{"id":996,"date":"2008-06-03T23:17:57","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T22:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=996"},"modified":"2008-06-04T20:51:24","modified_gmt":"2008-06-04T19:51:24","slug":"mcclatchy-vs-scott-mcclellan-on-the-road-to-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/06\/mcclatchy-vs-scott-mcclellan-on-the-road-to-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"McClatchy vs. Scott McClellan on the road to Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott McClellanI<\/span>n case you bought into Scott McClellan<\/strong>‘s claims<\/a> 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<\/strong><\/a> here in the UK), Warren Strobel<\/strong> and Jonathan Landay<\/strong> at McClatchy<\/strong> have posted an impressive rebuttal<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s what happened, based entirely on our own reporting and publicly available documents:<\/p>\n

* 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. <\/a>(Note<\/em>: See also Richard Clarke<\/strong> and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill<\/strong> on this point).<\/p>\n

* Bush decided by February 2002<\/strong>, at the latest, that he was going to remove Saddam by hook or by crook. (Yes, we reported that at the time<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n

* White House officials, led by Dick Cheney<\/strong>, began making the case for war in August 2002<\/strong>, in speeches<\/a> and reports that not only were wrong, but also went well beyond<\/a> what the available intelligence said at that time, and contained outright fantasies and falsehoods. Indeed, some of that material<\/a> was never vetted with the intelligence agencies before it was peddled to the public.<\/p>\n

* Dissenters, or even those who voiced worry about where the policy was going<\/a>, were ignored, excluded or punished. (Note: See Gen. Eric Shinseki<\/strong>, Paul O’Neill<\/strong>, Joseph Wilson<\/strong> and all of the State Department’s Arab specialists and much of its intelligence bureau).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}