Sunday Show Stonewall
[EDIT: Links that didn't transfer are in the original. Link at the bottom.]
On the one year anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the Bush Administration deployed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to the Sunday talk shows to defend their eroding credibility on the Iraq war. The trio refuses to admit any mistakes were made. Powell said that, despite the war being predicated on the need to "disarm" Iraq of its WMD, the failure to find any WMD does not "take away from the merit of the case" for war (a marked departure from last month when he said the "absence of a WMD stockpile changes the political calculus" for ever going to war in the first place). Similarly, Rice said "I believe to this day that [Iraq] was an urgent threat" despite no WMD being found. And when Rumsfeld was asked about weapons inspector David Kay's belief that the Administration should "come clean" about misrepresenting the WMD case, he replied only "I didn't see the full statement that [Kay] made" and added he's still "reserving final judgment" on whether he believes Iraq had WMD. But at least one person went on national TV in the last 24 hours and told a straight story: former weapons inspector Hans Blix said on the Today Show this morning the Iraq invasion was "as much punitive as it was preemptive: it was a reaction to 9/11 that we have to strike some theoretical, hypothetical links between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists. That was wrong. There wasn't anything."
REVISING HISTORY: Before the war, President Bush said Iraq was "a threat of unique urgency" because there was "no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess the most lethal weapons ever devised" (notice the graphic header on the White House's "no doubt" transcript). But with the Administration's own weapons inspector now demanding the White House "come clean" about misleading Americans, the three officials all tried to revise history. Powell said we went to war to make sure "there would be no WMD in the future," Rice said Iraq was really just "a state of WMD concern," and Rumsfeld claimed the White House never said Iraq was an immediate threat, despite the fact the Administration said that repeatedly (more on this below). In short, instead of providing answers, the interviews all raised more questions.
RUMSFELD DISHONESTY CAUGHT ON FILM: The most vivid display of the Administration's widening credibility gap came when CBS's Bob Schieffer asked Rumsfeld "If Iraq did not have WMD, why did they pose an immediate threat to this country?" Rumsfeld retorted, "You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate threat.' I didn't...It's become kind of folklore that that's what happened." [EDIT: Does the fact that he has come to believe he never uttered a lie mean that he never uttered a lie?] Schieffer repeated his question but Rumsfeld challenged the reporter saying, "If you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em." At that point, NYT columnist Tom Friedman read Rumsfeld his own words, pointing out that the Defense Secretary had told Congress on 9/19/02 that "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people" than Iraq and that "some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent [but] I would not be so certain." According to the transcript of the show, Rumsfeld replied "Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know." American Progress has posted a video clip of this exchange.
RICE NEGLECTS THE RECORD: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was pressed by NBC's Tim Russert about why the Administration painted Iraq as such a pressing threat to America before the war, and she replied that "What the president said in his State of the Union is that we cannot wait until it becomes imminent." While that is technically true, Russert responded "the rhetoric of the administration was much different than Saddam could be a threat or he has weapons programs. The president said he was, 'a unique and urgent threat.' It was, 'a unique urgency,' 'a grave threat.' You and the president both talked about the mushroom cloud. Scott McClellan, deputy press secretary, said it's 'an imminent threat.' Ari Fleischer, the press secretary, said, "absolutely," it was an imminent threat." Meanwhile, last week, "the head of the CIA, George Tenet, testified this week he never said it was an imminent threat and he said it three times he had to correct the vice president or president on comments they had made about intelligence."
POWELL DEFENDS U.N. SPEECH: On Fox News Sunday, Powell said that the case he made to the United Nations before the war "reflected not some political spin - it reflected the best judgment of the intelligence community." He said he presented "the same information that in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) the intelligence community had presented to Congress" and the public. His statement ignores how the intelligence community had repeatedly warned the White House that its WMD case for war was weak. It also ignores a Knight Ridder report noting that "the public version of the [NIE's] assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's intentions," meaning "the public was given a far more definitive assessment of Iraq's plans and capabilities than President Bush and other U.S. decision-makers received from their intelligence agencies." See American Progress's backgrounder outlining how the Administration neglected intelligence and ignored warnings about their WMD case.
MORE RUMSFELD DISTORTIONS: Despite inspectors concluding there are no WMD stockpiles in Iraq, Rumsfeld said he still is not so sure, saying Iraq "is a country the size of California... so it's not as though we have certainty today." Of course, weapons inspector David Kay has already addressed this argument saying "I'm a little troubled when people say, as they do all the time to me: Baghdad is bigger than L.A, Iraq is the size of California...What is really insulting to me is the belief that we would design a strategy that relied on searching for the actual weapons themselves once you go beyond the place that your intelligence said they should be." Rumsfeld also addressed criticism of Halliburton's conduct in Iraq, claiming that "when something goes wrong, believe me, we will land all over them, regardless of which company it is." But just today, the WSJ reports "the top military officer in Iraq has criticized Halliburton" for its failures in constructing new bases for U.S. troops.
OTHER ITEMS OF NOTE: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed "the president has talked about a forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East" because "we have to change the very nature of the Middle East itself, because it is obviously a place where hatred and ideologies of hatred are flourishing because of lack of opportunity and the freedom deficit." Her comments came two days after the Administration set aside its four-month old plan "to issue a sweeping call for economic, political and cultural reform in the Middle East" because of objections by the Egyptians and Saudis. When Rumsfeld was asked about criticism from the Military Officers Association of America (the group representing 390,000 retired and active duty officers) that his stop-loss policy is a "backdoor way to reinstitute the draft" he disparaged the group saying "the fact is they're not well-informed."
americanprogress.org |
