Follow us on social

Setting the record straight on the teeming media swamp that supported Iraq

Setting the record straight on the teeming media swamp that supported Iraq

Join us Wednesday for a special event. It's not about re-litigating but putting the press in its proper place, lest we get caught again.

Analysis | North America

In his doubling down of support for the war in Iraq, David “Axis of Evil” Frum all but exonerates the architects and promoters of the war (which would include himself, being a speechwriter for President Bush until 2002, then a media cheerleader) as such:

To my mind, the most important lessons regard government decision making, offering a warning against groupthink and self-deception. Crucial decision makers started with an assumption that regime change in Iraq would be cheap, easy, and lightly contested. They then isolated themselves from all contrary information—until it was too late.

Frum, like his contemporary Eli Lake, is an interesting case because each has in the last few weeks attempted to both acknowledge the conventional wisdom after 20 years that the war was a failure, while still arguing best intentions and look, “Iraq really is better off without Saddam Hussein." On the latter, I will let my colleague Connor Echols’ heartbreakin interviews with actual Iraqis answer that. What I’m keen to explore is Frum’s assertion that: “I don’t believe any leaders of the time intended to be dishonest. They were shocked and dazed by 9/11. They deluded themselves.”

It is highly doubtful that Frum vulcan mind-melded with each of the architects, or saw into their souls a la Bush and Vladimir Putin. We know from highly documented accounts that, contra Frum’s simplistic summation, the Bush administration was influenced by a vanguard of well-placed neoconservatives who had set regime change into motion back in the Clinton administration. This was no 9/11 hangover. As Jim Lobe pointed out in these pages in 2021, the 2001 attacks enabled leaders and operators like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Scooter Libby, Robert Kagan, and Bill Kristol to have the war they wanted long before those planes flew into the Twin Towers.

Frum’s flimsy rationalization conveniently ignores that the mainstream media was totally and willingly co-opted into this “delusion” too, and without it, the invasion and aftermath, which included eight years of occupation and then another two years of military assistance to help the Iraqis roust ISIS (which the U.S. invasion created) wouldn’t have carried on in the manner that it did.

I say that because as the polling showed the American people losing faith in the war by January 2005, the mainstream media backgrounded all of the bad news (like military massacres, civilian deaths, torture, sectarian violence, PTSD) while foregrounding Pentagon talking points that said new counterinsurgency methods and tactical wins meant victory was “right around the corner.” They lied about reconstruction progress, too, as Peter Van Buren points out right here

An entire ecosystem of information management ensured that the major networks, newspapers and radio, owned by only a handful of conglomerates, were singing the same tune, all of the time.

Frum, Lake, and columnists like Max Boot, who now, conveniently, says he regrets it, were what Spock would call top “lifeforms” in that ecosystem. 

We must talk about this because these men and their compradores in the Washington swamp want to dismiss any comparison to how we view Ukraine and how the media is covering U.S. policy in that war. They have not learned any lessons about meddling and the limits of American power writ large, just in failed wars of the past.

This is why I am joining Peter Beinart, Jonathan Landay, and Krystal Ball this Wednesday in D.C. to talk about how we can commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War by sussing out how the media was complicit, and what it can do to learn from those lessons. Please consider joining us in person or watch our livestream. It is not about re-litigating or belaboring, but about setting the record straight, lest we fall into the same traps again.

Quincy-institute-iraq-war-poster-807x1024


Eli Lake (New America Foundation/Wikimedia Commons); Max Boot (Naval War College) and David Frum (Flickr/Policy Exchange)|
Analysis | North America
President Trump with reporters
Top photo credit: President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Sunday, September 7, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

Is Israel forcing Trump to be the capitulator in chief?

Middle East

President Donald Trump told reporters outside a Washington restaurant Tuesday evening that he is deeply displeased with Israel’s bombardment of Qatar, a close U.S. partner in the Persian Gulf that, at Washington’s request, has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012.

“I am not thrilled about it. I am not thrilled about the whole situation,” Trump said, denying that Israel had given him advance notice. “I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect of it,” he continued. “We’ve got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy with the way that went down.”

keep readingShow less
Europe Ukraine
Top image credit: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, President of Ukraine, Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the UK, and Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland, emerge from St. Mary's Palace for a press conference as part of the Coalition of the Willing meeting in Kiev, May 10 2025, Kay Nietfeld/dpa via Reuters Connect

Is Europe deliberately sabotaging Ukraine War negotiations?

Europe

After last week’s meeting of the “coalition of the willing” in Paris, 26 countries have supposedly agreed to contribute — in some fashion — to a military force that would be deployed on Ukrainian soil after hostilities have concluded.

Three weeks prior, at the Anchorage leaders’ summit press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that Ukraine’s security should be ensured as part of any negotiated settlement. But Russian officials have continued to reiterate that this cannot take the form of Western combat forces stationed in Ukraine. In the wake of last week’s meeting, Putin has upped the ante by declaring that any such troops would be legitimate targets for the Russian military.

keep readingShow less
After bombing, time to demystify the 'Qatar lobby'
Top photo credit: The Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, is standing third from the left in the front row, alongside the Minister of Culture of Qatar, Abdulrahman bin Hamad bin Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, who is at the center, and the Minister of Culture, Sports and Youth of Oman, Sayyid Theyazin bin Haitham Al Said, who is second from the right in Doha, Qatar, on May 9, 2024. (Photo by Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto)

After bombing, time to demystify the 'Qatar lobby'

Middle East

On Tuesday, Israel bombed Doha, killing at least five Hamas staffers and a member of Qatari security. Israeli officials initially claimed the US green-lit the operation, despite Qatar hosting the largest U.S. military in the region.

The White House has since contradicted that version of events, saying the White House was given notice “just before” the bombing and claiming the strike was an “unfortunate" attack that "could serve as an opportunity for peace.”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.