June 2003

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Gulf Vets Against the War?

Reborn on the Fourth of July?

On June 10th, in an article on the growing sophistication of Iraqi military resistance the Washington Post quoted Captain John Ives, an American officer stationed in Fallujah* as saying "It could get worse before it gets better. It's a matter that some people want us dead. We're just going to have to take them out." If somehow I were able to raise a beer with Capt. Ives, I would tell him that he's got his causality mixed up. What most Iraqis want, it should be clear, is not to have you dead, but to have you gone. Granted, a significant number of them see the best chances of that in trying to physically harm you and your comrades, no laughing matter for you I'm sure, but if you weren't there, the fact is that those you feel you have to "take out" would not being giving much of a thought to you.

Whether Capt. Ives would understand the point is of some import to those Americans who would seek to counter the imperial ambitions of the Bush administration. As resistance to the war within Iraq increases, the Bush administration will likely become more worried about "credibility" in its narrow militaristic sense. This is not the "credibility" of are we telling the truth, already shot to the wind for most of the world, but the "credibility" of will we destroy you if you mess with us, a "credibility" that is dearly held to by successive U.S. foreign policy planners no matter what administration. It is young, mostly naïve, soldiers like Capt. Ives that are required for the bloodbaths necessitated by this latter form of "credibility."

One of the greatest strengths of the anti-Vietnam War movement, contrary to the widespread myth of protesters spitting on returning veterans, was the successful incorporation of Vietnam Veterans Against the War into the movement, later popularized by Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July," about antiwar veteran Ron Kovic (somewhat simplistically and bombastically, but that's Oliver Stone for ya). It was the young soldiers returning from the war that knew first-hand the types of slaughter required to carry out Johnson and Nixon's policies and a number of them became the most eloquent spokesmen against the war.

Capt. John Ives and many of his compatriots could conceivably amend their understanding of the situation and follow in the footsteps of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the Israeli Refuseniks, and many others if the antiwar movement reaches out to returning soldiers and quite likely even if they don't.

*As of Sunday, still a center of troubles for American occupation forces.

— guest posted by Rob Johnson
BellumAmericanum

Resistance chapters forming in a community near you

In an earlier e-mail, Ben Regenspan wrote:

TvNewsLies.org has posted a poignant and urgent letter from Eric E. Johansson, an ex-US Army Paratrooper and Infantryman who is now president of the SF Bay Area Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69.

The letter is titled:   NOW PEOPLE OF GOOD CONSCIENCE SHOULD STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK !
Eric's message should be heard by people everywhere!  Please link to this message if you can.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 30, 2003 1:14 PM

 

Hot enough for you?

Update

Steve e-mailed from his home office to ask me to thank Reggie Avraham for sending this Bush Lies Marathon related link. Reg's site, TVNewsLies.org is most definitely worth a visit, and their Bush coverage is certainly not bush-league stuff.

Mr. Perry will return, but in the meantime he's slaving away on his Bush Lies story for an upcoming, yet to be determined issue of City Pages. From what I've seen of the project so far, spotting the lies is easy, documenting them is the hard part.

Wait until August

Years ago I was on a painting crew that got a home weatherization project from the City of Des Moines. One of the routine jobs involved putting tar paper around the severely cracked foundation of an older home. It was 108° F. that day, and the normally rigid tar paper was flopping around like a sheet of paper. We took hourly breaks and were drinking quarts of pop like they were half full Dixie cups. 108° is damn hot. It's 109° again today in Baghdad, so I went looking for some news about Iraqi summer heat.

Even when there's air conditioning, the effect is relative. When it's 130 degrees F. outside, a room can be cooled to about 90 degrees at best. But air conditioning requires electricity. Journalists, royalty, and other "elites" get most of their power from local generators, but even those can be unreliable. "In the middle of our interview, the power kicked out and the room went pitch black. Within 30 seconds, the temperature in the room seemed to jump 30 degrees in the absence of air conditioning.

Ilene Prusher, The Christian Science Monitor

In American military parlance it is called Heat Condition 5. The term refers to weather so hot that soldiers are advised to drink at least a litre of water an hour to survive. In Iraq just now, it could equally describe a seemingly inexorable rise in tempers, not summer temperatures.

Hot tempers in a hot land, The Economist

The situation in Iraq is one of devastation. The liberation from Saddam is fading in peoples' minds. Occupation by the US and Britain is the new reality. It is only a matter of weeks before really hot weather arrives, and this will only add to the chaos. As the tension worsens, it will become even more difficult for any political accommodation to take place and to hold....

"Iraqis feel that there future is being imposed on them by foreigners. This is the last phase of the honeymoon. There is widespread gratitude to the Americans for toppling the regime, but as the summer sets in, tempers will rise, along with the temperature.''

It is a dangerous situation.

Mo Mowlam, The Independent

"Saddam was not a just man, but he provided for us," said Laith Yahia, a street vendor. "There was nothing like this in his time; there was no looting, and there was electricity."

Without back-up generators, thousands of families are sweltering in 120 degree-plus weather when the electricity goes out, as it does for 20 hours a day in some neighborhoods. Children get sick from drinking the water: The United Nations Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq last week reported that cases of diarrhea have tripled in Baghdad.

There's no working phone system, only expensive satellite phones. The night is full of gunfire. The local police force, propped up by the U.S. military, hasn't shed its Saddam-era reputation for corruption.

Tom Lasseter, Dana Hull and Natalie Pompilio, The Mercury News

To hear Iraqis tell it, June is mild. "This is nothing," they repeat, sometimes laughing. "Wait until July. Wait until August." In those months, the mercury challenges the 130-degree mark.

For US soldiers patrolling Baghdad, there's no escaping the heat. There is no air conditioning. No swimming pools. Cooling off means a seat in the shade with a baby wipe to cut the grime. Sleeping is a fitful affair, with men stripped to their shorts, spread-eagled on cots.

"I pity them," said 73-year-old Hajj Talib Taha, as a pair of rumbling Humvees sat stuck in traffic on teeming al-Rashid street.

Others said the Americans should have considered the heat before invading the kitchen.

Jim Krane, OC Register

For me, the most chilling passage (so to speak) was Mo Mowlam reminding us that "It is only a matter of weeks before really hot weather arrives." [emphasis mine] Maybe our troops can handle it. Lots of them are from the South and more used to hot weather than some of us, but last I heard it rarely gets to 109° F. anywhere in the US besides Death Valley, and 130° F. is just insane. This is going to be a very long, very hot summer. How do you say My Lai in Arabic?

While looking for weather-related information on Iraq, I also came across this Florida Today feature on Hank Brandli, a retired Air Force colonel. Back in early June he was studying satellite photos and came to the conclusion that we're pumping Iraqi oil to Kuwaiti refineries. He makes a good case, but I'm sure he's wrong. They told us this war wasn't about oil, and everyone knows this administration doesn't lie.

— posted by Mark Gisleson

 

Posted by Steve Perry at June 27, 2003 8:09 AM

 

News from the Middle East

Warm and sunny

The DebkaFile is reporting that a remote-controlled explosive device was used to attack a U.S. patrol in Iraq early today. Meanwhile, a 77-year-old Holocaust survivor died from the Park Hotel suicide attack in Netanya. It's June 26, 2003 — just another typical day in the Middle East. As of 9:00 a.m. (CDT) it's a sunny late afternoon in Baghdad and the temperature is 109° F/43° C.

More news from the Middle East:

UPDATE: Two US soldiers reported abducted north of Baghdad. [Yahoo]

UN terror committee fails to find evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaida [Boston Globe via Buzzflash]

More on the ambushes that killed two US troops and two Iraqi civilians. [Miami Herald] [Middle East Online]

150 Norwegian troops ship out to Iraq. [Aftenposten]

The growing role of mosques in post-war Iraq. [Dar Al Hayat]

Counter insurgency efforts intensify. [Al-Ahram]

Electronic Iraq. They don't care where Raed is.

Mass graves found in Aceh. Oops — that's in Sumatra. We'll hear more about this after Bush's reelection. [The Australian]

CNN reports on the discovery of the remnants of Iraq's nuclear program under a rose bush where they were buried twelve years ago by Iraqi nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi on orders from Qusay Hussein and Hussein Kamel. MSNBC has cautious semi-tabloid coverage.

Tony Blair and Benito Mussolini: separated at birth? [The Independent]

The BBC takes umbrage at Alastair Campbell's allegations of lies. [Guardian Unlimited]

John Moyers picks up on the "Bush lies" meme. [Tom Paine]

Dan Kennedy reviews Danny Schechter's "instant book" on the Iraq War. [Boston Phoenix]

"Privately, the Americans admit that torture, or something very like it, is going on at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where they are holding an unknown number of suspected terrorists." [The Independent]

 

I'm sure there's some good news out there too, it's just that I couldn't find any with a Middle Eastern dateline.

— posted by Mark Gisleson

 

Posted by Steve Perry at June 26, 2003 9:57 AM

 

Just the facts?

WMDs and Judith Miller

Romenesko is all over one of the more interesting sidebars in the ongoing squawk over WMDs. Jim links to various parties about the interesting way in which the New York Times and Washington Post have approached the fallen cherry tree on the White House lawn.

"I think The Post is more interested in pursuing the story," said New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, speaking of W.M.D.’s.

The New York Observer's Sridhar Pappu takes a hard look at both newspapers' coverage, including the questionable reporting of Judith Miller, who some have claimed was doing little more than parroting press releases from Ahmed Chalabi.

Of course, The Times has had its share of earth-rattling breaks. There was the monumentally controversial (and much-maligned) April 21 story, in which Judith Miller reported that a scientist in Saddam Hussein’s weapons program stated that the illicit weapons were destroyed just before the war. The piece, however, also disclosed that Ms. Miller had made agreements with military officials not to visit or speak to the scientist directly, and she also submitted her copy to them for approval.

Howard Kurtz is Romenesko's headliner link, however, and Howie the Post columnist throws some gasoline onto the fire:

New York Times reporter Judith Miller played a highly unusual role in an Army unit assigned to search for dangerous Iraqi weapons, according to U.S. military officials, prompting criticism that the unit was turned into what one official called a "rogue operation."

More than a half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a middleman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi....

Viewed from one perspective, Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, nationally recognized expert on weapons of mass destruction and co-author of a best-selling book on bioterrorism, was acting as an aggressive journalist. She ferreted out sources, used her long-standing relationship with Chalabi to pursue potential stories and, in the process, helped the United States take custody of two important Iraqis....

"This was totally out of their lane, getting involved with human intelligence," said one military officer who, like several others interviewed, declined to be named because he is not an authorized spokesman. But, the officer said of Miller, "this woman came in with a plan. She was leading them. . . . She ended up almost hijacking the mission."

The Australian press quotes the Columbia Journalism Review's Russ Baker extensively in their Judith Miller coverage.

Exactly who was feeding her information and what their motives might have been remain unclear. On May 26 the Washington Post published an internal New York Times memo in which Miller said the main source for her WMD articles was Ahmad Chalabi, an exiled leader who is close to top Pentagon officials - and who has for years been trying to come up with a justification for an invasion. Miller insists that Chalabi has never been an unnamed source in her Iraqi coverage, yet, in her WMD pieces, he does not appear as a named one either.

Each time Miller produces an article touting terrorist links to WMDs, she almost always mentions that al-Qaeda's capability to deploy or develop these types of weapons has been judged to be crude at best. She also uses plenty of "might haves" and "could haves". Despite this, Miller's "scoops" were picked up by other media and helped drum up support for extreme anti-terrorism measures by the Bush Administration domestically (in the Patriot Act) and internationally (the invasion of Iraq).

Neither Miller or the New York Times looks good in this one. CounterPunch's David Lindorff provides additional background on the Miller-Chalabi affair:

Citing New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh, Kurtz suggests that Chalabi was a key source of WMD "evidence" for the infamously biased "intelligence unit" known as the Cabal set up in the Pentagon by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last fall, when he found he couldn't get what he wanted from the CIA. Kurtz goes on to say, "Chalabi may have been feeding the (New York) Times and other news organizations the same disputed information."

More on Iraq from ITV, Paul Krugman, The Hill, Paul Salopek, The Evening Standard, and The Boston Globe.

—posted by Mark Gisleson

 

Posted by Steve Perry at June 25, 2003 9:25 AM

 

alt.comics.MiddleEast

Comic relief

Spiders is a graphic novel (i.e., comic book), about what if the Iraq War had been fought by President Gore. The plot requires true believer-like faith in nanotechnology and girl power, but compared to Donald Rumsfeld’s papal-like infallibility in the face of contrary facts, it's a pleasant alt-reality to spend time in.

The point of this isn't Spiders so much as it is communications, and the growing use of comic books to sell ideology (kind of like Fox News in print). Noy Thrupkaew reports on Persepolis, a graphic novel by Iranian artist/political commentator Marjane Satrapi. As with Spiders, Persepolis focuses on the role of women in reforming Islam. Thrubpkaew points out that 70% of Iranians are under the age of thirty; what better way to reach this audience than with a comic book? [Pantheon Books, 160 pps.]

Comics (or graphic novels) are an ideal vehicle for promoting political causes in emerging nations. In fact, after reading what Gospelcom.net has to say about comics in the Middle East, I'm a bit surprised the Republican party hasn't resorted to using comic books to reach all those Rush fans out there in the red states.

I don't see this is as an indication that American political parties are behind the curve, not at all. I think it means that the stereotype of “adult comic book reader = illiterate” is pretty strong in our culture, and it's presently viewed as an inappropriate form of outreach. I'm sure that if Karl Rove thought comics could still influence voters, Dreamhavens nationwide would be stocked to the ceilings with the latest edition of The Incredible Bush.

Comic books have played a role in American politics, especially in Get Out the Vote and union organizing efforts. But, as anyone who watched last night's History Channel special on comics can tell you, the U.S. comic book industry is in sad shape, almost as broken-down as our Bush-battered electoral process.

Are comics a thing of the past? No, they've just evolved into animated and special effects-laden live action video fare. Why read Batman when you can watch Batman Beyond? After watching Wing Commander Bush strut across the USS Abraham Lincoln's deck, it's not hard to imagine future presidential spots evolving into sixty-second battles between Rancher Man and Hillary Woman or maybe even a return of The Gorebot vs. The Dickster. Or wait, I guess Showtime's already working on the first superhero campaign ad. [2nd item]

— posted by Mark Gisleson

 

Posted by Steve Perry at June 24, 2003 8:42 AM

 

Bush charity

The status quo is a victory with this Court

The hardest thing to figure out about this crew of new Republicans is this: why do they do the right thing every now and then? You know it's not duty, conscience or anything else related to ethics or the well-being of the Union. The answer's usually Karl Rove, but it's hard to see how he can take credit for today's Supreme Court decision upholding the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action program. [more]

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the swing vote, and needless to say the Gingrichian quartet of Renchquist, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas played their usual role in the 5-4 vote.

Former top generals went to bat for the University's program, and for now, I think they deserve the credit for giving O'Connor the chance to cast the correct vote.

Queen for a Day

In my youth there was a dreadful game show called Queen for a Day. Host Jack Bailey would interview three contestants, each of whom who tell a tale of woe about their hardships and rough life. Back in the '50s, the hardships were a bit more bleak than modern audiences might realize, and the prizes were usually some "by your own bootstraps" consumer product that would help these women straighten out their lives. The one I remember most vividly was a Singer sewing machine, because it allowed the full-time mother of six to take in sewing to help pay the rent.

Mark Cuban appears to be the new Jack Bailey. His Fallen Patriot Fund cuts checks for $13,200 to the families of Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers who were "killed or seriously wounded" during the recent military action. Not every victim of Bush's war will get a check — apparently you need a sad story to go with your plight. Losing Billy Bob to them damn Eye-raqis doesn't automatically qualify you.

I'm still waiting to hear what our fearless leader is going to do for our troops. Surely there's a major raid on the Treasury just around the corner (to be announced at a fortuitous time prior to the 2004 elections). The troops have been grumbling, and while God hears our prayers, it's Karl Rove who hears and acts on the grumbles in this administration (if they involve votes, that is).

— posted by Mark Gisleson

 

Posted by Steve Perry at June 23, 2003 10:09 AM

 

The Bush Lies Marathon: Closing Ceremonies

Failed Van Gogh, or was this post-pretzel-attack? 

So far we've listed 56 Bush administration lies in five days' time, though upon consideration I think I have to disqualify one statement presented as a lie yesterday: Bush's repeated claim during Campaign 2000, "I don't believe in nation-building." Well? He never said he didn't believe in tearing them down, just that he drew the line at rebuilding them. Looks true to me. So call it 55 through yesterday.

What follows are a last few unduplicated lies I've received in the past few days. I don't think any of them are repetitions, but I'll be double-checking that before I write my summary story on Bush lies. Once again, thanks to everyone who has contributed ideas and links. And don't stop mailing in fresh lies when you spot them just because the marathon is over.

[Meantime, if you're a latecomer to the lies marathon, you can go back to day one, day two, day three, day four, day five.]

1) No major figure in the Bush administration said that the Iraqi populace would turn out en masse to welcome the US military as liberators. (Ed Thornhill)

2) 9/11 did not represent an intelligence failure. (Robert David Steele)

3) American air defenses were activated, according to protocols, on 9/11. (Joseph Gathman)

4) The looting of archaelogical and historic sites in Baghdad was unanticipated. (Sally Ryan)

5) The mass looting was a reaction to Saddam's past oppression. (Ryan)

6) The CIA was primarily responsible for any pre-war intelligence errors or distortions regarding Iraq. (George Hunsinger)

7) The US invasion of Iraq constituted a legal war under international law. (Hunsinger)

So: 62 lies for purposes of this little survey, without anyone's thinking hard or breaking a sweat. Do you suppose we've exhausted the list?

(PS--thanks, too, to those who sent Bush lies regarding domestic affairs, but here it's strictly war and terrorism.)

Posted by Steve Perry at June 20, 2003 12:59 PM

 

The Bush Lies Marathon, Day 5

And the fibs just keep on comin'...

How'm I doin', dad?

1) The Arab world hates the US for its virtues--its freedom and prosperity. (Perry)

2) "I don't believe in nation-building." (Duane Evans)

3) The president is a former soldier himself. (Tom Ware)

4) The US's interest in "democratizing" the Middle East is not about oil at bottom. (Alan W. Peck)

5) An International Atomic Energy Commission report indicated that Iraq could be as little as six months from making nuclear weapons. (Ed Rickert)

6) Saddam's regime likely had the capability to launch drones carrying chemical or biological agents all the way to the US. (Rickert)

7) Shots rang out from the Palestine hotel, directed at US soldiers, just before a US tank fired directly on the hotel, killing two journalists (Ed Thornhill)

8) US troops were under attack when they fired upon crowds of civilian protesters in two separate incidents in Fallujah. (Perry)

9) A pro-western uprising occurred in the city of Basra as UK troops were advancing on the city. (Thornhill)

10) No major figure in the Bush administration asserted that the US would quickly find Iraqi WMD caches. (Thornhill)

Why Bush's Lies Stick, part 4

They make better television than the truth.

Something like three-quarters of the American public gets whatever news it receives from TV. And we all know what's become of TV news. As the line between informing and entertaining disappears altogether, so does the notion that news departments exist for any purpose other than entertaining--getting the best live shots, telling a tidy and gratifying "human" story, making sure the heroes look like heroes and the correspondents look like models. The Bush administration has excelled at crafting bedtime stories for the TV news, and the networks show no sign of tiring of them.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 19, 2003 10:55 AM

 

The Bush Lies Marathon, Day 4

A fresh reminder today, courtesy of Tony Blair's former international development secretary, Clare Short, of a Bush administration lie we've already listed in slightly different form: The Bush administration was not bent on invading Iraq from the start. In the Guardian Short describes being briefed on a summer 2002 pact between Bush and Blair to go to war in February/March of this year. No wonder the administration thought Hans Blix's efforts were so ten minutes ago.

Today's first nine lies are the rest of Rob Johnson's long list; number 10 was sent by Vince Bradley. I'll be posting compilations of the rest of the submissions, and a few more of my own, in the next couple of days, and I'm still taking fresh entries at sperry@citypages.com.

1) That the U.S. is obeying the Geneva conventions with regard to POWs of Afghanistan or Iraq

2) That the U.S. is obeying the Geneva conventions period.

 

3) That the Congressional "war resolution" was constitutional (some argument about this one I'm sure, but I would include it)

 

4) That UN resolutions 687 and 1441 provided the justification for U.S. action

 

5) That the "no-fly" zones were UN-imposed

 

6) That Saddam was solely responsible for "starving his people" during the sanctions years

 

7) That people being held in Guantanamo are mostly "terrorists"

 

8) That Judith Miller and the rest of the "embeds" are journalists

 

9) That the American people are now safer

 

10) The staged statue toppling in the Baghdad square, featuring tight shots of a non-existent "crowd" that consisted of Chalabi stooges.

Why Bush's Lies Stick, part 3

He believes them.

This is an underrated quality in presidents, especially ones of the modern era, who do their jobs in front of cameras. Bill Clinton lied often and lied well, but you could see the intelligence and calculation in his carefully parsed public words. We knew he was lying; he knew he was lying; the game was to catch him. Ronald Reagan was a much more effective public liar because you knew in watching him that he believed every myth and fabrication that passed his lips. And why shouldn't he? They worked well enough for him.

W partakes of the same magic. Like Reagan, he is not stupid but profoundly lazy. He never bothers to learn the details that put the lie to what he says in public, so he never has to bother about the elaborate web of prevarication some politicians are forced to construct. He merely keeps saying the same things over and over, whether they make sense or not. And as we noted yesterday, repetition is everything in our free press. 

But W does not have Reagan's unflappable public gravitas, and that may prove a problem later. There are moments when you catch him mugging on camera, like a boy trying on faces to find one that seems appropriate to a situation he doesn't really understand. Bush and the American people share a dirty little secret: Both know that he's in imminent peril of getting in over his head if he's not already there. (He is.) Americans have always loved rooting for his type--the raw but spirited greenhorn--but the infatuation has its limits. If things begin going badly for Bush, his bumbling aggressions won't seem so endearing anymore.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 18, 2003 11:56 AM

 

The Bush Lies Marathon, Day 3

Plus: the secret of Rush Limbaugh's success, revealed at last to American liberals

If my lips ain't movin',
I ain't lyin'.

Today's items are a continuation of the lengthy list sent along by reader Rob Johnson, who's started his own blog here.

1) That WMDs went to Syria

2) That everybody fighting occupation forces is a "Saddam supporter" or "Ba'ath remnant"

3) That Iraq was behind the October 2001 anthrax attacks (Ok, that one got exposed pretty quickly, but still...)

4) That cronies and family of Bush aren't personally profiting off the war on Iraq or the war on "terror" (although that's not the main reason for the war, just a little side benefit)

5) That there are links between Venezuelan President Chavez and Al Qaeda.

6) That Bush is seeking a viable Palestinian state.

7) That the U.S. cares about whether Saddam "gassed his own people" beyond propaganda purposes.

8) That the U.S. cares about mass graves beyond propaganda purposes.

9) That Bush was going to get Osama "dead or alive"

10) That Iraqi cooperation with U.N. inspectors could have prevented the war.

Why Bush's Lies Stick, part 2

Because they get thrown at the wall a lot, and because American media always duly regurgitate them.

Consider two of the more interesting links posted yesterday at Cursor: first the news that a former Bush intelligence loyalist, Rand Beers, has joined the chorus of voices accusing the Bushmen of misfeasance, malfeasance, and plain lying in the war on terror; second, the recap of a recent University of Maryland poll indicating that a third of Americans believe the US actually did find WMD in Iraq, and 22 percent think the Iraqis used chemical and biological weapons in the war. And those numbers pale beside previous poll numbers on the share of Americans who believe Saddam was involved in 9/11--between 40 and 50 percent, as I recall.

So who is winning the war for American hearts and minds? Well, think about it. In the absence of any consistent, prominent skeptical voices among "newsmakers," much less journalists themselves, political claims aren't measured by their truth value but by the shelf space they consume. Goebbels wrote that a big lie could always be driven home through sheer repetition, but the Bush administration has been spectacularly successful at kiting big lies and littles lies alike.

Who to blame? Another vast right-wing conspiracy? Yes and no. As Bill Kristol has joked repeatedly, the cabal is right out in the open for the most part. And so is its media branch, a Bermuda triangle bounded at the perimeters by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge. These three and their progeny have done a superb job of beating up anyone who tries to besmirch the motives and actions of the neocons in power. But they could never have done so without the Democratic party establishment serving the dual role of punching bag and fellow traveler.

People need to look past the Democrat-bashing shtick of these guys to see the root of their fairly plain, if coded, agenda. They aren't really after the Democrats (who, after all, are mostly indistinguishable from Republicans in matters of governance); the hard right is out to see to it that the Democratic party never reconnects with the right's real enemy, which is the people.

So if you're one of those deluded souls who's joined the recent chorus hectoring the Democrats to find their own Rush Limbaugh, give it up. American left-liberals of the sort who still gather around the Democratic party can't do it. And here is why, the secret of Rush Limbaugh's success in a nutshell: The American right's knights of punditry are willing to go directly after their real enemies, a class that includes everyone who threatens to stand in the way of the untrammeled tyranny of the market. The American left is absolutely, constitutionally incapable of turning around and calling out its own enemies (those who stand for the untrammeled tyranny of money), because the institutional voices on behalf of left-liberalism in America are... institutional voices.

None of this means the left couldn't have its own take-no-prisoners radio wrestler, but it does mean the Democrats won't be spawning one. And if he or she ever emerges, the Democrats will be nearly as horrified as the Republicans.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 17, 2003 11:26 AM

 

The Lies Marathon: How You Can Help

1) The obvious part: Keep on sending more Bush administration lies. I'll publish the substantial ones with an acknowledgment in each case to the reader who posted me with it first.

2) When our marathon week is over, I'll be writing a cover story called "Count the Lies" for City Pages, the Mpls/St. Paul alt-weekly newspaper I edit. And here at Bush Wars I'll post the full text of that essay along with link annotations to stories corroborating the various lies. It's the latter part I need help with--if you have at hand, or have a minute to find, a salient link to demonstrate a particular lie, please send me that link with a brief note of which lie it illustrates. I'll publish an acknowledgment note with the story naming everyone whose contributions I cite.

Email me at sperry@citypages.com, and thanks once again.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 16, 2003 4:59 PM

 

The Bush Lies Marathon, Day 2

Right now I'm just a callow jerk, but someday
I'm gonna be a really important callow jerk.

Sorry it's taken nearly a week to get round to compiling the additional Bush administration lies I solicited last week. I'm going to present 10 a day this week, with additional thoughts along the way as to why Bush's lies go unchallenged. (Here's my first Bush Lies post, if you missed it.)

Today's Bushmen Lies

The first six were sent by Ted Dibble, one of the most eagle-eyed BW correspondents, and 7-10 were contributed by another always-on-point reader, Rob Johnson, who recently launched his own war/politics blog here.

1) Saddam was harboring a terrorist organization in Iraq, and it wasn't the MEK.

2) Saddam was planning to provide WMD to terrorist groups.

3) Saddam had penetrated the UN inspection teams, and knew all about their future moves.

4) UN documents support the Bush administration case that Saddam had WMD.

5) Saddam bought uranium in Africa.

6) The aluminum tubes were proof of a nuclear program.

7) That careful science demonstrates depleted uranium is no big risk to the population.

8) That the looting of Iraqi nuclear facilities was no big risk to the population.

9) That this war was notable for its protection of civilians (studies suggest it may have been the worst since Vietnam.)

 

10) That Iraqis now have freedom of speech.

 

How He Gets Away With It, part 1

 

Jeff St. Clair at Counterpunch emailed me an interesting piece from the UK's New Statesman weekly the other day, a profile of Bush critic and uber-capitalist George Soros. It was a very insightful piece, which I can't link here since New Statesman has gone to paid access. But the following excerpt is really the heart of it:

 

Soros may not, as some have suggested, be a fully paid-up CIA agent. But that his companies and NGOs are closely wrapped up in US expansionism cannot seriously be doubted.

So why is he so upset with Bush? The answer is simple. Soros is angry not with Bush's aims - of extending Pax Americana and making the world safe for global capitalists like himself - but with the crass and blundering way Bush is going about it. By making US ambitions so clear, the Bush gang has committed the cardinal sin of giving the game away.

For years, Soros and his NGOs have gone about their work extending the boundaries of the "free world" so skilfully that hardly anyone noticed. Now a Texan redneck and a gang of overzealous neo-cons have blown it.

Do tell. Of course it is a little ridiculous to single out Soros thus--since, after all, virtually the entire US political and media apparatus is on board with Bush's aim, which is expanded empire. Many of them dislike and distrust the administration's aggressive and open means of pursuing it, that's all.

And for that reason, Bush's stateside "critics" and "watchdogs" have no place to stand, practically or philosophically, so long as what he's doing can be spun as a success on the evening news. With precious few exceptions (Robert Byrd, possibly Paul Krugman), the loyal opposition--fretful Democrats, the news chatting heads--only doubted whether the Iraq operation was a good way to advance American empire. And if the people are still snowed, well... who's to call it a failure? 

One thing about this kind of capitulation, however: It can turn in a hurry if the administration loses control of events abroad, or specifically how they look on TV news. Just ask LBJ. But of course Bush has a much more loyal media choir singing behind him. 

Posted by Steve Perry at June 16, 2003 11:07 AM

 

Too many lies, not enough time

Steve Perry will be back next week, but the response to his request for more Bush lies was so overwhelming he decided to take the weekend to select the best of the new whoppers sent in by readers.

Giordano on Kerry, Moberg on Dean

Al Giordano, the Narco News guy, has a new blog: Big, Left, Outside. If you like your political news unfiltered and with a strong partisan bent, Al's your man. Among the many topics he's already covered, Giordano takes a look at Senator John Kerry's candidacy. As a Boston Phoenix reporter, Al used to cover Kerry back in the day, and has some interesting observations.

Here’s the key: To wake Kerry up, you have to piss him off. You have to put his back up against the wall and slam into him with everything you’ve got to awaken his mutant powers. And then the real John Kerry stands up: he’s golden in those moments: American politics’ version of the Incredible Hulk. The American political highway is littered with the higher political aspirations of former giants (Jim Shannon, Ed Markey, Ray Shamie, Bill Weld, and a dozen or so others you probably haven’t heard of) slain by Kerry when he was awake.

The Hulk can beat Bush.

Dr. Bruce Banner cannot.

While Bush Wars doesn't purport to be "fair and balanced," it doesn't seem very fair to focus on Kerry exclusively. David Moberg's recent look at Howard Dean's presidential candidacy hasn't been getting the buzz I would have expected (I guess it's all Hillary all the time right now). Moberg, aka Mr. In These Times, is an outstanding muckraker and his analysis is well worth the click.

Dean campaigns as a pro-union environmentalist and sustainable energy enthusiast who will enact a plan to guarantee health insurance for everyone (paid for by rolling back most Bush tax cuts), adopt a more internationalist foreign policy, and insist that international trade agreements enforce labor and environmental protections. But he also takes positions that might make some Wellstone fans uncomfortable. He makes balancing the budget the centerpiece of his economic policy, argues that single-payer national health insurance can’t be passed, and identifies more closely with Clinton’s foreign policy than many progressives would like.

And a Pax on your mausoleum

Salam Pax, the Iraqi blogger turned British reporter, checks out Sherif Ali bin Hussein's press conference at Where is Raed? Iraq's answer to Instapundit graciously links to a WashPost article on the event. In my humble opinion, Sharon Waxman's polished prose and vivid images pale next to Salam's raw but insightful post:

Anyway in [Sherif Ali] goes and gets instantaneously mobbed by the press, it was a scene to behold. I now have a clear understanding of what a “cluster fuck” looks like. It was hot. The mausoleum is tiny and has no windows and you had those hordes of journalists-gone-mad all wanting to have that special picture....He was sweating, it was so hot and they had him right there under the scorching sun, he had this smile pasted on his face and a tiny battery operated fan directed at his neck and held by one of his people. Have you ever tried to look dignified while you are wearing a dark suit and under a scorching sun?

— posted by Mark Gisleson

Posted by Steve Perry at June 13, 2003 12:49 PM

 

Old, new and ongoing wars

The battle for Iraq is over, except for a few niggling details:

U.S. jets bomb terrorist training camp in north Iraq

Apache attack helicopter shot down in western Iraq

Senate Intelligence Committee to begin closed hearings

Blix on U.S. "smear" campaign

Three killed in Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza

Sharon hunts militants, Hamas activates all cells [NYTimes reg. req.]

16 die in Jerusalem suicide bus bombing

Rumsfeld adviser refuses to rule out strike on North Korea

Agent probed after criticizing the FBI's International Terrorism Unit

There you have it: the old war, the never-ending war, and our future war. Pax Bushit.

posted by Mark Gisleson

 

Posted by Steve Perry at June 12, 2003 8:48 AM

 

Internet Piracy, Continued

Sorry to go all inside-baseball on you, but I wanted to update my item from yesterday regarding the wholesale theft and reposting of copyrighted essays and articles--mine, and those of others--by a number of "news clearinghouse" blogs and websites.

Yesterday I corresponded with the editors of Smirking Chimp and Informationclearinghouse.info. I told them that our attorney has advised me that what they're doing is patently illegal--under the case law concerning fair use standards, what they are doing is not even close to passing muster. Jeff Tiedrich, the boss at Smirking Chimp, wrote me back to say he'd stopped posting my stuff, and so why was I upset? Tom somebody, the editor at Information Clearinghouse, wrote back with a bit of puffery indicating he only does what he does in the name of the public's right to know, and aren't we really on the same side after all?

What bullshit. If it were even conceivable that the things I or anyone else wrote were reaching more readers through their posting practices, I don't think I'd complain. But so far as the reading public's right to know is concerned, there is absolutely no difference between their posting a link to MY site (fair, legal) and posting a link to an embedded page at THEIR site (unfair, illegal). The one and only difference is that by doing it the way they do, sites like Smirking Chimp and Information Clearinghouse artificially inflate their own page views at the expense of others.

Why does this matter? Because page views are part of the currency of the Internet--pile up a lot of them and you begin to be noticed more by search engines and blog trackers. You get linked more. Success begets success. Smirking Chimp clearly understands this; when you visit his page, the first thing you see beneath the main banner is a daily update like this:

22,498,786 page views since 27 December 2000

And that's very impressive. You could divide it by a factor somewhere between 4 and 14 to see how many page views the site would have had if it were playing fairly or legally.

There are any number of vital news clearinghouse sites who do it the honest way, by linking off to original sources--Cursor, Antiwar.com, Buzzflash.

Useful as pages like the Chimp and Info Clearinghouse may be, one question lingers: What exactly gives them the right to steal other people's work when the public interest would be as well-served by their doing it the honorable and legal way?

I should say that both sites have offered to take down any Bush Wars posts they have appropriated as their own. I told them it's not enough. Bad actors like these need to be policed up and cleaned up--by us, and now; to fail to do so is to hasten the day when some big media company files a lawsuit that winds up further tightening "fair use" restrictions for all of us bloggers and links providers. 

Today I'm contacting their Internet Service Providers and the National Writers Union.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 12, 2003 8:04 AM

 

DHS: As Big a Planning Snafu as Iraq?

The Bushmen prove again that they're all bozos in this putsch.

I've always remembered the advice of Jessica Mitford--trade journals are where the scoop on any industry resides. But I don't see many of them. Yesterday TCB managing editor Mark Gisleson passed me the May 26 issue of Federal Computer Week, a glossy, banal, but nonetheless informative digest. The 5/26 cover story, by a writer named Judi Hasson, is a report card on the Department of Homeland Security's first 100 days.

First the short strokes: There have been a few petty nips and tucks to domestic security procedures so far, mostly at the airports and borders. These things, however, were mostly being done before DHS came into existence, and would have been done in any case. So no credit to Ridge's posse there. As for the larger matter of creating a functioning organizational grid and, more important, a software architecture plan for integrating the enormous mass of data that DHS intends to process--nada. Nothing at all has been accomplished to date. 

Here, for example, is the sidebar note on Critical Infrastructure Protection: "DHS's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate implemented a plan to conduct vulnerability assessments for all critical infrastructure sectors." Got that? So far they have agreed that they're going to have to take a look, sometime, at domestic security threats. Huzzah! 

Hasson writes,

Ridge acknowledged that information technology integration is "a monstrous task," and some observers are quick to point out that the department has little to show for its work so far.

Robert David Steele, an author and former intelligence officer, points out that there are at least 30 separate intelligence systems and no money to connect them to one another or make them interoperable. "There is nothing in the president's homeland security program that makes America safer," he said....

Patrick Schambach, chief information officer at the Transportation SEcurity Administration, said DHS officials are... still in the discovery phase, figuring out exactly what tools they have in their arsenal....

This work includes creating an inventory of all the information systems being used in the department and deciding which should stay and which should go. The systems inventory, to be completed next month, is the first step toward an enterprise architecture plan that will be unveiled in September. That has not been an easy task. The inventory has already tallied more than 2,000 applications, most of them in stand-alone systems inherited from the 22 agencies that were folded into DHS.

Thankfully, though, Hasson reports that DHS's best and brightest do at last have email. Terrorists wishing to register can contact them through the DHS home page. (And be sure to select "security threats" as your subject line from the handy scroll-down menu.)

There are a couple of obligatory questions to ask in the name of fairness: Doesn't every administration flog its programs from their inception, before they're actually functioning? And wouldn't any administration be taking its first baby steps now with a program of this scale? The answers, respectively, are yes and no. FDR certainly did not wait for Congress's approval to start issuing executive orders and setting Harry Hopkins and the rest of his brain trust to formulating specific plans for various New Deal programs. To believe the Bushmen are still at square one with DHS by necessity is just absurd; to think as much requires swallowing the notion that an administration capable of selling and mounting an illegal war half a world away would blanch at bending bureaucratic rules in the absence of congressional approval to get the homeland security ball rolling.

Yet it's abundantly evident they did no such thing. Between the Bushmen's announcement in October 2001 that they would form a Department of Homeland Security and its formal inception this year, DHS was just another PR dirigible floated by the same people who dreamed up Bush's vaunted carrier landing last month--not to mention the "plan" for postwar Iraq. When it comes to the particulars of the Bushmen's imperial designs, they've got postures, not plans.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 11, 2003 11:06 AM

 

And Now, A Word About the Scourge of Internet Piracy

I love it when other sites link to what I write here--I'm doing this to be read, after all. But lately I've noticed a handful of websites pursuing a pretty repugnant practice: In place of linking to what I've written here, they upload the entire text of other writers' posts onto their own embedded pages, thus geometrically increasing the page views at their sites. In particular I've noticed The Smirking Chimp and Information Clearinghouse--two websites always worth reading because of their editors' sharp sensibilities--doing this recently with things I've written. And it's not just me, of course; they do it to lots of their link-ees.

I wonder if they know that this is illegal. According to City Pages' attorney, who I just talked to on the phone, it's theft and, more than that, it's fraud: the rankest kind of copyright infringement. If they persist in doing it, some wiseass--and who can say which one?--is going to start contacting past and present victims of this piracy, some of whom may feel even less tolerant than I'm feeling right now.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 11, 2003 10:51 AM

 

Does Bush have any plans to leave Iraq?

Jay Bookman's one of those journalists whose name you just don't hear nearly often enough. Sadly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stashes his old columns behind a paid archive firewall, so you'll have to settle for these "fair use" paragraphs:

The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence.

The pieces just didn't fit. Something else had to be going on; something was missing.

In recent days, those missing pieces have finally begun to fall into place. As it turns out, this is not really about Iraq. It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or UN resolutions.

This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were.

Once that is understood, other mysteries solve themselves. For example, why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?

Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran.

Reading Bookman makes you wonder what happened to journalistic priorities. More and more of the post-Iraq war stories suggest that Bush & Co. ran an illegal covert operation under the guise of a war of self-defense. Will Congress ever investigate? Not if Big Media refuses to put pressure on them.

For more from Jay Bookman, click here for his most recent column on WMDs.

By the way, Steve Perry is currently on deadline but will be back soon.

— Guest posted by Mark Gisleson

Posted by Steve Perry at June 10, 2003 1:14 PM

 

How to Beat Bush, Part 1

First start counting the lies...

One of the many images at bushinberlin.de

Early last week I started making notes for a long essay about the many war- and terror-related lies in which the Bush administration has already been implicated. In about half an hour I managed to fill an entire notebook page, and so far it only contains a sampling of the Bushmen's coarser, more memorable whoppers.

Last week, too, the Times's Paul Krugman--the only American daily newspaper columnist, besides William Pfaff of the International Herald Tribune, who is always worth reading--published a piece in the same vein: 

It's no answer to say that Saddam was a murderous tyrant. I could point out that many of the neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders by Central American death squads in the 1980's. But the important point is that this isn't about Saddam: it's about us. The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history — worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra. Indeed, the idea that we were deceived into war makes many commentators so uncomfortable that they refuse to admit the possibility.

Read the rest.

Here's the start of my list, beginning with the very premise of the Iraq war and proceeding to more quotidian fibs.

The invasion of Iraq was based on a genuine belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the US. 

Intelligence reports prior to the war supported that belief.

The invasion of Iraq was based on a desire to liberate the Iraqi people.

The US wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.

The war in Iraq was an extension of a larger war on terror.

There is a larger war on terror.

The Bush administration's foreign policy was born spontaneously and by necessity in the wake of 9/11.

The Bush administration had a plan for restoring essential services after the shooting war ended.

The Patriot Act and other sundry rollbacks of domestic freedoms were conceived only after 9/11, as a response to the events of that day.

Saddam was involved in the plotting of 9/11.

US troops have been under attack on the numerous occasions when they have killed members of angry, protesting crowds in Iraq.

After the war, the US would promptly facilitate the formation of an independent Iraqi government.

After the war, the US would not seek to control Iraq's oil supply.

The US's invasion plan was backed by a 40-nation-strong "coalition of the willing," many members of which (if they existed at all) refused to be named publicly lest the rest of the world hate them, too.

There has been progress to date in the war on terrorist/guerrilla elements around the world.

US troops bravely rescued Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital.

As I say, that's only the start of a list. I'm sure there's more to add, especially as concerns the "little" lies, like the saga of Jessica Lynch. So let's make that the BW Question of the Day:

Which lies of the Bushmen am I missing so far?

Email me at sperry@citypages.com, and as always, thanks.

Later this week I'll post about how the Democrats could craft all this into a coherent "message" for the campaign season, and why they won't.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 9, 2003 9:01 AM

 

BW Readers: Run, Greens, Run!

Me, I'm not so sure.

I have completed the arduous, thankless, and intern-less task of going through the 200 or so responses you sent regarding the Greens and Michael Moore in '04. (The original BW items are here and here.)

So: Should the Greens run a presidential candidate in 2004?

Taking into account the plus-or-minus 50 percent accuracy of Bush Wars polling methodology, I am confident in saying that it's all a big clusterfuck at this point.

I expected that a fairly decisive majority of the left-libs who read this site would be opposed to any third-party gambit in 2004 that might hand Bush the election; I was wrong. Almost 60 percent of those responding said that the Greens should mount a presidential campaign in 2004. Of those, about half seemed motivated by sheer hatred for the political establishment, Democrats as well as Republicans, and about half hedged their bets in some manner: The Greens should run a "party-building" (i.e., obscure and deliberately marginal) presidential campaign, for example.

Another popular option: the "sort of" presidential campaign. Several readers suggested that the Greens run an issue-raising, consciousness-raising campaign only to drop out and throw their support to the Democrats at the 11th hour. Brilliant. Just one question: In mounting that kind of campaign, will you tell the world in advance that your candidacy is a sham, or dupe your supporters until the bitter end? And either way, who do you suppose will be listening to you come election day?

Not surprisingly, the champions of this kind of Trojan horse campaign were some of the most avid Michael Moore advocates as well, the notion being (I guess) that Moore is the perfect celebrity presence to mount a campaign that's conceived from the start as polemical entertainment.

(Of the respondents who did weigh in on Moore, about a quarter of the total, roughly 2/3 thought he should be the Green party presidential candidate.)

My own hunch is that the Greens will not try a "serious" presidential candidate in 2004; they may run one of their party functionaries as a means of retaining favored ballot status in some states. The shocking thing, to me at least, is that so many people seem to want the Greens to run someone despite the threat of inadvertently helping Bush. Right here, right now, I find that stunning. I don't think there is any overestimating the disgust that Americans from across the political spectrum have for the Democratic party.

I've been mulling this over with people for days now, and I keep coming to a conclusion I don't much like. The modern Democratic party is a wretched and cynical Republican-Lite beast. I have never once bought or sold the lesser evil shibboleth. But for once, "wretched and cynical" probably is a genuinely lesser evil. I'm still open to being convinced otherwise, but more and more it seems to me that something like another Popular Front against fascism is in order. 

There. Let the arrows commence. 

And here are a collection of reader commentaries I received.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 6, 2003 12:06 PM

 

Technical Difficulties

Snuckles, 2001-2003

The sudden and temporary collapse of our hamster-powered blogs server this morning has put a vexsome wrinkle in my daily schedule. There is a new rodent on the job now, and I'm writing the Greens/Michael Moore update, which will be posted later this afternoon or in the morning.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 5, 2003 2:12 PM

 

Readers on Greens, Moore

The minute the Greens start backhandedly supporting Democrats with a cute "strategic voting" scheme is the minute the public stops taking Greens seriously because the Greens have stopped stop taking themselves seriously. It is the minute that the corporate Democrats feel free to completely ignore their own Kucinich/Sharpton wing and take votes to their left for granted. It is the minute the whole dynamic of the election shifts to the Right, with the Green Party looking like it isn't really serious about wanting governmental power to make changes.

The best way to fight the Right is with a good offense around an independent campaign for a real alternative, not a defensive strategy of supporting the Soft Right Democrats against the Hard Right Republicans. The Democratic leadership is so complicit in Bush's tax cuts, corporate pandering, war powers, war budgets, and repressive legislation that it is hard to argue they are the lesser evil. It's more like the slicker evil of a Clinton vs. the cruder evil of a Bush Jr.

Neoconservative militarism and neoliberal economics are not Bush's exclusive preserve. The Democratic leadership and majority of Congressional Democrats are every bit as committed to them as they are to pleasing their financial sponsors in the corporate rich who want these policies.

 

Howie Hawkins

(fmr NY Green candidate for state comptroller)

 

 

 

Lately, I've been thinking that Greens would be more effective as a pressure group or movement, rather than a political party. All the time and money they spend trying to gain elected office hasn't achieved anything. And we need to look no further than our own back yard. Annie Young from the Park Board, as well as Natalie Lee Johnson and Dean Zimmerman from the City Council, haven't been very effective, as nice as they may be.

 

Also, it's pressure groups and mass movements that secure progress and justice, not elected politicians, whether they're Democrats, Republicans, Independents or Greens. Consider what was achieved in the last century by the Labor Movement, the Poor People's Mo