http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php/2005110308460918/printSunday Sept. 8, 2002 was a red letter day in the White House Iraq Group’s efforts to market the war. That was the day the administration’s war salesmen scored one of their biggest propaganda coups.
That morning, the New York Times ran a front page story co-written by Judy Miller about how Saddam was trying to get a hold of aluminum tubes to be used in building nuclear weapons.
Perfectly timed to coincide with this planted (and bogus) info, the administration blanketed the Sunday shows with its big guns -- who all used the New York Times’ credibility to bolster their case against Saddam and scare the American people.
Dick Cheney did Meet the Press, citing the Times story as evidence that Saddam was “actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons”. Condi Rice went on Wolf Blitzer and warned that the "smoking gun” in Iraq could turn out to be “a mushroom cloud”. Colin Powell on Fox News Sunday, Don Rumsfeld on Face the Nation, and Richard Meyers on This Week all made similar points, raising the specter of a nuked up Saddam. A month later, the House and Senate hastily authorized the administration to go to war.
Of course, the Plamegate investigation has revealed the political alchemy of turning crap into gold via a deadly game of neocon telephone tag. Cheney to Libby to Chalabi to Miller back to Libby for confirmation by “a senior administration official” (or is it “former Hill staffer”?)… then right to the front pages of the Times, which Cheney and Rice and Powell and Meyers and Rummy can wave around as “proof”.
It’s an iconic moment. A simple yet eye-opening narrative that exemplifies the way the war was sold. For me, it includes all the key pieces of the puzzle -- when you put them together, everything suddenly clicks into place.
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