As has been well established by now, the president started lying about al Qaeda’s role in Iraq earlier this year as part of a cynical approach to bolstering support for the war. While that was hardly unexpected, the more noticeable problem was that the media started playing along with the White House’s scheme, and began characterizing everyone who commits an act of violence in Iraq as an al Qaeda terrorist.
The New York Times, perhaps because of its stature, became one of the most noteworthy and obvious offenders. About a week ago, to his enormous credit, the Times’ public editor, Clark Hoyt, tackled the subject head on in a terrific column. Hoyt spoke with Susan Chira, the Times’ foreign editor, who acknowledged, “We’ve been sloppy.”
Today, the paper took steps to make amends.
In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”
It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown…. But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.
Will Bunch makes a reasonable case that the NYT’s use of phrases — “greatly oversimplified” — is far too charitable. The president is misleading people, on purpose, as part of a cynical ploy. Some might be willing to call it what it is: lying.
Maybe I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, but I was encouraged by the piece anyway. Even if the Times pulls its punches when it comes to drawing conclusions, it’s still offering a damning indictment of a president who’s obviously making a bogus pitch.
Indeed, the attention on the issue seems to be making the rounds nicely. Here’s Joe Klein’s latest in Time:
Recently, in [Bush’s] desperation, starting with his speech at the Naval War College on June 28, he has been telling an outright lie, and he repeated it now, awkwardly, in Cleveland: “The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims, trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty.” (emphasis added)
That is not true. The group doing the most spectacular bombings in Iraq was named al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia by its founder, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, now deceased, in an attempt to aggrandize his reputation in jihadi-world. It is a sliver group, representing no more than 5% of the Sunni insurgency. It shares a philosophy, but not much else, with the real al-Qaeda, which operates out of Pakistan. In fact, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia has been criticized in the past by the operational director of the real al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for its wanton carnage directed at Muslims.
Bush’s lie, which assumes a lack of knowledge on the part of the American people, was compounded by an outrageous bit of spin: “We just started [the surge],” the President said. General David Petraeus “got all the troops there a couple of weeks ago.” In fact, Operation Fardh al-Qanoon, the military effort to secure Baghdad, has been going on since February.
We have had more than four years of a President who seems to have such a low opinion of the public that he can’t bear to tell it the truth about a war gone sour.
It’s worth adding that a touch of blog triumphalism is probably in order. As Glenn Greenwald explained, bloggers identified Bush’s rhetorical shifts, did the leg work tracking down the examples, and pushed the story hard. Shortly thereafter, Hoyt’s column made this a big deal, and now we’re seeing the results elsewhere. It’s encouraging.
Now, if we could only get the president to feel enough shame to start telling people the truth….