RICE'S LEADERSHIP
Correspondence RICE’S LEADERSHIP I WANT TO CORRECT several major factual errors in Stephen F. Hayes’s June 2 piece on Secretary Rice’s role in formulating and executing foreign policy in...
...ROBERT SATLOFF RESPONDS: Eric Nielsen must have pulled the short straw when it came to deciding who at Gallup would defend Who Speaks for Islam...
...by Dr...
...After much discussion, President Bush made the decision to surge our armed forces, as well as numbers of our diplomats, and changed our strategy on the ground...
...You know, maybe it wasn’t the most technically accurate way of doing this, but this is how we made our cluster-based analysis...
...On the Syrian-Korean nuclear reactor, offi cials inside the administration and on Capitol Hill understood that the cause of the delay was the Six Party Talks...
...Listening to the audio recording, her actual response is this: Now terming a Four moderate, yes, we can certainly agree that probably, they’re not very moderate if they’re saying four to that question...
...The Washington Post reported in its “Corrections” section that the published version of Chinoy’s book does not contain the quotes attributed to Chris Hill about cutting out State Department offi cials, thus the basis for Hayes’s assertion has disappeared...
...Instead, they sent in the media spinmeister...
...In February, Fred Barnes wrote: “Inside his own administration, Bush had few allies on a surge in Iraq aside from the vice president and a coterie of National Security Council (NSC) staffers...
...As for the quote in question, the version of Meltdown that you and some others have seen is the ‘advance uncorrected proofs,’ as noted on the cover...
...Mogahed publicly admitted they knew certain people weren’t moderates but they still termed them so...
...The decision to break out the groups was driven by the data analysis and the distinct differences that the analyses showed between groups...
...This is not a case of analytical disagreement among scholars...
...emphasis added...
...And fi nally, on the question whether Rice and Chris Hill excluded those skeptical of deals with North Korea, McCormack claims that “the basis of Hayes’s assertion has disappeared...
...It was, I mean, I don’t know, you’re writing a book, you’re trying to use terminology people understand, you know, it wasn’t maybe the most technically perfect word, I will admit, but that’s how we broke the two groups apart...
...Satloff states that comments in his piece attributed to Mogahed were transcribed from an event hosted by his own Washington Institute for Near East Policy...
...STEPHEN F. HAYES RESPONDS: Sean McCormack complains about “several major factual errors” and cites three...
...I thank him for fi xing the trivial errors in the transcription...
...in print...
...Did Chris Hill say this to you...
...The authors, John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, clearly preferred not to do the job themselves, and Gallup didn’t send up to the plate anyone with actual responsibility for publishing a book riddled with mistakes and laced with sleight-of-hand...
...washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07...
...We have all witnessed the return on success from the performance of our armed forces and diplomats in Iraq that started with the president’s decision...
...Clearly, Mogahed’s actual statement critiques the choice of one word, saying the word “moderate” may not have been “technically perfect...
...When they do, they will hear Mogahed say of the term “moderate” that it “wasn’t maybe the most technically perfect word” to describe poll respondents who somewhat justifi ed 9/11...
...So, there it is—the smoking gun...
...None of his examples withstands scrutiny...
...Satloff writes in his piece, supposedly quoting Mogahed: “Yes, we can say that a Four is not that moderate . . . I don’t know . . . You are writing a book, you are trying to come up with terminology people can understand...
...Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer’s name, address, and phone number...
...There’s one more reason to thank Nielsen for urging readers to listen to the original exchange with Mogahed: When they do, they will fi rst have the opportunity to hear my Washington Institute colleague Dr...
...As Hayes correctly reports, there is no dispute that all the key principals of the National Security Council have discussed together with the president at every step our North Korea policy...
...All letters should be addressed: Correspondence Editor THE WEEKLY STANDARD 1150 17th St., NW, Suite 505 Washington, DC 20036...
...In so doing, I thank him too for underscoring a central critique of the book, i.e., that Gallup’s coauthors defi ned poll respondents who somewhat justifi ed 9/11 as “radicals” in their 2006 Foreign Policy article and then redefi ned them—all 200 million of them—as “moderates” for their book...
...It’s worth noting that this isn’t the fi rst time someone has reported that Rice opposed the surge...
...On the North Korean-Syrian nuclear reactor, Hayes argues that we stayed silent to protect the Six Party Talks...
...On the Six Party Talks, Secretary Rice did not cut out members of her team from the policy...
...As you are well aware, today’s headlines are seldom the same as history’s judgments, with examples of that truism extending back through the founding of our great country...
...The Chris Hill quote was, as I reported, merely “confi rmation” of this point...
...This development is also refl ected in many of the episodes recounted in my book and was confi rmed by interviews with multiple sources...
...On the surge, my piece contained one sentence reporting that several senior Bush administration offi cials told me Rice opposed the surge and three full paragraphs of Rice’s response to those claims...
...He’s wrong...
...POLLING MUSLIMS I N THE ARTICLE “Just Like Us...
...emphasis added...
...Really...
...government not discuss in public what we knew about the reactor for fear of sparking a regional confl ict in the Middle East...
...Not only did Bush administration offi cials tell me that Secretary Rice and Chris Hill wanted to keep the information secret to save the Six Party Talks, two of the congressional leaders who had been briefed on the issue made the same claim in public...
...She said, ‘Bring it only to me.’” I emailed Mike Chinoy with a simple question...
...this is a case of “I-was-for-it before-I-was-against-it” chicanery...
...So while the headlines today, including some of those in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, may be dour or accusatory, we are confi dent that the strategic course pursued throughout both terms of the administration is strong and consistent and has laid the foundation for our country to achieve the goals of President Bush’s second inaugural speech...
...I’ll leave differences over historical interpretation and philosophy for another day...
...The Chris Hill quote McCormack refers to is this one, in which Hill claims that Rice discouraged the written documentation of policy deliberations: “Some of the minimal paperwork business is coming directly from the secretary...
...Chinoy responded: “As you correctly noted in your article, Hill and Rice sought to cut their bureaucratic adversaries out at various critical points as they seized control of the process and orchestrated a major turnaround in administration policy toward North Korea...
...What she did was to ask tough questions about strategy and the role additional forces would play in carrying out that strategy...
...She and Esposito cooked the books and dumbed down the text...
...Satloff is welcome to disagree with the analysis, but manufacturing a quote to make one’s point has no place in a reasoned and scholarly discussion...
...Hayes’s article quotes from galleys of an upcoming book by Mike Chinoy, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis, to support the assertion that Secretary Rice acted to cut out members of her team from North Korea policy...
...Immediately after the reactor was destroyed, Secretary Rice was part of a consensus among the National Security Council principals that the U.S...
...I’ll limit my comments to areas where Hayes’s facts about key moments strayed from the record...
...After deliberation, she supported the president’s decision on the troop surge...
...John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed...
...Correspondence RICE’S LEADERSHIP I WANT TO CORRECT several major factual errors in Stephen F. Hayes’s June 2 piece on Secretary Rice’s role in formulating and executing foreign policy in President Bush’s second term (“In the Driver’s Seat...
...You may also fax letters: (202) 293-4901 or email: editor@weeklystandard.com...
...No one at the State Department objected to the report...
...Hardly unfair...
...Department of State Washington, D.C...
...Let’s take them in order...
...In fact, we stayed silent in order to prevent a regional war in the Middle East...
...THE WEEKLY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor...
...That’s a far cry from writing that she favored a pullback from Iraq...
...SEAN MCCORMACK Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs U.S...
...One thing historians will not fi nd, however, will be any evidence Secretary Rice personally supported a pulling back from Iraq...
...Finally, I’ll close by noting that my boss is proud of the administration’s record during both the fi rst and second terms of this president, and she views any accomplishments we are able to record now as in large part a product of work we did in the fi rst term...
...In the fi nal version of the book which goes on sale in several weeks there is no such quote from Christopher Hill, but on the bigger picture of what was going on, you’re right on the mark...
...Far from wanting to conceal from the world information about the facility, Secretary Rice favored public disclosure of information concerning the reactor prior to its destruction...
...Satloff’s false attribution claims she called the entire data analysis inaccurate...
...In a May 1 op-ed in the Washington Times, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Peter Hoekstra questioned the national security rationale that they were given by the Bush administration, writing that the delay was “unfortunately infl uenced by the desire of some within the administration to create a ‘legacy’ of denuclearizing North Korea before the end of President Bush’s term...
...It was only after all agreed that public discussion of what we knew would not begin a war in the Middle East that the president gave the green light to public discussion of the matter...
...php?CID=376...
...Let’s start with the fall of 2006 as senior policymakers discussed policy options for Iraq, with the central question eventually becoming one over the numbers of American troops in Iraq and their role...
...Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice favored a troop pullback...
...As for the process that led to this singular decision, much will be written by historians in years to come...
...When one listens to the audio from the event (posted on his website), it becomes apparent that he either: (a) failed to check the quote against the actual audio recording, or (b) purposely fabricated a quote to suit his needs...
...I welcome Nielsen’s suggestion that readers listen to the full account of the exchange with Mogahed (at http://www...
...As McCormack knows, I quoted a senior Bush administration offi cial making the same claim...
...It was really data-driven based on this cluster analysis...
...David Pollock summarizing his aptly titled new study, “Slippery Polls: Uses and Abuses of Opinion Surveys from Arab States...
...ERIC NIELSEN Senior Director, Media Strategies Gallup Washington, D.C...
...May 12) Robert Satloff reviews fi ndings from the Gallup Press book Who Speaks for Islam...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 39
