This article is an adaptation of a larger piece, entitled "Iraq and Preemptive Self-Defense," I wrote for inclusion in The Iraq War & Its Consequences, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., Singapore, scheduled for publication in September 2003. That article, in addition to some of the elements explored here, discusses the real reasons for the invasion of Iraq.

Overview

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, against the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon, are said to have changed everything in the world. I do not agree. What may have changed as a result of September 11 is the American psyche and its newfound sense of vulnerability in the world. In my view, what has not changed is the attitude of the Bush administration. It has been very much "business as usual," in the sense that those in power are taking advantage of uncertainties and fear to advance their own political and ideological agendas.

I believe that President George W. Bush's administration took advantage of the fear and uncertainty engendered by the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001 to put forth a national security policy of preemptive self-defense as if it were a direct response to September 11 instead of just one element of a longer-standing, post-Cold War political vision of unrivaled U.S. power developed by members of the administration. They then used that policy as a justification to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.

In order to achieve those foreign policy goals, the Bush administration relied on outright lies, distortions, and manipulation of information to push the American public to support an invasion of Iraq. Domestically, major media outlets acted more like public relations firms for the administration's agenda than objective news sources that supposedly underpin the much-lauded American free press. Meaningful public debate was stifled, and the press largely ignored opposition to the war. Those who did dare to speak out were publicly attacked and vilified. In this post-September 11 environment, people across the country who did not agree with Bush's policy direction felt isolated and unsure of their own concerns about the dramatic press for war and the attacks on civil liberties at home.

Internationally, the administration tried to use similar manipulations, coupled with intense political and economic pressure, to achieve international support for the invasion. They had hoped to build on the surge of global sympathy toward the United States in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the international cooperation that developed in the administration's war on terrorism resulting from those attacks. Instead, in the process of taking the United States to war, the Bush administration alienated some of its closest allies and much of the Arab world.

The administration's policy of preemptive self-defense threatens to dramatically destabilize international security and international law and has set a dangerous precedent, the ramifications of which will be felt for years if not decades. In using the violence of September 11, 2001, to advance their foreign policy agenda, members of the Bush administration have made the United States more vulnerable and have eroded civil liberties, further diminished free expression in America, and threatened the very fabric of our democracy.

Iraq: The Spin and the Lead-Up to War

The Bush administration - and its primary ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair - spun the case that the Iraqi regime posed such an overwhelming and immediate threat to national and global security that "preemptive self-defense" gave cause for a just war against Saddam Hussein. This doctrine is spelled out in the administration's policy document, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, released on September 17, 2002.[1]

The primary justifications for a war of preemptive self-defense against Iraq were that Hussein's regime supported terrorists in general, had links to al Qaeda in particular, and was continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction.[2] As that argument spun out, the administration consistently stated that there was a direct link between Hussein and al Qaeda, implying that, through that link, he was responsible either directly or indirectly for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The administration sought to soften the image of the invasion by also arguing that it was seeking regime change to free the Iraqi people from decades of despotic rule - to provide them the right to form their own government and use the riches of Iraqi oil to benefit all the people of the country. In particular, the administration used this argument to play to the best side of the American psyche - the belief most Americans share that this country really does stand for freedom and justice and democracy and self-determination for all under all circumstances.

These were the essential elements that the administration used to try to rally both the U.S. Congress and the United Nations for war against the Hussein regime. On September 12, 2002, Bush addressed the United Nations in the push for a new UN resolution requiring the regime to give up weapons of mass destruction and stop support for terrorism in order to avoid war.[3] On October 11, 2002, both houses of the U.S. Congress voted to authorize an attack on Iraq if the regime refused to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by UN resolutions. On November 8, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, which established an enhanced inspection regime to disarm Iraq, to be carried out by the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).[4]

Even as the weapons inspectors were resuming their activities, the Bush administration increased rhetorical and real pressure on the Iraqi regime, and began to move troops into the region. Hussein grudgingly began to cooperate with the inspectors, but the Bush administration, under pressure from its primary ally, British prime minister Tony Blair, agreed to press for another UN resolution to grant international legitimacy to the war.

On January 27, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA, reported to the UN Security Council that, after the first 60 days of the resumed weapons inspections,

We have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons programme since the elimination of the programme in the 1990s. . . . With our verification system now in place, barring exceptional circumstances, and provided there is sustained proactive cooperation by Iraq, we should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons programme.[5]

Yet, as if operating in a vacuum, and essentially disregarding ElBaradei's report, on February 5, 2003, in a dramatic bid to convince a skeptical world of the imminent need for war, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the Bush administration's case to the United Nations as a prelude to its push for a second UN resolution for war.[6] In arguing that the Iraqi regime had not abandoned its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs, much of the evidence he presented was based on undisclosed sources, along with documents and intercepts subject to various interpretations.[7] Many of the administration's claims, presented by Powell, have subsequently unraveled, as described below. While Powell made an eloquent presentation, the evidence he presented did not convince a skeptical world of the need for immediate action. With little support, the United States withdrew its bid for a resolution to endorse its war with Iraq.

On March 17, 2003, in an address to the nation, President Bush gave Hussein an ultimatum: Leave Iraq within 48 hours or face war. Two days later the United States launched its invasion of Iraq with a "decapitation attack" aimed at Hussein and his two sons.

The Spin - Myth or Reality?

On May 1, 2003, after a dramatic photo-op fighter-jet landing on the aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln, standing before a huge banner hung on the ship that read "Mission Accomplished," Bush declared the war's major combat operations to be over.[8] On July 16, however, a little less than three months later, as organized attacks on occupation forces were on the rise, the new commander of U.S. Central Command, General John Azibaid, acknowledged that the U.S. occupying forces in Iraq were facing a "classical guerrilla-type campaign."[9] No weapons of mass destruction have as yet been found in the occupied country, and the administration's arguments for war have been rapidly losing currency - a currency that many believe they never should have had in the first place.

The Bush administration was helped tremendously in advancing its war agenda domestically by the U.S. media. Embracing the administration's arguments for its post-September 11 policies, both at home and abroad, media outlets gave virtually no room for dissent or even objective discussion - particularly in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion and during the war itself, when U.S. reporters were "embedded" with advancing U.S. troops. The "embedding" of media was only the most overt aspect of the administration's policy of misinformation and propaganda to achieve its goals vis-à-vis Iraq.

Almost as soon as Bush began his rhetorical assault on the imminent threat of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, it would be revealed time and again that evidence he cited was false, nonexistent, or distorted. One of the first examples was his statement in October 2002 that an IAEA report on Hussein's nuclear capacity alleged that the regime was "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon. Almost immediately the IAEA refuted the allegation, pointedly noting that no such report existed. While Bush's claims were disseminated loudly and clearly, the subsequent disclaimer by his spokesperson Ari Fleisher was barely noted by the media. It still remains a piece of misinformation little touched on by the media.[10]

Other evidence of weapons of mass destruction, cited by Bush and high-ranking members of his administration, has also proven to be either completely false or to have been made "more forward-leaning" in order to bolster the position that the administration wanted to prove.[11] The most notorious example of the use of false information is Bush's statement in his State of the Union Address (January 28, 2003) that Hussein sought uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa.[12] The CIA had successfully argued for removal of a similar statement from an earlier speech Bush gave in October 2002 because it knew the "evidence" was not credible. It also has stated that it pressed the White House to drop such allegations from Bush's address.[13]

An example of the Bush administration making information "more forward-leaning" was the explanation it offered for the case of aluminum tubes bought by Iraq. The administration declared these would be used for producing nuclear bombs. Although numerous experts stated that the tubes were not for nuclear production, administration officials presented the issue as yet more proof of its case for war. One intelligence analyst who had participated in the aluminum-tubes debate said, "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of the aluminum really is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie."[14]

It has been widely reported that Vice President Dick Cheney, his chief-of-staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and others repeatedly visited CIA headquarters to press for interpretations of information to support the push for war.[15] One senior administration official said, "Nearly every day, Cheney and Scooter hammered the agency on Iraq or terrorism. Over time, the agency got tired of fighting."[16] But apparently, even this pressure did not satisfy the needs of the administration. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set up a shadow agency, the Office of Special Plans (OSP), to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defense Intelligence Agency, in interpretation of data.[17]

The other primary argument for the invasion was the "bulletproof" evidence, as declared in September 2002 by Donald Rumsfeld, that Saddam Hussein had ties with al Qaeda.[18] President Bush and his advisors repeatedly talked of these ties, with the barely veiled implication that, because of the links, Hussein was in some way responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet, these claims proved even weaker, if that is possible, than the evidence provided regarding the weapons of mass destruction in Hussein's possession.

On June 15, 2003, retired General Wesley Clark was interviewed on NBC television's Meet the Press, during which he stated that the Bush administration began trying to implicate Hussein immediately after the September attacks. Clark said,

Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, "You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein." I said, "But - I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?" And I never got any evidence.[19]

According to the nonprofit media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,

Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response "go massive . . . sweep it all up, things related and not."[20]

Others in and around the Bush administration began publicly trying to connect Hussein to al Qaeda and thus to the attacks of September 11, 2001. On behalf of the administration, James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA and a current member of the Defense Policy Board, went to Europe to seek evidence to back the claim. His evidence - that Mohamed Atta, the leader of the September 11 attacks, had met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague - was not supported by U.S. intelligence or by Czech officials.[21] In February 2003, the New York Times reported that an FBI official said, "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there."[22] Additionally, a classified British intelligence report seen by BBC News stated, "There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network."[23]

U.S. Media Bias, the Administration's "Information Warfare," and the Stifling of Public Debate

It can be difficult to understand why much of the American public still wants to believe the nearly mythological justifications for the invasion. It is easy to see why people outside the United States cannot understand the "gullibility" of the American public and are confused by claims of seemingly uniform support for the Bush administration's policies. But from inside the country, it is easier to understand.

Particularly since September 11, 2001, the mainstream American media has largely supported an aggressive war on terrorism and a "muscular" U.S. foreign policy. In the immediate aftermath of the September terrorist attacks, it was considered unpatriotic at best and treasonous at worst to publicly ask any questions about the root causes of terrorism or the appropriate responses to terrorism.

The assault on such questioning began almost immediately after the attacks and helped to foster an environment of fear of public discourse. One particularly high-profile case was that of late-night television's Bill Maher, then host of ABC's Politically Incorrect. Maher's commentary on U.S. military responses to terrorism might have been ill-timed, but the response he received helped feed into a traumatized American psyche and contributed to stifling public questioning of administration policies. Sponsors withdrew support for the show, which was ultimately cancelled. According to Bush's spokesperson Ari Fleisher, what had happened to Maher was appropriate and a signal to Americans that they "need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that - there never is."[24]

Another high-profile incident occurred during the Iraqi invasion when the lead singer of a popular singing group, the Dixie Chicks, said she was embarrassed to be from the same state as Bush. Clear Channel, a corporation owning 1,200 radio stations in the United States, went immediately on the attack and called for all its stations to stop playing the band's music.[25] Clear Channel, whose stations also helped organize pro-war rallies around the United States, also organized an event in Louisiana where a 33,000-pound tractor smashed Dixie Chicks CDs, tapes, and other paraphernalia.[26]

The mainstream media has consistently presented positions that reinforced the administration's point of view and left little room for debate and discussion, particularly in the lead-up to the war and during the invasion itself. For example, one survey of 414 Iraq-related stories on the three major U.S. networks between September 2001 and February 2002 found that all but 34 of the stories were sourced out of the White House, the Defense Department, or the State Department.[27]

The situation did not improve once the invasion started. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) began a three-week study on March 19, 2003, the day after the war began. They canvassed 1,617 on-camera sources in stories about Iraq on the evening newscasts of six U.S. television networks and news channels.[28] The major findings include the following:

Nearly two-thirds of all sources, 64 percent, were pro-war, while 71 percent of U.S. guests favored the war. Anti-war voices were 10 percent of all sources, but just 6 percent of non-Iraqi sources and 3 percent of U.S. sources. Thus viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1 . . . Looking at U.S. sources, which made up 76 percent of total sources, more than two out of three (68 percent) were either current or former officials . . . In the category of U.S. officials, military voices overwhelmed civilians by a two-to-one margin, providing 68 percent of U.S. official sources and nearly half (47 percent) of all U.S. sources. This predominance reflected the networks' focus on information from journalists embedded with troops, or provided at military briefings, and the analysis of such by paid former military officials.[29]

At the same time, despite the largest public protests in the streets of American cities since the height of the Vietnam War, the massive displays of opposition to official policy were barely acknowledged, let alone covered. Often, when there was coverage of antiwar events, it would be placed in inner sections of newspapers, as if they were entertainment or events of local significance, rather than displays of massive public opposition to national policy. Further, the FAIR study cited above found, for example, that:

Just 3 percent of U.S. sources represented or expressed opposition to the war. With more than one in four U.S. citizens opposing the war and much higher rates of opposition in most countries where opinion was polled, none of the networks offered anything resembling proportionate coverage of anti-war voices.[30]

In the face of such a barrage of biased reporting, it is very difficult for individual citizens to believe that their opposition opinions, or even basic questioning of events, are anything but rare, isolated, and perhaps even "unpatriotic." As Chris Hedges, a nonpacifist war correspondent for about 20 years, writes in his recent book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

The effectiveness of the myths peddled in war is powerful. We often come to doubt our own perceptions. We hide these doubts, like troubled believers, sure that no one else feels them. We feel guilty. The myths have determined not only how we should speak but how we should think. The doubts we carry, the scenes we see that do not conform to the myth are hazy, difficult to express, unsettling. And as the atrocities mount, as civil liberties are stripped away (something, with the War on Terror, already happening to hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the United States), we struggle uncomfortably with the jargon and clichés. But we have trouble expressing our discomfort because the collective shout [emphasis added] has made it hard for us to give words to our thoughts. This self-doubt is aided by the monstrosity of war.[31]

Another aspect of the assault on freedom of expression has been the passage of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, rushed through a panicked Congress and signed into law on October 26, 2001, allegedly to strengthen U.S. intelligence tools to fight terrorism.[32] The act actually makes it much easier for the government to spy on U.S. citizens in general, through "roving wiretaps," which can follow the target rather than be confined to a specific telephone, for example; through surveillance of computer use; and through investigation of an individual's library records.[33] Just as the media largely ignored public opposition to the invasion of Iraq, it has given scant coverage to opposition to the Patriot Act. Librarians and local governments across the country have been taking increasing action in opposition to the act. Librarians, for example, are organizing to repeal Section 215 of the act, which allows the FBI to secretly obtain court orders for access to library and bookstore records.[34] By March 2003, at least 160 municipalities and county governments in the United States had passed resolutions in opposition to the act.[35]

The above outlines just the domestic public face of the attempts to mold U.S. public opinion. In a presentation in April 2003 in Washington, DC, a university professor analyzing the situation noted the administration's "attempts to assert 'full spectrum dominance' over all levels of wartime communication . . . effacing the traditional boundary between battlefield deception and public sphere propaganda."[36] Further, he stated,

According to defense analyst William Arkin, the Bush strategy lays out goals for information warfare that pursue D5E: "destruction, degradation, denial, disruption, deceit, and exploitation." Arkin notes that the wide array of sites and practices of information control brought into the range of this policy "blurs or even erases the boundaries between factual information and news, on the one hand, and public relations, propaganda and psychological warfare on the other."[37]

The administration sought to carry out this strategy through an office in the Pentagon, the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), created shortly after September 11, 2001, to generate support for the war on terror.[38] The OSI considered a range of options from standard public relations to the covert planting of disinformation in foreign media - an operation known as "black propaganda."[39] Yet when plans for OSI were leaked to the New York Times, it reported "even many senior Pentagon officials and congressional military aides say they know almost nothing about its purpose and plans."[40] With the leak of its creation to the press, the controversy generated resulted in Rumsfeld's shutting OSI down within a week[41] - one day after Bush proclaimed zero tolerance for lies by American officials and vowed to "tell the American people the truth."[42]

Although OSI might have been publicly closed, it is likely the policy itself continued. As a Newsday columnist wrote at the time of the closing, "But don't worry, Rumsfeld's people were whispering yesterday around the Pentagon. They'll keep on spreading whatever stories they think they have to - to foreigners especially. Call it the free flow of misinformation. Who needs a formal office for that?"[43] On November 18, 2002, en route to a meeting of defense ministers in Chile, Rumsfeld himself told reporters on his plane,

And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And "oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall." I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.[44]

Despite the controversy generated when the creation of OSI was revealed, these comments about the continuation of the policy went essentially unreported. As reported by FAIR, "A search of the Nexis database indicates that no major U.S. media outlets - no national broadcast television news shows, no major U.S. newspapers, no wire services or major magazines - have reported Rumsfeld's remarks."[45]

In the period leading up to a possible second UN resolution to endorse the war in early 2003, when it was revealed that the administration's National Security Agency was "conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq."[46] The activities included intercepting the home and office phone calls as well as e-mails of country representatives to the United Nations in order to gather information as to how they might vote on the resolution. Much more concern was generated in the international media than in the U.S. press.[47]

Conclusion

As I stated in the opening paragraphs of this piece, I believe the Bush administration played on the vulnerability of an American public traumatized by September 11, 2001, to advance a post-Cold War political and military agenda long under development by members of the administration. As one senior administration official reportedly observed, inside the government, the terrorist attacks were "a transformative moment" not because they revealed a threat previously unknown to the government, but because they drastically reduced the American public's resistance to military action abroad. With the attacks on the United States, "the options are much broader."[48] One of those options was the invasion of Iraq.

In order to justify the invasion, administration officials lied and distorted and manipulated information to push the American public to support an invasion of Iraq as "preemptive self-defense." While the Bush administration's post-September 11 national security strategy, based on preemption, did not stir much debate inside the United States, it did abroad. Many argued that it would create precedents that would make the world much less secure rather than more.

To now find that the evidence used to justify its first preemptive action - the invasion of Iraq - was based not just on uncertain intelligence, but on "forward-leaning" interpretations of intelligence as well as outright lies to justify policies already in motion puts U.S. credibility further at risk. The strategies and tactics used by the Bush administration to achieve its ends left, in the words of one commentator, "diplomacy in ruins." The impact of its increasingly tattered credibility on both U.S. and global security remains to be seen.

In addition to the erosion of domestic civil liberties through legislation such as the Patriot Act, democracy in the United States has been threatened by the stifling not just of the freedom of speech of individuals but of public discussion and debate about policies that have an impact on the course of our nation. Major U.S. media outlets have been complicit in the erosion of our freedoms by acting more like public relations firms for the Bush agenda than objective news sources that supposedly underpin the much-lauded American free press.

There have been a few journalistic voices that have spoken out, including one of the foremost in contemporary America, Walter Cronkite. In discussing his decision in mid-2003 to begin to write a regular column, he stated,

In my years as a journalist I have known only a single time as critical as this, when it seemed that the future of our democracy hung in the balance . . . We all know the issues that today threaten a seismic change in this land we love and our relations with each other and the rest of the world: Our bellicose military policy, our arrogant foreign policy, our domestic security policy that threatens our freedom of speech, press and person . . . As a witness to most of our 20th-century history, I have a few ideas that might at least be provocative. And a little provocation with perhaps some original ideas can't hurt as we put the issues and their possible solutions on the table for discussion.[49]

Only if more and more of us continue to find and exercise our public voices can the violence wrought on our democracy through the lies and distortions of the current administration to advance its policies, coupled with the complicity of much of the mainstream media, be countered. As this situation demonstrates, the use of violence in all forms to counter violence only serves to erode our liberties and make us all less secure - both in the United States and around the globe.

Endnotes

1. The White House, National Security Council, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (September 17, 2002), http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html; see also U.S. Department of Defense, "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction" (December 2002), http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/WMDStrategy.pdf (PDF). [Return to text]

2. As a result of the first Persian Gulf War, through a series of UN resolutions, the regime was required to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction. UN weapons inspections were carried out between 1992 and 1998, when they were suspended. [Return to text]

3. George W. Bush, "Remarks by the President in Address to the United Nations General Assembly" (New York, September 12, 2002), http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html. [Return to text]

4. UN Security Council, Resolution 1441, S/1441 (November 8, 2002), http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/2002/sc2002.htm. [Return to text]

5. Mohamed ElBaradei, "The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: Statement to the United Nations Security Council" (New York, January 27, 2003), http://www.un.org/News/dh/iraq/elbaradei27jan03.htm. [Return to text]

6. Colin Powell, "Remarks to the United Nations Security Council" (New York, February 5, 2003), http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm. [Return to text]

7. The White House, Press Release, "U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the UN Security Council," February 5, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html. For a point-by-point discussion of the elements of the speech, see the Center for Cooperative Research, "Powell's Feb. 5th Presentation to the UN," http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/wot/iraq/colin_powell_february_5_presentation_to_the_un.html. [Return to text]

8. Associated Press, "Bush to Declare Major Combat Over in Iraq," April 30, 2003. [Return to text]

9. Jonathan Marcus, "U.S. Faces Up to Guerrilla War: It Has Taken a Change in Command for Senior U.S. Officers to Utter the 'G' Word about Iraq," News, BBC, July 17, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3074465.stm; and Vernon Loeb, "'Guerrilla' War Acknowledged: New Commander Cites Problems," Washington Post, July 17, 2003, sec. A. [Return to text]

10. Dana Milbank, "For Bush, Facts Are Malleable," Washington Post, October 22, 2003; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), "Media Advisory: Bush Uranium Lie Is Tip of the Iceberg: Press Should Expand Focus Beyond '16 Words,'" July 18, 2003. For an analysis of 16 major distortions by the administration to justify the invasion of Iraq, see Council for a Livable World, "Iraq: 16 Distortions, not 16 Words," July 31, 2003, http://www.clw.org/16distortions.html. [Return to text]

11. John W. Dean, "Missing Weapons of Mass Destruction: Is Lying about the Reason for War an Impeachable Offense?" FindLaw, June 6, 2003; and James Risen and Douglas Jehl, "Expert Said to Tell Legislators He Was Pressed to Distort Some Evidence," New York Times, June 25, 2003. [Return to text]

12. Articles and analyses of the evidence presented by the Bush administration to justify attacking Iraq abound. See, for example, William M. Arkin, "A Hazy Target; Before Going to War Over Weapons of Mass Destruction, Shouldn't We Be Sure Iraq Has Them?" Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2003; Seymour M. Hersh, "Offense And Defense," New Yorker, April 7, 2003; Robin Cook, "Shoulder to Shoulder and Stabbed in the Back," Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2003; Dean, "Missing Weapons of Mass Destruction"; John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman, "The Selling of the Iraq War: The First Casualty," New Republic, June 30, 2003; Dana Milbank, "White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim on Iraqi Strikes: Gist Was Hussein Could Launch in 45 Minutes," Washington Post, July 20, 2003; and Dana Priest, "Uranium Claim Was Known for Months to be Weak: Intelligence Officials Say 'Everyone Knew' Then What the White House Knows Now About Niger Reference," Washington Post, July 20, 2003. [Return to text]

13. Edward T. Pound and Bruce B. Auster, "The Plot Thickens: New Evidence Fails to Resolve Mystery of Bush's State of the Union Misstep on Iraq," U.S. News and World Report, July 28 to August 4, 2003. See also Robert Sheer, "A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied," Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2003. [Return to text]

14. Judis and Ackerman, "The Selling of the Iraq War." [Return to text]

15. Judis and Ackerman, "The Selling of the Iraq War"; Julian Berger, "The Spies Who Pushed for War," Guardian, July 17, 2003; Jim Lobe, "The Other Bush Lie," TomPaine.com, July 15, 2003; and Ray McGovern, "Not Business as Usual: Cheney and the CIA," Alternet, June 30, 2003. In "Not Business as Usual," McGovern writes, "As though this were normal! I mean the repeated visits Vice President Dick Cheney made to the CIA before the war in Iraq. The visits were, in fact, unprecedented. During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit." [Return to text]

16. Pound and Auster, "The Plot Thickens." [Return to text]

17. Berger, "The Spies Who Pushed for War." [Return to text]

18. Judis and Ackerman, "The Selling of the Iraq War." [Return to text]

19. FAIR, "Media Advisory: Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments: General Says White House Pushed Saddam Link without Evidence," June 20, 2003. [Return to text]

20. FAIR, "Media Advisory: Media Silent." [Return to text]

21. Judis and Ackerman, "The Selling of the Iraq War." [Return to text]

22. James Risen and David Johnston, "Split at C.I.A. and F.B.I. on Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda," New York Times, February 2, 2003. [Return to text]

23. BBC, "Leaked Report Rejects Iraqi Al-Qaeda Link," News, February 5, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2727471.stm. [Return to text]

24. Mark Armstrong, "White House Politically Corrects Maher," E! Online News, September 27, 2001, http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,8886,00.html. [Return to text]

25. Norman Soloman, "Media Nix: From Blix to Kucinich to the Dixie Chicks," Global Policy Forum, April 24, 2003, http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/media/2003/0424medianix.htm. [Return to text]

26. Paul Krugman, "Channels of Influence," New York Times, March 25, 2003, available online at Common Dreams News Center, http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0325-03.htm. [Return to text]

27. In 2001, a total of 14,632 sources were interviewed by the three major network's evening news broadcasts. Of these, the percentage who were white: 92, the percentage who were male: 85, the percentage who were Republican, when party noted: 75., and the percentage who were the president: 9; see "The Usual Suspects," Utne, Nov./Dec. 2002. See also FAIR, http://www.fair.org, particularly the section "Iraq and the Media," http://www.fair.org/international/iraq.html. [Return to text]

28. The news programs studied were ABC's World News Tonight, CBS's Evening News, NBC's Nightly News, CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports, Fox's Special Report with Brit Hume, and PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. [Return to text]

29. Steve Rendall and Tara Broughel, "Amplifying Officials, Squelching Dissent: FAIR Study Finds Democracy Poorly Served by War Coverage," FAIR, May/June 2003, http://www.fair.org/extra/0305/warstudy.html. [Return to text]

30. Rendall and Broughel, "Amplifying Officials." The antiwar percentages ranged from 4 percent at NBC, to 3 percent at CNN, ABC, PBS, and FOX, to less than 1 percent - one out of 205 U.S. sources - at CBS. [Return to text]

31. Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (New York: Public Affairs, 2002). [Return to text]

32. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (U.S.A. Patriot Act) Act of 2001, HR 3162, 107th Congress, 1st sess. (October 24, 2001), available online at Electronic Privacy Information Center, http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html. [Return to text]

33. Much analysis has been written about the impact of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. See, for example, Mary Minnow, "The U.S.A. Patriot Act and Patron Privacy on Library Internet Terminals," Law Library Resource Xchange, February 15, 2002, http://www.llrx.com/features/usapatriotact.htm; Center for Constitutional Rights, "The State of Civil Liberties: One Year Later. The Erosion of Civil Liberties in the Post 9/11 Era," n.d., http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/whatsnew/report.asp?ObjID=nQdbIRkDgG&Content=153. [Return to text]

34. Chris Finan, "Opposition to the U.S.A. Patriot Act Is Growing," American Booksellers Association, November 14, 2002, http://news.bookweb.org/freeexpression/943.html. [Return to text]

35. Brian Seals, "Watsonville Joins Opposition to Patriot Act," Santa Cruz Sentinel, March 26, 2003, http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2003/March/26/local/stories/02local.htm. [Return to text]

36. Gordon R. Mitchell, "Legitimation Dilemmas in the Bush National Security Strategy," (paper presented at the Eastern Communication Association Conference, Washington, DC, April 23-26, 2003). [Return to text]

37. William M. Arkin, "Defense Strategy: The Military's New War of Words," Los Angeles Times, November 24, 2002; quoted in Mitchell, "Legitimation Dilemmas." [Return to text]

38. CNN, "New Pentagon Office to Spearhead Information War," February 20, 2002, http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/02/19/gen.strategic.influence/. [Return to text]

39. Tom Carver, "Pentagon Plans Propaganda War," News, BBC, February 20, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1830500.stm. In this article Carver writes, "Some generals are worried that even a suggestion of disinformation would undermine the Pentagon's credibility and America's attempts to portray herself as the beacon of liberty and democratic values." [Return to text]

40. James Dao and Eric Schmitt, "Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad," New York Times, February 19, 2002, available online at Common Dreams News Center, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0219-01.htm. [Return to text]

41. For a full transcript of Rumsfeld's remarks to the press at the announcement of the closing of OSI, see U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs, "U.S. Closes Office of Strategic Information: Says Effectiveness Damaged by Media," February 27, 2002, http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/sasia/text/0227rmfd.htm. [Return to text]

42. Norman Soloman, "Pentagon's Silver Lining May Be Bigger Than Cloud," Media Beat sec., FAIR, February 28, 2002, http://www.fair.org/media-beat/020228.html. Soloman was reporting on a column by Ellis Henican in Newsday. [Return to text]

43. Soloman, "PentagonŐs Silver Lining." [Return to text]

44. FAIR, "Media Advisory: The Office of Strategic Influence Is Gone, But Are Its Programs in Place?" November 27, 2002. For a full transcript of Rumsfeld's remarks, see the U.S. Department of Defense, DefenseLink, http://www.dod.gov/news/Nov2002/t11212002_t1118sd2.html. For a discussion of the continued programs, despite the closing of the OSI, see William Arkin, interview with Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, "Global Information War in the Works?" On the Media, WNYC, December 13, 2002, http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_121302_information.html. [Return to text]

45. FAIR, "Media Advisory: The Office of Strategic Influence Is Gone." [Return to text]

46. Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy, and Peter Beaumont, "U.S. National Security Agency Memo Reveals Spying on U.N. Delegates," Observer, March 3, 2003, available online at ReclaimDemocracy.org, http://reclaimdemocracy.org/weekly_2003/spying_on_un.html. [Return to text]

47. Bright, Vulliamy, and Beaumont, "U.S. National Security Agency Memo." [Return to text]

48. Nicholas Lemann, "The Next World Order: The Bush Administration May Have a Brand-New Doctrine of Power," New Yorker, April 1, 2002. [Return to text]

49. King Features, Press Release, "Walter Cronkite to Write Weekly Newspaper Column," n.d., http://www.kingfeatures.com/pressrm/PR129.htm. [Return to text]