[lbo-talk] NYRB: Now They Tell Us (The press during the buildup to the Iraq invasion)

Thomas Seay entheogens at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 14 22:42:49 PST 2004


Now They Tell Us by Michael Massing http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922

In recent months, US news organizations have rushed to expose the Bush

administration's pre-war failings on Iraq. "Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper," declared a recent headline in The Washington Post. "Pressure Rises for Probe of Prewar-Intelligence," said The Wall Street Journal. "So, What Went Wrong?" asked Time. In The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh described how the Pentagon set up its own intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, to sift for data to support the administration's claims about Iraq. And on "Truth, War and Consequences," a Frontline documentary that aired last October, a procession of intelligence analysts testified to the administration's use of what one of them called "faith-based intelligence."

Watching and reading all this, one is tempted to ask, where were

you all before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these

deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration

was pressing its case for regime change—when, in short, it might

have made a difference? Some maintain that the many analysts who've

spoken out since the end of the war were mute before it. But that's

not true. Beginning in the summer of 2002, the "intelligence community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922

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