It's hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House's claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since "everyone" was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons threat. This was never the case. Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press.
This timeline is an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War. It is not an exhaustive catalog, but a useful reference point for understanding the media's performance. The timeline also points to missed opportunities, when courageous journalists—working inside the mainstream and the alternative media—uncovered stories that should have made the front pages of daily newspapers, or provided fodder for TV talk shows. By reading mainstream media critically and tuning into the alternative press, citizens can see that the notion that "everyone" was wrong about Iraq was—and is—just another deception.
September 1, 2002
— In a Baltimore Sun column calling for the resumption of weapons inspections in Iraq, former inspector Scott Ritter points out that earlier inspections had been able to verify a "90 percent to 95 percent level of disarmament," including "all of the production facilities involved with WMD" and "the great majority of what was produced by these facilities.”
September 6, 2002
— In a story entitled "Lack of Hard Evidence of Iraqi Weapons Worries Top U.S. Officials," Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay report that "senior U.S. officials with access to top-secret intelligence on Iraq say they have detected no alarming increase in the threat that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein poses to American security and Middle East stability."
September 7, 2002
—"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
(White House chief of staff Andrew Card, quoted in the New York Times about the government's plan to sell the public on the Iraq War.)
—Speaking of the need to disarm Iraq, George W. Bush refers to a report by the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) alleging that Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. No such report exists, as MSNBC reports on its website (oddly, the article was quickly removed from MSNBC's website, as Paul Krugman would note months later—4/29/03). Bush's lie mostly escapes media scrutiny; as John MacArthur recalled months later (Columbia Journalism Review, 5/603), the Washington Post half-heartedly acknowledged the problem deep in a story:
In the twenty-first paragraph of her story on the press conference, the Washington Post's Karen DeYoung did quote an IAEA spokesman saying, in DeYoung's words, "that the agency has issued no new report," but she didn't confront the White House with this terribly interesting fact.
September 8, 2002
—Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller co-author the article "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts" on the front page of the New York Times. The story relies heavily on claims made by Bush administration officials regarding Iraq's "worldwide hunt" to acquire aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment. Miller and Gordon warn that "Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war." The article would come to be entirely discredited.
—Vice President Dick Cheney appears on Meet the Press and contends that Iraq has "reconstituted" its nuclear weapons program. His main piece of evidence is the recent attempts by Hussein to obtain aluminum tubes, which Cheney cites to "a story in the New York Times this morning."
More Documentation of the Massive Campaign of Lies Here...
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