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]