AP, NY Times, Wash. Post uncritically reported Bush claim that terrorists "would follow us here" from Iraq

In articles on President Bush's July 4 speech to the 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post uncritically reported Bush's oft-used defense of his Iraq war policy -- that Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq will attack Americans inside the United States if U.S. troops withdraw "before the job is done." Yet none of the articles noted that security and terrorism experts have challenged Bush's view, despite several recent news reports on this dispute, including a March 18 Post article.

The AP directly quoted Bush's speech, while the Times and the Post paraphrased his claim. From the July 4 AP article:

"Victory in this struggle will require more patience, more courage, and more sacrifice," Bush told the guardsmen and their families in a half-hour speech in a cavernous aircraft maintenance hangar at the 167th Airlift Wing.

"If we were to quit Iraq before the job is done, the terrorists we are fighting would not declare victory and lay down their arms. They would follow us here."

That line played well with the crowd.

From the July 5 Times article:

Mr. Bush said if the United States were to leave Iraq now, Al Qaeda "would be able to establish their safe haven from which to do two things: to further spread their ideology and to plan and plot attacks against the United States."

Victory, he said, "will require more patience, more courage, and more sacrifice."

From the July 5 Post article:

President Bush warned Wednesday that the Iraq war "will require more patience, more courage and more sacrifice," as he appealed to a war-weary public for time and sought to link today's conflict to the storied battles that gave birth to the nation.

In an Independence Day address before members of the National Guard and their families, the president again painted a dire portrait of the consequences of pulling out of Iraq, asserting as he has before that "terrorists and extremists" would try to strike inside the United States.

None of the above articles mentioned that numerous security and terrorism experts have challenged Bush's argument. In fact, the Post itself published an article on March 18 focused on this very point. According to the article, "U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts" have said that Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) "poses little danger to the security of the U.S. homeland." The March 18 Post article added that according to "government and outside experts," "AQI's new membership and the allied insurgents care far more about what happens within Iraq than they do about [Al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden's plans for an Islamic empire" and "[t]hat is likely to remain the case whether U.S. forces stay or leave."

Indeed, other media outlets have produced similar reports. An April 6 McClatchy Newspapers article reported the opinion of "[m]ilitary and diplomatic analysts" that Bush "exaggerat[ed] the threat that the enemy forces in Iraq pose to the U.S. mainland" when he claimed in a April 4 speech that "this is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here." The article continued: "U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush's own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States." In addition, as Media Matters for America has noted, an April 30 report from National Public Radio's All Things Considered explored Bush's claim in an April 16 speech that "[i]f we do not defeat the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they won't leave us alone -- they will follow us to the United States of America." The report quoted a number of experts, including retired Army Lt. Col. James Carafano, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, challenging Bush's view.

As Media Matters documented, an April 4 Post article also uncritically quoted Bush's assertion that "if we were to leave [Iraq] before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here," despite its March 18 article. Moreover, previous AP reports have uncritically quoted similar claims made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his presidential campaign spokesman.

—B.A.