[Media-watch] More from the misleader

[John Meed]

Dear Mediawatch

Here is another article plus sources from Move On's 'Misleader'
(http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/archive.asp). More stuff that would
have been outside Hutton's remit as far as the government is concerned no
doubt.

John Meed

Bush Admits Misleading on WMD

Less than a year after declaring there was "no doubt the Iraqi regime
continues to possess the most lethal weapons ever devised,"1 President Bush
and the White House began to openly "back away from its WMD assertions
today."2 The New York Times reported, "White House officials are no longer
asserting that stockpiles of banned weapons would eventually be found" after
their weapons inspector, David Kay said he "doesn't think [WMD] existed"
after the 1991 Gulf War.3

The backtracking is reverberating throughout the Bush administration. While
Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations last year that "our
conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and
500 tons of chemical weapons agent,"4 he said this weekend that it could
actually be "zero tons."5 Powell told the United Nations in 2003 that Iraq
"can produce anthrax," that it might "have produced 25,000 liters" and
showed a video of an Iraqi plane that dumping "2,000 liters of simulated
anthrax" as proof, but he now says they might have produced no anthrax at
all.6 

Similarly, Vice President Dick Cheney, said before the war, "there is no
doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction...to use
against our friends, against our allies, and against us," but now says the
war was about Iraq's "efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction."7 The
vice president also cited a classified report8 his own Administration has
labeled "inaccurate" as the "best source" of proof that Saddam Hussein and
Al Qaeda were linked.9

In response, the Administration is beginning to blame the intelligence
community for the WMD fiasco, and planning an internal "review of prewar
intelligence."10 Administration ally Kay concurred, arguing "I think the
intelligence community owes the president [an apology] rather than the
president owing the American people."11 Despite Mr. Kay's assertions,
experts who knew the record of U.N. inspections knew that finding no WMD
"was always a strong possibility . . .but Bush administration officials
never acknowledged it."12

Earlier reporting found that senior Administration officials deliberately
"bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence,"13
and the White House set up a separate intelligence apparatus, the "Office of
Special Plans," to "cherry-pick intelligence that supported its pre-existing
position and ignoring all the rest."14 For example, the president's
well-known declaration in last year's State of the Union, asserting that
Iraq "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,"15 remained
despite CIA demands to remove such allegations from his speech16.
Sources: 

1.    Presidential Remarks, 03/17/2003.
2.    "White House Shows Less Certainty Now on Iraq's Arms", New York Times,
01/27/2004.
3.    "Kay: No evidence Iraq stockpiled WMDs", CNN, 01/26/2004.
4.    U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security
Council, 02/05/2003.
5.    "5 GIs Die In Iraq Attacks", CBS News, 01/24/2004.
6.    Ibid.
7.    Remarks by the Vice President to Italian Leaders, 01/26/2004.
8.    "Critics blast Cheney for linking al Qaeda to Iraq", Scripps Howard
News Service, 01/23/2004.
9.    DOD Statement, 11/15/2003.
10.    "White House to Review Prewar Intelligence on Iraqi Arms, New York
Times, 01/26/2004.
11.    "Kay wants inquiry on weapons estimates", Charlotte Observer,
01/26/2004.
12.    "`They don't exist': Kay's words may boost global teamwork on arms
control", Boston Globe, 01/25/2004.
13.    "The Stovepipe" The New Yorker, 10/27/2003.
14.    "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong", The Atlantic Monthly,
January 2004.
15.    State of the Union, 01/28/2003.
16.    "White House: CIA questioned State of the Union address", Miami
Herald, 07/23/2003.