TRUTH: THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR

Many credit Senator Hiram Johnson, an isolationist and a Republican, as the man who said in 1919 that “truth is the first casualty of war.”

Scott McClellan, who was the press secretary under President George W. Bush, has written a new book titled What Happened. I have only read reviews of his book at this writing but I intend to read it in the next week or two because his statements seem to support Hiram Johnson’s observation about truth being the first casualty of war.

A review by Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith published by The Center for Public Integrity http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/ gave me a lot of material for reflection. Following is an excerpt:

FALSE PRETENSES

FOLLOWING 9/11, PRESIDENT BUSH AND SEVEN TOP OFFICIALS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION WAGED A CAREFULLY ORCHESTRATED CAMPAIGN OF MISINFORMATION ABOUT THE THREAT POSED BY SADDAM HUSSEIN'S IRAQ.

By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith

January 23, 2008

“ President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

“ On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

“ It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it . . . .”

In singling out the lies of Bush, I am quite aware that other presidents have lied too—Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. If you need confirmation of the fact that some of our recent presidents were not truth tellers, go to your computer and Google in their names under the term “presidential lies.” Then reflect on these words of Princeton historian Julian Zelizer, who says that these lies damage the institution of the presidency and affect the ability of the next president to govern effectively.

Whether we vote for Senator McClain or Senator Obama in November 2008, let us hope that both men are truth tellers.

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