January-February 2004       Election year 2004 is a year of considerable challenge for the administration. Inside the administration, the whole Iraq story is unraveling even more decisively than it has unraveled in public, and the White House and the Office of the Vice President must fend off challenges including investigation and oversight at several junctures. Meanwhile, the ‘antiwar movement,’ as the corporate media outlets call it, is making itself felt. In other words, awareness of what actually led to the Iraq war continuously spreads through a wider and wider spectrum of the public. From the administration, public statements in support of the troops and behind-the-scenes manipulation continue, as ever, in tandem.

Also as ever, what the administration achieves depends on the help of large media outlets. The political challenge posed by former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, for example, is demolished by the fictional ‘Dean scream,’ where manipulated sound footage runs several hundred times on CNN to create a false impression about the Democratic front-runner. This false impression is instantly seized on by Bob Schieffer at CBS, by the Washington Post, and other prominent journalistic outlets, and instantly hardens, cemented into conventional wisdom.

Jan. 6, 2004 – Two Republican judges on a three-judge panel in federal court in Austin, Texas, okay a GOP redistricting of Texas between census years. Effectively the redistricting will eliminate five Democratic seats in the U.S. House, safeguarding a GOP majority in Congress after the 2004 elections and reducing any chance of genuine campaigning on peace-and-prosperity issues in election year 2004.

Jan. 7, 2004 -- The administration quietly withdraws the military team hunting for military equipment in Iraq. This is the giveaway that the administration has at least acknowledged, at least internally, that chemical and biological weapons, WMD, will not be found in Iraq.

Jan. 7, 2004 – Secretary of State Colin Powell, interviewed by Koppel on ABC’s Nightline, rephrases or revises the previous claims about Iraqi WMD:

“SECRETARY POWELL: So everything we have seen over those years since they actually used these weapons in 1988 led us to the conclusion, led the intelligence community to the conclusion, that they still had intent, they still had capability and they were not going to give up that capability. What they actually had in the way of inventory was something we had to try to analyze, and we put the best people on it. And the intelligence community presented all the information they had in national intelligence estimates and information they provided to the Congress. It was also consistent with information that UN inspectors had come up with over the years and foreign intelligence agencies had come up with over the years.

When I went before the world last February 5th at the United Nations Security Council, with Director Tenet there with me, I was presenting, in the most balanced way that I could, but in a way to make the case, the considered view of the U.S. intelligence community, which was shared by most of the intelligence community cells throughout the world in different countries.

Now, how much is actually there, we'll find out when Dr. Kay finishes his work. One of the problems is we didn't really know how much was there. That's why we gave Saddam Hussein a chance to tell us what was there, give us an honest declaration of what you've been doing. And he didn't do that.

MR. KOPPEL: But you were specifying. You spoke about anywhere between 100 and 500 metric tons.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes, that we didn't know what happened to.”

Jan. 8, 2004 – Craig R. Schmall, CIA daily briefer for Cheney and Libby, meets with FBI investigating the CIA leak matter. According to his note/memo within CIA, Jan.9, “I mentioned also to the agents that Libby was in charge within the administration (or at least the White House side) for producing papers arguing he case for Iraqi WMD and ties between Iraq and al-Qa’ida, which explains Libby’s and the Vice President’s interest in the Iraq/Niger/Uranium case.”

http://wid.ap.org/documents/libbytrial/jan24/DX421.pdf

Jan 8, 2004 – The respected Carnegie Endowment for World Peace releases a detailed, 111-page report titled “WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications,” that says categorically that the administration “systematically misrepresented” the threat from Iraq.

Jan. 8, 2004 – In an interview with reporters, Colin Powell acknowledges that there is no “smoking gun” link between Iraq and al Qaeda, although he expresses a belief that such links existed.

Jan. 8, 2004 – White House office emails for this date are missing, according to later congressional inquiry by the House Government Reform Committee.

Jan. 9, 10, 11, 2004 – White House office emails for these dates are missing, as revealed by subsequent investigation.

Jan 11, 2004 – CBS reports that former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, interviewed for 60 Minutes, reveals that Bush was focused on removing Saddam from the first.

Jan. 12, 2004 – White House office emails from this day are missing, according to later investigation by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

The devastating appearances and dignified but also devastating statements by two figures such as Paul O’Neill and Colin Powell should have spelled the end for White House credibility. They were reported, and they did have impact.

But any newspaper reader over recent years must know that these reports would have had much more impact had they gotten even a tenth of the focus and emphasis devoted to Monica Lewinsky, in the Clinton years. This is not written in support of the Clintons—who could have retired to Arkansas after leaving the White House, instead of capitalizing in New York as stop-gaps for GOP corporate policy. But the hysterical energy devoted to Ms. Lewinsky should have been at the very least equaled, in the news media, by alert attention to the bogus White House claims about Iraq.