CBS Face the Nation featured interviews with Barack Obama and George W. Bush this weekend (11/9/14), and part of the latter discussion covered the Iraq War. The show provided one more chance for Bush, with an assist from host Bob Schieffer, to misstate some facts about the decision to invade:
SCHIEFFER: Were you surprised, when you gave the ultimatum to Saddam, that he didn’t leave? Did you think there was a chance he might leave?
BUSH: I really did. Yeah.
SCHIEFFER: You really did?
BUSH: I did. Yeah. You know when he was captured, I was told that the FBI agent that talked to him, he said, “I just didn’t believe Bush.” And it’s hard for me to believe he didn’t believe me.
SCHIEFFER: Mm-hm.
BUSH: We’d given an ultimatum to the Taliban and delivered–I make the point in the book, of course, that–and Dad understood this better than anybody–that when you say something as president, you better mean it. Words mean something.
SCHIEFFER: Mm-hm.
BUSH: And he was very clear at times during his presidency, and meant it. I thought I was pretty clear at times during my presidency, and meant it. Saddam Hussein didn’t believe us, so I was surprised.
SCHIEFFER: But you thought that he would believe you, and that he would leave?
BUSH: I thought that there was a chance. Yeah, I certainly hoped so, but he didn’t. And so that’s why I put in the book he chose war.
The implication is pretty clear: The war happened when Saddam Hussein decided he wouldn’t leave Iraq. Before the Face the Nation interview aired, CBS Evening News (11/7/14) broadcast a portion of it, with anchor Scott Pelley saying: “It was in 2003 that President George W. Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq after Saddam Hussein defied an ultimatum to give up power.”
But in reality, the war was going to happen no matter what Saddam Hussein did. As FAIR (Press Release, 3/19/03) noted at the time, amidst the media hoopla over Bush’s declaration, the New York Times (3/18/03) very clearly reported, under the headline “Allies Will Move In, Even if Saddam Hussein Moves Out,” that a US-led invasion would happen no matter what:
Even if Saddam Hussein leaves Iraq within 48 hours, as President Bush demanded, allied forces plan to move north into Iraqi territory, American officials said today.
The paper added:
Even if Mr. Hussein were to be ousted in a sudden coup, a military intervention seems very likely. The question no longer seems to be whether American and British troops will enter Iraq but under what circumstances.
Perhaps it is fitting that Bush would say, “When you say something as president, you better mean it”–and then say something so demonstrably false. It would have been nice for CBS to point this out.
One of the primal functions of the corpress is to make true history a real mystery
@Doug Latimer Thanks. I think you have it figured out.
Da nada, Tom.
After forty some odd years of exposure to this odiosity, I’d like to think I’ve sussed some measure of its mendacity.
I don’t think he is lying. But I do think it is like saying “President Bush, we are in a war with your country. Will you please step down?”
Saddam would you please step down. So…they could do as they please? We want your treasury, artifacts and oil leases. Israel hates you.
Bush was *totally* lying — and anyone who’s bothered to do the research and connect the dots is aware of it. The invasion was pretty much a done deal the moment Bush took the Oath of Office, because several high-level members of his administration — the most prominent being Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz (although they weren’t the only ones) — were actually charter members of a neoconservative think tank called Project for a New American Century (PNAC) which was agitating for regime change in Iraq at least two years before Clinton left office and was in favor of increasing US military presence around the world generally. 9-11 gave them the perfect excuse and the perfect opportunity to go after what they wanted, but there’s evidence to suggest the Bush administration was already looking for ways to rationalize moving against and into Iraq within the first few weeks of Bush’s first term. (I recommend an excellent documentary called “Why We Did It” that ties the pieces together and yet doesn’t even mention the PNAC ties which further support the idea that the fix was in from day one.)
Indeed Bluestocking, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neal reported that the invasion of Iraq/regime change there was discussed at the very first cabinet meeting in Jan. of 2001. Had heard reports that Sadaam was negotiating with the CIA to leave the country if that would forestall the invasion but the Bush administration refused to negotiate. They wanted control of the oil.
Bush and his ilk also frequently toss out statements about how they went to the UN before invading (which is true) suggesting that the UN was in favor of the invasion (which is false).
Lost completely is the fact that Iraq was largely cooperating with UN mandated (and farcical) weapons inspections. I remember Saddam’s guys dismantling rockets in compliance with our demands, right up to the night of the invasion. So absurd. I’m sure we didn’t actually expect them to cooperate with any of it, so it put us in a bit of an awkward position when they did and we had to invade anyway. Guess what…it wasn’t actually about the weapons! JK hahaha lol!
Even I was surprised we didn’t find (or plant) anything after the invasion. I totally believed Iraq likely had some chemical weapons at the very least. I just didn’t believe that we viewed them as a real threat, and thought we were just using “WMD’s” as a pretext for invasion.
I was totally prepared for us to find anything from a few canisters of Sarin, up to a nuke or something and then for that to be trotted out to a credulous public as a “See, I told you Saddam was bad!”
When we didn’t ever find anything, or plant anything? That was so crazy if you’d have put it in a novel, nobody would believe it. They’d be all, “Ok, I GET IT! Enough with the hamfisted satire already!”
Anyway, thanks CBS, NPR, and other major news outlets for providing obscure figures like former 2 term president of the United States George W. Bush with an outlet for airing previously unheard viewpoints! And for keeping it civil and not muddying up the interview with things like calling bullshit on ancient demonstrably false nonsense. What is Schieffer’s pre-interview research routine? Reviewing the interviewee’s favorite colors? Looking at Facebook while sitting on the can?
Mmmm that’s good Journalism!
Saddam’s “I didn’t believe bush”, if that story isn’t apocryphal, might be getting misinterpreted. He wasn’t saying “I didn’t step down because I didn’t think he’d actually invade”. He was saying, “I don’t believe Bush. I’m not an idiot. I may be a tyrant and a murderous dickhead, but come on. Don’t tell me you believe Bush! What are you, a baby?”
We can expect politicians such as Bush to be pretty despicable.
But Scheiffer is the guy who really makes himself an enemy of the people — he tries to put Bush in a good light but has nothing but scorn for a guy like Ed Snowden. And he scorns Snowden precisely because Snowden wants to bring truth to the people.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Sayeth Georgie: “I was pretty clear at times during my presidency.” Yeah about twice. When he stole the election in 2000. And that time in 2006 when the shower in the Whitey House suddenly went cold on him and he screamed for Laura’s assistance. Oh wait, that third time about 2005 when Bush went to the National Press Club and got down on his hands and knees, joking about the missing WMD, while US soldiers were savaging and being savaged in Iraq, and the civilian death count was somewhere near 200,000. Frigging hilarious. Love your wit Doug Latimer. Precisely. About those inspections. The inspectors were in Iraq until about six weeks before the invasion and had turned up not a scintialla of a WMD, when they were unilaterally withdrawn antecedent to Bush’s mass murder spree. I think Goebbels was cryogenically frozen, another state secret, we’ll probably soon see a return of Ted Williams, and now inhabits the Schieffer doppelganger.
@doug latimer, ..and the *mystery* is supportive of THE MYTH?
or is a substantial part of the myth? or does it totally *become* the myth?
Quoting (the young and wonderful )Andrew Gavin Marshall, who quotes JFK,
“The myth sweeps aside the facts and complex nature of terror, al-Qaeda, the American empire, and literally defies the law of physics.” [Marshall writes here about 911 in a multi-part “The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda” and continues ] .. ” As John f. Kennedy once said, ‘the greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth- persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.’ “
I have read other stories that say Saddam Hussein WAS going to leave, but Bush & Cheney disregarded it, because it was their plan all along to go to war against Iraq. There were 6 other countries they planned to take on, including Afghanistan and Iran, just to name two others. It was the Bush/Cheney screw-ups and the fact it didn’t turn out to be the “slam-dunk” Cheney said it would be … that caused them to have to stop invading other countries.
Much obliged, potshot
janice, I’d say that the myth possesses all of those attributes
Deliberate, contrived, dishonest, persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic
With the last more precisely defined as disconnected to reality.
The myth is the Holy Grail of the propagandist. It’s often designed to infect not merely the mind, but the bileful soul, of its targets. It seeks to speak beyond their intellect, to their fears and fury.
It is the masterpiece of that most dark art.
Well as we move forward proving that Saddam did break every promise signed in the surrender document including him saying while under arrest he planned to rearm in all ways.And that we found 5000 chem warheads.We realize war was comming and it was only a matter of time.His surrender accord said if he broke one caviet that we would attack.We did not and this emboldened him.