The Dish

Here’s a fascinating encounter with the producer of the Frontline special on the war against Saddam, Martin Smith. It’s from the Washington Post’s online chat today:

Boston, Mass: Why did Martin Smith at least twice say while conducting an interview in the program that “Americans were sold this war as an imminent threat…” That is a bold face lie, an untruth from beginning to end. In President Bush’s state of the union speech, he specifically countered that argument by in essence saying we cannot afford to wait until the threat from Iraq is imminent. For a program with Truth in it’s title, that’s a big slip up and I heard Mr. Smith say it at least twice.

Martin Smith: I’m glad you asked this question. I believe I may have used the term “imminent threat” more than twice. If you go back to the records you will see that while the president does not use the exact phrase, he talks about a “grave and gathering danger.” He talks about Saddam’s ability to launch chemical or biological weapons in 45 minutes.

No one that I spoke to in the administration who supported the war quibbled with the use of the term “imminent threat.” It’s simply not a quotation – it’s a summary of the president’s assessment.

Good for you, Mr Boston. What we see here is that Smith has interpreted what the administration said before the war to be an “imminent threat.” But the only time I know of that the exact phrase was used was in president Bush’s critical State of the Union address before the war. And in that speech, this is what Bush said:

“Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.”

Yes, that is a “grave and gathering danger.” But it is not “imminent.” In fact, it specifically makes a distinction that Smith’s propaganda elides. Think I’m as biased as Smith? Here’s how the leading anti-war Democrat – yes, Howard Dean – described Bush’s position on September 29, 2002: “The president has never said that Saddam has the capability of striking the United States with atomic or biological weapons any time in the immediate future.” I would say that “any time in the immediate future” is as good a definition as any of the word “imminent.” So was even Howard Dean spinning for Bush? Of course not. He was summing up the simple truth. Smith is distorting the historical record to make a fake case against the administration. Perhaps it was intentional; perhaps he was just so blinded by liberal bias he even believed his own untruths. But this time, he’s been caught.
(CORRECTION: In my original version, I included a final line from the caller from Boston. There was no final line. I mistranscribed commentary from an email about the inter-change and confused it with the transcript. Apologies.)

JUST A REMINDER: Here are a few choice quotes from Democrats in the period leading up to the war to disarm and depose Saddam. They are all almost identical to the Bush administration’s statements. None claim an “imminent” threat. All suggest a real and growing danger. Some of the intelligence may well turn out to be wrong. But their concerns were real; and their judgment correct. Again, the imminent meme has to be challenged before the anti-war media make this untruth truth:

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” –Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998.

“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” –Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.” –Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction… [W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real …” –Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003.

With thanks to Snopes.com and Don Luskin.

After Saddam, the Iraqi Marsh Arabs, their lives and traditions violated by Saddam, enjoy the benefits of America’s liberation:

The marsh has once again assumed its omnipresent role in the village. Women clad in black head-to-toe abayas wade into the water to wash clothes. The mullet found in the murky depths, though small and bony, is grilled for dinner every night. Swamp grasses are cut to feed the cows and sheep that will eventually be traded for water buffalo.
“Everyone is so happy,” Kerkush said as he watched his son stand in a mashoof and steer it like a gondolier with a long wooden pole. “We are starting to live like we used to, not the way Saddam wanted us to live.”

How can you not be moved by such a story? How can you not be proud of what we have done?

More imminent insinuation from the left. Frontline, the left-wing arm of liberal WGBH, ran a documentary last week, paid in part by tax-payers’ dollars, that threaded the “imminent” meme throughout. (They had the gall to email me to promote it). Here’s one question posed to Paul Bremer that simply assumes the lie:

I guess the problem is that Americans cautioned that this aftermath would be difficult, and that we didn’t sign up for a humanitarian mission; we signed up to rid ourselves of an imminent threat. Was the war wrongly sold?

The distortion continues relentlessly. And you’re paying for some of it.

From October 10, 2002, here’s an extract from Tom Daschle’s case for agreeing with the administration’s rationale for war:

The threat posed by Saddam Hussein may not be imminent, but it is real, it is growing, and it cannot be ignored.

There you have it. Why does the media continue to lie about the arguments made for war against Saddam? They keep moving the goal-posts so the administration cannot win. Just as they did all they could to prevent the war, and to undermine it when it was going on, now they seek to distort history to advance the agenda of appeasing terrorist-sponsoring tyranny. (Thanks to Bo Cowgill.) Keep those “imminent” references coming. We can turn this untruth around.

Threatening the U.S. government with nukes in a suitcase.

Who wrote this headline for the Cheney speech? Is it that the more people hear the truth, the more desperate the media is to discredit it?

The vindication of the war in David Kay’s report. Maybe if we just keep pointing these things out, people will begin to see through the media propaganda. I hope you didn’t miss Charles Krauthammer today either.

The Associated Press will not stop lying about the case for war against Saddam. Here’s a piece about the vice president’s speech today. Money quote:

Yet Cheney offered no new evidence that Saddam posed an imminent threat as the administration claimed before the war.

Grrrrr.

I can hardly believe I’m writing this (and maybe there’s a catch) but the Nobel Commitee seems to me to have done a great thing in awarding it to a pro-democratic Iranian woman. It’s a sign that the world understands the plight of people living under Islamist dictatorships and wants to support those who have made a difference in moving the Muslim world toward greater pluarlism and openness. Next year: George W. Bush?

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I read with interest your post today, Fri 10th Oct, on the poll purporting to show that Fox News viewers are more likely to hold false beliefs. The poll and its associated reporting are evidence of leftist bias, but I disagree with you about how the poll is biased. Notice, all three questions have a false pro-war answer and a true anti-war answer, so that the results are obviously conflating being mis-informed with being pro-war. This is probably not even intentional on the poll authors’ part.

Imagine an opposite kind of poll asking, for example:

• Did President Bush claim before the war that the threat to the US from Iraq’s WMD was imminent?
• Do a majority of Iraqis support the US invasion?
• Did the US sell significant amounts of arms to Saddam Hussein?
• Was the toppling of the Saddam statue at the end of the war staged?

A poll asking these or similar questions would doubtless find that Fox News viewers have the most accurate grasp of reality and NPR listeners the least.”

This in an amazing op-ed in yesterday’s Austin-American Statesman:

After I returned from Bosnia, I visited the “museum” at Dachau. I saw the rebuilt barracks and new barbed wire, the meticulously restored crematoria and killing grounds. I knelt there in a field that had been used to dump the ashes of the victims of the Holocaust, and lit a candle for the souls who suffered there. I cried and prayed there, remembering what had been done, and thought upon the words “never again.” Somehow the thought of it made me cry more, because I couldn’t stop thinking about how long it took us to decide to stop the madness in Bosnia. How no one even tried to stop the killings in Cambodia, Kurdish Iraq and the Sudan. How we walked away from Somalia after the tragic sacrifice of American soldiers fighting to build a better world. It occurred to me how much we have forgotten and how empty those brave words had become.

We cannot save the world by ourselves. We cannot stop all the genocides and massacres. We cannot make sure that “never again” becomes a fulfilled promise rather than a hope. But we can return a little meaning to those words, stop some killings and end some suffering. I hope we do, and I would be proud to serve again in Iraq to do so.

But I won’t expect those who call for “peace” to help me.

Nope, the pacifists and anti-war crowd are on the side of the tyrants – now as so often before.