BUSH WATCH...WALTER C. UHLER

Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).

February 20, 2006

"Accuracy in Media" Validates Goering's Axiom

Doesn't such a failure of restraint justifiably earn AIM the title "Hypocritical Brownshirts." And doesn't their McCarthyite reporting validate Hermann Goering's axiom?

More Proof of Prewar Intelligence Manipulation by the Bush Administration

By Walter C. Uhler

Writing in the March/April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar has launched a furious assault on the Bush administration for its manipulation of prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and links to al Qaeda. Mr. Pillar should know, because he was the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia (NESA) from 2000 to 2005.

Most damaging is his assertion: "The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made." That decision, of course, was to invade Iraq. And, as we know, plenty of evidence exists -- especially as provided by Bush administration insider, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- to prove that the Bush administration plotted, from its very first day in office, to effect regime change in Iraq.

Pillar's firsthand proof of intelligence manipulation appears to be unassailable: The Bush administration "went to war without requesting - and evidently without being influenced by - any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq…As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war."

As Pillar correctly notes, it was the Senate -- not the Bush administration -- that requested such a strategic-level assessment, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Yet, what precipitated that request was the "cherry-picking" from intelligence about aluminum tubes, by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, which exaggerated how close Iraq was to acquiring nuclear weapons. Presumably, such manipulation is what Pillar has in mind when he complains about how "the administration selected pieces of raw intelligence to use in the public case for war, leaving the intelligence community to register varying degrees of private protest when such use started to go beyond what analysts deemed credible or reasonable."

But, much worse than mere cherry-picking for exaggeration from legitimate, if partial, intelligence was the Bush administration's attempt to frighten Congress -- just a few weeks before it was scheduled to vote on a resolution to support war -- by falsely proclaiming the existence of links connecting Iraq with al Qaeda. Why? Because the intelligence community already had expressed its doubts about such links in four classified reports. Thus, there existed no legitimate intelligence to cherry-pick from.

Nevertheless, but from pure fabrication, President Bush falsely warned against allowing al Qaeda to become "an extension of Saddam's madness." Not to be outdone, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld falsely claimed, "that American intelligence had 'bulletproof' evidence of links between al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq."

Anyone who had read the four classified reports would have known that Bush and Rumsfeld were making false statements. Which means that virtually every senior official in the Bush administration was an accomplice.

Unfortunately, few individuals outside the Bush administration knew about those four classified intelligence reports. And Pillar doesn't mention them in his article. But our British allies in the war against Iraq knew what was going on. And, now, so do we, thanks to the individual who leaked the highly classified "Downing Street Memo" of July 2002.

According to that memo, the Chief of British Intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet the following information about his recent talks in Washington: "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Moreover, as Pillar confirms, "the greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments [precisely] concerned …the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda." In fact, it required only the first of those four classified reports -- co-authored by Pillar's NESA and issued to the President's Daily Brief principals on September 21, 2001 -- to provoke neoconservatives in the Pentagon to establish a small office tasked with cultivating that very discrepancy.

That office, staffed by untrained but appropriately biased political hacks, was set up by Douglas Feith and called the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCEG). According to Pillar, with the formation of that group, "The administration's rejection of the intelligence community's judgments became especially clear." Not only did the PCEG deliberately resurrect and disseminate damning, but erroneous, raw intelligence about Iraq's links to al Qaeda (raw intelligence that the intelligence community already had dismissed), it also solicited raw intelligence from now discredited anti-Saddamist defectors programmed by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.

Thus, was it an accident that the PCEG's "intelligence" affirming Iraq's links to al Qaeda found its way into the pre-invasion public utterances of the Defense Secretary, National Security Adviser, Vice President and President? Didn't Cheney speak for them all when he wrote the following note on one of Feith's briefings: "This is very good…Encouraging…Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of the CIA."

"Encouraging?" Manipulating evidence to go to war is "encouraging?" Perhaps that entire exercise best explains why the least enthusiastic member of Bush's war party, Colin Powell, called Feith's group a "Gestapo office."

A recent poll indicated that 53 percent of Americans supported the impeachment of President Bush, "if it was in fact proven that Bush had lied about the basis for invading Iraq." Thus, it's up to that 53 percent to determine whether the very establishment of a "Gestapo office" dedicated to supplanting legitimate classified reports with discredited and ultimately false intelligence that, in turn, was used eagerly and uncritically by senior Bush administration officials, constitutes anything other than the "BIG LIE" that so-called totalitarian regimes had perfected in the past.

"Fixed" Intelligence from Feith's "Gestapo Office," the CIA and the Bush Administration's Impeachable Lies about Iraq's Prewar Links to al Qaeda

By Walter C. Uhler

Except in the cynical, zealous or spiritually clouded minds of his right wing devotees, it's become a well-established (if under reported) fact that President George W. Bush is a serial liar, if not a congenital liar.¹ For example, after The New York Times very belatedly leaked Mr. Bush's unconstitutional order permitting the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without obtaining the required court-approved warrants, Bush defended his directive as a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism.

But, as liars commonly do, Bush seems to have forgotten that in April 2004 he told an audience in Buffalo, New York: "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." He also told the audience that precisely because it was "the United States government talking about wiretap," Americans could rest assured that "constitutional guarantees are in place." ²

Obviously, that specific lie pales when compared with Bush's willful violation of the Bill of Rights, and thus his oath to defend the Constitution -- clearly an impeachable offense. But, even that impeachable offense pales when compared with the heinous crime of spewing lies to scare Americans into supporting war against an enfeebled Iraq. Yet, Americans have failed to impeach him for that crime, in part, because more lies are being told to cover it up.

In fact, Bush lied on December 14, 2005, when discussing what intelligence was available to Congress, when it voted to support his decision to invade Iraq. Bush lied when he asserted: "Some of the most irresponsible comments - about manipulated intelligence - have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein." ³

Mr. Bush, of course, was referring to the hastily crafted classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002, the classified briefings to Congress that accompanied the NIE and the declassified White Paper, issued a few days after the NIE. All were made available to Congress. (The extremely alarmist White Paper lacked the caveats and doubts found in the NIE, which became understandable, once people learned that the White Paper had its origins in the White House's desire to mobilize the public for war. Fabrication of the White Paper actually commenced prior to and independent of the NIE.)

Yet, Bush knew his assertion was false. And so do readers of Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack. For, as Woodward tells us, President Bush received additional briefings both before and after the October NIE and Congressional vote, including the now infamous briefing on December 21, 2002.

It was after the CIA presented him with "The Case on WMD as it might be presented to a jury with Top Secret security clearances," on December 21st, that Bush said: "Nice try…I don't think this is quite--it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from." ⁴ According to Woodward, "Bush turned to Tenet. 'I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?'" ⁵ Infamously, Tenet assured Bush, "It's a slam dunk case!" ⁶

That entire episode raises a host of questions about both the value of the October NIE, as well as the formal post-invasion investigations that focused on the NIE. It also lends plausibility to the assertion made by former CIA agent, Ray McGovern, that, when Tenet requested the White House's permission to conduct a NIE, he "got the go-ahead - on one condition: that the estimate's judgments had to parallel those in Cheney's August speech." ⁷

But, for those needing more proof that Bush lied on December 14, 2005, note that the Congressional Research Service (CSR) released a report the next day that concluded: "The President and a small number of presidentially designated cabinet-level officials, including the vice president …have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive information, including intelligence sources and methods." ⁸ In all, the report identified "nine key U.S. intelligence 'products' not generally shared with Congress." ⁹

Presumably, that CSR report did not count the intelligence "products" -- falsely linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda -- that were concocted for the Bush administration by Douglas Feith's "rogue" intelligence cell, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCEG).

"Falsely linking?" Yes, on July 22, 2004, the 9/11 Commission published its comprehensive "Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." Although it acknowledged some evidence of contacts between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorists, it emphasized, "To date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States" ¹⁰

Thus, the 9/11 Commission punched a gaping hole in the Bush administration's repeated prewar assertions that America faced a grave and growing danger from the looming possibility that Saddam Hussein, given his significant ties to al Qaeda, might provide weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to a terrorist organization committed to attacking the United States. We now know that Saddam had no significant ties to al Qaeda.

Nevertheless, on 17 June 2004, in order to minimize the devastating impact of that impending 9/11 Commission Report, Bush lied again. He insisted, "there was a relationship." ¹¹ But, remember, this is the same inveterate liar and dissembling weasel who was exposed by ABC's Diane Sawyer on December 2003. Then, as you probably recall, Sawyer pressed Bush about justifying a war to the American public by stating "as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he [Saddam] could move to acquire those weapons." Bush weaseled out by asking: "So what's the difference?" ¹²

Two months later, Bush weaseled again, when he justified his illegal, immoral invasion (to Tim Russert, of Meet the Press) by asserting: "Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and so I'm not going [sic] leave him in power and trust a madman…He had the ability to make weapons, at the very minimum." ¹³ In other words, America now invades countries simply because they have the "ability" to make weapons - if you take the words of our Commander-in-Chief at face value.

The 9/11 Commission's Report specifically rebutted Vice President Cheney's favorite canard: that one of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met with an Iraqi diplomat at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague on April 9, 2001. The report noted: "The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11, where he …leased an apartment. On April 6, 9, 10 and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida." ¹⁴

We now know that, as early as May 2002, FBI and CIA analysts had "scoured thousands of travel records" before concluding, "There was no evidence Atta left or returned to the U.S." ¹⁵ Moreover, on June 21, 2002 the CIA published Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, which concluded that the meeting "likely never occurred." ¹⁶

So why, in September 2002, was Vice President Cheney falsely asserting on Meet the Press that evidence of Atta in Prague with "a senior Iraqi intelligence official," was deemed "credible" by the CIA? ¹⁷

The brief answer is: Because Douglas Feith's PCEG (which would merge into the Office of Special Plans) was still feeding him the bogus intelligence that confirmed what he already "knew." The PCEG did not simply "study the policy implications of relationships among terrorist organizations and their sources of support," as Feith falsely testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), but also "reviewed both raw and finished intelligence and did undertake their own intelligence analysis after looking at the IC [Intelligence Community] products and discovering that what they needed had not been produced by the IC." ¹⁸

What's worse, without exception, Feith's PCEG produced intelligence products that consistently exaggerated the number, type, significance and danger of the ties it found between Iraq and al Qaeda. And although it was wrong on every one of its assessments, not one of its errors resulted in underestimating the threat. This pattern of errors in one direction suggests fraud and the 'fixing" of intelligence, not mere incompetence.

But, thanks to the intervention of Feith's boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the politicized intelligence gathered by this rogue "Iraqi intelligence cell in the OUSD(P)" ¹⁹ -- "rogue," because it was operating outside the established intelligence agencies funded by Congress and subject to congressional oversight -- was presented to (and impressed) Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, briefed to Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet (but minus the slide disparaging the CIA), and ultimately presented to Condoleezza Rice's deputy (Stephen Hadley) and Cheney's Chief of Staff, "Scooter" Libby. That last briefing took place without the knowledge of Tenet.

Moreover, as Senator Carl Levin reported in October 2004, "one slide, omitted from the [PCEG] version presented to the CIA, but included in the version presented to the White House [on September 16, 2002], discussed the alleged meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001." ²⁰

Consequently, when it came to Iraq's links to al Qaeda, a chasm separated the Intelligence Community's evidence from the alarmist rhetoric expressed by Cheney and other senior officials in the Bush administration. PCEG reporting was used to create and fill that chasm. But only because senior Bush administration officials demanded evidence -- any evidence -- that could be used to persuade Americans that Bush's war of choice was a war of necessity.

We now absolutely "know" that the Bush administration sought to fix the intelligence to support war, but only because a British patriot leaked a document marked, "Secret and Strictly Personal - UK Eyes Only." This Downing Street Memo was written in July 2002 and contains the details of a secret meeting between British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his top officials.

It was at this meeting that the Chief of British Intelligence "reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. BUSH WANTED TO REMOVE SADDAM, THROUGH MILITARY ACTION JUSTIFIED BY THE CONJUNCTION OF TERRORISM AND WMD. BUT THE INTELLIGENCE AND FACTS WERE BEING FIXED AROUND THE POLICY" ²¹(my emphasis).

But that's not all. Recently disclosed evidence now clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration could not use the reports issued by the Intelligence Community (IC) to fix the facts about Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, because the IC repeatedly and steadfastly expressed doubts about the existence and significance of such ties. Those doubts were expressed in at least five reports, beginning with the President's Daily Brief on September 21, 2001 and continuing up to and including the report, Iraqi Support for Terrorism, published in January 2003, just two months before President Bush gave the order to invade.

Moreover, the IC held to its doubts, notwithstanding intense and repeated questioning by senior officials in the Bush administration, especially Vice President Cheney. As the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence told the SSCI, "the Vice President had visited CIA about five to eight times between September 2001 and February 2003." Moreover, the instances "of repeated questioning were related to terrorism issues, and not about Iraq's WMD capabilities." ²²

More specifically, according to the SCCI: "The CIA Ombudsman interviewed about two dozen analysts and managers involved in the preparation of the CIA's June 2002 document entitled Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship…The Ombudsman told the committee that he felt the 'hammering' by the Bush Administration on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had witnessed in his 32-year career with the agency. Several analysts he spoke with mentioned pressure and gave the sense that they felt the constant questions and pressure to reexamine issues were unreasonable." ²³

Although the IC never repudiated its doubts, those doubts never found their way into alarmist speeches delivered to the American public by senior Bush administration policy makers. Why?

Why was the Bush administration's rhetoric about Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda so consistently and flagrantly over the top, when compared with the cautious and sober intelligence it was receiving from the IC? Now that we know that the IC got it right and Bush administration got it wrong, one needs to ask: "Who was supplying the 'fixed' facts?" Again, the brief answer is: Feith's PCEG

Here's the detailed answer:

On the very afternoon of September 11, 2001, the day al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told an aide that he wanted the "best info fast; judge whether good enough [to] hit S. H." Then he added: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related, and not." ²⁴ Thus commenced the dishonest campaign by high level officials in the administration of George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq - and, thus, the exertion of pressure on agents in America's duly established intelligence agencies to embrace fabrications provided by anti-Saddamist Iraqi émigrés about Saddam Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda.

On the evening of September 12th, President Bush told counterterrorism expert, Richard Clarke: "I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…" ²⁵ When Clarke responded: "but Mr. President, al Qaeda did this," President Bush replied: "I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…" ²⁶

When Clarke replied, "We have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and have not found any real linkages," Bush testily retorted, "Look into Iraq, Saddam."²⁷ According to Clarke, Bush never said, "'Make it up,' but the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said, 'Iraq did this.'" ²⁸

In fact, Clarke's office quickly issued a memo to National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, which concluded "the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak…bin Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime." ²⁹ But, according to Clarke, "it got bounced by the national-security advisor, or deputy. It got bounced and sent back, saying, 'Wrong answer… Do it again.'" ³⁰

Just three days later, during a September 15, 2001, meeting of Bush's 'war cabinet" at Camp David, a few members discussed the possibility of the war on terrorism getting bogged down in Afghanistan. Ms. Rice suggested "that they think about launching military action elsewhere as an insurance policy in case things in Afghanistan went bad...They would need successes early in any war to maintain domestic and international support." ³¹

That suggestion "perked up" Wolfowitz. It was Wolfowitz (along with coauthor Zelmay Khalizad) who, in late 1997, wrote a piece for the neoconservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, titled Overthrow Him - "Him," of course, meaning Saddam Hussein. As George Packer has observed, Saddam was Wolfowitz's "white whale." ³²

So, jumping on Rice's suggestion, Wolfowitz told the gathering: "Iraq was a brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable. He estimated that there was a 10 to 50 percent chance Saddam was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. The U.S. would have to go after Saddam at some time if the war on terrorism was to be taken seriously." ³³

On September 17, 2001, Bush told the National Security Council that he believed "Iraq was involved, " but he would not "strike them now. I don't have the evidence at this point." ³⁴ He never would get real evidence. Nevertheless, on that same day Bush signed a Top Secret directive that not only 'spelled out the plan to go to war against Afghanistan," but also "ordered the Pentagon to begin preparing military options for an invasion of Iraq." ³⁵

On September 19, 2001, Richard Perle convened a meeting of the Defense Policy Board (DPB). Perle is the notorious neoconservative zealot and "Likud Zionist" ³⁶ who, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, signed a 1996 report, titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm -- for Israel's prime minister! It advised him to topple Saddam and launch preemptive strikes on other Arab states. ³⁷ (Note well this endnote.)

Perle's contempt for the CIA was well known. In 2002 he told Knight Ridder, "The CIA's analysis isn't worth the paper it's written on." ³⁸ On another occasion, Perle asserted: "I think the people working on the Persian Gulf at the CIA are pathetic…They have a record over 30 years of being wrong." ³⁹

Perle placed greater value on the intelligence provided by the anti-Saddamist émigrés of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by his friend, Ahmad Chalabi. In January 2001, the INC began receiving funds from the U.S. State Department "for an effort called the 'Information Collection Program.'" Under the program, "defectors from Saddam's military and secret police…[were made] available to American intelligence." ⁴⁰

But, according to former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Patrick Lang, "What the program really did was to provide a steady stream of raw information useful in challenging the collective wisdom of the intelligence community." ⁴¹ Lang's claim was supported by Perle who, in January 2003, told Judith Miller that "until recently, CIA officials were so hostile to defectors brought out of Iraq by the Iraqi National Congress …that they refused to interview them and even tried to discredit their information. 'But ultimately, the flow of information was so vital and so overwhelming that they could no longer ignore it'" ⁴²

Moreover, "one internal Pentagon memorandum from December 2001, went so far as to suggest terrorism experts in the government and outside it had 'deliberately downplayed or sought to disprove' the link between al Qaeda and Iraq." ⁴³

(The information flow was, indeed, "overwhelming," - coming, as it did, from the top of the Bush administration down to the IC -- but it caused no significant changes in the IC's reporting on Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda.)

Attending Perle's DPB meeting were Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Feith and William Luti "drifted in and out." ⁴⁴ "The speakers at the event, who aggressively advocated U.S. military action to overthrow Saddam Hussein, were Ahmad Chalabi and Princeton professor Bernard Lewis." ⁴⁵

According to Lang, "One consequence of the DPB meeting was that former CIA Director [James R.] Woolsey was secretly dispatched to London to seek out evidence that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks…Part of Woolsey's mission involved making contact with INC officials to get their help in further substantiating the link between hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence. " ⁴⁶

On September 20, 2001, Rumsfeld "raised the possibility that weapons of mass destruction could be used against the United States." But not in the context one normally would imagine. Instead, he saw it as "an energizer for the American people." ⁴⁷ Psy-ops to be waged against the American public!

However, "Shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Director of Central Intelligence's (DCI) Counterterrorism Center (CTC) and the CIA Near East and South Asia office (NESA) collaborated on a paper on Iraqi links to the September 11th attacks." ⁴⁸ And, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence noted (in its July 9, 2004 Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq), "The paper was disseminated to President's Daily Brief (PDB) principals on September 21, 2001. The Committee was not informed about the existence of this paper until June 2004," ⁴⁹ and was denied permission to examine it, even in classified form.

But, thanks to very recent reporting by Murray Waas of National Journal, we now know that the September 21, 2001 President's Daily Brief advised Bush and his principals that the "U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks [on 9/11] and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties to al Qaeda." ⁵⁰

According to Waas, "The highly classified document was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president's national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers." ⁵¹ Thus, virtually every senior official in the Bush information received information from the CIA in September 2001, which ultimately would prove to be definitive.

"Definitive?" Yes. For, as the post-invasion investigation conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded: "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship." ⁵²

Nevertheless, within days of receiving this unwelcome CIA intelligence, the Defense Department's third ranking official, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (OUSDP), Douglas Feith, established the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCEG).

Why? First, because Wolfowitz suggested it. ⁵³ Wolfowitz had long been skeptical of the CIA and had, in fact, participated in two "Team B" exercises - one to determine whether the CIA was underestimating the Soviet threat(see my article,"Misreading the Soviet Threat," (http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/Misreading.html) and another, under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld, to determine whether the CIA was underestimating the threat posed by rogue states developing ballistic missiles (see my article "National Missile Defense and Russian American Relations, http://www.armscontrol.ru/start/publications/uhler1.htm).

In each instance, the Team B egregiously exaggerated the threat. The first exaggeration caused America to engage in an arms race with itself, which, if it had any effect at all on the Soviet Union, probably prolonged the Cold War. The second exaggeration resulted in the rushed deployment (at exorbitant expense) of a largely untested missile defense system that probably doesn't work and, perhaps, is technologically incapable of defending America.

Such egregious errors, in a just world, would have disqualified both Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld from further public service - for life! Yet, unfortunately, in September 2001, Wolfowitz was urging Feith to form still another "Team B," with Rumsfeld's enthusiastic support.

According to James Risen, writing in his recent book, State of War: "Israeli intelligence played a hidden role in convincing Wolfowitz that he couldn't trust the CIA."⁵⁴ Mossad's "intelligence officials frequently traveled to Washington to brief top American officials, but CIA analysts were often skeptical of Israeli intelligence reports, knowing that Mossad had very strong -- even transparent -- biases about the Arab world." ⁵⁵

One might ask why Wolfowitz failed to detect these same obvious biases. Presumably, he was neither a Likud Zionist or an "Israel-firster." Yet, according to Risen, "After each Israeli briefing, the CIA would issue reports that were circulated throughout the government, but they often discounted much of what the Israelis had provided. Wolfowitz and other conservatives at the Pentagon became enraged by this practice; they had begun meeting personally with top Israeli intelligence officials and knew which elements of the Mossad briefings the CIA was downplaying."⁵⁶

Risen adds that "Wolfowitz personally complained to Tenet about the CIA's analytical work on Iraq and al Qaeda."⁵⁷ Tenet dismissed his complaint. But Wolfowitz was not to be denied. After all, according to Francis Brooke (Chalabi's lobbyist in Washington), in February 2001, Wolfowitz called Brooke to say that he was so committed to removing Saddam Hussein, "he would resign if he couldn't accomplish it." ⁵⁸ "So Paul set up his own unit" ⁵⁹ to find Iraq's links to al Qaeda. "And then that really pissed off people at the CIA." ⁶⁰

For his part, Likud Zionist and "Israel-firster" Feith needed to prove his assumption "that Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda and was likely to hand off WMD to terrorists" ⁶¹ Feith, you'll recall, was one of the unregistered foreign agents, who co-authored the 1996 report advising Israel's prime minister to topple Saddam and launch preemptive strikes against specific Arab states. He "got his current position…only after Perle personally intervened with Rumsfeld, who was skeptical about him." ⁶² It must have been his pro-Israel and anti-Saddam zealotry that moved Perle, for if we are to believe General Tommy Franks, Feith was "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth."⁶³

Feith staffed the PCEG with his co-author of the 1996 report (and fellow unregistered agent for Israel) David Wurmser, as well as Michael Maloof. Wurmser and Maloof would be "working deductively, not inductively: The premise was true; facts would be found to confirm it." ⁶⁴ As the authors of Vanity Faire write in their exceptional expose, The Path to War, "the advocates of regime change in Iraq realized that, for any American invasion to enlist support, both domestically and internationally, links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda needed to be proved." ⁶⁵ Thus, in light of the CIA's September 21, 2001 President's Daily Brief, somebody needed to fix the facts!

At this point, one might ask, as George Packer does in his highly acclaimed book, The Assassin's Gate: "Does this mean that a pro-Likud cabal insinuated its way into the high councils of the U.S. government and took hold of the apparatus of American foreign policy to serve Israeli interests?" In general, Packer's answer is no. But "For Feith and Wurmser," Packer answers yes: "the security of Israel was probably the prime mover." ⁶⁶

However, as my good friend, noted Russia scholar and proud Zionist, George Enteen, recently warned: "These people had influence but not power; that belonged and belongs to Cheney and Rummy." ⁶⁷ Officially, the PCEG was responsible for studying "…the policy implications of relationships among terrorist groups and their sources of support." ⁶⁸ But according to Lang, "a dedicated apparatus centered in the Office of the Vice President created its own intelligence office, buried in the recesses of the Pentagon, to 'stovepipe' raw data to the White House." ⁶⁹

Thus, although an INC letter, written to the Senate Appropriations Committee in June 2001 claimed, "information gathered by the group went directly to the Defense Department and Vice President Dick Cheney's office," ⁷⁰ George Enteen is correct. Until the Cheney/Rumsfeld "cabal" (as Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence B. Wilkerson has called it) decided to adopt the radical policies urged by fanatics like Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith and Wurmser, the latter were fighting a drawn out, if not losing, bureaucratic battle.

Consequently, Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas -- writing in the November 17, 2003 issue of Newsweek -- were correct when they concluded: "It is important to note that at this early stage [summer of 2001], the neocons did not have the enthusiastic backing of Vice President Cheney." Instead, "What changed Cheney was not Chalabi or his friends from AEI [American Enterprise Institute], but the 9/11 attacks." ⁷¹

Yet, the Newsweek authors failed to capture fully the environment in which Cheney made his leap into the neocon camp. First, it wasn't a long jump. They should have noted that Cheney had been scripting the National Security Council's principals meetings from the very beginning of Bush's presidency and that the focus of those meetings was on "regime change" in Iraq, but not necessarily by an American military invasion. ⁷²

It wasn't until January 3, 2002, that "Director Tenet and other CIA officials brief[ed] the Vice President and his staff on the limitations of covert operations in bringing down Saddam Hussein and explained that only a military operation and invasion would succeed." ⁷³

The Newsweek reporters also should have recalled that, in May 2001, "President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would himself lead an effort looking a preparations for managing a possible attack by weapons of mass destruction and at more general problems of national preparedness." ⁷⁴ Thus, when the 9/11 Commission Report noted, "The Vice President's task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attacked occurred," ⁷⁵ it certainly understated Cheney's monumental failure and the well-deserved humiliation he must have felt.

Moreover, when one recalls that both Cheney's immersion in the crafting of his anti-environment energy policy and his scripting of NSC principals meetings for regime change in Iraq took him away from his task force, it brings to mind his five draft deferments and failure to serve during the Vietnam War. In both instances, he "had other priorities."

But Risen excoriates Rumsfeld, even more than Cheney. "'There were many times the Pentagon just did what it wanted'...An effective network of officials with long-standing ties to Cheney, some neoconservative, others simply conservative, scattered throughout key jobs in the administration, provided crucial support to Rumsfeld. It was Rumsfeld's force of personality, his willingness to act as an enabler for the neoconservatives within the Department of Defense and elsewhere in the administration, combined with the enthusiastic support he received from Cheney, that did so much to break down the normal checks and balances in the national security apparatus." ⁷⁶

Risen concludes: "To others in the administration, mystified by the process -- or lack of process --it eventually became evident that Cheney and Rumsfeld had a back channel where real decision making was taking place, and that larger meetings were often irrelevant. The result was that the Bush administration was the first presidency in modern history in which the Pentagon served as the overwhelming center of gravity for U.S foreign policy." ⁷⁷

One of Rumsfeld's goals was to gain control over intelligence. Thus, it was with the backing of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney that Maloof and Wurmser began their PCEG work in October 2001. They would commence briefing Feith's deputy, Stephen A. Cambone, on a weekly basis. ⁷⁸ As Risen reported in The New York Times, "the team's conclusions were alarming: old barriers that divided the major Islamic terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, were coming down, and these groups were forging ties with one another and with secular Arab governments in an emerging terrorist war against the West." ⁷⁹

In late 2001, at Maloof's request, Perle asked Chalabi to supply Maloof with information provided by Iraqi defectors.⁸⁰ That very request demonstrates that the PCEG was operating as a rogue intelligence gathering operation.

Thus, Wolfowitz probably lied when he claimed: "They are not making independent intelligence assessments." ⁸¹ Yet, he admitted: "The lens through which you're looking for facts affects what you look for." ⁸² In addition, Rumsfeld probably lied when he asserted: "Any suggestion that it is an intelligence-gathering activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, I think, would be a misunderstanding of it." ⁸³

According to Risen, "The CIA and the DIA believed that Feith's team had greatly exaggerated the significance of reported contacts among extremist groups and Arab states." Moreover, "there was little proof that Mr. Hussein was working on terror plots with Mr. Bin Laden, a religious extremist who viewed the Baghdad regime as a corrupt, secular enemy." ⁸⁴

In fact, building upon its input into the September 21, 2001 PDB, the CIA's NESA "drafted a paper [in October 2001] that broadened the scope of the issue by looking at Iraq's overall ties to terrorism." ⁸⁵ Thus, it would dovetail, if not necessarily agree, with the scope of investigation being pursued by the PCEG. But, because the report was requested by a recipient of the September 21, 2001 PDB, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was denied access to it.

One can guess, however, that it too contained no significant Saddam-al Qaeda links, if only because, when the PCEG gave its far more alarmist briefing to Wolfowitz in November, the Deputy Secretary asked: "How come I'm not hearing this from anybody else?" ⁸⁶

If, indeed the CIA's NESA paper found no significant ties, perhaps that explains why "several senior policy makers" expressed interest in having the CIA's CTC draft another paper that was "purposefully aggressive in seeking to draw connections, on the assumption that any indication of a relationship between these two hostile elements could carry great dangers to the United States." ⁸⁷ (The Deputy Director for Intelligence directed that the analysis, titled Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, be published on June, 21, 2002.⁸⁸ )

Moreover, when the Senate Select Committee staff asked the Deputy Director for Intelligence why the CTC "analysts' approach was purposively aggressive…She explained that: "What happened with the 'murky paper' was that I was asking the people who were writing it to lean far forward and do a speculative piece. If you were going to stretch to the maximum the evidence you had, what would you come up with?" ⁸⁹

In January 2002, the PCEG completed a 150-page briefing and slide presentation for Feith. ⁹⁰ By then, Maloof had lost his security clearance. And soon after the report's completion, Wurmser was transferred to the State Department (he subsequently would move to Cheney's staff). Nevertheless, during their short tenure they briefed Rumsfeld twice, Feith numerous times and Samantha Ravich at least three times. Ms. Ravich was Cheney's national security adviser for terrorism. ⁹¹

Two Naval Reserve officers replaced Maloof and Wurmser. In addition, Ms. Christina Shelton was detailed into Feith's Policy Support Staff. . Ms. Shelton had been working for the DIA (which, subsequently, rejected her research on Saddam ties to al-Qaeda ⁹²) until Feith specifically requested that she be detailed to his staff. Moreover, Shelton had no sooner arrived at the OUSD(P) before she tore into the CTC's aggressive report: Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship. Shelton would conclude that the CTC's "aggressive" reporting wasn't aggressive enough.

According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Shelton's analysis stated: "The report provides evidence from numerous intelligence sources over a decade on the interaction between Iraq and al-Qaeda. In this regard, the report is excellent. Then in its interpretation of this information, CIA attempts to discredit, dismiss, or downgrade much of the reporting, resulting in inconsistent conclusions in many instances. Therefore, the CIA report should be read for content only - and CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored." ⁹³

Feith sent Shelton's critique to Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, ⁹⁴ which might explain the CIA's subsequent "'hammering' by the Bush Administration," that the CIA's Ombudsman viewed to be "harder than he had witnessed in his 32-year career with the agency." ⁹⁵

Nevertheless, while Shelton was deconstructing the CTC's report and making a strong pitch for significant interaction between Saddam and al-Qaeda, the DIA had issued a February 2002 report that specifically cast doubt on reports suggesting "that Iraq trained al-Qaeda to use biological and chemical weapons." ⁹⁶ The report, DITSUM No. 044-02, stated, "it was probable that the [al-Qaeda] prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi 'was intentionally misleading debriefers in making claims about Iraqi support for al-Qaeda's work with illicit weapons." ⁹⁷

The report noted, "Mr. Libi's claims lacked specific details about the Iraqis involved, the illicit weapons used and the location where the training was to have taken place." ⁹⁸ And it added: "It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers." ⁹⁹ In fact, Mr. Libi recanted his claims after America's invasion of Iraq. And the CIA withdrew them in March 2004.

Subsequent reporting for The New York Times by Douglas Jehl revealed that the DIA's doubts about Mr. Libi were based, in part, on its knowledge that he commenced providing "his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002." ¹⁰⁰ In fact, Mr. Libi subsequently claimed that he fabricated claims about Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda "to escape harsh treatment" ¹⁰¹ at the hands of the Egyptians. So much then for the U.S. policy of rendition/torture.

Equally significant, however, was the DIA's general skepticism about close cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Two of the report's declassified sentences read as follows: (1) "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements," and (2) "Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control." ¹⁰²

Unfortunately, the evidence indicates that the DIA's February 2002 report -- like the September 21, 2001 President's Daily Brief and October's CIA (NESA) elaboration on it -- was ignored. For example, during Bush's major speech in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, he still falsely asserted: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

His claim was based upon information provided by Mr. Libi. Yet, the DIA had discounted Mr. Libi's assertions eight months earlier. Where was Rumsfeld? Wolfowitz? Feith? The incompetent national security adviser? Moreover, one full year after the DIA issued its report, Bush falsely claimed: "Iraq has provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training." ¹⁰³

What cannot be overemphasized is the fact that evidence to support Bush's specific claims, as well as his administration's numerous, generally alarmist assertions about Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, WAS NOT coming from the Intelligence Community. Neither the September 18, 2002 CIA report, Iraqi Support for Terrorism (which was distributed to but twelve senior Bush administration officials), nor the more widely distributed updated version, dated January 2003, provided any evidence to support such claims.

Instead, note what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found in these reports:

1 "The Intelligence Community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaeda strike."
2 "This paper's conclusions - especially regarding the difficult and elusive question of the exact nature of Iraq's relations with al-Qaeda - are based on currently available information that is at times contradictory and derived from sources with varying degrees of reliability…"
3 "The CIA did not assert in any of its assessments that Iraq had committed to a formal arrangement permitting al-Qaeda members to transit and live within Iraq."
4 "The CIA refrained from asserting that the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda were cooperating on terrorist operations. DCI Tenet, in his testimony before the Committee, summarized the intelligence reporting on Iraqi-al Qaeda operational cooperation stating: "these sources do not describe Iraqi complicity in, control over, or authorization of specific terrorist attacks carried out by al Qaeda."
5 Concerning Mohammed Atta's April 2001 trip to Prague, "the CIA judged that other evidence indicated that these meetings likely never occurred." The FBI agreed.
6 "Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that help analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible links to al Qaeda." ¹⁰⁴

Bogus intelligence, however, was percolating up to Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney from what Secretary of State, Colin Powell, called "Feith's 'Gestapo office.'" ¹⁰⁵

On July 22, 2002, Ms. Shelton sent an email to Mr. Cambone that recounted the events of a meeting held with Feith that day. Feith, it appears, asked an assistant "to prepare an intel briefing on Iraq and links to al-Qaeda for the SecDef and that he was not to tell anyone about it." ¹⁰⁶

During the summer of 2002, a special assistant to Wolfowitz created a set of briefing slides that incorporated Ms. Shelton's work, as well as the work of the PCEG's two naval reservists. The intent of the slides was to outline Rumsfeld's "views of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda." ¹⁰⁷ The slides also "criticized the Intelligence Community…for its approach to the issue." ¹⁰⁸

According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, these briefing slides continued to claim that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001. A "findings" slide summed up the briefing by claiming: (1) "More than a decade of numerous contacts," (2) "Multiple areas of cooperation," (3) "Shared interest and pursuit of WMD," and (4) "One indication of Iraq coordination with al-Qaeda specifically related to 9/11." ¹⁰⁹

Very telling was the slide that criticized the IC's handling of its Iraq-al Qaeda intelligence. It blamed the IC for "consistent underestimation" of efforts by Iraq and al Qeada to hide their relationship and faulted the IC for its "assumption that secularists and Islamists will not cooperate." ¹¹⁰ Most telling, however, was the criticism that the IC required "juridical evidence" for its findings.¹¹¹

Juridical indeed! Who, except for the dishonest and reckless, would refuse to acknowledge the immense moral obligation to get the intelligence right, when contemplating preemptive war (see my article on preemption, http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/preemption.html ).

Consequently, on the matter of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, who best understood the moral obligation to get it right? The agents of the IC or the scattershot Rumsfeld gang operating under his instructions to "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related, and not?" Then, ask yourself, who actually got it right?

Nevertheless, as we now know, the slides were presented to Rumsfeld in early August 2002. According to Wolfowitz, it "was an excellent briefing. The Secretary was very impressed." ¹¹² Wolfowitz also recommended that the briefing be presented to the CIA, where, perhaps, "each side might make an assessment" ¹¹³ of the evidence.

On August 15, 2002 Feith and staff took their briefing to the CIA, except for the slide critical of the agency. Following the briefing, Mr. Tenet " requested that the two OUSD(P) briefers speak with the CTC and the NESA experts on Iraq and terrorism."¹¹⁴ According to one member of the PCEG, "Tenet agreed to postpone the release" of what would become September's report (Iraqi Support for Terrorism) "until analysts from the CTC, NESA, NSA, and the DIA could meet with the OUSD(P) briefers to discuss the issue." ¹¹⁵

That meeting took place on August 20, 2002. According to the IC's analysts, members of Feith's staff "were concerned about 'too many caveats in the reporting' and the 'tone' of the draft IC report. Feith's staff also pressed dubious information, including criticizing the draft IC report for omitting reference to the 'key issue of Atta.'" ¹¹⁶

Moreover, Senator Carl Levin has obtained documents demonstrating "that Feith's staff requested, both verbally and in written form, at least 32 changes to the IC draft, including inserting raw intelligence reports that had previously been omitted, deleting others, and altering the characterization of certain issues and raw reporting." ¹¹⁷ In all, "16 changes were made, 14 were not, and for 2 the outcome is indeterminate." ¹¹⁸

Thus, Levin concludes, "even though the IC analysts refused to incorporate information which they believed was dubious into their judgments about the Iraq-al Qeada relationship, and the IC analysts remained skeptical of that relationship, nonetheless raw, questionable intelligence reports were incorporated in the IC document because of advocacy of Under Secretary Feith and his staff." ¹¹⁹

Unbeknownst to the CIA at the time, Feith took his act to the White House on September 16, 2002, where his staffers briefed Condoleezza Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, and Cheney's chief of staff, the now indicted "Scooter" Libby. The briefing contained the slides presented to Rumsfeld, including the slide criticizing the IC, but with "additional information" about Atta's alleged meeting in Prague, "potential common procurement intermediaries shared by Iraq and al Qaeda, and other possible connections." ¹²⁰

"'The briefing went very well and generated further interest from Mr. Hadley and Mr. Libby,' who requested a number of items, including a 'chronology of Atta's travels.'" ¹²¹

Cheney had long been wired (through Ravich, Libby and Rumsfeld) to Feith's group. Moreover, as Murray Waas has reported, Cheney wrote in the margins of one of Feith's reports about ties between Saddam and al Qaeda: "this is very good … Encouraging … Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of the CIA." ¹²²

Speaking on "Meet the Press" on September 9, 2002, Cheney claimed "We've seen in connection with the hijackers of course, Mohammed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center." ¹²³

But, if Cheney was not basing his assertions about Saddam's ties to al Qaeda on the "crap" from the Intelligence Community, but from Feith's rogue intelligence cell, then Cheney lied when he claimed that evidence of Atta in Prague with "a senior Iraqi intelligence official," was deemed "credible" by the CIA. ¹²⁴

Continuing the drumbeat for war on the eve of an October Congressional vote in support of the war, Bush warned on September 25th about the danger "that al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness." ¹²⁵ That same day, National Security Adviser Rice told PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer: "Yes, there clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented. There clearly is testimony that some of these contacts have been important contacts and there's a relationship here."¹²⁶

Finally, who can forget Donald Rumsfeld's claim, made two days later, "that American intelligence had 'bulletproof' evidence of links between al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq." ¹²⁷ And speaking as though the February 2002 DIA report didn't exist, Rumsfeld asserted: "We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior-level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical- and biological-agent training."¹²⁸

"American intelligence" did not have "bulletproof" evidence. In fact, "American intelligence," construed to mean the established Intelligence Community funded by and responsible to the U.S. Congress, found no "bulletproof" evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda.

Instead it was "un-American intelligence," that supported the "bulletproof" evidence claimed by Rumsfeld. And it was "un-American intelligence" about Iraq's links to al Qaeda that was used by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice to beat the drums for war on the eve of the Congressional vote.

The "un-American intelligence" came from a rogue intelligence cell set up by a leading member of the Bush administration's war party, Saddam-obsessed Paul Wolfowitz, who believed Mossad's biased intelligence and not American intelligence. And it was headed by Feith, who General Tommy Franks called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," and whose primary loyalty was to Israel (see Notes number 37 and 66.)

Inspired by Mossad, Feith's rogue intelligence cell appears to have solicited, reexamined, digested and regurgitated evidence from the programmed liars put forward by Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress - evidence that the Intelligence Community already had considered, before dismissing as unreliable. Then, as Seymour Hersh has noted: "A routine settled in: the Pentagon's defector reports, classified 'secret,' would be funneled to newspapers, but subsequent analyses of the reports by intelligence agencies - scathing but also classified - would remain secret."¹²⁹

Perhaps, that explains why even Secretary of State Colin Powell privately referred to Feith's intelligence cell as "Feith's Gestapo office." How ironic! Neocon Jews running a "Gestapo office." Finally, and most significantly, let's not forget that this "un-American intelligence" got it wrong!

Can the United States still be called a "democracy," if a majority of its citizens fails to recognize and redress such "un-American" behavior? ("Un-American," at least according to our ideals, if not our actual history.)

Unfortunately, some Americans seek to dismiss this shameful episode. Others simply want to "move on." Still others want to cover it up. Thus, the question: "Do we bring the perpetrators to justice or do we simply let history record their dishonest march to war?"

I, for one, agree with the renowned conservative Israeli military historian, Martin van Creveld: "For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins." ¹³⁰

ENDNOTES:

1. Mr. Yoshi Tsurumi, who attempted to teach Bush macroeconomic policies and international business during the 1973-74 academic year at the Harvard Business School, has observed that our worst president in American history "showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases." Mary Jacoby, "The Dunce," Salon.com, 16 September 2004
2.President Bush, "Information Sharing, Patriot Act Vital to Homeland Security," April 20, 2004
3.Jonathan S. Landay, "Bush gets intelligence data lawmakers do not," The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 16, 2005.
4.Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, pp. 247-49.
5.Ibid. p. 249.
6.Ibid.
7.Ray McGovern, "Sham Dunk: Cooking Intelligence for the President," NEOCONNED AGAIN, p. 294.
8.Landay, Inquirer, Dec. 16, 2005
9.Ibid.
10.The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 66.
11.CNN.com, "Bush insists Iraq, al Qaeda had 'relationship,'" June 17, 2004
12.ABC News, "Excerpts From Interview With President Bush," Dec. 16, 2003.
13.Washingtonpost.com, "Text: President Bush on NBC's 'Meet the Press,'" February 8, 2004
14.The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 228.
15.Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, "Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked By Cheney," Washington Post, 29 September 2003
16.Part XII. "Iraq's Links to Terrorism," Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq," July 9, 2004, p. 340. One reaches this conclusion by inference, given the SSCI's statement that it used the January 203 version of "Iraqi Support for Terrorism," and noting only when earlier versions differed with it. (See p. 314)
17.Senator Carl Levin, "Report of an Inquiry into Alternative Analysis of the Issue of an Iraq-al Qaeda Relationship," October 21, 2004, p. 38.
18.Part XII. "Iraq's Links to Terrorism," Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, July 9, 2004, p. 311.
19.Ibid. p. 309. Feith was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, thus his office was the OUSD(P).
20.Senator Carl Levin, "Report of an Inquiry…" p. 17.
21."The Secret Downing Street Memo," The Sunday Times UK, 01 May 2005
22.Part IX. "Pressure On Intelligence Community Analysts Regarding Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Capabilities," Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, July 9, 2004, respectively p. 276 and p. 275.
23."Additional Views of Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, Senator Carl Levin and Senator Richard Durbin, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, July 9, 2004, p. 456.
24.James Bamford, A Pretext for War, p.285.
25.Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies, p. 32
26.Ibid.
27.Ibid.
28.Bryan Burrough, Evgenia Peretz, David Rose, and David Wise, "The Path to War: Special Report: The Rush to Invade Iraq; The Ultimate Inside Account," Vanity Faire, May 2004, p. 236.
29.Senator Carl Levin, "Report of an Inquiry…, p 9.
30.Vanity Faire, "The Path to War," p. 238.
31.Bob Woodward, Bush at War, p. 83.
32.George Packer, The Assassins' Gate, p. 115.
33.Woodward, Bush at War, p. 83.
34.Ibid., p 99.
35.Col. W. Patrick Lang, USA (Ret.), "Drinking the Kool-Aid: Making the Case for War with Compromised Integrity and Intelligence, neo-CONNED! Again, p. 258
36.Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies, p. 40.
37.As James Bamford has written; "It was rather extraordinary for a trio [Perle, Douglas Feith and James Wurmser] of former, and potentially future high-ranking American government officials to become advisors to a foreign government. More unsettling still was the fact that they were recommending acts of war in which Americans could be killed, and also ways to masquerade the true purpose of the attacks from the American public." Bamford, p. 263
38.Jonathan S. Landay, John Wolcott and Warren P. Strobel, "Faulty intelligence continues to plague U.S. efforts in Iraq," Knight Ridder Newspapers, March 19, 2004.
39.James Risen, "How Pair's Finding on Terror Led to Clash on Shaping Intelligence," New York Times, April 28, 2004.
40.Col. W. Patrick Lang, USA (Ret), p. 253.
41.Ibid.
42.Judith Miller, "Threats and Responses: Intelligence; Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say," New York Times, January 24, 2003
43.Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, p. 211.
44.Vanity Faire, "The Path to War," p. 236.
45.Lang, p. 258
46.Ibid., pp 258-59.
47.Woodward, Bush at War, p. 106.
48.Part XII. "Iraq's Links to Terrorism," Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, July 9, 2004. p. 304.
49.Ibid.
50.Murray Waas, Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel, National Journal.com, Nov. 22, 2005.
51.Ibid.
52.Part XII. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, p. 346.
53.Packer, p. 106.
54.James Risen, State of War:The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, p. 72.
55.Ibid.
56.Ibid., pp. 72-73.
57.Ibid., p. 73.
58.Jane Mayer, "The Manipulator," The New Yorker, June 7, 2004.
59.Risen, State of War, p. 73.
60.Ibid.
61.Packer, p. 107
62.Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, p. 193.
63.Woodward, Plan of Attack, p. 281. Rumsfeld disagrees.
64.Packer, p. 107
65.Vanity Faire, "The Path to War," p. 238.
66.Packer, p. 32.
67.Email dated December 5, 2005.
68.Part XII. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, p. 307.
69.Lang, p. 253.
70.Landay, Walcott and Strobel, "Faulty Intelligence…"
71.Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, "Cheney's Long Path to War," Newsweek, November 17, 2003.
72.See Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty, and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's assertions about Cheney's scripted NSC meetings and their obsessive focus on regime change in Iraq. Pp. 70-76, 85-86, 96-97, and 127.
73.Additional Views, Rockefeller, Levin & Durbin, SSCI Report, p. 452 (quoting Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack).
74.The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 204.
75.Ibid.
76.Risen, State of War, p. 66.
77.Ibid., p. 64.
78.James Risen, "How Pair's Finding on Terror…" New York Times, April 28, 2004
79.Ibid
80.Ibid
81.Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, "Threats and Responses: A C.I.A. Rival; Pentagon Sets Up Intelligence Unit," New York Times, October 24, 2002.
82.Ibid.
83.Warren Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott, "Some in Bush administration have misgivings about Iraq policy," Knight Ridder Newspapers, October 27, 2002.
84.Risen, "How Pair's Finding on Terror…"
85.Part XII. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, p. 304.
86.James Risen, "How Pair's Finding on Terror….
87.Part XII. P. 305
88.Ibid.
89.Ibid. pp. 306-307.
90.Ibid.
91.Waas
92.Part XII. P. 308.
93.Ibid..
94.Ibid.
95.See note 11.
96.Douglas Jehl, "Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts," New York Times, November 6, 2005.
97.Ibid.
98.Ibid.
99.Ibid.
100.Douglas Jehl, "Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied To Coercion Claim," New York Times, December 9, 2005.
101.Ibid.
102.Jehl, "Report Warned Bush Team… Nov. 6, 2005
103.Carl Levin, "Levin Says Newly Declassified Information Indicates Bush Administration's Use of Pre-War Intelligence Was Misleading," November 6, 2005.
104.For each specific quotation, see Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, respectively p. 322, p. 322, p. 334, p. 338, p. 340 and p. 355.
105.Woodward, Plan of Attack, p. 292.
106.Part XII. "Iraq's Links To Terrorism," SSCI Report, July 9, 2004 p. 309.
107.Ibid.
108.Ibid.
109.Ibid.
110.Ibid.
111.Ibid.
112.Ibid.
113.Ibid, p. 310
114.Ibid.
115.Ibid.
116.Carl Levin, Report of an Inquiry into…, Oct. 21, 2004, p. 15.
117.Ibid.
118.Ibid. p. 16.
119.Ibid.
120.Part XII. SSCI Report, July 9, 2004. p. 311.
121.Ibid.
122.Murray Waas, National Journal, Nov. 22, 2005
123.Carl Levin, Report of an Inquiry…, Oct. 21, 2004, p. 38
124.See Note 17 above.
125.Eric Schmitt, "Threats and Responses: Intelligence; Rumsfeld Says U.S. Has 'Bulletproof' Evidence of Iraq's Links to Al Qaeda," New York Times, September 28, 2002.
126.Carl Levin, Report of an Inquiry, p. 34.
127.Eric Schmitt, New York Times, September 28, 2002.
128.Ibid.
129.Hersh, p. 218.
130.Martin Van Creveld, "Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War," Forward, November 25, 2005.

from September/October 2005  pp.65-67 (vol. 61, no. 05) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Review of The Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys through Theocratic Iran and Its Furies, by Dilip Hiro. Nation Books, 418 pages, 2005, $16.95; and Iran's Nuclear Option: Tehran's Quest for the Atom Bomb, by Al J. Venter. Casemate Publishers, 451 pages, 2005, $29.95.

Suddenly, it was 1979 all over again. In the United States, the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted a wave of nostalgia--and not the good kind. In the words of the Chicago Tribune, Ahmadinejad was an "ultraconservative" former mayor of Tehran who "sought to resurrect the fervor" of Iran's Islamic revolution. Grainy photos of Ahmadinejad--or someone resembling him--from more than 20 years ago appeared on television screens like a scene from America's Most Wanted, amid speculation that he was personally involved in the seizure of the U.S. Embassy.

Such an approach could offer a way out of the true Iranian labyrinth--the one haphazardly built by vindictive U.S. policy makers in the years since the fall of the Shah. The only other alternative is a dead end. --posted Jan. 16, 2006

Bad Faith Distorts Iraq's Prewar al Qaeda Links

For nearly two decades, from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, I purchased annual subscriptions to Commentary magazine, edited by Norman Podhoretz. Not that I fell for Podhoretz's neoconservative ideology, his inveterate anti-Sovietism, Israeli chauvinism or incessant rants about the "present danger." Indeed, five of my numerous scathing letters of dissent to the periodical were published (Feb. 1978, Dec. 1990, Dec.1993, Oct.1994 and Aug. 1996).

No, although I almost always could predict Podhoretz's (and Commentary's) line of argumentation before I read his (and its) articles, I read the magazine for the sake of my own intellectual integrity. And I only ceased subscribing and reading when I came to doubt the intellectual integrity of its editor and many of its writers.

Nudging me toward that break were the doubts about Podhoretz coming from highly respected thinkers and critics. For example, in March 1984, while participating in a George Orwell Symposium at Rosemont College (Pennsylvania), I had the opportunity to discuss Mr. Podhoretz's January 1983 Harper's article, "If Orwell were Alive Today," with Orwell scholar and biographer, Bernard Crick.

I suggested to Mr. Crick that Podhoretz appeared to embrace Orwell's fear that a long Soviet-American stalemate would cause the United States to increasingly emulate the "totalitarian" practices of its adversary, leading (as Orwell suggested in Nineteen Eighty-Four) to "the division of the world among two or three vast totalitarian empires unable to conquer one another and unable to be overthrown by any internal rebellion." [Norman Podhoretz, "If Orwell were Alive Today," Harper's, March 1983, p. 35]

Podhoretz also implied that Orwell would have found a nuclear war preferable to the prospect of creeping Western totalitarianism. He did so by claiming that Orwell "thought that 'the worst possibility of all,' was that 'the fear inspired by the atomic bomb and other weapons yet to come will be so great that everyone will refrain from using them.'" Moreover, Podhoretz offered this "worst possibility" in the very same paragraph in which he discussed the intolerable nightmare of a worldwide totalitarian stalemate.

When I suggested to Mr. Crick that Podhoretz had used Orwell's words to express his own preference for early nuclear war over long-term totalitarian stalemate, Crick agreed. And then, without any prompting, Crick added that Podhoretz was "a thoroughly nasty person."

In an interview on October 23, 2002 in The Atlantic online, Christopher Hitchens added his studied opinion about Podhoretz's 1983 Harper's article. He observed that Podhoretz's article was: "Straight out of bad faith-chopping bits that don't support his case out of an excerpt. If he had done that in the academy he would have been fired."

For the purposes of this article, however, the most relevant observations about Podhoretz were made by Gore Vidal, in his article, "A Cheerful Response," published in the March 22, 1986, issue of The Nation. It was there that Mr. Vidal wrote: "Over the years, Poddy, like his employers, the AJC [American Jewish Committee], moved from those liberal positions traditionally occupied by American Jews (and me) to the far right of American politics. The reason for that is simple. In order to get Treasury money for Israel (last year five billion dollars), pro-Israel lobbyists must see to it that America's 'the Russians are coming' squads are in place so that they can continue to frighten the American people into spending enormous sums for 'defense,' which also means the support of Israel in its never-ending wars against just about everyone. To make sure that nearly two thirds of the federal budget goes to the Pentagon and Israel, it is necessary for the pro-Israel lobbyists to make common cause with the lunatic right."

Vidal noted that Podhoretz's "first loyalty would always be to Israel." Perhaps the devil in him also compelled Vidal to add: "Although there is nothing wrong with being a lobbyist for a foreign power, one is supposed to register with the Justice Department. Also, I should think that tact would require a certain forbearance when it comes to politics in the host country."

The question of "first loyalty to Israel" has been raised again, some nineteen years later, by both James Bamford (in A Pretext for War) and George Packer (in The Assassins' Gate). Both have decried the official machinations of two younger unregistered lobbyists for Israel, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. Both were obsessed with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein -- in order to secure the realm for Israel -- long before they accepted employment in the administration of the malevolent Dick Cheney and the incurious, insouciant George W. Bush. Mr. Packer goes so far as to suggest that, for Mr. Feith and Mr. Wurmser, loyalty "to the security of Israel was probably the prime mover." [Packer, p. 32]

As Packer notes, "Feith, [Richard] Perle, and Wurmser…occupied key policy positions in the administration of George W. Bush, where they were shaping the imminent war to overthrow Saddam." [Ibid] While Mr. Perle publicly disparaged the Iraq intelligence coming out of the CIA, Feith established a rogue intelligence cell devoted to the sole objective of searching for links between Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and international terrorists, especially al Qaeda.

At the direction of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, soon after the 9/11 attacks Feith set up the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCEG), which he staffed with Wurmser and another neocon, Michael Maloof. According to Mr. Bamford, the PCEG was "little more than a pro-war propaganda cell" [p. 289] that channeled bogus intelligence directly to the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President.

Supporting Bamford's allegation is evidence that Maloof used Perle to request what would prove to be bogus intelligence from Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC). And we know that even after Maloof and Wurmser departed the PCEG, Feith's group devoted itself to challenging and undermining the Intelligence Community's (IC's) doubts about Saddam Hussein's links to al Qaeda.

The IC's post-9/11 doubts about such links were first expressed in CIA's President's Daily Brief (PDB) of September 21, 2001. The PDB asserted that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks on 9/11 and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties to al Qaeda.

Feith's PCEG was established in the wake of that PDB and — Surprise!— soon claimed to have found credible evidence of significant links connecting Iraq to al Qaeda. Moreover, Feith's PCEG presented its briefing slides to Wolfowitz in November 2001, Rumsfeld in the summer of 2002, George Tenet and the CIA in August 2002 and deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and Cheney's chief of staff (and now-indicted) "Scooter" Libby in September 2002.

Yet, the Intelligence Community never repudiated its doubts about alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. It refused to buckle, even in the face of repeated questions by Cheney and overheated blustering by Wolfowitz. Moreover, the IC found Feith's PCEG briefing slides to be unpersuasive.

Why, then, was Cheney talking publicly about the links connecting 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, with Iraqi intelligence? After all, he certainly knew that investigations by the CIA and FBI had discredited such allegations. And why, then, was Rumsfeld talking about possessing "bulletproof" evidence linking Saddam and al Qaeda? After all, Rumsfeld knew quite well that the very persistence of doubts within the IC meant that the evidence was anything but "bulletproof." So who lied?

Cheney and Rummy's evidence came from Feith's "Gestapo office" (as Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to it). And so did the evidence that Scooter Libby attempted to foist on Powell prior to his now infamous February 5, 2003 speech before the Security Council of the United Nations.

Moreover, we now possess "bulletproof" evidence to convict Feith's PCEG of hyping its so-called intelligence about Iraq's ties to al Qaeda. What "bulletproof" evidence? First, consider what we now know about the paucity of that intelligence. According to the July 2004 "Report" of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI): "Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible ties to al Qaeda."

Given that eye-opening conclusion, who would have faulted the intelligence professionals in the Intelligence Community for refusing to find significant links connecting Iraq to al Qaeda? Yet, Feith's PCEG used that very same "little useful intelligence" (supplemented, no doubt, by the bogus stories fed to it by Chalabi's programmed INC informants) to find significant links. Thus, the inescapable conclusion: Feith's PCEG "hyped" the links connecting Iraq to al Qaeda.

We also know that Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Libby and Cheney eagerly, uncritically and, thus, irresponsibly (if not dishonestly) promoted Feith's hyped intelligence before selling it to an unwitting American public. How do we know? We know, because they recommended Feith's "fixed" and "hyped" intelligence to each other while continuing to proclaim Iraq's ties to al Qaeda to the world — even after failing to browbeat support for those claims out of the IC.

"Browbeat?" According to the SCCI: "The CIA Ombudsman interviewed about two dozen analysts and managers involved in the preparation of the CIA's June 2002 document entitled 'Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship'…The Ombudsman told the committee that he felt the 'hammering' by the Bush Administration on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had witnessed in his 32-year career with the agency. Several analysts he spoke with mentioned pressure and gave the sense that they felt the constant questions and pressure to reexamine issues were unreasonable."

"Fixed and hyped?" Of course "fixed." Simply recall the leaked SECRET "Downing Street Memo" of July 2002, which outlined secret discussions between British Prime Minster Tony Blair and his top cabinet officials about how "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

And of course, "hyped." Simply recall the SCCI's conclusion: "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship." Consequently the PCEG's false allegations of significant ties HAD to be hyped.

Of course, "fixed" and "hyped" meant nothing to Feith, his PCEG, Wolfie, Rummy, Libby, Cheney or even incurious, insouciant Bush - because every one of these arrogant zealots simply "knew" that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. To hell with all of the Intelligence Community's caveats and doubts!

Even more damning, however, is the indisputable fact that the Intelligence Community got the matter of Iraq's ties to al Qaeda right, while reckless Wolfie, Rummy, Libby, Cheney and Bush all got it egregiously wrong. Thousands of innocents have died in Iraq, yet not one of these arrogant zealots has been brought to justice.

As Martin van Creveld, the noted professor of military history at Hebrew University, has concluded: "For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins."

But, guess who's written to call the CheneyRummyBush criminality in Iraq a "bold and noble enterprise." Yes, Norman Podhoretz. He has written an unfortunately scatterbrained article, "Who Is Lying About Iraq," in the December 2005 issue of Commentary.

I say "unfortunately," because my brief article cannot possibly cleanse the walls of every piece of scattershot dung flung by Podhoretz, presumably with the expectation that some of it would stick. Instead, I devote myself solely to what Podhoretz says or doesn't say about the Bush administration's treatment of intelligence about Iraq's ties to al Qaeda.

Consider that Podhoretz excoriated Senator Harry Reid's allegation that "the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for war in Iraq."

Podhoretz belittled Reid's assertion (which I have substantiated above, beyond a doubt); but, curiously, wrote nothing about the activities of the PCEG and its unregistered lobbyist, Feith. Yet, how could any serious examination of the Bush's administration's handling of intelligence concerning Iraq's ties to al Qaeda overlook the very rogue cell set up to search for such ties? Thus, we must ask, "Is Podhoretz incompetent, dishonest, or both?"

In addition, Podhoretz denied the pressure that the Bush administration exerted on the Intelligence Community. And he cited evidence from reports by the SCCI and the Robb-Silberman commission to prove his point. Yet, he failed to acknowledge that the SCCI's report was merely Phase One and dealt largely with the failures of the IC. He failed to mention that the SCCI's Phase Two will report on the Bush administration's politicization of intelligence. He also failed to mention that the Robb-Silberman commission was prohibited from examining the politicization of intelligence.

What's even worse, while citing both reports to deny the Bush administration's pressure on the IC, Podhoretz somehow missed that part of the SCCI report that contained the previously mentioned testimony about pressure from the CIA's Ombudsman. Thus, once again we must ask, "Is Podhoretz incompetent, dishonest or both?"

Finally, to defend the scoundrels in the Bush administration against charges of lying, Podhoretz "fixed" the very words of the post-invasion investigative panels - the words of the SCCI and the 9/11 Commission - to transform the extremely weak Iraq-al Qaeda links they found into more robust ties than either panel intended.

See for yourself: Podhoretz asserted that the SCCI "report explicitly concluded that al Qaeda did in fact have a cooperative, if informal, relationship with Iraqi agents working under Saddam. The report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion."

Now, compare Podhoretz's claim with actual SCCI conclusions: (1) "Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible ties to al Qaeda" and (2) "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship."

Also compare Podhoretz's claim with the actual 9/11 Commission statement: "To date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship."

Now, I ask you, Mr. Podhoretz, "How do you square your assertion of a "cooperative" relationship with the 9/11 Commission's denial of a "collaborative" operational relationship?

Never mind. I'm afraid I already know the answer. Although I can't vouch for Crick's allegation of "nasty," it appears that he, Vidal and Hitchens all accurately nailed a part of Podhoretz. When combined, they mean: "Any unregistered lobbyist who's willing to countenance a nuclear war to avert the mere prospect of totalitarianism seeping into the West -- as Podhoretz was -- certainly would not quibble about an illegal, immoral invasion that stands to benefit his Israel."

Consequently, neither would such a scoundrel quibble about engaging in "straight out of bad faith" (quoting Hitchens) fixing of the facts in order to quell the critics of what he believes to be CheneyRummyBush's "bold and noble enterprise." --posted Jan. 11, 2006

Even Confiding With God Doesn't Compensate for Bush's Brain

By Walter C. Uhler

Writing in today's New York Times, Bob Herbert observed: "There's a disturbing remoteness to President Bush," that has reduced him to "little more than a bundle of talking points." Reduced? Anyone even remotely familiar with the life story of this 43rd and worst of all American presidents knows that George W. Bush has never succeeded on his own.

Yes, he normally puts up a good, if false, front that initially fools most people until they are compelled to examine his actual performance. But make no mistake, Bush's string of failures—both of character and performance—would have long ago disqualified anyone else lacking his family's political and financial clout in our American plutocracy. As Senator Joseph Biden observed, Bush never worked to correct his massive flaws because "he always had someone there—his family or friends—to bail him out."

But, like America's evangelicals, we should have taken Bush at his word in 1999, when he smugly asserted: "Nobody needs to tell me what I believe. But I do need somebody to tell me where Kosovo is." Unfortunately, too few of us failed to state that what he was offering us—a core of ignorance and incompetence, especially in foreign affairs, shrouded by faith in Jesus—was inadequate for presidential decision making. As a consequence, America not only got a President to whom God supposedly confides, but also a President who permitted a cabal led by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and a handful of Zionist neocons to show him where Iraq is.

Now—given his debacle in Iraq—it should be obvious to all Americans that even confiding with God doesn't compensate for Bush's brain.

Yet, wasn't it vintage Dubya yesterday, when he revealed his "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq?" Although it's not much of a plan, it's the type of plan he might have considered more than 32 months ago, when he gave the go-ahead for the illegal, immoral invasion that led to our current quagmire in Iraq. But that's precisely the point! Although God supposedly instructed Bush to attack Iraq, a competent president would have planned to win the peace after winning the war, and would have planned his exit strategy BEFORE commencing his war.

The "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" is a "day late, dollar short" piece of propaganda, which serious Americans should disregard on two counts. First, after one dismisses the flowery rhetoric about freedom and democracy (certain to persuade only those who have never seriously studied either) and the numerous misleading examples of partial recovery from the very devastation that American forces have inflicted upon Iraqis, the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" is as dishonest as the earlier crap about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to al Qaeda that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell flung in the collective face of America more than 32 months ago.

Dishonest? Yes, Bush's document contains no explicit admission that America's very invasion, its very occupation, and the continuing presence of American forces have transformed Iraq into the primary front where international terrorists learn their trade. Neither does it contain an explicit admission that America's very presence causes Iraq's insurgency to grow and gain strength. Nor does it address American plans for permanent bases in Iraq

It presents mealy-mouthed generalizations about the "many challenges" that confront America's occupiers rather than hard facts, such as the fact (recently provided by Congressman John Murtha) that "insurgent incidents have increased from 150 per week to over 700." It also fails to admit that America's invasion precipitated a civil war. Yet, that's the conclusion of esteemed (Ret.) Army General, William Odom. "We created the civil war when we invaded; we cannot prevent a civil war by staying."

Bush's document also is silent about the corrosive impact his costly occupation has had upon America's military. Again, General Odom speaks with well-deserved authority when he observes: "I think the Army is already broken." Congressman Murtha seconded General Odom's view, today, when he said, "the Army is 'broken, worn out' and may not be able to meet future military threats to the country's security."

Finally, Bush's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" says nothing about "the tension between the Bush administration and senior military officers," which General Odom has concluded to be "worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam." As Seymour Hersh wrote in the 5 November 2005 issue of The New Yorker, "Many of the military's most senior generals are deeply frustrated, but they say nothing in public, because they don't want to jeopardize their careers."

In a word, it's a dishonest piece of propaganda written to reverse the growing and correct American perception (long believed by much of the rest of the world) that George W. Bush is a reckless warmonger who ranks with the worst of all American Presidents.

Here's Bush's problem: The American public, traumatized by al Qaeda's despicable terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, wanted to believe the Bush administration when it claimed that Saddam Hussein: (1) was involved in the 9/11 attacks, (2) had significant ties to al Qaeda, (3) possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and (4) was willing to share them with international terrorists. Consequently, (5) Saddam needed to be "taken out." Fortunately, because American troops (6) would be treated as liberators, (7) the invasion would be a cakewalk requiring only a short occupation and little post-invasion reconstruction.

Now, after some thirty-two months of watching the situation in Iraq degenerate into a quagmire, a majority of Americans have concluded that the Bush administration was wrong—and perhaps lied—about each and every one of its seven claims.

But while the American public has allowed its views to be influenced by facts—even if belatedly—President Bush has not. And that's the second reason why Americans should pay no attention to his "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." It's based upon pure faith!

His record as a candidate and as President richly supports the conclusion that no set of facts can compete with the faith Bush places in his faith.

Judging by his own statements Bush subscribes to a definition of truth, which is identical to that postulated by the 19th century Christian philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. In 1846 Kierkegaard wrote his Concluding Unscientific Postscript To The Philosophical Fragments, which contained the following (and now famous) definition of truth: "An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual."

That's what Bush meant in 1999, when he asserted: "Nobody needs to tell me what I believe. But I do need somebody to tell me where Kosovo is." That's also what he meant on March 7, 2001, when he told Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, "I won't negotiate with myself." (And O'Neill was only stating the obvious, when he subsequently observed: "All sound analysis is about negotiating with yourself.")

Putting aside the obvious objection that the passionate appropriation of objective uncertainties can yield gross abominations—after all, Hitler truly believed that the '"Jewish question" required a solution—does the passionate appropriation of objective uncertainties render the appropriator incapable of telling lies? Does such a person get a pass, even when everyone else concludes that he must have known that what he was saying was not true? For example, don't we all believe Bush lied when, on July 14, 2003, he asserted: "We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."

In point of fact, don't we all know that Saddam allowed the inspectors back in? And don't we all believe that Bush knew that Saddam had allowed the inspectors back in? How wouldn't he know? Moreover, who doesn't know (except, perhaps, a lying or ignorant Bush) that it was the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq (before the inspectors could complete their work), as well as its advice to leave, that persuaded the inspectors to depart?

Readers of Ron Suskind's excellent New York Times Magazine article, "Without a Doubt" (October 17, 2004) will recall Bruce Bartlett's troubling observation about Bush. Although a Republican and former adviser to Ronald Reagan, Bartlett nevertheless said: Bush 'truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence. But you can't run the world on faith."

Unfortunately, Bush's faith also fosters nefarious political tactics. As New York Times columnist, David Brooks, revealed on the September 11, 2005 edition of The Chris Matthews Show, "from its earliest days, the Bush administration adopted a policy of shielding itself from political damage by never publicly admitting any mistake—even if it meant lying to the media and the American public."

But an even more nefarious tactical advantage was revealed when a senior adviser to Bush told Ron Suskind that guys like Suskind were "'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'" Then he added: "'That's not the way the world works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors …and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Is there anyone out there who can't envision an Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin implementing such evil, totalitarian practices? For me, it's simply the second reason to refuse to take Bush's "new" strategy seriously. It's simply one more "new reality" that "history's actors" want us to study.

Why attempt to sort out this bogus document when we know both the dishonesty inside it and the totalitarian tactics behind it? And, if it's true (as "current and former military and intelligence officers" have told Seymour Hersh) that Bush "disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding," then there is no alternative for us fact-based folks—other than pressuring Congress to remove him (and the nefarious Cheney) from office by way of impeachment.

Dumbing Down for Jesus:
Kansas Board of Education Approves Challenges to Evolution

By Walter C. Uhler

Whenever I contemplate the evil and incompetence spewing from the administration nominally headed by President George W. Bush—especially the evil and incompetence surrounding the decision to invade and occupy Iraq—Jacques Barzun's unforgettable warning about "the menace of the untaught" overloads my brain. Today, however, I must blame the Kansas Board of Education for sparking another "Barzun overload." (It even beat out Pat Robertson's asinine claim that the good citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania voted God out of their town when they voted to oust the school board clowns who had slipped "intelligent design" into Dover Area High School's biology curriculum.)

But, my thoughts about the menace of the untaught weren't the result of Kansas' 6 to 4 vote to adopt new science standards that require Darwin's theory of evolution to be challenged in the classroom. [Jodi Wilgoren, The New York Times, Nov. 9, 2005] After all, nothing can claim to remain a working theory in science unless it continuously and successfully withstands repeated attempts to render it false. Like Bush, but without his shameful atmospherics, genuine scientists should say: "Bring 'em on!"

Neither did Barzun's warning come to mind simply because the supposed challengers to evolution, intelligent design propagandists and creationists, have never submitted their inchoate mumbo jumbo for similarly rigorous scientific scrutiny. Anyone who's read, Why Intelligent Design Fails, already knows, "Intelligent design, like older versions of creationism, is not practiced as a science. Its advocates act more like a political pressure group than like researchers entering an academic debate. They seem more interested in affirming their prior religious commitment than in putting real hypotheses to the test." [Matt Young and Taner Edis ed., Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism, p. x]

In fact, "Barzun overload" didn't strike until I read that the Kansas Board redefined science itself, "so that it would not be explicitly limited to natural explanations." [Wilgorin]

Although now might be the time to decry this most recent "menace" permitting "supernatural" hocus pocus into biology classrooms, I prefer instead to suggest that the vote by the conservative ideologues of Kansas is a dangerous first step toward retarding its biology students to educational levels found in 13th century Europe.

After all, it was in 1215 that the Fourth Lateran Council officially promulgated the doctrine of transubstantiation. Consequently, untold thousands of Christians were told to accept on faith that, during the Eucharist, the whole substance of the bread and the wine literally was converted into the body of Christ, with only the external appearance of bread and wine remaining.

Presumably, today's defenders of intelligent design would have responded to the Lateran Council's transubstantiation in the same way they do to evolution: "Nature alone cannot explain life's complexity."

Unfortunately, as happens with most mass superstitions, zealots transformed this supernatural "Host" superstition into hysteria when they "began to worry that these living wafers might be subjected to all manner of mistreatment, and even physical torture, at the hands of heretics and Jews." [Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, p. 99] According to Sam Harris, "Historical accounts suggest that as many as three thousand Jews were murdered in response to a single allegation of this imaginary crime" of "host desecration." [Ibid. pp. 99-100]

Today, millions of Americans still take Holy Communion and as many as 91 percent of America's Christians still believe in the Virgin Birth. Now, the good citizens of Kansas are asked to believe in supernatural science. What's next? A high school science curriculum devoted to the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

In fact, intelligent design is as bereft of hard evidence as is the myth of the Virgin Birth. And it's hardly an accident that it appeals to the same faith-based crowd. Yet, as any Bible student knows, "the earliest references to Mary (like Mark's gospel, the first to be written, or Paul's letter to the Galatians) don't mention anything unusual about the conception of Jesus." [Nicholas D. Kristof, "Believe It, or Not," The New York Times, August 15, 2003]

Second, as Paula Fredriksen explains in her study, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, "creative use of the Septuagint" (the Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures), "clearly shapes both synoptic birth narratives," those written by Matthew and Luke. [p 27] "The tradition that Jesus' mother was a virgin at the time of his birth, for example, draws on prophecy available only in the Greek version of Isaiah 7:14: In the original Hebrew, the word that stands behind the Septuagint's parthenos, 'virgin,' is aalmah, 'young girl.'" [Ibid]

Third, as the great Catholic theologian Hans Kung concluded, "the Virgin Birth is a 'collection of largely uncertain, mutually contradictory, strongly legendary' narratives, an echo of virgin birth myths that were widespread in many parts of the ancient world." [Kristof, "Believe It, or Not"]

Fourth, as the intellectual giant, Harold Bloom, observed: "Nobody can say for sure who wrote the four Gospels, or precisely when and where they were composed, or what source material was relied upon. None of the writers knew Jesus, or ever heard him preach." [Jesus and Yahweh, p. 22] Moreover, Bloom cannot "recall a single passage in the Synoptic Gospels that unequivocally identifies Jesus as God: such status comes to him only in John, and clearly emerges from that Gospel's battles with those it angrily called 'the Jews'".[p. 5] Finally, "There is not a sentence concerning Jesus in the entire New Testament composed by anyone who ever met the unwilling King of the Jews." [p. 19]

Nevertheless, "According to Gallup, 35 percent of American believe that the bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. Another 48 percent believe that it is the 'inspired' word of the same—still inerrant, though certain of its passages must be interpreted symbolically before the truth can be brought to light." [Harris, p. 17]

Thus, "nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity." [Ibid] Now tell the truth, should thoughtful Americans pay any attention to what the faith-based crowd thinks about science? Have even one-tenth of those 230 million ever mastered even one college level biology textbook?

Scientific illiteracy aside, American Christians are quick to spot the idiocy and harm springing from other religions—especially after 9/11. Who wasn't outraged to learn that, in 2002, "the religious police in Mecca prevented paramedics and firefighters from rescuing scores of teenage girls trapped in a burning building. Why? Because the girls were not wearing the traditional head covering that Koranic law requires." [Ibid, p. 46]

But that outrage pales when compared with the world's incomprehension and indignation over the support American Christians provided for Bush's illegal, immoral and thus evil "crusade" against Iraq. When the world learned that Bush confided to Mahmoud Abbas, "God told me to strike at Al Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did," it didn't simply blame America's Christian conservative President; it also indicted his fellow true-believing evangelicals—many of whom, to this day, defend their own complicity [Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies, p.1].

Yet, Iraq aside, consider that "51 percent of Americans reject the theory of evolution, saying God created humans in their present form," and "38 percent… believe that creationism should be taught instead of evolution." [Glenn Collins, "An Evolutionist's Evolution," The New York Times, Nov. 7, 2005] How many of these intrepid Christians have demonstrated the courage to attempt to falsify Christianity, like scientists attempt to falsify evolution?

Moreover, what harm results from the increasing American tendency to substitute faith for fact? I suspect that such a substitution virtually guarantees that America's children will remain as ignorant as their parents.

Consider the illuminating essay recently written by Diane Ravitch, "Every State Left Behind" [The New York Times, Nov. 7, 2005]. Ravitch urged Americans to "recognize that we need national [education] standards, national tests and a national curriculum."

Why? Because, almost all states are dumbing down their tests in order to report about "incredibly large proportions of their students [who] meet high standards." How do we know? We know because their so-called high achievers invariably score much lower when they take the standardized nationwide test.

For example: "Idaho claims that 90 percent of its fourth-grade students are proficient in mathematics, but on the federal test only 41 percent of Idaho's students reached the Education Department's standard of proficiency" [Ravitch, The New York Times]. In New York, the numbers are 85 percent proficient in the state test, but only 36 percent on the national test. In North Carolina it's 92/40. And for fourth grade reading proficiency, it's 87/26 in Georgia and 83/22 in Alabama.

State data for eighth grade readers is equally bogus. "Texas reports that 83 percent met the state standard, but the federal test finds that only 26 percent are proficient" [Ravitch, The New York Times]. In Tennessee the disparity is 88/26 and in North Carolina it's 88/27.

Why do Americans allow themselves to be duped by such faith-based state scores? According to Ravitch, it's because, "the states function in a political environment. Educational leaders and elected officials want to assure the public that the schools are doing their jobs and making progress. The federal testing program, administered for the past 15 years by an independent, bipartisan governing board, has never been cowed by the demands of parents, school officials and taxpayers for good news"—or a religiously inspired agenda.

Who politicized the Kansas Board of Education and the recently ousted board members at Dover Area High School in Pennsylvania? Conservative zealots; some of whom have even admitted to not understanding intelligent design—and who certainly do not understand what constitutes genuine science. America needs to establish national education standards, national tests and a national curriculum, if only to prevent the piecemeal hijacking (one school district or state after another) of genuine science by the inerrant Bible crowd or closet creationists. It's a matter of America's national security.

Finally, as Olivia Judson (evolutionary biologist at Imperial College, London) recently demonstrated, the substitution of "ideologies born of wishful thinking"—such as intelligent design and creationism—can have disastrous consequences for both the faith-based and fact-based communities. Speaking about the dreaded avian flu, Judson notes, "a few mutations to a bird virus could—in the absence of a vaccine—mean the difference between 60 people dead and several million." ["Evolution Is in the Air," The New York Times, Nov. 6, 2005]

"But the most important point is this: viruses and other pathogens evolve in ways that we can understand and, to some extent, predict. Whether it's preventing a flu pandemic or tackling malaria, we can use our knowledge of evolutionary processes in powerful and practical ways, potentially saving the lives of tens of millions of people." [Ibid]

Then again, perhaps not. Especially if the 51 percent of Americans who reject the theory of evolution—or the Kansas Board of Education—have their way.

The "Stinky Inky," Part 2

By Walter C. Uhler

Were one to read Davis Merritt's recent book, Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism is Putting Democracy at Risk, he or she would realize that the reasons for The Philadelphia Inquirer's deterioration extend far beyond the irredeemable right-wing slop that so often besmirches its Commentary page.

Merritt's insights take on added significance, given the recently announced editorial staff reductions that have shaken the Inky. But they must await my future evaluation, because the Inky's stinky Commentary page of October 20, 2005 demands an immediate response. Stinky? Yes, simply consider its outrageously uniformed and insipid right-wing essays by Kathleen Parker and Jonah Goldberg . . .

First, a cheerleading Ms. Parker asked why no newspaper headlines read: "Iraqi democracy takes bow to standing ovation, global applause." After all, "What matters is, they voted. They went to the polls and practiced democracy."

Oh, really? What about the recent complaint by a prospective voter in Baghdad? : "I would like to point out that we are three days away from the referendum, yet very large sectors of Iraqi people couldn't receive part of the five million copies [of the constitution] from the UN, ie—they will not know what the constitution contains. Subsequently, they will vote according to their backgrounds or religious or political preferences. Many people who will vote yes do not know why they will vote yes...what kind of vote is this?" [as quoted by Dahr Jamail, Oct. 18, 2005]

Many of these complaints are equally valid whenever Americans go to the polls. But, one shouldn't be surprised that Ms Parker—and, presumably, her conservative readers—are unconcerned about such matters. After all, who among them today is reflecting upon and lamenting the bias and ignorance, which informed their first vote five years ago for two rank incompetents—George W. Bush and Richard Cheney? Even more alarming, who among them today is reflecting upon and lamenting the bias and ignorance, which moved them to reelect a war party of liars and dissemblers who, arguably, should stand trial for war crimes?

Unfortunately, Ms. Parker's banalities about voting not only impede self-reflection, but also critical thinking. Thus, instead of addressing very real and sobering possibilities that, (1) passage of Iraq's constitution might strengthen the prospects for theocratic rule, (2) might increase the probability of civil war and (3) might benefit Iran much more than the United States; she would have you share her scorn for the media's unjustified, "glass-half-empty" emphasis on Iraq's voting irregularities.

Who at the Inky found this vacuous piece worth publishing? Yet, Ms. Parker's essay appears profound when compared with the drivel written by Lucianne's boy, Jonah Goldberg.

If you recall that Lucianne's boy "entered the national stage when he listened to the Linda Tripp tapes with his mom," and, thus, "turned his 15 minutes of fame into a full-time job," [Inda Schaenen, "The Jester of Monicagate," Salon Media Circus, September, 1998] then you understand how this mediocrity learned to shift the terms of the debate.

In his essay, "Dean pins new label on the faithful," Lucianne's boy plays "bait and switch." He starts with one limited-hang-out paragraph about the unprecedented scandals and crimes—notably those of Messrs. DeLay, Rove and Frist, but not Bush and Cheney—now rocking the world of the Republican Party.

Moreover, in that same paragraph, Lucianne's boy has the gall to lament the absence of public recognition and praise for Bush's "successes in Iraq." He seems to have forgotten that Bush's false "Mission Accomplished" came sandwiched between pre-invasion lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, its ties to al-Qaeda and its citizens' readiness to greet American soldiers with flowers—and a post-invasion occupation marked by incompetence, corruption, and widespread suffering, an ever resilient insurgency and the proliferation of jihadists and terrorist attacks, both in Iraq and around the world. Thus, we all need to remain skeptical about any allusions by conservatives to Bush's "successes."

Such skepticism aside, Lucianne's boy might also try thinking outside the box. Think about how the world reacted to Hitler's fleeting, but terrible, "successes in Poland." Were he to do so, Lucianne's boy might then understand why, in the eyes of the world (especially the Muslim world), the lies upon which the unprovoked invasion of Iraq were predicated might long besmirch any subsequent "successes," even if sustained and widely viewed to be good. Unprovoked aggression against another country remains a war crime, even if no international body possesses the power to prosecute the war criminals.

Yet, incredibly, after one paragraph of muddleheaded, limited-hang-out apologetics for the criminality of Republicans ("the problems of success"), Lucianne's boy devotes ten paragraphs to Howard Dean.

Dean's crime? It's his desire for Democrats to "frame" the terms of political debate more persuasively than Republicans. . And even if Dean were guilty of promoting the inappropriate frame of "Merlot Democrats" vs. "Reliable Republicans," Lucianne's boy would do well to consider how the term "reliable" might soon become a term of opprobrium, especially in an age of widespread Republican incompetence and criminality. It's a thought I also recommend to Kathleen Parker.

But, such observations entirely miss the point, which is: "Why would The Philadelphia Inquirer publish such frivolous right-wing crap?" The mind boggles when contemplating the contempt with which its editors must hold its readers!

The U.S. Has Plans to Invade Iran Before Bush's Term Ends

By Walter C. Uhler

Bill Gertz is a right-wing national security reporter for the Rev. Sun Yung Moon's neo-fascist newspaper, The Washington Times. He's also a spigot from which flows much classified information illegally leaked by like-minded "patriots" seeking to advance their hawkish agenda in the military-industrial-congressional complex. And, frankly speaking, that's the only reason I pay any attention to him.

So I was hardly surprised when, on September 16, 2005, Gertz reported on the Bush administration's "computer slide presentation." which was aimed at persuading whoever would listen that Iran is working feverishly to build nuclear weapons.

According to Gertz, the report claims: "Iran's nuclear program is well-scaled for a weapons capability, as a comparison to [Pakistan's] nuclear weapons infrastructure shows…When one also considers Iran's concealment and deception activities, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons."

The report also states that "Iran's uranium ore resources are insufficient for Tehran to produce enough fuel for civilian electrical power generating reactors. 'However, Iran's uranium resources are more than sufficient to support a nuclear weapons capability.'" [U.S. Report Says Iran Seeks To Acquire Nuclear Weapons," Washington Times, 16 September 2005]

Unlike the Washington Post's article on the subject two days earlier, Gertz predictably failed to mention that the slide show "dismisses ambiguities in the evidence…and omits alternative explanations under debate among intelligence analysts." He also failed to mention that several diplomats "said the slide show reminded them of the flawed presentation on Iraq's weapons programs made by then-secretary of state Colin L. Powell to the UN Security Council in February 2003" ["US Deploys Slide Show to Press Case Against Iran," Washington Post, 14 September 2005]

Moreover, in order to serve as water boy for the Bush administration, Gertz had to ignore (or discount) the recent report from Britain's prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies, which concluded that Iran "was at least five years away from producing sufficient material for 'a single nuclear weapon,'" Instead, Gertz obediently and dutifully noted that the Bush administration "is pressing the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] to refer the issue… to the United Nations Security Council," which "could then impose economic sanctions against Iran or possibly a future authorization for the use of force." [Ibid.] Ah yes, "authorization for the use of force"—the source of many a neocon and chickenhawk wet dream.

But much more disconcerting than Gertz's piece was one written by Claude Salhani on 22 September 2005 for the same loony "Moonie" scandal sheet. Salhani shamelessly reintroduced the tactics, which proved so successful in inflaming a frightened American public about the threat posed by Iraq. He invoked the words of an Iranian dissident (today's Ahmad Chalabi), as well as former U.S. government officials (seeking to "empower resistance" inside Iran), to make the claim the Iran is, in fact, "gearing for war" with the United States.

No, notwithstanding the inflammatory title that the Moonie editors attached to Salhani's article—"Is Iran Geared For War?"—Iran is not planning to attack the United States. Instead, it is merely taking very prudent measures to defend itself against a possible illegal preventive war instigated by the "war party" in the Bush administration.

Although America's past is riddled with instances in which a "war party"—remember the "War Hawks" Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun?—within a given party or administration labored mightily to con its subjects into wars of aggression, it's America's singular misfortune today to be guided by a "war party" in and around the Bush administration, which consists of neocons and chickenhawks who seek to compensate for personal cowardice or neglect of military duty (especially during the Vietnam war) with martial rhetoric and by sending courageous soldiers to fight, kill, and perhaps die for them. Note President George W. Bush's "Bring 'em on."

But it is America's greater misfortune today to be informed by a so-called "watch dog" mainstream news media that supinely reports this war party's will to kill without insisting upon the hard evidence necessary for justifying war. Although they failed miserably in their 2002-03 coverage of Iraq, unfortunately this is not a recent phenomenon. For as John L. Harper has recently concluded: "The premises on which the United States decided to go to war in 1812, 1846, 1898, 1917, 1950, 1964–65 and 2002–03, were largely false." [John L. Harper, "Anatomy of a Habit: America's Unnecessary Wars," Survival, Summer 2005, p. 79]

But, forget the past. Just a few days ago, on September 26, 2005, The Telegraph of Calcutta, India issued an astounding report that has yet to cause a ripple within America's mainstream news media. In the fifth paragraph of the article, "Gulf factor key to PM's Iran vote decision," were the following words: "Top-ranking Americans have told equally top-ranking Indians in recent weeks that THE US HAS PLANS TO INVADE IRAN BEFORE BUSH'S TERM ENDS" (author's emphasis).

Thoughtful, decent, moral citizens of these United States: I urge you to write to the editors of your local and national news outlets to insist that they authenticate or repudiate the information reported by The Telegraph. And I further urge you to write your congressman (or congresswoman) to inquire about their knowledge concerning this assertion. Finally, I urge you to write to President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and/or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to inquire about their plans to invade Iran before they leave office.

We simply cannot permit the Bush "war party" to run roughshod over America's democracy once again.

September 19, 2005

America's 'Mental Defectives' Confront Iran

By Walter C. Uhler

On a recent visit to a periodicals room in the Joe Paterno wing of Penn State's Pattee Library I ran across a fascinating journal, The Long Term View, published by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Its Spring 2004 issue was entirely devoted to the question, "Why We Seek War" and its editor, Lawrence R. Velvel, commenced his introduction by asserting: "The United States is a nation which seeks war. We better change or we may end up destroying ourselves and perhaps even the world." [p.3]

Mr. Velvel provides some twenty-one reasons why Americans seek war, but I was especially intrigued by reason number six: "Government is incompetent and its leaders stupid." [p.9] Velvel offers many persuasive reasons for government incompetence (which should not prevent us from acknowledging widespread incompetence in the private sector), but he's less persuasive when attempting to explain why leaders become stupid.

True, Velvel gets close when he observes: "politicians, who run government, care little about truth, accuracy, honesty, or any of those other disposable attributes. They care far more about what can be spun, sold, and made to sound good, so that they will get votes." [Ibid.] Were one to add that most politicians these days are driven by ideology, then he arrives at our present day phenomenon: the ideological moron.

Webster's dictionary defines a "moron" as a "feebleminded person or mental defective who has a potential mental age of between 8 and 12 years and is capable of doing routine work under supervision." [Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1979, p. 743]

Americans elected mental defectives in 2000 and 2004. The mental defects of President George W. Bush and his boss, Vice-president Cheney (as well as their underlings), were not physiological, but ideological.

Domestically, the mental defects manifested themselves in a monomaniacal pursuit of tax cuts for the rich. Grover Norquist spoke for the Bush administration (and like a genuine moron) when he asserted: "My Goal is to cut Government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." We see their results today in New Orleans, where penny-wise but pound-foolish tax cuts starved levee construction and disaster preparedness.

Abroad, their mental defects coalesced around a neoconservative obsession for serving Israel and securing oil by toppling Saddam Hussein and, thus, reshaping the Middle East. But both the domestic and foreign agendas of the Bush administration were predicated on the moronic notion that a small, successful war against Iraq would provide the high approval ratings necessary to impose its political will on America.

Thus, lacking adequate supervision, during 2001 our mental defectives ignored warnings about an impending al Qaeda attack while they obsessed about Saddam's removal. Al Qaeda's successful attacks provided the first clue that this Bush administration was incapable of anything more than "routine work under supervision."

Yet, still lacking mature democratic supervision, our mental defectives then manipulated the fears of post-9/11 terror-struck and traumatized Americans, in order to persuade them that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda. Knowing so little about the world, most Americans swallowed these lies and supported the Bush administration's illegal, immoral preventive war against Iraq.

Beyond the needless killing and mutilation of American soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, America's invasion sparked terrorist attacks around the world, including those in Madrid and London. In addition, as the Boston Globe reported on July 17, 2005,: "New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank—both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States—have found that the vast majority of those foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself." [Bryan Bender, "Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq," Boston Globe, July 17, 2005]

Moreover, the predictable failure by our mental defectives to plan adequately for the post-invasion occupation of Iraq gave life to an ever-growing, increasingly resilient insurgency that once again proved that the Bush administration was only "capable of doing routine work under supervision" (as would the administration's inept response to the disaster cause by Hurricane Katrina).

Perversely, as things now stand, the Bush administration's bungled occupation of Iraq has indeed reshaped the Middle East—but to the enormous benefit of Iran. Iran is now awash in oil revenues and, according to an August 22, 2005, report in TIME, "The Iranian regime has deepened its imprint on the political and social fabric of Iraq, buying influence in the new Iraqi government, running intelligence gathering networks and funneling money and guns to Shi'ite militant groups—all with the aim of fostering a Shi'ite-run state friendly to Iran."

Playing diplomatic chess to the Bush administration's checkers, not only is Iran attempting to "wear out" and "keep U.S. forces engaged in Iraq," [Ibid.], it is leveraging its oil exports, its determination to establish a "'petroeuro' system for oil trade" in 2006 and its rights to the nuclear fuel cycle (under Article 4 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) in order to buy time to acquire the capability to develop nuclear weapons.

Mere capability might be deterrent enough, but as Anne Penketh has recently noted: "In light of the war on Iraq, which did not have nuclear weapons, second-tier nations have judged that North Korea was spared invasion because of its nuclear deterrent, and drawn their own strategic conclusions." [Anna Penketh, "Never Again? How the War in Iraq Spurred a New Nuclear Arms Race," The Independent UK, 05 August 2005]

Moreover, as the London Times reported on August 11, 2005, "Iran's right to nuclear energy and defiance of the West over its nuclear ambitions is the first issue since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that has galvanized all political factions, classes and public opinion." [Ramita Navai, "A Divided Nation Puts Differences Aside On The Nuclear Road," London Times, August 11, 2005] Americans should take note, because such unity guarantees that Iran would meet American invading forces with "a rebellion many times more destructive, and more legitimate in the eyes of its people, than the one in Iraq." [Michael J. Mazarr, "Strike Out," The New Republic, 06 August 2005]

Nevertheless, rather than engage in serious discussions with Iran, as Dilip Hiro recommends in his new book, The Iranian Labyrinth, America's mental defectives have authorized the presentation of a hour-long slide show titled, "A History of Concealment and Deception," to diplomats from more than a dozen countries. It expresses the very certainty about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons that proved so unfounded about Iraq's WMD. Why should anyone believe them?

Not only does the PowerPoint briefing omit "alternative explanations under debate among intelligence analysts," several diplomats said "the slide show reminded them of the flawed presentation on Iraq's weapons programs made by then-secretary of state Colin L. Powell to the UN Security Council in February 2003." [Dafna Linzer, "US Deploys Slide Show to Press Case against Iran," Washington Post, 14 September 2005]

Let's us hope that England's Tony Benn is mistaken when he observes, "the build-up to a new war is taking exactly the same form as it did in 2002." [Tony Benn, "Bush is the Real Threat, The Guardian UK, 31 August 2005] But, if he's correct, then the American public must finally impose its supervision, in order to restrict these war mongering mental defectives to only those routine tasks that befit them.

September 10, 2005

Big Talking, Poor Performing America

By Walter C. Uhler

You can't fool the precious few Americans who really know their country's history. They know that America's big talk (dating from Puritan times) about God's plan for America to redeem the world is largely the product of religiously inspired self-delusion or outright propaganda. They also know that, far too often, the big talk has been belied by extremely low-class performance. Now it's happening once again in the events surrounding hurricane-ravaged New Orleans.

"Third world" TV images beamed from the Crescent City—where the rich and white escaped Hurricane Katrina, while the poor and black suffered and died in apartheid—have exposed years of banana republic-like neglect by America's political elite, from President George W. Bush on down. Thus, those images mock America's incessant bragging about its mandate from God to redeem the rest of the world for democracy.

As the whole world now sees in New Orleans, America has miserably failed even to account for its poor and minorities, let alone "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility…promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"—as its much ballyhooed democratic Constitution promised.

One can credit the low-class, "enrichez vous" greed of corporate leaders and their political action committees, as well as the Presidents and Congressmen executing and legislating for their bribes, for bringing America to this shameful state.

But, let's try removing the God-tinted glasses, which severely distort our views about America's behavior, both at home and abroad. Ask yourself; did God support America's genocide of Native Americans? Did God support slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, Hiroshima, or Vietnam? Did God support 9/11? How about the devastation of the great city of New Orleans?

When one asks such questions, the mixed results of these disasters suggest that God does not care any more or less about the fate of the United States than He does about the fate of Israel, Russia, India, China, Iran or Cuba. Thus, God doesn't even care whether America wins or loses the "global war on terror," let alone our immoral, illegal invasion of Iraq.

Consequently, we must not only heap scorn upon the idiocy spoken by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, when they interpreted al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on 9/11 as God's retribution for America's evil ways. We also must decry the idiocy of Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, who "suggested that the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq."

We should be equally outraged by the statements of Repent America's leader, Michael Marcavage, who claimed that Katrina was "an act of God" because it "destroyed a wicked city" on the eve of a large gay festival. Finally, we must equally repudiate all those mentally challenged folks who believe: (1) that Hurricane Katrina was God's retribution for Bush's highly dubious electoral victory in 2000 or (2) that God had a hand in Bush's victory. Please, all of you. Get real!

Unfortunately, this isn't new to America. If one were to read chapter two of Robert H. Wiebe's book Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy, he or she would learn that America's exceptional democratic and Christian mission was repeatedly tainted by low-class performance as white male rule spread across the frontier.

Titled, "The Barbarians," Wiebe's chapter two is filled with hilarious accounts by horrified nineteenth century Western European travelers to America. Prominent European writers noted America's "uncouth mosaic of expectoration and nutshells," [p. 45] dishonesty in commerce, bad manners, lack of imagination, "insensate gobbling of whatever food was laid before them," [p. 49] cheap value placed on human life, slavery and, most ominously, a violence that places "society at the borders of jungle terror." [p.51]

As Wiebe notes, "Cheap lives and violent ways came with the origins of white culture in America, moving through the starving times and the slaughtering of natives in the 17th century into the paramilitary settlement of farm lands in the 18th." [p. 53]

Indeed, the huge gap that separates America's braggadocio about its God-inspired exceptionalism from its actual low-class performance originated in Puritan Massachusetts. But a singularly important, precedent-setting example of that gap can be found in the all-too-common greed for land, wealth, and stature by an ambitious surveyor named George Washington.

As historians Fred Anderson and Andrew Clayton explain in their book, The Dominion of War, Washington and his fellow Virginians sought to expand their colonial possessions to the West, in order to enrich themselves further on the backs of yet more Negro slaves.

Thus, Governor Dinwiddie gave Washington the task of carrying a message to the French containing the demand that they immediately leave British territory. As Anderson and Clayton note: That this aspiring gentleman emissary "spoke neither French nor any Indian language, had little formal education, knew nothing of native cultures, and utterly lacked diplomatic experience were not obstacles." [p. 116]

Instead, possessing "the self-confidence of the truly ignorant," [p. 117] Washington pressed on until May 28, 1754, when forty men under his command blundered into attacking "a detachment of Canadian militiamen" that was escorting a French officer on a diplomatic mission to Virginia. "The actions of the young Washington, eager to prove himself and bold to the point of foolhardiness, sparked a cataclysm long in the making" [p. 118]—the French and Indian War.

The new war between France and England sucked new troops and resources into North America. But when the victorious British sought to impose new taxes upon its colonies, in order to defray the cost of that war, the Americans famously refused.

Less known today, however, but equally disturbing then to both Indian-hating backwoodsmen and land speculators like Washington, was Britain's Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited further western settlements in America. Not only did Washington violate the prohibition, his decision to support the break with England was influenced by his personal land-speculator self-interest in America's imperial expansion.

Little was said about such petty self-interests during the American Revolution or in the immediate aftermath of victory. Instead, New England clergymen characterized the ongoing struggle as a conflict between "God's elect" and the "Antichrist." And victory moved the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, to proclaim America to be "God's New Israel" and to compare George Washington to "Joshua commanding the armies of the Children of Israel and leading them into the Promised Land." [Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation, pp. 10–11]

But American messianic propaganda never sunk so low as it did when Southern clergymen, during the Civil War, had the audacity to suggest, "God ordained the war, just as he had ordained slavery, and the Confederacy consequently represented the will of the Almighty." [Ann Sarah Rubin, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861–1868, p. 17]

Minister James Henley Thornwell assured the faithful that "the cause it not ours, but God's," [Rubin, p 37] and Reverend Joseph Atkinson "argued that the Confederate revolution was even more deserving of God's favor because its leaders—particularly Stonewall Jackson—were so pious." [Rubin, p 39.] No doubt the South was full of pious racists. Probably still is.

Finally, we have the example of Reverend Stephen Elliott who assured his fellow Southerners that their independence would not be won until "England and the North were 'convinced that slavery, as we hold it here, is essential to the welfare of the world… a sacred trust from God.'" [Rubin, p.40]

Thus, many in the South actually invoked God's will to justify their evil ways. And thus, we shouldn't be surprised to find that many Americans today support President George W. Bush's evil war against Iraq.

After all, Bush told Mahmoud Abbas, "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." But, did God also tell Bush and company to exaggerate and lie about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaida? Was it God who rendered so many Americans stupid enough to believe such lies and exaggerations? And why did God, who supposedly told Bush to invade Iraq, then trap American troops in a quagmire that exposed Bush and company for the rank amateurs they are?

Iraq is the early 21st century's object lesson exposing the chasm separating America's messianic rhetoric and belief from the reality of its illegal, immoral and low-class performance.

George W. Bush talks big. Remember, "Bring 'em on!" How many Americans and Iraqis have died since then? And at what personal risk to himself? But, America's worst president and biggest phony wraps himself in God. And by doing so in this country, he's able to get away with murder.

Moreover, at this very moment, he and his political advisers (including the ignoble Karl Rove) are crafting and acting upon the propaganda designed to disguise the Bush administration's shamefully incompetent response to the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina. Can it be that Americans are the only people unable to see through their bullshit?

---

August 3, 2005

Rick Santorum Flunks "The History of the American Family"

By Walter C. Uhler

Readers of Senator Rick Santorum's book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, should examine it closely, including its concluding "Bibliographical Note." Then they should ask themselves: "Is there any evidence in the text or bibliographical note to suggest that Mr. Santorum has ever read a serious, comprehensive history of the American Family?"

This reviewer found no evidence whatsoever. Yet lack of comprehensive knowledge doesn't prevent Mr. Santorum from pontificating about the current crisis of the American family by sketching "the past forty years of American history in light of our founders' vision." [Santorum, p. xi] Yet, even if one assumes that Mr. Santorum has mastered both the past forty years and the founder's vision (which he hasn't), there's still early Colonial history and some 185 years of American family life after the American Revolution that he ignores.

Knowing little about the history of the American family, Santorum stuffs the gaping holes with bogus nostalgia and right-wing extremist ideology. Yet, does he really believe that Pennsylvania's intelligent voters will swallow such generic assertions as: "The village elders dislike the traditional family because of what it instills in children and society—traditional values." [p. 17] Such prattle befits an imbecile!

Even the dullest of Santorum's fellow conservatives might want to ask: (1) "Can you identify those terrible village elders?" (2) "Specifically, what do you mean by 'traditional family' and when did it come into existence?" and (3) "To which traditional values are you alluding?"

Yet, except for a feeble attempt to identify and describe traditional values—and a very poor treatment of "virtue"—the reader will not find specific and complete answers to these questions in Santorum's book. But, he's undeterred by such lack of precision. Thus, Santorum asserts: "I will argue that the unit that most efficiently, effectively, and naturally builds and replenishes capital in every aspect of society is the family." [p. 9]

Santorum's con begins with his book's title: It Takes a Family. For he does not mean just any family. His definition of "family" frowns on single parents, wouldn't contain cohabiting parents and most definitely cannot abide same sex parents.

No, Mr. Santorum's family is the "traditional" family "consisting of a mother and father who have committed themselves to each other in lifelong marriage together with their children." [p. 28] But there's more. In Santorum's "traditional" family, "men and women and children have natures," especially gender, which are unchanging and delimiting. "Nature is nature, and the freedom to choose against the natural law is not really freedom at all." [p.29]

Yet, slippery Santorum doesn't specify when this "traditional" American family came into existence. And although he attempts to link it to our Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, his religious beliefs about fixed "natures" expose him as an ideologue and charlatan.

After all, anyone familiar with the history of the American family knows that society in early Colonial America looked upon the "natures" of its members quite differently than did society after the American Revolution.

Had he read, for example, the book by Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of the Family, Santorum would know that, in seventeenth century Colonial America, marriage was primarily a business arrangement that required parental approval. It seldom originated from love. The family was an agricultural work unit in which the father dominated. Children were thought to be sinful and depraved by nature. After the age of two, it was the father's responsibility to break the willfulness of his children.

And lest parents become too soft in the course of raising them, children in their early teens were sent to live and work for other families. Finally, remarriage after the death of a spouse might result in the "fostering out" of all children from an earlier marriage. [Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life, pp. 13-16]

Marriage and family scholar, Stephanie Coontz, believes that the seventeenth century American family was traditional, when compared with European families of earlier centuries. But is this the "traditional" family and are these the "natures" that Mr. Santorum had in mind? Although he never specifies, I suspect not.

By the late eighteenth century, as economic changes undermined the leverage of fathers, marriage became more intimate and children "were increasingly viewed as special creatures with unique needs." [Mintz and Kellogg, p. 21] Less a place of work than in the seventeenth century, the home became a place of privacy and shelter from the competitive economic pressures of the outside world.

By the early nineteenth century, child-rearing manuals ceased being directed at fathers. And women—who until the mid-eighteenth century were widely viewed to be devious, sexually voracious, overly emotional and physically and intellectually inferior (by nature) —came to be seen "as inherently more virtuous and less selfish than men." [Ibid. p. 55] Thus, they were seen as better equipped by nature to provide the nurturing that children now required by nature. Perhaps this was the "traditional" family and "natures" to which Mr. Santorum alluded.

According to Ms. Coontz, writing in her new book, Marriage: A History, "in the eighteenth century people began to adopt the radical new idea that love should be the most fundamental reason for marriage and that young people should be free to choose their marriage partners on the basis of love." [Coontz, p. 5]

But notice the immediate impact on Coontz's "traditional" family: "No sooner had the ideal of the love match and lifelong intimacy taken hold than people began to demand the right to divorce. No sooner did people agree that families should serve children's need than they began to find the legal penalties for illegitimacy inhumane. Some people demanded equal rights for women so they could survive economically without having to enter into loveless marriages. Others even argued for the decriminalization of homosexual love, on the ground that people should be free to follow their hearts." [Coontz, p. 8]

As Ms. Coontz goes on to explain, "there was a crisis over these questions in the 1790s [when the Founding Fathers still held sway], and another in the 1890's, and yet another in the 1920s," [Coontz, p. 8] before "things fell apart in the 1970s." [Ibid]

Santorum's book is silent about these earlier crises. Which allows him to demagogically blame anonymous liberal "village elders" (presumably still living) occupying the equally anonymous "Bigs," (big institutions attempting to control our lives) for the current crisis. Like an ignorant child (or an Ann Coulter), Santorum blames liberals for "trying to build bureaucracies to aid the poor and marginal in our society, while ignoring the central importance of families." [Santorum, p. 27]

Santorum's ignorance of the full history of the American family also serves his demagogy when he contrasts today's "toxic combination of the village elders' war on the traditional family and radical feminism's misogynistic crusade to make working outside the home the only marker of social value and self-respect," [p. 95] with an "America in previous generations" that was "rich in social, cultural, and moral capital" and supported and nurtured families. [p. 27] But, given the earlier crises, we know Santorum is dead wrong.

After all, as Ms Coontz explains, "the real question…is not why things fell apart in the 1970s but why they didn't fall apart in the 1790s, or in the next crisis of the 1890s, or in the turmoil of the 1920s, when practically every contemporary observer worried that marriage was 'on the rocks.' And the answer is not that people were better partners in the past or better able to balance the search for individual self-fulfillment and the need for stability. The reason is that for the most part they could not yet afford to act on their aspirations for love and personal fulfillment." [Coontz, pp. 8-9]

Readers of Charles E. Lindblom's extraordinary book, Inquiry and Change: The Troubled Attempt to Understand and Shape Society (Yale, 1990) would recognize Santorum's game. Lindblom's concern was individual "impairment"—much of it resulting from the pursuit of narrow, job-related knowledge—and how it prevents Americans from solving the country's social problems. He succinctly captures such impairment with a quote from the renowned physicist Leo Szilard: Americans "were free to say what they think, because they did not think what they were not free to say." [Lindblom, p. 63]

According to Lindblom: "The whole history of humankind reads in some large part as a history of impairment of inquiry: ignorance, superstition, barriers to inquiry, exile and execution of dissenters, the many intimidations of tyranny, illiteracy, the steady impositions of peer pressure, and the use of the media for propaganda, among mass manifestations. This undeniable point invalidates the careless claim that contemporary attitudes, beliefs, values and volitions are on the whole a rational product of a winnowing out process through which, over millennia and centuries, humankind comes to know what is true and valid." [p. 69]

Senator Santorum traffics in such ignorance and superstition, yet possesses the certainty and petulance of Jose Ortega y Gasset's "learned ignoramus." Thus, Santorum assures us that intellectual formation "is all about conforming our minds to the truth." [p. 388]

Forget for the moment that Santorum's "truth" includes "faith" in the virgin birth (ignoring that the Hebrew word "almah" [young girl] was mistranslated as the Greek word "parthenos" [virgin] in the Septuagint) and spiritual leadership by an infallible Pope. Has it never occurred to him that Albert Einstein never would have arrived at E=MC², had he "conformed" his mind to the scientific "truth" as it was commonly understood at the time?

It didn't occur to him, because Santorum is an intellectual thug who allows his religious faith and political ideology to create and order his facts and conclusions. For example, Santorum claims "morality…derives from the objective reality that lies at the very heart of being human." [p. 392] Yet, in his "objective reality," abortion is immoral and merits some thirty pages of the book's attention [pp. 239-268], but the occupation of Iraq and the killing of Iraqis merely constitute the bringing of "order" to freedom there—and, thus, merit just one sentence. [p. 202]

Neither do corporate greed, corporate welfare nor tax cuts for the rich merit much attention in Santorum's morality based upon objective reality. Thus, neither Enron nor Halliburton merit a word of scorn. Yet Santorum waxes indignant about the welfare programs, which liberals supposedly foisted upon America's poor and needy. Consequently, Santorum's "morality based upon objective reality" has no credibility. Yet, he seeks to impose it upon you as conservative America's "common good."

Finally, Santorum's extremism borders on the dishonest when he asserts, "the courts have slowly strangled religious freedom." [p. 108] And is it really true that college professors are much more liberal than America's general population because "tenured radicals" from the 60s now fill so many departments. Or are professors more liberal because they read more serious books?

More significantly, isn't it just a bit disingenuous, if not dishonest, to write a book titled, It Takes a Family, but totally ignore the devastating impact on American families caused by the "creative destruction" of unbridled capitalism?

Is it merely an accident that Santorum's readers will never learn, for example, the warnings contained in the 1880 Census: "The factory system necessitates the employment of women and children to an injurious extent, and consequently its tendency is to destroy family life and ties and domestic habits, and ultimately the home." [Mintz and Kellogg, p. 85] Or is patent intellectual dishonesty at work?

Unfortunately, the best one can say about Senator Rick Santorum's terrible book is this: "Not every assertion within its pages is wrong and few of his many errors merit the contempt he richly deserved and received for linking "liberal" Boston to child molestation by Catholic priests." In a word, the book is slick Rick the ideologue, not sick Rick the ideologue.

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July 11, 2005

The Media Farce Over Iran's Newly Elected President

By Walter C. Uhler

Recently, Americans have been treated to the spectacle of America's mainstream news media stumbling over itself while attempting to define the newly elected President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for American readers and viewers.

To anyone still reeling from its impotent interrogation of (and robust support for) the Bush administration's transparently spurious rationale for invading Iraq, this week's media performance was both frightening and depressing.

It began normally and professionally enough, with articles by the New York Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune (from the Los Angeles Times) on June 26, 2005, that described Ahmadinejad's background, his rapid rise to power and his "hard-line" or "ultraconservative" views and policies.

Invariably, the reports got around to his expressed determination to exercise Iran's rights to the nuclear fuel cycle under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (It's widely believed that successful completion of this cycle would provide Iran with the option to build nuclear weapons.)

Although the Times published thoughtful and nuanced articles about Iran's new president, it also published a nuanced article belied by its flagrant headline: "U.S. Challenge in Iran: Victory by Hard-Liner Could Widen Rift on Terror and Nuclear Program." "Terror" and "nuclear" are emotionally laden words, but when it comes to American-Iranian relations, they are innocuous when compared to any reference to the Americans taken hostage in 1979. Yet, the very second paragraph of that otherwise balanced article advised readers that America is now "facing a populist who came to age in the student union that took over the American Embassy in 1979."

Given Middle East expert Kenneth Pollock's observation that "the hostage crisis has left a terrible scar on the American psyche." [Pollock, The Persian Puzzle, p. 172] it was not unreasonable to expect the Times to accompany any reference to the hostage crisis with an explanation about why Iranians chose the American Embassy in November 1979. Yet, it failed to do so.

But, the June 26, 2005, CBS Evening News' report on Ahmadinejad was far worse. Not only did it serve up a script containing inflammatory half-truths about the date and reasons behind U.S.-Iranian antagonism, it also provided viewers with visual reminders of the hostage crisis. The inflammatory half-truths went as follows: "America and Iran have been at odds since 1979, when Iranian students, followers of Ayatollah Khomeini, seized 52 U.S. Embassy Staff and held them captive for 449 days, before releasing them."

Like the Times' article, the CBS report also failed to explain why the American embassy was seized. Thus, Americans were reminded about the embassy seizure by two prominent news sources, but neither explained that the Iranians seized the American Embassy, in part, because they suspected that President Carter and the deposed Iranian dictator, Muhammad Reza Shah, were planning another American-led coup.

Another coup? Yes, in 1953 the Eisenhower administration gave the CIA the green light to topple the constitutional government of democratically elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadiq and replace it with the dictatorial rule of Muhammad Reza Shah. Thus, America and Iran have been at odds since 1953 (not 1979), when America, not Iran, was the offending instigator.

Moreover, as Dilip Hiro recently has written, "The CIA-engineered overthrow of Mussadiq's constitutional government…blocked the development of Iran as a multi-party, democratic state." {Hiro, Iranian Labyrinth, p. 353]. Americans should keep Hiro's observation in mind whenever Bush administration officials decry the absence of democracy in Iran.

Yet, as Pollock correctly concludes, the embassy seizure was more than a precautionary move. "It was an act of vengeance for the 1953 coup, designed to humiliate the United States, to cause pain to the American people, and to assuage the angry psychological scars that the Iranian people still bore from that event." [p.155]

Unfortunately, it was the very absence of such obligatory historical context that permitted the news cycle on Ahmadinejad to deteriorate into farce.

Consider the July 1, 2005, front page of the New York Times. It juxtaposed two photos, one recently taken of Ahmadinejad, the other of someone resembling a younger Ahmadinejad—but who's seen escorting a hostage. The accompanying headline reads: "U.S. Pursuing Reports That Link Iranian to Embassy Seizure in '79."

That article prompted me to send the following "letter to the editor" email to the Times:

To the Editor:

Even if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took part in the embassy seizure in 1979, as some former hostages contend, both the Bush administration and America's news media have an obligation to explain precisely what provoked the event that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called "the second [Iranian] revolution, greater than the first."

The first revolution in February 1979 was led by Khomeini and overthrew some twenty-five years of dictatorial rule by Muhammad Reza Shah. But the Shah ruled for twenty-five years because the Eisenhower administration gave the CIA the green light to implement Operation Ajax in 1953, and thus engineer the coup that toppled the constitutional government of democratically elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadiq. Eisenhower moved because the British government, fearing the nationalization of its Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, persuaded him that Mussadiq's rule was leading to a Communist takeover. (Two birds of a feather, even then!)

In fact, because the 1953 coup and the 1979 Embassy seizure were so closely connected in the minds of Iranians, Khomeini refused to release the hostages until Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President—thus demonstrating Iran's ability to topple an American leader (Jimmy Carter).

Thus, lest the embassy seizure be manipulated to magnify the threat to America posed by Iran's nuclear program, both the Bush administration and America's news media are obligated to give Americans the complete story.

Walter C. Uhler

Apparently the Times didn't find my letter "fit to print."

Unfortunately, that Times' article was representative of a brief, but widespread, media feeding frenzy that sent U.S. Representatives rushing to support new sanctions under The Iran Freedom Support Act.

Yet, in slightly more than 24 four hours, the farce had ended. No, the farce didn't implode because some competent reporter told the full story behind the taking of the hostages; it collapsed because authoritative doubts and denials rendered a link between the two photos improbable.

Was it too much to ask that the mainstream media withhold these stories about Ahmadinejad, until the allegations of former American hostages could be investigated? Why the urgency? Did the out-of-context references to the embassy seizure, respectively published and broadcast by the Times and the CBS Evening News on June 26, 2005, cause the news cycle to degenerate into unverified claims that Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage takers of 1979?

Regardless of how these questions are answered, the damage has been done. For, just as the attacks on September 11 rendered many Americans susceptible to spurious arguments for invading Iraq, so, too, has the media's irresponsible reporting of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's involvement in the embassy seizure generated yet more susceptibility to political manipulation by the Bush administration.

Although it's now Iran, it nevertheless appears to be "Déjà vu all over again."

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The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush

By Walter C. Uhler

In my article "Democracy or dominion?" (recently republished in Annual Editions: World Politics 05/06), much attention was devoted to the severely impoverished civic education that impairs most Americans, and thus their democracy. Putting aside the thoughtless, often inbred, devotion of so many rightwing Republican Party stalwarts, such tenacious civic impairment constitutes the most formidable barrier preventing the impeachment of President George W. Bush.

Americans are famous for their disdain of any education or learning that isn't practical or doesn't lead to a job. Unfortunately, it shows—often as civic impairment. Perhaps the most persuasive and depressing evidence of such civic impairment came from a 1996 study published by Delli Caprini, Michael X. and Scott Keeter.

Having examined more than 2000 factual "pop quiz" political knowledge questions given to the American public since the 1930s, these researchers found that "only 13 percent of the adult public could correctly answer 75 percent or more of the questions, and only 41 percent of the public could correctly answer 50 percent or more of the items." ¹ Thus, when it came to political knowledge, most Americans flunked. Unfortunately, the authors also concluded: "Americans are no better informed about political matters than they were 50 years ago." ²

Want specifics? According to a study published in 1969 "two in every three Americans would not recognize the Bill of Rights even if it were read to them." ³ Another study, published in 1985, found that "nearly 40 percent of one survey sample believed Israel to be an Arab nation." ⁴

In 1987 only 8 percent of Americans could identify the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1990 only 34 percent could identify America's Secretary of State. In 1995 only 27 percent knew that America spent more of its budget on Medicare than foreign aid. In 1999 only 12 percent knew who presided over the impeachment trial of President Clinton. ⁵

"Perhaps the most disturbing of all poll results, however, was revealed in March 2003, the month the United States invaded Iraq. An astounding 51 percent of those polled answered in the affirmative when CNN/USA Today pollsters asked: 'Do you think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks, or not?'" ⁶ Where were they two months earlier, when President Bush admitted that he could not claim a direct link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 terrorists?

Unfortunately for all of those 1,700 plus American soldiers and up to 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians subsequently killed in Iraq, no less than 84 percent of that ignorant 51 percent supported America's illegal and immoral invasion. Thus, Americans' civic impairment has proven to be a menace—to themselves and the world.

Moreover, one cannot explain Bush's reelection—given his administration's first term of lies and incompetence concerning Iraq—without turning to America's civic impairment. It appears to have produced the perfect storm predicted by H.L. Mencken in 1920: "As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright moron." ⁷

Unfortunately, by abandoning its watchdog role after 9/11, America's mainstream news media played a major role in abetting Bush's reelection. Although news articles did report the incompetence undermining the Bush administration's occupation of Iraq, few news organizations conducted serious investigations into the mountain of lies Bush officials told to justify Iraq's invasion.

Even now, with the publication of a "smoking gun" (Great Britain's secret Downing Street Memo of 23 July 2002, which asserts "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. BUT THE INTELLIGENCE AND THE FACTS WERE BEING FIXED AROUND THE POLICY" ⁸ [author's emphasis]), few newspapers have seen fit to report on it, let alone publish it. ⁹

The performance of The Philadelphia Inquirer is not atypical. Although the Downing Street memo story was first published by the Sunday Times on May 1, 2005 and reported by the Inquirer's parent company, Knight Ridder, on May 6th, the poor saps who rely solely on "The Stinky Inky" ¹⁰ for their news didn't read about it until June 8, 2005.

Worse still, the Inky's front-page article on that date, "'02 memo on Iraq is rebutted," must have caused countless readers to ask: "What memo?" Thus it undercut the memo's significance by first reporting it in the context of a news conference where President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair disavowed its content. Curious Inky readers might have asked why the memo wasn't considered newsworthy until Bush and Blair were forced to address it at a nationally televised news conference. Why didn't Inky's newsroom or the opinion page editors see fit to write about it earlier?

Predictably, on June 12th, three days after David Lindorff (writing for Counterpunch) exposed the Inky's bootlicking negligence, the Inky finally ran both a competent news article on the memo and an incompetent opinion piece by Chris Satullo.

Satullo's column would have his Inky readers believe that the Downing Street memo has gained no traction because, "after Sept 11, people were angry and they were scared. They wanted a leader who would not dither, who would just go out and kick some butt. Bush was that guy, in spades. If it turns out he kicked the wrong butt, then screwed up the aftermath to a bloody fare-thee-well, well, to many people that matters less than how he made them feel when they were reeling."

That's quite an indictment of the American public. But it doesn't wash. The obvious response to such nonsense is: "What about the international law that places the burden of justifying any preemptive war on the country about to initiate such a war?" Doesn't it place a high standard on pre-war intelligence? And doesn't the news media have an obligation, in a democracy, to inform the American people, in order that they might prevent their president from kicking the "wrong" butt!

Satullo's thinking implies that the newspapers didn't report the news about the memo, because the American public wasn't interested. Yet, everyone knows that the news media is supposed to serve as the public's watchdog. Moreover, Satullo's thinking ignores the relentless and assiduous attempts by the White House to shape what the news media reports. Is it any wonder that, with lame cover-ups like Satullo's, the public's trust in newspapers and television news has reached "an all-time low this year." ¹¹

Yet, if poor civic education and a supine news media render Americans incapable of preventing political malfeasance, American democracy still appears capable of correcting the mistakes it couldn't prevent. After all, it took only 250 plus years to correct the evil of slavery. But now Americans know better. So, too, do many Americans now regret the three centuries of genocidal war that whites conducted against Native Americans.

Given that record of glacial movement toward self-correction, we might count ourselves fortunate that, a mere two years after the invasion of Iraq, polls already suggest that a majority of Americans believe the Bush administration's invasion was a mistake. Unfortunately, there's little evidence to suggest popular support for impeaching President Bush, removing him from office, and putting him on trial for war crimes. Yet, notwithstanding the best efforts of the mainstream news media to ignore or bury it, the evidence supports precisely that course of action.

THE EVIDENCE:

According to Mickey Herskowitz (a friend of the Bush family, biographer of Prescott Bush and former ghostwriter for George W. Bush), Dubya "was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999." ¹² "Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult for a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars." ¹³

A second source, publisher and editor Osama Siblani, substantiated Herskowitz's claim. In May 2000, Mr. Siblani met Mr. Bush in Michigan and heard him claim that he was "going to take him [Saddam] out," after he became president." ¹⁴

Thus, after the US Supreme Court handed him the presidency and despite numerous warnings from CIA Director George Tenet and counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke about the danger posed by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorists, Bush and the "principals" of his National Security Council (NSC) proceeded to hold numerous meetings devoted to "regime change" in Iraq.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice told the very first meeting of Bush's NSC: "Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region [i.e., the Middle East]." ¹⁵ Two days later, on February 1, 2001, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld told the NSC principals: "Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that aligned with U.S. interests." ¹⁶ When the NSC met again, on February 5th, each department "principal" was tasked with increasing its collection of intelligence concerning Iraq's WMD.

Nevertheless, as late as May 16, 2001 CIA Director Tenet was telling the NSC: "It was still only speculation whether Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or was starting any weapons-building programs." ¹⁷ According to one of the "principals," Paul O'Neill, CIA Director "Tenet was clearly being very careful to say here's the little we know and the great deal we don't. That wouldn't change, 'and I read those CIA reports for two years.'" ¹⁸

Yet, notwithstanding O'Neill's assertion that the Bush administration lacked hard intelligence about both Iraq's WMD and ties to al Qaeda, in late February 2001, "documents were being prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency...mapping Iraq's oil fields and exploration areas and listing companies that might be interested in leveraging this precious asset." ¹⁹

In fact, many of the 32 meetings held by Bush's "principals" before 9/11 were devoted to Iraq. But, just one was devoted to Osama bin Landen and al Qaeda. Moreover, "between May 31 and July 26, 2001, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley convened the [NSC] deputies four times to work the Iraq policy.... On August 1, the group presented a Top Secret paper to the principals entitled, "A Liberation Strategy." ²⁰

Consequently, who's surprised to discover that, when al Qeada's terrorists struck America on September 11th, Bush administration officials immediately would use the attack as a pretext for war against Iraq?

On September 11th, Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, demanded "the best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein]" Then, ominously, he added: "Go massive....Sweep it all up. Things related and not." ²¹ Thus commenced the dishonesty. The very next day, after hearing Richard Clarke's doubts about Saddam's involvement, an irritated President Bush ordered him to look at the evidence again.

On September 15, 2001 Ms. Rice asked NSC members whether the US should plan to attack elsewhere "as an insurance policy in case things in Afghanistan went bad." ²² Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz jumped on the question to recommend attacking Iraq. It "was a brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily." ²³ (For that and other similarly horrendous errors in judgment, Bush subsequently awarded Wolfowitz the position of president of the World Bank)

Having yet to lose his integrity, Secretary of State Colin Powell objected: "Nobody could look at Iraq and say it was responsible for September 11." ²⁴ Nevertheless, on September 17th, Bush told the NSC principals: "I believe Iraq was involved [in September 11]." ²⁵ (Remember, in January 2003, Bush admitted he could not make such a claim.)

Thus, on November 21, 2001, Bush asked Rumsfeld, "What kind of war plan do you have for Iraq?" ²⁶ He then ordered Rumsfeld to prepare to attack Iraq, but also requested: "Could this be done on a basis that would not be terribly noticeable?" ²⁷

As Bob Woodward demonstrates in his book, Plan of Attack, General Tommy Franks spent much of 2002 refining just such a war plan. After all, on February 16, 2002, President Bush signed a Top Secret intelligence order for regime change. ²⁸ Three days later Franks revealed just how determined Bush was, when he told Senator Bob Graham: "Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan" because "military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq." ²⁹ Franks then added: "The Predators are being relocated." ³⁰

Thus, as early as February 2002, the Bush administration was so committed to a war with Iraq that it was willing to withdraw from Afghanistan critical resources necessary to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, and capture Osama bin Laden. As Senator Graham had concluded: "someone in the White House had put Saddam Hussein ahead of Osama bin Laden." ³¹

While General Franks was refining plans for an invasion, the Bush administration unleashed a massive two-part campaign to mobilize American support for the invasion. First was Bush's "axis of evil" speech, delivered in January. Although Iraq was Bush's objective, "Rice and Hadley were aware of the secret war planning on Iraq, and they worried that singling out Iraq ... would appear a declaration of war." ³² "So she and Hadley suggested adding other countries." ³³

Nevertheless, conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer correctly understood the real message: "Iraq is what this speech was about. If there was a serious internal debate within the administration over what to do about Iraq, that debate is over. The speech was just short of a declaration of war." ³⁴ (Recall that, only a month later, resources were being shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq).

In April, Bush publicly committed himself to "regime change" in Iraq. Yet, who in America's corridors of power had the courage to suggest, as did the British Attorney General in the Downing Street memo, that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action." ³⁵ Yet, it was in April that Tony Blair visited Crawford Texas and signed on to "military action to bring about regime change." ³⁶

Blair set conditions for British military action: "Efforts had to be made to construct a coalition... [and] shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine Crisis was quiescent, and the options for action to eliminate Iraq's WMD through UN weapons inspectors had been exhausted." ³⁷

With Blair in harness, the Royal Air Force and U.S. aircraft "doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq." ³⁸ According to an article by Michael Smith in The Sunday Times UK, "the attacks were intensified in May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war." ³⁹

The "allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001." ⁴⁰ The primary objective was "to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war," but Tommy Franks "has since admitted this operation was designed to 'degrade' Iraqi air defense in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf War." ⁴¹

Thus, when Sir Richard Dearlove (the head of MI6, Britain's CIA) reported on July 23, 2002 that "there was a perceptible change of attitude" in Washington; one in which "military action was now seen as inevitable;" ⁴² presumably he was signaling something more massive than the secret intelligence operations Bush approved in February and the massive bombing that commenced in May.

The Bush administration had reached the same conclusion as Britain's head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett: "The only way to overthrow it [Saddam's regime] was likely to be by massive military action." ⁴³

Based on the devastating information contained in the July 23, 2002, secret Downing Street memo (which updated and corrected the Cabinet Office Paper of July 21, 2002), we now know that Tony Blair and his principals knew that the Bush administration believed massive military action was inevitable. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." ⁴⁴

Unfortunately, the fixing of intelligence and facts was just beginning. First, came the horrendous legal advice in mid-August from White Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who "concluded that the authority to invade Iraq rested on three legs: the 1991 [Congressional] resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf war, a Congressional resolution enacted just after the Sept. 11 attacks and the president's role as commander in chief." ⁴⁵

Gonzales' legal advice contrasted sharply with Lord Goldsmith's. Not only did the British attorney general conclude, "the desire for regime change was not a legal basis for military action," he also asserted that "there were three legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention and UNSC [United Nations Security Council] authorization." ⁴⁶

Although the Bush administration subsequently employed both self-defense and humanitarian intervention (to bring freedom to Iraq) as justifications for its invasion, in July 2002, Lord Goldsmith had concluded that neither applied.⁴⁷

Even worse was the fixing of intelligence by Vice President Cheney. It commenced the second stage of the Bush administration's massive propaganda campaign and certainly answered Britain's objection that "little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action." ⁴⁸

As Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman reported in "The Radical" (The New Republic, Dec. 1 & 8, 2003), "Cheney came to see the intelligence establishment as flawed and corrupted by political biases hopelessly at odds with his goals." Moreover, from the perspective of the Office of the Vice President, "the CIA—with its caveat-riddled position on Iraqi WMD and its refusal to connect Saddam to al Qaeda—was an outright obstacle to the invasion of Iraq." ⁴⁹

Cheney was determined "to go beyond the typical information channels in the bureaucracy." ⁵⁰ And he did. Speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002, Cheney informed his audience: "The Iraq regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents." Post-invasion searches for weapons proved him wrong, which is bad enough. But did he lie?

Cheney also asserted: "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." Again, post-invasion searches for such efforts proved Cheney to be dead wrong, which is bad enough. But did he lie?

Consider the evidence Cheney used for his assertions. Cheney cited the first-hand testimony of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel Hassan. But note, Kamel could not have provided any testimony to support Cheney's assertion of "now," because Kamel had been executed in 1996.

More seriously, Cheney provided his VFW listeners with an incomplete and dishonest account of Kamel's testimony. Cheney failed to tell them that Kamel also claimed: "All chemical weapons were destroyed. I ordered the destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed." ⁵¹ Post-invasion searches found no weapons and, thus, lent credence to this crucial testimony.

But, then, Cheney was a serial abuser of intelligence. First, he eagerly swallowed the bogus intelligence provided by "sources" associated with Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC). In fact, in the fall of 2002, he was complaining that "We're getting ready to go to war, and we're nickel-and-diming the INC at a time when they're providing us with unique intelligence on Iraqi WMD." ⁵²

Because such bogus intelligence fit with Cheney's obsession for regime change, he used it to badger the professional intelligence analysts who had long discounted such INC sources. Thus, in mid-2002 Cheney made unprecedented trips to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. And when analysts wrote something about Iraq's WMD that didn't suit him, he bombarded them "with a thousand questions," including "Why are you disregarding sources that are saying the opposite." ⁵³

More problematic was the special intelligence briefing that Cheney and Tenet gave to senior member of Congress in September 2002. Using flimsy evidence (still being debated then within the intelligence community), which indicated that an Iraqi procurement agent intended to include the purchase of topographic mapping software of the U.S. in his larger purchase of autopilots and gyroscopes to outfit Hussein's unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), Cheney and Tenet characterized that evidence as the "smoking gun" that demonstrated Iraq's intention to target America with its UAV's.⁵⁴

Members of Congress might have been less impressed, had the two visitors mentioned the questions still surrounding this piece of intelligence. And they might have been curious to know that the Air Force (perhaps best equipped to speak to such matters) dissented, claiming: "the small size of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance." ⁵⁵

Americans need to keep Cheney's abuses in mind whenever Bush administration officials, or Republican-controlled investigative committees, blame duly constituted U.S. intelligence agencies for all the bad intelligence concerning Iraq's WMD.

They also should keep in mind that, in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice exaggerated (or lied) when she falsely asserted that aluminum tubes sought by Iraq could "only" be used in uranium centrifuges. In fact, Rice already knew that experts in some government agencies doubted that the tubes were intended for centrifuges.

Yet, she compounded her false assertion by warning Americans that they should not wait for "smoking gun" evidence of Iraq's WMD, lest it come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

More false assertions—about Iraq's ties to al Qaeda, unmanned aerial vehicles capable of dispersing chemical or biological agents, mobile labs producing germ agents, and uranium from Africa—would be made by administration officials up until the eve of America's invasion. The crowning moment, however, came on February 5, 2003 when Colin Powell regaled the United Nations and the world with one false assertion after another

Thus, the sad reality was this: Official intelligence, often qualified and measured, but occasionally half-baked, was supplemented or exaggerated—in a word, "fixed"—by members of the Bush administration, especially Cheney. One only needs to compare the classified version of the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate with unclassified 25-page abridgement, the so-called "White Paper," to see how the latter was fixed.

According to Senator Bob Graham, "It was as if the unclassified version selectively put forward all the arguments in favor of invading Iraq, while leaving the concerns to the much smaller audience of people with access to the classified version. In fact,,,it was two different messages, directed at two different audiences." ⁵⁶

But that's not all. Cheney's VFW kickoff of stage two of the massive propaganda campaign came just three days before President Bush signed a top secret National Security Presidential Directive ("Iraq: Goals, Objectives, and Strategy") that formally committed the U.S. to the invasion of Iraq.

One element of the strategy was "to work with the Iraqi opposition to demonstrate that we are liberating, not invading Iraq." The final element of the strategy was "to demonstrate that the United States is prepared to play a sustained role in the reconstruction of a post-Saddam Iraq." ⁵⁷

Consequently, when one considers the actual shifting of resources from Afghanistan to Iraq in February, Blair's April buy-in to military action, the stepped up bombing in May, the Bush administration's July shift to a massive invasion and President Bush's top secret National Security Presidential Directive in August (which mentions an invasion); it not only appears that Donald Rumsfeld lied to Congress on September 19, 2002, when he denied that the Bush administration had already decided that Saddam had to be overthrown, it also appears that President Bush lied as well,

On October 2, 2002, while addressing Congressional leaders who had just presented their resolution on Iraq, Bush asserted: "None of us here today desire to see military conflict." He lied. Who can forget that, in the moments "before he gave his national address announcing that the war had begun, a camera caught Bush pumping his fist as though instead of initiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home run. 'Feels good,' he said" ⁵⁸

On October 7, 2002, President Bush attempted to influence Congress as it was deliberating what became Public Law 107-243, "Authorization for Use of Military Forces against Iraq Resolution." Bush falsely linked Iraq and al Qeada (which the intelligence community heatedly disputed) and cited Iraq's chemical weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles and high strength aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons as reasons why Saddam Hussein must disarm, by force if necessary. In fact, Saddam had none of these weapons of mass destruction.

But he also said, "I hope this will not require military action." Once again he lied. And he lied yet again on October 16, 2002 when he told the American people: "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary." ⁵⁹

If intentionally deceiving the U.S. Congress is an impeachable offence, then President Bush deserves impeachment—because every time he assured congressmen that he hoped to avoid war, he deceived them. And if commencing war without receiving Congressional approval is an impeachable offense—which it certainly is—then President Bush merits impeachment. For, strictly speaking, Bush took America to war in May 2002 when he authorized the intense bombings designed to degrade Iraq defense capacity, if not provoke a response by Saddam.

Finally, as the August 2002 top secret National Security Presidential Directive proves, Bush had committed America to an invasion of Iraq before seeking Congressional approval.

The evidence presented above contains examples demonstrating "fixed" intelligence. Moreover, we know the following:

(1) Cheney had contempt for the intelligence establishment,
(2) Cheney abused intelligence,
(3) Cheney and his crew in the Office of the Vice President pressured intelligence analysts,
(4) Notwithstanding its obsession with Iraq, the Bush administration never requested the CIA to conduct a full blown National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (the October NIE on Iraq's WMD was conducted at the request of three U.S. Senators),
(5) Although the secret October NIE was hastily crafted, it contained many caveats not found in the alarmist unclassified White Paper and
(6) When, on December 21, 2002, Bush was given "'The Case' on WMD as it might be presented to a jury with Top Secret security clearance," he turned to Tenet and said: "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?" ⁶⁰ Which compels two questions: "Why another intelligence briefing after the NIE?" and "What did Bush make of the NIE intelligence used to persuade Congress to agree to war?"

All six pieces of evidence indicate contempt for serious intelligence. And that contempt freed the "principals" to "fix" the intelligence according to their own preconceived biases. To the extent that such "fixed" intelligence influenced Congress to vote for war, Bush must be impeached.

The decision to go to war also was made before President Bush sought the approval of the United Nations. Absent an imminent threat or actual attack, going to war without UN approval is a war crime. Thus it's important to recall Lord Goldsmith's warning that "if the sponsors of the U.S.-UK draft resolution sought a vote at the [UN Security] council and failed to get it, serious doubts would be cast on the legality of military action against Iraq. This explained the joint decision of Blair, Bush and [Spain's] Aznar to withdraw their draft resolution from council."⁶¹ Better to be suspected of war crimes than branded a flagrant war criminal.

Given the information provided above, who can doubt that talk about the threat posed by Iraq's WMD was a smokescreen to disguise Bush and Cheney's long-held obsession to take Saddam out. Consequently, after his impeachment and removal from office, President Bush and his co-conspirators should be prosecuted for war crimes. --posted June 24, 2005

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May 5, 2005

The 60th Anniversary of VE Day, Bush's Visit to Russia and America's Hypocrisy about "Spheres of Influence"

By Walter C. Uhler

As President Bush prepares to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the May 8–9, 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany to American, British and Soviet forces, Americans might well use the occasion to finally acknowledge the preponderant role played by the Soviet Union's Red Army in ensuring Germany's defeat. It may have saved Western civilization. As historian Robert Service acknowledges in his recent biography of Joseph Stalin, were it not for the Soviet victory in World War II, "perhaps Germany would permanently have bestridden the back of the European continent."¹

True, Stalin's overtures to Hitler and the consequent signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact on 24 August 1939 facilitated Hitler's invasion of Poland, which precipitated World War II. But Stalin turned to Hitler only after it became clear that France and Great Britain saw little value in the anti-Hitler alliance sought by the Soviet Union.

And precisely because Stalin had few illusions about Hitler's long-term plans to transform Untermenschen Slavs into slaves serving Germans, he viewed the pact as a means to gain time to prepare the Soviet military for war. The pact also contained secret provisions that allowed the Soviet Union to gobble up eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia. But to Stalin, such territorial expansion was primarily a means to establish a Soviet-controlled buffer between Germany and the Soviet Union.

But, while Stalin schemed to delay war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was courting war. Thus, "six months before Pearl Harbor, lacking a declaration of war and without the knowledge of Congress or the American people, the Commander in Chief gave the Atlantic Fleet approval to change from defensive to offensive operations"² against German and Italian warships. Moreover, one month before Pearl Harbor, FDR "polled his cabinet about 'whether the people would back us up in case we struck at Japan down there."³ One week later, General George Marshall told a group of bureau chiefs and news correspondents: "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan, whereas the Japs believe we are preparing only to defend the Phillipines [sic]."⁴

In June 1940, Roosevelt had told military planners that he imagined America at war, "but with naval and air forces only."⁵ He wished "to use the nation's economic and technological resources rather than ground forces" and hoped to "have allies bear the brunt of any fighting;"⁶ a hope that seemed quite plausible after Soviet forces joined the war in June 1941.

Consequently, FDR was quite willing to overrule State Department officials who opposed unconditional aid to the Soviet Union. And overrule them he did, as soon as he became convinced (notwithstanding contrary advice from his military attach� in Moscow) that such aid would not be wasted on an ally incapable of withstanding the German onslaught.

Thus, he was in complete agreement with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, when the latter asserted (one week before Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union): "Should this new war break out we shall of course give all encouragement and any help we can spare to the Russians, following the principle that Hitler is the foe we have to beat."⁷

By late 1941, with the realization "that Congress was not likely to approve the creation of a land army of the size deemed necessary to defeat Germany," it was becoming clear that "the best—perhaps only—way to defeat Germany would be to maintain the Soviet front."⁸ Thus, on 7 November 1941, FDR placed aid to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program.

But, according to a noted historian, David M. Glantz, "Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make a difference between defeat and victory in 1941-1942."⁹ Instead, credit for the Soviet Union's survival during that period must go to the waves of Red Army soldiers mobilized for battle.

Nevertheless, as the war continued, Lend-Lease food, clothing and raw materials helped countless Soviet citizens while easing the burden on the Soviet economy. More significantly, "without Lend-Lease trucks, rail engines, and railroad cars, every Soviet offensive would have stalled at an earlier stage, outrunning its logistical tail in a matter of days."¹⁰

Yet, Lend-Lease was far from decisive. According to Glantz, had Stalin and his commanders been left to their own devices, it "might have taken 12 to 18 months longer to finish off the Wehrmacht," but "the ultimate result would probably have been the same, except that Soviet soldiers could have waded at France's Atlantic beaches."¹¹

The Red Army's liquidation of Germany's Sixth Army (147,000 dead, 91,000 prisoners) at Stalingrad in February 1943 destroyed the myth of German invincibility and marked the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe. But that idea did not register around the world until Soviet forces gave Germany's Blitzkrieg its worst defeat at Kursk, in July 1943.

Perhaps the very pointed assessment by John Erickson said it best: "The portents of the outcome at Kursk were enormous. Demonstrably the Red Army could strike for Berlin 'with no outside assistance,' setting off alarm bells in the West. The 'Second Front' was finally agreed in November 1943."¹²

Recently, Russian historian Valentin Falin made the assertion that, as a consequence of the Wehrmacht's strategic defeat at Kursk, "American and British chiefs of staff, as well as Churchill and Roosevelt held a meeting in Quebec on August 20. They discussed whether the United States and Britain should withdraw from the anti-Hitler coalition and unite with Nazi generals for a joint war against the Soviet Union."¹³

This author has found no evidence in the secondary literature to support Falin's allegation. And, in fact, a second front against Hitler was established on D-Day and the ensuing Battle of Normandy. But what Americans need to realize is, notwithstanding films like "Saving Private Ryan" and the histories written by Stephen Ambrose, historian Norman Davies probably was correct when he claimed that "the D-Day landings would be the sole operation fought by western armies that might scrape into the war's top 10 battles."¹⁴

Davies adds: "In one single operation in 1944, when demolishing the Army Group Mitte in Byelorussia, Marshall Rokossovsky destroyed a collection of Wehrmacht divisions equivalent to the entire German deployment on the western front."¹⁵ And he quotes German sources that "state unequivocally that 75–80% of Germany's losses were incurred on the eastern front."¹⁶

World War II claimed the lives of some 27 million Soviet citizens. It claimed the lives of some 13 million Red Army soldiers. As Robert Service notes, "Stalin was not innocent of blame: his policies of imprisonment and deportation had added to the total."¹⁷ Moreover, countless Soviet citizens died due to Stalin's poor preparation for war. Yet, "no fewer than 1,710 Soviet towns had been obliterated by the Germans along with around seventy thousand [70,000] villages. Even where the Wehrmacht failed to set fire to entire townships, it succeeded in burning down hospitals, radio stations and libraries."¹⁸

It's in light of such suffering and devastation that it's safe to say that American war deaths numbered a "mere" 400,000. But it's also safe to conclude that, thanks to the heroics of the Red Army, Roosevelt got the type of war he wanted in Europe.

Professor Davies knows full well that when FDR met with Stalin at Teheran in November/December 1943, Roosevelt secured Stalin's agreement to join the war against Japan and to participate in a post-war international organization, based upon FDR's concept of the "four policemen."¹⁹ But, in exchange—as Mary Glantz notes in her recent book, FDR and the Soviet Union—"Roosevelt acquiesced to Stalin's demands for territorial acquisition and the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in eastern Europe."²⁰

Ms. Glantz makes two additional relevant points about spheres on influence: (1) It was "abundantly clear" to FDR and Churchill "that the Red Army would liberate large chunks of eastern and central Europe with or without Allied assistance. First and foremost, this included Poland and much of the Balkans."²¹ (2) "When Roosevelt and Churchill accepted the surrender of the Italian government in September 1943 and welcomed Charles de Gaulle as the leader of the French, they also accepted the principle that liberating countries would retain the dominant influence in the countries they liberated."²²

Davies also knows that Churchill met with Stalin in Moscow in October 1944 to broker post-war spheres of influence in the Balkans. For example Churchill offered Stalin 90% control over Rumania in return for his agreement to permit Great Britain 90% control over Greece. Churchill offered differing percentages for Yugoslavia, Hungary and Bulgaria. Davies also knows that FDR approved of that "naughty document."²³

Yet, because Stalin had been "habitually given to mass murder"²⁴ Davies cannot reconcile himself to the Soviet Union's "liberation" of Eastern Europe (known to most of us as resubjugation). He cannot reconcile himself with the sad observation of Thucydides' Athenians: "For we both alike know that into the discussion of human affairs the question of justice enters only where the pressure of necessity is equal, and that the powerful exact what they can and the weak grant what they must."²⁵

But, Davies might ask himself whether the two Polish, two Bulgarian and three Romanian armies that accompanied the Red Army into Eastern Europe to ensure "regime change" in those countries differed so much from President Bush's "coalition of the willing," which conducted an illegal, immoral invasion to bring about "regime change" in Iraq.

First, Davies would have to concede that Stalin had more legitimate security reasons for his "liberation" than did Bush. Second, although America's imperialism normally is enforced by periodic interventions, rather than the heavy-handed occupation that the Soviet Union inflicted on Eastern Europe, the Bush administration is building fourteen permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. And like the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe, it is a safe bet that American soldiers will be occupying those bases fifty years from now.

Anyone who doubts that Iraq is in America's sphere of influence simply needs to recall that, soon after the invasion, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz issued a memorandum that restricted the bidding on contracts to rebuild Iraq to "companies from the U.S., Iraq, coalition partners and force contributing nations."

But, if America often demands its spheres of influence (note especially the Monroe Doctrine), when FDR died and his successor, President Harry Truman, found himself in sole possession of the atomic bomb, the new president saw no need to recognize the Soviet Union's sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

It was Truman, in the wake of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, who asserted: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help the Russians and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances."²⁶ Thus, not only was Truman out of step with FDR's decision to bet on the Red Army, such rhetoric fueled Stalin's suspicions about why the Allies delayed so long in establishing a second front.

According to Mary Glantz, soon after FDR's death, his ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, returned to Washington specifically to warn Truman "the Soviet Union was violating the Yalta agreements, especially with regard to Poland. He advised the president that the United States had to take a more forceful stance toward the Kremlin. In short, Harriman persuaded the president to adopt the very course that Roosevelt had been struggling against throughout the war."²⁷

Thus, whereas FDR was not willing "to risk postwar cooperation with the Soviet Union over the Polish issue,²⁸ Truman was. Not only did Truman make Poland a bigger issue, on 12 March 1947 he appeared before a joint session of Congress to request $400 million in assistance to Greece and Turkey. In what came to be called the Truman Doctrine, the president declared his determination to resist aggressive communism. According to Melvyn P. Leffler, "the president dramatized the situation to transform public attitudes and win support for a new initiative."²⁹

Truman's speech had the effect of "framing" the Cold War. "By defining the enemy as inveterately hostile, it eliminated the prospect for compromise and accommodation."³⁰ Moreover, by framing perceptions of the Kremlin, officials were relieved "of the need to try to reconcile their diverse geopolitical and economic goals abroad with their desire to get along with the Kremlin. Policymakers need not agonize over the problems of accommodating legitimate Soviet interests; the Soviets had none. Policymakers need not scrutinize avenues for compromise; it was futile. Having identified the Kremlin as a totalitarian foe akin to Nazi Germany, they could adopt a strategy to thwart the growth of Soviet power in peacetime or defeat it in wartime."³¹

But the Cold War began in earnest with the 5 June 1947 announcement of the Marshall Plan. Not only would it solidify a "Western block against the Soviet Union," but Marshall also "intended to undermine Soviet hegemony over the countries of eastern Europe by providing them with American financial help."³² According to Robert Service, "moderation in Soviet foreign policy came to a halt. Thus began the Cold War."³³

And thus commenced some fifty years of ideologically inspired amnesia in the West, especially America, about the heroics of the Red Army during World War II.

On May 9, 2005, President Bush will be presented with a golden opportunity to give proper credit to the Red Army's heroics, even if he fails to mention FDR's willingness to trade U.S. technology and machinery—and recognition of the Soviet Union's legitimate post-war sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

But don't bet on it. After all, an important member of his cabinet, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been associated with the most egregious of policies advocated by America's right-wing extremists (and surreptitiously practiced by the Truman administration) during the early years of the Cold War—rolling back the Iron Curtain.³⁴

In late September or early October of 2002, while serving as Bush's national security advisor, Ms Rice attempted to persuade members of the House of Representatives of the necessity of the September 2002 National Security Strategy, which she played the major role in writing.

The new strategy emphasized preemptive attacks, rather than allowing dangerous threats to gather. In reality the strategy was advocating preventive war, which is illegal under international law, except in three specific instances.³⁵ Yet, as Ms. Rice attempted to make her case for waging war against a country that had not first attacked the United States, a Democrat asked her whether America should have invaded the Soviet Union in 1948 to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. According to Time magazines account of this conversation, Ms. Rice responded: "In light of 50 years of bondage of Eastern Europe, that was probably a reasonable thing to do."³⁶

Although such right-wing revisionism seems astounding when coming from a person who actually specialized in the study of Russia, and although U.S. representatives quickly assured the Russian Foreign Ministry that Ms. Rice made no such statement, Rice's statement rings true. Not only because the Bush administration dishonestly seizes on anything that will justify current policies, but also because so many Americans, including Americans who should know better, have forgotten the Red Army's World War II heroics and FDR's willingness to tolerate a Soviet sphere of interest in the joint pursuit of world peace.



A slightly revised and updated version of this article will be presented at the 14th Annual Russian-American Seminar (of which RAISA is a co-sponsor) to be held at St. Petersburg University during May 17-24, 2005. Endnotes to this article will be provided upon request.

posted April 21, 2005

The Stinky INKY: As The Philadelphia Inquirer Placates Its Right-Wing Readers, Its Quality Deteriorates

By Walter C. Uhler

I've been reading The Philadelphia Inquirer since I moved into the Philadelphia region in 1976. For good or bad, it's been my local paper. And although I've never confused it with the serious national newspapers—The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Washington Post—the Inquirer's Sports Page was what I turned to before anything else. Thus I often read the rest of the Inquirer, especially it's front-page section, its Op-ed/Commentary page and its book reviews before turning to the more serious newspapers.

Eventually I commenced writing to and for the Inquirer. My first letter was published in 1986, my first book review in 1998 and my first Op-ed in 2000. But by late 2002, due to my allegations about the Inquirer's slipshod and craven coverage of the Bush administration's lies and propaganda about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda (which were used to gain popular support for the Bush administration's illegal and immoral Hitler-like invasion of Iraq) a tacit mutual agreement was reached that I would no longer write for the Inquirer.

My formal estrangement with the Inquirer commenced nearly a year before my last Op-ed was published there. It occurred as a consequence of my letter about the deterioration of the Inquirer that was published in Z Magazine in November 2001. In Z, I wrote about "the right-wing bias that increasingly sullies the Commentary page" of the paper. I noted that its editor, John Timpane, had failed to publish my most recent Op-ed (critical of the Bush administration's unilateralism), which proved good enough for publication by a conservative, pro-defense weekly newspaper, Defense News.

I also wrote about how the increasing right-wing shift of the Inquirer coincided with the general dumbing-down of the newspaper. As examples, I cited the Inquirer's decision to discontinue it separate "Books" section, which was dumbed-down as it shrank, as well as the publication of low quality letters to the editor that never merited publication, due to their powerful and wide-ranging stupidity.

One such letter, which found its way into the newspaper, made the claim: "If we test, develop and deploy the system secretly, then we can have the security of the missile defense without escalating the arms race." As I responded in Z, "How testing, development, and deployment could remain secret (under the collective noses of an inquisitive press, government leakers, competent foreign intelligence agencies, and sophisticated spy satellites) apparently did not enter the mind of the writer—or the editors of the newspaper. (Readers merely need to consider the recent reports of the huge barge being used to float a large X-band radar to its intended destination, in order to realize how ridiculous that letter was.)

But, rather than address my criticisms directly, two editors ridiculed Z Magazine and anyone who would write to or for it. Yet, America's most brilliant and formidable intellectual, Noam Chomsky, routinely contributes to Z.

Thus, the rightward drift and accompanying deterioration of the Inquirer proceeded apace. Now, its Commentary page regularly features Op-eds by Jonah Goldberg, a syndicated right-wing lightweight with little of importance to say. And it occasionally carries the slightly more serious right-wing nonsense written by Mona Charen. Perhaps thoughtful and liberal Philadelphians should thank God that the Inquirer has spared them the vile opinions and nostrums of that loud-mouthed, blond-tressed pinhead, Ann Coulter.

But, even worse, the Commentary page often reprints the syndicated neoconservative rants of Charles Krauthhammer (who writes for, and thus besmirches, the Washington Post). Readers of Andrew Bacevich's new book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced By War, will find that he places much blame on such "neocons" for America's new militarism.

Moreover, Bacevich believes Krauthhammer to be one of the most extreme of the neocons. Not only has Krauthammer called collective security a "mirage," he claims that the only "alternative to unipolarlarity is chaos." Thus he advocates that the U.S. "unashamedly" lay down the rules of the world order and then be "prepared to enforce them." And, thus, he inflames that large section of the American population that shares his warmongering psychopathy.

Bacevich excoriates The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post for giving regular foreign policy commentary (respectively) to these neocons: David Brooks, Max Boot, Krauthammer and Robert Kagan. According to Bacevich, "as a direct consequence of this determined rabble-rousing, neocon views about the efficacy of American military power and the legitimacy of its use gained wide currency." And thus, by regularly carrying Krauthammer's column without balancing it with same-day thoughtful commentary to the contrary, the Inquirer's Commentary page contributed to this national disservice.

Unfortunately, two recent editorial decisions indicate that the right-wing drift/pandering/dumbing-down has further infiltrated the Inquirer's newsroom. First, the April 10, 2005 issue of the Inquirer contained the headline: "Shiites rally in Baghdad: Thousands mark anniversary of city's fall." To people who had not seen other, more accurate, descriptions of the gigantic rally the day before, the Inquirer's headline might leave them with the impression that the Shiites were celebrating the fall of Saddam Hussein.

In fact, they were. But one only needs to read other headlines about the rally -- "Demonstrators In Iraq Demand That U.S. Leave" (by The New York Times), or "Iraqis stage huge anti-US protest" (the BBC) or "Tens of Thousands of Iraqis Demand U.S. Withdrawal" (Washington Post) or "Livid Iraq Protesters Tell U.S. to Get Out" (Los Angeles Times)—to realize that the Inquirer's headline omitted the most significant reason for the protest. And although I wrote to the editors to complain that their omission raised "suspicions of bias, dishonesty or incompetence," I received no response from the news gatherers or headline writers.

Equally disturbing, however, was the discovery that the Inquirer failed to publish significant breaking news reported by its very own parent organization. On April 15, 2005, Knight Ridder ran the headline: "Bush administration eliminating 19-year old international terrorism report." The news report received significant national attention.

The actual report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, is an updated version of the 2004 report that, a year ago, required correction because it undercounted the number of terrorist incidents that occurred in 2003.

Of course, Bush administration officials denied that the undercount in the 2004 report was intentional. Yet, given that the 175 "significant " terrorist attacks in 2003 constituted "the highest number in two decades," the Bush administration could hardly have been satisfied with a such a high number that suggested the administration's global war on terrorism was not eliminating terrorism (an impossible and, thus, stupid goal to begin with), but cultivating it.

Now, the 2005 report states that 625 "significant" attacks occurred in 2004. Yet, again, the Bush administration wants Americans to believe that its refusal to release that report (and its decision to cease issuing such reports) has nothing to do with its empirical evidence suggesting that Bush's war on terrorism has been a colossal failure.

It's true that Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay mentioned some officials who questioned the methodology behind the count. "But other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered 'Patterns of Global Terrorism' eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raise disturbing questions about the Bush administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism."

Yet, The Philadelphia Inquirer failed to publish this article from it s parent company. Why?" Does the Inquirer fear antagonizing its many conservative readers and faith-based Bush supporters with actual, but discomfiting, facts? Does it fear retribution by way of subscription cancellations? Or are the news editors simply biased, dishonest or incompetent?

Thus: Enquiring minds would like to know
Why the Inquirer has deteriorated so.


Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The San Francisco Chronicle and Philadelphia Inquirer, among numerous other periodicals. His article, "Democracy or dominion?" will be republished in Annual Editions: World Politics 05/06 (McGraw Hill) scheduled for publication in April. He is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association.

waltuhler@aol.com

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