George Soros Funded Study Says Bush Lied

Captain's Quarters ^ | Jan. 23, 2008 | Ed Morrissey

[jdm]

The AP reports, and the New York Times expands, on a new study by a supposedly "independent" organization that claims to have assembled hundred of "false statements" by the Bush administration in the course of the Iraq war. However, 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:

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded 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."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

Nowhere in these articles do either news organization bother to inform their reader of the partisan nature of the CPI. Besides Soros, it gets financing from the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Los Angeles Times Foundation. The FIJ shares most of its board members with the CPI, which hardly makes it a separate entity in terms of its political direction.

Dafydd at Big Lizards does a good job of pulling apart the supposed quotes that CPI used to blow some hot air into the limp "Bush lied" meme, but even the New York Times wasn't impressed:

There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”

In fact, there is nothing new in this site that hasn't already been picked apart by the blogosphere, and some of it discredited. It includes the debunked charge that Bush lied in the "sixteen words" of the 2003 State of the Union address. Joe Wilson's own report to the CIA and to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed that, at least according to Niger's Prime Minister, Iraq had sought to trade for uranium in 1999. The CPI site has the sixteen words posted as one of their false statements.

Let's boil this down. An organization funded by known political activists puts up a website with shopworn quotes taken mostly out of context and misrepresented -- and this somehow qualifies as news?

Hey, AP. I'll be posting a couple of essays today. I'll be sure to look for your breathless report on the wires later this afternoon.

[angcat]

Can you post the letter please.

[tobyhill]

It was through Internet form and not through my mail box. Here’s a snippet though. Feb 17, 1998, Clinton,”It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them”.
If my letter get’s responded to I’ll post my letter and the response.

[angcat]

Thanks

[SuziQ]

Sure it qualifies as news, if the Old Grey Lady says it is.

[ncdave4life]

This “study” is just a Charles Lewis smear of Bush & the Republicans. Lewis claims to be non-partisan, but as the Weekly Standard wryly noted a few years ago:

“Charles Lewis... runs a scrupulously nonpartisan shop, you understand, and his donor list represents the full spectrum of American viewpoints, from the Gaia Fund to the Streisand Foundation and everything in between.”

Funny stuff. However, there is apparently one strange exception to the left/liberal lineup backing Lewis. One of his web sites says that Paul Volker wrote him a check, too: http://www.tfij.org/about/donors/

As for the “study” itself, it is easily refuted. To shoot down the “Bush lied, people died” con artists, you can find many quotes from prominent DEMOCRATS, during both Clinton and Bush administrations, warning of Saddam’s WMDs, here:

http://www.mooregop.org/WMDs_the_rest_of_the_story.html

A couple of years ago the Chicago Tribune noted:

“Assertions that the Bush administration strong-armed intelligence analysts in 2002 and 2003, or misled the nation in making its nuclear case for war, challenge logic. During and after Clinton’s presidency, the intelligence community repeatedly warned the White House that Iraq was one cache of fissile material and one year short of wielding a nuclear bomb. If the White House manipulated or exaggerated that intelligence before the war in order to paint a more-menacing portrait of Saddam Hussein, it’s difficult to imagine why. For five years, the official and oft-delivered alarms from the U.S. intelligence community had been menacing enough.”
- Chicago Tribune, Nov. 30, 2005 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-051130roadtowar2,0,6361891,print.story

-Dave

[ichabod1]

Who lied (who lied?), who died (who died?), who pays (who pays?), who profi-its?

[capt. norm]

Of course Bill Clinton was tried and found guilty of perjury, but that was just peachy.

The old double standard at work.

[Delta 21]

I’ll take that as a rhetorical question.

[Nevadan]

Whenever I hear of an organization in the news that I am unfamiliar with, I take a few seconds to google it. It is absolutely amazing what one can find out when one uses the Internet to go to the actual organization’s website! I guess all those journalism schools out there, along with the AP, Fox News, and the rest of the MSM don’t know about this valuable source of information. They appear surprisingly ignorant of Algore’s most wonderful invention!

[potlatch]

Excellent post devolve!

[devolve]

.

A bit of geometry used there!

[potlatch]

[A bit of geometry used there!]

Lol, in highschool I took ‘Plane Geometry’ and ‘Solid Geometry’. Guess the ‘plane’ was ‘flat’ and ‘solid’ was the 3 dimensional. Been awhile!! lol

[motherof 3]

Smug Jack Cafferty just repeated the whole impartial study, Bush lied thing and is asking for comments on this caffertyfile to be read next hour.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!