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.

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.

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.