When President Obama announced in October that he was ordering all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, Mitt Romney’s campaign issued a statement assailing the president, calling his decision an “astonishing failure”:
“President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women. The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government. The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq.”
Yet today during an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, Romney backtracked. Immediately after criticizing Obama for not keeping up to 30,000 troops in Iraq, the former Massachusetts governor said the withdrawal is the right move:
ROMNEY: With regards to Iraq, of course we’re following the Bush timeline with one exception and that is the [blank space] President Bush and I believe others anticipated that we would have an ongoing force, somewhere between 10 and 20 and 30,000 there to help with the transition. President Obama’s own Secretary of Defense suggested that would be the case and they were unable to negotiate a status of forces agreement to allow the 10 to 20 to 30,000 troops to remain which I think was a failure on the part of the administration. But is the wind down in Iraq appropriate? Yes.
Watch it:
It seems like Romney and Newt Gingrich are in stiff competition for this year’s top GOP flip-flopper. Gingrich’s recent Iraq reversal clocked in at an impressive 13 seconds. Perhaps Romney is trying to reclaim the mantle.
In a segment that shows that Fox News may actually inhabit Bizarro World, Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade hosted Media Research Center executive director L. Brent Bozell to claim that President Obama "seems to be getting a free pass from most media outlets" for some of his decisions on Libya, while President Bush got "anything but a free pass" in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
If Kilmeade and Bozell are to be believed, in the lead up to the Iraq war the media reported critically about the Bush administration's claims, providing us with a variety of viewpoints on the issue and legitimately debating the administration's case for going to war. If only we were so lucky. In reality, the media acted as Bush's lapdogs, eagerly parroting every dubious claim the Bush administration made about Iraq and shouting down the few who dared to disagree. So bad was the media's coverage of Iraq, many major media outlets have since issued apologies for their complete and total failure to investigate any of the claims made by the Bush administration.
[W]e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge.
In August 2004, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz examined his own paper's coverage, and concluded:
An examination of the paper's coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.
Michael Massing ruthlessly dissected the press's failures in February 2004 in the New York Review of Books:
Beginning in the summer of 2002, the "intelligence community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it....
The nearer the war drew, and the more determined the administration seemed to wage it, the less editors were willing to ask tough questions. The occasional critical stories that did appear were... tucked well out of sight.
In his book, "Now They Tell Us," Massing writes that journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration and that those with dissenting views were shut out. As a result, coverage was highly deferential to the White House. At his publisher explains, Massing's "detailed analysis demonstrates, pre-war journalism was also deeply flawed, as too many reporters failed to independently evaluate administration claims about Saddam's weapons programs or the inspection process."
Even Scott McClellan -- Bush's former press secretary -- has said that "the media ... serve[d] as complicit enablers" in the Bush administration's "carefully-orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval." From his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception:
In the fall of 2002, Bush and his White house were engaging in a carefully-orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval to our advantage. We'd done much the same on other issues--tax cuts and education--to great success. But war with Iraq was different. Beyond the irreversible human costs and substantial financial price, the decision to go to war and the way we went about selling it would ultimately lead to increased polarization and intensified partisan warfare. Our lack of candor and honesty in making the case for war would later provoke a partisan response from our opponents that, in its own way, further distorted and obscured a more nuanced reality. Another cycle of deception would cloud the public's ability to see larger, underlying important truths that are critical to understand in order to avoid the same problems in the future.
And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it... the media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. Was the president winning or losing the argument? How were Democrats responding? What were the electoral implications? What did the polls say? And the truth--about the actual nature of the threat posed by Saddam, the right way to confront it, and the possible risks of military conflict--would get largely left behind.
Oh -- and regarding The New York Times' 2004 mea culpa mentioned above, as Slate's Eric Umanskypointed out, "Of the 12 flawed stories the Times cites, Judith Miller wrote or co-wrote ...10 of them." Miller was subsequently fired from the Times. Where is she currently employed? Fox News.
If this weren't bad enough, Bozell then furthered his claims of a media double standard by repeatedly trying to suggest that the media were opposed to Iraq, despite the fact that Bush had "twice the coalition" than Obama has in Libya. Except, Bush didn't have the support of the United Nations. Or the Arab League. Or the African Union. Obama does. As Juan Cole points out in his "Top Ten Ways that Libya 2011 is Not Iraq 2003" list: "By the UN Charter, military action after 1945 should either come as self-defense or with UNSC authorization. Most countries in the world are signatories to the charter and bound by its provisions." This was most certainly not the case in Iraq and one of many big reasons why the current situation in Libya and the situation in Iraq are not comparable.
Furthermore, during the segment, Fox News also took Bush's "bare-knuckled political power-play" to force Congress to vote on using force in Iraq less than a month before the 2002 elections and somehow turned it into evidence of media bias. A Fox caption claimed: "Media pushed Bush admin; pressured for congressional approval for Iraq."
In fact, according to former Bush White House chief of staff Andy Card, it was the White House that was pushing for a vote on the Iraq resolution in October 2002, shortly before the 2002 election, even as then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) was asking the White House to delay the vote "so we could depoliticize it." From the November 30, 2007, edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe (via ThinkProgress):
SCARBOROUGH: We have to start with something that we all are talking about a couple of days ago where Karl Rove went on Charlie Rose and he blamed the Democrats for pushing him and the president into war. Is that how it worked?
CARD: No, that's not the way it worked.
SCARBOROUGH: What the heck? Seriously, what the hell was that about?
CARD: Democrats pushed us a lot of stupid things, but they didn't push us into war.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, yeah. You worked with Karl. Is that just Karl spinning beyond the White House?
MIKA BRZEZINSKI:Spinning out of control?
CARD: Well, Karl is very smart. He's -- sometimes his brain gets ahead of his mouth. And sometimes his mouth gets ahead of his brain.
Politico's John Bresnahan has reported that the White House move to force a vote in October "was a bare-knuckled political power play by President Bush and GOP leaders in Congress":
As someone who covered the 2002 vote on Iraq for Roll Call, Rove's assertion that Congress was pushing for a quick vote on the use-of-force resolution is just not credible at all.
The White House pushed to hold that vote in October, just a month before the mid-term elections, and Democrats were forced to support it or risk losing their re-election campaigns.
It was a bare-knuckled political power play by President Bush and GOP leaders in Congress, and it worked very, very well. Republicans ended up winning back the Senate that fall, and the GOP picked up more House seats.
It's hard to imagine that anyone could be so partisan as to try to spin a tale about an anti-Iraq media narrative during the lead-up to that war. Yet, that's exactly what Bozell and Kilmeade tried to do. Is there any way they actually believe the story they're selling? We doubt it.
By Zaid Jilani
The Bush administration has long maintained they had not decided to invade Iraq until the days before it actually began and that they did “everything” they could to “avoid war in Iraq.” President Bush even claimed that the “American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war.”
Yet there is evidence that the Bush administration, from its very early days, was actively plotting to go to war with the Arab country. From a British memo that noted that “Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme” to memoirs by administration members Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill, there have been numerous disclosures that strongly suggest that the Bush administration was plotting a war against Iraq while recognizing it was not a threat to the United States.
Now, with the help of a Freedom of Information Act request, the National Security Archive has obtained a newly declassified document that details talking points that emerged from a meeting between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and CENTCOM Commander General Tommy Franks in November 2001.
The talking points mainly revolve around the logistical planning for a war in Iraq. They detail the “decapitation” of the Iraqi government by U.S. forces and make regime change the goal. Interestingly, they already mention U.S. forces “coming out of Afghanistan” to join the invasion of Iraq. Yet the most alarming part of the document is a bullet point titled, “How start?” (which is a discussion that actually appears after the planning of the entire war). The participants in the Rumsfeld-Frank meeting discussed possible ways to provoke a conflict with Iraq, including an attack by Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish north, the U.S. discovering a “Saddam connection” to 9/11 or the anthrax attacks, or a dispute over WMD inspections. It appears from the language of the talking points that the Bush administration had already decided to go to war with Iraq and was looking for an opportunity to invade:
Another document obtained by the National Security Archive shows that the Bush State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research created an assessment of international support for a war against Iraq in December 2001. It noted that the “UK’s Blair would publicly support a US decision to bomb Iraq but would face considerable criticism.” It worried that going to war in Iraq could “bring radicalization of British Muslims, the great majority whom opposed the September 11 attacks but are increasingly restive about what they see as an anti-Islamic campaign.” These fears appear to have been prescient, as in July 2005 British Muslim extremists apparently radicalized by the war in Iraq detonated bombs throughout London.
From Media Matters
Following President Obama's speech on the end of combat operations in Iraq, media outlets hosted discredited Bush administration officials Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, and Ari Fleischer to respond, despite the fact that the three were at the forefront of the campaign of misinformation used to sell the war.
Rove led WH group that "promoted" view that Saddam had WMDs "and was seeking more"
White House Iraq Group was formed to "set [messaging] strategy" for going to war with Iraq. The Washington Post reported in 2003 (accessed via Nexis), that the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) was formed in August 2002 "to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it 'an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities.' " Part of WHIG's mission, according to the Post, was to decide "what to demand of the United Nations in the president's Sept. 12 [2002] address to the General Assembly, when to take the issue to Congress, and how to frame the conflict with Iraq in the midterm election campaign that began in earnest after Labor Day." Rove was a regular participant in this group.
WHIG promoted view that Saddam "had weapons of mass destruction and was seeking more." The Los Angeles Times reported on August 25, 2005, (accessed via Nexis) that WHIG "promoted the view that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was seeking more":
The group consisted of Rove, Libby, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, and Mary Matalin, Cheney's media advisor. All are believed to have been questioned in the leak case; papers and e-mails about the group were subpoenaed.
Before the war, this Iraq group promoted the view that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was seeking more. In September 2002, the White House embraced a British report asserting that "Iraq has sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
The Washington Post further reported that WHIG "assigned Communications Director James R. Wilkinson to prepare a white paper for public release, describing the 'grave and gathering danger' of Iraq's allegedly 'reconstituted' nuclear program." From the October 30, 2005, article (accessed via Nexis):
By summer 2002, the White House Iraq Group assigned Communications Director James R. Wilkinson to prepare a white paper for public release, describing the "grave and gathering danger" of Iraq's allegedly "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program. Wilkinson gave prominent place to the claim that Iraq "sought uranium oxide, an essential ingredient in the enrichment process, from Africa." That claim, along with repeated use of the "mushroom cloud" image by top officials beginning in September, became the emotional heart of the case against Iraq.
Rove repeatedly politicized national security issues, including the war in Iraq, and actively encouraged GOP to campaign on the issue. Think Progress has documented Rove's repeated politicization of the Iraq war and his encouragement that Republicans campaign on the issue in 2002, which included (emphasis in original):
In January 2002, Rove told conservatives, "Americans trust the Republicans to do a better job of keeping our communities and our families safe...We can also go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America."
[...]
In June 2002, Rove was giving PowerPoint presentations candidates advising them to "focus on the war" in their fall campaigns.
In September 2002, Time reported that when friends asked whether Bush planned to invade Iraq, Rove was been [sic] known to reply, "Let me put it this way: If you want to see Baghdad, you'd better visit soon."
In addition, according to an April 5, 2003, The New York Times article (accessed via Nexis), Rove worked "busily ... to shape perceptions of Mr. Bush as a wartime leader and to prepare for the re-election campaign that will start as soon as the war ends. The Times quoted Rove as saying, "The president is leading the coalition of the willing, and is determined that Iraq will be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction and that the cruel dictator's regime will be ended." From the Times:
The White House portrays Karl Rove, President Bush's most influential political adviser, as playing no role in military decisions that are shaping the Bush presidency.
But more than two weeks after the war began, Mr. Rove is busily working to shape perceptions of Mr. Bush as a wartime leader and to prepare for the re-election campaign that will start as soon as the war ends.
Tonight, Mr. Rove traveled here to tend to the Republican troops at the Texas Night fund-raising celebration of the Kent County Republican Committee.
"The president is leading the coalition of the willing, and is determined that Iraq will be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction and that the cruel dictator's regime will be ended," Mr. Rove declared after taking the stage to chants of "U.S.A.!" in a cavernous hanger filled with the local party faithful wearing Texas-style cowboy boots, hats and bandanas.
Beyond courting Republicans at party events, Mr. Rove has in recent days been counseling Congressional Republicans and conservative groups on how to advance their domestic agenda even while attention is on Iraq.
This week, he held forth at a lunch with conservative commentators and journalists. Some participants had backed the administration on Iraq when it faced criticism that the war plan provided insufficient force and that it had been overly optimistic about Iraqi resistance.
Hadley took responsibility for infamous "16 words" in Bush's State of the Union address
Hadley reportedly accepted responsibility for the infamous "16 words" incident, in which Bush claimed, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." On January 28, 2003, as part of his State of the Union address, President Bush made the now-infamous claim that "[t]he British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," a claim that was highly disputed and which turned out to be false. In 2003, then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley reportedly accepted responsibility for the line appearing in Bush's address, despite having received two memos and a phone call from CIA Director George Tenet three months earlier raising objections to its inclusion in prior speeches. From a July 2003 FoxNews.com article:
Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in a rare on-the-record session with reporters, said that he had received two memos from the CIA and a phone call from agency Director George Tenet last October raising objections to an allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore from Africa to use in building nuclear weapons.
As a result, Hadley said the offending passage was excised from a speech on Iraq the president gave in Cincinnati last Oct. 7. But Hadley suggested that details from the memos and phone call had slipped from his attention as the State of the Union was being put together.
The false claim was credited as one of the bases for shifting public support for the war. As a July 2003 New York Times analysis noted:
The speeches worked. Public opposition to the war, never fierce, began to melt, polls show, and by mid-March, when hostilities began, more than 60 percent agreed that ousting Mr. Hussein was worth spilling American blood.
Today, those 16 words haunt the administration. They are the best-remembered flourish in a portrait of Iraq that today seems unrecognizable. They are a leading rationale for a war that has resulted in the death of 224 Americans. And they are either unsubstantiated or based on a lie.
Hadley was also a part of the White House Iraq Group. According to a 2003 Washington Post report, Hadley was a "regular participant" in WHIG meetings. From The Washington Post:
The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
Fleischer repeatedly hyped the nonexistent threat of WMD to pitch war
As press secretary, Fleischer was responsible for pitching the Iraq war, which he often did by hyping the nonexistent threat of weapons of mass destruction. Ari Fleischer was the White House press secretary from January 2001 to July 2003. As press secretary, Fleischer was responsible for a number of false or misleading claims regarding Iraq and Saddam Hussein, including:
* "I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found." [4/10/03]
* "Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly ... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes." [3/21/03]
* "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." [1/9/03]
* "Saddam Hussein does not exactly have a track record of telling the world the truth. So he, on December 8th, has to indicate whether or not he has weapons. Let's see what he says. If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world." [12/2/02]
* "[G]iven the chance to throw off a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein, people will rejoice." [3/21/03]
* "[W]hen you take a look at the level of violence inside of Iraq, it is impossible to argue anything other than violence has, indeed, come down as a result of America's military operations." [6/25/03]
* "There is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly. ... And all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes." [3/21/03]
Despite their history, media turns to Hadley, Fleischer and Rove to respond to Obama's speech
Kilmeade hosts Hadley to discuss whether "the president is finally acknowledging the previous administration was...on the right track in the middle east overall." On the September 1 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade hosted two Bush administration officials, Margaret O'Sullivan and Hadley, to discuss whether "the president is finally acknowledging the previous administration was right - was on the right track in the Middle East overall."
MSNBC's Morning Joe hosts Fleischer to defend Bush and compare invading Iraq to invading Nazi Germany. On September 1, MSNBC's Morning Joe hosted Fleischer to defend Bush for invading Iraq, and Fleischer compared Iraq to the invasion of Nazi Germany:
FLEISCHER: Probably the most profound meeting I ever sat on at the White House was a meeting with Elie Weisel. Just President Bush, Elie Wiesel, Condi Rice was there and myself. And the president asked Elie Wiesel - Nobel Peace Prize winner, Holocaust survivor - should he remove Saddam [Hussein]. Wiesel said yes, and then he added, "If only the world had listened to Winston Churchill in 1938 or 1939, World War II and the Holocaust could have been avoided. And I thought to myself, if the world had listened to Churchill in '38, people probably would've said "you exaggerated the threat of Hitler. You know, who says there was a World War coming?" We'll never know what we averted by getting rid of Saddam and how many lives were saved as a result of removing the threat of Saddam Hussein.
Rove: "This was not a well-delivered speech." On September 1, Fox News' On the Record with Greta van Sustern hosted Rove to attack Obama's Iraq speech, saying: "[T]his was not a well-delivered speech." Rove called Obama's mention of Bush "an attempt at graciousness" that "didn't succeed," and he criticized Obama for not taking a "confident" tone that showed "a celebration of what has happened" in Iraq "to this point."
By Faiz Shakir
In April 2006, ThinkProgress produced a report titled “The Architects of War: Where Are They Now?” We wrote at the time, “a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded — not blamed — for their incompetence.” Referencing our report in July 2007, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “To read that summary is to be awed by the comprehensiveness and generosity of the neocon welfare system.”
Flash forward to today, and the answer to our original question of the Iraq war architects — “where are they now?” — can be answered quite simply: They’re on your TV screens, in your radio, and in your newspapers — shamelessly demanding credit for the work they’ve done.
For example, consider former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith. According to the Pentagon Inspector General’s office, Feith delivered a briefing to the White House in 2002 that “undercut the Intelligence Community” and “did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence.” What is he doing now? In an interview with NPR yesterday, he blasted Obama for not properly crediting the “success” of Iraq:
He didn’t say America is more secure. And that’s the kind of statement that could help explain to the American people why we need to persevere and do all the things that he’s pledging to do in the future. … And then he also, in January of 2007, just when the surge was getting underway, proposed legislation that would have ended the war in March of 2008. And had that legislation succeeded, it would have prevented the success that he celebrated in his speech tonight.
Another example: former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who took blame for allowing President Bush to make the false claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa to build a nuclear weapon. What is he doing now? In an interview with the New York Times, Hadley demanded Bush be given “credit” for Iraq:
“I thought I owed it to the former president that somewhere out there somebody gives him some credit and points out that he’s the one actually that started withdrawing U.S. troops and he’s the one that set up the framework for both a long term relationship with Iraq and a December, 30 2011 end date,” Mr. Hadley said in an interview.
And there’s also former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who conceded the case for invading Iraq was determined based on what could be easily sold to the public. “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” he said. In an op-ed in the New York Times this Monday, Wolfowitz was more magnanimous about sharing “credit” with U.S. soldiers, Iraqi forces, and the Iraqi people. Wolfowitz, who incorrectly predicted Iraq’s reconstruction would be paid for with Iraq’s oil, urged Obama to maintain “a long-term commitment, albeit at greatly reduced cost and risk.”
And on your TV sets, you’ll frequently see Ari Fleischer — the prominent pre-war mouthpiece who said Iraq would “shoulder much of the burden” for reconstruction, who said the Iraqis would “rejoice,” and who claimed that there was no chance “of losing the peace.” On both CNN and MSNBC over the last 24 hours, Fleischer has bemoaned that Bush isn’t being given enough credit for ending the war in Iraq. Watch it:
KIRCHNER: I said that a solution for the problems right now, I told Bush, is a Marshall Plan. And he got angry. He said the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats. He said the best way to revitalize the economy is war. And that the United States has grown stronger with war.
STONE: War, he said that?
KIRCHNER: He said that. Those were his exact words.
STONE: Is he suggesting that South America go to war?
KIRCHNER: Well, he was talking about the United States: ‘The Democrats had been wrong. All of the economic growth of the United States has been encouraged by wars.’ He said it very clearly.
Watch it:
It is worth noting that despite the prosecution of two major wars, there was very minimal net job growth during Bush’s tenure as president. And of course, he bequeathed an economy that suffered massive job losses in his wake.
By Matt Duss
Seven years ago today, President Bush launched the Iraq war. In a televised address to the nation, Bush told the American people “at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” Over the last several years, ThinkProgress has been keeping a Timeline of the Iraq War, marking the key events in the U.S. invasion, occupation, and now ongoing withdrawal from the country. Among the most significant events of the last year were:
JUNE 30, 2009: Jubilation as U.S. Combat Troops Withdraw From Cities. Six years and three months after the March 2003 invasion, the United States has withdrawn its remaining combat troops from Iraq’s cities and is turning over security to Iraqi police and soldiers. While more than 130,000 U.S. troops remain in the country, patrols by heavily armed soldiers in hulking vehicles have largely disappeared from Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq’s other urban centers. Iraqis danced in the streets and set off fireworks overnight in impromptu celebrations of a pivotal moment in their nation’s troubled history. The government staged a military parade to mark the new national holiday of “National Sovereignty Day,” and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made a triumphant, nationally televised address. [Washington Post, 6/30/09]
AUGUST 11, 2009: Massive Bombings In Northern Iraq and Baghdad. Two truck bombings in northern Iraq and attacks targeting day laborers in western Baghdad killed at least 51 people and wounded scores early Monday, Iraqi authorities said. The attacks underscored the Sunni insurgency’s continued ability to inflict mass casualties as the country’s Shiite-led government tries to demonstrate it can handle security with minimal assistance from the U.S. military. [Washington Post, 8/11/09]
JANUARY 7, 2010: Iraq bars 15 political parties with Baathist ties from upcoming elections. At least 15 parties will be banned from upcoming parliamentary elections because they have been linked to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party or have promoted Baathist ideals, Iraqi officials said Thursday. The decision by the Justice and Accountability Commission, in charge of cleansing high-level Baathists from the ranks of the government and security forces, seemed to be an attempt to purge candidates with links to the old political order, many of whom are popular among secular nationalist voters. The move is a blow to hopes of bringing opposition figures — who turned to violent resistance over the past seven years — into the political fold, part of the U.S. strategy to bolster the government. [Washington Post, 1/8/10]
On March 7, Iraqis braved terrorist attacks to go to the polls in Iraq’s second parliamentary election since the U.S. invasion. Latest returns show that incumbent Prime Minister Nouri Maliki “has strengthened his lead over main rival Iyad Allawi in Iraq’s parliamentary elections, with partial results now in from all 18 provinces.”
Later that night, Hume joined Bill O’Reilly to continue defending the network’s news coverage. O’Reilly and Hume agreed that Fox “routinely hammered President Bush on Iraq” and was “very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq”:
O’REILLY: Now you and I came up in the old school, where we were taught as a reporter you should be skeptical of everybody. I mean, that’s your job as a reporter.
HUME: Right.
O’REILLY: To be skeptical, skeptical of the Democrats, skeptical of the Republicans. It doesn’t really matter. And I have to say that when President Bush was in trouble in Iraq, this network and this program and your program, as well, routinely, routinely hammered President Bush on Iraq.
HUME: Well, we certainly — we were very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq.
O’REILLY: Absolutely.
“There was no cheerleading of President Bush on this network when his administration ran into trouble,” claimed O’Reilly. Watch it:
O’Reilly and Hume appear to have a selective memory when it comes to their cheerleading of the Bush administration. When Hume stepped down from the Special Report anchor chair, he marveled that Bush had put America on “an amazing” foreign policy “path.” During his time at Fox, Hume repeatedly spun bad news for Bush and pushed misleading information that bolstered the Bush administration’s faulty case for invading Iraq. Perhaps this is one reason why a 2003 study found that 80 percent of those who primarily relied on Fox News believed falsehoods about why we went into Iraq.
When it came to Iraq war coverage, O’Reilly explained his philosophy on his radio show in June 2007 after the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Fox covered the war less than CNN and MSNBC. Claiming that Fox’s competitors were reporting on violence “because they want to embarrass the Bush administration,” O’Reilly said, “Do you care if another bomb went off in Tikrit? Does it mean anything? No!” “There’s little news value in broadcasting daily bombings,” O’Reilly added on his Fox show.
Transcript:
O’REILLY: Now you and I came up in the old school, where we were taught as a reporter you should be skeptical of everybody. I mean, that’s your job as a reporter.
HUME: Right.
O’REILLY: To be skeptical, skeptical of the Democrats, skeptical of the Republicans. It doesn’t really matter. And I have to say that when President Bush was in trouble in Iraq, this network and this program and your program, as well, routinely, routinely hammered President Bush on Iraq.
HUME: Well, we certainly — we were very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq.
O’REILLY: Absolutely.
HUME: .for a very long period of time. The criticisms were made of him were reported and discussed at length on FOX News. Now, he had his defenders. The war had its defenders.
O’REILLY: But there was no cheerleading.
HUME: There were commentators.
O’REILLY: There was no cheerleading of President Bush on this network when his administration ran into trouble. There was no cheerleading, you know. It was skeptical coverage. Iraq’s going south. When the economy started to wobble last September, we were right on that.
Now, what has changed, in your opinion, from when you and I came up in the journalistic ranks and we were told — taught in school and then told by our bosses you be skeptical of those in power. Doesn’t matter where they are, what party they are. That does not in many quarters take place anymore.
HUME: Well.
O’REILLY: We mentioned NBC and CNN. And certainly those networks are dramatically favorable to Barack Obama. What is happening.
HUME: Well, I think that – well, I think what happened in this particular case — look, it has been universally recognized for a long period of time and survey after survey has shown it that most reporters vote Democrat, particularly in presidential elections. The journalists who inhabit Washington, and I think it’s fair to say the key spots in the network headquarters and newspaper headquarters in New York with very few exceptions are Democrats, or at least they vote Democratic. They tend to be liberal in their outlook. That was true for a long time.
The level of discipline, exercised by the conventions of journalism on them have weakened.
