Interview with David Sirota, Center for American Progress

July 12th, 2004
Transcription by Volunteer Citizen Journalist Carol Dew

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and what you do here.
DAVID SIROTA: I'm David Sirota, the Director for Strategic Communications at the Center for American Progress.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And go over what you do each morning -- kind of your routine.
SIROTA: We're up at about 6 a.m. every morning. We go through all the news of the day -- try to take it apart. See what''s being reported, what isn't being reported, and connect it with what the President and the Administration and Congressional lawmakers have said before -- To try to contextualize the news in a way that isn't being contextualized in the mainstream media.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So in your judgement, do you see that a lot of news is being reported on day-to-day events as opposed to broader issues over time?
SIROTA: Absolutely. Often --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I'm sorry, I'm not going to be including my questions, so just try to --
SIROTA: Absolutely, I think that reporters get caught in the Beltway mentality. They are caught in the day-to-day back-and-forth of politics, and they often don't step back to contextualize what they're reporting on in a bigger picture.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So on the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction -- one thing that we're seeing a lot of now -- that it's all the CIA's fault. Can you kind of put that into context?
SIROTA: Well, a couple of things with that. The Senate has reported that it's supposedly the -- only the CIA's fault -- that WMD failure -- But in fact, the report didn't even analyze how the Bush administration deliberately doctored the case for war -- took the intelligence that they had, presented only the most compelling parts of it, and did not disclose to the public very clear dissents that the intelligence community had given to them. We have compiled a list of at least a dozen instances in which the intelligence community specifically told the administration that its case for war based on WMD was entirely weak and unsupported. That was never made clear to the public. That was never acknowledged by the administration. Instead, we got a totally sugar-coated presentation to make us think that the case for war was -- or I'm sorry -- the threat to (sic) Iraq was an imminent threat.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And so, what do you attribute -- why isn't this a mainstream thought? Is it the press is not shining a spotlight? Or is it the communication strategies of the Bush administration? Kind of go into "Why?"
SIROTA: Well, I think it's that the President has such a giant bully pulpit -- that's first and foremost. If the President of the United States is repeating things, and the Vice President is repeating things that are of dire and very frightening consequence, I think there is a tendency to want to believe that the government of the United States isn't necessarily misleading or lying to the public. I also think that the administration did quite a good job of hiding the internal dissents and warnings that it was getting from the intelligence community that its case was weak. The public essentially did not have the full story -- Did not know that many parts of the intelligence community were telling the White House that it shouldn't be saying certain things -- that it shouldn't be painting such a picture of an imminent threat. So I think that reporters didn't necessarily get the full story -- the public didn't get the full story. And especially after 9/11, the public wanted very much to believe that its government was not lying to them. Unfortunately, it appears in many instances it was.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And talk a little bit about the Congressional role in this, and did Congress live up their job?
SIROTA: I think many Democrats were in the minority -- did their ever best to find out as much as they could about what was going on with the intelligence -- how it was being manipulated. The problem is that the White House and the Congress are controlled by one party. There's very little avenue to be able to ask questions. In the House of Representatives, for instance, you have to get the majority to agree to even allow you to have a vote or a hearing on any given issue. So it's very, very difficult to ask questions. I think Congress as a whole totally and completely abdicated its responsibility. It did not provide the oversight that it should have. It had many, many chances to ask many, many serious questions, and it did not demand answers.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And talk a little bit about the relationship between the Congress and the press. It seemed that Congress wasn't going out on a limb because the Press wasn't -- The press wasn't going out on a limb -- Can you talk about that relationship?
SIROTA: Yeah, I think that it was a -- it was a two-way street. Congress was not holding the hearings, and was not asking the tough questions, and was not demanding the right answers from the administration. That gave -- or set up the environment in which the press also wasn't asking the tough questions -- wasn't pushing as hard as it could have pushed. I mean there are certain instances where the press really did break ground, and where some minorities -- Democrats in the Congress did break some ground. But they were facing some very steep odds, and the voices of courage at that time were few and far between.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you talk a little bit about your role as -- When you're looking at the news, it seems like you can find out what's going on, but editorially, it may be buried in the middle of the paper. So talk about the role of the Internet and blogs and how that's redefining what's news.
SIROTA: Well, I think the Internet allows people to put together different sources of information in new and interesting ways that allowed them to see the whole picture. When -- Traditionally, when you read one -- When you were able to only read one or two stories about a given subject, you essentially are forced to accept the construct that the reporters on each of the stories is putting forth. With the Internet, you're able to see many, many different stories. You're able to see many, many different sources. You're able to put together sources yourself to really try to get at the heart of what's going on. Thus when a reporter may not reference the fact that President Bush said a certain thing two years ago, you're able to go onto the White House website and find out that, in fact, he did say that kind of thing. So it really gives you a chance to be your own reporter. And I think that the blogs -- that blogs and that people out there on the Internet made a very significant contribution to trying to get the truth out -- whether to reporters or to the public at large.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And -- let me just open up to the questions -- Can you talk a little bit more about -- by doing that -- Are there parallels for what you're doing -- is essentially intelligence analysis versus just straight journalism. You're doing a lot of open source. Can you -- do you make -- do you see any parallels there from --?
SIROTA: Well, I think there are parallels there -- I think a lot of intelligence gathering, as I've heard, is essentially researching what's already out there. I think that the -- Again, the benefit of the Internet is that we do not have to accept what either our government or the corporate media is telling us at all times. We have an ability to search for the truth ourselves. The more sources you have, the more potential you have to get to what you can deem "the actual truth." And I think that that's what we try to do here. We're trying to be an operation that gets people the truth, but we encourage people to go find the truth themselves. We're not the ultimate arbiter. The Washington Post isn't the ultimate arbiter. The New York Times isn't the ultimate arbiter. And certainly the White House isn't the ultimate arbiter.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And can you give me, kind of, your evaluation of how the press performed leading up to the war, both the print and the -- Start with the print media.
SIROTA: I think the print media was better than the television media. I think that they were both -- The media as a whole was intimidated since 9/11. They were in a posture that was more willing to accept what the government was telling them about the threat of terrorism than they had been previously about different issues. I think the print media -- certain news outlets, certain reporters, did a very good job of trying to get to the bottom of some of the unsubstantiated things that were coming from the government -- people like Walter Pincus, people like Johnathan Landay and others. But I think that -- Unfortunately, those were the exception, not the rule. The television media was far worse. The television media typically took the President's and the Vice President's myths about Iraq carte -- at face value. You saw a lot of stories that simply parroted the President and Vice President, saying that "Iraq definitely had weapons of mass destruction" -- "Definitely posed an imminent threat to the United States." It might be because the medium itself is designed for shorter sound bites. There isn't enough time to really spell out what kind of an elaborate, dishonest story is being woven. So I think that -- And unfortunately, most Americans get a lot of their news from the television media so they were getting, essentially, sound bites -- very frightening sound bites -- oftentimes not honest sound bites.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And let's see -- Can you talk a little bit about how the issues of international law were covered leading up to the war in Iraq?
SIROTA: Like the United Nations?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Yeah.
SIROTA: I think the issues about the United Nations were not covered fairly. I think that the press was too easy to take what ended up being a fairly serious smear or discrediting campaign against the United Nations and Hans Blix, which was unfortunate. And I also think that the media did not do an adequate job of really seriously analyzing Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations, which now has been shown to be filled with inaccuracies. Part of that was because the administration certainly was hiding what was proof that it was -- proof of some of the problems with that speech. But the other problem was that the media was not acting in its fashion of protecting the public from being lied to.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when you look at how the issues being framed now that the -- "It's all CIA's fault." Well, after October -- Talk about how all the questions that should have been asked about the administration's case after the Congressional Resolution -- you know, you had November, December, January, and February, when the international community was not convinced.
SIROTA: Well, I think that the -- the questions that should have been asked, that weren't asked -- was "Can we please see the proof of the assertions that you are making, in general?" The president was saying that there was going to be --- that aluminum tubes meant that Iraq had nuclear weapons. The press did not, as far as I can tell, demand to see the proof of that very serious assertion. That assertion, of course -- The Department of Energy said that those aluminum tubes, in fact, were not meant for nuclear weapons development. The Department of Energy told the White House that. The press should have demanded to see the proof of all of these charges -- all of these charges about chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons. There were very few demands to see the evidence behind what the President and Vice President were telling us.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And from your sense -- Can you kind of characterize what the French and other countries were actually saying -- What their argument was for, for not --
SIROTA: Yeah --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- going to war?
SIROTA: As far as I can recall -- The European, or the French and German, argument for not going to war was not an argument based on being soft on terrorism. It was an argument that we had not exhausted all diplomatic efforts to deal with the situation. That we had not explored the fact that the embargo and the current policies were in fact now proved to be keeping Saddam Hussein contained. I think that --- I don't want to necessarily entirely defend the behavior of every party at the negotiating table, but the position that was being articulated was not one that was to be soft on terrorism. But one to say that "Let's try to exhaust some more of our options here." It was not presented that way. It was presented as a "soft-on-terrorism" position, which was unfortunate, because characterizing it that way robbed us of a serious debate on a serious, and unfortunately, deadly military intervention.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So do you feel that there was a --- From my perspective it was covered as -- that "There is a debate." -- that the substance -- they never really got into the substance of why ---
SIROTA: The substance -- Look, I mean, you had a debate where it was -- it was, you know, "The French are jerks. The Germans are jerks." You know, Don Rumsfeld was calling the people he was negotiating with "Old Europe." It turned into an argument of insults instead of a policy debate. What was truly unfortunate was the polarized debate allowed the administration to marginalize the arguments, the substantive arguments being made, by our allies. Those arguments, had we listened a little more closely, we might have had a much more broad coalition in Iraq -- had we exhausted our diplomatic channels -- had we built a better coalition. Unfortunately, the administration polarized the debate, and none of it got through.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And do you have a sense as to why, in January, the Bush administration switched from saying, "We don't need a second resolution" to "We need a second resolution?"
SIROTA: Boy. I'm trying to recall the timeline here. I --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: It was January 31st -- it was at the end of January. During the month of January, it seemed that the Bush administration was trying to go to war on procedural grounds.
SIROTA: Right.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: But then our allies --
SIROTA: I think -- I think what that was, was not a genuine effort to -- I don't think that was a genuine effort to build a broader coalition. I think that was throwing a bone to huge international pressure and domestic pressure at home. I think it was a hollow gesture -- it wasn't serious. They were never serious about building a real international coalition. They were never serious about dealing with the problem in as responsible way as possible. They were pursuing a pre-determined agenda, and they found whatever avenue they could to pursue that agenda.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And do you think if they would have had a coalition, and they would have gotten authorization from the United Nations Security Council, that the war would have been justified?
SIROTA: Well, that's a personal -- that's more of a personal question. I -- 20/20 hindsight showing -- knowing what we know now about what Iraq's weapons situation was -- what kind of a threat that they posed, we have at least some of the intelligence that the administration was given has been declassified. If you look at the intelligence, and look at what the White House was presented, and look at all the dissents, and look at what administration officials were saying early on in the administration about how Saddam Hussein was contained. He was not a threat to his neighbors. This was -- these were the words of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice -- if you looked at that body of evidence objectively, it didn't seem to -- it didn't seem to appear that this was a country that posed any imminent threat to the United States. There are other regimes in the Middle East that have just as repressive dictators running those countries -- Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq. Iraq was one of them. I'm not saying that Iraq was any better or any worse than those regimes. The point is, we did not evaluate whether those -- whether Iraq truly posed a threat to us. The president was dishonest about whether Iraq posed a threat to us. That's really what the problem is here.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when you see -- when you say "imminent threat," a lot of people on the right will say, "They never technically said, 'imminent threat,'" -- But you had press condensing it to "imminent threat."
SIROTA: That's not true. That's -- first of all, that's not true. They did say "imminent threat" repeatedly. They said -- Donald Rumsfeld was actually questioned about this on CBS Sunday -- their Sunday morning show -- said he never said "imminent threat." In fact, the reporter read him back two quotes where he did say Iraq posed an imminent threat. They said that Iraq posed...
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: But that was "immediate threat."
SIROTA: Well, he said both "immediate" and "imminent" threat. The White House communications director said he was an "imminent threat." They've said "imminent threat," "immediate threat," "mortal threat." I mean they said it was every kind of different threat -- every kind of synonym you could come up with. The fact is -- They made America believe that Saddam Hussein was a serious threat -- a threat "right now" that needed to be dealt with. That was never the case, and they mislead the public.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And -- When you look at, you know, in Washington, when both the Democrats and Republicans agree, the majorities -- In this case, they both agree on the resolution -- Is it the press' job, or can they even fulfill the void, when there's still legitimate debate that needs to happen -- If both party agrees on certain issues -- there may be other issues as well, but on this particular issue, you know --
SIROTA: I think it's the press' responsibility to ask all the questions so that the American public has the full story at all times. That's not what happened in this case. You didn't need to be for or against the war to want to know as much of the truth, as much of the circumstances, surrounding the decision to go to war. That clearly didn't happen. The media is not there, I don't think, to fill the role of protester. It's not there to fill the role of advocate. It is there to inform the public so that we can make informed decisions about our positions, and that didn't happen. We still have a situation now, where -- I think the last poll was -- almost half of the public still has at least one utter factual misperception about the circumstances about going to war. That's clearly the media's fault. The media has not done its job in debunking myths that have been spewed to the public. And educating the public about what the truth is.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And, from your sense, why did this administration go to war -- and in hindsight, looking at all their justifications and what seems to be their motivation for going into Iraq?
SIROTA: I think that they are a very ideological administration, and I think that they -- that the people who made this decision did, at some level, sincerely believe that by invading Iraq, they could change the Middle East and the entire planet. I think that that is a totally hair-brained idea. I think it is very, very, very far out on the fringe element of the right wing. I think it bears no basis in foreign policy history or current reality. But I think that they had an agenda that they determined a long time ago they were going to pursue. And they simply grabbed as many facts or circumstances to try to substantiate what was already an agenda that they had decided upon.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: When you look at -- You know, some people when they look at the Project for New American Century, and -- Can you talk a little bit about seeing America as maintaining this superpower status militarily, economically --
SIROTA: Right. The neo-conservatives, I mean, that's their -- that's sort of their M.O. They believe that American power is to be used. They believe that American supremacy is to be protected in the world. And I don't necessarily have a problem with America using its strength to project democracy and to project human rights all across the globe. I think the idea that America needs to be an imperial power was an idea that the neo-conservatives were pushing for a very long time. And I think that I have a lot of problems with that, and I think that the rest of the world has a lot of problems with that -- and I think a lot of Americans have a problem with that -- that our military is now being used to pursue what is largely perceived across the globe as an imperial agenda. That doesn't help America's long-term security. That doesn't help the men and women fighting in the front lines. That is a radical right-wing agenda. That is something that I don't agree with -- a lot of people don't agree with. And unfortunately, it was an agenda that was pre-determined before we ever set foot in Iraq.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Pre-determined by whom?
SIROTA: It was pre-determined by -- you had conservative ideologues fill top foreign policy positions in this administration -- Paul Wolfowitz, Don Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Condoleeza Rice. These are ideologues who are out on the fringe of their own party, pushing ideas that are extreme -- extreme from any other previous Democratic or Republican president. They now occupy positions of power, making serious decisions -- making decisions of war and peace, life and death. And unfortunately, there was no moderation. There was no thought to following any sort of realistic approach here.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And can you give me a sense of the influence of think-tanks -- on the press, but also within the government here?

SIROTA: Well, I think, first and foremost, you've got -- The neo-conservatives are essentially think-tank ideologues who now occupy high positions of public office. So right there is a direct influence of think-tanks on the public realm. You have ideologues in positions of power. I think you also have a situation whereby -- Once they're in power, they have think-tanks to back them up with propaganda, with media outreach, with all sorts of the intellectual infrastructure that they need to undergird what was a misleading case for war. Our think-tank tries to counter that. You've got something like 300 conservative organizations in Washington -- you've got only a handfull of progressive organizations. We're trying to fight back, but it's an uphill battle, because there's -- the deck is stacked against us right now. There are so many conservative organizations.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Talk a little bit about -- also think-tanks in the press. It seems that a lot of television news will go to think-tanks to --
SIROTA: Yeah. Well, what the media operation in Washington often does is seek out experts. And think-tanks are typically a headquarters for quote-unquote "experts." So during the lead-up to the Iraq war, you had a lot of neo-conservative ideologues who were considered quote-unquote "foreign policy experts," who the media typically goes to for quote-unquote "expert opinion," about what's going on -- about the veracity of the case for war. So it's sort of an echo effect. You've got neo-conservatives pushing the -- pushing this war policy in the government. And then when the media goes to get expert opinion on that, they often go to neo-conservative think-tank types who are simply echoing the same thing that the people in government are saying.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Well, and I think -- to the media's defense -- They also have other -- like Michael O'Hanlon from Brookings Institute, but he was for the war.
SIROTA: Right.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So you have even liberal hawks who were advocating -- so even within the media, there is very little skeptical viewpoints.
SIROTA: Yeah, there was essentially -- What was very unfortunate, was especially after September 11th, the sort of Washington consensus was -- you had conservatives -- you had pro-war conservatives, and pro-war sort of liberals or pro-war Democrats, and there was very, very little room for an alternative viewpoint. I think that that was, in part, because both parties in Congress -- or many members in both parties, supported the war. But I think it was also, in part, that there was typically a lot -- there was a lot of pressure to be patriotic among the media. There was a lot of pressure to support the President among the media, so there was very little room for opposition.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And we -- Can you talk a little bit about public relations as a phenomena in the communications strategy both from the government, but also all around DC? It seems like it's very hard to talk to anyone in this town who hasn't been media trained.
SIROTA: Right.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So can you talk about what effect that has?
SIROTA: Well, I think it's got -- I think there's a couple of effects --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I'm sorry--
SIROTA: I think there's a lot of effects of the professionalization of politics and media. I think it creates more polarized policy positions, more extreme policy positions. The more extreme your position is, the more of a short sound bite message you can make. I think that it creates an atmosphere of -- not of bi-partisanship or of compromise -- it creates one of polarization. And so I think that -- What you got on the war was, "You're either totally against fighting terrorism" or "Totally for fighting terrorism." When in fact, it was really a lot different. A lot of the people who didn't want to go to war in Iraq weren't against the fight to protect the country. They believed that going to war in Iraq would actually endanger the country. And in fact, people within the military were saying that going to war in Iraq could endanger the country. The US Army War College issued a couple of memos which said that invading Iraq has actually made the country less safe. This was never part of the debate. Because frankly, you've got a situation where the people who have the most extreme views dominate the media.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And talk a little bit about the regime change policy that was passed in 1998. You hear a lot of people on the right say, "Well, that was passed under Clinton." Can you just address --
SIROTA: The way I think about that is --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I'm sorry. When you say "that"--
SIROTA: Yeah. The way I think about the regime change policy was that -- No one likes Saddam Hussein. He was a brutal dictator who was not co-operative with the United States. We're friends with a lot of brutal dictators -- our country is, unfortunately. We decided that Saddam Hussein was an enemy because he was not only a brutal dictator, but he wasn't playing ball with American foreign policy. And it's hard to argue that he -- It's hard to say anything good about him. I have nothing good to say about Saddam Hussein. So you ultimately had a policy of regime change -- That in a perfect world, Saddam Hussein not being the dictator of Iraq is a good thing. And who's going to argue with that? I mean, I wouldn't argue with that. Yeah, in a perfect world, Saddam Hussein not being the dictator of Iraq is a good thing. What that doesn't take into -- What that doesn't take into account is the fact that -- invading Iraq and removing him forcibly from power could create far more problems for our country and the planet than trying to contain him, trying to contain the situation. So I think that you had a regime change policy that was a Statement of Principle. But as was proven, there was no plans to invade Iraq. Most national security experts said that Iraq was not a threat to its neighbor. What the Bush administration did was take the regime change policy, which was a Statement of Principle, and manipulate it to justify what it was never meant to justify, which was a forcible invasion of a sovereign country in the middle of one of the most explosive parts of the world. And now we're lying in the bed that we've made.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when I read -- When I actually read the Iraqi Liberation Act, I see a section that, it says "Sense of Congress." Can you -- When the Congress passes something that's "Sense of Congress" language -- is it not just saying that we think that this is what should happen --
SIROTA: Right --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- not what the policy is? And there seems to be a blurring of that line by the Bush administration -- Ari Fleischer saying, "Our foreign policy IS this," instead of saying, "The Congress said it should be this."
SIROTA: Right, a Sense of Congress Resolution, again, is sort of a Statement of Principle. It's that in a perfect world, here's how we'd like the world to look. The Bush administration took that principle and manipulated it. They took it and they used it as a justification for something it was never meant to be used as a justification for, which was military action based on misleading evidence to invade one of the most fragile parts of the world -- to pursue what was already a predetermined ideological agenda.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So, can you make that distinction again of -- Like who sets the foreign policy of the United States? Is it only the president can set the foreign policy, and then the Congress is merely advising him as to this is what the principle should be, and -- Because you have Ari Fleischer saying, "The Congress set the foreign policy -- they voted this amount" --
SIROTA: Right -- No. Constitutionally, the President of the United States sets American foreign policy. They are the Commander in Chief -- the Founding Fathers believed that foreign policy was made -- can only be made, essentially, by the Executive. You can't really make foreign policy by committee. The Congress is there for oversight. The Congress is there to approve or disapprove of that policy. But the person who sets the direction for US foreign policy is the President, and any efforts by people working in the Executive Branch to claim otherwise is, again, misleading and dishonest.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Great. And did you see, during the build up to the war in Iraq -- it kind of started out through Labor Day -- August 26th with Cheney's speech, and then September 7th was when Bush and Blair were on the lawn -- And you have that buildup all after that. Did you -- At what point do you recall, or do you recollect, that you saw war as being inevitable -- that we're going to go to war no matter what happens?
SIROTA: I thought we were going to go to war when Powell gave his speech. That's when I -- maybe I was an optimist. I thought something would crack. I thought something would break. I thought -- I don't know what I -- Maybe I'm an optimist. But when I heard Powell's speech, I knew that there was no turning back. And maybe that was late in the game, but even I wanted to believe that they weren't totally misleading us, and totally had a pre-determined agenda. I mean, we later on find out -- I think it was in March of 2002 -- I believe it was March of 2002, that we later find this out -- that Condoleeza Rice met with the State Department's Director of Policy and Planning, and said -- he said, well, he said something about Iraq, and she essentially indicated that the decision had already been made to go after Iraq. Again, now I'm sure there's many instances of this. I held out hope. I think a lot of Americans held out hope that the administration was being forthright about trying to pursue a serious diplomatic avenue. Unfortunately, that was never the case.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And do you see this war as being legitimate or illegal, since it wasn't -- there was -- Do you buy into the legal justifications from the Bush administration?
SIROTA: I never talk about it in that -- in that --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Talk about what? I'm sorry --
SIROTA: -- I never about the war in terms of legal or illegal. I think that my personal belief is that the United States has every right to defend itself in the face of a threat. My problem with this war is there never was an imminent threat. There never was a serious threat to Americans from Iraq that justified the kind of military action that we took. Not only was there never a threat, but our government knew there was never that threat, and they pushed forward anyway. That's my problem.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And do you see that -- And a lot of people on the right are using this humanitarian justification as kind of saying, "Oh, it's okay, because we got rid of this dictator." But you know in fact, when we talk to Human Rights Watch, they said that we shouldn't consider it a humanitarian intervention for a number of reasons -- That there was legal options that -- Are you aware of what -- When you talk about regime change, it's almost assumed here, because it's never discussed, that military intervention is the only way to change the regime. But are you aware of what the other legal options might even be?
SIROTA: I'm aware of sanctions. I'm aware of UN efforts. I'm aware of multi-lateral efforts. I think that -- Trying to justify what we did solely on humanitarian grounds is insulting to Americans' intelligence. First of all, that was never the case that was made to America. Period. Never. Second of all, if humanitarian grounds are the justification for military intervention, then we should be going to war in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, and a whole host of other places that not only are we not going to war in, but who we call "friends." So that's really -- that does not hold water.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when you look up to the buildup to the war in Iraq, do you see any huge red flags, in hindsight, that you know, maybe the ElBaradei speech on March 7th, about the aluminum tubes on -- Niger documents, Hussein Kamel on February 24th in Newsweek. Can you talk about some of the red flags that were coming up that may -- you may have even have been following --
SIROTA: -- The biggest red flag that came up for me was when Colin Powell flashed at the United Nations to mobile weapons labs, and he flashed up pictures on the screen. And they weren't really pictures. They were artist's rendering of pictures. And that to me said, "Something is fishy here." Something isn't right when we're supposedly producing our best, most airtight, case to the entire world, and we're producing artist's renderings of the threat. If we don't have hard documentation of a threat, and we're sending 140,000 Americans into harm's way, there is something seriously wrong.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And I think, in a lot of -- Iraq is part of the "War on Terrorism." If you take a step back and you look at the "War on Terrorism" as a whole, you seem to -- Do you think that it's militarily possible to win a "War on Terrorism" through use of force?
SIROTA: I think it's possible to defend America using all sorts of tools. I think part of defending America is smart, strategic use of the military. But I also think a huge part of it, which isn't being used at all, or barely at all, is trying to reach the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East, of people around the world -- to try to change them from a path of hatred towards us. That's a huge part of this. It's a very important part of this. You cannot change hearts and minds with the barrel of a gun. You can defend America from an imminent threat for a short period of time, maybe. Maybe. But in the long run, you cannot end the international threats to America with force alone. And public diplomacy, outreach to other countries, coalition building, education -- if that -- if those kinds of things continue to be ignored, there's no amount of military force that's going to protect us.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when you think about where we're at now in the world situation -- Do you have a vision of how the world can be peaceful, and what do we need to do to get to that point?
SIROTA: I think it takes -- you know, I'm no huge expert here. I think it takes -- There's a couple things, I think we need to do a lot better job of funding and getting serious about public diplomacy -- reaching out and trying to promote what America's really about. I think our open support of regimes who oppress their people is a whole other area where we create, unfortunately, hatred for our country. We are seen, in many parts of the world, as enablers of oppressive regimes -- regimes that hurt families, hurt people, oppress women. We are seen as an enabler of that, because we call these, some of these, regimes "allies." You know, I also think that we need to overcome the image that our foreign policy is dominated by corporate interests, is dominated by imperialism -- that the only thing we care about is enriching our corporations. That's the perception out there, and if we don't -- you know, you can seriously change that, but it takes a long commitment -- it takes a serious commitment to doing it. And unfortunately, we don't have it right now, but I think we could have it.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And, tying in with the corporate ownership, do you see any influence of the -- reducing the number of owners and the coverage of how -- you know, a correlation between ownership and the press?
SIROTA: Well, of course. You've got -- The less and reporters, or less and less media companies you have controlling the news, the less and less serious perspective you have. If all of your news comes from four or five news sources, then you're going to get only four or five perspectives. That's a problem in a country of 280 million people. I don't know the exact number of major media companies we have, but it's probably no more than 30 or 40, and that's probably on the outside. That's not enough for 280 million Americans. That's not enough when there was a serious opposition to this war that got disproportionately less coverage than it required.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And do you -- what -- Do you see differences between foreign press versus --
SIROTA: Yeah. I think that the foreign press -- The foreign press appears to have more diversity. They appear to be more politically partisan -- meaning, you have conservative papers -- openly conservative papers, openly progressive papers, openly centrist papers, and it's sort of an arena of different perspectives. I think in the United States, what's insipid is that conservative news organizations and newspapers pretend to be objective. And that supposedly liberal publications and news organizations also pretend to be objective -- and aren't even liberal or progressive. We have this guise of objectivity which hides really inherent agendas, and it would be much better, and much more honest, if those agendas were -- people knew what those agendas were. I mean, Fox News still claims that it's objective. And I think a lot of people in the country believe Fox News is objective. They're the farthest thing from objective. But the more they say they're objective, the more, sort of, misleading their news coverage is, because it's slanted in a conservative way. But it's packaged as objective, so people believe that what they're getting -- this conservative propaganda, is quote unquote "fact," or quote unquote "news."

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And ... let me see if there's anything else here...
SIROTA: I gotta run in a little bit.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay, I think we're -- let me just -- final question. When you look at the news, it seems like -- When you're reading all the different newspapers -- you're reading the same story, and you're kind of getting it in your mind what like what's true and not true -- Can you go through, just out loud here, when you're -- Do you form a hypothesis -- "This is what I think is going on," and then you test it by reading it, and --
SIROTA: What do I do?
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Yeah.
SIROTA: Well, since I'm immersed in news so much, what typically happens is that when people lie or make a dishonest statement, it actually jumps out at me at this point. I can look at what the President says on a given day, on a given issue, and usually know if he's said something different in the past, or if the facts would call into question what he's saying. I think that you have to be immersed in it because it's hard to contextualize things, especially when reporters aren't contextualizing them for you. I was a little bit more trustworthy of the government when I first started in Washington. Now I realize that there is a willingness to utterly lie and mislead the public. It's quite unfortunate. I don't think it's always been like this. I don't think it has to be like this. But it's far worse than I ever imagined, and I'm an optimist.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And it seems like your role that you're playing is unique in the sense that there aren't as many journalists within the profession who are doing the same types of things that you're doing, and looking at this many different sources of news. Can you talk to -- from your sense, is there anyone else?
SIROTA: Well, I think the best investigative journalists do it pretty well, and I don't consider myself the best investigative journalist. I don't consider myself really a journalist. I consider myself somebody who tries to spread the facts and spread the truth, whether that's to journalists or the public. I think that journalists, especially in Washington, working for fewer and fewer media companies, are more and more prone to covering gossip -- to simply reporting what's spewed at them from people who they believe are powerful. And they're very, very, very unwilling to challenge the ultimate power structure in Washington. They're very unwilling to ask questions that make people uncomfortable. That's what I'm here for. That's what I'm here to try to encourage journalists and the public to do. And I hope I'm doing a good job.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: How do you -- what kind of feedback do you get? Do journalists read a lot of --
SIROTA: We get a lot of feedback from reporters who appreciate what we're doing. And certainly a lot of feedback from conservatives who don't appreciate what we're doing. And we get a lot of feedback from the grassroots -- from people -- citizens across the country who read what we do. And a lot of them beg us to try to get it into the major -- into the mainstream media -- Ask us are we getting this to their newspaper, are we getting it to their TV station? And you can rest assured that we are. And sometimes it gets in -- Sometimes it doesn't. We try to be as aggressively truth-pursuing as possible, and it's a battle.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Great.