Bill Kristol
Kristol: "American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators." In testimony delivered February 7, 2002, before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Kristol said:
[A]s in Kabul but also as in the Kurdish and Shi'ite regions of Iraq in 1991, American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators. Indeed, reconstructing Iraq may prove to be a less difficult task than the challenge of building a viable state in Afghanistan.
The political, strategic and moral rewards would also be even greater. A friendly, free, and oil-producing Iraq would leave Iran isolated and Syria cowed; the Palestinians more willing to negotiate seriously with Israel; and Saudi Arabia with less leverage over policymakers here and in Europe. Removing Saddam Hussein and his henchmen from power presents a genuine opportunity -- one President Bush sees clearly -- to transform the political landscape of the Middle East.
Kristol in April 2003: "The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably." In an April 28, 2003, Weekly Standard column, Kristol wrote:
The United States committed itself to defeating terror around the world. We committed ourselves to reshaping the Middle East, so the region would no longer be a hotbed of terrorism, extremism, anti-Americanism, and weapons of mass destruction. The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably. But these are only two battles. We are only at the end of the beginning in the war on terror and terrorist states.
Kristol: "[A]lmost no evidence" that "the Shia can't get along with the Sunni." And on the April 1, 2003, broadcast of WHYY's Fresh Air, Kristol said, "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."
Kristol began working for Fox News as a political commentator in 1996, and he continues to serve as a regular contributor to the network.
Stephen Hayes
Hayes repeatedly advanced falsehood that Al Qaeda and Iraq were linked . Media Matters has identified instances in which Hayes advanced falsehoods and distortions to defend attempts by Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration to link Al Qaeda and Iraq. For example, on the December 9, 2005, edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Hayes defended Cheney's December 2001 claim that 9-11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. According to Hayes: "If you look at the front page of The New York Times in the days surrounding the vice president's claim, The New York Times was actually reporting the same thing." But as Media Matters noted, even after the Times and numerous other news outlets subsequently reported in May 2002 that the FBI and CIA "had firmly concluded that no meeting had occurred," Cheney continued to raise the possibility that such a meeting took place.
Hayes "has made a career out of pretending Saddam and Al Qaeda were in league." Hayes has repeatedly claimed on TV, in The Weekly Standard, and in his book The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, that Iraq was connected to Al Qaeda. Spencer Ackerman wrote that Hayes "has made a career out of pretending Saddam and Al Qaeda were in league to attack the United States":
Hayes, in the Standard, has made a career out of pretending Saddam and Al Qaeda were in league to attack the United States. He published a book - tellingly wafer-thin and with large type in its hardcover edition - called "The Connection." One infamous piece even suggested that Saddam might have aided the 9/11 attack. Hayes can be relied on to provide a farrago of speciousness every time new information emerges refuting his deceptive thesis. Unsurprisingly, [former Vice President Dick] Cheney has repeatedly praised Hayes's work, telling Fox News, "I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections."
Pentagon called Hayes' assertion that "a top secret U.S. government memorandum" concluded that Saddam and bin Laden had an "operational relationship" "inaccurate." In an article in The Weekly Standard's November 24, 2003, issue, Hayes asserted that "a top secret U.S. government memorandum" -- which Hayes identified as a memorandum produced by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith -- concluded that Saddam and bin Laden "had an operational relationship." Hayes wrote of the memo: "Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources." In a January 9, 2004, interview with Denver's Rocky Mountain News, Cheney cited Hayes' article, claiming that "[i]t goes through and lays out in some detail, based on an assessment that was done by the Department of Defense and was forwarded to the Senate Intelligence Committee some weeks ago." Cheney added: "That's your best source of information." Following the publication of Hayes' article, the Pentagon released a statement asserting that "[n]ews reports" about the memo "are inaccurate" and that the portion of the memo to which Hayes' article referred "was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions."
Hayes is a regular Fox News contributor, who often appears as a panelist on Fox News' Special Report.
Judith Miller
Miller's series of articles on the now-debunked claim that Saddam had WMDs forced NY Times to apologize for its coverage. As Franklin Foer wrote for New York magazine:
During the winter of 2001 and throughout 2002, Miller produced a series of stunning stories about Saddam Hussein's ambition and capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, based largely on information provided by [Ahmad Chalabi] and his allies -- almost all of which have turned out to be stunningly inaccurate.
Indeed, although the Times did not identify Miller by name, it did publish an editor's note in May 2004 apologizing for its coverage of the existence of WMDs in Iraq, particularly articles based on the assertions of Chalabi and other Iraqi defectors:
But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge.
