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This is a long piece, but worth a read. He dissects Tweety and his rhetoric. ENJOY! David Fiderer Chris Matthews Rewrites History about the Clintons and the Origins of the Iraq WarOn last Wednesday's Hardball, Chris Matthews asked a rhetorical question that no one answered. So I will. "I'm amazed now that Bill Clinton has come out and said he's Jerry Rubin. I mean, he's now become -- announced the fact that he's been against the war -- I love the phrase, "from the beginning." Within a few hours, by the way, the verb -- the verb tense changed from the past to the present. This is like the old "is" is question. He's now against the war, having promised the voters a few minutes before that that he was against it. Now he's just saying he is against it, a lesser claim. I don't remember him speaking out against the war back in 2001, 2002 and 2003, do you?" I sure do. A few minutes on a fee-based search engine jogged my memory. Here are few clippings: "Clinton Splits With Bush on Iraq," The Washington Post March 13, 2003 "Former president Bill Clinton, who has generally supported the Bush administration's Iraq policy in recent remarks, called on his successor yesterday to accept a more relaxed timeline in exchange for support from a majority of the United Nations Security Council members. .. he former president has publicly espoused an approach substantially different from the administration's public stance."
"Deadline for war - Give the inspectors more time, urges Clinton" The Daily Telegraph March 13, 2003 "Bill Clinton yesterday urged the Bush administration to give Hans Blix as much time as he wants to complete weapons inspections in Iraq. The former president broke ranks with his successor...Mr Clinton said war might yet be avoided if Saddam Hussein were given more time to disarm. "
"Clinton recommends U.S. patience on Iraq," Reuters, February 11, 2003. "Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday the United States should exercise patience in its standoff with Iraq to help build allied support for a potential strike."
Hardball, February 12, 2003,when Chris Matthews asks "Christopher Hitchens, are you upset that President Clinton has emerged as a critic and perhaps a mild-mannered critic of the policy of this administration on the eve of war?" <snip>
<snip>
On March 18, 2003, everyone (who was willing to look) knew with substantial certainty that:
11. UN inspections had discredited the NIE,
12. The White House made no effort to reconcile the inspectors findings with their prior intelligence assumptions,
13. The White House offered nothing substantive to refute the inspectors' findings,
14. Hans Blix said the inspectors, who found nothing that presented even a remote danger to the US or Europe, could complete their work in a matter of months,
15. George Bush had promised to call for another Security Council vote to invade, and ("Everyone will show their cards,") and totally disregarded that promise a few days later,
16. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and others said their was insufficient basis for launching a war at that time
17. Most of our allies were - including Britain - also advocating more time for the inspections to be completed, and
18. And that mainstream media never seriously considered or reported Numbers 11 through 16 above.
Put another way, Number 18 meant that, at a time in the world when a journalist's professionalism and integrity counted most, Helen Thomas stood virtually alone in the Beltway press corps, courageously asking hard questions while surrounded by cowards. Tim Russert's sycophancy stands out because he repeatedly lied about the inspectors.
To this day, Chris Matthews forgets about the elephant in the room. He interviewed White House speech writer Michael Gerson, John McCain, and George Tenet, each of whom repeated the canard that they believed at the time of the invasion that Saddam had WMD. Matthews never referenced the reports by Blix and ElBaradei, which prove that their "beliefs" were based on a reckless indifference to the truth.
When interviewing Tenet on May 7, 2007 Matthews said,
"Most Americans were for this war for two reasons: one, payback -- it was even in our country music, 'Remember How You Felt?' -- and the fear of a nuclear weapon, that they actually had a delivery system, this balsam wood plan they were going to use to bring over here and attack us with."
And you know why they believed that? Because Chris Matthews and glossed over information that put us all on notice. On March 7, 2003, ElBaradei said, "The IAEA has yet to come across evidence of a nuclear weapons program. "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.""
We knew enough on March 7, 2003, months before Joe Wilson spoke out or David Kay's inspectors began snooping around. You know why we knew? Because the administration offered nothing in rebuttal and because their reliance on such a crude forgery showed that they were incompetent. It's plain common sense which Matthews and others failed to consider then or now.
To bring things back full circle, Bill Clinton made a comment that was 90% accurate, Hillary Clinton made comments that were 100% accurate, yet they are accused by the media chronically feeding us doubletalk. You what to know what real doubletalk is? Check out Howard Kurtz' interview with Tom Brokaw:
HOWARD KURTZ: Most people would say, and I would agree, the media did a pretty poor job during the run-up to the Iraq War in terms of the way that President Bush was selling it, and now, of course, the coverage in recent years has been more critical.
BROKAW: Yes. The one thing I would disagree with you about, a lot of what happened on the run-up was unknowable. People did believe he had weapons of mass destruction. People who were critical of the war and the idea of going to war did in fact think that he had weapons of mass destruction, which was one of the bases for...
KURTZ: But shouldn't journalists have been more skeptical toward the line the administration was selling, even if they couldn't disprove it and given it more...
BROKAW: I think on the execution... (CROSSTALK)
BROKAW: I think on the war plan they should have been a lot more skeptical.
KURTZ: And given more space, more air time to opposition voices? There was a feeling... (CROSSTALK)
BROKAW: Yes, but remember -- you have to remember, the opposition voices were not that many in this town, for example, in Washington. There just weren't that many....
"Not that many opposition voices in this town"? How about 230 miles north in New York, where Brokaw lived and worked? Did Brokaw conveniently forget the names Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei?
Arianna and Keith Olbermann perfectly dissected Karl Rove's transparent and ugly lies about the beginning of the Iraq war. But at the end of the day, it's the historical whitewashing by Chris Matthews and Tom Brokaw that poses a far greater danger to our political discourse. Not because it maligns the Clintons, but because it obstructs our ability to look at cause and effect or any individual's responsibility. And because it remains the conventional wisdom.
Addendum: (11:40 pm) The piece was not intended as a wholesale defense of Hillary Clinton's October 2002 vote, or of Bill Clinton's public statements during the run up to the war. Rather it was about how the press dismisses any valid points they wish to make. And Senator Clinton's point in particular reminds us that everyone was put on notice about the absence of WMD before we invaded. In other words, the fact that George Tenet told Bush, "It's a slam dunk!" was totally irrelevant when Woodward published his book. And any suggestion that Bush made an honest mistake, or that we did not know better, is a pervasive and very dangerous canard.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/chris-matthews-rewrites-h_b_75089.html |
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