Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 133                 Today’s News and Views         Wednesday, May 10, 2006

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Today's News and Views

Rebellion was in the air, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acting like a crafty minister to an embattled king, fending off citizens outraged over government lies and the growing death toll from a war built on deception.

As hecklers at a speech in Atlanta on May 4 accused the Bush administration of lying and then were dragged away one by one, Rumsfeld appealed for civility and for renewed faith in George W. Bush’s honesty.

“You know, that charge [of lying] is frequently leveled against the President for one reason or another, and it’s so wrong and so unfair and so destructive of a free system, where people need to trust each other and government,” Rumsfeld told a crowd of international affairs experts.

Anyone who’s followed the twisted course of Iraq War rationales had to marvel at Rumsfeld’s chutzpah, putting citizen accusers on the defensive and turning government deceivers into defenders of “a free system.” How could he expect such a transparent ploy to work?

But the cagey Pentagon chief may have recognized that he could still score with two target audiences: die-hard Bush loyalists and the Washington press corps. The word “lie” – when applied to Bush – sends Bush's backers into a fury and thus is studiously avoided by the mainstream press.

The two groups especially reject the l-word when the evidence shows that Bush and his top advisers have lied about the Iraq War. Indeed, one of the most enduring and successful lies has been Bush’s insistence that he treated war with Iraq as a “last resort” and that Saddam Hussein was the one who “chose war” by refusing to let United Nations weapons inspectors in.

The reality, however, was that Hussein told the truth when he said his country no longer had weapons of mass destruction, as U.S. weapons inspectors later discovered, and he did let in U.N. inspectors to search wherever they wanted for several months before Bush launched the invasion on March 19, 2003. But Bush is almost never challenged when he misrepresents these facts. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “President Bush, With the Candlestick…”]

Insider accounts from former Bush administration officials, such as Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, also revealed that Bush and his senior aides were spoiling for a war with Iraq from their earliest days in office – and that they exploited the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as a pretext.

British government documents, including the so-called “Downing Street Memo,” supplied additional corroboration that Bush “fixed” the intelligence and sought other excuses to justify a war, such as trying to trick the Iraqis into firing on a U-2 spy plane painted in U.N. colors. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “George W. Bush IS a Liar.”]

Foolish People

Yet, despite this now well-established history, the Washington press corps still acts aghast or mystified when some citizens accuse Bush and his aides of lying about the Iraq War.

Sometimes, the mainstream journalists explain to the citizenry that Bush didn’t lie; he was just misled by mistaken intelligence. Other times, the journalists assert that the President was, beyond doubt, well-meaning and thus his critics must have some dark political agenda for attacking his integrity.

That pattern repeated itself when Rumsfeld jousted with the angry citizens in Atlanta and got more than he had bargained for. After Rumsfeld bemoaned the harm done by calling Bush a liar, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern rose to ask several pointed questions.

“Why did you lie to get us into a war that was not necessary and that has caused these kinds of casualties? Why?” asked McGovern.

“Well, first of all, I – I haven’t lied. I did not lie then,” Rumsfeld said as he fell back on the argument that the problem was simply bad intelligence. “I’m not in the intelligence business. They gave the world their honest opinion. It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.”

Persisting in his questions, however, McGovern cited Rumsfeld’s earlier certainty about where Iraq’s WMD caches were hidden. McGovern also noted the administration’s now-discredited claims that Hussein’s government had ties to al-Qaeda terrorists.

Rumsfeld responded first by (falsely) denying that he had said what McGovern said he said about the WMD caches. The Defense Secretary then pulled out an old canard that supposedly proved a Hussein-al-Qaeda connection by noting that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had spent time in Baghdad.

“Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period,” Rumsfeld said. “That is a fact.”

Some news coverage of the Atlanta confrontation, such as the clip on NBC’s Nightly News, ended with that Rumsfeld statement, leaving his Zarqawi point unchallenged.

However, CNN and other news outlets did carry a fuller version, in which McGovern put Rumsfeld’s claim in context: “Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That’s also ...”

“He was also in Baghdad,” Rumsfeld interjected.

“Yes,” McGovern said, “when he needed to go to the hospital. Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.”

Not Trustworthy

But Rumsfeld’s Zarqawi-in-Baghdad line demonstrates why the Bush administration still deserves no trust on Iraq.

While superficially the Zarqawi-in-Baghdad line may sound like damning evidence against Iraq, it actually means almost nothing since there’s no proof that Hussein’s government was aware of Zarqawi’s presence, let alone collaborated with him.

By this Rummy logic, the U.S. military should have invaded Florida and jailed its governor, Jeb Bush, because terrorist Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers lived in the state for more than a year before the attacks. Some even attended Florida flight schools.

But no administration official has ever accused Jeb Bush of complicity in the 9/11 attacks just because Atta operated under the nose of George W. Bush’s younger brother.

Yet, Rumsfeld justifies invading a nation halfway around the world because its government failed to detect a then-obscure terrorist getting medical treatment in a hospital.

(Following this Rummy logic further, one would have to conclude that the U.S. occupation forces and the new Iraqi government are now colluding with Zarqawi because he has operated in and around Baghdad for the past three years without being caught.)

Despite the irrationality behind the administration’s Zarqawi-in-Baghdad argument, it has rarely been  challenged by major U.S. news outlets. After the May 4 confrontation, the most any U.S. news outlet did was play McGovern’s retort without further explanation or comment.

Besides not holding the Bush administration accountable for these sorts of Iraq War deceptions, the U.S. news media often goes on the offensive against Bush’s critics, painting them as either unbalanced or vengeful.

For instance, after the exchange in Atlanta, McGovern faced questions from CNN anchor Paula Zahn about the CIA veteran’s motives.

“How much of an axe do you have to grind with Secretary Rumsfeld?” Zahn asked. (Note she didn’t ask if McGovern had an axe to grind with Rumsfeld, but rather how much.)

“It’s not a matter of axes to grind,” McGovern responded. “It’s a matter of telling the truth. And we pledged, in my day at the CIA, to tell it without fear or favor, to tell it like it is. And, when I see that corrupted, that is the real tragedy of this whole business.”

Zahn then pressed McGovern to give Rumsfeld credit because the Defense Secretary stopped security guards from throwing McGovern out.

“Donald Rumsfeld encouraged whoever I think had their hands on you at the time to let you stay there,” Zahn said. “Does he get any credit for that today?”

Rummy, the Believer

After wrapping up the segment with McGovern, Zahn turned to CNN military correspondent Jamie McIntyre and repeated her concerns about McGovern’s motives.

“Some fireworks there, as this speech unfolded, Mr. McGovern claiming he has no axe to grind,” Zahn said, reiterating her negative suggestion about McGovern that Zahn apparently had pulled out of thin air.

Although Zahn and McIntyre agreed that Rumsfeld was mistaken on a number of points about Iraq, they kept giving him the benefit of the doubt about his own motivation.

“It comes down to the question of, was he wrong because – for the right reasons, or did he intentionally mislead?” McIntyre said. “And one thing I can tell you about Rumsfeld is he intensely believes that what he says is true and that he’s got the right version of events.”

Just as Zahn never explained why she thought McGovern had an axe to grind, McIntyre didn’t explain how he knows that Rumsfeld only says what he “intensely believes.” Typical, for the mainstream news media, a negative inference was drawn against a Bush critic while a positive inference was applied to a Bush ally.

Yet, the actual evidence on Rumsfeld suggests that he routinely made statements about the Iraq War that any mildly informed person would know to be false or at least highly dubious. Coupled with his illogical arguments – like the Zarqawi-in-Baghdad claim – the only rational conclusion is that the Defense Secretary is a conscious deceiver, if not an inveterate liar.

But the major U.S. news outlets simply refuse to make such harsh judgments, instead either choosing to look away when incriminating evidence is presented or bending over backwards to find some euphemism.

Both tendencies were on display in the New York Times in the days after the Rumsfeld-McGovern confrontation.

The day after Rumsfeld’s Atlanta speech, the New York Times could have used the exchange as a peg to write about the long history of Iraq War deceptions. Instead, the Times printed one paragraph of a wire story that simply quoted McGovern saying that Rumsfeld had lied and Rumsfeld responding, “I did not lie.”

The Times returned to the confrontation in a May 7 editorial in the context of urging the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee to finally release a report on whether the administration “deliberately misled the world” in its presentation of Iraq War intelligence.

But even in that editorial, there was the continued determination to evade the word “lie.” The Times phrased its criticism this way: “It is bad enough that Mr. Rumsfeld and others did not tell Americans the full truth – to take the best case situation – before the war.”

Mysterious Fear

Still, why – given the overwhelming case that the administration has lied repeatedly – did the Times feel compelled “to take the best case situation” and then simply say that the administration “did not tell Americans the full truth.” Far from not telling the full truth, the administration manufactured a case for war out of whole cloth.

One answer to the question of why the Times and other news outlets won't hold the Bush administration accountable in clear English is that many journalists are still afraid they will be accused of lacking patriotism and face career damage, as happened to Iraq War skeptics during the jingoistic run-up to the invasion in 2002 and early 2003.

This fear remains strong even as Bush’s popularity crumbles and the Republican attack machine breaks down.

The residual fear is like the terror that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid felt toward a relentless tracker named Jo Lefors who wore a white straw hat. Even when facing far worse dangers, the two outlaws always were spooked at the possibility that they might spot Lefors’s white hat.

Similarly, journalists are so frightened of accusations that they are undermining the President “at a time of war” that they will do almost anything to avoid the charge, even as a growing number of Americans are livid with the media for fawning over Bush and enabling his disastrous war policies.

What the broader American public has begun to understand is that Rumsfeld is wrong when he demands unconditional trust from the people for President Bush. What truly destroys “a free system” is the betrayal of the people's trust by dishonest government officials, especially on matters of life and death.

At such moments, the news media only worsens the destruction of democracy by pretending there is no problem or, worse, blaming citizens who try to alert the country to the problem. The hard truth is that the lying won’t stop – and the damage to democracy will just grow worse – until the liars are called to account, however unpleasant the task.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Iraq is a long way from developing into the model democracy that Bush wanted to create by toppling Saddam Hussein. Iran is pressing ahead with its nuclear program, unimpressed by Washington's threats. Compared to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad and his fantasies about the annihilation of Israel, Saddam Hussein was a tinhorn despot.

From hawk to dove?

Bush's answer to the question of how he will respond to the threats from Tehran is a far cry from the hawkish rhetoric we've grown used to. Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy -- that's what he's betting on, at least for now. The hawks in Washington are burned out; they have no answers to what's happening in Iran. Oh wait, there's also Latin America, where they're electing one leftist government after another. What would once have given rise to crisis meetings and secret military plans doesn't even seem to be worth a question anymore.

Bush is running out of time, and not just because the end of his term is approaching. He knows it as well as anyone. Sometimes he speaks like an old man mellowed by the passage of time, pointing out not every problem in the world can be solved immediately. Is this still the same Bush that Old Europe feared as a crazy cowboy? This is clearly a president whose best days are behind him. Six years ago he still believed problems could be solved quickly, even bombed away. One-and-a-half years ago, he was re-elected for sticking to that sort of reasoning. Now that his public support has declined so dramatically, Bush must feel as lost as Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair. But Sabine Christiansen didn't bring that up either.

What did get a lot of attention was terrorism in the Middle East. "It was worth it," Bush said of the invasion of Iraq. But that's exactly what many now are disputing -- including the very people who provided Bush with his political and ideological ammunition three years ago. In February, political thinker Francis Fukuyama called for a critical evaluation of neo-conservative influenced US foreign policy in the New York Times. It would have been interesting to hear what Bush thinks about this. Of course he's right to point out that 12 million Iraqis participated in the January 2005 elections; democracy in Iraq is now one factor in the lives of the Iraqi people. But it's not the decisive one. For many of these people, tyranny has simply been replaced by terrorism. That's something Bush can't deny -- and that's what makes him seem so powerless.

And then of course there's Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. it's certainly news that Bush now wants to close the detention camp in Cuba. Conditions there have long been controversial in the United States. But Bush is only half right when he says he'll punish those army officers responsible for torture and abuse. The top man in charge, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is still in office. If the man who sent the US Army to Baghdad without adequate preparation or equipment had resigned by now, Bush might not seem quite so helpless today.

Bush has given two interviews to the German media -- a gesture of friendship towards German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he needs more than ever. After all, he's lost all his other buddies in Western Europe. Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar was voted out of power two years ago, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is on his way out and Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi's last dance is over. So there's only Angie left. Bush calls her a "strong woman" -- a polite reply to a somewhat confusing question about German family policy. When Bush visits Europe and Germany in July, it will be a kind of goodbye tour. Who knows which "strong woman" -- Condoleeza Rice or Hillary Clinton -- will replace him to visit with Merkel the next time a US president comes to Germany. Maybe the fireplace will be lit then. Today it stayed cold: trans-Atlantic television ashes in the White House.

Claus Christian Malzahn is the Berlin bureau chief of SPIEGEL ONLINE.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006

p m carpenter's commentary

May 07, 2006

Now take Nancy Pelosi -- please

I guarantee you there are a couple hundred Democratic members of the House of Representatives scratching their heads this morning, wondering why in God’s name they ever cast a vote for Nancy Pelosi as the public face of their party.

She just made an appearance on “Meet the Press,” and it was a disaster. Worse than that, it was a lasting embarrassment for any progressive-minded viewer hoping to see something other than a profile in stuttering, stammering, defensiveness, vacillation and evasion. I haven’t felt that uncomfortable since watching Roger Mudd ask Ted Kennedy about his day.

She said nothing with conviction, sitting instead visibly trying to recall her talking points cleared by a horde of nervous, focus-grouping advisers. As one sad example Tim Russert gave her the opportunity three times -- three times -- to pledge she would honorably and proudly work to repeal Bush’s inane tax cuts as Speaker, and she responded with empty, circumlocutory nothingness on each occasion.

Her answers concerning Iraq were almost unintelligible but clearly contradictory; her solution to the energy crisis was stilted, bumper-sticker pabulum having something to do with shifting our focus from the Middle East to the Midwest -- get it? clever, huh?; her demotion of “investigations” to only “hearings” into White House crimes was a bizarre and muddled distinction; and the rest of what she didn’t say with excessive strain wasn’t worth hearing, either.

Were I a Democratic congressional candidate I would be running away from Nancy Pelosi as fast as I was running against George W. Bush. Her projection of party timidity and uncertainty was that bad.

In 1994 Republicans had Newt Gingrich, a slick, bold, convincing, walking promise of real changes to come, whether real or not, smart or not. In 2006 Democrats are stuck -- or are they? -- with the gutless Nancy Pelosi, a quivering reed of unpromising fear and paralysis.

She’s regarded by the opposition as its secret weapon. But you know it, I know it, even rank-and-file Democrats know it, which makes her something less than a secret force of internal destruction. So why can’t professional Democratic strategists figure it out?

If you doubt my assessment of her agonizing appearance on “Meet the Press” you can read the transcript here (yet to be posted as of this writing), though I would suggest you first take a slug or two of fermented fortification. It’ll rattle you. Really.

11:37 AM

    You hearken back to rock-throwing days in Vietnam, and lament hatred and rage. But you do not see that those days are quaint by comparison given our current geopolitical situation. Johnson and Nixon, whatever else their faults may have been, were internationalists who understood the need for connection to the wider world. The war in Vietnam, barbaric as it was, did not inspire tens of thousands of Vietnamese to join martyr's brigades. It did not threaten to unleash chaos in a part of the world that holds the economic lifeblood of our whole existence. It did not threaten to shake loose nuclear weapons from quasi-rogue states like Pakistan.

    You speak of the angry mob because you got slapped around via email, but your characterization of the anti-war crowd tells me you have not spent a single moment out in the streets with them. I have. I have covered dozens of protests, large and small, in cities all across this country before and after the invasion of Iraq. Millions upon millions of Americans participated in these, and never once, not one time, was a rock thrown.

    No violence was offered anywhere, unless it was violence offered to old ladies by riot-garbed police, as was evidenced in Portland several years ago. I have the photographs to prove it. If you want to see anger, enjoy this picture of a 60-year-old woman holding an anti-war sign while being placed in a hammer-lock by a riot cop:

    "The hatred is back," you say, as if such hatred is beyond justification. It is interesting that you make so many allusions to Vietnam; the comparison is apt, yet not on point. This is not a situation of "Then" and "Now," but "Then" and "Again." The two issues are joined by a common theme: official malfeasance, presidential lies, administrative fear-mongering and horrific body counts in a faraway land. The lesson of Vietnam was so searing, many believed, that it would never have to be learned again.

    Why the anger? Because that lesson didn't take, at least with this crowd. Why the anger? Because millions of people are staggered by the idea that, yes Virginia, we have to go through this again. We have to watch soldiers slaughter and be slaughtered for reasons that bear no markings of truth. We have to watch the reputation of this great nation be savaged. We have to watch as our leaders lie to us with their bare faces hanging out.

    Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children's future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to do their job.

    George W. Bush and his pals used September 11th against the American people, used perhaps the most horrific day in our collective history, deliberately and with intent, to foster a war of choice that has killed untold tens of thousands of human beings and basically bankrupted our country. They lied about the threat posed by Iraq. They destroyed the career of a CIA agent who was tasked to keep an eye on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and did so to exact petty political revenge against a critic. They tortured people, and spied on American civilians.

    You cannot fathom anger arising from this?

    I wrote a book called "War on Iraq" in the summer of 2002. That book stated there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, no al Qaeda connections in Iraq, no connections to 9/11 in Iraq, and thus no reason for the invasion of Iraq. It is now almost the summer of 2006. That book was right then, and is right now, and the millions of Americans who agree with the facts contained therein have shared these four years with me in a state of disbelief, shock, sorrow and yes, anger. None of this had to happen, and the fact that it was allowed to happen inspires the kind of vitriol you got a taste of via email.

    If you want anger, you should try reading some of the emails I get on a weekly basis. The mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands and children of American soldiers killed in Iraq write to me asking why it happened, what can be done, how this is possible. They write to me because I wrote that book, because somehow they think I have an answer to that bottomless question.

    I am sorry you were so wounded by the messages you received. I wish that hadn't happened; I am personally from the more-flies-with-honey school of journalistic correspondence. But in the end, truth be told, I don't feel too badly for you. It isn't an excess of outrage that plagues this nation today, but an abject lack of it. Instead of castigating those who take an interest, who have gotten justifiably furious over all that has happened, I suggest you take a moment within yourself and ask why you don't share their feelings.

    This isn't Vietnam, Mr. Cohen. This is a whole new ballgame, and the stakes are higher by orders of magnitude. It took almost ten years of Vietnam for people to reach the boiling point you are so apparently horrified by (and worthy of note, that rage may have elected Nixon, but also served to stop the killing in Southeast Asia). Should those of us who are angry today wait until 2013 to raise hell?

    At a minimum, I suggest you head down to your local hardware store and buy a few sheets of 40-grit sandpaper. Apply it liberally - pardon the pun - to any and all parts of your body that may be exposed to the scary anger of the anti-war Left. Toughen up that hide of yours, and greet the coming days with a leathery mien impervious to a few angry emails.

    Afterwards, you could perhaps figure out why the anger of those who see this war as a crime and this administration as a disaster is so terribly threatening to you. Anger is a gift, after all, one that inspires change. If you don't think we need a change, real change, I can only shake my head.

    P.S. Another reason for the anger you have absorbed can be laid, frankly, at your own feet. There are enough of us around who can still remember your words from November of 2000: "Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush."

    Locate a mirror, Mr. Cohen. Stare deep within it. Know full well that today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, will recast all your yesterdays as having passed like a comforting dream. Your ability to remain within the safe bubble of the beltway clubhouse, drifting this way and that in some meandering, rudderless fog, has ended. Al Gore invented the internet, or so we are told, and some bright-eyed editor decided to staple your email address to the bottom of your works. Welcome to the age of electronic accountability.

© : t r u t h o u t 2006

But it took a federal prosecutor to pry this information from Woodward. Boehlert quotes a media observer as calling it "Watergate in reverse."

Despite public opinion polls that show two thirds of the American public disapprove of Bush's presidency, despite failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite chronic lying that defies belief, despite a spending spree putting the nation on the precipice of bankruptcy, despite massive corruption, despite gross conflicts of interest, despite blatant war profiteering and cronyism, despite an administration that has put us at the brink of WW III, the mainstream press generally still continues to treat Bush with credibility.

Boehlert, as we are, is aghast at how the mainstream media -- through the collusion of its big multi-billion dollar corporate parents -- has joined the military-industrial complex in an ongoing effort to prop up a failed administration, guilty of illegalities, deception, fraud, negligence and gross failure.

America's media used to be a key shaper of public policy by providing reasoned analysis and more-or-less balanced reporting. Now, it is a daily public relations machine for Bush and the Republican Party. Its role is generally to enable and support the power base of the GOP, particularly the Bush Administration.

There are myriads of reasons for this and Boehlert explores them. But, moreover, he details the professional malfeasance of the mainstream media in becoming a de facto extension of the White House communications office. Most BuzzFlash readers will recall many of the mainstream media transgressions as they served as cheerleaders for ruinous Neo-Con visions. Boehlert puts them in context and adds new details and nuance that only will enrage you more at how news has become a public relations / advertising / propaganda commodity.

Of course, the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us against was -- and is -- based on a mutually beneficial relationship in which the growth of the military benefits the makers of weapons systems and military supply contractors (does the name Halliburton ring a bell) so that war becomes necessary in order to create a need for more production, as weapons of war are depleted and need to be replenished. In short, wars are no long necessarily fought because they are in our national interest; they are fought because the military-industrial complex can't profit if no wars are fought.

Similarly, big media is really just a subsidiary of the big mega-corporate conglomerates that are part of the shadow government that has worked to fix the free market system to benefit the few large companies at the top. Big media is the public relations arm of these companies -- and you can be sure news will be slanted to protect the business interests of the parent companies, who know that the Bush Administration butters their bread in regulations and laws that give them near-monopoly powers.

It's all very insidious, very clubby, and very, very anti-democracy and anti-free market.

"Lapdogs" is not a theoretical book (a lot of the above analysis is BuzzFlash value added). Boehlert, who writes for Salon, rolls up his sleeves and documents his case. Any patriotic political junkie worried about the future of democracy and the disgrace of the modern mainstream media must read this book.

It will make you angry that the people who are delivering the nightly news are helping to "fix the facts" for the Bush Administration. They are PR flaks, not journalists.

The fish rots from the head down, and the news media rots from the CEOs and boards of the parent corporations on down to the transcribers who masquerade as reporters.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

© BuzzFlash

Niagara Falls Reporter

MADNESS OF KING GEORGE CONTINUES

By Bill Gallagher

"A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King."

-- Emily Dickinson

American Poet 1830-1886

DETROIT -- For our loathsome king, madness is always in season. His newfound "passion" for cycling is yet another excess in exercise, a diversion from the demons that usually grip him. But, gratefully, when he's outside peddling, he's not clowning in the Oval Office where the "decider" and his "gut" create more suffering and havoc for the world.

Washington in the spring is lush and green, brimming with blossoms, freshness and hopeful renewal -- a state of nature not found in the state of our union.

It's too much to hope that someday, when tooling around on his expensive bike, Bush might actually think about how fragile and threatened our green Earth is and how imperative good stewardship is to save it for other generations.

Bush says cycling allows him to "chase the fountain of youth." Yet, six years into his presidency, he has done nothing to deal with the greenhouse gases that spur global warming and shorten the life expectancy of our entire ecosystem. He has fostered our national addiction to petroleum. His energy policies encourage wasteful consumption and add to the already-obscene profits of oil companies and their executives.

Bush permits his favored industries to poison the air we breathe and imperil the health of millions of people, especially children. He devotes his energies to enhancing the wealth of his family and his Houston cronies.

Issues like clean air and the survival of the planet don't occupy any of King George's precious time. Once, though, he did sit down with half a dozen cycling enthusiasts for a chat about their shared hobby. They met for 35 minutes.

That's 34 minutes and 45 seconds longer that Bush spent reacting to the intelligence report he received in August 2001 titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

Bush spent more time in one cycling seance than he has personally devoted -- during his entire administration -- to working on the creation of the nation of Palestine, the single most important deed required to even begin quelling violence and terrorism in the Middle East.

Bush's spring offensive, aimed as jolting his tanking poll numbers, is another flop. His staff shuffle and the new branding of the struggle with terrorism as "World War III" no longer fool the long-fooled American people.

The latest CBS poll shows only 30 percent now say they approve of Bush's handling of his war in Iraq.

CIA Director Porter Goss got sacked amid reports one of his top deputies attended hooker-graced poker parties at the Watergate Hotel in Washington with former Congressman Duke Cunningham, the convicted bribe taker. Goss may have played a few hands himself.

He was a disaster from the get-go, filling top CIA posts with his own political hacks. Goss had an undistinguished stint with the agency decades ago, but built his political stock as a Florida congressman and House Intelligence Committee chairman.

During his oversight, he presided over the colossal intelligence failures prior to the 9/11 attacks. He also allowed his predecessor, George "The Whore" Tenet, to get away with blaming the agency for Bush's "intelligence failures" on Iraq's weapons programs.

The Busheviks are back-pedaling on any real diplomatic initiatives. Their essential foreign policy is protecting oil interests and corporate greed.

When big oil beckons, big Dick rises to the occasion. Vice President Cheney made a rare trip from the bat cave and accused Russia of using its oil and gas resources as "tools of intimidation or blackmail." Cheney wants to rekindle the Cold War and rattle the Russian bear. His disgraceful hypocrisy is as transparent as it is dangerous.

In his speech to European leaders in Vilnius, Lithuania, last week, Cheney dared to pretend the United States can preach civic virtue and democratic values to the Russian government.

He accused the Putin government of alienating allies and "other actions by the Russian government have been counterproductive, and could begin to affect relations of other countries."

Dick Cheney has systematically and repeatedly attacked the fundamental constitutional rights of the American people. He favors illegal spying, denial of due process and claims unlimited executive authority. He and his boy Bush should be impeached and tried for treason.

For "enemy combatants," Cheney supports torture, imprisonment without charges, kidnapping and the rejection of international law and the Geneva accords. He claims the "war-time president" can do anything with no accountability to any one. In a just world, those actions would assure Cheney and Bush a war crimes trial in the Hague.

Of all people to lecture the Russians on human rights and democratic principles, no one is more unfit than Dick Cheney. The hypocrisy of his mission was even more apparent when he went to Kazakhstan to cozy up with its despotic leaders and promote U.S. oil interests, especially -- surprise, surprise -- Halliburton's.

If freedom and democracy are taking lickings in Russia, they are getting killed in Kazakhstan. But Lord Halliburton didn't utter a syllable about those abuses. He was too busy cutting deals for his former company -- in which he still has a financial stake -- and pumping up other U.S. energy interests there.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, won re-election to his third six-year term in 2005 with a Stalin-like 91 percent of the vote. In the last six months, two of his political opponents have been murdered. Amnesty International has cited Kazakhstan for a litany of human rights abuses.

But when did a little blood in the pursuit of oil ever bother big Dick? He's plunged into the geopolitical conflicts in the region sucking up to the Kazakhs to assure a U.S. claim on its vast energy resources. Halliburton runs an oil services operation there and wants to build new export routes for the nation's enormous reserves.

While every single organization monitoring human rights abuses ranks Kazakhstan's record much worse than Russia's, Cheney chose to ignore that unpleasant truth. He expressed support for the Kazakh government, without hesitation or reservation.

He told reporters, "I have previously expressed my admiration for what has transpired here over the past 15 years both in terms of economic development as well as political development."

The murders, torture, political prisoners and rigged elections don't mean a damn thing to Cheney. Like in Iraq, it's all about oil and the use of the U.S. military power and influence to assure its steady flow.

The Busheviks use stunning arrogance to pressure and demand that nations in Central Asia and the Middle East cater to our insatiable thirst for oil. We wage wars and support tyrants to get it. We claim foreign energy reserves as our "own," usually depriving impoverished people of their resources. Our greed creates more unrest in already troubled regions and encourages terrorism.

Nations around the world, including many long-time friends, distrust, even despise us. George W. Bush doesn't really care. He and his people are wealthy and content. Now, in another spring of the world's discontent, Bush is taking carefree rides on his bike, isolated from the disasters he inflicts on suffering people and our environment.

Emily Dickinson concluded the poem from which the words at the beginning of this column are taken with the following:

"But God be with the Clown

Who ponders this tremendous scene

This Experiment of Green

As if it were his own!"

God save us from our clown-king.

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@sbcglobal.net.

May 9, 2006

Editorial

The Pretenders

After five straight years of profligacy, Republicans are desperately trying to portray themselves as the defenders of budget discipline. The challenge is driving them to new heights of hypocrisy.

President Bush is threatening a veto — which would be his first — of an "emergency" spending bill because senators have bulked it up by $14 billion more than he had requested. But at the same time, the White House has been hounding Congressional Republicans to do whatever it takes, including blatant budget gimmickry, to pass $70 billion worth of additional tax cuts, among them a wholly gratuitous extension of special low tax rates for investors. And Mr. Bush is going to the barricades over $14 billion?

Meanwhile, Senator John McCain recently proclaimed victory in the war on pork when the Senate stripped from the emergency spending bill $15 million that would have gone to a seafood marketing campaign. That's fine, but it won't quite pay off the multibillion-dollar tax cuts for investors that Mr. McCain, in his new presidential candidate persona, has decided to embrace.

Senator Judd Gregg, the chairman of the Budget Committee, has warned that the nation "simply cannot continue on the path to higher deficits." But there's no indication that he's willing to block the path by refusing to bless the gimmicks that allow his party to pretend the pending tax cut package doesn't affect the bottom line.

And Senator Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Finance Committee, describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool fiscal conservative. But right now Mr. Grassley is maneuvering to add a second tax cut package to the mix, enlarging the deficit by a further $20 billion, or more.

There was a time that the Republican Party stood for fiscal restraint, but that boat has long since left the dock. Now, as its leaders prepare to inflate the deficit even more, the least they could do is refrain from pretending they care.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Rove prepares 20 judges
By Alexander Bolton

Presidential adviser Karl Rove and White House counsel Harriet Miers yesterday told conservative activists and Senate staff that the administration would soon send the names of more than 20 judicial nominees to Capitol Hill for confirmation.

The undertaking to move ahead came at a 2:30 meeting at the White House that was boycotted by leading conservatives upset at the slow pace of nominations, according to people who attended the meeting.

Conservatives are upset by the Senate’s slow pace on judges since the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court in February. They are frustrated that the White House has sent few nominees with strong conservative records.

Conservatives are also angry that Senate Republicans agreed to hold a second Judiciary Committee hearing on D.C. Circuit Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh today.

Prominent conservatives who have played instrumental roles in the battle over the federal judiciary but skipped the meeting included Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society; former Attorney General Edwin Meese, chairman for the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies; and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice. A representative for the Committee for Justice didn’t attend either.

Rove’s participation in the meeting could mean the White House intends to emphasize the judiciary to rev up the conservative base in the run-up to the midterm election. The judiciary, because of its power over social issues, is a leading concern of the base. Rove is likely to spend more time wooing the base since he was shifted from a policy-oriented to a purely political-strategy role last month.

During a conference call hosted by Leo earlier yesterday, one participant called for conservative leaders to skip the White House meeting because of frustration over the state of judicial nominees. The participant said that by missing the meeting conservative leaders would send a strong statement that GOP leaders needed to have a serious discussion on judicial nominees.

Manuel Miranda, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) who now chairs the Third Branch Conference, a coalition of conservative organizations, also called for a boycott during a second call. He said he had about 50 participants on his call but did not know many of those who listened in.

The White House meeting was supposed to include a broad coalition of conservative activists. One participant said White House, Senate and Republican National Committee staff nearly equaled the number of conservative leaders who showed up.

But White House staff scrambled to dispel the notion of a brewing rebellion. At the meeting, Tim Goeglein, the White House liaison to conservative activists, gave a list of explanations for each prominent conservative not at the meeting. The point was to show that their absences were because of scheduling conflicts and not because of an intentional boycott. But the rarity with which such White House meetings are held seemed to undercut the explanations.

One participant said the White House could begin submitting judicial nominations to the Senate by the end of the week. Another said Rove and Miers did not give a clear timeline but indicated the nominations would come soon.

Yesterday’s meeting was scheduled to thank conservatives for their work on behalf of President Bush’s nominations to the bench, particularly Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, both of whom the Senate confirmed within the past year.

The last time White House officials held a meeting about judges with a broad array of conservative activists and leaders was the beginning of 2005, according to one activist.

The White House has nominated only four candidates among 18 vacancies on the federal appellate circuit, including two nominees to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals whom conservatives view as liberal-leaning. They are California Resource Agency general counsel Sandra Ikuta and Milan Smith, who is the brother of Sen. Gordon Smith, a liberal-leaning Republican from Oregon. There are 56 vacancies in the federal judiciary and 33 judicial nominees pending before Congress, according to the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice.

Conservatives are also upset that Republicans have allowed the nominations of strong conservatives to languish in the Senate, despite having a 55 seat-majority in the chamber.

One controversial conservative nominee, Michigan Judge Henry Saad, withdrew his nomination earlier this year. Senate Republicans have also made clear that there is not likely to be action on 9th Circuit nominee William Myers and 4th Circuit nominee William Haynes.

Last week Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) vowed that Democrats would filibuster Kavanaugh and 4th Circuit nominee Terrence Boyle.

Conservatives were told yesterday that Kavanaugh’s nomination could be voted on by the end of this week.

© 2006 The Hill

May 8, 2006

The Good Life

by Bill Burkett ;Bush National Guard story Whistleblower

http://www.opednews.com

An essay on today’s times

As I took the towel from my pocket to wipe the sweat from my eyes, I looked up to see the monstrosity passing along this one lane dirt county road. That monstrosity was a spanking new Ford two ton truck with every bell and whistle imaginable towing the most immaculate horse trailer fit for a king. In today’s market the truck and trailer combination obviously cost well over $85,000.

Just down the road another mile, a Dallas contractor has purchased a little over 700 acres of cedar infested land that has little to no grass stand for livestock or wildlife. The old property supported only about fifteen cows for the past thirty years. But today, as one concrete truck after another; a massive eighteen wheeler with nothing but cabinetry, and a stone mason and other construction specialists make this old road into powder, a sprawling 4500 square foot hunting lodge suggested to cost just under a million is being erected. Like so many other such ventures within an hour’s drive, they plan to build a $750,000 high wire fence and have controlled hunts with domesticated wild game.

And for you hunters, that actually means they buy pen raised quail and release them only a few minutes before a hunt; turn out domestic raised deer and elk that have been raised specifically for these hunts; and turn out a buffalo, on demand to add to the bow or gun enthusiasts need to act out a fantasy of being a big game hunter. The fantasy is Botswanna. The reality is no more than shooting a domesticated animal in a pen.

In town, the foreclosure lists are just beginning to rise as the $300,000 homes that have only been lived in for a couple of years start to hit the market. Young professionals living in excess; or older folks leveraging their accumulated worth to chase the American dream? Which excess was it?

Actually, it’s been both.

They couldn’t make the dream work. The slide rule was used against them; the treadmill accelerated and bumped them off; and the dream was a mirage, not a reality. The door to the “good Life” was just slammed in the face with the chill of mythical dreams and failed promises.

In a world laden with excess, Ronald Reagan blessed America and said “Greed is good”. Since then, two generations of our young folks have been programmed to believe in grabbing everything you can; living with exorbitant debt, and working till you drop. Their parents were the first spoiled slobs of America – my generation. What a lazy bunch. We had the new math, the new adult toys, and the glitz of every dream. While our parents had been raised to believe that everything was possible in America, they had also been raised as products of the Great Depression and the great World War. They knew sacrifice. They abhorred debt. They valued true value.

We worried less about debt; were lulled into believing that life was a sock hop, and that glitz and glamour were reality.

But our children were unleashed with the credit card plastic and plastic became their real lives.

The race was on to compete. Compete. Compete. Compete with each other rather than cooperate.

They began force feeding younger and younger kids to compete as well. They worked to get their kids ahead in education and the first drive was some mental prize that being first was best; that being biggest, loudest and richest was supreme.

And then the Soddom and Gommorha story of the decline of this once Great Nation was unleashed as well to the rest of the World.

Yes, it was born in God’s country. It was lavish, brazen, brash, vulgar and, and excessive.

In 1955, every child of white skin tone believed they could achieve great things. Black children and Hispanics dreamed they may one day be equal.

In 1995, every white child was raised to believe they were one of two categories; the Bold and the Beautiful or the Ugly and Downtrodden. And their was an elitism far greater than at any preceding time in American history and an accompanying race for those not born into the elite society to get in. As with every generation, every individual made a conscious choice.

Some chased their dreams of wealth and fame while others succumbed to a life of mediocrity. But for whatever reason, in about 1995 those within the mediocrity found they could lift their pride and power through a persuasion that the end was near and they could be heaven bound through their religion. Gone were the days of religion in private. Religion became Hollywood, and the vast riches from its exploitation followed. So did megachurches, television networks, and the hookers, scandal and ugliness that excess breeds.

That was just in America. As a counter reaction, Jewish, Islam and other religious beliefs had to work hard to either react or follow this rush to greed and excess. They too developed and exploited their own religions and from that exploitation came the religious zealots of their own persuasion.

The Apocolyptic belief also unleashed another subconscious reaction: grabbing for all the ghusto.

“live for Today” became the motto. “Grab all you can”, the mantra.

Within social and work cultures we found opportunism abound. Its tempo has only escalated over this past decade as it pits more and more competition for greed and corruption neighbor against neighbor; business against business; culture against culture; special interest against special interest; nation against nation and religion against religion.

Now why should we ever be surprised that the World is in the worst shambles in our lifetime? Where PEACE was before the goal, today, it’s perpetual war and strife – competition. Where once the though of harmony, respect, and cohabitation was accepted as the Worldwide desire; now it’s annihilation or cleansing – that’s right religious, moral, business competition cleansing. And war is not a tool too far.

In the last five years, President Bush has accumulated more national debt than all of the Presidents that preceded him in the 225 years history of the United States.

The debt of nations however, is nothing more than the accumulated debt of its individual citizens.

Just like Constitutions, societies, rules of law, they are simply “trusts” between people – or as the sitting President has forthrightly said, “Just a Goddamned piece of paper”, when speaking of the US Constitution.

Yet he used the framework of the constitution to claim he doesn’t have to abide by over 750 laws passed by the United States Congress – the arm of government entrusted with making law within the same US Constitution.

But, I digress. Let’s examine the individual debt as well.

This nation has lived on credit. The banking industry encouraged and built its wealth stream on the basis of false economics.

When car prices got too high to afford in the 80s, we developed longer term mortgages and lease agreements and encouraged people to concentrate not on net worth or value basis but on cash flow or making payments basis. The fact was, we produced a car that wouldn’t last but three years under commuting conditions, yet we managed to develop financing schemes – scams, actually – to charge interest on for amortization periods up to seven years. While it makes no practical sense from a consumer sense; it disavows the base problem that the cars have been over priced; the law of true supply and demand was displaced by the Republican Reagan Administration. Credit restrictions and usury laws were relaxed; banking was totally deregulated and all consumer protections displaced.

This alteration came in the banking industry when I was a banker in the 1970s. I know of which I speak. We knew there had to be a transitional approach because the price of living had exceeded the real ability to pay for goods – especially durable goods. The net effect was that we had to find ways that people could live then – and pay later.

Within a decade, personal bankruptcies became more prevalent. And within the 1990s financial institutions which had expanded to almost every retail merchandiser in America saw bankruptcy losses as cutting deeply into their bottom line. They chose to shift the blame from themselves to the creditors. It took a one-party government made up of the 35% of solid support who believed they were enjoying the good life to do it – but the drawbridge for the elite set was finally cast in stone and raised.

When we examine that solid 35%, we find that only about half that number actually have sound financial values that will stave off most sever economic downturns. With conservative investment strategies, annualized returns on investment in the 10-12% those top 14% can withstand a major five year US and/or World Crisis and most with wisdom can even use this crisis to open opportunities for themselves.

But the remaining 21% of the solid 35% supporters of the wealth class societal architecture are some of the most vulnerable of all of society and will certainly be within the leading edge of economic failings in the case of a major recession or depression. They are the “wanna be’s” who have concentrated their efforts almost extensively on borrowed time and borrowed money; influence and general butt kissing.

Now I must back off slightly on the butt kissing. We all know in the World that we live in, that we never seem to date, marry, do business or politics with someone we don’t like. So obviously butt kissing still reaps the highest return on investment of any stock portfolio on this society. Read any steamy novel, or examine any failed romance and we see that the age-old question of why the pretty girls pick the scoundrels is fairly obvious. They’ll say anything; take charge, promise the world without intent to deliver and otherwise prove they are the real bad boys.

On the job, the oldest frustration known to the workplace is that sexual or other favor; not performance equals fast promotions.

In fact, I’ve grown to call this time in our history as the “Influence Years”; where politics, business, wealth and power are all determined more by influence than wisdom or performance.

Certainly the first step to remedy and provide a solution is understanding the model, the cause and the mechanism which drives us. From that we must determine the end objective.

And that’s where I think the political parties have failed the American People.

On the right, a party of excess has taken charge and has fueled extreme leveraging of America. This is the GREED party complete with rampant influence peddling at all levels. Hence the debt, the excess in influence and corruption. Further it’s understandable that they paint everyone else as a threat; extreme competition, and everything is limited, exclusives abound, hastening the “shortage mentality”.

I’ll never forget the observation of the man who I felt was the smartest man in the World, John Elmo Burkett. That’s right, he was my Father.

He was mostly self educated, though he excelled at every level. He didn’t carry the high pedigree of Yale and Harvard, but instead taught the skills and the strategic logic to those who carried that pedigree within his business and within his lifetime work as a lay minister.

As he grew more and more mature, he commented in reflection that there was no real shortage of anything in this World except “distribution”.

Supply was not the problem. Distribution was.

Hoarding was allowed to take place and it was hoarding that occupied and controlled all of society in the days following the great depression. But that same hoarding was also at the root of every recession.

Strategically, and purely theoretical socialism becomes the answer. In a world of robots, each would have equal choices, equal rewards and nothing would matter. But each also would face the same challenges as outcomes. Now be careful not to quote this paragraph out of context. Read on.

That’s neither the reality, nor the message here.

The message is really pretty simple.

Within this and all challenging Worlds, leadership must insure that distribution of opportunity, justice, safety and security are never hoarded by the powerful few. Otherwise calamity and chaos follow and create a world that is filled with instability – the World in 2006.

Placing Americans in inner competition; under a belief that everything is limited, exclusive or otherwise is in short supply is also a contrast to the historical teachings within the Old Testament of the Bible that so many have placed on their desktops to provide an image of fairness in business, but have as yet failed to ruffle the pages until that book is torn, tattered and worn. A little off subject, but appropriate. Daddy never trusted anyone with a new Bible. He saw it as imagery rather than use and now I understand why. He listened far more intently when he saw ruffled and feathered pages, with notes and bookmarks, and I’m sure that’s the same way the old Rabbi’s and Islamic leaders also feel.

Yes, even the Old Testament histories acknowledge that within the land of Kings, one should study the directives of those kings in times of famine. Slavery was acknowledged, but being good to slaves was something else. And from this came the justification used by the American Old South for slavery; a revision of the old King and Fiefdom rule even down from twenty previous centuries.

Social order is an old problem as we see. Abraham faced it, and the principles of the Jewish community face it today as well. I refuse to speak to something that I don’t know, but I’m sure there must be a parallel also within the teachings of the Koran concerning wealth and social structure.

Within those contexts, don’t forget that religion as we know it today actually grew out of the impoverished segments of each population. Religion became a coping mechanism; a Faith for believers to counter their poverty, and strife in this life and on earth. For in every faith, it is the Faith that “there will be a better place” that is the flame from which the impoverished and oppressed moth gravitates.

Each of us, I included, am prone to believe that we have reached an ultimate milestone in which our nation – or society has defaulted – a new low. But within the wide expanse of history, reflection shows that these were simply the rise and fall of civilizations.

Is there a true strategic need for a major economic correction – a recession or depression to alter the course? Will there be a choice?

And how will it alter the balance within the societal structure; who will weaken and who will strengthen?

When will this “bubble” or that burst and who will rise and who will fall because of it.

We’ve led entire college courses and the field of investment to believe they can predict that future. We’ve established entire professions which now drive pricing – the futures markets – which gamble in this every day.

But the futures markets, securities and politics in general can not forecast everything. They did not forecast major ‘acts of God’ such as Hurricane Katrina. They do not forecast Tidal Waves. And as we find, they are very vulnerable also to the “fluff journalism” and spin of corporate profits and losses; hence WorldCom and Enron.

We are at an interesting time and I tend to believe it can go either way.

Regardless, living in excess fuels the end. In every teaching from religion to history we find that a generational rise in excessive living spurred the meltdown leading to change. Maybe it was the accelerator that caused the car to simply go too fast for the blind curve ahead. To me, it was the person whose foot was on that accelerator who was ultimately to blame.

Bill Burkett Lt. Col. Burkett, Texas National Guard, ret. lives in Texas.

Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2006

Since the 9/11 terror attacks, the U.S. government has tried both structural and personnel changes to fix the nation’s intelligence services – including now the ouster of CIA Director Porter Goss – but the remedies have failed because they’ve missed the core problem.

What’s wrong with the U.S. intelligence community is that over the past three decades its ethos of telling truth to power has been corrupted by politics to such a degree that George W. Bush now sees the Central Intelligence Agency as virtually his family’s fiefdom, with the Langley, Virginia, headquarters even named for his father, George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director.

So, when analysts at the CIA were viewed as undercutting George W. Bush’s case for war with Iraq, the White House launched a counter-attack against these intelligence professionals for perceived disloyalty.

During the buildup to the Iraq War, Vice President Dick Cheney personally went to CIA headquarters to bang heads with intelligence analysts who doubted White House claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. While some analysts resisted, many mid-level bureaucrats acquiesced to Cheney.

Paul Pillar, the CIA’s senior intelligence analyst for the Middle East, said the Bush administration didn’t just play games with the principle of objective analysis, but “turned the entire model upside down.”

After quitting the CIA in 2005, Pillar wrote an article in Foreign Affairs magazine stating that “the administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made.”

“The Bush administration deviated from the professional standard not only in using policy to drive intelligence, but also in aggressively using intelligence to win public support for its decision to go to war,” Pillar wrote. “This meant selectively adducing data – ‘cherry-picking’ – rather than using the intelligence community’s own analytic judgments.”

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq failed to find WMD, the White House put much of the blame on the spy agency. Some of the suppressed CIA doubts then began to surface, embarrassing Bush during Campaign 2004.

At that delicate political moment, Bush installed Goss, a partisan Republican congressman recruited by Cheney, to take over the CIA. The Goss appointment on Sept. 24, 2004, reflected Bush’s determination to bring the agency’s analytical division into line with his policies both before and after the November 2004 presidential election.

Loyal Henchmen

Like a Medieval ruler punishing a rebellious province, Bush sent in loyal henchmen to root out perceived traitors. Bush’s attitude toward CIA analysts who disagreed with his pre-war assertions about Iraq’s WMD was much like his anger toward the French for cautioning him about his Iraq invasion plans.

Being right was no protection from Bush’s wrath; indeed, it appeared to make him madder. Though Bush has continued to this day to stress how much he values accurate intelligence as vital for the nation’s security, his real record has been one of insisting on getting information that fits his preconceptions.

So, rather than reward the CIA analysts who had resisted White House pressure to cook the WMD intelligence on Iraq, Bush set out to remove them. (He also took aim at the State Department, another bastion of WMD dissent, where he moved to replace the diffident Colin Powell with the enthusiastic loyalist Condoleezza Rice.)

At the CIA, Bush’s intelligence purge gained momentum in the weeks after he secured his second term. Bush saw his victory as almost a mystical validation of his view that the “war on terror” was a conflict between good and evil in which people were either with Bush or with the terrorists. Bush called the election his “accountability moment.”

CIA intelligence professionals got the message that they could either get behind Bush’s policies or get out. The loyalty demands led to an exodus of senior CIA officials, including deputy CIA chief John E. McLaughlin and deputy director of operations Stephen R. Kappes.

In whipping the remaining intelligence analysts into line, Bush was helped by powerful conservative news personalities – from AM talk radio to Fox News, from right-wing newspaper columnists to Internet bloggers – who conjured up conspiracy theories about a CIA plot to destroy the President.

Conservative columnist David Brooks was among those pushing the argument that the CIA’s only rightful role was to serve the President.

“Now that he’s been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies,” wrote Brooks in the New York Times. “His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

To Brooks, the justification for Bush going after the CIA was the release of information that made Bush look bad.

“At the height of the campaign, CIA officials, who are supposed to serve the President and stay out of politics and policy, served up leak after leak to discredit the President’s Iraq policy,” Brooks wrote.

“In mid-September [2004], somebody leaked a CIA report predicting a gloomy or apocalyptic future for the region. Later that month, a senior CIA official, Paul Pillar, reportedly made comments saying he had long felt the decision to go to war would heighten anti-American animosity in the Arab world.” [NYT, Nov. 13, 2004]

On the Mark

Nearly 18 months later, those CIA assessments seem to have been right on the mark, as violence in Iraq continues to spin out of control and the Middle East seethes with hatred toward the United States.

But in November 2004, the victorious President and his conservative allies were set on throttling those intelligence professionals who still believed that their job was to get the information right, not just tell Bush what he wanted to hear.

Bush’s counterinsurgency campaign to stamp out disloyalty at the CIA also was more paranoia than recognition of an actual threat. Though the White House selected Goss to lead the purge, the supposed CIA “cabal” never really existed. “He came in to clean up without knowing what he was going to clean up,” one former intelligence officer told Washington Post reporter Dana Priest.

Nevertheless, Goss and his lieutenants from his old congressional staff drove out a number of mid- and senior-level officers caught up in the search for disloyalty. “The agency was never at war with the White House,” former CIA operations officer Gary Berntsen told Priest.

“Eighty-five percent of them are Republicans,” said Berntsen, a self-described Republican and Bush supporter. “The CIA was a convenient scapegoat.” [Washington Post, May 6, 2006]

Plus, the claim from Bush’s media supporters that the CIA only existed to “serve the President” was not historically accurate.

While it may be true that the CIA’s operations directorate was created as a secret paramilitary arm for the U.S. executive, the CIA’s analytical division was established to provide objective information to both the President and other parts of the U.S. government, including Congress.

Even at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA’s analytical division took pride in telling presidents what they didn’t want to hear – such as debunking Eisenhower’s “bomber gap” or Kennedy’s “missile gap” or Johnson’s faith in the air war against North Vietnam.

Though never perfectly applied, the ethos of objective analysis continued through the mid-1970s. Then, CIA analysis began to come under sustained attack from conservatives and a new group called neoconservatives, who insisted that the Soviet Union was a rapidly expanding military menace with its eye on world conquest.

The CIA analytical division held a more nuanced assessment of the Soviet threat, viewing Moscow as a declining superpower struggling to keep pace with the West while coping with fissures inside its own empire.

This CIA analysis was the background for the