Baghdad Jim

Jim McDermott is my congressman. I've always viewed him as problematic: He definitely votes the way I'd want him to. And he sometimes demonstrates great courage. But he also has a propensity to shoot from the hip -- and then fails to back up the things he says. Even when he's right. All of which serves to undermine his credibility on what often are important issues.

Of course, McDermott made the national GOP Talking Points in late 2002 when he visited pre-invasion Baghdad, saying beforehand, "The President of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war." While there, he held a press conference suggesting the same thing. And he continued to say it later, including during an appearance on ABC's This Week:

"I think the president would mislead the American people."

As Ed Bishop reported in the St. Louis Journalism Review:

Right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh went ballistic. Cal Thomas called the Congressmen "the Bozos of Baghdad." Bill O'Reilly said they were giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It was the kind of reaction you'd expect from these folks.

What was interesting was the reaction from the supposed "bastions of liberal media" like The New York Times. They too condemned the Congressmen. National Public Radio political correspondent Mara Liasson, interviewed on the Fox News Channel, even called for McDermott's resignation.

Even our local "liberal" press was all over him -- most notably P-I columnist Joel Connelly, whose antipathy to McDermott has been long noted. Connelly fiercely denounced McDermott as wrong, wrong, wrong: "McDermott has managed to play into the hands of both Saddam Hussein and Karl Rove."

The problem was that McDermott turned out to be right, right, right -- as even Connelly's P-I colleague Robert Jamieson later observed. Ed Bishop's analysis was even more exacting:

Today, it can still be debated whether President Bush deliberately misled the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. But no reasonable person denies that the Bush administration was wrong about Saddam Hussein's nuclear capability, WMDs, the cost of the war and the number of troops it would take to occupy Iraq. In fact, to characterize the public speeches and Congressional testimony of administration officials as misleading seems more than reasonable.

But, to my knowledge, no one in the press has apologized to McDermott.

It's not easy for journalists to admit they were wrong. But, when the evidence is overwhelming, usually they're willing to do so. I think something else is going on here: To admit they were wrong would lead to admitting why they were wrong -- and there's the rub.

The problem is mainstream journalists are echoing the far right out of fear.

Now, of course, the right is all over McDermott again, this time for suggesting on a Seattle radio station that the story of Saddam's capture may have been given the Jessica Lynch Treatment: distorted, misreported and overblown for propaganda purposes:

"I'm sure they could have found him a long time ago if they wanted to."

... "I've been surprised they waited, but then I thought, well, politically, it probably doesn't make much sense to find him just yet."

Predictably, McDermott was again assailed by the Mighty Wurlitzer for promoting "conspiracy theories" (which were then lumped in with Howard Dean's remarks about Bush's foreknowledge of Sept. 11). And once again, the local media -- not only Connelly but this time Jamieson too -- jumped all over him for the remarks.

Problem is, once again, McDermott may prove right -- or at least half-right.

Information is beginning to emerge from Islamic journalists that Kurds, not American forces, actually cornered Saddam:

Washington's claims that brilliant US intelligence work led to the capture of Saddam Hussein are being challenged by reports sourced in Iraq's Kurdish media claiming that its militia set the circumstances in which the US merely had to go to a farm identified by the Kurds to bag the fugitive former president.

The first media account of the December 13 arrest was aired by a Tehran-based news agency.

American forces took Saddam into custody around 8.30pm local time, but sat on the news until 3pm the next day.

However, in the early hours of Sunday, a Kurdish language wire service reported explicitly: "Saddam Hussein was captured by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A special intelligence unit led by Qusrat Rasul Ali, a high-ranking member of the PUK, found Saddam Hussein in the city of Tikrit, his birthplace.

"Qusrat's team was accompanied by a group of US soldiers. Further details of the capture will emerge during the day; but the global Kurdish party is about to begin!"

As Josh Marshall has observed, this information may not be entirely reliable. But it also may turn out quite accurate. It's certain, however, that no one in the U.S. media is bothering to examine the facts of the matter, for much the same reasons that Bishop elucidated previously.

The problem, of course, is that McDermott shoots from the hip. He has pretty good instincts in terms of getting to the bottom of political machinations and chicanery. He also has a pretty good bead on the Bush administration.

But in both these cases, he made the assertions without the evidence in hand to back them up. And in both cases, what should have been important information presented responsibly to the public was shot down by a madly piping Wurlitzer.

So my problems with McDermott come down to competence, really. He should have followed through on his instincts, investigated the matters carefully, avoided brash public proclamations before obtaining the evidence, and then acted accordingly when the time was ripe. Instead, he shot from the hip, and then looked foolish because he couldn't back it up at the time.

But I have an even bigger problem with journalists and yammering right-wing pundits who leap to conclusions that later prove wrong -- and then lack the decency or backbone to admit it.