WASHINGTON - 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.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

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By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer

On the Net:

Center For Public Integrity: http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx

Fund For Independence in Journalism: http://www.tfij.org/




What does this actually mean??? I mean didn't we all already know this news?

Way to be on the ball there, journalists. Wouldn't it be nice if we had this study done in, oh, I dunno, 2002?

This is really good, and pretty damning of the media:

Bill Moyers, "Buying the War"

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

I second this reccomendation. Absolutely fascinating piece.

Study: False statements preceded Iraq war

Fixed that for you.

Old news... but always good news. In October of 2003 I read an article that drug me into giving a fuck about politics and at times wish I never head. The author also broke the story about the My Lai massacre.

This shit was out in the open way back then...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/1 ... 027fa_fact

You should read it anyhow... very informative.

BREAKING: IRAQ DIDN'T HAVE WMD

Fixed that one too.

Government ordered to disclose draft Iraq dossier

Andrew Sparrow, senior political correspondent
Wednesday January 23, 2008
Guardian Unlimited

A Whitehall spin doctor may have played a greater role in the drafting of the famous dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction than the government admitted at the time, the Information Tribunal said today.

In a ruling on a freedom of information request relating to what is alleged to be the first draft of the dossier published in 2002, the tribunal said that the public should be allowed to read the document.

The tribunal made its ruling following a three-year campaign by a researcher who believes that the dossier will undermine the government's claims that the document was entirely drawn up by John Scarlett, the then-head of the joint intelligence committee, and not government spin doctors.

The dossier, which claimed Iraq could launch weapons on of mass destruction within 45 minutes, became the subject of huge controversy when the BBC reported that it had been "sexed up" by Downing Street.

Today's decision relates to an early version of the dossier written by John Williams, a former Daily Mirror journalist who at the time was head of press at the Foreign Office. The so-called "Williams draft" was mentioned during the Hutton inquiry but it was never published and at the time the Foreign Office claimed that it had little influence on the version that was eventually published.

The government always claimed that the dossier eventually published in September 2002 was the work of the joint intelligence committee and its chairman, Scarlett.

But Tony Blair was subsequently accused of "sexing up" the dossier to persuade the public to support the war against Iraq and at the time of the Hutton inquiry there was a fierce debate about the extent to which his spin doctors, and principally his press chief, Alastair Campbell, were involved in the wording of the document.

Willliams, who has now retired from the Foreign Office, apparently started writing his version on September 7 2002, four days after Blair had announced that a dossier on Iraq's WMD would be published.

At the time of the Hutton inquiry the government insisted that the dossier drafting process had started later and that the Williams version was not relevant.

It was admitted that Williams had attended meetings to discuss the dossier, but it was claimed that he was not "part of the joint intelligence committee machinery" and that his input was marginal.

After considering evidence from the Foreign Office, and reading the Williams draft itself, the tribunal said that the Williams version should be made public.

"Information has been placed before us, which was not before Lord Hutton, which may lead to questions as to whether the Williams draft in fact played a greater part in influencing the drafting of the dossier than has previously been supposed," said the tribunal, which has the job of adjudicated when public bodies do not accept an order from the information commissioner to release information.

Chris Ames, the researcher who demanded the publication of the Williams draft and whose campaign was supported by the New Statesman, said that today's ruling "casts doubt over the government's claim that the document played no part in the production of the dossier".

In its ruling, the tribunal said that the Williams draft had a "header" at the top with the words "JIC Two Document Version 24 July 2002". The Foreign Office claimed that the reference to JIC - the acronym for joint intelligence committee - was a mistake and that it should have read CIC. CIC was the acronym for the coalition intelligence centre, a Whitehall body set up to coordinate news during the so-called "war on terror".

The tribunal also pointed out that the Williams draft had been annotated in two sets of handwriting. It said that this contradicted the Foreign Office's claim that the Williams draft was discarded as soon as Scarlett started drawing up his own version.

According to the tribunal, "some sections of the published draft do bear a resemblance to parts of the Williams draft". However it said that the similarities "were not such as to lead on easily to the conclusion that one had been based on the other".

During the Hutton inquiry - which covered the drafting of the dossier in detail because the row about Campbell's involvement in it eventually culminated in the death of the weapons expert David Kelly - there were hints that the Williams draft contributed to the final version.

An email from a Downing Street press officer was released in which he referred to "some quick thoughts on John's draft of 9 September".

The email ended: "We also need to think, once we have John's further draft tomorrow, how we prepare the ground for the launch of the text to get expectations in the right place".

Although Williams wrote his draft in September, the Foreign Office had originally started work on a dossier about the WMD threat posed by Iraq and other countries in February 2002. This paper was adapted as the year went on.

When Campbell gave evidence to the Hutton inquiry, he claimed that all previous papers relating to WMD were "redundant". He was anxious to refute suggestions that he and his team of spin doctors had influenced the content of a document that was supposed to reflect the opinions of the intelligence services.

The tribunal said there should be only a "very small redaction in the manuscript annotation" before it is disclosed. The information is "not central to the purpose or content", it added.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We will be studying the decision of the tribunal."

John Baron, a Tory MP, said that the Foreign Office ought to comply with the tribunal's ruling.

"I am now pressing the foreign secretary immediately to make public the Williams draft so that we can assess for ourselves the significance of this document in the run-up to war - a war which we should never have been party to."

After today's ruling, Williams told that the BBC that he always felt his draft should have been published and that he thought it was a mistake that the Foreign Office tried to keep it secret.

"I was surprised when the Foreign Office said it was not going to publish this. My feeling has been that by refusing to publish it they have given it the apparent importance which I do not believe it has," he told the BBC.

Williams said that his version was "over-taken" and that it was "never, as far as I was concerned, relevant [to the final published version]."

The BBC story about Downing Street allegedly "sexing up" the dossier claimed that the assertion about Saddam Hussein launching WMD in 45 minutes was added to the dossier at the last minute because Blair and his officials felt early drafts were not very convincing.

Williams told the BBC that his version did not contain the 45 minutes claim.

During the Hutton inquiry, it was established that MI6 only gathered the intelligence about the WMD being launched within 45 minutes - intelligence which turned out to be wrong - shortly before the dossier's publication.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/sto ... 72,00.html

Numbered list?

it still boggles my mind how condi rice has gotten away with being a fucking dirtbag.

So I guess Bush's administration was 935% more positive than we were about there being WMDs in Iraq and Saddam's link to al Qaida.

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Excellent math skills.

I wasn't trying to be serious about it. I just thought I'd make an exaggeration about it and turn it into a joke. Because I mean if you think of it that way, it is kinda funny.