Four of six major papers left out prescient warnings in coverage of 2002 Iraq war vote

Summary: A December 4 Washington Post article pointed out that the newspaper's own reporting from October 2002 on the House's passage of the Iraq war resolution failed to quote a single Democrat expressing concerns about "postwar challenges," though many had done so. Media Matters found that contemporaneous articles from three other major print outlets also left out any mention of such warnings.

In a December 4 article, Washington Post staff writer Walter Pincus highlighted the congressional Democrats who voted against the October 2002 Iraq war resolution and who predicted at the time that the Bush administration was not prepared for certain "postwar challenges" -- warnings that, in Pincus' words, "turned out to be correct."http://tinyurl.com/y743oh[Open in new window]
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Editor&Publisher:
Pincus Tweaks 'Post' on War Resolution -- How Did Others Respond?
By Greg Mitchell
Published: December 04, 2006

NEW YORK -- In the Washington Post today, longtime national security reporter Walter Pincus observes that several Democrats who voted in 2002 against giving President Bush authority to attack Iraq are now about to play key roles in the upcoming Congress. He pointedly observes that they were "given little public credit at the time, or since," even though they have "turned out to be correct in their warnings about the problems a war would create."

Pincus was one of the few top people at the paper to push for more skeptical coverage of the run up to the war. Now he points out, "The day after the House vote, The Washington Post recorded that 126 House Democrats voted against the final resolution. None was quoted giving a reason for his or her vote except for Rep. Joe Baca (Calif.), who said a military briefing had disclosed that U.S. soldiers did not have adequate protection against biological weapons."

Pincus noted that no other reason given to oppose the resolution by others "was reported in the two Post stories about passage of the resolution that day." A search of the Washington Post archives finds that the main story was co-authored by Jim VanDeHei, who is now leaving the paper....

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But how did newspapers, on their editorial pages, feel about the vote then?

The Washington Post was typical in backing Congress' decision to give Bush "broad authority ... to move against Iraq." The editorial suggested that it was not a "declaration of war" and "the course of U.S. policy is not yet set." Of course, Bush would later act as if it were equivalent to a declaration of war, and there is much evidence that U.S. plans for an invasion were indeed pretty well "set" at that time....http://tinyurl.com/y8myz6[Open in new window]
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