Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 118

Eleven Years Ago: McCain Promised We'd Be Greeted as 'Liberators" in Iraq

It was eleven years ago today that this historic exchange took place.  On the March 12, 2003, edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews asked Sen. John McCain: "Do you believe that the people of Iraq or at least a large number of them will treat us as liberators?" McCain answered: "Absolutely. Absolutely."

What's less often recalled is that McCain had written an op-ed that morning for the NYT titled "The Right War for the Right Reasons." McCain totally bought the bogus claims of Iraq WMD and then dispensed with fears that the attack might have longterm risks:  "Isn't it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness?"

Greg Mitchell’s book So Wrong For So Long , on the media and the Iraq war, was published last week in an expanded edition for the first time as an e-book. 

When 'Washington Post' Failed on Iraq

A subject I've been posting about for, oh, the past decade --the media's sad, tragic performance during the run-up to the U.S. attack on Iraq almost eleven years ago.  It's also the subject of my book So Wrong for So Long .  Howard Kurtz, now at Fox, calls it, aptly, the media's "biggest failure of modern times."

Just one aspect:  My book reviews the article Kurtz wrote for the Post in 2004, taking the newspaper to task for some of its misconduct (the paper itself did not assign is own probe). 

Because of the notoriety surrounding Judith Miller and The New York Times’ coverage, the Post’s almost equally poor coveage and opinion pieces drew too little attention after WMD were not discovered. The Post ran Kurtz’s critical August 12, 2004, piece on the front page, something it inevitably failed to do with stories skeptical of the march to war.

By the Post’s own admission, in the months before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the war, while contrary information “got lost,” as one Post staffer told Kurtz. So allow me to pursue a few points (see my book for much more on media misconduct in war coverage). First, two quotes (beyond the Woodward gem) from Post staffers that speak for themselves:

• “There was an attitude among editors: Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all the contrary stuff?”—Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks.

• “We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power.“—Reporter Karen DeYoung.

* “[Bob] Woodward, for his part, said it was risky for journalists to write anything that might look silly if weapons were ultimately found in Iraq.”

Next, consider the highly revealing excuses, offered by Post editors:

• Executive Editor Downie said experts who questioned the war wouldn’t go on record often enough. But his paper, and others, quoted unnamed pro-war sources willy-nilly.

• Downie also asserted that “voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones.” This is simply rewriting history. On the eve of the invasion, polls showed that half the public wanted to delay the invasion to give the United Nations inspectors more time to do their duty, and millions had already marched in the streets. Many of the editorial pages of major US newspapers (though, crucially, not the Post’s) were expressing their own doubts about the need for war. Key intelligence experts questioned the administration’s evidence but were given little play, on or off the record, at the Post.

• Liz Spayd, assistant managing editor for news, offered another weak defense in explaining why a key article questioning the existence of WMD by thirty-two-year Post veteran Walter Pincus was finally published on Page A17. Pincus’s stories are “difficult to edit,” as she put it. Matthew Vita, then national security editor and now deputy assistant managing editor, offered another defense for the Pincus miscue: “We were dealing with an awful lot of stories, and that was one of the ones that slipped through the cracks.”

• That rationale also applied to another sad case. In the days before the war, Dana Priest and Karen DeYoung finished a piece that said CIA officials had communicated significant doubts to the administration about evidence linking Iraq to an attempted uranium purchase. The story was held until March 22, three days after the war began. “Editors blamed a flood of copy about the impending invasion,” Kurtz explained.

• Vita had a different excuse on another missed opportunity. One of the fresh revelations in the Kurtz piece was how, in October 2002, Thomas Ricks (who has covered national security issues for fifteen years) turned in a piece titled “Doubts,” indicating that Pentagon officials were worried that the risks of an invasion of Iraq were being underestimated. It was killed by Vita. He told Kurtz that a problem with the piece was that many of the quotes with names attached came from “retired guys.” But the Post (and much of the rest of the media) rarely shied away from “retired guys” who promoted the war.

• Other excuses rippled through the Kurtz piece, featuring phrases like “always easy in hindsight,” “editing difficulties,” “communication problems” and “there is limited space on Page 1.” One editor explained, “You couldn’t get beyond the veneer and hurdle of what this groupthink had already established,” even though the British press somehow managed to overcome that. Amid all the excuses, Post staffers denied that the paper was under any pressure from the White House.

• At the end of the Kurtz piece, Downie offered his ultimate defense. “People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media’s coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war,” Downie said. “They have the mistaken impression that somehow if the media’s coverage had been different, there wouldn’t have been a war.”

Two responses to that final excuse come quickly to mind.

Most of those against the war did not ask for a media “crusade” against invasion, merely that the press stick to the facts and provide a balanced assessment: in other words, that the Post do its minimum journalistic duty. If anything, the Post, and some other major news outlets, came closer to crusading for the war.

And did Downie honestly believe that nothing the media might have done could have possibly stopped the war? Especially when, as noted, public and editorial opinion on the eve of war was divided? Does he take issue with Walter Lippmann’s notion that the press plays a vital role in “manufacturing consent”? And does he really believe his must-read newspaper lacks any clout? If so, what does that say about the state of modern newspapering?

Greg Mitchell’s So Wrong for So Long , on the media and the Iraq war--with a preface by Bruce Springsteen--has been published in an expanded edition for the first time as an e-book.

A Gram for Keith

Who knew Keith Richards ever warbled "Hickory Wind"?  Of course, there were always rumors that Keith bought "Wild Horses" off Gram Parsons for a huge stash of smack. 

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A Quiet Stroll Down 'Abbey Road'

Isolated vocals for the famous 16-minute "medley."   h/t Dangerous Minds.

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Tuesday Night Music Pick

Seems like a good moment for "The Envoy," by Warren Zevon, about Philip Habib, now might be...John Kerry?

Joe and Lou

One of my faves among the mid-career rockers, Joseph Arthur, a close friend of Lou Reed, coming out with a 12-song tribute album.  Here's his "Walk on the Wild Side." 

From the liner notes: "It's odd dancing around death, odder still if the death you are dancing around is that of a legend.  You just never know what's appropriate and what's not, what to share and what to keep inside. There is no blueprint. I loved Lou and we were friends. The last thing I would want to do is turn his life into an opportunity, but at the same time, what better way to honor the man and his music than to celebrate it and sing it and record it?"

11 Years Ago: DIxie Chicks Got It Right, Were Wronged

It was 11 years ago last night that the Dixie Chicks, extremely popular then and far from controversial, caused a massive stir when singer Natalie Maines declared on stage in London--a little more than a week before that their fellow Texas, President Bush, launched a war based on lies--"Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."

Of course, hatred was quickly spewed in their direction by media types, political figures, and country music yahoos--who never get so excited with right-wing entertainers who make threats against a Democratic president--with boycotts announced.   Maines clarified two days later--"I feel the President is ignoring the opinions of many in the U.S. and  alienating the rest of the world."  But record sales and concert proceeds plunged. 

She then issued an apology of sorts:  "As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect. We are currently in Europe and witnessing a huge anti-American sentiment as a result of the perceived rush to war. While war may remain a viable option, as a mother, I just want to see every possible alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers' lives are lost. I love my country. I am a proud American."

Good old true American Merle Haggard weighed in:

I don't even know the Dixie Chicks, but I find it an insult for all the men and women who fought and died in past wars when almost the majority of America jumped down their throats for voicing an opinion. It was like a verbal witch-hunt and lynching. 

While Bush himself argued: 

The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say ... they shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out ... Freedom is a two-way street ....

The Chicks then posed semi-nude on the cover of Entertainment Weekly with words they had been called slightly covering them, e.g. "Dixie Sluts."  But their career would never be the same.  Meanwhile, more than 4000 American troops and more than a 125,000 Iraqis would die in a war based on lies.  See my new book "So Wrong for So Long" for much more.

Prof's Email Gets Her in Political Trouble

Don't miss this major piece at the Chronicle of Higher Education, on a professor in Wisconsin who sent an email to 18 students, in an online course, saying they could not complete an assignment during last October's government shutdown, and it was the GOP and Tea Party's fault.  In the new Internet, and partisan, world this naturally went viral--and now her career is threatened.

Those players—which include watchdog groups like Campus Reform, online publications, and local and national talk-radio shows—have sought to expose college professors for liberal bias and put colleges under pressure to rein them in. Activists on the left are similarly capable of protesting conservative speech they finds offensive, but they have not established organizations that monitor faculty speech, and campaigns demanding the firing of conservative academics are much less common than those directed at academics seen as liberal.

Peter Lanza and His Adam Bomb

Out of nowhere, New Yorker posted exclusive Andrew Solomon interview with Peter Lanza, father of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook mass killer, who has been largely silent.  Unfortunately, he does not mention his ex-wife's leaving guns around the house with easy access, and Solomon doesn't bring it up either.  One excerpt:

Since the shootings, Peter has avoided the press, but in September, as the first anniversary of his son’s rampage approached, he contacted me to say that he was ready to tell his story. We met six times, for interviews lasting as long as seven hours. Shelley, a librarian at the University of Connecticut, usually joined us and made soup or chili or salads for lunch....An accountant who is a vice-president for taxes at a General Electric subsidiary, he maintains a nearly fanatical insistence on facts, and nothing annoyed him more in our conversations than speculation—by me, the media, or anyone else. He is not by nature given to self-examination, and often it was Shelley who underlined the emotional ramifications of what he said.

Peter hadn’t seen his son for two years at the time of the Sandy Hook killings, and, even with hindsight, he doesn’t think that the catastrophe could have been predicted. But he constantly thinks about what he could have done differently and wishes he had pushed harder to see Adam.

And:

Peter does not think that Adam had any affection for him, either, by that point. He said, “With hindsight, I know Adam would have killed me in a heartbeat, if he’d had the chance. I don’t question that for a minute. The reason he shot Nancy four times was one for each of us: one for Nancy; one for him; one for Ryan; one for me.”

Sunday Morning in the Church of Beethoven

Continuing our weekly feature:  After experiencing another amazing "Missa Solemnis" at Carnegie Hall this week (Roger Norrington conducting), it's only proper that I let you sort of experience it via what I considered the best full performance I've heard or seen at YouTube.   And even with 'antiwar' message at the close...