{"id":82102,"date":"2015-12-13T09:23:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-13T17:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82102"},"modified":"2015-12-13T09:23:25","modified_gmt":"2015-12-13T17:23:25","slug":"so-wrong-for-so-long-how-the-press-the-pundits-and-the-president-failed-on-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82102","title":{"rendered":"So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits–and the President–Failed on Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greg Mitchell writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

For awhile, back in 2003, Iraq meant never having to say you\u2019re sorry. The spring offensive had produced a victory in less than three weeks, with a relatively low American and Iraqi civilian death toll. Saddam fled and George W. Bush and his team drew overwhelming praise, at least here at home.<\/p>\n

But wait. Where were the crowds greeting us as \u201cliberators\u201d? Why were the Iraqis now shooting at each other–and blowing up our soldiers? And where were those WMDs, bio-chem labs, and nuclear materials? Most Americans still backed the invasion, so it still too early for mea culpas–it was more \u201cmy sad\u201d than \u201cmy bad.\u201d
\n–
\nBy 2004 it was clear that Saddam\u2019s WMDs would never be found, but with another election season at hand, sorry was still the hardest word. But a few very limited glimmers of accountability began to appear. So let\u2019s begin our catalog of the art of mea culpa and Iraq here.<\/p>\n

PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY President Bush and many others–including scores of Democrats–who once claimed \u201cslam dunk\u201d evidence on Iraq\u2019s WMDs now admitted that this intelligence was more below-average than Mensa. But don\u2019t blame them! They simply had been misled. Judith Miller of The New York Times, perhaps the prime fabulist in the run-up to war, explained that she was only as good as her sources–her sources having names like \u201cCurveball\u201d and \u201cRed Cap Guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the news media, which for the most part had swallowed whole the WMD claims, was not facing re-election, so some self-criticism, at least of the \u201cmistakes-were-made\u201d variety came easier. <\/p>\n

THE MINI-CULPA This phrase was coined by Jack Shafer of Slate after The New York Times published an \u201ceditors\u2019 note\u201d in May 2004, admitting it had publishing a few \u201cproblematic articles\u201d (it didn\u2019t mention any authors) on Iraqi WMDs, but pointing out it was \u201ctaken in\u201d like most in the Bush administration. Unlike the Times, Washington Post editors three months later did not produce their own explanation but allowed chief media reporter Howard Kurtz to write a lengthy critique. Editors and reporters admitted they had often performed poorly but offered one excuse after another, with phrases such as “always easy in hindsight,” “editing difficulties,” “communication problems” and “there is limited space on Page 1.” One top reporter said, \u201cWe are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power. \u201c <\/p>\n

STONEWALLING As years passed, the carnage in Iraq intensified but accepting blame for this in America was still pretty much AWOL. President Bush and Vice President Cheney said that even if the WMD threat was bogus, they\u2019d still do it again. Reason: They\u2019d deposed a \u201cdictator\u201d–and would you rather have Saddam still in power? <\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s flash forward to this past two weeks, when Iraq (remember Iraq?) re-emerged in the news and opinion sections. But anyone who expected that hair shirts would come into fashion must have been sadly disappointed. The \u201cmea culpas\u201d would not be \u201cmaxima.\u201d First, those who accepted some blame. <\/p>\n

LIMITED HANGOUT STRATEGY David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, wrote well over a thousand words at the Daily Beast describing multiple reasons for promoting the war before very briefly concluding, \u201cThose of us who were involved\u2014in whatever way\u2014bear the responsibility.\u201d While adding: \u201cI could have set myself on fire in protest on the White House lawn and the war would have proceeded without me.\u201d Jonathan Chait at New York offered regrets for backing the war but defended believing in Saddam\u2019s WMD and recalled that \u201csupporting the war was cool and a sign of seriousness.\u201d And: \u201cThe people demanding apologies today will find themselves being asked to supply apologies of their own tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

YOUNG AND DUMBER Ezra Klein apologized in a Bloomberg column, at great length, for supporting the war–when he was eighteen, and \u201cyoung and dumb.\u201d Charles P. Pierce at Esquire replied, \u201cIt is encouraging that he no longer believes in fairy tales.\u201d<\/p>\n

MEA (AND A LOT OF OTHERS) CULPA Stephen Hadley, Bush\u2019s national security adviser, wrote at Foreign Policy: \u201cIt never occurred to me or anyone else I was working with, and no one from the intelligence community or anyplace else ever came in and said, \u2018What if Saddam is doing all this deception because he actually got rid of the WMD and he doesn\u2019t want the Iranians to know?\u2019 Now, somebody should have asked that question. I should have asked that question. Nobody did.\u201d<\/p>\n

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK Thomas Friedman, famous author and New York Times columnist, admitted that the U.S. had \u201cpaid too high a price\u201d for the 2003 invasion (which he supported, but did not now mention) but, hey, there was still a decent chance that good would come from it–if only those ungrateful Iraqis would stop blowing each other up and form a stable democracy. David Ignatius at the Washington Post offered his regrets but observed that at least \u201cthe surge\u201d worked and saved lives (although Rajiv Chandraskaran at the Post calls this a \u201cmyth\u201d). <\/p>\n

Now for those who accepted little or no blame:<\/p>\n

WHO, MEA? Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy Pentagon chief, in an interview fiercely denied he was the architect of the disaster. Afterall, \u201cI didn\u2019t meet with him [Bush] very often.\u201d The New York Times in an editorial pointed fingers at the bad actors who helped get us into the war but somehow did not recognize any \u201cme\u201d in \u201cmess.\u201d (The Washington Post got around this by not publishing an editorial on the subject at all.) Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast blamed the war on American \u201chubris\u201d but did not reveal that he (hubristically?) backed the war himself. <\/p>\n

THAT\u2019S MY STORY AND I\u2019M STICKING TO IT Dick Cheney in a new Showtime documentary said he\u2019d do it all again. \u201cI feel very good about it. If I had to do it over again, I\u2019d do it in a minute.\u201d Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair concurred. Donald Rumsfeld tweeted (yes) about \u201cliberating\u201d 25 million Iraqis. He failed to recall when he said the war would last at most six months. Richard Perle, former chairman of the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Policy Board, said that asking if the war was worth it was \u201cnot a reasonable question. What we did at the time was done in the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation.\u201d <\/p>\n

IF WE\u2019D ONLY KNOWN! George Will on ABC: \u201cIf in 2003 we\u2019d known what we know now \u2014 the absence of weapons of mass destruction, the difficulty of governing and occupying a society in which, once you lop off the regime, you\u2019re going to have a civil war in a sectarian tribal society \u2014 the answer I think is obviously no.\u201d <\/p>\n

BLAME IT ON THE HANDLERS Kenneth Pollack of Brookings, one of the most influential proponents of the war, now says that he had a different war in mind and the occupation was handled incompetently, asserting, \u201cit didn’t have to be this bad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greg Mitchell writes: For awhile, back in 2003, Iraq meant never having to say you\u2019re sorry. The spring offensive had produced a victory in less than three weeks, with a relatively low American and Iraqi civilian death toll. Saddam fled … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791,233,20,29611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-iraq","category-journalism","category-neoconservatives"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82103,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82102\/revisions\/82103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}