The Post’s lead editorial on June 15 mixed a
patronizing tone with derisive comments in assuring its readers that
“the memos add not a single fact to what was previously known about the
administration’s prewar deliberations. Not only that: They add nothing
to what was publicly known in July 2002.”
Oh, really?
While it may be true that some people were alleging
what the secret British memos now confirm, those people were vocal
opponents of invading Iraq and were treated by the Post and other
pro-war news outlets as fringe characters fit only to be ignored.
For example, many war critics asserted that Bush’s
decision to take his case against Iraq to the United Nations was a ploy
designed only to justify a predetermined course for invasion. In other
words, the critics felt that Bush and his allies were not acting in good
faith, but simply wanted some political cover for an illegal war.
That, of course, was not the judgment of
editorialists at the Washington Post, the New York Times or other major
newspapers who praised Bush for going to the UN on the advice of
supposed moderates such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and British
Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Indeed, looking back to late 2002 and early 2003,
it would be hard to find any “reputable” commentary in the mainstream
press calling Bush’s actions fraudulent, which is what the British
evidence reveals them to be.
Willful Deception
That sense of willful deception – which pervades
the British memos – is why so many American citizens are furious both at
Bush for misleading the country to war and at the mainstream news media
for failing to adequately challenge the administration’s claims about
the need to invade Iraq. The Iraq War has now claimed the lives of more
than 1,700 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis – with no end
in sight.
But the British memos show that much of the
internal pre-war debate was how best to manipulate the public, including
the charade of a last-ditch UN appeal for returning inspectors to Iraq.
In a March 14, 2002, memo to Blair, his chief
foreign policy adviser David Manning recounts that he explained over
dinner with then-U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice how
important it was to maneuver Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein into a
position where he would refuse to permit new UN weapons inspections.
“This issue of weapons inspectors must be handled
in a way that would persuade Europe and wider opinion that the U.S. was
conscious of the international framework, and the insistence of many
countries on the need for a legal basis,” Manning wrote. “Renewed
refusal by Saddam to accept unfettered inspections would be a powerful
argument.”
Manning also indicated to Rice that Blair needed
this UN initiative because the British media and people weren't the
pushovers that their American counterparts were. “I said that you
[Blair] would not budge in your support for regime change [in Iraq] but
you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was
different from anything in the States,” Manning wrote.
Wrong-Footing Saddam
On March 18, 2002, four days later, British
Ambassador to the United States Christopher Meyer reported on a lunch
with U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz at which they
discussed how demands for weapons inspections might trip up Hussein.
Meyer told Wolfowitz that the United States could
wage war on its own, “but if it wanted to act with partners, there had
to be a strategy for building support for military action against
Saddam. I then went through the need to wrong-foot Saddam on the
inspectors and the [UN Security Council resolutions] …
“If all this could be accomplished skillfully, we
were fairly confident that a number of countries would come on board.”
[Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2005, from documents supplied by the London
Sunday Times.]
This concept of trying to “wrong-foot Saddam” is a
recurring theme in the British memos.
The next month, April 2002, Blair met with Bush in
Crawford, Texas, to signal Blair’s support for Bush’s war plans, though
the two men have insisted – as recently as at a joint press conference
in Washington on June 7, 2005 – that they had not yet made the decision
to invade.
Done Deal
The British documents from summer 2002, however,
make clear that the invasion of Iraq was essentially a done deal. Three
months after the Crawford summit, Blair’s foreign policy team reconvened
to hash over new plans for arranging a pretext for war.
A July 21, 2002, briefing paper said it was
“necessary to create the conditions” which would make an invasion legal.
To achieve those conditions, the briefing paper suggested a UN Security
Council resolution that would be insulting enough to goad the proud
Hussein into rejecting inspections.
“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which
Saddam would reject,” the briefing paper said.
Two days later, on July 23, Blair met at his
offices at 10 Downing Street with his top foreign policy advisers to
review the Iraq situation. According to the
minutes, which have become known as the Downing Street Memo, Richard
Dearlove, chief of the British intelligence agency MI6, described a
recent trip to Washington at which he discussed Iraq with Bush’s
National Security Council.
“Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military
action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” Dearlove
said.
The minutes added, “It seemed clear that Bush had
made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet
decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his
neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North
Korea or Iran.”
Ultimatum
Again recognizing that an unprovoked invasion would
violate international law, Blair favored first pursuing arms inspections
with the hope that Hussein would say no.
“We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to
Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help
with the legal justification for the use of force,” according to the
minutes. “The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference
politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN
inspectors.”
Ultimately, the UN Security Council did approve a toughly worded
resolution demanding the return of UN inspectors. But Hussein crossed up
Blair and Bush by letting the inspectors return to Iraq in November 2002
and giving them access to suspected WMD sites of their choosing.
Despite praise for this cooperation from chief UN inspector Hans Blix
and no WMD discoveries, Bush pressed ahead with his war plans in
mid-March 2003. Bush forced the UN inspectors to leave Iraq just days
before the invasion on March 19.
The U.S.-led invasion ousted Hussein in three
weeks, but U.S. inspectors failed to locate any WMD. As the initial
euphoria over Hussein’s toppled statue faded, replaced with widespread
chaos and growing casualties, Bush seemed to realize that he needed to
create a justification for the war, at least some words he could tell
the American people.
So, by summer 2003, Bush had begun rewriting the
recent history to assert that the war was justified because Hussein had
not let the UN arms inspectors in, precisely the rationale that Bush and
Blair had hoped to have. Though it hadn’t worked out that way, Bush
solved the problem by simply lying about the history.
On July 14, 2003, Bush
said about Hussein, “we gave him
a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And,
therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from
power.” Bush repeated this formulation in slightly varied forms over the
following two years, including during a presidential debate in 2004.
Yet, like so many other examples of Bush misstating
or exaggerating facts, this falsified history drew little notice or
objection from the U.S. mainstream media. [For our latest story on
Bush’s manufactured history, see Consortiumnews.com’s “President
Bush, With the Candlestick…”]
'Hegemon'
Another stunning feature of the British memos was
the sense of resignation felt by London and the other world capitals
once Bush had marked out the path to war.
“In practice, much of the international community
would find it difficult to stand in the way of the determined course of
the U.S. hegemon,” according to the July 21, 2002, briefing paper, which
added: “US views of international law vary from that of the UK and the
international community.”
Particularly, the British found themselves caught
between a rock and a hard place because Bush was determined to attack
Iraq and would use British military facilities regardless of London’s
desires, the briefing paper said.
“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British
bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” which meant that the issue of British
complicity in an illegal American war “would arise virtually whatever
option ministers choose with regard to UK participation,” the July 21
briefing paper said. [London Sunday Times, June 12, 2005]
These secret British memos, obtained by foreign
policy correspondent Michael Smith of the London Sunday Times, offered
an extraordinary inside view of power politics as played by the Bush
administration. But much of the U.S. mainstream media yawned when the
documents surfaced in early May 2005. Stories were either relegated to
the inside pages or not written at all.
This time, however, liberal activists and Internet
bloggers pressed the issue, essentially accusing the mainstream media –
or MSM – of toadying up to the Bush administration or cowering before
right-wing pressure groups.
Striking Back
Finally, the hectoring from the anti-war side grew
too much. A few front-page stories about the documents appeared, but
prominent national commentators denied that any cover-up had occurred.
They dismissed the British memos as old news or weak evidence.
On June 12, 2005, for instance, the Washington Post
carried an opinion column by Los Angeles Times editorial page editor
Michael Kinsley, who mocked readers who had peppered him with demands
for coverage of the Downing Street Memo.
Kinsley said he only read the memo after getting
about 200 e-mails. In a column entitled “No
Smoking Gun,” he then proceeded to ridicule Americans who saw the
memo as “proof positive that President Bush was determined to invade
Iraq the year before he did so” or who thought “the whole ‘weapons of
mass destruction’ concern was phony from the start, and the drama about
inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions.”
In this derisive tone, Kinsley wrote,
“Although it is flattering to be thought personally responsible for
allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office, in the end I don’t
buy the fuss.” Kinsley then dismissed the value of the Downing Street
Memo’s contents, some of which were attributed to MI6 chief Dearlove,
who is referred to in the memo as “C.”
“Even on its face, the memo is not proof
that Bush had decided on war. It says that war is ‘now seen as
inevitable’ by ‘Washington,’” Kinsley wrote. “C is saying only that
these people believe that war is how events will play out.”
Kinsley then speculated that those
viewpoints of “Washington” may be just the views of “the usual freelance
chatterboxes.”
But Kinsley either is a very sloppy reader
or a liar. The context of Dearlove’s information is clear. It came from
a meeting that Dearlove had in Washington with Bush’s National Security
Council, the most authoritative source on Bush’s thinking outside of the
president himself, not just from some “freelance chatterboxes.” Dearlove
doesn't cite “Washington” as his source the way Kinsley says the
intelligence chief does.
The relevant paragraph from the Downing
Street Memo reads as follows:
“C reported on his recent talks in
Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action
was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through
military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But
the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC
had no patience with the UN route. … There was little discussion in
Washington of the aftermath after military action.”
Editorial Attack
The Washington Post followed up Kinsley’s salvo
with its June 15 editorial, discounting the British disclosures as old
and fuzzy news.
The Post, which beat the war drums loudly in 2002
and 2003, continued to insist that Bush was sincere in his belief about
the WMD threat from Iraq, despite the British comments that
“intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
The “fixed” intelligence comment was “vague but
intriguing,” the Post editorial said, but then it cited the fact that
several official government investigations didn’t accuse the Bush
administration of politicizing the intelligence. (The editorial doesn’t
mention the rest of the story: that the Bush administration and the
Republican congressional leadership barred the investigations from
examining that issue.)
But the Post editorial pages have been getting the
Iraq story wrong from the start. As the nation lurched toward war in
2002-2003, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt not only fell for the Bush
administration’s claims about WMD, but he treated dissent toward that
conventional wisdom as almost unthinkable.
After Secretary of State Powell made his
now-infamous presentation of the Iraq evidence to the UN on Feb. 5,
2003, Hiatt’s editorial page judged Powell’s WMD case “irrefutable” and
added: “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses
weapons of mass destruction.”
The Post’s pro-war editorials were amplified by a
pro-war echo chamber of Post columnists who are also under Hiatt’s
jurisdiction.
“The [Post] editorials during December [2002] and
January [2003] numbered nine, and all were hawkish,” wrote Columbia
University journalism professor Todd Gitlin. “This editorial mood
continued into February, culminating in a blast at the French and
Germans headlined ‘Standing With Saddam.’ Apparently it’s not only
George W. Bush who doesn’t nuance.” [American
Prospect, April 1, 2003]
False Facts
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the failure
to discover WMD, Hiatt acknowledged that the Post should have been more
circumspect.
“If you look at the editorials we write running up
[to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Hussein] has weapons of
mass destruction,” Hiatt said in an interview with the Columbia
Journalism Review. “If that’s not true, it would have been better not to
say it.” [CJR,
March/April 2004]
While Hiatt is only one of many successful
Washington journalists whose careers have benefited from not rocking the
Republican boat, he does stand out as one with a particularly long
record of missing stories and getting rewarded for it.
Hiatt first came to my attention when I was with
the Associated Press in the mid-1980s. Starting in spring 1985, I had
been writing stories about Ronald Reagan’s NSC aide Oliver North’s
secret Nicaraguan contra support operations. These AP stories had
encountered fierce White House denials.
Adding to our troubles were two articles –
published in 1986 by the New York Times and the Washington Post –
purporting to explore the inner workings of Reagan’s NSC. Neither story
made any mention of North. When I called a friend at the Post to ask why
North had been left out, I was told that the Post had been assured by
its White House sources that North was an inconsequential figure.
Only months later, the Iran-Contra scandal broke
wide open, showing that North’s activities were not only consequential
but caused the most memorable scandal of Reagan’s presidency. The
reporter for the Post article about the NSC – the story that had failed
to mention Oliver North – was Fred Hiatt.
Hiatt later was the Post’s bureau chief in Moscow
where some critics of Russia’s “shock therapy” privatization considered
Hiatt naïve about the corruption that pervaded the business activities
of some “Russian oligarchs” as they manipulated the sell-off of state
assets. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Russia’s Ruling Robbers.”]
Still, despite this track record – or some might
say, because of it – Hiatt landed the prestigious job of editorial page
editor of the Washington Post, one of the most influential positions in
American journalism. From that spot, he has lectured the Democrats – and
now common citizens – not to be too critical of George W. Bush’s Iraq
policies.
Sad Donkeys
Early this year in a Post column entitled “Bad News
Donkeys,” Hiatt chastised Sen. John Kerry for not showing enough
enthusiasm over the Iraqi election on Jan. 30. According to Hiatt, Kerry
“grumped” his answer about the election when the senator told NBC’s Tim
Russert that “I think it’s gone as expected.”
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pressed for
a clearer exit strategy for U.S. troops, Hiatt judged that her comments
“sounded grudging and morose.” He finished up his column comparing the
Democrats to the sad-sack donkey character Eeyore in the Winnie-the-Pooh
stories. [Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2005]
Ironically, although Hiatt chastised Democratic
leaders for their lack of enthusiasm about Iraq in February, his
editorial page echoed those concerns in June.
“In fact, the U.S. mission in Iraq seems to be
drifting dangerously – and the president, once again, is not talking
frankly to the country about the sacrifice that may be required, or
where the troops and other resources for such an effort will come from,”
the June 15 editorial said. “Those ought to be the questions at center
stage this summer” – as opposed to the British memos and the evidence of
deception.
But it’s easy to see why George W. Bush thinks he
can continue dissembling about the Iraq War, since he’s gotten away with
it for three years, as the Post and other parts of the MSM have told the
public, “move along, none of your business what happened here.”