- NEW YORK -- Undersecretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, an obsessive architect of the war in Iraq, appeared
before Congress last week to say that the big problem out there is cowardly
reporters afraid to leave Baghdad to find out how well the Bush-driven
liberators are doing these days. That, finally, seemed to get the press's
attention about our own role in all this.
-
- To begin with, at least 35 very brave reporters have
been killed in Wolfowitz's excellent adventure. That means, among other
things, that it has been much more dangerous to be a journalist in Iraq
then to be an American soldier or Marine. There are hundreds of journalists,
unarmed, in Iraq, but there are tens and tens of thousands of well-armed,
well-trained uniformed troops.
-
- But Wolfowitz does have a point about press cowardice.
Most of us were afraid of showing and shouting that the Bush administration
was misleading Americans into a war of choice. Now we know. This week alone,
three great journalists or gentlemen, scholars and patriots have conceded
that they were misled or deliberately deceived in the crazed run-up to
unnecessary invasion.
-
- * William F. Buckley Jr., perhaps the most influential
political thinker and writer of his generation, being interviewed about
giving up control of the National Review, the conservative magazine he
created 50 years ago, said this: "If I knew then what I know now about
what kind of situation we would have been in, I would have opposed the
war. ...
- With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein
was not the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration
a year ago."
-
- * Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, the leading journalist
of his, younger, generation, found, before the invasion, that some of his
many intelligence sources did not believe there was persuasive evidence
that Saddam possessed WMD, weapons of mass destruction. Now he writes:
"I did not feel I had enough information to effectively challenge
the official conclusions about WMD. In light of subsequent events, I should
have pushed for a front-page story, even on the eve of war, presenting
more forcefully what our sources were saying."
-
- * Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, and author
of the October 2002 book, "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading
Iraq," is more measured now, admitting that things went wrong. Now
he writes: "The primary cause for our current problems in Iraq is
the reckless and often foolish manner in which this administration has
waged the war and reconstruction."
-
- I might add to that list Richard Holbrooke, the former
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a supporter of the war, who was
asked where we stand now on ABC News last Sunday. He answered: "The
situation in Iraq is like diving off a diving board without knowing if
there is any water in the pool."
-
- That has the ring of a prepared answer, but it also has
the ring of truth. In fact, he or anyone else would have been correct if
they gave that answer before the invasion. Most of us did not know what
we were getting into and just typed out or broadcast whatever fools like
Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney whispered to us. To what end? In the same edition
of Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, that I read Buckley's quote there
was a sad ongoing story about a New England Journal of Medicine report
headlined: "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- Study: One in Six Iraq
Veterans Show Symptoms."
-
- Like the military, the press acquitted itself relatively
well on the battlefield itself -- whatever Wolfowitz, who later apologized,
really thinks. But like the White House, the press failed before the battles,
writing down whatever the president and his men, sourced and anonymous,
told them. It is as if a Pavlovian president controlled most of the press
into believing this:
-
- "I am the only president you have. I know things
you will never know. I don't say these things are true. These things are
true because I say them."
-
- But much of it, critical parts, was not true. And the
press made few attempts to check. We forgot that we are supposed to be
outsiders, the guys at the edge of the crowd shouting that the emperor
has no clothes! We failed the body politic. How could the crowd know --
particularly when it was being led by one of the most secretive administrations
of modern times?
-
- In the end, though, this war, the separate war on terrorism
and the many failures of the press should provide all Americans with a
greater lesson: In a great and free country, the more the people know,
the safer and better off they are. We, the press, should have fought harder
and smarter to get out the real story of the lousy and stupid war we started
in Iraq.
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- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=123&ncid=742
&e=10&u=/ucrr/20040706/cm_ucrr/2020hindsightiniraq
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