The Deadly Lies Of Reliable Sources

Ninety-five days before the invasion of Iraq began, I sat in the ornate Baghdad office ofthe deputy prime minister as he talked about the U.N. weapons inspectors in his country. "They are doingtheir jobs freely, without any interruption," Tariq Aziz said. "And still the warmongering languagein Washington is keeping on."

The White House, according to Aziz, had written the latest U.N. Security Council resolution"in a way to be certainly refused." But, he added pointedly: "We surprised them by saying, 'OK,we can live with it. We'll be patient enough to live with it and prove to you and to the world that yourallegations about weapons of mass destruction are not true.'"

Speaking that night in mid-December 2002, Tariq Aziz -- dressed in a well-cut business suit,witty and fluent in English -- epitomized the urbanity of evil. As a high-ranking servant of a murderousdespot, he lied often. But not that time.

With knee-jerk professional reflexes, American journalists assumed that Iraqi officials werelying about weapons of mass destruction -- and also assumed that officials such as George W. Bush, DonaldRumsfeld and (especially) Colin Powell were being truthful. Overall, the news media helped to create a greatmarket for war.

An author who soared in that bullish market was Kenneth Pollack, the former CIA analystwhose 2002 book "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq" was a media-driven smash. Afrequent presence on national television, Pollack eagerly promoted a book and a war at the same time. Hecalled for a "massive invasion" of Iraq.

Now, in the current issue of the Atlantic magazine, Pollack has a long essay with a somewhatregretful tone. "What we have learned about Iraq's WMD programs since the fall of Baghdad leads me toconclude that the case for war with Iraq was considerably weaker than I believed," he writes. "I hadbeen convinced that Iraq was only years away from having a nuclear weapon -- probably only four or five years.That estimate was clearly off, possibly by quite a bit."

But most journalists and pundits touted such estimates as reasonable because the media proswere predisposed to believe the pronouncements from administration officials. Now we're told that onlyhindsight has provided us the chance to see how wrong those estimates were. That's nonsense.

Extensive information, poking huge holes in key deceptions, was readily available at thetime -- but major U.S. media outlets are still reporting as though Bush's pre-war claims were credible whenthey were made. In reality, any "intelligence failure" was dwarfed by a contemporaneous mediafailure.

(If you have any doubt that the Bush gang's WMD claims could have been recognized astransparently bogus from the start, take a look at dozens of news releases assembled during many pre-warmonths by my colleagues at the Institute for Public Accuracy. Those releases, from 2002 and the first monthsof 2003, remain posted at www.accuracy.org without any change in wording.)

In late January, Senate committees heard testimony from the man who headed the 1,400-memberweapons inspection team in Iraq during the last half of 2003. Longtime hawk and Bush 2000 campaign supporterDavid Kay declared: "Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong." And: "It is highlyunlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there."

A week later, on Feb. 4, the Pentagon's Donald Rumsfeld appeared before the Senate ArmedServices Committee and simply drew from an inexhaustible supply of fog: "It was the consensus of theintelligence community, and of successive administrations of both political parties, and of the Congress, thatreviewed the same intelligence, and much of the international community, I might add, that Saddam Hussein waspursuing weapons of mass destruction."

In the grand tradition of manipulatively farcical commissions appointed by a president toassess his devious actions, a front-page New York Times article reported with delicate euphemisms that Bush'snew panel will "examine American intelligence operations, including a study of possible misjudgmentsabout Iraq's unconventional weapons."

"Possible" -- as though there's still any question about the pre-war intelligenceverdicts proclaimed by the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell.

"Misjudgments" -- as though the White House hadn't summoned any and allpseudo-evidence to rationalize its from-the-outset determination to invade Iraq.

After 27 years as a CIA analyst, Ray McGovern knows a few things about propaganda. He notesthat "the 'investigation' is slated to go past the election. Members will be picked by the president, andthe scope is unconscionably wider than is necessary." McGovern contends that "the key question for2004 is whether the administration's stranglehold on the media can be loosened to the point where theelectorate can wake up, take away the president's driver's license and put an end to the recklessendangerment."

The media war of 2004 is well underway. To the victor goes the White House.

Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News MediaDidn't Tell You." Courtesy, Znet