THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
January 2007, Week Three
Page Three
- January 19: The US's contingency plan for military action against Iran's putative nuclear weapons program goes far beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, according to former US intelligence analyst Wayne White.
War with Iran
White was a senior Middle East analyst in the State Department's INR until March 2005. The INR was one of the few US intelligence agencies to consistently make relatively accurate predictions about Iraq's putative WMDs. "I've seen some of the planning.... You're not talking about a surgical strike," says White. "You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years. White makes his remarks to the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank. "We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or US warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability. "I'm much more worried about the consequences of a US or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure," which would prompt vigorous Iranian retaliation, he says, than civil war in Iraq, which could be confined to that country. - The Bush policy towards Iran is similar to its pre-invasion stance towards Iraq: a surface commitment to diplomacy, but in reality a bellicose thrust towards a war as the only possible solution to what the White House terms "the Iran problem." The US has recently escalated its financial sanctions against Iran, and has taken direct military action against Iranian elements in Iraq. Many on both sides of the political aisle fear that Bush will launch a military strike, or even a full-blown invasion, against Iran, which would almost certainly unleash chaos and bloodshed in the entire Middle East.
- One Middle East expert, Kenneth Katzman, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service, is attempting to lay the groundwork for an invasion by arguing, "Iran's ascendancy is not only manageable but reversible" if one understands the Islamic republic's many vulnerabilities." Katzman says, tehran's leaders have convinced many experts Iran is a great nation verging on "superpower" status, but the country is "very weak...[and] meets almost no known criteria to be considered a great nation." The economy is mismanaged and "quite primitive," exporting almost nothing except oil, he says. Also, Iran's oil production capacity is fast declining and in terms of conventional military power, "Iran is a virtual non-entity," Katzman adds. (Katzman is deliberately, and vastly, underestimating the size and efficacy of the Iranian military and its potential to wreak havoc both on American invasion forces and in the region in general.) Katzman recommends that, because the US cannot be severely hurt by Iran, the US should at some point "call that bluff." Still, he cautions against early confrontation and says that if there is a "grand bargain" that meets both countries' interests, that should be pursued. (Reuters/Yahoo! News)
North Korea agrees to curb its nuclear program
- January 19: North Korea announces that it has reached a preliminary agreement with the US to curb its nuclear program, but Bush officials are downplaying the importance of the agreement.
North Korean nuclear program
The top US nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, expresses optimism that progress could be made when wider arms negotiations reconvene. North Korea's Foreign Ministry says that three days of talks in Berlin between Hill and North Korea's main nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan had been held "in a positive and sincere atmosphere and a certain agreement was reached there." No further details are given as yet. But Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino says, "I think it's premature to say there is an agreement -- premature to say the least." Hill says the talks have laid the foundation for progress when six-nation nuclear negotiations resume and that he has agreed with his North Korean counterpart "on a number of issues. ...I am pretty convinced that we have the basis for a good session of the six-party talks," Hill says. The negotiating countries, which include South Korea, the US, Japan, China and Russia, had been seeking to outline how to implement a September 2005 agreement in which the North pledged to disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees. A South Korean news report says the six-nation arms talks could resume in early February due to progress made at the Germany meetings. (AP/Yahoo! News)
Three Ohio election workers on trial for rigging 2004 presidential recount figures
- January 19: Prosecutors in Ohio say that three Cuyahoga County elections workers conspired to avoid a more thorough recount of ballots in the 2004 presidential elections.
Election fraud
Prosecutor Kevin Baxter says on the first day of the workers' trial, "The evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless. They did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months" on the recount. The 2004 presidential election was one of the tightest in modern history, with Ohio providing Bush his narrow margin of victory -- 118,000 votes out of over 5.5 million cast. Opponent John Kerry decided not to pursue an aggressive recount of Ohio ballots, a decision which may have been affected by the decision to fraudulently misrepresent the results in Cuyahoga County, a key Democratic stronghold. Witnesses testify that, two days before a planned recount, selected ballots were counted so the result would be determined. Defense attorneys counter that the election workers were just "doing it the way they were always doing it." Charged with various counts each of election misconduct or interference are Jacqueline Maiden, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections' coordinator, who was the board's third-highest ranking employee when she was indicted last March; Rosie Grier, assistant manager of the board's ballot department; and election worker Kathleen Dreamer. The most serious charge faced by each is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison. - The fraudulent recount figures gave Kerry a miniscule +23 vote margin, but it is now apparent that those vote tallies were wrong. According to Baxter, instead of conducting a random count, the workers chose sample precincts for the Dec. 16, 2004, recount that did not have questionable results to ensure that no discrepancies would emerge. "This was a very hush operation," he says. Democrats have long alleged that tens of thousands of Ohio Democratic votes were either lost, miscast, not counted, or not cast because of unfair voting conditions. (AP/Forbes)
- January 19: Congressional Democrats warn Bush not to launch an attack against Iran without Congressional approval -- which Bush is unlikely to get.
War with Iran
"The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization," says Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Bush said last week that US forces will "seek out and destroy" networks providing that support. While top administration officials have said they have no plans to attack Iran itself, they have declined to rule it out. This week, the administration sent another aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf -- the second to deploy in the region. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the buildup was intended to impress on Iran that the four-year war in Iraq has not made America vulnerable, but military experts say that sending carrier groups into the Gulf is more likely intended as a threat towards Iran. The US is also deploying anti-missile Patriot missiles in the region. Reid's statement follows a statement by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden last week, who challenged Bush's ability to make such a move. In a letter to Bush, Biden asked him to explain whether the administration believes it could attack Iran or Syria "without the authorization of Congress, which does not now exist." Instead, says Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, the US must try to engage Iran and Syria in a constructive dialogue on Iraq because of the countries' influence in the conflict. "Do we have so little confidence in the diplomats of the United States that we're not willing to let them talk with somebody we disagree with?" Hamilton asks. (AP/Yahoo! News) - January 19: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that Bush is dodging Congressional oversight by rushing troops to Iraq and betting that Congress won't cut off funds to support those troops once they are engaged in battle.
Iraq war and occupation
The White House calls Pelosi's assertion "poisonous." Pelosi says the war should not be "an obligation of the American people in perpetuity," she says. "The president knows that because the troops are in harm's way, that we won't cut off the resources. That's why he's moving so quickly to put them in harm's way," she says on ABC's Good Morning America. Pelosi says she cannot be sure that Bush deliberately manipulated the deployments to avoid congressional action; she says she hopes he did not but thinks that "he could have told us about it sooner. ...We found out about it as the troops were going in." Pelosi adds that Bush "has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder." - Stung by the assertions, the White House sends out spokeswoman Dana Perino to say, "Those particular comments were poisonous. I think questioning the president's motivations and suggesting that he, for some political reason, is rushing troops into harm's way, is not appropriate, it is not correct, and it is unfortunate because we do have troops in harm's way. ...It's certainly not in keeping with the bipartisan spirit and civility that the Democrats pledged and that we looked forward to. Speaker Pelosi was arguing in essence that the president is putting young men and women in harm's way for tactical political reasons. She's questioning his motivations rather than questioning his policies." But the explanation that Bush is rushing troops into combat before Congress can move to cut off their funding is not only the most simple and believable interpretation of Bush's actions, but is directly in line with similar actions by Bush over his two terms, to isolate Congress from taking any active role in the decision-making process of the government.
- On the same day as Pelosi's criticisms, the co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, Lee Hamilton, tells a House panel that Bush's plan to deploy 21,500 additional troops to secure Baghdad and Anbar province could delay progress in training Iraqi security forces. (AP/Yahoo! News, AP/Truthout)
- January 19: The House, under new Democratic leadership, drastically revamps the House Page Board, the panel in charge of supervising its teenage pages, in response to the Mark Foley page scandal of September 2006.
Mark Foley scandal
Republican House leaders had refused to attempt any such restructuring. The vote was 416-0 to equalize the political membership of the House Page Board, whose Republican chairman never told two board colleagues that he believed for a year that Foley was a "ticking time bomb." The expanded board also will include a former page and the parent of a current or former page, to add new pairs of eyes to spot any future examples of misconduct. In remarks before the vote, lawmakers express anger that the past board chairman, Republican John Shimkus, failed to convene the board when he learned in the fall of 2005 that Foley had sent overly friendly e-mails to a former Louisiana page. Frozen out were Democrat Dale Kildee, the new board chairman, and Republican Shelley Moore Capito, who will remain on the board. Shimkus will not be on the new board. The House ethics committee, in a December report on the scandal, said that after Foley resigned, Shimkus told Capito "that he believed he had done the right thing in 2005 based on the information he had, but added words to the effect of Dale's a nice guy, but he's a Democrat, and I was afraid it would be blown out of proportion." The House legislation resolution expands the board membership to eight, including the former page and the parent. There also would be four House members, equally divided by party, as well as the clerk of the House and the sergeant-at-arms, who are permanent members. The previous board had five members: three lawmakers -- two from the majority -- plus the clerk and sergeant-at-arms. Capito says the equal representation "takes it out of the political realm. There's no way there should be a partisan upper hand when talking about the governance of the page board." (AP/Forbes) - January 19: The first name floated by the Bush administration to replace California US Attorney Carol Lam (see January 12 item) is Pat Shea.
US Attorney firings
Shea, an business lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, seems to have as his main qualifications his friendship with Bush -- the two attended Harvard together and keep in regular contact. Shea has voiced what the San Diego Union-Tribune terms "keen interest" in the position. Lam, like many US Attorneys around the country, have recently been fired using an obscure provision of the USA Patriot Act, and the trend seems to be to replace the fired attorneys with those more politically reliable. Like the other fired attorneys, Lam's strong record of fighting political corruption and drug crime provided no grounds for her dismissal. The top FBI official for San Diego says that Lam's dismissal would jeopardize several ongoing investigations. "I guarantee politics is involved," says special agent in charge Dan Dzwilewski. "It will be a huge loss from my perspective." Peter Nunez, who held Lam's post from 1982 to 1988, says he is "in a state of shock" from hearing the news of Lam's forced ouster. "It's just like nothing I've ever seen before in 35-plus years. To be asked to resign and to be publicly humiliated by leaking this to the press is beyond any bounds of decency and behavior. It shocks me. It really is outrageous." - The Union-Tribune writes that the speculation over Shea "can only fuel the charges of cronyism being leveled against the Bush administration." The Union-Tribune observes, "Having succeeded in dumping Lam, Gonzales now has the tempting option of bypassing the Senate confirmation process and appointing an 'interim' US attorney here to fill out the last two years of the Bush administration. Pursuing this course, which is made possible only by a dubious amendment to the Patriot Act, would be a colossal mistake, in our view. Whomever President Bush ultimately chooses to replace Lam, the appointee must possess the qualifications to withstand Senate scrutiny. The Constitution requires that the president receive the 'advice and consent' of the Senate for judicial offices. In replacing Lam, the president should follow both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution." (San Diego Union-Tribune, North County Times/TPM Muckraker)
- January 19: The conservative smear campaign against Barack Obama continues, this time with a second smear against Hillary Clinton underneath.
Conservative smear campaigns
On Fox News, Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy features a segment that charges Obama attended an Islamic "madrassa" school when he was six years old. The charge comes from Insight magazine, a publication of the right-wing Washington Times. Of course, the charge is completely false, as is the implication that Obama is Muslim. Doocy tells his viewers that madrassas are "financed by Saudis" and "teach this Wahhabism which pretty much hates us," then declares, "The big question is: was that on the curriculum back then?" One caller plays cooperatively into the smear, wondering if Obama's schooling means that "maybe he doesn't consider terrorists the enemy." Fox co-anchor Brian Kilmeade responds, "Well, we'll see about that." Another caller says, "I think a Muslim would be fine in the presidency, better than Hillary. At least you know what the Muslims are up to." Co-anchor Gretchen Carlson responds, "We want to be clear, too, that this isn't all Muslims, of course, we would only be concerned about the kind that want to blow us up." - Obama, born and raised a Christian, is a member of the Church of Christ. As a child, he lived for four years in Indonesia with his father, a non-practicing Muslim, and attended a local Muslim school in Djakarta, a secular public school that served a multi-ethnic and multi-religious population. After that, he was enrolled in a Roman Catholic school. In his book Dreams Of My Father, Obama wrote, "In Indonesia, I'd spent 2 years at a Muslim school, 2 years at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies. In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I'd pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended." In his second book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote, "Without the money to go to the international school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesian schools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks." According to CNN's John Vause, who has extensively covered real Muslim madrassas, the children at the Indonesian school wear school uniforms and are taught a typical school curriculum today as they were 39 years ago when Obama was a student there. Vause reports that the religious views of other students are respected and that Christian children at the school are taught that Jesus is the son of God.
- "The allegations are completely false," says Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. "To publish this sort of trash without any documentation is surprising, but for Fox to repeat something so false, not once, but many times is appallingly irresponsible."
- The Clinton smear comes when Fox and other right-wing propaganda outlets try to say that the smear against Obama comes from the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. But several sources, including Robert Parry's Consortium News, learn that the story actually came from Insight magazine, as originally sourced, and the Obama/Clinton smear is actually concocted by the owners and editors of the Washington Times, who are part of the media empire of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Moon's media conglomerate is obviously targeting Obama because of Obama's strong chances of winning the 2008 presidency. "He was a Muslim, but he concealed it," a source supposedly close to the background investigation told Insight. "The idea is to show Obama as deceptive." The Insight article was based on a single, unnamed source, and the magazine's writers and editors did not bother to do the most cursory fact-checking. The story quickly spread to the right-wing media organs of Rupert Murdoch, most notably Fox News and the New York Post, which picked up and trumpeted the story without doing any of their own checking.
- And Fox, in particular, is quick to spread the Clinton connection: "Hillary Clinton reported to be already digging up the dirt on Barack Obama," says John Gibson, anchor of Fox's The Big Story. "The New York senator has reportedly outed Obama's madrassa past. That's right, the Clinton team reported to have pulled out all the stops to reveal something Obama would rather you didn't know -- that he was educated in a Muslim madrassah." Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson terms the Insight article "an obvious right-wing hit job by a Moonie publication that was designed to attack Senator Clinton and Senator Obama at the same time." Fox is "unwilling to stop when they knew they were wrong or correct what they knew was a lie," says Robert Gibbs, Obama's communications director. Executives at the network will claim that their on-air "clarification" was enough, but Fox's own people continue to slime both Obama and even CNN reporter John Vause, who debunked the story: Fox's John Gibson says that Vause "probably went to the very [same] madrassa" as Obama. Harold Ickes, a longtime Clinton aide preparing to join Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, says, "The lesson of Swift Boat [the 2004 efforts to smear John Kerry over his Vietnam service] is you cannot let this stuff circulate unanswered. If they [bloggers] can finger you trying to drop poison into the well, you'll be hurt by it. Stuff moves out so quickly that campaigns have to exercise much more control over their negative information apparatus." The Chicago Tribune is more blunt: "[W]hat Insight did on its Web site, and what Fox News did in repeating the report, was not ideological at all. It was unethical, unprofessional and shabby, a trifecta, if you will, in the world of journalism."
- On March 1, San Francisco radio host Catherine Moy revisits the smear, saying that Obama lied about his education at the Indonesian madrassa (in fact, Obama, in his autobiography Dreams from My Father, is very candid about the Muslim teachings he endured in Indonesia). Moy says that her source for the Obama smear is Andy Martin, whom she describes only as a "Republican" who "once ran in the primaries" for the Illinois Senate seat eventually won by Obama. In February 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Martin called a federal bankruptcy judge a "crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race." Martin was also reported as saying, "I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did, when Jew survivors are operating as a wolf pack to steal my property." Martin, according to the Tribune, has also served several stints in prison "on issues related to contempt of court."
- Parry notes that this is by no means the first smear campaign against Democrats that Moon and his right-wing media empire has planted in the American media. In the 1988 election, Moon's Washington Times ran a story that Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis had psychiatric treatment, doing incalculable harm to the candidate and enhancing George H.W. Bush's presidential chances. During the 1992 election, the Times accused Bill Clinton of working for the KGB, again helping Bush's election chances. In the 2000 election, Moon again smeared a Bush opponent when his Times alleged that vice president Al Gore was "delusional." In 2004, Moon's media organs led savage and fraudulent attacks on Democratic candidate John Kerry's patriotism.
- Parry writes, "Once Moon's media empire surfaced these accusations, they would reverberate through the right-wing echo chamber and often into the mainstream press. Usually, the charges spotlighted a purported flaw so severe -- such as mental instability or treason -- that the Democrat would be disqualified in the eyes of many voters. Also, since it's difficult to prove a negative, mainstream news outlets often would treat the charges as a point of legitimate dispute, forcing the Democrat to issue a denial or refuse to comment. Sometimes, TV pundits would add insult to the injury by critiquing how poorly the smeared Democrat countered the attack. Moon's long record of engaging in this agit-propaganda helps explain his value to the Right and particularly to the Bush family. In turn, the Republicans have protected Moon from government investigations into his questionable sources of money, which finance both his media empire and his allied right-wing political organizations." He concludes, "Viewed over the past quarter century, Moon's media empire has the distinct appearance of a well-designed covert operation that uses foreign money, possibly from illicit sources, to influence the US political process in ways beneficial to Moon's political and financial goals." (Fox News/Think Progress [link to video], CNN/Consortium News, MSNBC, Chicago Tribune, Media Matters)
- January 19: Outgoing Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, gutted the office's emergency funds to pay for the destruction of computer hard drives in the offices.
Republican corruption
Incoming governor Mike Beebe has found himself with no emergency funds for the last half of fiscal 2007. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette discovered the destruction of the hard drives after receiving documents and memos from Huckabee's office through a Freedom of Information Act request. A January 9, 2007 memo, written the same day as Beebe took office, from a state Department of Information System official to Huckabee, tells of the "disposition of data maintained" by the department "for the office of the governor" during Huckabee's tenure: "All drives have been subsequently crushed under the supervision of a designee of your office," wrote Gary Underwood, the agency's chief technology officer and a former Huckabee staff member. Huckabee spent over $13,000 to destroy the drives. The office still owes DIS $12,000 for the destruction, which was performed on 83 computer hard drives and four servers. The data was transferred to backup tapes, which were delivered to Huckabee's chief of staff, Brenda Turner. Beebe says he was startled to learn of the data destruction. "It certainly removes any opportunity to have any information," he says. He has never heard of such measures being taken before. Asked whether "crushing" hard drives should be considered a criminal offense of destroying state property, Beebe, the former state attorney general, says he doesn't know. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) - January 19: Allen Jasson, a 55-year old Australian IT expert who lives in Britain, is kicked off a Qantas airline flight from Melbourne to London after refusing to remove a T-shirt that calls Bush the "world's number 1 terrorist."
Attack on civil liberties
Jasson says he will sue the airline. Qantas officials say the shirt could have upset other passengers. Jasson, who earlier had flown another Qantas flight wearing the same shirt without incident, says Qantas has infringed on his freedom of speech. "I am not prepared to go without the T-shirt. I might forfeit the fare, but I have made up my mind that I would rather stand up for the principle of free speech," he says. Meanwhile, Qantas has issued a statement saying comments made verbally or on a T-shirt which had the potential to offend other travellers or threaten the security of aircraft "will not be tolerated." (Reuters) - January 19: Former Democratic senator and vice president Walter Mondale says that current vice president Dick Cheney has bullied federal agencies and given absurd advice about the nation's risk and Iraq, adding that never would have been tolerated when Mondale was vice president.
Iraq war and occupation
"I think that Cheney has stepped way over the line," Mondale says at the opening of a three-day conference about former President Jimmy Carter at the University of Georgia. Mondale was Carter's vice president. Mondale says Cheney and his assistants pressured federal agencies as they prepared information for Bush. "I think Cheney's been at the center of cooking up farcical estimates of national risks, weapons of mass destruction and the 9/11 connection to Iraq," he says. That does not serve the president, because he needs facts, Mondale says. "If I had done as vice president what this vice president has done, Carter would have thrown me out of there. I don't think he could have tolerated a vice president over there pressuring and pushing other agencies, ordering up different reports than they wanted to send us. I don't think he would have stood for it." (AP/Yahoo! News) - January 19: Joe Conason asks the necessary question: now that a dismal and potentially catastrophic war with Iran is becoming more and more of a possibility, will the Iraqi government support the US or Iran?
War with Iran
Conason writes, "The answer to that simple question is far from clear, despite the thousands of lives and billions of dollars we have sacrificed to support the ruling coalition in Baghdad. While the Bush administration seeks to isolate and even overthrow the Iranian regime, as well as its Syrian ally, its partners in Iraq are establishing closer relationships with both." The government under the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, regularly colludes with the Iranian intelligence community, who Bush officials accuse of arming Iraqi insurgents and terrorists who attack US forces, commit sectarian atrocities, and undermine the attempts to form a democracy in Iraq. The Iraqi government has also resumed diplomatic relations with Syria, signed a huge aid agreement with Iran, and is encouraging the expansion of Iranian consulates and border stations. And al-Maliki's friendly relations with Iran are encouraged by Kurdish leaders such as President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who say they believe in secular democracy and consider themselves friends of the US. This dichotomy almost came to a violent head during the recent raid by US soldiers on an Iranian office in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, when, briefly, Kurdish troops surrounded the Iranian office and aimed their weapons at American troops. Since then, Zebari has defended the Iranians, demanded their immediate release, and emphasized his government's plans to "engage [Iran] constructively." - Conason observes acidly, "So in Iraq, the friends of our enemies are...our best and only friends. That lethal contradiction is among the many reasons why the president's plan to send more troops to Iraq won't achieve his objectives -- and why the basic framework of his policy is fundamentally flawed." Conason says the safety and effectiveness of the new US combat brigades slated to enter Baghdad during the next months is anything but certain. He writes, "According to the Bush theory, they will combine with the Iraqi army and national police to establish security while suppressing both Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias. In reality, the probable result is that the Shi'ite militias will temporarily disappear, while the joint American-Iraqi operations finish disarming and driving out the Sunni rebels. Then the Shi'ite militias will reappear -- as they certainly will if the United States engages in hostile action against Iran." Conason notes the bitter complaint of an American military official, who recently told the New York Times, "We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem. We are being played like a pawn." (Truthdig)
- January 19: Author and political analyst David Corn makes the simple, straightforward observation that "[t]he market doesn't work -- not when it comes to conservative commentators."
Conservative media slant
Case in point: William Kristol, the neoconservative icon, Fox News regular, editor of the Weekly Standard, and former chief of staff for then-vice president Dan Quayle. Corn writes, "Before the Iraq war, rightwing (and middle-of-the-road) pundits claimed Saddam Hussein was a dire WMD threat, that he was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, that the war was necessary. The neoconservative cheerleaders for war also argued that an invasion of Iraq would bring democracy to that nation and throughout the region. They were wrong. But they have paid no price for their errors. They did not have to serve in Iraq. None, as far as I can tell, have had sons or daughters harmed or killed in the fighting there. They did not have to bear higher taxes, because George W. Bush has charged the costs of this military enterprise to the national credit card. Though they miscalled the number-one issue of the post-9/11 period, they did not lose their influential perches in the commentariat. Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle, Robert Kagan, Gary Schmitt, Danielle Pletka and others (including non-neocon Thomas Friedman) who blew it on Iraq still regularly appear on op-ed pages and television news shows, pitching their latest notions about Iraq, Iran or other matters." - Foremost among this inglorious coterie is Kristol. Like the others, the more consistently wrong he is, the more media exposure he gets. Kristol has now been named a "star" columnist for Time magazine. Corn provides a quick analysis of just how wrong Kristol has been on, well, just about everything for so long, to answer his question, "[W]hy in the hell does [Time] believe that what America needs now is more Bill Kristol?"
- September 11, 2002: Kristol adds his voice to the chorus of "let's attack Iraq" pundits by saying that Saddam Hussein could do more harm to the United States than al-Qaeda had: "[W]e cannot afford to let Saddam Hussein inflict a worse 9/11 on us in the future." Kristol never acknowledged that Hussein had no ties to al-Qaeda.
- September 15, 2002: Kristol said that inspections and containment could not work with Iraq: "No one believes the inspections can work." Corn notes, "Actually, UN inspectors believed they could work. So, too, did about half of congressional Democrats. They were right."
- September 18, 2002: Kristol said that a war in Iraq "could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East." Bad call, Bill.
- September 19, 2002: Kristol again denounced the idea of UN inspections: "We should not fool ourselves by believing that inspections could make any difference at all." That same day, during a debate with Corn on Fox News, Corn said that the goal of inspections was to prevent Hussein from reaching "the finish line" in developing nuclear weapons. Kristol exclaimed, "He's past that finish line. He's past the finish line." Kristol has never acknowledged that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons.
- November 21, 2002: Kristol insisted that the US "can remove Saddam because that could start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy."
- February 2, 2003: Kristol claimed that Secretary of State Colin Powell, preparing for his magnificently fraudulent UN speech, would "show that there are loaded guns throughout Iraq" regarding weapons of mass destruction. Corn notes, "As it turned out, everything in Powell's speech was wrong. Kristol was uncritically echoing misleading information handed him by friends and allies within the Bush administration."
- February 20, 2003: Kristol summed up the argument for war against Hussein: "He's got weapons of mass destruction. At some point he will use them or give them to a terrorist group to use.... Look, if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world.... France and Germany don't have the courage to face up to the situation. That's too bad. Most of Europe is with us. And I think we will be respected around the world for helping the people of Iraq to be liberated." Stunningly, systematically wrong.
- March 1, 2003: Kristol dismissed concerns that sectarian conflict might arise following a US invasion of Iraq: "We talk here about Shi'ites and Sunnis as if they've never lived together. Most Arab countries have Shiites and Sunnis, and a lot of them live perfectly well together." He also said, "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president." And he maintained that the war would be a bargain at $100 to $200 billion. The running tab is now nearing half a trillion dollars, and rising.
- March 5, 2003: Kristol said, "I think we'll be vindicated when we discover the weapons of mass destruction and when we liberate the people of Iraq."
- Corn concludes, "In an effectively functioning market of opinion-trading, Kristol's views would be relegated to the bargain basement. And he ought to be doing penance, not penning columns for Time. But -- fortunate for him -- the world of punditry is a rather imperfect marketplace." (The Nation)
- January 19: Columnist, blogger, and political activist David Sirota chronicles the endless list of flip-flops made by a variety of media and political glitterati on their positions on Iraq.
Conservative media slant
First, though, he gives the example of Democratric presidential candidate John Edwards, who in 2005 said of his 2002 vote to authorize Bush's invasion of Iraq, "I was wrong [and] I take responsibility." Not everyone is as candid as Edwards. Some examples:- Two months ago, Bush told the nation that "we've never been for stay the course." The number of times he and his senior officials have said that America will indeed "stay the course" are innumerable -- the last count the editor of this site remembers is well over 100.
- In July 2006, then-Democratic Senate candidate Joseph Lieberman said during his losing primary battle with Ned Lamont, "the sooner we are out the better," and that, by the end of 2006, he would support efforts to "begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops." He later said that "no one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do and bring our troops home." Instead, Lieberman ran against Lamont as an "independent," and, with strong Republican support, won re-election. Now he leads the charge for military escalation. Last week he sent a letter to Bush saying, "[I] strongly encourage you to send additional American troops to Iraq."
- Last week, Time's Joe Klein claimed he has "been opposed to the Iraq war ever since 2002." But in the hyperventilating days of February 2003, just before the invasion, Klein told NBC's Tim Russert, "War may well be the right decision at this point. In fact, I think it probably is."
- At least conservative New York Times David Brooks hasn't backed off on his support for the war. Instead, he has attacked American democracy himself, saying of anti-war challenges to pro-war incumbents, "primary voters shouldn't be allowed to define the choices in American politics." Sirota retorts, "[A]pparently, democracy and elections are no longer an acceptable way to run our country." Brooks's colleague at the Washington Post, Richard Cohen, decided that war could be an opportunity for some antic humor, writing that "the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic."
- January 20: Michael Brown, the insouciantly incompetent former head of FEMA, says that party politics played a central role in decisions about how to respond to Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricane Katrina and FEMA
Some White House officials suggested only Louisiana should be federalized because it was run by a Democrat, Governor Kathleen Blanco, Brown tells a group of graduate students at a lecture on politics and emergency management at Metropolitan College of New York. Brown says he had recommended to Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the hurricane be federalized, making the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking we had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it," he says. Brown refuses to say who made the suggestions, but says he later learned of the situation from Blanco's office and from other officials on the federal level. - Blanco responds to Brown's revelation with anger: "This is exactly what we were living but could not bring ourselves to believe. Karl Rove was playing politics while our people were dying," she says through a spokeswoman. "The federal effort was delayed, and now the public knows why. It's disgusting." But White House spokeswoman Eryn Witcher attempts to spin Brown's statements back onto himself, retorting, "It is unfortunate that Mike Brown is still hurling false statements about the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina. The only consideration made by the administration at the time of this tragedy and since are those in the best interests of the citizens of the Gulf region." (Those who actually believe this statement are urged to visit the Hurricane Katrina page of this site.)
- Brown now directs Emergency Management Programs for the Resilient Corp., a consulting firm. (AP/CNN)
- January 20: Former Ohio Republican Representative Bob Ney, the only member of Congress to be criminally charged in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, is sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $6,000 by US District Judge Ellen Huvelle.
Jack Abramoff scandal
The sentence is three months longer than the Justice Department's recommendation, because, says Huvelle, Ney had violated the trust placed in him as a public official. "Both your constituents and the public trusted you to represent them honestly," she says. Ney, who claims to have committed the raft of crimes because of his alcohol addiction, apologizes for his transgressions and says, "I will continue to take full responsibility, accept the consequences and battle the demons of addiction that are within me." He will serve his time at a federal prison in West Virginia which has an alcohol abuse rehabilitation program. Huvelle says that Ney has a "long way to go to make amends" for his actions, and adds, "[W]hat baffles the court is what went wrong...an alcohol problem doesn't explain everything." Ney pleaded guilty last October to conspiracy and making false statements. He admitted that he traded official actions for disgraced lobbyist Abramoff for expensive trips, sports tickets, meals and campaign donations. So far seven people -- Abramoff, Ney and former associates Michael Scanlon, Tony Rudy, Neil Volz and Adam Kidan, and Interior Department official Roger Stillwell -- have pleaded guilty. Stillwell was sentenced to two years' probation. In June, David Safavian, the former top procurement officer at the Office of Management and Budget, was found guilty on four charges of making false statements and obstructing justice stemming from his dealings with Abramoff. He was sentenced to 18 months, but has appealed his conviction. - While the court received several letters pleading for leniency, other letters were harsher. One Ohio citizen wrote, "I beg you to give him at least 27 months and if possible put an extra 0 on his sentence behind the 7." Another letter said, "If the punishment fit the crime, he'd be shot at sunrise." Ney's older sister, Emmylou Ney Charlton, stuck up for her brother and ignored his crimes, writing, "Whatever he has done is now an albatross around his neck that is a constant reminder of a bright political future, now lost because of flaws in judgment and misplaced loyalties." A former member of his congressional staff, Matthew Parker, says that Ney did not drink that heavily until the federal probe of his criminal actions was well underway. In a written statement issued in October after he pled guilty, Ney continued to deny that he had taken any money for himself, when in fact he stole hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. He wrote, "I accept responsibility for my actions, and I am prepared to face the consequences of what I have done.... I have made mistakes of judgment and acted in ways that I am not proud of. I never intended my career in public service to end this way, and I am ashamed that it has. I never acted to enrich myself or get things I shouldn't, but over time, I allowed myself to get too comfortable with the way things have been done in Washington, DC for too long." (AP/MSNBC)
- January 21: A Washington Post analysis of Bush's decision to escalate the number of US troops in Iraq shows what many already knew: that Bush willfully ignored the advice of virtually everyone involved in the process -- the Iraqi government, the Iraq Study Group, the Congressional leadership, breakaway Republicans, the will of the American people, and his own military commanders -- and followed his "instincts" in making the decision.
Iraq war and occupation
Reporters Michael Abramowitz and Peter Baker call their work "[a] reconstruction of the administration's Iraq policy review, based on more than a dozen interviews with senior advisers, Bush associates, lawmakers and national security officials...." (Editor's note: While critically valuable, Abramowitz's and Baker's analysis strikes me as being far too crediting of Bush's own decision-making and leadership skills. As we have learned from many, many other sources, it is far more likely that the decisions were made by Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and other senior officials both in Washington and in Riyadh, with Bush more the tail being wagged than doing the wagging. But certainly Bush's obduracy, intransigence, and belligerence played key roles in the decisions that were made.) - Bush was advised by Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki during their November 30, 2006 meeting that the best bet for regaining control of Baghdad was to have US troops withdraw entirely from the embattled city and let Iraqi security forces deal with the situation there. Bush immediately rejected the idea. His own military commanders, along with Congressional Democrats (and many Republicans), believed that the US had enough troops in Iraq and there was no need for more, a conclusion supported by the Iraq Study Group. But Bush wanted to send more troops. Abramowitz and Baker write, "So Bush relied on his own judgment that the best answer was to try once again to snuff out the sectarian violence in Baghdad, even at the risk of putting US soldiers into a crossfire between Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias. When his generals resisted sending more troops, he seemed irritated. When they finally agreed to go along with the plan, he doubled the number of troops they requested. It was a signature moment for a president who seems uninfluenced by the electorate on Iraq and headed for a showdown with the new Democratic Congress. Presented with an opportunity to pull back, Bush instead chose to extend and, in some ways, deepen his commitment, gambling that more time and a new plan will finally bring success to the troubled US military mission." Few outside the White House and the neoconservative axis support Bush's escalation, except for a relatively small number of Republicans such as Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and "Democrat" Joseph Lieberman, who breathlessly advised Bush to "Be bold."
- (Side note: When Lieberman was battling for the Democratic nomination for his Senate seat in July 2006, he told Connecticut voters that "the sooner we are out the better," and that, by the end of 2006, he would support efforts to "begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops." He later said that "no one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do and bring our troops home." Now that he is an "independent," Lieberman has completely reversed his course; just last week, he sent Bush a letter saying, "[I] strongly encourage you to send additional American troops to Iraq.")
- But even Bush and his diehard supporters were surprised by the depth and breadth of the resistance to his escalation. They expected the Republicans to perhaps grumble, but to fall into line; they expected the Democrats to fracture, some supporting the escalation, some opposing, others riding the fence. Instead, they found themselves facing an unexpectedly unified front of determined, angry opposition.
- Their confidence in their own marketing strategies, if not their military planning, had been fed by three years of victories in Congress and on the electoral trail, until November's midterm elections. While making endless hay out of accusing Democrats of cowardice and defeatism during these years, and publicly predicting the always-imminent collapse of the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq, privately Bush and his inner circle had grudgingly begun to consider the idea that their central strategy for Iraq -- establishing a representative democracy and trusting that the insurgency would wither away -- was fundamentally wrong. "The political process would not lead to security in Iraq." write Abramowitz and Baker. "In fact, it would have to be the other way around." The continual assurances from then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior ground commanders that the troop numbers were adequate began to ring hollow. One senior administration official says, "It was pretty clear when you started to look at our assumptions, many of them just weren't right."
- Bush decided that getting rid of Rumsfeld would be enough of a sop to his critics to allow him to continue to pursue his policies with the old heedlessness, but refused to announce the decision until after the midterm elections. He also decided to begin several agency reviews of Iraq policy, again keeping those reviews out of the public eye. National security advisor Stephen Hadley returned from Iraq on November 5 with profoundly disturbing conclusions about the stability and loyalty of the al-Maliki government; he gave his report to Bush on November 8, the same day that Bush announced the "resignation" of Rumsfeld. Hadley recommended increasing US support for the Iraqi government, including possibly sending in more troops.
- On November 14, Bush combined the reviews of the different agencies and announced to his senior advisors that he would lead the review process himself. Bush and Cheney steered the review process towards the conclusion they favored -- escalation. They heard what they wanted from a plan presented by retired Army general Jack Keane, which recommended tens of thousands of additional troops in Baghdad (and ignored the advice of retired Army general Barry McCaffrey, who called Keane's idea a "fool's errand"). The White House's consultations with Congressional Democrats was dismissed by most of those Democrats as "a facade of consultation over a decision long since made."
- Bush and his advisors initially held out strong hopes that the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan, congressionally chartered commission headed by former secretary of state James Baker, a close friend of the Bush family, and former congressman Lee Hamilton, a widely respected Democrat, would give the White House a chance to put a bipartisan veneer on their own plans. But Baker's group provided uncooperative, and produced major proposals that Bush and his advisors rejected out of hand -- diplomacy, political benchmarks for al-Maliki, and phased withdrawal plans.
- His senior commanders in the Middle East, CENTCOM commander John Abizaid and Iraq commander George Casey, were also opposed to any escalation, both because they didn't feel the additional troops would change the dynamics on the ground. And even the Joint Chiefs, formerly so compliant, put up unsuspected resistance as well. After Bush tried to placate some of his commanders' concerns by announcing funding for increasing the size of the Army and the Marines, but overrode Casey's decision that if Bush wanted to send more troops, he should allocate two brigades for Baghdad, a third on reserve in Kuwait, and two more on callup status in the States. Bush wanted all five brigades in Baghdad.
- Interestingly, the analysis ends here, seemingly incomplete, at least in the Web-based version. But the next step was the "resignations" of both Abizaid and Casey, and their replacements by two other senior commanders more willing to comply with Bush's wishes. (Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle)
- January 21: Republican senator Chuck Hagel responds angrily to Dick Cheney's assertion that criticism of the plan to send 21,500 more US soldiers to Iraq "undercuts the troops," and his statement that whatever Congress does "would not affect the president's ability to carry out his policy."
Iraq war and occupation
Hagel responds on CBS's Face the Nation: "Let me tell you this. I served in Vietnam in 1968. Others did too. Jim Webb, John McCain. John Kerry. Other members in the House. In 1968 when I was there with my brother, worst year, deaths, I would have welcomed the Congress of the United States to pay a little attention as to what was going on. I would have welcomed that. That is complete nonsense to say we're undercutting the support of the troops. What are we about? We're Article 1 of the Constitution. We are a co-equal branch of government. Are we not to participate? Are we not to say anything? Are we not to register our sense of where we're going in this country on foreign policy? Bottom line is this: our young men and women and their families, these young men and women who are asked to fight and die deserve a policy worthy of those sacrifices. I don't think we have one now." (CBSThink Progress [link to video])
