Peter Beinart tries to fool us as he fools himself
Peter Beinart is a former New Republic editor (and current Editor-at-Large) who has written a book just published, The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. He is generally associated with the so-called centrists in the Democratic Party – the non-softies and Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC) types who believe national security should be the centerpiece of upcoming campaigns. In an interview with Paul McLeary in CJR Daily, Beinart makes an extraordinarily disingenuous and self-serving re-creation of history. http://www.cjrdaily.org/politics/peter_beinart.php
Besides its mealy-mouthedness that reveals much more than intended, this is truly annoying simply as a statement of fact. Hindsight is easy, but I have a clear recollection: to anyone with an open mind paying reasonably close attention – which ought to be a reasonable standard applicable to the editor of The New Republic – the evidence had begun to unravel much earlier than “the first months of 2003.” In August 2002, I was 80% convinced by the certainty and specificity of Cheney, Rice and Bush that Saddam had nuclear weapons. However, by some time in October or early November , to anyone without a tin ear, it should have become crystal clear that the administration had shifted into full-bore propaganda mode. The mere existence of that shift called the supposedly supporting evidence into question.
The timeline is not exact, but it’s close. First, the al Qaeda connection had been thoroughly discredited, yet Cheney continued trying to keep the embers glowing on that one. Not a good sign of truthiness. Then, quite suddenly, the term “weapons of mass destruction” became not an alternative expression supporting more specific terms within a spoken or written statement, but a mantra for all spokespersons. Um, which ones? Before, they had definitively said Saddam had a “nuclear weapons” program. They were quite sure about biologicals, too, and certain about chemicals, and logically he certainly should have been pursuing them, too, if he was on the verge of going nuclear. Now, however, about the middle of October 2002, it was the vaguer expression, always and solely. Why the shift? Well, it doesn’t take rocket science to think maybe they now realize their information doesn’t support the nuclear claim after all, and so they have shifted to a form of throwing all the shit against the wall figuring something would stick. Anyone who could not see the signs of carefully controlled public speech simply was not paying attention or refused to hear.
Repetition of the “gassed his own people” also became a mandatory meme, too, even though that was 15-year-old information and more recent atrocities that might justify the building sense of urgency seemed hard to come by.
One of the things I was sure of was that the intelligence agencies for our allies would see the information and they would rush to join us – just as they had in the first Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo. Russia no doubt would look on more benignly than it had in Kosovo, when it had to give props to feelings of Slavic brotherhood. Regardless of whatever economic interests they might be cultivating, “Old Europe” had participated in the sanctions and supported the inspections, so it did not make sense that France and Germany would be indifferent to a Saddam with nuclear weapons. Their reluctance to join the bandwagon seemed like a strong sign that, at the hush-hush bigwigs levels, they were quite unconvinced by whatever information on weapons we and Tony were able to show them.
Then the obviously orchestrated trashing of anything French by the neo-conservative mouthpieces gathered steam quickly. It was completely unnecessary and counterproductive unless whipping up of a general xenophobic war hysteria was the object – which, of course, it was. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to see that in real time as a typical propaganda technique. Any generally well educated person should have been exposed to how propaganda has been used in democratic societies to whip up support for war beginning in the early 20th century.
In almost the same time frame, the trashing of Hans Blix began, and the war whoopers eagerly grabbed the bait: any later decision by Saddam to finally meet Blix’s demands would not change enough minds to slow the momentum. Here was Charles Krauthammer, Cheney’s channeler at the Washington Post, on November 1, 2002:
In fact, there was a whole, whole lot to go on well before evidence “began to dribble out in the first months of 2003.” The WMD chorus got a reprieve with Powell’s speech in the first week of February. By that time, however, all of the foregoing became a flood, and the following six weeks had every or virtually every key fact claimed by Powell discredited in the major press – but with cowardly editors moving such stories to the back pages.
What the “first months of 2003” gave us was not the first inkling, but virtually air-tight confirmation of the evidence that had done more than “dribble out” before the end of 2002 – evidence that the administration was lying about its supposed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and that George Bush himself was lying when he said on a few occasions that war could be avoided. Beinart is at best in denial in his re-construction of history, as he certainly was while living it. What it means is that Beinart and his ilk simply did not process the information coming at them every day, beginning sometime in October of 2002, revealing a propaganda campaign that was not supported by intelligence information. Why not? Well, obviously they did want the U.S. to go to war to get rid of Saddam Hussein, regardless of the existence or non-existence of weapons of mass destruction, and they wanted it sooner rather than later. That’s the next question: Why?
What I was not sufficiently attuned to was the evidence that began to dribble out in the first months of 2003 that suggested that this fairly widespread view about Saddam's nuclear weapons program might in fact be wrong. . . . I wasn't sufficiently alive to the possibility that in fact we all could be wrong, but we knew enough by March of 2003 to realize that we should have been revising that view, which I think would have certainly suggested that we should have allowed the inspections to go on longer.
Besides its mealy-mouthedness that reveals much more than intended, this is truly annoying simply as a statement of fact. Hindsight is easy, but I have a clear recollection: to anyone with an open mind paying reasonably close attention – which ought to be a reasonable standard applicable to the editor of The New Republic – the evidence had begun to unravel much earlier than “the first months of 2003.” In August 2002, I was 80% convinced by the certainty and specificity of Cheney, Rice and Bush that Saddam had nuclear weapons. However, by some time in October or early November , to anyone without a tin ear, it should have become crystal clear that the administration had shifted into full-bore propaganda mode. The mere existence of that shift called the supposedly supporting evidence into question.
The timeline is not exact, but it’s close. First, the al Qaeda connection had been thoroughly discredited, yet Cheney continued trying to keep the embers glowing on that one. Not a good sign of truthiness. Then, quite suddenly, the term “weapons of mass destruction” became not an alternative expression supporting more specific terms within a spoken or written statement, but a mantra for all spokespersons. Um, which ones? Before, they had definitively said Saddam had a “nuclear weapons” program. They were quite sure about biologicals, too, and certain about chemicals, and logically he certainly should have been pursuing them, too, if he was on the verge of going nuclear. Now, however, about the middle of October 2002, it was the vaguer expression, always and solely. Why the shift? Well, it doesn’t take rocket science to think maybe they now realize their information doesn’t support the nuclear claim after all, and so they have shifted to a form of throwing all the shit against the wall figuring something would stick. Anyone who could not see the signs of carefully controlled public speech simply was not paying attention or refused to hear.
Repetition of the “gassed his own people” also became a mandatory meme, too, even though that was 15-year-old information and more recent atrocities that might justify the building sense of urgency seemed hard to come by.
One of the things I was sure of was that the intelligence agencies for our allies would see the information and they would rush to join us – just as they had in the first Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo. Russia no doubt would look on more benignly than it had in Kosovo, when it had to give props to feelings of Slavic brotherhood. Regardless of whatever economic interests they might be cultivating, “Old Europe” had participated in the sanctions and supported the inspections, so it did not make sense that France and Germany would be indifferent to a Saddam with nuclear weapons. Their reluctance to join the bandwagon seemed like a strong sign that, at the hush-hush bigwigs levels, they were quite unconvinced by whatever information on weapons we and Tony were able to show them.
Then the obviously orchestrated trashing of anything French by the neo-conservative mouthpieces gathered steam quickly. It was completely unnecessary and counterproductive unless whipping up of a general xenophobic war hysteria was the object – which, of course, it was. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to see that in real time as a typical propaganda technique. Any generally well educated person should have been exposed to how propaganda has been used in democratic societies to whip up support for war beginning in the early 20th century.
In almost the same time frame, the trashing of Hans Blix began, and the war whoopers eagerly grabbed the bait: any later decision by Saddam to finally meet Blix’s demands would not change enough minds to slow the momentum. Here was Charles Krauthammer, Cheney’s channeler at the Washington Post, on November 1, 2002:
And France's game is to give that authority to Hans Blix, the bureaucrat weaponsIn short order, Krauthammer was followed in national columns with Blix smears, deftly reinforcing attacks on the manhood of Western European men, French in particular, by the such right-wing brain trustees as William Kristol, William Safire, Mona Charen and George Will. Is it remotely possible that this November-December 2002 campaign was orchestrated? Could it have possibly seemed so to an observer of ordinary education, intelligence and curiosity? Meanwhile, the Guardian reported Richard Perle saying the U.S. would attack Iraq regardless of Blix’s findings. Why didn’t it get any play in the U.S.? There was a lot of weird shit going on, and it all pointed in one direction.
inspector whose most salient characteristic is politeness. . . . Furthermore, the French want to leave the question of future material breaches to Blix. Heaven help us. Why should the United States forfeit to him -- and his proven track record of failure -- its freedom of action to defend itself against a supreme threat to its national security?
In fact, there was a whole, whole lot to go on well before evidence “began to dribble out in the first months of 2003.” The WMD chorus got a reprieve with Powell’s speech in the first week of February. By that time, however, all of the foregoing became a flood, and the following six weeks had every or virtually every key fact claimed by Powell discredited in the major press – but with cowardly editors moving such stories to the back pages.
What the “first months of 2003” gave us was not the first inkling, but virtually air-tight confirmation of the evidence that had done more than “dribble out” before the end of 2002 – evidence that the administration was lying about its supposed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and that George Bush himself was lying when he said on a few occasions that war could be avoided. Beinart is at best in denial in his re-construction of history, as he certainly was while living it. What it means is that Beinart and his ilk simply did not process the information coming at them every day, beginning sometime in October of 2002, revealing a propaganda campaign that was not supported by intelligence information. Why not? Well, obviously they did want the U.S. to go to war to get rid of Saddam Hussein, regardless of the existence or non-existence of weapons of mass destruction, and they wanted it sooner rather than later. That’s the next question: Why?
posted by KISSWeb | 3:20 PM
2 Comments:
Great piece! And, I certainly concur. It was long before we invaded Iraq that I had concluded the whole thing was trumped up. I wasn't sure there weren't some residual weapons, but I was sure they weren't a serious threat to the U.S. And, I was 100% sure that an unprovoked invasion of Iraq would not only be a disaster on the ground in Iraq but a disaster for the U.S. in its relationship with the rest of the world.
Yes, Walldon, I would concur with just about that constllation of thoughts in March 2003. I believe I had formed a sense that the whole thing probably was a sham, but perhaps wasn't 100% convinced there were not some nukes or bios. But I was totally convinced they were not enough of a threat to justify going to war before Blix finished his job -- and that, without the justification such as we had built in Guf I and the Balkans, it would be a disaster as you describe.
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