BUSH WATCH...THE BIG BUSH WAR LIE

Saddam Did Not Attack WTC, PENTAGON

The big Bush 41 lie that stirred the public to back Daddy Bush and his desire to invade Iraq was that Saddam took incubators out of an Iraqi hospital, thereby killing 312 babies. The administration later admitted it was a lie. (Go here) The big bush 43 lie is that there are strong connections between 9/11, Al Qaeda, and Saddam. (Go here) There aren't, but "according to a New York Times-CBS News survey, 42 percent now believe Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In an ABC News poll, 55 percent believe Saddam provides direct support to Al Qaeda," reports The Nation magazine. "Intelligence estimates suggest there are some 100 Al Qaeda members at large in the United States, although that is not an argument to start bombing Washington," argues one writer below. The fact is the recent Bush press conference, the first in many months and scripted to the teeth, was devoted to reinforcing the big Bush war lie. What follows describes the press conference, including the culpibility of the press, helping Bush spread the big lie. --Politex, 03.11.03

AMERICANS READ CANADIAN PAPERS FOR THE NEWS. DURING PRESS CONFERENCE BUSH SAID IT WAS "SCRIPTED," BUT YOU HAD TO READ A CANADIAN PAPER TO FIND THAT OUT "Some major news organizations have misquoted and distorted the record on President George W. Bush's stage-managed news conference last Thursday, altering his slip about how the whole thing was "scripted" to "unscripted." If you stayed awake, you would have seen Bush at one point look at a list of reporters he planned to call upon while recognizing CNN's John King. When another reporter tried to cut in, Bush said: "This is a scripted -" Check the official White House transcripts and you'll see the word "scripted." But go to the online transcripts at The New York Times, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the Los Angeles Times and you'll see the reference has either been cut or changed to "unscripted." A typo? Perhaps. One George Orwell might have appreciated. " 3.14.03 www.bushwatch.com
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WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS GRABS ITS ANKLES "The Bush press conference to me was like a mini-Alamo for American journalism, a final announcement that the press no longer performs anything akin to a real function. Particularly revolting was the spectacle of the cream of the national press corps submitting politely to the indignity of obviously pre-approved questions, with Bush not even bothering to conceal that the affair was scripted. Abandoning the time-honored pretense of spontaneity, Bush chose the order of questioners not by scanning the room and picking out raised hands, but by looking down and reading from a predetermined list. Reporters, nonetheless, raised their hands in between questions–as though hoping to suddenly catch the president’s attention. In other words, not only were reporters going out of their way to make sure their softballs were pre-approved, but they even went so far as to act on Bush’s behalf, raising their hands and jockeying in their seats in order to better give the appearance of a spontaneous news conference. " 3.13.03 www.bushwatch.com
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"HAVE YOU NO SHAME, SIR?" MR. BUSH? "At his press conference last week, President Bush broke a 43-year tradition by failing to call on Helen Thomas, now of the Hearst Syndicate, who has been asking questions at presidential press conferences since 1960. Thomas is openly critical of this administration, and particularly of this war. Afraid to take a question from an 82-year-old woman? George W. Bush has no class. " 3.13.03 www.bushwatch.com
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GOOD QUESTION, REPORTER FLUNKY, AND I OUGHTA KNOW, SINCE CONDI WROTE IT.
"Communications director Dan Bartlett said this White House uses news conferences more sparingly than other types of presidential events, because "if you have a message you're trying to deliver, a news conference can go in a different direction. In this case, we know what the questions are going to be, and those are the ones we want to answer," Bartlett said. 'We think the public will see the thought and care and attention he's given to a lot of the different questions that are being asked about the diplomatic side and the military side and the potential post-Iraq issue. These are all legitimate questions that he has answers for and wants to talk about.'" --WP, 03.07.03

"Let's see here. [Looks down at notes on podium. Looks up and calls on reporter.] Elizabeth." (transcript)

HOW HEAVY WAS THE MEDICATION BUSH WAS ON?
"George W. Bush kept seeming to lose interest in his own remarks last night as the president did that rarest of rare things -- for him -- and held a prime-time news conference... He spoke with little urgency and no perceptible passion... There were times when it appeared his train of thought had jumped the tracks. Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements -- pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless... Watching him was like counting sheep... The contrast between the foggy Bush of last night and the gung-ho Bush who delivered a persuasive State of the Union message to Congress not so long ago was considerable... Bush may have been ever so slightly medicated. He would hardly be the first president ever to take a pill. " --Tom Shales, WP, 03.07.03

WHAT, ME WORRY? INDICATION THAT BUSH PRESS CONFERENCE SOLEMNITY WAS JUST A "DELIBERATELY UNDERSTATED" ACT "Friends and officials who met with President Bush at the White House this week said they were surprised to find him upbeat and chatty despite a barrage of diplomatic setbacks, and said he seemed to be at peace with the clear path he has set toward war with Iraq. The guests' descriptions of Bush's mood contrast with the studied solemnity that marked his East Room news conference Thursday night, when he appeared bent on convincing American and overseas audiences that he would be a reluctant, not rash, warrior.... One of the leaders described Bush as "cocky and relaxed" and said he conveyed the clear impression that he had concluded that attacking Iraq was inevitable.... Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said Bush's East Room bearing seemed designed to allay one of the biggest vulnerabilities that polls are showing in his public image -- the impression of many people that he has rushed to war, has pushed Iraq too hard and has done too little diplomacy....Behind the scenes, though, Bush is still Bush. " 3.08.03 www.bushwatch.com
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BUSH REPETITION AT PRESS CONFERENCE FED MASS CONFUSION ABOUT SADDAM BEING RELATED TO 9/11 "The shortage of critical challenges from the press (and from intimidated Democrats) assisted the manipulation of public thinking. By relentless repetition, Bush and his team accomplished an audacious feat of propaganda--persuading many Americans to redirect the emotional wounds left by 9/11, their hurt and anger, away from the perpetrators to a different adversary. According to a New York Times-CBS News survey, 42 percent now believe Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In an ABC News poll, 55 percent believe Saddam provides direct support to Al Qaeda. The Iraqi did it, let's go get him. As a bogus rallying cry, "Remember 9/11" ranks with "Remember the Maine" of 1898 for war with Spain or the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1964 for justifying the US escalation in Vietnam. " 3.08.03 www.bushwatch.com
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WHILE BUSH TURNED COMPLEX WAR ISSUES INTO SIMPLISTIC BABY TALK, THE PRESS CONFERENCE REPORTERS REMAINED SCRIPTED AND OUT OF TOUCH "As candidate and as president, Bush has demonstrated his belief that persuasion for him is often reduced to simple repetition. His is the rhetoric of the sound bite. It works well on the campaign trail, where different audiences in different locales need to hear the same message. However, when the same point is made over and over in the same words in a single news conference, his rhetoric tends to sound scripted, and the effect can be disquieting. Blame some of it on a fixated press corps. I was astonished and dismayed that in the first opportunity to quiz the president in four months, not one question was asked about the shaky economy or the out-of-control federal budget. The very next day came news of the largest monthly jump in unemployment since the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and an official estimate that Bush's budget proposals would add $2.7 trillion to the national debt in the next 10 years. An economically cushioned set of reporters seemingly couldn't care less about this looming disaster. Talk about being out of touch! " 3.11.03 www.bushwatch.com
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"Useful In Mobilizing Public Opinion"

In the fall of 1990, members of Congress and the American public were swayed by the tearful testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah.

In the girl's testimony before a congressional caucus, well-documented in MacArthur's book "Second Front" and elsewhere, she described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and leave 312 babies "on the cold floor to die."

Seven US Senators later referred to the story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five votes. In the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five times, saying that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler revisited."

But just weeks before the US bombing campaign began in January, a few press reports began to raise questions about the validity of the incubator tale.

Later, it was learned that Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had no connection to the Kuwait hospital.

She had been coached – along with the handful of others who would "corroborate" the story – by senior executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, the biggest global PR firm at the time, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make the case for war.

"We didn't know it wasn't true at the time," Brent Scowcroft, Bush's national security adviser, said of the incubator story in a 1995 interview with the London-based Guardian newspaper. He acknowledged "it was useful in mobilizing public opinion." --CSM, Sept. 6, 2002

"It Was A Pretty Serious Fib"

– When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.

"It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story.

The White House is now making its case. to Congress and the public for another invasion of Iraq; President George W. Bush is expected to present specific evidence of the threat posed by Iraq during a speech to the United Nations next week.

But past cases of bad intelligence or outright disinformation used to justify war are making experts wary. The questions they are raising, some based on examples from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, highlight the importance of accurate information when a democracy considers military action....

That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn't exist," says Heller. Three times Heller contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (now vice president) for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis – offering to hold the story if proven wrong. The official response: "Trust us." To this day, the Pentagon's photographs of the Iraqi troop buildup remain classified....

"My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence," says former US Rep. Lee Hamilton (D) of Indiana, a 34-year veteran lawmaker until 1999, who served on numerous foreign affairs and intelligence committees, and is now director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. The Bush team "understands it has not yet carried the burden of persuasion [about an imminent Iraqi threat], so they will look for any kind of evidence to support their premise," Mr. Hamilton says. "I think we have to be skeptical about it." --CSM, Sept. 6, 2002