Posted on 01/23/2008 6:25:10 AM PST by GLH3IL
WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
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"The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."
The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Why isn’t ayone doing a report on false statements made by the left in the runup to the war? You know like 600,000 dead Iraqi’s.
LOL, study???? That's funny. George Soros propaganda says that.
The title is especially bad. From a crowd that ate up bill clinton’s machinations about “is” and “sex” as legitimate uses of the english language and “not really lies at all”, they have been doing everything they can to change the truth — that we haven’t found the WMD everyone in the world thought were there — into an intentional lie. Since for them truth is just a relative construct of reality, I have a really hard time not laughing in the face of colleagues who still claim to be concerned about Bush’s “lies.”
Somebody needs to tell these people to MOVE ON!
George Soros group...
Yes, Soros paid for the study. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1958158/posts
It omitted statements made by Democrats. It’s another attempt to buy the white house by Soros and it needs to be exposed ASAP.
I agree. I just clicked the ‘I do not recommend’ button and moved on. There’s clearly no basis in common sense for this. The whole basis is simply to increase the Kultursmog and further roil the political waters.
Just a political attack from the rear, IMHO.
This interactive applet, based on public data, documents in a very powerful way, the co-support networks of the left.
Attention: Fair Tax zealots: Add to your list of essential changes to the tax code that tax-exempt foundations must be required to pay out far more of their assets. Indeed the level now is only 5%. It should be 10%, so much that foundations no longer have eternal life.
This is the only way to drive a stake through the left’s funding.
As I posted last night, “non-profit journalism” is beholden to donors. These two groups donors and board members are a who’s-who of lefty, Soros funded lefty organizations and former NPR, Columbia U, CBS, etc., journalists and lawyers.
“Non-profit journalism” = Agenda-driven propaganda.
Study already being debunked
January 23, 2008
How to Lie About Lying
Iraq Matters , Media Madness
Hatched by Dafydd
This one is simply befuddling:
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
Now, would any disinterested party read the above — and not think the study authors were accusing President Bush and his administration of deliberately lying us into war? Surely this subtextual implication must have crept in because of bad writing; I can’t imagine that the elite media would be so intentionally partisan.
Here are the specific charges:
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida,” according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. “In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.”
One notes that “Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members” — isn’t that a lovely grammatical construct? — do not deny that Iraq was “trying to... obtain” WMD, even though they appear to include such claims under the category of “false statements.”
Nor do they deny the administration’s claim that Iraq had “links” with al-Qaeda. They merely dispute the meaningfulness of those links... and dub that another “false statement” by the president and his administration.
Here is that section from the report itself, from their database of “false statements;” it’s a perfect primer on the anatomy of a falsehood:
In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: “Sure.” In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of “compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda.” What’s more, an earlier DIA assessment said that “the nature of the regime’s relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear.”
This one is instructive to deconstruct:
1. What they say: “In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: ‘Sure.’”
What they mean: Rumsfeld asserts that relationships exist between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
2. What they say: “[A]n assessment... found an absence of ‘compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda.’”
What they mean: The later assessment found that there were relationships, but they did not rise to the level of military alliances.
3. What they say: “[A]n earlier DIA assessment said that ‘the nature of the regime’s relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear.’”
What they mean: Before we found out the nature of the relationships, we did not know the nature of the relationships.
If you can find that Rumsfeld’s statement (1) — which evidently consisted of the single word “Sure” — is falsified by either (2) of (3), please take to the comments and explain it to the rest of us... because to me, laboring under the disadvantage of having been intensely trained only in the lesser rhetorical art of mathematical logic, they appear to be able to exist in the same ‘hood without bothering each other.
Here is another “false statement” (we are meant to understand “obvious lie”) that the Center discovered, after digging deeply into the substrata of hidden rhetorical diplospeak. I must admit, this one was a marvel of original research that all by itself may justify the report — if only to bring this one hidden, obscure falsehood to the light of day:
On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement “probably is a hoax.”
This is such an out of the blue, never before seen accusation that I haven’t had time to formulate a response. He has me there!
Thus the massive database of dishonesty and mountain of mendacity they unearthed, dutifully reported by the Associated Press... with but a single effort to elicit a general response from the administration — and no attempt whatsoever to delve into these alleged “false statements” to see whether there is even a contradiction between what the administration said and what the Center for Pubic Integrity said. Yet there is also this unanswered (unasked) question that seems somewhat pertinent, at least to me:
How many of these “false statements” were, in fact, believed true by virtually everybody, Republican and Democrat alike, when they were made? How many were parroted by Democrats, including those on the House and Senate Permanent Select Intelligence Committees, who thereby had access to the same intelligence as la Casablanca? The Center doesn’t tell, and the incurious media elites don’t ask.
This is as close as they come in their executive summary:
Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual “ground truth” regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who’s Who of domestic agencies.
On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials [Eric Shinseki? Weasely Clark? Bill Clinton?], have publicly — and in some cases vociferously [”rabidly” would be the better word choice] — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence.
A growing number of critics! Well, who could argue with that?
Here are a couple of inconvenient truths the AP story neglects to tell us:
o “A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations...”
The Fund for Independence in Journalism says its “primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support for the largest nonprofit, investigative reporting institution in the world, the Center for Public Integrity, and possibly other, similar groups.” Eight of the eleven members of the Fund’s board of directors are either on the BoD of the Center for Public Integrity, or else are on the Center’s Advisory Board. Thus these “two” organizations are actually joined at the hip.
o “Fund for Independence in Journalism...”
The Center is heavily funded by George Soros. It has also received funding from Bill Moyers, though some of that money might have actually been from Soros, laundered through Moyers via the Open Society Foundation.
Other funders include the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts (used to be conservative, but in 1987 they veered sharply to the left, and are now a dyed-in-the-wool “progressive” funder), the Los Angeles Times Foundation, and so forth. The Center is a far-left organization funded by far-left millionaires, billionaires, and trusts.
Even the New York Times, in their “me too” article on the data dump, admits that there is nothing new in this release... just a jumble of statements, some of which later turned out to have been erroneous, others which just constitute heresy within the liberal catechism:
There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”
By “wallowing,” the Times means those in the terminal stage of BDS can search for phrases like “mushroom cloud” or “yellowcake” and be rewarded by screens and screens of shrill denunciation of the Bush administration... just as Watergate junkies used to do (without the benefit of computers) in the early 1970s. (Mediocre science-fiction author and liberal “paleotruther” Isaac Asimov called this, evidently without realizing the irony, “getting my Watergate fix.”)
The Nixon reference appears to have been suggested by the report itself; the executive summary ends:
Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?
I’m certain it’s sheer coincidence that this nonsense was spewed across the news sockets during the peak of the election primary season... and right before the primary in Florida, of all states. Had anyone at AP or the Times realized how this might affect the election, I know their independent journalistic integrity would have suggested they hold this non-time-constrained story until afterwards. Say, they could even have used the time to consider whether “Iraq and al-Qaeda had a relationship” and “the relationship didn’t amount to direct cooperation” contradict each other.
A less charitable person than I might imagine this “database” was nothing but a mechanical tool to allow good liberals easier access to a tasty “two-minutes hate.”
But realizing that the elite media has only our best interests at heart, my only possible conclusion is that, despite the multiple layers of editorial input that must occur at these venues, several important facts just slipped through the cracks:
o The fact that the Center for Public Integrity is a Left-funded, leftist, activist organization with a serious hatchet to grind with the Bush administration;
o The fact that the Fund for Independence in Journalism is neither independent, nor is it engaged in journalism (it’s a front group of mostly the same people whose purpose is to shield the Center from lawsuits);
o And the fact that the vast majority of the supposed “false statements” are in fact simply positions with which liberals disagree, or else statements widely accepted at the time that later investigation (after deposing Saddam Hussein) showed to be inaccurate.
I must assume that these self-evident facts must simply have been honestly missed by the gimlet-eyed reporters and editors at AP and the NYT. Heck, even Pinch nods.
http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2008/01/how_to_lie_abou.html
Shouldn’t be too hard, after all this is a Soros project
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1958158/posts
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kathleen-mckinley/2008/01/09/study-lies
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1951183/posts
you could probably through in the “For Profit Journalism” as agendized propaganda too...such as CNN, PMSNBC, NYT..etc...
IMHO, most of the journo-hacks these days are part of the liberal spin machine...
It then stated that the proof found that Iraq did not HAVE WMDs and that the Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda were not "meaningful." It leaves out the evidence that Iraq had a WMD program in place, waiting to be restarted once sanctions ended. It ignored that Saddam had informed several people that he had WMDs. It further ignored that there were SOME ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
To its credit, the report does not call these "lies." This report being used to bash Bush is more honest with Bush than some so-called conservatives are being with Romney. Bush can be wrong on a crucial fact and not be called a liar, but these same people call Romney a liar because he gets some facts wrong on an incident that happened 40 years ago.
Get a life, and at LEAST act as ethical as the people who bashed Bush with this report.
Their server is down - (www.publicintegrity.org). The Gerbil running on the wheel must have died.
In November when I was putting Halloween decorations back in the attic and found a newspaper I saved from long ago that I forgot all about.
Tacoma News Tribune
December 20, 1998
Headline: CLINTON IMPEACHED
If that wasn’t amusing enough to read again after all these years, now with his wife running, I notice a story at the bottom of the very same front page that must be read:
U.S. and Britain halt airstrikes against Iraq
Sub-headline, Citing ‘significant damage’, Clinton says Saddam must be ousted to avoid future threats.
BAGHDAD, Iraq – President Clinton ended the air campaign against Iraq on Saturday saying: “I’m confident we have achieved our mission.” Yet despite suffering more than 400 punishing bomb and missile strikes over four nights, Saddam Hussein’s government remained defiant and said it would bar any return of U.N. arms inspectors to the country.
SNIP
In blunt language, Clinton called for the ouster of the Iraqi leader. “So long as Saddam remains in power, he will remain a threat to his people, his region and the World.
SNIP
So lets look at just how much of a ‘continued threat’ Saddam really was AFTER Clinton made the above statement. This is just a partial list of the times Iraq fired at American and British aircraft patrolling the Northern No Fly Zone during Operation Northern Watch. Some of the data was not available, like the entire year of 2000. The list also does not include other violations, such as locking air defense radar onto Coalition aircraft, and it does not include the Southern no-fly zone. If all the violations were included, the list would be much much longer.
Sooooooo with all of these documented attacks on our aircraft patrolling the Northern No-Fly Zone after Clinton said “Saddam must be ousted”, why is Bush and Cheney being persecuted for doing just that?
I feel Bush’s only mistake was placing too much emphasis on the WMD and not building a better case based on the countless other violations of the cease fire.
13 Jan 1999 SAM systems track and fire on Coalition aircraft
25 Jan 1999 Coalition aircraft respond to surface to air missile launch
28 Jan 1999 Coalition aircraft respond to Iraqi AAA fire
11 Feb 1999 Coalition aircraft respond to Iraqi AAA fire
12 Feb 1999 Coalition aircraft respond to Iraqi AAA fire
15 Feb 1999 Coalition aircraft respond to Iraqi AAA fire
1 Mar 1999 Iraq fires anti-aircraft artillery at coalition aircraft
14 Mar 1999 Coalition aircraft respond to Iraqi AAA fire
1 Mar 1999 Iraq fires anti-aircraft artillery at coalition aircraft
6 Mar 1999 Coalition aircraft respond to Iraqi AAA fire
25 May 1999 Coalition aircraft respond to Iraqi AAA fire
04 Sep 2001 Iraqi AAA fired at, radar targets ONW aircraft
27 Aug 2001 ONW aircraft fired upon, coalition responds
17 Aug 2001 ONW Aircraft fired upon and targeted by radar
07 Aug 2001 Iraqi missiles and AAA fired at ONW aircraft
18 Jul 2001 USAF F-16 aircraft crashes in Turkey
14 Jun 2001 ONW aircraft respond to targeting radar, AAA
23 May 2001 ONW aircraft fired upon and targeted by radar
30 Apr 2001 AAA fired at ONW aircraft
06 Apr 2001 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft
22 Feb 2001 ONW Aircraft fired upon and targeted by radar
12 Feb 2001 ONW Aircraft fired upon and targeted by radar
24 Jan 2001 Iraqi missiles and AAA fired at ONW aircraft
04 Dec 2002 Iraq attacks ONW aircraft monitoring No-Fly zone
02 Dec 2002 Iraq attacks ONW aircraft monitoring No-Fly zone
28 Nov 2002 Iraq attacks ONW aircraft monitoring No-Fly zone
18 Nov 2002 Iraq attacks ONW aircraft monitoring No-Fly zone
17 Nov 2002 Iraq attacks ONW aircraft monitoring No-Fly zone
30 Oct 2002 ONW aircraft defend against Iraqi anti-aircraft threat
22 Oct 2002 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft
26 Jun 2002 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft, Coalition responds
19 Jun 2002 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft, Coalition responds
28 May 2002 ONW aircraft fired upon, Coalition responds
01 May 2002 Iraq fires AAA at Northern Watch Aircraft
28 Feb 2002 ONW Aircraft fired upon and targeted by radar
04 Feb 2002 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft
31 Jan 2003 Iraq Attacks Operation Northern Watch Aircraft Monitoring No-Fly Zone
04 Feb 2002 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft
28 Feb 2002 ONW Aircraft fired upon and targeted by radar
19 Apr 2002 Iraq targets Coalition aircraft
01 May 2002 Iraq fires AAA at Northern Watch Aircraft
28 May 2002 ONW aircraft fired upon, Coalition responds
19 Jun 2002 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft, Coalition responds
26 Jun 2002 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft, Coalition responds
04 Jul 2002 ONW aircraft threatened, Coalition responds
23 Aug 2002 Iraqi targets coalition aircraft
27 Aug 2002 Iraqi targets coalition aircraft
09 Oct 2002 Iraq threatens coalition aircraft
22 Oct 2002 Iraq fires AAA at ONW aircraft
18 Nov 2002 Iraq attacks ONW aircraft monitoring No-Fly zone
28 Nov 2002 Iraq attacks ONW aircraft monitoring No-Fly zone
02 Dec 2002 Iraq attacks ONW aircraft monitoring No-Fly zone
This really has me fired up.
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