As we pass the 14th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, its chief progenitor is suddenly beloved by the mainstream media again.
Every time former President George W. Bush pops up somewhere these days, media pundits gush about how good he looks now, compared to Donald Trump. Recently, for instance, he described himself — and was dutifully portrayed as — a great supporter of the free press.
“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy,” he told NBC’s Matt Lauer in early March. “That we need the media to hold people like me to account. I mean, power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.”
The same week, he similarly assured a gushing daytime talk show host Ellen DeGeneres that “I’m a big believer in free press.”
But in reality, Bush was anything but a friend of the press during his presidency. Maybe he didn’t demonize it as much as Trump does — but he actively manipulated it and bullied it far worse and far more effectively than Trump has, much of it in the service of selling his marquee policy: the war in Iraq.
That illegal war destabilized Iraq and took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the lives of over 4,000 American soldiers — many more in both countries continue to live with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, among other war wounds. Over the course of the conflict, the United States has spent over $2 trillion.
And although Trump is trying hard to delegitimize the press, which is highly dangerous and not to be underestimated, there’s little evidence his behavior is getting the press to back away from its accountability mission — like Bush did.
George W. Bush speaks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library as he promotes his upcoming book “Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors” in Simi Valley, Calif., on March 1.
Photo: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
The Run-Up to War
By far the biggest and most tragic example of Bush making of mockery of the free press was the cascade of lies he and Dick Cheney told — and got away with — in the run-up to war in Iraq.
Almost all of the American mainstream media was cowed by the nationalistic fervor expressed by Bush in his November 2001 invocation that the nations of the world are “either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” The White House attacked those who raised too many questions as unpatriotic; newsroom leaders and their corporate masters were afraid of appearing out of step with the country.
There were plenty of what Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway calls “alternative facts” in the pattern of manipulation and deceit Bush used to build his case for the war in Iraq.
Among major print outlets, only Knight Ridder Newspapers, which today is part of McClatchy, aggressively challenged the case for war. “There wasn’t any reporting in the rest of the press corps, there was stenography,” John Walcott, who worked with Knight Ridder at the time, would later say. “The administration would make an assertion, people would make an assertion, people would write it down as if it were true, and put it in the newspaper or on television.”
Bush White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan would himself later write that the war was sold with a “political propaganda campaign.” McClellan said the push to war was “all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage,” which is something the administration used the news media to do. “Through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers,” he wrote of the press’s role in the debacle. “Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it.”
“Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge,” the New York Times’ editors wrote in May 2004.
Egyptian journalists hold a banner supporting Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese national who was arrested by the U.S. military while working for Al Jazeera during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as they call for his freedom during a protest in front of their syndicate in Cairo in 2007.
Photo: Amr Nabil/AP
Demonizing Al Jazeera
President Trump has referred to mainstream television networks like CNN as the “enemy of the American people.”
But those are just words. By contrast, the Bush administration actively suppressed the one television network that was a thorn in its side during the initial phase of the war in Iraq.
Qatar-based Al Jazeera’s critical coverage of the invasions of Afghanistan and particularly of Iraq — featured in the documentary Control Room — set off a viperous reaction from the Bush administration. Trump complains of “fake news,” but Bush’s Pentagon falsely accused Al Jazeera of purposely staging scenes of civilian casualties in Iraq.
When the network obtained exclusive footage of videotaped addresses by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asked five major U.S. television networks to limit their coverage of the tapes. The New York Times called it “the first time in memory that the networks had agreed to a joint arrangement to limit their prospective news coverage.”
The administration also imprisoned an Al Jazeera journalist in Guantánamo Bay for several years, one of many innocent people who ended up at the camp.
Alongside this campaign of demonization and attempted suppression, the Bush administration bombed the network’s offices twice — ostensibly by accident. First, they struck the network’s bureau in Kabul in 2001, which destroyed the office but left the staff unharmed. In April 2003, a U.S. missile struck the Baghdad office, killing Al Jazeera cameraman Tarek Ayoub.
Author Ron Suskind, in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” suggests the Bush administration was not too upset following the bombing in Kabul. “Inside the CIA and White House,” he writes, “there was satisfaction that a message had been sent to Al Jazeera.”
In 2005, the Daily Mirror published the minutes of a 2004 meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, describing how the American president suggested bombing Al Jazeera headquarters in Qatar.
The memo suggests that Blair talked Bush out of it. But the Bush White House never directly denied the story.
Cowing the Press About Torture
When the American people learned that the U.S. government had set up a global network of secret prisons where it tortured detainees, the Bush administration set out to manage the media fallout by insisting that the brutal techniques that it had authorized — including waterboarding — were not torture.
“I’ve said to the people that we don’t torture, and we don’t,” Bush told interviewer Katie Couric in 2006. Vice President Dick Cheney referred to the torture techniques as an “alternative” form of interrogation, and Attorney General John Ashcroft also insisted that waterboarding isn’t torture.
The media went along with it. Mainstream outlets instead used the government’s euphemism, “enhanced interrogation,” or other more polite phrases rather than using the word torture.
New York Times Washington editor Doug Jehl in 2009 explained that because Bush didn’t call it torture, that made it a “matter of debate.” In 2011, executive editor Bill Keller said that referring to the CIA techniques as torture would be “polemical.” In 2014, the Times finally decided to finally call it torture — eight years after it let Bush tell the nation it wasn’t.
Punishing Skeptics and Leakers
The administration also took harsh steps to punish those who challenged its official narratives.
Recall the 2003 outing of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote a New York Times op-ed contradicting a false claim the Bush administration made about Iraq’s acquisition of uranium from Niger. The administration’s leak of her name to columnist Robert Novak was largely seen as payback for Wilson’s defiance.
There’s also the example of the groundbreaking New York Times story about Bush’s warrantless surveillance program. It was published in late 2005, even though it was ready for publication in the fall of 2004.
“We had the White House, at the highest levels, insisting that this program would harm national security were we to write about it,” the Times reporter who broke the story, Eric Lichtblau, later explained. “The concern from the editors was would we be … outing an operational program that was on a firm legal foundation, and they made the decision that we could not do that at that point.”
This successful intimidation removed a key scandal from the playing field right before an election that Bush only narrowly won.
The administration also pursued numerous cases against leakers under the Espionage Act. Although the prosecution was not completed until the Obama administration, it was the Bush administration that began the investigation into NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, a military veteran whose career prospects were ruined even though the espionage charges against him were eventually dropped.
Donald Trump talks with journalists during a rally on Sept. 9, 2015, in Washington.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
A Healthier Media Under Trump?
So far, Trump’s approach to the media has been to endlessly insult them — calling them everything from “fake news” to the enemies of the American people.
And White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held one press gaggle where he disinvited CNN and a few other outlets that have reported critically on the administration.
But the name-calling and other petty tactics have hardly cowed the American press. Unlike during the Bush years, the media has not been intimidated by the president’s outbursts. Instead — with a few exceptions, such as when the administration deploys anonymous sources to make terrorism-related claims — it has been emboldened. By being so adversarial to the press, Trump has made them more adversarial.
For example, when President Trump talks about possibly waterboarding detainees, the news media now has no problem referring to it as torture.
And while the news media compliantly repeated the Bush administration’s lies used to take the country to war in Iraq, Trump’s lies are more aggressively challenged, as the media has started to make fact-checking the president a major part of its operations.
The difference between how the two administrations dealt with the media is also illustrated in how they approached the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, a long-time D.C. tradition where the president, other political elite and the press corps and celebrity guests revel in each others’ company.
In late February, President Trump announced that he will not be attending.
Many interpreted the move as an attempt by Trump to further antagonize the media outlets who attend the event — which is very different than Bush’s approach, which was to cozy up to journalists.
But consider how in 2004, Bush narrated a series of pictures of him at the White House looking for the weapons of mass destruction he falsely claimed Iraq had — as the crowd of journalists and politicos laughed with him:
It’s much healthier for American journalism when the president is insulting journalists and refusing to play nice than making them laugh with him about a war based on lies.
Top photo: George W. Bush speaks with reporters during his presidential campaign. Bush won the 2000 presidential election against Vice President Al Gore after a controversial vote recount in Florida.
Back in the day when Al Jazeera was the bomb…now look at them…Quacky Bias Liars
True that. I’ll never forget how Bush and Cheney went out of their way to publicly humiliate Helen Thomas. Bush also destroyed the career of a fine seasoned journalist, Dan Rather, for presenting negative accusations about GWB’s avoiding military combat by using his father’s connections. Bush II’s disregard for authority was well known, but evidence gathered by CBS did not hold up to scrutiny. Foul play was suspected on the part of Bush’s protectors, but Rather was brought down, a loss to the public for effective investigative journalism. That was the point. The Bushies made an example of what happens to journalists who seriously confronted the Bush administration.
Once again, the poor Clintons get no credit for all of their hard work! Was it not during Clinton I’s reign that much of the media was distilled down into the present 6 companies who decide what is true and noteworthy?
You are right James. Also Reagan eliminated the Fairness doctrine in 1987, changing the quality of broadcasting ever since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine
There WERE WMDs! The media DID ITS JOB WELL!
Thank you!
There are no free media, there is no democracy, although there are true journalists that gather themselves and make projects like the intercept, but and investigative journalist groups can be infiltrated by the CIA.
The only difference between Bush and Trump is that Bush was supported by the CIA media, while Trump is attacked by the CIA media.
Considering Trump positioned DOD/CIA people in the government, to let them to make a business from the war, I expect they will stop to make media propaganda against Trump.
If they continue to misuse their media against Trump even after he gave them positions to make the war and to profit, they make propaganda with the aim to assassinate Trump and make a profit from the civil war. They got positions, they can rule America even without Trump.
The media are just tools for the fight between different billionaires and some of them (those who owns private military industry) have DOD/CIA working for them. All politically educated people know that DOD and CIA have their media.
In any case, it is good to see an article that compare behavior of Bush and Trump about media, but it is written with the presumption that American media are free and independent and “some evil president is trying to control free democratic media”. as I know, 6 companies owns all media in America and you can be sure, to make profit, they collaborate with the gov.
Man, you hear this bullshit they be talkin’
Every day, man
It’s like these motherfuckers is just like professional liars
YouknowwhatI’msayin? It’s wild
Listen
Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you,
Tell the truth, Bush knocked down the towers
I pledge no allegiance, fuck the president’s speeches
I’m baptized by America and covered in leeches
The dirty water that bleaches your soul and your facial features
Drownin’ you in propaganda that they spit through the speakers
And if you speak about the evil that the government does
The Patriot Act’ll track you to the type of your blood
This shit is run by fake Christians, fake politicians
Look at there mansions, then look at the conditions you live in
All they talk about is terrorism on television
They tell you to listen, but they don’t really tell you the mission
They funded Al-Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion
Even though Bin Laden, was a CIA tactician
They gave him billions of dollars, and they funded his purpose
Fahrenheit 9/11, that’s just scratchin’ the surface
They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam
But that’s bullshit, I’ll show you why it’s totally wrong
Cuz if another country invaded the hood tonight
It’d be warfare through Harlem, and Washington Heights
I wouldn’t be fightin’ for Bush or White America’s dream
I’d be fightin’ for my people’s survival and self-esteem
I wouldn’t fight for racist churches from the south
I’d be fightin’ to keep the occupation out
And of course Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons
We sold him that shit, after Ronald Reagan’s election
Mercenary contractors fightin’ a new era
Corporate military bankin’ off the war on terror
They controllin’ the ghetto, with the failed attack
Tryna distract the fact that they engineerin’ the crack
Cuz innocent people get murdered in the struggle daily
And poor people never get shit and struggle daily
This ain’t no alien conspiracy theory, this shit is real
Written on the dollar underneath the Masonic seal
Whose lyrics? This is great.
Found a typo – there mansions – should be “their.”
I agree with the author. MSM like the New York Times pushed the biggest fake news story of the 21st century when it fronted the WMD case for Bush.
Bush’s comments about the need for a free press need to be considered in the context of what he is – a neocon – and the fundamental unity of the neocons and neolibs in their disdain for Trump’s methods. Not Trump’s philosophy, mind you, because he has already revealed himself to be a friend of the very rich. In fact the only thing that Trump has done as President that does not follow the four essential characteristics of neoliberalism is his killing of the TPP and TTIP negotiations.
And as far as I am concerned the US MSM richly deserve all the abuse Trump has heaped on them, precisely for their complete cowardice in not challenging Bush on Iraq and for surrendering their editorial license to their big advertisers.
It amazes me that the father or mother of an 18 tear old killed in Bushes lie of a war didn’t go to the ends of the earth to kill him after he displayed that repulsive video to the laughing audience
Witness a United States page being turned; the hunched back of g bush junior being led walking toward incarceration-
In many respects, it has happened regardless of prior administration tough front softback stance on past legally dubious transgressions in the name of war, which was long ago deemed OVER-
Mr. Jilani
The primary reason for the invasion of Iraq was the successful removal of Saddam Hussein from power i.e., regime change. The Iraq Liberation Act passed in 1998 during the Clinton Presidency. Regime change was the official policy of the US government. Bush needed two important reasons to invade Iraq – 911 which created a compliant atmosphere within the US (including the US media) and the long brutal history of the dictator Saddam Hussein.
There is no doubt that Bush decided to invade Iraq shortly after 911 and he clearly sought to build his case for the invasion. George Tenet’s “slam dunk” for WMD’s was a key factor in boosting support for the war. There had been no inspections since Bill Clinton bombed Iraq in late 1998 – a period of about four years which was plenty of time for Saddam to reconstitute his WMD program. However, by the time the inspectors hit the ground in Iraq, the decision was already made to invade so that was just a publicity stunt by Bush. There is no doubt that the many journalists in America were just as angry as the general population after 911. I am not so certain that “bullied” applied to everyone in the American media although clearly Bush used 911 to his advantage to promote the invasion. Most Americans agreed with the invasion of Iraq after 911. That probably included most within the US media as well.
Besides the trauma of 911, Bush took advantage of the history of Saddam Hussein to sell the invasion. Saddam invaded two countries, illegally used chemical weapons on the Iranians and the Kurds, developed a nuclear program (bombed by Israel), compensated families for terrorist attacks conducted in Israel and launched rockets capable of carrying chemical weapons at Israel as he retreated from Kuwait. Hussein was a murderous dictator at home killing tens of thousands of Kurds and Shia Muslims during his more than two decades of rule. His Sunni-led dictatorship greatly exacerbated the sectarian divide in Iraq with major consequences after the US invaded. Additionally, Saddam Hussein played a cat and mouse game with the UN weapons inspectors refusing to fully cooperate as stated in his agreement to disarm. Sixteen resolutions were passed at the UN because he would not cooperate. Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998 for that very reason although Clinton did not require UN inspections after he bombed Iraq.
There were some positive results from the invasion. First and foremost, a brutal dictator was removed from power. Iraqis also voted for the first time. Under Saddam Hussein, the minority Sunnis ruled over Iraqis oppressing the majority Kurdish and Shia populations. The Shia and the Kurds were liberated – at great cost. The majority Shia population is rightly in power and the Kurds occupy an autonomous region in northern Iraq – and are a US ally in the war against ISIS. Much of the sectarian violence witnessed in Iraq was fomented under the sectarian-based authoritarian rule by the Sunnis during Saddam’s tenure.
The rise of ISIS in Iraq certainly was one negative result of the US invasion (besides the large amount of casualties), but this was also do, in part, to missteps by the Shia majority which prematurely kicked the US military out of Iraq and alienated the Sunni population under the direction of Maliki. For US Arab allies, the empowering of the Shia in Iraq (and the mullahs in Iran) was a disastrous geopolitical result of the removal of Saddam from power.
Irak war was oil state motivated period-
All the words you used are if the subconscious nature in mind programming IOW the battle for what is referred to as “your mind” is lost-
Concur.
“……..Irak war was oil state motivated period…….”
Sorry. I think you are entirely wrong about that. It was about regime change and asserting US power post 911.
Thanks.
It’s as if a coup is about regime change.
May I suggest that you follow the money?
Iraq was a lie, everything bush told us was false; Nobody has been held accountable
Completely and utterly incorrect analysis.
Here is the reason for the Iraq war.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nfmATUzBwxY
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fVNhXcdt3_8
The second reason for the Iraq war. If you dare.
Why should anyone be outraged by the simple truth that finances trumps peace in many cases? The animal world fights to the death over food. Why do you think humans are any different?
I really wouldn’t pay any attention to what that guy said in that clip. That is ONE person’s opinion. It’s irrelevant really.
The author seems to have been asleep for 8 years.
Obama was the worst president for press freedom in modern history.
The Russophobic attacks continue apace despite evidence and are published by American mainstream media (both press and entertainment). There’s still widespread acceptance of unnamed sources providing assertions that Russia “hacked” the US election, the US power grid, European elections, and more no clear evidence and even some words to the contrary. We now know that the CIA has “UMBRAGE” to disguise their attacks misleading investigations into believing another party did their dirty work. The “Russia did it” narrative is a hamfisted attempt to lay the groundwork for war with Russia and distract the public away from blaming Hillary Clinton for pulling defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2016 US Presidential race.
Trump’s numerous bigotries are fairly petty (policies hurt people far more than namecalling and bickering) and occasionally he says something true for which he takes criticism from the mainstream American media. Trump took undeserved criticism for pointing out the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on lies, Trump was made fun of for saying there were immigration-related troubles in Sweden a couple of days before riotous behavior (behavior similar to that in Berkeley which was called a “riot”) broke out in Rinkeby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZMctkUVcqU leading one commentator to ask where’s the apology (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyYuPkpRHmY), as a couple of examples.
I suspect the mainstream media is really facing a different situation between Presidents G.W. Bush and Trump: Bush made it clear from the start he was no challenge to what is now called “the Deep State” or “the permanent government”. A war based on lies could go forward because that suits those at the top of US economy. But Trump said things during his campaign that challenged neoliberalism and neoconservatism which scared some long-time partners of Republicans, pushing them toward supporting the horrid proposed policies of Hillary Clinton: candidate Trump said he wanted to make bilateral business deals with Russia (compare with fomenting war against Russia like Hillary Clinton’s Syrian “no-fly” zone was set to do), Trump criticized the TPP even comparing the effect the TPP would have on member state citizens to being raped which notably didn’t raise objections amongst the Left as comparisons to rape predictably do probably because they knew the TPP was indeed horrible (compare with Clinton’s “gold standard” support for the TPP, choosing a pro-TPP vice presidential candidate, and some pro-TPP people on her cabinet forming committee), and Trump even briefly mentioned universalizing healthcare in a “60 Minutes” interview which is a viable healthcare plan polls more favorably than ObamaCare.
Trump is certainly not living up to his campaign rhetoric, and I hope that both HMO-driven ObamaCare (nee RomneyCare) and any HMO-led ObamaCare replacement are replaced with HR676 (universalizing Medicare, “Medicare for all”), but you certainly won’t find much beyond glib mockery in mainstream American entertainment (even when they’re dead wrong, like Colbert famously was when he declared Trump wouldn’t become president) or deep discussion of life-and-death issues including HR676, where so much “fake news” comes from (including the demonization of RT in the Obama administration’s report just before the end of Obama’s last term) and what that means for American empire, and the pernicious drone war (mostly done under Obama, but apparently picked up by Trump enabling the Navy SEALs to kill Anwar Awlaki’s young daughter and numerous others thus helping Trump carry out what he promised to Fox & Friends by phone interview—”you’ve got to kill their families too”).
I don’t agree with many of your conclusions, but that is a great comment.
the author supplies the answer himself…but first…using comparison to make an argument is the weakest thing anyone can ever do.
the way the puppet treats the media has LESS THAN ZERO to do with how bush treated the media.
a very common practice enablers use to show support for what they claim they are adverse to.
well..he may have told 80 lies…but fox news said SHE told 85 lies!.
weak stuff right?
so…getting back to my point.
all the media has to do IS STAND-UP and there is no such thing as any method that may be used against it…as having any effect other then having been attempted.
to bad it took a few thousand rehashed words to actually say it.
Excellent piece Mr. Jilani. Your article should be a chapter in a history or civics textbook for high school curriculum. It is important to remember that the Government not only bullied and defanged the press, but entertainers, businesses and the people as well. Many of us were duped, many of us went all in with the propaganda. Now, we sit and listen as pundit after pundit decries some perceived besmirching of our service members, like a football payer not standing at the playing of the Anthem. Yet not one of them offers a whimper of a wish for justice for any of them, the dead, the severely injured, the lost, the broken, their families – or stretching it further – the millions of people our country killed in the name of false revenge. Was it Bush or was it us? Is it Bush or is it us? Look who 48% of Americans voted for this selection? Look at what he said. Look at the absence, that I aware of, for any effort to bring the Bush administration to justice. I cant in good conscience feel that I am any better than Bush. Yes I was duped, and then I saw. Still, I sit doing nothing, except sending in a comment. I’m no better.
Good look back. Given current events can anyone deny Trump’s assertion about American mass media being enemy of the people (just do the body count)? And now along with that, they are the enemy of “independent media” in their attempt to marginalize and even shut down these alternative sites.
The Bush regime, the major mass media (including NYTimes), along with the deep state at that time produced spectacular results. Gallop polls showed that 72% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq. The majority of Americans believed Saddam had WMDs. (BTW, a majority of Americans in 2010 believed Iran had nukes.)
The democrats, the deep state, and the major media outlets are producing the same results as the Bush regime but targeting Russia and Putin. I haven’t seen any polls for March, but in December 52% of democrats believed Russian agents changed actual voting results to give Trump the victory, which even the deep state did not claim.
Reuters revealed in January a poll they conducted: “The Jan. 9-12 survey found that 82 percent of American adults, including 84 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans, described Russia as a general “threat” to the United States. That’s up from 76 percent in March 2015 when the same questions were asked.” Poll numbers concerning anything Russian started going down when Obama started openly attacking Putin in his 2nd term.
America has now seen a repeat of the Bush years in that a propaganda campaign has worked to prep the American people to accept conflict and even war with Russia, much like what happened in the early years of the Bush regime. This is not to say that Americans want war, but as with Saddam, can be easily lead to follow and support the president into a war.
(Also, not sure how the current established Russo-phobia will play a part in the midterms. It may be a case that while Russia is Thee Enemy, but as Greenwald pointed out–Americans are not going to sleep and waking up obsessing about the Russians.)
As it is, only 25% of Americans have ANY trust in the media, so the only way to go is up. Unfortunately for us, the media is continuing the hyper-partisan slant that they’ve had since campaign season. CNN and MSNBC have possibly even become even more partisan since Election Day and it’s filtered on down to the local NBC affiliates. And since the election Fox News has actually been the most level-headed and reliable news source on tv. They still get completely stupid at times, but CNN and MSNBC are all stupid all the time. Even the people who are tuning in right now will eventually get tired of the constant outrage and serious accusations that never pan out, and they’ll probably burn out before the midterms. Summer will come and people will turn off their tv’s and forget about politics, and once fall rolls around a large percentage will continue to ignore politics. The media will try to gin up some outrage again but by 2018 people will be numbed by it and will tune out.
There is a paradox in that Americans don’t trust the media, but the propaganda spewed by the same media is still effective in shaping attitudes and beliefs.
1 % profitable media is used to leverage a bankrupt neoliberal edifice message that continuously is degraded causing messengers like Mrs Greenspans wife et al to appear asif an episode of americauna horror story, which is the final byproduct used by 1% to maintain false CNTRL
Nobody hated/hates gw bush more than I do but I’ve come to realize that he was just the goofy loser used by Cheney to start that war.
I disagree, GWB truly wanted to invade Iraq even before 9/11 – and it wasn’t only Cheney’s work. Also, GWB as president had John Yoo write “the torture memo” – used by the White House to justify torturing prisoners, and then he ordered that torture. That’s not just some loser dupe, it’s a bona fide war criminal.
It’s an open question whether the corporate news media learned anything from the time they served as lapdogs to the Bush administration. By not courting the media and by demonstrating unprecedented incompetence, Trump left himself wide open to scornful treatment. Reporters now refer to lies as “lies,” and to torture as “torture,” not because they are wiser now but because Trump seems to have created this opportunity.
“Reporters now refer to lies as “lies,””
No, they just call the untruths/half-truths that they don’t like lies…they have no problem pushing the lies that fit their agenda. And fact checking Trump’s bullshit may be “calling lies lies” but everyone knows that Trump exaggerates everything, so when the media fact checks a bullshitter they’re the ones who end up looking ridiculous.
Hmmm. . . With 8 years of the 14 under President Obama.
Cripes, one of Bush’s chief propagandists (Frum) is an editor over at The Atlantic and the Editor in Chief (Goldberg) was a Bush cheerleader and is currently part of the effort to whitewash Kissinger’s record. It seems that there is no fall out whatsoever for being a propagandist and a shill. None.
Thanks for the interesting article. I’d love to see another on how the media rolled over for Obama, too.
And just so Conservatives don’t take it to heart
I don’t think Bush did it, ’cause he isn’t that smart
He’s just a stupid puppet taking orders on his cell phone
From the same people that sabotaged Senator Wellstone
The military industry got it poppin’ and lockin’
Looking for a way to justify the Wolfowitz Doctrine
And as a matter of fact, Rumsfeld, now that I think back
Without 9/11, you couldn’t have a war in Iraq
Or a Defense budget of world conquest proportions
Kill freedom of speech and revoke the right to abortions
Tax cut extortion, a blessing to the wealthy and wicked
But you still have to answer to the Armageddon you scripted
And Dick Cheney, you fucking leech, tell them your plans
About building your pipelines through Afghanistan
And how Israeli troops trained the Taliban in Pakistan
You might have some house niggas fooled, but I understand
Colonialism is sponsored by corporations
That’s why Halliburton gets paid to rebuild nations
Tell me the truth, I don’t scare into paralysis
I know the CIA saw Bin Laden on dialysis
In ’98 when he was Top Ten for the FBI
Government ties is really why the Government lies
Read it yourself instead of asking the Government why
‘Cause then the Cause of Death will cause the propaganda to die..
paints the picture
true art
++
S/he does, indeed.
The 14th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq was in January 2005.
It is really sad when people totally ignore history.
This is ridiculous. The beltway and establishment media wasn’t bullied or goaded or made to believe lies; they wanted to believe and propagate them. They helped develop them and fostered them. They were more than complicit – they were party to the crimes that to this day have gone unpunished.
George W. Bush is a wanted man in at least two countries that I can think of off the top of my head. He and Dick Cheney have been convicted of war crimes in absentia in countries like Italy (IIRC). They have to be careful where they travel because there are active arrest warrants for them abroad.
I cannot believe that this article made it through the vetting process at an outlet shared by Glenn Greenwald. He could recite, by memory, a list of crimes and media coverups (for example the NYT was willing to bury the domestic surveillance story until after Bush had safely defeated John Kerry in 2004) that are being glossed over to this day.
Nah, this wasn’t a bullied or cowed media. They were complicit and they have never been made to pay.
This article is nonsense. It’s revisionist history at best. The press was complicit in selling the Iraq war, which began long before it was formally declared.
“No sign the press has abandoned its duties”?
Jesus Christ you’re delusional.
100% ON THE MONEY.
G.W. Bush was a mule carrier.
What’s with the generalizations?
I get that that The Intercept considers itself above all other news outlets, but come on. You do understand that news outlets have both news sides and editorial sides, right?
Of course Saddam had no WMDs, but do you know who actually believed that he did. Everybody. The UN, global think tanks, and even Saddam’s own generals. And the US intelligence community reached its position on the issue before Bush even came into office.
And the media was using the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” because there was a public debate over whether or not the techniques were equivalent to torture. But, of course, The Great Greenwald has to pretend that the media, which is, of course, always beneath him, did not dare express any opinions on the matter. Come on.
Other than that, an interesting and relevant article.
Greenwald didn’t write this, though.
The only reason anyone believed there were WMD was because that’s what Bush operatives were selling, not the other way around. And the ONLY people arguing over whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” were equivalent to torture were Foxbots. Everyone else in the world KNOWS that waterboarding is torture.
I don’t disagree with what the waterboarding part. But, again, everybody thought that Iraq had WMD; Saddam was hardly going to announce that he had gotten rid of them, since he wanted to deter the Iranians.
The US British, the French, the Russians, the Israelis, the Chinese, and even Saddam’s own generals all believed Saddam had WMDs. This belief was common before Bush even came into office.
One who says that “everybody” believed Saddam had WMDs in 2003 is either insane or straight up prevaricating. Your lies about the U.S. intelligence community’s stance on the matter have convinced me that in your case it’s the latter. You’re 110% FOS. The media intentionally pushed the anti-war position to the back pages or ignored and stifled it. There were MANY people who knew that Saddam didn’t have the WMDs including the UN’s own inspection team.
In short, GFY.
Incorrect. The intelligence community did believe that Saddam possessed WMDs.
Even before Bush took office, President Clinton, high-ranking members of his administration, and many prominent Democrats assessed the evidence and arrived at the same conclusion that Bush reached.
There were problems with the intelligence, but another problem was that the “dissents” of certain agencies were relegated to footnotes in the intel reports. Of course, the IC’s assessments of the issue turned out to be wrong mostly because they believed that Saddam was continuing the WMD programs that it, in reality, abandoned after the Gulf War.
The problem is that Saddam, of course, didn’t advertise this fact, since he wanted to deter the Iranians and his domestic enemies. So a certain ambiguity about the programs was in his interest.
The generals would not have sent their soldiers to die by the many tens of thousands if they really believed Iraq had WMDs and would use them. They knew the actual WMDs were under control of the US led coalition, and they used them. Millions died in this war and the mass majority were civilians.
Which generals?
Are you referring to Saddam’s generals?
Regarding UN , In January 2003, United Nations weapons inspectors reported that they had found no indication that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons or an active program
Global think tanks, Are you serious !!!!! , what does that mean all of them , even the ones in the middle east , France,Germany , Turkey, China and many others
Do you mean global or American !!
Saddam’s own generals , source please !!!!
US intelligence community , BASED ON WHAT !!!!! no evidence was presented
YOU KNOW THERE WAS A REASON THE UN REFUSED TO GIVE THE US THE RIGHT TO ACT IN IRAQ
“but do you know who actually believed that he did. Everybody”
think twice before you write something this stupid
I just have one question what do you mean by Everybody ???
Calm down, dude.
Numerous foreign intelligence agencies also believed Saddam had WMDs. The Reps and Dems who saw the intel all believed that he had them. Saddam himself had stockpiles of old chemical weapons, and he had every intention of renewing the program once the international pressure let up, since he wanted to deter Iran, the Shias and the Kurds.
You’ll recall the report of the 2002 NIE, the Iraq Survey Group and the Duelfer report, or the Robb-Silberman report. General Franks was told by the Jordanians and Egyptians that they believed Saddam had them. And the Dems going back to the Clinton era believed Iraq had WMDS based on the intel they saw.
Another issue. You people say that the US “knew” for sure that Saddam had no WMDs. Based on what intel? The problem with the intel collection efforts related to WMD was that the CIA had also been tasked since the Clinton administration with finding ways to undermine Saddam’s regime. When the CIA is assigned a covert action, it might receive additional funding for such a mission, but rarely does it receive additional personnel. Thus the resources for collection on the WMD front were stretched rather thin.
Mohamed ElBaradei the head of the IAEA said ” that the IAEA needed four or five months to verify that Iraq did indeed not possess that weapons capability.
Less than two months later Bush’s military invasion of Iraq began.
In those two months all of Iraq’s airports, runways and aircraft were bombed into oblivion by the US. So much for shock and awe, essentially Iraq was made a sitting duck in terms of conventional warfare.
btw: There were members of the press and Intelligence officers who didn’t believe the hype and spoke out, as well as Dems and Reps who voted against.
One only had to do a bit of research: history and current, read the foreign press and interviews with those who ‘don’t believe the hype’, many of them actual experts with decades of knowledge on Iraq and Saddam Hussein and the history of the ME, to find out how manipulated and cherry picked the Bush information was.
Fact is those who were for it and those who reported what can only be described as jingoistic propaganda did not want to know and decided for career, ideology, goals, sales, investments, corporate pressure and laziness, apathy and carelessness (just another ME country) to believe without question what was handed to them, okay looks good to me, let’s go for it!
Wonder if the Yea’s were thinking of the fate of John Paton Davis Jnr., and feared suffering the same punishment and so agreed to the absolute destruction of a sovereign country, igniting the Arabian peninsula and beyond and condemning so many to suffer and die for decades to come. Did it come down to – rather them than me?
Ref: John Paton Davis Jnr.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paton_Davies_Jr.
Also mentioned in the ironically titled “The Best and The Brightest” by David Halberstam.
Correct.
Blix and ElBaradei both reported on their 2003 inspections. They concluded that there was no evidence of a nuclear-weapons program and that Iraq was in the process of destroying its missiles. They didn’t find any chemical/biological weapons, but couldn’t document their destruction either (the latter was one of Blix’s main complaints during the mission.
Saddam had no large WMD stockpiles at the time, but he had not abandoned his interest in pursuing them once the sanctions let up. Also, Saddam wanted to hedge his bets with the crash scrub effort; he wanted to appease the UN on one hand, but on the other maintain a certain ambiguity about the status of his WMDs in order to deter the Iranians and his domestic enemies.
Again, Saddam’s ambiguity about the programs was part of a deterrent strategy, since much of Iraq’s conventional military power had been destroyed in the Gulf War.
If the US had accepted Iraqi concessions (such as UNSCR 1441), the crisis would probably have been resolved, and gone down in history as a successful case of coercive diplomacy. Of course, rather than accommodate Iraq, the US chose to escalate, and demanded Saddam abandon the programs. Since Iraq had scrubbed its WMDs, The US was basically demanding that Saddam make a policy change by openly admitting to that fact. But Saddam believed his WMD disclosures would forestall an invasion.
After the US accused Iraq of violating 1441, Saddam decided to cooperate with the inspectors. He ordered his officers to scrub Iraq of WMD, but he stopped short of providing them with airtight proof that he didn’t have a hidden cache. He also forbade his WMD scientists to leave the country (which would have enabled them to be interviewed by the UN)
Saddam’s ambiguity over WMD was meant to deter Iran, the Shiites and the Kurds, but it didn’t deter the US, of course.
“Of course Saddam had no WMDs, but do you know who actually believed that he did. Everybody. The UN, global think tanks, and even Saddam’s own generals. And the US intelligence community reached its position on the issue before Bush even came into office.”
Uh, BS. Scott Ritter, UN Weapons inspector, was telling everyone on the run-up to the war that there weren’t any WMD’s.
As to your other baloney regarding torture, man, you’re really into revisionist history.
The only thing I said about torture was that there was a debate over whether waterboarding was torture. I was not revising history in any way. And in my own opinion waterboarding is torture.
No, not “everybody” believed he had WMD’s. fact of the matter, so what if he did?! Who died and made us sheriff of the world? Last time I checked, its us who have killed 30,000,000 people sice WWII
You could also look at the Downing Street Memos; the British also thought Saddam had WMDs.
Bush, like a lot of other people, was wrong about Saddam having giant stockpiles of WMDs. When people say he lied about it, they assume that he, in fact, knew that Saddam had no WMDs, which wasn’t the case since that wasn’t even the consensus view at the time. Groupthink was part of the problem, and the intelligence community was in general agreement that Saddam was pursuing WMDs, a conclusion they had reached before Bush even entered office.
And, as you note, Saddam wanted a certain ambiguity about the status of his WMDs, in order to deter his domestic and regional enemies.
The judgements the IC made in that 2002 NIE were based on information they had dating back fifteen years, and were routinely presented to Congress. Did Congress ever come back to the IC to accuse them of bias or politicization prior to the NIE? There is no evidence that they did.
The NIE did include alternative views, and one sentence even reads “We lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq’s WMD program.” There’s a reason NIEs are called “Estimates.”
Ah, if only we had assigned all of the commenters here to research and write those NIEs.
I would like to thank President Trump for insulting and berating and ripping the media to shreds – the same media that sold us WMD and the housing fraud perpetrated by wallstreet thieves who rob America for a living.
I hope he berates them into bankruptcy as they are wholy Unamerican.
Agreed as much as I hate trump the media needed a good thrashing.
“Needed?”
May an army of Greenwalds appear and take pretend journalists to the woodshed forever!
These were some of thoughts that popped into my head when Robert Reich said that, already, Trump is the worst president in American history (a month or so after sharing the infamous “I’m for a free press” Bush comment). Trump may very well become the worst president and his administration is probably (and maybe intentionally) the most incompetent, but he hasn’t been responsible for over 100,000 deaths. He hasn’t added anything significant to the 9/11 security and surveillance state yet. I’m not normalizing Trump by any means, but the Bush administration was a huge fan of alternative facts, and with much larger ramifications; they called it “intelligence”. Part of the reason the American people are so easy to manipulate is not just the complicity of the mainstream press in doing so, but also collective amnesia of events that happened a decade or two ago.
Bush, Cheney and Blair are all war criminals responsible for the death of over 1 million people. All 3 should be doing life in prison with no parole. Yet, they make millions and are celebrated for what? Bush’s paintings? None of that matters. All that matters is they’re “celebs”. Same with Obama. They’re hot, they’re happening. Get the talk show bookers to get them on. All around, all that matters is money and power.
Blair still says that grieving families and loved ones of people killed by his illegal and immoral war protesting him are a “nusiance”. But you learn to live with it. Pyschopaths, every one of them.
The media is nothing but the propaganda machine of the US military. That has always been its main purpose in life.
Bush did nothing to the mieda. He didn’t need to.
Reminds me of the accusations the Democrats and the CIA are throwing around today. Asserting Russia are behind their ills without a shred of definitive evidence instead of admitting to being caught breaking the law.
We cannot let Trump nor any Intelligence official lead us into anymore wasteful, deadly wars by way of bold-faced lies. Every statement from every official from any side must be critically assessed, no exceptions, no matter the “social consequence.”
It is typical of the corporate owned media to try to
pin something as lousy as the war of aggression against Iraq
(and elsewhere) on a few individuals when the truth of the matter is that
horrifying events like these are the result of the majority of
elected democrats and republicans alike working together to
manipulate and pillage.
As long as people keep limiting the blame,
as is done in this article,
and do not include the whole gallery of deviant rogues,
then you are helping make sure that justice is twisted to suit your
personal stupidity and you are promoting myths.
Also,
when lousy scoundrels from Wall Street’s Washington talk
about freedom and the “free” press, they mean those who are
free from any connection to the truth or sense of conscience.
blame a few individuals?
did you read past the headline?
The whole premise of this article is that the Bush administration
was SO POWERFUL(!) that
they alone
manipulated the media with their lies.
The lies were trumpeted by most of Washington. Sure, the
Bush administration had the most prominent role in the scheme
to dominate and savage Iraq, but the message was
proudly reinforced
by most of the democrats and republicans alike.
Trump is an ass and Bush was an ass, but Washington is overflowing
with professional asses who will continue to enable these kinds
of arrogant power-lusting slimes.
you need to do a better job of making the case about “the whole premise,” when the article in its entirety is devoted to describing a problem – a program or system, even – on a much larger scale.
Yes.
what concerns me most about the fact that Trump has really just removed the fig leaf is the self-righteous, self-congratulatory mood that has settled over much of the “mob” that formerly felt so confident in toeing the company line under the likes of Bush and Obama.
to what extent is it the same behavior, just redirected? and does it become a de facto endorsement of the people and actions that led to Trump, and lead us gratefully back to them, fig leaf restored, once Trump is gone?
how does this not become yet another play for lesser-evilism? i mean, the redemption of G-fucking-W?
Good point, but you forgot to mention Obama in your headline, unless you think Obama was the media.
Trump may not have a similar cozy relationship with the corporate MSM as Bush did, but that does not equal the MSM actually doing factual reporting on anything. They’re just propagandist for the neoliberal and neocon Republicrats.
They’re cheerleaders for war, the surveillance state and corporate control of everything.
I disagree. President Bush did what presidents do. The press was a willing butt boy for the president. Not one person I know believed any of the justifications for war and yet the press chose to be complicit with the lies. There was not an ounce of skepticism or actual reporting anywhere in the MSM.
If reporters and news organizations can’t take the pressure, they need to get out of the business. The blood of 1 million dead Iraqi citizens is on their hands.
After that shameful reportage, I actually thought we no longer needed ‘freedom of the press’ because they abdicated their constitutionally-protected role of providing oversight to government and political activities.
What a shameful time in the history of the ‘news industry.’
Actually, there was one newspaper org that got Iraq right: Knight-Ridder. They were just about the only MSM news outlet that wrote the truth about Iraq leading up to the war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/17/the-reporting-team-that-g_n_91981.html
As an aside, the photo of Bush hawking his coloring book, Portraits of Courage, is sickening. This guy sent thens of thousands of young men and women to fight a made-up war, then used their broken and maimed bodies as models. This is an important lesson on the amorality of many “leaders” who feed the war machine.
If we are ever to begin to get a handle on how to stop these people, we had better figure out a way to stop ourselves from supporting them in the first place. What is it about human psychology that places ideology above life?
Many people you know believed the lies. You do not know who all of them are, but the believers and supporters of the war machine comprise a majority of adults in USA.
It would be much healthier if the media in general was middle of the road in their reporting, rather than acting as partisan attack dogs.
That won’t work either, there aren’t always two or three sides to a story or narrative, quite often there is what is right and just and what is completely wrong and unacceptable.
When that happens inevitably the side getting short shrift will cry that the report is biased (it is and should be) and that it is unfair to them when the facts are that they are flat out wrong and need to adjust their own world view to align with reality.
How about we just get reporters that actually report again, that go OUT and find a good story that actually matters and has some facts and sources they can present instead of bald speculation, spectrographically repeated press releases and completely disingenuous attempts to be fair and balanced on subjects that are one sided (unless you are a loon).
Facts no speculation, facts no commentary.
I do not go to a news/information source to hear some less intelligent talking head/keyboard commando distil the available facts down for me without actually presenting me with the sources and actual evidence.
If you want unbiased news then they have to present ONLY the facts about the situations, any attempts at “being” unbiased lead directly to bias and misinformation.
That would be “stenographically” nor spetrographically.
Auto correct is not yet up to the job it even in 2017.
Trump is a hard one to pin down, all the neo-liberal cries of stupid, ignorant and suffering from dementia won;t change the fact that Trump wanted good relations with Russia and a winding down of the wars of choice and that it was the neoliberals walking hand in hand with the neoconservatives who are closing off all avenues that don’t lead to direct confrontation with Russia and expansion of US imperialism.
Given that that is the case it seems to me that Trump isn’t really a problem, the two neocon/lib parties banding together into a single neofascist oligarchy with a hard on for war are the real problems.
Sadly that means actually supporting the Orange Overlord as the most sane choice for pretty much all of his stupidity.
Kinda lame, huh?
Lame yes, last resort for now, yes. The MSM as servants of elites of both parties only do their jobs when Trump or hopefully a real reformer in 2020 buck the system they serve. MSM kissed all over Clinton, Bush and Obama ass but for the moment are actually at least a critical if no a real free press.
Trump will have to serve the middle or fail, he for now has no support from the left and the too “right” Paul Ryan/Anna Rand healthcare has cashed and burned by popular demand, “burn baby burn”. I like free market solution but the free market has failed in healthcare and this is like National defense is life or death on an even grander scale.Greed from all sides insurance, pharmaceuticals, political and individual leaves single payer as the best affordable plan. Trump will get the same defeat until he forges a central coalition that actually want reasonable progress that blends thoughtful progressive and conservative measures. An idea so old it would seem new today.
The problem with that is that Democratic triangulation has moved the centre ground so far right that even Nixon’s policies are too left for them.
If that is who we are looking to save us from excesses, these right wing “centrists”, then perhaps it is better that Trump be allowed to lay waste to the US political system.
“Sadly that means actually supporting the Orange Overlord as the most sane choice for pretty much all of his stupidity.”
Don’t forget he’s a climate change denier and a nuclear expansionist. The real sane choice here is popular mobilization against both parties and against Mr. Trump.
True that, but good luck with it.
Americans like their reality in bite size high energy TV format.