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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA 'OWN GOALS' IN THE GWOT
Newsweek's flub and Bush's by Joan Vennochi (on above) 
Newsweek's flub and Bush's By Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, May 19, 2005 SPEAKING OF mistakes and deceptions: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dredged up that old Bush myth during her recent surprise visit to Iraq -- the one that suggests a link between the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the US invasion of Iraq and continuing military presence. According to a statement of remarks released by the State Department, Rice said in Baghdad: ''You see, this war came to us, not the other way around. The United States of America, when it was attacked on Sept. 11, realized that we live in a world in which we cannot let threats gather, and that we lived in a world in which we had to have a different kind of Middle East if we were ever to have a permanent peace." In Bagdhad, Rice also said: ''The absence of freedom in the Middle East, the freedom deficit, is what has produced the ideologies of hatred that led people to fly airplanes into a building on a fine September day. People don't want to be suicide bombers, people don't want to be suicide hijackers, but somehow the ideologies of hatred in this region have become so great that human beings have been willing to do that to other human beings . . . We got a malignancy that was growing, that came to haunt us on that fine September day." The bipartisan commission which investigated the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks concluded there was ''no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein's government collaborated with the terrorists who attacked the United States. No direct link has yet to be established between Saddam Hussein and, as Rice put it, the ''malignancy that was growing." Fifteen of the 19 men who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, but President Bush is still holding hands and sashaying down a Crawford, Texas, path with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah. The remaining four hijackers came from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon. In Baghdad, Rice also offered up the revised Bush administration script for justifying the Iraq invasion -- regime change. The new script ignores any mention of the original, key justification for war in Iraq, as presented to Congress and the American public: the alleged stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction by Hussein. The original justification is now accepted as a mistake of intelligence, at the very least. On the day of Rice's visit, Iraqi officials announced the discovery of 46 bodies at sites in and near Baghdad, three suicide bombings, and three shootings, including one that killed a revered Shi'ite cleric. But luckily for the White House, the Rice visit and the gruesome violence were overshadowed by the furor over Newsweek magazine's retraction of an article that stated that American interrogators tried to rattle Muslim detainees by flushing a Koran down a toilet. The report is being blamed for inciting widespread protests and riots in the Muslim world. Newsweek's bad mistake is very good news for the Bush administration. The commander-in-chief is playing editor-in-chief. Instead of answering questions about what is really happening in Iraq, the White House is asking what happened at Newsweek. Newsweek published a mistake; get angry about that, if you like. But the Bush administration went to war over a mistake -- the alleged existence of WMD -- and a deception -- the never-proven link between Iraq and Sept. 11. So far, 1,623 American soldiers are dead and another 15,000 are wounded. Insurgents continue to slaughter Iraqis; nearly 500 have been killed since the April 28 announcement of a Shi'ite-dominated government. There is still no obvious end game in Iraq, just the hope that somehow, over time, some version of democracy will win out over suicide bombers and religious fanatics. The course chosen by the Bush administration spawned anti-American sentiment around the world. And the Bush administration continues to deceive, as demonstrated by Rice's recent remarks. In Baghdad, Rice said, ''Our children and our children's children will look back, and they will say, we are so grateful that there were Americans willing to sacrifice, so that the Middle East could be whole, and free and democratic and at peace. And that never again would we have to fight terrorists on our soil, in America." Her expectation is pinned upon an administration's mistakes and deceit. The Bush legacy truly rests on whether the end, if it ever comes, justifies the means. Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com. |