7 ms·

You hire Judith Miller to write about WMDs. Then get 'quality' news to publish it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J

by sien 8y ago

You hire Judith Miller to write about WMDs. Then get 'quality' news to publish it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller The cost of the NYT's 'disinformation' about Iraq was a war that cost hundreds of billions and thousands of lives.

influx 8y ago
It's treasonous not to trust the 17 intelligence agencies.
- 1337biz 8y ago
  Your irony is too subtle.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  I can't tell if you're just using sarcasm here, but there's nothing "treasonous" about not trusting intelligence agencies that throughout history have not been very trustworthy. You should also stop using "treason" incorrectly. Here [1] is a great debate between Glenn Greenwald and James Risen where Glenn breaks down how important it is to not use Treason in an incorrect manner, and explains (sourced) exactly what Treason is defined as under US law with examples throughout history. [1] https://youtu.be/LsY70_uIXNc?t=5m34s https://youtu.be/LsY70_uIXNc?t=5m34s
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    The missed penny is what notable persons have long and loudly proclaimed distrust of the US Intelligence Community.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      Yeah well, a broken clock can still be right twice a day.
  - SpikeDad 8y ago
    Interesting to have Greenwald define treason. Is he trying to keep himself out of that illustrious crowd? Guess living in a foreign country makes one braver than usual.
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      It's not Greenwald's definition - he sourced it in the video from Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii And then goes on to cite previous court cases and what charges were actually brought in them.
  - lobotryas 8y ago
    It's nice to see someone say that when a person would be hounded to no end online if they showed any skepticism of intelligence agencies' assertions that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections
- Avshalom 8y ago
  whether I am addressing this to you or the audience: it has come out in the years since that in fact the US intelligence community agreed there was no credible threat of WMDs in Iraq, but they mostly kept their mouth shut when the Bush administration claimed otherwise.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    That's also my impression. I followed that closely. It's also my impression that the US intelligence community tried to warn the Bush administration about the 9/11 attackers, but that Condoleezza Rice blew them off.[0] 0) https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-director...
    - monocasa 8y ago
      > It's also my impression that the US intelligence community tried to warn the Bush administration about the 9/11 attackers, but that Condoleezza Rice blew them off. Nah, the official report from the CIA was FOIAed. IMO this meme that the CIA saw it all right is just Washington internal politics leaking out. https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-on-WMDs-unedacted-version# https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-o... Page 13 > High Confidence > * Iraq is continuing, and in some cases expanding, its biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions. The report also spends a long time parroting that yellowcake BS too.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        But it wasn't just the CIA. I've read that the NSA had intercepts.[0] And regarding the NSA, I tend to trust Bamford. I also gather that NSA staff didn't want to reveal too many specifics, to avoid compromising methods etc, and that their reticence proved counterproductive. The FBI were reportedly also close to the hijackers.[1] And they also have lots of data on Saudi connections.[2] Also, there used to be an article on salon.com about a team of Mossad agents that was tracking the 9/11 hijackers. But now I don't find it. As I recall, there were connections to young Mossad agents in the US, who posed as artists, selling their work door-to-door.[3] I've also read that it was rather a rite of passage for young agents. With the US being relatively safe for training. 0) https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/21/missed-calls-nsa-terrorism-osama-bin-laden-mihdhar/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/21/missed-calls-nsa-terror... 1) https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129563&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129563&page=1 2) https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-fbi-is-keeping-80000-secret-files-on-the-saudis-and-911 https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-fbi-is-keeping-80000-secre... 3) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1387069/US-arrests-200-young-Israelis-in-spying-investigation.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel...
davidzweig 8y ago
"Credible estimates of Iraq War casualties range from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 (per the Iraq Family Health Survey) to 461,000 total deaths as of June 2011 (per PLOS Medicine 2013), over 60% of them violent." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
- BeetleB 8y ago
  "Other disputed estimates, such as the 2006 Lancet study and the 2007 Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey—which likely overestimate mortality—put the numbers as high as 655,000 total deaths as of June 2006 (over 90% of them violent) and 1.2 million violent deaths as of August 2007 respectively. Meanwhile, body counts—which likely underestimate mortality—put the numbers as low as 110,000 violent deaths as of April 2009" The Wikipedia summary needs editing. The paragraph has a lot of weasel words. Who decides what is credible? Who decides what is likely an underestimate? And AFAIK, all the estimates are disputed - yet someone will get the impression that the Lancet ones are the disputed ones and not the PLOS one.
bumholio 8y ago
It's quite unfair to compare misinformation campaigns orchestrated by the whole US government and it's intelligence agencies, as was the case with Iraq's WMDs, to online propaganda organized by private individuals to the benefit of various political candidates or their own online circulation. What happened with Iraq was not just fake news, it was fake governing, it was another order of magnitude. Miller and the NYT were just some of the many useful idiots.
- munk-a 8y ago
  Nah, the backlash we're seeing against mainstream media these days are, I believe, in a large part driven by those reporters that failed to do their due diligence when it came to Iraq. Reporters should expect to be told lies often, when those lies are blindly printed and distributed it does a lot of damage to society's trust. I think with Iraq it went beyond negligence, but likely not at all levels, preferring to hire hawkish reporters is an effective way to keep the train rolling. That said, singling out NYT as the OP did is sort of hilarious, all the media outlets ran the same terrible stories and often avoided booking guests that would speak against the war.
  - slg 8y ago
    The definition of lying generally involves intent. Do you think these journalists generally are intending to mislead with statements they know are untrue in the same way the producers of fake news do?
    - function_seven 8y ago
      Nobody in this thread suggested that the journalists were lying, just that they were terrible at their jobs. They repeated the official line, without questioning the source.
      - slg 8y ago
        The title of this article and post presents a question. The first comment in this thread appears to be answering that question by blaming it on the NYT.
octonion 8y ago
Really, it was all the New York Times & the US government had nothing to do with it? Go away, propaganda troll.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  There's no "propaganda trolling" here. The newspapers & media conglomerates pay a big role in lying to the American public to manufacture consent, with the help of the US government and intelligence agencies. They work together. Check out Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
  - SpikeDad 8y ago
    On occasion maybe individuals. And certainly more on the right than the left. But they don't work together in the least.
- dang 8y ago
  Personal attacks and name-calling will get you banned here regardless of how wrong someone else is. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules from now on. Edit: actually, since you've done this repeatedly after we warned you, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
bsder 8y ago
Whataboutism. Your statement, while accurate, says nothing about the veracity of the current article. I wish I could do more than downvote you.
- acheron 8y ago
  > I wish I could do more than downvote you. It’s off topic garbage, and generated an equally garbage subthread, so flagging is certainly appropriate.
ebikelaw 8y ago
It wasn't like they learned their lesson, either. They've continued to staff up with morons and to report a lot of falsehoods and distractions in the years since the Iraq War days.
curtis 8y ago
> The cost of the NYT's 'disinformation' about Iraq was a war that cost hundreds of billions and thousands of lives. Are you saying that had the NYT reported things differently the Iraq war wouldn't have happened? That seems unreasonably strong because it implies that the New York Times had a greater responsibility for the war than did the president and congress.
- wu-ikkyu 8y ago
  Perhaps if the entire mainstream media had reported things differently (instead of seemingly all of them being blindly in favor of it), then yes, maybe it wouldn't have happened. That is assuming of course that the US government actually cares what the public thinks when powerful government officials want war.
  - meowface 8y ago
    Perhaps you're right, but at the time, most mainstream media was simply reporting on what the executive branch had already claimed was proven: Saddam had WMDs. At the time, there were no government/intelligence officials saying otherwise. The media had no strong reason to doubt the government's claims before the war started, as well as no way to validate or disprove the claims. And it's not like it would've been the most shocking revelation in the world if it were true; Saddam was a despot who had undoubtedly heavily researched, developed, and used WMDs in the past and had motive to continue stockpiling WMDs. The media certainly should have been more skeptical and critical of the government, but I'd say at that early stage, the blame mostly falls on Bush and his advisors. If you were working at one of these news outlets at that time, I bet you would have reported it similar to the rest of the mainstream media, too.
    - wu-ikkyu 8y ago
      The media is not supposed to simply parrot government talking points, at least not in a free society. Even if Saddam did have WMDs, so what? So does North Korea and other hostile regimes, and so does the US. Couldn't the media have questioned whether or not that was a valid excuse for war? That's the type of thing Phil Donahue of MSNBC did, and his questioning of the war got him fired. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program History is important, too, but apparently not to them. Was it ever mentioned in the mainstream media that the US itself had provided billions of dollars in military equipment and support to Saddam, including dual use technologies used for chemical and biological weapons? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_War#Dual-use_exports https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Ir... "You know we armed Iraq...during the Gulf War those intelligence reports would come out"-- 'Iraq, incredible weapons! Incredible weapons!' "...How do you know that?" 'Well...we looked at the receipts. But as soon as that check clears we're going in!' -Bill Hicks https://youtu.be/MyG2c-Wddzo https://youtu.be/MyG2c-Wddzo
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
arminiusreturns 8y ago
Indeed. It's called "Operation Mockingbird". I'm sure it's a different name by now, but all these people talking about this subject, I usually do a ctrl+f "mockingbird" and when I see nothing I know they aren't getting to the heart of the issue. Another thing no one talks about? The massive consolidation via mergers and acquisitions in the media/journalism world. It's been show multiple times that ownership is used to influence those things, but when those ownerships become monopolies owned by fewer and fewer oligarchical uber-rich, there are less and less voices in the wilderness speaking truth. What I do is find a truth teller and read all his or her stuff. Robert Fisk, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, Steve Coll, Matt Taibbi, Michael Hastings (assassinated), Gary Webb (assassinated), Jeremy Scahill, Richard Grove, and John Perkins are just a few on my list.
Bucephalus355 8y ago
Costs of those wars are going to be, at the final tally, around $6 billion. Most of it will be through deserved veterans benefits, as was/is the case with Vietnam. Trump has recently been claiming $7 billion, although I haven’t seen evidence for that. https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-iraq-war-cost-2-trillion-2013-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-iraq-war-cost-2-tril...
- LUmBULtERA 8y ago
  Not that I like Business Insider as a source, but I think you're off from the article by about $5.94 trillion.

by sien 8y ago

influx 8y ago

It's treasonous not to trust the 17 intelligence agencies.

1337biz 8y ago
Your irony is too subtle.
prolikewh0a 8y ago
I can't tell if you're just using sarcasm here, but there's nothing "treasonous" about not trusting intelligence agencies that throughout history have not been very trustworthy. You should also stop using "treason" incorrectly. Here [1] is a great debate between Glenn Greenwald and James Risen where Glenn breaks down how important it is to not use Treason in an incorrect manner, and explains (sourced) exactly what Treason is defined as under US law with examples throughout history. [1] https://youtu.be/LsY70_uIXNc?t=5m34s https://youtu.be/LsY70_uIXNc?t=5m34s
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  The missed penny is what notable persons have long and loudly proclaimed distrust of the US Intelligence Community.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Yeah well, a broken clock can still be right twice a day.
- SpikeDad 8y ago
  Interesting to have Greenwald define treason. Is he trying to keep himself out of that illustrious crowd? Guess living in a foreign country makes one braver than usual.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    It's not Greenwald's definition - he sourced it in the video from Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii And then goes on to cite previous court cases and what charges were actually brought in them.
- lobotryas 8y ago
  It's nice to see someone say that when a person would be hounded to no end online if they showed any skepticism of intelligence agencies' assertions that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections
Avshalom 8y ago
whether I am addressing this to you or the audience: it has come out in the years since that in fact the US intelligence community agreed there was no credible threat of WMDs in Iraq, but they mostly kept their mouth shut when the Bush administration claimed otherwise.
- mirimir 8y ago
  That's also my impression. I followed that closely. It's also my impression that the US intelligence community tried to warn the Bush administration about the 9/11 attackers, but that Condoleezza Rice blew them off.[0] 0) https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-director...
  - monocasa 8y ago
    > It's also my impression that the US intelligence community tried to warn the Bush administration about the 9/11 attackers, but that Condoleezza Rice blew them off. Nah, the official report from the CIA was FOIAed. IMO this meme that the CIA saw it all right is just Washington internal politics leaking out. https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-on-WMDs-unedacted-version# https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-o... Page 13 > High Confidence > * Iraq is continuing, and in some cases expanding, its biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions. The report also spends a long time parroting that yellowcake BS too.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      But it wasn't just the CIA. I've read that the NSA had intercepts.[0] And regarding the NSA, I tend to trust Bamford. I also gather that NSA staff didn't want to reveal too many specifics, to avoid compromising methods etc, and that their reticence proved counterproductive. The FBI were reportedly also close to the hijackers.[1] And they also have lots of data on Saudi connections.[2] Also, there used to be an article on salon.com about a team of Mossad agents that was tracking the 9/11 hijackers. But now I don't find it. As I recall, there were connections to young Mossad agents in the US, who posed as artists, selling their work door-to-door.[3] I've also read that it was rather a rite of passage for young agents. With the US being relatively safe for training. 0) https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/21/missed-calls-nsa-terrorism-osama-bin-laden-mihdhar/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/21/missed-calls-nsa-terror... 1) https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129563&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129563&page=1 2) https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-fbi-is-keeping-80000-secret-files-on-the-saudis-and-911 https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-fbi-is-keeping-80000-secre... 3) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1387069/US-arrests-200-young-Israelis-in-spying-investigation.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel...

davidzweig 8y ago

"Credible estimates of Iraq War casualties range from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 (per the Iraq Family Health Survey) to 461,000 total deaths as of June 2011 (per PLOS Medicine 2013), over 60% of them violent." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

BeetleB 8y ago
"Other disputed estimates, such as the 2006 Lancet study and the 2007 Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey—which likely overestimate mortality—put the numbers as high as 655,000 total deaths as of June 2006 (over 90% of them violent) and 1.2 million violent deaths as of August 2007 respectively. Meanwhile, body counts—which likely underestimate mortality—put the numbers as low as 110,000 violent deaths as of April 2009" The Wikipedia summary needs editing. The paragraph has a lot of weasel words. Who decides what is credible? Who decides what is likely an underestimate? And AFAIK, all the estimates are disputed - yet someone will get the impression that the Lancet ones are the disputed ones and not the PLOS one.

bumholio 8y ago

It's quite unfair to compare misinformation campaigns orchestrated by the whole US government and it's intelligence agencies, as was the case with Iraq's WMDs, to online propaganda organized by private individuals to the benefit of various political candidates or their own online circulation. What happened with Iraq was not just fake news, it was fake governing, it was another order of magnitude. Miller and the NYT were just some of the many useful idiots.

munk-a 8y ago
Nah, the backlash we're seeing against mainstream media these days are, I believe, in a large part driven by those reporters that failed to do their due diligence when it came to Iraq. Reporters should expect to be told lies often, when those lies are blindly printed and distributed it does a lot of damage to society's trust. I think with Iraq it went beyond negligence, but likely not at all levels, preferring to hire hawkish reporters is an effective way to keep the train rolling. That said, singling out NYT as the OP did is sort of hilarious, all the media outlets ran the same terrible stories and often avoided booking guests that would speak against the war.
- slg 8y ago
  The definition of lying generally involves intent. Do you think these journalists generally are intending to mislead with statements they know are untrue in the same way the producers of fake news do?
  - function_seven 8y ago
    Nobody in this thread suggested that the journalists were lying, just that they were terrible at their jobs. They repeated the official line, without questioning the source.
    - slg 8y ago
      The title of this article and post presents a question. The first comment in this thread appears to be answering that question by blaming it on the NYT.

octonion 8y ago

Really, it was all the New York Times & the US government had nothing to do with it? Go away, propaganda troll.

prolikewh0a 8y ago
There's no "propaganda trolling" here. The newspapers & media conglomerates pay a big role in lying to the American public to manufacture consent, with the help of the US government and intelligence agencies. They work together. Check out Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- SpikeDad 8y ago
  On occasion maybe individuals. And certainly more on the right than the left. But they don't work together in the least.
dang 8y ago
Personal attacks and name-calling will get you banned here regardless of how wrong someone else is. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules from now on. Edit: actually, since you've done this repeatedly after we warned you, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

bsder 8y ago

Whataboutism. Your statement, while accurate, says nothing about the veracity of the current article. I wish I could do more than downvote you.

acheron 8y ago
> I wish I could do more than downvote you. It’s off topic garbage, and generated an equally garbage subthread, so flagging is certainly appropriate.

ebikelaw 8y ago

It wasn't like they learned their lesson, either. They've continued to staff up with morons and to report a lot of falsehoods and distractions in the years since the Iraq War days.

curtis 8y ago

> The cost of the NYT's 'disinformation' about Iraq was a war that cost hundreds of billions and thousands of lives. Are you saying that had the NYT reported things differently the Iraq war wouldn't have happened? That seems unreasonably strong because it implies that the New York Times had a greater responsibility for the war than did the president and congress.

wu-ikkyu 8y ago
Perhaps if the entire mainstream media had reported things differently (instead of seemingly all of them being blindly in favor of it), then yes, maybe it wouldn't have happened. That is assuming of course that the US government actually cares what the public thinks when powerful government officials want war.
- meowface 8y ago
  Perhaps you're right, but at the time, most mainstream media was simply reporting on what the executive branch had already claimed was proven: Saddam had WMDs. At the time, there were no government/intelligence officials saying otherwise. The media had no strong reason to doubt the government's claims before the war started, as well as no way to validate or disprove the claims. And it's not like it would've been the most shocking revelation in the world if it were true; Saddam was a despot who had undoubtedly heavily researched, developed, and used WMDs in the past and had motive to continue stockpiling WMDs. The media certainly should have been more skeptical and critical of the government, but I'd say at that early stage, the blame mostly falls on Bush and his advisors. If you were working at one of these news outlets at that time, I bet you would have reported it similar to the rest of the mainstream media, too.
  - wu-ikkyu 8y ago
    The media is not supposed to simply parrot government talking points, at least not in a free society. Even if Saddam did have WMDs, so what? So does North Korea and other hostile regimes, and so does the US. Couldn't the media have questioned whether or not that was a valid excuse for war? That's the type of thing Phil Donahue of MSNBC did, and his questioning of the war got him fired. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program History is important, too, but apparently not to them. Was it ever mentioned in the mainstream media that the US itself had provided billions of dollars in military equipment and support to Saddam, including dual use technologies used for chemical and biological weapons? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_War#Dual-use_exports https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Ir... "You know we armed Iraq...during the Gulf War those intelligence reports would come out"-- 'Iraq, incredible weapons! Incredible weapons!' "...How do you know that?" 'Well...we looked at the receipts. But as soon as that check clears we're going in!' -Bill Hicks https://youtu.be/MyG2c-Wddzo https://youtu.be/MyG2c-Wddzo

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

arminiusreturns 8y ago

Indeed. It's called "Operation Mockingbird". I'm sure it's a different name by now, but all these people talking about this subject, I usually do a ctrl+f "mockingbird" and when I see nothing I know they aren't getting to the heart of the issue. Another thing no one talks about? The massive consolidation via mergers and acquisitions in the media/journalism world. It's been show multiple times that ownership is used to influence those things, but when those ownerships become monopolies owned by fewer and fewer oligarchical uber-rich, there are less and less voices in the wilderness speaking truth. What I do is find a truth teller and read all his or her stuff. Robert Fisk, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, Steve Coll, Matt Taibbi, Michael Hastings (assassinated), Gary Webb (assassinated), Jeremy Scahill, Richard Grove, and John Perkins are just a few on my list.

Bucephalus355 8y ago

Costs of those wars are going to be, at the final tally, around $6 billion. Most of it will be through deserved veterans benefits, as was/is the case with Vietnam. Trump has recently been claiming $7 billion, although I haven’t seen evidence for that. https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-iraq-war-cost-2-trillion-2013-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-iraq-war-cost-2-tril...

LUmBULtERA 8y ago
Not that I like Business Insider as a source, but I think you're off from the article by about $5.94 trillion.