What Wolfowitz Really Said: The truth behind the Vanity Fair "scoop."

The Weekly Standard ^ | 06/09/03 | William Kristol

[GretchenEE]

I KNEW that "story" was bogus and I didn't even get past the third paragraph on FR when it came out. It reeked all the way through the Internet. Bad cheese stank, it had. I am very glad to see the above. Let the world know!

[YaYa123]

"But distorting an on-the-record interview with a Bush administration official in order to create a quasi-conspiratorial narrative of deceit and deception at the highest levels of the U.S. government is a disgrace."

I agree with Bill Kristol, distorting truth is disgraceful, but it's commonplace when a writer is hellbent on putting out his spin to discredit the Bush Administration. And then, have allies in the media, who will defy logic in order to repeat and repeat the spin, until it gains common acceptance as truth.

Below is a partial transcript of CNN's Capital Gang, a good example of how the left works to preserve the deception, at least long enough for it to sink into the public consciousness as truth. You know the democrat's favorite tactic...repeat a lie often enough and people think it's true.

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0305/31/cg.00.html

PERLE: I don't believe we should be embarrassed at all.[about not finding WMDs] We know what was produced. The United Nations documented what was produced. Saddam never accounted for it, even though he was given ample opportunity to do so. We had to assume that what couldn't be accounted for had been hidden. And indeed, we heard Iraqis talking to each other about hiding. What more could you want?

SHIELDS: Richard, and I just have to say that two mobile vans do not rise to the level of an imminent threat to the continental United States. And as presented by the president and the secretary of state, the case was that they were, they were really right around the corner, they were just basically off Nantucket and about to land.

PERLE: I don't think the argument was that it was imminent in time. He...

SHIELDS: Imminent threat to the United States.

PERLE: Well, if you know that you have a Saddam Hussein who is building weapons of mass destruction, whether he's going to attack in a week or a month or a year is beside the point. You have a threat that has to be dealt with.

NOVAK: I (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

HUNT: But Paul Wolfowitz said in an interview out this weekend that it really was only a bureaucratic rationale.

PERLE: No, he didn't say that.

HUNT: Yes, he did. He said it was a...

PERLE: I've read the text of what he said.

HUNT: Well, I have too.

PERLE: And he was seriously misquoted in that article. And the misquotes in the wire service accounts are even worse than the misquotes...

HUNT: Those were direct quotes.

SHIELDS: It was a direct quote. He said, "A bureaucratic decision was made to go with weapons of mass destruction because there was a consensus on that."

PERLE: If you read...

SHIELDS: I read the article.

PERLE: ... the full quote, which is on the Defense Department Web site, precisely to counter the distortions, you will see that he said there were multiple reasons, all of which were stated by the president.

SHIELDS: OK."...

Count on it! Richard Perle didn't convince Al Hunt and Mark Shields to correct the Vanity Fair record. They (and others) are going to chew on President Bush about WMDs until they are found, and then they will switch gears and claim they were planted. Thousands of American soldiers weren't killed or poisoned by WMDs, so the left will never fogive President Bush his successful war on Saddam.

My question: Whythehell was Paul Wolfowitz granting interviews to Vanity Fair?

[iconoclast]

I think the reason for the pre-emptive attack on Iraq is rapidly becoming crystal clear. We needed a replacement for the bases in S.A that we have let Bin Ladin run us out of.

I don't necessarily disagree with this strategy. But, as an American, I resent being talked down to, lied to, and propagandized.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Horse hockey. Serbian population in Kosovo declined from 90% after WWII to 20% in 1990 (according to UN satistics.) Attacks on police and military posts by the KLA drug lords justified the attacks on them by the Yugoslavian authorities.

Were are the mass graves which CNN concocted to justify that nonsensical Clintonian adventure? You seriously believe the Abomination would have done ANYTHING that would be in the US interest? Hundreds of churches have been destroyed by the Organized Criminials Clinton supported. Churches 100s of years older than our country.

[SpinyNorman]

I always thought Vanity Fair was one of those women's magazines, like Glamour and Redbood etc. Now I am convinced that this is so (and why Mark Shields reads it......).

Why would anyone go to such a magazine for factual information? Sounds like the credibility level is on a par with the Enquirer. Smart of them to record the whole thing though. That should be SOP with all future interviews by all administration figures.

[WOSG]

you would be better off simply taking Bush's statements as the reasons, as THE reasons. There were several - terror links, WMDs, a dictatorshi that fostered the seeds of hate against us and brutalized his own people, etc. ... this (SA airbases) was not one of them.

You were not lied to on this matter ... unless you count Vanity Fair, the New YOrk Times, Robert Fisk, and The Gaurdian.

[WOSG]

I resent that absurd ad hominem ... you mischaracterize both my comments and the President's:

First, Bush never stated certain knowledge, he based his case on the intelligence and stated as such:

"The first time we may be completely certain he has a -- nuclear weapons is when, God forbids, he uses one. "
- George Bush, Sept 2002.

There were at least 5 reasons to go to war against Iraq. WMDs was but one of them:

"
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles, and all related material.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it, as all states are required to do by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi'a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans, and others, again as required by Security Council resolutions.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown. It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait, and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It will accept U.N. administration of funds from that program, to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people. "

- Bush to UN general assembly, 12 sept 2002


Note the word STRATEGIC in the paragraph: "The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people; they've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it; the security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder. The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq."



http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html

[Destro]

Produce the goods and Bush has no problems.

[iconoclast]

you would be better off simply taking Bush's statements as the reasons, as THE reasons. There were several - terror links, WMDs, a dictatorshi that fostered the seeds of hate against us and brutalized his own people, etc. ... this (SA airbases) was not one of them.

1)Terror links - no more than most M.E. muslim states and fewer than some.

2) WMD - still lookin' for em'.

3)Brutal dictatorship - about as common as weeds in the second and third worlds. Since when are they a priority?

4)(The UNMENTIONED ONE), SA airbases - now to become Iraq airbases ... the only serious outcome of the war (other that unanticipated civil chaos) and exactly the point I am failing to get across to you!

[WOSG]

"Brutal dictatorship - about as common as weeds in the second and third worlds. "

Total BS, like the rest of your answer. Name a single other dictator alive in 2003 that has literally hundreds of THOUSANDS of graves of his people that HE created. I've posted plenty of old links on Saddam's genocide of the kurds and his many other crimes against his own people. It is an insult to most 3rd world governments, even the bad ones, to compare his sadistic and brutal regime with any other. ... on North Korea is even comparable in world today.

But wait there is more: Who was not only a sadistic and brutal dictator who killed thousands And has had programs of WMDs to boot. And has trained Al Quaeda at Salman Pak terrorist training camp. anyone? Only one.

"WMD - still lookin' for em'." a bioweapons mobile lab was found. so was a whole nuclear research COMPLEX -- in the country that has the largest reserves of oil and NO working nuclear power plant ... please grab a clue! it's not chopped liver they found!