Then there’s this perspective on the Neocon fiction that ‘everyone believed’:
"Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
But he ran into resistance from the paper’s editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, “helped sell the story,” Pincus recalled. “Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper.” Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17. . .
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?”
Michael Massing, a New York Review of Books contributor and author of the forthcoming book “Now They Tell Us,” on the press and Iraq, said: . . . on the key issue of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the paper was generally napping along with everyone else. It gave readers little hint of the doubts that a number of intelligence analysts had about the administration’s claims regarding Iraq’s arsenal." . . .
On Jan. 30, 2003, Pincus and Priest reported that the evidence the administration was amassing about Baghdad hiding weapons equipment and documents “is still circumstantial.” The story ran on Page A14. . .
Such decisions coincided with The Post editorial page’s strong support for the war, such as its declaration the day after (Colin) Powell’s (UN) presentation that “it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.” . . .
In mid-March, as the administration was on the verge of invading Iraq, Woodward stepped in to give the stalled Pincus piece about the administration’s lack of evidence a push.
“Despite the Bush administration’s claims” about WMDs, the March 16 Pincus story began, “U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress,” raising questions “about whether administration officials have exaggerated intelligence.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58127-2004Aug11.html
