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Today's
Stories
October 22
/ 24, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
You
Can't Blame Nader for This
October 21,
2004
Ben Tripp
The
Undecided Voter Examined
Joshua Frank
Kerry
and the Environment:
It's Not Easy Pretending to be Green
Stan Cox
What
the Left Doesn't Get About Small Businesses
Bill Martinez
State
Depart and Cuban Visas: Only Anti-Castro Agitators Need Apply
Mark Engler
The War and Globalization
Lina Britto
and Lucia Suarez
Bolivia:
a Year After the October Insurrection
Website of the Day
Two Pampered Children of Wealth
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
Jason Leopold
Sinclair
Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception
Jesse Sharkey
A
Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School
Students
Col. Dan Smith
Choking
Free Speech About the Draft
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion
David Vest
If
Bush Wins, Blame Me
Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Ron Jacobs
Time
to Kick It Up a Notch
James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?
Christopher
Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest
Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...
Website of
the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue
October 19,
2004
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
October 22 / 24, 2004
One More Bogus
Rationale
The
Emperor's New Crumbs
By
DAVID J. LEDERMANN
You flip and you flop under
the Big White Top
where the long-legged ring-mistress starts and stops.
But you know, after all, the act is wearing thin ---
as the crowd grows uneasy and the boos begin.
But you balance your world on the tip of your nose ---
you're a SeaLion with a ball at the carnival.
-- Ian Anderson,
"SeaLion" from War Child (Jethro Tull, 1974)
With the recent release of the Iraq
Survey Group's final report on the search for Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction, the administration and its supporters
have rushed to embrace those few crumbs thrown in their direction
by ISG head, Charles Duelfer, the special advisor to the Director
of Central Intelligence hand-picked for the job by the president.
Those crumbs are encapsulated in language probably as favorable
to the administration's position as any by a headline appearing
on the Pentagon's Armed Forces Information Service website on
the day of the report's release, "Saddam Had WMD Ambitions."
Duelfer's paltry leavings, however, principally the report's
indications that Saddam harbored an apparent "intent"
to pursue illegal weapons in the future, are not likely to do
much to relieve the anguish of Carlos Arredondo, who set himself
and a military van ablaze after three uniformed Marine casualty
officers arrived at his Florida home bearing news that his 20-year-old
son, Alexander, had been killed in Najaf.
Nor are Duelfer's crumbs likely
to temper Sue Niederer's anger, which last month got her arrested
at a campaign event where she interrupted a Laura Bush speech
attired in a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, "President
Bush You Killed My Son," 24-year-old Seth Dvorin, who died
in Iraq trying to disarm an explosive device along a military
supply route. They probably won't go very far either toward easing
the pain of Rosemarie Slavenas, whose son Brian died in Iraq
for what his mother called America's lack of a "civilized
foreign policy." Duelfer's crumbs probably won't ameliorate
the grieving of Ruth and Agustin Lau, parents of 20-year-old
Karina, who walked away from a four-year music scholarship to
enlist in the Army only to be blown out of the sky by a shoulder-fired
missile that took down the transport helicopter starting her
toward home from Fallujah for a two-week leave. Nor will they
bring back to her husband and family Karen Unruh-Wahrer, dead
at 45 of a heart attack suffered just hours after seeing for
the first time the lifeless body of her son, Robert, who was
killed by enemy fire near Baghdad last month.
For anyone who missed it, the
Duelfer report's central findings were that Iraq had no weapons
of mass destruction at the time of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003
or for most of the 12 years leading up to it and that no such
weapons had been produced in Iraq after 1991. By 1996, Iraq had
eliminated all of its weapons programs and production capabilities
for manufacturing WMDs, and no efforts were ever made to convert
so-called "dual use" facilities to weapons manufacture.
Through the 1990s and after, Iraq's nuclear capabilities had
deteriorated, not advanced, as the Bush administration had so
volubly maintained. Finally, the report concludes that Saddam
never attempted to reconstitute his capacity for making illegal
weapons.
Duelfer skewered virtually
every claim made by the administration in the run-up to war,
from tales of chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and
aluminum tubes for processing nuclear fuel to horror stories
about mobile biological weapons laboratories and attempted purchases
by Saddam of nuclear yellowcake. Not only did the Duelfer report
demonstrate that there were no illegal weapons, and no "weapons
programs," as the original Bush fallback position claimed,
but it discredits even the president's back-up fallback position
-- his fabulously labored assertion in the 2004 State of the
Union Address that Saddam was engaged in "weapons of mass
destruction-related program activities." Commenting on the
report, David Kay, who led the ISG until January of this year
and who had by then concluded that no weapons of mass destruction
existed, stated that Duelfer's report flatly repudiated the administration's
pre-war hype and that it showed Saddam "was not an imminent
threat." Kay explained that whatever Saddam's intentions
may have been, the report demonstrates that he "had no plans
for moving from intent to production."
About the always fanciful notion
that the Iraqi government had spirited weapons of mass destruction
out of the country without anyone noticing, Kay had this to say
on CNN: "Right now we have a lot of people who are desperate
to justify the Bush administration's decision to go to war with
Iraq. . . . They will focus on issues such as intent. You will
also hear that although we haven't found the weapons or manufacturing
capability, they could have been shipped across the border. You
can't ship that which you haven't produced. You can't bury that
which you haven't obtained or produced."
All of which leads to the inescapable
conclusion, one most of the world had arrived at before the war
began, that the primary justification the administration gave
for the invasion of Iraq was without foundation. The Bush team
is nothing if not creative, however, and the president came out
swinging after the Duelfer report's release. It seems that rather
than undermine the rationale for war, the report actually provides
justification for it -- though not exactly the justification
that had been advertised. For Duelfer had divined Saddam's intent
to someday produce weapons of mass destruction (albeit not, as
advertised, to attack the United States or give to terrorists,
but as a deterrent, mainly against Iran).
Duelfer's offerings concerning
Saddam's state of mind, though meager, are worth more than their
weight in political gold. Indeed, they may be all that stands
between another four years marking the most virulent strain of
crony capitalism the country has seen since Warren Harding's
administration and the eviction of George W. Bush from the White
House. Those tiny morsels Duelfer left him have over recent days
been strung together as a political lifeline for Bush, one to
which he and the members of his administration are desperately
clinging to maintain their grip on power. Leaving nothing to
chance (and certainly nothing to truth or accuracy), the president
and his staff are grasping at Duelfer's crumbs for all they are
worth and a whole lot more.
It matters not that the portion
of the Duelfer report now being used to rationalize the Iraq
invasion is almost purely speculative and appears to have been
presented more as a gift to the president that appointed the
ISG head than a finding based on solid evidence. As the AP summarized,
Duelfer's team found that "Saddam was particularly concerned
about the threat posed by Iran," and the deposed Iraqi ruler
said that "he would meet Iran's threat by any means necessary,
which Duelfer understood to mean weapons of mass destruction."
It seems then that the most significant "evidence"
of Saddam's intent to pursue illegal weapons consists of an inference
drawn by presidential appointee Duelfer from an unspecific and
hardly incriminating statement made by Saddam, under interrogation,
about his determination to defend his country from a hostile
neighbor.
With nothing more alarming
than Duelfer's meditations on Saddam's presumed intent to justify
their war, it obviously wouldn't do for administration officials
to simply recite those portions of the ISG report without adding
a little bit of rhetorical gloss. The president did not disappoint
when upon the report's release, he brazenly asserted that Saddam
"retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the
intent to produce weapons of mass destruction, and he could have
passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies." During
the second presidential debate two days later, Bush proclaimed
that "Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have
given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies,"
while on the stump, Bush continues to defend the war on the grounds
that he acted to prevent the threat of terrorists gaining access
to such weapons.
Never mind that the Duelfer
report concluded that Saddam had neither the "materials"
nor the "means" to produce weapons of mass destruction,
much less the ability or the desire to pass them along to terrorists.
As even Fox News acknowledged, the ISG report "concludes
that Saddam wanted WMDs not to attack the United States or to
share them with terrorists, but to deter his old enemies Iran
and Israel." This conclusion comes as no surprise, as it
mirrors the CIA's pre-war assessment, ignored by the administration
then just as Duelfer's affirmation of it is now, that even if
Saddam possessed illegal weapons, he was unlikely to ever use
them against the U.S. or its allies unless they attacked him
first.
The president's misstatements
were seconded by Condoleeza Rice, the former Chevron Oil Company
director turned National Security Advisor. Before the war, Rice
did her level best to panic an apparently insufficiently jittery
post-9/11 America by invoking the spectre of a Saddam-configured
"mushroom cloud" blossoming any day overhead. Obviously
unchastened by having virtually her every public pronouncement
for two solid years proven wildly and disastrously off the mark,
Rice appeared on the Fox News channel the Sunday following the
Duelfer report's release to declare that Saddam was a "gathering
and growing threat," a statement directly contrary to the
report's findings that Saddam represented a diminishing threat
through the 1990s and by the time of the American-led invasion
in 2003 was no threat at all. Vice-president Cheney, who has
distinguished himself in recent months (when not hurling expletives
on the Senate floor) by repeating at every opportunity the completely
discredited claim that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda, greeted
the ISG report with the assertion that it showed that "delay,
defer, wait wasn't an option." Huh?
Bush and his staff appear as
nothing so much as textbook examples of the old adage that once
you start lying, it's almost impossible to stop. These folks
have been hyping the Iraqi "threat" for over two years
now, and with just days remaining in which to solidify or completely
lose their grasp on power, the administration's lying today is
as fevered as ever. Anyone inclined to believe that administration
officials weren't deliberately deceiving the public about Iraq
before the war need only consider their pronouncements on the
ISG report and how much they conflict with the report's actual
contents. It is the same approach the administration took to
the pre-war "intelligence" it claimed established Saddam
was an "imminent threat" but which for the most part
led to the opposite conclusion.
In fact, reliable information
discrediting the administration's claims about Iraqi weapons
was substantial and readily available before the war to anyone
interested in the truth. During the pre-war period, the administration
and the mainstream media trumpeted as established fact the self-serving
fabrications of Ahmad Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles in the pay
of the U.S. government. While these stories garnered headlines,
credibly sourced, and as everyone now knows, entirely accurate,
reports contradicting the administration's claims were appearing
in the international press, and less prominently, in U.S. media
outlets, as well.
In U.S. mainstream media, reports
challenging the administration's claims tended to appear, if
at all, in the back pages of newspapers, and were practically
invisible on the broadcast and cable television news programs.
Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post described
the consistent slant at his paper, which in a belated and half-hearted
apology to readers over its lemming-like pre-war performance
acknowledged running some 140 front-page stories favorable to
the administration's case for war in the months leading up to
the invasion while contrary information "got lost."
Conceded Ricks, "'Administration assertions were on the
front page. Things that challenged the administration were on
A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors:
Look, we're going to war, why worry about all this contrary stuff?'"
The influential New York Times, which probably advanced the case
for war more than any news organization in the country with its
breathless headlines parroting administration claims, had previously
issued a similar apology to its readers.
The fact that John Kerry cited
the same intelligence the administration supposedly believed
in justifying his own pro-war vote hardly suggests, as Bush has
argued, that "everybody" thought Saddam still had weapons
of mass destruction. Retired Marine intelligence officer and
former chief UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, a Republican
and Bush supporter in 2000, certainly thought otherwise, basing
his conclusion that Iraq had rid itself of such weapons on seven
years of experience on the ground in Iraq seeking evidence of
any. Perhaps more telling, the administration created its own
intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, precisely because
of the pervasive doubts about the existence of Iraqi WMDs being
expressed by American intelligence professionals in the established
agencies. The Office of Special Plans was set up to circumvent
the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which had been insufficiently
accommodating in providing the administration the answers it
wanted to support its case for war. Among its operations, the
Office of Special Plans channeled uncorroborated and mostly false
information from paid Iraqi exiles to the vice-president and
other administration officials without vetting by professional
intelligence analysts. The erroneous information often found
its way into the president's speeches and other administration
pronouncements used to sell the public on the necessity of war.
John Kerry's conduct in relation
to the war does not inspire confidence in the Senator's judgment
or his integrity. Prior to the Senate vote on the Iraq war resolution,
Kerry actively promoted the ridiculous notion that the Iraqi
regime posed a dire threat to the United States, despite the
paucity of credible evidence for the proposition. He then feigned
surprise that the administration, which had been chomping at
the bit for war ever since assuming office, actually went ahead
and launched the invasion once it had the Kerry-supported congressional
resolution in hand for all the political cover it needed. Viewed
from this writer's perch in Michigan, where gas guzzlers and
flag wavers pretty much rule the road yet both our U.S. senators
voted against the Iraq war resolution, Kerry looks to be the
worst kind of opportunist.
Michigans' senior senator,
Carl Levin, is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services
Committee and a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Hardly anti-military (just last year he was presented the highest
civilian honor bestowed by the Navy, its Distinguished Public
Servant Award for his "exceptional service to the Navy and
Marine Corps"), Levin declared the Iraq war resolution "unacceptable
since it empowers the President to initiate the use of U.S. military
force although the threat against which it is used is not imminent."
John Kerry, on the other hand, spurned this principled stance
for the evidently more politically expedient one of avoiding
the prospect of being tagged with an "anti-war" label
in his anticipated run for the presidency.
Based on presidential appointee
Duelfer's own report, then, the threat from Saddam was that,
although disarmed and without any capability or even plans for
producing weapons of mass destruction, he presumably would have
liked to pursue illegal weapons, not to attack the U.S. or its
allies or give to terrorists, but for purposes of self-defense
against openly hostile neighbors that already possess such weapons.
Understandably eager to change the subject, the administration
and its media amen corner have fastened onto those few additional
crumbs laid out by Duelfer regarding Saddam's efforts to game
the oil-for-food program and win support for lifting the crippling
economic sanctions on Iraq. These efforts, viewed in tandem with
Duelfer's assessment of Saddam's intentions, have been fashioned
into a new rationale for war, that if and when Saddam succeeded
in having the sanctions removed, he was going to restart his
weapons programs. It evidently doesn't matter that such a distant,
speculative and improbable scenario (especially as the U.S. was
committed to having the sanctions stay in place so long as Saddam
remained in power) fails by a long shot to constitute grounds
for an invasion under the requirements of any "just war"
theory one might find, falls well outside the criteria for permissible
military action under international law and would have no standing
whatsoever as a basis for war in the moral calculus of any normal
human being.
The Duelfer report is just
one of several recent blows to the administration's case for
war and America's credibility in the world. Following upon the
September 11 commission's findings that there was "no credible
evidence" that Iraq was involved in the attacks of 9/11
and that "no collaborative relationship" had existed
between the government of Iraq and Osama bin Laden's terrorist
network, the CIA reported that it could find no conclusive evidence
substantiating the administration's repeated claims that the
former Iraqi government had harbored terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
On the contrary, as Reuters reports, before the war al-Zarqawi
"was linked to Ansar al-Islam, a militant group operating
in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, an area placed beyond Saddam's
control by U.S. air protection since 1991." Which suggests
that if the U.S. government were half as serious about fighting
terrorism as it is about controlling the Middle East it could
have taken out al-Zarqawi long ago without dropping a single
bomb on the hapless residents of Baghdad.
But don't take my word for
it. A March 2, 2004 report from NBC News relates three separate
missions the U.S. military had planned and was ready to execute
against al-Zarqawi well before the Iraq invasion, each of which
was scrapped by the administration. The reason the missions were
called off, according to NBC, was that while military officials
insisted their case for attacking al-Zarqawi's operations was
airtight, "the administration feared destroying the terrorist
camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."
Evidently, with a prize like Iraq in the offing (one the administration
carelessly took to be easy pickings), the "war on terror"
could take a back seat for a spell while other time-honored American
priorities, like converting oil-rich sovereign nations into colonial
outposts for politically connected capital, were attended.
By the time U.S. forces hit
al-Zarqawi's camp at the beginning of the war, as the NBC story
laments, "it was too late - Zarqawi and many of his followers
were gone." Today, al-Zarqawi is deemed responsible for
hundreds of recent killings in Iraq (including murders of kidnapped
civilians), has pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden and
according to a recent Knight Ridder report, has been gaining
adherents among Iraqis "outraged over the trail of razed
neighborhoods and dead civilians left by the U.S. military's
anti-insurgent offensives." Given the administration's approach
to the problem, the president's recent statement that he didn't
think the war on terror could be won looks more every day like
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Despite the strength of the
evidence that the administration deliberately misled the public
about the Iraqi "threat" to America, it is clear that
no meaningful investigation of the Office of Special Plans, which
unlike the professional intelligence agencies operated without
congressional oversight, will take place. Neither will the administration's
clear abuse of the intelligence process and the manipulations,
exaggerations and distortions of fact by administration officials
lead to their prosecution. Over the objections of Senator Levin
and others, the Republican controlled Congress, which looked
on every perceived transgression by Bill Clinton as an opportunity
for a formal inquiry, public hearings and with any luck, impeachment
proceedings, has all but completely squelched the possibility
of an investigation that might result in embarrassing the president,
especially before the election. As things stand, what ought to
be the most significant and far-reaching inquiry into executive
misconduct in at least a generation is being conducted in secret
with Bush partisans in control of the proceedings. Though by
most accounts the work of the committee investigating the administration's
handling of pre-war intelligence, begun over a year ago, should
only have required a few months to complete, the committee holds
a politically calculated mandate not to report its findings until
after the November presidential elections.
Having reached Duelfer's post-war
conclusions before the war began, Scott Ritter was lampooned
in the American media as an Iraqi dupe. Chief weapons inspector,
Hans Blix, who argued that the UN inspection process should be
given more time, and Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, who reported two weeks before
the invasion that "we have to date found no evidence or
plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program
in Iraq," had their competence questioned by administration
officials and their reputations impugned by the hooligans of
the cable news networks and talk radio. These professionals and
others, performing their jobs in the field, employing their expertise
with no agenda other than establishing the facts, relentlessly
maligned by the administration and its media hatchet wielders,
all today are vindicated.
The politicians, with their
paid informants and rogue intelligence operations, grandiose
ambitions and cowboy swagger, have been proven decisively, conclusively
and fatally (for others, that is) wrong. The Bush administration,
its public relations machinery and the echo chamber of the Washington
press corps embracing and amplifying its every official utterance,
manifestly deceived the public. The explanation for why "delay,
defer, wait wasn't an option" appears now obvious, though
Hans Blix spelled it out seven months ago when he told CNN's
Wolf Blitzer concerning the administration's brief for war, "I
think it's clear that in March, when the invasion took place,
the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling
apart." Yet those responsible are not to be held to account.
The establishment media, complicit
in advancing the administration's case for war from the beginning
and institutionally incapable of challenging power in any event,
greets every new revelation of this administration's malfeasance
with a collective yawn. The Republican congressional majority
eagerly and quite openly maneuvers to cover the administration's
tracks. Meanwhile, the "opposition" party leadership,
including pro-war representative Dick Gephardt, and the like-minded
Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle, hide in the shadows as Bush's
co-conspirators.
The ball of state legitimacy
is being spun as perhaps never before. Bush needs only to keep
the beaten and deflated thing afloat a few more days to the election.
Concerning which, probably nothing speaks more clearly of the
rot at the core of the republic and the corrupted state of our
democratic institutions than the fact that this president, who
took the country into a disastrous and illegal war on utterly
false pretenses, instead of being forced to resign in disgrace
or face impeachment, is as likely as not to be rewarded for his
crimes with a second term in office.
David J. Ledermann is a Detroit-area tax attorney and
writer. He can be reached at: djledermann@hotmail.com
Weekend
Edition Features for October 16 / 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
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