Bush adviser tells inside story of Iraq war
Tom Basile, who served as the senior press adviser in Baghdad under former President George W. Bush, joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Herald Drive” program yesterday to discuss his new book, “Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq.”
Q: Tell us about what led you to write this book.
A: I was a civilian adviser to the coalition government in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004 and there are a lot of misperceptions about the Iraq War and I’ve always felt, as well as a lot of my colleagues, that the real story of what actually happened during those first critical 12 months has never really been told. So, I felt ... it was time to tell the story from the civilian perspective by somebody who was part of the Bush administration and who could take people behind the scenes during that critical first year and talk about that struggle against the media bias and the communications fight that ultimately came to define a lot of what we think Iraq was — and what we did or didn’t do there.
Q: In your book you talk about the importance of messaging. Do Republicans have a problem with messaging?
A: Well, we certainly saw this in Iraq, that you really can’t surrender the microphones to your critics. And this is what I feel that we did. While we were doing positive things, as the war became more unpopular at home and we weren’t getting fair or balanced coverage from the mainstream press, we didn’t push back enough against misinformation. We allowed the critics of the war to drive those perceptions, to actually take control of the message. And I think that’s a lesson for all policy makers, whether you’re Republican or Democrat.
Q: A lot of people have said after the Kuwait War that the first president Bush should have continued on into Iraq and taken care of the Iraqi problem at that point. Just give us an overview of whether or not that’s correct or whether you agree with that.
A: I think the media pushed that when it was convenient for the media to push it. There was a specific mandate for the first Gulf War and President Bush at that time felt that once that mandate was met that their responsibility was sort of concluded. I think that when it comes to the second Gulf War, we’ve asked a lot of the wrong questions over these last 15 years. We tend to ask whether or not we should have gone in in the first place. And what I talk about in the book is once we were there, what was our responsibility to the Iraqi people? And what did some of the most brave Americans — both military and civilian — actually do to try and meet that responsibility?