New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief: Obama Ignored Iraq Problems, and Even Denied Their Reality, for Political Reasons Not only did they ignore the actual facts on the ground in Iraq, they even whipsawed reporters and editorial pages into denying those facts.
The NYT Baghdad Bureau editor in 2012 answered some questions in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything:"
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The left has long charged Bush/Cheney with "overstating" the case for War in Iraq, or the threat of terrorism generally. However, on the point of WMDs, it should be noted that these were not Busy/Cheney's overstatements; they were the CIA's. Bill Clinton repeated the same overstatements, for the same reason: Because that's what the CIA's best intelligence was (even though it turned out wrong).
So did Al Gore. So did Hillary Clinton.
As to the threat of terrorism or major terrorist attacks, all of these are speculative glimpses into the future. One can charge Bush/Cheney with "overstating" the risks, but this is itself speculative: Bush and Cheney do not know the future, and neither do their critics.
However, Obama did not just mislead the country as to speculative guesses about the future. His Administration lied as regards currently-ascertainable facts existing in the current moment.
At each turn he lied about the facts about Iraq to support his particular political narrative.
Yesterday the New York Times also examined some of Obama's other statements on IS, Iraq, and terror.
WASHINGTON — When President Obama addresses the nation on Wednesday to explain his plan to defeat Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria, it is a fair bet he will not call them the "JV team." Nor does he seem likely to describe Iraq as "sovereign, stable and self-reliant" with a "representative government." And presumably he will not assert after more than a decade of conflict that "the tide of war is receding."
As he seeks to rally Americans behind a new military campaign in the Middle East, Mr. Obama finds his own past statements coming back to haunt him. Time and again, he has expressed assessments of the world that in the harsh glare of hindsight look out of kilter with the changed reality he now confronts.
But that's not quite right, as the NYT here suggests that Obama's statements may have been true at the time they were made, but were rendered false by ensuing developments.
As Tim Arango makes clear, however, Obama was swearing to facts known to be false at the time they were claimed.
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To Mr. Obama's critics, the disparity between the president's previous statements and today’s reality reflects not simply poorly chosen words but a fundamentally misguided view of the world.
Tim Arango seems to think it's that, plus active denial and concealment of known facts.
Rather than clearly see the persistent dangers as the United States approaches the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, they said, Mr. Obama perpetually imagines a world as he wishes it were.
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