LETTERS: More on What Would Clinton Do (WWCD)?

By: Jay DeFoore In our last installment of Letters for 2005, the debate over the Iraq War continues to loom large in readers' minds, most recently the argument put forth by Ted Koppel and Tom Brokaw on "Meet the Press" that had 9/11 occurred on President Clinton's watch, he too would have invaded Iraq. Not so, says one reader, who levies some pretty harsh criticism at the two broadcast vets who floated the notion. Here's wishing all of our readers a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2006. And keep those letters coming.

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Koppel And Brokaw Get It Wrong Again

Re: Koppel and Brokaw Agree: Clinton Would Have Gone Into Iraq, Too

I wonder what Koppel and Brokaw are smoking these days, because if they think that the entire world believed Iraq still had WMDs despite the reports of the UN inspectors, the debrief of General Hussein Kamel, Scott Ritter telling the world that Iraq's WMD's were destroyed in the early '90s; both Condi Rice and Colin Powell were on record in early 2001 saying that Iraq was not a threat to her neighbors, the sanctions had worked and Saddam Hussein was not a threat to the region let alone the U.S. And let us not forget the Downing Street papers, "fixing the facts around the policy." Somehow Brokaw and Koppel missed all this and decided on their own that Bill Clinton would have up and invaded Iraq if 9/11 had happened on his watch. How do these guys dream up this stuff? It's so patently absurd I'd think they would be ashamed to speculate like that with zero evidence, just their journalistic instincts I guess. Too bad those instincts didn't tell them that the White House was lying to the Congress and the country to justify invading Iraq.

Why is it that these supposedly intelligent journalists believe that Clinton would have invaded Iraq because al Qaeda took out the World Trade Center. They seem to have to justify their own incompetence at not digging a little and testing the Administrations serial lies about the state of Iraq's WMD program instead of faithfully repeating every false assertion that the White House Iraq Team dished up. They both did just that, every night without a flicker of interest in the plausibility of the "smoking gun into a mushroom cloud" ad nauseam. They missed the biggest story of their careers by phoning in the justification for Bush's war of choice instead of doing a little investigative reporting and now they are trying to spread the guilt around, using the same old canard of blaming it on Bill Clinton. They did the same thing with Ken Starr's leaks -- treated them as gospel and kept harping on Clinton for most of his presidency, but blame a Republican; no, never, he's just doing what Clinton would have done! Makes one sort of wonder if Santa was especially generous to those two in this year of paid-to-opine journalists around the country?

James Domenico
San Francisco, Calif.

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More on Parlor Games

The following is in response to the "Parlor Games" post by reader Chris Dodson that appeared in our Dec. 29 letters column:

It appears Dodson forgets the Clinton/Gore Administration did very little to combat terrorism during their tenure in the White House. Proof of this is the fact 9/11 happened less than 9 months after President Bush was in office. Everyone knows 9/11-style attacks take a lot of planning, which means a lot of time. Nine months is simply not in line with what most experts say is the required time to plan and execute these type of attacks. Further, the weaknesses or vulnerabilities found and exploited by the hijackers were a result of security procedures put in place by the Clinton/Gore Administration. After all, weren't these procedures put in place after the first WTC bombing?

As far as Russert "leading the witness," I believe this statement is inaccurate. A topic is put on the table for discussion. How that topic is answered or responded to by the guests or interviewees is up to those individuals. Koppel and Brokaw are not neophytes in the world of news. They are "broadcast veterans" as mentioned in the second line of your letter. They both know their answers will be watched and scrutinized by viewers and pundits alike.

I would venture to say Mr. Dodson has a problem considering anything anti-left as news. This despite the fact a recent UCLA study found that the media is biased toward the left.

Paul Martinez

Ed's Note: The UCLA study of media bias Martinez refers to has been widely criticized, most notably by The Wall Street Journal, which called it "logically suspect." The Columbia Journalism Review also said the study "falls short." We're just saying?

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News & Observer and Blogs

Re: Bizarre Murder Case Raises New Blogging Issues

While I would generally favor extreme caution and sensitivity in dealing with kids' statements and such, the broader argument to wrestle with here is, if a parent allows a kid to blog (regardless of whether the kid did it secretively, it is still in a parent's home and under a parent's alleged control), the material is not private. It was intentionally disseminated. And not just to one or two people. Compare that to a limited distribution scenario: If the material on those blogs had been snail-mailed in a letter or letters to family friends, who had then made them available to reporters, most editors would have published such in a second.

David Page
Page Productions
Hamel, Minn.

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Shame

Re: Harris Survey: Many Americans Still Think Saddam Was Behind 9/11

Shame. The pure ignorance of 25% of American adults on the simple facts that have been floating around for 4 years.

Walid Azar