Looking Back at Iraq With… Michael Gordon?
By Peter Hart | FAIR | March 20, 2013
The performance of the corporate media is one of the principal failures of the Iraq War. There are almost too many examples to name; but most critics agree that one of the most instrumental single pieces that made the false case for war was the front-page New York Times story (9/8/02) hyping the idea that Iraq was trying to procure special aluminum tubes for its nuclear weapons program.
Last night in its 10-years-later segment, the PBS NewsHour (3/19/13) made a rather stunning judgment: One of the two expert journalists was the guy who co-authored that piece.
New York Times reporter Michael Gordon was the lead author on that infamous tubes article, but his record goes deeper than that. A few days into the U.S. bombing (3/25/13), Gordon appeared on CNN to endorse the bombing of Iraqi TV’s offices, calling it “an appropriate target,” since “we’re trying to send the exact opposite message.”
When U.S. politicians began to seriously consider a withdrawal of U.S. troops, Gordon criticized that policy, especially in one article (11/15/06) headlined, “Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say” (FAIR Media Advisory, 12/4/06). He went on the Charlie Rose show (1/18/07) to endorse a troop surge. (Even the Washington Post admits that the idea that the surge succeeded is a “myth”–3/15/13.) And in early 2007, Gordon wrote articles, relying heavily on anonymous U.S. sources, alleging that the Iranian government was sending weapons into Iraq (Action Alert, 2/16/07).
So why would Gordon be someone you’d want to listen to about the Iraq War? That’s hard to say, really. But Gordon had plenty to tell PBS viewers. He complained that the Obama White House wasn’t interested enough in Iraq–leading to “the decline of American influence.” As he put it:
I think they view Iraq as just another country. They don’t have the same emotional or psychological or even foreign policy stake in it that the previous administration had.
Gordon added that the U.S. military “see a lot of early mistakes in the first years” of the war, but that “I do think the surge, as a military operation and military strategy, was effective and was essential.”
When one of the hosts, Judy Woodruff, asked about the war’s legacy, he replied: “Well, I think the military learned how to do counterinsurgency. The public opinion may no longer support that, but forever is a long time. And I think you can’t say we won’t have to do that again at some point in the future.”
And if there is ever another moment that requires reporters to faithfully record the views of anonymous U.S. officials as they make their case for war, it’s a safe bet that Michael Gordon will be there to do that job.
Related video
No comments yet.
Featured Video
China Will Absorb Taiwan
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
How Much of Science Is Reproducible?
BY NOAH CARL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | DECEMBER 27, 2022
Reproducibility is the most fundamental yardstick in science. If a result can’t be replicated, it doesn’t count as science.
Yet in recent years, there has been much talk of a ‘replication crisis’. Many results that we assumed were robust simply cannot be replicated. The term is typically used in the context of psychology and medicine, though it may apply to other fields as well.
So how much of science is reproducible? One way of tackling this question is to select a large number of studies from a particular field and then attempt to replicate them. This has been done several times. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Trump and Netanyahu: The odd couple
- Netanyahu’s Ethnostate and the Greater Israel: A Biblical Mythology or a Geopolitical Project?
- Israel Kidnaps, Tortures, and Rapes Humanitarian Activists
- Iran demands ‘zero-tolerance’ on nuclear strikes, cites 17 US-Israeli attacks against its facilities
- ‘Biden’s war’ has become Trump’s – Lavrov
- Suspected Ukrainian drone explodes in Romanian port
- ‘Let That Sink In’: Feds Charge Two NIH Researchers With Smuggling Mpox Into U.S.
- Thousands protest in Albania over Kushner tourism project
- Gitmo and Torture Revisited
- The Quiet Coup That Put Israel Inside Americas Intelligence Core
- If Americans Knew
- Senate is quietly working on new legislation that includes MANDATORY, expansive intelligence sharing with Israel
- Congress wants to tie the United States to Israel with this new legislation. It’s a trap.
- We Were Ordered to Kill’: The 1967 Nakba That Israelis Don’t Know About
- Pro-Israel voices win out, kill bill to stop US-Israel military integration
- Revealed: Israel’s curriculum for ‘influencing public consciousness’
- Finally: House votes to end Trump’s war with Iran
- Iran Never Threatened to ‘Wipe Israel Off the Map’
- Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon devastates centuries of history
- This Pro-Israel Group Paved the Way for Trump’s Disastrous War in Iran
- Kushner floats cash-for-normalization with Israel to expand ‘Abraham Accords’
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
- Real-World Observations Do Not Support The Position That Climate Change Is Human-Caused
- Germany’s AfD Party Calls Debunked Climate Scenarios “Greatest Fraud In Human History”
- Researchers Find Rapid Global Warming Phase At End Of Last Ice Age (Ca.18,000 Years Ago)
- Even The DNA Of Single-Celled Plankton Can Upend Alarmist Arctic Sea Ice Melt Claims
Aletho News 
Leave a comment