[Peace-discuss] The Lies We Bought

[patton paul]

This article shows how the press failed to make use of available evidence
to refute the Bush Administration's claims regarding Iraqi WMDs during the
months before congress authorized the use of military force against Iraq.
-Paul P.



Published in the May/June issue of the  Columbia Journalism Review
The Lies We Bought
The Unchallenged "Evidence" For War
by John R. MacArthur


Shortly before American military forces invaded Iraq, a troubled Ellen
Goodman raised a singularly important question about the Bush
administrations propaganda campaign for war  How we got from there to
here.

There, according to Goodman, was innocent 9/11 victimhood at the hands of
religious fanatics; here, was bullying superpower bent on destroying a
secular dictator. I assumed that someone as astute as Goodman would reveal
at least part of the answer  that the American media provided free
transportation to get the White House from there to here. But nowhere in
her nationally syndicated column did she state the obvious  that the
success of Bushs PR War (the headline on the piece) was largely dependent
on a compliant press that uncritically repeated almost every fraudulent
administration claim about the threat posed to America by Saddam Hussein.

Late as she was, Goodman was better than most in even recognizing that
there was a disinformation campaign aimed at the people and Congress. Just
a few columnists seriously challenged the White House advertising assault.
Looking back over the debris of half-truths and lies, I cant help but ask
my own question of Goodman: Where was she  indeed, where was the American
press  on September 7, 2002, a day when we were sorely in need of
reporters?

It was then that the White House propaganda drive began in earnest, with
the appearance before television cameras of George Bush and Tony Blair at
Camp David. Between them, the two politicians cited a new report from the
UNs International Atomic Energy Agency that allegedly stated that Iraq was
six months away from building a nuclear weapon. I dont know what more
evidence we need, declared the president.

For public relations purposes, it hardly mattered that no such IAEA report
existed, because almost no one in the media bothered to check out the
story. (In the twenty-first paragraph of her story on the press
conference, The Washington Posts Karen DeYoung did quote an IAEA spokesman
saying, in DeYoungs words, that the agency has issued no new report, but
she didnt confront the White House with this terribly interesting fact.)
What mattered was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war  the
one that the White House chief of staff and former General Motors
executive Andrew Card had famously withheld earlier in the summer: From a
marketing point of view, you dont introduce new products in August.

Millions of people saw Bush tieless, casually inarticulate, but
determined-looking and self-confident, making a completely uncorroborated
(and, at that point, uncontradicted) case for preemptive war. While we
contemplate the irony of Bush quoting a UN weapons inspection agency that
he would later dismiss, we might ask ourselves why no more evidence was
needed than the presidents say-so  and why no reporters asked for any.

But the next day, more evidence suddenly appeared, on the front page of
the Sunday New York Times. In a disgraceful piece of stenography, Michael
Gordon and Judith Miller inflated an administration leak into something
resembling imminent Armageddon: More than a decade after Saddam Hussein
agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its
quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for
materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said
today.

The key to this A-bomb program was the attempted purchase of specially
designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as
components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. Mysteriously, none of those
tubes had reached Iraq, but American officials wouldnt say why, citing the
sensitivity of the intelligence.

Gordon and Miller were mostly careful to attribute their information to
anonymous administration officials, but at one point they couldnt restrain
themselves and crossed the line into commentary. After nodding to
administration critics who favored containment of Hussein, they wrote this
astonishing paragraph:

Still, Mr. Husseins dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions,
along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraqs push to improve
and expand Baghdads chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq
and the United States to the brink of war.

That Sunday, Cards new-product introduction moved into high gear when Vice
President Dick Cheney appeared on NBCs Meet the Press to brandish Saddams
supposed nuclear threat. Prompted by a helpful Tim Russert, Cheney cited
the aluminum tubes story in that mornings New York Times  a story leaked
by Cheneys White House colleagues. Russert: Aluminum tubes. Cheney:
Specifically aluminum tubes. This gave the six months away canard a
certain ring of independent confirmation: Theres a story in The New York
Times this morning, said Cheney. And I want to attribute the Times.

Does it matter that, in the months that followed, aluminum tubes as
weapons of mass destruction were discredited time and again? Does it
matter that the former U.S. weapons inspector David Albright (not the
usual suspect Scott Ritter) told 60 Minutes, in an interview broadcast on
December 8 (a program in which I participated) that people who understood
gas centrifuges almost uniformly felt that these tubes were not specific
to gas centrifuge for production of enriched uranium  that the
administration was selectively picking information to bolster a case that
the Iraqi nuclear threat was more imminent than it is, and in essence,
scare people? Will the Times ever publish a clarification ( la Wen Ho Lee)
based on IAEA chief Mohammed el-Baradeis January 9 and March 7 reports
insisting that there was no evidence that the 81 mm tubes were intended
for anything other than conventional rocket production?

As for the defectors with special knowledge of Saddams elusive chemical
weapons stockpile, did Miller and Gordon  did anyone in the mainstream
U.S. press  take proper note of Newsweeks exclusive on March 3? In it,
John Barry reported that Iraqs most important defector, Hussein Kamel, who
had run Saddams nuclear and biological weapons program, told the CIA and
UN weapons inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the gulf war, Iraq
destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles
to deliver them.

And what of Saddams overall nuclear procurement program? When el-Baradei
told the UN Security Council on March 7 that supporting documents of
alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger were forged, no clarification
of the Gordon-Miller report appeared in the Grey Lady. Perhaps Times
people still believed their own scare story from all those months before:
Hard-liners are alarmed that American intelligence underestimated the pace
and scale of Iraqs nuclear program before Baghdads defeat in the gulf war,
the September 8 piece reported. The first sign of a smoking gun, they
argue, may be a mushroom cloud.

The few corrections and refutations of the White House line were too
little and too late for American democracy. Enterprising reporting was
needed from the moment of the Bush-Blair p.r. gambit to October 10, the
day Congress abdicated its war-making power to the president. During that
crucial period, I was able to find only one newspaper story that
straightforwardly countered the White House nuclear threat propaganda; it
appeared, of all places, in the right-wing, Sun Myung Moon-owned
Washington Times. On September 27, a very competent piece by Joseph Curl
(unfortunately buried on page 16) pointed out not only that there was no
new report by the IAEA saying Saddam was six months away from the A-bomb,
but also that the agency had never issued a report predicting any time
frame. Indeed, when IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq in December 1998,
spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Curl, We had concluded that we had
neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their
fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment.

The American media failed the country badly these past eight months. As
journalists, what can we do about it? Perhaps we need to adopt the
rapid-response techniques used in public relations, something akin to
James Carvilles and George Stephanopouloss famous War Room ethos: never
leave an accusation unanswered before the end of a news cycle.

Unfortunately, the politicians and their p.r. people know all too well the
propaganda dictum related nearly twenty years ago by Peter Teeley, press
secretary to then Vice President George H.W. Bush. Teeley was responding
to complaints that the elder Bush, during a televised debate, had grossly
distorted the words of his and Ronald Reagans opponents, the Democratic
candidates Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. As Teeley explained it to
The New York Times in October 1984, You can say anything you want during a
debate, and 80 million people hear it. If anything turns out to be false
and journalists correct it, So what. Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000 or
20,000.

John MacArthur is publisher of Harpers Magazine and author of 'Second
Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War'.