“MEDIA MATTERS Watch” : Media Matters’ Falsehoods Exposed!

An August 31, 2006, post by Media Matters continues to underscore the organization’s dishonesty in their presentation of facts. In the post, MMatters takes issue with an interview with President Bush conducted by the liberal Brian Williams that aired on NBC and MSNBC August 29 and 30, 2006. There are several dishonest elements to this MMatters’ post.

1. First of all, MMatters clearly implies that Williams was somehow "soft" (my word) on Bush by "allowing" him to answer questions they way he wanted to. In fact, Williams was particularly tough on the President. For example, he cited a radical, far-left pundit simply as a "critic." Also, Williams himself has been forced to defend himself against the wide impression that he was quite "disrespectful" in the interview. (Read Williams’ blog.) Was Williams "soft"? No way.

2. Media Matters also makes the following dishonest and deceptive claim against Vice President Cheney.

The truth?

Here’s what Vice President Cheney said to Tim Russert only five days after 9/11 on Meet the Press:

RUSSERT: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation? [Sept. 11 attacks]

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.

Got that?

Now, in a Meet the Press interview on December 9, 2001 (nearly FOUR-AND-A-HALF YEARS AGO), Russert and Cheney had the following exchange:

RUSSERT: Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?

CHENEY: Well, what we now have that’s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that’s been pretty well confirmed, that he [Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.

Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don’t know at this point. But that’s clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.

That, my friends is the best that MMatters can do in citing that Cheney "claimed that Iraqi intelligence officers met with alleged 9-11 hijacker Mohamed Atta prior to the attacks."

Are you ready? Here’s the deception by Media Matters: In three later appearances on Meet the Press, Vice President Cheney unequivocally and clearly stated that the "didn’t know" if the meeting happened and that it was "unconfirmed." Don’t believe it? Here:

Cheney on Meet the Press, 9/14/03:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: With respect to 9/11, of course you’ve had the story that’s been publicly out there: The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack. But we’ve never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know. (emphasis added)

Cheney on Meet the Press, 9/8/02:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I want to be very careful about how I say this. I’m not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can’t say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We’ve seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn’t he there, again, it’s the intelligence business.

RUSSERT: What does the CIA say about that and the president?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: It’s credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it’s unconfirmed at this point. We’ve got…

RUSSERT: Anything else?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is-again, I want to separate out 9/11, from the other relationships between Iraq and the al-Qaeda organization. But there is a pattern of relationships going back many years.

Cheney on Meet the Press, 3/24/02:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: [on Iraq] … With respect to the connections to al-Qaida, we haven’t been able to pin down any connection there. I read this report with interest after our interview last fall. We discovered, and it’s since been public, the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague, but we’ve not been able yet from our perspective to nail down a close tie between the al-Qaida organization and Saddam Hussein. We’ll continue to look for it. (emphasis added)

And as far as MMatters’ claim that there are "no confirmed reports of such a meeting," here is a must-read 2004 article by Deroy Murdock that outlines very compelling evidence that such a meeting did actually take place. By the way, the report of the Atta-Iraqi meeting is rooted in Czech intelligence, who still stand by the story.

Media Matters has clearly mislead their readers.

3. MMatters also falsely claims that President Bush voiced "misinformation" in the following exchange:

WILLIAMS: How close was he [Saddam Hussein] associated with Al Qaeda, in your view?

BUSH: Well, he was — he was on our state sponsor of terrorists list. And he was paying families of suiciders. He has – he also, by the way, had weapons of mass destruction one time and had the capacity to make them. And that’s a dangerous mix. We didn’t put him on the state sponsor of terrorists list. The previous administrations put him on the state sponsor of terrorists list. 

In their effort to smear the President, MMatters cites the Duelfer Report. MMatters selectively and deceptively posts the following,

Media Matters’ misrepresentation of the Duelfer Report is as dishonest as it gets.

Media Matters also dishonestly cites the line, "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991." This is utterly a misleading citation by Media Matters that falsely implies that there was absolutely no WMD in Iraq after 1991. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Duelfer Report states that, in 1998,

UNSCOM surfaced its concern over the evidence it found that Iraq had, contrary to its declarations, weaponized VX in missile warheads …

Also:

By 2000, the erosion of sanctions accelerated … Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem … Major items had no trouble getting across the border … Indeed, Iraq was designing missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be readily available.

Media Matters also deceptively clips a quote from the Duelfer Report that says Iraq "had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions." In fact, here’s what the report actually states:

The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions … Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them.

Dishonesty? Absolutely. But this appears to be par for the course for Media Matters.

For the facts about Iraq and WMD, check out this must-read interview with Bill Tierney, who in the 90’s worked for UNSCOM overseeing the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles in Iraq. "Where the WMD Went," by Jamie Glazov. Here’s the kicker:

[Tierney:] "Iraqis have told me that the WMD destruction and movement started just after Operation Desert Fox, since after all, who would be so stupid as to start a bombing campaign and just stop.

"It was only after Saddam realized that President Clinton lacked the nerve for anything more than a temper-tantrum demonstration that he knew the doors were wide open for him to continue his weapons program. We didn’t break his will, we didn’t destroy his weapons making capability. (The Iraqis simply moved most of the precision machinery out prior to the strikes, then rebuilt the buildings), but we did kill some Iraqi bystanders, just so President Clinton could say ’something must be done, so I did something’."

‘Til next time.