Speaking of intelligence failures ... What looks like a qualified mea culpa on Richard Cohen's part in today's Washington Post ("A Failure of More than Intelligence") ends up in a whole nother place.

Shortly before the United States went to war in Iraq, I was in contact with a former member of the American intelligence community. This is what he told me: Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program, no chemical or biological weapons program to speak of, and no link to al Qaeda. He said that if America invaded, it would cost us "perhaps 1,000 casualties" and would lead to prolonged "terrorism and harassment." I thanked him very much for his views -- and urged the United States to attack anyway. Along with Don Quixote, I sometimes feel that facts are the enemy of truth.

The record will show, however, that as war approached I was expressing second thoughts. I urged patience since it was becoming obvious that my source might be right ... I knew that the most alarming case against Saddam Hussein -- that he was an imminent threat to the United States -- was a lie.

Urging "patience" in face of a determined rush to war, knowing the case being made for the war is founded in a lie, might seem to fall somewhat shy of the vigorous defense a journalist owes the truth; Cohen seems to think, though, that it's as much moral courage as could reasonably have been expected of him. This sort of bland, "I loved not wisely but too well" self-absolution may be the default position at this point of the pro-war liberal (Richard Cohen is nothing if not an articulator of the default position)—that doesn't make it any less infuriating.

It doesn't become positively disgusting, though, till Cohen allows himself this smarmy little flight of revisionist fantasy:

From the very start, [President Bush] had expressed the view that he had no need to read newspapers because, as he insisted, he got everything he needed from briefings. Unlike Bill Clinton, who got the PDB (the President's Daily Brief) on paper and routinely defaced it with questions and comments, Bush had briefings that were delivered orally, much like children's medicine. Much was made of them, but we now know they were worthless and sometimes misleading. ...

Had the president read the local newspaper, however, he might have raised the question of whether much of what he was being told was nonsense. Every piece of evidence the Bush administration was citing to support its assertion that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program was being challenged, usually by United Nations weapons inspectors. Sometimes these officials announced their findings; sometimes they were leaked in advance. Sometimes others made the case, even journalists in Iraq. All of this was in the press.

God help us, this Richard Cohen wants us to take as a stern, truth-to-power-speaking judgement on George Bush. If only the President had read the Washington Post, he might have learned skepticism. Oh yeah, Richard? In what alternate reality was that skeptical WaPo published, anyway? Because those of us who aren't privileged to live within the comfortable precincts of Cohenville never saw it.

With many [intelligence] analysts prepared to discuss the competing claims over the intelligence on Iraq, the press was in a good position to educate the public on the administration's justifications for war. Yet for the most part, it never did so. A survey of the coverage in November, December, and January reveals relatively few articles about the debate inside the intelligence community. Those articles that did run tended to appear on the inside pages. Most investigative energy was directed at stories that supported, rather than challenged, the administration's case.

Michael Massing, "Now They Tell Us"

An examination of the [Washington Post's] coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.

"The paper was not front-paging stuff," said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. "Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?"

Howard Kurtz, "The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story"

"If only George Bush had read diligently deep into the inner pages to which the Post relegated it, when it wasn't being suppressed entirely, he might have learned skepticism" doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?

Cohen ends his piece claiming, sententiously, that "the failure was not in intelligence. It was in political character." Obviously, I have a somewhat different take on whose character is being revealed here. If Richard Cohen wants to pretend to himself that his journalist's conscience was—is—decently active in the matter of the Iraq war, well, it's not like anyone can stop him. But he ought not to be allowed to lie about the record of his paper's coverage in the process.

posted by michael  1:11:39 PM  
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