No yuks as Stewart presses Iraq War architect on honesty
05/13/2008 @[EMAIL PROTECTED]
9:45 am
Filed by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, who was at
the heart of the Bush
administration's selective cherry-picking of intelligence to make its case
for the invasion of
Iraq, appeared on The Daily Show on Monday to promote his new book about
the run-up to the war.
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The central premise of Feith's book, which he repeated over and over to
Jon Stewart, is that
although there were errors in some of the administration's claims about
the dangers posed by
Saddam Hussein, the people making those statements were not being
intentionally dishonest and
did not set out to mislead the American public.
"The administration had an honest belief in the things that it said,"
Feith insisted. "Some of
the things that it said about the war that were part of the rationale for
the war were wrong.
But errors are not lies and I think much of what the administration said
was correct and
provided an im****tant argument that leaving Saddam Hussein in power would
have been extremely
risky -- even though the president's decision to remove him was extremely
risky."
Stewart pointed out in response that painting a rosy picture of how quick
and easy the war
would be while downplaying the risks was itself a form of dishonesty. "You
said something that
I thought was interesting," he noted to Feith. "'The common refrain that
the postwar has been a
disaster is only true if you had completely unrealistic expectations.'
Where would we have
gotten those expectations?"
"If you knew the perils but the conversation that you had with the public
painted a rosier
picture, how is that not deception?" Stewart asked.
Feith attempted to counter this by suggesting that because "the recent
history has been very
unhappy in a lot of ways ... people look back and I think they misremember
a lot," but he
finally resorted to claiming once more that "there were statements ...
that in looking back you
wish you would have made differently ... I don't think any of them were
deception. I think they
were errors."
"You don't think it was a purposeful strategy?" Stewart asked. "This is an
administration very
sophisticated in the arts of propaganda and public relations."
Feith insisted that far from being sophisticated, the administration was
actually very bad at
propaganda. He then went on to summarize his version of what led up to the
war:
"What the president decided after 9/11 was we should not focus only on the
group that hit us,
we should be trying to prevent the next attack. ... The administration ...
became persuaded by
the facts that Saddam Hussein was an extremely serious danger. ... There
was a moment when the
president wanted to focus on diplomacy. ... Ultimately the diplomacy
failed. ... The
administration grossly mishandled the public explanation."
"You removed the ability for the American public to make an informed
decision," responded
Stewart. "Once you have removed that, then you no longer have, I think,
the authority."
This video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast May 12,
2008.
Download video
http://www.rawprint.com/media/2008/0805/com_tds_douglas_feith_080512a.flv
Transcript via closed captions
:: jon: welcome back to the show, everybody. my guest tonight was the
undersecretary of defense
for policy from 2001-2005. his new book is called "war and decision:
inside the pentagon at the
dawn of the war on terrorism." please welcome to the show doug feith. sir.
welcome. i
appreciate you being here. i know you and i disagree somewhat on the war,
but we may agree.
what's your favorite baseball team.
:: the philadelphia phillies.
:: jon: oh, man. we really disagree. mets. "war: indecision." what if it
boils down to that, i
like the mets, you like the phillies. the whole thing falls apart. it seem
like in reading it
sort of the basic idea of the book-- and tell me if i'm wrong-- that a lot
of what we know
about the run-up to the iraq war, a low of the conventional wisdom is
wrong. this idea that, i
think it's something that you might take offense to that we were misled
into war somehow. (one
person applauding).
:: jon: settle down. it will be a long ten minutes, lady. the idea we're
misled in a war is
wrong. now, from this side of it, i always felt like we were misled. so,
let's bridge that gap
in ten minutes. what makes you say we were not misled? what was so honest
about....
:: i think the administration had an honest belief in the things that it
said. some of the
things that it said about the war that were part of the rationale for the
war were wrong.
errors are not lies. i think much of what the administration said was
correct and provided an
im****tant argument that leaving saddam hussein in power would have been
extremely risky even
though the president's decision to remove him was extremely risky.
:: jon: let me stop you there because the president's decision to remove
him was extremely
risky. that's not the sense, i think, that the american people got in the
run-up. ( applause )
the sense that you got from people was not... the sense was, we'll be
greeted as liberators. it
will last maybe six weeks, maybe six months. it will pay for itself. all
these scenarios that
were publicly proffered never happened. you said something that i thought
was interesting. the
common refrain that the post war has been a disaster is only true if you
had completely
unrealistic expectations. where would we have gotten those expectations?
(laughing)
:: well, there were a lot of things that did not go according to
expectations. we know that the
war has been bloodier and costlyier and lengthyier than anybody hoped. but
the president had an
extremely difficult task. after 9/11, there was a great sensitivity to our
vulnerability. and
the president had to weigh-- and what i do in the book is i look at the
actual documents where
secretary rumsfeld was writing to the president and powell and rice and
the vice president and
general myers and others. i talk about what they said to each other and
what they were saying
back to secretary rumsfeld. what you see is there was a serious
consideration of the very great
risks of war. i think that many of them were actually discussed with the
public. but to tell
you the truth, looking back one thing is absolutely clear. this
administration made grocerors
in the way it talked about the war. some of them are very obvious like
the....
:: jon: that was all we had to go on. you know, that was... i guess the
difference in my mind
is if you knew the perils but the conversation that you had with the
public painted a rosier
picture, how is that not deception? that sounds like... when you're sell
ago product.... (
applause ) what it sounds like for me. sorry. the fact that you seem to
know all the risks
takes this from manslaughter to homicide. it almost takes it from like
with the cigarette
companies. if they come out and say, no, our products i think are going to
be delicious. you go
back and you look and they go, well, they actually did talk about
addictiveness and cancer.
isn't that deception?
:: i do not think-- and i think when people read this book, i think people
will be surprised,
to be reminded of what was actually said. i think a lot of people's
perceptions of what were
said are filtered through, you know, the recent history. and the recent
history has been very
unhappy in a lot of ways. we've had a very serious losses in iraq, more
than anybody
anticipated. people look back and i think they misremember aate lot. one
of the reasons i wrote
this book is that almost all the other books that are out there on iraq
are based on anonymous
sources or they're based on interviews with people who are pretending that
they remember what
happened years before. and what i wanted to do was bring forward the
written record so that
people can actually be reminded of what was said within the government and
what was said publicly.
:: jon: maybe the disconnect is the written record within the government
differs so greatly.
all respect, i think i remember pretty clearly the general tenor of what
the government was
saying to the people in the run-up to the war. it was, the president
specifically, the risk of
going in, we have two choices: to do nothing. the risk of doing nothing is
far greater than the
risk of going in. but the risks of going in were never quantifyd publicly
the way they were
privately. in fact, the opposite. they undersold them. donald rumsfeld,
your boss, consistently
went out there and said, looting? it's one guy with a vase. i watch these
re****ts. violence?
henny-penny, the sky is falling. these are what we were getting over and
over again. dick
cheney saying the insurgency is in its last throes. a consistent drum
beat, a willful, i
think-- and you can tell me if i'm wrong-- selling of the positive and
pu****ng back of the
negative.
:: some of the criticisms you've made are valid. i criticized some of
the... there were
statements that everybody in the administration-- myself included-- made
that in looking back
you wish you would have made differently, you would have call fied
differently. i don't think
any of them were deception. i think they were errors.
:: jon: you don't think it was a purposeful strategy, andrew card said you
don't want your new
product in august. they had the white house iraq group that went through
this is an
administration very sophisticated in the art of propaganda and public
relations.
:: i disagree with that.
:: jon: really?
:: i think this is an administration... i strongly disagree. i think
that....
:: jon: being bad at it doesn't mean you're sophisticated. you know what i
mean. ( applause )
:: i think that the administration thought through a lot of these problems
reasonably well
although there were errors in the thinking- through also. but they talked
about them not at all
well. i think the administration's strategy was in many ways better than
it sounded. part of
what....
:: jon: that's a good point. when we come back we'll talk about the
reasoning behind that
because that's actually a very interesting point. we'll be right back with
doug feith. (
applause ) ,, .. ,, .. captioning sponsored by comedy central captioned by
media access group
at wgbh access.wgbh.org welcome back. we're talking to douglas feith
undersecretary of defense
to president bush. it's very difficult to get into sort of an argument of
whether or not iraq
was the right next move in the war on terror. that's another whole issue
that i'll still come
down on the bad news i think you guys decided it was a good move. the one
thing i think we can
look at is there was no momentum for a war in iraq. the momentum had to be
generated somewhere.
afghanistan had its own momentum. we were attacked from there. bin laden
was taking refuge
there with the taliban. to get the country to mobilize to war in iraq took
effort.
:: i think you're looking at it differently from the way we looked at it.
:: jon: i believe that is correct.
:: i think that is correct.
:: you're looking at it from the point of view that the administration
came in hell bept on
going to war.
:: jon: no, no, no. i'm looking at it as iraq and a war didn't have its
own momentum. it had to
draft behind another... did you ever watch auto racing? you know when a
guy sneaks in there and
he starts to draft behind a lead car. afghanistan had its own momentum.
the administration had
to work very hard to create the case. it was a prosecution, if you will.
:: i really don't think you're talking about it the way any of us in the
government thought
about it.
:: jon: no?
:: the way we approached this was the main thought that the president had
after 9/11 was that
the standard approach that we had taken for years, the law enforcement
approach-- find out who
did it and go and arrest them and prosecute them-- was not adequate to the
challenge after
9/11. what the president decided after 9/11 was we didn't have... we
should not focus only on
the group that hit us. we should be trying to prevent the next attack. it
wasn't that the
administration built the case. it's that the administration seriously
considering what needed
to be done to prevent the next attack became persuaded by the facts that
saddam hussein was an
extremely serious danger and that removing him was im****tant to america's
national security.
:: jon: i'm saying that the facts were not presented to the american
people because in making
the prosecution they seemed to downplay the negative side. anything that
went towards not
making the case was brushed aside. anything that would take away the
momentum. why didn't you
call your group... you called it the office of special plans. why didn't
you call it what you
had originally thought to call it, which was....
:: the office of northern gulf affairs.
:: jon: why didn't you call it that?
:: there was a moment when the president wanted to focus on diplomacy and
he didn't... (laughing).
:: jon: i remember that moment.
:: it was more than a moment. it was a period of months.
:: jon: there was a reason you said why you didn't call it that.
:: the president didn't want to put out a signal that he had decided to go
to war when he in
fact had not decided to go to war. so he wanted to emphasize that he was
trying to find a
diplomatic resolution of the problem. now the diplomacy was backed up by a
threat of force.
then ultimately the dip diplomacy failed when hussein didn't make an
honest declaration on his
chemical and biological.
:: jon: the decisions made were based on the sales aspect of this war in
the administration.
:: to tell you the truth, what i would say is the administration should
really be criticized
for the opposite which is that the administration grossly mishandled the
public explanation.
:: jon: that's what i'm saying.
:: then we agree on that. it grossly mishandled it. i don't think it was
dishonesty. i think it
was... it was.
:: jon: just because your intentions are good and noble and you believe it
to be the right move
for the country doesn't make dishonesty. you remove the ability for the
american public to make
an informed decision. ( applause ) once you have removed that, then you no
longer have, i
think, the authority because what you've done is you've told us what part
of the argument you
think is appropriate for us to know about. but i do appreciate it. the
book is very footnoted.
it makes for slow reading. but it's interesting. thank you. ( cheers and
applause ) douglas feith.
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