Think Progress

Feith Claims His Memoir Is Not A ‘Blame Laying And Finger-Pointing Book’»

News reports have described Iraq war architect Douglas Feith’s new book “War and Decision” as a score-settling account in which Feith “assails” his former colleagues for mishandling the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

But during a discussion of the book at the conservative Hudson Institute today, Feith argued that the book is not a “blame-laying and finger-pointing book”:

FEITH: I was conscious of that when I wrote the book. And I went out of my way to write a book that I do not believe that anybody who actually bothers to read even just substantial piece of it, would find is a blame-laying and finger-pointing book.

Watch it:

In fact, in the book and while promoting it, Feith has done nothing but blame others for the war’s failures. Indeed, at a similar event recently, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank got the impression that according to Feith, the “Iraq war is everyone else’s fault.” Some examples from the book:

– Feith blamed former Iraq occupation governor L. Paul Bremer for “mishandling…the political transition” in Iraq and the general policy of “setting up an occupation government.”

– Feith blamed former Secretary of State Colin Powell for not strongly opposing the war within the administration before the initial invasion, despite “downplay[ing]” the supposed Iraqi threat. But Feith also attacked Powell for not “wholeheartedly support[ing] it” once the war started.

– Feith accused the CIA of “politicizing” intelligence by ignoring Saddam’s ties to international terrorists despite the fact that the Pentagon’s inspector general called Feith’s own efforts to conjure up such a link — through his “Office of Special Plans” — “inapropriate.”

Bremer noted recently that the Iraq war architects are “running away from their building” and as Milbank said of Feith’s version of Iraq war history: “It must have been very difficult being Doug Feith: correct all the time, and surrounded by idiots.”

Feith: ‘We Took An Extremely Strong Pro-Geneva Convention Position In The Pentagon’»

Since writing his new book, Iraq war architect Doug Feith has consistently tried to rewrite the history of Bush administration foreign policy, blaming its failures on others. Feith continued these gross distortions yesterday, in a three-hour interview with right-wing radio talker Hugh Hewitt.

It is well-known that the administration’s torture program violates the Geneva conventions, which even conservatives admit. Feith told Hewitt the administration was “strongly pro-Geneva convention,” and so was he:

FEITH: We took an extremely strongly pro-Geneva Convention position in the Pentagon. And what I said when I briefed Secretary Rumsfeld on this, and briefed the President on it, is we have troops all over the world. There is no country in the world that has a stronger interest in promoting respect for the Geneva Conventions than the United States, and there’s no institution of the U.S. government that has a stronger interest in that than the Pentagon. … [T]hey are a part of the law of the United States, they’re treaties in force, and I thought the Pentagon had an extremely strong interest in promoting respect for the Geneva Conventions.

Listen to it:

If Feith had such respect for the Geneva Conventions, then why did he help the administration evade them? In his new book on the administration’s torture program, British international lawyer Philippe Sands interviewed Feith and reported that Feith “took the steps to ensure that none of these detainees could rely on Geneva.”

Sands told Vanity Fair that Feith’s argument against Geneva “prevailed,” as the President signed an order turning Guantanamo into a “Geneva-free zone.” Feith seemed unrepentant:

The Common Article 3 restrictions on torture or “outrages upon personal dignity” were gone. “This year I was really a player,” Feith said, thinking back on 2002 and relishing the memory. I asked him whether, in the end, he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority. He was not. “The problem with moral authority,” he said, was “people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely.”

“As he saw it, either you were a detainee to whom Geneva didn’t apply or you were a detainee to whom Geneva applied but whose rights you couldn’t invoke,” Sands noted. “That’s the point,” Feith admitted.

Furthermore, Feith reportedly sought the help of torture advocate John Yoo, then at the Justice Department, in evading the Conventions. Judge Advocate General lawyers, who rejected Feith’s views, “said he had a dismissive, if not derisive, attitude toward the Geneva Conventions,” according to lawyer Scott Horton.

Feith: Did The Bush Administration Ever Say Iraq Would Be Easy? ‘Absolutely Not’»

Douglas Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense and an architect of the Iraq war, has been hitting the media circuit to promote his new book — and to continue blaming others for the war, defending former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and distorting former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s record.

Yesterday, he appeared on the Brian Lehrer show, on WNYC. Lehrer brought up the so-called “Parade of Horribles” Feith discusses in his book, and asked why the American public was only told that the war “would be a cakewalk.” Feith insisted no one from the administration had said that:

LEHRER: The public was never told that the Parade of Horribles were considered possibilities. Instead we were told it would be a cakewalk. Were you–

FEITH: You weren’t told that by the administration. Absolutely not.

When Lehrer played a clip from Meet the Press in which Vice President Cheney claimed the U.S. would be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq, Feith dismissed it as “one of the more optimistic comments” but said that others, “especially” Rumsfeld, “were a lot more reserved than that.” He also insisted that “the initial reaction of many of the Iraqis was to greet us as liberators.”

Listen to it:

In fact, as everyone knows, the Bush Administration and its allies declared repeatedly that the war would be relatively easy, quick, and painless:

Press Secretary Ari Fleisher: “My point is, the likelihood is much more like Afghanistan, where the people who live right now under a brutal dictator will view America as liberators, not conquerors.” [10/11/02]

White House Chief of Staff Andy Card: “I think the Iraqi people would welcome freedom with jubilation.” [1/26/03]

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “The people will be enormously relieved and liberated.” [3/20/03]

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz: “The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. They know that America will not come as a conqueror.” [3/11/03]

Vice President Dick Cheney: “I’m confident that our troops will be successful, and I think it’ll go relatively quickly…Weeks rather than months.” [3/16/03]

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: “I do not mean that we will need to maintain a military presence in Iraq as was the case in Europe.” [8/7/03]

Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle: “And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.” [9/22/03]

It looks like Feith can add “lying” to the list of his post-White House activities.