?Sir, if I got my news from the newspapers also, I?d be pretty depressed as
well.? ? Captain Sherman Powell to Matt Lauer, Today, 8/17/05
If you were to believe what you see in the mass media, Iraq has become a
horrendous quagmire, with soldiers being killed almost on a daily basis, for
what turns out to have been a lie about weapons of mass destruction. To top it
off, after having nothing to do with terrorism, Iraq has now become a training ground
for al-Qaeda. But maybe not. The media has gotten things wrong before. Just
look at Dan Rather?s story about the memos concerning President Bush?s service
in the Texas Air National Guard, or how the battlefield victory of the 1968 Tet
Offensive was turned into a defeat with a few words from Walter Cronkite.
What is happening in Iraq is a failure by the media to give the American
people relevant information. This has probably colored public opinion on the
liberation of Iraq. The media?s failure has come in two areas. First, it has
failed to provide the news in context, often focusing on negatives. Second, it
has not brought evidence to the American people that would place the initial
decision to go in into context. Both of these failures have occurred often
enough that one cannot be blamed for wondering if a pattern of deception, by
omission, is not occurring.
The term ?deception by omission? might sound harsh, but it is accurate.
Deception does not need the active misrepresentation of facts, it can occur
when someone fails to reveal something relevant to the situation ? particularly
when the people leaving out some of the facts are advocating a specific course
of action (such as withdrawal
from Iraq ).
For instance, the media has often failed to report many of the successes.
This was a major complaint voiced by at least two columnists
who have served in Iraq. In the first case, the complaint is about the lack of
good news ( schools opened, rehabilitation of
infrastructure neglected by Saddam Hussein, and other news items
that don?t have the suddenness and shock value of a car bombing). The second
complaint is that the ?police blotter? coverage often obscures the ?big
picture? of what is going on. This is quite important as well. The insurgents
offer little more beyond murder, mayhem,
and terror.
The second, and more serious matter is the fact that the media has flat-out
omitted several pieces of information that tend to back up the decision to go
to war and put to rest claims that President Bush lied. Stephen
F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard
has documented
the connections between Saddam?s regime and al-Qaeda. This has been a
constantly repeated pattern.
In April,
2003, a pair of journalists discovered a memo in which the Mukhabarat
wanted to bring over a representative of Osama bin Laden to discuss ?the
future of our relationship with him?. The memo in question went through five translations
before the article was published, and the reporter in question, Mitch Potter,
admitted that he had been skeptical of the claims.
- Ahmed
Hikmat Shakir is someone else who has been ignored, except to be dismissed
as a case of mistaken id entity. Yet looking closely at the
circumstances of his capture (with contact information for safe houses
used in the 1993 World Trade Center attack and information on the 1995
plan to destroy airliners of the Pacific), and how he got his job as a
greeter at the airport in Kuala Lampur, one has to wonder just what the
deal was with him.
- Richard
Clarke?s e-mail opposing a U-2 mission over Afghanistan was also swept
under the rug. The rationale: It would warn bin Laden of an attack and
?old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad? (Chapter 4,
9-11 Commission Report). Note that Clarke claimed in 2004 that there
was no
connection at all. Yet this 180-degree shift in his position never
drew any notice in the outlets that initially published the charges.
- Finally,
there is an
evidence summary for an al-Qaeda detainee currently being held at
Guantanamo. The summary, reprinted
in a report by Hayes in the Weekly Standard, indicated that the
detainee traveled to Pakistan with an Iraqi intelligence agent in 1998 for
the purposes of carrying out a chemical mortar attack against the U.S. and
British embassies in Pakistan. Even though this attack was not carried
out, it was precisely the scenario that both President
Bush (?Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or
chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.?) and then-Secretary
of State Colin Powell (?Our concern is not just about these elicit
weapons. It's the way that these elicit weapons can be connected to
terrorists and terrorist organizations that have no compunction about
using such devices against innocent people around the world.?) warned
about in the run-up to the war.
These four instances would clearly
exonerate the President and his national security team of the most serious charges
laid against them by the anti-war movement. To wit, they prove that the
rationale for going to war was based in fact, not lies. Knowing that the threat
was real would certainly have an effect on public opinion.
In essence, the coverage of Iraq
that people have been getting from the media is a distorted picture that has
characterized by a distinct pattern of omission of facts that would support the
Administration. Given the call by Greg Mitchell for media outlets to
editorialize in favor of a withdrawal from Iraq, there is a serious question as
to whether or not these omissions are deliberate. If so, then the media is
guilty of deception by omission.
