Frontline: Bush's War

[jesus marion joseph]

Anybody catch this last night on PBS? It was part one, and laid out pretty much in detail how the whole Iraq war mess came to be. It appears that Scooter Libby handed Colin Powell a pre-written speech indicating what the White House wanted him to say at the UN. Powell's staff began fact-checking, but realized there were so many leads to chase that they wouldn't have enough time to check all of the claims before the date he was scheduled to deliver the speech, so they dumped it and started from scratch.

What they relied on instead was material from the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate, which would normally have been a painstakingly researched compendium of credible information. In this case, however, the NIE had only been cobbled together by Tenet's CIA because it was demanded of them by congress, who were incredulous that one had not been produced before.

Anyhow, Powell apparently insisted that Tenet sit behind him, in camera range, while he delivered the now infamous speech. Tenet later tried to claim that he was railroaded, but it appears that he was more of a willing participant than he would like us to believe.

There was much more, of course, including mind-blowing insight into how Rumsfeld and Cheney work (including throwing military officers under the bus if they voiced claims the administration didn't like). Can't wait for the next installment.

[tippy]

Yes, I am glad you mentioned it. I was riveted. Part 2 is tonight.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by tippy

Yes, I am glad you mentioned it. I was riveted. Part 2 is tonight.

I watched it too.
It's interesting that there have been several similar docs on television here in Canada that I've mentioned from time to time, to Scott's great amusement, in the last eight years, some before the '04 election with similar information, about the runup to Iraq that haven't been shown on American TV. They were shown on our news programs, "The Passionate Eye" and "The Fifth Estate."
That's part of the reason that I've been so incredulous that the Bush Administration was given a second term.
None of it has not been known and published worldwide, so it's sad, if nothing else, that it's new to so many.
There was also a huge article in Vanity Fair before the '04 Election that laid out how the intel was massaged and how everyone fell into lockstep behind this obscene adventure.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

j.m.j.,

I watched it also. A lot of the things they talked about has been in the news already. This is the first time it's been tried to lay everything out in one show.

I'd like to thing that this documentary would shake things up but it has two things going against it: one, it's on PBS and two, it's very long. Point one guarantees that not only will its audience be limited, but that it will be preacing to the choir. Point two addresses the attention deficit disorder of the American public. I can see my fellow Americans' eyes glaze over as we speak.

[Root Doctor]

The show prompted the one question that's bugged me for years, which is why Bush didn't hitch his fortunes to Powell, who was bright, accomplished, and popular, rather than Cheney, who's none of these things.

[clarke68]

Originally Posted by Darryl G. Thomas

I'd like to thing that this documentary would shake things up but it has two things going against it: one, it's on PBS and two, it's very long. Point one guarantees that not only will its audience be limited, but that it will be preacing to the choir. Point two addresses the attention deficit disorder of the American public. I can see my fellow Americans' eyes glaze over as we speak.

Not sure it's entirely an attention thing...according to the ratings, most American eyeballs were glued to the 2-hour "Dancing with the Stars" last night, although Britney Spears' appearance on CBS' "How I Met Your Mother" apparently gave them a run for their money.

[tippy]

If one of the major networks played this show - advertising it as comprehensive leading up to the war and where we are now, etc. - people would watch it. I really think they would.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

tippy,

I think you're wrong. It would get a larger audience than PBS's, but I don't see the American people flocking to see this thing (at least in the numbers we think they should).

I think I read somewhere that less than a tenth of 1% of the American population is directly effected by the war (I may be wrong on the number, it seems awfully small).

[Gentle Giant]

Anything in the program that begs for impeachment proceedings?

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by Root Doctor

The show prompted the one question that's bugged me for years, which is why Bush didn't hitch his fortunes to Powell, who was bright, accomplished, and popular, rather than Cheney, who's none of these things.

Powell was railing against the tide. Cheney/Rumsfeld/Libby/Wolfowitz marginalized him and then hung him out to dry. For his part, it appears Powell attempted to prepare the UN speech with solid, credible intel, but he didn't even have enough time to do that. It's mind boggling to think that Tenet allowed Powell to go public with that speech, but there it is.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

Powell was railing against the tide. Cheney/Rumsfeld/Libby/Wolfowitz marginalized him and then hung him out to dry. For his part, it appears Powell attempted to prepare the UN speech with solid, credible intel, but he didn't even have enough time to do that. It's mind boggling to think that Tenet allowed Powell to go public with that speech, but there it is.

The image that always sticks in my mind during the U.N. Speech is Tenet sitting directly behind Powell as he did his little shuffle and show-and-tell, looking like he was imagining himself somewhere else............anywhere else.
As Powell showed us the vials and diagrams etc. I felt a sense of unreality. The vials were just vials. The diagrams were just trucks. What made his case, such as it was, was his words, unconvincing to anyone at all who was sitting in the chamber, except for the British, who already had decided to ally themselves with Bush.
At the same time, from the White House, Bush was getting on television every day, assuring us that Saddam Hussein and his country were a crowd of liars and evil-doers who, although they claimed to have no WMDs and the inspectors were coming up empty were just not looking properly.
Rest assured Bush's boys would find the offending weapons................

And here the world is....................still and seemingly forever.

[clarke68]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

It's mind boggling to think that Tenet allowed Powell to go public with that speech, but there it is.

In part 2 (last night), David Kay (our weapons inspector over there) put it like this:

I think it is true that George Tenet wanted to be a player, and he understood that if you didn't give the policy-makers what they wanted, he believed, I think wrongly, that you weren't a player, and therefore your views wouldn't be taken, and you wouldn't be invited into the closed meetings, etc. He traded integrity for access, and that's a bad bargain anytime in life. It's particularly a bad bargain if you're running an intelligence agency.

Overall, I was really impressed by the quality of reporting on the show. It's easy to write-off Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld as the "axis of evil" or whatever, but the fact is everyone involved is, for the most part, trying to do the right thing. Of course, not everyone agrees what "the right thing" is or how to accomplish it, and no matter what you do, accomplishing it is incredibly difficult, and will naturally result in a lot of mistakes.

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

Anything in the program that begs for impeachment proceedings?

I'm a little foggy on what qualifies a president for impeachment. Nixon got it for sending guys to break-in to an office and then lying about it, Clinton got it for his relationship with an intern and then lying about it. So, if you count trumping up charges to justify the invasion of a (potentially, but in reality not really) hostile nation...sure, I guess.

Best I can figure is that Bush has gotten off the hook either because Democrats are too nice, too distracted, or too disorganized to pull it off; or maybe everyone just cuts Bush some slack because he's the president that had 9/11 fall into his lap.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by clarke68

Nixon got it for sending guys to break-in to an office and then lying about it, Clinton got it for his relationship with an intern and then lying about it.

Technically, Nixon was not involved with the Watergate break-in. He tried to cover it up after the fact, which is where he ran into trouble, and then attempted to do what Dick Cheney's lawyer is trying to do now, which is to claim that if the president does something, it isn't a crime. Nixon felt he was unfairly singled out as a player of dirty tricks when "everybody was doing it".

[patricia]

Originally Posted by jesus marion joseph

Technically, Nixon was not involved with the Watergate break-in. He tried to cover it up after the fact, which is where he ran into trouble, and then attempted to do what Dick Cheney's lawyer is trying to do now, which is to claim that if the president does something, it isn't a crime. Nixon felt he was unfairly singled out as a player of dirty tricks when "everybody was doing it".

You know, JMJ, had Nixon used that justification with my late mother, she would have extended the grounding [her preferred punishment for major offences] at least another month. But first he would have heard the old saw, "So, if everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you do that too??"

Doesn't the "sure it's usually wrong, but if everyone's doing it, it's OK for you to do it" dodge lose some of it's power when you become an adult???
Apparently not.

[tippy]

Originally Posted by patricia

Doesn't the "sure it's usually wrong, but if everyone's doing it, it's OK for you to do it" dodge lose some of it's power when you become an adult???

Apparently not.

Not in our nation’s capitol. Everything’s different there. Those people are special.

[Gary Sisco]

Yeah, as in special ed.

[RBS]

It's a pretty jarring show. I've only watched the first half of the first episode.

Rumseld and Cheney have had some sort of sick co-dependency for 30 years or more.

I want to know where Frontline was when the war was starting.

[clarke68]

Originally Posted by RBS

I want to know where Frontline was when the war was starting.

At the conclusion of part 2, the coverage of the current surge is very superficial. It seems like 6 months (or 6 years) has to go by before any Washington policy makers are willing to talk openly with the press.

Pretty good review of the Frontline special on opednews...not exactly my idea of "fair & balanced" reporting, but this guy seems pretty level-headed. I can post it here if anybody is interested, although it's quite long.

[rollhead]

Frontline is almost five years late with this story.

This film, which said it much more powerfully and succinctly, came out in November 2003.

http://www.truthuncovered.com/

[tippy]

As has been pointed out already on this thread though, this wasn't new stuff. Frontline and news agencies have been covering various aspects of it all along. This is a hindsight is 20/20 comprehensive timeline of events. Part of the appeal is the digestibility which could be viewed as a con, that's fair.

[tippy]

I think Clarke's link which includes rollhead's too is worth posting in full.

Frontline’s “Bush’s War” on PBS Monday and Tuesday evening was a nicely put-together rehash of the top players’ trickery that led to the attack on Iraq, together with the power-grabbing, back-stabbing, and limitless incompetence of the occupation.

Except for an inside-the-beltway tidbit here and there—for example, about how the pitiable secretary of state Colin Powell had to suffer so many indignities at the hands of other type-A hard chargers, Frontline added little to the discussion. Notably missing was any allusion to the unconscionable role the Fourth Estate adopted as indiscriminate cheerleader for the home team; nor was there any mention that the invasion was a serious violation of international law. But those omissions, I suppose, should have come as no surprise.


Nor was it a surprise that any viewer hoping for insight into why Cheney and Bush were so eager to attack Iraq was left with very thin gruel. It was more infotainment, bereft of substantive discussion of the whys and wherefores of what in my view is the most disastrous foreign policy move in our nation’s history.

Despite recent acknowledgements from the likes of Alan Greenspan, Gen. John Abizaid, and others that oil and permanent (or, if you prefer, “enduring”) military bases were among the main objectives, Frontline avoided any real discussion of such delicate factors. Someone not already aware of how our media has become a tool of the Bush administration might have been shocked at how Frontline could have missed one of President George W. Bush’s most telling “signing statements.” Underneath the recent Defense Authorization Act, he wrote that he did not feel bound by the law’s explicit prohibition against using the funding:

“(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” or

“(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

So the Frontline show was largely pap.

At one point, however, the garrulous former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage did allude to one of the largest elephants in the living room—Israel’s far-right Likudniks—and their close alliance with the so-called neo-conservatives running our policy toward the Middle East. But Armitage did so only tangentially, referring to the welcome (if totally unrealistic) promise by Ahmed Chalabi that, upon being put in power in Baghdad, he would recognize Israel. Not surprisingly, the interviewer did not pick up on that comment; indeed, I’m surprised the remark avoided the cutting room floor.

Courage No Longer a Frontline Hallmark

Frontline has done no timely reportage that might be looked upon as disparaging the George W. Bush administration—I mean, for example, the real aims behind the war, not simply the gross incompetence characterizing its conduct. Like so many others, Frontline has been, let’s just say it, cowardly in real time—no doubt intimidated partly by attacks on its funding that were inspired by the White House.

And now? Well the retrospective criticism of incompetence comes as polling shows two-thirds of the country against the Iraq occupation (and the number is surely higher among PBS viewers). So, Frontline is repositioning itself as a mild ex-post-facto critic of the war, but still unwilling to go very far out on a limb. Explaining the aims behind war crimes can, of course, be risky. It is as though an invisible Joseph Goebbels holds sway.

Too Late

On Monday evening I found myself initially applauding Frontline’s matter- of-fact, who-shot-John chronology of how our country got lied into attacking and occupying Iraq. Then I got to thinking—have I not seen this picture before? Many times?

It took a Hollywood producer to recognize and act promptly on the con games that sober observers could not miss as the war progressed. Where were the celebrated “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD)? Robert Greenwald simply could not abide the president’s switch to “weapons of mass destruction programs,” which presumably might be easier to find than the much-ballyhooed WMD so heavily advertised before the attack on Iraq. You remember—those remarkable WMD about which UN chief inspector Hans Blix quipped that the U.S. had one hundred percent certainty of their existence in Iraq, but zero percent certainty as to where they were.

Robert Greenwald called me in May 2003. He had read a few of the memoranda published by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) exposing the various charades being acted out by the administration and wanted to know what we thought of the president’s new circumlocution on WMD.

I complimented him on smelling a rat and gave him names of my VIPS colleagues and other experienced folks who could fill him in on the details. Wasting no time, he arrived here in Washington in June, armed simply with copious notes and a cameraman. Greenwald conducted the interviews, flew back to his eager young crew in Hollywood and, poof, the DVD “Uncovered: The War on Iraq” was released at the beginning of November 2003.”

So Frontline is four and a half years behind a Hollywood producer with appropriate interest and skepticism. (Full disclosure: I appear in “Uncovered,” as do many of the interviewees appearing in Frontline’s “Bush’s War.”)

Actually, the interviewing by Frontline occurred just a few months later. I know because I was among those interviewed for that as well, as was my good friend and former colleague at the CIA, Mel Goodman. I was struck that Mel looked four years younger on this week’s Frontline. It only then dawned on me that he was four years younger when interviewed.


Have a look at “Uncovered,” [http://www.truthuncovered.com/index.php ] and see how you think it compares to Frontline’s “Bush’s War.”

Safety in Retrospectives

It also struck me that producing a Frontline-style retrospective going back several years is a much less risky genre to work with. Chalk it up to my perspective as an intelligence analyst, but ducking the incredibly important issues at stake over the next several months is, in my opinion, unconscionable. The troop “surge” in Iraq, for example.

Only toward the very end of the program does Frontline allow a bit of relevant candor on a point that has been self-evident since Cheney and Bush, against strong opposition from Generals Abizaid and Casey (and apparently even Rumsfeld), decided to double down by sending 30,000 more troops into Iraq. A malleable new secretary of defense would deal with the recalcitrant generals and pick a Petreaus ex Machina of equal malleability and political astuteness to implement this stop-gap plan.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist/author Steve Coll, with typical candor, put the “surge” into perspective:

“The decision at a minimum guaranteed that his [Bush’s] presidency would not end with a defeat in history’s eyes; that by committing to the surge, he was certain to at least achieve a stalemate.”

Given this week’s fresh surge of violence as the U.S. surge is scheduled to wind down, even a stalemate may be in some doubt. But, okay, small kudos to Frontline for including that bit of truth—however obvious—and for adding the grim background music to its final comment: “Soon Bush’s war will be handed to someone else.”

Rather Not, Thank You

Intimidation of the media is what has happened all around, including with Frontline, which not so many years ago was able to do some gutsy reporting. Let me give you another example about which few are aware.

Do you remember when Dan Rather made his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, admitting that the American media, including him, was failing to reveal the truth about things like Iraq? Speaking to the BBC on May 16, 2002, Rather compared the situation to the fear of “necklacing” in South Africa:

"It's an obscene comparison," Rather said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck."

Talking to another reporter, Dan told it straight about the careerism that keeps US journalists in line. "It's that fear that keeps [American] journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so often."

The comparison to “necklacing” may be “obscene” but, sadly, it is not far off the mark. So what happened to the newly outspoken Dan Rather with the newly found courage, when he ran afoul of Vice President Dick Cheney and the immense pressure he exerts on the corporate media?

We know about the lies and the cheerleading for attacking Iraq. But there is much more most of us do not know and remain unable to learn if Rather and other one-time journalists keep acting like Bert Lahr’s cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz before he gets “the nerve” and courage.
For Dan Rather, the fear would simply not go away...even after leaving CBS for HDNet and promising that, on his new “Dan Rather Reports” show, viewers would see hard-hitting and courageous reporting that he said he couldn’t do at CBS.

Will it surprise you that Dan Rather cannot shake the necklace? I refer specifically to a program for “Dan Rather Reports,” meticulously prepared by award-winning producer, Kristina Borjesson. The special included interviews with an impressive string of first-hand witnesses to neocon machinations prior to the US attack on Iraq, and provides real insights into motivations—the kind of insights Frontline did not even attempt.


Nipped in the Bud by the “Dark Side”

Last year Borjesson’s taping was finished and the editing had begun. Borjesson’s requests to interview people working for the vice president had been denied. But, following standard journalistic practice (not to mention common courtesy), she sent an email to John Hannah in Cheney’s office in order to give Hannah a chance to react to what others—including several of the same senior folks on Frontline last evening— had said about him for her forthcoming report.

At that point all hell broke loose. Borjesson was abruptly told by Rather’s executive producer that by sending the email, Borjesson could have “brought down the whole (‘Dan Rather Reports’) operation.”

The show was killed and Borjesson sacked. For good measure, she was also accused of “coaching” interview subjects and taking their words out of context. Since neither Rather nor his executive producer would provide proof to substantiate that allegation, Borjesson took the unprecedented step of sending her script and transcripts to all her interview subjects, asking them to confirm or deny that she had coached them or taken their words out of context. Not one of them found her script inaccurate or said they were coached. She has the emails to prove this.

This sorry episode and Frontline’s careful avoidance of basic issues like the strategic aims of the Bush administration in invading and occupying Iraq are proof, if further proof were needed, that the White House, and especially Cheney’s swollen office, exert enormous pressure over what we are allowed to see and hear. The fear they instill in the corporate press, and in what once was serious investigative reporting of programs like Frontline, translates into programs getting neutered or killed outright—and massive public ignorance.

Some consolation is to be found in the good news that, in this particular case, Kristina Borjesson is made of stronger stuff; she has not given up, and was greatly encouraged by how many of the very senior officials and former officials she had already interviewed consented to be re-interviewed (since the tapes belonged to the “Rather Not” folks).

Now who looks forward to being re-interviewed?

Borjesson’s original interviewees took into account her problems with the cowards and the censors—and her atypical, gutsy refusal to self-censor—and went the extra mile. A tribute to them as well, and their interest in getting the truth out.

Borjesson is now completing the program on her own. Look for an announcement in the coming months, if you’re interested in real sustenance rather than the pabulum served up, no doubt under duress, by Frontline.

[patricia]

As I mentioned earlier, CBC's "The Passionate Eye" and The Fifth Estate" have done several documentaries over the last eight years about the Bush Administration and particularly about the Iraq situation, including a scathing series of reports on Abu Ghraib and the other, lesser-known detention centres.
You can access the various titles by googling:
"the fifth estate/iraq"
[Of note, a documentary titled "The World According To Bush"].
or
"the passionate eye/iraq"
[Check out particularly an excellent doc about Abu Ghraib titled "A Few Bad Apples], with other links to interviews with John Woo, soldiers who were involved in the Abu Ghraib obscenities and lots of other material on both sites.

[Jon Abbey]

Originally Posted by clarke68

maybe everyone just cuts Bush some slack because he's the president that had 9/11 fall into his lap.

we'll never know, but I've always wondered if 9/11 would have gone down the same way if Gore was president.

[Scott Dolan]

What exactly do you mean by that, Jon?

[Darryl G. Thomas]

What I noticed about the documentary was that some of the interviews had been used in previous PBS documentaries, so yes it was a rehash. Someone mentioned that it didn't cover the media's role in the whole. Affair, again that was dealt with by a Bill Moyers' documentary.

[groover]

Originally Posted by Jon Abbey

we'll never know, but I've always wondered if 9/11 would have gone down the same way if Gore was president.

According to ex-CIA agent Robert Baer, there's no-one in D.C. untouched by Saudi money, but Gore's nowhere near as deep in bed with them as the Bush family. If nothing else, the way the Saudis were treated afterwards would likely have been somewhat different.

[Jon Abbey]

dunno, any number of things. did the attacks happen when they did in part because Al Qaeda saw who was elected, knew a 'crusade' was likely coming on one flimsy excuse or another, and decided to pull the trigger on something they'd been laying the groundwork for anyway? did they happen when they did because they saw we elected an idiot, and thought they could take advantage of that? I'm sure someone has addressed this in some way at some point, although maybe it's just all too hypoethetical.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Jon,

I don't think it mattered who was president. I think 9/11 was a done deal.

[Jon Abbey]

Originally Posted by Darryl G. Thomas

I don't think it mattered who was president. I think 9/11 was a done deal.

maybe, it happened 10 months after the elections. I find it hard to believe that it was set irrevocably in motion before November of 2000, but if someone wants to show me proof to the contrary, I'd be happy to admit I'm wrong.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Darryl G. Thomas

Jon,

I don't think it mattered who was president. I think 9/11 was a done deal.

I think you ar 100% correct.

Jon, of course we can't provide evidence to the contrary. It's conspiratorial. But when did they try to knock them down the first time? One month after Clinton took office.

It's a specious argument at very best.

al-Qaeda has absolutely no interest in who is President. Our foreign policy has never drastically changed in any way no matter who was in office. We still have hundreds of bases around the globe, we're still in their lands, and that has never, and will never change.

And they are certainly not worried about us taking the battle to them. They have no homeland. It's impossible, and they know that.