Memo to Scott McClellan: Here's what happened

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

(Click here, here and here to get just a taste of what we mean).

Second, we find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to "set the record straight" (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country.

But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.

Bush loyalists have responded in three ways:

1)  Scott, how could you?  This conveniently ignores the issue of what Bush did or didn't know and do about intelligence on Iraq, converting the story line into that of wounded leader and treasonous former aide. (That canard was the sole focus of a CBS news radio report Wednesday night).

2) Invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Okay. When do Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, et al *not* say that?  Dog bites man.

3) It was an intelligence failure. The CIA gave us bad dope on WMD and, well, they're the experts. More on this in a second.

The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war.

Here's ABC News' Charles Gibson: "I think the questions were asked. It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. It is not our job to debate them. It is our job to ask the questions.” And “I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently."

Really?

Or this from NBC's Brian Williams: “Sadly, we saw fellow Americans — in some cases floating past facedown (after Katrina). We knew what had just happened. We weren’t allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors [in Iraq]. I was in Kuwait for the buildup to the war, and, yes, we heard from the Pentagon, on my cell phone, the minute they heard us report something that they didn’t like. The tone of that time was quite extraordinary.” And this: "“It’s tough to go back, to put ourselves in the mind-set. It was post-9/11 America."

So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?

Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.

We confess that here at McClatchy, which purchased Knight Ridder two years ago, we do have a dog in this fight. Our team - Joe Galloway, Clark Hoyt, Jon Landay, Renee Schoof, Warren Strobel, John Walcott, Tish Wells and many others - was, with a few exceptions, the only major news media organization that before the war consistently and aggressively challenged the White House's case for war, and its lack of planning for post-war Iraq.

Here are Bill Moyers and Michael Massing on the media's pre-war performance.

Enough self-aggrandizing trumpet-blowing. OK, Scott, What Happened?

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).

* The Bush administration didn't even want to produce the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs that's justly received so much criticism since.  The White House thought it was unneeded. It  actually was demanded by Congress and slapped together in a matter of weeks before the congressional votes to authorize war on Iraq.

* The October 2002 NIE was flawed, no doubt. But it contained dissents questioning the extent of Saddam's WMD programs, dissents that were buried in the report. Doubts and dissents were then stripped from the publicly released, unclassified version of the NIE.

* The core of the administration's case for war was not just that Saddam was developing WMDs, but also that, unchecked, he might give them to terrorists to attack the United States. Remember smoking guns and mushroom clouds? Inconveniently, the CIA had determined just the opposite: Saddam would attack the United States only if he concluded a U.S. attack on him was unavoidable. He'd give WMD to Islamist terrorists only "as a last chance to exact revenge."

* The Bush administration relied heavily on an Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi, who had been found to be untrustworthy by the State Department and the CIA. Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress were given millions, and produced "defectors" whose tales of WMD sites and terrorist training were false, fanciful and bogus. But the information was fed directly to senior officials and included in official White House documents.

* The same INC-supplied "intelligence" used in the White House propaganda effort (you got that bit right, Scott) also was fed to dozens of U.S. and foreign news organizations.

* It all culminated in a speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 making the case against Saddam. Virtually every major allegation Powell made turned out later to be wrong. It would have been even worse had not Powell and his team thrown out even more shaky "intelligence" that Cheney's office repeatedly tried to stuff into the speech.

* The Bush administration tried to link Saddam to al Qaida and, by implication, to the 9/11 attacks. Officials repeatedly pushed the CIA for information on such links, and a separate intel shopwas set up under Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith to find "proof" of such ties. Neither the CIA nor anyone else ever found anything resembling an operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

* An exhaustive review of Saddam Hussein's regime's own documents, released in March 2008, found no operational relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

* The Bush administration failed to plan for the rebuilding of postwar Iraq, as we were perhaps the first to report. The White House ignored stacks of intelligence reports, some now available in partially unclassified form, warning before the war about the possibilities for insurgency, ethnic warfare, social chaos and the like.

We could go on, but the rest, as they say, is history.

That's what happened.

-- Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay.

Comments

[Laura]

Thank you for the excellent column, and for all the work done at the time. This deserves, though, a larger forum that the Nukes and Spooks blog site. It's time for a front page editorial. Please.

[Murican]

Stroebel and Landay are greater than Woodward and Bernstein. The malfeasance and misfeasance of the Bush administration and its operatives dwarfs any that could even be dreamed of by the Nixon administration. You guys were the ones to call bull on it and you will go down in history for it!

[oldfaithless]

You guys, almost alone, have done a terrific job in exposing this administration's deceptions. Congratulations!!
It is utterly mystifying that anyone is getting excited about McClellan's "revelations." Only the most gullible believed anything he said in office; why pay attention now?

[barrisj]

Early in the (first) Bush administration, the K-R WashBureau was my bookmarked go-to site for the REAL NEWS, and kept me and like-minded people well ahead of the curve during the propaganda assault preceding the illegal invasion of Iraq...time and events have proved the K-R/McClatchy team spot on with their assessments. Carry on your superb work in actually understanding - and executing - the role of a so-called free press!

[david]

>i am a disabled veteran from the vietnam war...and not suprised by scotts revelations from his time in the white house. the biggest problem is that these individuals in high responsible positions should not lie so blatantly. it destroys trust and democracy expecially when the president claims to live on a higher moral plane.

[RandyT, USN Ret.]

We now have well over 4000 American troops killed, a record number of troop suicides, hundreds of thousands of Iraq citizens killed and trillions of dollars spent, so can we agree it is time to stop the madness?

Thank you McClatchy for some honest news.

[Maureen]

During the 2000 campaign, I vividly recall Sam Donaldson saying that if George Bush wins the presidency, we could count on the U.S. attacking Iraq as payback for Daddy Bush. At the time, I thought Sam was being dramatic, but when the topic of Iraq first came up, it brought that comment back to me in frightening clarity. You're right; this is really old news. One can only hope that hearing it this time around will teach people a lesson about being sheep and why dissent is the definition of being American.

[Persona non grata]

Golf clap.

[Rev. Sharpstick]

So when is your book coming out, and what will be the cover price?

[felix random]

when bush elevated osama from a common criminal to the head of a stateless state (no borders to defend, consequently undefeatable) it was obvious that he wanted a permanent war. not a soul noticed, the media bent over and took it and said thank you.

rupert murdock won. he had at that point successfully discredited journalism in america to the point that any lie would do. s.o.p. for him.

the real driving force to invade iraq was the rich aging male's fear of impotency, which is what scott missed. can you say neo con........

y'all didn't miss much but your voice was successfully suppressed by simple omission. rove really did take his major lessons from goebbles intimidate, marginalize, and when ever possible evaporate, anyone who was not fanatically devoted.

thanks for the flat extraordinary effort, it fends off the self serving emptiness masquerading as reporting every time i drop in

[geoff]

Truly amazing. I hadn't realized that you had stories back as early as Oct/2001.

[jrw]

A remarkably restrained column, given the great work done by K-R and McClatchey over the past 5 years. Of course, notice how McClellan's charges of media complicity and cowardice are not part of the discussion we read, see and hear from the media outlets whose failures helped get us where we are. When you generate the news, it's a safe bet you won't be part of the coverage.

[Steve J.]

Your reporting on Iraq and the war on terror has been superb and I only wish I had begun reading it well before the invasion.

[bdd]

Sorry, but those stories you trumpet at the beginning of this piece were posted in 2004 and 2005, a day late and a dollar short. Our free press is certainly not free and rarely, it seems, capable of performing it's role as the eyes and ears of the populace. We're now relegated to commercial hacks touting the corporate line, careful not to stir up trouble. The only "news" is in the sports pages...

[bdd=morelies]

bdd why lie?. Click the links - they start at Oct 2001.

[V W House]

I agree with the last comment by Laura: This excellent review should be more widely circulated. I have come to rely most on your coverage, that of NPR and, though I think it less credible, the NY Times. The rest are in the military-industrial-media complex, complicit in a social disaster. Thank you for your professionalism.

[spud]

My deepest thanks for your reporting and for real journalism.

[Carly Corday]

It is news when a former press secretary busts out to confirm all of this. Stop denigrating Scott McClellan! It's exactly what the murderer in the oval office wants you to do. And boy, are you ALL doing it, led by the shallow, pewling likes of "Dances With Rove" David Gregory.

It IS news. Knock it off, damn you all. You're turning potential harmony in the fight against the monsters into cacophony that resolves NOTHING--OF COURSE--it's what you do. The noise keeps us all off balance, as intended.

[Charles Lumia]

Interesting article.

While I don't know exactly what Scott McClellan said in his book, I have of course been reading articles about it and speaking with people on the issue.

I don't necessarily consider him a trustworthy person, for many obvious reasons; the main being that I don't see how someone can sit idly by and lie to the American people as he did, only to later come out with a book. It's clear that he wants to profit from the situation.

Not that it matters. As you stated, it's clear that many people were misleading the American people, and from the very beginning. Why and how exactly is up for debate of course, but there is no doubt that it happened.

My issue now is that we are in Iraq, and I don't feel that it's an acceptable action for us to abandon the Iraqi people in their time of need. After tearing their country apart, it wouldn't be right to leave them to fend for themselves.

That is of course controversial, many people feel that we should leave Iraq immediately. I think that it's mainly because they are being blinded by partisan politics. I personally am independent and have never been associated with any political party, so I feel that I haven't been corrupted, if you will.

Why I'm bringing this up is because it is very likely that this book, and anything that comes of it, is only going to lead to more support for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. And I honestly care about the people of Iraq.

The Iraqi people didn't do anything wrong. They had a crazy leader, and then we just barge into their country and remove him, kill him, and now we want to leave their country in a huge mess.

It isn't right. We have to help and support the Iraqi people.

[showze]

Biggest moral challenge facing America...is will Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

if not then America is a completely narcissistic society.

[Kansas gal]

Clark Hoyt? What a name from the past. We miss you in Wichita but are glad you are a part of one news organization that has tended to get it right!

[CPH]

Unfortunately, though, despite your professionalism you will be taken down with the rest of the press who cravenly misrepresente the truth, lied to the public and buckled under to the pressure generated by the administration's propaganda department.

[Emily Stewart]

From: Head of State
http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/05/tactical-woundedness.html

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tactical Woundedness

I was just mulling over the response of the White House and former associated figures over the past 24 hours, and realized that there is a phenomenon, used in the past by this and other Administrations, which can be culled out, newly defined, that I shall call "Tactical Woundedness":

Tactical Woundedness: The use of an apparent sense of betrayal, often portrayed through the use of euphemistic insinuation, such as the word "puzzled" and "this isn't the ----- we knew", that is meant to serve as a form of indirection--to draw viewers of an event away from a damaging factual disclosure and towards an implication of personal disloyalty. This relies on the known effect of people to be influenced in the direction of attending to interpersonal conflict over factual inaccuracy--even when the factual inaccuracy may have a considerable impact on their own lives.

See also: Mock outrage; Captain Renault in Casablanca: "shocked, shocked".

If these individuals are indeed wounded, it is more likely an understated wounded pride at their "misunderestimation"--that such a receptive servant of the message, no doubt hired for his unquestioning fealty, would now actually remove the curtain from the proceedings that they expected that he would obediently continue to conceal.

Cite:
Head of State
http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/05/tactical-woundedness.html

[Frank]

The man was a twit when he was on the job and is a twit still. Now he writes a book telling people what they already know and they run off to buy it.

For him to try and come across as some kind of after market visionary is ludicrous. He was/is part of the problem, not the solution.

His proceeds from his book should go to the survivors of those we have lost in Iraq (that would show he really has a conscience, instead of playing it up for his book).

[Canario]

Now we are starting to know and understand the extent to which this administration deceived the American people with all of its rhetoric regarding the war on terror.

As important as that knowledge is, it is also essential we learn why,- in a country that spends so much money, and uses so many resources in intelligence programs-, we were not able to prevent that attack.

We heard the many explanations and rationalizations from Bush and his team regarding our failure to doing so. But knowing what we now know on the manner this people operate I just no longer believe their excuses.

It would be healthy for his nation if we are clear on the reasons why we failed and hold those responsible accountable