U.S. intelligence veterans recall the real story of how New York Times reporter Judith Miller disgraced herself and her profession by helping to mislead Americans into the disastrous war in Iraq. They challenge the slick, self-aggrandizing rewrite of history in her new memoir.
MEMORANDUM FOR: Americans Malnourished on the Truth About Iraq
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: A New “Miller’s Tale” (with apologies to Geoffrey Chaucer)
On April 3, former New York Times journalist Judith Miller published an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths: Officials Didn’t Lie, and I Wasn’t Fed a Line.” If this sounds a bit defensive, Miller has tons to be defensive about.
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
In the article, Miller claims, “false narratives [about what she did as a New York Times reporter] deserve, at last, to be retired.” The article appears to be the initial salvo in a major attempt at self-rehabilitation and, coincidentally, comes just as her new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, is to be published today.
In reviewing Miller’s book, her “mainstream media” friends are not likely to mention the stunning conclusion reached recently by the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other respected groups that the Iraq War, for which she was lead drum majorette, killed one million people. One might think that, in such circumstances and with bedlam reigning in Iraq and the wider neighborhood a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, so to speak, might prompt Miller to keep her head down for a while more.
In all candor, after more than a dozen years, we are tired of exposing the lies spread by Judith Miller and had thought we were finished. We have not seen her new book, but we cannot in good conscience leave her WSJ article without comment from those of us who have closely followed U.S. policy and actions in Iraq.
Miller’s Tale in the WSJ begins with a vintage Miller-style reductio ad absurdum: “I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me.” Since one of us, former UN inspector Scott Ritter, has historical experience and technical expertise that just won’t quit, we asked him to draft a few paragraphs keyed to Miller’s latest tale. He shared the following critique:
Miller’s Revisionist History
“Judith Miller did not take America to war in Iraq. Even a journalist with an ego the size of Ms. Miller’s cannot presume to usurp the war power authorities of the President of the United States, or even the now-dormant Constitutional prerogatives of Congress. What she is guilty of, however, is being a bad journalist.
“She can try to hide this fact by wrapping herself in a collective Pulitzer Prize, or citing past achievements like authoring best-selling books. But this is like former Secretary of State Colin Powell trying to remind people about his past as the National Security Advisor for President Reagan or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
“At the end of the day Mr. Powell will be judged not on his previous achievements, but rather on his biggest failure his appearance before the United Nations Security Council touting an illusory Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction threat as being worthy of war. In this same vein, Judith Miller will be judged by her authoring stories for the ‘newspaper of record’ that were questionably sourced and very often misleading. One needs only to examine Ms. Miller’s role while embedded in U.S. Army Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, hunting for weapons of mass destruction during the 2003 invasion, for this point to be illustrated.
“Miller may not have singlehandedly taken America and the world to war, but she certainly played a pivotal role in building the public case for the attack on Iraq based upon shoddy reporting that even her editor at the New York Times has since discredited including over reliance on a single-source of easy virtue and questionable credibility Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. The fact that she chose to keep this ‘source’ anonymous underscores the journalistic malfeasance at play in her reporting.
“Chalabi had been discredited by the State Department and CIA as a reliable source of information on Iraq long before Judith Miller started using him to underpin her front-page ‘scoops’ for the New York Times. She knew this, and yet chose to use him nonetheless, knowing that then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fully as eager to don the swindlers’ magic suit of clothes, as was the king in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale. In Ms. Miller’s tale, the fairy-tale clothes came with a WMD label and no washing instructions.
“Ms. Miller’s self-described ‘newsworthy claims’ of pre-war weapons of mass destruction stories often were as we now know (and many of us knew at the time) handouts from the hawks in the Bush administration and fundamentally wrong.
“Like her early reporting on Iraq, Ms. Miller’s re-working of history to disguise her malfeasance/misfeasance as a reporter does not bear close scrutiny. Her errors of integrity are hers and hers alone, and will forever mar her reputation as a journalist, no matter how hard she tries to spin the facts and revise a history that is highly inconvenient to her. Of course, worst of all, her flaws were consequential almost 4,500 U.S. troops and 1,000,000 Iraqis dead.”
Relying on the Mistakes of Others
In her WSJ article, Miller protests that “relying on the mistakes of others and errors of judgment are not the same as lying.” It is almost as though she is saying that if Ahmed Chalabi told her that, in Iraq, the sun rises in the west, and she duly reported it, that would not be “the same as lying.”
Miller appears to have worked out some kind of an accommodation with George W. Bush and others who planned and conducted what the post-World War II Nuremburg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime,” a war of aggression. She takes strong issue with what she calls “the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war.”
Does she not know, even now, that there is abundant proof that this is exactly what took place? Has she not read the Downing Street Memorandum based on what CIA Director George Tenet told the head of British Intelligence at CIA headquarters on July 20, 2002; i. e., that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of making war for “regime change” in Iraq?
Does she not know, even at this late date, that the “intelligence” served up to “justify” attacking Iraq was NOT “mistaken,” but outright fraud, in which Bush had the full cooperation of Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin? Is she unaware that the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence at the time, Carl Ford, has said, on the record, that Tenet and McLaughlin were “not just wrong, they lied … they should have been shot” for their lies about WMD? (See Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.)
Blame Blix
Miller’s tale about Hans Blix in her WSJ article shows she has lost none of her edge for disingenuousness: “One could argue … that Hans Blix, the former chief of the international inspectors, bears some responsibility,” writes Miller. She cherry-picks what Blix said in January 2003 about “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”
Yes, Blix said that on Jan. 27, 2003. But Blix also included this that same day in his written report to his UN superiors, something the New York Times, for some reason, did not include in its report:
“Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable.
“Our inspections have included universities, military bases, presidential sites and private residences. Inspections have also taken place on Fridays, the Muslim day of rest, on Christmas day and New Years day. These inspections have been conducted in the same manner as all other inspections.” [See “Steve M.” writing (appropriately) for “Crooks and Liars” as he corrected the record.]
Yes, there was some resistance by Iraq up to that point. Blix said so. However, on Jan. 30, 2003, Blix made it abundantly clear, in an interview published in The New York Times, that nothing he’d seen at the time justified war. (The byline was Judith Miller and Julia Preston.)
The Miller-Preston report said: “Mr. Blix said he continued to endorse disarmament through peaceful means. ‘I think it would be terrible if this comes to an end by armed force, and I wish for this process of disarmament through the peaceful avenue of inspections,’ he said. …
“Mr. Blix took issue with what he said were Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents. …
“He further disputed the Bush administration’s allegations that his inspection agency might have been penetrated by Iraqi agents, and that sensitive information might have been leaked to Baghdad, compromising the inspections. Finally, he said, he had seen no persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, which Mr. Bush also mentioned in his speech. ‘There are other states where there appear to be stronger links,’ such as Afghanistan, Mr. Blix said, noting that he had no intelligence reports on this issue.”
Although she co-authored that New York Times report of Jan. 30, 2003, Judith Miller remembers what seems convenient to remember. Her acumen at cherry picking may be an occupational hazard occasioned by spending too much time with Chalabi, Rumsfeld and other professional Pentagon pickers.
Moreover, Blix’s February 2003 report showed that, for the most part, Iraq was cooperating and the process was working well:
“Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming. …
“The inspections have taken place throughout Iraq at industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centres, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private houses, missile production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites. …
“In my 27 January update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, most importantly prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure. This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has so far been without problems, including those that had never been declared or inspected, as well as to Presidential sites and private residences. …
“The presentation of intelligence information by the US Secretary of State suggested that Iraq had prepared for inspections by cleaning up sites and removing evidence of proscribed weapons programmes.
“I would like to comment only on one case, which we are familiar with, namely, the trucks identified by analysts as being for chemical decontamination at a munitions depot. This was a declared site, and it was certainly one of the sites Iraq would have expected us to inspect.
“We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart. The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection.”
Blix made it clear that he needed more time, but the Bush administration had other plans. In other words, the war wasn’t Blix’s fault, as Judy Miller suggests. The fault lay elsewhere.
When Blix retired at the end of June 2004, he politely suggested to the “prestigious” Council on Foreign Relations in New York the possibility that Baghdad had actually destroyed its weapons of mass destruction after the first Gulf War in 1991 (as Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who had been in charge of the WMD and rocket programs assured his debriefers when he defected in 1995). Blix then allowed himself an undiplomatic jibe:
“It is sort of fascinating that you can have 100 per cent certainty about weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty of about where they are.”
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
William Binney, former Technical Director, National Security Agency (ret.)
Thomas Drake, former Senior Executive, NSA
Daniel Ellsberg, former State and Defense Department official, associate VIPS
Frank Grevil, former Maj., Army Intelligence, Denmark, associate VIPS
Katharine Gun, former analyst, GCHQ (the NSA equivalent in the UK), associate VIPS
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan, associate VIPS
Brady Kiesling, former Political Counseler, U.S. Embassy, Athens, resigned in protest before the attack on Iraq, associate VIPS.
Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003.
Annie Machon, former officer, MI5 (the FBI equivalent in the UK), associate VIPS
David MacMichael, former Capt., USMC & senior analyst, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former Capt., Army Infantry/Intelligence & CIA presidential briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce, Maj., former U.S. Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Scott Ritter, former Maj., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
Coleen Rowley, Division Council & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
Greg Thielmann, former Office Director for Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Peter Van Buren, former diplomat, Department of State, associate VIPS
Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.) & US diplomat (resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq)
She said in her report that “These were not new chemical arms, to be sure, but Saddam Hussein’s refusal to account for their destruction was among the reasons the White House cited as justification for war.â€
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0&hc_location=ufi
“The discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale.â€
Why were they kept secret? Here’s probably the answer…
“With remarkable speed, Iraq built a program with equipment and precursor purchases from companies in an extraordinary array of countries, EVENTUALLY INCLUDED THE UNITED STATES (emphasis mine), according to its confidential declarations.â€
[…]
“Iraq produced 10 metric tons of mustard blister agent in 1981; by 1987 its production had grown 90-fold, with late-war output aided by TWO AMERICAN COMPANIES that provided hundreds of tons of thiodiglycol, a mustard agent precursor. Production of nerve agents also took off.â€
Also, there’s this old allegation that she was a “charter member” of the WHIG.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051023015045/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/357082p-304302c.html
“They were funneling information to [New York Times reporter] Judy Miller. Judy was a charter member,” the source said.
let’s not forget the massive amounts of birth defects and cancers in Fallujah.
“Annie Machon, former officer, MI5 (the CIA equivalent in the UK), associate VIPS.”
No, MI5 is the FBI equivalent.
What a crew of idiots we have in the USA…arguing that 134,000 were killed in Iraq! This is a troll or mossad-nsa-cia at work.
You people are so confused. Hope u can get your s–t together very, very soon.
This Ms Miller isn’t in jail? U protect war mongering liars….
What a crew of idiots we have in the USA…arguing that 134,000 were killed in Iraq! This is a troll or mossad-nsa-cia at work.
You people are so confused. Hope u can get your s–t together very, very soon.
What a crew of idiots we have in the USA…arguing that 134,000 were killed in Iraq! This is a troll or mossad-nsa-cia at work.
You people are so confused. Hope u can get your s–t together very, very soon.
It is historically correct to state that the Neo Cons, under the auspices of the Globalist bankers,
Took a “treatise on PNAC” and turned it into an actual plan, which has been very usual conduct fro the usual “perps” Because PNAC was and is a plan of world domination, a “fall guy had to be found as well as his country. In this instance Iraq was the starting equation, and I quote that eloquent scoundrel who made billions on the death of millions. ” Mr President you will need another Pearl Harbor to motivate the public” and further, ” if the people found out what we did , there would be hell to pay” After the 7 nation states were destroyed, PNAC called for the destruction of Russia and China, by creating antagonisms-
The VIPS article on Miller’s memoir omits some interesting info:
“Consortium News” leaves out Judith Miller’s interview of CIA official Andrew C. Weber on the PBS show “Bio-Terror”. Andy was a “nuclear inspector” assigned to Moscow. (Something omitted from his official biography.) He is now Asst. Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, & Biological Defense Programs. Moreover, while a part-time “visa officer” at the CIA’s Jeddah consulate, Andy would issue visas to Agency assets.
cf. footnote 12, page 17 of my book “Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World”.
Let’s face it.
The whole basis for going to war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria and Iran has long since been blown wide open. List of credible names who disagreed with the official accounts and reasoning for war just keeps growing by the day! Absolutely NONE of these countries could ever mount a serious, credible threat to the United States, let alone cause any sense of widespread panic among the populace.
Most of the fear-mongering has typically been from within government and the various private “think-tanks”, and gleefully parroted by the “media”. Now, WHAT is so hard to understand here??? When there are pay-offs and all forms of bribery going on behind closed doors, not to mention the risks to one’s career if he/she dare speaks against the “system”, this is usually the kind of results you can expect; EVERY TIME.
Smedley S. Butler said it right, even in the title of his book: “War is a Racket”.
Arthur Schopenhauer German philosopher, 1788-1860
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-avqJQwOoo
High speed drift on a prairie road
Hot tires sing like a string being bowed
Sudden town rears up then explodes
Fragments resolve into white line code
Whirl on silver wheels
Black earth energy receptor fields
Undulate under a grey cloud shield
We outrun a river colour brick red mud
That cleaves apart hills soil rich as blood
Highway squeeze in construction steam
Stop caution hard hat yellow insect machines
Silver steel towers stalk rolling land
Toward distant stacks that shout “Feed on demand”
100 miles later the sky has changed
Urban anticipation — we get 4 lanes
Red orange furnace sphere notches down
Throws up silhouette skyline in brown
Sundogs flare on windshield glass
Sudden swoop skyward iron horse overpass
Pass a man walking like the man in the moon
Walking like his head’s full of irish fiddle tunes
The skin around every city looks the same
Miles of flat neon spelling well-known names
USED TRUCKS DIRTY DONUTS YOU YOU’RE THE ONE
Fat wheeled cars squeal into the sun
Radio speakers gargle top 40 trash
Muzak soundtrack to slow collapse
Planet engines pulsate in sidereal time
If you listen close you can hear the whine
One million Iraqis dead? The figure I’ve always read is 134,000 Iraqi civilians dead. If anyone has a bulletproof cite for the one million figure handy, I’d like to see it. If not, I will look for it myself.
You might want to start your search with the Lancet surveys. As of 2006 they were estimating several hundred thousand dead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties
In the intervening 9 years the constant chaos engendered by the war has surely caused many more deaths. And the depleted uranium weapons used by the US and the UK are gifts which will keep on giving for thousands of years.
I’ve no way of finding a flat number I’d trust, but my gut feeling is that a million deaths in Iraq is distinctly on the low side. After all, that unspeakable bitch Madeleine Albright admitted to 500,000 deaths from the sanctions started by the crappy duo of Bush Daddy and Clinton the First.
ZS:
Clinton continued Bush sanctions one Iraq in the 1990s, he did not start them.
Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq “1,455,590”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
That number will increase with the UN/USA back over there to stop ISIS. Just a dog and pony show for the Elite. It’s All about the BENJAMINS people. WAKE UP Please.
I had heard a figure as high as “six million exterminated” in Iraq, but that number didn’t sound as if it added up to me. Anyhow, what if the number is only 134,000 civilians murdered in a war of naked aggression? Many would go to war over the USS Liberty and that was only a few sailors…what is your point exactly?
You might want to start your search with the Lancet surveys. As of 2006 they were estimating several hundred thousand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties
In the intervening 9 years the constant chaos engendered by the war has surely caused many more deaths. And the depleted uranium weapons used by the US and the UK are gifts which will keep on giving for thousands of years.
I’ve no way of finding a specific number I’d trust, but my gut feeling is that a million deaths in Iraq is distinctly on the low side. After all, that unspeakable b*tch Madeleine Albright admitted to 500,000 deaths from the sanctions started by the crappy duo of Bush Daddy and Clinton the First.
Here’s the most recent report, Mary, by a physician organization on number of people killed as result of post 9-11 wars: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/26/endless_war_as_us_strikes_tikrit
For some various estimates of the number of Iraqi’s killed as a result of the Iraq war, one link is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
This has numbers ranging from 151,000 to 1.033 million.
One thing to remember is that this doesn’t scale the numbers on an overall population basis, for example, the Iraqi population is about 34 million or approximately a ninth of the USA’s 318 million.
And scaling gives some idea of how significant the total deaths are on the entire population as family members are killed and caregivers and breadwinners are killed.
So 151,000 killed in Iraq is about equivalent to a foreign power invading the USA and killing 1.4 million on a percentage of the overall USA population basis.
The 911 attacks resulted in the deaths of 2977 victims in NY and the Pentagon, and this would correspond to the deaths of 318 Iraqi’s on a similarly scaled basis.
So even with the low end of the Iraqi body count, the USA visited Iraq with the scaled equivalent of 151,000/318 or 475 x 9-11 events.
For me, it is inconceivable the USA could be viewed favorably by a non-elite Iraqi.
Mary, If you are relying on the mainstream media to provide you will a summary or Iraqi deaths then you have not been paying attention to the extensive government, media and corporate propaganda that has been an everyday fact of American life for decades.
Just ran into this a few minutes after reading your post:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30164-report-shows-us-invasion-occupation-of-iraq-left-1-million-dead
Judith Miller forget about ever being credible again, count your blessings that you can still get a job at Fox News.
The narrow focus of our VIPS memo upon Miller’s deliberate cherry-picking vis a vis Hans Blix is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to her three decades of agenda-driven, narcissistic and reckless journalism. Her Wikipedia page does not do her “justice” but here are some more links which provide a more comprehensive detailing of her execrable
“career.” I’m having trouble finding the June 25, 2003 Howard Kurtz column in the Washington Post that exposed her shenanigans when Rumsfeld signed off on personally giving her a “top secret clearance” and embedding her in the elite unit (fruitlessly) looking for WMD after the Iraq invasion. Nor is the Kurtz column linked on her Wikipedia page, but this WSWS article quotes extensively from the Kurtz column and from leaked e-mails between Miller and her NYT’s then boss John Burns: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/06/mill-j27.html
Here are some more articles that provide a broader picture of Miller’s longtime disinformation efforts:
https://books.google.com/books?id=78c0TA032EYC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=army+met-a+army+unit+judith+miller&source=bl&ots=B79XCaFNhO&sig=gSdqqwVwWXacdwk0_t0Fb9xbJJI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JQAjVZ7cB5X-yQSZvYG4Dw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=army%20met-a%20army%20unit%20judith%20miller&f=false
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/index3.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/07/08/128888/-Judith-Miller-3-Decades-of-Disinformation#
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Judith_Miller
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/judith_millers_pathetic_iraq_apologia_a_disgraced_reporter_rallies_to_her_own_defense/
Someone just helped me find a link to the original Washington Post expose about Miller’s role in staging stuff as an “embedded journalist” by their media critic Howard Kurtz: http://52.10.241.151/content/embedded-reporters-role-army-units-actions-questioned-military?hc_location=ufi The article begins: “New York Times reporter Judith Miller played a highly unusual role in an Army unit assigned to search for dangerous Iraqi weapons, according to U.S. military officials, prompting criticism that the unit was turned into what one official called a “rogue operation.”
Assuming you are THE Coleen Rowley, great to hear from a great American Patriot, thank you for your courage and dedication, being a former whistleblower myself on a much less significant scale, you have my knowing and enduring admiration. THANK YOU.
Assuming you are THE Coleen Rowley, great to hear from a great American Patriot, thank you for your courage and dedication, being a former whistleblower myself on a much less significant scale, you have my knowing and enduring admiration. THANK YOU.
Thanks for this necessary corrective to Miller’s self serving rewrite of history. It’s relevant and necessary, esp since none of those responsible have been held to account and the crimes continue. The situation today with Syria is somewhat similar to the propaganda and obvious ‘regime change’ goal in Iraq. No matter what Syria does …. it’s never enough. After successfully removing all prohibited chemicals and destroying mfg facilities, for which Syria receives no acknowledgment but OPCW receives nobel peace prize, now there are charges of chlorine use. Seriously. And the UNSC passes resolution threatening another use of international force. And we have HRW, which declined to oppose the Iraq war, playing a back seat cheerleader role for war on Syria.
rick,
Technically chlorine gas is not a banned chemical weapon.
Also any party, including you, can make it easily.
Then as you may realize there’s little evidence that the Assad regime used sarin, It was very likely the “rebels”.
Just so you’re clear the chlorine gas claims are BS.
Right, Human Rights Watch is a joke, they’ve bought the narrative of one bad, much worse, side in the Syria war.
Because there was little to no accountability for the massive failure (in terms of public interest – it was a great success for warmongers) of the New York Times and other major media outlets in the leadup to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, there is little to no pressure for the New York Times and other media outlets to do much different as some of the same sick bastards who led us into Iraq in 2003 are hoping to lead us in to war with Iran over overblown or completely fabricated nuclear weapons concerns, and are gleefully flirting with nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine. Thank you Judith, for your service.
“I don’t think you can have reform in this country unless we have media reform. I don’t think we can have democracy in this country unless we have media democracy.†former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps
For the record, explanation of the law and policy, fact basis for Operation Iraqi Freedom: http://learning-curve.blogspot.com/2014/05/operation-iraqi-freedom-faq.html .
In fact, the principal trigger for Operation Iraqi Freedom was UNMOVIC’s final report to the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003 that found “about 100 unresolved disarmament issues”, such as “With respect to stockpiles of bulk agent stated to have been destroyed, there is evidence to suggest that these was [sic] not destroyed as declared by Iraq.”
To better understand the situation with Iraqi disarmament that the President had to consider at the decision point for Operation Iraqi Freedom, see the UNMOVIC Cluster Document (“Unresolved Disarmament Issues Iraq’s Proscribed Weapons Programmes 6 March 2003”), pursuant to UNSCR 687, that triggered the final decision for OIF.
Eric:
Wrong.
GWBush wanted to start the war (the 2003 invasion) and was looking for an excuse.
Even if Iraq had fully developed nuclear weapons in 2002, the 2003 invasion is still illegal–under well established treaties and even still US law.
What you’ve done is try to turn the terms of the conversation so as to post justify a war of aggression. (Karl Rove did this well in 2002/3.)
Your link is to a pro-war blog written by the US military. Hardly an objective source of information regarding what caused the Iraq war. That’s not unlike linking to a neo-Nazi website to “explain” why Hitler “had” to invade Poland to start WWII. Doh! Epic fail.
That is 100% false :
Everybody knows it was Poland who attacked Germany !
The Polish WMD’s could reach Berlin in minutes, so naturally Germany had to defend itself
and World Peace ..
Peter,
I realize you’re joking, but the line is Germany had to attack Poland to save ethnic Germans from nasty slav[e]s. And then since France had a treaty with Poland France had to declare war on Germany and then of course Germany had to invade northern France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, and Norway.
In all seriousness, you’ll find these Nazi justifications on all sorts of neo Nazi websites. (And I’ve skipped quoting the antisemitic rants.)
Eric, while you are clearly a thoughtful and well-read guy, I think you ought to think about what you wrote.
You are stating that unresolved disarmament issues, including a possible discrepancy with respect to chemical weapons precursors is justification for war.
This is not true. The UN Charter limits war to self-defense and requires that unless there is an imminent threat, military action should only be taken by agreement of the Security Council. The United States failed to obtain full consent of the Security Council and certainly could not claim self-defense.
The question of why there were discrepancies with respect to chemical weapons precursors has been addressed. They decompose. The only chemical weapons that were found in Iraq were badly decomposed… so badly that they injured US troops charged with their disposal. They were not useful as weapons.
The same is true of stuff used to make biological weapons. After a while, it goes bad.
The U.S. lied to the U.N. to get the limited authorization it received and then abused. This has been confessed by Colin Powell’s top aide, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. As someone who wasn’t there, you should listen to him. He was there, and he does know. And he’s telling you you’re wrong.
Colon is full of shit. Harry Belafonte called him (uh oh) an “uncle Tom”. You cannot blame Colon for trying to get along in this Neo-Liberal, corporate-fascist, white man’s world though: covering up the My Lai massacre, getting weapons to Iran, and convincing the masses and wealthy socialite “reporters” like Judith Miller.
Guernica! Guernica! Guernica!
I believe Harry Belafonte referred to Colin Powell as a “house slave”, which is more in keeping with Powell’s position inside the US power structure.
There is seemingly a decline in the stature of American’s Black leaders as Martin Luther King, Harry Belafonte and Thurgood Marshall are replaced the with likes of Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Eric Holder.
Perhaps it is that the previous generation were all battle worn outsiders while the new generation are now establishment groomed insiders.
Interesting. I would say that Condoleeza Rice (as opposed to Secretary of State Colin Powell) was the “actual” house slave (for Neocon imperial war-mongering), as she was the “National Security Advisor” to Bush in the “White House.” Her forebears were “house slaves.” You just can’t get any more deliciously ironic and perfectly “Imperial” than that!
Colin Powell is a RHINO and Harry Belafonte is a Communist
I think you mean RINO. Harry Belafonte is a communist? and your proof is? and your point is? argumentum ad hominem is no argument.
SEE THIS:
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq war illegal, says Annan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm
You are wrong. The UN did not ask the USA to invade.
It was a “coalition of the willing”.
It was not the UN, it was the US, Britain, Micronesia, Albania, The Seychelles, …
OH,
You forgot Palau.
More seriously: Poland.
I noticed you did not mention anything about the 6 years of UN Inspections BEFORE the “Iraq War”.
6 YEARS of inspectors being allowed to go anywhere they wanted and their documentation of the actual destruction of the very agents you assume were not destroyed.
Instead every so often pictures of old corroded useless non viable munitions are paraded about and them claimed to be the “WMD” that were so feared.
Useless non serviceable garbage buried in an ammo DUMP.
Yet after all that and 10 years of occupation and the deaths of over a million Iraqis, most of which were not enemy combatants you are still trying to justify the invasion?
What was the reasoning? Saddam Hussein killed 15,000 or so of his own people so we had to go in and “save them” by killing a MILLION more?
So who was worse? Saddam Hussein (who was an asshole) or a foreign invader who killed over a MILLION with all the good intention they can muster? Of course we also can include the 60,000 wounded and the dead American soldiers in this too can’t we? Then there is that who 3 soldiers committing suicide a day thing as well . . . . .
Or how about that “trade” of 5 high level enemy combatants PLUS $5 million dollars for a CIA investigate and KNOWN planned defector and traitor called Bowe Bergdahl. Oh wait that was not the same war now was it?
Think about that how much distance is between all those countries? They are mostly close together like the states of America now aren’t they. So the borders are supposed to mean there is an actual difference?
Apparently here in America we are supposed to see our own borders as not making a difference when it comes to illegal immigration these days. Hmmm . . .
Hello 5WarVeteran,May i ask as an Australian Living in a rural part of NSW,Are things as Bad as they seem in America? Do you think Jade helm is a beat up? was the Boston bombing a false flag?Will Hilary Clinton be the next president?.Is Barak Obama as incompetent as he seems?I would really like your opinion.Sincerley ,will
Jeeez, I guess Aussies aren’t taught to spell.
Since 5war, or nobody else, answered your question, I thought I might try. Yes, things are as bad in America as they seem. Things are also bad in Australia, UK, and Canada too. Things are on the “Bad” track in NZ. The Problem is that these five Nations are “The Five Sisters” and the remaining, CENTRAL CORE of what was once called The British Empire, because they are mainly “staffed” with blood members of the far-flung, English-speaking, Tribe (including those of us assimilated centuries ago, from “The Celtic Fringe” tribal Nations). Because we are only “subjects”, in the several subjugated “Provinces” of an EMPIRE, and thus not allowed to follow common-sense policies in our own respective National interests, that mainly concern promoting the General Welfare, or common good, things will generally “get bad” for the common folks. Perceptive members of the USA Province are aware of this situation because we have frequently squared off against this Empire (1776, 1812, 1861 against the CSA proxies of the Brit Empire, since then only via economic manipulations, Great Depressions, embroilments in foreign wars to bleed and undermine us with a Security State beyond public control, and specifically in “Imperial Control”). We’ve come in for an EXTRA dose of “Bad” BECAUSE we have squared off, violently and bloodily, against this Empire. JFK was the last President to confront The Empire. They killed him for it. Since then we’ve had “Wall Street/Security State” pawns, or ones who are “gun shy”. An Empire is run by an exclusive club of extremely wealthy gangsters who promote the idea that they comprise a “Ruling Class” of “our betters”, so as to keep down rebellion. They care NOTHING about the general welfare and well-being of common folks, EXCEPT only to placate “the masses”. When “the masses” are sufficiently placated, THEN come the “economic crises” and “austerities” and “quantitative easing” (read “extracting The Emperor’s Tribute from the subjects”), so that they can get on more vigorously with their looting operations…until the heat is turned up again and they back off for awhile. This is a sickness that has plagued Western Civilization for at least 2000 years, maybe more. The Old Romans perfected it. The version of this sickness with which you and I are familiar, was called “The British Empire”, now called “New World Order”. It’s run from City-of-London/Wall Street, and their “Security State” apparatus. Their reign is currently threatened by BRICS, which have adopted policies that FDR and JFK (great warriors against The Empire) would recognize. The Empire is at “End Game” now. They may be breathing their last, this time. This is The Story that lays behind all of the other stories of History, AND current events.
BTW, Will-from-NSW, my ancestors hailed from old south Wales; old Glamorgan Shire, and old Pembroke Shire. They were affiliated with The Independents, meaning religiously independent from the Pope and the King. Many of them decided the King was little more than a sanctimonious, posturing “Mafia Don” and had him executed, and this occurred in a time when Royalty was thought to be Divinely Ordained, and to lay hands upon a King was tantamount to seizing an Angel, or some such Divine Being. The World calls them the Puritans, or RoundHeads (the old CSA was mainly run by descendants of The Cavaliers…old Loyalist/Royalist foes of the RoundHeads). My ancestors came over here in 1640, in the New England area, secretly to “have another go” at dismantling The Ancient Regime of EMPIRE, before it burned up, and consumed the entire World. The going’s been rough, and “Bad”, as you say, and unfortunately, their descendants have largely forgotten The Story, many being seduced by the shiny rewards of Empire. The Sickness is one of Inner, moral Corruption, NOT outer affiliation; a condition beyond the Realm of governance and politics, which modern-day atheists/materialists (which defines almost ALL of us, now-a-days) can’t acknowledge as being possible. Fortunately though, it looks like BRICS will finish the work that my ancestors started…if they themselves remain uncorrupted by Imperial Temptations.
To Brad Owen,
You said “… FDR and JFK (great warriors against The Empire) … .” What on earth can you mean? I can see JFK being murdered for his intent to avoid the highly profitable Vietnam War, but FDR? How can anything good be said about FDR? Other than the formation of the “federal reserve system” FDR has done more to destroy America than anyone else. He injected more of the the poison of socialism into America than any other president.
And you said: “Perceptive members of the USA Province are aware of this situation because we have frequently squared off against this Empire (1776, 1812, 1861 against the CSA proxies of the Brit Empire, … .” I happen to believe that the Confederate States of America were completely justified in seceding from the tax hungry union. What’s your story? Have you read “The Real Lincoln” by Thomas DiLorenzo? Lincoln was a pro-empire man and the Jefferson Davis was right to oppose him.
Sincerely,
David Parker
I see now ……LOL. It’s so good to know a million dead makes perfect sense. Another poor soul duped.