When an open society suffers the misfortune of being dragged into a war 8,000 miles away from home, most people would want the government to tell them candidly about the latest developments in the conflict. Regrettably, however, during the U.S. invasion of Iraq neither the President nor the Defense Department published accurate and detailed daily or weekly reports about our gains and losses. What we did get were occasional statements from Mr. Bush and his associates. And what did we learn?
On March 19, 2003, the President told us that “American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” Already three days earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney had confided to Meet the Press: "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." Seven weeks into the invasion, Mr. Bush declared the "Mission Accomplished.”
Although the capture of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had been touted as the main purpose of the invasion, they could not be found. Nevertheless, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld assured us on March 30 that "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
On May 29, Mr. Bush mistakenly told Polish television: "We found the weapons of mass destruction." On June 24, Mr. Rumsfeld offered yet a different response: "I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons." And on July 9, when those weapons still had not been found, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer got impatient with another questioner: "I think the burden is on those people who think he (Hussein) didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."
When there were media reports of widespread looting in occupied areas, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld explained that "stuff happens": "Freedom is untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
When assaults on U.S. troops kept increasing, he explained to reporters: zSB(3,3) “In those regions where pockets of dead-enders are trying to reconstitute, General Franks and his team are rooting them out. In short, the coalition is making good progress.” Later, the President agreed: “There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on.”
Six weeks before his reelection, Mr. Bush told voters: “I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America.” By May 30, 2005, Vice President Cheney was even more upbeat when he told CNN’s Larry King: “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
On June 27, however, Mr. Rumsfeld was not so certain: “Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, ten, twelve years,” he commented on Fox News. Yet, on February 2, 2006, he told the Washington Times: “Is Iraq going to be a long war? No, I don’t believe it is.”
As the insurgency continued unabated into 2007, Senator McCain came to the defense of the commander-in-chief when, on March 27, he claimed that Iraq had become safer. “General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee,” the senator asserted (even though humvees are probably never unarmed). Five days later, NBC reported McCain had strolled through a Baghdad market, accompanied by 100 soldiers, three blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships.
Throughout the four and a half years of the war, the President and his advisers have failed to inform the nation regularly and truthfully. If it were not for dozens of independent reporters, often searching for the facts in harms’ way, what would we know of the realities in war-torn Iraq?