Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
27, 2004
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
May
19, 2004
Elizabeth
W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing,
Now
Bill
and Kathleen Christison
The US Can't Win
Vijay
Prashad
For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004
Ray
Hanania
Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.?
Greg
Moses
Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC
Michael
Gillespie
Who is Kenneth deGraffenried?
Josh
Frank
Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry?
Gary
Corseri
Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave
Kevin
Alexander Gray
If Malcolm Were Alive
May
18, 2004
Neve
Gordon
The Gaza Debacle
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Vanessa
Jones
Man on a Leash
Thomas
P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden
Zeynep
Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Kenneth
Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
Website
of the Day
Truth Against Truth
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
May
27, 2004
Fatal
Errors
The
Lies of Our Times
By
AMY GOODMAN and DAVID GOODMAN
In our new book, The
Exception To the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers
and the Media That Love Them, we titled one chapter "The
Lies of Our Times" to examine how The New York Times coverage
on Iraq and its alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction
helped lead the country to war. Yesterday, The New York Times,
for the first time, raised questions about its own coverage in
an 1,100-word editor's note. Here is an excerpt from our section
of the book on the New York Times and Iraq.
"From a marketing point
of view, you don't introduce new products in August." --
Andrew H. Card, White House Chief of Staff speaking about the
Iraq war P.R. campaign, September 6, 2002
In the midst of the buildup
to war, a major scandal was unfolding at The New York Times-the
paper that sets the news agenda for other media. The Times admitted
that for several years a 27-year-old reporter named Jayson Blair
had been conning his editors and falsifying stories. He had pretended
to be places he hadn't been, fabricated quotes, and just plain
lied in order to tell a sensational tale. For this, Blair was
fired. But The Times went further: It ran a 7,000-word, five-page
expose on the young reporter, laying bare his personal and professional
escapades.
The Times said it had reached
a low point in its 152-year history. I agreed. But not because
of the Jayson Blair affair. It was The Times coverage of the
Bush-Blair affair.
When George W. Bush and Tony
Blair made their fraudulent case to attack Iraq, The Times, along
with most corporate media outlets in the United States, became
cheerleaders for the war. And while Jayson Blair was being crucified
for his journalistic sins, veteran Times national security correspondent
and best-selling author Judith Miller was filling The Times'
front pages with unchallenged government propaganda. Unlike Blair's
deceptions, Miller's lies provided the pretext for war. Her lies
cost lives.
If only The New York Times
had done the same kind of investigation of Miller's reports as
it had with Jayson Blair.
The White House propaganda
blitz was launched on September 7, 2002, at a Camp David press
conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood side by side
with his co-conspirator, President George W. Bush. Together,
they declared that evidence from a report published by the UN
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed that Iraq was
"six months away" from building nuclear weapons.
"I don't know what more
evidence we need," crowed Bush.
Actually, any evidence would
help-there was no such IAEA report. But at the time, few mainstream
American journalists questioned the leaders' outright lies. Instead,
the following day, "evidence" popped up in the Sunday
New York Times under the twin byline of Michael Gordon and Judith
Miller. "More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed
to give up weapons of mass destruction," they stated with
authority, "Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons
and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an
atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today."
In a revealing example of
how the story amplified administration spin, the authors included
the phrase soon to be repeated by President Bush and all his
top officials: "The first sign of a 'smoking gun,' [administration
officials] argue, may be a mushroom cloud."
Harper's publisher John R.
MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda
in the Gulf War, knew what to make of this front-page bombshell.
"In a disgraceful piece of stenography," he wrote,
Gordon and Miller "inflated an administration leak into
something resembling imminent Armageddon."
The Bush administration knew
just what to do with the story they had fed to Gordon and Miller.
The day The Times story ran, Vice President Dick Cheney made
the rounds on the Sunday talk shows to advance the administration's
bogus claims. On NBC's Meet the Press, Cheney declared that Iraq
had  purchased
aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium. It didn't matter that
the IAEA refuted the charge both before and after it was made.
But Cheney didn't want viewers just to take his word for it.
"There's a story in The New York Times this morning,"
he said smugly. "And I want to attribute The Times."
This was the classic disinformation
two-step: the White House leaks a lie to The Times, the newspaper
publishes it as a startling expose, and then the White House
conveniently masquerades behind the credibility of The Times.
"What mattered,"
wrote MacArthur, "was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial
for war."
Judith Miller was just getting
warmed up. Reporting for America's most influential newspaper,
Miller continued to trumpet administration leaks and other bogus
sources as the basis for eye-popping stories that backed the
administration's false premises for war. "If reporters who
live by their sources were obliged to die by their sources,"
Jack Shafer wrote later in Slate, "Miller would be stinking
up her family tomb right now."
After the war, Shafer pointed
out, "None of the sensational allegations about chemical,
biological, or nuclear weapons given to Miller have panned out,
despite the furious crisscrossing of Iraq by U.S. weapons hunters."
Did The New York Times publish
corrections? Clarifications? Did heads roll? Not a chance: Judith
Miller's "scoops" continued to be proudly run on the
front pages.
Here are just some of the
corrections The Times should have run after the year-long campaign
of front-page false claims by one of its premier reporters, Judith
Miller.
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES DEPARTMENT
OF CORRECTIONS
Scoop: "U.S. Says Hussein
Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts," by Judith Miller and
Michael R. Gordon, September 8, 2002. The authors quote Ahmed
al-Shemri (a pseudonym), who contends that he worked in Iraq's
chemical weapons program before defecting in 2000. " 'All
of Iraq is one large storage facility,' said Mr. Shemri, who
claimed to have worked for many years at the Muthanna State Enterprise,
once Iraq's chemical weapons plant." The authors quote Shemri
as stating that Iraq is stockpiling "12,500 gallons of anthrax,
2,500 gallons of gas gangrene, 1,250 gallons of aflatoxin, and
2,000 gallons of botulinum throughout the country."
Oops: As UN weapons inspectors
had earlier stated-and U.S. weapons inspectors confirmed in September
2003-none of these claims were true. The unnamed source is one
of many Iraqi defectors who made sensational false claims that
were championed by Miller and The Times.
Scoop: "White House Lists
Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons," by Judith Miller and
Michael Gordon, September 13, 2002. The article quotes the White
House contention that Iraq was trying to purchase aluminum pipes
to assist its nuclear weapons program.
Oops: Rather than run a major
story on how the United States had falsely cited the UN to back
its claim that Iraq was expanding its nuclear weapons program,
Miller and Gordon repeated and embellished the lie.
Contrast this with the lead
paragraph of a story that ran in the British daily The Guardian
on September 9: "The International Atomic Energy Agency
has no evidence that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons at a
former site previously destroyed by UN inspectors, despite claims
made over the weekend by Tony Blair, western diplomatic sources
told The Guardian yesterday." The story goes on to say that
the IAEA "issued a statement insisting it had 'no new information'
on Iraq's nuclear program since December 1998 when its inspectors
left Iraq."
Miller's trumped-up story contributed
to the climate of the time and The Times. A month later, numerous
congressional representatives cited the nuclear threat as a reason
for voting to authorize war.
Scoop: "U.S. Faulted Over
Its Efforts to Unite Iraqi Dissidents," by Judith Miller,
October 2, 2002. Quoting Ahmed Chalabi and Defense Department
adviser Richard Perle, this story stated: "The INC [Iraqi
National Congress] has been without question the single most
important source of intelligence about Saddam Hussein."
Miller airs the INC's chief
complaint: "Iraqi dissidents and administration officials
complain that [the State Department and CIA] have also tried
to cast doubt on information provided by defectors Mr. Chalabi's
organization has brought out of Iraq."
Oops: Miller championed the
cause of Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader who had been lobbying
Washington for over a decade to support the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein's regime. As The Washington Post revealed, Miller wrote
to Times veteran foreign correspondent John Burns, who was working
in Baghdad at the time, that Chalabi "has provided most
of the front page exclusives on WMD [weapons of mass destruction]
to our paper."
Times readers might be interested
to learn the details of how Ahmed Chalabi was bought and paid
for by the CIA. Chalabi heads the INC, an organization of Iraqi
exiles created by the CIA in 1992 with the help of the Rendon
Group, a powerful public relations firm that has worked extensively
for the two Bush administrations. Between 1992 and 1996, the
CIA covertly funneled $12 million to Chalabi's INC. In 1998,
the Clinton administration gave Chalabi control of another $98
million of U.S. taxpayer money. Chalabi's credibility has always
been questionable: He was convicted in absentia in Jordan of
stealing some $500 million from a bank he established, leaving
shareholders high and dry. He has been accused by Iraqi exiles
of pocketing at least $4 million of CIA funds.
In the lead-up to war, the
CIA dismissed Chalabi as unreliable. But he was the darling of
Pentagon hawks, putting an Iraqi face on their warmongering.
So the Pentagon established a new entity, the Office of Special
Plans, to champion the views of discredited INC defectors who
helped make its case for war.
As Howard Kurtz later asked
in The Washington Post: "Could Chalabi have been using The
Times to build a drumbeat that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass
destruction?"
Scoop: "C.I.A. Hunts Iraq
Tie to Soviet Smallpox," by Judith Miller, December 3, 2002.
The story claims that "Iraq obtained a particularly virulent
strain of smallpox from a Russian scientist." The story
adds later: "The information came to the American government
from an informant whose identity has not been disclosed."
Smallpox was cited by President
Bush as one of the "weapons of mass destruction" possessed
by Iraq that justified a dangerous national inoculation program-and
an invasion.
Oops: After a three-month search
of Iraq, " 'Team Pox' turned up only signs to the contrary:
disabled equipment that had been rendered harmless by UN inspectors,
Iraqi scientists deemed credible who gave no indication they
had worked with smallpox, and a laboratory thought to be back
in use that was covered in cobwebs," reported the Associated
Press in September 2003.
Scoop: "Illicit Arms Kept
Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert,"
by Judith Miller, April 21, 2003. In this front-page article,
Miller quotes an American military officer who passes on the
assertions of "a man who said he was an Iraqi scientist"
in U.S. custody. The "scientist" claims that Iraq destroyed
its WMD stockpile days before the war began, that the regime
had transferred banned weapons to Syria, and that Saddam Hussein
was working closely with Al Qaeda.
Who is the messenger for this
bombshell? Miller tells us only that she "was permitted
to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material
from the arms program was buried. Clad in nondescript clothes
and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where
he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."
And then there were the terms
of this disclosure: "This reporter was not permitted to
interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted
to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days,
and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.
Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered
be deleted." No proof. No names. No chemicals. Only a baseball
cap-and the credibility of Miller and The Times-to vouch for
a "scientist" who conveniently backs up key claims
of the Bush administration. Miller, who was embedded with MET
Alpha, a military unit searching for WMDs, pumped up her sensational
assertions the next day on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
Q: Has the unit you've been
traveling with found any proof of weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq?
JUDITH MILLER: Well, I think
they found something more than a smoking gun. What they've found...is
a silver bullet in the form of a person, an Iraqi individual,
a scientist, as we've called him, who really worked on the programs,
who knows them firsthand.
Q: Does this confirm in a way
the insistence coming from the U.S. government that after the
war, various Iraqi tongues would loosen, and there might be people
who would be willing to help?
UDITH MILLER: Yes, it clearly
does.... That's what the Bush administration has finally done.
They have changed the political environment, and they've enabled
people like the scientists that MET Alpha has found to come forth.
Oops: The silver bullet got
more tarnished as it was examined. Three months later, Miller
acknowledged that the scientist was merely "a senior Iraqi
military intelligence official." His explosive claims vaporized.
A final note from the Department
of Corrections: The Times deeply regrets any wars or loss of
life that these errors may have contributed to.
UP IN SMOKE
Tom Wolfe once wrote about
a war-happy Times correspondent in Vietnam (same idea, different
war): The administration was "playing [the reporter] of
The New York Times like an ocarina, as if they were blowing smoke
up his pipe and the finger work was just right and the song was
coming forth better than they could have played it themselves."
But who was playing whom? The Washington Post reported that while
Miller was embedded with MET Alpha, her role in the unit's operations
became so central that it became known as the "Judith Miller
team." In one instance, she disagreed with a decision to
relocate the unit to another area and threatened to file a critical
report in The Times about the action. When she took her protest
to a two-star general, the decision was reversed. One Army officer
told the Post, "Judith was always issuing threats of either
going to The New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There
was nothing veiled about that threat."
Later, she played a starring
role in a ceremony in which MET Alpha's leader was promoted.
Other officers were surprised to watch as Miller pinned a new
rank on the uniform of Chief Warrant Officer Richard Gonzales.
He thanked her for her "contributions" to the unit.
In April 2003, MET Alpha traveled to the compound of Iraqi National
Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi "at Judy's direction,"
where they interrogated and took custody of an Iraqi man who
was on the Pentagon's wanted list-despite the fact that MET Alpha's
only role was to search for WMDs. As one officer told the Post,
"It's impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the
mission of this unit, and not for the better."
After a year of bogus scoops
from Miller, the paper gave itself a bit of cover. Not corrections-just
cover. On September 28, 2003, Times reporter Douglas Jehl surprisingly
kicked the legs out from under Miller's sources. In his story
headlined AGENCY BELITTLES INFORMATION GIVEN BY IRAQ DEFECTORS,
Jehl revealed: An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence
Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by
Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National
Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials
briefed on the arrangement. In addition, several Iraqi defectors
introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization
and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, invented or exaggerated their
credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government
and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials
said.
The Iraqi National Congress
had made some of these defectors available to...The New York
Times, which reported their allegations about prisoners and the
country's weapons program. Poof. Up in smoke went thousands
of words of what can only be called rank propaganda.
This Times confession was too
little, too late. After an unnecessary war, during a brutal occupation,
and several thousand lives later, The Times obliquely acknowledged
that it had been recycling disinformation. Miller's reports played
an invaluable role in the administration's propaganda war. They
gave public legitimacy to outright lies, providing what appeared
to be independent confirmation of wild speculation and false
accusations. "What Miller has done over time seriously violates
several Times' policies under their code of conduct for news
and editorial departments," wrote William E. Jackson in
Editor & Publisher. "Jayson Blair was only a fluke deviation....
Miller strikes right at the core of the regular functioning news
machine."
More than that, Miller's false
reporting was key to justifying a war. And The Times' unabashed
servitude to the administration's war agenda did not end with
Iraq.
On September 16, 2003, The
Times ran a story headlined SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL TO LEVEL WEAPONS
CHARGES AGAINST SYRIA. The stunningly uncritical article was
virtually an excerpt of the testimony about to be given that
day by outspoken hawk John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state
for arms control. The article included this curious caveat: The
testimony "was provided to The New York Times by individuals
who feel that the accusations against Syria have received insufficient
attention." The article certainly solved that problem.
The author? Judith Miller-preparing
for the next battlefront.
Amy Goodman is the host of Democracy
Now. She and David Goodman are the authors of Exception
to the Rulers.
Weekend Edition
Features for May 22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
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