Book Review

Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror

According to investigative journalist and terrorism expert Richard Miniter, Communism was more dangerous than Al Qaeda, there is evidence for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, President George W. Bush never said Iraq was an “imminent threat,” and racial profiling of terrorists doesn’t work.

Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror is guaranteed to hold readers’ interest as Miniter, author of bestsellers Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror and Shadow War: The Untold Story of How America Is Winning the War on Terror, attempts to debunk 22 of the most prevalent media myths about the war on terrorism. From the provocative title to the opening lecture on why myths “deserve to die” to the “bonus” myths in the Epilogue, the book is a quick and fact-filled read. Its 260 pages include four appendices, a bibliography, and extensive notes.

The book is divided into six main sections — Myths About Bin Laden, Myths About September 11, Myths About Iraq, Myths About Terrorism, Liberal Myths, and Conservative Myths — and Miniter elaborates on specific myths under each section.

The author gets off to a fast start by defining his terms. “For our purposes, a myth is a statement of seeming fact about the War on Terror that has become part of the conventional wisdom and is provably false,” he writes. Myths originate in a number of ways: honest errors (He cites Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 as example of what happens when people ignore or confuse details.), government spin, disinformation spread by foreign sources, historical amnesia, and leaks.

Miniter says early in his investigation, he learned that few people on the right or the left made a “comprehensive attempt” to set the record straight. In a nation of partisan bickering and media distortion, it’s sometimes difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Miniter set out to change that by speaking to eyewitnesses whenever possible, making trips around the world, and pouring over “tens of thousands of pages” of documents. In Disinformation, he makes a valiant and well-documented effort to be non-partisan as he goes after popular myths fueled by both sides of the aisle.

For example, under Myth #7 — The post-September 11 world is more dangerous for Americans than ever before — Miniter asserts that the Cold War, specifically the former Soviet Union itself, was more of threat to the U.S. than Al Qaeda ever was. He compares casualties from the Cold War with those caused by Al Qaeda: Communism killed more than 70,000 (as well as millions worldwide) and injured more than 400,000 Americans, while Islamic terrorism has killed fewer than 4,000 since 1992. “With the disappearance of the Soviet Union,” Miniter writes, “many of the terror groups outside Arab lands have withered or turned to kidnapping and drug sales to survive.”

The author debunks the “no evidence of weapons of mass destruction myth” (#11), contending that although the strength of pre-war intelligence on WMDs was exaggerated, so was the case against that intelligence. He documents at least five incidents that prove Iraq had WMDs.

Perhaps the most frequently-heard media sound bite is “liberal” Myth #19 – President Bush said Iraq was an “imminent threat” to America:

Enter any television green room, press club bar, or political blog and chances are you will meet someone who will insist that President Bush called Iraq an “imminent threat,” as a justification for war.

Miniter says that an exhaustive Lexis-Nexis (a searchable archive of content from newspapers, magazines, legal documents and other printed sources) search turned up no evidence that Bush or his cabinet officials ever made the infamous “imminent threat” claim or anything close to it. Miniter even names names and calls out a high-profile liberal blogger who helped fuel the myth.

Things get really interesting when the author attempts to disprove “conservative” myths. Myth #21 — Racial profiling of terrorists works:

Intent is not a physical characteristic; the category of “Arab male” is too broad to be useful and too narrow to include all known Al Qaeda suspects; profiling ignores the most likely Al Qaeda countermeasure: recruiting non-Arab, non-male terrorists; it would quickly become unenforceable.

So what would work? Miniter has the answer: category or grid searches. Racial and ethnic categories wouldn’t be necessary, he writes. Establish a database with multiple categories to track suspected terrorists. If suspects fit into more than one category simultaneously, they would be given a score based on their links to terrorists. The higher the score, the higher the scrutiny. Miniter says that Admiral John Poindexter tried to take a similar approach but was attacked by the press and stopped by Congress.

Racial profiling may be taboo, but it is rational. For instance, a young, Arabic-looking man in an airport line is statistically more likely to be a terrorist than a black American woman. Some argue that profiling based on race is unconstitutional, but our government does it all the time. Racially profiling to fight terrorism is “bad,” while racially profiling for hiring and admissions is “good.”

The other “conservative” myth (#22) in Disinformation is the Arabs-crossing-the-Mexican-border claim, one that I have blogged about on my web site. It’s not true, says Miniter.

While hundreds of illegals steal across America’s almost 2,000-mile border with Mexico every day, so far there is not a single confirmed report that Al Qaeda operatives have joined the throng.
…
In June 2004, militia member Chris Simcox claimed that the Border Patrol had arrested seventy-seven “Arabic-speaking males” — all of whom later turned out to be Mexicans.

Canada, not Mexico, is the real threat, asserts Miniter. Why is the northern border more of a threat than the porous southern border? Canada is more “hospitable” to Al Qaeda than Mexico is. Miniter offers evidence from interviews with high-ranking government officials, reports, and credible news sources that tends to show Canada, unlike Mexico, is sympathetic to Islamic extremists.

Disinformation is a concise and readable book broken down into manageable sections for the busy reader and provides those on the left and right with credible responses to media and government “myths” about the war effort in Iraq. Whether you agree with Miniter’s claims or not, his latest book is a good resource to add to your library.

Originally published January 17, 2006, on Townhall.com

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