Yahoo! News - A CRACK IN BUSH'S FAÇADE
Yahoo! News - A CRACK IN BUSH'S FAÇADE
A CRACK IN BUSH'S FAÇADE
Mon Jun 30, 5:08 PM ET
By Ted Rall
Growing WMD Scandal Could Lead to Impeachment
Ted Rall
MINNEAPOLIS--Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction. He lied to us, the United Nations, and the soldiers he sent to die in Iraq. Bush's apologists defend his attempts to sell this obscene war as mere spin, but claiming certain knowledge of something that doesn't exist is hardly a question of emphasis. It's time to stop wondering where the WMDs are. Even if nukes and gases and anthrax turn up in prodigious quantities, it won't matter. Proof of Bush's perfidy, unlike his accusations that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, is irrefutable.
Before he ordered U.S. forces to kill and maim tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi soldiers and civilians, Bush and Co. repeatedly maintained that they had absolute proof that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) still possessed WMDs. "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Dick Cheney said in August. In January, Ari Fleisher said: "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." WMDs; not a "WMD program" as they now refer to it. WMDs--not just indications of possible, or probable, WMDs.
Absolute proof.
During the first days of the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stared into television cameras, looked right at his employers (that's you and me), and said that he knew exactly where they were. "We know where they are," Rumsfeld said. "They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
Uh-huh. So where are they?
"Absolute" proof is a high standard--heck, it's a nearly impossible benchmark. The last time I checked, my cat was in my kitchen, licking the milk at the bottom of my cereal bowl. As intel goes, mine is triple-A-rated--I witnessed it this morning, and I've spent the better part of a decade observing that animal. But if you were to demand absolute proof of kitty's current location, I couldn't give it to you. I'd bet that he's sleeping on my bed. But he could be in the litter box, on the windowsill, or sneaking out an open window. Truth is, I don't know where he is. To say otherwise, to present even a well-founded hypothesis as Fact, would be a lie.
Bush had conjecture, wishful thinking and stale intelligence going for him. He needed absolute proof, and the absence thereof is leading to talk of impeachment. Before the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld argues, "Virtually everyone agreed they did [have WMDs]--in Congress, in successive Democratic and Republican administrations, in the intelligence communities here in the United States, and also in foreign countries and at the U.N., even among those countries that did not favor military action in Iraq." Untrue.
The Bush Administration didn't have proof, so they spent last fall making it up. As Robin Cook, who resigned from Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s cabinet over the war, told the British Parliament: "Instead of using intelligence as evidence on which to base a decision about policy, we used intelligence as the basis to justify a policy on which we had already decided."
By January 2003, 81 percent of respondents to an ABC News poll said they believed that Iraq "posed a threat to the United States."
Previous administrations, reliant on the CIA (news - web sites) for reliable information, have traditionally respected a "Chinese wall" between Langley and the White House. As Republicans blame the CIA for the missing WMDs, leaks from within the CIA increasingly indicate that Dick Cheney and others sought to politicize its reports on Iraq, cherry-picking factoids that backed its war cry and dismissing those that didn't. This dubious practice culminated with Colin Powell's over-the-top performance before the U.N., where he misrepresented documents he knew to be forged--which he privately derided as "bullshit"!--as hard fact.
The Administration's defenders, whose selective morality makes Bill Clinton look like a saint, argue that the WMDs don't matter, that Saddam's mass graves vindicate the war liars. But no one ever denied that Hussein was evil. The American people knew that Saddam was a butcher during the '80s when we backed him, and during the '90s when we contained him. They weren't willing to go to war over regime change in the '00s, which is why the Administration invented a fictional threat. Now that we know that presidents lie about the need for war, how will future presidents rally us against genuine dangers?
Lying to the American people is impeachable. Waging war without cause is subject to prosecution at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague . But insiders have to talk before the media can aggressively pursue the WMD story, prosecutors can be appointed and top evildoers brought to justice.
Now Slaughtergate has its own Alexander Butterfield. Christian Westermann, a respected State Department intelligence analyst talking to Congress, has testified that Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a Bush political appointee, pressured him to change a report on Cuba so that it would back Bush claims that Cuba was developing biological weapons. Westermann says that when he refused, Bolton tried to have him transferred.
Westermann's testimony doesn't relate to Iraq, but it puts the lie to Bushoid assertions that they never messed with the CIA. A reliable source informs me that there's a "jihad" underway between Administration political operatives and the career intelligence community. "Guys are pissed off that they're being asked to take the fall for the White House. Look for more leaks in the future," this official says.
Meanwhile, Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been reduced to parsing the meaning of intelligence: "Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true," he says.
Now he tells us.
--------
The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Editorials
Underestimating the capacity of Americans to detect a fraud
By PIERRE TRISTAM
ESSAYS
Last update: 01 July 2003
The first man to underestimate Americans was King George, 227 years ago. He wasn't the last.
In an eight-minute speech at the CIA on Sep. 26, 2001, President Bush finished with a mostly coherent incantation about how terrorists have "misunderestimated" America: "The folks who conducted to act on our country on September 11th made a big mistake," he said. "They underestimated America. They underestimated our resolve, our determination, our love for freedom. They misunderestimated the fact that we love a neighbor in need. They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too."
Malapropisms aside, it wasn't an uninspiring speech, lifting as it did from Winston Churchill's "we shall never surrender" address to the House of Commons toward the beginning of World War II. But white flags were trembling all over Europe in 1940. The Nazis looked so invulnerable that in the less-quoted portion of the same speech, Churchill considered that if Britain "or a large part of it were subjugated and starving," it would be up to the colonies "beyond the seas [to] carry on the struggle." No such possibility has ever faced the United States after Sept. 11 -- not in anybody's wildest fears. The attacks were barbaric and stunningly effective, but their magnitude didn't make them any less freakish. The country was shocked, slightly dented, greatly aggrieved, because Americans are a feeling people. But our "way of life" was never threatened. Look around: Routines haven't changed a whit, and not because of the cosmetic precautions of such brave new world inventions as the Department of Homeland Security, but in spite of them.
Yet the president's brawny rhetoric, understandable in the smoldering aftermath of the attacks, became less, not more, measured with time. As have his actions. Announcing the beginning of the war in Afghanistan two weeks after the CIA speech, Bush ended with the now famous coda: "We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail." Reviewers called the phrases Churchillian, but the phrases owed more to H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" than to anything more realistic, or less sensational. It isn't that a counter-offensive on terrorism wasn't warranted. But Sept. 11 wasn't, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman continues to insist, "the beginning of World War III." So you couldn't blame world opinion for balking when Bush turned Dr. Strangelove.
But the president isn't much concerned about world opinion. The aim of his Texas-salted rhetoric -- "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" -- wasn't meant only for allies and would-be enemies abroad. It was to define the meaning of Americanism at home, to draw supporters as patriots and dissenters as traitors. With the jingo press and its radio chat jocks as enforcers, Bush acted early and often to make a loyalty oath of that dividing line and to keep drawing it all the way to the next election. It has worked wonders. Would-be dissenters (most of them, anyway) have either gone silent or fallen in line behind the president. Liberals have stumbled over each other, trying to prove, Friedman-style, how this time it really is different, how we mustn't lose sight of the real enemies out there.
Sure enough, some diehard dissenters have managed to sound as if Bush were worse than either Osama or Saddam. But Bush's jingoes have just as idiotically managed to make dissenters seem as dangerous to America as Osama and Saddam put together. Dumb dividing lines make for dumb dichotomies. But it isn't a matter of who's worse. To phrase the matter this way plays into the hands of jingoes, because the answer is a set-up. Who in his right mind would say that Bush is worse than Saddam? The real question is: To what extent has Bush abetted Saddam and Osama's relevance by making them out to be as dangerous as Hitler or Stalin? To what extent has he lied to make them seem more of a threat to America than they actually are? To what extent is he changing government and trampling the Constitution, with his patriotic-security apparatchiks, in order to solidify his political cult (which the country, in a national malapropism of its own, confuses with clout)? And to what extent have Americans bought into such a whopper of mass delusion?
On Bush's watch domestic insecurities have never been so expedient, foreign threats never so imaginary, patriotism never such a "grotesque and laughable word," as Mark Twain once put it. Bush has made brandishing a flag (or a cruise missile) a self-evident virtue, absolving its bearer of reflection or responsibility. But that's the way of the fanatic. And on this July 4, that is what we are, mostly, because we still believe in this president, mostly.
It isn't a flaw to be naturally trusting. But Bush is underestimating Americans' capacity to adjust, to detect a fraud, even when it is their own king. King George found out. The reigning King George will, too, if we are to raise the banner of critical independence again.
A CRACK IN BUSH'S FAÇADE
Mon Jun 30, 5:08 PM ET
By Ted Rall
Growing WMD Scandal Could Lead to Impeachment
Ted Rall
MINNEAPOLIS--Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction. He lied to us, the United Nations, and the soldiers he sent to die in Iraq. Bush's apologists defend his attempts to sell this obscene war as mere spin, but claiming certain knowledge of something that doesn't exist is hardly a question of emphasis. It's time to stop wondering where the WMDs are. Even if nukes and gases and anthrax turn up in prodigious quantities, it won't matter. Proof of Bush's perfidy, unlike his accusations that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, is irrefutable.
Before he ordered U.S. forces to kill and maim tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi soldiers and civilians, Bush and Co. repeatedly maintained that they had absolute proof that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) still possessed WMDs. "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Dick Cheney said in August. In January, Ari Fleisher said: "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." WMDs; not a "WMD program" as they now refer to it. WMDs--not just indications of possible, or probable, WMDs.
Absolute proof.
During the first days of the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stared into television cameras, looked right at his employers (that's you and me), and said that he knew exactly where they were. "We know where they are," Rumsfeld said. "They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
Uh-huh. So where are they?
"Absolute" proof is a high standard--heck, it's a nearly impossible benchmark. The last time I checked, my cat was in my kitchen, licking the milk at the bottom of my cereal bowl. As intel goes, mine is triple-A-rated--I witnessed it this morning, and I've spent the better part of a decade observing that animal. But if you were to demand absolute proof of kitty's current location, I couldn't give it to you. I'd bet that he's sleeping on my bed. But he could be in the litter box, on the windowsill, or sneaking out an open window. Truth is, I don't know where he is. To say otherwise, to present even a well-founded hypothesis as Fact, would be a lie.
Bush had conjecture, wishful thinking and stale intelligence going for him. He needed absolute proof, and the absence thereof is leading to talk of impeachment. Before the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld argues, "Virtually everyone agreed they did [have WMDs]--in Congress, in successive Democratic and Republican administrations, in the intelligence communities here in the United States, and also in foreign countries and at the U.N., even among those countries that did not favor military action in Iraq." Untrue.
The Bush Administration didn't have proof, so they spent last fall making it up. As Robin Cook, who resigned from Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s cabinet over the war, told the British Parliament: "Instead of using intelligence as evidence on which to base a decision about policy, we used intelligence as the basis to justify a policy on which we had already decided."
By January 2003, 81 percent of respondents to an ABC News poll said they believed that Iraq "posed a threat to the United States."
Previous administrations, reliant on the CIA (news - web sites) for reliable information, have traditionally respected a "Chinese wall" between Langley and the White House. As Republicans blame the CIA for the missing WMDs, leaks from within the CIA increasingly indicate that Dick Cheney and others sought to politicize its reports on Iraq, cherry-picking factoids that backed its war cry and dismissing those that didn't. This dubious practice culminated with Colin Powell's over-the-top performance before the U.N., where he misrepresented documents he knew to be forged--which he privately derided as "bullshit"!--as hard fact.
The Administration's defenders, whose selective morality makes Bill Clinton look like a saint, argue that the WMDs don't matter, that Saddam's mass graves vindicate the war liars. But no one ever denied that Hussein was evil. The American people knew that Saddam was a butcher during the '80s when we backed him, and during the '90s when we contained him. They weren't willing to go to war over regime change in the '00s, which is why the Administration invented a fictional threat. Now that we know that presidents lie about the need for war, how will future presidents rally us against genuine dangers?
Lying to the American people is impeachable. Waging war without cause is subject to prosecution at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague . But insiders have to talk before the media can aggressively pursue the WMD story, prosecutors can be appointed and top evildoers brought to justice.
Now Slaughtergate has its own Alexander Butterfield. Christian Westermann, a respected State Department intelligence analyst talking to Congress, has testified that Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a Bush political appointee, pressured him to change a report on Cuba so that it would back Bush claims that Cuba was developing biological weapons. Westermann says that when he refused, Bolton tried to have him transferred.
Westermann's testimony doesn't relate to Iraq, but it puts the lie to Bushoid assertions that they never messed with the CIA. A reliable source informs me that there's a "jihad" underway between Administration political operatives and the career intelligence community. "Guys are pissed off that they're being asked to take the fall for the White House. Look for more leaks in the future," this official says.
Meanwhile, Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been reduced to parsing the meaning of intelligence: "Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true," he says.
Now he tells us.
--------
The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Editorials
Underestimating the capacity of Americans to detect a fraud
By PIERRE TRISTAM
ESSAYS
Last update: 01 July 2003
The first man to underestimate Americans was King George, 227 years ago. He wasn't the last.
In an eight-minute speech at the CIA on Sep. 26, 2001, President Bush finished with a mostly coherent incantation about how terrorists have "misunderestimated" America: "The folks who conducted to act on our country on September 11th made a big mistake," he said. "They underestimated America. They underestimated our resolve, our determination, our love for freedom. They misunderestimated the fact that we love a neighbor in need. They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too."
Malapropisms aside, it wasn't an uninspiring speech, lifting as it did from Winston Churchill's "we shall never surrender" address to the House of Commons toward the beginning of World War II. But white flags were trembling all over Europe in 1940. The Nazis looked so invulnerable that in the less-quoted portion of the same speech, Churchill considered that if Britain "or a large part of it were subjugated and starving," it would be up to the colonies "beyond the seas [to] carry on the struggle." No such possibility has ever faced the United States after Sept. 11 -- not in anybody's wildest fears. The attacks were barbaric and stunningly effective, but their magnitude didn't make them any less freakish. The country was shocked, slightly dented, greatly aggrieved, because Americans are a feeling people. But our "way of life" was never threatened. Look around: Routines haven't changed a whit, and not because of the cosmetic precautions of such brave new world inventions as the Department of Homeland Security, but in spite of them.
Yet the president's brawny rhetoric, understandable in the smoldering aftermath of the attacks, became less, not more, measured with time. As have his actions. Announcing the beginning of the war in Afghanistan two weeks after the CIA speech, Bush ended with the now famous coda: "We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail." Reviewers called the phrases Churchillian, but the phrases owed more to H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" than to anything more realistic, or less sensational. It isn't that a counter-offensive on terrorism wasn't warranted. But Sept. 11 wasn't, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman continues to insist, "the beginning of World War III." So you couldn't blame world opinion for balking when Bush turned Dr. Strangelove.
But the president isn't much concerned about world opinion. The aim of his Texas-salted rhetoric -- "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" -- wasn't meant only for allies and would-be enemies abroad. It was to define the meaning of Americanism at home, to draw supporters as patriots and dissenters as traitors. With the jingo press and its radio chat jocks as enforcers, Bush acted early and often to make a loyalty oath of that dividing line and to keep drawing it all the way to the next election. It has worked wonders. Would-be dissenters (most of them, anyway) have either gone silent or fallen in line behind the president. Liberals have stumbled over each other, trying to prove, Friedman-style, how this time it really is different, how we mustn't lose sight of the real enemies out there.
Sure enough, some diehard dissenters have managed to sound as if Bush were worse than either Osama or Saddam. But Bush's jingoes have just as idiotically managed to make dissenters seem as dangerous to America as Osama and Saddam put together. Dumb dividing lines make for dumb dichotomies. But it isn't a matter of who's worse. To phrase the matter this way plays into the hands of jingoes, because the answer is a set-up. Who in his right mind would say that Bush is worse than Saddam? The real question is: To what extent has Bush abetted Saddam and Osama's relevance by making them out to be as dangerous as Hitler or Stalin? To what extent has he lied to make them seem more of a threat to America than they actually are? To what extent is he changing government and trampling the Constitution, with his patriotic-security apparatchiks, in order to solidify his political cult (which the country, in a national malapropism of its own, confuses with clout)? And to what extent have Americans bought into such a whopper of mass delusion?
On Bush's watch domestic insecurities have never been so expedient, foreign threats never so imaginary, patriotism never such a "grotesque and laughable word," as Mark Twain once put it. Bush has made brandishing a flag (or a cruise missile) a self-evident virtue, absolving its bearer of reflection or responsibility. But that's the way of the fanatic. And on this July 4, that is what we are, mostly, because we still believe in this president, mostly.
It isn't a flaw to be naturally trusting. But Bush is underestimating Americans' capacity to adjust, to detect a fraud, even when it is their own king. King George found out. The reigning King George will, too, if we are to raise the banner of critical independence again.
posted by A. J. Franklin @ 11:14
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