Saturday, January 10, 2004
David Kaspar does a little background-check on the folks responsible for the recent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on the Bush Administration's reasons for going to war in Iraq.
I've been noticing with frankly some amazement, that this report has pretty much been met with stony silence from this end of the blogosphere. Why? Because I think we know enough to hear about this report, and the media's fawning all over it (the BBC announced it all day long), and put it into its proper perspective - that of, "Oh great, yet another 'country' heard from..." Ho hum. No need to tell me what the Bush Administration did or didn't do, I lived it. I also think some of us hear about about some great "nonpartisan" group coming out with a new important opinion and immediately and appropriately think, "bullshit." After all, groups like Amnesty International are also "non-partisan." Unless all you're doing is providing data, not drawing conclusions, there simply is no such thing.
What Kaspar's quick check shows is that, while it doesn't discount at least the possibility of the report's usefullness (being a partisan doesn't necessarily mean your conclusions are wrong), there's well more than an even chance that all we have here is another set of people with an ax to grind seeking to influence and guide the debate for their own purposes, and doing it with the help of the imprimatur of their organization.
"The study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace states ... a private nonpartisan research organization ... Carnegie Endowment researchers ... one of the nation's oldest foreign affairs think tanks"
At least some media faintly hint at the foundation's political bias: "Carnegie is regarded as a moderately left-of-centre think-tank" (Financial Times). Others point to the fact that two (Jessica T. Mathews and George Perkovich) of the three authors of the study "served in the Clinton administration and opposed the Iraq war." (Boston Globe)
The third author, Joseph Cirincione, has proven himself to be a hardline Bush-hater and a foe of the "neo-conservatives". He bitterly opposed the 2003 Iraq war - before and after. His remarks on the subject were frequently polemic and condescending towards members of the Bush administration...
