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The MSM should know

The New Neo Posted on by

The blurb for this AP article on Yahoo News caught my eye, so I clicked on it. It indicated that a new study had documented that during the lead-up to the Iraq War the Bush administration had made hundreds of “false statements” about the security threat Iraq represented.

I was expecting, at the very least, something new. Even perhaps something significant.

And I was certainly expecting evidence of lies on the part of Bush and company, although I should have understood that the phrase “false statements” was ever-so-carefully chosen to conjure up the idea of a lie in the reader’s mind but to stop short of actually saying it.

From the first two paragraphs of the article:

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

“Orchestrated campaign;” “false pretenses.” Sure sounds like lies, doesn’t it? And not just a lie or two, but an enormous series of them, “The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period.”

Finally, in the next sentence, we get to the point:

[The study] found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

I should no longer be astonished at the media, or at groups that purport to be nonpartisan but are not (see this and this, about the two closely connected groups that were behind this “study,” and draw your own conclusions).

So I’ll be brief; you’ve heard it all before. But just let me say that a study that concludes that Bush said Iraq had WMDs and none have been found, and that therefore his statements about WMDs can be characterized as “false” (but not necessarily lies), is hardly worth the designation “news” or “study.”

And, speaking of “organized campaigns” that attempt to “galvanize public opinion,” the AP and the MSM are expert practitioners of those arts, despite their claims of objectivity. And hey, I know, because I’ve done a study.

Comments

The MSM should know — 30 Comments

  1. The problem is the same as with the Lancet/Johns Hopkins 650,000 dead Iraqis report:

    the media repeats the falsity, sans context.

    Without a media parrot, the study has no cachet.

    Of course, the media WANTS to repeat the news. Media are guided by the Charles Enderlin philosophic standard of false, but true. The media collaborate with like minds (George Soros) to get the false but true news out to the world.

  2. They are on the other side.

    They believe it to be the side of virtue. They believe:

    If we all just come together, as one, all our problems will be solved. The neocons are the major obstacle preventing the world coming together as one. Therefore, neocon ideas must be fought.

  3. George Soros Funded Study Says Bush Lied

    The AP reports, and the New York Times expands, on a new study by a supposedly “independent” organization that claims to have assembled hundred of “false statements” by the Bush administration in the course of the Iraq war. However, the Center for Public Integrity hardly qualifies as “independent”. It gets much of its funding from George Soros, who has thrown millions of dollars behind Democratic political candidates, and explicitly campaigned to defeat George Bush in 2004:

    http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/016723.php

  4. You’re missing the big deal. It’s been said that the alien spacecraft at Roswell will teach us, among other things, time travel.
    But Soros beat them to it.
    He went back in time and got Clinton, Kerry, Albright, and several others to say EXACTLY THE SAME THING!
    This is BIG.

  5. Yeah, and all of those Kurdish villages were just topographical errors. The mass murderer didn’t actually have a weapon on him when he was busted, even though every cop and judge in the county figured he was armed and would kill again, and even though the UN served a warrant on his ass. Therefore he is as clean as a lamb… well, no, maybe not… but, um… the sheriff *lied*.

    /folds hands, /nods piously

    That’s my point. And in the moral, historical, and intellectual vacuum I inhabit, it’s the only one that counts.

  7. My, why not tally up the false statements of anti-war types? You know, all those dire predictions that didn’t come about?

    Also, since we know Saddam had a few hundred WMDs lying around, does that make any of these allegedly false statements true? And if so, did the group that did the counting make false statements?

  9. I like that freedomagenda.com link.

    Please spread it. I love dropping it onto site comments whenever the “Bush Lied!” or the Democratic Memory Hole crowd (e.g., Bill “I was always against the Iraq War” Clinton) start holding sway. Shuts ’em up every time.

  10. All it takes is one little link to Al Qaida to make it true… and a few existed… ergo, new headline, “two media monitoring groups and AP present false statements in disinformation campaign”….

  11. The problem with Bush is that he dared to steal the podium of the Left and actually did something with it instead of just talk.

  13. The FM link also demonstrably proves that just because Bush is refusing to step on his opposition, doesn’t mean his opposition doesn’t deserve being stepped on or that “Bush doesn’t have the resources” to do it. Bush can get online and get the stuff he needs to blast open the media deception campaign used against him and us. He doesn’t do it cause he likes to play with the rules.

    The Left has never played within the rules, though.

  14. Weren’t some of those lies supposedly about the support that foreign intelligence services gave to the WMD theory?

    This exerpt from an article about German armament sales to Iraq made my blood boil.

    The BND is Germany’s foreign intelligence service.

    “If we trust our [intelligence] services, and I do, then we know that there exist weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” said Pflueger, and referred to a November 13, 2002, BND briefing of members of parliament’s foreign affairs committee in which relevant information was disclosed. As a member of parliament, added Pflueger, he was bound by his secrecy oath not to pass on such information, but challenged Schroeder to make it public forthwith. This was necessary, he said, “so that Herr Schroeder cannot continue to spread the impression that the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a figment of George W Bush’s imagination”.

    The full article can be found at:
    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EB05Ak02.html

  16. Trying to paste in a part one, and then a part 2, no luck — total post word count I’m trying to post is: 550 words … what’s the rule on word counts .. or is there?

  17. There is not a word limit.. instead there is a magical filter that will supress your post if it contains a magic word that no one knows.

  19. Somewhere I had read, in the past, that there were convoys of trucks seen leaving Iraq for Syria right before the invasion kicked off. My bet is that Saddam’s WMD’s are still in the sand there. Or perhaps in the facility that Usrael took out not long ago.

    JMHO

  22. This is an interesting article about Iraq’s WMD:

    http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=09F9FC90-1752-4965-8D02-D2EFD4FB112B

    I’ll paste some of it

    FP: John Loftus, Dave Gaubatz and Ryan Mauro, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

    John Loftus, let us begin with you.

    Your volunteers at the IntelligenceSummit.org have been examining the secret documents captured from Saddam — and it appears that they have solved a large part of the mystery of Saddam’s missing WMDs. Correct?

    Loftus: Yes, now the truth is beginning to emerge. Saddam’s own secret files show that he was lying to the UN, year after year. He told the UN that Iraq had no more WMD after 1991, and would never start those WMD programs again. But his own secret records show that in 2001, 2002, and 2003, Saddam was repeatedly purchasing banned chemicals, covering up radiation leaks, and generally orchestrating a cover-up.

    Are the records genuine? We had NSA check the audiotapes to make sure it was Saddam’s own voiceprint. It is. Now, why would Saddam and his top aides record all those tapes year after year and hide the forgeries in secret vaults? There are three shelf miles of paper records. What is the point? These are secret internal records, it is not as if he was using them in public to fool the Iranians into thinking he had WMD. These records almost did not even make it onto the light of day. They were buried amid a forest of documents that might not have been reviewed for decades, if ever. I cannot think of any explanation but these are genuine secret archives of Saddam’s innermost feelings at his innermost meetings.

    Moreover, at the time people like Dave Gaubatz and John Shaw were putting their statements on the record about how the WMD ended up in Syria, they did not know that we would get circumstantial corroboration from Saddam’s own files. Statistically, this is beyond the realm of possibility of fabrication.

    Gaubatz: Thanks Jamie. My friend Mr. Loftus is the person who has inspired me to continue requesting our political leaders and the American public demand the truth about WMD be brought forward. There was a point in time when I had raised the flag indicating I surrender and can no longer fight the WMD cause further. Then I thought of the innocent children who would suffer the most during a terrorist attack in which WMD was used. I have obtained a second wind and want to inform everyone based on many years of working counter-intelligence, I left Iraq knowing WMD had indeed been buried, some had been transported out of Iraq directly before the war, and some has now been looted by our enemies.

    Are the records genuine as Mr. Loftus stated? The documents are genuine. In the last year I was informed by Federal Agents on the ground in Iraq, that many Iraqi sources who provided WMD intelligence to us in 2003, were subsequently kidnapped and killed for helping Americans.

    I want people to realize the war in Iraq is unlike any that our country has ever faced. There was chaos in 2003, and there is chaos in 2007. I do not mean to put fault on any one person for the failure to locate the WMD when we had the opportunity. Our leaders had the best intentions, but failed to properly review intelligence reports in a timely manner, and most were not acted upon. We are now suffering the consequences of not listening to the counter-intelligence officers on the ground and who was obtaining first-hand intelligence. In 2003 we reported the pending civil war between the Sunni and Shia Muslims. In pure Islam the Sunni Muslims consider Shia Muslims to be non-believers and apostates. The punishment for apostasy is death as described in Fiqh Us Sunnah. Fiqh Us Sunnah is in virtually every Sunni mosque in America. Our mapping team just left Florida. A prominent Islamic Scholar (Sunni) advised that all Shia people need to be
    killed in the U.S.

    The best way to solve the WMD mystery is to have all witnesses involved in either the search or excavations come before Congress and testify. This is when I will release names and contact information of the Iraqis who know first-hand about WMD and the Al Qaeda presence in Iraq well before 2003. Military agents will then be called forward.

    This issue is very easy to prove. Put all players before Congress, under oath. The truth will be revealed. Some will be hurt politically or their military careers will be damaged, but America will know the truth. The truth is the only thing that may have a remote chance of preventing another attack against our great country.

    Mauro: In 2006, particularly after pressure from the Intelligence Summit, the Bush Administration began declassifying some of the millions of documents that have been found in Iraq. Many of them were not translated due to the sheer volume of documents the U.S. possessed and how few reliable Arabic translators we have. These documents, as they were declassified, were put on the Internet where concerned citizens, fluent in Arabic, began translating them. Joseph Shahda and Ray Robison are two individuals who played a critical role in this. My only role was organizing and presenting them at the 2007 Intelligence Summit, and coupling it with the extensive open-source research I’ve done.

    However, this web site where the declassified documents were placed has been taken down. An Iraqi document with critical details on how to build a nuclear weapon was posted, and the government decided it was best to end this practice. As a result, millions of documents are not translated and analyzed, leaving a big gaping hole in our intelligence collection. Though the picture is incomplete, we have clear indications that Iraq, at the least, had the capabilities to produce WMD and was actively researching and expanding that capability. There is also evidence that WMD went to Syria.

    We learn about an Iraqi dissident who reported to us that he was in contact with drivers who confessed to transporting WMD into Syria. Apparently, 50 trucks arrived in Deir al-Zour, Syria, on March 10, 2003. One driver told the informant that an earlier shipment occurred on March 1st. Another document describes how Chinese intelligence picked up information about a WMD transfer to Syria, and asked the Germans for verification. The Germans said they didn’t have information on such a transfer, and then someone in the German government leaked this discussion to the Iraqis.

    We also know that Iraq was in bed with foreign terrorists, and although no smoking gun exists to prove a collaborative relationship with Al-Qaeda, we do know from a document from 1997 that Iraqi intelligence met with Osama Bin Laden on February 19, 1995, where Bin Laden requested that Iraqi radio broadcast the speeches of a radical sheikh. Bin Laden also “requested joint operations against the forces of infidels in the land of Hijaz,” which is Saudi Arabia. Those who argued for so long that Bin Laden was unwilling to work with a so-called secular dictator like Saddam are proven wrong, as Bin Laden, not the Iraqis, initiated the request for collaboration.

    It is worthy to note that on November 13, 1995, only months after this meeting, Al-Qaeda bombed the Saudi National Guards headquarters in Riyadh, killing five Americans. It’s circumstantial evidence, but other documents clearly point to Iraq as a committed state sponsor of terrorism.

    FP: So what does all of this mean? What do we carry away from these discoveries?

    And where is the apology from the liberal Left?

    Moreover, the U.S. clearly failed in securing and searching key sites after it defeated Saddam. If it failed in this context, how can we be hopeful that the U.S. will succeed in dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran?

    Loftus: I think what we carry away from Saddam’s secret files is that the average citizen today does not have a clue about world history because so much of it is classified. This is a theme that dates back to my congressional testimony in the 1980’s about Nazis in America. Russian double agent Kim Philby of British Intelligence dumped hundreds (if not thousands) of former Nazi war criminals in America, disguised as anti-communist freedom fighters. When US intelligence found out how badly they had been tricked, they covered it up for a half century, until I exposed it on 60 Minutes.

    It is the cover-up that kills America, not the mistakes. The American people are forgiving, they know that all government agencies make mistakes from time to time. The American attitude is let’s fix it and move on. But the liars that cover up their mistakes are traitors to America, because they prevent their mistakes from ever getting fixed. One of my favorite old spies, George Orwell wrote: “The omission is the most powerful form of lie, and it is the duty of historians to ensure that those lies do not creep into the history books.” He was writing about the evils of communism and nazism, but he could just as easily have been writing about Saddam Hussein.

    It wasn’t just the liberal press that was utterly wrong about Saddam Hussein having WMD, it was almost the entire mainstream press, and a good chunk of the conservative press went along with it. Heck, even all of the experts in the State Department drank Saddam’s cool aid. Truth be told, just about everyone bought into Saddam’s lie that he had no plans for making any more WMD. Right up to the end of his life, Saddam was even lying to his own jailer. He told this FBI Special Agent that he had no WMD, and was only lying about having WMD to intimidate the Iranians. The FBI Agent actually took Saddam’s word for it, and is publishing a book about him this week. The author is a wonderful agent, but he has been completely conned, as Saddam’s records show repeatedly. I am watching right now as the press praises the conventional wisdom, and tries to bury my report on what Saddam really said about WMD to his closest aides. If the press covers up the Saddam files, they have truly betrayed America.

    An alumni of my high school (Boston Latin) once wrote that those who fail to learn the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them. Iran tells us they have no WMD, but the truth is that they and their Syrian puppets are exploiting every hellish program that Saddam bequeathed to them. This is not over, Saddam may yet have his revenge: the Iranian are finishing the nuclear project that he started. Thank God for the Israelis, who twice now have blown up Saddam”s nuclear facilities: once in Osirak, Iraq, and now in Deir al Zour, Syria. The more things change, they more they stay the same. For once, can’t the press just admit they were wrong and move on? The only thing that matters is the truth, and the truth does not belong to the liberals or conservatives. It belongs to all of us.

  23. No responsible world power with the ability to cut down the Baathist along with their emerging international Jihadist scapegoats could have shown there face if they had done any thing less; the mobilization alone accomplished several important things in the multifaceted world of foreign policy; it chased the North Koreans out of Damascus, exposed the A.Q. Khan network, led to Kadafi’s capitulation of legal arms to Bush and Blair and not to Annan, and most importantly it stemmed the mega-Rwanda, of which Iraq was imploding, to something much less catastrophic than what it would have been. The coalition acting as it did was an amazing good fortune for the Iraqi people and the world (despite European Champaign-creds, yeah they get Champaign creds), minus the Bremer interim but hindsight is 50/50. To bad it wasn’t done sooner when international law required signatories’ urgent intervention in 1988, or in 1991, to bad we had to make difficult decisions in the Cold War to enable Saddam Hussein, thank you Russia ! And what a gut-wrenchingly great lose we’ve endured with the casualties of our fellow Americans and allies, they were and are the very best of us, angels if there ever were angels, heroes in company of all the heroes of humanity through all antiquity, but to think that revolutionary change comes without sacrifice is ahistorical. By 2003, it was the only responsible course to take; after all we historically had something to do with creating the mess, should it not therefore be our responsibility to FINALLY act on our promises to our international friends; and with diametric resolve to deal with the in-coalescent that our international enemies have chosen? Without the coalition then Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey would have leapt on Iraq’s oil fields like skinny maggots on a big fat bloated beached sea trout, so yes it was about oil, keeping it from hands it did not belong to, and out of the hands of Al-Qaeda, who were being drawn to Iraq with their exodus from Afghanistan, and sooner for that matter. Supporting Education is good. Supporting civil liberties is righteous. If we let the world go dark without a fight, our additional advances on what we’ve already established in western democracies, with our protected natural and civil rights, will all be lost. We should be proud that Iraq today is not the killing field of a three decade old totalitarian state, that today it has something of a federal constitution, and an elected Prime Minister, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd as we know who is of an ethnicity that was nearly wiped from the face of the Middle east, elected from the very majorities that perpetrated his peoples genocide — this is real progress that we can always be proud of no matter what happens!

  24. I meant of course, “led to Kadafi’s capitulation of ILLEGAL arms” … Jiminity cricket how I wish there was a preview; as if that would help, hmmm … I need more writing discipline!

    and on the larger note — thank you, neo!

  26. Pingback:false statements « empty rhetoric

  27. You should check out the book Saddam’s Secrets by Iraqi General Georges Sada with Jim Nelson Black.

    Fascinating stories from a Christian Iraqi who can trace his ancestors in the region back before Christ. He is an Assyrian Christian whose native tongue isn’t Arabic but Aramaic, which is the language Jesus spoke. Apparently, his bible doesn’t need translation… How cool is that?

    Saddam was a monster, but a monster who was surrounded by yes men, and he knew it. He also knew that Georges had a reputation for being truthful even when truth would risk his life, and that was generally what allowed him to keep his head.

    He is now involved in the rebuilding of Iraq.

    Unfortunately, the ghost writer wasn’t terrifically talented, and after seeing Georges interviewed on TV here in Canada, the writer clearly does not convey how charming, and how plainly kind General Sada is. The book gives him a classic middle eastern man’s perspective which sounds arrogant to our ears, but is their way of being truthful. In person he comes off as honest and sincere.

    He knew Chemical Ali, and explains that all those reams of information hidden away were to ensure that if the US ever got serious, his people would be able to rebuild the WMD programs in short order.

  28. I think that the main problem with MSM is not poor standard of honesty or ideological bias. These problems are obvious, but root case run deeper. This is a structural problem of the very institution of press or other mass media whose job is to transfer factual information and ideas to wide masses of poorly educated people from a small, usually more educated elite which looks at their audience with contempt and poorly understand it. We call these journalists “pundits” – the term originally meant Hindus high priests, Brahmins. This information transfer is usually done only in one direction, from above, almost without feedback. Even university professor is in better, healthier situation: he sees how his lectures are perceived and can modify his presentation. This system is doomed to become corrupted due its very nature. See K.Chesterton’s short story “A Man and His Newspaper” written in 1930s. (He also was a journalist.) Only abolution of this system of mass information and replacement it by a system with significant feedback, like Internet forums and blogs, but more professional and with wider circulation, brings hope to overcome this structural deficiencies.

  29. Feedback is a good word. My impression is that traditionally, the only feedback most newspapers really paid attention to was circulation numbers (or in the case of television and radio, ratings). That and advertising sales. I don’t think journalists in general have been prepared to deal directly with their readers. Maybe the next generation of newsies will be.

  30. Part of it is structural. The bad / stupid reporting part. Communications majors know nothing about over 90% of what they report on.

    But the bias… having a more technical education would only help so much. I know dopey socialists who are also engineers or have hard science backgrounds….

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