How I found out the Bushies were lying about Iraq (before the war)

[MaggieD]

I have an interesting story to tell about how I found out the Bush administration was lying about the Iraq war a full year before it started. It's been 12 years so I may have forgotten a few of the minor details, but the overall experience is still vivid in my mind, and so I will tell it now because I think some of you may enjoy it.

(Full disclosure: I signed up for DU right when it started back in 2001. I got banned in 2004 after the election. I think it was because I said something unfavorable about John Kerry's campaign, but I don't know for sure. I just woke up the next day and logged in to find out I was banned. I wrote to the admins to ask why, but never received a response. I'm back now because apparently there was some sort of amnesty and old members can now reactivate their old account. So I did).

Okay, here's the story. Back in 2002 my spouse worked for a national news network. Not in the news department, but as a manager in operations for their web site. Ops employees would have exposure to some of the journalists but they didn't hob nob with them much. However, in Feb 2002 one of them did sit down with 5 or 6 of the ops management types (my spouse being one) and the discussion that ensued was fascinating. My spouse, knowing what a political junkie I am immediately wrote down the bullet points after the discussion was over so as to share them with me later.

The journalist in question is very famous. I won't disclose her name here, but suffice to say if I named her every one of you would recognize the name -- no Google required. She also, through familial relations, has very close ties to republicans (although I did not/ do not have the impression that she is on either the liberal or conservative team). I mention this to point out that I thought her information was solid because my assumption is that her familial relationships gave her good inside access. And she turned out to be exactly right later on, so there is that as well.

Here is what she said in Feb 2002:

- She said that we were definitely going to invade Iraq - no ifs, ands, or buts. She said the Bush administration would roll it out to the public in August. She was off by 1 month. She said the delay was for planning purposes, and apparently they'd used a lot of munitions in Afghanistan and needed to rebuild stores of missiles, etc. Nothing was mentioned about WMD. At the time it was about supposed ties to Al Qaeda.

- She said Cheney was indeed essentially running things at that point. If I recall correctly she called him the Shadow President.

- She said that the Bush administration made it very clear that journalists who wrote/reported negative stories about them would be cut off from access, and that this could ruin a journalists career.

- She also stated that some journalists had considered taking out a full page ad in the NYT about this access issue that would occur if negative stories about the Bushies were reported, but nothing had come of it, again, because it would lead to career suicide.

- Separate from this conversation, the person in charge of network news for this organization sent out a company wide email telling everyone that not supporting the administration was unpatriotic. I cannot remember the exact words in the email, but that was definitely the gist of it. I actually read the email myself (my spouse shared it with me).

So, the bottom line is that in all through the fall of 2002 when Bush was saying he had not made up his mind about invading Iraq -- that he was only asking for authorization from congress in case inspections failed, I knew he was lying his ass off (based on the information I heard in Feb 2002). And when the Downing Street Memo was released much later, stating that the Bush administration was fixing the facts around the policy that made perfect sense to me. There was no doubt in my mind, even before the memo was revealed, that was exactly what was done.

I don't know if other journalists had the same information as the person my spouse spoke with, but I know she did not speak out when Bush was claiming he had not made a decision about invading Iraq in the fall of 2002. Maybe she had no proof that was good enough for news reporting. Maybe she couldn't betray the familial relationships she had. I don't know. But I do know she was right. The Bush administration was determined to invade Iraq, come hell or high water.

[liberal N proud]

1. It was easy to tell they were lying about Iraq

Their lips were moving.

[Solly Mack]

2. That was the biggest clue.

[mainer]

3. So much evil done, while those in the know were too afraid to make a peep

It makes you respect honest journalists all the more, putting their jobs on the line while their colleagues were such cowards.

[on point]

4. I knew when Bush promoted an MIA pilot from 1st war & refused aid to look for him

It was obvious that Bush was setting up propaganda points to go Saddam. They kept insisting he was held despite the lack of evidence. Guess what once the invasion started he was completely dropped from their radar

You could also add in the prove the negative nonsense, despite what inspectors were saying

"We know you have Martian death rays. We demand you turn them over or else"

How do counter delusional / liars like the bush criminals?

[Gidney N Cloyd]

12. That was so laughable. It was the "Old Shoe" ploy right out of Wag the Dog.

[davekriss]

46. I was just about to bring this up

Early in the march to war Condi Rice was making the media rounds going on about the purported downed pilot from the first invasion of Iraq. Iirc, she even claimed something like the pilot being imprisoned in the basement if Saddam's palace. When I heard that I turned to my wife and said we're going to invade Iraq.

It was clear to me that the Bush administration was floating a trial ballon to see if 'patriotic indignation' could be sparked within we unwashed masses. Clearly pure propaganda.

[warrior1]

5. They made up their minds before 9/11

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bush-sought-way-to-invade-iraq/

[MaggieD]

7. I know that too

But the interesting thing is I also know that prominent journalists knew it for a fact as well, even as they were letting Bush claim nothing had been decided yet as of the fall of 2002. In other words, some at least knew he was lying.

[Skidmore]

6. I had no doubt that we were being marched into war in spite of the

the verbage. What they said belied what they were doing and the administration's constant ramping up of the fear factor for the public.

[GusBob]

8. thanks for the post

I didn't figure it out until I knew they were lying about WMDs. The media was in on that too. Believe it or not it was 2 conservative columnists who helped bolster the idea that the WMD angle was a lie: pat buchanon of all people and Charlie reese

[Enthusiast]

9. They were wrong then and they're wrong now.

[L0oniX]

31. It was easy to go figure. Policy wars = wrong. Always has and always will be wrong.

[Hissyspit]

10. I was thinking it was August when Bush first mentioned Iraq.

Regardless, my jaw literally dropped open. It as an insane thing to hear. I knew they were lying then and there.

I remember saying out loud several times "Iraq? What the fuck?"

[Gidney N Cloyd]

11. Campbell Brown?

[MaggieD]

23. More famous than Campbell

[Samantha]

40. Andrea Mitchell? (n/t)

[LeftyMom]

36. I'm pretty sure she's hinting around at her source being Andrea Mitchell.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

43. I thought about Michell but didn't think she'd be so loose-lipped.

[Hekate]

13. Thanks for sharing, and welcome back. I think journaling some of our memories is important...

... not necessarily public, if/when they are too sensitive, but important nonetheless.

I didn't join DU until Fall 2002, and by then I had been driven almost mad by the ramping up of outright propaganda by the media. It was everywhere I looked for news reporting, certainly on CNN and MSNBC. It took awhile, but it finally came to me what they were doing to our minds.

I grew up post WW II reading accounts of how the Nazis came to power and how they persuaded the public, and it was a like a punch in the gut to see it happening here in my own country, which had even been renamed "The Homeland."

So, thanks for adding your account to the list of crimes perpetrated by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld et al. -- and the cowardly Fourth Estate.

[MiniMe]

14. I knew before Bush was selected as President

I said, if Bushit gets elected, we will be going to war with Iraq. People didn't believe me, until it happened. After all, they tried to kill his Daddy.

[MaggieD]

22. Yeah, I did too

I guess what really amazed me was that he kept telling congress that he hadn't made up his mind, and that the AUMF would just give him a stronger hand with the UN and the inspectors. I have to believe that if this very famous journalist knew it was already decided other journalists did too, and should have called Bush on that bullshit.

[rustydog]

15. What fully convonced me they were lying

When they were screaming about botulin toxins, nerve gas, and WMD's AND do you want your proof to be a mushroom cloud?????Do Ya? Do YA!!!

Then, all that GW and company could do after challenging our patriotism , after diverting all our spy satellites to catch Saddam in the act, is produce a hand-drawn image of what Saddam's trailers of mass destruction looked like.

Why a drawing? Because not one evidentiary photo existed to buttress his claim.If they had just one satellite image of a garbage truck going down an Iraqi highway, Bush Co would have asserted it was a weapons trailer. They didn't even have that, they had to resort to an artists rendering.

War Criminals every one.

[L0oniX]

32. Remember Powel showing those oil tanker trucks and saying they were mobile missile trucks?

[MaggieD]

48. Yes. Agreed

But this was before Powell's speech. It was a weird thing watching it happen just as she had said it would.

[think4yourself]

54. That was a big red flag for me, also.

After all the propaganda about "gassing his own people" with "stockpiles of chemical weapons" and "mobile weapons labs" they then told us we need to send 200,000 young Americans into THAT?
It was then I knew there were no chemical weapons of any import.

[KG]

16. what were journalists worried about losing access to, the bush admin?

that bunch of thieves and liars? what good were they as a source unless their job was to disseminate the excreta they produced?

[JHB]

25. They were worried about losing access to their big paychecks...

...-- or, for the second- and third-tier ones, about losing their chance to move up to the big paychecks -- if they lost access to WH sources.

[MindPilot]

17. As I've said many many times, the blame lies squarely at the feet of the media.

If journalists had all ignored those threats of lost access, if reporters could have counted on their bosses backing them up and simply told the truth, there would be nothing the WH could do. An empty press room would have left the BFEE with a dead mic, completely incapable of catapulting any propaganda

[Cha]

18. Thanks MaggieD.. we knew it too. It was so obvious they were cooking the books to bomb Iraq

come hell or high water. Judy Miller and the NYT didn't help our cause, either.

"And when the Downing Street Memo was released much later, stating that the Bush administration was fixing the facts around the policy that made perfect sense to me"

thanks MD for your vivid experience of 12 years ago! Yes, and Welcome Back!

[RainDog]

19. Cokie Roberts, sounds like

She's always been a corporate insider, never willing to tell the truth when her overseers want lies.

[MaggieD]

20. Nope. Not even close. She's a winger, no?

[Timez Squarez]

28. Baba Wawa

is my latest guess..

[MaggieD]

30. Nope.

If you guess right I will conveniently not reply.

[H2O Man]

21. Recommended.

Thank you for this.

[MaggieD]

24. Thanks for all the kind comments

It's nice to be back.

[CaptainTruth]

26. I knew because I did some research ...

... & discovered the PNAC.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC

When 9/11 happened I knew they had the "new Pearl Harbor" they needed to move forward with war.

I'm still amazed & saddened that almost no one knows about this organization, & what they wrote before Bush became president. None of it was secret, they openly wrote about their goal of transforming the Middle East using American military power.

How could our media miss this? Are they really that stupid? Or lazy?

[MaggieD]

29. Oh yeah, I knew about PNAC

.....before Bush even got selected. I don't remember how I heard about it, but I doubt it was through mainstream media. The media in this country sucks. It's just more of our corporate overlords telling us what they want us to know or believe for their benefit. Real journalism died a long time ago.

[cantbeserious]

27. Thanks For Sharing - For Many The Lies Were Obvious

eom

[vanlassie]

33. Andrea Mitchell

[PearliePoo2]

37. We replied within a couple of minutes of each other.

I'll bet we're correct.

[vanlassie]

39. No doubt in my mind, anyway.

[PearliePoo2]

34. My guess is:

Andrea Mitchell.

[MaggieD]

45. Let me say this about that

.... Did you know Brian Williams is super funny in real life and he likes to wear leather pants?

[Wounded Bear]

35. My most distinct memory about the runup to Iraq II...

was a feeling of sadness coupled with deja vu. Having lived through (and served) during the Vietnam Era, my strongest thought was always, "Oh shit, we're doing it again."

Pretty much what transpired.

[elias49]

38. "Oh Wake up Maggie I think I got somethin to say to you..."

I despise Andrea M. She's a horrid 'newsperson'.

[MaggieD]

41. To everyone saying you knew it was a lie too

I think a lot of people did. Those that pay attention, anyway. What shocked me most I think was how complicit our media was in the whole thing. I had a feeling they were not to be trusted, but all illusions about our media dropped away as I saw the run up to war unfolding while knowing many prominent journalists knew it was busllshit yet remained silent.

Up until then I really believed that journalists were at least some check and balance on the system. Now I know that belief was horribly naive.

[LuvNewcastle]

59. Lots of people on the internet knew.

I was reading opinions of all sorts of people back then who were talking about it. I told everyone in my family about it and they didn't believe me. They watch Fox News, of course. My dad still believes they found WMD. It's amazing how strong the power of denial is with Republicans. I tell him that the only reason he believes they found WMD is because he watches Fox News all the time, but he keeps watching that shit. Fox News watchers are like addicts. If there's a tv around, they've got to have it on Fox News. It's really sad, but that shit has ruined my relationship with my parents. It's hard to respect people when you think they're nuts.

[MaggieD]

66. Same with my Mother

She stayed with me for a few months last year. I told her you cannot watch that station when I'm in the house and you shouldn't watch it at all. I could hear her rapidly changing the channel when I'd walk in the door from work. LOL!

[Samantha]

42. I never believed ANYTHING Bush said after he stole the election in 2000

Anyone who would do something like that in plain view of the American people is incapable of showing restraint about doing anything he wants to do, right or wrong.

The day the army marched across the desert to invade, I stood in front of a conference room at work and watched the procession across the desert and I cried. I have never cried at work. I knew that as an American, this was being done in the name of the American people and I was partially to blame.

Sam

[MaggieD]

44. Good point

But when did you realize the media seldom told the truth either?

[Samantha]

49. When I was 12 years old and Kennedy was assassinated

I believe that was also close to the time when I found out politicians steal elections. There was some type of circular being passed around disclosing how Lyndon Johnson won one of his local elections in Texas. The party who lost demanded a recount, and the night before the recount was to be started, the place which housed the ballots burned down.

Sam

[MaggieD]

50. And the media acted like it was all above board?

That's very interesting. Apparently I lost my virginity about the media late in life. I always thought at least one journalist would speak out - to get the scoop on the rest if nothing else. Then again, I grew up during watergate where journalist were heroes and whistleblowers.

[WinkyDink]

61. You believed something he said BEFORE then??

[valerief]

47. It was in the PNAC papers before the new century. nt

[polynomial]

51. The media is flagrantly wicked

This war is the most incredible nefarious lie. The media is flagrantly wicked in avoiding the history of the Bush family that spans all the way back to world war two.

Grandpa Prescott Bush helped financed the Nazi party. Now George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush are very close friends with the very terrorist family America is fighting, the Bin Laden family. Yikes!

In the same time period George Herbert Walker Bush worked for the Union Pacific railroad tycoon a Mr. Harriman who was very tied to the Nazi party.

If the Wikipedia story is still intact about Sun Valley Utah, it’s one of my current favorites. Bergdahl came from this small town that was actually very close the resort specifically designed by the railroad tycoon Harriman to attract rich Germans during or after the war.

The story goes were Harriman asked a prominent Nazi German to help him choose a sight, to design a resort town for the rich that would be close to the Union Pacific system. That is creepy.

With that said Bush family should never have been in politics let alone run the country. Yuk…

[Ilsa]

52. PBS was running thorough documentaries before

and after the wars started. They covered PNAC. That's how I learned they were lying.

[supernova]

53. You're making me think of Diane Sawyer

I know you don't want to say, but this puts me in mind of her

[MaggieD]

56. Nope - look up thread

We have some smart DUers on board.

[belpejic]

57. You are right

I can back you up on this.

I didn't find out conclusively until Fall 2002, but around then I represented my major media company (I'm long out of the industry) at a big lobbyist D.C. clusterf***. Apparently Rove's people told our people that the U.S. was definitely going in to Iraq, and this was before Powell's embarrassment at the U.N.

So when the bombs started falling several months later I definitely was not surprised. Massively bummed, but not surprised.

I was too scared about keeping my job at the time to say anything, but that was twelve years ago and who gives a crap now.

The fact that Iraq is blowing up now should surprise no one. We went in for the wrong reasons, spent trillions of dollars in taxpayer money, oversaw the death and suffering of countless Iraqis, and lost several thousand of our bravest women and men.

The fact that craven Americans are supposedly up in arms about the current situation in Iraq is ridiculous.

The smart money then and the smart money now knows that it was wrong. The idiots are just now beginning to realize that we're reaping what we sowed.

It's all just so tragic.

[MaggieD]

58. I wish historians would write this

They fucking lied. And they knew they were lying as they looked us all in the eye. It should be de facto part of history that they lied - not a side note. If for nothing else than to inform future generations.

[WinkyDink]

60. My simple reason: THEY ARE REPUBLICANS. To purloin a phrase: That is all ye need to know.

[chrisa]

62. Looking back, it was such a frightening time. It was our "tasting menu" of Fascism.

They weren't stupid - they had the press by the balls through a Fascist's favorite form of control - fear. If you get the press, you can control the message. That's exactly what they did. It's a misconception that Fascist countries don't have an active press. They do - a bunch of useful tools that read Government-approved stories because they're afraid to say anything else.

Nationalism is also a favorite tool of Fascists. I'm talking forced Nationalism, where anybody who doesn't "love their country" (in the same way people in North Korea "love" theirs) is considered an enemy.

[vanlassie]

63. I am still haunted by a comment I saw made by then Sec of Treasury John Snow. He was asked, on the

eve of the invasion if it wasn't going to be terribly expensive? "No- it won't cost much..." said with a smirk. Fucking ghoul. I have looked and looked for that piece of footage.... would like to find it just for posterity.

[mstinamotorcity2]

64. Political Suicide??

It would have surly meant Death. It won't be like they haven't killed individuals before. We have seen too many strong leaders bite the bullet. I think they have proven that with Abraham Lincoln.

[Uncle Joe]

65. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, MaggieD.

[csziggy]

67. January 2001 The Onion knew that Bush was going to start a war in the Middle East

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'
News • Politics • government • george w. bush • clinton administration • ISSUE 43•01 ISSUE 37•01 • Jan 17, 2001

<SNIP>
During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/

When I first read this satirical article at the time it was written, I was amused but a little worried that they had Bush's tone far too right. Over the next eight years, I realized the The Onion writers must have known much more about politics than I expected.