JC:When Will There Be News on the Front Pages Instead of the Opinion Page?

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Sunday, May 15th, 2005

Krugman on Memo and Iraq - When Will There Be News on the Front Pages Instead of the Opinion Pages?

Today, in the Sunday Washington Post, I noted that the ombudsman had an excellent, though ultimately unsatisfactory, column on the Secret Downing Street Memo. In the Monday New York Times, columnist Paul Krugman chimes in. Krugman's work is always meticulous and brilliantly written, and this is no exception. But I am I alone in wondering: why is all the news in the papers on the opinion pages these days?

An excerpt from Krugman that shows why this story is not just about the past, but about the future:

"Is there any point, now that November's election is behind us, in revisiting the history of the Iraq war? Yes: any path out of the quagmire will be blocked by people who call their opponents weak on national security, and portray themselves as tough guys who will keep America safe. So it's important to understand how the tough guys made America weak.

There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the "Downing Street memo" - actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted."

I would simply add to Krugman's forward looking analysis, a backward looking one. Yes, elections are about accountability. But, even making the (demonstrably false) assumption that President Bush was elected last November, there was no accountability on Iraq. Why? Because the President and his surrogates denied that intelligence had been deliberately manipulated and denied that the President had made war with Iraq his first option. The news media, unintentionally complicit in the WMD scam, played along, making it an open question whether either of these things were true. The Democratic nominee's record in supporting the war also blurred the question.

Lacking any agreed upon facts, the American people were not presented with a choice of whether or not to elect President Bush despite his Administration's manipulation of intelligence and his apparent deceit about whether he had made up his mind to go to war. President Bush said he exhausted all options before going to war and the intelligence community made mistakes, and the media failed to confront him with dispositive contradictory evidence (in part because there was not any evidence as unimpeachable as the minutes of the Blair meeting and, in part, because the media allowed the President's men to assail the credibility of honorable former officials -- making identical contentions.)

Thus, there has been no real accountability moment. Until now.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/opinion/16krugman.html?hp&oref=login

May 16, 2005
Staying What Course?
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Is there any point, now that November's election is behind us, in revisiting the history of the Iraq war? Yes: any path out of the quagmire will be blocked by people who call their opponents weak on national security, and portray themselves as tough guys who will keep America safe. So it's important to understand how the tough guys made America weak. There has been notably little U.S. coverage of the "Downing Street memo" - actually the minutes of a British prime minister's meeting on July 23, 2002, during which officials reported on talks with the Bush administration about Iraq. But the memo, which was leaked to The Times of London during the British election campaign, confirms what apologists for the war have always denied: the Bush administration cooked up a case for a war it wanted.

Here's a sample: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." (You can read the whole thing at www.downingstreetmemo.com.) Why did the administration want to invade Iraq, when, as the memo noted, "the case was thin" and Saddam's "W.M.D. capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran"? Iraq was perceived as a soft target; a quick victory there, its domestic political advantages aside, could serve as a demonstration of American military might, one that would shock and awe the world.

But the Iraq war has, instead, demonstrated the limits of American power, and emboldened our potential enemies. Why should Kim Jong Il fear us, when we can't even secure the road from Baghdad to the airport? At this point, the echoes of Vietnam are unmistakable. Reports from the recent offensive near the Syrian border sound just like those from a 1960's search-and-destroy mission, body count and all. Stories filed by reporters actually with the troops suggest that the insurgents, forewarned, mostly melted away, accepting battle only where and when they chose. Meanwhile, America's strategic position is steadily deteriorating.

Next year, reports Jane's Defense Industry, the United States will spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Yet the Pentagon now admits that our military is having severe trouble attracting recruits, and would have difficulty dealing with potential foes - those that, unlike Saddam's Iraq, might pose a real threat. In other words, the people who got us into Iraq have done exactly what they falsely accused Bill Clinton of doing: they have stripped America of its capacity to respond to real threats. So what's the plan?

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1. Excellent

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