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Bush Still Lies about Iraqi Inspections
In what's been called George W. Bush's first exit interview, the outgoing President continues a lie that he first unveiled several months after launching the Iraq War, justifying the invasion by claiming that Saddam Hussein didn't let the U.N. inspectors in.
Like previous times when President Bush has used this lie, it went unchallenged by the journalist who heard the false claim, in this case ABC News anchor Charles Gibson.
According to the text of the ABC News interview, which was released Dec. 1, Gibson asked Bush, "If the [U.S.] intelligence had been right [and revealed no Iraq WMD], would there have been an Iraq War?"
Bush answered, "Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld."
Of course, the historical record is clear: Hussein did let U.N. arms inspectors into Iraq in the fall of 2002 to search any site of their choosing. Their travels around Iraq in white vans were recorded daily by the international news media, as they found no evidence that Iraq had WMD stockpiles, even at sites targeted by U.S. intelligence.
Hussein and his government also declared publicly that they didn't possess WMD, including providing the United Nations a 12,000-page declaration on Dec. 7, 2002, explaining how Iraq's stocks of chemical and biological weapons had been destroyed in the 1990s.
However, still set on invading, Bush forced the U.N. inspectors to leave Iraq in March 2003, a departure that was followed within days by his "shock and awe" attack on Iraq, beginning March 19.
Several months later, with Hussein's government ousted and with the U.S. military coming up empty in its search for WMD caches, Bush began his historical revisionism by insisting publicly that he had no choice but to invade because Hussein supposedly had barred U.N. inspectors.
On July 14, 2003, Bush told reporters:
"We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."
Facing no contradiction from the White House press corps, Bush continued repeating this lie again and again in varied forms.
On Jan. 27, 2004, for example, Bush said, "We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution - 1441 - unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in."
Color of Truth
As the months and years went by, Bush's lie and its unchallenged retelling took on the color of truth.
At a March 21, 2006, news conference, Bush again blamed the war on Hussein's defiance of U.N. demands for unfettered inspections.
"I was hoping to solve this [Iraq] problem diplomatically," Bush said. "The world said, ‘Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.' ... We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did."
At a press conference on May 24, 2007, Bush offered a short-hand version, even inviting the journalists to remember the invented history.
"As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his [Hussein's] to make. And he made a choice that has subsequently caused him to lose his life."
In the frequent repetition of this claim, Bush never acknowledged the fact that Hussein did comply with Resolution 1441 by declaring accurately that he had disposed of his WMD stockpiles and by permitting U.N. inspectors to examine any site of their choosing.
Prominent Washington journalists even have repeated Bush's lie as their own. For instance, in a July 2004 interview, ABC's veteran newsman Ted Koppel used it to explain why he - Koppel - thought the invasion of Iraq was justified.
"It did not make logical sense that Saddam Hussein, whose armies had been defeated once before by the United States and the Coalition, would be prepared to lose control over his country if all he had to do was say, ‘All right, U.N., come on in, check it out," Koppel told Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now."
In the real history, Hussein did tell the U.N. to "come on in, check it out." But faux reality had become the trademark of the Bush presidency -- and its supporters in the press corps.
Choosing War?
The Washington conventional wisdom eventually embraced another fake belief, that Hussein provoked the war by misleading people into believing that he still possessed WMD.
In line with this bogus version of history, "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley asked FBI interrogator George Piro, who had debriefed Hussein in prison, why the dictator kept pretending that he had WMD even as U.S. troops massed on Iraq's borders, when a simple announcement that the WMD was gone would have prevented the war.
"For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking," Pelley said in introducing the segment on the interrogation of Hussein about his WMD stockpiles, which aired Jan. 27, 2008. "Why did he choose war with the United States?"
This "60 Minutes" segment never mentioned the fact that Hussein and his government did disclose that it had eliminated its WMD. Instead Pelley pressed Piro on the question of why Hussein supposedly was hiding that fact:
"Why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?"
After Piro mentioned Hussein's lingering fear of neighboring Iran, Pelley felt he was close to an answer to the mystery: "He believed that he couldn't survive without the perception that he had weapons of mass destruction?"
But, still, Pelley puzzled over why Hussein's continued in his miscalculation. Pelley asked:
"As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn't he stop it then? And say, ‘Look, I have no weapons of mass destruction,' I mean, how could he have wanted his country to be invaded?"
It apparently never matters to the major U.S. news media (nor to President Bush) that Hussein and the Iraq government did declare that they had no WMD and did let the U.N. inspectors in to check.
Now, with the new ABC News interview, it looks as if that pattern - of Bush lying about the circumstances of the Iraq War and the Washington press corps nodding along - will continue until Bush's last days in office.
- Posted in
37 Comments so far
Show AllHeard Bush briefly on the BBC this morning saying "the intelligence was wrong". No, it wasn't. Bush ignored most of it. He's still so devious that if he swallowed a nail he'd shit a corkscrew.
Sioux Rose
SECRETARY: I believe that constitutes the big lie # 2... Tenet getting that medal and all. IF we had a media that did its job, but its paid sycophants mostly can't and won't since corporations that directly or indirectly profit from war require that media be used to seduce the masses and sway their judgment in favor OF war, we would not need to volley this subject about. It is so far into the realm of criminal intent that Bush manufactured the lies necessary to gain enough public support for this unnecessary war... and look at the tragic irony, they brought the house (US economy) down anyway, although adherents to "disaster capitalism" are busy going about like vultures to pick the good meat off the skewers that represent failed and failing US industries. And oil prices again are way down, thus demonstrating the naked truth that price has been about the Wall St speculators all this time... though the inflated costs a few months ago were attributed to war, less oil, and several other theories.
He's still so devious that if he swallowed a nail he'd shit a corkscrew.
Love it!
And how much of the "wrong intelligence" came out of his hand-picked vice president's office?
Exactly, but like the article points out, if only these journalists had the least bit of professionalism and guts to simply challenge him. No need to argue, be ready with the easily-found evidence that the problem was not the professionals who gathered the wrong intelligence.
He and his gang don't like the CIA's methods, and they've been trying to scapegoat them since forever.
Dubya will always "live" in his own warped version of reality. What remains to be seen is if he called to account for it in any meaningful way (not likely).
www.wunderman-comics.com
Bush lies. All reminders are welcome, from Robert Parry and others.
Exactly, reminders are important...chapter and verse like he did.
For possibly the best research and writing on Bush administration lies, see Frank Rich's "The Greatest Story Ever Sold". He has a huge section at the back--like 70 pages--of a time-line of their proven lies. It has on one side of the page: "What they said", and on the other side: "What has been proven to be the facts"...type of comparison.
Brilliant... lies by the hundreds, all referenced, with the date, etc.
It amazing how many times I have had to argue that Bush LIED repeatedly when he made these claims yet STILL have people claiming that Saddam refused the inspectors.
The fact is the Bush Lies worked with far too many people.
This only one example of the many lies he told yet was not called on.
pk
The majority of Americans respond: whatever, dude.
Boy lies like a rug, flat out. Damn shame none of the talking heads in the media have any balls.
TRUTH IS WILLING BUT...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhiannonstone/2721203107/in/pool-828437@N25
Bush opted in his position of power to follow a course that would ultimately kill hundreds of thousands of human beings. He did this behind lies and deceit to his country. He worships a god that says, "Thou shalt not kill,” yet he says that that same god told him to invade therefore killing innocents and transgressors alike. He is a man unworthy of his country. He is a man unworthy of his god. He will be gone from the national scene soon and yet not soon enough. He will not be sought for advice nor will he entertain on the lecture circuit. He will be as unofficially worthless as he was officially worthless. He will not be missed.
Folks, you can babble all you want about how Bush lied (then and now). But the reality is, Gibson was too busy sucking Bush's dick to notice - he was following the modern tradition of TV journalism.
As Bush the Elder's press secretary (Peter Teeley) said of TV (he was talking about debates, but the logic holds)
"You can say anything you want ..., and 80 million people hear it."
If the press then points out an error (or a lie) "...so what? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000 or 20,000."
So the pattern is clear - so long as the journalist is a typical TV fellator-of-power, you can lie your ass off to a TV audience of ten million mouth-breathers, and only those who bother to check page 20 of the NYT will see the revelation that once again a political parasite lied.
And with the NYT and other major outlets far too concerned about their ad revenue and 'access' to political parasites, it is highly unlikely that they even bother... so the only people who are made aware of the lie are those who read alternative news on the interwebs.
It has been ever thus - Jefferson's anti-Federalist writings had to be promulgated through small-scale media because the big media (even at the time) was in the Federalists' pockets.
Cheerio
GT
GT's Market Rant
You are correct. Lying wouldn't work if TV interviewers confronted liars with the truth.
As long as the Fairness Doctrine remains unenforced you'll never have the right to confront the lies of George Bush and his co-conspirator Charlie Gibson.
"Whoever controls the media controls the country. Period"
- Me
Or to put it another way: we have a free press as long as you own the press!
So an American president can lie about reasons for attacking a country, and the press/journalists go along with the lie. What does that say about this country? Personally I can't stand liars and won't deal with the weasels. But it's okay for leaders of this country to lie. Now Bush is shedding crocodile tears about the whole thing, but when asked if he'd do it again if he "knew the truth" that Iraq was no threat, he says he can't answer that......haha
America has lost all its credibility by pre-emptively attacking a country over (ahem) "faulty" intelligence. It, along with Israel, is planning the same thing with Iran (and Pakistand and Syria?) since it's been allowed to get away with it.
So Bill Clinton lies to the American people on national television with: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
Results in: American people are deceived into thinking their President did not commit adultery.
Consequences to Clinton: national disgrace and failed impeachment proceedings.
George Bush Jr. lies to the American people on national television with: "...Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld."
Results in: A full scale war and occupation taking the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent Iraqis and 4000-5000 American and coalition soldiers.
Consequences to Bush Jr.: Nothing.
I just had to write it out for this reality to actually sink in. It still hasn't sunk in.
Adhoc:nobody believed Bill C., just nobody unrelated to him was that upset by his fooling around like a jerk. But, it doesn't equate with Bush's lies. Like the old political button said, "When Clinton lied, nobody died.". People knew Bush lied and went along. Not everybody. Why, indeed, is the question?
NYC, I was thinking the same thing; nobody really believed Bill.
Why did people go along with Bush's many lies? Because if the president can get away with this type of behavior then maybe they can, too. If they have already gotten away with this type of behavior, it absolves them of guilt.
Also because there are a lot of chickenshit fucktards out there (sorry about the language, mom) whose Fear prohibits them from seeing Reason.
The utility of perpetuating this particular lie of the Bush regime is two-fold.
First, as the Downing Street memos document, the whole point of Tony Blair and the George Bush White House in issuing a series of ultimatums to Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the 2003 invasion was a blatant effort to "wrong foot" Saddam, ie., goad him into refusing to let the UN inspectors in, or otherwise obstruct the UN's search for weapons of mass destruction. This was a particularly significant point for the Brits, and European opinion generally. Without defiance of UN resolutions to point to, the tenuous basis for launching a preemptive military attack under existing international law was greviously undermined.
Yet that damn Saddam Hussein just kept on cooperating, and disclosing, and negotiating, and asking for more time, and insisting he had nothing to hide - a sort of rope-a-dope tactic that frustrated Bush/Cheney's timetable for shock and awe. Eventually, the UN inspectors had to be pulled out of Iraq to get them away from the danger zone, specifically in order that the US bombs could start to fall.
This apocryphal fairy tale of Saddam Hussein's defiance of the UN Security Council thus lives on as a form of ex post facto wishful thinking: if only Hussein had done so, there would have been a semblance of legal basis for waging a war of aggression. Alas, the swine stubbornly refused to be wrong footed.
Second, perpetuating this myth served the rhetorical purposes of George W. Bush on the domestic partisan front. Just think back on how many times did we watched little George strut his stuff in front of military academy graduating classes, deploying troops and their families, veterans' groups, right wing think tank audiences, and GOP fundraiser events, declaring piously "We had no choice..... We did not seek out this fight..... America was attacked first on 9/11, and the enemy chose to bring this upon himself..... We must carry the offensive to their turf, fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them over here....."
This is classic victimhood reversal, depicting an aggressive war of choice as an act of self defense in response to foreign provocation and perceived threat. As such, it seeks to fit neatly into the American frontier narrative of savage heathens perpetually lurking in the woods just beyond (white) civilization's perimeter, an omnipresent primordial danger that causes responsible men to always keep their powder dry, in order to shoot first and let God sort it out later, before threats can fully materialize.
Sound a bit familiar?
Bill from Saginaw
Sioux Rose
BILL: Wise & sagacious analysis. If only MAINSTREAM MEDIA said it as you did. Even today when I bring these things up, intelligent people look at me as if I have the facts wrong, because they have heard this lie so often. Goebbels and his new incarnation as Rove & the Bush Team understand the strategy quite well.
The other thing accomplished by this line of argument is that it avoids bringing up, let alone facing directly, the question of whether or not war was justified even if we were certain that Saddam had WMDS and ties to terrorists. For example, was war really the last resort? Or was the war specifically authorized by international authority? Is the idea of a pre-emptive war a morally valid one?
And it avoids the whole question of his responsibility for the war's execution and the course of post-war Iraq, including the unaccounted for -- and lost -- tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars. We might as well not have had a president or Congress for all of the oversight that was not done in those years. From Enron, to Katrina, to war and the global financial collapse, who was minding the store?
Clearly, an important consideration for President Bush was responding to people from "that part of the world" (his words, I believe) from whence had come the attacks of 9/11. Maybe that is why he cannot respond to the hypothetical question, What if we knew there were no WMDs in Iraq to be found, would he still have chosen war? Saddam would still have been a cruel dictator with the ability to negatively affect our strategic interests.
In Thomas Berger's novel "Little Big Man" there is a cynical swindler named Meriwether who keeps having vegeance wreaked upon him by the people he has swindled. They cut off an arm, a leg, put out an eye; he keeps getting whittled down little by little. That's George Wanker Bush as he lies his way out of office. There is less and less of him (there was almost nothing to begin with) with every lie he tells. At the end, he'll look like the basket case in "Freaks".
Not sure what you're all talking about here. Bush certainly is guilty of a long list of delusions and incompetencies, but the UN inspection agency reported just before Bush's invasion that Iraq was not fully complying with Security Council Resolution 1441. If it's been so long that you don't remember, see the March 7, 2003, entry at http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/iraqchron and read where it says:
"UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors had stated during briefings to the Security Council on January 27 and February 14 that Iraq was gradually increasing its cooperation with the United Nations. Yet, both deemed the cooperation insufficient."
So it's not clear why you're now suggesting that Charlie Gibson failed to challenge Bush on the facts. If Bush is essentially saying that Saddam didn't fully comply with UN demands on inspections, he's basically correct.
You're free to point out that Bush and his neo-con handlers were making all kinds of unsubstantiated claims about Iraq's weapons capability, and that Bush and his posse were guilty of peddling wild exaggerations and outright falsehoods about the threat posed by Saddam, and that the US and the UN should not have even been making belligerent demands for unfettered access to all Iraqi sites without advance notice or any other precondition. In short, there's a mountain of fact-based complaints one can make about Bush and his handling of the Iraq situation.
But instead you seem here to have managed to choose one slice of the story in which he's actually telling the truth, or at least close enough to the truth that you make yourself look a bit silly by complaining so loudly about it.
The progressive left is marginalized enough in this country without going around giving the reactionaries ammunition with which to shoot us.
Bush, in his revealing interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson, claimed he wished "that the intelligence had been different", but that was never really the point. Bush, like so many others, had made up his mind regarding Saddam independent of the facts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Try as he might to spread responsibility for his actions by pointing out that "a lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein," the fact is WMD was simply an excuse used by the president to fulfil his self-proclaimed destiny as a war-time president who would avenge his father's inability (or, more accurately, sage unwillingness) to finish the job back in 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf war.
Scott Ritter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/dec/02/george-bush-iraq-wmd
I'll believe Scott Ritter and all of the other weaponds inspector before I would believe anything out of the mouth of that lying Bush.
Cheney and his crew had been plotting to invade Irak for a long time. Bush is now trying to nudge the history in the direction of blaming the professionals for messing up on the 'intelligence'. It has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Besides, the professionals were on the case but Cheney leaned heavily to have them manipulate the intelligence to justify war.
You will have to make a better case for non-compliance than a February 14 report saying that "Iraq was gradually increasing its cooperation with the United Nations."
Besides, did the UN have in mind for "serious consequences" a unilateral launching of "Shock and Awe" on March 19? Either Bush was serious about the concerns of the UN, or he wasn't.
There is a better case -- you cited the first half of the quote, and not the second half, where the UN inspectors say Iraq was not in full compliance.
But agreed, there's lots of other places to question administration policy, including whether Bush was serious about the UN's concerns, and about whether the UN resolution actually authorized war as the appropriate retaliation. The only point I was making here is that the article seems to be harping on one small piece of fact where Bush actually has an on-balance claim to accuracy, and that opponents of the war would do better to stick with fact-based criticisms, of which there are many.
pbasken sez: "... see the March 7, 2003, entry at http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/iraqchron and read where it says:
"UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors ... both deemed the cooperation insufficient."
Bush sez (graph 4 in preceding article): "Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in."
***
If the inspectors were not allowed to go in, how did they determine cooperation was "insufficient"?
I hope I am mistaken in my impression that your threshold for bullshit is set dismally low.
Bottom line: If Bush's mouth is moving, and noise is coming out, then you are being lied to.
Again, if you go back and read the facts of what was going on, or simply recall it from your own memory, it was an ongoing game where Iraq would let the inspectors in, then assert a series of restrictions and conditions (for instance, remember all the yada-yada about "presidential palaces"). So letting the inspectors in didn't mean full cooperation. You may take the position that the UN was making an unfair demand of Iraq, and that's a perfectly reasonable position to take, but that doesn't mean one can deny the fact that the UN inspectors really did accuse Iraq of failing to comply.
Calling names is great fun, I'm sure, and the Internet of course has provided a huge playground for those who enjoy such sport, but all I'm suggesting is that there's plenty of grounds on which to question Bush's accuracy and competence and strategic approach, and that those seeking meaningful change would do well to stick with the facts and not write an article such as this one, which ironically accuses a TV journalist of overlooking the facts when it appears the author of the article is the one who has done so. There's so many areas in which one could criticize administration policy toward Iraq -- so why pick one that doesn't really exist and leave yourself open to the impression of being more interested in name-calling than in constructive problem-solving?
Bush To Receive First-ever International Medal Of Peace.
ROTFLMAO Maybe they'll try Gandhi for war crimes too! How much more Orwellian can they get?
Check this out on rob@opednews.com for a real stomach turner. Some wretch had to create another lie to support all the others. This "award" will have the stench of the sewer processing plant that was to be named after GWB and hopefully, he will be the only person to ever accept such a farcical charade. If not, we have the makings of another dark comic series for Comedy Central.
Since this "award" is apparently given out by some Elmer Gantry-type fire and brimstone evangelical preacher, it is tantamount to winning the first ever Order of the Humanitarian given by the Ku Klux Klan.
I'd like to let loose a big fart and say, “Mr. President, come smell the roses!”
Goebbels sez December 3rd, 2008 3:33 am:
“Bottom line: If Bush's mouth is moving, and noise is coming out, then you are being lied to.”
Unless it's that wet slappy noise he make from the Saudi king's pants!
America is a Nation of Laws , Constitutional Laws. Or we used to be.
Now we are the nation with the biggest liars, and the biggest club.
We can say what ever we want , and seek our self - righteous justice with our big club.
After all , the people in Iraq,Afghanistan's, and Iran are not humans with real family lives.
They are what we say they are, don't send real reporter to these country's to show us what life is really like their, dehumanize and bomb.
By the way, Bush and his Republican security spy nation has had 7 years and lots of money to build a spy machine that is pro Republican.
These people are ruthless, they will slander, character assassinate, gang stalk their victims , for power and money. All that , and hide behind the Jesus fish symbols on their cars.
Wow, now that's patriotism. I wonder what Obama is going to do with this useless spyocracy, that torture innocent Americans.
He can fire them all, replace them with Democratic contractors and spy on Republicans. I mean, this spy network uses the patriot act and dig up all your personal transactions and day to day activities.Phone calls, internet usage, they have been dinging for dirt for 7 years.
Ooops , I sorry,they are looking for terrorist suspects. Hell in southwset Florida, Bradenton and Sarasota, the TIPs program put road side adds on billboards asking for information about Terrorists.I am not kidding.
Now that's high tech fear mongering.
The Bush Doctrine is the Natzi Germany propaganda playbook. Tell lies enough times over and over and people think its the truth.
Of course , our treasonous major media are part of the propaganda machine.
Can Obama save our Democracy and our Constitution, lets pray he does.
The alternative is a Capitalistic Fascist Coup by the Elite super rich that have spent 7 years robbing us.
These are dangerous times in Americas Democracy. A Coup was attempted during the first stock mark crash, and was thwarted by Major General Smedley Darlington Butler.
The whole event was buried in senate hearings and the elite bankers and corporate owners who put the plans together walked.
BornFreeMen
"You can say anything you want ..., and 80 million people hear it."
If the press then points out an error (or a lie) "...so what? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000 or 20,000."
Yes that's how it goes !!!!
The USA should be wallowing in SHAME -- It has over the last 20 years brought a Holocaust to the people of Iraq at the behest of Israel !!!!
http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/iraqwar.shtml
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0306-09.htm