Posted on 10/29/2004 9:35:02 AM PDT by presidio9
Members of the Washington press corps -- especially reporters who cover the White House -- might have prevented the United States from going into a senseless war if they had been doing their jobs.
They could have asked tougher questions about the slim evidence that the administration cited for making its now-disproved claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaida.
If the press had fulfilled the role of vigilant watchdog, it might have given the administration some pause, instead of a free ride, during the months before the March 19, 2003, invasion.
Instead, White House reporters were mostly mute, docile and accepting, perhaps for fear of appearing unpatriotic during the emotional surge leading up to the war. The result: Reporters accepted whole hog what the administration was dishing out to scare the country into supporting an untenable war.
Sad to say, reporters shelved their chief weapon -- skepticism. Instead of performing their necessary adversarial role, reporters became cheerleaders.
Some television personalities in the administration's hip pocket ridiculed their colleagues who challenged the White House pro-war spin.
I've covered the White House long enough, especially during the Watergate scandal of the Nixon era, to know that a gullible press is harmful to the nation.
Like most Americans, reporters also were in the grip of the post-9/11 atmosphere, when dissent was equated with a lack of patriotism.
Little by little, the falsehoods that took us into the Iraqi quagmire are being laid bare.
As reporters look back on those White House briefings in the prelude to the war, they must regret that they were snookered.
No one in the White House briefing room doubted that President George W. Bush was determined to bring about a "regime change" to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq. He could not have been more transparent. The questions were not so much "why?" but rather "when?" There were few doubts expressed.
War was the only option Bush was considering. He went through the motions to seek the approval of the United Nations but did not feel he needed a nod from that body or from other world leaders. It now appears that Bush had ample help at the Pentagon to back up his false claims when the intelligence community would not accommodate him.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said last week that Pentagon officials told the White House in September 2002 that Saddam was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks, even though the intelligence community considered it dubious. Levin said Iraq's relationship with al Qaida was "exaggerated to support administration policy."
Reporters allowed themselves to be bamboozled by then-spokesman Ari Fleischer, who clumsily tried to intimidate reporters on occasion, once warning reporters to watch what they say.
Intimidated? Not really. But it made us all aware that the Bush White House was determined to put its slant on all news dealing with Iraq and terrorism.
The long-planned invasion of Iraq was depicted as "the central front in the war on terrorism."
Fleischer and his successor, Scott McClellan, spoke of Saddam Hussein and 9/11 in the same breath at their briefings to subliminally make their point, a conflation later perfected by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Once, when Terry Hunt of the Associated Press asked Bush point-blank if he knew of any link, the president responded, "No."
But that didn't stop Bush and Cheney from continuing their clever phrase-making that leaves many audiences convinced that Saddam was behind 9/11. That accounts for the recent CNN-USA Today poll showing 42 percent of Americans believe Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks. The press should review its own performance and decide whether it met its obligation to hold a president accountable.
I often receive e-mails complaining that reporters had rolled over and played dead when they should have been more probing. It's heartening that some newspapers now acknowledge that they should have been more doubting.
Michael Getler, the Washington Post ombudsman, recently questioned the role of the fourth estate and noted, "The country was taken to war on the basis of a set of facts, assurances and images that turned out not to be true."
He spoke of the difficulties of "banging up against what some consider to be a patriotic spirit," as well as a determined president, a convinced constituency and no access to classified documents.
"We fell short," he said.
We all did.
(Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com).
Don't let Saddam hear that you said that. It might qualify as crual and unusual punnishment.
Almost as bad as BVDs on your head... ;)
what IS THAT?? HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA ewwwwwwwwwwwww
she looks like a "cabbage fart" .... my uncle use to say that about "reallllllllllly" ugly people HAHAHAH ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
She was a pretty baby once ... maybe.
Gee, words like awful, cruel, malicious, sadistic -
they just don't come to mind.....
ROTFL, however, do! TX for the laugh.
Helen's put her finger on what's wrong with this country. Patriotic spirit. Kerry's been right all along, it's time to grovel to the UN and assorted Euroweenies. Instead, we've been fooling around, trying to protect this wretched country....What's wrong with Helen? Nothing that a new brain wouldn't fix.
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