Phil Donahue, the legendary American television talk show host, died Sunday at 88. The author recalls his appearances on Donahue’s top-rated show as he questioned the rationale to invade Iraq in 2003.
Phil Donahue introduces the North American premiere of the documentary Body of War at the Toronto International Film Festival. (jbach/Flickr)
I got to know Phil in 2002, when he returned to the television talk show circuit on MSNBC as the host of Donahue.
America was, at that time, collectively beating the drums of war, with the Bush administration making the case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to world peace sufficient enough to justify a military invasion.
Phil, however, thought it was important to ask questions before signing on to the government case for war. He asked his producer, Jeff Cohen, to find a voice in opposition to the war. Jeff called me, and asked if I would be the guest on Phil’s premier. I accepted.
Donahue premiered on July 12, 2002. More than a million people tuned in, making it the top-rated show in America in prime time. As Eric Boehlert wrote in Salon Magazine,
“It was telling that Donahue’s first guest on the inaugural show was Scott Ritter, the former United Nations weapons inspector turned dove, who argued the United States today has no basis to declare war on Iraq. An ex-Marine and a proud Republican who spent years inspecting Saddam Hussein’s arsenal, Ritter has been surprisingly absent from the national debate about a new war with Iraq. Donahue fixed that oversight in one night.”
According to Jeff, the decision to bring me on created a storm of controversy within NBC/MSNBC. He wrote about the difficulties in booking voices opposed to the war:
“Not every weapons expert had been wrong. Take ex-Marine and former UN inspector Scott Ritter. In the last months of 2002, he told any audience or journalist who would hear him that Iraqi WMD represented no threat to our country. ‘Send in the inspectors,’ urged Ritter, ‘don’t send in the Marines.’
It’s telling that in the run-up to the war, no American TV network hired any on-air analysts from among the experts who questioned White House WMD claims. None would hire Ritter.
Inside MSNBC in 2002, Ritter was the target of a smear that he was receiving covert funds from Saddam Hussein’s government. The baseless slur was obviously aimed at reducing his media appearances. It surfaced like clockwork at MSNBC when we sought to book Ritter as a guest on Donahue.”
The famous American journalist and political commentator, Bill Moyers, asked Donahue about this in 2007:
BILL MOYERS: You had Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector. Who was saying that if we invade, it will be a historic blunder.
PHIL DONOHUE: You didn’t have him alone. He had to be there with someone else who supported the war. In other words, you couldn’t have Scott Ritter alone. You could have Richard Perle alone.
BILL MOYERS: You could have the conservative.
PHIL DONOHUE: You could have the supporters of the President alone. And they would say why this war is important. You couldn’t have a dissenter alone. Our producers were instructed to feature two conservatives for every liberal.
BILL MOYERS: You’re kidding.
PHIL DONOHUE: No this is absolutely true.
On Feb. 25, 2003, [three weeks before the March 19 invasion of Iraq] MSNBC canceled Donahue, its top-rated show.
An internal NBC report described host Phil Donahue as “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” noting that senior management worried that Donahue’s show could become “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”
The straw that broke the camel’s back was my last appearance on Donahue, on Jan. 15, 2003. I appeared side by side with Richard Butler, my former boss at the United Nations.
The transcript speaks for itself:
DONAHUE: Mr. Ritter, a comment on the final point that he made-briefly, please.
RITTER: What I’ll say is this, is, I take strong disagreement with the contention that you know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
BUTLER: Oh, come on, Scott. That’s on the public record.
RITTER: Of course it’s not. The public record actually says, with all due respect…
BUTLER: You signed the papers to me, when you worked for me, advising me-with all of your intellect and knowledge, you signed pieces of paper to me saying that Iraq has hidden weapons of mass destruction.
RITTER: Never. I signed pieces of paper to you that said we have credible intelligence information that says Iraq has it. And I asked you permission to carry out an inspection. But, understand, it’s an investigation. You just made a definitive statement that says you know Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. But, with all due respect, Richard, that is never reflected in any of the documents, even the one you just mentioned.
BUTLER: That’s not true.
RITTER: It is true. I have it here tonight. Do you want to go through the document page by page and show the people?
DONAHUE: Well, probably not.
(LAUGHTER)
BUTLER: It’s absolutely established that Iraq has not accounted for…
RITTER: Bingo. I agree with that, has not accounted for. But that’s an accounting issue.
BUTLER: So, where are the 500 shells with mustard in them? Where is the 400 tons of…
RITTER: These are good questions, but do you have evidence that they have it?
BUTLER: Where are the missiles?
RITTER: Do you know they have it for a fact, that they possess it as we speak? Or is the problem that Iraq has provided an accounting that we don’t have evidence to back it up, that we can’t confirm the Iraqi version of disposition? My point is…
BUTLER: Why are you assuming such a degree of innocence on the part of the Iraqis?
U.S. Army paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade prepare to board C-17 Globemaster III’s bound for Iraq on March 23, 2003 at Aviano Air Base, Italy. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Stephen Faulisi)
RITTER: Because 200,000 Americans are going to war based upon a perception of a threat. You testified before the U.S. Senate that Iraq has these weapons. And people listened to you and they gave that credibility, when the fact is, you do not know with absolute certainty that Iraq has these weapons.
BUTLER: Scott, the United States…
(APPLAUSE)
RITTER: And I’m not going to stand by and let Americans die in combat because people like you mislead the American Congress. I just won’t allow that to happen.
BUTLER: Oh, for God’s sake, for God’s sake, I mislead the American Congress?
RITTER: You said you know where the weapons are. Where are they?
BUTLER: Please allow me to finish. There is on the record at the United Nations pieces of paper signed by you…
RITTER: I have them here.
BUTLER: … addressed to me, saying, these people have concealed weapons. Please authorize me to go find them.
RITTER: And you signed those documents.
BUTLER: Sometimes I did and sometimes I told you no.
RITTER: Give me an example when you said no.
BUTLER: I told you no because I thought what you were doing was excessive.
RITTER: Give me an example, Richard.
BUTLER: Come on.
RITTER: No, please, in front of the people here tonight. You’ve said this many times. You’ve brought my credibility into question. I can document every time we’ve met, every time I briefed you, and every time you signed it. Please, for the benefit of the public tonight, one example of when you turned me down.
Phil Donahue cut off the debate at that point.
It should be noted that the documents I referred to were part of the archive seized by the F.B.I. when they raided my home on August 7.
I last saw Phil Donahue at the Fighting Bob Festival, in Wisconsin, in 2008. He was in good spirits, and we exchanged reminisces of the time we tried to stop the war in Iraq which was, at that time, still raging.
We had both been proven right in our opposition to this war.
Those who promoted the war continued to draw large salaries in their jobs at NBC and MSNBC, while Phil and I spoke to local crowds in Chautauqua.
Looking back, Phil and I got the better of the deal.
We retained our honor and integrity.
Phil Donahue died this past Sunday.
And with his passing went one of the last honest journalists in America.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
I am reminded that I do not feel bad about having ended a 30 year friendship in 2005 after my friend indicated, without any hesitation or any sign of having any doubts or second thoughts, that he was voting for GWB a second time in 2004, and that he was in favor of the Iraq war.
My friend was a fundamentalist Christian but did not fit the worst stereotypes of people of that persuasion. I met him in the mid 1970’s when we were both graduate students and working at a part time job sponsored by our state university. I was a Christian, but not a fundamentalist, at the time I met my friend, and later had my reasons for becoming unhappy with Christianity, and my friend was accepting.
I was bothered that my friend was for GWB in 2000, anybody but Gore and he was strongly against abortion, but I accepted it at the time.
However I needed to reevaluate my friendship with him after he voted for GWB in 2004 and was in favor of the Iraq war. My friend felt that we had needed to take out Saddam Hussein just like we had needed to take out Hitler in the late 1930’s but did not do so. And he felt that it was OK that we did not find the purported weapons of mass destruction, because — he said — Intelligence is not an exact science. To me that sounded like excusing a president who was “his type” of president.
I proposed that if my friend and I got together we could talk about work, school, and people we both knew. However I did not want to hear my friend’s thoughts about any controversial issue. And I did not want to hear about any of my friend’s or his family’s church or Christian activities, and I said that to my friend knowing that church and Christian activities were very important in his family’s life.
We mutually agreed to end our friendship, and we did so on amicable terms. We agreed we could have fond memories of our past relationship and exchanged best wishes for each other’s futures.
I could not respect my friend’s politics or especially his religious faith after voting for GWB a second time and being in favor of the Iraq war.
Given some recent Supreme Court decisions, including by “justices” appointed by GWB, I am reminded that I do not feel bad about having ended our friendship
One thing I wondered about was his news sources, where my friend got his news from. I did not get to find out. I would guess he got his news from the mainstream media, and from fundamentalist Christian news sources and commentaries.
Thanks Scott for your service to your nation.
Scott Ritter has asserted that Israeli agents offered him 3 million dollars to “confirm” Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. To his credit, Mr Ritter told them to stuff it.
Yes, but some people might well have acted with less integrity.
Good article.
But let us be careful about Bill Moyers.
Because of him and others, we are no longer allowed to see “The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Guilty Men”
That documentary shows us just some of the evidence of Vice President Johnson’s role in the JFK assassination.
The History Channel agreed not to show it again and ran a studio discussion in which three people said that the documentary should never have been broadcast. Nobody was allowed on to defend it or the original decision to show it!
“The documentary, shown in the week of the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, caused a storm of protest from prominent veterans of the Johnson administration, including broadcaster Bill Moyers and Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America.”
“History Channel withdraws JFK documentary”
“Controversial documentary accused former President Lyndon B. Johnson of complicity in Kennedy assassination.”
(Originally from Reuters).
Thank You Scott
I there is imminent threat of attack one must know where the threat is or it cannot be imminent. In our nuclear world there is acknowledged imminent threat which in effect means we should immediately stage a preemptive attack. That is now worse in fefect to the entire Cold War.
If imminent threat of attack can be imagined then all wars are possible all of the time any time we want.
Scott:
You are a good and courageous man. Thanks for this recollection. Please keep up the good fight. From a Canuck friend
It is beyond me how anyone can believe a word of the US government after the Magic Bullet, the Gulf of Tonkin, WMDs, and lately, the Russiagate fraud – among a thousand other lies large and small.
No wonder Gore Vidal called America the United States of Amnesia.
Bravo, Scott. You and Donahue were from the same ethical mode, one that all the joined power of this morally dirty, ethically diseased, and practically insane country of ours is determined to suppress and eradicate.
They have attacked you as they attacked him, for the most sinister, dishonest and cowardly reasons, and because you refuse to knuckle under to these vicious monsters, I fear for your life.
He was such a good man. Always seeking truth. What MSNBC did was the antithesis of what journalism is about. Their actions since then reinforce their hypocrisy every day….
Quite right. But those who garner their information from state-run/corporate media might know very little about what their govt actually does for a living. I say State-Run media as a matter of law and is not my opinion since the FCC decides who can be on air with a license to broadcast When the FCC approves a license, it becomes state-run media by definition of law. However, when Americans are uneducated about such realities, they have proven they can be talked into almost anything, no matter how untruthful such information so often happens to be.
Donahue was amazing—penetrating, seeking. Scott was one of the main weapons inspectors expressing skepticism of the claim for war and became an instant hero. The back and forth dragged on with a sort of smug Bush insistence on going to war. At last around March it was stated the US would invade Iraq . . . because of the weather. If it waited much longer it would be too hot. This is what the “reasoning” eventually came down to.
Rachel Corrie was murdered 2 days before the March 19 war kickoff. I stood with “the Gray Panthers” on Eight Mile and Novi Roads in metro detroit protesting that war and we got lots of honks in agreement. Very few heckles.
RIP Phil Donahue. Here’s a guy who would have Nader on somewhat regularly and would also give a non-hostile platform to anti-war voices. He was the last of a dying breed.