Report: Newspapers Were Deceived by Iraqi Defectors

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000463209

NEW YORK Bush administration officials were not the only people duped by tips from Iraqi defectors in the run-up to the 2003 war. Newspaper reporters also received, and printed, information from them, much of which has turned out to be false, according to a lengthy report this morning by Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells of Knight Ridder news service.

Knight Ridder's Washington bureau, which has broken numerous stories related to the Iraq war in recent months, has obtained a June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) to a U.S. Senate committee that listed 108 articles based on often fabricated information provided by the INC's "Information Collection Program," which was funded by the U.S. These articles appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Sun-Times, The Times of London and two Knight Ridder papers, The Kansas City (Mo.) Star and The Philadelphia Daily News, among others.

"Feeding the information to the news media," Landay and Wells write, "as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to Bin Laden. In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department."

...more...

So when do we just start calling the WH a "bureau of propaganda"?

n/t

a la 1984

As long as you got floks like Judith Miller printing shit in rags like the NYT it will continue to happen... Lazy Editors..Period!

I have voted Dem for 32 years and still do.

How can you justify this personal and group slur against fellow Democrats.?

Oh that's right you're chasing me...
Since you love that board so much why don't you chase this scumbag freeper...
http://www.peopleforchange.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5193&st=0&#entry40840

I never said you were a freeper...I just said that stupid forum is full of them.

Glad to have you join us :hi:

that one of the first meetings of the administration was about how to invade Iraq. Bush says, "find a way." I think that the media is not telling the whole story when they say Bush was duped. You can't dupe yourself! The administration needed some talking points to convince the country to go to war. They were lying then and this kind of reporting supports the lies. They knew what they were doing and that there were no WMDs and nuclear weapons.

I think they figured no one would ask qustions after they achieved a glorious victory or possibly they figured they would worry about crossing the WMD credibility gap later.

:hi:

(WOW! three newbies :toast:)

Was that reported in the press, or only in the book? If it was in the press I'd love to have a link to pass around.

*edit* Never mind - it was easy to find:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I sent this to the Editorial Board at NYT yesterday (editorial@nytimes.com)
after the Public Editor replied that he didn't deal with things that didn't happen on his watch:

Greetings.

A new study from the Center for International Security Studies at the University of Maryland might provide a good framework for evaluating the New York Times' coverage of the Administration's WMD claims in the run-up to the Iraq War.

The summary version of the study can be found at
http://www.cissm.umd.edu/documents/WMDstudy_short.pdf

and the full version can be found at
http://www.cissm.umd.edu/documents/WMDstudy_full.pdf

Did the Times uncritically and "stenographically" report the administration's claims, as this study indicates most US media did during the run-up to the war? Maybe your staff can have a hard look at this, especially given that Judith Miller is used as an example in the study.

Best Wishes,

Welcome to DU, swag!

:toast:

what ever these guys had to say. Never mind that the CIA discounted them 10 years ago. Lapdogs, wanted to cover a war

about W.C. Fields' line "You can't cheat an honest man"?

expressing outrage when they discover that their victim wasn't really guilty of the crime they lynched him for...

"Hey, we're were duped!!" :crazy:

If they ran it through the WH then the WH is responsible for not telling them it was false.

If they didn't run it by or through anyone and just printed it verbatim then they are responsible for being irresponsible and printing propaganda!

Why is it that you don't see Guardian and others such as them printing this outlandish stuff or finding history to go along with the article to verify exactly who is the IRNC?

I think that they were asked to publish these articles and/or IF they did check they were given the go from the WH as part of the propaganda machine!

I think they should all be taken to task regarding fines, license suspension, etc. for contributing to this mess w/o due research and analysis beyond getting the WH approval!

..had these media outlets learned ANYTHING of the last Bushit war in the Gulf.. they wouldn't have taken the bait. Did they not recall the crooked testimony of "victims" in Kuwait of Saddam's brutality? The incubator stories.. all fabricated by the same PR firm used this time to get the war going? How stupid are these people? I laugh now when I see things that we dismissed months and months ago, lies we've exposed here on DU or in the European media, now come down like a brick on the US Media's head!! duh.

On the upside, we are beginning to witness the media attempting to distance themselves from their masters. On the other hand, they're trying to shirk responsibility and play the victim.

Make them pay regardless.

Media reform must happen, whether they like it or not...

(on edit: typo)