November Surprise, the Sequel

Are we really surprised? The Saddam Hussein verdict, scheduled for October 16 and then suddenly delayed last month (supposedly because the Iraqi special tribunal needed more time) to November 5, the last news cycle before the US midterm election, has now come in and the former dictator (and monster) has been found guilty. The Bush administration, struggling desperately for face time in the media these last weeks, has one day of Iraqi front-page headlines and lead TV news stories of its dreams in an election season in which the Iraq War has more or less shoved every other issue off center stage.

The possibility that this particularly convenient verdict postponement might have been the result of Bush administration planning and pressure to create a November surprise for the midterm elections was first raised here at the Nation magazine's "The Notion" blog on October 17. Since then the mainstream American media has failed to explore the subject.

Just to review for a second: Saddam's trial, as the Washington Post's Ellen Knickmeyer reported last January, was a key priority of the Bush administration, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars exhuming evidence for it, refurbished the courtroom for it, trained judges for it, provided security for it, and even drafted many of the statutes under which Saddam was to be tried. The trial has been significantly stage-managed and run on a daily basis by the US Regime Crimes Liaison Office, working out of the US embassy in Baghdad.

As the Media Matters website has ably reported, the Bush administration (think: Karl Rove) has a penchant for and a "history of timing national security-related actions to the political calendar," thereby causing presidential approval ratings to providentially bump up at just the right moments; and White House Press Spokesman Tony Snow, when asked last week by CNBC's Larry Kudlow whether the verdict would be a "November surprise," even welcomed the question, as well as the prospective verdict, this way:

"[Y]ou are absolutely right, it will be a factor. But you know what, it may fit into a larger narrative about an Iraqi government that has been doing what the president has said all along which is developing the capacity to sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and to help us out on the war on terror."

You would think that all this might have inspired the odd editor at the odd major (or even minor) newspaper to assign a story, however speculative, on the possibility of a Bush-manipulated Saddam-execution special, or that a major columnist somewhere might have commented, or that the odd reporter might have called someone other than the usual suspects. But no such luck, it seems.

Instead, where reporters did anything on the subject, they took the charge of possibly tampering with the verdict date for political advantage on the "home front" directly to administration figures -- last week, Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad (""The United States had nothing to do with the selection of the date and we don't know whether the judges have come to a judgment or not."); this Sunday, Tony Snow ("absolutely crazy"; "‘The idea is preposterous,' he said in an interview on CNN's ‘Late Edition,' that ‘somehow we've been scheming and plotting with the Iraqis.'") -- who naturally denied that it was faintly conceivable. In fact, in such articles, all you could read were denials of the charge. There was never a sense that the charge came from anywhere.

In the meantime, the idea was mocked on CNN; while NBC's Tim Russert fluffed it off, based on administration denials, evidently without (like every other reporter around) even bothering to explore the all too plausible possibility, or calling anyone on Earth who might have another opinion. How about, for instance, the articulate and knowledgeable human rights lawyer Scott Horton, whose private e-newsletter, "No Comment," first tipped off "The Notion" to the providential postponement? (Leading Democrats, of course, just ducked as always.) For our "balanced" press, this was little short of dereliction of duty.

When the tampering possibility slipped into stories at all, it was as a formulaic paragraph or two deep inside pieces deep inside the paper. Typical was this from the Post's usually able reporter Knickmeyer (who knows too much about the nature of Saddam's trial to have covered this issue so poorly):

"In Baghdad, US officials close to the trial deny that the announcement of the verdict, set for two days before US congressional elections, was timed to give a boost to the Republican Party. ‘If we had that kind of power to set dates like that, the trial would have been concluded in about five months,' said one of the officials, who all spoke on condition they not be identified further. ‘The fact of the matter is: No way.'"

So here we are, just a news cycle before election day, and both George W. Bush ("a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law") and Ambassador Khalilzad ("an important milestone in the building of a free society") are once again able to use one of those classic administration Iraq words -- "milestone" (think Saddam's capture, the purple finger election) -- that otherwise had disappeared from our news. This won't last more than a day or two, of course, before the Iraqi bad news begins to pour in again; but right now those few crucial hours are manna from heaven for an administration whose vice president has already declared that it will be "full speed ahead" in Iraq after the midterm elections, no matter what.

I have little doubt that, weeks, months, or years from now, we'll learn just who carried off this particular administration political ploy--and just how. In the meantime, this is but another small, pathetic tale of how the mainstream media has failed its readers and viewers, blindly and blandly spreading yet another administration fiction about the increasingly fictional land of, and "government" of, Iraq.

Look for a blunt account of this fiasco in the normal outlets. You'll do so in vain. If you're curious, take a look instead at what Riverbend, the "girl blogger of Baghdad," has to say today about the verdict, about what it's like--in an Iraq "at its very worst since the invasion"--to experience firsthand "the frustration of feeling like the whole country and every single Iraqi inside and outside of Iraq is at the mercy of American politics." So are we, unfortunately; and, on this election eve, you can offer some part of the thanks for that to the major paper or TV network of your choice.

Comments (26)

1. TOM

   So you are upset because the left-leaning media is NOT "looney/conspiratorial left" like yourself?

   MEDIAMATTERS????????

   lolololololololololololololololololololololol

   You cite them as a CREDIBLE source? My goodness you are delusional.

   SADDAM is going to swing, justice prevails.

   The EU has just condemened the sentence of death, evidently it is much too enlightened for such archaic forms of justice.

   Posted by CPT at 11/05/2006 @ 7:08pm

2. I am sure there is some preposterous, yet possible reason, why my obsfucations are more interesting than the topic of this thread!!!

   he,he!!!

   what?!?

   Posted by Veil at 11/05/2006 @ 7:15pm

3. I guess that delaying Saddam's death sentence was the best that these schmucks could arrange for a November Surprise, seeing that they STILL can't find the only jaundiced, 6' 4" bandolier-sporting towel head in fucking Afghanistan.

   Posted by skeletonman at 11/05/2006 @ 7:44pm

4. That would be a slam on Bush's failure to capture and bring to justice someone (OBL) who actually did attack us.

   Posted by skeletonman at 11/05/2006 @ 7:48pm

5. First and foremost, I just want to point out that the "towel-head" reference is pretty blatantly racist.

   Second, and more closely related to the topic at hand, Englehardt's article amounts to little more than a bald assertion. The closest he comes to a real argument is "well, it would benefit them, wouldn't it?" and that's not nearly good enough. He never presents any actual evidence, nor does he consider the possibility that the lack of such evidence may be why the mainstream media isn't giving his claims the weight that he thinks they deserve. Until he has actual evidence to back up his accusations, he probably shouldn't be making them.

   Posted by Thrawn at 11/05/2006 @ 7:54pm

6. If that's the November suprise the impact is minimal. This will not be like Bin Laden releasing a video tape in the closing days of the '04 campaign. And if Bin Laden were to do that tomorrow - it only serve to remind people that Bush is weak on national security. Change is on the way.

   Intrepid Liberal Journal

   Posted by trebor007 at 11/05/2006 @ 7:56pm

7. Posted by CPT 11/05/2006 @ 7:08pm

   You mean that the Bush phone call to Maliki just days before the announcement were not connected?

   Hey, my Uncle Louie left me this bridge in his will...I'd take any reasonable offer....

   Posted by leftofcenter at 11/05/2006 @ 8:22pm

8. What, Saddam Hussein guilty! I thought that was a forgone conclusion before we invaded. Let's hang him and get it over with and let the real Civil War begin.

   We need to get our troops out of there before they become referees in the Civil War. Right now they, nor do I, know which side should win. Do we support the Shiites and turn the country into an Iranian type theocracy or do we support the Sunnis and return a strong man like Saddam to run the country again? Or do we just stay there and suffer 100 American troops a month for ever?

   We need to get out, but stay close enough by to discourage any of Iraq's neighbors for having any overbearing influence until the Iraqi's figure out what THEY want to do.

   "Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq .... There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

   George H. W. Bush - If only his son could read.

   Posted by COProgressive at 11/05/2006 @ 9:05pm

9. http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

   Observations regarding the Saddam verdict from an Iraqi living the nightmare...always poignant and worth the reading!!

   Posted by Lillian at 11/06/2006 @ 01:42am

10. Posted by VEIL 11/05/2006 @ 7:15pm

    (he-he)

    Posted by drhammer at 11/06/2006 @ 07:25am

11. But fear not, Tom! Thanks to the spineless yellow-stripe feckless editors of La Nation, now you get to vote for a Whitman's assortment of Democratic Party MURTHA AIRWAR PLAN candidates to bomb "the girl blogger of Bagdad" into oblivion. Won't that be nice?

    Posted by AlanSmithee at 11/06/2006 @ 08:02am

12. Saddam killed hundreds of thousands. Are you saying the life of an American is over 100 times more valuable than the life of an Iraqi?

    Posted by MARYBRETBRAD 11/06/2006 @ 08:12am | ignore this person

    Saddam kileed hundreds of thousands? Really? How do you know?

    Hint...the method they used to come up with "Saddam killed hundreds of thousands"...was EXACTLY the same method the Lancet study used to come up with "the US invasion killed hundreds of thousands.

    Posted by Lillian at 11/06/2006 @ 10:18am

13. Fair point; the word "racism" can and often is used in this way. I'm not sure that's the case here, though. At the very least, the epithet attacks a general grouping of people, whether cultural or racial, so the word usage here is still describing something beyond just "a bad thing." Moreover, even though you're definitely right that attire is a cultural rather than racial phenomenon, a reference to a specific kind of attire can still be used to single out a particular race. In fact, that's part of what makes it bad; it lumps people together and assigns them a wholly unwarranted common characteristic. If my memory serves me right, it's often used as a denigrating term against "those Arabs," so it at the very least has a great deal of potential to be racist.

    Your comment is well-taken, though, and its reminder is appreciated.

    Posted by Thrawn at 11/06/2006 @ 10:22am

14. Also, in case it's not clear, my post is responding to:

    Posted by MARYBRETBRAD 11/06/2006 @ 08:30am

    I don't mean to crowd out Lillian or anything; the post wasn't there when I was writing.

    Posted by Thrawn at 11/06/2006 @ 10:23am

15. so hussein was guilt of killing a bunch of shia who tried to kill him in an attempted coup....

    but no evidence of his gassing people, and what not?

    hmmmm.....

    Posted by darladoon at 11/06/2006 @ 11:13am

16. No, that's not what the trial said. They only tried him on that specific charge; I think there's even another trial on other charges later. Regardless, though, the trial doesn't support your claim.

    Posted by Thrawn at 11/06/2006 @ 12:21pm

17. Marybretbrad, how terribly thoughtful of you to give us a semantic dissertation. Did you know that race is largely a cultural convention anyway?

    I almost feel sorry for the Republicans this year (almost!). The pseudo-controversy over Clinton's appearance on Fox was beaten to a pulp by the Mark Foley thing. The pseudo-controversy over Kerry's dumb remarks - something that could have gotten some momentum going, although it's kind of late - was almost instantly overshadowed by another gay fall from grace. And Saddam's neck is not only competing with that latest fall but the military papers revolt too.

    Conspiracy people please note: if it was a conspiracy to release the news now, it was poorly done, because weekend news is hardly the very best time to break a story, as every media hack knows. And it's too late anyway for the mere news of Saddam's conviction to excite the masses, or even rally the faithful.

    Posted by Vic Perry at 11/06/2006 @ 12:43pm

18. I believe it's prudent to view every action the bush administration takes as suspicious. It would have been nice, however if the author had spent more time invesigating and reporting on his allegation rather than lambasting other journalists for failing to do what he didn't do.

    Posted by dnluce at 11/06/2006 @ 1:15pm

19. As the Queen of Hearts loved to roar in Alice in Wonderland: "Sentence first! Verdict later!"

    After suffering from three-and-a-half bloddy years of Deputy Dubya Bush's sentence, the Iraqi people finally get a potemkin show trial and suspenseless verdict of "guilty" on the last Iraqi leader to actually maintain anything like order and security on the road from Baghdad to the airport.

    Now, back to your regularly scheduled incoming mortar rounds exploding within the beseiged confines of the Baghdad Green Zone Castle. Things in Saigon looked a whole lot better than this when I left Vietnam in January of 1972.

    Posted by Michael Murry at 11/06/2006 @ 2:03pm

20. Yeah yeah, it's a partisan issue blah blah. Read a few anthropology textbooks (no, wait, why not consult some more "rumors" about "The Bell Curve" -- talk about third hand info) and get back to us.

    By the way, most racial ephithets (I'm certainly not going to name them for you) refer to "cultural" - or allegedly cultural - practices. Race is a construction. This isn't liberal politics (it doesn't even GO WITH all liberal politics, actually)

    Posted by Vic Perry at 11/06/2006 @ 3:21pm

21. Well done to the Nation for flagging this up...but, while the Mainstream media may be failing us now, so did the independents. Why did the Nation leave such a potentially important story to a side-piece, and not make a major article? Why did none of the blogging crew pick this up and run with it? Why when all were saying "where is the October surprise?" were those in the know so soft-spoken in response? I reguarly read the Nation and the blogs, but somehow missed this one. So it seems did the rest of the blogosphere.

    Posted by Brandon2 at 11/06/2006 @ 4:00pm

22. No, that's not true. I read this in a Molly Ivins column, among many other places.

    Posted by MARYBRETBRAD 11/06/2006 @ 1:01pm | ignore this person

    Well Darin, is this the column from Molly you were thinking of?...

    Posted on Oct 17, 2006 By Molly Ivins

    Meanwhile, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health now estimates about 655,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in this war. All the work in the study fell to a knee-jerk response from conservatives, "Oh, that can't be right." Yet the methodology employed is the same as is used by the federal government to decide how to spend millions of dollars every year. It is, as they say, the industry standard.

    And, in the interest of full accoutablility, it turns out I was incorrect regarding the methods used to estimate Iraqi deaths.

    Turns out, when comparing the estimates of '200,000 to 300,000 Iraqi deaths attributed to Saddam over his 24-year reign' vs the John's Hopkins esitmate of '650,000 Iraqi deaths attributable to the US invasion'...

    ...it turns out the John's Hopkins study used methodology that was vastly more accurate and statistically more significant than the WAGs and NOTAs that underly the estimates of deaths attributable to Saddam.

    Posted by Lillian at 11/06/2006 @ 5:05pm

23. MEDIAMATTERS????????

    lolololololololololololololololololololololol

    You cite them as a CREDIBLE source? My goodness you are delusional.

    Posted by CPT 11/05/2006 @ 7:08pm | ignore this person

    Oh yes, those Media Matters folks...always resorting to 'exact quotes', precise transcripts, and tape recordings to concot thier biased reports. Everybody knows how subjective those pesky 'facts' are, right CPT?

    (/sarcasm off)

    Posted by Lillian at 11/06/2006 @ 5:15pm

24. It seems there are some fairly conservative readers on this post. I wonder if any of them can remember, oh, about a month ago, when Dubya truculently questioned the timing of the breaking of the Foley scandal and insinuated THAT was engineered by the Dems as an "October Surprise." As if the Dems could ever manage something like that.

    Left-wing conspiracy theory, indeed. At least the left-wing cuckoos don't have their finger on the button - oh, and they probably get a little more bent out of shape over child molesters, too.

    Posted by silverman76 at 11/06/2006 @ 6:44pm

25. On what principles that define you as a republican has this administration satisfied you?

    Is it the smaller government?

    Is it the lower deficits and fiscal prudence?

    Is it the all money you have seen from tax breaks?

    Is it imigration reform? (and what a fence it will be)

    Is it the overturning of Roe V Wade?

    Is it the banning of gay marriage and gay rights?

    Is it the brilliant prosecution of the war?

    Is it the masterful diplomacy?

    Is it the competent staff?

    Is it the wonderful mixing of church and state?

    Is it the great advisors like Taggert and Kissinger?

    Did you get a no-bid contract?

    Marginalizing the UN?

    Trimming the fat from the constitution?

    The polarizing rhetoric?

    The credibility we are enjoying around the world?

    Is it republican integrity?

    Domestic spying?

    What could it possibly be? I have to know where you find your inspiration in the party.

    Have they put fear into you? You're not afraid of terrorists, are you? Even though republican leaders don't want you to know this, I'm going to let you in on something that should cheer you up: you are a million times more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, a car wreck, etc. than a terrorist attack.

    You have nothing to fear but fear iself.

    Come to the light and vote democrat.

    Posted by kackermann at 11/07/2006 @ 05:09am

26. Timing is everything in politics and BushCo has shown a willingness to use everything at their disposal for political gain. Did anyone else notice the ridiculous reasons they gave for not removing Ney even after he admitted he was guilty of selling his vote? They allowed him to vote on some of the most sensitive topics in recent history after admitting to crimes committed over a year before. How many votes did he participate in during the time of his investigation, only to find out he was guilty all along? Hastert said, "Boy, when we get back to work, we're gonna give him a good talking to." Yet for the Schiavo affair, they held emergency sessions, rallied the Supreme Court from slumber and worked feverishly to block her husband from doing as the law allowed. Are these people capable of delaying the Saddam sentence? Yes. Do they have enough moral integrity to refrain from politicizing this issue during the election? No. Integrity should be something bestowed on people by others, when they are forthcoming with details of their actions. George isn't forthcoming with any information and everything told to us by him has been found to be lies. He shouldn't be allowed near a microphone unless he is put under oath beforehand. With his record of being a pathological liar, and the goosestepping sycophantic behavior of his toadies in the media, it embaresses me that any American would think the average Joe would believe their con. Ever hear the saying, "They went to the well once too often."? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 1000 times? Welcome to the GOP". The educated of America seem to be willing to swallow any rationalization that comes from people with more letters after their names, than they themselves have. Stop it! Your gullibility endangers us all. Don't forget, Mengele was a Doctor.

    Posted by Malcolm Tent at 11/07/2006 @ 08:49am