2003-07-11 -
7:06 a.m.
Better Late Than Never: The Media Asks Questions.
It started early yesterday morning. Unable to sleep, I had World News Now running in the background...I wasn't really paying much attention. It has been a while since the news finally broke into the mainstream media that the Bush Administration lied about the evidence against Saddam Hussein as an excuse to invade Iraq. Reports about the questioning of Bush's motives for using discredited intel have been arriving all day.
Too bad they have so much more discredited intel to go through. While they fixate on the forged documents about Hussein trying to purchase nuclear material from Niger, they're ignoring the rest.
Bush didn't limit his "story" about Iraq to it's development of nuclear weapons.
The aluminum tubes had been proven by the inspectors and the intelligence community to be the wrong size and type to be used to enrich nuclear material.
The drone that could be used to attack British citizens in 45 minutes with WMD turned out to be a model plane.
The "tons" of biological and chemical weapons magically disappeared along with the rebuilt plants and mobile units being used to manufacture them.
When the inspectors failed to find the proof of the Administration's claims, Bush and his cronies sneered at them and used it as an excuse to go to war, knowing full well those tons of WMD and facilities did not exist.
The inspectors knew Powell was presenting exaggerated information when he made his presentation to the UN Security Council in February. So did the intelligence community. They wrote about it. They posted it on the internet. Somehow the mainstream media and most of the Democrats in Congress managed to be unaware of what millions worldwide knew: these were lies.
The antiwar protests weren't just about wanting peace. They were protests by informed citizens protesting a regime that was lying through its teeth to make an illegal war on a nation that was technically crippled by years of sanctions. We knew Hussein had no ties to Al Qaida. We knew Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Of all the despots in the world, he was the least capable of participating in terrorism.
Most Washington Democrats and the US media keep shying away from the truth, even though they have been told the truth by the intelligence and diplomatic communities (as well as other governments and the millions of world citizens who protested the war) since long before the invasion began (most of the information was publicly available before the State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003).
I was busy working on my magazine with Good Morning America on by now, when I heard an interview with Greg Thielmann (an ex-officer of the Bureau of Research and Intelligence) by Diane Sawyer. What a miserable affair that was. I went this evening to see if I could pull up the interview on the ABC website and as they usually do with anything that goes against the message they want to send, it wasn't posted.
Poor Diane. She sounded absolutely miserable. I suppose as an ex-Nixon sycophant, it's not surprising she would feel this way.
(Paraphrased)
Diane: Are you saying the president lied?
Thielmann: That's the only conclusion to draw. Yes.
Diane: Isn't that harsh?
Harsh? I suppose her response is akin to Powell "To think we would go out of our way to put in a single sentence (Iraq's attempts to acquire nuclear material) is an overdrawn, overblown and overwrought conclusion." True. A single sentence is nothing compared to all the lies in the State of the Union Address and Powell's address to the UN. (Yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater is using only one word.) or Bush via Fleischer, "Just move on. I have." (Wishful thinking? I'm sure.)
But the clincher came in a statement from an unnamed source close to the Administration: "Bush's credibility isn't damaged by this, and it won't be unless the situation in Iraq deteriorates further. If it does, people will start asking questions. But we don't think that will happen."
I have to say, ???? So, according to this, he will only be discredited if people start asking questions! And really, aren't a few questions all it would take?
Related link:
Experts Accuse U.S. of Misrepresentation
"WASHINGTON (AP)...
..."When the war began in March, Iraq posed no threat to the United States or to its neighbors, a former senior State Department intelligence official said Wednesday.
Its missiles could not reach Israel, Saudi Arabia or Iran, said Greg Thielmann, who held a high post in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
But Thielmann, one of four critics at a session held by the private Arms Control Association, said the Bush administration had formed a ``faith-based'' policy on Iraq and took the approach that ``we know the answers; give us the intelligence to support those answers.'' "
Thanks to
Tom Englehardt for the link!
Powell's UN Presentation
Powell Fails to Make Case
Source of Pentagon Papers Critiques Iraq Coverage
Remember John Dean and Watergate? See what he has to say about the media and the prewar coverage.
"They are not doing the job that should be done on informing themselves, Congress, and the public on the decision-making process, the dissenting positions within the government, and the real considerations in the decision."
"Still, they are getting more leaks. Many in the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department see this may be a reckless war and that many may die needlessly. We do know much more than we did at a comparable time with Vietnam. And, as in past, the foreign press is reporting much more adequately than the U.S. press -- and the U.S. press, as before, is largely ignoring that."
