Although The Guardian earlier reported that US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz had said that the Iraq war was all about oil, the newspaper has now removed the article from its web site, and will print a full correction in Friday's edition. According to the Guardian's ombudsman, the quote, "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil," was taken out of context, and misconstrued.
***Operation Infinite Freedom - Situation Room - 5 JUN 03/Day 78***
From The Daily Camera of Boulder, CO
http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/editorials/article/0,1713,BDC_2489_2012009,00.html
Among the deceivers
Does it matter if we were misled on Iraq? Hell, yes
June 5, 2003
Dictators and democrats alike love to clothe their policies in the language of altruism. But once shorn of rhetorical raiment, naked realpolitik often lies beneath. Now, amid rising doubts about the Bush and Blair administrations' case for attacking Iraq, they are trying to wrap a towel around the nakedness of their misdirections.
George Bush and Tony Blair told us that Iraq posed an imminent threat to our security. Saddam supported the al-Qaida network that attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, they warned. With great specificity, they described putative stocks of weapons of mass destruction, asserting that Iraq might have a nuke within six months and missiles capable of delivering WMD.
The war mostly went well. Major fighting was over quickly, and while thousands of Iraqis were killed, fewer than 200 British and American troops died (though more go down each week). The ruthless Saddam is gone.
But then things got tricky. Promises of quick transition to Iraqi control have been chucked, efforts to rebuild a destroyed nation are foundering and unrest among the masses rises daily.
And the rationales for a hurry-up war aren't holding up well at all. There was no Saddam-al-Qaida axis. And despite a concerted effort to find them, no WMD have been found. The best evidence so far, two trailers that might have been used to make bio-weapons, hardly constitute a serious threat.
Increasingly, it's clear that pre-war "evidence" of WMD was exaggerated, questioned by intelligence experts and even some of Bush and Blair's top deputies. Some "intelligence" proved to be crude forgeries, or plagiarized from decade-old graduate-student work. A transcript of a meeting between Secretary of State Colin Powell and his British counterpart, Jack Straw, reveals that both men fretted over trumped-up WMD claims. U.S. News and World Report revealed that during a Feb. 1 rehearsal of his U.N. speech urging war, a frustrated Powell threw his script in the air and said "I'm not reading this. This is bull----." (He read the "bull----," anyway.) Intelligence grunts angry that their work was spun, edited and politicized are quietly leaking the truth.
To all this, the Bush and Blair administrations and their media attack dogs respond: It doesn't matter. The point is, they bark, we got rid of a monster, as the discovery of mass graves proves (conveniently ignoring the fact that most of the dead are Shiites slaughtered by Saddam because Bush the first abandoned them following the 1991 Gulf War).
I quoted the whole thing as it is soooooo typical of lefties (and esp of the useful idiots that enable their fostering and defense of totalitarianism) that it is purity of intent, or even the manner that intent is expressed in words (whether it is ever followed up on or not -- see: Clinton, W.J.) that matters more than RESULTS.
I thank God every day I don't have a brain that works like this.
email to openforum@thedailycamera.com
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London's Guardian, which has been pushing the line that the Bush administration and the Blair government "deceived" the public, has two embarrassing corrections today of its own reporting on the matter. Here's the first:In our front page lead on May 31 headlined "Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims," we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.
And here's the second (which appears on the Guardian's homepage):
A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the department of defence website, "The . . . difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq." The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.
Those who accuse their nations' leaders of lying would seem to be engaging in what psychologists call "projection." Still, cheers to the Guardian for correcting its mistakes, something a certain New York Times columnist has yet to do.
Problem is, I can't find the second correction on Al-Guardian's homepage. But then their 6 June edition is up now. Did we miss it?
Good news is this (apparently) never made the print edition.
gaud
\Gaud\, n. [OE.] deceit; fraud, artiface; device.
The lib press is getting smarter about damage control with the "don't let this happen to you" object lesson they are getting from the Old Grey Whore. 'Course for many this will just mean lying more carefully.
I posted the text of the Utne Reader peice on another thread, in this message. Unfortunately they do not send you to the correction if you go to the link for the original article. You just get a typical "page no longer available" notification.
The retraction is here:
Correction
June 2003 Issue
Yesterday, we cited a story in the Guardian newspaper that quoted U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as saying the U.S. invaded Iraq for the oil. We removed that story from our website today after the Guardian issued the following correction:
A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading “Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil” misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the Department of Defence website, “The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.” The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.