One of the most horrifying aspects of the Washington Posts's cheerleading for the Iraq Debacle in 2002/2003 was that WaPo editors IGNORED the excellent, and very skeptical, reporting of their own correspondents - most notably Walter Pincus.
In Monday's post, Pincus authors a long article about the other notable group of Iraq war skeptics - Democratic members of the House of Representatives - and points out how little credit they have been given.
Here's his lead:
Although given little public credit at the time, or since, many of the 126 House Democrats who spoke out and voted against the October 2002 resolution that gave President Bush authority to wage war against Iraq have turned out to be correct in their warnings about the problems a war would create.
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Democrats Who Opposed War Move Into Key Positions
The juiciest tidbits below - and the killer money quote at the end.
Pincus then lists Dem Rep after Dem Rep, what they said and did during the debate - and it's a hit parade of dire forewarnings, which have since proved deadly accurate.
Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, was one of several Democrats who predicted during the House floor debate that "the outcome after the conflict is actually going to be the hardest part, and it is far less certain."
The incoming Armed Services chairman, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), spoke in support of Spratt's amendment, stressing the need for "a plan for rebuilding of the Iraqi government and society, if the worst comes to pass and armed conflict is necessary." [snip]
Skelton went on to note the "extreme difficulty of occupying Iraq with its history of autocratic rule, its balkanized ethnic tensions and its isolated economic system." He also warned that Bush's postwar strategy must "take seriously" the possibility that a replacement regime "might be rejected by the Iraqi people, leading to civil unrest and even anarchy."
(Rep. Barbara) Lee also raised questions in the floor debate that remain unanswered. "What is our objective here," she asked four years ago, "regime change or elimination of weapons of mass destruction?"
(Rep. Tammy) Baldwin four years ago asked questions that are being widely considered today: "Are we prepared to keep 100,000 or more troops in Iraq to maintain stability there? If we don't, will a new regime emerge? If we don't, will Iran become the dominant power in the Middle East? . . . If we don't, will Islamic fundamentalists take over Iraq?"
Pincus ends his article with a little tidbit that, metaphorically speaking, calls out the National press, and the WaPo specifically for not REPORTING these excellent questions when it could have done some good.
The day after the House vote, The Washington Post recorded that 126 House Democrats voted against the final resolution. None was quoted giving a reason for his or her vote except for Rep. Joe Baca (Calif.), who said a military briefing had disclosed that U.S. soldiers did not have adequate protection against biological weapons.
"As a veteran, that's what hit me the hardest," he said.
Lee was described as giving a "fiery denunciation" of the administration's "rush to war," with only 14 colleagues in the House chamber to hear her. None of the reasons she gave to justify her concerns, nor those voiced by other Democratic opponents, was reported in the two Post stories about passage of the resolution that day.
Remember that Pincus did his darndest to warn his editors, and the press, that the WMD were fairy tales:
On Sunday, March 16, three days before the war began, Pincus attempted to do just that, publishing a story that laid out the full case for doubt. In u.s. lacks specifics on banned arms, several unnamed intelligence officers and administration officials conceded that they lacked hard facts, and that much of the evidence they had compiled was circumstantial at best. It ran on page seventeen. (Leonard Downie Jr., the Post’s executive editor, would later express regret that the paper did not give more prominence to stories that were skeptical of the administration’s WMD claims.)
CJR story on Pincus
Geez, think maybe he's still a little steamed about that page 17 slot? (I know I am. )