Did Bush manipulate public opinion for the war in Iraq?

Diane Sawyer grills Bush

Published on December 22, 2003 By Draginol In Politics

Jark has managed to get the transcript of Diane Sawyer's interview with Bush. And he makes a good point that many people on both the left and right have failed to make: Regardless of whether you think we did the right thing by going into Iraq, the bottom line is that the administration certainly seems to have manipulated the public in getting general support for the action. Read Jark's full blog here.

I happen to have been one who supported US action in Iraq. But I also never considered WMD to be a credible threat. To me, it boiled down to two things:

1) After 9/11 we didn't have the luxury anymore of letting vocal enemies of the United States with the means to do us harm stay in power in sensitive areas. Saddam simply had to be taken off the board.

2) For the war on terror to be won, there has to be a fundamental cultural shift in the Middle East. The real targets have to be Saudia Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Syria. Iraq was in the perfect geographic position to apply pressure on those countries to try to become more liberal and open and to curb their more violent, fundamentalist citizens. It certainly helps that Iraq produces a heck of a lot of oil. Going after Saudi Arabia without Iraq taken care of would have been a disaster. Now, hopefully with peaceful means, these countries can be changed. If Iraq can serve as an example to the dictatorships of the region both in terms of how successful its people become at being prosperous, happy, and peaceful as well as how the previous leaders of Iraq met their end, we have a good chance of winning the war.

Those of us "into this kind of thing" have known this for well over a year now. We have talked about these issues on the blogsphere for a long while. But the challenge Bush has had was to convince the American people of the need to go after Iraq without these two above issues being too plainly stated.

The strategy they went with was to simply pursue the UN resolutions from the Gulf War to their logical conclusion. Iraq had WMD at one time and had not proven that they didn't have it. They made themselves "low hanging fruit".

But as much as I rejoice in the downfall of Iraq, I don't know how I feel about the administration's manipulation of public opinion. That is the sort of thing Clinton regularly did and only serves to make the public more cynical of elected officials. Elected officials should not take the position of "Well, we know what's best for our citizens so we'll manipulate the ignorant masses so that they'll support doing the right thing even if they don't know what the right thing s..."i

Comments (Page 1)

JeremyG

on Dec 22, 2003

That has always been my one big complaint about the whole thing when I talk about it. Sure to an extent I disagree with going into Iraq when so many other people were against us. It puts us in a dangerous spot.

But i also think that in general the world is a better place without him.

But I dont like how Bush so obviously piggy-backed Saddam with 9/11 when there was no material evidence that the two were AT ALL linked. Plus the WMD "documents" that were stamped by an african agency that was dissolved many years prior. It was obviously done to fool the people. I guess the saddest part is how the general public bought into it.

GemCityJoe

on Dec 22, 2003

I was for going to Iraq and toppling Saddam before Bush was ever elected. Just glad we finally got a Pres. with the gumtion to do it. I don't care if we had the world's stamp of approval or not. Bush told them that either you're with us of you're not with us. With 40% of the world economy, basicly, we are the world. When it comes to our security, we can't have the likes of Europe telling us what to do. We will act as we see fit to do so. Other openions are nice, but the final say is ours and ours alone. GCJ

Anthony R

on Dec 22, 2003

I don't know what part of the presidents
state
of the union 2003 some people were listening to. The president said
that although the threat was not imminent it was to dangerous to wait
until it was.

"Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein
could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist
networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons
and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial,
one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like
none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that
that day never comes. (Applause.)
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when
have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on
notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly
emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.
Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it
is not an option."

This part of the state of the union blast this manipulation of public opinion
right out of the water.

Draginol

on Dec 22, 2003

You can't use one speech as your entire body of evidence. You are ignoring the months and months of build up. Colin Powell's UN presentation focused largely on WMDs for example.

Anthony R

on Dec 22, 2003

I don’t question why we went now, I question why it took so long, why didn’t US troops get Hussein in 91 after Hussein illegally invaded Kuwait, while we had 600,000 US troops in the region, poised on Baghdad and ready to strike?

If anything, it took to long to oust Hussein, and now a bunch of people that hate Bush want to investigate the case for war. A good place to investigate would be the UN, ask why they failed to enforce their resolutions, ask why France and Germany failed to act, and why it took so long for willing members of the world community to target Hussein as an unacceptable danger, those are the questions that should be asked.

The Democrats thought Milosevic was a priority over Hussein; no one is investigating the mess we made over there, and were still there, what did we accomplish there?

Anthony R

on Dec 22, 2003

Consider the source of this interview, ABC and Diane Sawyer deliver liberal
leaning, biased news, they hate the Bush administration.
ABC
will not even report how Bush's approval ratings have gone up since the
capture of Hussein.

TREVOR Woodward

on Dec 22, 2003

DEAR BRAD,

I THINK THAT THE US WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH BETTER OFF, AND HAVE FAR MORE RESPECT, IF IT HAD ASKED ITSELF THE OBVIOUS QUESTION - WHY DID THEY (TERRORISTS) DO THIS? POPULIST ANSWERS SUCH AS 'THEY DON'T LIKE US' DOESN'T GO FAR ENOUGH AND ARE AN INSULT TO THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD. THE TRUTH IS THAT THE US HAS TRAMPLED THE HUMAN RIGHT OF OTHERS TO THE EXTENT THAT THE AFFECTED FOUGHT BACK. NOT IN A FAIR WAY, BUT NOT IN A VACCUME EITHER.
JUST CONSIDER IRAQ AND YOUR LOW HANGING FRUIT THESIS - ALL VERY WELL AND GOOD, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE 40,000 ESTIMATED INNOCENT IRAQI'S GEAD AS A RESULT OF THE US' GUNG HO 'FRUIT PICKING' EFFORTS? WHAT A MESS - YOU FUCKED THE COUNTRY - BUT THIS IS A DISTRACTION.
ASSUME THAT THE REAL FIGURE IS 40,000 DEAD. NOW IF IT IS 40,000 GUILTY PEOPLE THEN THEIR SURVIVORS ARE MORE THAN LIKELY, IN THE BALANCE OF THINGS SAY, FAIR COP (AS ISN TO COP IT SWEET). BUT THEY WERE GUILTY OF NOTHING OTHER THAN LIVING WHERE THEY DID. ASSUME THAT EACH OF THESE DEAD PEOPLE HAD SAY, 10 CLOSE FAMILY MEMBERS, THAT'S NOW 400,000 NEW TERRORISTS FOR THE US TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH IN THE FUTURE.
OR PUT ANOTHER WAY - YOU HAVE THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT WITH RESPECT TO ISRAEL/PALESTINE - HAVE THE AGGRESSIVE TACTICS OF THE ISRAELI DONE ANYTHING AT ALL TO CURB TERRORISM. INDEED IT HAS NOT, IT HAS JUST GIVEN MORE FEED TO THOSE THAT WOULD USE TERROR, AND HAS SPAWNED THE ULTIMATE ASSYMETRIC WEAPON - THE SUICIDE BOMBER.
SO WAKE UP AMERICA, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR FREEDOMS VOTE BONZAI (LITTLE BUSH) OUT OF OFFICE. HE IS DANGEROUS.
CHEERS FROM TREVOR DOWN UNDER (IF YOUR FRIENDS CAN'T TELL YOU YOU SUCK WHEN YOU DO - WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING FRIENDS?)

on Dec 22, 2003

re: Trevor,

Smart thinking 99 - I have never thought of it that way??? it is almost Newtonian in it's thinking; ie. hate is an energy that cannot be destroyed by taking revenge, because those allied to the revengee, will end up hating the revenger and the cycle is thus perpetuated. It's much easier to go and bomb the fuck out of someone. Or is it really?

stevendedalus

on Dec 23, 2003

Sadly, I give credit to Bush and close members of his administration for supremely, infamous manipulation unequaled in our history. He not only confounded the UN and Congress but bamboozled the public into thinking Saddam had a direct hand in 9/11! Man, that's political talent!

Draginol

on Dec 23, 2003

There are no credible estimates that put Iraqi civilian deaths even over 10,000 let alone 40,000.

Trevor - I don't care "why they did this" to us. There is nothign the US has done to justify their actions. And make no mistake, the majority of Americans will do whatever is necessary to prevent this from happening to us again.

Perhaps the Islamic world needs to start asking, why the US does this to them. Because if the choice becomes us or them, Americans will choose us in a heart beat even if that means the Islamic world is a totally destroyed.

I don't say this because I hope that happens, I don't. I just don't think Europeans and especially the Islamic world understands American culture. We try to do the right thing. But if we feel we've been wronged (and we do) our history shows that we will do whatever it takes to secure ourselves.

Remember this: Japan bombed a military base to start its war against the United States. The war ended with the United States vaporizing two of its largest cities after having used conventional weapons to flatten nearly every city in Japan. It is one of those things about democracy - it is slow to anger but once angered, once motivated, it is hard to turn off. So I say to you, for the sake of the Islamic world, they will not continue the path of folly in trying to convince us that the fault lies with us. That sort of argument is interesting in intelletual forums. But in the real world, when people are getting killed, those who would start killing Americans need to understand the full implications of their actions.

Blaming Bush is convenient. But I can say this: Any President of the United States would have done at least as much or would have faced mass riots. The US federal government only has one job (the state governments do pretty much everything else): Take care of the citizens of the US. It's not designed to build roads or schools or provide water or electricity. It mainly does two things: Kill people in other countries that the American people perceive as threats to them and help our people domestically. That's all it does. It's not like a European government or the government in other countries in its design.

So don't delude yourself into thinking that Americans are going to sweat about the "why" the terrorists murdered so many Americans. Most Americans care about how its government will make the problem go away in as permanent a way as possible. It's not the "Arab street" you should worry about, it's the American street.

JeremyG

on Dec 23, 2003

Ummm brad that's because the US stopped any estimates from being performed.

Draginol

on Dec 23, 2003

JeremyG: Let's say the US waved a magical wand and stopped eestimated. Okay, so does that make crazy numbers like 40,000 deaths more realistic? Why stop there? Let's say 5 million Iraqi's died. I mean, if you're going to make up a number, why not go for the gusto?

Anthony R

on Dec 23, 2003

Civilian casualty’s only tragic if associated with Bush

stevendedalus

on Jan 10, 2004

Strange that you are crystal clear about Clinton "regularly" manipulating the people, yet you need more evidence for Bush.

Solitair

on Jan 12, 2004

Interesting interviews with Paul O Neill in the last day or two. For someone who was on the National Security Council to say they never saw any evidence of WMD is a serious statement. Personally I agree with Brad. Bush did indeed manipulate the American people to achieve the desired support for war in Iraq, but Saddam did need to be removed. The issue now is

for Americans
a) are the American people happy with being manipulated?

does the end justify the means?

for the rest of the world
a) should any country ever trust the word of the US again when they were obviously lied to?

why did Bush so blatantly attach France, Germany and Russia when ti now turns out they were right?
c) should they assist in the policing and rebuilding of IRaq as the US desires?

Paul.

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