GMA's Cuomo echoed false Bush claim that Samarra bombing "touched off the sectarian bloodletting" in Iraq
On the February 12 edition of ABC's Good Morning America, co-anchor Chris Cuomo asserted that "the bombing of a Shiite shrine touched off the sectarian bloodletting" in Iraq. Referring to the February 2006 bombing -- reportedly by Al Qaeda -- of the prominent Al Askariya Shiite mosque in Samarra, Iraq, Cuomo echoed numerous claims from high-level Bush administration officials, including President Bush himself, that the Samarra mosque bombing set off what Bush called "a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today." In fact, as Media Matters for America has documented, while the situation in Iraq has significantly worsened since the Samarra mosque bombing, sectarian violence throughout Iraq before the incident was already substantial and rising.
At the beginning of Bush's January 10 speech to the nation outlining his "New Way Forward" in Iraq, Bush presented the following account of recent events in Iraq:
BUSH: When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation. The elections of 2005 were a stunning achievement. We thought that these elections would bring the Iraqis together, and that as we trained Iraqi security forces we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.
But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq -- particularly in Baghdad -- overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq's elections posed for their cause, and they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam -- the Golden Mosque of Samarra -- in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq's Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.
McClatchy Newspapers noted on January 14 that Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen Hadley have subsequently "recited Bush's history of" the sectarian violence in various public appearances.
However, as McClatchy reported, "the country already had been on a trajectory of rising sectarian violence. U.S. diplomats, reporters and military and intelligence officers began reporting that Shiite death squads were targeting Sunni clerics and former officials of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime at least 15 months before the Samarra bombing."
Media Matters also noted numerous facts that contradict Bush's suggestion that that U.S. efforts in Iraq were succeeding up until shortly after the December 2005 Iraqi elections when New York Times columnist David Brooks asserted that Bush's depiction of events leading to the Samarra bombing "was the accurate, right description."
From the February 12 edition of ABC's Good Morning America:
CUOMO: We begin in Iraq, where today marks one year since the bombing of a Shiite shrine touched off the sectarian bloodletting. Just this morning, a massive bomb went off as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was speaking about Baghdad becoming safer. Nearly 70 people were killed.
The re-writing of history continues apace. The accepted narrative will become one where "everything was going swimmingly until those ungrateful and uncivilized Muslims (who, by the way, were too ignorant to be able to accept the gift of democracy that America so magnanimously offered) started to go after each other. The destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure and the inability to have the basic functions of electricity and clean water available had nothing to do with rising discontent of the Iraqi public.
Anything to make this colossal blunder a little more palatable.
MMFA probably even overstated the significance of the Sammara bombings, by saying that "the situation in Iraq has significantly worsened since the Samarra mosque bombing".
This is misleading, since violence before and after the Samarrah bombings was constant, and was not affected sharply, or even notably, by this bombing, as we can see in this graph by the Iraq Body Count project: (Look carefully at the unchanged trend before and after February 22, 2006, date of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Iraq1.png
Truthseeker, what is the direct link for this at IBC? I only see this figure at wikipedia. I don't see it at IBC. Also, are there any charts that are more current? I'm not questioning your honesty, I'd just like to see the complete picture.
Sure. There is a graph compiled by the BBC showing data up to July 2006. Here it is:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41982000/gif/_41982058_insurg_att_08_06_graph416.gif
If we look at the post-Samarrah-bombing period, (Feb. 22, 2006), we merely see a continuing upwards trend that is not inconsistent with the trend that began in 2003. Each year is more violent than the previous.
April 2004 is more of an abrupt spike than the Feb. 2006 Samarrah bombing)
Every previous year ('03, 04 and 05) has a range that is similar in terms of violence escalation to the violence for the months following Feb. 22, 2006.
I think we're talking about different aspects of the Iraqi War. I was referring specifically to the MMFA criticism, which is addressing the level of sectarian violence and, I think, incorrect. The BBC graph you linked, sourced from Multi-national Force Iraq (a Central Command Public Affairs website), is depicting the number of insurgent attacks. The military distinguishes between insurgent and sectarian violence. Sectarian violence, which is what Cuomo was addressing, has risen dramatically (about 20-fold in 2006) since the Samarra bombing, according to Multi-national Corp - Iraq data (also a CENTCOM website). See the figure on page 24 of http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/9010Quarterly-Report-20061216.pdf.
MMFA documented insurgent attacks, not sectarian violence.
So it did not debunk what it claims it debunked.
the statement in question is whether the mosque bombing "touched off" sectarian violence. it did not, since it was already going on.
Well, I was specifically addressing MMFA's and Truthseeker's statement that sectarian violence was a significant problem prior to Samarra and that the Samarra bombing did not precipitate the sectarian civil war we are now witnessing.
But if you want to parse words, I'd be happy to play. The issue at this site, as MMFA usually gets right, is whether the statement is conservative misinformation. Cuomo's statement is not misinformation. Would you not consider going from <50 incidents per month to >1000 per month "touching off"? The American Heritage Dictionary's definition of "touched off" is to "cause to explode or fire; also, initiate, trigger." You are using the latter definition, which is fine, but Cuomo's statement, if using the the former definition, is not misinformation. Let me ask the question again. Would you not consider going from less than 50 to greater than 1000 an explosion in the sectarian violence. Perhaps Cuomo should have used "explosion" or, simply and less dramatically, "increase", but I don't think what he said could be considered misinformation.
Where did you find this stat that incidents from 50 to 1000? And...it's true, what period is it in which there were 50 incidents per month? A period of 3 months? A period of a year? Two years? Let's analyze this.
I think the data presented in the May 2006 quarterly report in the above link is quite definitive? For a continuation of the "incidents" data, where the 1000 sectarian incidents in October 2006 is shown, see the November 2006 quarterly report.
it has been one downward spiral since shortly after the invasion. this is just buying into another bush propaganda point. just like bush has claimed that he had to invade because saddam "wouldn't let the inspectors in". another lie the media let him get away with.
I'm shocked ! Our feckless leader shirking off responsibility for something?
And the media helping him out, scared spitless to be stuck in that "America-hatin" category.
The spineless leading the brainless. Or the other way around, it's hard to tell anymore.
Although I'd love for Bush to be wrong, I think the statement "sectarian violence throughout Iraq before the [Samarra] incident was already substantial and rising" is misleading, or as MMFA likes to write, "baseless." Yes, there was sectarian violence before, but the Samarra incident lifted sectarian violence to a level that alone is causing sufficient political and social conflict to be considered a civil war in certain provinces. I think Cuomo's statement was correct.
The Samarra incident coincided with the dramatic increase in sectarian violence. According to DoD (http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/Iraq_Reports/Index.html), incidents of sectarian violence were practially non-existent in 2004 and on a "limited scope" throughout 2005, usually fewer than 50 incidents per month. Sectarian incidents declined from November 2005 to February 2006, and the number of sectarian casualties declined from September 2005 to January 2006. However, incidents dramatically increased in February 2006, peaking in October (the last data point) at over 1,000.
If you don't believe the DoD data, according to Wikipedia citations of the IBC project counter, the rate of all Iraqi civilian deaths has nearly doubled since the Samarra bombing.
The other source of civilian casualty data, the study published in Lancet, is inconclusive because of the data collection times.
Your own link proves there's no special spike in the post-Samarrah-bombing period, but a continuing trend.
I took the liberty of cutting a graph from your Pentagon link.
See the February-May, 2006 period. link
See above post about sectarian violence.
I guess the US occupation government under Bremer defining all Iraqis by their religious sect and doling out political power accordingly had nothing to do with it....or the US training and equipping sectarian death squads, the dreaded "police commandos" whe began a killing spree....or the black ops operations where US and British special forces soldiers were arrested in cars full of explosives dressed as natives had nothing to do with the violence?