Last week, I wrote of a University of Massachusetts student who claimed to have been visited by federal agents for borrowing Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (better known as Mao's "Little Red Book") from the library. After being confronted with inconsistencies in his story, he has now confessed to making the whole thing up, saying he liked getting all the attention.
It's people like this who make trying to get to the truth harder. I apologize for highlighting a false story here and will do my best to make sure it doesn't happen again.
12/29/2005
You Mean the Law Applies to Us Too?
"No man is above the law and no man is below the law. That is the principle that we all hold dear in this country. The President has many responsibilities and many privileges. His chief responsibility is to uphold the laws of this land. He does not have the privilege to break the law."
Then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay - who has been conspicuously silent on lawbreaking by the Bush Administration - urging the House of Representatives on 10/8/98 to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky
I Know What I Said, But I Didn't Really Mean It
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
President Bush in a 4/20/04 speech, at the same time he was approving wholesale spying on American citizens without any court orders whatsoever
Deeper and Deeper
Despite heroic efforts on the part of the Bush Administration and its allies in the conservative media to get past the warrantless-spying scandal, it's not going anywhere. On the contrary, every new revelation only deepens the sense of public outrage at the President's Big Brother act.
To recap: it was revealed two weeks ago that after 9/11, President Bush unilaterally ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap the international communications of hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans, ignoring the constitutional and statutory requirements that all wiretap requests must be approved by a court. As the White House responded by claiming Bush has "inherent power" to do whatever he wants and blamed the media for breaking the story, more revelations came out.
Purely domestic calls were tapped as well as international ones. A FISA judge quit in protest of the secret spying operation. The nation's telecommunications companies acquiesced in allowing the NSA to tap wide swathes of domestic communications in what amounted to a massive data-mining operation, searching huge amounts of data for buzzwords to prompt more active listening and intervention.
Bush's defenders claim that the spying stopped terrorist plots and besides, only people with something to hide would object to this indiscriminate warrantless searching. As for the first claim, we have only the Administration's word that plots were exposed and, to put it mildly, their word is worthless. They have abused the public trust so many times that their credibility is completely shot.
And as for the second claim - well, with that attitude, how long will it take before all our telephone calls, E-mails and other communications are subject to permanent tap by an Administration whose motives might not be pure? Will such defenders of an unfettered right to spy on anyone at any time be comfortable with the knowledge that someone is always listening?
Indeed, the White House's motives might not be pure already. There are disturbing rumors that the secret FISA court, which almost always approves wiretap requests, expressed misgivings at Bush's first list of targets for surveillance. This supposedly prompted Bush to make his end run around the law and order the secret spying. If that is the case, who was on the list? And since the spying continues to this day, who is on the list now?
No matter how much the White House and the right wing try to fudge the issue, the controversy is not about wiretapping in and of itself. Wiretapping has long been an accepted and valued part of law enforcement, and tapping criminal suspects with a court order is perfectly legitimate. The issue is that the President ordered the wholesale surveillance of possibly millions of people in willful defiance of the Constitution and federal statute law.
With even some Congressional Republicans aghast at the White House's arrogant power grab, both parties are demanding an investigation and some serious reining-in. Even the once-dreaded word "impeachment" is starting to be whispered in the halls of Congress.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney believe themselves to be above the law, once again exploiting 9/11 to give them an excuse. This cannot be allowed to continue.
To recap: it was revealed two weeks ago that after 9/11, President Bush unilaterally ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap the international communications of hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans, ignoring the constitutional and statutory requirements that all wiretap requests must be approved by a court. As the White House responded by claiming Bush has "inherent power" to do whatever he wants and blamed the media for breaking the story, more revelations came out.
Purely domestic calls were tapped as well as international ones. A FISA judge quit in protest of the secret spying operation. The nation's telecommunications companies acquiesced in allowing the NSA to tap wide swathes of domestic communications in what amounted to a massive data-mining operation, searching huge amounts of data for buzzwords to prompt more active listening and intervention.
Bush's defenders claim that the spying stopped terrorist plots and besides, only people with something to hide would object to this indiscriminate warrantless searching. As for the first claim, we have only the Administration's word that plots were exposed and, to put it mildly, their word is worthless. They have abused the public trust so many times that their credibility is completely shot.
And as for the second claim - well, with that attitude, how long will it take before all our telephone calls, E-mails and other communications are subject to permanent tap by an Administration whose motives might not be pure? Will such defenders of an unfettered right to spy on anyone at any time be comfortable with the knowledge that someone is always listening?
Indeed, the White House's motives might not be pure already. There are disturbing rumors that the secret FISA court, which almost always approves wiretap requests, expressed misgivings at Bush's first list of targets for surveillance. This supposedly prompted Bush to make his end run around the law and order the secret spying. If that is the case, who was on the list? And since the spying continues to this day, who is on the list now?
No matter how much the White House and the right wing try to fudge the issue, the controversy is not about wiretapping in and of itself. Wiretapping has long been an accepted and valued part of law enforcement, and tapping criminal suspects with a court order is perfectly legitimate. The issue is that the President ordered the wholesale surveillance of possibly millions of people in willful defiance of the Constitution and federal statute law.
With even some Congressional Republicans aghast at the White House's arrogant power grab, both parties are demanding an investigation and some serious reining-in. Even the once-dreaded word "impeachment" is starting to be whispered in the halls of Congress.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney believe themselves to be above the law, once again exploiting 9/11 to give them an excuse. This cannot be allowed to continue.
12/21/2005
Less Preaching, More Teaching
"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause... The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones, rejecting the Dover, Pennsylvania school board's attempts to include "intelligent design" (reallly just warmed-over creationism with a word change here and there) in public school biology classes
12/20/2005
L'Etat, C'est Moi
During his press conference yesterday, President Bush angrily claimed that he has absolute power to spy on anyone at any time, warrants and the Constitution be damned. He asked rhetorically, "Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely." He said he will continue the spying program "so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens."
In other words, forever.
As Bush spoke, I swear I could hear Richard Nixon speaking from beyond the grave. During a 1977 interview, Nixon said that "when the President does it, that means that it's not illegal." The White House should remember that his downfall was triggered by illegal surveillance not unlike what we're now seeing.
The Bush Administration has closed ranks behind its leader, but it hasn't been easy. After all, the notion that the President has the power to disregard federal law and the Constitution to eavesdrop on anyone he feels like is kind of hard to defend.
Not that they didn't try. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, ostensibly the nation's chief law enforcement officer, said that the FISA law governing national-security searches "involves looping paperwork around, even in the case of emergency authorizations from the Attorney General." But FISA allows for wiretapping on an emergency basis, with retroactive warrants allowed up to 72 hours after the tap is conducted. Even if that isn't sufficient, why not work with Congress to change the law instead of just ignoring it? Gonzales said an amendment "was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore killing the program."
Yeah, those pesky laws do tend to get in the way of doing anything you like just for the heck of it.
Gonzales also said that when Congress voted post-9/11 to let Bush attack al Qaeda, by using the words "all necessary and appropriate force" they also implicitly gave him the authority to spy on anyone the Administration believes to be connected with al Qaeda - a rationale heatedly rejected by many in Congress.
It is, to put it mildly, highly doubtful that in giving Bush the green light to retaliate against al Qaeda, Congress also gave him the authority to overturn statute law and indeed the Constitution. What else does the President think he can simply do away with at the stroke of a pen?
Having already dispensed with the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against warrantless searches, Bush is now targeting the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, telling everyone, "The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy." So pointing out that the President is acting like a dictator is not protecting democracy, but helping Osama bin Laden? Someone should point out to Bush that hiding behind bluster and accusing people who question him of borderline treason doesn't help his case.
The Bush Administration is out of control. Its previous abuses - indefinite imprisonment, secret jails, torture, et cetera - may not have felt like they applied to us, to American citizens. Instead, they always happen to other people, to bad people, to terrorists, and anything that happens to terrorists can't be bad enough.
But now the monster we unleashed to destroy the enemy is turning on us. When we pick up the phone to call family or friends, how can we be certain that no one is listening in? If we talk politics via E-mail, can we be sure that someone somewhere is not combing over our messages and looking for buzzwords to trigger further investigation? If we write a letter to the editor, or attend a political meeting, or subscribe to a certain publication, or borrow a particular library book, or post to a political-opinion blog, will our names go down on a list of people deemed worthy of increased surveillance?
Laws exist for a reason. The Founding Fathers designed the Constitution with a framework of checks and balances precisely to prevent just this sort of power trip by any one branch of government. The United States is a nation of laws and not of men, and no matter what Bush thinks, he cannot do anything he wants just because he's the President. He has to follow the same laws as everyone else. No exceptions.
President Bush says that everything he does in his Global War on Terror is to defeat the terrorists who want to destroy our way of life. But his reckless abuses in pursuit of this goal threaten to do the job for them by destroying the very freedoms we cherish. Congress and the public must act immediately to put an end to this power grab, by impeachment if needed.
In other words, forever.
As Bush spoke, I swear I could hear Richard Nixon speaking from beyond the grave. During a 1977 interview, Nixon said that "when the President does it, that means that it's not illegal." The White House should remember that his downfall was triggered by illegal surveillance not unlike what we're now seeing.
The Bush Administration has closed ranks behind its leader, but it hasn't been easy. After all, the notion that the President has the power to disregard federal law and the Constitution to eavesdrop on anyone he feels like is kind of hard to defend.
Not that they didn't try. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, ostensibly the nation's chief law enforcement officer, said that the FISA law governing national-security searches "involves looping paperwork around, even in the case of emergency authorizations from the Attorney General." But FISA allows for wiretapping on an emergency basis, with retroactive warrants allowed up to 72 hours after the tap is conducted. Even if that isn't sufficient, why not work with Congress to change the law instead of just ignoring it? Gonzales said an amendment "was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore killing the program."
Yeah, those pesky laws do tend to get in the way of doing anything you like just for the heck of it.
Gonzales also said that when Congress voted post-9/11 to let Bush attack al Qaeda, by using the words "all necessary and appropriate force" they also implicitly gave him the authority to spy on anyone the Administration believes to be connected with al Qaeda - a rationale heatedly rejected by many in Congress.
It is, to put it mildly, highly doubtful that in giving Bush the green light to retaliate against al Qaeda, Congress also gave him the authority to overturn statute law and indeed the Constitution. What else does the President think he can simply do away with at the stroke of a pen?
Having already dispensed with the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against warrantless searches, Bush is now targeting the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, telling everyone, "The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy." So pointing out that the President is acting like a dictator is not protecting democracy, but helping Osama bin Laden? Someone should point out to Bush that hiding behind bluster and accusing people who question him of borderline treason doesn't help his case.
The Bush Administration is out of control. Its previous abuses - indefinite imprisonment, secret jails, torture, et cetera - may not have felt like they applied to us, to American citizens. Instead, they always happen to other people, to bad people, to terrorists, and anything that happens to terrorists can't be bad enough.
But now the monster we unleashed to destroy the enemy is turning on us. When we pick up the phone to call family or friends, how can we be certain that no one is listening in? If we talk politics via E-mail, can we be sure that someone somewhere is not combing over our messages and looking for buzzwords to trigger further investigation? If we write a letter to the editor, or attend a political meeting, or subscribe to a certain publication, or borrow a particular library book, or post to a political-opinion blog, will our names go down on a list of people deemed worthy of increased surveillance?
Laws exist for a reason. The Founding Fathers designed the Constitution with a framework of checks and balances precisely to prevent just this sort of power trip by any one branch of government. The United States is a nation of laws and not of men, and no matter what Bush thinks, he cannot do anything he wants just because he's the President. He has to follow the same laws as everyone else. No exceptions.
President Bush says that everything he does in his Global War on Terror is to defeat the terrorists who want to destroy our way of life. But his reckless abuses in pursuit of this goal threaten to do the job for them by destroying the very freedoms we cherish. Congress and the public must act immediately to put an end to this power grab, by impeachment if needed.
12/19/2005
Step Away from the Book
"My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think."
University of Massachusetts professor Brian Williams on the government investigating a student for borrowing Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book" from the library for a class on fascism and totalitarianism
Big Brother Is Listening
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It's basic knowledge to anyone who took history class in school: if the government wants to search your house or listen in on your phone calls or read your E-mail, they have to explain to a judge why it should be allowed and to get a warrant. It's what separates America from a police state in which the government can search anyone and wiretap anything just because they feel like it.
The revelation that the Bush Administration routinely taps the private communications of hundreds and possibly thousands of American citizens without bothering to get warrants as required by the very bedrock of our civil society should scare the pants off anyone who cares about democracy.
After a bit of hemming and hawing, President Bush admitted to ordering the secret spying and rolled out his usual litany of excuses:
Bush insisted that all this snooping was done on (unnamed) terrorist suspects in line with (secret) legal opinions, so it's all right. But why should we believe him? After all, he said he has the authority to do whatever he wants in this regard, including:
Bush has shown us over and over again what contempt he has for the basic rule of law in America. If the law prevents him from doing whatever he wants, he doesn't try to amend the law, he just breaks it.
The really frightening part of this latest exposure stems from the fact that the Administration already has a process in place for approving security-related wiretaps. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court exists for examining government requests for tapping suspects in national-security cases; indeed, it is a virtual rubber stamp for such requests. But Bush ignored the FISA court entirely, instead ordering the spying unilaterally and giving the job to the National Security Agency - which, by the way, is legally barred from doing such things domestically. So why didn't Bush go to FISA? The unsettling suspicion is that the wiretaps have nothing at all to do with terrorism or al Qaeda or national security.
If that is indeed the case, who is he spying on? Antiwar groups? Political dissenters? Prominent Democrats? The Kerry campaign? Does anyone in the White House remember that this is how Watergate started?
Bush and his minions claim they are protecting American freedom by their actions. In addition to spitting on the Constitution, they appear to have forgotten the words of Benjamin Franklin, one of our most prominent Founding Fathers: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
Amendment IV, United States Constitution
It's basic knowledge to anyone who took history class in school: if the government wants to search your house or listen in on your phone calls or read your E-mail, they have to explain to a judge why it should be allowed and to get a warrant. It's what separates America from a police state in which the government can search anyone and wiretap anything just because they feel like it.
The revelation that the Bush Administration routinely taps the private communications of hundreds and possibly thousands of American citizens without bothering to get warrants as required by the very bedrock of our civil society should scare the pants off anyone who cares about democracy.
After a bit of hemming and hawing, President Bush admitted to ordering the secret spying and rolled out his usual litany of excuses:
- It was because of 9/11.
- It was done to protect American lives.
- It's all the media's fault for blowing the whistle on the scheme.
Bush insisted that all this snooping was done on (unnamed) terrorist suspects in line with (secret) legal opinions, so it's all right. But why should we believe him? After all, he said he has the authority to do whatever he wants in this regard, including:
- Jailing suspects indefinitely without bothering to prove their guilt
- Shredding the Geneva Conventions and simple humanity to sanction the torture and even murder of prisoners
- Exporting suspects to other countries to have confessions tortured out of them
- Setting up secret prisons in other countries to make suspects "disappear"
- Compiling intelligence files from spying on antiwar groups, then maintaining such files in violation of laws requiring their destruction 90 days after determination that the subject is not a threat
Bush has shown us over and over again what contempt he has for the basic rule of law in America. If the law prevents him from doing whatever he wants, he doesn't try to amend the law, he just breaks it.
The really frightening part of this latest exposure stems from the fact that the Administration already has a process in place for approving security-related wiretaps. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court exists for examining government requests for tapping suspects in national-security cases; indeed, it is a virtual rubber stamp for such requests. But Bush ignored the FISA court entirely, instead ordering the spying unilaterally and giving the job to the National Security Agency - which, by the way, is legally barred from doing such things domestically. So why didn't Bush go to FISA? The unsettling suspicion is that the wiretaps have nothing at all to do with terrorism or al Qaeda or national security.
If that is indeed the case, who is he spying on? Antiwar groups? Political dissenters? Prominent Democrats? The Kerry campaign? Does anyone in the White House remember that this is how Watergate started?
Bush and his minions claim they are protecting American freedom by their actions. In addition to spitting on the Constitution, they appear to have forgotten the words of Benjamin Franklin, one of our most prominent Founding Fathers: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
12/16/2005
Secret Spying, Just All in a Day's Work
"It's not the main story of the day... The main story of the day is the Iraqi election."
Defending Christmas in Congress
The United States has many problems. A dying city in Louisiana that the federal government shows no interest in saving. A seemingly endless war in Iraq. Skyrocketing energy prices. Housing, health care and college education increasingly unaffordable. A ruinous fiscal policy drowning us in debt. An ever-shrinking middle class. But never fear, Congress is taking action! Granted, it's not about any of these pressing issues, but Congress has taken a firm stand on - defending Christmas.
Yes, the "War on Christmas" campaign is now being fought on Capitol Hill. Throwing her support behind jolly old Saint Nick, Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-VA) introduced H. Res. 579 "expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected."
"Christmas has been declared politically incorrect," Davis declared on the House floor on Wednesday, faithfully parroting the official Fox News talking points. "Any sign or even mention of Christmas in public can lead to complaints, litigation, protest, and threats. America's favorite holiday is being twisted beyond recognition. The push towards a neutered 'holiday' season is stronger than ever so that no one can be even the slightest bit offended."
Not surprisingly, she raised a few eyebrows. "Did something happen when I was not looking?" asked Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY). "Did somebody mug Santa Claus? Is somebody engaging in elf tossing? Did somebody shoot Bambi? If you eat venison, are you a suspect? What silliness we engage in, protecting symbols."
What Ackerman knows is that there is no "attack on Christmas," no matter what Davis and Fox News think. Christmas is in no danger; one can go pretty much anywhere in the country and encounter gobs of Christmas decorations, Santa statues, candy canes, and so on. We have freedom of religion in this country to worship as we please, which is exactly as it should be. But that doesn't matter, for there are points to be scored with people who can't function without something to hate and fear.
And scored they were. One would think that the Democrats would reject such nonsense, but they unfortunately showed their usual spine, falling in with Republicans to approve the resolution on a 401-22 vote.
"There are people around who need an enemy at all times to try to separate us one from the other as Americans in order to advance their own agenda," Ackerman said. "I do not think we should be playing into their hands."
Couldn't have put it better myself. Perhaps we can now get back to real business.
Yes, the "War on Christmas" campaign is now being fought on Capitol Hill. Throwing her support behind jolly old Saint Nick, Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-VA) introduced H. Res. 579 "expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected."
"Christmas has been declared politically incorrect," Davis declared on the House floor on Wednesday, faithfully parroting the official Fox News talking points. "Any sign or even mention of Christmas in public can lead to complaints, litigation, protest, and threats. America's favorite holiday is being twisted beyond recognition. The push towards a neutered 'holiday' season is stronger than ever so that no one can be even the slightest bit offended."
Not surprisingly, she raised a few eyebrows. "Did something happen when I was not looking?" asked Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY). "Did somebody mug Santa Claus? Is somebody engaging in elf tossing? Did somebody shoot Bambi? If you eat venison, are you a suspect? What silliness we engage in, protecting symbols."
What Ackerman knows is that there is no "attack on Christmas," no matter what Davis and Fox News think. Christmas is in no danger; one can go pretty much anywhere in the country and encounter gobs of Christmas decorations, Santa statues, candy canes, and so on. We have freedom of religion in this country to worship as we please, which is exactly as it should be. But that doesn't matter, for there are points to be scored with people who can't function without something to hate and fear.
And scored they were. One would think that the Democrats would reject such nonsense, but they unfortunately showed their usual spine, falling in with Republicans to approve the resolution on a 401-22 vote.
"There are people around who need an enemy at all times to try to separate us one from the other as Americans in order to advance their own agenda," Ackerman said. "I do not think we should be playing into their hands."
Couldn't have put it better myself. Perhaps we can now get back to real business.
12/15/2005
On to Victory...Somehow
President Bush has painted himself into quite a corner. His talking-point speeches on Iraq aren't boosting his popularity. Every poll shows a considerable majority of Americans remaining convinced that he has no clue what to do about Iraq. His much-vaunted "strategy for victory" released with a splash a couple of weeks ago has instead sunk like a stone. He has lost all credibility, and the percentage of Americans who consider him honest and trustworthy is rapidly sinking to below the freezing point.
And yet he can't stop spouting the same macho slogans, the same empty rhetoric, the same stock phrases. "We will not leave until victory has been achieved," he still thunders righteously, unable to define "victory" beyond the fuzziest of catchphrases. "We can debate these issues openly," he still says, all the while accusing anyone who actually questions him of "hurt[ing] the morale of our troops."
His latest PR campaign, consisting of a series of speeches before properly dutiful audiences, is basically more of the same. Watching Bush's Iraq speech (let's face it, it's really just the same speech delivered over and over as if sheer repetition can make us believe that black is white) is an exercise in sheer frustration, making one itch to reach through the TV screen and shake him until he faces reality.
There is no strategy, no policy. There is only wishful thinking that the current parliamentary elections, merely the latest in a long string of "milestones," will magically make everything better. Nobody in the White House wants to hear what the Iraq experts in the State Department and CIA are saying - that Iraq is coming apart along ethnic lines, and a bloody civil war is a matter of when, not if. And anyone who dares admit the truth is promptly set upon by GOP attack dogs.
As more and more Americans (and even some in Congress) are realizing, it's time to face facts: the Iraq War simply cannot be won militarily. What began as an ostensible war of liberation has morphed into an indefinite occupation, and the Iraqi people want us out. They'd rather handle their own affairs without American interference, regardless of the consequences.
It doesn't help that the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq has also been a disaster, with billions of dollars simply stolen by contractors and billions more disappearing into a swamp of waste. It is telling that the Bush Administration, having made a big deal over the Oil For Food "scandal," doesn't have a single auditor in Iraq to watch the money. In many Iraqi cities, basic infrastructure is in worse shape than before the invasion almost three years ago.
The death toll has been horrendous. Briefly forced from his blissful bubble to acknowledge Iraqi deaths for the first time, Bush reluctantly said that approximately 30,000 Iraqis have been killed in his obsessive war, but his figure included military and insurgent deaths as will as civilian and is widely seen as far too low. Estimates of civilian deaths alone vary wildly from 31,000 to 100,000, and the actual figure will very likely never be known.
The fledgling Shiite-controlled Iraqi government seems determined to follow in Saddam Hussein's footsteps, from maintaining torture chambers in prisons to using death squads to knock off prominent Sunnis. Of course, Washington displays the appropriate horror at each new example of depravity, but never actually does anything about it. Because, after all, it's not Saddam doing these things, so they can't be that bad.
Meanwhile, one cannot blame the Iraqi people for suspecting that the whole point of the invasion and occupation was to seize control of Iraq's oil supplies. It's not for nothing that the original name for Operation Iraqi Freedom was "Operation Iraqi Liberation," which was rather hastily changed once someone realized what it spelled.
Bush is in deep denial. Having committed himself to invading Iraq since long before 9/11, he cannot bring himself to admit that he just might have made a mistake. It doesn't matter how many people are killed for the sake of his self-righteous ego, he can never, ever, admit error. And as much lip service as he pays to the notion of "supporting the troops," every American soldier who comes home in a flag-draped coffin, and every grieving family member who mourns him or her, is paying the price for his vendetta.
And yet he can't stop spouting the same macho slogans, the same empty rhetoric, the same stock phrases. "We will not leave until victory has been achieved," he still thunders righteously, unable to define "victory" beyond the fuzziest of catchphrases. "We can debate these issues openly," he still says, all the while accusing anyone who actually questions him of "hurt[ing] the morale of our troops."
His latest PR campaign, consisting of a series of speeches before properly dutiful audiences, is basically more of the same. Watching Bush's Iraq speech (let's face it, it's really just the same speech delivered over and over as if sheer repetition can make us believe that black is white) is an exercise in sheer frustration, making one itch to reach through the TV screen and shake him until he faces reality.
There is no strategy, no policy. There is only wishful thinking that the current parliamentary elections, merely the latest in a long string of "milestones," will magically make everything better. Nobody in the White House wants to hear what the Iraq experts in the State Department and CIA are saying - that Iraq is coming apart along ethnic lines, and a bloody civil war is a matter of when, not if. And anyone who dares admit the truth is promptly set upon by GOP attack dogs.
As more and more Americans (and even some in Congress) are realizing, it's time to face facts: the Iraq War simply cannot be won militarily. What began as an ostensible war of liberation has morphed into an indefinite occupation, and the Iraqi people want us out. They'd rather handle their own affairs without American interference, regardless of the consequences.
It doesn't help that the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq has also been a disaster, with billions of dollars simply stolen by contractors and billions more disappearing into a swamp of waste. It is telling that the Bush Administration, having made a big deal over the Oil For Food "scandal," doesn't have a single auditor in Iraq to watch the money. In many Iraqi cities, basic infrastructure is in worse shape than before the invasion almost three years ago.
The death toll has been horrendous. Briefly forced from his blissful bubble to acknowledge Iraqi deaths for the first time, Bush reluctantly said that approximately 30,000 Iraqis have been killed in his obsessive war, but his figure included military and insurgent deaths as will as civilian and is widely seen as far too low. Estimates of civilian deaths alone vary wildly from 31,000 to 100,000, and the actual figure will very likely never be known.
The fledgling Shiite-controlled Iraqi government seems determined to follow in Saddam Hussein's footsteps, from maintaining torture chambers in prisons to using death squads to knock off prominent Sunnis. Of course, Washington displays the appropriate horror at each new example of depravity, but never actually does anything about it. Because, after all, it's not Saddam doing these things, so they can't be that bad.
Meanwhile, one cannot blame the Iraqi people for suspecting that the whole point of the invasion and occupation was to seize control of Iraq's oil supplies. It's not for nothing that the original name for Operation Iraqi Freedom was "Operation Iraqi Liberation," which was rather hastily changed once someone realized what it spelled.
Bush is in deep denial. Having committed himself to invading Iraq since long before 9/11, he cannot bring himself to admit that he just might have made a mistake. It doesn't matter how many people are killed for the sake of his self-righteous ego, he can never, ever, admit error. And as much lip service as he pays to the notion of "supporting the troops," every American soldier who comes home in a flag-draped coffin, and every grieving family member who mourns him or her, is paying the price for his vendetta.
You Can't Trust Those Quakers
"This is the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Vacuum Cleaner. They‘re collecting everything."
Comment on a leaked Defense Department document showing that the Pentagon routinely spies on nonviolent citizen antiwar groups - in complete violation of American law
12/14/2005
Scaring Your Friends
It is said that on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington inspected his troops and remarked, "I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me." The incessant and increasingly unhinged "War on Christmas" campaign is finally starting to scare the non-wingnut conservative movement.
Cal Thomas, a columnist who says that secretly buying favorable Iraqi press coverage is just dandy, is now wondering whether this whole "War on Christmas" nonsense is, well, nonsense. While not mentioning the culprits of this fear campaign by name, he opines that "the effort by some cable TV hosts and ministers to force commercial establishments into wishing everyone a 'Merry Christmas' might be more objectionable to the One who is the reason for the season than the 'Happy Holidays' mantra required by some store managers."
In other words, "cool it."
While I normally agree with Thomas on virtually nothing, I have to applaud his comments. It is gratifying to note that the campaign to push one particular version of Christmas on everyone else is rankling mainstream conservatives. Fox News (on which Thomas is a regular commentator) shamelessly incorporates "War on Christmas" rhetoric into more and more of its shows. Jerry Falwell unveiled a "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" to drag into court anyone who dares disagree with them on any matter Christmas-y.
Even the Bush Administration is set upon by these self-anointed holy warriors. Some of the wiggier denizens of the right wing attacked the White House for sending out 1.4 million "Happy Holiday" cards instead of "Merry Christmas" cards. (Note to these holier-than-thou types: There are many millions of non-Christian Americans, even non-Christian Republicans. It's our country too, you know.)
It's about time that other American conservatives tell their ever more rabid compatriots to knock it off.
One can't help wondering if God really cares whether the cashier at Home Depot says "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays." One would think He cares more about keeping people fed, clothed and housed rather than wasting time and energy on this non-issue. I'm also fairly sure there's nothing in the Bible, Jewish or Christian, that says "thou shalt shove thy religious values down everyone else's throats and loudly threaten everyone who worships in their own way."
WWJD, indeed.
Cal Thomas, a columnist who says that secretly buying favorable Iraqi press coverage is just dandy, is now wondering whether this whole "War on Christmas" nonsense is, well, nonsense. While not mentioning the culprits of this fear campaign by name, he opines that "the effort by some cable TV hosts and ministers to force commercial establishments into wishing everyone a 'Merry Christmas' might be more objectionable to the One who is the reason for the season than the 'Happy Holidays' mantra required by some store managers."
In other words, "cool it."
While I normally agree with Thomas on virtually nothing, I have to applaud his comments. It is gratifying to note that the campaign to push one particular version of Christmas on everyone else is rankling mainstream conservatives. Fox News (on which Thomas is a regular commentator) shamelessly incorporates "War on Christmas" rhetoric into more and more of its shows. Jerry Falwell unveiled a "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" to drag into court anyone who dares disagree with them on any matter Christmas-y.
Even the Bush Administration is set upon by these self-anointed holy warriors. Some of the wiggier denizens of the right wing attacked the White House for sending out 1.4 million "Happy Holiday" cards instead of "Merry Christmas" cards. (Note to these holier-than-thou types: There are many millions of non-Christian Americans, even non-Christian Republicans. It's our country too, you know.)
It's about time that other American conservatives tell their ever more rabid compatriots to knock it off.
One can't help wondering if God really cares whether the cashier at Home Depot says "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays." One would think He cares more about keeping people fed, clothed and housed rather than wasting time and energy on this non-issue. I'm also fairly sure there's nothing in the Bible, Jewish or Christian, that says "thou shalt shove thy religious values down everyone else's throats and loudly threaten everyone who worships in their own way."
WWJD, indeed.
12/13/2005
Secret Laws?
The Bush Administration has given us a mania for secrecy at any cost unrivaled since the time of Richard Nixon. Everything is classified, whether or not it actually needs to be, and every Freedom of Information Act request is fought tooth and nail.
The White House's paranoia has now inflated to truly Orwellian proportions. John Gilmore, the libertarian co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation sued the Administration challenging the rule that everyone has to show ID when boarding a commercial airline flight. In the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week, Justice Department lawyer Joshua Waldman argued that the rule is backed up by federal law - but refused to explain which law actually requires it.
In court last week, Judge Thomas Nelson incredulously asked Justice Department lawyer Joshua Waldman, "How do we know there's an order? Because you said there was?"
"We couldn't confirm or deny the existence of an order," Waldman replied.
Amazingly, the Justice Department has refused to identify the law in question to Gilmore's lawyers or to the public. Only the court judges would be allowed to know which law supports the rule, and they would be barred from communicating this.
In George Orwell's seminal novel 1984, Winston Smith ruminates that keeping a diary is not illegal "since there were no longer any laws," but the price would be high anyway. The very notion of secret laws, hidden from the public and unleashed only when someone unknowingly runs afoul of them, is odious and offensive to our democracy. The court should order the government to come clean on this issue.
The White House's paranoia has now inflated to truly Orwellian proportions. John Gilmore, the libertarian co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation sued the Administration challenging the rule that everyone has to show ID when boarding a commercial airline flight. In the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week, Justice Department lawyer Joshua Waldman argued that the rule is backed up by federal law - but refused to explain which law actually requires it.
In court last week, Judge Thomas Nelson incredulously asked Justice Department lawyer Joshua Waldman, "How do we know there's an order? Because you said there was?"
"We couldn't confirm or deny the existence of an order," Waldman replied.
Amazingly, the Justice Department has refused to identify the law in question to Gilmore's lawyers or to the public. Only the court judges would be allowed to know which law supports the rule, and they would be barred from communicating this.
In George Orwell's seminal novel 1984, Winston Smith ruminates that keeping a diary is not illegal "since there were no longer any laws," but the price would be high anyway. The very notion of secret laws, hidden from the public and unleashed only when someone unknowingly runs afoul of them, is odious and offensive to our democracy. The court should order the government to come clean on this issue.
12/08/2005
I Knew It!
"If Bill O'Reilly needs to have an enemy, needs to feel persecuted, you know what? Here's my Kwanzaa gift to him. Are you ready? All right. I'm your enemy. Make me your enemy. I, Jon Stewart, hate Christmas, Christians, Jews, morality, and I will not rest until every year families gather to spend December 25th together at Osama's homo-abortion-pot-and-commie-jizzporium."
Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," after exposing Bill O'Reilly's attempt at passing off a year-old film clip as current and generally making his whole "war on Christmas" propaganda campaign look ridiculous
12/07/2005
The Enemy Is Everywhere
"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush Administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture."
-- Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights president William A. Donohue commenting on the official White House Christmas card wishing recipients a happy "holiday season"
"[Bush] claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one. I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."
-- WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah responding to the same, er, outrage
-- Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights president William A. Donohue commenting on the official White House Christmas card wishing recipients a happy "holiday season"
"[Bush] claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one. I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."
-- WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah responding to the same, er, outrage
Torture? Us?
You almost had to feel sorry for her.
Almost.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, touring European capitals in an attempt to shore up support for the Global War on Terror (GWOT), is in the impossible position of denying what everyone knows all too well. She insisted that the US does not torture prisoners, does not maintain secret prisons for GWOT detainees, and does not export prisoners to less-squeamish countries such as Egypt and Syria for the really heavy stuff.
Of course, with more and more evidence piling up every day of exactly that, no one believed a word she said. It certainly doesn't help that the Bush Administration put a lot of intellectual effort into redefining torture to exclude everything short of death or "permanent organ failure," just so we can deny that torture is taking place. Nor does it help that Vice President Cheney is aggressively lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from American anti-torture laws.
In Germany, newly elected Prime Minister Angela Merkel raked Rice over the coals about a German citizen named Khalid el-Masri. Seized off a bus in Macedonia because his name was similar to a wanted al Qaeda suspect, el-Masri was secretly shipped to a American prison in Afghanistan and tortured for five months before the CIA realized they had the wrong man. Without so much as an "oops, sorry about that," the CIA dumped him in Albania and tried to hush it up. With the help of the ACLU, el-Masri is now suing former CIA director George Tenet in federal court, but the government refuses to let him into the country. Merkel reported that Rice admitted American wrongdoing and apologized. Rice, of course, denied this.
In Italy, the government in Rome is furious over the clumsy CIA abduction of a Islamic cleric from the streets of Milan - a cleric that Italy had under surveillance. The CIA did not coordinate their action with the Italian government, choosing instead to shred local law and just go get him, destroying an Italian intelligence investigation at the same time.
Rice's stock response to European anger is that while occasional mistakes are made, everything we do in pursuit of the GWOT is to protect not just American but European lives, so the proper response from the Continent is to sit down and shut up. The targets of her little lecture are understandably irked at being spoken to in this manner.
All in all, it was not one of the finer moments in American foreign relations. By phrasing her statements with almost Clintonian exactitude to leave a whole lot unsaid, Rice came across not as a level-headed diplomat eager to recruit international help in combating terrorism, but as a blank-faced defender of a tormenting bully.
The Bush Administration seems determined to prove their own government-can't-do-anything-right rhetoric by screwing up everything they touch. Nevertheless, when we're facing an enemy as determined to destroy us as al Qaeda is, alienating your few remaining allies is not the way to go.
Almost.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, touring European capitals in an attempt to shore up support for the Global War on Terror (GWOT), is in the impossible position of denying what everyone knows all too well. She insisted that the US does not torture prisoners, does not maintain secret prisons for GWOT detainees, and does not export prisoners to less-squeamish countries such as Egypt and Syria for the really heavy stuff.
Of course, with more and more evidence piling up every day of exactly that, no one believed a word she said. It certainly doesn't help that the Bush Administration put a lot of intellectual effort into redefining torture to exclude everything short of death or "permanent organ failure," just so we can deny that torture is taking place. Nor does it help that Vice President Cheney is aggressively lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from American anti-torture laws.
In Germany, newly elected Prime Minister Angela Merkel raked Rice over the coals about a German citizen named Khalid el-Masri. Seized off a bus in Macedonia because his name was similar to a wanted al Qaeda suspect, el-Masri was secretly shipped to a American prison in Afghanistan and tortured for five months before the CIA realized they had the wrong man. Without so much as an "oops, sorry about that," the CIA dumped him in Albania and tried to hush it up. With the help of the ACLU, el-Masri is now suing former CIA director George Tenet in federal court, but the government refuses to let him into the country. Merkel reported that Rice admitted American wrongdoing and apologized. Rice, of course, denied this.
In Italy, the government in Rome is furious over the clumsy CIA abduction of a Islamic cleric from the streets of Milan - a cleric that Italy had under surveillance. The CIA did not coordinate their action with the Italian government, choosing instead to shred local law and just go get him, destroying an Italian intelligence investigation at the same time.
Rice's stock response to European anger is that while occasional mistakes are made, everything we do in pursuit of the GWOT is to protect not just American but European lives, so the proper response from the Continent is to sit down and shut up. The targets of her little lecture are understandably irked at being spoken to in this manner.
All in all, it was not one of the finer moments in American foreign relations. By phrasing her statements with almost Clintonian exactitude to leave a whole lot unsaid, Rice came across not as a level-headed diplomat eager to recruit international help in combating terrorism, but as a blank-faced defender of a tormenting bully.
The Bush Administration seems determined to prove their own government-can't-do-anything-right rhetoric by screwing up everything they touch. Nevertheless, when we're facing an enemy as determined to destroy us as al Qaeda is, alienating your few remaining allies is not the way to go.
12/06/2005
Telling It Like It Is
"I want to talk about the media angle, because we've avoided it, it's the elephant in the room -- it's Fox News. Come on. It's [Bill] O'Reilly, it's [Sean] Hannity, it's [John] Gibson. They're demagogues who realize that at Christmastime, you can rally the masses on this issue. They'll do it every Christmas. They did it last Christmas, they'll do it next Christmas."
-- Neal Gabler, on the 12/3/05 "Fox News Watch," on how Fox News has largely manufactured the "war on Christmas" non-issue
-- Neal Gabler, on the 12/3/05 "Fox News Watch," on how Fox News has largely manufactured the "war on Christmas" non-issue
12/05/2005
Merry Christmas, Dammit! Part II
Once upon a time on an episode of The Simpsons, Bart watched a Christmas special hosted by the Jewish Krusty the Clown and commented, "Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ."
Fox News seems not to have realized that this was a joke. This screenshot, courtesy of Crooks & Liars, is from the 12/3/05 edition of the Fox show "Bulls & Bears."
It appears that Fox, long recognized as the all-but-official propaganda arm of the Republican Party, is not content with merely letting John Gibson hawk his book The War on Christmas on his pundit show ad nauseam, nor with letting Bill O'Reilly endlessly bloviate on his own show about this manufactured issue.
Nope, Fox is now weaving "war on Christmas" rhetoric into their other shows as well, creating what certainly looks like an officially imposed "big issue." Opening up his own show "Your World" to the campaign, Neil Cavuto sat back as O'Reilly sneered that while non-Christian Americans are "entitled to their opinion," it's "insulting to Christian America" for companies to say "Happy Holidays" and such instead of "Merry Christmas."
And if that wasn't enough, O'Reilly also attacked people who just might feel a tad uncomfortable at the "celebrate Christmas or else" campaign, saying, "they don't want any message of spirituality or Judeo-Christian tradition because that stands in the way of gay marriage, legalized drugs, euthanasia, all of the greatest hits on the secular progressive play card."
What's next? Perhaps the "Fox & Friends" anchors will crusade against credit counselors who caution against fiscally reckless Christmas shopping, accusing them of wanting to destroy the American economy. The possibilities are endless.
Fox News seems not to have realized that this was a joke. This screenshot, courtesy of Crooks & Liars, is from the 12/3/05 edition of the Fox show "Bulls & Bears."
It appears that Fox, long recognized as the all-but-official propaganda arm of the Republican Party, is not content with merely letting John Gibson hawk his book The War on Christmas on his pundit show ad nauseam, nor with letting Bill O'Reilly endlessly bloviate on his own show about this manufactured issue.
Nope, Fox is now weaving "war on Christmas" rhetoric into their other shows as well, creating what certainly looks like an officially imposed "big issue." Opening up his own show "Your World" to the campaign, Neil Cavuto sat back as O'Reilly sneered that while non-Christian Americans are "entitled to their opinion," it's "insulting to Christian America" for companies to say "Happy Holidays" and such instead of "Merry Christmas."
And if that wasn't enough, O'Reilly also attacked people who just might feel a tad uncomfortable at the "celebrate Christmas or else" campaign, saying, "they don't want any message of spirituality or Judeo-Christian tradition because that stands in the way of gay marriage, legalized drugs, euthanasia, all of the greatest hits on the secular progressive play card."
What's next? Perhaps the "Fox & Friends" anchors will crusade against credit counselors who caution against fiscally reckless Christmas shopping, accusing them of wanting to destroy the American economy. The possibilities are endless.
12/02/2005
The Best Coverage Money Can Buy
What part of "free press" does the Bush Administration not understand?
It apparently was not enough that they were embarrassed earlier this year for secretly feeding favorable stories into the American news media. Slick "video news releases" were produced for unattributed broadcast on local TV stations. Pundit Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 to shill for the No Child Left Behind Act, a move that the Government Accountability Office decried as "covert propaganda." Conservative blogger and gay escort Jeff Gannon received credentials to attend White House press briefings for the sole purpose of asking softball questions at difficult times.
Proving that some people just never learn, the Administration has now been caught doing the exact same thing, this time in the Iraqi press.
In articles published this week by the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and other sources, it was revealed that the US military has been surreptitiously placing stories in Iraqi newspapers, TV and radio. Pentagon "psychological operations" staffers write more or less truthful but heavily slanted stories with such feel-good headlines as "More Money Goes to Iraq's Development." The articles are then handed to a private PR firm called the Lincoln Group for editing and translation into Arabic, which then pays Iraqi publications as much as $1500 to run the stories under their own reporters' bylines. The US government also used our taxpayer dollars to buy a newspaper and radio station in Iraq for more direct propagandizing. And if all that weren't enough, the Army created an organization called the Baghdad Press Club, whose members were paid as much as $200 a month depending on how many favorable stories they churned out.
None of the planted stories carried any indication that they were provided by the US government.
The story was leaked by Army officers rightly appalled by the practice, saying that trying to secretly control the Iraqi press could only destroy American credibility and bolster the insurgency. "Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq," a Pentagon official told the Los Angeles Times. "Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it."
Sadly, all this chicanery and secret propaganda is not really surprising. The White House has always loathed the very existence of an independent press and has done everything in its power to turn the American media into dutiful stenographers. Not to mention that the Administration has always treated the soaring unpopularity of the war, both in Iraq and here at home, as more of a sales problem than an actual policy issue. After all, why should we go to the time and trouble of actually thinking up a new strategy when we can just change public perception of the existing one?
Indeed, the Administration basically admitted as such in its much-hyped National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, in which one of the methods of "strengthen[ing] public understanding of coalition efforts" is "a free, independent, and responsible Iraqi media" (emphasis added). In this context, "responsible" apparently means "subservient."
The problem with this, of course, is that an uncensored press free of government control is absolutely essential to the functioning of a democratic society, and the Administration's manipulation of the fledgling Iraqi media has - once again - destroyed our trustworthiness in that shattered nation. The fiasco has given the Iraqi insurgency and everyone else in the world yet another reason to dislike and distrust the United States. Heckuva job, guys.
President Bush once joked that "if this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I'm the dictator." With his open contempt for the very principle of a free press, it sounds like he's operating true to form.
It apparently was not enough that they were embarrassed earlier this year for secretly feeding favorable stories into the American news media. Slick "video news releases" were produced for unattributed broadcast on local TV stations. Pundit Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 to shill for the No Child Left Behind Act, a move that the Government Accountability Office decried as "covert propaganda." Conservative blogger and gay escort Jeff Gannon received credentials to attend White House press briefings for the sole purpose of asking softball questions at difficult times.
Proving that some people just never learn, the Administration has now been caught doing the exact same thing, this time in the Iraqi press.
In articles published this week by the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and other sources, it was revealed that the US military has been surreptitiously placing stories in Iraqi newspapers, TV and radio. Pentagon "psychological operations" staffers write more or less truthful but heavily slanted stories with such feel-good headlines as "More Money Goes to Iraq's Development." The articles are then handed to a private PR firm called the Lincoln Group for editing and translation into Arabic, which then pays Iraqi publications as much as $1500 to run the stories under their own reporters' bylines. The US government also used our taxpayer dollars to buy a newspaper and radio station in Iraq for more direct propagandizing. And if all that weren't enough, the Army created an organization called the Baghdad Press Club, whose members were paid as much as $200 a month depending on how many favorable stories they churned out.
None of the planted stories carried any indication that they were provided by the US government.
The story was leaked by Army officers rightly appalled by the practice, saying that trying to secretly control the Iraqi press could only destroy American credibility and bolster the insurgency. "Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq," a Pentagon official told the Los Angeles Times. "Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it."
Sadly, all this chicanery and secret propaganda is not really surprising. The White House has always loathed the very existence of an independent press and has done everything in its power to turn the American media into dutiful stenographers. Not to mention that the Administration has always treated the soaring unpopularity of the war, both in Iraq and here at home, as more of a sales problem than an actual policy issue. After all, why should we go to the time and trouble of actually thinking up a new strategy when we can just change public perception of the existing one?
Indeed, the Administration basically admitted as such in its much-hyped National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, in which one of the methods of "strengthen[ing] public understanding of coalition efforts" is "a free, independent, and responsible Iraqi media" (emphasis added). In this context, "responsible" apparently means "subservient."
The problem with this, of course, is that an uncensored press free of government control is absolutely essential to the functioning of a democratic society, and the Administration's manipulation of the fledgling Iraqi media has - once again - destroyed our trustworthiness in that shattered nation. The fiasco has given the Iraqi insurgency and everyone else in the world yet another reason to dislike and distrust the United States. Heckuva job, guys.
President Bush once joked that "if this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I'm the dictator." With his open contempt for the very principle of a free press, it sounds like he's operating true to form.
12/01/2005
Stay in Line and Nobody Gets Hurt
"I would think if somebody is going to have to answer for following the wrong religion, they're not going to have to answer to me. We know who they're going to have to answer to... But in the meantime, as long as they're civil and behave, we tolerate the presence of other religions around us without causing trouble."
Fox News pundit and The War on Christmas author John Gibson on the 11/19/05 "Janet Parshall's America" radio show, displaying his version of Christian love
Stay the Course, Again
President Bush ventured out of his bubble yesterday to speak to the midshipmen at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis to deliver what was billed as a "major address" on Iraq. Anyone expecting actual developments, such as a plan for a phased withdrawal, a change in strategy or anything else would have been sorely disappointed. What we instead got was yet another robotic recitation of our "goals" in Iraq, while glossing over the pesky details of just how we are supposed to get there. It was really just more of the same - more macho slogans ("I will settle for nothing less than complete victory"), more false comparisons to World War II ("free nations came together to fight the ideology of fascism, and freedom prevailed") and more dishonest links to 9/11 ("the terrorists in Iraq share the same ideology as the terrorists who struck the United States on September the 11th"). As to why American men and women are still fighting and dying in Iraq two and a half years after we supposedly liberated the place - that one went unanswered.
There was no mention of the increasing sectarian violence, no mention of the insurgent penetration of the fledgling Iraqi army, no mention of the tiny fraction of supposedly trained troops who can actually carry out operations by themselves, no mention of the brewing civil war. Nor was there any mention of former US-installed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's comment that "people are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse," that all Iraqi factions issued a joint call for an American withdrawal, nor their statement that it's permissible to attack occupation forces.
In short, it was a blatant rehash of the same "stay the course" speech Bush keeps delivering. Indeed, he didn't even have to show up to deliver this one; all he really had to do was send a cardboard cutout and a tape player.
Along with this exercise in repetition, the White House also released its "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," inviting questions on why it took so long to come up with a strategy which really should have been done in the first place. In his speech, Bush called it "an unclassified version of the strategy we've been pursuing in Iraq," but there's one problem: it's not a strategy, it's just a hodgepodge of the same old talking points. Among the rhetoric can be found such gems as "failure is not an option," "the terrorists, Saddamists, and rejectionists...can win only if we surrender," and, just to be sure people get it, "our strategy for victory is clear."
(Almost lost in the hoopla over the President's latest playback, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the Pentagon, working with a PR firm called the Lincoln Group, regularly pays Iraqi newspapers to run American-written propaganda stories under their own reporters' bylines. Among such articles are ones titled "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism" and "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq." In a particularly delicious bit of irony, the scheme was unmasked just as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in journalism and media ethics.)
The Bush Administration apparently thinks that their poll numbers are in the toilet not because the American people disapprove of what they're doing, but because they haven't made a good enough sales pitch. The detachment from reality this displays is disturbing. How can you convince people to change course when they're so confident in what they're doing they have no idea that it's causing nothing but disaster?
Fortunately, Republicans in Congress are starting to listen even if the White House won't. Even Democrats are starting to timidly show a tiny amount of spine. Contact your Senators and Representative and tell them we won't stand for more of the same. We need to get out of Iraq, and the sooner the better.
There was no mention of the increasing sectarian violence, no mention of the insurgent penetration of the fledgling Iraqi army, no mention of the tiny fraction of supposedly trained troops who can actually carry out operations by themselves, no mention of the brewing civil war. Nor was there any mention of former US-installed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's comment that "people are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse," that all Iraqi factions issued a joint call for an American withdrawal, nor their statement that it's permissible to attack occupation forces.
In short, it was a blatant rehash of the same "stay the course" speech Bush keeps delivering. Indeed, he didn't even have to show up to deliver this one; all he really had to do was send a cardboard cutout and a tape player.
Along with this exercise in repetition, the White House also released its "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," inviting questions on why it took so long to come up with a strategy which really should have been done in the first place. In his speech, Bush called it "an unclassified version of the strategy we've been pursuing in Iraq," but there's one problem: it's not a strategy, it's just a hodgepodge of the same old talking points. Among the rhetoric can be found such gems as "failure is not an option," "the terrorists, Saddamists, and rejectionists...can win only if we surrender," and, just to be sure people get it, "our strategy for victory is clear."
(Almost lost in the hoopla over the President's latest playback, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the Pentagon, working with a PR firm called the Lincoln Group, regularly pays Iraqi newspapers to run American-written propaganda stories under their own reporters' bylines. Among such articles are ones titled "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism" and "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq." In a particularly delicious bit of irony, the scheme was unmasked just as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in journalism and media ethics.)
The Bush Administration apparently thinks that their poll numbers are in the toilet not because the American people disapprove of what they're doing, but because they haven't made a good enough sales pitch. The detachment from reality this displays is disturbing. How can you convince people to change course when they're so confident in what they're doing they have no idea that it's causing nothing but disaster?
Fortunately, Republicans in Congress are starting to listen even if the White House won't. Even Democrats are starting to timidly show a tiny amount of spine. Contact your Senators and Representative and tell them we won't stand for more of the same. We need to get out of Iraq, and the sooner the better.
11/30/2005
Don't Bother Me with the Facts
No one likes to hear bad news, but the Bush Administration has raised the shielding of the President from unpleasant truths to something of an art form. It is already well known that President Bush eschews open discussion in favor of sycophantic approval and so all public encounters are carefully staged, from pre-rehearsed chats with the troops to scripted Cabinet meetings. What is now coming out is that the President regularly refuses to listen to anything, even from his closest advisers, with which he disagrees.
In an unnerving New Yorker article, Seymour Hersh writes that "the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq... He disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding." It's a classic example of a "don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up" reaction.
Perhaps more disturbing, Hersh reports that Bush claims a divine mandate to fight terrorism, saying that "God put me here." When it comes to feeling that one has God on his side, there is a considerable difference between being a private citizen and being the most powerful man in the world. Bush has repeatedly claimed to have been divinely chosen to be President, and even saw the 2002 midterm election results as a heavenly endorsement.
It was reported back in June 2003 that Bush told Palestinian leaders, "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did." The White House hotly denied the report, but given Bush's frequent expressions of religious fervor, it's not very farfetched at all.
One former Administration official who left after Bush's first term told Hersh that upon returning from a visit to Iraq he reported his findings to Bush at the White House, telling him "we're not winning the war."
Bush asked, "Are we losing?"
"Not yet" was the reply. Bush was visibly displeased with the answer.
"I tried to tell him," the official said. "And he couldn't hear it."
Even military generals, who of all people should be able to give the President honest if unpalatable assessments of the situation on the ground, are afraid to speak up. They remember all too well the example of Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff. Shinseki testified before Congress that the Administration's desired troop requirements for an invasion and occupation of Iraq were considerably smaller than what was actually needed. In retaliation, Shinseki's replacement was announced more than a year early, instantly transforming him into a lame duck and undercutting his authority.
So rather than commit professional suicide, no one at the Pentagon wants to tell Bush or even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld what they have to hear but don't want to hear. Meanwhile, military officials at all levels are all too happy to talk off the record about what is really happening: Iraq is a mess, nothing is working right, the Iraqi people hate us, nobody really believes in the war anymore, the troops are furious at having been deceived, and everyone just wants to get out and go home.
The President of the United States, ostensibly the most powerful man in the world, is delegating more and more authority to Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, preferring to exist "in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway."
And that, more than anything else, bodes ill for the Iraq War and for the nation as a whole. As long as top officials insist on living in a pleasant dream world, hearing only good news and punishing anyone who tells them differently, no improvement is possible. That is seriously scary.
In an unnerving New Yorker article, Seymour Hersh writes that "the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq... He disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding." It's a classic example of a "don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up" reaction.
Perhaps more disturbing, Hersh reports that Bush claims a divine mandate to fight terrorism, saying that "God put me here." When it comes to feeling that one has God on his side, there is a considerable difference between being a private citizen and being the most powerful man in the world. Bush has repeatedly claimed to have been divinely chosen to be President, and even saw the 2002 midterm election results as a heavenly endorsement.
It was reported back in June 2003 that Bush told Palestinian leaders, "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did." The White House hotly denied the report, but given Bush's frequent expressions of religious fervor, it's not very farfetched at all.
One former Administration official who left after Bush's first term told Hersh that upon returning from a visit to Iraq he reported his findings to Bush at the White House, telling him "we're not winning the war."
Bush asked, "Are we losing?"
"Not yet" was the reply. Bush was visibly displeased with the answer.
"I tried to tell him," the official said. "And he couldn't hear it."
Even military generals, who of all people should be able to give the President honest if unpalatable assessments of the situation on the ground, are afraid to speak up. They remember all too well the example of Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff. Shinseki testified before Congress that the Administration's desired troop requirements for an invasion and occupation of Iraq were considerably smaller than what was actually needed. In retaliation, Shinseki's replacement was announced more than a year early, instantly transforming him into a lame duck and undercutting his authority.
So rather than commit professional suicide, no one at the Pentagon wants to tell Bush or even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld what they have to hear but don't want to hear. Meanwhile, military officials at all levels are all too happy to talk off the record about what is really happening: Iraq is a mess, nothing is working right, the Iraqi people hate us, nobody really believes in the war anymore, the troops are furious at having been deceived, and everyone just wants to get out and go home.
The President of the United States, ostensibly the most powerful man in the world, is delegating more and more authority to Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, preferring to exist "in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway."
And that, more than anything else, bodes ill for the Iraq War and for the nation as a whole. As long as top officials insist on living in a pleasant dream world, hearing only good news and punishing anyone who tells them differently, no improvement is possible. That is seriously scary.
11/29/2005
Merry Christmas, Dammit!
Now that Thanksgiving is behind us and we're deciding what to do with all those leftovers, it is once again time for the religious right's Save Christmas campaign. Once again proving H.L. Mencken's wry observation that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, this annual exercise in fear and loathing tries to convince millions of people that they are being persecuted for being Christian.
And they're pulling out all the stops. Following the standard technique of treating isolated and extreme incidents as the norm, Fox News (motto: "We Distort, You Deride") echoes with uber-pundits Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson bloviating about how the ACLU or some other bugaboo is trying to destroy Christmas. Indeed, Gibson uses his TV show ad nauseam to plug his book The War on Christmas. Meanwhile, having already defended America from the insidious menace of gay Teletubbies, Jerry Falwell has also gotten into the act, announcing his "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" to sue the bejeezus out of anyone who spreads "misinformation" on Christmas (translation: doesn't share his view of what Christmas should be).
All like to talk about how America is a "Christian nation" and should publicly worship as such, regardless of that little thing called separation of church and state. In their world, it is imperative that December 25 be an officially revered holy day, strictly regulated to ensure the proper Christmas spirit. And anyone who is grinchy enough to believe that religious worship is best done at home and church instead of being splashed all over our civic life is a terrible, anti-Christian evildoer.
Once again, we see how no issue is too tiny, manufactured or just plain silly for the right wing to blow up to insane proportions. All you have to do is turn on the TV or radio to be deluged with Christmas music, Christmas specials, Christmas carols, et cetera, et cetera. Christmas trees and Nativity scenes are everywhere. Yes, Virginia, Christmas is alive and well in America, despite all this "Save Christmas" nonsense.
But I sincerely doubt that O'Reilly, Gibson, Falwell and company really give a rat's patoot as to whether the greeters at Wal-Mart say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." What they're really after is publicity and money. O'Reilly wants more people to watch his show, which is suffering from declining ratings as more and more people get turned off by his ranting and bullying. Gibson wants to sell a lot of copies of his book. And Falwell wants all those tax-free donations sent in by people who are easily frightened. The common denominator of all this is money. You've got it. They want it. And if they have to scare you with a fake "crisis" to get you to part with it, so much the better.
And they're pulling out all the stops. Following the standard technique of treating isolated and extreme incidents as the norm, Fox News (motto: "We Distort, You Deride") echoes with uber-pundits Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson bloviating about how the ACLU or some other bugaboo is trying to destroy Christmas. Indeed, Gibson uses his TV show ad nauseam to plug his book The War on Christmas. Meanwhile, having already defended America from the insidious menace of gay Teletubbies, Jerry Falwell has also gotten into the act, announcing his "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" to sue the bejeezus out of anyone who spreads "misinformation" on Christmas (translation: doesn't share his view of what Christmas should be).
All like to talk about how America is a "Christian nation" and should publicly worship as such, regardless of that little thing called separation of church and state. In their world, it is imperative that December 25 be an officially revered holy day, strictly regulated to ensure the proper Christmas spirit. And anyone who is grinchy enough to believe that religious worship is best done at home and church instead of being splashed all over our civic life is a terrible, anti-Christian evildoer.
Once again, we see how no issue is too tiny, manufactured or just plain silly for the right wing to blow up to insane proportions. All you have to do is turn on the TV or radio to be deluged with Christmas music, Christmas specials, Christmas carols, et cetera, et cetera. Christmas trees and Nativity scenes are everywhere. Yes, Virginia, Christmas is alive and well in America, despite all this "Save Christmas" nonsense.
But I sincerely doubt that O'Reilly, Gibson, Falwell and company really give a rat's patoot as to whether the greeters at Wal-Mart say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." What they're really after is publicity and money. O'Reilly wants more people to watch his show, which is suffering from declining ratings as more and more people get turned off by his ranting and bullying. Gibson wants to sell a lot of copies of his book. And Falwell wants all those tax-free donations sent in by people who are easily frightened. The common denominator of all this is money. You've got it. They want it. And if they have to scare you with a fake "crisis" to get you to part with it, so much the better.
11/28/2005
Never Mind
More than three years have passed since Jose Padilla stepped off an airplane in Chicago and into limbo. Announcing Padilla's arrest by federal agents, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft declared (in Moscow, of all places) that he had conspired with al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" and was being held as an enemy combatant. In the upside-down world of the Bush Administration, that simple designation enabled the government, solely on the President's say-so, to hold Padilla incommunicado, unable to communicate with his family or even a lawyer. Forever. More than two years after Padilla's disappearance, then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey blithely told a press conference that yes, they had evidence that Padilla was a bad person who planned to blow up apartment buildings by stopping up gas pipes and he would go to trial - eventually.
Now, in a move worthy of Saturday Night Live's Emily Litella, the government last week looked into the camera, smiled, and said "Never mind."
Padilla was finally indicted on vague charges of conspiring to "murder, maim and kidnap" Americans overseas, with no mention whatsoever of all those sensational accusations. All that stuff about dirty bombs, apartment buildings, and even al Qaeda was now, in the words of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, "irrelevant."
Irrelevant? Padilla was locked up for three and a half years with no charges. The only "trial" he received was a pair of splashy news conferences at which wild allegations were tossed around. Padilla was demonized in the public eye with exactly zero opportunity to defend himself. And now all that is deemed merely "irrelevant?"
The Padilla case has rankled a lot of people for a long time. It's just plain wrong that anyone, particularly an American citizen, can be just plucked off the street and made to disappear into an American prison without charges, without a trial, and without end. Indeed, it cannot be a coincidence that the indictment comes as the Supreme Court was about to take up the case, with the likelihood that the Court would order the government to either try Padilla or release him.
And yet this is only a microcosm of the much larger and more frightening practices of holding unilaterally-declared "enemy combatants" without any trial or charges at all. Add to that the recent revelations of secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe (Poland, Romania and Hungary, to be exact) the winking export of prisoners to torture-friendly countries, and the obscene White House drive to stop a bill banning American torture. Indeed, there are rumblings that the earlier hysterical charges were left out of the Padilla indictment because the information was reportedly tortured out of two al Qaeda operatives.
What is happening in our country? Has America really been perverted from the land of liberty into the land of don't-get-on-our-bad-side-or-else-we'll-make-you-disappear-and-pull-out-your-fingernails-just-for-good-measure? Even if we do eventually manage to destroy al Qaeda and other terrorist groups by using such tactics, we will have effectively sold our national soul to the devil.
Now, in a move worthy of Saturday Night Live's Emily Litella, the government last week looked into the camera, smiled, and said "Never mind."
Padilla was finally indicted on vague charges of conspiring to "murder, maim and kidnap" Americans overseas, with no mention whatsoever of all those sensational accusations. All that stuff about dirty bombs, apartment buildings, and even al Qaeda was now, in the words of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, "irrelevant."
Irrelevant? Padilla was locked up for three and a half years with no charges. The only "trial" he received was a pair of splashy news conferences at which wild allegations were tossed around. Padilla was demonized in the public eye with exactly zero opportunity to defend himself. And now all that is deemed merely "irrelevant?"
The Padilla case has rankled a lot of people for a long time. It's just plain wrong that anyone, particularly an American citizen, can be just plucked off the street and made to disappear into an American prison without charges, without a trial, and without end. Indeed, it cannot be a coincidence that the indictment comes as the Supreme Court was about to take up the case, with the likelihood that the Court would order the government to either try Padilla or release him.
And yet this is only a microcosm of the much larger and more frightening practices of holding unilaterally-declared "enemy combatants" without any trial or charges at all. Add to that the recent revelations of secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe (Poland, Romania and Hungary, to be exact) the winking export of prisoners to torture-friendly countries, and the obscene White House drive to stop a bill banning American torture. Indeed, there are rumblings that the earlier hysterical charges were left out of the Padilla indictment because the information was reportedly tortured out of two al Qaeda operatives.
What is happening in our country? Has America really been perverted from the land of liberty into the land of don't-get-on-our-bad-side-or-else-we'll-make-you-disappear-and-pull-out-your-fingernails-just-for-good-measure? Even if we do eventually manage to destroy al Qaeda and other terrorist groups by using such tactics, we will have effectively sold our national soul to the devil.
11/22/2005
Shut Up and Salute
The White House has been having more than its share of problems lately. After yet another "milestone" has come and gone in Iraq, the anti-American insurgency war has not miraculously gone away. One can almost hear the head-scratching in the White House Situation Room - these ungrateful Iraqis don't appreciate all we've done for them, like, um, not being able to get the lights back on. Why don't they just sit back and let us take all their oil?
And so as the American death toll in Iraq rockets past 2,000 with no end in sight, the Administration has unveiled its new plan for winning the war. It does not, of course, have anything to do with strategy or goals in Iraq. Heaven forbid. No, this new plan involves attacking war critics at home as unpatriotic, America-hating whiners.
On Veterans Day, President Bush did his bit to unite the nation by claiming that it's "deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." That's a good one - the Administration has rewritten history on an almost daily basis by constantly changing the rationale for invading Iraq ever since it became apparent that Saddam Hussein did not in fact have massive WMD stockpiles. Oh yes, and it's all Bill Clinton's fault for also believing that Saddam possessed all those terrible weapons. Never mind the fact that Clinton - unlike Bush - did not use this belief to scare Americans into supporting a full-on invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Not to be outdone, Vice President Cheney, looking more and more every day like someone who desperately needs a laxative, did his part for the cause by smearing all those troublemakers who take democracy seriously and insist on (gasp!) questioning our nation's leaders. "Nobody is saying we should not be [debating the drive to attack Iraq] or that you cannot reexamine a decision made by the President and the Congress some years ago," Cheney said to the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
But just in case people might actually take his advice, he went on to say, "What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion...that the President of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence."
And just to be sure that nobody missed the point, he added that "untruthful charges against the Commander-in-Chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself."
Really? Actually demanding accountability and alleging deliberate deception is dishonest? Reprehensible, even? With the recent avalanche of revelations that intelligence was cherry-picked and knowingly false reports were embraced to support an already-approved invasion, one would think that Cheney and others who were hot to attack would be just a tiny bit bashful at being found out. Nope, the official line is that anything short of unquestioning obedience and mindless belief is sabotaging America.
Fortunately, after years of being told to shut up and salute, the American public ain't buying it. With solid majorities in poll after poll reporting that the public feels deceived into war and demanding a pullout from Iraq, the usual White House approach of wrapping themselves in the flag just isn't working this time. Congressional Republicans, facing an angry electorate in next year's elections, are starting to buck the White House and, however timidly, are asking for anything to show the folks back home that they don't support an endless war. Even the Democrats are starting to show some spine.
With a normal Administration, one could say they should be ashamed at such blatant attempts at getting off the hook. Of course, with this Administration, shame is a four-letter word.
And so as the American death toll in Iraq rockets past 2,000 with no end in sight, the Administration has unveiled its new plan for winning the war. It does not, of course, have anything to do with strategy or goals in Iraq. Heaven forbid. No, this new plan involves attacking war critics at home as unpatriotic, America-hating whiners.
On Veterans Day, President Bush did his bit to unite the nation by claiming that it's "deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." That's a good one - the Administration has rewritten history on an almost daily basis by constantly changing the rationale for invading Iraq ever since it became apparent that Saddam Hussein did not in fact have massive WMD stockpiles. Oh yes, and it's all Bill Clinton's fault for also believing that Saddam possessed all those terrible weapons. Never mind the fact that Clinton - unlike Bush - did not use this belief to scare Americans into supporting a full-on invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Not to be outdone, Vice President Cheney, looking more and more every day like someone who desperately needs a laxative, did his part for the cause by smearing all those troublemakers who take democracy seriously and insist on (gasp!) questioning our nation's leaders. "Nobody is saying we should not be [debating the drive to attack Iraq] or that you cannot reexamine a decision made by the President and the Congress some years ago," Cheney said to the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
But just in case people might actually take his advice, he went on to say, "What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion...that the President of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence."
And just to be sure that nobody missed the point, he added that "untruthful charges against the Commander-in-Chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself."
Really? Actually demanding accountability and alleging deliberate deception is dishonest? Reprehensible, even? With the recent avalanche of revelations that intelligence was cherry-picked and knowingly false reports were embraced to support an already-approved invasion, one would think that Cheney and others who were hot to attack would be just a tiny bit bashful at being found out. Nope, the official line is that anything short of unquestioning obedience and mindless belief is sabotaging America.
Fortunately, after years of being told to shut up and salute, the American public ain't buying it. With solid majorities in poll after poll reporting that the public feels deceived into war and demanding a pullout from Iraq, the usual White House approach of wrapping themselves in the flag just isn't working this time. Congressional Republicans, facing an angry electorate in next year's elections, are starting to buck the White House and, however timidly, are asking for anything to show the folks back home that they don't support an endless war. Even the Democrats are starting to show some spine.
With a normal Administration, one could say they should be ashamed at such blatant attempts at getting off the hook. Of course, with this Administration, shame is a four-letter word.
11/21/2005
Unintelligent Design
Every once in a while, the holier-than-thou wing of American Christianity makes another attempt at taking our schools and perverting them from bastions of learning and intelligence into halls of indoctrination. Such it is with "intelligent design," the latest version of creationism.
At least creationism is honest enough to admit that it's rooted in the Biblical story of the creation of the Universe as told in Genesis. ID, called "creationism in a cheap tuxedo," depends on sleight-of-hand tricks in selling its claim that some form of higher intelligence - but not God - created the world and everything in it. ID advocates claim that it deserves to be respected as a scientific theory alongside those of Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Indeed, they usually bend over backwards to insist that what they offer is not religion, but merely an "alternative" to Darwinian evolution which should be taught as such in science classes. "Teach the controversy!" they cry.
Now while it's not as poetic as its Genesis-based counterpart, ID is an interesting way of looking at how the world began. But it's not science. It's many things - philosophy, religion, metaphysics, culture - but not science.
Science looks at how the world is, and in order for something to be scientific, it has to be testable, provable, disprovable and repeatable. Darwin's theory of evolution has proven to be the most durable theory in the history of human scientific knowledge. Every time new medicines are created to combat bacteria or viruses that have become resistent to a drug, you're seeing evolution in action.
But how can one prove that God (or, in the world of ID, Not-God) created the world? One can't; it's quite literally a matter of faith.
Indeed, ID's reputation as a non-religious scientific theory took some hits after voters in Dover, Pennsylvania voted out all eight school board members who tried to compel local schools to teach ID as science. TV preacher Pat Robertson, last heard distinguishing himself in the world of foreign affairs by calling for the assassination of the President of Venezuela, declared that the people of Dover "rejected [God] from your city" and "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God." Other comments made it abundantly clear what ID advocates are trying to hide - that intelligent design is a religious doctrine.
That's why when they refer to an "intelligent designer," ID advocates really mean God, and the Christian version of God at that. They'll just never admit it. So if we're going to shoehorn the Biblical version of creation into America's classrooms via ID, we should include alternative versions of ID as well. Native American versions (one per tribe, of course) of how the world began, perhaps, or the African tale of how the world was literally vomited into being by Bumba. Or my personal favorite, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
When you get right down to it, the fight over ID really has nothing to do with science. Rather, it has everything to do with the efforts of the Christian right to force their own religious beliefs on the rest of us. The framers of the Constitution were quite right when they mandated a separation of church and state in the fledgling nation called the United States. Looking back on centuries of religiously-motivated persecution, oppression and massacres in Europe, they were determined never to let America emulate what had failed so disastrously in Europe.
Mixing religion and government is always a bad move. If you're going to teach ID, do it in a philosophy or comparative-religion class. But keep it out of science classes.
At least creationism is honest enough to admit that it's rooted in the Biblical story of the creation of the Universe as told in Genesis. ID, called "creationism in a cheap tuxedo," depends on sleight-of-hand tricks in selling its claim that some form of higher intelligence - but not God - created the world and everything in it. ID advocates claim that it deserves to be respected as a scientific theory alongside those of Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Indeed, they usually bend over backwards to insist that what they offer is not religion, but merely an "alternative" to Darwinian evolution which should be taught as such in science classes. "Teach the controversy!" they cry.
Now while it's not as poetic as its Genesis-based counterpart, ID is an interesting way of looking at how the world began. But it's not science. It's many things - philosophy, religion, metaphysics, culture - but not science.
Science looks at how the world is, and in order for something to be scientific, it has to be testable, provable, disprovable and repeatable. Darwin's theory of evolution has proven to be the most durable theory in the history of human scientific knowledge. Every time new medicines are created to combat bacteria or viruses that have become resistent to a drug, you're seeing evolution in action.
But how can one prove that God (or, in the world of ID, Not-God) created the world? One can't; it's quite literally a matter of faith.
Indeed, ID's reputation as a non-religious scientific theory took some hits after voters in Dover, Pennsylvania voted out all eight school board members who tried to compel local schools to teach ID as science. TV preacher Pat Robertson, last heard distinguishing himself in the world of foreign affairs by calling for the assassination of the President of Venezuela, declared that the people of Dover "rejected [God] from your city" and "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God." Other comments made it abundantly clear what ID advocates are trying to hide - that intelligent design is a religious doctrine.
That's why when they refer to an "intelligent designer," ID advocates really mean God, and the Christian version of God at that. They'll just never admit it. So if we're going to shoehorn the Biblical version of creation into America's classrooms via ID, we should include alternative versions of ID as well. Native American versions (one per tribe, of course) of how the world began, perhaps, or the African tale of how the world was literally vomited into being by Bumba. Or my personal favorite, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
When you get right down to it, the fight over ID really has nothing to do with science. Rather, it has everything to do with the efforts of the Christian right to force their own religious beliefs on the rest of us. The framers of the Constitution were quite right when they mandated a separation of church and state in the fledgling nation called the United States. Looking back on centuries of religiously-motivated persecution, oppression and massacres in Europe, they were determined never to let America emulate what had failed so disastrously in Europe.
Mixing religion and government is always a bad move. If you're going to teach ID, do it in a philosophy or comparative-religion class. But keep it out of science classes.
11/18/2005
Musical Life Beyond Corporate Radio
It used to be that commercial radio stations provided listeners with a wide variety of music. Local bands could get on local stations to build a following. Anyone driving on a cross-country trip could count on being able to listen to one station after another, creating a national mosaic of local and regional music. No more.
Corporate control of the music industry has inexorably taken its toll. The Buggles famously sang that "video killed the radio star," but BMI, Sony, Clear Channel and others did the job far better than MTV ever could. These days, it seems like every radio station in America is owned by a super-conglomerate, and they all play the very same thing.
Whether you're in a big city or a small town, it doesn't matter how much you spin the dial, you hear the same playlists interrupted by the same inane banter and the same endless commercials, all piped in from somewhere else. The corporate-radio version of "variety" means rotating between one prefabricated, focus-group-tested, guaranteed-to-sell "pop" group and another. Anything outside this safe, marketable formula is barred from the airwaves, leading to music which sounds like it was all written by the same five people all working out of the same corporate boardroom.
So what can you do besides throw your radio out the window? Fortunately, like the last spark that keeps a flame alive, there are still a few excellent independent stations out there. Going days or even weeks at a time without repeating a single song, they play music by people you've never heard of and which makes the stuff aired by your local Clear Channel affiliate sound like rancid crap. And even if you don't live locally, they broadcast on the Internet.
While there are other good ones, here are the top five stations I listen to when the boredom of corporate radio starts killing off too many brain cells:
Corporate control of the music industry has inexorably taken its toll. The Buggles famously sang that "video killed the radio star," but BMI, Sony, Clear Channel and others did the job far better than MTV ever could. These days, it seems like every radio station in America is owned by a super-conglomerate, and they all play the very same thing.
Whether you're in a big city or a small town, it doesn't matter how much you spin the dial, you hear the same playlists interrupted by the same inane banter and the same endless commercials, all piped in from somewhere else. The corporate-radio version of "variety" means rotating between one prefabricated, focus-group-tested, guaranteed-to-sell "pop" group and another. Anything outside this safe, marketable formula is barred from the airwaves, leading to music which sounds like it was all written by the same five people all working out of the same corporate boardroom.
So what can you do besides throw your radio out the window? Fortunately, like the last spark that keeps a flame alive, there are still a few excellent independent stations out there. Going days or even weeks at a time without repeating a single song, they play music by people you've never heard of and which makes the stuff aired by your local Clear Channel affiliate sound like rancid crap. And even if you don't live locally, they broadcast on the Internet.
While there are other good ones, here are the top five stations I listen to when the boredom of corporate radio starts killing off too many brain cells:
- Broadcasting out of a 12-by-12 shack in Talkeetna, Alaska, the Internet-only Whole Wheat Radio features a eclectic playlist with classical, jazz, folk and everything in between. You almost never hear commercial artists, but they do have the occasional cover song.
- The NPR-affiliated station The Current broadcasts from the Twin Cities of Minnesota with a heavy emphasis on local bands.
- With harder music than WWR or The Current, KEXP comes from Seattle, the home of grunge rock, bringing a mix of established music and up-and-comers.
- WUMB, an all-folk station in Boston, features mostly established folk artists from Pete Seeger to Tracy Chapman, but has new artists as well.
- Another NPR station, this one in Philadelphia, WXPN mostly plays the sort of classic rock overlooked by corporate "classic rock" stations, but also gives significant airplay to local musicians.
Sense and Nonsensibility
"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region... Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home."
"Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. The eve of an historic democratic election in Iraq is not the time to surrender to the terrorists. After seeing his statement, we remain baffled -- nowhere does he explain how retreating from Iraq makes America safer."
Formerly pro-war Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) introducing his resolution calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq
"Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. The eve of an historic democratic election in Iraq is not the time to surrender to the terrorists. After seeing his statement, we remain baffled -- nowhere does he explain how retreating from Iraq makes America safer."
The complete White House response to Rep. Murtha's statement
We're baaaaaaack...
Following a bad car accident, a long recovery, and a return to health, the Progressive Perspective is back on the air!
4/08/2005
All the President's IOUs
President Bush's campaign to destroy – oops, I mean "rescue" – Social Security is in big trouble. Nobody, not even Bush, genuinely believes that privatizing the system will do anything to solve its eventual financial problems. Economists cringe at the thought of piling on trillions of dollars in additional debt to achieve the transition. It is widely recognized that the campaign and its associated scare tactics are based not on economics but on an ideological loathing of Social Security's very existence.
Even Congressional Republicans, getting an earful in their home districts, are telling the Bush Administration that this just isn't flying. Of course, Senators and Congressmen do not have the advantage of living in the President's dissent-free bubble; they actually have to interact with their constituents and listen to what they have to say. They do not have the luxury of speaking only with people who have been pre-screened to weed out anyone who might be so rude as to express anything other than utter and slavish devotion.
So it is a measure of how desperate things must be getting that Bush was sent to visit the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, West Virginia on Tuesday. There, he struck a dramatic pose next to a filing cabinet containing the records of the $1.7 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds in which the Social Security trust fund is invested. Bush, of course, put it rather differently.
"There is no 'trust fund,'" Bush proclaimed, "just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs. The office here in Parkersburg stores those IOUs. They're stacked in a filing cabinet." Playing to his usual audience of handpicked sycophants, he smirked, "Imagine: the retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet." (What did he expect – Scrooge McDuck's money bin, perhaps?)
In other words, Treasury bonds, widely regarded as the gold standard in safe and secure investments, are just worthless slips of paper.
For someone who brags about being the first MBA President, it's pretty obvious that Bush doesn't know squat about economics. A Treasury bond is not an "IOU." It's still money, just like a share of stock, a privately issued bond, or the totals printed on a bank statement. Everyone who has ever had a checking account knows that a paper check is money, too. Does the President of the United States really believe that money in any form other than bills and coins is worthless?
Bush's financial ignorance aside, casually dismissing Treasury bonds as IOUs is particularly reckless. He seems to have forgotten that thanks to his obsession with tax cuts über alles combined with huge hikes in federal military and homeland-security spending, the government is running a $400 billion annual budget deficit with no end in sight.
To understand why this is so irresponsible, all you have to do is realize that the deficit is financed by selling Treasury bonds – the very same bonds in which the Social Security trust fund is invested. Those bonds are increasingly being bought by foreign investors, who are already spooked by the Bush Administration's utter disregard for any notion of financial restraint. And if bondholders listen to Bush's statement and decide that the bonds really are worthless, that the government can't or won't make good on its debts, they may either (a) refuse to buy any more bonds or (b) demand higher interest rates on bonds they do buy. With the White House hopelessly addicted to endless borrowing, either one would send the economy into a tailspin.
And the icing on the cake is that since Bush refuses to raise taxes to pay for his privatization plan, it would be financed by selling – you guessed it: Treasury bonds!
Bush's bizarre ramblings aside, the Social Security trust fund exists. It is real. It is kept in the same bonds which we buy as birthday presents and safe investments. They even earn six percent interest. They may not be sexy, but they're secure, backed up by the "full faith and credit" of the federal government, just like the money in your wallet.
Besides, if Bush's uncontrolled deficit spending really does cause a financial crisis severe enough to put that faith and credit in doubt, Social Security will be the least of our worries.
We sincerely hope that the governments, institutions and individuals who finance the national debt know better than to take Bush's increasingly frenzied theatrics as signs of actual policy decisions. But it doesn't make his wild statements any more comforting.
Even Congressional Republicans, getting an earful in their home districts, are telling the Bush Administration that this just isn't flying. Of course, Senators and Congressmen do not have the advantage of living in the President's dissent-free bubble; they actually have to interact with their constituents and listen to what they have to say. They do not have the luxury of speaking only with people who have been pre-screened to weed out anyone who might be so rude as to express anything other than utter and slavish devotion.
So it is a measure of how desperate things must be getting that Bush was sent to visit the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, West Virginia on Tuesday. There, he struck a dramatic pose next to a filing cabinet containing the records of the $1.7 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds in which the Social Security trust fund is invested. Bush, of course, put it rather differently.
"There is no 'trust fund,'" Bush proclaimed, "just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs. The office here in Parkersburg stores those IOUs. They're stacked in a filing cabinet." Playing to his usual audience of handpicked sycophants, he smirked, "Imagine: the retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet." (What did he expect – Scrooge McDuck's money bin, perhaps?)
In other words, Treasury bonds, widely regarded as the gold standard in safe and secure investments, are just worthless slips of paper.
For someone who brags about being the first MBA President, it's pretty obvious that Bush doesn't know squat about economics. A Treasury bond is not an "IOU." It's still money, just like a share of stock, a privately issued bond, or the totals printed on a bank statement. Everyone who has ever had a checking account knows that a paper check is money, too. Does the President of the United States really believe that money in any form other than bills and coins is worthless?
Bush's financial ignorance aside, casually dismissing Treasury bonds as IOUs is particularly reckless. He seems to have forgotten that thanks to his obsession with tax cuts über alles combined with huge hikes in federal military and homeland-security spending, the government is running a $400 billion annual budget deficit with no end in sight.
To understand why this is so irresponsible, all you have to do is realize that the deficit is financed by selling Treasury bonds – the very same bonds in which the Social Security trust fund is invested. Those bonds are increasingly being bought by foreign investors, who are already spooked by the Bush Administration's utter disregard for any notion of financial restraint. And if bondholders listen to Bush's statement and decide that the bonds really are worthless, that the government can't or won't make good on its debts, they may either (a) refuse to buy any more bonds or (b) demand higher interest rates on bonds they do buy. With the White House hopelessly addicted to endless borrowing, either one would send the economy into a tailspin.
And the icing on the cake is that since Bush refuses to raise taxes to pay for his privatization plan, it would be financed by selling – you guessed it: Treasury bonds!
Bush's bizarre ramblings aside, the Social Security trust fund exists. It is real. It is kept in the same bonds which we buy as birthday presents and safe investments. They even earn six percent interest. They may not be sexy, but they're secure, backed up by the "full faith and credit" of the federal government, just like the money in your wallet.
Besides, if Bush's uncontrolled deficit spending really does cause a financial crisis severe enough to put that faith and credit in doubt, Social Security will be the least of our worries.
We sincerely hope that the governments, institutions and individuals who finance the national debt know better than to take Bush's increasingly frenzied theatrics as signs of actual policy decisions. But it doesn't make his wild statements any more comforting.
3/29/2005
Science Museums Without Science
Molly Ivins once said that reading the morning paper is sometimes like finding Fidel Castro in your refrigerator. You don’t really know what to think.
There was one such article in the New York Times recently about how a number of IMAX theaters, many located in southern states, are refusing to show a handful of films. It appears that the films deemed inappropriate, including Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, Cosmic Voyage and Galapagos, all have one thing in common – they all mention evolution. As such, they have become targets for the Christian-right jihad against anything which does not fall into line with their theology.
While such idiotic bloviating against the world at large is not surprising coming from this crowd, the truly stunning part of the story is that most of the spineless theaters are located in science museums, including ones in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas.
One museum in Fort Worth pulled Volcanoes after “some people said it was blasphemous,” according to marketing director Carol Murray. One viewer even called it “anti-creationist propaganda.” (In a victory for common sense, the museum quickly reversed itself in the face of public outrage and announced it would show Volcanoes after all.)
Not surprisingly, the museums all publicly deny that fundamentalist Christian reaction was any factor in their decisions. But Richard Lutz, a Rutgers University oceanographer who was chief scientist for Volcanoes, said he was privately told by a number of theaters that they would refuse to show the film “literally for fear of the reaction of the audience.”
Call me naïve, but I was always under the impression that museums, especially science museums, are supposed to educate the public, not kowtow to ignorance and willful blindness. What’s next? Will museums remove exhibits on dinosaur fossils or Cro-Magnons because they don’t jibe with Genesis? What about models showing the Sun instead of the Earth at the center of the solar system? And let’s not even get started on that whole “Big Bang" sacrilege.
This is the 21st century, eight decades after John Scopes was thrown in jail for teaching evolution to his high-school science class, but you’d never know it. I never thought we’d see American science museums rejecting proven science when it offends the religious right. No wonder American students routinely score way behind students from other countries on math and science subjects. We’re teaching them that facts are facts only if they don’t upset the pious fools among us. It would be a great joke were it not so infuriating.
There was one such article in the New York Times recently about how a number of IMAX theaters, many located in southern states, are refusing to show a handful of films. It appears that the films deemed inappropriate, including Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, Cosmic Voyage and Galapagos, all have one thing in common – they all mention evolution. As such, they have become targets for the Christian-right jihad against anything which does not fall into line with their theology.
While such idiotic bloviating against the world at large is not surprising coming from this crowd, the truly stunning part of the story is that most of the spineless theaters are located in science museums, including ones in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas.
One museum in Fort Worth pulled Volcanoes after “some people said it was blasphemous,” according to marketing director Carol Murray. One viewer even called it “anti-creationist propaganda.” (In a victory for common sense, the museum quickly reversed itself in the face of public outrage and announced it would show Volcanoes after all.)
Not surprisingly, the museums all publicly deny that fundamentalist Christian reaction was any factor in their decisions. But Richard Lutz, a Rutgers University oceanographer who was chief scientist for Volcanoes, said he was privately told by a number of theaters that they would refuse to show the film “literally for fear of the reaction of the audience.”
Call me naïve, but I was always under the impression that museums, especially science museums, are supposed to educate the public, not kowtow to ignorance and willful blindness. What’s next? Will museums remove exhibits on dinosaur fossils or Cro-Magnons because they don’t jibe with Genesis? What about models showing the Sun instead of the Earth at the center of the solar system? And let’s not even get started on that whole “Big Bang" sacrilege.
This is the 21st century, eight decades after John Scopes was thrown in jail for teaching evolution to his high-school science class, but you’d never know it. I never thought we’d see American science museums rejecting proven science when it offends the religious right. No wonder American students routinely score way behind students from other countries on math and science subjects. We’re teaching them that facts are facts only if they don’t upset the pious fools among us. It would be a great joke were it not so infuriating.
3/25/2005
Where's a Bolt of Lightning When You Need One?
"One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America... This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others."
House Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" DeLay (R-TX) in a speech to the Family Research Council, not only exploiting the Schiavo family's agony for purely political gain, but actually insinuating that Terri's vegetative state was divinely caused to save his career
3/23/2005
Of Death and Life
I have been doing a great deal of thinking lately about Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who for fifteen years has hovered somewhere between life and death in what is called a persistent vegetative state. Her body lives, her heart beats and her lungs breathe, but her brain is dead, asphyxiated by a 1990 heart attack that cut off the blood flow. After years of attempts at therapy and rehabilitation, it became painfully apparent that no recovery was possible. Since then, her husband Michael has fought tenaciously to remove her feeding tube and allow her to die, claiming she told him she would not want to live like this. Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have fought just as tenaciously to keep her feeding tube in place, insisting that their daughter is still alive in there somewhere.
Her doctors beg to differ, pointing out that the part of her brain that made her an individual person, with loves and dreams, is not only dead but atrophied, replaced with spinal fluid. With the issue being fought in Florida state courts for years, judge after judge has consistently ruled that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of improvement. With no medical evidence to the contrary nor proof of spousal abuse or neglect, Michael has the right to determine his wife’s medical treatment in accordance with Florida state law.
The dispute is loud and rancorous. The Schindlers accuse their son-in-law of wanting his wife out of the way so he can marry his girlfriend, and indeed recently filed divorce papers on her behalf. Michael in turn accuses his in-laws of ignoring their daughter’s wishes and refuses to divorce his wife, saying that doing so would be abandoning her to a fate worse than death.
The truly disgusting part of this whole sorry saga is how every sanctimonious holier-than-thou from Tallahassee to Washington is taking advantage of the family’s agony as an excuse to grandstand under the cover of keeping Terri alive. A House subcommittee even issued a subpoena to get her testimony on the issue. It just so happens that she cannot speak or even reliably respond to external stimuli, but that’s irrelevant. Florida state law puts the spouse in charge of medical decisions when the patient cannot make them for him or herself, but that’s irrelevant too. There are political points to be scored, and scored they must be, regardless of the consequences.
The absolute nadir of this political hijacking (so far) is a memo from a Republican apparatchik which can be described only as grotesque. Leaked over the weekend, the memo not only crows that “the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue,” but actually salivates over the prospect of using the family’s torment as “a great political issue” to bludgeon Democrats in the next election.
Meanwhile, religious and “pro-life” groups around the nation have taken up the cause, circulating carefully selected four-year-old pictures of Terri seemingly responding to her mother. (Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is a physician but not a neurologist, used these edited highlights to declare that she is not in fact in a vegetative state. Of course, if he were to issue an actual diagnosis based solely on watching a video clip, he would rightly lose his medical license.) The far more numerous and tragic images of her simply lying there insensate are ignored, as is her doctors’ nearly-unanimous diagnosis that no improvement is possible. Instead, such groups hurl the epithet of “Nazi” at Michael and his supporters, and claim that if Terri is allowed to die, anyone who is brain-damaged would be marked for death and should instead be kept artificially alive ad infinitum.
Putting aside the revolting and deliberately inflammatory comparison, consider for a moment what could happen if the laws envisioned by such people become reality. What if by some unimaginable tragedy your spouse or parent or child winds up in a hospital bed, just lying there, unresponsive to all entreaties of love or anguish? Let’s suppose you know that they would not have wanted to be kept alive in this way and would instead want to die with dignity and grace, but they never wrote it down in a living will.
And then someone you have never met and who doesn’t know your situation walks in and orders you to keep your loved one suspended in a permanent living death. Not a very pleasant scenario, is it?
(Fortunately, you can help prevent this from happening to you by filling out a living will, directing whether or not you want to be kept alive artificially. Living will forms for your state can be accessed for free at http://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/forms.shtm.)
Even more than the political and legal questions, this single-minded pursuit of keeping Terri alive leads one to ask: what does it mean for a human being to be alive? Does it mean only that the heart has to beat, the lungs have to breathe? Does it mean that the person has to be able to speak or respond to questions? Or is it something in between, or indeed totally different? And finally the biggest question of all: is it cruel to keep someone biologically alive long after all that made them a person has died?
Good men and women have been wrestling with these questions for a very long time, and I cannot pretend to have the answers. But I do know that everyone who has forced his or her way into this agonizing family decision, from politicos to pundits to simple pests, needs to bug off.
Terri Schaivo’s situation is a truly dreadful one, and there can be no winners, even if one side or the other eventually wins a definitive court judgment. But, sadly and reluctantly, I have to agree with her husband. After so many years in limbo, she deserves a dignified death, not the circus to which she has been subjected. Fifteen years is enough. It’s time to let her go.
Her doctors beg to differ, pointing out that the part of her brain that made her an individual person, with loves and dreams, is not only dead but atrophied, replaced with spinal fluid. With the issue being fought in Florida state courts for years, judge after judge has consistently ruled that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of improvement. With no medical evidence to the contrary nor proof of spousal abuse or neglect, Michael has the right to determine his wife’s medical treatment in accordance with Florida state law.
The dispute is loud and rancorous. The Schindlers accuse their son-in-law of wanting his wife out of the way so he can marry his girlfriend, and indeed recently filed divorce papers on her behalf. Michael in turn accuses his in-laws of ignoring their daughter’s wishes and refuses to divorce his wife, saying that doing so would be abandoning her to a fate worse than death.
The truly disgusting part of this whole sorry saga is how every sanctimonious holier-than-thou from Tallahassee to Washington is taking advantage of the family’s agony as an excuse to grandstand under the cover of keeping Terri alive. A House subcommittee even issued a subpoena to get her testimony on the issue. It just so happens that she cannot speak or even reliably respond to external stimuli, but that’s irrelevant. Florida state law puts the spouse in charge of medical decisions when the patient cannot make them for him or herself, but that’s irrelevant too. There are political points to be scored, and scored they must be, regardless of the consequences.
The absolute nadir of this political hijacking (so far) is a memo from a Republican apparatchik which can be described only as grotesque. Leaked over the weekend, the memo not only crows that “the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue,” but actually salivates over the prospect of using the family’s torment as “a great political issue” to bludgeon Democrats in the next election.
Meanwhile, religious and “pro-life” groups around the nation have taken up the cause, circulating carefully selected four-year-old pictures of Terri seemingly responding to her mother. (Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is a physician but not a neurologist, used these edited highlights to declare that she is not in fact in a vegetative state. Of course, if he were to issue an actual diagnosis based solely on watching a video clip, he would rightly lose his medical license.) The far more numerous and tragic images of her simply lying there insensate are ignored, as is her doctors’ nearly-unanimous diagnosis that no improvement is possible. Instead, such groups hurl the epithet of “Nazi” at Michael and his supporters, and claim that if Terri is allowed to die, anyone who is brain-damaged would be marked for death and should instead be kept artificially alive ad infinitum.
Putting aside the revolting and deliberately inflammatory comparison, consider for a moment what could happen if the laws envisioned by such people become reality. What if by some unimaginable tragedy your spouse or parent or child winds up in a hospital bed, just lying there, unresponsive to all entreaties of love or anguish? Let’s suppose you know that they would not have wanted to be kept alive in this way and would instead want to die with dignity and grace, but they never wrote it down in a living will.
And then someone you have never met and who doesn’t know your situation walks in and orders you to keep your loved one suspended in a permanent living death. Not a very pleasant scenario, is it?
(Fortunately, you can help prevent this from happening to you by filling out a living will, directing whether or not you want to be kept alive artificially. Living will forms for your state can be accessed for free at http://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/forms.shtm.)
Even more than the political and legal questions, this single-minded pursuit of keeping Terri alive leads one to ask: what does it mean for a human being to be alive? Does it mean only that the heart has to beat, the lungs have to breathe? Does it mean that the person has to be able to speak or respond to questions? Or is it something in between, or indeed totally different? And finally the biggest question of all: is it cruel to keep someone biologically alive long after all that made them a person has died?
Good men and women have been wrestling with these questions for a very long time, and I cannot pretend to have the answers. But I do know that everyone who has forced his or her way into this agonizing family decision, from politicos to pundits to simple pests, needs to bug off.
Terri Schaivo’s situation is a truly dreadful one, and there can be no winners, even if one side or the other eventually wins a definitive court judgment. But, sadly and reluctantly, I have to agree with her husband. After so many years in limbo, she deserves a dignified death, not the circus to which she has been subjected. Fifteen years is enough. It’s time to let her go.
1/21/2005
Round Two
On the day after George W. Bush's inauguration, his super-rich backers, who ponied up $40 million to cover the cost of the entertainment, wake up and congratulate themselves on having bought a place at the table. The rest of us, who could not afford to put up hundreds of thousands of dollars, wake up to a $17 million bill for inaugural security. After all, the best kind of party is one where someone else gets stuck with the check.
Looking back on four years and ahead to four more, President Bush gave a speech in which he promised the same thing, only more so. Amid the festivities ostensibly dedicated to the military, he paid lip service to the 1,366 (and counting) American soldiers who gave their lives in pursuit of his obsession with "getting" Saddam Hussein. He exhorted more young men and women to fill the ranks of a military which can't meet recruiting quotas and is forcing retiring soldiers back into uniform en route to Iraq.
"Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants," he said, referring, of course, to his wants.
He declared in almost messianic vocabulary that his second-term mission is nothing less than to export democracy to "every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Sounds good on the surface -- but from this President, and given the post-speech spin, he seems determined to take the very same policy which failed so disastrously in Iraq and apply it to the rest of the world.
Become democratic, Bush implied, or face the consequences. Don’t do it because it's better for everyone involved. Do it because we'll destroy you if you don't.
Having purged his top ranks of all but the most sycophantic of yes-men, the most powerful man in the world has no one nearby to tell him this is a recipe not for a golden age of world peace, but rather for endless and permanent war. And with his resolve to ignore those who don't agree with him 200%, he's not going to listen to anyone who says so.
He called on the Almighty so many times one would be forgiven for thinking he was speaking from a pulpit instead of a podium. He called the spread of democracy a divine mission, all but saying that we know better than everyone else, and that with God is on our side we can't lose. Then again, since he has said numerous times that God speaks to him and that he carries out the heavenly will, one wonders if Bush sees himself as a latter-day Moses, bringing the carrot of freedom and the stick of plagues.
With all this onwarding of Christian soldiers, one wonders if Bush reassured longtime family friend Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan (a.k.a. "Bandar Bush") that Riyadh will once again receive a free ride thanks to longstanding business ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royals. In any event, Saudi Arabia, home to Osama bin Laden, most of the 9/11 hijackers and a royal family with a long and sordid history of supporting Islamic extremists, will likely be exempt from Bush's crusade just as it was exempt from the War on Terror™.
Afterwards, much luxury was on display at the capital's nine inaugural balls, where Republicans and their well-heeled financiers danced and schmoozed the night away to the theme of "Celebrating Freedom and Honoring Service." Mere citizens weren't allowed anywhere near the merriment, not with $1,000 ticket prices, 400 pounds of lobster, and a very exclusive guest list.
Slightly smarting from news reports of fat-cat gluttony, organizers gave free tickets to the "Commander in Chief Ball" to 2,000 military personnel and their families. Of course, the attendees were all handpicked by the Pentagon to ensure an appreciative crowd and to weed out anyone who might say anything uncomfortable. You know, those subversive party-poopers who just have to ask why their friends and relatives continue to be killed fighting in a country which was no threat to America.
Meanwhile, over in free Iraq, our men and women in uniform continue to fight and die defending themselves against the happily liberated Iraqi people. Being told to stop whining and accept "the army we have," they continue to scrounge junkyards for makeshift armor plating for their vehicles and ask their families to pass the collection plate at home in the hopes of getting enough money to buy bulletproof vests.
Some people along the parade route in Washington, and at other locations around the country, did not feel at one with the cheering crowds and made their feelings plain with protest and dissent. Demonstrating that they have taken the inaugural message of freedom to heart, a number of Bush supporters along the route and on talk radio promptly attacked the protesters as "traitors."
Ahead, we see four more years of doubletalk and doublethink, of propagandistic calls to war and calls to spend, of projecting happy illusions while hiding from reality, of cloaking real intentions in soothing language. Hold on tight.
Looking back on four years and ahead to four more, President Bush gave a speech in which he promised the same thing, only more so. Amid the festivities ostensibly dedicated to the military, he paid lip service to the 1,366 (and counting) American soldiers who gave their lives in pursuit of his obsession with "getting" Saddam Hussein. He exhorted more young men and women to fill the ranks of a military which can't meet recruiting quotas and is forcing retiring soldiers back into uniform en route to Iraq.
"Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants," he said, referring, of course, to his wants.
He declared in almost messianic vocabulary that his second-term mission is nothing less than to export democracy to "every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Sounds good on the surface -- but from this President, and given the post-speech spin, he seems determined to take the very same policy which failed so disastrously in Iraq and apply it to the rest of the world.
Become democratic, Bush implied, or face the consequences. Don’t do it because it's better for everyone involved. Do it because we'll destroy you if you don't.
Having purged his top ranks of all but the most sycophantic of yes-men, the most powerful man in the world has no one nearby to tell him this is a recipe not for a golden age of world peace, but rather for endless and permanent war. And with his resolve to ignore those who don't agree with him 200%, he's not going to listen to anyone who says so.
He called on the Almighty so many times one would be forgiven for thinking he was speaking from a pulpit instead of a podium. He called the spread of democracy a divine mission, all but saying that we know better than everyone else, and that with God is on our side we can't lose. Then again, since he has said numerous times that God speaks to him and that he carries out the heavenly will, one wonders if Bush sees himself as a latter-day Moses, bringing the carrot of freedom and the stick of plagues.
With all this onwarding of Christian soldiers, one wonders if Bush reassured longtime family friend Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan (a.k.a. "Bandar Bush") that Riyadh will once again receive a free ride thanks to longstanding business ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royals. In any event, Saudi Arabia, home to Osama bin Laden, most of the 9/11 hijackers and a royal family with a long and sordid history of supporting Islamic extremists, will likely be exempt from Bush's crusade just as it was exempt from the War on Terror™.
Afterwards, much luxury was on display at the capital's nine inaugural balls, where Republicans and their well-heeled financiers danced and schmoozed the night away to the theme of "Celebrating Freedom and Honoring Service." Mere citizens weren't allowed anywhere near the merriment, not with $1,000 ticket prices, 400 pounds of lobster, and a very exclusive guest list.
Slightly smarting from news reports of fat-cat gluttony, organizers gave free tickets to the "Commander in Chief Ball" to 2,000 military personnel and their families. Of course, the attendees were all handpicked by the Pentagon to ensure an appreciative crowd and to weed out anyone who might say anything uncomfortable. You know, those subversive party-poopers who just have to ask why their friends and relatives continue to be killed fighting in a country which was no threat to America.
Meanwhile, over in free Iraq, our men and women in uniform continue to fight and die defending themselves against the happily liberated Iraqi people. Being told to stop whining and accept "the army we have," they continue to scrounge junkyards for makeshift armor plating for their vehicles and ask their families to pass the collection plate at home in the hopes of getting enough money to buy bulletproof vests.
Some people along the parade route in Washington, and at other locations around the country, did not feel at one with the cheering crowds and made their feelings plain with protest and dissent. Demonstrating that they have taken the inaugural message of freedom to heart, a number of Bush supporters along the route and on talk radio promptly attacked the protesters as "traitors."
Ahead, we see four more years of doubletalk and doublethink, of propagandistic calls to war and calls to spend, of projecting happy illusions while hiding from reality, of cloaking real intentions in soothing language. Hold on tight.
1/17/2005
No Weapons, No Regrets, No Shame
Well, it's official. The White House quietly announced last week that Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group has packed it in, giving up the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Remember them? They were the huge pile of terrible weapons which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others assured us repeatedly and apocalyptically just had to exist and were doubtlessly going to be used against us.
You may recall Duelfer's preliminary report back in October that Iraq's WMD arsenal was actually destroyed more than a decade ago. As this was not what the White House wanted to hear, the report was buried and the ISG sent back into the field. Of course, now that the election is safely in the past, it doesn't really matter what they report -- from the Administration's standpoint, anyway. From the standpoint of the people whose loved ones have been killed in this splendid little war, it matters a whole lot.
Almost two years have passed since we invaded Iraq, and while we've managed to kill an awful lot of people, turn the rest of the world against us and bog ourselves down in a desert quagmire, no weapons have ever been found. The last-ditch hope from invasion supporters is that Saddam smuggled his WND stockpiles to other countries before the war, but there is no evidence of such a move.
Other justifications for the invasion have likewise disintegrated, from Saddam Hussein's alleged al Qaeda connections to those unmanned poison-spraying drones which didn't work and couldn't do what they were alleged to even if they did work. The sole remaining excuse is the liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam's tyranny, but the Iraqi people themselves don't seem terribly pleased to be the hosts of an indefinite American occupation force, especially one which promised the moon and then didn't even deliver green cheese.
For his part, Bush told ABC that he has "no regrets" over his invasion obsession, still insisting that the Iraq War is on track and has made the world a safer place. This shows a denial of reality of such staggering proportions that one has to wonder whether he is living in a dream world.
Perhaps he is. It was recently reported that Bush ordered his aides not to bring him any "bad news" on Iraq and only tell him the good stuff. Combine this with his infamous remark that he never bothers to get the news by himself and you have a perfect example of a child monarch, kept blissfully ignorant by his scheming advisers.
He also told the Washington Post that he sees his re-election squeaker as a complete vindication of his disastrous Iraq policies, therefore no one will be held accountable for anything Iraq-related, from the twisting of pre-war intelligence to justify an already-made decision, to the rejection of any sort of post-war planning beyond flowers-in-the-streets wishful thinking.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who overruled his military generals on required force levels and only last month told front-line troops to stop whining about chronic armor shortages, will keep his job. So will Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who cherry-picked raw intelligence data to manufacture a nonexistent Iraq-al Qaeda link. Ditto for Vice President Dick Cheney, who kept on referring to fictional Iraqi nuclear programs and imaginary Prague meetings long after both were firmly disproved. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who invoked images of phantom mushroom clouds and tried covering up the pre-9/11 intelligence briefing warning of an al Qaeda plot, is actually getting a promotion to Secretary of State. (Colin Powell, the current holder of that job, was pushed aside and finally pushed out entirely for insufficient cheerleading.) And White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who perverted law and morality to justify torturing prisoners in Cuba and Iraq, is likewise being advanced to Attorney General.
Tom Lehrer once famously said that satire died the day Henry Kissinger, one of the chief architects of the Vietnam War, won the Nobel Peace Prize. That thin scream you hear is satire dying another death. How on Earth can one satirize a President so firmly convinced that up is down and black is white? Where is the humor in an Administration which rewards pleasant lies while punishing unpleasant truths?
The only thing preventing total despair is one bright spot: the imminent-disaster fear campaign used so successfully in manipulating us into supporting the Iraq War doesn't seem to be working so well in scaring up support for gutting Social Security. A leaked memo written by one of Karl Rove's aides, bragging about how the neoconservatives who have hated the program since the day it was created finally have a chance to destroy it, provides a window into the inner workings of the White House's thought processes. Numerical analyses showing how such privatization would make the national debt skyrocket beyond all control didn't help, and even some Republicans are backing away from the plan.
The ISG has now officially admitted to reality. But it seems President Bush and his inner circle never will. And the more they try to hide their heads in the sands, the longer this stupid and pointless war will continue, and the more American soldiers will come home in body bags.
You may recall Duelfer's preliminary report back in October that Iraq's WMD arsenal was actually destroyed more than a decade ago. As this was not what the White House wanted to hear, the report was buried and the ISG sent back into the field. Of course, now that the election is safely in the past, it doesn't really matter what they report -- from the Administration's standpoint, anyway. From the standpoint of the people whose loved ones have been killed in this splendid little war, it matters a whole lot.
Almost two years have passed since we invaded Iraq, and while we've managed to kill an awful lot of people, turn the rest of the world against us and bog ourselves down in a desert quagmire, no weapons have ever been found. The last-ditch hope from invasion supporters is that Saddam smuggled his WND stockpiles to other countries before the war, but there is no evidence of such a move.
Other justifications for the invasion have likewise disintegrated, from Saddam Hussein's alleged al Qaeda connections to those unmanned poison-spraying drones which didn't work and couldn't do what they were alleged to even if they did work. The sole remaining excuse is the liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam's tyranny, but the Iraqi people themselves don't seem terribly pleased to be the hosts of an indefinite American occupation force, especially one which promised the moon and then didn't even deliver green cheese.
For his part, Bush told ABC that he has "no regrets" over his invasion obsession, still insisting that the Iraq War is on track and has made the world a safer place. This shows a denial of reality of such staggering proportions that one has to wonder whether he is living in a dream world.
Perhaps he is. It was recently reported that Bush ordered his aides not to bring him any "bad news" on Iraq and only tell him the good stuff. Combine this with his infamous remark that he never bothers to get the news by himself and you have a perfect example of a child monarch, kept blissfully ignorant by his scheming advisers.
He also told the Washington Post that he sees his re-election squeaker as a complete vindication of his disastrous Iraq policies, therefore no one will be held accountable for anything Iraq-related, from the twisting of pre-war intelligence to justify an already-made decision, to the rejection of any sort of post-war planning beyond flowers-in-the-streets wishful thinking.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who overruled his military generals on required force levels and only last month told front-line troops to stop whining about chronic armor shortages, will keep his job. So will Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who cherry-picked raw intelligence data to manufacture a nonexistent Iraq-al Qaeda link. Ditto for Vice President Dick Cheney, who kept on referring to fictional Iraqi nuclear programs and imaginary Prague meetings long after both were firmly disproved. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who invoked images of phantom mushroom clouds and tried covering up the pre-9/11 intelligence briefing warning of an al Qaeda plot, is actually getting a promotion to Secretary of State. (Colin Powell, the current holder of that job, was pushed aside and finally pushed out entirely for insufficient cheerleading.) And White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who perverted law and morality to justify torturing prisoners in Cuba and Iraq, is likewise being advanced to Attorney General.
Tom Lehrer once famously said that satire died the day Henry Kissinger, one of the chief architects of the Vietnam War, won the Nobel Peace Prize. That thin scream you hear is satire dying another death. How on Earth can one satirize a President so firmly convinced that up is down and black is white? Where is the humor in an Administration which rewards pleasant lies while punishing unpleasant truths?
The only thing preventing total despair is one bright spot: the imminent-disaster fear campaign used so successfully in manipulating us into supporting the Iraq War doesn't seem to be working so well in scaring up support for gutting Social Security. A leaked memo written by one of Karl Rove's aides, bragging about how the neoconservatives who have hated the program since the day it was created finally have a chance to destroy it, provides a window into the inner workings of the White House's thought processes. Numerical analyses showing how such privatization would make the national debt skyrocket beyond all control didn't help, and even some Republicans are backing away from the plan.
The ISG has now officially admitted to reality. But it seems President Bush and his inner circle never will. And the more they try to hide their heads in the sands, the longer this stupid and pointless war will continue, and the more American soldiers will come home in body bags.
1/11/2005
Political Payola
Back in the 1950s, the world of rock-'n-roll radio was all aflutter over disclosures that disk jockeys routinely took secret payments from record companies to guarantee air time for their songs. The practice, which became known as payola, sparked a big scandal and heartfelt industry promises never to do it again.
As the French would say, plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Armstrong Williams is a highly conservative black commentator who opines on the issues of the day in his syndicated newspaper column and TV show, not to mention the various television pundit shows on which he is a frequent guest. Over the last year or two, he has spoken out strongly in favor of the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind Act, the education-reform law which is supposed to increase student performance. He made it a constant theme, often inviting Education Secretary Rod Paige on his show to expound on the law's benefits.
Now it turns out he had motives other than mere punditry. USA Today revealed last week that via the Department of Education, the White House secretly gave Williams payola -- $241,000, to be exact -- to provide an Administration-friendly forum for NCLB on his own show, to support it when he went on other shows, and to lobby other black journalists to get in line with the cause.
Not only did Williams never bother mentioning to anyone that his pro-NCLB comments in various media outlets were actually paid political announcements, it took a Freedom of Information Act request to pry the information out of the White House. Somewhat to his credit, he admitted that what he did was wrong, which is putting it mildly. Tribune Media Services has already dropped his column and one TV network has suspended his show. Other newspapers are announcing that they will no longer run his Op-Ed submissions because they'll never know for sure if he's trying to pull the same scam.
Williams will face the music, as well he should. Secretly taking money to promote a partisan political agenda while hiding that minor fact from readers and viewers, not to mention the networks on which he appeared, is way out of line.
What remains to be seen is whether the White House will face any consequences over this. You see, it is extremely illegal for the government to engage in domestic propaganda. And it's not like they haven't gotten caught at this before. Last year, it was revealed that the Administration had produced fake news videos with actors posing as reporters touting the then-pending Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Proving that some people never learn, it was revealed only last week that the same swindle was pulled to sell the White House's illegal-drug policies. In both cases, more than one station was deceived into running the videos as actual news items before the fraud was unmasked.
Disturbingly, the White House says this latest flap is not a big deal and blamed it on Education. They in turn shrugged it off as "a permissible use of taxpayer funds." Permissible to use our tax dollars to pay off so-called journalists into regurgitating government propaganda? Um...no, it isn't. Not by a long shot. And by the way, how wonderful can this law possibly be if the Administration has to resort to flat-out bribery to get it some good press? (Answer: it isn't. The White House has failed to fund it adequately, it's not getting the results it's supposed to get, and even some conservatives are backing away from it.)
Even more disturbingly, Williams admitted that "this happens all the time" and that "there are others" who take White House payola while pretending to be independent. Which leads us to wonder: how many other paid shills are out there masquerading as real journalists? How many other TV appearances are actually Administration-approved infomercials? When we turn on pundit shows and see Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity praising the White House's political agenda, are we seeing actual independent commentary or are we seeing Ministry of Truth propaganda?
The White House claims the Williams payola was an isolated incident, that there are no other journalists on the government payroll parroting what they're paid to say.
Putting it bluntly, I don't believe them. The Administration has been caught too many times telling blatant lies and using anything-goes ad campaigns to sell policy to be trusted on anything they say.
The Bush Administration should end this practice now. But since the White House doesn't seem to realize it did anything wrong (and not for the first time, either) it is up to journalists to uphold ethical standards and refuse such political payola. It sure isn't happening on Pennsylvania Avenue.
As the French would say, plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Armstrong Williams is a highly conservative black commentator who opines on the issues of the day in his syndicated newspaper column and TV show, not to mention the various television pundit shows on which he is a frequent guest. Over the last year or two, he has spoken out strongly in favor of the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind Act, the education-reform law which is supposed to increase student performance. He made it a constant theme, often inviting Education Secretary Rod Paige on his show to expound on the law's benefits.
Now it turns out he had motives other than mere punditry. USA Today revealed last week that via the Department of Education, the White House secretly gave Williams payola -- $241,000, to be exact -- to provide an Administration-friendly forum for NCLB on his own show, to support it when he went on other shows, and to lobby other black journalists to get in line with the cause.
Not only did Williams never bother mentioning to anyone that his pro-NCLB comments in various media outlets were actually paid political announcements, it took a Freedom of Information Act request to pry the information out of the White House. Somewhat to his credit, he admitted that what he did was wrong, which is putting it mildly. Tribune Media Services has already dropped his column and one TV network has suspended his show. Other newspapers are announcing that they will no longer run his Op-Ed submissions because they'll never know for sure if he's trying to pull the same scam.
Williams will face the music, as well he should. Secretly taking money to promote a partisan political agenda while hiding that minor fact from readers and viewers, not to mention the networks on which he appeared, is way out of line.
What remains to be seen is whether the White House will face any consequences over this. You see, it is extremely illegal for the government to engage in domestic propaganda. And it's not like they haven't gotten caught at this before. Last year, it was revealed that the Administration had produced fake news videos with actors posing as reporters touting the then-pending Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Proving that some people never learn, it was revealed only last week that the same swindle was pulled to sell the White House's illegal-drug policies. In both cases, more than one station was deceived into running the videos as actual news items before the fraud was unmasked.
Disturbingly, the White House says this latest flap is not a big deal and blamed it on Education. They in turn shrugged it off as "a permissible use of taxpayer funds." Permissible to use our tax dollars to pay off so-called journalists into regurgitating government propaganda? Um...no, it isn't. Not by a long shot. And by the way, how wonderful can this law possibly be if the Administration has to resort to flat-out bribery to get it some good press? (Answer: it isn't. The White House has failed to fund it adequately, it's not getting the results it's supposed to get, and even some conservatives are backing away from it.)
Even more disturbingly, Williams admitted that "this happens all the time" and that "there are others" who take White House payola while pretending to be independent. Which leads us to wonder: how many other paid shills are out there masquerading as real journalists? How many other TV appearances are actually Administration-approved infomercials? When we turn on pundit shows and see Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity praising the White House's political agenda, are we seeing actual independent commentary or are we seeing Ministry of Truth propaganda?
The White House claims the Williams payola was an isolated incident, that there are no other journalists on the government payroll parroting what they're paid to say.
Putting it bluntly, I don't believe them. The Administration has been caught too many times telling blatant lies and using anything-goes ad campaigns to sell policy to be trusted on anything they say.
The Bush Administration should end this practice now. But since the White House doesn't seem to realize it did anything wrong (and not for the first time, either) it is up to journalists to uphold ethical standards and refuse such political payola. It sure isn't happening on Pennsylvania Avenue.
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