It's the Media, Stupid.
Ray McGovern, www.commondreams.org: That the White
House has been promoting Woodward’s book (Rice wasted
no time in saying she is sure it is “terrific”)
reflects the administration’s determination to keep
the focus on the cover story for the war—WMD, and
obscure the actual motives regarding oil and Israel.
And if, with no WMD to be found, the U.S. media or
political opponents press home the point about going
to war on false pretenses, Woodward’s book will
provide useful yarn for White House spinners claiming
the president was misled by faulty intelligence. And
the slam-dunker can be left hanging on the rim of the
basket, twisting in the wind, so to speak, until he
falls of his own weight.
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0430-04.htm
Published on Friday, April 23, 2004 by
CommonDreams.org
Blowing Smoke for Bush
Court Historian Woodward Disguises Bush Aims in Invading Iraq
by Ray McGovern
Why is Bob Woodward’s latest book, “Plan of Attack,”
is being promoted by the administration? Because it
portrays an in-charge President Bush and presents him
as genuinely concerned (and seemingly misled) over the
threat posed by Iraq’s “weapons of mass-destruction.”
Unfortunately, the nation’s most-famous investigative
reporter got it wrong.
You would not know from Woodward’s book that the CIA’s
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction – used with Congress to hype the
threat - was written several months after the
administration decided to make war on Iraq. That
decision had little to do with WMD or with supposed
ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. It had everything to
do with the imperative seen by Bush’s neoconservative
advisers to gain dominant influence over strategic,
oil-rich Iraq and to eliminate any possible threat to
Israel’s security. With that twin aim, the rationale
was generally consistent with several decades of U.S.
policy objectives in the Middle East. Where the Bush
administration broke new ground was in its decision to
launch a preemptive war when there was nothing to
preempt.
To honest analysts—including some within the
“coalition of the willing”—the actual U.S. purpose was
a no-brainer. Australian intelligence analysts, for
example, had done their homework in reading the
neoconservatives’ rationale in the documents of the
Project for a New American Century and were able to
make confident judgments regarding underlying U.S.
motives. Senior Australian intelligence analyst Andrew
Wilkie has testified to his Parliament that Australian
intelligence gave his government “detailed assessments
in which it was made very clear that the U.S. was
intent on invading Iraq for more important reasons
than WMD and terrorism. Hence, all this talk about WMD
and terrorism was hollow.”
The U.S. Congress was not likely to acquiesce in
attacking Iraq on the basis of the strategic vision of
the neoconservatives. Rather, it was necessary to
coerce our lawmakers by conjuring up ominous specters
like the frequently adduced “mushroom cloud.” Enter
the NIE on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
prepared hurriedly in September 2002. Secretary of
State Colin Powell has admitted that the target
audience for the Estimate was Congress. The NIE and
its various initial drafts became the centerpiece of a
successful campaign to persuade our elected
representatives to relinquish to the executive the
war-making power vested solely in them by the framers
of the Constitution.
Hyping the evidence on WMD in classified briefings for
Congress proved relatively easy; making a persuasive
public case for WMD in Iraq was a tougher challenge.
According to Bob Woodward—erstwhile junkyard dog of
Watergate and, more recently, domesticated
administration chronicler—CIA Director George Tenet
and his deputy were called to the White House on
December 21, 2002 to rehearse the case for weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq. In his book “Plan of
Attack,” Woodward reports that when the briefing was
over Bush turned to Tenet and remarked, “I’ve been
told all this intelligence about having WMD and this
is the best we’ve got?” Woodward writes that Tenet
assured the president that it was “a slam-dunk case,”
and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who
was there, has confirmed Woodward’s account.
The next 45 days were devoted to fortifying the
evidence in preparation for Colin Powell’s key speech
at the U.N. on February 5, 2003. But as in the case of
the earlier NIE, almost none of Powell’s assertions
regarding WMD in Iraq have stood the test of time.
Powell has even conceded publicly that he was misled
on the existence of the Iraqi “bio-trailers” to which
he gave such prominence, and says he has had
“discussions” with the CIA about this particular
embarrassment.
That the White House has been promoting Woodward’s
book (Rice wasted no time in saying she is sure it is
“terrific”) reflects the administration’s
determination to keep the focus on the cover story for
the war—WMD, and obscure the actual motives regarding
oil and Israel. And if, with no WMD to be found, the
U.S. media or political opponents press home the point
about going to war on false pretenses, Woodward’s book
will provide useful yarn for White House spinners
claiming the president was misled by faulty
intelligence. And the slam-dunker can be left hanging
on the rim of the basket, twisting in the wind, so to
speak, until he falls of his own weight.
By design, this would blow still more smoke over the
actual reasons for the war. But for Tenet it would
bring a certain poetic justice. For the unforgivable
sin in intelligence analysis is telling the
policymaker what he wants to hear—justifying with
cooked “intelligence” what he has already decided to
do. Sycophancy has no place in intelligence work—and
particularly not on issues of war and peace.
Ray McGovern’s (RRMcGovern@aol.com) responsibilities
during his 27-years as a CIA analyst included chairing
National Intelligence Estimates. He is on the Steering
Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
###