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Constitutional Guarantees.

Written by David Manning
to The New York Times,
April 15, 2007.

To the Editor:

Re: “Everybody Hates Don Imus” (April 15). Okay, the constitution guarantees free speech. That’s great. But it does not guarantee everyone a radio program.

—David Manning
—New York

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posted on a daily basis.

Shaping History.

Written by Lancy deHaven Smith to
The New York Times,
July 25, 2006.

To the Editor:

As a scholar who has been studying various accounts of how the Bush administration arrived at its decision to invade Iraq, I was baffled by Bryan Burrough’s superficial review of The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind. Burrough starts by making an unfavorable comparison between Suskind’s new book and the supposedly more thorough works of Bob Woodward, and yet, in the rest of the review, Burrough does not even mention Suskind’s startling revelations which challenge perhaps the most important claim that Woodward has made about the Bush administration’s pre-invasion decision making.

In Plan of Attack, which was published in 2004 as the presidential election was approaching, Woodward reported that in December 2002, as the possible invasion of Iraq was being considered, President Bush was briefed in the Oval Office by CIA staff about intelligence findings on whether Iraq possessed, or was in the process of developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). According to Woodward, the President responded to the briefing by saying that the evidence for WMD was weak, at which point CIA Director George Tenet stood up, “threw his arms in the air,” and declared, “It’s a slam dunk case!” (See Plan of Attack, p. 249.)

Suskind offers a different account of this meeting and implies that Woodward was set up by Bush and his staff to provide cover for Bush after it became clear that there were no WMDs in Iraq to be found. In The One Percent Doctrine (p. 188), Suskind reports that neither Tenet nor the other CIA official at the meeting (John McLaughlin) remember Tenet ever raising his arms or saying “slam dunk.” Moreover, Suskind points out that the story about this meeting was not conveyed by Bush to Woodward until late 2003—almost a year after the meeting had occurred—by which time suspicions were mounting that Bush had taken the nation to war under false pretenses. Knowing what we do now about how Bush, Cheney, and Scooter Libby tried to discredit Joseph Wilson by manipulating reporters, the idea that Bush might have used Woodward in a similar way makes sense.

The question of whether the President intentionally misrepresented intelligence reports to justify the invasion of Iraq continues to be disputed and remains critically important to how Americans evaluate the war in Iraq, the Bush administration, and the performance of America’s political institutions. This issue has never been investigated by Congress, apparently because Congressional Republicans have no interest in looking into the actions of a Republican president, even if—or especially if--the President may have lied to Congress and misled the nation. In the absence of a formal inquiry, investigative journalism is our best hope for learning the truth, and The One Percent Doctrine offers new and important information. Why would Burrough ignore this and instead focus on Suskind’s writing style, character portrayals, and scene-setting?

—Lance deHaven-Smith, Ph.D.
—Professor of Public Administration
—and Policy
—Florida State University
—Tallahassee, FL

Comments will be reviewed and
posted on a daily basis.