The truth behind the Pollack-O'Hanlon trip to Iraq
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
(updated below)
Last Wednesday, I interviewed Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution regarding the trip he recently took to Iraq and the highly publicized Op-Ed in the New York Times about his trip, co-written with his Brookings colleague, Ken Pollack. The full transcript of the interview, which lasted roughly 50 minutes, can be read here.
O'Hanlon's answers, along with several other facts now known, demonstrate rather conclusively what a fraud this Op-Ed was, and even more so, the deceitfulness of the intense news coverage it generated. Most of the critical attention in the immediate aftermath of the media blitz focused on the misleading depiction of the pro-war Pollack and O'Hanlon as "critics of the administration." To his credit, O'Hanlon acknowledged (in my interview with him, though never in any of the media appearances he did) that many of the descriptions applied to him -- including Dick Cheney's claim that the Op-Ed was written by "critics of the war" -- were inaccurate:
First, I think that to an extent, at least, it's certainly fair to go over a person's record when that person themself is being held up as playing a certain role in the debate. So while I'm not entirely happy with some of the coverage I've received here [on this blog] and elsewhere, I agree with the basic premise: that if I'm being held up as a "critic of the war", for example by Vice President Cheney, it's certainly only fair to ask if that is a proper characterization of me. And in fact I would not even use that characterization of myself, as I will elaborate in a moment.
Indeed, as I documented previously and as he affirmed in the interview, O'Hanlon was, from the beginning, a boisterous supporter of the invasion of Iraq. While he debated what the optimal war strategy was, once it became clear exactly what strategy Bush would use, O'Hanlon believed -- and forcefully argued -- that George Bush was doing the right thing by invading Iraq:
As you rightly reported -- I was not a critic of this war. In the final analysis, I was a supporter.
He believed with virtual certainty that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD and that that fact constituted the principal justification for the invasion. In February, 2003, O'Hanlon wrote -- in a column entitled "Time for War" -- that the "president was still convincing on his central point that the time for war is near" and decreed that "it is now time for multilateralists to support the president." Not a single one of the television interviews Pollack and O'Hanlon gave about their Op-Ed included any reference to the fact that they were both supporters of the war and of the Surge.
Throughout 2003 and into 2004, O'Hanlon supported not only the war, but also Bush and Rumsfeld's occupation strategy. And while he began to argue -- just as did Bill Kristol and his neoconservative comrades -- that improvements were needed in Iraq due to the need for more troops, there was never a point, and there still is none, where O'Hanlon argued for withdrawal of troops or a timetable for withdrawal (though in 2004, he argued for a decrease in troop numbers). Then, in 2005, he argued for troop increases. At the beginning of this year, O'Hanlon (and Pollack) supported George Bush's and Fred Kagan's Surge plan.
(Continued here.)
Salon.com
(updated below)
Last Wednesday, I interviewed Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution regarding the trip he recently took to Iraq and the highly publicized Op-Ed in the New York Times about his trip, co-written with his Brookings colleague, Ken Pollack. The full transcript of the interview, which lasted roughly 50 minutes, can be read here.
O'Hanlon's answers, along with several other facts now known, demonstrate rather conclusively what a fraud this Op-Ed was, and even more so, the deceitfulness of the intense news coverage it generated. Most of the critical attention in the immediate aftermath of the media blitz focused on the misleading depiction of the pro-war Pollack and O'Hanlon as "critics of the administration." To his credit, O'Hanlon acknowledged (in my interview with him, though never in any of the media appearances he did) that many of the descriptions applied to him -- including Dick Cheney's claim that the Op-Ed was written by "critics of the war" -- were inaccurate:
First, I think that to an extent, at least, it's certainly fair to go over a person's record when that person themself is being held up as playing a certain role in the debate. So while I'm not entirely happy with some of the coverage I've received here [on this blog] and elsewhere, I agree with the basic premise: that if I'm being held up as a "critic of the war", for example by Vice President Cheney, it's certainly only fair to ask if that is a proper characterization of me. And in fact I would not even use that characterization of myself, as I will elaborate in a moment.
Indeed, as I documented previously and as he affirmed in the interview, O'Hanlon was, from the beginning, a boisterous supporter of the invasion of Iraq. While he debated what the optimal war strategy was, once it became clear exactly what strategy Bush would use, O'Hanlon believed -- and forcefully argued -- that George Bush was doing the right thing by invading Iraq:
As you rightly reported -- I was not a critic of this war. In the final analysis, I was a supporter.
He believed with virtual certainty that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD and that that fact constituted the principal justification for the invasion. In February, 2003, O'Hanlon wrote -- in a column entitled "Time for War" -- that the "president was still convincing on his central point that the time for war is near" and decreed that "it is now time for multilateralists to support the president." Not a single one of the television interviews Pollack and O'Hanlon gave about their Op-Ed included any reference to the fact that they were both supporters of the war and of the Surge.
Throughout 2003 and into 2004, O'Hanlon supported not only the war, but also Bush and Rumsfeld's occupation strategy. And while he began to argue -- just as did Bill Kristol and his neoconservative comrades -- that improvements were needed in Iraq due to the need for more troops, there was never a point, and there still is none, where O'Hanlon argued for withdrawal of troops or a timetable for withdrawal (though in 2004, he argued for a decrease in troop numbers). Then, in 2005, he argued for troop increases. At the beginning of this year, O'Hanlon (and Pollack) supported George Bush's and Fred Kagan's Surge plan.
(Continued here.)
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