What's "Wrong" Got to Do With It?

It continues to appall me that our political environment has devolved to the point where chronic law-breaking, lying, and failure by (pseudo-) elected politicians to even genuflect in the direction of representing "we the people" has become acceptable. Back in the day, Nixon's shenanigans triggered a revolt based partly I want to think on ethical standards and some appreciation for what mattered. These days, not so much.

Glenn Greenwald, at his exceptional blog Unclaimed Territory, continues among other valuable roles to act as a surrogate conscience, alas one that as these things go, likely impinges primarily on the choir.

One of the most bizarre aspects of our current political debates is that the very people who were most glaringly and incessantly wrong about virtually everything prior to the invasion of Iraq are still held out as some sort of wise foreign policy experts. The converse of that distorted principle is that those who were most right about Iraq-related issues are still treated as subversive lepers who are unfit for decent company, as well as unfit to be heard in mainstream media outlets and television talk shows.

Few people, if any, were as right about the critical pre-invasion issues as Scott Ritter was. Back in September, 2002, Ritter was trying to tell anyone who would listen that Iraq had no WMD's, and accordingly said:

My country seems on the verge of making an historic mistake…. My government is making a case for war against Iraq that is built upon fear and ignorance, as opposed to the reality of truth and fact.

Ritter was not just some newspaper columnist like Charles Krauthammer or free floating pundit like Michael Ledeen. He was a former Marine officer, top aide to Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War, and a tenacious weapons inspector working inside Iraq for the U.N. It is difficult to imagine someone with greater credentials and credibility who ought to have been listened on those issues.

But in a vivid reminder of just how ugly and corrupt were the tactics used by Bush followers at the time to crush any dissent, Ritter was virtually excluded from any mainstream setting. He was branded a subversive, a traitor, and the "new Jane Fonda." The media -- while it venerated the Krauthammers and Bill Kristols and Fred Barnes's and the slew of other know-nothings who paraded forth to spew fictitious pro-war talking points -- cooperated enthusiastically with the smears on Ritter, all but treating him like some sort of untouchable traitor, notwithstanding the fact that, until 2004, he had voted only for Republicans, not to mention that he been an outstanding Marine officer. Nothing shielded those who dissented from the Bush agenda from charges of treason and subversion.

And by virtue of this now-familiar Bush worshipping tactic, one of the very few individuals who was actually voicing accurate and truthful observations about Iraq prior to the invasion was shut out of the debate, other than to be held up for universal mockery.

Ritter has just given an interview (h/t Taylor Marsh) to San Diego Citybeat (the national media, with a payroll full of people who were completely misinformed and wrong about Iraq, still treats Ritter like a crank). The interview is well worth reading.

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If you read the Constitution, you’ll be struck by the first words: “We the people of the United States.” And yet it sickens me where Americans will say, in the name of security, they will give up their constitutional rights. Warrantless wiretapping—it’s against the law! This is the sort of issue that should bring Americans streaming into the streets, saying, “Not on my watch.” If your definition of patriotism is blind subservience to governmental authority, then you’ve just defined those Germans who supported Hitler, the Italians who supported Mussolini.

Ritter also believes that the essence of the administration's conflict with Iran has nothing to do with whether Iran ceases its enrichment efforts and everything to do with the fact that the administration is resolved to change the ruling regime in Iran:

That’s why when I speak of Iran, I say be careful of falling into the trap of nonproliferation, disarmament, weapons of mass destruction; this is a smokescreen. The Bush administration does not have policy of disarmament vis-à-vis Iran. They do have a policy of regime change. If we had a policy of disarmament, we would have engaged in unilateral or bilateral discussions with the Iranians a long time ago. But we put that off the table because we have no desire to resolve the situation we use to facilitate the military intervention necessary to achieve regime change.

It’s the exact replay of the game plan used for Iraq, where we didn’t care what Saddam did, what he said, what the weapons inspectors found. We created the perception of a noncompliant Iraq, and we stuck with that perception, selling that perception until we achieved our ultimate objective, which was invasion that got rid of Saddam. With Iran, we are creating the perception of a noncompliant Iran, a threatening Iran. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. Now that we have successfully created that perception, the Bush administration will move forward aggressively until it achieves its ultimate objective, which is regime change.

It is difficult to dismiss that view -- very difficult. It was readily apparent even as early as mid-2002 that we were going to invade Iraq no matter what Saddam did, no matter what happened with the inspections process, etc. The goal was not to rid Iraq of weapons but to change the government regardless of what weapons it had.

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Howzabouta Little Investigation?

Just when Bob Woodward had through what seems to amount to subornage to the powers-that-be and general sycophancy spent all the credibility chips gained from the yeoman reportage in exposing Watergate, we're reminded that he was not a solo act way back when. Woodward's bankrupt for sure, but I believe I hear the sound of cavalry to the rescue.

Carl Bernstein, RW's former accomplice-in-patriotism, has just weighed in with a terrific article in Vanity Fair, arguing that the tide has turned in favor of invoking a serious investigation of the performance and character of the Bush junta.

Of course the numbers of us pretty well persuaded of the despicable nature of that "performance," given what we can see of the "results," is constantly growing, to the point where it is likely a solid majority depending on how carefully the question is asked.

Indubitably, question nuances and such annoying picayune details are a major component of this theoretical investigation. This administration seems to have relied on a greater degree of secrecy, clandestine behavior, and invoked claimed national security needs far more than any other in history. Yet, interestingly, despite far greater cover resulting from this sleazy backstage strategy, anyone paying attention (okay, yes, we're now alas talking well less than a majority of the citizenry) must be aware that word games and hairsplitting are the standard behavior on the rare occasion when the brush-cutter is actually exposed to an impromptu question.

"There's no war plan on my desk" is a classic. "If someone committed a crime" is great too, leaving the obvious innocent-until-proven-guilty copout to cover for years of ongoing criminal service while what's left of justice ambles on. Flat-out lies have become more or less de rigueur for Bush, Cheney, and McClellan to the point where their appearances scarcely count without a real zinger. For me it's the insistence on word-game evasion that's most offensive given that we have been more than adequately informed that nuances, subtleties, "negotiating with myself," anything resembling responding to new information, and generally caring about the details are more than butch can be bothered with.

Lying is a sin, for those inclined towards some brands of religion, e.g. Christianity. Under circumstances of power, lying is a crime, potentially a capital crime. Bush is a documented liar. Cheney is a known liar. Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Powell, and others are also on-record liars.

Bernstein's article is carefully phrased, avoiding the vehemence I certainly feel and tend to prefer and find plenty of out here. His article has already attracted a lot of attention, and I anticipate some scorn from the hard-core for being less strident than it could have been. Personally, I'm delighted to have a veteran of these things weigh in measuredly, careful phrasing and all yet with clear abhorrence for what these swine have been allowed to get away with.

Okay, I admit that the chance of such an investigation actually being made is limited given the regressive's control of all that smacks of government. But let's face it; even some former shrubsters can read and maybe even think for themselves. He's not such a wonderful guy to be caught out in public with these days. Maybe they would like to win at least a few of those upcoming elections too!

I'm excerpting at some length here, proportionate to the excellent and nourishingly-long article. I think you will be able to hold your own in that party this weekend with my short version, but those of you with proper appetites and political metabolism should know obligation to read the entirety.

Senate Hearings on Bush, Now:

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Raising the worse-than-Watergate question and demanding unequivocally that Congress seek to answer it is, in fact, overdue and more than justified by ample evidence stacked up from Baghdad back to New Orleans and, of increasing relevance, inside a special prosecutor's office in downtown Washington.

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Perhaps there are facts or mitigating circumstances, given the extraordinary nature of conceiving and fighting a war on terror, that justify some of the more questionable policies and conduct of this presidency, even those that turned a natural disaster in New Orleans into a catastrophe of incompetence and neglect. But the truth is we have no trustworthy official record of what has occurred in almost any aspect of this administration, how decisions were reached, and even what the actual policies promulgated and approved by the president are. Nor will we, until the subpoena powers of the Congress are used (as in Watergate) to find out the facts—not just about the war in Iraq, almost every aspect of it, beginning with the road to war, but other essential elements of Bush's presidency, particularly the routine disregard for truthfulness in the dissemination of information to the American people and Congress.

The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy—used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.

Most of what we have learned about the reality of this administration—and the disconcerting mind-set and decision-making process of President Bush himself—has come not from the White House or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, but from insider accounts by disaffected members of the administration after their departure, and from distinguished journalists, and, in the case of a skeletal but hugely significant body of information, from a special prosecutor. And also, of late, from an aide-de-camp to the British prime minister. Almost invariably, their accounts have revealed what the president and those serving him have deliberately concealed—torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and its apparent authorization by presidential fiat; wholesale N.S.A. domestic wiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law; brutal interrogations of prisoners shipped secretly by the C.I.A. and U.S. military to Third World gulags; the nonexistence of W.M.D. in Iraq; the role of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff in divulging the name of an undercover C.I.A. employee; the non-role of Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the events of 9/11; the death by friendly fire of Pat Tillman (whose mother, Mary Tillman, told journalist Robert Scheer, "The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him"); the lack of a coherent post-invasion strategy for Iraq, with all its consequent tragedy and loss and destabilizing global implications; the failure to coordinate economic policies for America's long-term financial health (including the misguided tax cuts) with funding a war that will drive the national debt above a trillion dollars; the assurance of Wolfowitz (since rewarded by Bush with the presidency of the World Bank) that Iraq's oil reserves would pay for the war within two to three years after the invasion; and Bush's like-minded confidence, expressed to Blair, that serious internecine strife in Iraq would be unlikely after the invasion.

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"Terrorism is not the only new danger of this era," noted George F. Will, the conservative columnist. "Another is the administration's argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the 'sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs' … [which] is refuted by the Constitution's plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws 'necessary and proper' for the execution of all presidential powers."

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As in Watergate, the Bush White House has, at almost every opportunity when endangered by the prospect of accountability, made the conduct of the press the issue instead of the misconduct of the president and his aides, and, with help from its Republican and conservative allies in and out of Congress, questioned the patriotism of the other party. As during the Nixon epoch, the strategy is finally wearing thin. "He's smoking Dutch Cleanser," said Specter when Bush's attorney general claimed legality for the president's secret order authorizing the wiretapping of Americans by the N.S.A.—first revealed in The New York Times in December.

Before the Times story had broken, the president was ardent about his civil-libertarian credentials in such matters: "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so," Bush said in a speech in Buffalo, New York, in April 2004.

Obviously, Bush's statement was demonstrably untrue. Yet instead of correcting himself, Bush attacked the Times for virtual treason, and his aides initiated a full-court press to track down whoever had provided information to the newspaper. "Our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk," he declared, as if America's terrorist enemies hadn't assumed they were subject to all manner of electronic eavesdropping by the world's most technologically sophisticated nation.

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That statement by Bush, in June 2004, in response to worldwide outrage at the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs, illustrates two related, core methodologies employed by this president and his cadre to escape responsibility for their actions: First, an Orwellian reliance on the meaninglessness of words. (When is "torture" torture? When is "ordered" "authorized"? When is "if someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration" a scheme to keep trusted aides on the payroll through a legal process that could take years before adjudication and hide the president's own role in helping start—perhaps inadvertently—the Plame ball rolling?)

"Listen, I know of nobody—I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information," the president was quoted saying in Time magazine's issue of October 13, 2003. Time's report then noted with acuity, "Bush seemed to emphasize those last two words ['classified information'] as if hanging onto a legal life preserver in choppy seas."

The second method of escape is the absence of formal orders issued down the chain of command, leaving non-coms, enlisted men and women, and a few unfortunate non-star officers to twist in the wind for policies emanating from the president, vice president, secretary of defense, attorney general, national-security adviser to the president, and current secretary of state (formerly the national-security adviser). With a determined effort, a committee of distinguished senators should be able to establish if the grotesque abuse of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo was really the work of a "few bad apples" like Army Reserve Spc. Lynndie England wielding the leash, or a natural consequence of actions flowing from the Oval Office and Office of the Secretary of Defense.

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There will forever be four indelible photographic images of the George W. Bush epoch: an airplane crashing into World Trade Tower number two; Bush in a Florida classroom reading from a book about a goat while a group of second-graders continued to captivate him for another seven minutes after Andrew Card had whispered to the president, "America is under attack"; floodwaters inundating New Orleans, and its residents clinging to rooftops for their lives; and, two days after the hurricane struck, Bush peeking out the window of Air Force One to inspect the devastation from a safe altitude. The aftermath of the hurricane's direct hit, both in terms of the devastation and the astonishing neglect and incompetence from the top down, would appear to be unique in American history. Except for the Civil War and the War of 1812 (when the British burned Washington), no president has ever lost an American city; and if New Orleans is not lost, it will only be because of the heroics of its people and their almost superhuman efforts to overcome the initial lethargy and apparent non-comprehension of the president. Bush's almost blank reaction was foretold vividly in a video of him and his aides meeting on August 28, 2005, the day before Katrina made landfall. The tape—withheld by the administration from Congress but obtained by the Associated Press along with seven days of transcripts of administration briefings—shows Bush and his Homeland Security chief being warned explicitly that the storm could cause levees to overflow, put large number of lives at risk, and overwhelm rescuers.

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After Nixon's resignation, it was often said that the system had worked. Confronted by an aberrant president, the checks and balances on the executive by the legislative and judicial branches of government, and by a free press, had functioned as the founders had envisioned.

The system has thus far failed during the presidency of George W. Bush—at incalculable cost in human lives, to the American political system, to undertaking an intelligent and effective war against terror, and to the standing of the United States in parts of the world where it previously had been held in the highest regard.

There was understandable reluctance in the Congress to begin a serious investigation of the Nixon presidency. Then there came a time when it was unavoidable. That time in the Bush presidency has arrived.

Game, Set, Match to Ms.Hamsher

I'm not willing to even grant mercy points in this smack-down. Ms. Hamsher in three as I see it. Limited excerpt below hardly does her justice. If you made it this far you can certainly check out the original, no?

The Latest Plame Smear: Does Fred Hiatt Even Read the Washington Post?

For years now the GOP machine has succeeded in strong-arming the Washington Post into legitimizing their propaganda, dribbling out sensational disinformation during Whitewater to the hacktackular Sue Schmidt to put on the front page without skepticism or question. Over time they have provided easy, sleazy copy and traded "access" to the point that it has fueled an empire of mediocrity where only the people willing to limbo low enough and shape the news to Karl Rove's satisfaction are rewarded with the scoops that trigger seniority. Both editors and reporters alike know their only ability to ascend the hierarchy comes from emulating supreme access pimp and BushCo. dupe Bob Woodward in a slavish devotion to stenography and the propagation of spin.

The new Washington Post editorial, an enormous turd that editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is no doubt behind, is such an unmitigated piece of BushCo. propaganda, such a giant bag of bs it deserves to be taken apart, piece by piece and beaten into the ground. Armando at Daily Kos has a rundown of Hiatt's bloodthirsty warmongering for which the paper will one day soon be held to account. But Sunday's editorial on the BushCo. leak shows exactly how the Post is earning its reputation for being just a few shades less reliable than PRAVDA:

A Good Leak

President Bush declassified some of the intelligence he used to decide on war in Iraq. Is that a scandal?

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do.

How exactly does the public benefit from having selective, misleading bits of information leaked to a reporter for no other reason than to polish Bush's image in the press? Over at the Left Coaster, eRiposte takes apart the notion that this "declassification" was in any way intended to benefit the public.

Basically the NIE report had three sections -- the Key Judgments, which had no mention of the uranium claim, the Body of the NIE which did mention the uranium claim, and the Annex which contained the INR rebuttal that said the uranium claim was extremely iffy.

Says eRiposte:

If Libby had actually passed on the key judgments of the NIE to Miller, Miller would have discovered that it had NO mention of the uranium claim. So, it appears that Libby, Bush and Cheney tried to deliberately misrepresent the NIE to reporters by claiming that the uranium claim was part of the NIE's key judgments (even though it was not) and then tried to leak the contents from the body of the NIE (minus the annex) to make it appear as if the NIE made a strong case against Joseph Wilson's claims.

Hiatt may want to take a short trip down the hall, because journalists Barton Gelman and Dafna Linzer, also writing for Sunday's Washington Post seem very much aware of this fact.

Further, according to Fitzgerald the CIA report on Joe Wilson's trip had not been declassified at the time Libby leaked it to Miller. Hiatt conveniently ignores this in his eagerness to give Bush a free pass and attribute his craven abuse of power to some misty-eyed notion of public service.

But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

This is a portrait of Fred Hiatt gorging on beltway cocktail weenies. How helpful of him to spread the meme that this is all just more partisan politics. There is no legitimate concern here, no. It's all just Democratic "hyperbole." I can't wait to see the polling on this one, I'm sure it'll prove there are a whole lot of Democrats out there.

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