Time magazine's Joe Klein has read George W. Bush's memoir, and has a few criticisms (11/11/10); for instance, he points out that Bush

never stops to wonder if the UN inspectors, whom Saddam Hussein had allowed back into Iraq, were not finding weapons of mass destruction because, maybe, uh, the WMD didn't exist.

That's a good question, but it's not surprising that Bush didn't raise it, since Bush has repeatedly claimed that Saddam Hussein did not allow weapons inspectors into Iraq in the first place. As FAIR pointed out in an Action Alert ("Media Still Letting Bush Lie on Iraq Inspectors," 12/2/08), Bush peddled this absurd falsehood to ABC's Charlie Gibson, who failed to challenge him:

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq War?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld.

The Washington Post's write-up (12/1/08) of the interview praised Bush's "new candor."

The alert noted that this wasn't Bush's first attempt to rewrite history:

As FAIR pointed out (7/18/03), in July 2003 Bush made a similar comment ("We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in"), which the Post soft-pedaled by saying these words "appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring." And reporter Robert Parry (Consortium News, 12/2/08) noted after the ABC interview that Bush has made similar declarations (1/27/04, 3/21/06, 5/24/07 )--none of which  generated much interest from the corporate media.

If these utterances had received more attention at the time, reporters like Joe Klein would surely be more familiar with them. But Bush's fantasy was kept quiet--perhaps because reporting it widely would have sent a message that Bush had no idea what he was doing.

Media blogger Eli Stephens (left i on the news, 7/2/09) has posted on a Washington Post lede claiming that "Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran." Stephens explains how, as "one of the major pieces of 'evidence' used to justify the invasion of Iraq at the time," this "repetition now, from the mouth of Saddam Hussein no less, would be an important post-facto justification for the invasion." There's just one problem:

The claim itself was bullshit at the time. The truth, as I wrote at the time, was that while Gen. Colin Powell was at the U.N. lying through his teeth (or spouting lies put in his mouth by others, if you prefer to be generous to Powell) about the "evidence" the U.S. had, Iraqi Gen. Amer Al-Saadi (still imprisoned, as far as we know) was saying clearly and quite publicly that Iraq had no WMD whatsoever. That's one funny way to "allow the world to believe that you have WMD."

And, guess what? No such statement from Saddam Hussein appears in the interviews, which are all online at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The interviews aren't even transcripts, they are all simply summaries of the conversations made by an FBI agent, with only a tiny amount of direct quotations embedded within them. But even in those summaries, no such claim appears.

Having "twice" read "every word of the five 'casual conversations'" the Post says Hussein's comments are drawn from, Stephens is compelled to "repeat--no such claim by Saddam Hussein appears (nor does it appear in the summary of the documents prepared by the NSA)--that is entirely a fiction created by the Post." Read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Saddam's 'Secret': Hussein Told CBS About WMDs--but CBS Wasn't Watching" (3–4/08) by Seth Ackerman.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald has an explanation (3/23/09, ad-viewing required) for why he thinks that Howard Kurtz's belief that the image of corporate reporters as "just a bunch of cozy Washington insiders" is not "that big a deal"--because "there's such a built-in adversarial relationship between the press and the pols"--constitutes "an extremely funny joke today, showing why he is the 'media critic' for both the Washington Post and CNN":

That is some very penetrating media criticism there. The media and political leaders are at each other's throats so viciously, they have such sharply conflicting interests, that it's a wonder they can even be in the same room together without physical confrontation. For instance, it was the same Howie Kurtz who, in 2004, wrote this about what happened at his own newspaper:

Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.

Kurtz's own paper also reported Tim Russert's policy of refusing to report anything said by government officials unless explicitly authorized by them to do so.

Buttressing his condemnation with many more examples of such "adversarial" reportage, Greenwald also updates his post with grim video footage of "the ugly weekend riot that nearly erupted as a result of the intractable media/politician animosity" on display at presidential candidate John McCain's barbecue for his "base."

Read the recent FAIR Media Advisory: "The Short, Happy Iraq War of Howard Kurtz" (3/20/09).