Greg Mitchell RIPS (WP Richard Cohen - Then vs Now Column(s) re: Iraq

[otohara]

Richard Cohen, the Washington Post columnist, declared on Thursday that President Bush "wanted war" in Iraq, and the White House case for it was mainly false. Yet, three years ago, Cohen wrote that "only a fool" could doubt the president and the need for war.

By Greg Mitchell

(March 30, 2006) -- Richard Cohen, the longtime Washington Post columnist sometimes accused of being a “liberal,” produced a strong column today, titled “Bush Wanted War.” In it he said he had long been skeptical of this idea, but now had come to accept it. That’s all well and good, but where was Cohen a little more than three years ago, when this fact was as plain as the smirk on the president’s face, and the columnist agitated for war anyway?

If there was an “I’m sorry for being so stupid” embedded in Cohen’s column I didn’t spot it.

This is the man who, on Feb. 6, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deeply-flawed testimony in New York, wrote: “The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise.”

Yet Cohen has the nerve to write today: “Colin Powell, you may recall, soiled his stellar reputation with a United Nations speech that is now just plain sad to read. Almost none of it is true.”

What about Cohen’s reputation?

Now Cohen observes that “Paul Wolfowitz was obsessed with Iraq, and that seems to have been true of the White House as well.” Of course, this was well-known in 2003, if you looked for it, but it didn’t stop Cohen from cheerleading for the war.

Today Cohen notes there is “plenty of evidence had Saddam on his mind and in his sights from the very moment he got the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” He concludes: “Whatever Bush's specific reason or reasons, the one thing that's so far missing from the record is proof of him looking for a genuine way out of war instead of looking for a way to get it started. Bush wanted war. He just didn't want the war he got.”

Sadly, the same can be said of Cohen.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_...

[MADem]

1. This has EVERYTHING to do with the culture of FEAR at WAPO

And our old pal, Eminence Gris Bob Woodward, who had WAAAAAAY too much clout for his status over there. He was one of the lunatics running the damn asylum.

This piece is long, and is a study of PLAMEGATE, but it illustrates the climate over there, and elsewhere: http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/printables/060320roco02?print=true

I. THE SCRIMSHAW ARTISTS
March 15, 2003, Washington
"I have doubts," Walter Pincus told Bob Woodward in the newsroom of The Washington Post that Saturday. "I am hearing they may not exist."


Pincus braced himself for the invariable Woodward response when he was about to disagree with a friend: I would be careful with that. His tone was often custodial, and he could sound condescending, as if he alone were in possession of all the facts. At 59, Woodward, the son of a judge, had the decency of a Dodsworth, but he often behaved as if he were surrounded by stones. His conversation carried the implication of inside information.

All winter long, Pincus, who knew more about weapons and defense systems than almost any other reporter in the capital, and Woodward, his longtime colleague, had been going around and around with each other on the subject of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or W.M.D. In the 70s, Woodward and Carl Bernstein had helped topple the Nixon presidency, and since then Woodward had reached the stage of importance where his sources often came to him. But as Washington prepared for war, Pincus and Woodward were sifting and resifting what they heard from their sources at the State Department, the Pentagon, the White House, and the C.I.A. It was a time when reporters were chasing shadows on a screen. Both men would soon come to know more about the overarching power of the White House Iraq Group, the president's policies to sell the war, and the machinery behind the campaign to inflate Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress.

Now Pincus had written the first draft of a story that stated in the strongest terms he was capable of that the W.M.D. claim was not supported by any real evidence. He spent that Saturday making a desperate attempt to convince an editor on the national desk of the rightness of the article and trying to persuade him to push it into the Sunday edition.

"I have a piece that casts doubt on this whole thing," Pincus told Woodward.
"What whole thing?"
"The weapons. I am picking up all over the place that there are no weapons," Pincus said, and girded himself for the usual Woodward response.
But Woodward startled him. "I am picking that up, too," he said.
"You are?"
"Yes," Woodward said. "There seem to be real doubts now. Let me see what you have written and let's see if we can get it into the paper."

........Pincus at 71 retained the lean and hungry look he had had as a young man, but he radiated a sense of gloom. He taught a seminar on public policy at Stanford in Washington, and he had been devoting 20 minutes of each session to the inevitability of the coming war. Pincus often talked to his class about the decline in news standards and how Rupert Murdoch and deregulation had changed everything, resulting in the 24-7 news cycle and the Fox propaganda machine. Many of his students worked on the Hill or in government. Future podcasters, they absorbed much of their information from the growing mass of bloggers and other Web sites. It was obvious to them that the news business was undergoing a seismic transformation: newspapers were being hammered; young readers were falling away. Pincus had just discovered Jon Stewart, the satirical-news phenomenon, but blogs and the folkways of digital natives were a dim and secondary arena for him. He knew that Washington had changed since the 1970s, and that his kind of reporting, no matter how crucial, was no longer central to the news game. In a way, he and Woodward had become as antiquated as scrimshaw artists..........."You'll see," Woodward had been telling Pincus. "They are moving stuff around at night in Iraq. The W.M.D. will all be found.".....

[otohara]

2. Thanks

for this

[MADem]

3. The whole article is instructive, it really shows what a bunch of

cowed douches some of them were. None of the "press" comes out smelling like a rose.

[Gabi Hayes]

7. you've been doing some great stuff lately, madem! thanks for that

article

and thanks to Vanity Fair, too

they've been doing actual journalism for quite some time. some of their columnists are excellent, as well

what month did this article appear in? no mention from the link

reading it now...THANKS!



in loving memory of my dad, who had his ass blown off (literally) on a Belgian bridge, just prior to the Battle of the Bulge, and all the others who died fighting FASCISM

[MADem]

9. I think this was just last month. They aren't letting up.

They did a great piece on Fitz fairly recently as well. I guess they figure that wedged between the pictures of angry, hungry impossibly attractive ladies in extreme clothing and makeup, and pouty young men with abs, they really need to take a stand. I'm glad someone is doing it!

[Gabi Hayes]

4. I LOVE Greg MItchell

somebody posted a great column of his the other day....I'll see if I can find it

[Gabi Hayes]

5. link doesn't work for me, though....

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002275180

[Gabi Hayes]

6. here's a great column on the Post blogger fiasco

(March 25, 2006) -- The Washington Post announced last night (play along with me here, folks) that President George W. Bush had agreed to replace Ben Domenech as the “Red America” blogger at the newspaper’s popular Web site. Bush contributed his first Web posting today, in which he thanked his old rival, Al Gore, for “inventing the internets.”

Domenech had been forced out Friday amid charges of rampant plagiarism. Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, said that he was searching for a conservative to replace Domenech, but the quick Bush hiring still came as a surprise. A Post spokesman said, "Last time we hired someone for that blog who had worked for the White House. So why not go straight to the top?"


The spokeman said the Post was confident the president had never plagiarized because “he hasn’t written anything himself since college”--but this time, unlike in the Domenech case, “we spent a few minutes googling just to make sure.” He added that the Post does not screen bloggers for “misleading statements or outright lies” in their past.

Asked how the president could blog and govern at the same time, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan explained, “He has promised to stay up late each night, until 10 p.m., to work on it—in his pajamas, as is customary for bloggers, we understand.”

[otohara]

8. New Link

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002275180