Wilsongate: Motive, Means, and Opportunity
IPS and TNI’s most visible media spokesperson during the buildup to the Iraq War was Phyllis Bennis, who had been part of the Iraq antiwar movement since the Gulf War. Bennis and TNI worked closely with the antiwar coalition United for Peace and Justice (UPJ), a descendant of the Vietnam-era Communist Party front the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ), affiliated with John Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW).132 A year before Joseph Wilson gave the keynote address to the annual Iraq Forum of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), Bennis lectured at the same event on June 15-16, 2002, speaking on “The Iraq Debate Inside the Beltway” and citing UNSCOM weapons inspectors Scott Ritter and Richard Butler to support the statement that “there is no longer any nuclear or long-range missile capacity in Iraq”. Bennis’ lecture preceded a pair of presentations by Ritter himself, who gave a special screening of the film In Shifting Sands, financed by Iraqi agent Shakir Al-Khafaji with Oil-for-Food vouchers.133 The next month, Bennis debated war advocate Richard Perle on the July 1 episode of NewsHour with Jim Lehrer134 and wrote a five-point antiwar argument that was read into the record of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iraq by longtime Iraq antiwar ally Senator Paul Wellstone on July 31, 2002.
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. . .a list of counterarguments similar to Bennis’ was packaged into a talking-points format in an August 2002 report of the IPS-affiliated think tank Foreign Policy in Focus written by Stephen Zunes and titled “Seven Reasons to Oppose a U.S. Invasion of Iraq”. Zunes’ argument included a full point titled “There Is No Firm Proof that Iraq Is Developing Weapons of Mass Destruction”, echoing Bennis’ point on weapons inspections and elaborating. . .
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Bennis’ and Zunes’ talking points received wide distribution from antiwar media in late 2002 and early 2003. A modified version of Zunes’ August 2002 Foreign Policy in Focus report was published in the September 30, 2002 issue of The Nation,138 which had previously published Bennis’ views on Iraq sanctions.139 The November 11 and December 2, 2002 issues of The Nation included articles by Bennis.140