May 12th at 11:50PM
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: You Probably Don't Understand the Iraq War
Former Bush Administration Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight to set the record straight on the Iraq war. Apparently we were not mislead misled into war. I believe him. Unless he's misleading me now...
Anyway, Jon started summer early by firing up the grill and sticking Feith on it. Listen to the defense of a man who was in the room when all the planning went down and decide if it flips your script.
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Rule of Thumb: If someone who is/was employed by the Bush Administration tells you the sun rises in the East, make sure you have a compass in hand at dawn.
And you always know its not going well for the guest when the audience is completely silent.
Seriously though, good job. That was one of the best interviews I’ve seen in a long time. When I saw that this guy was on the show, I said to my wife, “Who ever told him to go on The Daily Show fed him to the wolfs.” I kept waiting for Jon to pull out video and say, “You mean like this? And this? And this? And this?”
When people criticize “political correctness”, this is what political correctness is. It is sanitizing the language of a debate. “Oh the people weren’t ‘lied to.’ The people weren’t even ‘misled.’ If the Administration is guilty of anything its ‘not communicating all of its concerns to the people.’”
Douglas Feith would have us believe that bovine rectal emissions are different than bullshit.
Keeping these guys from squirming out of the questions to avoid the hard answers is a tough job. Keep up the good work JS!
Again and again this non-news show amazes me how much more deep and serious questions are asked then anywhere else. I wish the media would not leave it to comedy central to ask bold questions and not focus on trival matters. I could go on and on but all in all i would like to thank the dailyshow team for giving us, the public, something we dont usually get. please dont stop!
from the bottom of my heart
thank you
wow...see, i know you hate to have people say it, but you /are/ a journalist. Just like that new study discussed. And if people don't believe me, i'll steer them to this interview...
I'm a huge Jon Stewart fan, but he suffers from a bit of Chris Matthews disease -- interrupting guests and talking too much during interviews (this one and others). Stewart made very good points and asked good questions, but especially with a tool like Feith it's often best to let the guest speak more. Especially the way the interview was edited, Feith got very little time to talk and as usual Stewart got the last word.
Thanks for a thoughtful interview that went beyond "fake news" to grapple with real issues. However, Jon did, perhaps inadvertently, let Feith off the hook. He was one of the key people who built the "link" and orchestrated the momentum that led to the war. The facts are available in several books, including Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack" and Richard Clark's "Against All Enemies." But the strongest evidence appears in James Bamford's "A Pretext for War."
Bamford explains that Feith and Richard Perle developed their blueprint for the Iraq operation while working for pro-Israeli think tanks. Their plan, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” centered on Israel taking out Saddam and replacing him with a friendly leader. “Whoever inherits Iraq,” they wrote, “dominates the entire Levant strategically.” The subsequent steps they recommended included invading Syria and Lebanon.
In the 1990s, Feith churned out anti-Arab diatribes in Israeli newspapers, Bamford reveals. In those articles, he urged Israel to establish more settlements and end the Oslo peace process. When George H.W. Bush was president, Feith organized a group to denounce the elder Bush for his “mistreatment of Israel.” What he wanted was a full-scale war against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
Back in government, Feith created the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) after 9/11. Senior officials have called it a disinformation factory. Torie Clarke, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, warned about “blowback” and said that OSI would undermine “the trust, credibility, and transparency of our access to the media.”
But the worst was still to come: Feith’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), which Jon mentioned. Officially, its job was to conduct pre-war planning. But its actual target was the media, policy-makers, and public opinion. Feith’s partner, Abram Shulsky, liked to call their operation “the Cabal.”
According to London’s Guardian newspaper, the OSP’s job was to provide key people in the administration with “alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq.” In particular, holdouts like Powell needed to be persuaded. To do that, the OSP obtained cooked intelligence from its own unit and a similar Israeli cell. There was also a close relationship with Vice President Cheney’s office. In the end, the public heard what Feith’s unit wanted them to hear.
How did it work? According to Bamford, OSP’s intelligence unit cherry-picked the most damning items from the streams of US and Israeli reports. “Then the OSP would brief senior administration officials,” he writes. “These officials would then use the OSP’s false and exaggerated intelligence as ammunition when attempting to hard-sell the need for war to their reluctant colleagues, such as Colin Powell, and even to allies like British Prime Minister Tony Blair.” Senior White House officials received the same briefings. It was clearly music to their ears.
The final step was to get Powell to make the case to the UN. This was handled by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a secret office established to sell the war. WHIG provided Powell with a “script” for his speech, using information developed by Feith’s group. Much of it was unsourced material fed to newspapers by the OSP. Realizing this, Powell’s team turned to the now-discredited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. But some of Feith’s handiwork ended up in Powell’s mouth anyway.
Thanks for taking this on. But it did allow Feith to spread more disinformation and wash his hands of responsibility.
For more on the government's perception management and mainstream media's whitewash, which continues during the current Presidential Death Match, take a look at some of the reports (and satire) on my blog, Maverick Media.
Feith is not a bright man (and, yes, I am being terribly kind). How -- for the love of God -- did such a person attain a position of power and responsibility? This was as good a political interview as I have ever seen. Jon Stewart calmly and graciously handed Feith his ass in a croker sack and Feith acted as cleverly as a three-month-old Spaniel puppy.
I love it when Jon gets all serious and political, because his incredulity at the nerve of these people is such a refreshingly normal reaction. He interviews politicians and their spin doctors on a near-daily basis, but he remains very much like the rest of us, an ordinary concerned citizen.
Great interview. I've maintained for ages that I'd love to see a weekly current affairs programme with Stewart doing a 30 minute interview, no audience, just him and a guest. Part of the reason the Daily Show is so good Stewart makes an excellent interviewer on serious subjects (I could do without the celebrity interviews altogether, they are consistently dull). He's considerate of the guest, even if he disagrees with them, engaging them in intelligent debate rather than rhetoric, and is knowledgeable and interested in the subject. It makes for compelling viewing as evidenced by this video.
Absolutely Brilliant!!!!!! These questions need to be asked!!! As a military spouse, I believe that George Bush is synonymous with Satan. I have friends that have been sent to Iraq 5X...does Bush think we are cats? My husband goes this June, and I am told that TriCare will not cover me until I have met the $1000 cap. Wow, I feel like my President cares for me. I didn't vote for the bastard, sure send us off to war and not be honest about the outcome!
Another thing that really burns me, I applied to render my services with the Army Reserve. I am a dually certified Audiologist/Speech Language Pathologist and they are not interested because I have asthma. How retarded is that? I already get my meds through TriCare. Oh...I am a risk. I am saying I will help our vets and they are saying NO!!! I don't get it.
I love my country, but am disgraced by Bush who currently represents the American voice! I am a 4th generation WY resident...the Honorable "DICK" does not represent me; Rumsfeld did not represent me, Condi is a fake, and Bush is mentally challenged
Continue the brilliant dialogue and challenge those that seem to think they have all the answers...because they discuss it "politically".!
Please continue this programming!
Carie Hornby-Daniels
Jon, you were cool, reasonable and did an excellent job of calling BS on Feith last night. Where are these guys going to hide once they are out of office? Probably in Cheney's new Dubai office. Thanks