Visions of Iraq

To quote the line from “The Da Vinci Code”, it just goes to show that the mind sees what it wants to see. How else can you explain a trip to Iraq by three individuals, who subsequently walk away with completely different interpretations of what is taking place in Iraq?

Thus Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution — the author of “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq” — and his colleague Michael O’Hanlon, another longtime war booster, returned from a Pentagon-guided tour of Iraq and declared that the surge was working. They received enormous media coverage; most of that coverage accepted their ludicrous self-description as critics of the war who have been convinced by new evidence.

A third participant in the same tour, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reported that unlike his traveling companions, he saw little change in the Iraq situation and “did not see success for the strategy that President Bush announced in January.” But neither his dissent nor a courageous rebuttal of Mr. O’Hanlon and Mr. Pollack by seven soldiers actually serving in Iraq, published in The New York Times, received much media attention.

Needless to say, it is interesting that while O’Hanlon and Mr. Pollack were doing the media rounds on national television, Cordesman was not invited to give his take on Iraq. Another example of the liberal media trying to undermine the war, right?

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

Site by Common