Black Box Report

As the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. And then there are damned lies that are statistics:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows 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.

That the run-up to the Iraq War was preceded by a litany of false statements from the Bush administration is nothing new. But seeing them all together, and the timeline of deception it creates, is pretty impressive. Naturally, rightwing bloggers are outraged that anyone would dare bring this up again. So what do they do? Attack the messenger!

The Center for Public Integrity hardly qualifies as "independent". It gets much of its funding from George Soros, who has thrown millions of dollars behind Democratic political candidates, and explicitly campaigned to defeat George Bush in 2004...

...Besides Soros, it gets financing from the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Los Angeles Times Foundation.

Streisand? ZOMG! And Ford? Total Commies. And everyone knows anything even remotely associated with Soros has the stench of brimstone on it. Wingnut Welfare, on the other hand, I'm told smells like roses.

...However...that would only explain the impetus behind someone taking on a project like this. It's not like Richard Mellon Scaife is going to pay anyone to put this together. Who commissioned it doesn't change any of the statements themselves, which were all a matter of public record. So their next trick, dripping in Clintonian irony, is to argue what the definition of the word "lie" is:

This is the crux of the matter. Being proven wrong is not “lying.”

The study is entitled, “False Pretenses: Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.” Quite clearly, then, the authors contend that the statements were made with full knowledge that they were wrong in order to lead the nation to war.

The study finds no such thing.
(snip)
The most damning examples are along these lines:

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.”

Of course, there’s no evidence here that Rumsfeld was aware of these reports. SECDEFs don’t read things that don’t make it to the top of the chain of command, after all.

My strong suspicion, though, is that Rumsfeld knew that an unequivocal “Sure” overstated the case. This, I think, reflects the consensus view of all but the most rabid pro- or anti-Bush observers that the administration 1) thought Saddam was dangerous, 2) believed he had an active WMD program if not WMD possession, 3) feared Saddam would transfer said technology to terrorists and other enemies of the United States and 4) cherry picked information that bolstered their case for action while downplaying dissenting views and evidence.

That’s bad. It’s not the way democracies are supposed to work and undermines the public’s confidence in their leaders. But it’s light years away from simply lying to the people about WMD known not to exist, which is what the report alleges.

(emphasis in the original)

If I say the earth is flat just because I don't believe all the evidence that it's round, does that make me a liar? Maybe not, but it would make me dangerously ignorant. Now, what if I had a lot of money riding on a bet that I could convince a number of people that the earth is flat, but in order to do that successfully, I've got to obscure all the information that contradicts my point? Am I a liar then? What if, after I've convinced a bunch of people the earth is flat, I look at some of the evidence that the earth is round and find, in my heart of hearts, that it's pretty convincing and maybe I was wrong - AND THEN - I continue telling people the earth is flat because I don't want to look like an utter jackass...Am I a liar then? As you can see, there's more than one way to tell a lie:

Such an argument, however, relies heavily on a parsing of what the word "lie" means. Any parent is familiar with their kids using "lying by omission" to get out of trouble. That's where you don't present facts you know but which would would shed culpatory light on your false statements. In that respect, it isn't the many false statements themselves which are a mark of guilt - it's the many instances of "we are sure", "Certain" and "know without a doubt" - the "slam dunk" qualifiers - that convict Bush and his administration of lies. In every case, as James admit, they had alternative interpretations, contrary intelligence or flat-out evidence that what they were saying was untrue and continued to press their narrative anyway. That's lying by omission.

The report only covers a two year period ending in 2003......where it will all end?

Now that 935 lies to get us into Iraq have been documented, collated and counted, how many more is it taking to keep us there?

That's for another day and another, much larger, report.