Should press make case for or against war in Iraq?
By Natalie Cortes
11.26.02
WASHINGTON — A former U.S. ambassador says it's the Bush administration's job, not the news media's, to explain to the American public why the United States should or should not attack Iraq.
But Dennis Ross, who was special Middle East coordinator under President Clinton and also helped shape Mideast policy in the first Bush administration, said Nov. 18 that the press did have the role of explaining what the White House says about its actions toward Saddam Hussein's regime. Ross and other panelists spoke at a program at the National Press Club co-sponsored by the press club and the Newseum.
Why the Bush administration has made disarming Iraq one of its main foreign-policy objectives has been at the center of public debate for several months. Though major newspapers across America have examined how serious a threat Saddam Hussein poses to the United States and its allies, journalists and the public are struggling to determine why the crisis with Iraq looms so large more than 10 years after the United States' victory in the Persian Gulf War. The panel, "Attack on Iraq: Coverage and Controversy," addressed such questions as whether it was the press's duty to make the case for or against war against Iraq.
Ross, now director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that although President George W. Bush and his advisers shifted the focus of U.S. foreign policy from Middle East peace to Iraq early on in his administration, it was the shock of Sept. 11 that "convinced them that they could not put the United States in a position where it might be surprised again, only this time with much more catastrophic results."
But for Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor of Peace at the University of Maryland, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 didn’t give the administration any more reason to go after Saddam Hussein because no evidence of Iraq’s involvement has surfaced. The attacks did create momentum for action against Iraq, however, he said.
"Clearly one of the biggest problems for the war option prior to 9/11 was (that) the American public wasn’t going to support mobilizing 250,000 troops that would be required to send to Iraq. 9/11 and the fear that came with that and the ability of the president to mobilize the American people provided that opportunity and certainly also international support," Telhami said.
Some journalists covering the Iraq story believe the administration has confused the public with a changing list of arguments about why attacking Iraq is vital to our national security.
Jane Mayer, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, said the White House had offered several rationales: "[Hussein] may be connected to Al Qaeda. He may be somehow in the world of international terrorism [although] the CIA [said], Well, actually we can’t find the links. And then [there was] the possibility that [Hussein was only] months away from developing nuclear weapons," Mayer said.
She added that it would have been easier for the press to probe many of those arguments had there been real opposition to the administration’s policies by the Democrats.
Throughout the Iraq debate, many have charged that the biggest failure of U.S. policy was in not toppling Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War. "I think initially in the first Bush administration there was a genuine desire to have him fall, but not a readiness to do anything to actually promote it … . There’s no question there was a kind of assumption that fragmentation of Iraq would be very destabilizing," Ross said.
Andrew Cockburn, co-author of the book Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, echoed that view, saying the senior Bush administration’s thinking was that "Iraq can be a problem but with Saddam in charge at least it’s a.) united … and b.) it’s demonized, it’s isolated … . And this administration for whatever reason … wants to upset that. I think part of the reason was that up until 9/11 … the sanctions policy was increasingly discredited worldwide."
One criticism Ross offered of news coverage of the Iraqi crisis was the great attention given to the Iraqi parliament’s vote against the United Nations resolution. "That was about the only time that I saw something and I said, 'Who do they think these guys are? Do they think that they have even the slightest possibility of even doing anything that would be reflective of what Saddam doesn’t want,'" he said.
Cockburn was also critical of how the press reported the issue of weapons inspectors serving as spies. Current coverage suggests that Hussein has alleged without evidence that inspectors were spying, "when in fact there were a number of very well-sourced, entirely credible, true stories about how the inspectors had become an espionage operation," Cockburn said.
Ross countered, "While it is true that it was reported back in 1999 ... that the inspectors were providing intelligence, it’s also important not to forget that basically Saddam was doing everything he could to frustrate our learning anything. He was blocking the inspectors from the beginning."
One of the reasons, according to Telhami, that Saddam Hussein has been so secretive about his ability to produce weapons of mass destruction is his fear of external threats. "Since the 1990s, I think that he may have seen the weapons of mass destruction as one way to save himself and his regime from outside threats, not from internal threats," he stated.
Telhami added that another element that may keep Hussein from being upfront about his weapons is his possible belief that the U.S. will attack no matter what. "If he believes that war is inevitable and he does have weapons of mass destruction, he’s going to not be so quick in revealing his hand," he said.