Americans deserve insight, not old news, on Iraq War, So Where Is It?

John C. Bersia won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000. What happened since then? Eight years later the man apparently can’t even do a Google search let alone deep research. This week he joins the ranks of old media ignorants who wrote about the Pentagon’s investigation into documents and tapes captured from Saddam’s regime. Like so many others, he chose to write about it without ever having even seen the report. At least he put his thoughts into the OPINION section instead of a NEWS section, but that suggests he knew he wasn’t writing about the report at all. He was writing his opinion of a report he’d never seen or investigated. The world wonders if anyone in the old media is actually interested in reported unbiased news, and thus interested in this report, OR if they’re all interested in voicing their uninformed, incorrect, and otherwise false opinions instead. So far the trend is the latter.

Let’s take a closer look….

Americans deserve insight, not old news, on Iraq War
By John C. Bersia
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE INFORMATION SERVICES

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led intervention that toppled Saddam Hussein, many people understandably still search for answers. All the more reason, then, for thorough, objective, fact-based assessments about Iraq that clarify the historical record and expand our understanding of how and why we arrived at this conundrum.

Therefore, it is not surprising that criticism has met the Pentagon’s apparent reluctance to allow easy access to a newly released study of the Institute for Defense Analyses’ Iraqi Perspectives Project, “Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents.”

Although defense officials sponsored the report, the document will not be posted online or e-mailed. Interested parties must submit a request and wait for the study to arrive by mail.

This is a purely false allegation. The Pentagon report was released online earlier this week, and it was done so not because the Pentagon wanted to hide something but because its authors found that leaked versions were being giving the completely wrong impression; an impression Mr. Bersia repeats later. One thing is clear by his opening comments Mr. Bersia never read the report. Had he ordered it by mail, he’d already have a copy (as I and others interested in the facts did). You can get the report online here.

Even more distressing to me is the set of conclusions that the report shares after a comprehensive evaluation of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.

Actually, the report didn’t look at all 600,000 documents, tapes, etc. Just tens of thousands. Much more remains to be interpreted and analyzed.

According to an executive summary, the study found that:
● No direct connection existed between Saddam and al-Qaida.
● Saddam’s regime was involved in regional and international terrorist operations well before the 2003 intervention.
● Major targets of those operations were Iraqi citizens, both at home and in other countries.
● Other targets included non-Iraqis from time to time.
● Saddam directly but cautiously cooperated with certain terrorist groups in alliances of convenience.
● State sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq via recruiting, training and resourcing was routine.

Contrary to Mr. Bersia’s biased and repeatedly incorrect opinion, the report did cite many “direct connections” between Saddam’s regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. It has not yet found any “smoking gun” evidence of “operational cooperation” between Saddam’s regime and Al Queda leadership, but the report says that’s likely a resort of the nature of state-sponsored-terrorism, as well as the relationship between the regime and the Al Queda network of terrorist groups; a relationship that was more strategic than tactical with both groups seeking the same short term goals, but not the same long term goals.

And what?

Anyone with a bit of time, interest and desire to pore through open sources of information about Saddam and Iraq could have drawn similar conclusions long before the conflict started. Indeed, many did.

Mr. Bersia apparently has an ability to erase history and re-write it. Prior to the 911 attacks it was commonplace for old media outlets to report that Saddam’s regime was working actively with the Al Queda network of terrorist groups. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, TIME magazine, Newsweek, international media outlets, and all the network news teams all claimed the regime was actively working with Al Queda. In fact, even the Clinton Administration’s 1998 indictment of Osama Bin Laden originally claimed that the two had formed an agreement to work together back in 1993 (a claim that was later removed, but found true via captured documents and interrogations of Al Queda detainees as well as regime detainees).
“Additionally, the indictment states that Al Qaeda reached an agreement with Iraq not to work against the regime of Saddam Hussein and that they would work cooperatively with Iraq, particularly in weapons development.”LINK

That the new study had access to an unprecedented amount of information is fine, but it does not change anything.

We did not need the review of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi documents to inform us that Saddam and al-Qaida — the proponents of two competing, transnational, ideological, revolutionary ideologies — were fundamentally incompatible.

This is patently wrong. The investigation found numerous examples as well as documented willingness of Saddam’s regime to work with various groups in the Al Queda network despite “ideological and revolutionary ideologies.”
Saddam’s Dangerous Friends

Five years into the Iraqi crisis, Americans should be hearing far better than a recap of the obvious, of old news. Furthermore, if defense officials are going to so much trouble to complicate access to tired perspectives, imagine what would happen to a report that stated or implied even more criticism of past conclusions and policies.

Even before the report was released, Warren Strobel (also of McLatchy Newspapers) wrote a grossly incorrect assessment of the report based on a single anonymous leak. His report was followed by others in the old media who reported on it without ever seeing it. Within hours the Pentagon (contrary to Mr. Bersia’s false insinuations) released the report online with the intent of informing the public correctly instead of incorrectly as the old media was doing.

“…two officials involved with the study became very concerned about the misreporting of its contents. One of them said in an interview that he found the media coverage of the study ‘disappointing.’ Another, James Lacey, expressed his concern in an email to Karen Finn in the Pentagon press office, who was handling the rollout of the study. On Tuesday, the day before it was scheduled for release, Lacey wrote: ‘1. The story has been leaked. 2. ABC News is doing a story based on the executive summary tonight. 3. The Washington Post is doing a story based on rumors they heard from ABC News. The document is being misrepresented. I recommend we put [it] out and on a website immediately.’”
“Saddam’s Dangerous Friends” by Stephen F. Hayes

After all the haste, inappropriate justifications, poor planning and stubbornness that have characterized U.S. actions in Iraq, Americans are entitled to a break. The best policy is the U.S. government to be honest and straightforward about national-security challenges before, during and after crises.

I couldn’t agree more, but it brings up a question, “If a report is released and no one in the media reports on it (let alone reports on it accurately), then does it matter?” Apparently not to Mr. Bersia who didn’t even bother to read the report when it was released online earlier this week, or who didn’t even bother to order a copy via mail (most people who did got theirs on Wednesday). The report ends with the following:

“v. Conclusion
One question remains regarding Iraq’s terrorism capability: Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against United States? Judging from examples of
Saddam’s statements (Extract 34) before the 1991 Gulf War with the United States, the answer is yes.”
[btw, no emphasis added on that ‘yes’. It’s emphasized in the report]

It doesn’t get simpler than that.

E-mail John C. Bersia at johncbersia@msn.com