The Guardian Pulls a "Dowd" - Falsely Attributes War for Oil Claim to Wolfowitz w/ Misquote

6 June 2003

[Stultis]

Excuse the vanity. All the relevant information is in the following thread, but buried a hundred odd messages down. I wanted to post something with what you need to know right up top, without having to wait for the editorials to come out tomorrow.

Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil (RUH ROH!!) [The Guardian, 6/4/03]

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed [...]. Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

[The Guardian then procedes with pontification based entirely on this misrepresentation.]

So much for the Guardian. Now compare that with what Wolfowitz actually said (the except is from the Q&A):

     Q:  What I meant is that essentially North Korea is being taken more seriously because it has become a nuclear power by its own admission, whether or not that's true, and that the lesson that people will have is that in the case of Iraq it became imperative to confront Iraq militarily because it had banned weapons systems and posed a danger to the region.  In the case of North Korea, which has nuclear weapons as well as other banned weapons of mass destruction, apparently it is imperative not to confront, to persuade and to essentially maintain a regime that is just as appalling as the Iraqi regime in place, for the sake of the stability of the region.  To other countries of the world this is a very mixed message to be sending out.

     Wolfowitz:  The concern about implosion is not primarily at all a matter of the weapons that North Korea has, but a fear particularly by South Korea and also to some extent China of what the larger implications are for them of having 20 million people on their borders in a state of potential collapse and anarchy.  It's is also a question of whether, if one wants to persuade the regime to change, whether you have to find -- and I think you do -- some kind of outcome that is acceptable to them.  But that outcome has to be acceptable to us, and it has to include meeting our non-proliferation goals.

     Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil.  In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.  The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz Remarks at the IISS Asian Security Conference (5/31/03)

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Q&A following IISS Asia Security Conference

More Wolfowitz Transcripts

Once again, side by side:

Guardian: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

Transcript: "Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil."

Of course this goes beyond the simple misquote. That might (if one was extremely charitable) be excused as a problem of translating from English to German and back. (The Guardian did publish before the DOD transcript of the Q&A portion of Wolfowitz' talk was posted.)

The real problem is extreme, blatant and willful (or shockingly ignorant) mischaracterization. The Guardian, in their lead sentence -- indeed in the first clause of the first sentence -- paraphrased Wolfowitz as having "claimed" that, "Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq". As you can certainly read for yourself, Wolfowitz claimed nothing of the kind. Not on any reading. Not in any language. Wolfowitz was merely noting that North Korea is on the verge of economic collapse, that this would present a large and possibly intolerable problem for South Korea if the regime were to suddenly implode, and that the same problem did not apply to Iraq since it had plenty of hard currency producing oil.

Furthermore, the following transcript should have been available to The Guardian, wherein Wolfowitz explicitly and forcefully repudiates the position they attribute to him:

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Media Availability at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo (6/3/03)

     Q:  I'm Satoru Suzuki with TV-Asahi of Japan.  Mr. Secretary, eleven weeks have passed since the coalition forces moved into Iraq.  Yet you've found no weapons of mass destruction in that country -- no convincing evidence yet.  Given that, are you still convinced that you'll be able to find such weapons eventually and, in the absence of such weapons, how can you still justify the war, and what would you say to those critics in Japan and the rest of the world who've been saying that the war was mainly about oil? 

     Wolfowitz:  Well, let me start with the last part.  The notion that the war was ever about oil is a complete piece of nonsense.  If the United States had been interested in Iraq's oil, it would have been very simple 12 years ago or any time in the last 12 years to simply do a deal with Saddam Hussein.  We probably could have had any kind of preferred customer status we wanted if we'd been simply willing to drop our real concerns.  Our real concerns focused on the threat posed by that country -- not only its weapons of mass destruction, but also its support for terrorism and, most importantly, the link between those two things.  You said it's eleven weeks since our troops first crossed the Kuwaiti border, and coalition troops first entered Iraq, as though eleven weeks were a long time.  Eleven weeks is a very short time.  In fact, unfortunately, significant elements of the old regime are still out there shooting at Americans, killing Americans, threatening Iraqis.  It is not yet a secure situation and I believe that probably influences to some extent the willingness of Iraqis to speak freely to us.

     We -- as the whole world knows -- have in fact found some significant evidence to confirm exactly what Secretary Powell said when he spoke to the United Nations about the development of mobile biological weapons production facilities that would seem to confirm fairly precisely the information we received from several defectors, one in particular who described the program in some detail.  But I wouldn't suggest we've gotten to the bottom of the whole story yet.  We said, when Resolution 1441 was being adopted, that the most important thing was to have free and unintimidated access to Iraqis who know where these things are.  Simply going and searching door to door in a country the size of the state of California is not the way you would find things.  You would find things when people start to give you information -- we're still in an early stage of that process and there is no question we will get to the bottom of what's there. 

     But there should be no doubt whatsoever this was a war undertaken because our President and the Prime Minister of England and the other countries that joined with us believe -- and I think they believe correctly -- that this regime was a threat to our security and a threat that we could no longer live with.  It is also the case that, beyond a shadow of any doubt whatsoever, this regime was a horrible abuser of its own people and that there is no question the Iraqi people are far better off with that regime gone. 

[Stultis]

Again, the lead sentence begins: "Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk [Wolfowitz] has claimed."

That characterization (oil being the "main" reason) was not supported even by the misquote. Was there something else in the dpa feed that supported it? If not, then The Guardian may have gotten "burnt" as to the quote, but they still spun a blatantly (and very probably willfully) false story to go along with it.

[tictoc]

Then again, I may be wrong about this. I was too hasty in posting. Of the two German newspapers quoted by you, one (Tagesspiegel) credited dpa, so I automatically assumed dpa to be the original source.

However, the Tagesspiegel article appeared on June 3rd, while the Die Welt article (bylined Sophie Mühlmann, datelined Singapore) appeared a day earlier, on June 2nd.

The mistranslation therefore is attributable not to dpa but to Sophie Mühlmann, reporting for Die Welt from Singapore (if she was even there; might have pulled a Rick Bragg).

[areafiftyone]

Thanks for the pingy wingy!!!

[facedown]

FReepers RULE bump!

[dennisw]

BTTTTT Al Guardian has a track record of being leftist and being the most anti Israel of all Brit fishwraps.

[tictoc]

Thank you for your reply, Stultis. Although I hate to defend the Guardian, the Tagesspiegel article does support that lead (lede?).

Tagesspiegel wrote:

Unterdessen erweiterte Vize-Verteidigungsminister Paul Wolfowitz sein Eingeständnis, dass Massenvernichtungswaffen nicht der eigentliche Kriegsgrund waren.

My translation:

In the meantime, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz expanded on his admission that weapons of mass destruction were not the actual reason for the war (my underline).

Tagesspiegel continues:

Auf die Frage, warum man Nordkorea anders behandle als den Irak, sagte er in Singapur laut "Welt":

My translation:

Asked in Singapore why North Korea was being treated differently than Iraq, he said, according to Die Welt:

(And now follows what the Guardian accurately translated from German, but what was in fact a gross misquote of Wolfowitz.)

[firebrand]

Maybe they can run the quote through a few more languages and see what they get.

[Stultis]

They still need the cattle-prod treatment from the English speakers. Heading home now, and will be composing a nice warm email to the ombudsman as a drive.

Maybe just, "thanks for playing 'misquote the jew'," and a link to the thread.

[tictoc]

My preliminary conclusion is that dpa is probably innocent of any inaccuracy or malice. The first, and principal, culprit is Sophie Mühlmann writing for Die Welt. Second comes Tagesspiegel, which added its own spin ("...not the actual reason for the war"). And finally, the Guardian added its blaring headline, based on the two German newspapers.

While it is true that both Tagesspiegel and Die Welt are supposed to be moderately right of center newspapers, their staff are products of journalism schools, and you can do only so much with the graduates after their indoctrination by their professors. Nevertheless, each of the two German newspapers should take action, especially in the case of Mühlmann. At the very least, a warning with an entry in the personnel file.

Alternatively, Mühlmann's English may not be up to the task of being a reporter, in which case she cannot remain a foreign correspondent.

[tictoc]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand your comment. Could you please clarify?

[firebrand]

It seems obvious. You don't take a remark in English translated into German and translate it back into English. Something is inevitably lost in the process. If they want to distort Wolfowitz even more, they can go from English to German to French to Italian and then back to English. We'll probably get Wolfowitz wanting steal every drop of Iraqi oil for his own private use.

[jayef]

My letter is in the mail.

[tictoc]

Now I see what you mean.

Translations can be either accurate or not. I make my living by supplying the former. The Guardian, whatever else we can say about it, did translate accurately from the article in Die Welt. If the journalist writing for Die Welt had been equally accurate in translating the original Wolfowitz comment into German, there would have been nothing for Tagesspiegel to hang its spin on, and in turn nothing for the Guardian to go nuts about.

However, and I am realizing this as I type, the Guardian was wrong to put the comments attributed to Wolfowitz in inverted commas. That gives the readers an impression of reading a verbatim quote. When you translate from Language A into Language B and then back into Language A, the result can be accurate, but will rarely if ever be word-for-word identical to the original comment.

Bad Guardian!

[Stultis]

Reporter's email (should be):

george.wright@guardian.co.uk

[Stultis]

Here's Mine:

To (Reporter):
george.wright@guardian.co.uk

cc (Ombudsman):
reader@guardian.co.uk

Thanks for playing "misquote the jew". Looks like you win again!

I understand that you may have been misled by the German papers cited in the article, but come now… It is absurd to think that a senior American official is going to say (even in effect or indirectly) something as stupid, wrong and inconsistent with stated policy as: "Yeah, Iraq really was a war for oil." This should have raised all kinds of red flags for fact checking. If you weren't culpable of intentionally misrepresenting Mr. Wolfowitz, then your only defense is laziness, incompetence and stupidity. Indeed it would clearly require all three factors working in consilient coordination to produce the laughable and slanted screed that proudly graced your internet frontispiece.

In case you haven't figured out that your article both misquoted Mr. Wolfowitz AND completely misrepresented the substance of his comments in context, please consult the following webpage for further information:

The Guardian Pulls a "Dowd" - Falsely Attributes War for Oil Claim to Wolfowitz w/ Misquote
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/923221/posts

[Stultis]

Schadenfreude in the U.K. alert!

[tictoc]

And here is mine (to the editors of Die Welt, cc'ed to Tagesspiegel):

Zu: "Im Fall Nordkorea setzt Wolfowitz auf die Anrainer"; WELT vom 2. Juni

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

Auslandskorrespondentin Sophie Mühlmann setzte am 02.06.2003 (\"Im Fall Nordkorea setzt Wolfowitz auf die Anrainer\") durch eine krass falsche Wiedergabe einer Bemerkung des Stellvertretenden US-Verteidigungsministers einen internationalen Stein ins Rollen.

Bei der Sicherheitstagung in Singapur antwortete Wolfowitz auf die Frage nach dem Grund für die unterschiedliche Behandlung Nordkoreas gegenüber dem Irak wie folgt:

ZITAT BEGINN
Q: What I meant is that essentially North Korea is being taken more seriously because it has become a nuclear power by its own admission, whether or not that's true, and that the lesson that people will have is that in the case of Iraq it became imperative to confront Iraq militarily because it had banned weapons systems and posed a danger to the region. In the case of North Korea, which has nuclear weapons as well as other banned weapons of mass destruction, apparently it is imperative not to confront, to persuade and to essentially maintain a regime that is just as appalling as the Iraqi regime in place, for the sake of the stability of the region. To other countries of the world this is a very mixed message to be sending out.

Wolfowitz: The concern about implosion is not primarily at all a matter of the weapons that North Korea has, but a fear particularly by South Korea and also to some extent China of what the larger implications are for them of having 20 million people on their borders in a state of potential collapse and anarchy. It's is also a question of whether, if one wants to persuade the regime to change, whether you have to find -- and I think you do -- some kind of outcome that is acceptable to them. But that outcome has to be acceptable to us, and it has to include meeting our non-proliferation goals.

Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.

ZITAT ENDE (wörtliche Niederschrift des US-Verteidigungsministeriums hier: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030531-depsecdef0246.html )

Dies wurde von Mühlmann fälschlich so berichtet:

ZITAT BEGINN
Auf die Frage, warum eine Atommacht wie Nordkorea anders behandelt würde als der Irak, wo kaum Massenvernichtungswaffen gefunden worden seien, antwortete der stellvertretende Verteidigungsminister wieder sehr offen: \"Betrachten wir es einmal ganz simpel. Der wichtigste Unterschied zwischen Nordkorea und dem Irak ist der, dass wir wirtschaftlich einfach keine Wahl im Irak hatten. Das Land schwimmt auf einem Meer von Öl.\"

ZITAT ENDE

Das wörtliche Zitat erweckt den Eindruck, er habe als Kriegsgrund eingeräumt, die USA seien in den Irak gegangen, um sich die Ölvorräte zu sichern. Tatsächlich aber sagte Wolfowitz, man habe den Irak deswegen anders behandelt, weil dieses Land aufgrund seiner Ölvorräte gegen wirtschaftlichen Druck und Sanktionen unempfindlich war.

Ein himmelweiter Unterschied! Einen Tag später wird diese Falschmeldung vom Tagesspiegel aufgegriffen, der noch die Ausschmückung hinzufügt: \"Unterdessen erweiterte Vize-Verteidigungsminister Paul Wolfowitz sein Eingeständnis, dass Massenvernichtungswaffen nicht der eigentliche Kriegsgrund waren.\" (siehe http://archiv.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/03.06.2003/596952.asp )

Am 4.6. dann trompetete der Guardian unter Berufung auf die Welt und den Tagesspiegel die Schlagzeile \"Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil\" (siehe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,970331,00.html)

Die linksliberale Medienlandschaft in Großbritannien und den USA walzt seitdem dieses Thema genüsslich aus -- und alles geht auf die Meldung in Ihrer Zeitung zurück.

Ich wollte zuerst nicht glauben, dass Die Welt dem ultralinken Guardian Material für eine seiner typischen anti-USA-Kampagnen frei Haus liefert.

Leider ist eben dies geschehen. Hoffentlich wird sich dieser Vorfall nicht bald wiederholen.

[Stultis]

Had to send 'em another email:

Oh, my. How could I have failed to mention, in my previous message regarding your misreporting, laziness, incompetence and stupidity (and/or willful dishonesty, as the case may be) that not only did you innovate, at least in English, a new misrepresentation of a clear and cogent statement by Mr. Wolfowitz, but you referenced an old one, unbothered by the fact that it has been thoroughly debunked in the English language press:

"Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war"

You could just read the transcript to correct this one:

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

But if you need it spelled out, try this:

What Wolfowitz Really Said (excerpted)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/757wzfan.asp

What gives with this Vanity Fair interview, then?

What gives is that Tanenhaus has mischaracterized Wolfowitz's remarks, that Vanity Fair's publicists have mischaracterized Tanenhaus's mischaracterization, and that Bush administration critics are now indulging in an orgy of righteous indignation that is dishonest in triplicate.

Pentagon staffers were wise enough to tape-record the Tanenhaus-Wolfowitz interview. Prior to publication of the Vanity Fair piece, they made that transcript available to its author. And they have since posted the transcript on the Defense Department's website (www.defenselink.mil). Tanenhaus's assertion that Wolfowitz "admitted" that "Iraq's WMD had never been the most important casus belli" turns out to be, not to put too fine a point on it, false. Here's the relevant section of the conversation:

TANENHAUS: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into--

WOLFOWITZ: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but . . . there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. . . . The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his U.N. presentation.

In short, Wolfowitz made the perfectly sensible observation that more than just WMD was of concern, but that among several serious reasons for war, WMD was the issue about which there was widest domestic (and international) agreement.

As for Tanenhaus's suggestion that Wolfowitz somehow fessed up that the war had a hidden, "unnoticed but huge" agenda--rationalizing a pre-planned troop withdrawal from Saudi Arabia--we refer you, again, to the actual interview. In an earlier section of the conversation, concerning the current, postwar situation in the Middle East, Wolfowitz explained that the United States needs to get post-Saddam Iraq "right," and that we also need "to get some progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue," which now looks more promising. Then Wolfowitz said this:

There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed--but it's huge--is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. . . . I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things.

Tanenhaus has taken a straightforward and conventional observation about strategic arrangements in a post-Saddam Middle East and juiced it up into a vaguely sinister "admission" about America's motives for going to war in the first place.

[Hipixs]

Tanenhaus has taken a straightforward and conventional observation about strategic arrangements in a post-Saddam Middle East and juiced it up into a vaguely sinister "admission" about America's motives for going to war in the first place.

And Dowd did a bit of her own juicing:

Bomb and Switch article of June 4, 2003:

Ms. Dowd commits a small misquote and a large mischaracterization: Paul Wolfowitz said another "almost unnoticed but huge" reason for war was to promote Middle East peace by allowing the U.S. to take its troops out of Saudi Arabia

He said:
There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed--but it's huge--is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things.
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

---

The agendafied media is bad echo chamber adding spin every time a subject is bounced from one reporter/writer to the next.

[hellinahandcart]

If they really want to confuse people, they should translate it into Portuguese and back again.

Portuguese is fun.