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January 9, 2007
Grave and Deteriorating for the Children of Agnew"The choices resemble what the go-getters from Enron faced: confront the bad accounting or adopt even more desperate measures to conceal losses. But if the AP had fabricated a source and relied on that source 60 times, maybe the tables could be turned again and the day of reckoning put off."The idea that the liberal press has to be overcome for conservatives truly to take power started with the Goldwater campaign in 1964, and today’s bias warriors are the inheritors, through Agnew, of that idea. So it’s not surprising to me that Spiro Agnew was yesterday lionized at RedState.com in a post by Martin Knight that tried to rouse the bias troops to further action by persuading them that nothing has changed since Agnew was criticizing those “men of the media.” They’re as powerful, as liberal, as unelected as ever. Still have a hold on public opinion. Don’t represent the people, still. A first-class hate object, as they were in ‘64. About “the rightosphere’s Jamail Hussien witch hunt,” Digby said: “It’s an ugly story all around.” Well, I agree. But when I sat down to think about the story, I didn’t start with Jamil Hussein, or the AP’s reporting, or the right-wing bloggers and their misdeeds, or even the larger shame of the cultural right’s attack on the press. In my own sorting through what USA Today called “the running six-week battle between bloggers and the Associated Press over the wire service’s report of sectarian violence in Iraq,” I started, not with the episode itself, but with the way we went into Iraq: on bad intelligence and cooked books and a phantom plan for the peace. Leaps to large conclusions from thin and miserable facts are routine in the established record of how it happened. Discredited sources left in because they were critical to a faltering case— also routine. And we know maybe ten percent of what will soon emerge when the record of those years (2002-04, especially) comes out through Congressional oversight, memoir-writing, the Libby trial, score-settling among the key players and the inevitable decline of the President’s power and reputation as he lurches on to the end. The intelligence fiasco in the build-up to the invasion is an exceedingly ugly story and rather than receding into the past, its significance grows every day. It’s like the decomposing body under the expanding executive house. More keeps coming out about the fraudulent case for war, and the consequences of having only an imaginary plan for the occupation. For Bush supporters who soldier on, the choices resemble what the go-getters from Enron faced: confront the bad accounting that’s gone on for years or adopt even more desperate measures to conceal losses and keep your hand alive. But if the AP had fabricated a source and relied on that source 60 times, maybe the tables could be turned again and the reckoning put off. That a day of reckoning for the children of Agnew was overdue amid the mess in Iraq was the point of Rich Lowry’s column for The National Review on Dec. 19th. Speaking to fellow conservatives (and directly to warbloggers, I thought…) Lowry started slowly: “The conservative campaign against the mainstream media” has certainly “scored some notable successes.” Dan Rather’s national guard investigation and Newsweek’s Koran desecration story are mentioned. (And how great would it have been to add the Jamil Hussein saga?) He’s right: we’ve had a conservative campaign against the mainstream news media. But has this campaign been good for conservatives? Not in Iraq. “The mainstream media is biased, arrogant, prone to stultifying group-think and much more fallible than its exalted self-image allows it to admit,” Lowry wrote. “It also, however, can be right, and this is most confounding to conservatives.” That such a discovery—hey, the press can be accurate, people—would be confounding to conservatives is important to know. I give Lowry a lot of credit for saying that. (Prompting Ed Morrissey to agree.) For it shows how far things had gotten. In their distrust of the mainstream media, their defensiveness over President Bush and the war, and their understandable urge to buck up the nation’s will, many conservatives lost touch with reality on Iraq. They thought that they were contributing to our success, but they were only helping to forestall a cold look at conditions there and the change in strategy and tactics that would be dictated by it. Yes, and by helping to forestall that cold look they were helping to create the huge failure that our policy in Iraq has become. As I argued in my Dec. 18 post (and the 214 comments it drew) the Bush government’s retreat from empiricism is not some unfortunate tendency or bad habit that George W. Bush fell into. It’s part of an emancipatory impulse in the political style that he and Cheney invented, right in front of our eyes. I draw attention to its down side when I call it a retreat. The upside is you are much freer to act, to invent, to surge and conceal your surging from the enemy. There’s a story I want to tell you from Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks, Pentagon correspondent of the Washington Post. That’s the book that recently made Republican Senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon “heartsick” because it documents, on page after page, the retreat from empiricism and lack of professionalism (as well as failed oversight) in the making of the war. Ricks is discussing Retired Lt. General Jay Garner’s preparations to head to Iraq and take charge of post-war operations for the White House. This is Bush’s man on the ground, hand-picked. On Feb. 21-22, 2003 Garner convened experts from across the government for the one and only meeting they would have to bring war policy roughly in line with what they could roughly predict would happen. (The effort failed.) Ricks goes on: Of all those speaking those two days, one person in particular caught Garner’s attention. Scrambling to catch up with the best thinking, Garner was looking for someone who had assembled the facts and who knew all the players in the U.S. government, the Iraqi exile community, and international organizations, and had considered the second-and third-order consequences of possible actions. While everyone else was fumbling for facts, this man had dozens of binders, tabbed amd indexed, on every aspect of Iaqi society, from how electricity was generated to how the port of Basra operated, recalled another participant. And Warrick did just that. A few days later Rumsfeld takes Garner aside and tells him he has to get rid of Warrick. “I can’t,” says Garner. He’s good, he’s smart and he knows a ton about Iraq. Rumseld says there’s nothing he can do; the order comes from above. Garner goes to see Stephen Hadley, deputy director of the National Security Council. Hadley can’t do anything either. Later Richard Armitage explains it to Ricks. “Anybody that knows anything is removed.” And Warrick was removed from Garner’s team, undoubtedly on Cheney’s orders. Now why would the White House (Cheney) hamper the White House (Garner) in that particular way? The retreat from empiricism is replete with puzzles of this kind. That’s why it’s important for conservatives and warbloggers to ask how it happened on their watch. (From the comments at Retreat From Empiricism: “Suskind was the pass-along for a message between Republicans.”) It’s going to take a while, I think. At the New Criterion site, James Bowman has a highly skeptical piece up—called Delusions of “reality”—about the “periodic ‘reality’ jags” journalists go on, “proudly boasting of their own intimate relations with that elusive commodity and taking the occasion to pour scorn and contempt upon what they take to be the Bush administration’s unfamiliarity with same.” To Bowman, those who claim that Bush is out of touch with reality are calling their opponent in a political struggle mentally damaged. This sort of objection should be laughed out of opinion court because it transparently refuses to deal with Bush’s arguments and policies. It’s like telling me I’m in denial when I simply don’t agree with your assessment of how it’s going. Cheap trick, he says. Like you’re in touch with reality and Bush isn’t? Nice try, Frank Rich. Here’s what I would say back to Bowman. You’re like an outside director of a company where the employees are trying to signal the board that the CEO is drastically out of touch. He’s relying on flawed reporting and advisers who won’t tell him the truth because they don’t think he wants to hear it. Now you think these people are grandstanding. Their criticism sounds far-fetched to you. But one day a big outside audit says the company is out of touch with conditions swamping its business. The consensus among those in the know, including friends of the firm: the CEO’s strategy lacks reality. Maybe it’s time to take a second look at those early complaints. Lowry, a conservative, was saying what Bowman should be saying: wake-up, conservatives! “Most of the pessimistic warnings from the mainstream media have turned out to be right— that the initial invasion would be the easy part, that seeming turning points (the capture of Saddam, the elections, the killing of Zarqawi) were illusory, that the country was dissolving into a civil war.” And this is the setting in which the battle of Jamail Hussein was fought. Not only the essential accuracy of the media’s account—situation grim and deteriorating—but the fact that conservatives and Republicans were telling each other: it’s time to recognize that reality. Lowry was peddling some new religion: when the media gets it right… (And his media blogger, Stephen Spruiell, followed up with that here.) The bloggers’ battle with the AP, the largest news organization in the world, was about that old time religion. The AP is piping it, and has sources who are sympathizers. For a while there, they were feeling alive and tingly again in the church of Goldwater and Agnew. Their eyes got big: Bloggers take down Big Media, books eight and nine. Here we go again with the MSM…. And in an amazing plot twist for those who have read the series, Eason Jordan returns to the fray, working with Michelle Malkin in the big hunt for answers. The many conservatives who, according to the editor of the National Review, had lost touch with reality on Iraq lost it because they identified with Bush’s will to act— and to act “against” the liberal media. They wanted him to openly deny it legitimacy, information, cooperation, respect. They cheered the effort to roll back the press, and thought they had done a fair amount of it themselves. Lowry was saying this strategy had gone badly. “Realism is essential in any war,” he wrote, “and it is impossible without an ability to assimilate bad news, even bad news that comes from distasteful sources.” He should have gone further: If you really wanted Bush to succeed in Iraq, and you noticed that he could never be wrong or accept that bad news bearers could be right, this was a warning sign that the warbloggers themselves, as friends of the president’s project, should have taken the lead in discussing. Why didn’t they? The children of Agnew have been fully on his side, soldiers in his struggle, happy warriors with Bush because they believe in their red state bones the press is biased against them. Like him they also disbelieve the bad news on principle, and then find someone more loyal to look into it
Posted by Jay Rosen at January 9, 2007 1:33 AM
Comments
A cynic would argue, and I'm certainly among them, that Cheney has wanted failure from the beginning. A competent, functional Iraqi government would not be signing 30 year oil leases with western companies from a position of abject weakness. The push for war made for some strange bedfellows: neocons who wanted to eliminate a threat to Israel's territorial ambitions, the oil companies whon stood to make tremendous profits from the instability premium and the possibility of aquiring huge Iraqi reserves at fire sale prices, Islamophobic christianists, and the "American Empire" chest-beating crowd. These can be overlapping categories, and Cheney for example fits more than one. But with Cheney driving the bus - it's always been about the oil. Posted by: Gary Reilly at January 9, 2007 10:27 AM | Permalink Gary, Well written article. I am glad you are finally getting it. What I want to know- and the article I and many many others really want you to write, is why it took you until 1/9/06 to write this when most of us could have written something similar in August or December of 2003! Ok 2003 is harsh, but where was the press in 2004 when it mattered the most. We wouldn't be talking surge or unreality if the press had been honest with the public in 2004. And what about 2005? It takes RICH LOWRY to start to signal you guys??!@! Look I can almost see 2003. But 2004-2006 you guys have a lot of apologizing to do. Please please do your jobs take back the national media narratives from the crazies. Make Fox and friends pay for over buying during the Rove/Cheney media bubble. Think of this as the dotcom correction in news credibility, where the losers are taken out of the game until they can prove they deserve to return. Posted by: patience at January 9, 2007 11:33 AM | Permalink "The children of Agnew have been fully on his (Bush's), side, soldiers in his struggle, happy warriors with Bush" Yeah, except for the part where they would actually put on a uniform and really serve....that's the ultimate disconnect from reality here; that these ideological midgets are soldiers in any true sense of the word. They're happy warriors, all right, because they're SAFE warriors. The only post they valiently man is at their keyboards, or in front of a TV camera, or a radio microphone. The only hits they take are from other bloggers. None of them will ever need - or earn - a bed at Walter Reed. You want to talk reality in right-wing blogville? The reality is that this whole thing is little more than a reality TV show for them. They clog the internet the way Clay Aiken fans clog the American Idol phone lines, thinking that what they do really matters, thinking that because they mouth support, they really are a part of it all. They give glassy-eyed, cheering support for their hero, revising all facts to fit into their hero mythology. They revere Bush the way a Nascar fan reveres Dale Earnhardt, with about the same level of intellectual complexity. Except, of course, Clay Aiken, and the right-wing blogoshpere aren't likely to be blown up by an IED. And even Dale Earnhardt's kids haven't signed up to fight the "war of our generation". These people, (the right-wing bloggos, not Clay or the Earnhardt boys), are sociopaths. They are incapable of empathizing with those who have been damaged by the policies they support. They only care about the points they make in their little "campaigns" against those who disagree with them politically. And they are very careful to keep their asses far away from danger while still remaining in the spotlight. Dying or being maimed for the policies they support is for someone else to do. In other words, they are despicable. Posted by: roooth at January 9, 2007 11:44 AM | Permalink Patience, It's Prof. Rosen's article . . . I am just a commenter, though I'm flattered to get the credit and criticism. And Prof. Rosen has posted trenchant analysis of the march to war in the past; his posts on Judy Miller and The New York Times's shameful war propaganda were top notch. Posted by: Gary Reilly at January 9, 2007 12:01 PM | Permalink Malkin posts DOD public affairs video at HotAir. Commenters herald it as the "real news" from Iraq and ask for more. 'Nuff said. Bowman's piece is decidedly weird. Yes, it's true that the narrative "America is losing this war" is the narrative that Iraqis who want the US out want expressed. (Bowman calls them "terrorists" which is at best, a distortion.) It has a post-modern quality that has become more and more common among right-wing commentators--that there really is no "reality," only narrative. This is, of course, precisely what the administration is trying to do--to discredit any journalistic enterprise, as well as any and all attempts to inject empiricism into a policy debate. It's a little disturbing that the person who most clearly captures this attempt to remove reality from the debate is a comedian on deep cable, Stephen Colbert, when he says that "Facts have a liberal bias." This program is, as with apparently all the Rovian iniatives, extremely short-sighted. That this is becoming apparent to the Rich Lowrys is an indication that the attempt to keep reality out of policy discourse is ultimately doomed. The idea that the Tom Warricks are to be marginalized, and ultimately removed, is an idea that guarantees embarassing failure. And that brings us to the really inexplicable element in all this, which does, in fact, call into question the president's, for lack of a better word, sanity. Why would the white house undermine the white house? One possibility is that Warrick's plans called for participation by Iraqis in reconstruction efforts, or, alternatively, he was known to be hostile to huge no-bid contracts issued to US companies. But it really seems as if there was a systematic effort to not find out anything--that there was a systematic, focused plan to not allow reality to distort the fantastic schemes that they were hatching. When you read what the young Heritage Foundationers in the Green Zone were doing--engaging in bizarre libertarian fantasies while the Red Zone burnder--it really seems to be the case that after a generation or two of chanting their free market, anti-government slogans that they actually came to believe in them. And had no patience with facts that indicated that these were, in fact, bumper sticker fantasies. Posted by: jayackroyd at January 9, 2007 12:24 PM | Permalink Just off the top of my head, I believe the guy's name is "Jake" Garner -- not "Jay." Posted by: Dan Lynch at January 9, 2007 12:52 PM | Permalink Uh, no. Jay is correct. Here's Garner discussing Warrick with Frontline... You mentioned that the State Department had done some good planning. They had something called the Future of Iraq Project. What was the attitude towards in the Pentagon towards the work that had been done by the State Department? Weird, huh? At the risk of oversimplifying this complex soap opera of power players, Bush and Cheney's actions, and motivations, become more 'logical' (yet still deluded) when viewed from the perspective of oil imperialism. I truly believe that this administration and it's neocon think tank witch doctors want to grab and control the world's largest oil fields by 'privatizing' them for the benefit of American (actually multinational) corporations. What's delusional is that they think this is actually achievable. An added 'benefit,' from their perspective, is the lucrative defense contracts that simplistic 'our team' patriotism tends to grease politically. But those contracts usually take the form of high-tech, irrelevant aerospace pork (star wars, F-22s&35s) rather than meaningful troop and mobility products. Corporate natural resource imperialism has long been the actual goal for much of America's past CIA, World Bank, and military incursions - and the reason we have supported so many otherwise incompetent and tyrannical dictators in resource-rich Third World countries from Chile to Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, these simplistic neocons somehow still cling to a 'football field' view of military battle, rather than the 40-year-old reality of guerilla conflict, where actual occupation of a hostile populace is clearly untenable. Just because Schwarzkopf could win tank battles on open desert, they think they can occupy and direct an entire country just as easily. For all the above reasons, recent GOP administrations keep recycling the same old dinosaur defense/oil/CIA players through government. And our military acts as an 'unpaid' mercenary force, usually for big oil, mining, and 'modernization' engineering contractors. Honduras, Cuba, Venezuela, Panama, Chile, Vietnam, Ecuador, Iraq, Iran...they're all part of that repeatedly incompetent, ineffective, and morally bankrupt philosophy. Even more regrettably, 'our team' patriotism makes this an easy sell to 'cowboy' segments of the American public, with a few periodic swings toward rationality such as we're seeing now. My question is: Can that cycle be broken? Posted by: Stephen Thomas Howe at January 9, 2007 1:29 PM | Permalink This rejection of Tom Warrick, could it have anything to do with the ideological litmus tests given to those working on Iraqi reconstruction? This is from the Washington Post's review of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Take, for example, the story of Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a Navy reserve officer and physician with two Bronze Stars whom a colleague describes as "the single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government." Burkle was ousted a week after Baghdad's liberation because, he was told by his superiors, the White House preferred to have a Bush "loyalist" in charge of health matters in Iraq. Burkle was replaced (fully two months later) by James K. Haveman Jr., a social worker whose experience as the community-health director for Michigan's former Republican governor, John Engler, had followed a stint running "a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions." Haveman had also traveled widely "in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world." (That pro-life stance was not uncommon in the CPA: Two staffers report being asked during their job interviews if they supported the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling.) Posted by: JJWFromME at January 9, 2007 1:31 PM | Permalink Great gobs of giblets, Roxanne, that link gave me the heebee jeebees. I had to take an immediate 10cc of snark. Posted by: Sven at January 9, 2007 2:44 PM | Permalink A competent, functional Iraqi government would not be signing 30 year oil leases with western companies from a position of abject weakness. ONLY a competent, functional Iraqi government can ensure that the oil flows. The big companies are not going to invest while instability continues. Cheney knows this better than anyone in the government. Ergo, Cheney cannot have wanted the occupation to fail if his true goal was to generate profits for Big Oil. Seems to me that if Big Oil truly called the shots in the US government, we would not have invaded Iraq at all. If all we wanted was the oil, the easiest way to get it would be to cut a deal with Saddam and remove the sanctions from Iraq. Posted by: Enzo at January 9, 2007 2:51 PM | Permalink I don't think Big Oil benefits by a retreat from empiricism. They want stability, professionalism and by all means let's find the Tom Warricks and get them on our side to get the oil flowing and the money moving. No, I think people have a hard time seeing how irrational the whole thing is, and self-defeating for the Bush team. In my mind there is still a mystery to be solved, and descriptions yet to come. The people who knew Cheney and said they no longer recognized him--Brent Scowcroft is one--are on to something. Whatever that change in Cheney is (and I don't pretend to grasp it) there's a connection, I believe, to Armitage--a Republican in the State Department--telling us: "Anybody that knows anything is removed." I think there are two roots to this retreat from empiricism; Bush's is Rovian and Cheney's is Straussian. In 2000 two weeks before the election Bush began to act as if the election was over and assumed the attitude of the president-elect. This is Rove's usual pre-election statergy of appealing to voter's need to back a winner. In this case it worked in a way that he could not have imagined. First of all the media lapped up the election night vignette of Bush family comfortable in their smug certainty that the election was W.'s to lose. This was constantly echoed in the following weeks as news anchors wondered aloud how long the electorate could handle the uncertainty. Then the Supreme Court used that assumption as a premise to award the crown to Bush. That was a triumph of political will that proved to Bush, his administration and his supporters that political success only has to be based on belief. In the following six years they have proved that the success of policy requires more than that. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe that both Addington and Libby are Straussians. While supposedly keeping one foot in empirical-based policy decisions Straussians believe that the certainty-starved masses must be fed nuggets of genial and mindless absolutism to ward off the despair of liberal relativism. The fallacy is that the need for certainty is uniform and deep. I think that delusion and Rove's triumph of the will seduced the Cheney Administration into abandoning its empirical based policies in an expression of simple hubris. I am still trying to imagine a corporate press that thinks it could survive by providing its audience with evidence for or against the policies of this administration and not just nuggets of mindless absolutism. You're kidding, right? Posted by: Gary P. Joyce at January 9, 2007 5:09 PM | Permalink Strange interview. So the Garner's planning started in October 2002. The invasion was in March of 2003. So according to the interview, the same month as the invasion, Garner meets with the president and president asks him to "tell him his background" and he asks him "OK, what are you going to do during reconstruction?". You've got to be kidding. The president has been hard selling the war for months, and he needs to ask Garner "what are you going to do during reconstruction" and "what is your background"? So it looks like the president was flying blind about the postwar right up until weeks before the invasion. Good grief. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 9, 2007 5:38 PM | Permalink And he says: But I will tell you that those [turf battles between DOD and State] never affected me personally, and I don't think they affected the team. How does he know that they didn't affect him personally or the team, especially considering how things turned out? This is a strange response to the question. Isn't he even curious why the State Department was cut out? And why did he never ask? I bet it has a lot to do with what Rachel Raphel talked about: "What one needs to understand is that these decisions were ideologically based," the diplomat argued. "They were not based on an analytical, historical understanding. They were based on ideology. You don't counter ideology with logic or experience or analysis very effectively." Posted by: JJWFromME at January 9, 2007 6:01 PM | Permalink Sorry, Rachel Raphel should be Robin Raphel... Posted by: JJWFromME at January 9, 2007 6:03 PM | Permalink "That such a discovery—hey, the press can be accurate, people—would be confounding to conservatives is important to know. I give Lowry a lot of credit for saying that." It would be easier to agree if Lowry himself hadn't been one of the children of Agnew angrily denying the obvious for the better part of the past three years. (See: "What Went Right, National Review, April 27, 2005.) It seems to me that Lowry has a pronoun problem: He says "they" when he really meant "we". A common malady on the right, these days. Posted by: Peter Principle at January 9, 2007 6:08 PM | Permalink So the big question for me is why? Jay has blamed irrationality and while that may be partially correct, I have a hard time believing there wasn't any self-acknowledgement that expelling the Tom Warricks of the world might be dangerous. Remember Warrick's an inside guy so it's not like this is just to score political points. It's an approach to policy. If they could recognize the inherent dangerous in such an approach, why plow forward? The only reasons or justifications for such behavior, that I can fathom, include a sense of omnipotence - we aren't disturbed by facts - or a fear of the power of knowledge - once you let in a few facts, you don't get to pick and choose. I don't find either of those justifications particularly convincing. Posted by: mavis beacon at January 9, 2007 6:16 PM | Permalink If they could recognize the inherent dangerous in such an approach, why plow forward? Well, there's this from the Garner interview: But can you give me any insight into why you think there was this resistance to [the State Department's] work? Posted by: JJWFromME at January 9, 2007 6:24 PM | Permalink Either Garner is terminally incurious or he's hiding something. Neither possibility reflects well on reconstruction... Posted by: JJWFromME at January 9, 2007 6:44 PM | Permalink Nice article on Iraq etc. Starting out with AP and the story that couldn't be corroborated and the ghostly source gives you a patina of concern for the press, but you drop that subject like a white-hot anvil. SURprise. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 9, 2007 9:56 PM | Permalink It seems to me that most of the questions you raise are answered thoroughly, convincingly and sometimes delightfully (in a purely intellectual problem-solving way) in Mark Danner's NYRB piece "The War of the Imagination."http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19720. Briefly, Rumsfield would have nixed Warrick, as he would have anyone with an allegience to the State Department, because the DOD plan was for a quick in and out conquest and then a handover to an Iraqi government in exile (Chalabi). Danner has a wonderful comment on Rumsfield's use of the "it came from above" or "it came from outside this building" line: "Such tactics are presumably what mark Rumsfeld as a 'skilled bureaucrati infighter,' the description that has followed him through his career in government like a Homeric epithet." The overall answer to the why question (why would they screw themselves up so badly and end up doing everything counter to their intentions?) that Danner gives is that in the effort to simplify everything and bring the decision making process down to a small group of deciders they ended up making everything more complicated. There's more. A good read. Posted by: wif at January 10, 2007 1:29 AM | Permalink I hope, Jay, that you don't mind that I put a link to Pressthink on my site - after I was needlessly "snarky." There's some valuable stuff going on here that would get missed. I actually do believe there is a bias in media, though not the political one that is bruited about. I believe it has more to do with lack of familiarity, a "strangeness" of story. I don't believe the press has a general agenda regarding firearms, I do believe there is an "otherness" for many in the business. If you were to poll your colleagues as to how many owned or were competent with firearms I think my postulation would be borne out. The firearms thing is only an example that could be applied in other cases. From 40 years of critical news reading I do believe journalism has been harmed by the conservative drumbeat of bias, there tends to be some idea that objective fact or analysis must contain opposing views or that in times of stress it's best not to push Government. That crappy pre-Iraq War intelligence got by an awful lot of people who knew better... Posted by: chuckbutcher at January 10, 2007 1:46 AM | Permalink The right-wing bloggers are like toy poodles, nipping at the toes of the AP over Jamil Hussein. The original story, about an attack against a few Sunnis at a mosque, received very little initial coverage and has been wholly obscured in the "pink mist" of carnage, American and Iraqi, since it was reported. Years ago, organized crime in NYC controlled unions, industries, neighborhoods. The last major Mafia trial here was about not a chain of nightclubs, not a whole nightclub, but the coatroom of some topless joint. The baby don, "Junior" Gotti was reduced to squabbling with the feds over quarters and singles. Posted by: Blynn at January 10, 2007 3:30 AM | Permalink Indeed, wif, that's why the Danner piece is linked to in this post (...the consequences of having only an imaginary plan for the occupation) and my previous one on the subject, Retreat from Empiricism. Danner has some answers. Maybe he's right that the DOD plan was to hand off to Chalabi, but Bush veoted that because deciding who the next government of Iraq would be wasn't "democratic," and since Cheney had killed everything State had done because it didn't assume a quick exit, they went to war with basically no plan at all. Maybe that's how it happened. (It's the only plausible account I know of.) Now does Danner have an answer to... yeah, but how could they do that? that's suicidal... I would say he doesn't, and he would say he doesn't. Also, before all this Cheney would have been classified by most everyone who knew him as a member in good standing of the reality-based community-- in fact he stood out for being sober-minded. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 10, 2007 9:25 AM | Permalink Matt Welch at the LA Times: "At the end of the Nixon administration, you had the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy," Vice President Cheney told reporters in December 2005, in defense of the National Security Agency's possibly illegal wiretapping of American citizens. In January 2002, Cheney told ABC's Cokie Roberts: "I feel an obligation, and I know the president does too … to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors. We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years." Notice that at the end of the Nixon Administration you had the peak moment for the modern press in terms of authority and legitimacy. Cheney again: "At the end of the Nixon administration, you had the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy." This ultimately helps to explains rollback. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 10, 2007 9:54 AM | Permalink Because Cheney's experience in the Nixon-Ford-Carter transition led him to believe that there is an inversely proportional relationship between the power, credibility, and authority of the press and that of the executive? (And, generously, that, again, if you carry forward through Carter, leads to weakness in dealings with the Middle East?) Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 10, 2007 12:55 PM | Permalink Initially, I thought that [the press's] institutional bias toward sensationalism distorted public understanding of the war. But by now the dismal conditions on the ground have caught up with, if not surpassed, the media's bleak outlook. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 10, 2007 1:26 PM | Permalink Funny. If the media outlet reports something that reinforces an outlook. Then its credible. If not. Its biased. Regardless of whether or not what was reported is indeed factual. If you're thinking that statement applies mainly to the right. You are completely divorced from reality. The author of this piece totally avoids something crucial. No one, right or left, would have any argument what so ever regarding press reporting. If the press would spend more time on getting the facts and less on getting the scoop. And why is it a left-right thing when the press gets it wrong? As they did with many of the stories that came out of Katrina, the summer conflict between Israel and Hezbola as well as with stories out of Iraq. Is someone really going to tell me that if the press is wrong, but their error reinforces the Left's narrative on a given subject. That the left should dutifly defend that error and any attempt at correcting it should be portrayed as a right wing smear job or something? Thats pathetic. If you feel your convictions are such that you will defend even lies or errors that reinforce them. Its not an expression of your strong convictions.. its evidence that you really have none This entire post is solely focussed on what motivates the right bloggers to pursue the AP affair. A cheap and lazy endeavor really. Since no one can really know what the motives really are. Any speculation made is going to be read by a receptive audience hungry to have their stereotypes reinforced. Whats most disturbing though is that - as all of it consists of the authors assumptions - the general point being conveyed is in fact more representative of the inner workings of the author. Dont know if that was what the post was supposed to convey. But it left me feeling slimed. Does the AP source as named really exist? Prove it. Did the AP erroneously report the burning of 6 men and 4 mosques? Prove it. If the reporting on the 6 men and the Mosques was in deed in error. Does one not then rightly question the accuracy of previous stories from the AP sourced to the man in question? How many are/were in error as well? What does this say about the accuracy of the reporting by the AP out of Iraq as well as its accuracy elsewhere? Its that simple. Good Lord, one would think that media accuracy would be one place left could agree with right. Guess not. Once again, pathetic. Whats really made me nauseous is the fact the progressive blogosphere has spent so much time on assumptions as to what motivates the righty bloggers to even question the reporting. And almost no time on the questions. This seems a complete reversal of positions here. I thought it was the conservatives that blindly stood by what ever the establishment said was true and progressives were supposed to be the skeptics? Guess thats just another stupid stereo-type. Interesting. M Posted by: Mike at January 10, 2007 11:11 PM | Permalink Welcome aboard, Mike. More from Max Boot, a conservative who supported the President's project in Iraq. His column says something similar to my post. If you wanted to figure out what was happening over the last four years, you would have been infinitely better off paying attention to their writing than to what the president or his top generals were saying. If we fail to achieve our goals in Iraq — which the administration defines as a "unified, stable, democratic and secure nation" — it won't be the fault of the ink-stained wretches or even their blow-dried TV counterparts. To argue otherwise deflects blame from those who deserve it, in the upper echelons of the administration and the armed forces. Perhaps that's the point. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 10, 2007 11:57 PM | Permalink Just a thought on Cheney and that liberal-biased concept, reality. How many open-heart or bypass procedures has he had? Ever hear of "pump head", a feeling of mental impairment reported by survivors of these procedures and verified by neurologists in 10-25% of cases? It was once thought that the bypass itself was the cause, resulting in tiny clots and ministrokes, but alternative open-heart procedures where the heart is kept beating did not improve the outcome for patients. The culprit may be anaesthesia, the age of the patients, the heart condition itself, a combination, or something else. One also has to consider dementia in any older person, even in their 50's or 60's. Reagan was clearly symptomatic throughout his presidency (his doctors still deny it, meaning the rest of us must be psychic). I'll bet the farm that Zell Miller or his family makes an announcement any day now. Posted by: Blynn at January 11, 2007 3:46 AM | Permalink Ricks speculates about just that in Fiasco, Blynn: that the result of the heart operations could have been a change in personality, which is the first time I had heard that idea. Phillip Carter (ex-military, served in Iraq) at Intell Dump: In conversations with people (especially strangers) since coming home, I'm frequently asked what it's like there, and how the "real Iraq" compares to the "CNN Iraq" or "New York Times version of Iraq." My stock answer goes something like this. The typical daily dispatch from Iraq covers the news of the day ? whether it's some intrigue in the Maliki government, a firefight in Baghdad, or a massive attack somewhere else. It is Baghdad-centric, because many of the reporters are based in Baghdad, and also because that's the main front in the war. To some extent, this daily reporting misses the larger context of Iraq ? the fact that many Iraqis go to work, school, the market, etc., and live their daily lives but for the interruptions of spectacular violence. And to some extent, the media ignores many of the "good deeds" done at the micro-level by U.S. forces, such as the opening of a new school or the delivery of a new generator, because it rates those events as not newsworthy. And so, if there is a difference between the Iraq I knew and the Iraq in the news, it is the complexity and contradiction presented by these multiple stories going on simultaneously. One gets a lot of press; the other one does not. Reporters who are willing to risk their necks to get the story are appreciated by those who know Iraq. Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin declares, "MSM credibility, R.I.P." Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 11, 2007 8:15 AM | Permalink Some facts about top decision makers from a study by a professor at NYU: What I find interesting is that this behavior is typical of many with the power to decide... it's neither right or left, for or not-for-profit. I've seen it in science, academia, big and small companies. I think your post says it happens in government too. Sounds right to me. Have you seen it in journalism? I've seen it in the business side of the media. Posted by: laurence haughton at January 11, 2007 1:27 PM | Permalink How about O'Neil's story about Brandeis Briefs not being used in the White House? A friend of mine was telling me about how pilots, as they're in the process of taking off and landing, have a formal process where the copilot "challenges" them on anything that they might have forgotten or not noticed. The pilot can't tell his subordinate "quiet, you're being annoying," because there's a formal process and all benefit from it. In military history, this sort of thing dates back to the Greek hoplites, who were the first to be included in the decisionmaking around fighting. People of lower rank could challenge people of higher rank and be heard. This pooled everyone's brainpower and experience, but also made for a more coherent team, because everyone felt like they had a stake in the outcome. It made for a formidable fighting force that was hard to match in the ancient world. (I've heard some historians describe this as part of how representative democracy came about.) But, what happens if you inject the Paranoid Style (of Politics or News) into this mix? There's a good chance that these kinds of reality-based "challenges" are going to get dumped... And it seems like there was plenty of ideological paranoia in American occupied Iraq, like with dismissing Tom Warrick; or the ideological litmus tests superceding placing officials with the right experience; or the 22-24 year olds given jobs way over their head, just because they passed their resumes to the Heritage think tank--just to name a few. The list goes on. One of my favorites is Ricks' quote from Keith Mines, who complained to the CPA that "Employment is a key issue. We need more Maslow and less Friedman." This points to a basic absurdity. If you have masses of people who are scrapping just to survive on a basic level, getting them to all read Ayn Rand and be entrepreneurs is, um, a ways down the road. Right off the bat, it's a no-brainer that you just want people to get fed, and get them friendly with the US cause. But in the case of an ideologue, there's a good chance that this sort of "challenge" from Kieth Mines is liable to fall on deaf ears. A case where this lesson was writ large was the dismissal of the state department. If you don't have the State Department participating in the process, just the Pentagon, that's not good. Because they're the ones who are going to be able to tell the military / Pentagon the cases where "you can't knit a sweater with a blow torch"--where the military role ends and the political one begins. (Or maybe that was what State told the Pentagon was told earlier, which was why Tom Warrick was sidelined and why Robin Raphel spoke out the way she did...) And if this is how things went, the movement conservative bloggers, Newscorp, etc. seem to mirror this whole situation. If, in the paranoid style of politics/news, you discount valid "challenges", eventually, your paranoia is going to serve to insulate you from the facts on the ground. (And then of course, there are some who blame the "liberal media" even for this, which reminds me of a Tom Tomorrow Cartoon I saw a while back : http://accordionguy.blogware.com/Photos/2005/11/america-a_brief_parable.jpg .) Posted by: JJWFromME at January 11, 2007 2:55 PM | Permalink Michelle Malkin is a reporter risking her neck in Iraq at this very moment ...so you can drop your sanctimonious posturing, Jay. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 11, 2007 9:55 PM | Permalink The National Academy of Sciences asks the White House OMB to drop its reality reassessment program: The Bush administration yesterday withdrew a proposal to change the way federal agencies assess environmental hazards, health threats and other risks, after an expert panel declared that it was so scientifically flawed that it "could not be rescued." Posted by: JJWFromME at January 12, 2007 8:16 AM | Permalink And Exxon says it has stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute's disinformation campaign to discredit climate science. That would be the disinformation campaign that "conservatives" argue does not exist. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 12, 2007 11:50 AM | Permalink Once again, you're long on speculation concerning motives, and short on facts. One quick example: It appears, in this case, that the bloggers were right - Captain Jamil Hussein does not exist, and never did. There WAS a cop who seems to have been a source of some kind, but his name is not Captain Hussein. There is also no evidence that the four mosques that got reported burned down (the copy was later furtively amended to read that only one was burned) actually got burned down. All four mosques are still extant, only one suffered any burn damage at all, and that was minor. The fact that they haven't burned down is the elephant in the room, and is what started the whole search for Captain Hussein. IF the story wasn't such obvious crap to begin with, no one would have bothered looking for him in the first place. Now, if the AP wants to get haughty about their source actually existing, and going so far as naming him Jamail Gholaim Hussein, then it's not too much to ask to expect that Jamail Gholaim Hussein actually exists. But he does not, and the man that the AP insists was the source (though he's no one by the name the AP's Kathleen Connelly insisted he was.) Leaps to large conclusions from thin and miserable facts are routine in the established record of how it happened. Unfortunately, leaps to large conclusions from thin and miserable facts have become the PressThink trademark. It's increasingly apparent that this crowd is more interested in speculating on Cheney's dementia without a shred of supporting evidence (other than a policy they disagree with) than dealing with the Five W's. As the music teacher said in the movie "Fame," "That's not music, Martelli. That's masturbation." You wanna deal with the facts? Great. Deal with the facts. Press Think, alas, has become all about ignoring the facts, or fixing them around the Grand PT narrative: "Cheney's senile and Bush is delusional." Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 12, 2007 5:03 PM | Permalink Once again, you're long on speculation concerning motives, and short on facts. We've got a big book of facts that everyone from John McCain to Max Boot is reading. In fact, we've got several of them. So don't listen to me speculate. Just read. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 12, 2007 6:33 PM | Permalink Shorter Jason: so's your mother! This part was added to the Huff Post version, which is slightly revised from this one. Situation Grave and Deteriorating for the Agnewocracy. This week in the LA Times, Max Boot, a conservative columnist who supported the invasion of Iraq, echoed what Lowry said. The press for all its fall downs and faults has been the better reality check in Iraq-- better than the White House, better than the military and its press operation, better than the rightosphere itself. And the trouble is that it's been a better guide to what was actually happening for liberals and conservatives, hawks and doves. It's true that the press covers explosions better than it covers conditions. Blow-ups get noticed, mission creep and steady progress do not. There's distortion in that. And a small distortion can over time produce a large effect. "Initially," wrote Boot. "I thought that this institutional bias toward sensationalism distorted public understanding of the war. But by now the dismal conditions on the ground have caught up with, if not surpassed, the media's bleak outlook." Initially... but then I realized. The Agnewocracy dreads that second thought, and for good reason. Boot explains: Whatever the shortcomings of some reporting, there has been a lot of first-rate coverage by a heroic corps of correspondents that has persevered in the face of terrible danger. (At least 109 journalists have been killed and many others wounded or kidnapped, making this the deadliest conflict on record for the Fourth Estate.) I am thinking of reporters such as John Burns, Dexter Filkins and Michael Gordon of the New York Times; Greg Jaffe and Michael Philips of the Wall Street Journal; Tom Ricks of the Washington Post; Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times and former Times reporter John Daniszewski; Sean Naylor of Army Times; Bing West and Robert Kaplan of the Atlantic Monthly; and George Packer of the New Yorker. They've risked their necks to get the truth -- and not, as Rumsfeld suggested, by flying over Iraq. Notice that you're infinitely better off with the press if you wanted to figure out what was actually happening. But what if you didn't want it figured out because it would hamper your freedom of action? Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 12, 2007 7:17 PM | Permalink Well, as I've argued before: Fiasco's a crock. But garbage in, garbage out. I've got a big book of facts to trot out, too. But if all you can do is name your favorite authors whose assumptions jibe with yours (Waas, Ricks, Hersh, et. al.) rather than deal intelligently and concretely with the facts themselves, and are prepared to defend the postulates underlying their arguments and yours on their own merits, then you're just spinning your wheels in an exercise in rhetoric, not in analysis. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 12, 2007 7:32 PM | Permalink At a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming... You would think all the prewar intelligence problems would have made more of an impression on him. Again, the idea seems more important than the reality. Reality is not a priority and takes a back seat. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 12, 2007 8:11 PM | Permalink re: "Shorter Jason: so's your mother!" *lol* Jay: there is a lot of life in this place! "But by now the dismal conditions on the ground have caught up with, if not surpassed, the media's bleak outlook." - Max Boot Well, no shit, Max. Ain't it a bitch when reality (2006) corresponds with reporting (2003, 2004, 2005) ? That's the real brain pain the rightwingnuts are dealing with -- and it's gonna take more than a couple of Tylenol PM's to ease the distress. Great post, Jay. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 12, 2007 10:40 PM | Permalink George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming... Holy crap...are these senior news executives really so stupid that they haven't figured that out yet without the President pointing out the obvious? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 12, 2007 11:07 PM | Permalink U.S. weapons inspectors concluded in 2004 that Hussein had long ago abandoned his nuclear weapons program. You know, it's just one lie after another. That was NOT the conclusion of the inspectors. They concluded that no further significant progress on the nuclear program was made under the sanctions, which is a very different matter. Indeed, the conclusion of the weapons inspectors - specifically Charles Duelfer's 2004 Iraq Survey Group, was very much the opposite of how your knucklehead source characterized it. Far from concluding that Saddam had "abandoned" his nuclear ambitions, Duelfer and the Iraq Survey Group concluded the following (verbatim from the report):
Duelfer found that Saddam's ability to pursue nuclear weapons decayed during the 1990s, but goes on to write the following: Initially, Saddam chose to conceal his nuclear program in its entirety, as he did with Iraq's BW [Biological Warfare] program. Aggressive UN inspections after Desert Storm forced Saddam to admit the existence of the program and destroy or surrender components of the program. These are not the actions of a man who had "abandoned" the goal of obtaining nuclear weapons. Of course, the author of the crap you're reading didn't bother to concern himself with what Duelfer actually said. More from the ISG report: The ISG found a limited number of post-1995 activities that would have aided the reconstitution of a nuclear program once sanctions were lifted. That is the reality. These were the conclusions of the ISG in 2004, in so many words. Apparently, reality isn't important to the people you've been reading, who can't be bothered to actually READ what's in the primary documents. Once again, garbage in, garbage out. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 12, 2007 11:51 PM | Permalink Discredited sources left in because they were critical to a faltering case— also routine. Discredited sources like Joe Wilson? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 13, 2007 12:02 AM | Permalink Jason explains what he is doing here. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 13, 2007 2:10 AM | Permalink Ain't it a bitch when reality (2006) corresponds with reporting (2003, 2004, 2005) ? The reality of 2006 does not authenticate the reportage of 2003. Only the reality of 2003 can authenticate the reality of 2003, and journalists do not yet have a monopoly on information about that reality. That said, 2003 was different. Also bad, but different. One of the things I find most suspicious (uh oh, wingnut alert) about the conventional wisdom of the "IT'S ALL ONE UNDIFFERENTIATED CALAMITY AFTER ANOTHER IN AN ORGY OF BUSH FAILURE" view is its remarkable consistency. I read history books, and it sure appears that all wars ebb and flow, that their character changes over time and that very rarely is there nothing but failure on one side. It's not necessary to attack the content of the material the media reports to question the veracity of the narrative it attaches to it. Reporters are good at reporting things.. they are not necessarily subject matter experts, and generally do not have the level of certainty about either the specific details or the big picture that their reportage implies. It's part of the nature of the beast, but it does make me rather uncomfortable when those who do not have relevant expertise imagine themselves to be experts. The consistency of their narrative seems to be significantly detached from underlying facts. For example, I've seen AP reports out of Iraq whose headline described Baghdad as being "rocked" by bomb blasts after Saddam was sentenced. If you read into the article, however, the "bomb blasts" were in fact a single report of 6 mortar shells which landed in a residential neighborhood with no reported injuries. This was the daily summary of Iraqi violence, and all it had for a city of 7 million was A SINGLE MORTAR ATTACK? 6 mortars could be fired by a small team with a mortar truck in a few minutes. They are militarily trivial, but Iraq is swimming in them. Would you get the sense of triviality from the headline 'Baghdad "rocked" by bomb blasts'? No, you'd think some real serious heavy stuff was going down.. but in fact the only violence to report was a single mortar attack! When every violent attack is described in the same tone and with the same level of alarm -- even ones with scant evidence, like the burning six -- how can the public understand the actual changes on the ground? =darwin Yeah, I have to explain what I'm doing to Countercolumn readers, because when I do post on PressThink, a number of them always write me and ask why I bother. The point is not to try to convert Rosen or Lovelady or Simon or anyone else. The point is not to let questionable assumptions (or false ones, such as the assertion that the ISG concluded that Saddam had "abandoned" his nuclear program) pass unchallenged. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 13, 2007 9:50 AM | Permalink I find the debate here entertaining. I don't buy Jason's assertion that Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq is a crock, as his post on it requires misreading the introduction into a strawman that he then proceeds to beat up, and then it ignores the entire rest of the book. Sort of judging a book by its cover. However, his continued presentation of misrepresentations and ignored facts by print articles, and then the failure to recognize/concede these points and arguments discredits those who are arguing against Jason. I see a lot more preaching to the choir here rather than honest debate. Lastly, I find it interesting that for all the fuss made over Warrick here, that none of the journalists posting here have delved into the primary source material to add depth to their argument, like Jason has done with the ISG (Duelfer) report. I understand that one of the points being made is how DoD ignored State in that interagency pissing contest, but it is then left to the readers' imagination on this board as to what the impact of this decision was. Was the report a silver bullet left unfired? Was it a mixed bag? It is simply not enough to state that they interagency process was broke, but to demonstrate the extent of the failure, you must show how things would have been different. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/index.htm Posted by: Shek at January 13, 2007 9:54 AM | Permalink "They believe in their Red State bones that the press is biased against them." Yeah. Tony Blair's a real "red stater, huh?" "[Islamic terrorists] have realised two things: the power of terrorism to cause chaos, hinder and displace political progress especially through suicide missions; and the reluctance of Western opinion to countenance long campaigns, especially when the account it receives is via a modern media driven by the impact of pictures. "They now know that if a suicide bomber kills 100 completely innocent people in Baghdad, in defiance of the wishes of the majority of Iraqis who voted for a non-sectarian government, then the image presented to a Western public is as likely to be, more likely to be, one of a failed Western policy, not another outrage against democracy." It's kinda hard to dismiss the argument as the inane rantings of the toothless unwashed in red-state flyover country when the head of the Labor party in the United Kingdom has come to the same conclusion, at least w/r/t coverage of Iraq. Do you think that Tories think they get a fair shake, or that the media is too biased to the right? No. Wartime coverage in the UK is to the dovish side of both. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 13, 2007 10:04 AM | Permalink The following passage is relevant. It's from my post on the Nick Berg beheading video (May 2004) and it tries to draw some important distinctions, as well as acknowledge that there are political implications in everything the press does: It is a fact of life that there are political implications in everything the news media does when handling a big national story-- including the images that are shown and not shown to us. Writing in USA Today on May 11, the day the Berg video surfaced, Walter Shapiro speculated: "This atrocity is almost certain to inflame American public sentiment, and presumably will strengthen the position of those calling for an-eye-for-an-eye vengeance in Iraq." One thing I haven't mentioned in this post or the last one is that a bedrock assumption of GWOT (the global war on terror) is that the enemy--Al-Qaeda, its sympathizers and the insurgents in Iraq--are primarily following an information strategy. That is how they seek to win-- in the battle of images, news, rumors, "perception." From this it is concluded that the media is the battlefield. And so rollback is justified, relentless attacks on the press are justified, disinformation, propaganda, culture war-- all have strategic value in GWOT, apart from their place in domestic politics. That wasn't there when Agnew started ranting. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 13, 2007 1:05 PM | Permalink "[Islamic terrorists] have realised two things: the power of terrorism to cause chaos, hinder and displace political progress especially through suicide missions; and the reluctance of Western opinion to countenance long campaigns, especially when the account it receives is via a modern media driven by the impact of pictures. This follows the logic of the most stunning analysis of the war on terror I have seen -- a lecture by Robert Pape on CSPAN. Here's what he says about why suicide terrorism exists, in conversation with The American Conservative: RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw. To draw the logical conclusion following Pape's analysis, the 9/11 attacks were intended to get the US out of Saudi Arabia (and that was apparently successful; our Saudi forces, as I understand it, have been shifted to Iraq -- hence our construction of permanent bases in Iraq to replace the lost bases in Saudi Arabia), and out of the Middle East. The reason US troops were in Saudi Arabia was to guard Saudi oil against the threat of invasion by Saddam. Hence, War for Oil II. The link is pretty clear. Yet this is never discussed in the mainstream press. What also follows is that the U.S./coalition presence itself is exactly what exacerbates terrorist attacks -- in Iraq, in London, in Madrid, in Jordan, in Indonesia. Which is exactly what many opponents of the war have argued since before the invasion. But very rarely have war boosters conceded any point. Just watch David Brooks squirm on the News Hour these days; it's harder and harder to be an apologist. (In fact, Bush pretty much acknowledged this when he told us that the "surge" would invite an increase in attacks). The one Iraq policy that seems in league with Pape's analysis is Murtha's. The premise that this war in Iraq ever had anything to do with WMD is false; that was just a one convenient excuse (as admitted by Paul Wolfowitz). So arguing and arguing over WMDs is a red herring. This war was always about altering the status quo in the region to ensure continued US access to oil. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 13, 2007 1:13 PM | Permalink Conservative journalist Rod Dreher (whom I know a little) on NPR this morning. He writes for The National Review, works at the Dallas Morning News. Dreher isn't fooling around. That body under the house is starting to smell. And the reality-based Republicans are starting to put together what happened. (Via Greenwald): As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool's errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic. The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness... The waste, the folly, the stupidity... The reason you don't take the most well informed man off Garner's team is that losses like that--which can be rationalized after the fact as interagency pissing contest gone awry, i.e. "normal" politics--lead to stupid, nonsensical, ignorant mistakes. Whaddaya want: they were engaged in an inter-agency possing contest!!!@! If you think that is going to cut it when the accounts are settled you have illusions that are about to crash big time. Dreher stepped off the boat because he could see where it's headed. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 13, 2007 1:59 PM | Permalink For the people on this blog who are arguing against Jay, I have a few questions (I tried asking Jason them in the previous thread, but he never answered): 1. Why was the Phase IV (postwar) plan virtually non-existent? What were the root causes of this? 2. Why did George Bush have to ask Jay Garner (according to Garner's own words), just days before the invasion, questions like "What are your plans for the postwar?" and "What is your background?" 3. If George Packer's description of the Phase IV planning was totally wrong, why did Lawrence Wilkerson say "George Packer of the New Yorker got it right"? 4. If George Packer's description of how things worked in the Pentagon Office of Special Plans was wrong, why would Lawrence Wilkerson say that he got it right? Why would his colleague Robin Raphel basically corroborate it? Posted by: JJWFromME at January 13, 2007 3:13 PM | Permalink The ISG found a limited number of post-1995 activities that would have aided the reconstitution of a nuclear program once sanctions were lifted. It's one thing to put out spin. It's another thing to go back and read your own spin and treat it as if it's gospel. That's what Bush seems to be doing with Iraq's nuclear weapons story. There were no nukes in Iraq. There were next to no materials to make nukes--if there were any at all. There were mostly just pieces of paper. James Risen told the full story of this in State of War. The program had been bombed and inspected back to the stone age. If this intelligence hasn't percolated up into Bush's consciousness by now, then he's reading his own press, not the intelligence that he should be reading. One more thing: I'm not a reporter-- just a concerned citizen. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 13, 2007 3:26 PM | Permalink There were no nukes in Iraq. There were next to no materials to make nukes--if there were any at all. No, of course not. Just four hundred tons of uranium. For the purpose of making kite crossbars for the children of Iraq, no doubt. (rolling eyes.) Then there's the not so small matter of Zawahie. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 13, 2007 4:09 PM | Permalink Just four hundred tons of uranium. Did you read your own link? The article is about the failure of the US to adequately guard or deal with the radioactive materials that were being internationally monitored until the US invasion. A few paragraphs from the 2004 Washington Post article: The International Atomic Energy Agency kept Iraq's uranium under seal in storage facilities for more than a decade before the U.S. invasion in March 2003, but the storerooms were looted when Baghdad fell several weeks later. Posted by: wif at January 13, 2007 6:26 PM | Permalink Jay, The near perfect convergence between Cheney's mantra that Vietnam and Watergate illegitimately castrated the properly imperial executive and the crest of US press authority and legitimacy (and in a way, even popular sovereignty) is absolutely crucial. You're really on to something here. Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 13, 2007 8:26 PM | Permalink Keep at it, Jason Van S, cos goodness knows Rosen et al in here need some challenging so they can pick up their game, bunch of damned isolationist buchanaites. Posted by: Wog Blogger at January 13, 2007 8:27 PM | Permalink Ok. We're going to criticize the United States for failing to guard dangerous uranium stocks that don't exist because there were no bomb-making materials in Iraq, except that there were, except that the Iraqis needed a bolt cutter to get at it because nobody ever EVER broke a seal in the history of civilization, and the uranium that Saddam had that didn't exist was no threat in any case, because it wasn't dangerous enough for Saddam to use to build a dirty bomb or give to someone else to build a dirty bomb, except that it was, because we have to come under criticism for failing to guard the uranium that didn't exist that wasn't dangerous, and how could we possibly let that dangerous nonexistent uranium get away? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 13, 2007 9:30 PM | Permalink Yes, I read the link. Your view must be a lot more [snicker] nuanced [/snicker] than mine. Because under the [snicker] nuanced [/snicker] model of analysis, somehow Saddam can have abandoned his nuclear program while simultaneously maintaining a number of WMD activities. It's all about the nuance. Simultaneously, you can ignore the plain meaning of the use of force resolution and totally ignore the terms of the cease fire, the language of umpteen UNSC resolutions, and the political rhetoric of two administrations, you can ignore the political rhetoric of Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and Bill Clinton, and claim that the Iraq war had nothing to do with WMD, while still claiming that Bush lied congress into authorizing a war by claiming Saddam had WMD that the war had nothing to do with, which is why Congress voted the way it did in 2002, and Kerry can vote for the 87 billion dollars before he voted against it, and Rangel can vote against draft legislation he himself personally sponsored onto the House floor. Nuance. So this is what it means to be 'reality based.' I'm starting to understand you people. [snicker] Nuance. [/snicker] Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 13, 2007 9:39 PM | Permalink I'm starting to understand you people. Now you've gone too far. I would never say something like that about you. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 13, 2007 9:49 PM | Permalink So, it turns out Jason's a partisan Republican. No wonder he sees "liberal bias" everywhere. Oh, well. The problem here is that many Republicans are apparently incapable of understanding criticism of other Republicans, except within the frame of Republican vs. Democrat. This is why "the media" is Democratic or liberal-biased. Because it has been critical of what has for most of the past six years been an all-Republican government. It's a shame -- and why this perpetual conversation is attack-attack-attack-attack, rather than an actual conversation. Isn't it interesting, the assumption voiced on Jason's blog, that no one who participates in PressThink believes in God? Makes it pretty clear where the lines are drawn. These folks feel themselves on the defensive when anyone is critical of anything Bush. Like Hells Angels, really -- all on one, one on all. Criticize Bush to any degree and Michelle Malkin, Jason, OReilly, and the whole gang stomp your friggin head into the pavement. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 13, 2007 11:22 PM | Permalink Is it really such an affront for jason to ask you paragons of empiricism to base your empiricals on actual facts? Just some observations in passing: Jay is promulgating the argument that the Bush Administration was cooking the intelligence. But, of course, the Bush Administration was doing so with such effect that they managed to cook the intelligence in, er, 1998, two years before the election. And doing it with such effect that every intelligence service in the West agreed. Several commenters raise the good old War for Oil canard --- but no one notices, first, that the cheap easy way to get the oil would have been to go along with reducing the Iraq sanctions, or second, that US forces aren't being used to protect or control the oil fields. In fact, they're being surged into the one area of Iraw that apparently doesn't have much in the way of oil resources. Then we've got this gem: Did you read your own link? The article is about the failure of the US to adequately guard or deal with the radioactive materials that were being internationally monitored until the US invasion. ... in which it is apparently being suggested that the four hundred tons of uranium didn't exist because it was being monitored. Thus, of course, we can conclude thaqt Fort Know has no gold because it's being guarded. (Oh, I admit it's sort of a hsame to taunt you about that, if only because Jason has done it so effectively already, but seriously folks, this isn't even good humor.) And that's just factual sorts of issues --- it would take a whole post to summarize the logical fallacies. Although, cripes, guys --- could you try to a little more breadth of coverage? It the same old ad hominem abusive, ad hom circumstantial, petitio --- how about a nice amphiboly? You hardly ever see a good amphiboly. Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at January 14, 2007 3:13 AM | Permalink Jay, You seem confident that the problem is simply that Bush et al are not grounded in reality. After attempting to establish this through a mix of anecdote (the original Suskind article was full of anecdote) and evidence, the issue then becomes one of chastising right wing bloggers for reinforcing that condition. An alternative explanation is that the Bush Iraq policy both was and still is grounded in reality but that a deliberate policy of deception was initially implemented (and to an extent has been maintained) for other reasons. This is more reality-based than the conclusions drawn by some of your supporters in the comments, that Bush is insane and Cheney delusional. I suggest you read the analysis, originating from a left wing site, as published in 'The Australian', last September. Here is an extract: There is a deep misunderstanding of the radical strategic change spearheaded by Bush. This is the result of consistent attempts by the Bush administration to describe the new policy in misleading, lowest common denominator terms as a war on terror. But capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and individual terrorists was never what this war was about. The reality is that in order to eliminate terrorism, the US has no choice but to attack the underlying forces of reaction and oppression that create it.If this interests you then also check out the thread on lastSuperpower, creating reality or reality based? , which responds to your orginal article. Posted by: Bill Kerr at January 14, 2007 3:14 AM | Permalink Oh, let's not miss this one: Apparently countering an argument in print is like having someone "stomp your frigging head into the pavement." Next, Jay will be speaking at the National Press Club about how Jason is denying him his First amendment rights by disagreeing. Posted by: Charlie (Colorado) at January 14, 2007 3:17 AM | Permalink Several commenters raise the good old War for Oil canard People on this thread that agree with Jay do not always agree with each other. I don't think it was as simple as "blood for oil" at all. For instance, I don't believe that Feith and Wolfowitz had any interest in oil whatsoever. But, of course, the Bush Administration was doing so with such effect that they managed to cook the intelligence in, er, 1998, two years before the election. And doing it with such effect that every intelligence service in the West agreed. No, the west did not agree with the conclusions that the Bush administration drew from intelligence. On the contrary. That's a big reason why Bush had to struggle so hard to pull together his "coalition of the willing." The intelligence communities in the west (and under the Clinton administration) had concluded that Iraq had some sort of WMD (many countries have gas and/or chemical weapons). But they disagreed about the significance of the threat that WMD posed. They especially didn't think the threat rose to the point where you had to invade, conquer and occupy Iraq. This article on ThinkProgress has more on the international intelligence. And here's something from Tyler Drumheller on how tenuous the case was even inside the US Intelligence community. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 14, 2007 8:49 AM | Permalink Is it really such an affront for jason to ask you paragons of empiricism to base your empiricals on actual facts? (regular readers can ignore this post -- its a standard rebuttal of Jason's intellectual dishonesty---and most of us have been exposed to a plethora of such rebuttals) Here's the problem.... an "empiricist" offers the observation that Bush's claims in 2002-2003 that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear program were completely false by pointing out the empirical fact that "Saddam had abandoned his nuclear ambitions". The latter statement is a fact within the context of a rebuttal of Bush's claims. Jason then takes that statement completely out of its context, and provides supposed "empirical evidence" to counter the out of context quote. However, rather than present his own evidence in his proper context, he completely distorts the meaning and intent of his source by rearranging quoted material and ignoring highly relevant facts. To wit...here is what Jason presented... More from the ISG report: Now, forgive me for providing an actual extended quote from the ISG report itself, but it is necessary to do so in order to demonstrate the extent of Jason's perfidy... In the wake of Desert Storm, Iraq took steps to conceal key elements of its program and to preserve what it could of the professional capabilities of its nuclear scientific community. Three things jump out at you. First is that Jason took two unrelated quotes (see italicized text), and presented them without ellipses (i.e. as if they followed one another.) Secondly, he changed the order of the quotes in an obvious attempt to imply that the "limited number of post-1995 activities that would have aided the reconstitution of a nuclear program once sanctions were lifted" were those that were actively "concealed" "in the wake of Desert Storm". This is clearly not the case -- in the immediate aftermath of Desert Storm, Iraq did try to conceal its nuclear weapons program, but by 1995 it was forced to admit it, and turned over massive amounts of documentation, etc, pursuant to it. In other words, the "efforts to conceal" the nuclear program in the "wake of Desert Storm" came to an end in 1995. Finally, Jason ignores the KEY finding (see bolded text in extended quote) regarding the "limited number of post-1995 activities that would have aided the reconstitution of a nuclear program".... i.e that the ISG found no indications of such purpose. Those of us who are regular readers of Press Think are fully and completely familiar with Jason's method of distorting and misrepresenting empirical facts in his effort to advance his ideological agenda. That's why it is "such an affront for jason to ask you paragons of empiricism to base your empiricals on actual facts." We KNOW the facts, and we KNOW how Jason consistently abuses empirical evidence in the most intellectually dishonest way imaginable. Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 14, 2007 9:02 AM | Permalink Look, I wrote a post about a crack-up on the Right--a split among the Iraq hawks on the question of whether further Agnewizing about the media and the war made sense, or delayed the day of reckoning with a disaster--and some of you seem to think that re-fighting the history of Saddam and WMD's is some kind of "response" to news of that crack up. Tensions within the Bush coalition over the necessity of being reality-based were the occasion for my writing, for that's a story I'm tracking. This isn't going to die down. People like Rod Dreher--a conservative, a Republican, a hawk--are going to be asking themselves how something so stupid could have happened. And when in the course of their examination they take a cold look, a second look at stories like what happened to Tom Warrick, what is going to sound more credible to them? "Just an interagency pissing contest..." or "Anyone who knows anything is removed." Why don't I leap into the trenches for hand-to-hand combat about what the ISG report found in footnote 42? Because it's a sideshow. Jason isn't aaddressing me. He thinks the foreign editor of the New York Times or equivalents may be lurking here some day and start to doubt their news reporting because of what Jason said. Like he said at his warblog: "Why engage there? Because much of Rosen's audience consists of opinion makers - journos themselves - and only a small minority post there." It's his fantasy; I have nothing to do with it. The rhetorical form his signal to the Times guy takes is to challenge Rosen on the facts. (By the way the editors he thinks are here lurking aren't here, lurking, but as I said, it's his fantasy.) But here's what I want to tell you, Charlie: The important argument is not between me and some hapless Agnewologists who troop over to comment, or between PressThink readers and Bush's dwindling corps of dead-enders. The argument that counts is between some supporters of the war in Iraq who think that attacks on the news media are unseemly for their side to continue to make--given the risks reporters take and the overall accuracy of their portrait--and other supporters of the war in Iraq who think attacks on the news media must continue to be made because it is biased, liberal, distorting the war, trying to take down our guy, an ignorantly ideological force and on and on. Some in the Bush coalition are talking to others, and I am commenting on that. Since this is the last thing that warbloggers want to discuss, they just read that story out of my post. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 14, 2007 12:47 PM | Permalink Jay Rosen: "The argument that counts is between some supporters of the war in Iraq who think that attacks on the news media are unseemly for their side to continue to make--given the risks reporters take and the overall accuracy of their portrait--and other supporters of the war in Iraq who think attacks on the news media must continue to be made because it is biased, liberal, distorting the war, trying to take down our guy, an ignorantly ideological force and on and on." Worth repeating. There is a difference between criticizing a news story, a journalist, or even a news organization for getting something wrong ... and discrediting "the media" (or MSM if you prefer) in order to persuade others for partisan purposes (i.e., to remain loyal). The former can make you a smarter news recipient and citizen participant, the latter makes you dumber and ensures a dumber brand of politics. Posted by: Tim at January 14, 2007 2:06 PM | Permalink
Your inference is in error. What is being more than suggested is that the 400 tons of uranium was not part of a Saddam Hussein weapons program at the time of the US invasion of Iraq. It is not evidence of weapons of mass destruction because, as has been noted above,"the Iraqis needed a bolt cutter to get at it..." I understand there is gold in Fort Knox. Do you find it very useful as far as your financial obligations are concerned? Posted by: wif at January 14, 2007 6:58 PM | Permalink So just what WAS Dr. Wissam al Zawahie, long Iraq's premier nuclear weapons point man and enabler, doing in Niger, a country which exports three things: Goats, peas, and uranium. What was he there to do? Arrange for the export of goat bellies? Do you think the United States would have sent Dr. Oppenheimer to Mexico to negotiate tamale shipments?, c. 1943? How do you account for Zawahie's presence in Niger? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 14, 2007 9:08 PM | Permalink an "empiricist" offers the observation that Bush's claims in 2002-2003 that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear program were completely false by pointing out the empirical fact that "Saddam had abandoned his nuclear ambitions". Horse hockey. Do you even know what an empirical fact is? The one you bring up isn't one, in that it cannot be established empirically - it can only be inferred as a theory to explain other facts and pieces of evidence, which ARE empirical evidence - i.e., the presence of WMDs buried in the desert, the presence of a centrifuge buried in a nuclear scientist's yard and concealed from inspectors, etc. Even documents which appear to exonerate Hussein are suspect as evidence, because as Dan Rather can attest, documents are so easily forged. There's another layer of circumstantial evidence to consider, including Al Zawahie's presence in Niger in 1999, Al Zawahiri's presence in Iraq at a conference in 1999, etc. These rings of evidence become rather less "empirical" as you move outward, but the conclusion that Saddam has abandoned his nuclear ambitions is not an empirical fact, but an opinion one can draw from other empirical facts available - provided one is willing to ignore an awful lot of it. Second, not a single one of the paragraphs you quote above - NOT ONE - supports the conclusion that Saddam had abandoned his nuclear weapons. The only one you have is that there were "no indications" that dual-use programs that the ISG did, in fact, find, were actually intended for nuclear purposes. This was 1.) NOT knowable prior to 2003 with any degree of certainty, because it relies on inspections that could only be completed AFTER the invasion, because Hussein was continually actively obstructing the work of the inspectors, apparently for no reason whatsoever, and 2.) Cannot be used to demonstrate the ABSENCE of nuclear ambitions, unless in your Alice in Wonderland world the absence of evidence is evidence of absense. Put another way, I have no indications at this time that you have owned, or have ever owned, a family dog. This is not evidence that you do not have a dog, and only a fool would try to conclude such from the absence of evidence. Now, BECAUSE the absence of evidence is not, and is never evidence of absence, it cannot be held that the (snicker) "key finding (/snicker) if the ISG report is that "no indications of such purpose " were found. That's not a finding. That's a failure to find. The ISG was identifying an opaque point in its subject matter. For example, the ISG could have written that "we found that these dual-use activities were not intended for WMD development or other military purposes." That would have provided your position a modicum of support. However, the fact is - and this IS empirically demonstrable - that the ISG didn't write that, they wrote something else. It is unfortunate for you that you have claimed that the assertion that "Saddam had abandoned his nuclear ambitions" is an "empirical fact", and then foolishly relied on the ISG report to support that, because the ISG report's plain language accepts that Saddam DID have nuclear ambitions as a postulate. Where? When the authors write this: Saddam's nuclear ambitions were secondary to the prime objective of ending the UN sanctions. The ISG does NOT suggest that Saddam had "abandoned" his nuclear ambitions. For the life of me I don't see where you can even begin to infer this. Indeed, this paragraph falsifies your assertion, albeit indirectly. Rather, the ISG's position, judging from the above line of text, is that Saddam DID have nuclear ambitions, long term they were just secondary to getting the sanctions lifted. Indeed, the presence of the centrifuge buried in the garden and Zawahie's trip to Niger both lend support to that theory, over and above the ISG's position. Neither is by itself conclusive - but there is no way on God's green earth that you can rationally conclude that Saddam had abandoned his nuclear ambitions. In other words, the "efforts to conceal" the nuclear program in the "wake of Desert Storm" came to an end in 1995. If this is intended to be a laugh line, it's hysterical. Clearly, Saddam Hussein came so clean in 1995, and opened his books and facilities to such an extent, that the Clinton Administration was forced to embark on an extensive bombing campaign in 1998, and the UN Security Council rewarded Saddam's forthrightness with another series of resolutions finding him in violation. You're a riot. Good one. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 14, 2007 9:46 PM | Permalink You mean to tell me after all this time people are still arguing the Niger fallacy. Jumpin Moses! Talk about nothing changing but the weather. Cutting to the chase, is the AP report real? Because in all the words I didn't find the source. Were they right or not? It didn't happen? What's the short answer? "the presence of WMDs buried in the desert, the presence of a centrifuge buried in a nuclear scientist's yard and concealed from inspectors, etc." Yeah right. And the two shells found buried in the desert are the weapons. We've found them! What a disgrace to soldiers thinking like this is. "The International Atomic Energy Agency kept Iraq's uranium under seal in storage facilities for more than a decade before the U.S. invasion in March 2003, but the storerooms were looted when Baghdad fell several weeks later." And I suppose this was obtained from Niger? And how about those inspections? Yeah I guess they didn't work. "And Exxon says it has stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute's disinformation campaign to discredit climate science. That would be the disinformation campaign that "conservatives" argue does not exist." Imagine that, Mr. Simon. Yet another sign of delusion unleased by the seeds of reality. Here's Pam Hess, appearing on Howie Kurtz's show on CNN: I think it's gotten caught up about it, and the debate about it is actually all wrong. What reporters know and what Martha says is that 20,000 really isn't that big -- isn't that big a jump. We're at 132,000 right now. It's going to put us even less that we had going in going across the line. What we're not asking is actually the central question. We're getting distracted by the shiny political knife fight. What we need to be asking is, what happens if we lose? And no one will answer that question. If we lose, how are we going to mitigate the consequences of this? I think Hess is precisely right - the real question - and the onus is on Democrats and their supporters - is to explain how it is a pullout will be mitigated once Al Qaeda has safe haven in Al Anbar. How do we get at those people? The answer is that if we pull out now, we will have to send even more troops later - with ZERO help from the sheikhs, because they cannot trust the US electorate to take on a project lasting longer than 3 years. Jay, I think Hess has your number. You're demonstrating your usual instinct for the most tangental subjects imaginable - tangental even to press issues. Hey, look! A new book about Republicans arguing! Look how pretty and shiny it is! Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 14, 2007 11:41 PM | Permalink Yeah right. And the two shells found buried in the desert are the weapons. We've found them! What a disgrace to soldiers thinking like this is. Publius, What would you say if it were rather more than two shells? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 14, 2007 11:48 PM | Permalink Don't they have a safe haven there now? And isn't Al Qaeda the least of the worries in Iraq? Iraq is about Iraq. No obsfucations allowed. This has always been a local conflict which we opened like a cheap, well expensive, can opener on a false canard of this same alleged Al Qaeda connection proven demonstrably false. There never was one. I'd say what Arnold would say? Old news. Two ten, Iran-Iraq artifacts aren't admisible evidence is such charges of world threatening armamants and the ability to deleiver them here. I'd call it delusion and denial. "Two ten?" What does that mean? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 14, 2007 11:56 PM | Permalink We've got a big book of facts that everyone from John McCain to Max Boot is reading. In fact, we've got several of them. So don't listen to me speculate. Just read. Neither Ricks - nor for that matter, Suskind, Woodward, nor Gordon/Trainor - are books of "facts". They are big books of unnamed and anonymous opinions. But yeah, "we've got a big book of anonymous opinions, and no way to verify any hidden agenda on the part of those unknown sources" doesn't sound quite as compelling... Posted by: Phred at January 15, 2007 8:41 AM | Permalink Are you seriously telling me this is Jay Rosen's response to the Jamil Hussein stories? Posted by: Marc Siegel at January 15, 2007 9:12 AM | Permalink They are big books of unnamed and anonymous opinions. If you were just talking about George Packer's book, you'd be right to a certain extent. But you'd still have to deal with Lawrence Wilkerson, who said that Packer got it right. And Robin Raphel. These are named highly placed sources who agree with Packer, and Ricks for that matter. If you read Ricks' book, on the other hand, you'd see that Fiasco is full of statements from named sources. And it's being being read all over capitol hill. Gordon Smith, John McCain, Max Boot--all Republicans who've had good things to say about Fiasco. That wouldn't happen if it were all rumors, anonymous sources, etc. It's serious journalism, and it's being treated that way by people on both sides of the aisle. You guys have still not answered my questions. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 15, 2007 9:14 AM | Permalink Mark Seibel, McClatchy Newspapers: President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq. Looks like we're getting somebody's fables again, not facts. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 15, 2007 9:33 AM | Permalink Are you seriously telling me this is Jay Rosen's response to the Jamil Hussein stories? I am, yes. Amazing, no? Are you seriously telling me that this is your response to Lowry and Boot and Carter and Dreher? Neither Ricks - nor for that matter, Suskind, Woodward, nor Gordon/Trainor - are books of "facts". They are big books of unnamed and anonymous opinions. Staggering. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 15, 2007 10:19 AM | Permalink Look, I wrote a post about a crack-up on the Right--a split among the Iraq hawks on the question of whether further Agnewizing about the media and the war made sense, or delayed the day of reckoning with a disaster--and some of you seem to think that re-fighting the history of Saddam and WMD's is some kind of "response" to news of that crack up. Jay, when the thread has degenerated to the point where you have to go back and explain what the original thread is about, you might in the future wish to close the comments section (since no one seems to have paid you any mind). This would at least give you the last word and provide an appropriate "bookend" to the original post. Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 15, 2007 11:36 AM | Permalink JJW, Phase IV planning was not "virtually non-existent" and Wilkerson was not referring to Packer's description of Phase IV planning. If you want to criticize the assumptions made in the Phase IV plan or how it was executed by ORHA, CPA and the CJTF - go for it. I suggest you read more about it. Perhaps you could start referring to Iraq's "Phase IV" plan by its name. You could explain which assumptions were valid (if any) and which weren't. Perhaps you could explain which parts were not properly completed. You could discuss the April 2003 meetings in Iraq. You could describe the roles played by Garner, McKiernan, Whitley, and the actual planners at CENTCOM, corps and MEF. You could tell us if you think the decision to replace Garner with Bremer was an empirical one. Knowing all you know and being in a position to judge reality and the empiricism of others, I'm interested. Posted by: Tim at January 15, 2007 11:43 AM | Permalink This thread reminds me of a football game where the score is 63 to 7 with a few minutes to go in the 4th quarter, and all the commentators are still arguing about the ref's controversial call in the 1st quarter concerning the combination interception/fumble. Jason, I know your world is crumbling around you ... much as Donald Rumsfeld's world crumbled around him ... but you're going to have to come up with a better response than "Thomas Ricks did it !!" Thomas Ricks didn't do it. He's just the guy in the press box with an excellent pair of binoculars. The idiots in charge of the whole Iraq misadventure did it. As Thomas Ricks makes abundantly clear. Time to start discussing the 4th quarter, not the first, guys --because the clock is ticking, and most of the crowd ( a reality-based community if there ever was one) has already left the stands in disgust. That was what the elections were about. And that is also what Dreher's response, and Boot's response, and Wilkerson's response, is about. And those guys are not dewey-eyed leftists. They are hardnosed conservatives, appalled at a game that started out a cakewalk for the good guys and turned into a rout by the bad guys. And, thank God, they want to know who fucked up, and why. Deal with it. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 15, 2007 1:24 PM | Permalink If you were just talking about George Packer's book, you'd be right to a certain extent. No, I am talking about ALL of those books, which I have on my shelf right next to me now. But you'd still have to deal with Lawrence Wilkerson, who said that Packer got it right. Well duuh, he's probably one of the anonymous sources, no doubt he agrees with himself. If you read Ricks' book, on the other hand, you'd see that Fiasco is full of statements from named sources. His most important contentions - and the only part of the book that can be described as "original" - derives from "several hundred interviews" with (you guessed it) unknown sources. And it's being being read all over capitol hill. Gordon Smith, John McCain, Max Boot--all Republicans who've had good things to say about Fiasco. That wouldn't happen if it were all rumors, anonymous sources, etc. It's serious journalism, and it's being treated that way by people on both sides of the aisle. It may well be "journalism", but we have been repeatedly assured in this column that we can only rely on FACTS not OPINIONS, and these books are nothing less than opinions. If someone wrote a book full of praise for the administration that relied on anonymous sources that we cannot check or verify, I suspect you'd be a little more skeptical of citing it than you are of citing these works. Indeed, I'd think you'd find it "staggering" that anyone described such works as "factual". Posted by: Phred at January 15, 2007 2:42 PM | Permalink Well duuh, he's probably one of the anonymous sources, no doubt he agrees with himself. Maybe you should go back and read his statement: Read George Packer's book The Assassin's [Gate] if you haven't already. George Packer, a New Yorker, reporter for The New Yorker, has got it right. I just finished it and I usually put marginalia in a book but, let me tell you, I had to get extra pages to write on. And I wish, I wish I had been able to help George Packer write that book. In some places I could have given him a hell of a lot more specifics than he's got. But if you want to read how the Cheney Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And if you're telling me that this statement has nothing to do with Phase IV planning (and that Robin Raphel's statements have nothing to do with Phase IV planning) then it sounds like you haven't read Packer or Ricks very closely. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 15, 2007 3:07 PM | Permalink ""Two ten?" What does that mean?" 2-10... a handful of old shells in the sand is a far cry from active programs. I hope that's clear. If your contention is that the number of chemical munitions that have actually been found is between two and ten, or even between two and twenty, or even between two and a hundred, what is clear is that you are so hopelessly uninformed you have no business trying to argue your points. Those of us in the reality-based community, who aren't delusional, know that the actual number of chemical munitions that have been recovered far exceeds that. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 15, 2007 6:12 PM | Permalink JJ Your intent with the questions you posited to me is well-taken. But you're asking "Why" questions. You haven't developed the argument to warrant asking "why" questions yet. You cannot posit a 'why' question without first establishing the "what." And you haven't. My argument all along is that the assumptions underlying your conclusions are so unsound, so unsupported, so factually off base, and in some cases, even demonstrably false, that there is no arguing the "why" or "how" with you. That's been my point all along. For example: You ask WHY the post occupation plan was nearly nonexistent. That's ridiculous. It didn't work out the way we had hoped, but that's not evidence of an absence of a plan. It COULD be evidence of some bad assumptions, or it's more likely some evidence that the enemy has been capable of doing some planning of his own. I do not accept your ridiculous characterization of the Phase IV plan as "virtually nonexistent." The rest of your questions are largely an exercise in circular reasoning. Packer's not right because someone else says he got it right. Packer would be right because the known facts support his conclusions AND DO NOT FALSIFY THEM. I mean, are you guys so gullible as to believe that Jay Garner doesn't have an agenda of his own in characterising his conversations with the President to the press? You don't think Jay Garner's loyalists are putting a little spin on the ball? Can an online community of reporters really be so credulous? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 15, 2007 6:27 PM | Permalink Jason: Re: the four questions you deem too unsophisticated / lazy / factually bankrupt to deserve a response For #1: You don't want to answer because you object to the characterization of postwar planning as "virtually non-existent." Does this mean you think planning existed, but was stupid? Or was it a matter of good planning, poor execution? Or do you believe the deteriorating circumstances in Iraq have simply defied thorough planning and capable execution by the administration? Or do you reject even that assertion (that the circumstances in Iraq are/have been deteriorating)? For #2: You don't want to answer this "why" question because of what you say is obvious "spin" by Garner. Just to clarify: are you saying that Garner is lying, that the "what are your plans? what is your background?" questions were never posed? For #3 and #4: I assume you've elucidated the "known facts" (and the conclusions they apparently falsify) elsewhere. So I won't ask you to recount them. But, again, to clarify: are you saying that a) Wilkerson is lying, and so are all other prewar planning participants who agree with him, b) Wilkerson misunderstands the facts, and so do all other prewar planning participants who agree with him, or c) something else? Posted by: MK at January 15, 2007 8:03 PM | Permalink I didn't detect a source on the so-called wmd you claim to have "found." "Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062101837.html How bout that, 500 old shells from 1980's. Frontline: Truth, War and Consequences, interview with Lt. Gen. Jay Garner (July 17, 2003) Frontline: Truth, War, and Consequences, WaPo chat with Martin Smith, Producer/Writer/Reporter (October 10, 2003) Frontline: The Lost Year in Iraq, interview with Lt. Gen. Jay Garner (Aug. 11, 2006) Posted by: Tim at January 15, 2007 8:41 PM | Permalink Underneath the argument about who has the correct facts, which is entirely fake, there's a difference of opinion about why most American's don't trust what Bush tells them about Iraq. It's entirely real. One group thinks it's because the news media is so bad and so biased against Bush. The other group thinks Bush's statements fail to reflect reality. The notion of a "dialogue" between these two views I find far-fetched; there's no dialogue because there is no common starting point, or ending point, or reference point. That's why it feels so pointless, dig? Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 15, 2007 9:22 PM | Permalink Surely things can't be this terminal in our collective discourse Sir? Pertinent facts and context must be agreed upon by the rules of reason. Those who can't will be rendered to the sideline. At some point those who think the Earth is 6,000 years old have to be sent to the sandbox. Yes, they do. But it won't happen by arguing with them about what the facts say about the earth's age. My statement wasn't about public discourse generally but this comment thread's discourse specifically. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 15, 2007 9:46 PM | Permalink I see. So you're in essence saying they're already in the sandbox at this point? If this is established then why can one side continue to argue it here? Only one is allowed because they're so far gone one just has to accept it? George W. Bush on 60 Minutes Sunday: "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct decision in my judgment. We didn't find the weapons we thought we would find or the weapons everybody thought he had....The minute we found out they didn't have weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so." Jason thinks Bush is bullshitting us. We did find those weapons, he says. Hey, Charlie: who do you think is right? Jason Van Steenwyk or George W. Bush? Publius: One is allowed to argue whatever one wants. A comment thread is a free speech zone. I addressed myself to what expectations we should have for that chatter. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 15, 2007 10:30 PM | Permalink Timothy M. Carney went to Baghdad in April 2003 to run Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals. Unlike many of his compatriots in the Green Zone, the rangy, retired American ambassador wasn't fazed by chaos. He'd been in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Phnom Penh as it was falling to the Khmer Rouge and Mogadishu in the throes of Somalia's civil war. Once he received his Halliburton-issued Chevrolet Suburban, he disregarded security edicts and drove around Baghdad without a military escort. His mission, as he put it, "was to listen to the Iraqis and work with them." Now he's being hired to back to Iraq and try again, this time with a reality-based approach: (italics mine) The plan unveiled by Bush last week calls for many people who lost their jobs under Bremer's de-Baathification decree to be rehired. It calls for more Sunnis, who were marginalized under the CPA, to be brought into the government. It calls for state-owned factories to be reopened. It calls for more reconstruction personnel to be stationed outside the Green Zone. It calls for a counterinsurgency strategy that emphasizes providing security to the civilian population over transferring responsibility to local military forces. Yes, it has. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 15, 2007 11:21 PM | Permalink Jay. There is no common starting point? No points of agreement? Really? Mmmm. Well, perhaps you're right. But humor me, are both the following statements true? Some of the news media are very bad and are biased against Bush (among various other things, e.g., see what aforementioned ace reporter, Rod Dreher, believes here and here about the media) AND Some of Bush's statements could logically and rightfully be interpreted as not being "reflective of reality" (although, IMHO, using "reality" in such a broad, loose way simply invites general disagreement rather than specific agreement). Posted by: Kristen at January 15, 2007 11:21 PM | Permalink There is no common starting point? No points of agreement? Really? If he's being cynical, this thread certainly hasn't proved him wrong. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 15, 2007 11:31 PM | Permalink In this thread and the previous one, I tried to get people to discuss what happened with Phase IV, if they were so unhappy with what I was saying (via Ricks and Packer). No luck. In the last thread people wanted to bash deconstructionism instead. I would be very happy if we had a real discussion/debate. I might learn something. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 15, 2007 11:34 PM | Permalink Publius - Actually, a better way to express it is "wow, you were right. I was mistaken. Saddam's chemical stocks were more extensive than I had thrice insisted they were, by several orders of magnitude. But no, you can't even gracefully do that. Like a petulant child, you huff and puff "big deal. Stocks from the 80s." But chemical release from those stocks from the 80s was still potent enough to put at least two US troops in the hospital when they were used as IEDs. And the fact that Polish troops had actually had other munitions turned over to them for cash in 2003 and 2004 indicates that there's probably more than one cache out there. Indeed, seeing as we had actually found 17 x 122mm rockets in Baghdad in January of 2003, BEFORE WE EVEN INVADED (although even that was apparently not dispositive in some peoples' view), it appears that there are a number of caches deposited around Iraq - we just haven't discovered all of them yet. But multiple caches distributed throughout Iraq, in many cases buried in the desert, has been the pattern with every other munition up until this point. You cannot dismiss the stocks from the 1980s as qualitatively different from more recent stocks, because under the terms of the cease fire and the UNSC resolutions, Saddam Hussein was supposed to destroy ALL of his chemical weapons stocks. Not some of them. Not most of them. All of them. Go ahead. Peruse the language. Show me where there was language inserted into the cease fire or the resolutions that provided exceptions to certain chemical weapons. Show me where the west "grandfathered in" stores from the Iran-Iraq war. You can't. You must therefore concede that Iraq was in material breach of the cease fire and the United Nations Security Council resolutions. Why? Because Saddam DID maintain chemical stocks, in violation of those agreements. You cannot concede the existence, even of 1980's era chemical weapons caches, and conclude otherwise. Of course, you'll probably try anyway. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 15, 2007 11:42 PM | Permalink Here is what I said, Kristen: One group thinks it's because the news media is so bad and so biased against Bush. The other group thinks Bush's statements fail to reflect reality. The notion of a "dialogue" between these two views I find far-fetched; there's no dialogue because there is no common starting point, or ending point, or reference point. Whether your two statements could both be true for the same hypothetical observer does not, I think, bear on the accuracy of my observation. It is not the view of the warbloggers that here and there there is "some" bias in the press, and among those who think reality-based policy-making got dumped it is not their view that once in a while the Bush Administration says something ungrounded in reality. What did you think of Timothy M. Carney's use of the term: that a "sense of reality" was lacking in policies pursued three years ago, but was now starting to return? And what would you recommend for the Bush dead enders when they get around to dismissing Carney? Anonymous sources is no good; he went on the record. He's not a journalist so generalized mistrust won't work. Unlike Wilkerson, he didn't quit the fight and begin criticizing from the sidelines; he's getting back in. Interagency pissing contest won't work, either. Got a suggestion? Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 15, 2007 11:47 PM | Permalink "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct decision in my judgment. We didn't find the weapons we thought we would find or the weapons everybody thought he had....The minute we found out they didn't have weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so." Jason thinks Bush is bullshitting us. We did find those weapons, he says. Hey, Charlie: who do you think is right? Jason Van Steenwyk or George W. Bush? Straw man. But par for the course in this place. I never once said we found the weapons of mass destruction Bush and other institutions thought we would find. I DID argue, and do argue, though, that we found the WMD stockpiles that we found. Which was rather significantly above "two to ten" (and I can't believe how many people let Publius twist in the wind for so long), and even more significantly above the zero that the cease fire and UNSC resolutions would allow. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 16, 2007 12:03 AM | Permalink He'd been in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Phnom Penh as it was falling to the Khmer Rouge and Mogadishu in the throes of Somalia's civil war. The man has a real Midas touch. How reassuring. :) Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 16, 2007 12:08 AM | Permalink "You cannot dismiss the stocks from the 1980s as qualitatively different from more recent stocks." Jay, I really don't think it's that bad... I mean, this would be one very difficult topic in ANY circumstance! (getting people with vastly different starting points etc. to just *talk to each other* is an accomplishment in itself!) Delia P.S. If you'd like to do this again some other time, I'd try a less difficult topic (maybe ask them for one). D. Posted by: Delia at January 16, 2007 12:55 AM | Permalink Publius, Point out where I asserted the existence of more recent stocks. Well, scratch that. You're not even intellectually honest enough to own up to having had your rhetorical teeth knocked out on your "two to ten" assertion. Better put some ice on that. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 16, 2007 2:42 AM | Permalink If you'd like to do this again some other time, I'd try a less difficult topic (maybe ask them for one). I don't think the choice of topics matter, Delia. The "retreat from empiricism"/"denial of reality" is something that occurs across the board in the Bush administration (everything from Katrina, to the assault on science, to the latest scandals) -- and reality is catching up with Bush's supporters. I think there was a reason why Jay used the phrase "grave and deteriorating" in the title of this post; its how the "bipartisan"--albeit very conservative -- ISG described the situation in Iraq. Basically, the "reality based community" community has won the "war" on empiricism. And while more and more "generals" (such as Lowry) are recognizing it, the Commmander-in-Chief remains convinced that reality can still be conquered -- and there are still quite a few "dead enders" who refuse to surrender despite the fact that they are in the "last throes". Bush and his White House subordinates will continue to try and defy reality -- and the Jason's of the world will continue to engage in the most egregious distortions imaginable in support of that denial. It doesn't matter what the topic is --- and we can expect that the "dead enders"-- like individual Japanese soldiers on isolated islands after WWII -- will continue to fight their battles long after the war has been declared over. Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 16, 2007 8:58 AM | Permalink P.S. If you'd like to do this again some other time, I'd try a less difficult topic (maybe ask them for one). I'm afraid I have no idea of what you're talking about. Do this again? Do what again? I wrote a post that says what I think. Culture war demands that Bush's dead enders come over and ridicule it and shout "so's your mother!" while the right wing blogosphere boycotts actual discussion of the post, even though it's about them. Big surprise! It's happened almost every time I write on the subject. It will happen next time too. Here's what one warblogger said to me in an e-mail exchange after I sent him the post. "I had some Jamil XX stuff come in and didn't get it linked yesterday, and I'm busy today, so it might be this weekend, but it does bear discussing." Right. I'm still waiting. The real action is within the Bush coalition itself, as I have said many times. Reality-based Republicans and hawks who cannot stand the incompetence any more are breaking with Bush's dead-enders. When that happens the dead enders go and beat on Bush's critics and "the media" to make their anxieties go away. Check out Jonah Goldberg's reaction to the defection of Rod Dreher, his own colleague at National Review's The Corner. Instead of responding to what Dreher said, Goldberg ridicules him for talking about his feelings of betrayal and then complains about NPR, which "has a habit of doing this sort of thing." Spirits be gone! Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 16, 2007 9:20 AM | Permalink Jason: You're not even intellectually honest enough... I'm sure Publius is real concerned about criticism of his intellectual integrity coming from Jason Van Steenwyk. (Jason must think people reading this thread have short term memory problems.) Jay, just to play devil's advocate here, you know that Dreher's not your average conservative, right? Posted by: JJWFromME at January 16, 2007 9:51 AM | Permalink Yeah, so what? Cunchy or not, he was fully behind the war, and believed in Bush. The mendacity and incompetence--the mendacity about the incompetence--finally got to him. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 16, 2007 9:56 AM | Permalink Ah, finally! Confederate Yankee has a go... As a media commenter, educator and critic, I was hoping that Rosen had decided to tackle, at least peripherally, the subject of the Associated Press' questionable (to put it mildly) coverage an apparent cover-up of the Hurriyah incident, that he would approach the problem critically, perhaps looking at the many inconsistencies in AP's ever-evolving storyline, such as the fact that they cited a group with strong ties to the insurgency and al Qaeda (the Association of Muslim Scholars) as a source without disclosing what their ties were or finding a single account corroborating their claim of 18 men, women and children burned alive at the al-Muhaimin mosque, that four mosques were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), heavy machine guns and assault rifles before being "burned and blew up,", and that AP Television shot video of one of the attacked mosques. All of these claims have quietly disappeared from the AP's subsequent coverage without correction or retraction... and yet Rosen seems interested in none of it. Nor does he seem to have any interest in the fact that the overwhelming majority of stories sources to Jamil Hussein had no independent verification from other news agencies. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 16, 2007 10:04 AM | Permalink Jay, Well... I thought you intended to have a *debate*! (between people having opposite views)-- may have just been the byproduct of your post, I don't know... I think this aspect was a success -- in a limited way, of course -- but given the difficulty of the topic... let's say I think it wasn't a bad start! I think it could be much better if the topic is much less sensitive (at least until the people with opposite view points get familiar with each other and respect and some sort of understanding develops -- I thought I saw a movement, albeit a tinny one, in this direction). re: "the right wing blogosphere boycotts actual discussion of the post, even though it's about them. Big surprise!" you are right! -- it *isn't* a surprise... I'm just looking at it differently: it's a *very* touchy subject and will probably continue to be for a good long while... (so maybe giving it a rest would not be a bad idea...) re: When that happens the dead enders go and beat on Bush's critics and "the media" to make their anxieties go away. again, I'd suggest giving it a rest... dropping the topic for a good long while (it may need to be a *very* long while...) Delia I think it could be much better if the topic is much less sensitive The thing is that this problem has a lot to do with events still going on now. Maybe the situation calls for some people dealing with some sensitive questions... Posted by: JJWFromME at January 16, 2007 10:25 AM | Permalink shorter connecticut yankee... "I'm going to keep digging until I find that pony." Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 16, 2007 10:49 AM | Permalink JJ: ok... I guess there is no problem with "dealing with it" -- I just wouldn't expect having a very good debate on it... (I don't think it's realistic) D. I think blogging at its best is a highly individualized form. In a way a good blog is the record of a writer's obsessions but it always addresses issues that people who don't have those obsessions also care about. This kind of post, my intention is not to start a debate but to state clearly and forcefully what I see happening. Then I participate in what happens from there, but that is "after" material. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 16, 2007 4:39 PM | Permalink So the 500 is the wmd. Funny how no one else in authority thinks so as evidenced in my link to the WP. 2-10-500 lost in the desert isn't the active program everyone advertised. Pity you are sharp enough to tell the difference. Publius: A simple "you know, I was dead wrong about the two to ten" will suffice. I also redirect you to this comment here by me: Straw man. But par for the course in this place. I never once said we found the weapons of mass destruction Bush and other institutions thought we would find. I DID argue, and do argue, though, that we found the WMD stockpiles that we found. Which was rather significantly above "two to ten" (and I can't believe how many people let Publius twist in the wind for so long), and even more significantly above the zero that the cease fire and UNSC resolutions would allow. You also fail to account for the fact that technology and programs are two different things. Where the goal is nonproliferation of WMD technology, it is not neccessary for a WMD program that has successfully been creating weapons to be active in order to be problematic. Saddam Hussein's regime is easily capable of sharing technology and know-how, and even provide nonstate entities with older munitions, even in the absence of an ongoing program to develop more. I mean, there's a reason Saddam was required to DESTROY his stocks, right? The fact that he buried hundreds upon hundreds of these munitions in the desert conclusively establishes two things: 1.) Saddam did not destroy them, as he was required to do, without exception. 2.) Saddam was hiding them. After all, if it were an oversight, they would have simply stayed in the arms depots he had all over the country. No, he made an active effort to conceal them. In your world view, Saddam Hussein simultaneously buries centrifuges, sends nuclear weapons experts to Niger, provokes a 1998 bombing campaign by abandoning WMD ambitions in 1995, and then buries tons and tons and tons of chemical ordnance in locations around the country for no damned reason at all. What's more, somehow it was possible to KNOW with absolute certainty he did all this for no damned reason at all in 2003, because you're retroactively attacking a forward-looking decisionmaking process from 2001-2003 by assuming knowledge that can only be gained in hindsight, while simultaneously claiming a "retreat from empiricism." Whacky. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 16, 2007 6:01 PM | Permalink I wrote earlier: Some in the Bush coalition are talking to others, and I am commenting on that. Since this is the last thing that warbloggers want to discuss, they just read that story out of my post. For illustration: Confederate Yankee reads it like that. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 16, 2007 6:18 PM | Permalink What's whacky is the puffery used to inflate Hussein into something more to be feared than he was. People that run and hide aren't very tough. Old shells lost from the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War are not stockpiles deleberately hidden for use later. They were old, deteriorated and long forgotten be it 2, the original find, 10 or the 500 discovered. Pathetic. Jay did that incident happen or not? It's obvious the right-bloggers don't think so, but are there facts enough to know? They think you're defending the AP and that's all they see. Jay, what do you think the Bush interviews this week on 60 Minutes and the News Hour mean for rollback? Even David Brooks now is a skeptic. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 16, 2007 9:50 PM | Permalink Jay did that incident happen or not? I can't say I know what happened on a given day of violence in Iraq. Here and here are posts that, together with their links, should allow you to make up your own mind, or at least determine what we know and don't. And if that doesn't help try here and here. They think you're defending the AP and that's all they see. True. But that's all they want to see. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 16, 2007 9:51 PM | Permalink "In the deepest reptilian folds of their brains, the Shiites are maneuvering amid the sectarian bloodbath all around," writes Brooks. "Instead of facing up to this core reality, the Bush administration has papered it over with salesmanship and spin." Rollback is dead strategically, yes. But is the Bush project in expanding executive power and establishing the legitimacy of unchecked forms of power novel to the Bush moment--as with the Office of Special Plans, where a policy could go to get validated when no other office would validate it--is that whole thing over? I doubt it. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 16, 2007 10:23 PM | Permalink Thanks. I'll go through them when I get time. And yes, that's all they want to see, indeed. Hang tough. Well, from here it looks like a clear case of US Military propaganda. As embarassing as that is to say. As for the right-wing bloggers, just more military jingoism in the flesh. Last refuge of scoundrels and all that. Because you see partisan blogging is propaganda by definition. The facts determine what is true, or not. Old shells lost from the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War are not stockpiles deleberately [sic] hidden for use later. Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence. You cannot make a logical leap from finding chemical shells concealed in the desert via bulldozer, in direct violation of the terms of the cease fire and the UNSC resolutions, to concluding that they were not deliberately hidden for use later. They were certainly deliberately hidden. Someone put them there, and then someone moved the earth over them. They didn't do it for no reason. Nobody had a motive to do it for no reason. You also cannot conclude, from the facts, that there was no intent to use later. If there was no intent to use them later, why not simply destroy them and get the sanctions lifted? You also can conclude nothing from the fact that the shells were from the Iran-Iraq war. That is NOT old for ordnance. The Air Force is lousy with F-16s that predate the Iran-Iraq war. Much of the Army's fleet of 2 1/2 ton trucks dates from the early 80s and before. In 1990, I was flying in helicopters that were built in 1968. THe chemical agents had lost their potency - but once you have the know how, it is relatively easy to quickly produce the agents. It is rather more difficult to sprout the industry needed to precision manufacture ballistically correct artillery and mortar rounds. You still have not pointed to any language in the cease fire providing for a grandfather clause allowing Iraq to keep 1980s era WMD. Go ahead. We're waiting. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 17, 2007 12:54 AM | Permalink The minute we found out they didn't have weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so. GWB, Sunday. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 17, 2007 1:09 AM | Permalink Here's the passage in Bob Woodward's "State of Denial" on the successful effort to get Jay Garner to terminate Tom Warrick [p. 127]: Rumsfeld: "Jay," he said, looking up. "Do you have a couple people on your team named Warrick and O'Sullivan?" "Yeah," Garner replied. "I've got a guy named Tom Warrick who did the 'Future of Iraq' study and I got a gal named Meghan O'Sullivan, who's a real talented young lady." Posted by: Lisa Williams at January 17, 2007 2:40 AM | Permalink "Well, is there an explanation at least?" asked Garner. "Interagency pissing contest," Rumsfeld replied. "Ah, so that's it," said Garner. "Well, at least it's for a good reason. They're going to be hard to replace, though." "I knew you'd understand," said the Secretary. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 17, 2007 9:01 AM | Permalink In further reply to Publius's question, this comes from someone whose knowledge of Iraq and fairness about journalism I respect... From Romenesko letters: From BOB BATEMAN: Eric Boehlert is right to take the bloggers (overwhelmingly of the political right) to task for going too far in their castigation and insinuations regarding the AP's source, Iraqi police captain Jamil Hussein. But he himself goes too far in exonerating the AP, as have a few others.... Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 17, 2007 9:30 AM | Permalink It's even worse. Jamil Hussein is, or at least was, a police captain in a single precinct in Baghdad. That is now well known. No. There is no Jamil Hussein. We do have someone with a totally different name, Jamil Ghdaab Ghlaim, however. But he denies being the source. Arabic names are tricky, though. But the AP still has not come up with the goods in any sort of reliable way. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 17, 2007 10:42 AM | Permalink The minute we found out they didn't have weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so. GWB, Sunday. Jay, You DO know the difference between a fact and an assertion, don't you? We already know that some 500 chemical munitions were dug up, dozens of chem munitions were turned over to the Poles. 17 more chemical 122mm rockets were found in January 2003. So it's established that Iraq DID retain WMD. Just not in the quantity expected. W's statement is dispositive of nothing. You have a bad habit of arguing from authority, when available facts already establish otherwise. That's why every post you write these days is about something someone else wrote about what they heard from a third source. God forbid Ricks or changes his mind about something. You wouldn't know WHAT to think! People will spin nine ways from sunday. Garner and Bremer will BOTH spin like crazy, because both are human. Look at the facts. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 17, 2007 11:12 AM | Permalink Jay, Even if that wasn't necessarily your *intention* (having a debate), I think these 2 threads have been very lively! and it does seem to have had something to do with arguing opposite points of view... Wouldn't you like Kristen and the others (and new people, of course) to come to your blog (and bring their different views with them) and debate? Delia P.S. I'd definitely consider that: just announce a debate on something that would be of interest to them...(maybe a week ahead of time so people can plan for it) D. "THe chemical agents had lost their potency" Admissible as to age and potency imminent threat status as per orders to the inspectors. Planes, frequently older based on maintenence are not comparable to explosive ordinances. Moreover, they had no operable planes from which to employ this small "missing" stock. These were lost from the 1980's. They didn't even know they were there by this time. You have a logic problem that wouldn't pass a West Point freshman class. Produce the document ordering these to be buried? The burden is on you. I don't see how rank is all-determining as to source credibility. With no centralized communications structure only eye witnesses could coroborate stories. And in this case they did. Say it isn't true? Are we to conclude there is no violence in Baghdad. Who's killing all these people? "W's statement is dispositive of nothing." Jason seems upset that the president has concluded that a bunch of empty tin cans found in the desert do NOT constitute weapons of mass destruction. But that's not all bad. At the very least, we've moved Jason to the position of the majority of the electorate -- that the president of the United States is a flat-out baldfaced liar. My work here is done. ;-) Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 17, 2007 4:28 PM | Permalink Admissible as to age and potency imminent threat status as per orders to the inspectors. Huh???
Holy crap! You don't think explosives have a shelf life???? (Rolling eyes) Moreover, they had no operable planes from which to employ this small "missing" stock. Ummm...let me put this gently: You don't need a plane to employ chemical munitions. Actually, a binary weapon probably wouldn't work if air-dropped. All you need is a mortar. Actually, you don't even need that. You can set them off with a cell phone and some tape and wire and a blasting cap - especially if they aren't binary. These were lost from the 1980's. Right. Nobody knew where they were and that's how they found out where to dig. You have a logic problem that wouldn't pass a West Point freshman class. You know, you shouldn't be slinging "logic problem" charges around if you don't even have the informational foundation to know that ordinance is still lethal after decades and that Iraqi chem ordinance is not neccessarily aerial-delivered. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 17, 2007 5:31 PM | Permalink 10,000 tons of shovels and other equipment intended for the mining of lead ore had not been accounted for, clearly evidence that Saddam had planned to manufacture bullets as soon as the sanctions were lifted. A senior Defense Department official noted that the lead could also be used in the production of glaze for clay pottery, which could cause insanity in unsuspecting victims. Several shovels from the 1970s turned up beneath a pile of old prayer mats in a rural mosque outside Samara. Vindication! Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 17, 2007 6:15 PM | Permalink They still could be hidden like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm. Wait, that was Libya. Isn't Libya in the Mideast? Harboring killers and Al Qaeda? Involved in 9/11? Saddam prolly smuggled those WMDs to Libya. Let's attack Libya. Why do you all keep talking to Jason Van Nutjob? I know it's a free speech zone, but enough already. Listen to W's advice when you deal with Jason. "Fool me once, shame on you. um ... a fooled man can't get fooled again." Mr. Simon, Take it up with the members of the ISG. After all, they concluded that Saddam DID have WMD ambitions once the sanctions were over - in part for the reasons I set forth already. My standard of proof is pretty low: All I have to do is establish that Saddam was in violation of the terms of the cease fire to establish cassus belli. That's pretty easy. That's established with the first WMD that Saddam failed to account for and destroy. And we have hundreds. You, on the other hand, would have to establish that Saddam was not in material breach of the terms of the cease fire. Not an easy row to hoe, when that conclusion is precisely the opposite of the conclusions of the CIA, DoD, ISG, Congress, Senator Clinton, the entire UN Security Council, and both Democrat and Republican administrations. Your analogy, therefore, doesn't hold. After all, we are not talking about retained stocks of lead, but a buried centrifuge and hundreds of chemical rounds. Chemical munitions are not like lead, in that they do not have a dual use. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 17, 2007 8:17 PM | Permalink Yes, I'm certain if found, they could have extracted the degraded chemicals and turn them into poison letter bombs. Of course with the degraded potency they'd need bigger envelopes. Avon Calling! Yeah that buried centrifuge and a handful of bolts again. It's a Acme Nuke plant. Just add hot water. So as a literalist all they needed to find is any old shell laying around in the dirt. We get it: a legal absolute. My standard of proof is pretty low: All I have to do is establish that Saddam was in violation of the terms of the cease fire to establish cassus belli.(emphasis added) Exactly. This is why the case for the invasion of Iraq was complete dogshit. There was no threat there, just the threat of a threat were the sanctions to be lifted -- which they were not about to be. The bar was set with a hair trigger (to mix metaphors) because the war was pre-ordained -- which is what Paul O'Neill told us in Suskind's book. On this, brother Jason, we now appear to agree. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 17, 2007 9:00 PM | Permalink Publius: Yes, I'm certain if found, they could have extracted the degraded chemicals and turn them into poison letter bombs. Dude: We've been over this already. The chemicals are not as big a problem as the shells. Chemicals are easy to mix when you already know how. Acquiring the shells with a limited industrial base is rather more difficult. By the way - you still have not posted the grandfather clause that allows Iraq to keep any WMD they had prior to 1991. Still waiting. Yeah that buried centrifuge and a handful of bolts again. It's a Acme Nuke plant. Just add hot water. So as a literalist all they needed to find is any old shell laying around in the dirt. We get it: a legal absolute. That is all that is needed to show that Saddam had not complied. In actuality, we have quite a bit more than that, as the ISG found. There was no threat there, An assertion not grounded in fact. Actually, that's not even an assertion, that's an opinion. But there WAS a threat, in that there was a possibility that Iraq would pass its technology on to Al Qaeda or other nonstate actors (i.e., Hamas) through all kinds of ties and connections with Al Qaeda and other terrorists. There was also the possibility that Iraq would pass on the weapons themselves to terrorists - not an unreasonable possibility, since we knew at the time that Saddam was A.) threatening, in so many words, to "burn half of Israel, B.) Had been willing to use them on his own people before, C.) Was providing shelter and succor to known terrorists, including ones which had killed Americans, and including one of the two masterminds behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, D.) That Hussein had exploded a dirty bomb in 1988 already, E.) That Hussein had dispatched one of his best nuke honchos to Niger, for no apparent reason. F.) Saddam had also already attempted to assassinate a U.S. President. Even if you could establish that Saddam had come to Jeebus and turned over a new leaf thanks to a Road to Damascus moment, well, that's a load of crap, too, because Saddam's ongoing obstruction of the sanctions regime made that impossible to determine except in hindsight - not a valid criteria with which to assess a decision, which can only be done using information reasonably available at the time.
Oh, Christ on a crotch rocket. Are you living in fantasyland? Sanctions were beginning to fall apart as far back as 1998, forcing Clinton to agree to a number of compromises to his policy of pursuing regime change in Iraq. Really, did you forget your history so soon? What's more, you have wholly overlooked this language from the Iraq Survey Group report: # The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development. # By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999. It just doesn't get any clearer than that. Honestly, you guys are having to overlook a breathtaking array of information. In other news, Benon Sevan has just been indicted for his role in corrupting the Oil For Food program and undermining the sanctions program, for a paltry $160,000 bribe. Other officials, including a British MP and a French cabinet member, rolled over for much less. Further, I saw with my own eyes brand new heavy industrial equipment, still shrinkwrapped, from European manufacturers such as Thuyssen - Krupp (whole escalators) sitting in the Baghdad airport in 2003. If you are operating under the illusion that the sanctions against Iraq were solid, you are pretty out of it. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 17, 2007 10:02 PM | Permalink Publius: Say it isn't true? Are we to conclude there is no violence in Baghdad. Who's killing all these people? Once again, the Left falls back upon the "fake but accurate" standard of journalism. The narrative, that Iraq is a complete disaster, is already set. The truth of any specific instance -- or even 61 such instances -- is secondary to the larger narrative "truth" demanded by Bush Derangement Syndrome. So who is empirically challenged? Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 17, 2007 10:50 PM | Permalink There was no threat there, just the threat of a threat were the sanctions to be lifted -- which they were not about to be.
Oh, and did you really forget the findings of the Iraq Survey Group? # By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999. Doesn't get any clearer than that, does it? Once again, to quote Bill Clinton, "Better put some ice on that." In other news, Benon Sevan was indicted today for undermining the Iraq sanctions at the highest levels of the UN, in return for a paltry 160k dollar bribe. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 18, 2007 1:28 AM | Permalink Laura Rozen on the Office of the Vice President: He has long surrounded himself with impeccably loyal aides who both share his worldview of a powerful presidency unchecked by the legislative branch, and who have also installed like-minded allies throughout the government. Such allies provide crucial intelligence of inter-departmental debates, enabling Cheney to make end-runs around the bureaucracy and head off opposing views at key meetings. Call it Cheney's state within the state. Make sure you pump that unvetted intelligence from Feith's office right into the bureaucracy. Even if 1% of it is right, then we are justified... Posted by: JJWFromME at January 18, 2007 7:47 AM | Permalink JJW, do you still consider Karen Kwiatkowski a reliable source? Did you "grapple" with the Senate report? I'd also recommend you research Robin Raphel's State Department efforts in Afghanistan (Keywords: UNOCAL and Taliban) and this NYT article on Iraq. Posted by: Tim at January 18, 2007 6:18 PM | Permalink Retired Generals Criticize Bush's Plan for Iraq. In the interest of dot connection, are we wondering enough about military? We have had what would appear to be a complacent group of commanders who have allowed themselves to be ruled by their civilian leaders with the only officials speaking out critically being safely retired generals. Will it continue as such? There is a history the military balking at orders -- recently with Bill Clinton fumbling the issue of gays in service; going back further to the issues surrounding General MacArthur. Vietnam, remember, was marked by a significant amount of "fragging" -- soldiers on patrol whacking their commanding officers. With the amount of incompetence this administration has displayed as it fails to listen to its field officers yet implicitly blames its commanders for the "mistakes that have been made," will the military simply follow? What else can they be doing? What else could they be doing? Posted by: wif at January 18, 2007 6:28 PM | Permalink I'd also like to recommend some additional reading on "Phase IV" planning. Shaping the Plan for Operation Iraqi Freedom: The Role of Military Intelligence Assessments Posted by: Tim at January 18, 2007 6:30 PM | Permalink JJW, do you still consider Karen Kwiatkowski a reliable source? Glad you're reading my links. You can read Packer and Ricks and they confirm much of what Kwiatkowski was saying. The link you sent doesn't go into much detail about her testimony, other than the fact that they asked her some specific questions and she gave them specific answers. I'd have to see an actual transcript to form an opinion. As for Robin Raphel, that NYT story doesn't say very much. The wisdom of top-to-bottom de-Baathification is something that Ricks questions pretty effectively in Fiasco. (It's interesting to see Chalabi involved. Not sure what his angle is here...) Posted by: JJWFromME at January 18, 2007 7:37 PM | Permalink I am completely disgusted with all of you. The right accuses the press of incompetence. The left -- well George Bush is even more incompetent so there! The generals in charge at the time screwed up by failing to plan adequately for reconstruction. George Bush screwed up by listening to the generals in charge and failing to get new ones when there plans failed. There were a lot of good reasons for getting rid of Saddam Hussein. WMDs were just one of many. Saddam spirited the core of his WMD capability to Syria. Note, it is the WMD capability that is important and the willingness to use same, not how many he actually had. Now that Abizaid has stepped down, Pretreaus will get his chance to deal with the factional fighting. Hopefully he will recognize that Syria and Iran are a significant contributors to the problem and deal with them accordingly. If he fails, get rid of him and keep throwing generals at the problem until they get it right. As for the press, I eagerly await the destruction of the current media business model and await its replacement. The press is the ally of our enemies and the key to terrorist victory. It is a shame that they do not recognize it. Posted by: Dave at January 18, 2007 7:39 PM | Permalink JJ: Jay's ok, right? (he usually doesn't leave this "unattended" for this long...) D. Posted by: Delia at January 18, 2007 7:53 PM | Permalink Note, it is the WMD capability that is important and the willingness to use same, not how many he actually had. Bingo. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 18, 2007 8:04 PM | Permalink There was no threat there, just the threat of a threat were the sanctions to be lifted -- which they were not about to be. Are you living in fantasyland? Further up in this thread you were accepting the findings of the ISG report as credible. But now you are completely ignoring that same report! From the Key Findings section of the Duelfer Report: # The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development. Wow. That was under Clinton's watch. Good job, Bill! I can personally attest, as an eyewitness, to a number of heavy industry components from Europe, still shrinkwrapped, sitting in the Baghdad Airport in May of 2003. Example: Whole escalator assemblies from Thuyssen-Krupp. Put my hands on them myself and looked at the shipping labels. Sanctions weren't collapsing, my @$$!!! Hell, Congress was figuring that out by 1998. In other news, Benon Sevan was indicted yesterday for selling out the oil for food program and taking bribes to undercut the UN sanctions regime. Who's Benon Sevan? Only the head of the entire UN Oil For Food program. The contention that the sanctions were secure is simply absurd in light of the testimony of Colin Powell, the findings of the ISG commission, the known corruption of the Oil for Food program at the very highest levels, and the known facts on the ground.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 18, 2007 8:17 PM | Permalink JJW: You can read Packer and Ricks and they confirm much of what Kwiatkowski was saying. Can you tell me the names of Packer's and Ricks' sources that confirm Kwiatkowski? Posted by: Tim at January 18, 2007 9:08 PM | Permalink JJW: I'd have to see an actual transcript to form an opinion. Wouldn't the same be true, then, for Robin Raphel? Posted by: Tim at January 18, 2007 9:30 PM | Permalink wif: "We have had what would appear to be a complacent group of commanders who have allowed themselves to be ruled by their civilian leaders. Will it continue as such? There is a history the military balking at orders... Vietnam, remember, was marked by a significant amount of "fragging" -- soldiers on patrol whacking their commanding officers." wif appears to be calling for a military coup -- is that the new platform of the Left? Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 18, 2007 9:31 PM | Permalink Publius: [re: the AP's "Jamil Hussein" stories] Say it isn't true? Are we to conclude there is no violence in Baghdad. Who's killing all these people? Once again we see the Left's embrace of the "fake but accurate" doctrine. Nevermind whether the reports are at all credible -- as long as they fit the larger, "narrative truth" that Iraq is a complete debacle. This, from the "reality-based community"? Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 18, 2007 9:37 PM | Permalink Nothing less than the usurpation of civilian authority. I don't put anything past these people anymore. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 19, 2007 12:53 AM | Permalink Can you tell me the names of Packer's and Ricks' sources that confirm Kwiatkowski? Well let's get everyone on the record about these things. Wilkerson, Raphel, Kwiatkowski, whoever. Let's hold hearings and find out what happened. Oh, wait. We haven't been able to. Because the Republicans have been stonewalling the investigation. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 19, 2007 7:16 AM | Permalink Perhaps a starting point for some suggested reading, wif? Posted by: Kristen at January 19, 2007 7:30 AM | Permalink That's right, Kristen. In our society we don't use bullets, we use ballots to resolve our issues. And according to the ballots, the Republicans are no longer in charge of intelligence investigations. ;-D Posted by: JJWFromME at January 19, 2007 9:49 AM | Permalink The "these people" language is a good clue, as well, but you know you've touched bottom in a thread when "neuro-conservative," the most ideological poster to appear with any regularity on these boards, the hardest of the hard core, and the one closest to a paid propagandist (though I don't think he is paid, he merely sounds like it) starts up with his mindless attacks on "the left," as he's done and will continue to do. Discourse-wise, it is the abandon hope, all ye who enter here moment. Spam is a more welcome sight. Accordingly, I will leave this thread open for a few hours--get your last aggressively mind-numbing attacks on "the left" in, folks--and then I will wrap it up. Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 19, 2007 10:56 AM | Permalink Many thanks for the kind words, Jay. But the premise of this entire thread is fundamentally misdirected. Our press is broken, and its reportage on the war is fatally flawed. Its pressthink is "stuck on stupid," in an early '70's timewarp, where the Pentagon is the enemy, the "5 o'clock follies" are propaganda to be dismissed. At the same time, anonymous and pseudonymous stringers, many of them ex-Baathists with ties to the terrorists, are given carte blanche to shape our perceptions of the battlefield. Our able men and women in the armed services, volunteers all, serve heroically but are vilified as torturers and worse. Our casualty rates, which are one-tenth of those in Vietnam, and are less than those sustained in a single day at Okinawa, are ghoulishly hyped by the likes of Ted Koppel. The reportage of dedicated embeds such as Michael Yon, Bill Roggio, and Michael Fumento, who paint a picture of a difficult, but winnable struggle, are ignored. But I suppose you would rather talk about Agnew. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 19, 2007 11:43 AM | Permalink Again, Jay, you don't bother engaging on facts. At ALL. You're trying to read something into "these people," and you're building your entire edifice on hearsay - and failing to defend it on a factual basis when the facts themselves - at least as represented in the primary documents - are brought to bear against your argument. You are more comfortable talking in abstractions, and synthesising arguments. But because your argument is not grounded in fact, your synthesis fails. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 19, 2007 12:12 PM | Permalink Ooops... I wrote the same rough content three times, when successive posts didn't take for some reason. I apologize for the triple post above. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 19, 2007 12:17 PM | Permalink Thanks for the links, Jason. Interesting, the assertion that Saddam was "within striking distance" of ending the sanctions in late 1999, and 3 1/2 years later, they were still in place, if being undermined by corruption in the Oil for Food program. Also, in the article wherein Powell tells us the sanctions are being undermined, he also says: "One model we are looking at is to keep Saddam from developing weapons of mass destruction. And we're also undertaking a fuller review of other things that can be done to promote a regime change." That's in March, 2001. It doesn't exactly undermine my assertion that the war was preordained. Or the main valid point, which is that Paul O'Neill told Ron Suskind that the Bush Administration brought up war with Iraq at its very first cabinet meeting. That would be January, 2001. And here you are giving me a quote from Powell five, six weeks later, that confirms it. You are offering it as proof of how wrong I am on the smaller point (the sanctions were in danger -- point ceded!) while proving me correct on the larger point. Bud, if you could get over yourself and your warrior-against-these-godless-"journo"-dumdums mode, you might note that we agree on an awful lot. I happen to agree that the status quo was untenable, that there were good reasons to go to war (for example, a generation of Iraqi children dead or starving, and blaming the US and its sanctions regime). But the case they chose to congeal the nation around this invasion was bullshit -- and that's why they've lost the country. Because everyone knows it was bullshit now. Well, almost everyone. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 19, 2007 12:27 PM | Permalink Kinda tough to "preordain" a war that requires congressional authority, isn't it? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 19, 2007 12:45 PM | Permalink But the case they chose to congeal the nation around this invasion was bullshit -- and that's why they've lost the country. So Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Edward Kennedy, and the French and Italian intelligence services were all lying? And how, pray tell, was this knowable in 2001-2002? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 19, 2007 12:48 PM | Permalink In those days, Congress would have supported Bush beheading a baby chicken on live TV if he invoked the holy name of 9/11. Congressional approval was just a formality, as was the attempt at UN approval. And how, pray tell, was this knowable in 2001-2002? Because there was no evidence. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 19, 2007 1:07 PM | Permalink So Bateman is now qualifying Boehlert's challenge to rightwing bloggers' ongoing attempt to rollback the Associated Press--to challenge the AP's authority and legitimacy. Bateman's points are well taken. Yet his discussion is strangely divorced from the stark and unappetizing alternatives facing the AP or anyone else attempting to report in a country where it is now dangerous for even Iraqi reporters to travel through the territory of other religious groups let alone for American reporters to get out and about. It strikes me that it would be much more useful for Bateman or some other interested journalistic professional to map the sourcing practices of all major media outlets in Baghdad than to carry on about preferred best practices that verge on wishful thinking in the anarchy that has now descended on Iraq's capital. This would show us where the AP falls on the continuum of all its major competitors. The vast majority of "news" reported in US outlets coming out of Baghdad for the last several years has been little more than transcriptions of Pentagon press releases, and in the case of Fox, fiction from the American Enterprise Institute. More lately the focus has shifted to insiders such as John McCain and Joe Lieberman, figures sadly "informed" by the same bad information, but this time planted in the Iraqi press by Pentagon propaganda operations. Any serious investigation of reporting in Baghdad has to challenge the authority and legitimacy of the Pentagon as a source when it explicitly declares itself to be involved in an information war. The Pentagon's consistent and systematic distortions of events in Iraq over the last three years make the AP look like a model for us all. Measured by past performance over the last three years, it would be quite an accomplishment for Jamail Hussein's credibility to descend to the level of the established and predictable distortion of Pentagon spokespeople. When that day comes we will know that we have to discount AP stories as systematically as we must discount Pentagon spin if we are ever to know what is happening in Iraq. Taking information from the Pentagon as a challenge to be investigated rather than as the answer to a question is the unavoidable starting point for serious reporting in Iraq. Taking competitors' narratives based on Pentagon spin as a starting point for challenging the AP's reporting is to challenge potentially inaccurate reports on the grounds of knowingly distorted data. How much of what the AP's competitors are printing is simply a transcription of the bad info from the Pentagon? What are the sourcing practices of all the major news services in Baghdad? How do they compare to those of the AP? Just running with the Pentagon spin of the day is not reporting. What are the real world alternatives at this point? Bateman isn't much help on this front. Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 19, 2007 1:07 PM | Permalink Lots of irrelevant assertions. Number of facts cited: zero. Par for the course for this place. At any rate, you're arguing that the Pentagon has a pro-Pentagon bias. Genius. All sources have a pro-themselves bias. The Pentagon, CENTCOM, and the Iraq HQ and the brigade and division PAOs are as legitimate a source as any other source in Iraq. To suggest that they are less legitimate than man-on-the-street interviews (Greg Packer, call your office!) with people of uncertain or undetermined loyalties is ridiculous. The Pentagon's biases are not at issue. We all know that Pentagon spokespeople have natural, built-in biases that warrant being checked with others as part of the reporting process. No one - NO ONE is arguing otherwise here. However, one look at the AP's own editorial policies settles the issue: The AP screwed up. There is no Jamil Gholaim Hussein police captain in Baghdad. There's a Jamil Gholaim NOT HUSSEIN, but he denies being the source. That's not even the worst of it: Where are the burnt-down mosques? Arguing that the AP's lousy methodology is ok because it's the same lousy methodology everyone else uses is a pretty useless argument. Yes, reporting in Iraq is tough. But disclosing your lousy methodology, for the purposes of perpetuating a culture of verification, is easy. Once you pull your head out of your ass, that is. It would have been easy for the AP to disclose Jamil's actual name when arguing that he exists, or to get his name right in the story, or to double check his existence, or to disclose that this police captain could have no personal knowledge of the event except through hearsay, and that the event wasn't even in his jurisdiction, but 7 miles away. That much was known to the AP at publication. They chose to bury that knowledge from the public. And when they blew the story, they refused to issue a correction, DESPITE THEIR OWN EDITORIAL POLICIES. That was their choice too. It was only then that people started to question Jamil's existence. I believe that Jamil Gholaim NOT HUSSEIN is probably the AP's source, even though he denies it now. But that excuses or explains NONE of the AP's behavior to this point.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 19, 2007 1:35 PM | Permalink Accordingly, I will leave this thread open for a few hours--get your last aggressively mind-numbing attacks on "the left" in, folks--and then I will wrap it up. does this mean I can't compose one of my mind-numbing rebuttals from "the left"? ;) Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 19, 2007 2:04 PM | Permalink "Nevermind whether the reports are at all credible -- as long as they fit the larger, "narrative truth" that Iraq is a complete debacle. This, from the "reality-based community"?" Well yes it is. Eye witnesses verify the story. Just because you don't accept the source and need it for YOUR master narrative doesn't mean it wasn't valid. What wingnuts don't understand is just saying something doesn't make it true. It either is or isn't. So even if you toss out this story on its face, the violence is the true narrative base thet fact that it IS true? Or is it really a happy Fizzies party? I think not. "Michael Fumento" Pffftt... the anti-global warming shill. Yeah like that's a neutral source on any subject. Some very interesting stuff from Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times: An editor of The Economist in the 1950s once advised his journalists to "simplify, then exaggerate". This formula is almost second nature for newspaper columnists and can make for excellent reading. But it is a lousy guide to the making of foreign policy... Journalists are a vital part of a neo-con network that formulated and sold the ideas that took the US to war in Iraq and that is now pressing for confrontation with Iran. The links between journalists, think-tanks and decision-makers in the neo-con world are tight and there is plenty of movement from one area to the other... Neo-conservative columnists have tended to follow the trial lawyers' approach to expertise. First, decide what you want to argue, then find an expert who agrees with you. The current debacle in Iraq is what you get when you turn op-ed columns into foreign policy. To me, Karen Kwiatkowski's piece about Feith's office sounds an awful lot like how people would operate at a press-spinning think tank... Posted by: JJWFromME at January 19, 2007 4:09 PM | Permalink Publius -- You are precisely missing the point. You state that "Eye witnesses verify the story," but the AP's source for 61 single-sourced stories could not possibly have been an eyewitness. This does not mean that Iraq is a "happy Fizzies party," it just means that you a little more of that much-vaunted nuance when considering Iraq policy. Oh, and Michael Fumento has "eyewitnessed" a lot more of Iraq than you ever have. In fact, he left his colon in Ramallah. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 19, 2007 5:01 PM | Permalink JJ -- If you think that the problem with journalism is that it is too slanted towards neo-conservatives, then you are truly living on another planet. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 19, 2007 5:03 PM | Permalink I don't know about Fumento's innards, only whom he works for. Eyewitnesses verfied the AP story, in addition to the original source in the police department. Don't they count? Apparently not in Wingerville: the proverbial "other planet." Journalism isn't slanted toward neo-conservatives. Policy is. And how is that policy working out, anyway? Posted by: JJWFromME at January 19, 2007 5:10 PM | Permalink Eye witnesses verify the story. Name them. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 19, 2007 5:11 PM | Permalink OK, I'm going to get my last kicks in ... Jay Rosen and JJW continue to obsessively march into their full retreat from empiricism. The culture war narrative of a "phantom," "imaginary" and "virtually non-existent" plan marches on - spirits be gone!. Posted by: Tim at January 19, 2007 6:30 PM | Permalink Wow. This thread's devolution from discourse to finger jabbing and name-calling sure was swift. Depressing. Not so much the name calling (that's just sort of boring and unoriginal) as the persistent absolutism. Lots of certainty, not so much insight. Posted by: MK at January 19, 2007 7:15 PM | Permalink Some of the "phantoms" in Ricks' book: Lt. Gen Kellogg: "there was no plan... The thought was, you didn't need it. The assumption was everything would be fine after the war." There are other sourced references to Phase IV in Ricks' book. You're welcome to take a look. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 19, 2007 7:18 PM | Permalink The government should organize easy access to Medline and Health topics, medical dictionaries, directories and publications. WBR LeoP JJ -- Your sources are contradicted by the interview with Gen. Garner that has already been cited a few times in this thread. He explicitly states that the postwar planning had already been going on for months when he was called in Jan 2003. You "empiricists" seem to forget that major concerns at the time, as Garner reminds us, included Saddam igniting the oilfields, massive flows of refugees, outbreaks of cholera, and the like. All of these were avoided by the rapid strike plan of General Franks. On the other hand, as in any war, other problems emerged. I can only be glad that you and your carping, adolescent ilk were nowhere near the planning for D-Day. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 19, 2007 7:41 PM | Permalink Incidentally, perhaps the best "eyewitnesses" to the events in Iraq are our troops in action. I try to read their correspondence on the milblogs nearly every day. In general, their morale seems pretty good, and their biggest complaint is uniformly the unfair coverage of the media. I have never seen it discussed here, but I think it is a relevant point -- most soldiers in Iraq despise the media and consider their slanted reports to be amongst the biggest drains on morale. Don't you find that the least bit disturbing, as they risk their necks so that you can sit here and whine on some blog? Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 19, 2007 7:47 PM | Permalink He explicitly states that the postwar planning had already been going on for months when he was called in Jan 2003. Yes, the state department spent millions on planning. But where did that go? (Reread Jay's post.) Evidently, it didn't go to those soldiers quoted above. Sounds like those soldiers were left high and dry. George Packer has more on this subject. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 19, 2007 7:54 PM | Permalink Here are my unclassified primary sources for the planning I saw, at the links on the bottom. My take on postwar planning is that the links between State and Defense were and are too weak, and that we got strategically surprised such that there was no way a DART team could do anything useful. Jay, over the last few years I've developed a much more informed attitude towards the press...and I've switched away from sources I used to consume because they're not as credible to me. Not that they are more or less fitting my ideology, but that they are less credible. I've seen active lying, not spinning but actual untruths, printed as gossip; narrative framing that ignores the whole story; credulous acceptance of information fires relayed as truth; and opinion journalism haughtily issued from On High as dispassionate and unbiased fact. The military folks learned from the Follies, and have some people outside their organization checking continually for opportunities to trumpet discoveries of falsehoods or lapses. I may not be alone, if the reduced profits from the sources I don't look at any more is due to this--I'm sure that's not the only reason, but it's one of them. Just a single data point, but perhaps worth thinking about. "Name them" Ah they're in the linked stories Jay posted. I assume you can read, just not recognize data you don't like, and thus, make it go away by virtue of collective decree that the sources never existed in the first place. The milbloggers only see what's directly in front of them. They can't see the whole country at once. Anyway you cut it, the place is a mess. To see otherwise is pure delusion. JJW, Thank you! Finally, a give and take. You can read Ike Wilson's paper yourself. It's a great read! I'll only quibble at this time with footenote 6 on page 15 (Jay'll love that!). Eclipse II is missing. Please, keep those links coming! Posted by: Tim at January 19, 2007 8:58 PM | Permalink Great links, Chap. It is amazing that the sophisticates here can't see that they're being played by a bunch of savages. That our hearts and minds are the key battleground, and that the tactics of terror are designed to inspire the very feelings of defeat and self-loathing that come so easily to the children of Vietnam. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 19, 2007 9:05 PM | Permalink "very feelings of defeat and self-loathing that come so easily to the children of Vietnam." False cause fallacy. No self-loathing here pal, just common sense. Explain to me how smart it would have been to take on the Chinese indefinitely which is what Viet Nam was really about? A false line in the jungle. Of course I'm old enough to have had a draft number so... No Iraqi ever came here with boxcutters sent from Bush family friend bin Laden. They're burden is theirs: age age old local strife we can't fix with military might and borrowed money. You just aren't sharp enough to see it for the cliched false comparisions. Common opinion is like that. I can think of a couple million people who might differ with your assessment of what Vietnam was all about. And I think the overwhelming majority of Iraqi citizens, who came out to vote three times, would probably disagree with your assessment of Iraq's prospects. Your comment about the lack of Iraqi hijackers on 9/11 is so foolish and concrete-minded that it is difficult to know how to respond. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 19, 2007 9:43 PM | Permalink Or perhaps you just don't think that brown and yellow peoples are capable of, or worthy of, democracy and liberty? Posted by: Neuro-conservative at January 19, 2007 9:44 PM | Permalink I was barely a toddler during Viet Nam. So I can't share your nostalgia. Posted by: JJWFromME at January 19, 2007 9:48 PM | Permalink |
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