A small memo to the Center for Public Integrity

Dear CPI staffer, So I hear you have this brand-new website that, “documents 935 false statements by top administration officials to justify Iraq War.” This is a great public good, and you have reason to feel happy about it. On the other hand: 1) Sending me approximately 935 e-mail notifications about the new website will ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Dear CPI staffer, So I hear you have this brand-new website that, "documents 935 false statements by top administration officials to justify Iraq War." This is a great public good, and you have reason to feel happy about it. On the other hand: 1) Sending me approximately 935 e-mail notifications about the new website will not put you in my good graces [C'mon, it was really close to 935?--ed. OK, it was closer to five, but I can confirm that these e-mails actually existed, and they clearly have the capability to send me 931 more. I had to act preemptively.] 2) Just to nitpick a little more, you aver that: Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence ? not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials ? Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz ? have testified before Congress about Iraq.OK, except that the other four officials that you highlight in the report are "White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan," President Bush, and Vice President Cheney. The latter two ain't testifying, and do you really think that the first two would provide any value-added?Warm regards, Daniel Drezner

Dear CPI staffer, So I hear you have this brand-new website that, “documents 935 false statements by top administration officials to justify Iraq War.” This is a great public good, and you have reason to feel happy about it. On the other hand:

1) Sending me approximately 935 e-mail notifications about the new website will not put you in my good graces [C’mon, it was really close to 935?–ed. OK, it was closer to five, but I can confirm that these e-mails actually existed, and they clearly have the capability to send me 931 more. I had to act preemptively.] 2) Just to nitpick a little more, you aver that:

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government’s pre-war intelligence ? not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials ? Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz ? have testified before Congress about Iraq.

OK, except that the other four officials that you highlight in the report are “White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan,” President Bush, and Vice President Cheney. The latter two ain’t testifying, and do you really think that the first two would provide any value-added?

Warm regards, Daniel Drezner

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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