Political Winds

On May 1, 1973, a Washington Post editorial said of Richard Nixon that there was “… a lot yet to be done if he means to repair the damage of 10 months of temporizing, evasion and deceit where the Watergate scandals are concerned.” It was strong language about the president, and it came before the nation would fully tune into Watergate. The Senate hearings, to which the commercial networks and PBS would devote 319 hours of coverage over three months, wouldn’t begin until May 18th of that year. I was young then and capable of awe, and I was in awe of the Washington Post.

These days, the Post is much more measured in tone. Despite ample evidence of the Bush administration’s “evasion and deceit,” the Post of the 21st century, at least the editorial page, is often willing or even eager to embrace the administration’s spin on the facts. So, one day before the release of the 9/11 Commission’s report, the Post’s editorial voice has chimed in with those on the right who debunk former ambassador Joe Wilson’s conclusions relating to Iraq and African uranium. And, like those same spinners, the Post defends Mr. Bush’s use of the “sixteen words” in his January, 2003 State of the Union speech. In case you’ve forgotten, Bush said, “[T]he British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The Post editorial asserts that

…over the past 10 days two major official reports, by the Senate intelligence committee and a special British commission, have concluded that the claim in the “sixteen words” may, after all, have been justified. Britain’s Butler report called it “well-founded”; the bipartisan Senate investigation said the conclusion was a reasonable one at least until October 2002 — and that Mr. Wilson’s report to the CIA had not changed its analysts’ assessment… The failure to find significant stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons or an active nuclear program in Iraq has caused some war opponents to claim that Iraq was never much to worry about. The Niger story indicates otherwise. Like the reporting of postwar weapons investigator David Kay, it suggests that Saddam Hussein never gave up his intention to develop weapons of mass destruction and continued clandestine programs he would have accelerated when U.N. sanctions were lifted. No, the evidence is not conclusive. But neither did President Bush invent it.

The editorial’s blithe dismissal of the anti-war movement is stunning. Most of us have not suggested that “Iraq was never much to worry about.” The issue was and still is the Bush administration’s endless repetition of false claims: that Iraq posed an imminent threat, that it possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda and 9/11. That Saddam “never gave up his intention to develop weapons of mass destruction” is simply an improved version of Bush’s statement about “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities” in his State of the Union address one year after the “sixteen words.” The fact that Saddam still harbored ambitions of someday developing WMDs could never have been sold by itself as a justification for barreling headlong into a costly war.

Incredibly, the Post editorial does not even mention several critical points concerning the African uranium issue. The editorial writers seemed to have forgotten the role of the forged documents in the administration’s rush to judgment. It was not Joe Wilson who exposed the forgery. It was the International Atomic Energy Commission. Wilson expounds at length on this in his July 15 letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In addition, the Post doesn’t bother to remind its readers that much of what was “concluded” by the committee was in “additional comments” made by three Republican senators and not endorsed by the bipartisan committee as a whole. Those comments include the statement that “The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador’s report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.” In his letter, Wilson says,

In fact, the body of the Senate report suggests the exact opposite… It is clear from the body of the Senate report that the intelligence community, including the DCI himself, made several attempts to ensure that the president did not become a “fact witness” on an allegation that was so weak. A thorough reading of the report substantiates the claim made in my opinion piece in the New York Times and in subsequent interviews I have given on the subject. The 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address, as the White House now acknowledges.

Wilson offers a detailed analysis of evidence cited in the Senate report, and he quotes from a CIA fax sent to the White House on October 6, 2002:

More on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British. (page 56)

It is clear that the US intelligence community was highly dubious about the alleged Iraq-Niger connection and that its doubts were based on multiple sources and reports, not just Joe Wilson’s findings. The GOP line now is that Bush’s “sixteen words” were accurate because there may be evidence that at some point the Iraqis inquired about uranium. In adopting that line of reasoning, the Post is guilty of parroting the broader GOP strategy of parsing words contained in the administration’s lengthy record of false and misleading statements. Bush insists he never said that Saddam was connected to 9/11. No, he just strongly suggested it countless times in the run-up to the war and beyond so that, until recently, the majority of the American people believed it. And no, Bush didn’t actually say that Saddam was about to get uranium from Africa for the nuclear program that posed an imminent and urgent threat to the United States of America.

Well, the Washington Post has backed Bush on Iraq, and apparently it still needs to rationalize that support. Yes, the newspaper occasionally does some solid and tough reporting on Bush and the GOP as well as the Democrats. But those who run this powerful publication have eroded the paper’s proud traditions. When Katherine Graham, the Post publisher and force of nature who unflinchingly supported its editors and reporters during Watergate, died in 2001, her executive editor during that period, Ben Bradlee, said,

Maybe not all of you understand what it takes to make a great newspaper. It takes a great owner. Period. An owner who commits herself with passion and the highest standards and principles to a simple search for truth. With fervor, not favor. With fairness and courage. . . .

I would ask the current publisher, Katherine Graham’s son Donald, where’s the “fairness and courage” in today’s Post? We need it.

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Today’s Worth Checking Out

Sandy Berger’s explanations concerning the national security documents seem implausible. It’s hard for me to believe that a guy with his experience could “inadvertently” take the papers. That said, at first blush, it appears that the documents in question - the post-millenium reports - were available to the 9/11 Commission. It also appears that the disclosure of the months-old investigation was a typically well-timed leak from the Ashcroft justice Department. For some good discussion about all of this, see Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo.

Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe has known John Kerry for more than thirty years. In The American Prospect, he goes beyond the standard media stereotyping in discussing why Kerry could be a very good president.

For a foreign take on Bill Clinton and his book, take a look at Alastair Campbell’s piece in The Guardian/Observer.

This was what US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay had to say about the Democrats in July of last year, when he spoke to one thousand Republican college students. To assure accuracy in quoting the GOP leader and to give him the benefit of the doubt, I’m citing a Fox News story about the speech:

“The national Democrat Party seems to have lost its marbles,” DeLay, R-Texas, said as he announced that Republicans are no more on the defensive, but are launching a counter-attack against Democratic criticism of the war in Iraq.

DeLay said the criticism was born of pure partisan hate, void of logic or reason.

“Their single organizing philosophy is an irrational, all-encompassing broiling hatred of George W. Bush,” DeLay said. “Most of all, Democrats hate the president because on every political issue of significance since he came to office, he has beaten them like rented mules.”

While I’m upset about DeLay’s obvious insensitivity to the welfare of mules, rented or otherwise, this is not the reason I draw your attention to his comments. Nor is it the fact that the mules have turned around and started kicking the president. No, I wanted to see if you picked up on something at the beginning of DeLay’s drivel. He said the “national Democrat Party.” Not “Democratic” Party. In case you haven’t noticed in listening to Republicans speaking about the loyal opposition, that was not a mere slip-up or innocent mistake. It wasn’t Bush-speak. It is a virtual rule of proper Republican behavior to say “Democrat Party” instead of “Democratic Party.”

You don’t believe me? Here are a few more examples of GOP etiquette:

From New Hampshire Republican Committee News

Jayne Millerick, Chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, released the following statement in response to a new radio ad released today by the Democrat Party:

From the Republican Party of Virginia Web site:

Never before has the Democrat Party chosen the 1st and 4th most liberal members of the United States Senate to represent it in a presidential campaign.

How about this headline from conservative Web site OpinioNet:

The Democrat Party Will Die in 2004

From the Republican National Committee Web site’s section on the origins of the term “GOP”:

Indeed, the “grand old party” is an ironic term, since the Democrat Party was organized some 22 years earlier in 1832.

I first became aware of the tendency of many Republicans to refer to the “Democrat Party” back in the early eighties. I was the chief political reporter for WTHR-TV, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis, the capital of the red state of Indiana. I remember sitting in the office of state GOP chairman Gordon Durnil one day. He sat back comfortably in his desk chair, puffing on his pipe and talking politics. It seemed like every minute or two, he punctured the avuncular image by snarling the term “Democrat Party” in a kind of Indiana drawl. I thought he relished saying it that way, enjoyed wrapping his tongue around this perfect encapsulation of disrespect. Over the years, as I noticed that Durnil wasn’t the only one employing the term, I wondered about how “Democrat Party” became part of the Republican vernacular. Here’s an explanation from The Columbia Guide to Standard American English

The proper noun is the name of a member of a major American political party; the adjective Democratic is used in its official name, the Democratic party. Democrat as an adjective is still sometimes used by some twentieth-century Republicans as a campaign tool but was used with particular virulence by the late senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, a Republican who sought by repeatedly calling it the Democrat party to deny it any possible benefit of the suggestion that it might also be democratic.

Even though I don’t think Republicans like Tom DeLay really believe in the concepts underlying the democratic republic, i.e., they’re not genuine democratic republicans, I won’t start calling DeLay’s party the “Republic Party.” You get my point?

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Today’s Worth Checking Out

Read Eric Alterman’s piece about Fox News in the wake of the this week’s release of Outfoxed, a new documentary about Murdoch’s contribution to a civil society. Alterman’s article and some excellent evidentiary material - “The Reality Behind Fox News” can be found at the Center for American Progress. Also, see Salon’s review of Outfoxed.

Today’s Summary of Undercovered News

Whether or not you were against the war, you had to be stirred by that powerful image of Saddam’s statue being pulled down by Iraqis in a spontaneous expression of joy and relief as Baghdad fell in April of last year. Except now we find out that it wasn’t spontaneous. The LA Times reported on July 3rd that

It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.

At a time when people were starting to note that the Iraqis were not greeting our troops with “garlands and flowers,” as Dick Cheney had promised, the video of the statue coming down was an important boost to the administration’s image-makers. I’m not suggesting that the staged statute destruction was ordered by higher-ups in the administration (although with this crowd, you can’t totally rule it out), but I do think the story deserves far more play than it has received. That picture is one of many phony images that the Bush people have used to try to build a portrait of a “strong leader.” There were such stunts, of course, as the infamous “Mission Accomplished” sign and Bush’s attempt to disavow an administration role in putting it up on the aircraft carrier. There were those fake video news reports pushed by the administration to local TV newsrooms and aired 53 times by about 40 stations. Then there was the fake turkey Bush served up to our troops for a photo op.

Yes, all presidents try to fully leverage the office for photo ops. But, as with so many levers of power, Bush has pushed too hard, with calculated cynicism and disrespect for the American people.

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This story just broke yesterday, so it’s hard to tell whether it has “legs,” but I’ll bet most Americans won’t hear too much about it from the national or local media unless somehow the issue comes up again in the election campaign:

HOUSTON, July 8 - Military records that could help establish President Bush’s whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.

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It is well-documented that the Bush administration has politicized, to an unprecedented degree, our government’s health and science regulatory agencies and advisory boards. But how many American women are even aware that their lives could be affected by the recent re-appointment of Dr. David Hager to the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee? Here’s Planned Parenthood’s take:

Dr. Hager co-authored a book that recommends scriptural passages and prayers for problems like headaches and premenstrual syndrome, and he is widely known to be opposed to prescribing contraceptives for unmarried women. He also played a prominent role in the creation of a petition designed to pressure the FDA into rescinding its approval of mifepristone.

All of this was public record when President Bush appointed Dr. Hager to the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee in 2002. And his anti-choice record has only worsened since then.

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Since I’m talking about under-reported stories, I have to tell you about seeing NBC News anchor Brian Williams’ little homily on the broadcast of the New York fireworks on July 4th. His was one of a number of celebrity intonations of American virtues irritatingly inserted in a corner of the screen. I’ve heard that Williams is a nice guy, and I’m sure he’s sincere, but I had to laugh. He said essentially that he was lucky to live out his fantasy of becoming a journalist and that we’re fortunate in this country to be able to report things even when people get upset about it. The speech was more full-blown and pious than I’ve just related, and as I was listening to it, I chuckled because I was trying to imagine the last time NBC News really took a chance and courageously exposed, for example, Bush administration malfeasance. The only time NBC talks about such things is when it’s forced to because another news outlet, usually print or Web, has already reported the story. And, no NBC, you can’t count “Dateline,” which generally goes after small potatoes.

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Today’s Worth Checking Out

Colonel David Hackworth (ret.), raises the question, “Will the New Iraq Defense Force Hack It?,” and offers a pessimistic answer.

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Today’s Kicker

This is a downright weird story out of - guess - California (although it must be said, the story doesn’t involve the usual faddists, rock musicians, Hollywood-governor types and the like). This time, the perp is the button-downed former mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan. Riordan is close to Gov. Hummer Terminator, who tapped him to be his Secretary of Education. Last week, the Secretary was at an event in Santa Barbara to promote summer reading. I’ll let an AP story take it from here:

The conversation, videotaped by KEYT-TV, took place July 1. The girl, 6-year-old Isis D’Luciano, asked Riordan if he knew her name meant “Egyptian goddess.”

Riordan replied, “It means stupid dirty girl.”

After nervous laughter in the room, the girl again told Riordan the meaning of her name.
“Hey, that’s nifty,” he said.

Have a good weekend!

[It’s been a long hiatus because of surgery. I’m back now and expect to be posting again regularly.]

Writing about Fahrenheit 9/11, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post writes, “… it is a farrago of conspiracy theories.” To be honest, I wasn’t positive what “farrago” meant even though I suspected it did not mean “smidgen.” But just to be certain, I looked it up on Dictionary.com. The first listing, from The American Heritage� Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, said, “An assortment or a medley; a conglomeration: ‘their special farrago of resentments’ (William Safire).”

Now it made sense. Richard Cohen, the longtime liberal, was trying to sound like William Safire, the longtime conservative. And he was trying to be an erudite writer like Safire. Well, farrago is a neat word, but Cohen didn’t seem as clever as Safire in using phrases like “utter stupidity of the movie,”"so silly and so incomprehensible,” and “hated his approach.” Cohen even went on to say, “… I found myself feeling a bit sorry for a president who is depicted mostly as a befuddled dope.” Wow. I don’t think even William Safire feels sorry for Bush.

Of course, Richard Cohen is far from alone among mainstream journalists in his condemnation of Michael Moore’s film. Here’s what the normally reticent Gwen Ifill of PBS said on Meet the Press, “You know, I look at this movie as a journalist, and as a journalist I have this affection for facts and accuracy. And even though there are facts in this movie, on whole it’s not accurate.” Gwen, where was this “affection for facts” during the past four years of White House spin and disinformation?

Quite a few big-name mainstream reporters feel the need to remind us of their high journalistic standards as they bash Moore. Unfortunately, those standards seemed often to have been evanescent in covering the Bush rush to war. So I suspect that some of the reaction among journalists is defensive. More important, as Paul Krugman said in his New York Times column, “Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven’t been doing their job.”

Cohen, Ifill and other members of the “respectable media” miss the point when they accuse Moore of not meeting certain journalistic standards, of unfair juxtaposition of images, and of pushing a plethora of kooky conspiracy theories (Safarian alliteration?). First of all, as Krugman says, the movie “has yet to be caught in any major factual errors.” While, like Krugman, I agree that Moore occasionally reaches too far in drawing inferences and conclusions based on the facts and circumstances outlined in the film (e.g., the Unocal pipeline as a major factor in the Afghanistan war), I also concur that Moore “tells essential truths.” Moore assembles a series of images and sounds into a two-hour bill of particulars against a presidency. The pictures and interviews add up to a powerful indictment of the Bush administration - even without Moore’s sometimes over-the-top narration. Moore didn’t fabricate the video of Bush shakily reading to a school class for seven minutes after being told that the US was under attack. He didn’t manufacture the pictures reflecting the uncomfortably cozy relationship between the Bushes and the Saudis before and after 9/11. He didn’t make up the heretofore virtually unseen video of African-American members of Congress trying unsuccessfully to get the Senate to consider their objections to the Florida vote and black voter disenfranchisement while the Senate was doing its pro forma certification of the electoral college outcome. Moore didn’t invent the tape of Bush’s offensive - and telling - smirking and winking at various times. And of course he didn’t stage the video of the dead and wounded in Iraq and the grief and anger of the patriotic mother who lost her son there.

Despite all the solid documentary evidence Moore presents, the film is not a documentary. It is a commentary, a polemic, an essay. So, allow me to point out to you, Richard Cohen, that Fahrenheit 9/11 is not merely attempting a recitation of facts. You have to use your noggin a little (even though it must be said that Moore is no master of sublety). You didn’t do that, Richard, and that’s why you were outraged that the pictures of prewar Iraq depicted “some sort of Arab folk festival — lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people.” The point Richard, was not that life was great under Saddam but that millions of average people would be affected and thousands would be killed in the war. And that, my liberal and journalistically stringent friend, may not always be a reason to avoid war, but it should have been part of the calculation of Bush, the media, and the American people in evaluating whether the Iraq war was one we absolutely had to fight.

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Happy July 4th to all of you! And speaking of July 4th and the values it represents, the Republicans are at it again with one of their tried and true “wedge issues” - the flag-burning amendment. Dick Cheney is saying that John Kerry’s votes against the amendment prove that he’s “out of touch with the conservative values of the heartland.” You see, Kerry’s been talking about how he would “honor the values that built our country.” The GOP doesn’t like Democrats bringing up values. For a useful perspective on real American values, read Walter Isaacson’s excellent op-ed essay in today’s New York Times. He explains that when the Declaration of Independence said the new states should show “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” it was a reflection of the founders’ belief that the country had to appeal “to the values and the ideals of potential allies.” Isaacson goes on to say,

These are the same values — liberty and aversion to tyranny — that America still shares with the French and our other natural allies. But unlike the founders, we are not as willing to court the hearts and minds of others. Rather than caring for the opinions of mankind, President Bush jokes, “Call my lawyer,” when the concept of international law is raised. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saw little need to distribute the Geneva Convention rules to American soldiers dealing with prisoners.

Machiavelli famously advised his prince that it was better to be feared than loved. By that standard, the United States is doing rather well. Alas, this is not a formula for winning a war against terrorism and the spread of dangerous weapons. We need allies who will want to help not because we scare them but because they share our values.

This will require leadership that values the role of diplomacy and doesn’t scoff at international law.

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Today’s Worth Checking Out

Speaking of our timid mainstream (especially TV) media, read about one reporter who did ask Bush some tough questions and tried to get the answers. Unfortunately, she doesn’t work for ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC or (is it even worth mentioning) Fox. Carole Coleman is the Washington correspondent for RTE, the Irish public TV network. Our president got very irritated with her. You can also watch the interview on RTE’s site.

William Greider has an intriguing piece in The Nation about “embedded patriots” - highly placed government officials - who have been leaking documents that have “provided forceful and well-timed contradictions to the White House line.”

John Judis’ article entitled “Imperial Amnesia” in the current issue of Foreign Policy analyzes Bush’s revisionist history of US involvement in the Phillippines and puts it in the context of Iraq.