'They Had Already Decided They Wanted to Invade Iraq'
CounterSpin interviews with Robert Dreyfuss and Diana Duarte on media and the Iraq War

http://fair.org/home/they-had-already-decided-they-wanted-to-invade-iraq/
Date Written:  2019-03-27
Publisher:  FAIR
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23602

MP3s and transcripts of two interviews about justifications for the Iraq war. One focused on intelligence on WMDs and the other on women's rights.

Abstract: 
--

Excerpt:

Many in media were critical of Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush, who used the March anniversary of the US's 2003 invasion of Iraq, based on what Americans were told was the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, as an opportunity to launch a Twitter tirade to say, "It's a myth that Bush lied." He and Bush "faithfully and accurately reported" intelligence community assessments, Fleischer maintained.

Media seemed concerned that Fleischer was insufficiently respectful of the toll of the Iraq War, including what the Washington Post modestly estimated as "thousands of dead Iraqis" - researchers would put that number at, minimally, half a million.

But Fleischer's revision isn't just wrong in emphasis or in sentiment. And we didn't have to wait 16 years to know that. In February 2004, CounterSpin spoke with investigative journalist Robert Dreyfuss about that pre-war intelligence on Iraq, and the role of a secret and largely unaccountable organization inside the Pentagon in manufacturing and publicizing it. We'll hear that interview again today.