You can look at earlier entries in this blog from 2005-2009 to see more about this key group whose sole purpose was to sell us this illegal criminal invasion of Iraq (the obvious reason why would-be war criminals of BushCheneyCo rejected the authority of the International Criminal Court in 2002), but the Times still has NO news articles about this group whose existence has been widely reported in The Washington Post (though I'm having trouble today finding a live link to the key Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus article in the August 10, 2003 Post), by Bill Moyers, in The Huffington Post, The Daily News, and elsewhere, and publicly confirmed in print and video by key players like Scott McClellan. But still, all the Times has to show when you search for existence of this group in its pages are a handful of Op/Ed pieces written (and written well) by Frank Rich.This would all be just a strange omission in the journalistic record of this disastrous war if the Times' Judith Miller hadn't played a key role in spinning the WHIG's web of lies with her reporting about the aluminum tubes that were supposedly being used by Saddam Hussein to enrich uranium. Dick Cheney could then conveniently point to this reporting in "the liberal press" to help make his fictional case for war (with that glee about others' death and destruction which only the true chickenhawks among us can feel).
The Times at some point will need to come to terms with its own culpability in beating the war drums, but I'm no longer holding my breath.
Labels: Bill Moyers, Bush, Cheney, New York Times, Scott McClellan, Washington Post, WHIG, White House Iraq Group
¶ 3/19/2013 08:39:00 PM 0 comments
Without the reporting of Walter Pincus in the Washington Post, we might never have learned about the the White House Iraq Group. His key article, "Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence," written with Barton Gellman and printed on page A1 on August 10, 2003, was the first that I know of to spell out the structure and members and methods of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and call it by its name and abbreviation.Today Walter Pincus is still digging for information about this group. In "Records Could Shed Light on Iraq Group," published today, he highlights the omissions in last week's Senate Intelligence Committee report on prewar exaggerations -- they did not seek out any "less formal" White House communications, obtain White House records, or interview President Bush or Vice President Cheney, because "such steps were considered beyond the scope of the report."
Pincus then goes on in today's short article to recap the key known members and activities of the White House Iraq Group, enhanced with some of Scott McClellan's recently-added revelations (or confirmations), before concluding:One obvious target for such an expanded inquiry would have been the records of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a group set up in August 2002 by then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.
WHIG's records would shed much light on whether, as Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the intelligence panel, put it: "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent."
Labels: Washington Post, WHIG, White House Iraq Group
¶ 6/09/2008 02:31:00 PM 0 comments
OK. I know that WHIGgate.org has been very inactive lately, but the fact is that it started with high hopes (and what turned out, of course, to have been false hopes) that the American people and their representatives in Congress and the "independent" flag-waving American mass media would come to their senses and hold the war criminals of the Bush Administration responsible for waging a war of aggression on manufactured evidence. The White House Iraq Group seemed like the perfect frame in which to tell the story of those lies, and the way they were sold to us.Despite the fact that we seem to be OK with being lied to, I couldn't help posting this new entry for nobody to read when I ran across the following question and answer in the transcript of a Washington Post Book World online discussion from May 30:
Rhode Island: Hi. I hope this question doesn't sound confrontational. My understanding is that you didn't become press secretary until a year or so after the Iraq war began. Can you tell us about what your role was before that? Were you privy to high-level discussions in the lead-up to the war? Thanks.
Scott McClellan: I became press secretary on July 15, 2003, a few months after the initial invasion. Prior to that, I served as the principal deputy press secretary. I was not involved in the policy-making on Iraq or in developing the overall marketing strategy for selling the war to the public. I did fill in for my predecessor at times, and even participated in some White House Iraq Group, or WHIG meetings. WHIG was set up as the marketing arm for selling the war to the public.
I'm not sure that I've seen the White House Iraq Group referred to by name and by its WHIG designation so clearly by a White House official who took part in their meetings. I find it very impressive that the author of What Happened was not responding to a specific question about the Group or its role; Scott McClellan brought the names up unprompted, and followed up with the perfect one-sentence definition: "WHIG was set up as the marketing arm for selling the war to the public."
Labels: New York Times, Scott McClellan, Washington Post, WHIG, White House Iraq Group
¶ 6/05/2008 02:32:00 PM 0 comments
