In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
The Cowardly Broadcasting System
CBS cravenly killed a "60 Minutes" segment about Bush's deceptive case for invading Iraq. What did it contain that was too much for voters to see?
(its salon, so you'll have to watch on at to read the article... but it is worth it)."Two years ago, Americans heard some frightening words from President Bush and his closest advisors," Bradley said in his introduction of the now-shelved report. "Saddam Hussein, they said, could soon have a nuclear bomb. Of course, we now know that wasn't true." Not only did Saddam not have a nuclear program, Bradley said, but "he hadn't for more than 10 years. How could the Bush administration be so wrong about something so important?"
The answer, Bradley was to have told viewers, "has a lot to do with a single piece of evidence: A set of documents that appear to prove Saddam was secretly buying uranium ore." The mysterious surfacing of the forged Niger documents, Bradley said, helped "explain why President Bush and his cabinet delivered the frightening message we all heard in the early autumn two years ago." The broadcast then cut to video clips of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice making public statements with eerily similar wording:
"We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," Cheney said in an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Cut to Rumsfeld: "We do now know that Saddam Hussein has been actively and persistently" pursuing nukes. Then, Rice, on a television talk show, insisted: "We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon."
By showing the video clips in rapid succession, the television piece conveyed, in a manner beyond the printed word, how deliberate and practiced was the administration's sense of urgency.
Bradley then interviewed Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (No one from the Bush administration or any Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee would cooperate, Bradley told viewers.) Biden said in the run-up to the war, he had been perplexed by the remarks of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, because nothing he knew about Iraq's nuclear threat squared with their claims. Asked why he thought they were making such dire pronouncements, Biden said: "What's the one way to energize the American public to go to war? The threat of nuclear weapons."
Cut to Bush: "We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." The expression on Bush's face as he speaks portentously was a look of concern. Yet, had the segment aired, the viewer would have understood that the president was not telling the truth.
- rob 12:50 PM - [PermaLink] -
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