Spinsanity: Myths and misconceptions about Iraq

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A friend forwarded this article to me. I found it very interesting and very surprising in its seeming lack of a discernable bias. (I reached that conclusion based on the fact that about half the time I was happy with what I read and the other half I was not. Readers will notice that I did not assume that my agreement or disagreement with this or that point meant the point was true or was not.)

I'll offer a link to the text and my own synopsis of that facts as presented.

Myths and misconceptions about Iraq

Synopsis of facts as presented:

Was Iraq connected to the September 11 attacks?

No evidence currently suggests this.

Did a 1998 IAEA report say Iraq was six months from developing a nuclear weapon?

No. It said that prior to the first Gulf War in 1991 they were "six to twenty four months" from doing so.

Did Iraq try to obtain aluminum tubes to produce fissile material?

Probably not. The tubes they wanted seem ill-suited for this purpose.

Did Iraq attempt to purchase uranium from Niger?

Probably not. Evidence supporting this claim appears false.

Was it Iran, rather than Iraq, that used poison gas on Kurdish civilians?

No. Only a single individual claims otherwise. All other evidence and reports indicate Iraq was the culprit.

Is this a war for oil?

No.

Doesn't the war in Afghanistan prove that a war in Iraq will kill thousands of civilians?

No.

Is this a "unilateral" war?

No.

Did a majority of Americans approve of the present course of action at the time President Bush announced his final decision?

The answer to this depends on how the question was asked.

=====================

Your thoughts and comments on the information presented in this piece are welcome. Discuss...

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Thanks for the link to Spinsanity.

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mark

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Kara wrote:

Thanks for the link to Spinsanity.

I have no experience with the site beyond this one piece, but if they are as balanced in their take on other issues, I would definitely find them a useful source of information.

- TW

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Checking in

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timberlandko wrote:

Checking in

Will you be checking any baggage? :wink:

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The piece, as you correctly indicated, was unbaised and very informative.

As in most of the kinds of things -- there is "disinformation" on both sides.

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Subtle spin = spin

Artful spin = concede on the points that are already lost or irrelevant, nuance the spin on the important ones.

But that's just my take on the spin, I won't go into the Iraq issue.

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I wish you would comment again Craven, in terms of your analysis of the "subtle spin" you refer to.

I have speed-read this - will look more closely after work - and take more of a look at the site.

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Looks great, Tres.

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was it mentioned sit -n-spin?? Laughing

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Actually, I just read their full rationale on the unilateralism question and it didn't hold water for me. You could just about get away with saying, Well, TECHNICALLY not unilateral, but in matters of intention and process, it's effectively unilateral.

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I spped-read, too, but warning lights went off at the structure (concede concede concede meat of argument concede) and at who they were "debunking" in terms of possible Iraqi casualties. (Janeane Garafalo, for example.) I'm suspicious of the oil and casualties arguments, but don't have time right now to go back to it. Hope to later, but by that time it probably will have been dealt with by blatham or tartarin or someone.

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(See? Go for it, Tartarin. That was another one I was suspicious of.)

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I think I'm backing off my first assessment, having plumbed the site a little more deeply. We'd all like to make more sense of what is happening and among the less scrupulous that means shaving a little off here, adding a little on there. "Spinsanity" seems to be smoother but not necessarily fairer or more accurate. The truth is complex and some of the real truths are being hidden very carefully. When I look back on Vietnam, for example, I'm struck by the fact that what seemed so wild and unlikely (by many) at that time turned out to have been true once presidential tapes were listened to, memos pored over, eye-witness accounts added up. By the time a couple of decades have passed, one has talked with people who were there and who say things like: Well, that's not the way we were supposed to present it, but we all knew it was true...

Remember Plato and the cave...

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Quote:

Is this a "unilateral" war?
Some opponents of the Iraq invasion have blithely called it a "unilateral" war, implying that the U.S. is without international allies. Former Vermont governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean, for instance, recently said in a speech at the convention of the California Democratic Party, "What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the president's unilateral intervention in Iraq!"

On its face, this statement is obviously untrue, as the United States is entering this war with the active support of thirty named partners including Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom (the Bush administration has also said fifteen nations privately support the war). It is possible to argue, of course, that by not working with the United Nations, the U.S.'s policy is essentially unilateral since the U.N. is the world's key multilateral institution. But people like Dean and American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner who casually refer to "[Bush's] unilateral war on Iraq" don't make this case - they imply that the U.S. is conducting this war alone, which is simply not true.

active support of thirty named partners? There are some foreign troops in the region, yes. But there are three(US, UK & AUS), maybe four(Poland) that delivered combat troops for this war. The others all delivered, in a more symbolic gesture, experts in ABC warfare.

A lot of the countries named barely have an amry so i wonder how they can active support the USA? And with all respect but: Afghanistan, Albania, Colombia, Eritrea, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines are all countries that even cant secure their own territory, let alone they can be an active support for the USA.

A lot of experts call this an illegal war because it is not backened by the UN.

Head to head: Legality of war

Legal experts scour old resolutions

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I think a lot of us (not just Dems) are squinting at the oddly contrived accession to power of Bush, followed by an oddly contrived invasion of Iraq, and are unable to believe anything good will come of either. It will be interesting to see just which statements of fact turn out to have been useful fictions as the invasion wears on. I'm glad to see that Bush will have to pay for his invasion out of his tax cuts... That may nudge some who were depending on those cuts into taking a second look at him.

Also, this face to face with Blair is interesting. 1) Blair will try to get Bush to give in and let the UN run things "after"... and 2) Blair will try to get Bush to repair relations with the Europeans. Won't Bush have to give in on at least one of those? Or will he just say, No Way Jose, as he did to Blair about allowing British contractors a piece of the post war action?

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tartarin are you leaving out Israel/Palestine from the Blair/Bush extravaganza?

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dlowan wrote:

I wish you would comment again Craven, in terms of your analysis of the "subtle spin" you refer to.

I have speed-read this - will look more closely after work - and take more of a look at the site.

The current push for one side is to characterize this war as multilateral. Their arguments for this disregard the following points:

Countries does not a majority make, you can have many countries without much support from the people.

The permanent members on the security council have the seats for a reason. This Administration is trying to get all the small fry they can to make the fact that they ignored the real players seem irrelevant.

The structure is such so that the powers have power, they circumvented this and used chequebook diplomacy to get as many of the pushovers they can. If support is to be measured by how many small countries' leaders you can buy the issue their opposition raised is still being ignored.

But that's not the real issue, the real issue is that this was never UNIlateral. There was always Britain. So they reduced the whole issue to a logomachy and try to slip that one by.

Tress put further spin on it by making it even more of a closed case. He didn't even mention the article's caveat.

Like I said concede the stuff that you had no chance of defending, then spin the most relevant issue and make it sound like a closed case (due to the apparent fairness of the earlier concessions).

I don't fault tress for the spin, everyone does it and he is good at it. Promoting spinlessness while spinning is a good tactic.

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Quote:

Tress put further spin on it by making it even more of a closed case. He didn't even mention the article's caveat.

I didn't intend to spin anything. I also didn't intend to reprint the article. You may consider it a valid point or one that means nothing, but "unilateral" is a pretty straightforward word. Working in tandem with others, even others that some people don't take seriously, is not acting unilaterally.

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Spinsanity: Myths and misconceptions about Iraq

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