In the wake of the revelations in Scott McClellan's new book, What Happened, some leading TV pundits and reporters have taken to the airways to admit that there was some truth in his charge that they were "complicit enablers" in the march to war in Iraq. Many others have denied all that.

What is most appalling, however, is that it took McClellan's book to produce a debate about this tremendously vital subject at all. And that brings us to one of the most iconic figures of all, Tom Brokaw.

More than two months ago, I wrote here and elsewhere that I found it appalling that in the orgy of coverage of the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war back in March, the media reviewed every aspect of the war and pointed fingers everywhere, except at the media. There was almost no self-assessment, after five years of war. I observed then that this revealed a disturbing, and continuing, mode of denial or defensiveness -- or else a shocking failure to realize what the war has wrought as the greatest blunder and catastrophe in our recent history. I made this same point in the New York Times last Friday. And, naturally, before that, in my new book.

Now, post-McClellan, some top media figures are, at least, self-assessing - but in most cases have concluded that they performed quite adequately in the run-up to the war. So the "coverup" continues.

Rather than review all that has been said, and left unsaid, in the past few days, I will simply perform the service of providing the transcript of an interview that has gotten some attention via a video at the MSNBC site, but never quoted in full due to the lack of a transcript. It deserves full study.

It features current NBC anchor Brian Williams interviewing former anchor Tom Brokaw (he was still in that seat when we went to war) four nights ago. Brokaw's bankrupt arguments could stand as Exhibit A in the media's continuing failure to admit complicity in the human, financial, and moral disaster that is the Iraq war.

Consider just a few elements. Brokaw says, "But this president was determined to go to war. It was more theology than it was anything else. It was pretty hard to deal with." So "hard" that the media didn't even try hard to "deal" with the 'theology." NBC and others chose to focus on the "evidence" of WMD rather than the evidence that the administration was simply bent on going to war, WMD or not.

Brokaw, to make light of McClellan's charges, also declares that "all wars are based on propaganda." He even mentions World War II. For Brokaw, who has embraced the notion of that being the "good war," to put the Iraq invasion in the same class is outrageous. There is a huge difference between admitting that there is a propaganda element to every war - and pointing out that certain wars are mainly based on propaganda and that a country has been misled, or lied, into war. Surely, Brokaw doesn't think FDR hyped the Japanese and German threat -- or was hellbent on war.

As for mantra of "the context of the time": The context was that the attack on Iraq took place fully 18 months after 9/11. We had already blasted the forces who had actually hit us on 9/11, which should have taken care of the media's patriotic fervor. I lost a good friend on 9/11 here in New York City, but my patriotic fervor caused me to write numerous articles warning of an unnecessary war against those who had nothing to do with those terrorist attacks -- especially since United Nations inspectors, on the ground in Iraq, had found absolutely no evidence of WMD. That was the real "context" of the time.

Brokaw cites NBC putting war critic Brent Scowcroft on the air. Studies (cited in my book) have shown that such critics were vastly -- hideously -- outnumbered by war supporters who got face time.

He also blames the Democrats for not raising more of an antiwar cry. What kind of journalist explains a failure to probe the real reasons for a war on others who may not be doing their own due diligence? And as Media Matters pointed out this week, Brokaw's NBC devoted exactly 32 words to the key antiwar political speech in September 2002 by Sen. Ted Kennedy. The other networks did much the same.

Here is the Brokaw/Williams transcript.

*
Williams: Are you confident, taking the coverage in toto -- that the right questions were asked, the right tone was employed - and should it be viewed in the context to that time?

Brokaw: It needs to be viewed in the context of that time. When a president says we're going to war, that there's a danger of the mushroom crowd. We know there had been experiments with Iraqi nuclear programs in the past. Honorable people believed he had weapons of mass destruction.

But there's always a drumbeat that happens at that time. And you can raise your hand and put on people like Brent Scowcroft, which we did, a very creditable man who said this was the wrong decision.

But there are other parts of America that also have a responsibility. How many senators voted against the war? I think 23 is all.

There was this feeling, that this was a bad man, he had weapons of mass destruction, we couldn't make the connection that he was sponsoring terrorists or harboring them, we raised that question day after day.

But this president was determined to go to war. It was more theology than it was anything else. That's pretty hard to deal with.

Look, I think all of us would like to go back and ask questions with the benefit of hindsight, but a lot of what was going on then was unknowable. The CIA insisted that he had weapons of mass destruction.

Now, when Scott says we were complicit enablers, two pages later he then says that in retrospect we went to military confrontation on weapons of mass destruction because we couldn't sell the real reason for it, which was an idealistic, democratic Iraq in the post-9/11 world.

So there is a fog of war, Brian, and also the fog in covering war.

Williams: Part of his allegation is that it was a war based on propaganda.

Brokaw: All wars are based on propaganda. John Kennedy launched the beginning of our war in Vietnam by talking about the domino theory and embracing the Green Berets. Lyndon Johnson kept it up and so did Richard Nixon. World War II--a lot of that was driven by propaganda, and suppressing things that people should have known at the time. So people should not be surprised by that.

In this business we often bump up against what I call the opaque world. The White House has an unbelievable ability to control the flow of information at any time but especially at a time when they are planning to go to war.

Bombshell, Govt admits, OIL IS THE REASON FOR THE IRAQ INVASION and not Weapons of mass destruction.

Everyone knew the WMD claims were fake.

For example, Tony Blair – the British Prime Minister – knew that Saddam possessed no WMDs. If America’s closest ally Britain knew, then the White House knew as well.

And the number 2 Democrat in the Senate -who was on the Senate intelligence committee – admitted that the Senate intelligence committee knew before the war started that Bush’s public statements about Iraqi WMDs were false. If the committee knew, then the White House knew as well.

White House warns Bush there was no weapons of mass destruction!

And the number 2 Democrat in the Senate -who was on the Senate intelligence committee – admitted that the Senate intelligence committee knew before the war started that Bush’s public statements about Iraqi WMDs were false. If the committee knew, then the White House knew as well.

But we don’t even have to use logic to be able to conclude that the White House knew.

Specifically, the former highest-ranking CIA officer in Europe says that Bush, Cheney and Rice were personally informed that Iraq had no WMDs in Fall 2002 (and see this).

Former Treasury Secretary O’Neil – who was a member of the National Security Council – said:

In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

The CIA warned the White House that claims about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions (using forged documents) were false, and yet the White House made those claims anyway.

Indeed, a former high-level CIA analyst (who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials) says that falsified documents which were meant to show that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein regime had been trying to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger can be traced back to Dick Cheney, and that:

CIA Director George Tenet told his “coterie of malleable managers” at the CIA to create a National Intelligence Estimate “to the terms of reference of Dick Cheney’s speech of August 26, 2002, where Dick Cheney said for the first time Saddam Hussein could have a nuclear weapon in a year, he’s got all kinds of chemical, he’s got all kinds of biological weapons.”

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind says:
Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”
The Washington Post reports that a secret, fact-finding team of scientists and engineers sponsored by the Pentagon determined in May 2003 that two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops were not evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program. The nine-member team “transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003.” Despite having authoritative evidence that the biological laboratories claim was false, the administration continued to repeat the myth over the next four months.

A British official said that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.

In January 2004, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on WMDS in Iraq concluded that the evidence prior to the war indicated that Iraq’s nuclear program had been dismantled and its chemical weapons had lost most of their lethality. In addition, the report concluded that the administration “systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs”.

Fool Me Once …

In addition, it is a well-understood principle that if someone has been caught in a lie, we are less likely to believe him. For example, a witness who is caught in a lie during trial is unlikely to be believed by the jury when he makes another statement.

Well, Cheney and other high-level White House officials repeatedly implied that Saddam and Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11, when they knew that wasn’t true.

Indeed, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind reports that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 … and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. And see this.

The government also spied on American citizens (even before 9/11 … confirmed here and here), while saying “we don’t spy”.

And the government tortured prisoners in Iraq, but said “we don’t torture”.

In other words, high-level officials in the administration were caught in repeated untruths, and so their statements about believing good faith that Iraq had WMDs is less believable.

What Really Happened?

But if the White House knew that Iraq didn’t have any WMDs, why did we go to war in Iraq?

Well, several very high-profile figures have said it was for the oil. See this, this, this. and this.

Perhaps Tom Brokaw says it most simply:
All wars on based on propaganda.
If you still believe that the government invaded Iraq due to WMDs or links to terrorists, this is why.