By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
June 4, 2003
Vanity Fair, a lightweight magazine that concentrates on “people and personalities” has been quoted recently by the Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, the Arab Press, Le-Monde in France, German papers and USA Today with a major foreign policy exposè.
According to Associated Press writer Dafna Linzer, “Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld speculated this week that the weapons were destroyed on the eve of fighting. His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, said in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine that weapons of mass destruction became a war banner because it was the only reason everyone in the administration could agree upon when citing why they were going after Saddam.”
The “only reason” for going after Saddam Hussein?
The lead paragraph in a Reuters article read: “The U.S. decision to stress the threat posed by Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction above all others was taken for ‘bureaucratic’ reasons to justify the war, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz says.”
Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung announced: ``The charge of deception is inescapable'' and France’s Le Monde called the weapons of mass destruction claim ``the greatest lie told by statesmen in recent years.''
The Independent of London reported: “Bush’s primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force (was) because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged. The extraordinary admission comes in an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defense Secretary, in the July issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.”
The only reason for the Iraqi War was because it was “politically convenient?
What is the public to believe? What in the world did Wolfowitz say in that interview? Well, thanks to technology and the wisdom of someone in the Bush Administration who probably got tired of consistent misquotations, transcripts of all interviews and press briefings by the President and cabinet officers have been available on government websites since sometime last year. Today anyone interested can check out what Wolfowitz REALLY said in the 21 page Vanity Fair interview on the Defense Department website.
Tannenhaus’ first question was:
Q: What do you think all the conspiritorial talk is? Do you have any notion, in Europe and here? What are people looking at this way?
While the question may make no sense to most readers, what Tannenhous was asking about is something called the “The Neocon Conspiracy” which claims there is “a group of highly placed individuals who are responsible for our present war in Iraq.” Neo-cons are supposedly mostly Jews and are “strong in the upper reaches of the Defense Department and the White House.” That means, of course, under the rules of virulent Anti-Semitism, any convenient lie is permissible to discredit them.
The Assistant Secretary, who is Jewish, replied:
Wolfowitz: I think it's pretty obvious and I think it's pretty disgraceful but all you can do is ignore it and go on and get the job done.”Q: What is it? I mean some say anti-Semitism. I guess in Europe that would be --
Wolfowitz: I just said all I'm going to say about it.
You know it's completely out in the open who holds what views in this Administration. You couldn't be more transparent about what the arguments are. The most significant thing that has produced what is admittedly a fairly significant change in American policy is the events of September 11th which are going to count as one of the -- If you had to pick the ten most important foreign policy things for the United States over the last 100 years it would surely rank in the top ten if not number one. It's the reason why so much has changed, and people who refuse to look at that, for whatever reason, or are unwilling to face up to the implications of that then go around and look for some nefarious explanation. But it's shameful.
In a second interview the following day Wolfowitz stated:
“To me what September 11th meant was that we just couldn't live with terrorism any longer.”
Further into the interview Wolfowitz talked about some of the things that DIDN’T happen:
Wolfowitz: There are choices that had to be made and I don't think there's any question that the fundamental speed of the operation, the remarkable speed of the operation, played a role in preventing a number of the worst things that we feared from happening. We'll never know exactly why the oilfields were not destroyed. We did not have an environmental disaster resulting from huge hydrogen sulfide fires in the north. We did not have attacks on Israel. We did not have a fortress Baghdad. We did not have a civil war in northern Iraq or a Turkish intervention in northern Iraq. We didn't have an Iranian intervention to speak of in southern Iraq. We didn't have any Arab governments collapse. … The one that has always worried me the most was the use of weapons of mass destruction. We still don't know why they weren't used. That's something maybe we'll know more about one of these days, I don't know.
Near the end of the interview Tannenhaus asked another somewhat incomprehensible question:
Q: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into --Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but -- hold on one second --
At that point Wolfowitz was interrupted by a telephone call. When he resumed he said:
Wolfowitz: -- there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two.
For the media to pick out an unfinished thought to an incoherent question, and then feign shock and dismay, while totally ignoring twenty one pages of Wolfowitz comments, indicate sloppy or no research or a deliberate and conscious decision to simply not report what Wolfowitz said about the Administration’s three fundamental concerns about Iraq.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com