- O'Hanlon and Pollack -- critics of administration handling of the war -- agree the surge is working
On July 30, Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack published an op-ed in The New York Times in which they described themselves as "analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq" and argued that "significant changes were taking place," which justified continuing the Bush administration's surge strategy "at least into 2008." The op-ed received widespread media attention, and supporters of the administration's policy in Iraq touted the op-ed, saying that Pollack's and O'Hanlon's findings of progress were particularly credible, given their purported criticism of the war. Indeed, the weblog Think Progress noted that O'Hanlon and Pollack "appeared on at least nine major mainstream media outlets in" the 24 hours after their op-ed appeared.
In fact, O'Hanlon and Pollack are not "critics of the war"; as Media Matters has noted, both O'Hanlon and Pollack were influential proponents of the Iraq war before the invasion. Pollack wrote a book in 2002 titled The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (Random House). Furthermore, O'Hanlon publicly supported the surge policy and wrote a January 2007 column in support of President Bush's troop escalation, claiming that it was "the right thing to try." Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald documented the litany of O'Hanlon and Pollack's support for the Iraq war, including the fact that O'Hanlon was one of the signatories to the Project for New American Century's Iraq policy letter issued in 2003, and had, as recently as February 2007, written a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that Democrats were wrong to oppose the war and that the surge should continue.
Media reports routinely failed to mention Pollack and O'Hanlon's support for the invasion:
- On the August 20 edition of Fox News' Special Report, national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and John Warner (R-VA), after returning from Iraq, were "sounding a bit like Brookings Institution war critics Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, who changed their views after seeing some of the military successes first hand."
- On the July 31 edition of CNN's Larry King Live, host Larry King failed to challenge Vice President Dick Cheney, who described O'Hanlon and Pollack as "strong critics of the war."
- In a June 30 post on The New Yorker's website, George Packer wrote that "'Hanlon and Pollack have long been critics of the war."
On Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace described O'Hanlon and Pollack as "two critics of the way the Bush administration has conducted the war." On the CBS Evening News, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin falsely described O'Hanlon as "a critic" of the Iraq war "who used to think the surge was too little too late, [but] now believes it should be continued." And on CNN Newsroom, anchor Heidi Collins introduced Pollack by saying that he "has been a vocal critic of the administration's handling of the [Iraq] war, but he says that an eight-day visit has changed his outlook a bit."
Myth: "The Surge has Reduced Violence in Iraq"
On the August 28 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry uncritically aired President Bush's assertion from his August 28 speech to the American Legion that "[s]ectarian violence has sharply decreased in Baghdad. The momentum is now on our side." Henry gave no indication that he had attempted to verify Bush's assertion. Further, The Washington Post printed an August 28 op-ed by O'Hanlon defending the New York Times op-ed he co-authored in which, relying on data supplied by the U.S. military, he repeated his previous claim that "Iraqi civilian fatality rates are down." During a report containing an interview with Petraeus, on the September 4 CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric did not challenge Petraeus' assertion that "if you look at the country as a whole ... the number of ethnosectarian deaths, you name it, the number of incidents has been reduced dramatically."
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