PAF is still pissed off

Not long ago, a famous career DC think-tanker and pundit came to my University to give a big public lecture. Before his talk, he had dinner with a couple dozen of us in one of the school's fancier reception rooms. Rubber chicken, wine, pretty nice affair by our standards. When the subject of Iraq came up, he defaulted to the "bad intelligence" defense: We were all misled, he told us; Everybody had the same faulty intelligence and everybody was equally mistaken in believing that Saddam had WMD, was linked to al Qaeda, and represented some kind of real threat. Who knew???

In the interests of not disrupting a University function with an ugly tirade against an invited guest, I bit my tongue (and began formulating a somewhat pointed but hopefully still civil response for the public lecture afterward). But I was really pissed off, and still am, that this DC bigshot could come in here and feed us bullshit which he should have known to be false. He should have known it because others knew it, and said so, before the fucking war began. And you didn't have to have some kind of esoteric security clearance to know it, because (among others) Knight-Ridder reporters were all over it, as Bill Moyers has helpfully documented for us (once you get to Moyers' page, scroll down for a veritable catalog of links to sceptical Knight-Ridder stories).

For instance, here's one from September 6, 2002 , seven months before the war began (reported By Jonathan Landay):

Senior U.S. officials with access to top-secret intelligence on Iraq say they have detected no alarming increase in the threat that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein poses to American security and Middle East stability.

Another from October 8, 2002, six months before the war began (reported by Strobel, Landay, and Walcott):

While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.

These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses - including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network - have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.

They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.

"Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews with Knight Ridder. No one who was interviewed disagreed. [emphasis added by PAF]

And there were many more stories like this for those willing to look beyond the big mainstream news outlets which had already capitulated to the administration's duplicitous militarism. The alternative news outlets listed near the top right of this blog carried many of these sceptical stories, which is why I recommend them to you now. For more on the (ahem) mature and symbiotic relationship between executive power and the mainstream press, watch the Moyers video.

So Mr. DC big-shot, PBS News Hour TV fixture, household name, trusted voice of reason and official bipartisan moderation, if you happen to be one of the three people (including me) who ever reads this, up yours.