[Peace] Moyers' "Record of Iraq War Lies" April 25
Karen Medina
kmedina at uiuc.edu
Fri Apr 13 11:49:26 CDT 2007
Dear Peace list,
Watch PBS on April 25th, 9:00 to 10:30 PM
Bill Moyers' "Record of Iraq War Lies"
(I haven't verified if this is Central time or not)
-karen medina (multitasking)
>> Record of Iraq War Lies to Air April 25 on PBS
>> By David Swanson
>> t r u t h o u t | Guest Columnist
>>
>> Thursday 12 April 2007
>>
>> Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute
>>video documenting the lies that the Bush administration
>>told to sell the Iraq war to the American public, with a
>>special focus on how the media led the charge. I've
>>watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the
>>most important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from
>>9:00 to 10:30 PM on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90
>>minutes will actually save you time because you'll never
>>watch television news again - not even on PBS, which comes
>>in for its own share of criticism.
>>
>> While a great many pundits, not to mention presidents,
>>look remarkably stupid or dishonest in the four-year-old
>>clips included in "Buying the War," it's hard to take any
>>spiteful pleasure in holding them to account, and not just
>>because the killing and dying they facilitated is ongoing,
>>but also because of what this video reveals about the
>>mindset of members of the DC media. Moyers interviews
>>media personalities, including Dan Rather, who clearly
>>both understand what the media did wrong and are unable to
>>really see it as having been wrong or avoidable.
>>
>> It's great to see an American media outlet tell this
>>story so well, but it leads one to ask: When will Congress
>>tell it? While the Democrats were in the minority, they
>>clamored for hearings and investigations, they pushed
>>Resolutions of Inquiry into the White House Iraq Group and
>>the Downing Street Minutes. Now in the majority, they've
>>gone largely silent. The chief exception is the House
>>Judiciary Committee's effort to question Condoleezza Rice
>>next week about the forged Niger documents.
>>
>> But what comes out of watching this show is a powerful
>>realization that no investigation is needed by Congress,
>>just as no hidden information was needed for the media to
>>get the story right in the first place. The claims that
>>the White House made were not honest mistakes. But neither
>>were they deceptions. They were transparent and laughably
>>absurd falsehoods. And they were high crimes and
>>misdemeanors.
>>
>> The program opens with video of President Bush saying
>>"Iraq is part of a war on terror. It's a country that
>>trains terrorists. It's a country that can arm terrorists.
>>Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this
>>country."
>>
>> Was that believable or did the media play along? The
>>next shot is of a press conference at which Bush announces
>>that he has a script telling him which reporters to call
>>on and in what order. Yet the reporters play along,
>>raising their hands after each comment, pretending that
>>they might be called on despite the script.
>>
>> Video shows Richard Perle claiming that Saddam Hussein
>>worked with al Qaeda and that Iraqis would greet American
>>occupiers as liberators. Here are the Weekly Standard, The
>>Wall Street Journal, William Safire from The New York
>>Times, Charles Krauthammer and Jim Hoagland from The
>>Washington Post, all demanding an overthrow of Iraq's
>>government. George Will is seen saying that Hussein "has
>>anthrax, he loves biological weapons, he has terrorist
>>training camps, including 747s to practice on."
>>
>> But was that even plausible? Bob Simon of "60 Minutes"
>>tells Moyers he wasn't buying it. He says he saw the idea
>>of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda as an
>>absurdity: "Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control
>>freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total
>>control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like
>>al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do.
>>So I just didn't believe it for an instant."
>>
>> Knight Ridder Bureau Chief John Walcott didn't buy it
>>either. He assigned Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay to
>>do the reporting and they found the Bush claims to be
>>quite apparently false. For example, when the Iraqi
>>National Congress (INC) fed The New York Times's Judith
>>Miller a story through an Iraqi defector claiming that
>>Hussein had chemical and biological weapons labs under his
>>house, Landay noticed that the source was a Kurd, making
>>it very unlikely he would have learned such secrets. But
>>Landay also noticed that it was absurd to imagine someone
>>putting a biological weapons lab under his house.
>>
>> But absurd announcements were the order of the day. A
>>video clip shows a Fox anchor saying, "A former top Iraqi
>>nuclear scientist tells Congress Iraq could build three
>>nuclear bombs by 2005." And the most fantastic stories of
>>all were fed to David Rose at Vanity Fair Magazine. We see
>>a clip of him saying, "The last training exercise was to
>>blow up a full-size mock-up of a US destroyer in a lake in
>>central Iraq."
>>
>> Landay comments: "Or jumping into pits of fouled water
>>and having to kill a dog with your bare teeth. I mean,
>>this was coming from people who are appearing in all of
>>these stories, and sometimes their rank would change."
>>
>> Forged documents from Niger could not have gotten
>>noticed in this stew of lies. Had there been some real
>>documents honestly showing something, that might have
>>stood out and caught more eyes. Walcott describes the way
>>the INC would feed the same information to the vice
>>president and secretary of defense that it fed to a
>>reporter, and the reporter would then get the claims
>>confirmed by calling the White House or the Pentagon.
>>Landay adds: "And let's not forget how close these people
>>were to this administration, which raises the question,
>>was there coordination? I can't tell you that there was,
>>but it sure looked like it."
>>
>> Simon from "60 Minutes" tells Moyers that when the
>>White House claimed a 9/11 hijacker had met with a
>>representative of the Iraqi government in Prague, "60
>>Minutes" was easily able to make a few calls and find out
>>that there was no evidence for the claim. "If we had
>>combed Prague," he says, "and found out that there was
>>absolutely no evidence for a meeting between Mohammad Atta
>>and the Iraqi intelligence figure. If we knew that, you
>>had to figure the administration knew it. And yet they
>>were selling the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam."
>>
>> Moyers questions a number of people about their awful
>>work, including Dan Rather, Peter Beinart and then
>>Chairman and CEO of CNN Walter Isaacson. And he questions
>>Simon, who soft-pedaled the story and avoided reporting
>>that there was no evidence.
>>
>> Landay at Knight Ridder did report the facts when it
>>counted, but not enough people paid attention. He tells
>>Moyers that all he had to do was read the UN weapons
>>inspectors' reports online to know that the White House
>>was lying to us. When Cheney said that Hussein was close
>>to acquiring nuclear weapons, Landay knew he was lying:
>>"You need tens of thousands of machines called
>>'centrifuges' to produce highly enriched uranium for a
>>nuclear weapon. You've got to house those in a fairly big
>>place, and you've got to provide a huge amount of power to
>>this facility."
>>
>> Moyers also hits Tim Russert with a couple of tough
>>questions. Russert expressed regret for not having
>>included any skeptical voices by saying he wished his
>>phone had rung. So Moyers begins the next segment by
>>saying, "Bob Simon didn't wait for the phone to ring," and
>>describing Simon's reporting. Simon says he knew the
>>claims about aluminum tubes were false because "60
>>Minutes" called up some scientists and researchers and
>>asked them. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post says that
>>skeptical stories did not get placed on the front page
>>because they were not "definitive."
>>
>> Moyers shows brief segments of an "Oprah" show in
>>which she has on only pro-war guests and silences a caller
>>who questions some of the White House claims. Just in time
>>for the eternal election season, Moyers includes clips of
>>Hillary Clinton and John Kerry backing the war on the
>>basis of Bush and Cheney's lies. But we also see clips of
>>Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy getting it right.
>>
>> The Washington Post editorialized in favor of the war
>>27 times, and published in 2002 about 1,000 articles and
>>columns on the war. But the Post gave a huge anti-war
>>march a total of 36 words. "What got even less ink,"
>>Moyers says, "was the release of the National Intelligence
>>Estimate." Even the misleading partial version that the
>>media received failed to fool a careful eye.
>>
>> Landay recalls: "It said that the majority of analysts
>>believed that those tubes were for the nuclear weapons
>>program. It turns out though, that the majority of
>>intelligence analysts had no background in nuclear
>>weapons." Was Landay the only one capable of noticing this
>>detail?
>>
>> Colin Powell's UN presentation comes in for similar
>>quick debunking. We watch a video clip of Powell
>>complaining that Iraq has covered a test-stand with a
>>roof. But AP reporter Charles Hanley comments, "What he
>>neglected to mention was that the inspectors were
>>underneath watching what was going on."
>>
>> Powell cited a UK paper, but it very quickly came out
>>that the paper had been plagiarized from a college
>>student's work found online. The British press pointed
>>that out. The US let it slide. But anyone looking for the
>>facts found it quickly.
>>
>> Moyers's wonderful movie is marred by a single line -
>>the next to the last sentence - in which he says, "The
>>number of Iraqis killed, over 35,000 last year alone, is
>>hard to pin down." A far more accurate figure could have
>>been found very easily.
>>
>> ---------
>>
>> This article by David Swanson was first published at
>>http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/21146.
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