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 2)

Poi Dog

on Jan 12, 2004

I wish I could respond in kind to many of the replies here, but there are simply too many tangents. I just wanted to lend perspective to those of you watching the war from your television sets:
1. The population cannot accept democracy. The Imams and clerics and religious leaders are the key holders of power. The U.S. gives leadership positions to those who could be a real help to Iraqi society, but the populace will not accept them, particularly the predominant Shi'ite muslims.
2. There are over 50% unemployed in the COUNTRY. And we have the audacity to get angry at the people when they are frustrated and hold rallies and riots. Our poor troops have to treat everyone as a potential threat, and the extremists know this and manipulate the crowd with incendiary remarks. Thus, you have a dangerous situation that originally detailed impoverished citizens, and troops that wanted to help the impoverished.
3. Undoing a thousand years of culture with our brazen influence is not conducive to a quick turnaround. Bush and his administration knew this, and knew the years of committment that were involved. It is boost to the republican sway, and to the military and its contractors. I wrote more on this subject in my blog at integrity.joeuser.com.

This is a subject that does not sit well with me.

netstarman

on Jan 19, 2004

What i havent heard people say that there was nothing wrong in what Clinton did to Bosnia, yet that place had a dictator kill a few hundred thousand people. When President Bush went in to stop Saddam from wiping out another million more, Did we forget about the Kurds , did anybody see the video tapes that saddams sons killing women for fun, When i was in the military i saw the video on what Saddam did to his own people. It was gruesome i was ill from seeing it , babys , women, small kids all dead from living in the northern part of Iraq, they all died from being gassed from chemical weapons. There was a chemical used called "yellow rain" it is shot up in the air near the town and forms into clouds and it rains yellow rain drops when it hits your skin you blister up and the pain is unbearable you die whithin 24 hours to maybe 3 days . there were mass gravesites in Iraq from Saddams doing. In afghanistan there are women who are beaten up just for adjusting there veils. I think bush did a great thing in going in and stopping saddam he had 12 years to start agreeing and doing what the UN said for them to do . Yet everyone who disagreed on bush's plan on going into Iraq have forgotten one thing FREEDOM. Im a veteran of the military who fought for everyones freedom here in the USA and Overseas. When theres a major problem in the world there has to be a stop to the violence, when talking doesnt do it and the mass killings keep going ( lIke Iraq ) someone has to fight for the FREEDOM or people who do not want freedom fight the people who do . My motto is you cant always keep the bandaid on you have to take it off sometime . I would fight for FREEDOM anyday of the week , freedom isnt free you fight everyday for it and everyone else.

Solitair

on Jan 21, 2004

Netstarman,
the issue isn't whether Bush was right to invade Iraq, but whether he duped the American people. I supported the need to remove Saddam. What many people had a problem with was that they felt they were lied to about why Iraq was being attacked. You may have no problem with that, but many other people have,

Paul.

jeblackstar

on Jan 21, 2004

Wait, you mean politician's might manipulate public opinion?! Shocking!!

Cheers

jeblackstar

on Jan 21, 2004

Oh, and by the way, I agree 100% with Paul on this

Solitair

on Jan 22, 2004

Politicans ALWAYS manipulate public opinion. That's their job!

There's a fine line between spin and lies though. A fine line that often moves around. People expect spin, they get upset when they are told lies. Just look at Nixon or Clinton for examples.

Paul.

zergimmi

on Jan 22, 2004

While most people of the world agree that Sadam had to go, To say that stuff the rest of the world, we're bigger, we will do what we like type comments, ae the very reason that most people in the planet of ours now view the US administration as one that is arogant and not to be trusted, as for manipulation of the public the get the desired outcome, well any one who is surprised has not bothered to watch how countless US Presidents have done likewise to make sure the People of the US and the citizens of the world have cow towed to their rather slanted imperialist view of the US version of the world order. I thonk US citizens should take a long look at theeir current President, as he may just be the person who drags them to a situation where they become a very marginalsed country, with a sliding position economically and as a super powr.

zergimmi

on Jan 22, 2004

I find it interesting why people ask why it took so long to remove Sadam, well he was after all once considered a friend of the US, eg he was more desired along with the Baath Party, in preference to the posible of a Muslim Controlled Administration, which would have been the outcome had the Rebellion of 1991 suceeded, the old addage of better the one you can control than the one you can't, and where would that leave the US admisitration and its rather hawkish approach to forigin policy,. What always intrigues me is just how successfully , successive Administrations have convienced the American Public of just how much they are threatened by the rest of the world, in many cases they and of course Israel are the only targets of Middle Eastern Terrorists, at least that was up until George Bush II became President, I am sure if the citizens of the US where treated with the same arrogance as the peoples of the Arab States have been subjected to by the US and the UK over the last century or two, they too may become evn a little resentful. It is time the people of the US stopped seeing enemies every where and realised that when you have such a Milartaristic Admistration, you have to have enemies to justify the whole mitilary industry, otherwise would you need to have some many WMDs as you guys possess, not to mention such a huge military in general, or is it to keep the rest of doing what we are told. It is gennerally now seen by most people living outside the US that under the current Administration, the US is the greatest threat to world peace, and the Primary rogue state, especially when you have President basically saying that he does not care about the Un or the rest of the world, he will do what he likes. Think about it america, why do countries like Iran want WMDs, to attack the greatest military force in the world or is it for protection against the US, Britian and Israel, who all posess WMDs.

stevendedalus

on Jun 27, 2006

And yet we still shake our heads in disbelief over 50 million Germans being sucked in by Hitler!

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!