Yakima Valley Peace Advocates Network

More vicious than Tricky Dick
John Dean says the Bush team's leaks are even viler than his former boss's -- and that Plame and Wilson should file a civil suit.
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By John W. Dean

Bush the Believer

By Richard Cohen (Washington Post)

Is George Bush the Iraq war's "useful idiot"?

The phrase was coined by Vladimir Lenin to refer to gullible communist sympathizers who swallowed whole the party line. They believed what they were told, and what they were told was mostly lies.

It could be somewhat the same with Bush. He may well be the last person to believe that the Iraq war was waged virtually in self-defense. He believes that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons. He believes Hussein had other weapons of mass destruction and that he was linked somehow -- don't ask how -- to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the events of Sept. 11.

The evidence is nowhere to be found. No weapons of mass destruction have turned up. An advanced Iraqi nuclear program seems to be, well, not so advanced. The evidence for it is either bogus or so tenuous as to be far from convincing. Ties to al Qaeda -- "bulletproof evidence," in the words of Don Rumsfeld -- have not been proved and never made much sense anyway. Al Qaeda is not well disposed toward secular leaders.

What evidence exists suggests, in fact, that the United States was hankering for a war no matter what. Intelligence -- no matter how fragmentary or inconclusive -- was shaped, molded and goosed until it could be used to prove that Hussein had to be taken out swiftly. The bogus uranium from Niger is a mere detail in this regard -- a smoking gun, yes, but one in the hands of White House aides for whom truth meant less than impact.

The real mystery is whether Bush himself realized how weak the evidence for a preemptive war was or was being manipulated by a cadre of disciplined administration aides who long had sought a war with Iraq. These are some of the very same people who in 1998 wrote a letter to President Clinton arguing that America should abandon containment, "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power." Ten of the 18 signatories -- including Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz -- are now in the Bush administration and were among the most vigorous proponents of war. Rumsfeld, Bob Woodward tells us, argued at the first Cabinet meeting after the Sept. 11 attacks for war on Iraq.

They may have been right then and they may be right now -- and in my view, a pretty good case can still be made for the war. But that's not really the case Bush made. Instead of arguing that down the road Iraq might have a nuclear weapons program or that eventually the United Nations would lose interest in maintaining sanctions, he raised the rhetorical danger to one of virtual imminence: Hit Iraq quick -- before Hussein could hit us.

That was a bogus argument. The war could have waited. But Bush could not.. My guess is that his tendency to see things in black and white and an un-Clintonian determination to eschew micromanaging led him astray. The president "is not a fact-checker," an administration aide told the media last week in explaining why Bush used weak evidence in his State of the Union message.

But neither is Colin Powell. Yet he went over the evidence carefully, discarding some of it before he made his own presentation to the United Nations. Powell might have suspected what Bush apparently did not -- that some administration officials were so intent on war they were cooking the books.

The proposals contained in the 1998 letter to Clinton were either bold or reckless, depending on your point of view. Whatever the case, Bush essentially adopted them. But in choosing an unconventional course, he persisted in using the conventional language of self-defense. In fact, he opted for a discretionary war, one waged not so much to preempt terrorism -- although that was part of the mix -- as to reorder the Middle East.

Had Bush made the same case for war that his aides did in 1998, that could have been debated. But it was a hard case to make, because Hussein really and truly did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. He posed a distant or theoretical threat -- and not really to America but to our interests and allies.

Now Bush stands abandoned by events. No weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear program. No links to al Qaeda. His judgment and his competence are being questioned -- his honesty as well. But the president is no liar. More likely, he is merely an uncritical man who believed what he was told. Lenin knew the type.

The phrase was coined by Vladimir Lenin to refer to gullible communist sympathizers who swallowed whole the party line. They believed what they were told, and what they were told was mostly lies.

It could be somewhat the same with Bush. He may well be the last person to believe that the Iraq war was waged virtually in self-defense. He believes that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons. He believes Hussein had other weapons of mass destruction and that he was linked somehow -- don't ask how -- to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and the events of Sept. 11.

The evidence is nowhere to be found. No weapons of mass destruction have turned up. An advanced Iraqi nuclear program seems to be, well, not so advanced. The evidence for it is either bogus or so tenuous as to be far from convincing. Ties to al Qaeda -- "bulletproof evidence," in the words of Don Rumsfeld -- have not been proved and never made much sense anyway. Al Qaeda is not well disposed toward secular leaders.

What evidence exists suggests, in fact, that the United States was hankering for a war no matter what. Intelligence -- no matter how fragmentary or inconclusive -- was shaped, molded and goosed until it could be used to prove that Hussein had to be taken out swiftly. The bogus uranium from Niger is a mere detail in this regard -- a smoking gun, yes, but one in the hands of White House aides for whom truth meant less than impact.

The real mystery is whether Bush himself realized how weak the evidence for a preemptive war was or was being manipulated by a cadre of disciplined administration aides who long had sought a war with Iraq. These are some of the very same people who in 1998 wrote a letter to President Clinton arguing that America should abandon containment, "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power." Ten of the 18 signatories -- including Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz -- are now in the Bush administration and were among the most vigorous proponents of war. Rumsfeld, Bob Woodward tells us, argued at the first Cabinet meeting after the Sept. 11 attacks for war on Iraq.

They may have been right then and they may be right now -- and in my view, a pretty good case can still be made for the war. But that's not really the case Bush made. Instead of arguing that down the road Iraq might have a nuclear weapons program or that eventually the United Nations would lose interest in maintaining sanctions, he raised the rhetorical danger to one of virtual imminence: Hit Iraq quick -- before Hussein could hit us.

That was a bogus argument. The war could have waited. But Bush could not.. My guess is that his tendency to see things in black and white and an un-Clintonian determination to eschew micromanaging led him astray. The president "is not a fact-checker," an administration aide told the media last week in explaining why Bush used weak evidence in his State of the Union message.

But neither is Colin Powell. Yet he went over the evidence carefully, discarding some of it before he made his own presentation to the United Nations. Powell might have suspected what Bush apparently did not -- that some administration officials were so intent on war they were cooking the books.

The proposals contained in the 1998 letter to Clinton were either bold or reckless, depending on your point of view. Whatever the case, Bush essentially adopted them. But in choosing an unconventional course, he persisted in using the conventional language of self-defense. In fact, he opted for a discretionary war, one waged not so much to preempt terrorism -- although that was part of the mix -- as to reorder the Middle East.

Had Bush made the same case for war that his aides did in 1998, that could have been debated. But it was a hard case to make, because Hussein really and truly did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. He posed a distant or theoretical threat -- and not really to America but to our interests and allies.

Now Bush stands abandoned by events. No weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear program. No links to al Qaeda. His judgment and his competence are being questioned -- his honesty as well. But the president is no liar. More likely, he is merely an uncritical man who believed what he was told. Lenin knew the type.

-- including the build-up and aftermath -- has brought an unusually wide range of criticism and condemnation. Greg Dyke, General Director of the BBC, said he was "shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war."

But even within the United States, such sentiments have spilled well beyond the usual circles of right- and left-wing media critics. I recently participated in a panel discussion at the National Press Club here on the media in Venezuela. In that country the private media has openly and consciously sided with the political opposition, and in the process disgraced itself in the eyes of journalists worldwide. The comparison with American reporting on the war repeatedly came up. It was striking to see such broad agreement -- among people of very divergent views and politics -- that our media had indeed failed miserably to fulfill its basic duty to inform the public.

The most obvious evidence of this failure is a "results-based" measure. A Gallup poll last August found that 53 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was "personally involved" in the massacre of September 11. Where did they get this idea, for which no evidence exists?

They got this idea from hearing it implied -- not even stated outright -- repeatedly by the Bush administration. The broadcast media transmitted this information over and over again, with only occasional rebuttals, if any. Regardless of their own views on the war, American journalists became the Bush Administration's major means of promoting it, even through disinformation. This disinformation included the alleged weapons of mass destruction (still missing in action), the forged documents and aluminum tubes put forth as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, and other falsehoods.

Many journalists I have talked to blame the American people for allowing themselves to be fooled, some even calling Americans "stupid." As far as they are concerned, the information was all there, especially in the print media and on the Internet -- so it's your own fault if you were misinformed or deceived.

This is a cop-out. Americans may have a lower literacy level than other high-income countries, but they are not any more stupid than anyone else. The people of Europe -- including the British and Spanish whose governments joined the "coalition of the willing" -- overwhelmingly opposed the war because the media in those countries, while presenting Bush and Blair's statements, also gave the other side of the story.

The broadcast media is most important, because that is the main source of information for the "swing voters" and Americans whose views are not determined by party affiliation. This media will have to be reformed. Journalists must begin to treat government lying as any other form of malfeasance such as bribery or stealing: it is something to be exposed to the public as news, not glossed over and reinforced with endless repetition.

And when the public is divided on matters of opinion, with 61 percent opposing a unilateral American invasion of Iraq, that view must be given equal time to that of government officials -- not just an occasional spray in an ocean of pro-war messages.

The last nine months have been truly Orwellian. In a political move beginning last August that was as transparent as it was cynical, the Bush team used a manufactured threat from Iraq to remove from the electoral agenda all the domestic issues on which it was politically vulnerable. Among these: a series of scandals involving the administration's highest officials (including President Bush and Vice- President Dick Cheney), the economy, the budget, Medicare and Social Security.

The strategy worked, and helped them win both houses of Congress for the Republican party. They then invaded Iraq, causing the media and the public to rally even more around the President, and lifting his approval ratings. Now the press is talking about whether he can "use the capital from the military success to push forward his domestic agenda."

That is not likely, as the economy continues to sputter and unemployment rises. The odds are therefore very high that we will find ourselves confronting another "security threat" before the next election -- North Korea, Iran, Syria . . . there are many to choose from.

Yes, it can happen again. The media's complicity in such scams is therefore much worse than a problem of bias or passivity. It is one of the greatest threats to democracy -- and security -- that this country faces.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington D. C.