Speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday evening, CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric pulled back the curtain on her personal views of both the war in Iraq and former “Evening News” anchor Dan Rather.

“Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war,” said Couric, adding that it is “pretty much accepted” that the war in Iraq was a mistake.

This story continues below
Advertisement

“I’ve never understood why [invading Iraq] was so high on the administration’s agenda when terrorism was going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that [Iraq] had no true connection with al Qaeda.”

Further, Couric said the Bush administration botched the war effort, calling it “accepted truths” that it erred by“disbanding the Iraq military, and leaving 100,000 Sunni men feeling marginalized and angry...[and] whether there were enough boots on the ground, the feeling that we’d be welcomed as liberators and didn’t need to focus as much on security.” She added “I’d feel totally comfortable saying any of that at some point, if required, on television.”

The former “Today” show anchor traced her discomfort with the administration’s march to war back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ‘shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the ‘Today’ show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this?’ And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? And I think, at the time, anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in.”

Couric referenced comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday’s “The Charlie Rose Show,” and said she actually agreed with Ahmadinejad on one point. “Oftentimes Westerners don’t really understand fully the values of this particular culture,” said Couric. “And I think the jury is still out as to whether democracy can really thrive in Iraq.”

Couric, a native of Arlington, Virginia, was at the Club to discuss “Democracy and the Press” for a recording of “The Kalb Report,” a public affairs series hosted by journalist and scholar Marvin Kalb. The series is sponsored by George Washington University, the National Press Club and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. People in the audience included Couric’s parents, “Evening News” executive producer Rick Kaplan, Shorenstein Center founder Walter Shorenstein and NPR’s Dan Schorr.

Couric also weighed in on the lawsuit recently filed by Dan Rather against CBS, in which Rather alleges he was unfairly squeezed out of CBS by network executives following a controversial 2004 story about President George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service record. After evidence emerged that the story’s primary documents were possibly faked or forged, Rather stated on air that “if I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.”

Couric took Rather to task for his reporting. “There were things in there that were quite egregious in terms of how it was reported,” she said. “And sloppy work is sloppy work…They did not dot their I’s and cross their T’s when it came to that story… And our job is to get right.”