False pretenses
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- January
- 23
President George Bush and seven of his top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the alleged national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a new study by the Center for Public Integrity says.
The extensive examination of the record documents the times that Bush and other officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, was seeking to obtain them or had ties to Al-Qaeda.
This first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric aims to show how statements in speeches, briefings, interviews were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under false pretenses.
The Center also notes that numerous bipartisan government investigations, including by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
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on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 1:25 pm by Susan Elan.
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The Center for Public Integrity is only funded by left wing groups. Its investigations always go after conservatives. It always has a left-wing bias and one of its major contributors is George Soros. This report is no suprise and its objectivity should be challenged.
Ms. Elan, a responsible journalist such as yourself should not simply be parroting the press release of a biased organization without disclosure.
Charles Lewis, the founder of CPI is a hardcore liberal, as evidenced by his many publications. And the previous poster is absolutely accurate when he points out that CPI only releases reports critical of conservatives and that their single largest donor is indeed a gentleman by the name of George Soros. Yes, that’s the same Soros of MoveOn.org fame.
The men and woman at CPI fashion themselves as modern-day muckrakers, but Upton Sinclair would be rolling in his grave if he saw how terribly CPI distorts the facts.
It’s one thing to have true investigative journalism. It’s quite another to have a hyper partisan organization pawning themselves as un-biased journalists.
HEY SUSAN, PLEASE TRY TO BE MORE RESPONSIBLE IN THE FUTURE.
I KNOW YOU FIND THAT YOU CAN’T HELP YOURSELF SOMETIMES. BUT MAY I SUGGEST THAT YOU READ UP ON ETHICS IN THE MEDIA… YOU HAVE A LOT TO LEARN. OR YOU CAN JUST KEEP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING. AFTER ALL, IT’S ONLY YOUR INTEGRITY THAT’S AT STAKE.
AND THAT’LL BE WHY YOU NEVER WRITE FOR A SERIOUS PUBLICATION.
THE CHOICE IS YOURS.
to bob – typical reply when the policies of this administration is questioned. words like liberal, leftist blah blah. but the truth presented its without the ‘liberal media bias’. iraq/saddam has no connection with 911, no WMDs found. what you will do is evade the premise of the war, then add more so-called ‘reasons’, finally label people leftist, liberal & unpatriotic when cornered. but the truth is still iraq/saddam had no connection with 911 nor has he WMDs.
Ms. Elan’s reporting is not known for its display of critical thinking skills or insight.
The blogosphere is all over this story, but the JN’s political reporters (like the rest of the dinosaur media) are content to regurgitate left-wing press releases that reinforce their own biases. Here’s HotAir.com’s take (excerpted):
In any case, by stopping the research at 2001, the story is set-up to misreport the facts. The Clinton administration spent years warning the public of the threat of Saddam and his WMD. They even bombed a pharma factory in Sudan on the suspicion that it was making WMD for both al Qaeda and Iraq. So the story either unintentionally or by design left out years of context.
Whatever the motivation, it’s clear that the reporter, Douglas K. Daniel, paid no attention to the man behind the curtain. The Center for Public Integrity is one of many George Soros fronts. Soros pays the bills and his minions, whether they happen to work at the CPI or the Center for American Progress or Media Matters or wherever, dance to his tune. And Soros has made it his life’s work to bring down the Bush administration. He says it’s the “central focus of my life.� Do you think people paid to to “research� by a man with that stated mission are likely to deliver unbiased findings?
Douglas K. Daniel either doesn’t know this or didn’t do his due diligence and report the full facts to his readers. Whatever the underlying issues are with his reporting, it’s dishonest to pass off press releases as journalism. He earns a fail.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/01/23/ap-runs-soros-funded-anti-war-study-as-hard-news/
Et tu, Susan?
it really doesn’t make a difference how many misrepresentations were or were not made by the bush
administration..the issue was were they made in good
or bad faith..ie did the administration believe what
they said when they said it…ie did Colin Powell believe
in WMD at the UN…remember every security agency in
the world believed either Sadam had nuclear biological
and chemical ( he already used chemical on his own
people,) or was trying to get it…MI5, Germany and
Mosad all believed it…that is a totally different
question then whether invading Iraq was the thing
to do given the alternatives of diplomacy and weapons
inspectors etc available before a war had to be started
This is a debate that will last for years..However
the problem with the president’s policy is that it
was driven by a small group of former lefties surrounding
the VIce President who believed then and still do that
America has the right and obligation to topple regimes
that it believes pose a threat to the peace and security
of the middle east..These neocons are nothing more than
former socialists …I trust no ideologue particularly
those that have gone from one end of the political spectrum
to the other in so short a time…wrong war, wrong reason
wrong time
This “study” has been already been debunked as a sham. Here’s a sample:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/01/23/ap-runs-soros-funded-anti-war-study-as-hard-news
Why didn’t the Journal News bother to check this out before printing it? Maybe they agree with it, so that’s good enough?
The issue is that the source of that material is a biased far-left consortium. It did not release similar or even almost-identical remarks made by many in the Clinton-Gore administration, including Bill Clinton and Hillary.
A simple Google search would have categorized the source of this press release. It should not have been posted on this blog without context, and without a disclaimer.
As to the Consultant’s point…all the statements were made in good faith. Everyone believed the intel.
But Consultant, don’t drag the “NeoCons” into everything.
Ethan, speaking of the Center for Public Integrity and Bill Clinton, I guess you missed their report titled Fat Cat Hotel, detailing the fundraising activities that earned stays in the Lincoln Bedroom. I guess Bob and Reality Check must have missed that, too.
Face it, they’re really not so liberal as you would have it. They seem pretty even handed and fair to me. Telling the truth, even when you don’t like what you’re hearing, is not a “liberal” thing, it’s an “informed citizenry” thing.
Since “Reality Check” brought up Soros, let’s look at his donations to the Center…
A $72,400 one-year grant in 2000 supporting “an investigative journalism series on prosecutorial misconduct.”
A $75,000 one-year grant in 2001 supporting “an examination of wrongful convictions resulting from prosecutorial misconduct.”
A $100,000 one-year grant in 2002 “to investigate the political spending of the telecommunications industry on the federal, state and local levels.”
A $1 million three-year grant in 2002 “to support the Global Access Project.”
Soros himself was a focus of the Center’s “Silent Partners” report on 527 groups, and their funding activities in the 2004 election cycle. (This, though he had given them $$ just a few years earlier.)
You know, you guys would be cackling in glee if they issued the same sort of report on President Hillary Clinton, so suck it up and don’t be crybabies when you don’t like what they’re telling you.
It is astonishing that it has not yet dawned on a few deluded souls that our current president and his radical administration
a) lied consistently about numerous questions such as non-existent ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda and non-existent wmds, and
b) did so absolutely deliberately to get the war they wanted from the days of the “Progress for a New American Century”.
Are you now resorting to standard Rove tactics – smear the messenger?
My personal opinion of the Center for Public Integrity is that they supply useful, verifiable information, but if you don’t agree, then LOOK IT UP at a variety of sources.
Are you actually arguing with a straight face that this administration did not lie us into this war, did not order American troops to stand down allowing bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora, and that this president didn’t know he was lying when he claimed, in his State of the Union speech of all places, that Saddam was trying to acquire yellowcake uranium in Niger?
As I say, if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything, which is all this administration has left to rely on.
Ready for war with Iran, anyone? Think they are a threat to us?