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Caveat lector
 | WHY WE WARNED YOU! Harold Meyerson murdered the facts as he beat up on stubborn old Cheney: |
THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2003
SPEAKING OF BASELESS ASSERTIONS: We’ve long slammed the press corps’ indulgent approach to the matter of George Bush’s truthfulness. The problem dates to the fall of 2000, when Candidate Bush paraded the country, grossly misstating the basic outlines of his own budget proposal. Incredibly, in his opening statement at the first Bush-Gore debate, Bush again made his standard misstatement (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/21/03). And, since Paul Krugman had devoted three recent columns to this very topic, everyone in the national press must have known it. Bush had misspoken again.
But the press had a script for the 2000 race in which Al Gore had a “problem with the truth.” Result? In the wake of that crucial first debate, almost no one mentioned Bush’s howlers. From that time on, the press corps maintained a silly script it developed during that race—George Bush is a straight-talking man, who tells you exactly what he thinks. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Whatever Bush’s strengths may be, he plainly isn’t The Last Honest Man. But the press corps stuck with this laughable script—until their sudden turn on Iraq.
But readers, habits die hard in the press corps. Instead of assembling a real critique of Bush-on-Iraq, pundits are doing what they do best—they’re presenting a mangled, simplified story, designed to persuade you of their new vision. Result? Basic facts are bent and discarded as they spin their uranium-from-Niger parable. Here, for example, is Harold Meyerson in this morning’s Washington Post:
MEYERSON (pgh 1): There are no stubborn facts in the Bush White House, just stubborn men. This is an administration that will not be cowed by the truth.But of course, the president’s State of the Union address didn’t mention uranium from Niger. And was Bush’s assertion really “baseless?” His statement cited British intelligence, and as Glenn Frankel reports in this morning’s Post, British intelligence—and Tony Blair—still stand behind that intelligence. But Meyerson doesn’t waste time with that. He just says that the statement was “baseless.”(2) After all, it’s not as if the president’s baseless assertion in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to acquire “yellowcake” uranium from Niger was the last we heard of this claim.
But that is only the smallest part of Meyerson’s rearrangement of facts. Just how malleable have facts now become? Watch as he goes for Dick Cheney:
MEYERSON (2): After all, it’s not as if the president’s baseless assertion in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to acquire “yellowcake” uranium from Niger was the last we heard of this claim. To be sure, Colin Powell consciously excised it from the bill of indictment he delivered to the U.N. Security Council in early February.…But it popped up again as late as March 16, when Cheney himself appeared on “Meet The Press” to make one more case for going to war.Sadly, this statement is totally false. In fact, Cheney wasn’t asked about Niger on Meet the Press. Indeed, he wasn’t asked about uranium procurement at all; the topic simply never came up. But so what? The press has Brilliant Points to make, and scribes are changing facts to make them. As he continues, Meyerson lodges a serious charge—another charge which is totally bogus:
MEYERSON (3): By then, the International Atomic Energy Agency had publicly reported that the documents purportedly recording the Iraq-Niger transaction were forgeries—a conclusion, we now know, that the CIA and the State Department shared…To state the obvious, anyone reading that passage would assume that Cheney “disagreed with the IAEA” about the forged documents. But Meyerson’s plain implication is totally false. In fact, just as with uranium procurement, the forged documents were never discussed at any point on this program. Here, in fact, is the real exchange from which Meyerson clipped Cheney’s quote:(4) But when “Meet The Press” host Tim Russert asked the vice president about the IAEA’s conclusions, Cheney bulled ahead with a certitude born of—well, of the political necessity for certitude. He disagreed with the IAEA, he said, adding, wrongly, “You’ll find that the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community disagree.”
RUSSERT: What do you think is the most important rationale for going to war with Iraq?In fact, Cheney “disagreed with the IAEA” about the presence of a nuclear program in Iraq. He never expressed any thoughts—none—about those famous forged documents. The famous forged documents were never mentioned. Meyerson’s charge is completely made up.CHENEY: Well, I think I’ve just given it, Tim, in terms of the combination of [Saddam’s] development and use of chemical weapons, his development of biological weapons, his pursuit of nuclear weapons.
RUSSERT: And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program, we disagree?
CHENEY: I disagree, yes. And you’ll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community disagree.
No, Cheney never said a word about the forged documents. But so what—facts are malleable things! And by now, Meyerson was on a roll. So he said that Cheney should apologize for his invented statement:
MEYERSON (pgh 6): The point is not that an apology is in order, though it plainly is. The point is that even after the IAEA’s revelation that the forged agreement had been “signed” by a Niger government official who in fact had been out of office for the better part of a decade, the vice president dismissed this information out of hand and disparaged its source.Sorry. No such statement ever occurred. That damaging statement by Harold Meyerson is completely and wholly invented.
Yes, readers! Here at THE HOWLER, we’d support a real study of Bush-on-Iraq. But Meyerson does something totally different. How does Meyerson tell this tale? First, Bush makes a “baseless assertion” in the State of the Union, saying that Iraq tried to get uranium “from Niger.” This “baseless assertion” totally relies on documents later shown to be forgeries. And even after these documents are debunked, Cheney stubbornly says they’re legit. According to Meyerson, the Bush Admin had nothing except those forged documents, and its “stubborn man” stood by his false claims even after the forged docs were debunked. British intelligence? Directly referenced by Bush in his statement, British intell is nowhere in sight.
Here at THE HOWLER, we’d support a real examination, but there’s no excuse for tales like this one. Readers, you have to make a decision: Are you willing to tolerate nonsense like this just because it feels good going down?
NOT SO STUBBORN: No, the facts haven’t been real stubborn as the uranium-from-Niger tale gets spun. In his third paragraph, Meyerson seems to make another claim which was contradicted just last night:
MEYERSON (3): By then, the International Atomic Energy Agency had publicly reported [on March 7] that the documents purportedly recording the Iraq-Niger transaction were forgeries—a conclusion, we now know, that the CIA and the State Department shared. Indeed, when the State Department turned over the documents to the IAEA on Feb. 4, it sent along a note stating, “We cannot confirm these reports and have questions regarding some specific claims.”Meyerson seems to imply that CIA and State had known, for some time, that those now-famous documents were forgeries. But is that true? Just last night, Andrea Mitchell said something quite different. She said that the CIA’s George Tenet only learned that the docs were forged when he watched that March 7 report:
MITCHELL: Congress also wants to know, why didn’t the CIA ask to see the documents alleging that Saddam was trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger, documents published in Rome today, for more than a year until after the president’s speech? In fact, Tenet first learned those documents were blatant forgeries by watching the U.N. say so on television, just before the war started.Mitchell then played the March 7 footage of the IAEA report. In her report, Mitchell stated something we had long understood—that the CIA’s Tenet only learned that the documents were forged on March 7, when the IAEA report was presented. If true, that’s just an astonishing fact—one the press has yawned at for months. But Meyerson seems to imply something different—and uses it, in his bogus narration, to make Cheney look even more dishonest. Can you see that the facts haven’t proved real stubborn as the press corps has worked with this tale?
Readers, there’s more—much more—where this comes from. Basic facts about this new prize tale are being spun all through the press. Yes, we’d support a real review. But do you see why we put you on notice this week? Do you see why we warned that, as the “press corps” turns, basic facts will be grievously spun?
COMIC RELIEF: The headline on the Meyerson piece? You guessed it! “Inconvenient facts…”