The Nation
Now, It's Gephardt's War, Too
I wonder how Barbra Streisand feels.
On September 29, at the fancy Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, she headlined a $6 million fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. With her on the stage was House minority leader Richard Gephardt. As she sang a politics-drenched rewrite of "The Way We Were" ("Mis'ries/seems that's all that fills the news/blame the fellas in the White House/for the way we are"), she interjected comments bashing George W. Bush and the Republicans. At one point she commented, "I find bringing the country to the brink of war unilaterally five weeks before an election questionable--and very, very frightening." This remark echoed a confidential memo a Streisand aide sent Gephardt a few days earlier. In that note, Streisand pressed "Democrats to get off the defensive and go on the offensive." The memo also said, "Many of the industries run by big Republican donors and insiders clearly have much to gain if we go to war against Iraq. Barbra urges the Democrats to publicly convey this message to the American people."
That's hardly the message Gephardt pushed once he left Babs-land and returned to Washington. Three days after the concert, he brokered a deal with the White House that guaranteed passage of a resolution authorizing Bush to launch war on Iraq as "he determines to be necessary and appropriate" in order to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and to enforce United Nations resolutions. The Gephardt-backed measure was less of a blank check than the one Bush had sent to Congress. The differences, though, meant little. Under the negotiated resolution, Bush will have to report to Congress that "diplomatic and other peaceful means alone" were not sufficient to thwart Saddam Hussein and enforce UN resolutions. But Bush does not have to issue such a report until two days after he initiates an attack. Gephardt (and the GOP House leaders) are telling Bush, shoot whenever you like, explain later. And once bombs are falling and US troops are in harm's way, how many members of Congress are going to challenge Bush's finding, if they consider it unpersuasive, and then attempt to de-authorize a wartime president? ("I demand you withdraw 100,000 troops and recall the bombers because you misread the last Iraqi communique on the inspections process!")
If war comes, it will not only be Bush's war. It will be Gephardt's war. Other key shareholders will be Democratic Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Edwards, two presidential wannabes who have been pre-running as get-Saddam hawks. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's stake in the enterprise is uncertain as of this writing. He has griped about Bush's politicized rhetoric and raised questions about Bush's dash toward war, but has not opposed the underlying policy. (And Daschle can thank Gephardt, who held his own unilateral negotiations with the White House, for cutting a deal that undermined any move Daschle might have contemplated to limit the use-of-force resolution.) Most Democrats in both the House and the Senate are expected to vote in favor of authorizing Bush to mount a war--even a unilateral one--against Saddam Hussein.
Which means that on the most vital issue of this election season, there is little distinction between the two parties. The Republicans are almost entirely for this war; the Democrats are mostly for it. Whatever happens--good, bad, in-between--Gephardt and the war-enabling Dems will bear responsibility and will deserve to be judged alongside Bush. In fact, some might deserve to be judged more harshly. It is no secret that on Capitol Hill, many Democrats are motivated to vote for the resolution out of political calculation. They do not believe war against Iraq at this time is a good idea, but they fear looking soft or being caught on the wrong side of what might be a popular war. They are hoping to buy security--their own-- with blood.
Bush may be motivated in a similar fashion, but there's a greater chance he truly believes in the mission. Gephardt, too, might buy the ever-shifting national security arguments for this war pitched by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice (rather than the caution expressed recently by retired General Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander; retired General Joseph Hoar, a former chief of the US Central Command; and retired General John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), but since 9/11 he has also adopted the political strategy of embracing the President on foreign policy matters in an attempt to prevent Republicans from hurling the time-tested weak-on-security charge against the Democrats. And against himself. Gephardt, after all, is eyeing a presidential run.
Perhaps when he lies awake at night, counting sheep on a White House lawn, Gephardt can say how much of his support for this war stems from policy concerns, and how much from crass political gamesmanship. But it's tough to see how his stance will benefit him and the Democrats. If the war goes well--and that is a possibility--Bush will receive most, if not all, of the credit and be strengthened for 2004. (Hopeful Democrats might note that Bush I was booted out of office after winning the Gulf War, but Bush II's accomplishments--"liberating Iraq" and "taking out" Saddam--will probably resonate more deeply and for longer than did his father's success in pushing Saddam out of Kuwait.) Me-too Democrats will likely find it difficult to tap the post-war celebration for political advantage. And if the war turns ugly, Gephardt and the other Democratic leaders now leaping aboard Bush's war-wagon will be in no position to complain.
So what's a frightened diva to do? Gephardt is not only not accusing Bush of using diversionary tactics, of practicing arrogant and perhaps dangerous unilateralism, and of greasing the wheels of war-profiteering. He is literally empowering Bush. He fiercely attacks the President on economic and budgetary matters. But he is greenlighting an endeavor that could further derail the federal budget and consume resources for the sort of domestic programs Streisand and Gephardt crave. With their wholehearted support of Bush's prospective war, Gephardt and other Democrats are essentially agreeing with Bush's argument that the nation's number-one priority is the anti-Saddam crusade. Not rising poverty. Not the rising number of Americans without health insurance. Not rising unemployment. Not pension reform. No matter how loud Gephardt thumps the podium on the House floor when he claims these are the real issues of the ongoing congressional campaign.
Gephardt's actions do not remove the war issue from the political table; they add momentum to preparations for war. He has cosigned the current centerpiece of the Bush presidency. In Streisandian terms, Bush said to Congress, "Don't Rain on My Parade," and Gephardt bounded forward with an opened umbrella. This war will be a Republican-Democratic duet.
Blair's British Problem
When British Prime Minister Tony Blair presented his "dossier" on the threats that are supposedly posed to the world by Iraq, President Bush was delighted with what he heard from the man Europeans refer to as "Bush's poodle." "Prime Minister Blair, first of all, is a very strong leader, and I admire his willingness to tell the truth. Secondly he continues to make the case, like we make the case, that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace," the president said last week, after Blair went before the British Parliament to make the case for attacking Iraq.
Much of the American media echoed the president's child-like glee at the release of the long-awaited dossier. "Britain's Case: Iraqi Program to Amass Arms is ‘Up and Running," warned The New York Times. "UK Details Saddam's Thirst for Arms," boomed MSNBC. "Britain: Iraq ready to strike," announced the Atlanta Journal Constitution. "Blair spells out Iraq Threat," came the word from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
As far as the Bush administration and much of the American media was concerned, Blair's 55-page report completed the case for war with Iraq – ideally in concert with the United Nations, but unilaterally if necessary.
In Britain, where political leaders, reporters and citizens actually listened to Blair's speech to parliament – and then seriously analyzed its lack of content – the reaction was decidedly less enthusiastic.
"Saddam may be a risk to peace, but Mr. Blair has failed to make the case for war against Iraq," read the banner headline above an editorial in the Independent newspaper, where the editors concluded, "The real threat to Western security, as 11 September demonstrated, comes from individual acts of terror. A war on Iraq would create hundreds of thousands more volunteers for al-Qa'ida and similar groups. If we really want to make the world a safer place, we have to make the Middle East a safer place. That means a lasting peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. War on Iraq would only render that prospect still more distant."
"We said we wanted killer facts," read the editorial on Blair's speech in the mass-circulation Mirror newspaper. "Instead, these are marshmallow ones." The staid Financial Times added that Blair presentation contained no "compelling evidence" for action against Iraq. " This dossier is not serious," explained former Times of London editor Simon Jenkins, one of Britain's keener observers of politics and foreign affairs.
The British people seem to agree that Blair bumbled when it came to making the case for action. After Blair delivered his speech, a scientific survey of 1,000 Brits, conducted by the prestigious NOP Research Group, found that nearly 80 percent were still opposed to a U.S.-British attack on Iraq that lacked an explicit endorsement from the United Nations.
Asked to name the greatest threat to world peace at the moment, 43 percent of Brits surveyed said Saddam Hussein, but 37 percent said George W. Bush.
Twenty-two percent of those surveyed said they thought Bush was calling for action against Iraq because the U.S. president perceives Saddam as a serious threat to world peace; but 21 percent said Bush was promoting war against Iraq because he was interested in gaining control over that country's oil reserves.
A survey by the BBC of 202 local leaders within Blair's Labour party found that 167 of them were opposed to at attack by the U.S. and Britain on Iraq.
The dramatic size of Saturday's protest against Blair's allegiance to Bush provided physical evidence of the prime minister's failure to convince his constituents that Iraq poses a clear and present danger. A London march that The Independent described as the "biggest protest in a generation," drew 150,000 people, according to police. Noting that authorities routinely underestimate crowds at demonstrations, organizers with Britain's Stop the War Coalition, put the crowd size at closer to 350,000.
Whatever the precise number of demonstrators, the message was clear. "There has been no case made – based on anything other than speculation – that Iraq poses a threat," explained Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspection chief in Iraq, who flew to London to address the protest. "It's not about defense of British people or British interests; it's so that corrupt American politicians can get their hands on Iraqi oil," said London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Tam Dalyell, the senior member of Blair's Labour Party in parliament, argued that: "We are sleep walking to disaster."
Tony Benn, a former Labour Party Cabinet minister who Blair once hailed as a political hero, spoke for the crowd when he said: "We believe it would be wholly immoral and wrong and criminal to attack Iraq and inflict casualties upon innocent people."
Tony Blair Makes A Case...For Inspections
After British Prime Minister (and George W. Bush sidekick) Tony Blair issued a 55-page white paper on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction several days ago, The Washington Post slapped a story on the front page headlined, "Blair: Iraq Can Deploy Quickly." The subhead read, "Report Presents New Details On Banned Arms." The New York Times similarly noted, "Blair Says Iraqis Could Launch Chemical Weapons in Minutes." As a counterbalance of sorts, its subhead said, "Sees Nuclear Weapon Capability in 1 to 5 Years."
Both articles conveyed the impression that Iraq is an immediate threat and that Blair supports Bush's dash to war--which in a way he does. But the "dossier" Blair unveiled--based on British intelligence work--made the case for renewed weapons inspections, not war. In the foreword to the report, Blair states, "The case I make is that the UN Resolutions demanding [Saddam Hussein] stops his WMD programme are being flouted; that since the inspectors left four years ago he has continued with this programme, that the inspectors must be allowed back in to do their job properly." If Saddam blocks the return of the inspectors or "makes it impossible for them to do their job," Blair declares, "the international community will have to act." But Blair, Bush's closest ally in the campaign against Saddam, is clearly saying an attempt to revive the weapons inspection program should occur before the United States and Britain wage war against Iraq. That is not how the media characterized his presentation. And it is not the White House position.
Most of Blair's white paper was devoted to detailing threat indicators--noting Saddam's long history of developing and seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran in the 1980s. It warns that Iraq possesses a useable chemical and biological weapons capability--without being specific about these weapons--and that it can "deploy" (which is not the same as "launch") some within 45 minutes. This may only mean that Iraq can quickly disseminate mustard gas on a battlefield--which would hardly be a surprise. Or a reason to preemptively attack.
The report offers no intelligence insights as to Saddam's intentions and plans. Citing intelligence sources, it says Saddam "believes that respect for Iraq rests on its possessions of these weapons and the missiles capable of delivering them." This is no newsflash. In fact, it undermines the argument that Saddam is a danger because he is likely to share such weapons with others--say, al Qaeda. The report contains no claim that Saddam is near any weapon breakthrough or about to engage in recklessly hostile activity. That is, no reason why an invasion must occur right away.
Regarding nuclear weapons, the report says, "In early 2002, the [British Joint Intelligence Committee] assessed that UN sanctions on Iraq were hindering the import of crucial goods for the production of fissile material [needed for a nuclear weapon]. The JIC judged that while sanctions remain effective Iraq would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon. If they were removed or proved ineffective, it would take Iraq at least five years to produce sufficient fissile material for a weapon indigenously. However, we know that Iraq retains expertise and design data relating to nuclear weapons. We therefore judge that if Iraq obtained fissile material and other essential components from foreign sources the timeline for production of a nuclear weapon would be shortened and Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in between one and two years." Blair, though, offers no evidence Iraq has been able to gather fissile missile from outside suppliers. The paper does maintain "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa," but no mention of how close Iraq came to succeeding. Nor is there any evaluation of how difficult or easy it would be for Iraq to locate the right sort and necessary amount of bomb-friendly material.
As for Iraq's ballistic missile capability, the report says Saddam wants bigger and longer-range missiles. But it notes that British intelligence predicts Iraq needs at least five years to develop a missile with a range of over 1,000 kilometers, as long as the current sanctions remain effective. "Sanctions and the earlier work of the inspectors," according to the report, "had caused significant problems for Iraqi missile development."
Blair's paper makes the easy case there is cause to fret about Saddam's arsenal and his apparent desire to enlarge and expand it. But it credits the UN weapons inspection program of the 1990s for having restrained, hindered and, in some instances, blocked Saddam's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. "Between 1991 and 1998," the white paper says, "[UN weapons inspectors] succeeded in identifying and destroying very large quantities of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles as well as associated production facilities. The [International Atomic Energy Agency] also destroyed the infrastructure for Iraq's nuclear weapons programme and removed key nuclear materials. This was achieved despite a continuous and sophisticated programme of harassment, obstruction, deception and denial." In other words, inspections can and did work. The dossier notes the inspectors discovered and exposed Iraq's biological weapons program and destroyed the al-Hakam biological weapons facility and "a range of production equipment" for biological weapons. The dossier offers no support for the Bush officials, such as Vice President Dick Cheney, who assert a new round of robust and unfettered inspections would be pointless and, worse, dangerous (for only providing false comfort).
Blair's paper actually is an argument for intrusive and aggressive inspections, not one for war. Or, at least, inspections before war. In tone, it seems in sync with the war-whipping of the Bush White House, but its facts--and its limited reference to policy options--support the give-tough-inspections-a-chance crowd. Following its release, President Bush praised his British helpmate. Maybe he didn't have time to read it.
Democrats Whine About War Debate
Of late, Democrats have taken to whining that Bush is politicizing the debate over the war on Iraq. Actually, there's not much of a debate to politicize--since most Democrats in the House and Senate seemed either resigned or eager to vote for a resolution authorizing George W. Bush to launch a war when he sees fit. (On the way to that vote, Democrats and Republicans may force alterations in the wording of Bush's proposed blank-check resolution; its thrust, though, is likely to remain the same.) But there's nothing wrong with politicizing this war or any other--if that means asking voters to decide electoral contests on the basis of a candidate's position on the war. The Democrats' problem is that, for the most part, they are unable or unwilling to politicize Bush's rush to war, for that would entail fiercely challenging Bush's demand for the authority to use force against Iraq--which is not the Democratic position.
So instead of worrying about the war, many Democrats fret about the politics. Days ago, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a fundraiser in Kansas for Republican congressional hopeful Adam Taff, who is running against Democratic incumbent Dennis Moore, and he proclaimed that electing Taff would aid the administration's war effort. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat, quickly protested. "I was chagrined," he said, that Cheney would tell people to vote for a Republican because he was a war supporter. "If that doesn't politicize the war," Daschle added, "I don't know what does." And when GOP chairman Mark Racicot observed that a vote against the war "could be fair game in the closing days of the campaign," Democratic National Committee spokesperson Jennifer Palmieri griped, "He's making a veiled threat, outlining how Republicans would use the Iraq vote against Democrats."
In reality, it was not so veiled. But that's not the point. Shouldn't legislators be judged on how they vote on such a crucial matter? The GOP is perfectly within its rights to urge voters to back Republican candidates who support Bush and his war on terrorism and his war on Iraq to come, and to claim that these are the most important questions facing the United States. It is up to the Democrats, if they so desire, to present a different case. That is the essence of politics. The Democrats can argue they care about national security and domestic matters. They can champion a different definition of "national security" than that embraced by the Republicans. They can assert Bush is using a justified or unjustified war to divert attention from the in-the-dumps economy. Democrats who oppose the war can try to persuade voters they know better. That is what an election is about.
War should not be beyond politics. When Karl Rove, Bush's master political strategist, earlier in the year was caught suggesting Republicans could gain from the war on terrorism, Democrats howled. But he was really only saying GOPers should position themselves close to a popular President and a popular war, and let the voters decide. When a computer disc containing a GOP briefing that advised Republican candidates to focus on war was found on a street, Democrats again complained about politicization. But this is not politicization. Perhaps exploitation. It also is what every politician does: emphasize the issue that provides a perceived advantage. But a crucial component of a campaign is debating what topics deserve focus.
There is nothing underhanded about defining an election as one between a party in sync with a president and a war (or two) and a party opposed to a president and filled with some who support those wars and some who do not. The Democrats are upset because, split as they are, they do not believe they benefit from such a comparison. (A case of message envy?) As a party, they cannot ask the voters to spurn GOP candidates who would too readily allow Bush to wage what might be an expensive and dangerous war, for many of their own either endorse that position--such as House minority leader Dick Gephardt--or acquiesce because they fear the political consequences of opposing the war. Bush might have (or probably, or definitely) pushed his war against Iraq during election time for crass political reasons--to squash debate and discussion of economic and health-related issues that tend to benefit Democrats. But many Democrats, too, are dealing with the war in a politics-first manner, with Gephardt and Daschle pushing for a fast vote on Bush's war resolution in order to have a chance to address other subjects prior to the November 5 congressional elections. (Their strategy smells of doom, though. As Representative Dennis Kucinich, a liberal Democratic who's leading two dozen or so anti-war House Democrats, notes, "If talk of war has pushed debate about the economy off the front-pages and out of the leads of the network news, what do you suppose a real war will do?" But the inverse may be true as well. If Democrats were to vote down Bush's war--which isn't going to happen--Iraq would still remain the national discourse's number-one item until the elections.)
On September 25, an angry Daschle took to the Senate floor to blast Bush for politicizing the war. He cited Cheney's war-oriented backing of Taff, Rove's remarks, and the computer disc briefing. But what really ticked him off was Bush's claim that the Democratic-controlled "Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people." Bush, though, was referring to the ongoing dust-up over the homeland security bill, in which Senate Democrats are opposing his attempt to exempt employees of the new Homeland Security Department from various workplace protections. Rather than address that specific dispute, Daschle asserted, "We must not politicize this war."
Bush's remark had been a low blow. But Daschle, who demanded an apology from Bush, was attempting to score points via partisan bickering. He was, in a way, trying to politicize the politics--arguing not against Bush's war, but Bush's politicization of the war.
With the elections looming, the GOP--the war party--is clearly prepared to turn an opponent's national security position into a partisan issue. The Democratic Party--the half-or-more war party--is not. But not because of any noble principle. It simply is not positioned to do so. Which leaves many Democrats set to cry "foul," finding it easier to attack war rhetoric than war itself.
Schröder Beats Bush
The first 2002 election campaign in which George W. Bush's desire to attack Iraq became a major issue did not involve Republicans and Democrats. It was not even held in the United States. But it can still be said that Bush – and his proposed war--came out on the losing end of the contest.
German voters on Sunday gave a narrow, yet clear, mandate to the red-green coalition of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The dramatic come-from-behind win for Schröder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) and its coalition partner, the Green Party, followed a campaign in which the chancellor promised to withhold German support for a US-led war against Iraq.
"Under my leadership, Germany will not participate in military action," declared Schröder, in a blunt statement that distinguished the chancellor from Edmund Stoiber, the standard bearer of the conservative Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) alliance that sought to oust the four-year-old SPD-Green government.
"There's still a big danger of war, and that is a point where we really have a differing opinion," Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Schröder's Green Party ally, said of the governing coalition's differences with the Stoiber camp. "In no case should we escalate," Fischer said of Germany.
German election analysts said Schröder's outspoken and consistent stance regarding Iraq helped his party eliminate a nine-point deficit in the polls and pull ahead of the opposition in the closing days of the campaign. In Sunday's voting The SPD-Green coalition won more than 47 percent of the vote and a majority of seats in the German Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. (The SPD was winning 37.6 percent of the vote in late returns, while the Greens earned 8.6 percent--the strongest national election finish in the party's 22-year history. The Greens are generally viewed as pulling the coalition toward a more anti-war stance.)
Another four percent of the vote went to the left-wing Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which took an even more militantly anti-war stance than Schröder's coalition. It appears that the PDS won several Bundestag seats in its east German strongholds, but is not expected to be a part of the coalition.
The likely coalition of Stoiber's CDU-CSU alliance and the smaller Free Democratic Party was taking 46 percent of the vote.
Stoiber saw his poll lead erode after he promised to leave open the option of using military force to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "We Europeans must co-ordinate our interests and bring them to bear with the United States," Stoiber said, while accusing Schröder of "poisoning" German's relations with the United States.
Stoiber's rhetoric was echoed--sometimes word-for-word--by Bush administration aides and allies, especially after German Justice Minister Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin allegedly suggested Bush was blowing threats from Iraq out of proportion in order to divert attention from domestic economic problems in the United States. "That's a popular method. Even Hitler did that," Daeubler-Gmelin supposedly told German trade unionists. She said the Hitler reference was a misquote, but the incident rocked the Schröder campaign in its final days.
The Bush administration and its Congressional allies, fearing a Schröder win, sent increasingly strong pro-Stoiber signals as the election approached. Two days before the election, US Sen. Jesse Helms, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said, "The German chancellor has damaged German relations with the United States in ways that cannot be easily repaired." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, spoke of the suddenly "poisoned atmosphere" of US-German relations and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called off a planned meeting with the German defense minister.
Yet, Schröder stuck to his anti-war theme.
The chancellor closed his campaign in the city of Rostock, telling a cheering crowd of 5,000: "The Middle East and Iraq need a lot of new peace, but they don't need a new war." Refusing to bow to the pressure from Washington, Schröder said, "Fundamental issues of German policy will be decided in Berlin and nowhere else."
The chancellor's decision to make his differences with the Bush administration the focal point of his final pre-election message reinforced the view that he was running as much against the US president's military schemes as he was against Stoiber. Polls indicated that a wide majority of Germans opposed their German military involvement in a US-led war on Iraq.
Ironically, the Bush administration may have handed Schröder the issue that enabled the Chancellor to retain office. Like the US, Germany is experiencing a serious economic slowdown. Joachim Raschke, a politics professor at Hamburg University, said the debate over Iraq--along with Schröder's solid response to summer flooding of German cities--helped to eclipse a dialogue about economic issues that might have benefited Stoiber and the CDU-CSU.
This was not the turn-of-events the Bush administration anticipated last summer, when it began cranking up the war rhetoric. White House political advisor Karl Rove had signaled that he wanted to make national security a front-burner issue prior to this fall's US elections--since polls showed that a focus on domestic economic issues would harm Republican chances in the fight for control of the US House and Senate. But Rove and his Bush team apparently failed to calculate the prospect that a domestic political gambit could deal the Bush camp a serious foreign policy blow.
Among traditional US allies in Europe, Schröder has been the most outspoken critic of the military action against Iraq. But, on the same day that the German chancellor was winning a new term at least in part on the strength of his anti-war stance, a member of the British Cabinet was breaking ranks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair--Bush's staunchest European ally.
"We cannot have another Gulf war," declared British Secretary of State for International Development Clair Short, in a statement that illustrating the rise of anti-war sentiment within Blair's Labour Party. "We cannot have the people of Iraq suffering again. They have suffered too much. That would be wrong."
Bush Stonewalls on Pre-9/ll Knowledge
The scene: a hut somewhere near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Al Qaeda Terrorist Number One: I have good news to report.
Al Qaeda Terrorist Number Two: What is it?
AQT1: We have achieved a major breakthrough in learning how the infidels in America intend to pursue their campaign against us. With this information, we will be able to strike again.
AQT2: What is this important information?
AQT1: That the President is briefed by the CIA and other spy services on what they learn of our plans.
AQT2: Now that we know the President is informed by his lackeys we are in a better position to deliver chaos and death upon them. Praise Allah.
Believe it or not, the Bush administration is suggesting that an absurd scenario of that sort is possible. As proof, look at the first page of the report released days ago by the House and Senate intelligence committees' joint inquiry examining September 11. "The Director of Central Intelligence," the relevant passage says, "has declined to declassify two issues of particular importance to this Inquiry." One was the identity of a key al Qaeda leader (since identified by the news media as Khalid Sheik Mohammed). The other was "any references to the Intelligence Community providing information to the President or White House." The report went on, "According to the DCI, the President's knowledge of intelligence information relevant to this Inquiry remains classified even when the substance of that intelligence information has been declassified."
That is, the administration will declassify intelligence information, but it will keep classified the fact that this material was (or was not) shared with the President or anyone else at the White House. The administration's position is that it can tell the public about intelligence reports the government gathered regarding potential acts of terrorism before September 11 without harming national security, but if it must reveal whether these reports were brought to the attention of George W. Bush or his aides, that would endanger the United States. (This is different from the customary Bush White House arguments about executive privilege and preserving Bush's and Dick Cheney's ability to hear frank talk from such crucial advisers as energy industry lobbyists.)
If there were a secrecy-meter for the secrecy-loving Bush White House, this latest move would peg the needle in the red zone. After all, if information that was shared with Bush is made public, how could Bush's awareness (or unawareness) of that information be considered a vital secret? But the administration is indeed maintaining that the country's enemies, as they currently plot against America, could somehow exploit knowledge of Bush's knowledge of past intelligence reporting.
The reason for this silly White House maneuver appears obvious: to avoid further debate on what Bush did or did not know about the prospect of domestic terrorism attacks prior to 9/11--and how he reacted to what he was told. Four months ago, Bush got burned when news reports revealed he had received a general briefing on August 6, 2001, suggesting al Qaeda was aiming to hit the United States. As Bush plans his war against Iraq, administration officials surely do not want a similar distraction. Had they not censored the intelligence committees, such a diversion might have occurred, for on page 23 of the report sits a landmine:
"A briefing prepared for senior government officials at the beginning of July 2001 contained the following language: 'Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that UBL [Usama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.'"
This was a much more to-the-point briefing than the August 6 one that caused the fuss. But who received it? What intelligence sources was it based on? Most importantly, what did those senior government officials do in response? The report does not say. Yet imagine the reaction if the report explicitly stated that Bush and top White House officials had been told in July, 2001, that a "spectacular" al Qaeda attack was weeks away.
That is the obvious inference. After a recent hearing held by the intelligence committees, a journalist asked Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate panel, if a reader could assume that prior to being censored the report read "the President and White House officials" in the many spots where it now says "senior government officials." Graham jokingly nodded his head without saying anything. Adopting a more serious demeanor, he said that "if the underlying information has been declassified I see no reason that who received it should be classified. How else do you hold people accountable?"
Precisely. The committees' job is to examine and judge how the government performed prior to 9/11--and tell the public what happened. A significant part of that mission is determining what information made it to the White House and what was done by the President and his aides. But Bush is stonewalling.
Classifying this type of information, Graham remarked, "is new to me....I do not understand how, as a blanket reason, that serves national security interests." Is the White House trying to cover up an embarrassment? a reporter asked. With a smile, Graham replied, "I'm not in the psychotherapy business." He vowed that the House and Senate intelligence committees will continue to negotiate with the White House to declassify this and other material ordered withheld by the administration.
The report overall is a damning document, indicating the national security establishment had plenty of warnings--more so than publicly known before--that al Qaeda was considering using airplanes as weapons. Yet no one in the intelligence community--as it is called--acted seriously on this information. (In one instance, an intelligence agency in 1998 received a report that an Arab group, which later was possibly linked to al Qaeda, planned to fly an explosives-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center. The FAA and FBI were informed; neither took action. Intelligence officials, though, have claimed this report, which originated with a police official in a Caribbean nation, was not deemed credible and that its significance has been exaggerated by the committees.) As the staff report bemoans, "While this method of attack had clearly been discussed in terrorist circles, there was apparently little, if any, effort by Intelligence Community analysts to produce any strategic assessment of terrorists using aircraft as weapons." (The committees' report undermines national security adviser Condoleeza Rice's post-attack assertion that no one could have imagined such an assault.) And the study notes that after CIA chief George Tenet in 1998 declared "we are at war" with bin Laden, "there was no massive shift in budget" and many within the intelligence establishment did not get the message. It shows, sadly, there were many more dots than previously revealed that went unconnected.
The report--the first of several supposedly to come from the committees--went further than expected in demonstrating that the intelligence establishment missed concrete signs of a specific threat and failed to plan for it. But it also revealed--once more--the Bush fondness for excessive secrecy. The President, who likes to champion responsibility, is abusing the classification system to prevent an evaluation of how he and White House officials handled their own responsibilities. A commander-in-chief who hides behind a phony claim of national security hardly deserves public confidence as he preps for war.
De-Saddamization, Not Disarmament
"No sensible person wants to go to war if war can be avoided." So said Secretary of State Colin Powell on September 15. Next time he is at the White House, he should take a good look around.
The day after Powell made that remark, Saddam Hussein offered unconditionally to permit UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq, after a four-year hiatus. His move, as skeptics quickly noted, was predictable. It split the UN which had been moving toward supporting--or yielding to--Bush's get-Iraq demand and gave Arab states and France, Russia and China (three-fifths of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, each with soft-on-Saddam governments) reason to call for slowing down the march to war. Just as predictable was the administration's response, as George W. Bush and his advisers dismissed the offer as an irrelevant ploy. They seemed irritated their express train to war, which was picking up momentum, had encountered a bad piece of track. Rather than slow down and take a look, they decided, let's ignore the bump, full speed ahead.
But if no sensible person wants a war that can be avoided, why not call Saddam's bluff? Bush's supposed aim has been disarmament in Iraq. The administration has sold "regime change"--that semi-polite term for ousting Saddam with military force--as a means for ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Powell, in the past, has raised the prospect that an aggressive, intrusive, unfettered, and robust weapons inspection program could achieve this, while Vice President Dick Cheney has said it could not. But even though Bush cited Iraqi repression and human rights violations during his speech last week at the UN, the publicly-stated concern driving administration policy has been Saddam's development of WMD. After all, is Bush proposing war against other nations that treat citizens brutally and do not allow for religious, political and civil freedom? Say, China, Qatar, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan? What makes Saddam different, we're told, is his development and potential use (which might include sharing) of horrific weaponry.
Inspections address this central point. The Bush administration and its conservative supporters in the punditry, though, have denied this. Testifying before the House armed services committee on September 18, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--after being interrupted by protesters chanting, "inspections, not war"--said, "The goal isn't inspections. The goal is disarmament....You can only have inspections when a country is cooperating with you."
That is not entirely so. Inspections are part of a disarmament campaign, and cooperation is not a black-and-white matter. From 1991 to 1998, UN inspectors faced a tough time in Iraq, for Saddam--big surprise--did not assist them. His government, for example, claimed it had no major biological weapons. Yet the inspectors uncovered such a program. (At the UN, Bush misleadingly attributed this important success to the defection of an Iraqi defector. But the UN inspectors had discovered these bioweapons months before this defection.) The inspectors also learned the Iraqi nuclear weapons program was further along than Saddam's government had acknowledged. With this information in hand, the inspectors dismantled Iraq's capacity to enrich uranium--a crucial step in bomb-making.
The right sort of inspections can lead to disarmament and can inhibit WMD development. During the seven years UN inspectors played cat-and-mouse with Saddam, his regime did not apparently make great strides on the WMD front. Not that Saddam may not have tried. But it's been four years since inspections ended, and none of the go-to-war-now crowd is today arguing Saddam possesses nuclear weapons. If Iraq was months away from a nuclear bomb at the end of the Gulf War in 1991--as the Bush administration and others claim (perhaps rightfully)--then it is clear that those seven years of inspections and dismantlement set him back, for there is no evidence that in the past four years Saddam has achieved what he was once months away from achieving.
Inspections without a cooperating regime did make a difference. As Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted, "In their first five years, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), which was responsible for inspecting and disarming Iraq's chemical, biological, and missile materials and capacities, and the [International Atomic Energy Agency] Iraq Action Team, which did the same for Iraq's nuclear ones, achieved substantial successes. With sufficient human and technological resources, time, and political support, inspections can reduce Iraq's WMD threat, if not to zero, to a negligible level." She defines inspections as "a resumed discovery and disarmament phase and intrusive, ongoing monitoring and verification extending to dual-use facilities and the activities of key individuals." By claiming the choice is between inspections and disarmament, Rumsfeld is being disingenuous. Inspections are aimed directly at disarmament. Regime change may be. But one targets a sometimes hard-to-find bull's eye, while the other seeks to blow up the entire firing range in order to get that red circle.
Why not try the first course, before resorting to blasting away? The White House and the UN should call Saddam's bluff. Send in the inspectors ASAP and test the unconditionality of the offer. It may take a while--months to a year--to scope out Iraq's WMD programs, but it should not take long to determine if Iraq is serious about giving the inspectors free run.
This is the approach backed by Richard Butler, former chief UN weapons inspector. One of the most passionate advocates of Iraqi disarmament, Butler has been a human-rights-oriented hawk on Iraq. During the summer, he appeared before the Senate foreign relations committee and was somewhat supportive of military action against Saddam. After Iraq said it would permit the return of inspectors, Butler remarked, "We don't have to be grateful for what Iraq has done. They are outlaws, they are outside the law; we have to assess carefully a decision by them to come back under the law and this seems to be a step in the right direction....Saying that the inspectors can come back to Iraq without condition is good--that's the first step. But what we really need to see is that inspectors are allowed to do their work when they get there, without conditions; in other words, unfettered access to any place or person that they need in order to do their job, and we won't know that until they get there."
Butler, despite his deep skepticism toward Saddam, views this as an opportunity, not an irritation. The Bush clan ought to do the same. But Team Bush--sometimes Powell, too--seem eager to shoot down any other options but regime-change war. (Other war-lite options include inspections backed by force, as the Carnegie Endowment has proposed, or strikes against WMD sites.) There may be risks involved in permitting Iraq to weasel its way through a round of inspection follies. Perhaps Saddam will gain more time to pursue what the administration fears he is pursuing. But that risk has to be considered along side the risks of military action--especially military action that could end up being mostly unilateral.
The Bush administration doesn't seem much interested in avoiding full-scale conflict. It would rather have a blank-check authorization from Congress than an inspection regimen in place. The White House is bent on regime change in and of itself. Sure, a military attack designed to achieve de-Saddamization might impede Iraq's WMD programs. But it might have many other consequences as well. Clearly, the goal is war, not disarmament. Secretary Powell, call your office.
US Rep. Rahall Speaks in Iraq
US Rep. Nick Rahall's policy pronouncements tend toward announcements about extending water and sewer service in southern West Virginia, or the erection of safety barriers on dangerous stretches of Interstate 64. So much of official Washington was caught by surprise when the West Virginia Democrat appeared before the Iraqi Assembly Sunday "as a member of Congress concerned with peace" and declared, "Basically, I want America and Iraq to give peace a chance."
"Instead of assuming that war must come, let us find ways to discover how to prove that war is unnecessary," Rahall told the Iraqis. "It is time and, in my opinion, far past time that American andIraqi officials talk to each other without threats."
Rahall's trip to Baghdad, which followed President Bush's saber-rattling address to the United Nations General Assembly, drew international attention to a congressman who has spent most of his quarter century on Capitol Hill securing funding for road projects and mine safety initiatives. Unlike Bush, however, Rahall is no newcomer to Middle East affairs.
The grandson and namesake of a Lebanese immigrant who in 1903 settled in Beckley, West Virginia, Rahall approaches debates over Middle East policy from a unique perspective in a Congress with only a handful of Arab-American members. Proud of his ethnicity, Rahall frequently quotes a line from Lebanese-American entertainer Danny Thomas: "He who denies his heritage has no heritage."
Rahall has been a frequent visitor to Lebanon, Israel and other Middle Eastern nations -- traveling as a member of Congressional delegations and on his own to his grandfather's hometown of Kfier, Lebanon. A graduate of Duke University who earned his political spurs as an aide to legendary West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, Rahall has quietly developed a level of expertise on Middle East issues that few members of Congress can rival.
Rahall has frequently parted company with the overwhelming majority of his colleagues on those issues. In 1993, for instance, the House considered a resolution declaring that "the Arab boycott of Israel is detrimental to the peace process in the Middle East and should be discontinued forthwith." It passed, by a margin of 425-1.
More recently, the West Virginia Democrat was one of 11 House members to oppose a December 2001, resolution expressing solidarity with Israel. In May, when the House voted on a resolution that praised Israel's fight against terrorism while placing blame for violence in the region on Palestinian leaders, Rahall cast one of just 21 "no" votes.
While Rahall's votes may look controversial to national observers, they have caused him little grief in West Virginia, where he is regularly reelected with little or no opposition. The congressman is known for maintaining good relations – and an open dialogue -- with both Arab-American and Jewish constituents. Additionally, Rahall's voting record on Middle East issues tends to parallel that of his old boss, Senator Byrd. And, like Byrd, he devotes so much time and energy to bringing infrastructure projects to southern West Virginia that foreign policy issues are rarely part of the homestate debate.
Rahall has won high marks even from those who disagree with him for his expertise and for his attention to humanitarian issues that are often lost in Middle East policy debates. A thoughtful critic of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's actions, Rahall voted in favor of the 1991 Congressional resolution supporting the Persian Gulf War. In the years since, however, he has been in the forefront of questioning the wisdom of US policies toward Iraq.
Rahall signed the letter, initiated by Representatives Tom Campbell (R-CA) and John Conyers (D-MI), that, for humanitarian reasons, called for the lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq. Last week, Rahall cited similar concerns, saying he has decided to travel to Baghdad to "help illuminate the plight of the Iraqi people."
"I'm not going as Secretary of State. I'm not going as a weapons inspector. I'm going as an individual who'd like to cool this rhetoric and act in a calm matter, and show the Iraqi people that the American people are not warmongers," he said on the eve of the trip to Iraq, which he took in the company of former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk. (Rahall and Abourezk made the trip as part of a delegation organized by the Institute for Public Accuracy.)
Rahall said he also was making the trip because of his doubts about whether the Bush administration has made a case for waging war against Iraq at this time.
"Why now, two months before an election? Why was the threat so serious now that it wasn't a year ago. I've seen certainly no link of Iraq to 9/11," Rahall said. "I just don't see a linkage there."
Bush Tells UN, Make War or I Will
Let us stipulate that Saddam Hussein is a scumbag. He has run a brutal and murderous dictatorship, repressed significant numbers of his people, sought to develop weapons of mass destruction, invaded a neighbor, used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians and Iranians, and defied various UN resolutions. Delivering his Big Speech at the UN on Thursday morning, President George W. Bush covered Saddam's infamy in detail (without noting, by the way, how the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s provided Saddam with assistance while he was using chemical weapons during his war against Iran). The President cited the numerous times the UN Security Council has declared Iraq in breach of resolutions ordering it to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. But Bush presented no heretofore unknown information about the threat posed by Iraq. And he offered no specific proposals on how to deal with the threat--real or hyped. He was making a case for despising Hussein (as if that was needed). But his case for war against Iraq remained vague. His message was, either you do something, or I will. That is, Bush said nothing new.
The speech was a lecture. Claiming he desired a United Nations that is "effective...and successful," Bush tried to guilt-trip the General Assembly into accepting his hardline approach. He argued the UN must do so in order to be taken seriously: "All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?" Worrying about the strength and credibility of the UN is a new position for the Bush administration, which has repeatedly ignored or opposed consensus positions of the UN, such as its support for an international criminal court. (A partial list of these instances appears in the preceding column; click on the link below.)
But Bush signaled that actually he, too, held no true respect for the UN. For in the nut-graph (as a newspaper editor would call it) of his speech, Bush declared that if the UN decides his particular course of confrontation with Iraq--whatever that might entail--is not appropriate, he is willing to defy the body and move against Iraq on his own. "We will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions," he said. "But the purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council's resolutions will be enforced--the just demands of peace and security will be met--or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will lose its power." In keeping with his with-us-or-against-us approach to foreign policy, he was telling the UN that its standing depends upon on whether it agrees with him.
Bush mentioned nothing about any effort to revive aggressive and robust weapons inspections in Iraq, nothing about possible stricter sanctions, nothing about military options shy of those designed to achieve regime change (such as strikes against Iraq's suspected WMD facilities, should there be proof these sites present a danger). Bush was dismissive of all paths but war. "We've been more than patient," he remarked. "We've tried sanctions. We've tried the carrot of oil for food, and the stick of coalition military strikes.'" And none of it, he suggested, has worked. So the question hovers, what does Bush expect the UN to do? The only alternative he seems willing to accept is a war to remove Saddam.
Nor did Bush discuss the challenge of what would come after such an event--other than a new Iraq that "can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine." (No word from Bush on the prospects of a "democratic" Saudi Arabia or a "democratic" Jordan.) And he praised his administration's actions in Afghanistan. But the post-war scene there remains a mess, and even Republicans on Capitol Hill have griped that the United States has not done enough in terms of providing security and assistance to that fractured (and fractious) nation. Present-day Afghanistan--which may be an improvement for many Afghans over the time of the Taliban--is hardly a good sales-pitch for war against Iraq.
As far as the public knows, Bush so far has failed to persuade any head of state--but Britain's Tony Blair--that war against Saddam is necessary at this point. He hasn't even won over key advisers to his dad, including former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. His UN address brought nothing fresh to the podium. Bush was not leading; he was pushing.
Bush at the UN: The Charade Before the Crusade
"'Don't worry. We've got a plan. We purposefully let the Iraq issue stay in no-man's-land for a while. But we know what we're doing.' That's what senior people at the White House tell me," the Reverend Lou Sheldon, the chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, informs me while we're waiting for sandwiches. (It pays to favor the Capitol Hill deli fancied by a leader of the religious right.) "I sure hope so," he adds.
There does seem to be a plan in the works. August, as White House chief of staff Andrew Card told a reporter, is an awful time to "introduce new products"--such as a war. So the Bush administration waited until back-to-school week to add the latest lyrics to its beating of the war drums. As part of the run-up to Bush's September 12 speech at the UN--in which, the White House promises, he will lay out the case for confronting Saddam Hussein--the big cahunas of Bush's posse hit the Sunday shows to issue the pre-case for going to war with Iraq.
This whole operation has a fake air to it, for Bush and Dick Cheney have already talked themselves into a corner. Bush has repeatedly cited Saddam as an immediate and direct threat to the United States and the entire world. Cheney has said time is of the essence and that even a revived weapons inspection program in Iraq would not undo this threat. In fact, he argued, a program to monitor and disarm Saddam would only provide a false sense of comfort and allow Saddam more time to become more of a menace. With such rhetoric, the Bush administration has left itself with no option other than a military strike against Saddam.
Meanwhile, Bush and his lieutenants have already been trying to make the case. For months, they have been on the phone and in meetings with European, Asian and Middle Eastern allies, desperately seeking partners for the crusade against Saddam. Only one other leader so far has signed up--British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Most others have publicly distanced themselves from the administration's get-Saddam-now urgings. Is Bush going to say anything much different at the UN than what he and his people have already told the allies?
Bush may have one more chance with his UN speech. But the pre-speech chatter from the administration showed that Team Bush has still not come together on the fine points of its war against Iraq. On Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that "disarmament is the issue" and that the reason for "regime change" (the administration's euphemism for attacking Iraq) is to "make sure" Iraq is disarmed. Yet when Tim Russert asked Cheney on Meet The Press whether the goal is "disarmament or regime change," Cheney replied, "The President's made it clear that the goal of the United States is regime change." (Guess Powell missed that memo.) On CNN, Wolf Blitzer asked national security adviser Condoleeza Rice if the Iraqi government was linked to al Qaeda. She responded, "There is certainly evidence that al Qaeda people have been in Iraq. There is certainly evidence that Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists." Asked if Iraq has been "working with and supporting al Qaeda," Powell said, "We cannot yet make a definitive conclusion that such a thing has occurred." On this subject, Cheney said, "there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years" between Iraq and al Qaeda. He did not elaborate on this vague but provocative assertion.
Powell noted that a "more robust and aggressive" inspection regime would be worth pursuing, claiming the issue was "under consideration." Cheney stuck to his previous stand on inspections but without reiterating his forceful opposition: "I'm a real skeptic." As to why America's allies have left Bush in the lurch, Cheney said, "I don't think they know the same information" as the Bush administration. Powell, though, remarked, "I think they know enough to come to the same conclusion."
Pity the viewer who watched all the interviews. With days to go to the Big Speech, there still was not one set of talking points. But the Bush advisers did agree that Bush intended to pressure the UN to move against Saddam. As Powell commented, in the face of Iraqi violations of UN resolutions ordering Saddam to give up his weapons of mass destruction, "the United Nations should feel offended, the United Nations should feel that something has to be done." Powell said Bush will deliver "a strong message that it's time [for the UN] to do something."
This is Texas-sized chutzpah. The Bush administration has repeatedly told the UN to get lost. A partial list: it opposed the Kyoto protocol on global warming; it boycotted a UN conference held to encourage states to sign the comprehensive test ban treaty, which outlaws nuclear tests; it refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the execution of juveniles; it walked out of a UN conference on racism over fear that the meeting would condemn Israel; it rejected a draft UN agreement to enforce a biological weapons ban that was supported by almost every other participating nation; it opposed a UN initiative against torture that established an inspection process, out of concern this would lead to monitors in US prisons, especially the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; and it successfully led smear-like campaigns to oust the UN human rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, and the head of the UN agency that overseas the chemical weapons treaty.
The Bush gang has displayed little respect for the UN. Often when the UN has declared a priority, the Bush administration has dismissed the body's concern. Yet now Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says, "I think it is probably not a good thing for the United Nations to be laughed at and sneered at and disobeyed and...to not be significant enough....And for the United Nations to acquiesce in that, it seems to me, is an unfortunate thing."
What if the UN this time around does the spurning? "We'd like to do it with the sanction of the international community," Cheney commented, without defining the "it." Yet he added: "But the point in Iraq is this problem has to be dealt with one way or another." By the way, he said the same regarding Congress. In other words, it would be nice to have you with us, but we don't need you.
So Bush's UN trip is something of a high-risk but mandatory charade. Critics at home and abroad say he has to win foreign support for his campaign against Iraq. His administration has accepted that he needs to take a stab at that, but it is clearly signaling it is willing, if not eager, to saddle up alone. Given Bush's failure to date to convince any head of state other than Blair--and his inability to persuade Republican Senators like Chuck Hagel and Larry Craig and former Bush I officials like Brent Scowcroft and Larry Eagleburger--the UN speech is unlikely to change many minds. But that probably won't matter. The plan will remain the same.
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