Powell repeating false claims

[9215]

Voice4Change
Uniting Our Voices
http://www.voice4change.org



September 30, 2003



ACTION ALERT: Another Falsehood on Iraq Goes Unchallenged

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
http://www.fair.org/activism/powell-inspectors.html

September 29, 2003

On a weekend when the Bush administration's pre-war intelligence on Iraq
was a major topic on the Sunday talkshows, Secretary of State Colin Powell
re-circulated a false story about United Nations weapons inspectors being
kicked out of Iraq in 1998. Some major media outlets let Powell's comments
pass without comment or correction.

On ABC's This Week (9/27/03), Powell explained that the Clinton
administration "conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on
the intelligence that he had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being
thrown out."

The actual history is much different. On December 15, 1998, the head of the
U.N. weapons inspection team in Iraq, Richard Butler, released a report
accusing Iraq of not fully cooperating with inspections. The next day,
Butler withdrew his inspectors from Iraq, in anticipation of a U.S.-British
bombing campaign that began that evening. Neither George Stephanopoulos
nor George Will, who conducted ABC's interview, corrected Powell's false
assertion.

In reporting on the interview, the New York Times merely repeated Powell's
charge (9/29/03): "Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a television
appearance today, noted that the Iraqi leader threw weapons inspectors out
in 1998, making it more difficult for intelligence agencies to get hard
information." The Los Angeles Times (9/29/03), meanwhile, paraphrased
Powell's words to make them more factually accurate, prefacing his quote
with the statement that "U.N. weapons inspectors had left Iraq in 1998 and
did not return until late last year." The quote immediately follows,
giving readers the misimpression that Powell accurately conveyed this
background.

As the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq have become a
public controversy, it is reasonable to expect journalists to point out
continuing misinformation on Iraq by senior Bush administration officials.
If New York Times editors were interested in correcting the record, all
they would have to do is re-print a correction they ran over three years
ago (2/2/00): "A front-page article yesterday... on Iraq misstated the
circumstances under which international weapons inspectors left that
country before American and British air strikes in December 1998. While
Iraq had ceased cooperating with the inspectors, it did not expel them. The
United Nations withdrew them before the air strikes began."

ACTION: Please contact ABC's This Week and the New York Times and encourage
them to correct Powell's false statements.

CONTACT:
ABC's This Week
mailto:[e-mail]

New York Times
mailto:[e-mail]
Toll free comment line: 1-888-NYT-NEWS

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if
you maintain a polite tone. Please cc [e-mail] with your
correspondence.

Forward this alert as widely as possible:
http://www.voice4change.org/stories/send2friends.asp?id=030930~fair.asp

Warm Regards,

Voice4Change.org
http://www.voice4change.org

[RichM]

1. Thanks for posting. I emailed the NYT.

Those swine!