Greg Mitchell

Alex Gibney on His Controversial New WikiLeaks Film

Greg Mitchell on May 23, 2013 - 9:25 AM ET

(Reuters)

Alex Gibney’s much-anticipated film, We Steal Secrets: the Story of WikiLeaks, starts to hit theaters tomorrow and already it’s a media sensation. Gibney summed up the reaction for me last month: “My view, while biased, is: the response from people who’ve seen the film has been mainly positive and from those who haven’t, mainly negative.”

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, and several key allies, such as writer/filmmaker John Pilger, have long claimed they’ve seen a (what else?) “leaked” script but Gibney had some doubts about that. Yesterday via the official WikiLeaks Twitter feed they again denounced the film, saying they had seen the actual film and found it strewn with errors and also found it “trashy.” Gibney replied that the only leaked version was not the final cut.

Gibney long courted Assange for an interview and even flew to the UK for a six-hour chat with Julian—about the request. It broke down over what the director saw as Assange’s demands for some control over excerpts from any interview.

Coverage of the film in the US, after the February screening at Sundance, has been mostly good, Gibney has observed. “The people who don’t necessarily have an axe to grind are liking it,” he asserted. And he again declared strong support for Bradley Manning. (I should note that I wrote the first book about WikiLeaks and later the first book about Bradley Manning.) Here’s the trailer for the Gibney film, and much more below:

When WikiLeaks became a household name three years ago—the release of the “Collateral Murder” video from Iraq came on April 5, 2010—and the material it released caused shock waves around the world, numerous film operatives rushed to buy rights to books and articles. One of them was Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal.

Early this year Assange denounced a Hollywood flick when it started shooting—it focuses on the early days of WikiLeaks and his relationship with Daniel Domscheit-Berg (who left the group in a huff). It just finished shooting and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange. And Assange blasted Gibney’s upcoming doc—right down to its title.

At Sundance, Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman interviewed Gibney (who won an Oscar for his Taxi to Dark Side and has directed many other fine docs, from Enron to Mea Maxima Culpa). She also solicited a critical response from Assange attorney Jennifer Robinson. Much of the debate was over how the film treats the Swedish legal case and the seriousness of the threat that Assange could end up extradited to the United States. Gibney told The Daily Beast, “I think a lot of this film is deeply sympathetic to Julian and his initial cause. I just think Julian got corrupted.”

But the debate continued. At the New Statesman in early February, Jemima Khan, who had posted bail money for Assange, and went on to become a producer of the Gibney film, wrote a piece claiming that Assange’s backers had become “blinkered” to his faults, especially the alleged sexual misconduct.

This led Pilger, a week later, to attack her, and Gibney, at The Guardian, accusing the Assange “haters” of suffering from “arrested devleopment.” As for Assange not cooperating with the Gibney film: he “knew that a film featuring axe grinders and turncoats would be neither ‘nuanced’ nor ‘represent the truth,’ as Khan wrote, and that its very title was a gift to the fabricators of a bogus criminal indictment that could doom him to one of America’s hellholes.”

Gibney then responded at the New Statesman, opening with: “How sad. John Pilger, who once had a claim to the role of truth-teller, has become a prisoner of his own unquestioning beliefs.” He said that Pilger had even gotten the title of his film wrong. “In fact, ‘we steal secrets’ is a quote taken from the film, uttered by the former CIA director Michael Hayden,” Gibney revealed. “Thus, the title of the film is intended to be, er… ironic.”

Gibney closed: “There are many people, including me, who admire the original mission of WikiLeaks. But those supporters should not have to stand silently by as WikiLeaks’s original truth-seeking principles are undermined by a man who doesn’t want to be held to account for accusations about his personal behaviour. To paraphrase Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Julian Assange is not the Messiah; and he may be a very naughty boy.”

Wanting to catch up with his current views on the pre-release controversy, I interviewed Gibney in April. Count me as another who, for now, has not seen the film. Some highlights:

ON THE PILGER DEBATE: “Pilger’s attack was unfair and unvarnished and not buttressed by the facts, especially since he didn’t see film. Like Assange, he may have a transcript or just saying he has. I doubt it.”

THE TITLE OF THE FILM: “It was meant to be provocative. People in Assange’s camp want to take it a certain way. If one sees the film one sees what I’m getting at. We live in a world where everyone thinks they do the right thing, so they are entitled to do the wrong thing. So ends can justify the means. The title is meant to set a context for both leaking and the rather brutal attack on leakers by the Obama administration. They’re trying to try people like Bradley Manning for a capital offense for leaking classified material.”

ON THE MEDIA SHOWING MORE SYMPATHY FOR MANNING LATELY: “The larger story is not a change in views about him but how much he’d been ignored. When you see the film you’ll see—and the thing I’m most gratified about—how much we put him at the center of story. Where he should have been but hasn’t been. Part of it was he was just the ‘alleged’ leaker and now he has pleaded guilty. Finally he’s being noticed, which is a good thing.

“My personal view—he’s the new Pvt. Eddie Slovik [the American soldier our military executed for desertion during World War II]. They picked on Manning because they could. They felt he was weak, he was marginalized. And I think now it’s beginning to surprise the government that public opinion is shifting in his direction [since his statement at his recent hearing].”

ON MEDIA ACCOUNTS ATTRIBUTING MANNING’S LEAKING TO GENDER CONFUSION: “In my film I recognize that Bradley Manning had personal troubles. He made a difference, and I think he thought about trying to make a difference—but he was also different himself.

“The idea of Manning leaking because he wanted to become a woman is a joke. Not at all credible. But I think a reason he turned to [Adrian] Lamo in those chats was he needed someone to talk to. I took some criticism at Sundance for saying Manning was ‘alienated.’ I think it was twisted into me saying he leaked because he was a malcontent. But if he was perfectly in alignment with the military culture he would have never leaked! Sometimes whistleblowers get distanced from the culture and feel they should or must speak out. These issues are important to the story.”

WHAT SURPRISED HIM IN MAKING THE FILM? “The Swedish sex charges surprised me. I assumed from the start, especially after doing Client 9 [his film on Eliot Spitzer], that as Michael Moore says in my new film—it was a put-up job, something so suspicious about it, it seemed like a plot. I don’t believe that now….

“Another surprise: I started out thinking it was a story about a machine, a leaking machine—but WikiLeaks’ contribution was not the ‘drop box’ but an ability to publish on many international sites. The jury is still out on the best way to get secrets from a source—and the best way is probably not a drop box.”

Greg Mitchell has written two books on WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning. His latest books are So Wrong for So Long, which probes US media malpractice and Iraq, and Hollywood Bomb, on how Harry Truman and the military censored MGM anti-nuke epic in 1946.

Obama's War on Leaks: Already Having 'Chilling Effect' on the Media?

Greg Mitchell on May 22, 2013 - 9:31 AM ET

Attorney General Eric Holder (Associated Press)

It’s been slowly building for quite some time, but now the mainstream media is finally flashing a Red Alert concerning the Obama administration’s anit-leaks campaign. They used to refer to it as simply a “war on whistleblowers.” Now, after the Associated Press and Rosen/Fox News probes, they see it as a “war on the press”—with consequences already quite apparent.

Consider just the following:

A New York Times editorial today declared, “The Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.” It concluded: “Obama administration officials often talk about the balance between protecting secrets and protecting the constitutional rights of a free press. Accusing a reporter of being a ‘co-conspirator,’ on top of other zealous and secretive investigations, shows a heavy tilt toward secrecy and insufficient concern about a free press.”

Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, added on Tuesday that going after “routine news-gathering efforts as evidence of criminality is extremely troubling and corrodes time-honored understandings between the public and the government about the role of the free press.”

And Greg Sargent at The Washington Post interviews Mark Mazzetti, one of the chief Times investigative reporters, who tells him, “There’s no question that this has a chilling effect. People who have talked in the past are less willing to talk now. Everyone is worried about communication and how to communicate, and [asking if there] is there any method of communication that is not being monitored. It’s got people on both sides—the reporter and source side—pretty concerned…

“It certainly seems like they’re being very serious about hunting down people talking to reporters. All we know are the results. The fact that you have so many [cases] now, it scares people who talk to us. [Sources] who might have talked to us once may not talk to us now… Those of us doing national security reporting feel it’s a very difficult climate to work in right now.”

Greg Mitchell’s current books are So Wrong for So Long (on media failures and Iraq war) and the wild tale of MGM and Harry Truman scuttling a 1947 anti-nuclear epic, Hollywood Bomb. His personal blog, updated several times day, is Pressing Issues.

Al Jazeera English Kills an Op-Ed, Refuses to Explain: Bad Sign?

Greg Mitchell on May 21, 2013 - 1:49 PM ET

Busy day so don’t have time to delve into this too deeply but important story—as Al Jazeera gets ready to move into US market in big way—so here it is in brief, with a bunch of links. Your move.

Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian been on the case since late last week and spent the weekend asking for comment for Al Jazeera English, to no avail, last I checked.

It seems that Joseph Massad, the Middle East scholar and Columbia University prof, wrote a column for AJE last Tuesday titled “The Last of the Semites.” I’ll let Greenwald summarize it:

Massad’s argument was obviously controversial: he highlighted the shared goal between the early Zionist movement and Europe’s anti-Jewish bigots (namely, the removal of Jews from the continent), detailed the cooperation between German Nazis and Zionists to facilitate the departure of Jews out of Europe (the existence of that cooperation is not in dispute, though the extent of it very much is), and highlighted the extensive disagreements among Jews themselves over the wisdom and justness of Zionism…

Of course, this drew wide online commentary and criticism—the usual. Then the stakes were raised. Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic tweeted: “Congratulations, al Jazeera: You’ve just posted one of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent memory.” And John Podhoretz, even more pointedly: “Congratulations, donors to Columbia University, for paying this monstrous [Mossad’s] salary!”

On Saturday, Greenwald discovered that the op-ed had been removed from the AJE site, although it’s still around at other sites. He started sending e-mails to various AJE editors and spokespeople, with no response as of this morning.

Just go and read his piece today to catch up on what he thinks happened (who decided) and why. His working theory for the latter is that, about to launch AJ America—as a kind of challenge to CNN—their usually bold news service is going soft, not wishing to defend some of its prime and most influential American critics. Greenwald:

Although I condemned the original op-ed, I did not agree with the decision to delete it. For one thing, it’s a futile gesture: in the Internet age, everything published is permanent. For another, it’s contrary to the journalistic ethos: although it would have been appropriate to decide in the first instance not to publish it, once a decision is made to publish something, it should not be removed merely because it provokes controversy or even offense. Retractions should be reserved for serious factual errors.

He also quotes Massad’s reaction. Stay tuned for more.

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PBS's Koch Problem: How a Major Right-Wing Funder Undercut Key Films

Greg Mitchell on May 20, 2013 - 10:56 AM ET

A 2011 file photo of David Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Don’t miss Jane Mayer’s feature at The New Yorker, just posted online, on little-known story of how PBS’s WNET in New York reacted in showing Alex Gibney doc Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream. The film did air, but see what surrounded it.

Problem: It partly focused on the Koch Brothers, and David Koch is a major, longtime WNET funder. So WNET bent over backwards to give him a chance to respond even before the doc aired, and also scheduled a roundtable to discuss it. Gibney: “They tried to undercut the credibility of the film, and I had no opportunity to defend it…. Why is WNET offering Mr. Koch special favors? And why did the station allow Koch to offer a critique of a film he hadn’t even seen? Money. Money talks.”

And then another documentary realating to the Kochs ran into trouble and lost funding.

But Mayer’s conclusion: “In the end, the various attempts to assuage David Koch were apparently insufficient. On Thursday, May 16th, WNET’s board of directors quietly accepted his resignation. It was the result, an insider said, of his unwillingness to back a media organization that had so unsparingly covered its sponsor.”

Gibney is the Academy Award–winning director whose WikiLeaks film opens this Friday.

Trailer for his Park Avenue, inspired by book 740 Park by my old Crawdaddy friend of nearly forty years back, Michael Gross:

Obama 'Worse Than Nixon'? Not Quite

Greg Mitchell on May 16, 2013 - 9:51 AM ET

Richard Nixon says goodbye to staff after resigning on August 9, 1974. (AP Photo.)

I have my issues with Obama—often expressed here—but come on. Judging from the wild references online and on the TV to Obama being “as bad as Nixon”—maybe “worse”—and behaving in a very “Nixonian” manner in regard to the IRS tax-exempt probing and DOJ seizure of AP phone records, most hosts and guests and pundits have very little knowledge of Richard Nixon’s actual acts (or have forgotten them).

So here, as public service, just for starters—there was so much more (e.g. approving a break-in at Brookings, the secret bombing and then invasion of Cambodia, ovethrowing Allende, bombing Hanoi and continuing Vietnam War for four years etc. )—are the first two of the three articles of impeachment approved by the House in 1974.

The third related to his rejection of subpoenas and other requests for evidence.

Yes, I’ve written a fairly well-known book about Nixon, although not Watergate-related (it covers his dirty-tricks 1950 campaign for Senate). Not to mention growing up in a Nixon-loving household during the 1950s.

Musical soundtrack here, courtesy of Phil Ochs.

Read Greg Mitchell on the DOJ seizure of AP staff’s phone records.

Outrage Grows Over the DOJ Seizure of AP Phone Records

Greg Mitchell on May 14, 2013 - 9:05 AM ET

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks about a strategy to fight cyberstealing in February. AP has protested the seizure of its phone records in a letter to Holder. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin.)

When the news broke yesterday afternoon it was at first hard to believe, yet, when one thought about it for a bit, it seemed all too part of a pattern. The Associated Press itself broke the news that the US Department of Justice had notified AP last Friday that it had secretly obtained telephone records for more than twenty separate telephone lines assigned to AP journalists and offices (both cell and home phone lines).

Their report continued, “AP is asking the DOJ for an immediate explanation of the extraordinary action and for the records to be returned to AP and all copies destroyed. AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt protested the massive intrusion into AP’s newsgathering activities in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder…. Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual and largely unprecedented.”

Of course, the Obama administration has aggressively gone after leakers and brought six cases against whistleblowers, more than previous administrations combined.

Pruitt (who I met several times a few years back when he headed McClatchy), wrote:

There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know. We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.

Kathleen Carroll, the longtime AP executive editor, said on MSNBC this morning: “I’ve been in this business more than thirty years and our First Amendment lawyers and our lawyers inside the AP and our CEO is also a well-known First Amendment lawyer—none of us have seen anything like this.” Glen Greewwald at The Guardian hits the DOJ, as you might expect.

While no explanation was given, speculation quickly centered on an AP scoop from last May about a foiled terror plot coming out of Yemen, involving plans to blow up an airliner bound for the United States.

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Response was swift and angry—from left and right (the latter perhaps mainly happy to have another Obama “scandal” to exploit), all the way to The Daily Show late in the dayBen Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project called it an “abuse of power.” The Newspaper Association of America, a leading trade group, declared, “These actions shock the American conscience and violate the critical freedom of the press protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Others defended the move, noting that it had been handled through proper channels—that is, a judge had approved it. The White House said it had no involvement in the action at all.

This New York Times story offers a fair look. Ex–newspaper reporter Charles P. Pierce calls for Eric Holder’s resignation. Here’s a tough response from EFF, including:

It is disturbing enough that the government appears to have violated its own regulations for subpoenas to the news media. However, this revelation also shows that we have a severe problem in protecting the privacy of our communications. It is critical to update our privacy laws and our understanding of the Constitution, and reflect the realities of what law enforcement can determine from our records and other metadata about our communications stored with our communications providers, be they phone companies, ISPs or social networks.

Glenn Greenwald Battles Bill Maher—and Digby Declares a Winner

Greg Mitchell on May 13, 2013 - 12:04 AM ET

Glenn Greenwald speaks at the University of Arizona. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr CC 2.0.)

While those on the right frequently refer to Glenn Greenwald (now at The Guardian) and Bill Maher (eternally at HBO) as liberals or lefties, that is, of course, a gross simplication. So what else is new? Naturally they don’t see eye to eye on many issues, so when Greenwald was scheduled for last Friday night’s Maher show you could predict that some fur would fly.

Well, the debate started when Maher went into one of his weekly rants against the Muslim religion as being particularly and uniquely guilty of inspiring hatred and violence in the modern world. Greenwald pushed back strongly and Maher nearly lost his temper in responding. It was an unsually extended and testy set of exchanges for the show these days, and rather than summarize it, I’ll suggest you watch it here.

But what happened next was: Critics, and not just from the right, jumped on Greenwald for allegedly declaring that the United States was fully to blame for Muslim extremists and most of the other ills of the world. Greenwald, indeed, did place a lot of blame on America, but also clearly qualified that. He posted about that on Saturday at The Guardian, calling Maher “one of the most vocal and extreme advocates of the view that—while religion generally should be criticized—Islam is a uniquely threatening and destructive force and that Muslims are uniquely oppressive and violent, and that mentality has infected many of his policy views.”

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In any case, the anger directed at Greenwald as a blame-America-first zealot provoked longtime ace blogger Digby (a.k.a. Heather Parton) to rise to his defense. You can read her lengthy defense here. One excerpt:

To me, it is simply indisputable that the United States’ sometimes well-intentioned but often brutal and violent use of its global dominance as a military and economic power has resulted in the blow-back we call terrorism. Is it everything? Of course not, and Greenwald was careful to say he didn’t believe so either. It’s economics, culture and yes, religion as well. All these factors play into this problem. But there’s only one factor that Americans have any direct influence over—the actions of their democratically elected government. So that’s probably the smartest first step to try and correct, don’t you think?

Do I think Islam, fundamentalist or otherwise, is unusually lethal as religions go? No, frankly, I don’t. I think the embrace of fundamentalist Islam—and especially terrorism—among a sub-set of Muslims is driven mostly by the politics of the era, probably at the hands of opportunistic leaders who use it to keep their followers on their path to power.

Greg Mitchell’s current books are So Wrong for So Long (on media failures and Iraq war) and the wild tale of MGM and Harry Truman scuttling a 1947 anti-nuclear epic, Hollywood Bomb. His personal blog, updated several times day, is Pressing Issues.

Overlooked Story of the Week: 'Rot' and 'Crisis' for Nuclear Missile Launch Crews

Greg Mitchell on May 10, 2013 - 9:30 AM ET

A Titan II ICBM in an underground silo. (Steve Jurvetson/Flickr, CC 2.0.)

It’s been a wild news week, what with Israel’s attack on Syria, the gruesome kidnap/rape tragedy emerging from Cleveland and then the circus surroundiing the Benghazi hearings. We won’t even mention Jodi Arias, whoever that is. Sadly overlooked, however, was an exclusive from the Associated Press. Oh, no big deal. Just “rot” and “crisis” and a wave of firings in one program you especially don’t want to witness this in: our nuclear missle launch program.

At Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota the commander confirmed, as the story put it, “the willful violation of safety rules—including a possible compromise of launch codes—was tolerated.” Seventeen members of launch crews have been fired, an unprecedented action in its scope.

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Lt. Col. Jay Folds, deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, responsible for Minuteman 3 missile launch crews at Minot, cited disturbingly poor reviews that they received in a March inspection. “We are, in fact, in a crisis right now,” Folds wrote in the e-mail to his subordinates. Yet beyond routine publishing for the AP scoop, little media attention followed.

Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel demanded an explanation. Senator Dick Durbin said the issue “could not be more troubling.” The Air Force, perhaps trying to calm fears but only stoking them, revealed that the missiles were still on war footing.

As I’ve done for, oh, the past thirty years, in numeous articles and three books, this is where I remind readers that the US still has a first-strike nuclear policy, and thousands of nuclear weapons, more than two decades after the end of the Cold War—and that we have used nuclear weapons before, setting (and for most Americans, defending) a precedent.

Greg Mitchell’s new book is Hollywood Bomb. His previous books on this subject were Atomic Cover-up and, with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America.

The New York Times is again pushing for war in the Middle East, while McClatchy news outlets are again advising caution, Greg Mitchell writes.

History Repeats? 'NYT' Boosts, But McClatchy Questions, Claims of Syria's Use of Chemicals

Greg Mitchell on May 8, 2013 - 12:03 PM ET

A Syrian rebel stands atop rubble outside Damascus. (Reuters/Ahmed Jadallah.)

Is history repeating itself? As I noted earlier this week here, The New York Times, as it did in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, seems to be promoting (if a little less strenuously) some kind of dramatic US intervention in Syria, based on WMDs. Once again we’ve seen overheated front-page news stories, based on slim evidence, and columns by Thomas Friedman, Bill Keller and others. And, again as in 2003, the newspaper’s editorials express caution.

Also in a replay, reporters for McClatchy’s DC bureau are expressing sensible skepticism (back in the day the outfit was still owned by Knight Ridder) about evidence of WMDs, in this case, the Syrian regime’s alleged use of chemical agents against the rebels.

One of the reporters in those much-hailed, in retrospect, Iraq stories is still at it on Syria: Jonathan S. Landay. His Knight Ridder editor Clark Hoyt moved on (including a gig as public editor at the Times), and so has one of his chief colleagues, John Walcott. Warren Strobel moved to Reuters, the excellent Hannah Allam, former Middle East bureau chief and now based in DC, remains. Landay highlighted caution about new evidence at least as far back as April 26.

When I was editing Editor & Publisher we were one of the few mainstream news outlets to highlight the Knight Ridder team (for the full story see my book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits and the President Failed on Iraq). Later I appeared on Bill Moyers’s show with Walcott and Landay. Basically, they got the Iraq WMD story right because, unlike virtually every other major media outlet, they relied on experts outside the usual old-boy network of Pentagon, CIA, military and congressional sources.

I hope to chat with Landay and Allam and maybe others in the days ahead, but for now, consider yesterday’s McClatchy story by those two plus Matthew Schofield. It is quite at odds with the tone and substance of much of the New York Times coverage. It’s almost a response to it.

Despite rising calls for some kind of increased US military involvement in Syria, scant evidence exists, at least in public, that Syria’s vicious civil war has breached President Barack Obama’s “red line” on the use of chemical weapons.

In the ten days since the Obama administration notified Congress that it suspected, with “varying degrees of confidence,” that chemical weapons had been employed in Syria, no concrete proof has emerged, and some headline-grabbing claims have been discredited or contested. Officials worldwide now admit that no allegations rise to the level of certainty.

Yet political rhetoric on Syria has overtaken actual evidence in a high-stakes Washington debate that’s increasing pressure on Obama to lend more military support to the rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

On Monday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, D-NJ, alluded to chemical weapons as he proposed a measure to provide limited arms to the rebels, asserting that Assad’s regime “has crossed a red line that forces us to consider all options.”

That assertion, however, appears far less certain than it did only a week ago. British, French and Israeli experts who expressed more confidence in their assessment than the Obama administration had in its judgment have in recent days qualified their positions, said Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence analyst now with the Arms Control Association, a private organization that provides analysis of weapons issues. “That should make everyone suspicious,” he said. “And the reality may be lot more complicated.”

Thielmann added, “Do you really risk going to war without knowing who has used what and in what circumstances?”

Existing evidence casts more doubt on claims of chemical weapons use than it does to help build a case that one or both sides of the conflict have employed them.

'NYT' and Keller Promote a US Attack on Syria: Iraq WMD Revisited?

Greg Mitchell on May 6, 2013 - 9:14 AM ET

New York Times columnist Bill Keller has now called for the United States to launch missiles at Syrian government installations. (Reuters/Phil McCarten.)

Hail, hail, the gang’s nearly all here. Michael Gordon, Thomas Friedman, now Bill Keller. Paging Judy Miller! The New York Times in recent days on its front page and at top of its site has been promoting the meme of Syria regime as chemical weapons abuser, thereby pushing Obama to jump over his “red line” and bomb or otherwise attack there. Tom Friedman weighed in Sunday by calling for an international force to occupy the entire country (surely they would only need to stay one Friedman Unit, or six months).

Now, after this weekend’s Israeli warplane assaults, the threat grows even more dire.

And Bill Keller, the self-derided “reluctant hawk” on invading Iraq in 2003, returns with a column today stating right in its headline, “Syria Is Not Iraq,” and urging Obama and all of us to finally “get over Iraq.” He boasts that he has.

The Times in its news pages, via Sanger, Gordon and Jodi Rudoren, has been highlighting claims of Syria’s use of chem agents for quite some time, highlighted by last week’s top story swallowing nearly whole the latest Israeli claims. Days later, Obama said evidence was far from certain—even if chemicals were used it was very limited—and some of our allies who made same claims also expressed new skepticism. The Times editorial page urged caution. Jon Stewart mocked the hawks. But that hardly halted the foreign desk!

Yesterday, Reuters reported on one of the four United Nations investigators stating that if sarin was used in Syria it was more likely by the the rebels, not the regime. Still, David Sanger, later Sunday, continued (at least in his early drafts) to push the chem claims at the top of his story—while not noting the UN prober’s charge. He also highlighted John McCain’s calls for fast action, while burying contradictory claims, an old trick for the Times and The Washington Post from the run-up to Iraq war.

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Then Bill Keller posted his Monday column. He declared that our mistakes in that country should not prevent us from intervening in Syria, which is “not Iraq.” He says he was gun-shy after his Iraq flub—but no more! Now he derides Obama for “looking for excuses to stand pat.” He also provides several reasons why Syria is “not Iraq,” and how now his hawkishness is based on reality: This time we really can hurt the terrorists gathered there, really can calm tensions in the region, and so on. Instead of a “mushroom cloud,” he warns of the next chemical “atrocity.” And he claims there’s a broader coaiition of the willing this time.

He even revives the good old “domino theory,” endorsing the view that if we don’t do something in Syria it will embolden China, North Korea and Iran. And I love this one, straight from 2003: Doing nothing “includes the danger that if we stay away now, we will get drawn in later (and bigger), when, for example, a desperate Assad drops sarin on a Damascus suburb….” If a surge in aid for those Al Qaeda–lovin’ rebels fails against Assad, then we “send missiles against his military installations until he, or more likely those around him, calculate that they should sue for peace.” Yeah, how did that work out in Iraq in the long run?

At least Keller provides some comic relief when he admits, “I don’t mean to make this sound easy.” (To grasp why Keller is turning “hawk” on Syria, see my review of his recent column on his FUBAR re Iraq.)

Keller concludes: “Whatever we decide, getting Syria right starts with getting over Iraq.” Then we can get over Syria—with Iran? Remember when Iraq was supposed to help us “get over” Vietnam?

See my book So Wrong for So Long on how the media—including the Times and Keller—helped get us into that mess for ten years.

Israel’s throwing a big war in the Middle East, and the United States is invited. Read Robert Dreyfuss on Israel’s bombing of Syrian government forces.