In case you bought into Scott McClellan’s claims that the US media failed to ask questions (of — erm — Scott McClellan) in the run up to war with Iraq (echoed by odd bedfellows like Nick Davies here in the UK), Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay at McClatchy have posted an impressive rebuttal.
Here’s what happened, based entirely on our own reporting and publicly available documents:
* The Bush administration was gunning for Iraq within days of the 9/11 attacks, dispatching a former CIA director, on a flight authorized by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to find evidence for a bizarre theory that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. (Note: See also Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill on this point).
* Bush decided by February 2002, at the latest, that he was going to remove Saddam by hook or by crook. (Yes, we reported that at the time).
* White House officials, led by Dick Cheney, began making the case for war in August 2002, in speeches and reports that not only were wrong, but also went well beyond what the available intelligence said at that time, and contained outright fantasies and falsehoods. Indeed, some of that material was never vetted with the intelligence agencies before it was peddled to the public.
* Dissenters, or even those who voiced worry about where the policy was going, were ignored, excluded or punished. (Note: See Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O’Neill, Joseph Wilson and all of the State Department’s Arab specialists and much of its intelligence bureau).
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Hardly a rebuttal. Strobel and Landay’s blog posting cited here in fact attacks the US media for doing the very things Scott McClellan accuses them of. Their point is that McClellan’s remarks are “not news” – McClatchy was one of the few news outlets to interrogate the administration and publish news stories that contradicted the White House line on Iraq
Their point is that McClatchy as a major US news organization did question the administration line. I was casting that as a rebuttal to Nick D’s point was that no one had.
And this from Ari Fleischer:
Can Ari Fleischer really be considered a convincing source in this debate? More eloquent, surely, are the apologies for their Iraq coverage from the New York Times and Washington Post, and the new book by the editor of E&P. For the UK context we have the sophisticated academic research by Justin Lewis at Cardiff, backed up by the extensive work from Piers Robinson at Manchester that is just beginning to appear in print, demonstrating the UK media’s credulous attitude (with obvious exceptions) towards the government’s case for regime change
Take a look back at the reporting of the 45 minute dossier across the papers (plug: which I do in my book). You’ll find plenty of scepticism…
Of course, the public doesn’t always want scepticism.
I obtained the book and was disappointed to find the issue superficially and perfunctorily discussed on a single page. Poor show.
I’ve got feelings you know! I actually said it better here, and probably cheaper too.
BTW you’re not Professor of Medieval History, David Crouch are you? Or – crazy guess here – Socialist Workers Party luminary and Media Workers Against The War David Crouch?