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Conservative Realism or Disingenuous Callousness?
By David Corn
Last week, The Nation and The National Interest held a public discussion to explore whether these days foreign policy realists of the right could make common cause with foreign policy idealists of the left. (The event was titled, "Beyond Neocons and Neolibs: Can Realism Bridge Left and Right" and can be viewed here.) After all, both groups share an opposition to the messianic crusaderism and bullying interventionism of the neocons that has yielded the Iraq war. Speaking for the left were Kai Bird, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Sherle Schwenninger, a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute and a regular contributor to The Nation. The hardheaded crowd was represented by Dov Zakheim, an undersecretary of defense from 2001 to 2004 and now a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton (who supported the invasion of Iraq), and Dmitri Simes, a former Nixon adviser and now publisher of The National Interest
The presentation showed there was not a lot of territory to share. In his opening remarks, Bird noted that Henry Kissinger had been wrong about everything, and he referred to Vietnam and the US support of the military junta that in 1973 overthrew Salvador Allende, a democratically elected socialist, in Chile. Invoking Kissinger as the embodiment of all that has been wrong with U.S. foreign policy for decades was a deep insult to the conservative realists. Kissinger is the honorary chairman of The National Interest. Bird's salvo prompted Zakheim to defend Kissinger, particularly on Chile. (Nixon and Kissinger, via the CIA, had backed efforts to topple Allende.) "Chile," Zakheim said, "doesn't look to me like a failure....Quite a success. It wasn't doing that well in the 1970s." Simes then chimed in: "I'm not appalled by what Kissinger and Nixon have done in Chile. I'm not aware of them ever endorsing torture."
There's realism; then there's callousness. More than 3,000 Chileans were killed by the junta that was encouraged and then supported by Nixon and Kissinger; millions of Chileans lost all their political rights for years, as well. That's hardly "quite a success." And Simes is wrong to suggest that Kissinger was unaware of the abuses of the Chilean regime. The coup occurred on September 11, 1973. A quick search at the website of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit outfit, produced a November 16, 1973 cable from Jack Kubisch, the assistant secretary of state for Latin America, to Secretary of State Kissinger that noted that the Chilean junta had carried out "summary, on-the-spot executions." The cable also reported that military and police units had engaged in the "rather frequent use of random violence" in the post-coup days.
(92) CommentsOctober 20, 2006
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The Drip, Drip, Drip of the Foley-Hastert Scandal
By David Corn
I appeared on ABC News This Week yesterday, as a member of its roundtable. (You can get a podcast of the show here.) Prior to that segment, Representative Adam Putnam of Florida, who chairs the House Republican Policy Committee, debated Representative Rahm Emanuel, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, on the Foley-Hastert affair. Representative Tom Reynolds, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was originally scheduled to be in the GOP slot. Though Reynolds has been incriminated in the Mark Foley scandal and is now in danger of losing his seat in upstate New York, he had surprisingly accepted ABC News' invitation to appear on the show and be questioned by George Stephanopoulos. Common sense finally prevailed, and Reynolds pulled out. As Putnam recounted in the green room before the show, Putnam had been in Florida hunting doves when the call came from Reynolds' NRCC with an order for Putnam: you have to go on the Sunday talk show. Putnam saluted and flew back to Washington.
On the show, Putnam, naturally, defended House Speaker Denny Hastert. It was a hard case to argue, but he did the best he could in the face of Emanuel's assault. That's what you're expected to do when you're a junior (though ambitious) member of your party's leadership. But it may not be cost-free--and Putnam seems to know that. After he was done and about to leave the studio, I remarked to him, "You're betting nothing else is going to come out on this." He nodded but rolled his eyes, adding, "In Washington, that's a dangerous bet."
Indeed it is. The news the next day (via The Washington Post) was that Representative Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican who is openly gay, confronted Foley in 2000 after a former page complained to Kolbe that Foley had sent him sexually explicit Internet messages. The newspaper noted it was not clear whether Kolbe did anything beyond talk to Foley. But this development means that the Foley problem was known within GOP circles for six years. Hastert, though, has claimed he knew nothing about Foley's conduct until the day the story broke--even though statements from GOP legislators and staffers suggest his office was informed of the Foley problem years earlier.
(339) CommentsOctober 9, 2006
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Woodward's Book and the CIA/Plame Leak Case
By David Corn
Here's an interesting scene from Bob Woodward's new book. It's the summer of 2004 and George Tenet has resigned as CIA chief:
[White House chief of staff] Andy Card called [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage to see if he was interested in taking over the CIA.
No, Armitage replied emphatically.
(46) CommentsOctober 3, 2006
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This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like
By David Corn
As Congress has debated legislation that would set up military tribunals and govern the questioning of suspected terrorists (whom the Bush administration would like to be able to detain indefinitely), at issue has been what interrogation techniques can be employed and whether information obtained during torture can be used against those deemed unlawful enemy combatants. One interrogation practice central to this debate is waterboarding. It's usually described in the media in a matter-of-fact manner. The Washington Post simply referred to waterboarding a few days ago as an interrogation measure that "simulates drowning." But what does waterboarding look like?
You can see here. Jonah Blank, an anthropologist and foreign policy adviser to the Democratic staff of the US Senate, was in Cambodia last month and came across an actual waterboard at a former prison turned into a museum that chronicles the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime. Blank took photos of the waterboard and a painting depicting its use. I cannot post photos in this space, but I've published his photos on my own blog at www.davidcorn.com.
Go there for Blank's photos and commentary. As he notes,
(250) CommentsSeptember 28, 2006
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Corn Versus Hitchens: On Niger, Plame and WMDs
By David Corn
A version of this was first posted at my blog at www.davidcorn.com....
I told readers of my regular blog that I would eventually get to Christopher Hitchens and his claims that Iraq had indeed sought uranium in Niger and that the Plame leak was not connected to a White House vendetta against Joe Wilson (and that I had promoted this "delusion.") Today's Slate contains a lengthy response from me that contends that Hitchens' Niger theorizing is contradicted by various facts he conveniently ignores. (These facts are covered at great length in the new book I wrote with Michael Isikoff, Hubris: the Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.) The piece also reminds (or, attempts to remind) Hitchens of other facts he never references when he writes about the Plame case: namely, that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were out to undermine Wilson and in doing so leaked classified information about his wife's CIA employment. If you're interested in the details, you can go to the piece. Here's the finale:
For more than two decades, I have seen Hitchens weave facts and assertions into stylistically brilliant copy as he attempts to intuit great truths. But when he comes to believe that he can outthink the facts, he ends up enwrapped in creative conspiratorial fantasies. This past February, I participated in a radio debate with him on whether the Bush administration had misguided the nation into war. Hitchens largely avoided the question at hand and instead argued the necessity of the invasion. When he did address the issue of the absent WMDs in Iraq, he took a strange turn. "Doesn't anything ever strike you as odd," he said, "about the figure of zero for [WMD] deposits found in Iraq?...Isn't it odd that none after all this? None? Doesn't that suggest a crime scene that has been pretty well dusted in advance, the fingerprints wiped? Well, it does to me." Read that quote carefully. It is revealing. Hitchens was saying that the fact that no weapons had been uncovered in Iraq (after nearly three years of searching) was evidence that there had been weapons. How can one argue with a person of such intellectual prowess that he can turn absence into presence by mere deduction?
(102) CommentsSeptember 26, 2006
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Release the NIE on Iraq and Terrorism!
By David Corn
Reality intrudes again. President Bush and his allies keep insisting that the invasion of Iraq was essential to winning the fight against anti-American Islamic jihadists. The government's top experts on terrorism and Islamic extremism disagree. As The New York Times reported on Sunday, a National Intelligence Estimate produced earlier this year noted that the Iraq war has fueled Islamic radicalism around the globe and has caused the terrorist threat to grow. In other words, Bush's invasion of Iraq has been counterproductive. Or put this way: the ugly war in Iraq that has claimed the lives of thousands of American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians has placed the United States more at risk.
Times reporter Mark Mazzetti noted in his front-page article that he had spoken to "more than a dozen" U.S. government officials and outside experts who had either seen the NIE or who had participated in its creation. That's a lot of footwork. But he did not quote from the document itself, except to note that the NIE describes a radical Islamic movement of "self-generating" cells. (An NIE is the intelligence community's most definitive assessment of a major strategic issue and is supposed to represent the consensus view of the government's various intelligence agencies. This particular NIE is the first evaluation of global terrorism since the invasion of Iraq.)
The White House has claimed that the Times's account of the NIE did not represent the complete document. And Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has declared--in response to the news of this NIE--that the Bush administration has scored significant success against the "global jihadist threat."
(66) CommentsSeptember 25, 2006
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At the UN, Bush Cites Human Rights Declaration
By David Corn
When George W. Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, he glowingly referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN in 1948. He said:
This morning, I want to speak about the more hopeful world that is within our reach, a world beyond terror, where ordinary men and women are free to determine their own destiny, where the voices of moderation are empowered, and where the extremists are marginalized by the peaceful majority. This world can be ours if we seek it and if we work together.
The principles of this world beyond terror can be found in the very first sentence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document declares that "the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom and justice and peace in the world."
(385) CommentsSeptember 19, 2006
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Bob Novak Slimes Me
By David Corn
Robert Novak was on C-SPAN on Friday, and he took the opportunity to slime me. I don't know what the conservative columnist has against yours truly. Countless times in the past three years I've explained to outraged White House critics that Novak could not be charged under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (which applies mainly to government officials and only to journalists who engage in a pattern of identifying undercover CIA officers with the intent of harming the spy service). I haven't even criticized him much--if at all--for publishing the Plame leak, for, as a journalist, I assign more culpability to the leakers in this case (Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby) than the leak conveyors (Novak, Matt Cooper). Yet Novak has a bug up his keister about me, and he let it fly on C-SPAN.
I suspect his antipathy has something to do with his legal bills. He seems to blame me for the investigation that proceeded the leak he published--an inquiry that caused him to hire a lawyer and say nothing for two-and-a-half years. On C-SPAN, he declared,
There was an enormous hue and cry that was ginned up by left-wing journalists such as David Corn of The Nation and a left-wing investigative team from Newsday. And with Senator Chuck Schumer leading the way, some very partisan Democrats hyped up the case.
(223) CommentsSeptember 17, 2006
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Novak vs. Armitage: Was the Plame Leak Deliberate?
By David Corn
The book I co-wrote with Michael Isikoff, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, has set off a dispute between conservative columnist Bob Novak and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
The book--which recounts the behind-the-scenes battles that went on within the CIA, the State Department, Congress and the White House over the administration's case for war before and after the Iraq invasion--discloses that Armitage was the original source for the Novak column of July 14, 2003, which outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction." (The book also reveals that Valerie Wilson was operations chief for the clandestine Joint Task Force on Iraq and oversaw espionage operations aimed at gathering intelligence on Saddam Hussein's supposed WMDs.) Following the book's release, Armitage publicly confessed and apologized to Valerie Wilson and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. He said that the leak had been an inadvertent slip, an act of gossip that came during an interview with Novak about Colin Powell and the State Department. Armitage claimed he had merely told Novak--in an off-the-cuff fashion--"I think his wife works out there," meaning the CIA.
In a column published on Wednesday, Novak accuses Armitage of not telling the truth. The former No. 2 at the State Department, Novak insists, "obscured what he really did." Novak writes:
(326) CommentsSeptember 13, 2006
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Cheney, 9/11 and the Truth about Iraq
By David Corn
Dick Cheney commemorated the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by sticking to the MO that he and his running-mate used to lead the nation into the current mess in Iraq.
Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, Cheney encountered a decent grilling from host Tim Russert, who pressed him on how Cheney and George W. Bush had justified the war in Iraq. "Based on what you know now, that Saddam did not have the weapons of mass destruction that were described, would you still have gone into Iraq?" Russert asked. Yes, indeed, Cheney said, hewing to the company line. And he pointed to what appeared to be evidence that supported that no-regrets stance:
Look at the Duelfer Report and what it said. No stockpiles, but they also said he has the capability. He'd done it before. He had produced chemical weapons before and used them. He had produced biological weapons. He had a robust nuclear program in '91. All of this is true, said by Duelfer, facts.
(138) CommentsSeptember 11, 2006
David Corn
Washington--a city of denials, spin, and political calculations. They may speak English there, but most citizens still need an interpreter to understand its ways and meanings. DAVID CORN, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine, has spent years analyzing the policies and pursuing the lies that spew out of the nation's capital. He is a novelist, biographer, and television and radio commentator who is able to both decipher and scrutinize Washington.
In his dispatches, he takes on the day-by-day political and policy battles under way in the Capitol, the White House, the think tanks, and the television studios. With an informed, unconventional perspective, he holds the politicians, policymakers and pundits accountable and reports the important facts and views that go uncovered elsewhere.
Check out David Corn's latest book, (co-written with Michael Isikoff and now available in paperback), Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (Crown Publishers). For information, visit his personal blog at davidcorn.com.
Photo Credit: Michael Lorenzini
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