It has become standard operating procedure in the Bush Administration that if the facts don’t jibe with the ideology, one just ignores the facts and keeps plowing on straight ahead. Such is the Administration’s response to the 9/11 commission’s discrediting of one of its favorite canards: that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were partners in mayhem, that the invasion of Iraq was part of the War on Terror, and there was no substantive difference between Iraq’s secular dictatorship and al Qaeda’s theocratic terrorism.
“We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States,” the commission reported in direct contradiction to the standard Administration line. “Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded.”
In any other Administration, it would quickly be realized that this particular dog no longer hunts and a proven-wrong sales pitch would be abandoned. But after three years of this Administration, we know better.
Proving himself to be utterly unable to step outside his ideological box, President Bush responded to the report by flatly denying it and just repeating the same thing. “There was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,” he insisted somewhat peevishly. (In his defense, perhaps he was never told of the commission’s findings. After all, he has bragged on the record that he doesn’t bother to keep up with world events from any independent sources, preferring instead to be spoon-fed by his staff.)
Not content simply to give the impression of being disconnected from reality, Bush went on to deliver a real whopper: “This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda.”
Oh, really? That will be a surprise to millions of Americans who were intentionally deceived by White House rhetoric, both specific and general, into thinking just such a connection existed. Vice President Cheney kept mentioning the mythical Prague meeting between lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent long after it was debunked by American and Czech intelligence. Other officials, including Bush himself, were a little more careful, choosing instead to use buzzwords such as “Saddam,” “September 11” and “al Qaeda” endlessly in the same sentences to plant the impression of a connection without actually saying so. Either way, Bush’s statement comes off as either shamelessly dishonest or utterly idiotic.
Some say that the White House’s staying “on message” no matter what shows resolve and steadfastness. But when you keep on using the same lines long after they’ve repeatedly been exposed as false, that’s not resolve, that’s arrogant stupidity. Whether it’s deliberate or delusional, the thought of such blatant deceit coming from the most powerful people in the world is not a comforting one.
6/17/2004
6/16/2004
Once More, with Feeling
How many times must it be said?
Iraq was not involved with al Qaeda.
Iraq was not involved with al Qaeda.
IRAQ WAS NOT INVOLVED WITH AL QAEDA!
For two years, an unvarying drumbeat of misinformation has poured out of the White House claiming that Iraq and al Qaeda were thick as thieves. Combined with the constant insinuation that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks, it was a major selling point in the campaign to scare Americans into supporting the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. This was done over the protests of State Department and CIA analysts pointing out that no such connections have been shown to exist, and the secular Saddam Hussein and the Islamist Osama bin Laden were well known to loathe each other. Since the fall of Baghdad, no evidence of such a link has been discovered.
This minor inconvenience has failed to slow down the propaganda machine in any way. Indeed, as recently as this week, Vice President Cheney claimed that Hussein “had long established ties with al Qaeda.” President Bush dutifully backed him up, saying that the alleged post-invasion presence in Iraq of al Qaeda deputy Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi constitutes “the best evidence of [Iraqi] connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda.” The conservative media, especially William Kristol’s Weekly Standard magazine and the NewsMax.com website, have valiantly attempted to flog this particular dead horse, insisting that Hussein and bin Laden were bosom buddies.
Now the 9/11 commission, aided by testimony from senior FBI and CIA analysts, has added its weight to this debunking, having failed to uncover any credible evidence of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration. While finding that al Qaeda did make overtures to Iraq (among other countries, including Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan) asking for training camps and weapons, those overtures were ignored. The supposed and much-ballyhooed April 2001 meeting in Prague between lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent never happened. Iraq was not involved with 9/11 in any way.
So a central pillar of the Bush Administration’s argument for invading Iraq has been discredited – again. Every time Bush or Cheney insists, in the face of all logic and facts, that Hussein and bin Laden were partners in jihad, they are further exposed as self-deluded liars who are utterly unable to deviate from a proven-false party line. The rationales to justify the war and the chaos which followed have grown fewer and fewer. But don’t expect any realization of that fact in the White House.
Iraq was not involved with al Qaeda.
Iraq was not involved with al Qaeda.
IRAQ WAS NOT INVOLVED WITH AL QAEDA!
For two years, an unvarying drumbeat of misinformation has poured out of the White House claiming that Iraq and al Qaeda were thick as thieves. Combined with the constant insinuation that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks, it was a major selling point in the campaign to scare Americans into supporting the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. This was done over the protests of State Department and CIA analysts pointing out that no such connections have been shown to exist, and the secular Saddam Hussein and the Islamist Osama bin Laden were well known to loathe each other. Since the fall of Baghdad, no evidence of such a link has been discovered.
This minor inconvenience has failed to slow down the propaganda machine in any way. Indeed, as recently as this week, Vice President Cheney claimed that Hussein “had long established ties with al Qaeda.” President Bush dutifully backed him up, saying that the alleged post-invasion presence in Iraq of al Qaeda deputy Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi constitutes “the best evidence of [Iraqi] connection to al Qaeda affiliates and al Qaeda.” The conservative media, especially William Kristol’s Weekly Standard magazine and the NewsMax.com website, have valiantly attempted to flog this particular dead horse, insisting that Hussein and bin Laden were bosom buddies.
Now the 9/11 commission, aided by testimony from senior FBI and CIA analysts, has added its weight to this debunking, having failed to uncover any credible evidence of Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration. While finding that al Qaeda did make overtures to Iraq (among other countries, including Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan) asking for training camps and weapons, those overtures were ignored. The supposed and much-ballyhooed April 2001 meeting in Prague between lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent never happened. Iraq was not involved with 9/11 in any way.
So a central pillar of the Bush Administration’s argument for invading Iraq has been discredited – again. Every time Bush or Cheney insists, in the face of all logic and facts, that Hussein and bin Laden were partners in jihad, they are further exposed as self-deluded liars who are utterly unable to deviate from a proven-false party line. The rationales to justify the war and the chaos which followed have grown fewer and fewer. But don’t expect any realization of that fact in the White House.
6/08/2004
Remembering Reagan
When Ronald Reagan left the White House and retired from public life back in 1989, it was well known that at 78, he would not be as active an ex-President as others, from Richard Nixon to Jimmy Carter. When he announced in 1994 that he was suffering from the disease sadly nicknamed the Long Goodbye, Alzheimer’s sprang to the forefront of the public consciousness. And now that he is gone, we find ourselves looking back collectively.
Known as the Great Communicator, Reagan brought an almost royal classiness to the White House unseen since the days of JFK. Everything was white-tie, the finest china, the fanciest guest list. Reagan’s cheerful what-me-worry optimism was a decided change from Jimmy Carter’s often dour seriousness. He could always be counted upon to deliver a stern face or a comforting expression when called for, and as we are constantly reminded, he made America "feel good about itself again."
Unfortunately, that's not all he did.
Reagan also brought an air of selfishness and utter insensitivity to many issues. Whether it was declaring that ketchup was good enough as a vegetable for school lunches, announcing on Thanksgiving Day that unemployment benefits would be taxed, or never offering anything close to a balanced budget then blaming Congress for fiscal excess, the Reagan Administration too often displayed the uglier aspects of the “Me Decade.”
Reagan ignored the early years of the AIDS epidemic while cutting social spending to the bone and beyond, crippling health care, education, housing and other public services. His tax policies recklessly redistributed wealth upwards, increasing the number of families below the poverty line by a full third. His mania for deregulation paved the way for the savings and loan scandal, the bill for which you and I are still paying through our tax dollars.
He brought about an end to the Cold War by embarking on an uncontrolled arms race, forcing the Soviets to bankrupt their economy in a vain effort to keep up – and it was revealed only after the Soviet Union collapsed that its military was nowhere near the fearsome beast he claimed it was.
For someone who claimed to champion freedom across the globe, it should be noted that Reagan winked and said nothing when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians -- the very same atrocities which George W. Bush exhumed fifteen years later to justify invading Iraq. He was Our Man in Baghdad at the time, you see, and thus could do no wrong. It will be interesting to see how the commentators who now rush to heap posthumous praise on Reagan handle this little matter...but it's more likely that it will be simply ignored.
His anti-Communist “evil empire” rhetoric made its way into the popular culture of the 1980s, emerging in such gratuitously Soviet-bashing movies as Red Dawn, Invasion USA and Rocky IV as well as the TV miniseries Amerika. (It’s not like this was new to him. Back when he was head of the Screen Actors Guild, he was an FBI informer, ratting on his fellow thespians at the first hint of any political thought deemed unorthodox.)
But Reagan’s most lasting impact may well be not the tripling of the national debt nor the relentless government-is-the-enemy GOP mindset, but rather the transformation of the Presidency into an endless PR campaign. His handlers knew all too well that since Reagan the man was a genuinely nice guy, looked good on TV and could deflect inconvenient questions with a smile and a wave, Reagan the President could get away with almost anything. And so Reagan the President was able to push through policies that hurt children, the disabled, the sick, and the elderly – people who were usually incapable of fighting back – while Reagan the man stood above it all, untouchable.
Reagan was the Teflon President; nothing stuck to him. No matter how many policy disasters came about, from the secret wars of El Salvador and Nicaragua to the constitutional morass of Iran-Contra, he personally was never held accountable for anything. As House Speaker Tip O’Neill recounted in his memoirs, a constituent whose disability benefits had been cut came to him for help. As they discussed the problem, the constituent told O’Neill he was being too tough on Reagan and asked him to lay off. “Who do you think is cutting your benefits?” O’Neill asked, stunned. “It’s not him,” came the confident reply, “it’s the people around him.”
Reagan was the perfect figurehead President, delegating the actual responsibility to his staff while reserving the TV appearances for himself. No one else could have gotten away with blundering his way through a press conference with one misstatement and gaffe after another; no one else could have gotten away with looking strongly into the camera and blaming other people for his own mistakes.
And because of his personal appeal and charisma, he got away with it all. Once, in an inadvertently aired microphone test, he chose to quip, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” In the face of queasy public reaction, Reagan’s response, instead of admitting that nuclear annihilation might not be such a laughing matter after all, was to blame the media for reporting it in the first place. And people agreed, brushing it off as a tempest in a teapot rather than as a disturbing insight into the most powerful man on Earth.
After he left office, the conservative movement transformed him from a mere mortal into a full-fledged political saint, determined to name monuments and buildings after him in all fifty states, even trying to get his face added to Mt. Rushmore. The invocation of his name and memory was so powerful that when the conservative media pounced on rumors that CBS’ planned miniseries The Reagans was insufficiently worshipful, the network was scared into yanking it.
Reagan’s death has hastened this transformation, and the current media coverage tends to overlook the dark side of his Administration. Part of this is simply what normally happens when anyone dies: accentuate the positive while glossing over the bumpy parts. But we should not let this prevent a full and honest appraisal of his Presidency, no matter who it offends ideologically.
Known as the Great Communicator, Reagan brought an almost royal classiness to the White House unseen since the days of JFK. Everything was white-tie, the finest china, the fanciest guest list. Reagan’s cheerful what-me-worry optimism was a decided change from Jimmy Carter’s often dour seriousness. He could always be counted upon to deliver a stern face or a comforting expression when called for, and as we are constantly reminded, he made America "feel good about itself again."
Unfortunately, that's not all he did.
Reagan also brought an air of selfishness and utter insensitivity to many issues. Whether it was declaring that ketchup was good enough as a vegetable for school lunches, announcing on Thanksgiving Day that unemployment benefits would be taxed, or never offering anything close to a balanced budget then blaming Congress for fiscal excess, the Reagan Administration too often displayed the uglier aspects of the “Me Decade.”
Reagan ignored the early years of the AIDS epidemic while cutting social spending to the bone and beyond, crippling health care, education, housing and other public services. His tax policies recklessly redistributed wealth upwards, increasing the number of families below the poverty line by a full third. His mania for deregulation paved the way for the savings and loan scandal, the bill for which you and I are still paying through our tax dollars.
He brought about an end to the Cold War by embarking on an uncontrolled arms race, forcing the Soviets to bankrupt their economy in a vain effort to keep up – and it was revealed only after the Soviet Union collapsed that its military was nowhere near the fearsome beast he claimed it was.
For someone who claimed to champion freedom across the globe, it should be noted that Reagan winked and said nothing when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians -- the very same atrocities which George W. Bush exhumed fifteen years later to justify invading Iraq. He was Our Man in Baghdad at the time, you see, and thus could do no wrong. It will be interesting to see how the commentators who now rush to heap posthumous praise on Reagan handle this little matter...but it's more likely that it will be simply ignored.
His anti-Communist “evil empire” rhetoric made its way into the popular culture of the 1980s, emerging in such gratuitously Soviet-bashing movies as Red Dawn, Invasion USA and Rocky IV as well as the TV miniseries Amerika. (It’s not like this was new to him. Back when he was head of the Screen Actors Guild, he was an FBI informer, ratting on his fellow thespians at the first hint of any political thought deemed unorthodox.)
But Reagan’s most lasting impact may well be not the tripling of the national debt nor the relentless government-is-the-enemy GOP mindset, but rather the transformation of the Presidency into an endless PR campaign. His handlers knew all too well that since Reagan the man was a genuinely nice guy, looked good on TV and could deflect inconvenient questions with a smile and a wave, Reagan the President could get away with almost anything. And so Reagan the President was able to push through policies that hurt children, the disabled, the sick, and the elderly – people who were usually incapable of fighting back – while Reagan the man stood above it all, untouchable.
Reagan was the Teflon President; nothing stuck to him. No matter how many policy disasters came about, from the secret wars of El Salvador and Nicaragua to the constitutional morass of Iran-Contra, he personally was never held accountable for anything. As House Speaker Tip O’Neill recounted in his memoirs, a constituent whose disability benefits had been cut came to him for help. As they discussed the problem, the constituent told O’Neill he was being too tough on Reagan and asked him to lay off. “Who do you think is cutting your benefits?” O’Neill asked, stunned. “It’s not him,” came the confident reply, “it’s the people around him.”
Reagan was the perfect figurehead President, delegating the actual responsibility to his staff while reserving the TV appearances for himself. No one else could have gotten away with blundering his way through a press conference with one misstatement and gaffe after another; no one else could have gotten away with looking strongly into the camera and blaming other people for his own mistakes.
And because of his personal appeal and charisma, he got away with it all. Once, in an inadvertently aired microphone test, he chose to quip, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” In the face of queasy public reaction, Reagan’s response, instead of admitting that nuclear annihilation might not be such a laughing matter after all, was to blame the media for reporting it in the first place. And people agreed, brushing it off as a tempest in a teapot rather than as a disturbing insight into the most powerful man on Earth.
After he left office, the conservative movement transformed him from a mere mortal into a full-fledged political saint, determined to name monuments and buildings after him in all fifty states, even trying to get his face added to Mt. Rushmore. The invocation of his name and memory was so powerful that when the conservative media pounced on rumors that CBS’ planned miniseries The Reagans was insufficiently worshipful, the network was scared into yanking it.
Reagan’s death has hastened this transformation, and the current media coverage tends to overlook the dark side of his Administration. Part of this is simply what normally happens when anyone dies: accentuate the positive while glossing over the bumpy parts. But we should not let this prevent a full and honest appraisal of his Presidency, no matter who it offends ideologically.
6/03/2004
Back to the Gulag
In the bad old days of the Soviet Union, the Communist government maintained the Gulag, a network of prisons and labor camps across the country (but mainly in the frozen tundra of Siberia) to hold anyone even remotely suspected of insufficient support for the Revolution, having the wrong ethnic identity, and other supposed offenses. (For a vivid depiction of life in the camps, from the endless cold and hunger to the helpless dread one felt at falling into this legal nowhere, I recommend Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.)
A half-century after Josef Stalin’s death, the United States is in grave danger of creating a Gulag of its own. Not in terms of below-freezing prisons in Alaska, but in terms of a legal black hole.
Two years ago, an American citizen and former gang member named Jose Padilla was arrested by federal agents after stepping off a plane in Chicago. In tandem with the White House, the Justice Department said he was an al Qaeda agent, unilaterally declared him to be an “enemy combatant,” and ordered him locked up in a Navy brig in North Carolina. Since then, he has been forbidden to see anyone, from his family to his lawyers, and has been under deep interrogation. He was never charged with any crime and was never put on trial for anything. He was just pronounced guilty and was made to disappear. (It takes a wry sense of irony to note that Padilla’s arrest and enemy-combatant designation was demagogically announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft in, of all places, Moscow.)
Now, the Justice Department has defended its handling of the Padilla case for the first time, and the way in which it has done so is astonishing. Deputy Attorney General James Comey held a press conference the other day at which he announced that Padilla planned to blow up apartment buildings and commit other crimes. Anticipating reporters’ questions, Comey freely said that if Padilla had been put on trial instead of being declared an enemy combatant, “he would very likely have followed his lawyer’s advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right. He would likely have ended up a free man, with our only hope being to try to follow him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and hope – pray, really – that we didn’t lose him.” He also ominously said that “we’ll figure out down the road what we do with Jose Padilla.”
So the only way to deal with an American citizen who may or may not have been in league with al Qaeda was to make him disappear, that the right of any accused person not to be forced to testify against himself is little more than a technicality, and that Padilla would probably have been acquitted had he claimed that right? To me, this sounds an awful lot like an admission that a court case would likely have been painfully weak. But having invested a lot of political capital in proclaiming him to be a terrorist – especially by blaring accusations in a full press conference without ever bothering to give him any chance to respond – the Justice Department cannot now back away from it.
This is not, of course, to say that Padilla is without doubt an innocent victim of circumstance, blameless and pure. Far from it; we do not know for sure whether he actually committed any of the offenses of which he has been accused. All we have is the government’s claims that he did – and they refuse to put those claims to the test in court.
The American system of justice is based on the notion that anyone accused of wrongdoing is entitled to a fair trial at which the government would have to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Dispensing with all that and just declaring someone to be guilty without even charging him with anything is, quite simply, un-American. The concept that the government has the unchallengeable power to take anyone, particularly an American citizen, and throw them in jail without charges, without a trial, and without end is nothing short of scary.
After two years in a legal limbo, Jose Padilla deserves a trial. If he is found guilty of being an al Qaeda terrorist-in-training, lock him up and throw away the key. If he is found innocent, set him free and allow him to get back to his life. But we will never know the truth unless the government is willing to make an actual case instead of just announcing him to be guilty. Doing anything else is a mockery of justice, plain and simple.
A half-century after Josef Stalin’s death, the United States is in grave danger of creating a Gulag of its own. Not in terms of below-freezing prisons in Alaska, but in terms of a legal black hole.
Two years ago, an American citizen and former gang member named Jose Padilla was arrested by federal agents after stepping off a plane in Chicago. In tandem with the White House, the Justice Department said he was an al Qaeda agent, unilaterally declared him to be an “enemy combatant,” and ordered him locked up in a Navy brig in North Carolina. Since then, he has been forbidden to see anyone, from his family to his lawyers, and has been under deep interrogation. He was never charged with any crime and was never put on trial for anything. He was just pronounced guilty and was made to disappear. (It takes a wry sense of irony to note that Padilla’s arrest and enemy-combatant designation was demagogically announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft in, of all places, Moscow.)
Now, the Justice Department has defended its handling of the Padilla case for the first time, and the way in which it has done so is astonishing. Deputy Attorney General James Comey held a press conference the other day at which he announced that Padilla planned to blow up apartment buildings and commit other crimes. Anticipating reporters’ questions, Comey freely said that if Padilla had been put on trial instead of being declared an enemy combatant, “he would very likely have followed his lawyer’s advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right. He would likely have ended up a free man, with our only hope being to try to follow him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and hope – pray, really – that we didn’t lose him.” He also ominously said that “we’ll figure out down the road what we do with Jose Padilla.”
So the only way to deal with an American citizen who may or may not have been in league with al Qaeda was to make him disappear, that the right of any accused person not to be forced to testify against himself is little more than a technicality, and that Padilla would probably have been acquitted had he claimed that right? To me, this sounds an awful lot like an admission that a court case would likely have been painfully weak. But having invested a lot of political capital in proclaiming him to be a terrorist – especially by blaring accusations in a full press conference without ever bothering to give him any chance to respond – the Justice Department cannot now back away from it.
This is not, of course, to say that Padilla is without doubt an innocent victim of circumstance, blameless and pure. Far from it; we do not know for sure whether he actually committed any of the offenses of which he has been accused. All we have is the government’s claims that he did – and they refuse to put those claims to the test in court.
The American system of justice is based on the notion that anyone accused of wrongdoing is entitled to a fair trial at which the government would have to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Dispensing with all that and just declaring someone to be guilty without even charging him with anything is, quite simply, un-American. The concept that the government has the unchallengeable power to take anyone, particularly an American citizen, and throw them in jail without charges, without a trial, and without end is nothing short of scary.
After two years in a legal limbo, Jose Padilla deserves a trial. If he is found guilty of being an al Qaeda terrorist-in-training, lock him up and throw away the key. If he is found innocent, set him free and allow him to get back to his life. But we will never know the truth unless the government is willing to make an actual case instead of just announcing him to be guilty. Doing anything else is a mockery of justice, plain and simple.
6/01/2004
Busted!
Two months before America invaded Iraq last year, a particularly massive contract to rebuild the Iraqi oil infrastructure was awarded to Halliburton by the Army Corps of Engineers. The award was under most unusual circumstances: there was no competitive bidding and no ceiling to the payment amount, both of which were contrary to the usual process. In a nutshell, a multi-billion dollar contract was simply given away.
By a staggering coincidence, Halliburton’s CEO had left the company in 2000 to become Vice President of the United States. Despite Dick Cheney’s repeated denials that he had anything to do with the deal, there has always been more than a whiff of cronyism about it. (It did not help that since becoming Vice President, Cheney has annually received hundreds of thousands of dollars in “deferred compensation” from Halliburton.) It was blatantly obvious that Halliburton could never have gotten the contract under such conditions in a million years without its former boss now being VP, but it could never be proved.
Until now.
Time is now reporting that Cheney, far from keeping his old company at arm’s length, actively coordinated the sweetheart deal. The magazine obtained a copy of an internal E-mail message, dated March 5, 2003 and written by a Corps of Engineers official, saying that the contract had been approved and that the White House would be officially informed the next day.
“We anticipate no issue,” the message goes on to say, “since action has been coordinated w[ith] VP’s office.”
Cheney’s spokesman Kevin Kellems responded to the article by claiming the E-mail was just “a heads-up...in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton.” This does not, however, sound like much of a heads-up to me. Rather, it says loud and clear that the deal was engineered to benefit Cheney’s old cronies, ethics be damned.
Anyone else would instantly recognize that it’s just plain wrong for a government official to be actively involved in the awarding of a contract to one’s former colleagues. The fact that the contract was awarded under such ludicrously favorable terms makes it all the more clear that Cheney simply doesn’t get it. Does he really believe that the rules don’t apply to him, that the normal ethics laws are, to steal a phrase from Leona Helmsley, “for little people?”
As the fiascos keep piling up with no end in sight, Cheney has become a major liability to the Bush re-election effort. But since this Administration never holds anyone in power accountable for anything, don’t expect any consequences.
By a staggering coincidence, Halliburton’s CEO had left the company in 2000 to become Vice President of the United States. Despite Dick Cheney’s repeated denials that he had anything to do with the deal, there has always been more than a whiff of cronyism about it. (It did not help that since becoming Vice President, Cheney has annually received hundreds of thousands of dollars in “deferred compensation” from Halliburton.) It was blatantly obvious that Halliburton could never have gotten the contract under such conditions in a million years without its former boss now being VP, but it could never be proved.
Until now.
Time is now reporting that Cheney, far from keeping his old company at arm’s length, actively coordinated the sweetheart deal. The magazine obtained a copy of an internal E-mail message, dated March 5, 2003 and written by a Corps of Engineers official, saying that the contract had been approved and that the White House would be officially informed the next day.
“We anticipate no issue,” the message goes on to say, “since action has been coordinated w[ith] VP’s office.”
Cheney’s spokesman Kevin Kellems responded to the article by claiming the E-mail was just “a heads-up...in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton.” This does not, however, sound like much of a heads-up to me. Rather, it says loud and clear that the deal was engineered to benefit Cheney’s old cronies, ethics be damned.
Anyone else would instantly recognize that it’s just plain wrong for a government official to be actively involved in the awarding of a contract to one’s former colleagues. The fact that the contract was awarded under such ludicrously favorable terms makes it all the more clear that Cheney simply doesn’t get it. Does he really believe that the rules don’t apply to him, that the normal ethics laws are, to steal a phrase from Leona Helmsley, “for little people?”
As the fiascos keep piling up with no end in sight, Cheney has become a major liability to the Bush re-election effort. But since this Administration never holds anyone in power accountable for anything, don’t expect any consequences.
5/27/2004
It's Just a Movie
Much ado has been made about 2004’s first big-scale “blockbuster” film, The Day After Tomorrow. The movie has all the usual hallmarks of a summer popcorn flick – standard cookie-cutter characters, cheesy dialogue, some good solid destruction, and a ton of money spent on special effects. In short, it’s supposed to be a nicely diverting time-waster.
Directed by Roland Emmerich, who made Independence Day as well as Godzilla (you win some, you lose some), the film is about a new Ice Age triggered in only a week or so by global warming. The result is typical summer-movie death and disaster, with the trailers showing some very exciting-looking shots of twisters demolishing downtown Los Angeles and a tsunami drowning New York. (Of course, trailers are notorious for showing only the best parts of the movie, but that’s beside the point.)
Some environmental groups have glommed onto the film, pronouncing it to be a sort of wake-up call to the dangers of global warming. (It’s not like that hasn’t been done before. Look at Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. Actually, don’t look at it; it’s not very good.) Al Gore, the Ben & Jerry guys, and others have gone on record saying that the premise is rooted in accurate (if highly exaggerated) science and that basically everything in the movie is George W. Bush’s fault.
On the other side, detractors claim the film is little more than pseudo-science tree-hugging propaganda, and have compared it to the 1983 TV film The Day After, in which the Americans and Soviets annihilate each other in a nuclear war. They also point out that the film is “inspired” by a book written by alien-abduction claimant Whitley Streiber and conspiracy-theory radio host Art Bell, insinuating that a movie based on anything from these guys can’t possibly be taken seriously.
For their part, executives at 20th Century Fox are reportedly thrilled about the free publicity they’re getting from all this commotion.
But far from being some heavy-handed political polemic, it appears that The Day After Tomorrow is really just a summer disaster movie. No more, no less. (After all, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.) It’s a throwback to the sensational disaster flicks of the 1970s just as Independence Day was a throwback to the alien-invasion movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Like TV shows which breathlessly describe their plots as “ripped from today’s headlines” to bring in audiences, the screenwriters used global warming for the film’s hot topic (ha!).
The reviews are starting to come in, and like movies in general, some are good, some are bad, and some are average. But many say that people who get into screaming matches over the film’s supposed message are missing the point; that it’s just a big, splashy spectacle of a summer movie. So don’t make such a big deal about it, and if this kind of flick is your cup of tea, enjoy.
Directed by Roland Emmerich, who made Independence Day as well as Godzilla (you win some, you lose some), the film is about a new Ice Age triggered in only a week or so by global warming. The result is typical summer-movie death and disaster, with the trailers showing some very exciting-looking shots of twisters demolishing downtown Los Angeles and a tsunami drowning New York. (Of course, trailers are notorious for showing only the best parts of the movie, but that’s beside the point.)
Some environmental groups have glommed onto the film, pronouncing it to be a sort of wake-up call to the dangers of global warming. (It’s not like that hasn’t been done before. Look at Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. Actually, don’t look at it; it’s not very good.) Al Gore, the Ben & Jerry guys, and others have gone on record saying that the premise is rooted in accurate (if highly exaggerated) science and that basically everything in the movie is George W. Bush’s fault.
On the other side, detractors claim the film is little more than pseudo-science tree-hugging propaganda, and have compared it to the 1983 TV film The Day After, in which the Americans and Soviets annihilate each other in a nuclear war. They also point out that the film is “inspired” by a book written by alien-abduction claimant Whitley Streiber and conspiracy-theory radio host Art Bell, insinuating that a movie based on anything from these guys can’t possibly be taken seriously.
For their part, executives at 20th Century Fox are reportedly thrilled about the free publicity they’re getting from all this commotion.
But far from being some heavy-handed political polemic, it appears that The Day After Tomorrow is really just a summer disaster movie. No more, no less. (After all, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.) It’s a throwback to the sensational disaster flicks of the 1970s just as Independence Day was a throwback to the alien-invasion movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Like TV shows which breathlessly describe their plots as “ripped from today’s headlines” to bring in audiences, the screenwriters used global warming for the film’s hot topic (ha!).
The reviews are starting to come in, and like movies in general, some are good, some are bad, and some are average. But many say that people who get into screaming matches over the film’s supposed message are missing the point; that it’s just a big, splashy spectacle of a summer movie. So don’t make such a big deal about it, and if this kind of flick is your cup of tea, enjoy.
5/25/2004
Too Little, Too Late
Throughout the last thirteen months of warfare in Iraq, a common criticism is that the Bush Administration had no plan and no strategy for dealing with the chaos. It was as if the White House and the Pentagon were in a permanent holding pattern, praying that they could keep the situation relatively under control until the magic date of June 30, scheduled to be the supposed “handover of sovereignty” to Iraqis. After that, whatever happens can be passed off as somebody else’s problem.
This endless dithering, based primarily on the hope that things would eventually get better, has taken its toll. Polls routinely show that a clear majority of Americans oppose President Bush’s Iraq policy, and indeed it is painfully clear that there is no policy, just stalling for time. After weeks in which he has largely let his staff do the talking – and after months in which the situation in Iraq disintegrated into a truly catastrophic quagmire – Bush himself went before the cameras last night to lay out his long-awaited plan for getting us out of this mess.
The address can be summed up in four words: too little, too late.
In his speech, with one eye firmly fixed on Election Day, Bush outlined his “five steps” to handing over power to Iraqis and getting out. As he put it, “We will hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government, help establish security, continue rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, encourage more international support, and move toward a national election that will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people.” In the midst of the cheerleading, listing the accomplishments while glossing over the setbacks, it is interesting to note that while Bush laid out goals, he did not in any way mention the process in making them happen aside from the vaguest of generalities. It’s as if all these things are expected to happen by themselves.
Bush claimed that despite the post-June 30 presence of 138,000 American soldiers, with more to come if needed and with no withdrawal timetable of any sort, “the occupation will end and Iraqis will govern their own affairs.” This one is simply laughable. American troops will be able to go where they want, when they want, and will not be answerable to any supposed Iraqi government. So in other words, the occupation will continue, no matter what it’s called. (Indeed, post-speech reaction in Iraq shows that the Iraqi people realize this all too well.) And when you get right down to it, the new Iraqi government will have almost no power to speak of.
The speech contained some moments of unintended humor, such as when he insisted that “at every stage, the United States has gone to the United Nations,” conveniently forgetting that the Administration was dragged kicking and screaming into doing so, finally bypassing the UN entirely when that body refused to provide a blank check for war.
He also attempted to blame the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal on “a few American troops,” and in a desperate effort to just make the whole thing go away, he proposed tearing down the Saddam-era prison in favor of one yet to be built. (It was, indeed, the only tangible proposal in the whole speech.) But the “anything goes” policies emanating from the highest ranks of the Pentagon which formed the basis of the abuse were quietly ignored.
What was not mentioned was quite significant: the never-found WMD arsenal (which, if you recall, was the ostensible reason for the invasion), the fact that the vast majority of Iraqis see us as occupiers rather than liberators, and, of course, the numerous policy failures which allowed the situation to degenerate as far as it has. Then again, Bush is notorious for never, ever, admitting that he or anyone around him have ever been wrong about anything, so that one was probably too much to hope for.
But most depressingly, Bush continued to insist that the Iraqi insurgency is composed simply of a ragtag collection of “terrorists” and Saddam Hussein’s “elite guards,” rather than what it really is – a broad-based nationalist uprising aimed not at bringing back the bad old days but at throwing the Americans out. By doing so, and by seeing the conflict purely in black and white terms rather than as a complex state of affairs, he sows the seeds for more and bloodier failures.
“We must keep our focus,” Bush said, but that focus has been terribly lacking throughout this whole nightmare. The White House and the Pentagon had one goal in mind on invading Iraq: overthrowing Saddam Hussein. But once that was accomplished, there was no plan to deal with what would happen next. We have seen the consequences.
The thing we need right now is a clear sense of direction from the Bush Administration, one based not on phantom deadlines or re-election bids, but on a realistic plan to get us out of the military and diplomatic disaster which threatens to be the true legacy of George W. Bush. Unfortunately, that sense was nowhere on display last night.
This endless dithering, based primarily on the hope that things would eventually get better, has taken its toll. Polls routinely show that a clear majority of Americans oppose President Bush’s Iraq policy, and indeed it is painfully clear that there is no policy, just stalling for time. After weeks in which he has largely let his staff do the talking – and after months in which the situation in Iraq disintegrated into a truly catastrophic quagmire – Bush himself went before the cameras last night to lay out his long-awaited plan for getting us out of this mess.
The address can be summed up in four words: too little, too late.
In his speech, with one eye firmly fixed on Election Day, Bush outlined his “five steps” to handing over power to Iraqis and getting out. As he put it, “We will hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government, help establish security, continue rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, encourage more international support, and move toward a national election that will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people.” In the midst of the cheerleading, listing the accomplishments while glossing over the setbacks, it is interesting to note that while Bush laid out goals, he did not in any way mention the process in making them happen aside from the vaguest of generalities. It’s as if all these things are expected to happen by themselves.
Bush claimed that despite the post-June 30 presence of 138,000 American soldiers, with more to come if needed and with no withdrawal timetable of any sort, “the occupation will end and Iraqis will govern their own affairs.” This one is simply laughable. American troops will be able to go where they want, when they want, and will not be answerable to any supposed Iraqi government. So in other words, the occupation will continue, no matter what it’s called. (Indeed, post-speech reaction in Iraq shows that the Iraqi people realize this all too well.) And when you get right down to it, the new Iraqi government will have almost no power to speak of.
The speech contained some moments of unintended humor, such as when he insisted that “at every stage, the United States has gone to the United Nations,” conveniently forgetting that the Administration was dragged kicking and screaming into doing so, finally bypassing the UN entirely when that body refused to provide a blank check for war.
He also attempted to blame the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal on “a few American troops,” and in a desperate effort to just make the whole thing go away, he proposed tearing down the Saddam-era prison in favor of one yet to be built. (It was, indeed, the only tangible proposal in the whole speech.) But the “anything goes” policies emanating from the highest ranks of the Pentagon which formed the basis of the abuse were quietly ignored.
What was not mentioned was quite significant: the never-found WMD arsenal (which, if you recall, was the ostensible reason for the invasion), the fact that the vast majority of Iraqis see us as occupiers rather than liberators, and, of course, the numerous policy failures which allowed the situation to degenerate as far as it has. Then again, Bush is notorious for never, ever, admitting that he or anyone around him have ever been wrong about anything, so that one was probably too much to hope for.
But most depressingly, Bush continued to insist that the Iraqi insurgency is composed simply of a ragtag collection of “terrorists” and Saddam Hussein’s “elite guards,” rather than what it really is – a broad-based nationalist uprising aimed not at bringing back the bad old days but at throwing the Americans out. By doing so, and by seeing the conflict purely in black and white terms rather than as a complex state of affairs, he sows the seeds for more and bloodier failures.
“We must keep our focus,” Bush said, but that focus has been terribly lacking throughout this whole nightmare. The White House and the Pentagon had one goal in mind on invading Iraq: overthrowing Saddam Hussein. But once that was accomplished, there was no plan to deal with what would happen next. We have seen the consequences.
The thing we need right now is a clear sense of direction from the Bush Administration, one based not on phantom deadlines or re-election bids, but on a realistic plan to get us out of the military and diplomatic disaster which threatens to be the true legacy of George W. Bush. Unfortunately, that sense was nowhere on display last night.
5/21/2004
The Truth Comes Out
Yesterday, American troops and Iraqi policemen raided the home and offices of Ahmad Chalabi, seeking a dozen of his closest associates on fraud, theft, corruption and kidnapping charges. “Let my people go,” Chalabi thundered into the cameras like some Moses by the Tigris. And in one of the strongest signals yet that we have officially worn out our welcome in Baghdad, he added, “We are grateful to President Bush for liberating Iraq, but it is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs.”
To understand just why this is a big deal, it should be mentioned that two years ago, Chalabi was the toast of Washington. As the head of the Iraqi National Congress, a group of Iraqis living in exile out of the country, he had a single overriding vision – to overthrow Saddam Hussein and set up shop in Baghdad as the leader of a new Iraq. But he had virtually no support in Iraq, so to accomplish that, he needed some heavy-duty firepower to do the job for him.
So he came to America, whispering seductively into the ears of people high up in the neoconservative establishment that Hussein had a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith and others all believed him hook line and sinker. And by a staggering coincidence, all were obsessed with the notion of “finishing the job” left over from the 1991 Gulf War, when the military drive to throw Iraq out of Kuwait refrained from going on to Baghdad. Combining that with the desire to seize control of Iraq’s oil and their grand schemes of remaking the Middle East, they were primed and ready to listen to Chalabi.
The Clinton Administration, which was also the recipient of INC reports, did not trust Chalabi or his cohorts, seeing them as craven opportunists who were more interested in taking power for themselves than anything else. Undeterred, Chalabi provided a couple of defectors who claimed to have worked at Iraqi WMD sites, and their words were splashed all over friendly media outlets. Other defectors (including Hussein’s son-in-law) who reported that all such weapons had been destroyed were ignored.
The fact that Chalabi was convicted of fraud and embezzlement and was a fugitive from justice in Jordan, the fact that he had not been in Iraq in decades, the fact that he had no backing among the Iraqi people – all were disregarded. He was telling people precisely what they wanted to hear, and that was all that mattered.
When George W. Bush became President in 2001, Chalabi’s allies ascended to power, and immediately began planning his long-dreamed invasion of Iraq. All the while, the INC kept feeding fantastic stories to the Administration, to Congress and to the American media, all of which were accepted without question. Secretary of State Colin Powell used the tales as the basis for his now-infamous presentation to the UN Security Council. (He has since disowned his own testimony as being based on “inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading” information.) Career analysts in the CIA and the State Department, who had dealt with Chalabi before and concluded that he could not be trusted, cautioned their superiors against putting so much stock in him, but their warnings were ignored.
When the invasion finally came in March 2003 and Baghdad fell, Chalabi got what he wanted. He was appointed to the handpicked Iraqi Governing Council and was groomed to be the next leader of Iraq.
But as the search for Hussein’s much-ballyhooed WMD dragged on and nothing was found, the relationship began to sour. The highest American ranks finally began to realize that Chalabi just might have fed them intentionally false information in a successful attempt to dupe Washington. (Oh, and those famous defectors provided by the INC? Turns out their supposed bombshells were wrong, they contradicted each other on key details, and in some cases they never worked at the supposed weapons sites at all.) For his part, Chalabi did not help matters when in February he bragged to the London Daily Telegraph that, “As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important.”
As a result, he was eased out of power and marginalized. He remains on the IGC, but without authority, and his chances of becoming President of Iraq are now zero. His American funding, amounting to $335,000 a month, has been cut off.
So at long last, the truth about Chalabi finally comes out. He played us like Nintendo for his own purposes, telling people in power exactly what they wanted to hear. He had no compunctions about causing thousands of deaths and widespread destruction to get what he wanted.
This does not, however, let the Bush Administration off the hook. They were obsessed with the notion of “getting” Hussein at any cost and by any means necessary. Didn’t matter how it happened, as long as it happened. And so they willingly let themselves be conned like a backwoods tourist playing three-card monte in New York.
Chalabi said Hussein was bristling with terrible weapons, and he was believed. He said Hussein was in league with al Qaeda, and he was believed. He said American troops would be unconditionally welcomed as liberators, and he was believed. Anyone who pointed out that Chalabi was a power-hungry crook, that there was no evidence to support his claims, or that all might not go according to plan – they were simply ignored.
We are now paying the price for our leaders’ pathetic vendetta. We are paying for it with a sea of budgetary red ink which we are blithely handing off to our children. We are paying for it with our ruined international credibility. And most tragically, we are paying for it with the blood of our dead and wounded soldiers. Any Administration, Republican or Democratic, which allows itself to be so drastically hoodwinked does not deserve to remain in office.
To understand just why this is a big deal, it should be mentioned that two years ago, Chalabi was the toast of Washington. As the head of the Iraqi National Congress, a group of Iraqis living in exile out of the country, he had a single overriding vision – to overthrow Saddam Hussein and set up shop in Baghdad as the leader of a new Iraq. But he had virtually no support in Iraq, so to accomplish that, he needed some heavy-duty firepower to do the job for him.
So he came to America, whispering seductively into the ears of people high up in the neoconservative establishment that Hussein had a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith and others all believed him hook line and sinker. And by a staggering coincidence, all were obsessed with the notion of “finishing the job” left over from the 1991 Gulf War, when the military drive to throw Iraq out of Kuwait refrained from going on to Baghdad. Combining that with the desire to seize control of Iraq’s oil and their grand schemes of remaking the Middle East, they were primed and ready to listen to Chalabi.
The Clinton Administration, which was also the recipient of INC reports, did not trust Chalabi or his cohorts, seeing them as craven opportunists who were more interested in taking power for themselves than anything else. Undeterred, Chalabi provided a couple of defectors who claimed to have worked at Iraqi WMD sites, and their words were splashed all over friendly media outlets. Other defectors (including Hussein’s son-in-law) who reported that all such weapons had been destroyed were ignored.
The fact that Chalabi was convicted of fraud and embezzlement and was a fugitive from justice in Jordan, the fact that he had not been in Iraq in decades, the fact that he had no backing among the Iraqi people – all were disregarded. He was telling people precisely what they wanted to hear, and that was all that mattered.
When George W. Bush became President in 2001, Chalabi’s allies ascended to power, and immediately began planning his long-dreamed invasion of Iraq. All the while, the INC kept feeding fantastic stories to the Administration, to Congress and to the American media, all of which were accepted without question. Secretary of State Colin Powell used the tales as the basis for his now-infamous presentation to the UN Security Council. (He has since disowned his own testimony as being based on “inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading” information.) Career analysts in the CIA and the State Department, who had dealt with Chalabi before and concluded that he could not be trusted, cautioned their superiors against putting so much stock in him, but their warnings were ignored.
When the invasion finally came in March 2003 and Baghdad fell, Chalabi got what he wanted. He was appointed to the handpicked Iraqi Governing Council and was groomed to be the next leader of Iraq.
But as the search for Hussein’s much-ballyhooed WMD dragged on and nothing was found, the relationship began to sour. The highest American ranks finally began to realize that Chalabi just might have fed them intentionally false information in a successful attempt to dupe Washington. (Oh, and those famous defectors provided by the INC? Turns out their supposed bombshells were wrong, they contradicted each other on key details, and in some cases they never worked at the supposed weapons sites at all.) For his part, Chalabi did not help matters when in February he bragged to the London Daily Telegraph that, “As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important.”
As a result, he was eased out of power and marginalized. He remains on the IGC, but without authority, and his chances of becoming President of Iraq are now zero. His American funding, amounting to $335,000 a month, has been cut off.
So at long last, the truth about Chalabi finally comes out. He played us like Nintendo for his own purposes, telling people in power exactly what they wanted to hear. He had no compunctions about causing thousands of deaths and widespread destruction to get what he wanted.
This does not, however, let the Bush Administration off the hook. They were obsessed with the notion of “getting” Hussein at any cost and by any means necessary. Didn’t matter how it happened, as long as it happened. And so they willingly let themselves be conned like a backwoods tourist playing three-card monte in New York.
Chalabi said Hussein was bristling with terrible weapons, and he was believed. He said Hussein was in league with al Qaeda, and he was believed. He said American troops would be unconditionally welcomed as liberators, and he was believed. Anyone who pointed out that Chalabi was a power-hungry crook, that there was no evidence to support his claims, or that all might not go according to plan – they were simply ignored.
We are now paying the price for our leaders’ pathetic vendetta. We are paying for it with a sea of budgetary red ink which we are blithely handing off to our children. We are paying for it with our ruined international credibility. And most tragically, we are paying for it with the blood of our dead and wounded soldiers. Any Administration, Republican or Democratic, which allows itself to be so drastically hoodwinked does not deserve to remain in office.
5/19/2004
With This Ring I Thee Wed
Earlier this week in Massachusetts, gay and lesbian couples, some of whom have been in committed relationships for decades, started getting married at courthouses and clerk’s offices to the cheers of onlookers. Despite the apocalyptic warnings of gay-marriage opponents, fire and brimstone did not rain down, the earth did not open up and swallow everyone whole, and predatory homosexuals did not whisper into the ears of impressionable children, “Join us, all this can be yours.” When I turned on the news, instead of moral rot and the nation going to hell in a hand basket all I saw were people who love each other very much.
Just look at Tanya McCloskey and Marcia Kadish, who got married in Cambridge shortly after the clerk’s office opened for business Monday morning. They emerged from City Hall to applause and congratulations, their faces radiant and happy, their souls aglow.
Oratory is heard for hours on end as to how gay and lesbian weddings “threaten” marriage, as if straight marriages across the country will magically fall apart if two men or two women get hitched. For his part, right-wing radio personality Michael Reagan went so far as to opine that if gay marriage is allowed, no straight person in America will be allowed to get married without having at least one gay experience first. President Bush also weighed in on the issue, favoring second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians by denying them the right to get married.
The opponents of gay marriage claim that marriage is reserved solely for straight people, one man and one woman. Gays and lesbians are not allowed. If they really want the legal benefits of marriage, they can join in a civil union (if that is allowed in the first place) and hope for the best. The problem with this, of course, is that it treats gays and lesbians as unworthy of the full benefits of marriage. Telling people “no marriage for you, but here’s a civil union instead” contains more than a whiff of the “separate but equal” doctrine used for decades to justify racial segregation. Now it’s used to justify sexual segregation.
Despite what gay-marriage opponents claim, the basis of a successful marriage is not one set of XX chromosomes and one of XY. Just ask Britney Spears or anyone else who gets married in a drunken fog only to get it annulled within hours or days. Nor is it based on the ability to make a baby, as anyone who has ever undergone fertility treatments or adopted a child will testify. A successful marriage, rather, is based on two people who share love, trust, support and a determination to combine their lives.
Finding that special someone with whom you want to share your life is already all too rare. As we are constantly reminded, the divorce rate in America has hovered around fifty percent for the last few years. Is the solution really to bar a specific class of people from getting married in the first place?
No, discrimination is never the answer. Love and happiness, not DNA, is the basis of marriage. Love is in the air in the Bay State, and I for one applaud it. More states should follow Massachusetts’ lead.
Just look at Tanya McCloskey and Marcia Kadish, who got married in Cambridge shortly after the clerk’s office opened for business Monday morning. They emerged from City Hall to applause and congratulations, their faces radiant and happy, their souls aglow.
Oratory is heard for hours on end as to how gay and lesbian weddings “threaten” marriage, as if straight marriages across the country will magically fall apart if two men or two women get hitched. For his part, right-wing radio personality Michael Reagan went so far as to opine that if gay marriage is allowed, no straight person in America will be allowed to get married without having at least one gay experience first. President Bush also weighed in on the issue, favoring second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians by denying them the right to get married.
The opponents of gay marriage claim that marriage is reserved solely for straight people, one man and one woman. Gays and lesbians are not allowed. If they really want the legal benefits of marriage, they can join in a civil union (if that is allowed in the first place) and hope for the best. The problem with this, of course, is that it treats gays and lesbians as unworthy of the full benefits of marriage. Telling people “no marriage for you, but here’s a civil union instead” contains more than a whiff of the “separate but equal” doctrine used for decades to justify racial segregation. Now it’s used to justify sexual segregation.
Despite what gay-marriage opponents claim, the basis of a successful marriage is not one set of XX chromosomes and one of XY. Just ask Britney Spears or anyone else who gets married in a drunken fog only to get it annulled within hours or days. Nor is it based on the ability to make a baby, as anyone who has ever undergone fertility treatments or adopted a child will testify. A successful marriage, rather, is based on two people who share love, trust, support and a determination to combine their lives.
Finding that special someone with whom you want to share your life is already all too rare. As we are constantly reminded, the divorce rate in America has hovered around fifty percent for the last few years. Is the solution really to bar a specific class of people from getting married in the first place?
No, discrimination is never the answer. Love and happiness, not DNA, is the basis of marriage. Love is in the air in the Bay State, and I for one applaud it. More states should follow Massachusetts’ lead.
5/17/2004
Deeper and Deeper
The Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal just keeps getting worse.
Last week’s high-profile hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee featured numerous instances in which the official line, that the abuses were committed solely by rogue soldiers who kept their superiors in the dark, fell apart in the wake of testimony by said superiors that, well, maybe they did know about it here and there. For his part, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in his Senate testimony earlier this month, repeatedly claimed that he didn’t know any details about the abuses until late March, when he read the specific charges, and he certainly never authorized or encouraged anything like this.
Now we have Seymour Hersh, who originally broke the scandal in last month’s New Yorker, with a new claim of something appalling: that a secret Pentagon program code-named Copper Green “encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.”
And who signed off on this program? None other than Donald Rumsfeld.
The program, on which President Bush was reportedly briefed, was designed to take away responsibility for prisoner interrogation in Iraq from the CIA and give it to the Pentagon, bringing the environment more into line with the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A former intelligence officer quoted in Hersh’s article described the program as “grab whom you must, do what you want.” (For the record, a Pentagon press release vociferously criticized the Hersh report, calling it “outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.”)
According to Hersh, military intelligence officers took over the interrogation process and were given free rein to do whatever they wanted. With so many interrogators, contractors and others walking around Abu Ghraib out of uniform, even the military officer supposedly in charge of the prison, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was unsure who was who. The end result, according to a Pentagon consultant, was one in which “the ends justify the means.”
As for Rumsfeld’s denials, Hersh says the secretary was notified of the abuses just days after military policeman Joseph Darby blew the whistle two months earlier. It may well be that Rumsfeld simply ignored those reports, believing them to be routine interrogation procedures under the new rules. (In the aftermath of the revelations, the Pentagon supposedly revised the interrogation policies to explicitly prohibit such abuses, although it’s far more telling that most of the attention was given to barring photography.)
As if all that wasn’t enough, it was also revealed that the Pentagon program was rooted in a memo by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, written shortly after the 9/11 attacks, in which he claimed that al Qaeda prisoners were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. “In my judgment,” Gonzales wrote, “this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”
“Quaint?” The prohibition of torture and other physical pressures is “quaint?”
Then again, the Bush Administration has always claimed that al Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo were not subject to the Geneva Convention’s protections. And since the object of the secret Pentagon program was to “Gitmo-ize” the operations at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons, we should not be terribly surprised that the situation spun out of control as spectacularly as it did.
In a way, the Abu Ghraib scandal is indicative of the Iraq mess as a whole; the Administration marched us into this situation with ideological blinders firmly in place, refusing to even consider the possibility that all might not go exactly as according to plan. The only response to anything going wrong is a desperate attempt to spin the story into something – anything – less damaging.
But when this spin-proof scandal emerged (after all, it’s kind of difficult to put a happy face on physical and sexual abuse), the White House dug in and refused to hold anyone other than grunt-level soldiers accountable. The problem is that this approach no longer works. It is now public knowledge that these tactics were approved by those higher up the chain of command, and it remains to be seen how (or indeed if) the Administration will react.
Last week’s high-profile hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee featured numerous instances in which the official line, that the abuses were committed solely by rogue soldiers who kept their superiors in the dark, fell apart in the wake of testimony by said superiors that, well, maybe they did know about it here and there. For his part, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in his Senate testimony earlier this month, repeatedly claimed that he didn’t know any details about the abuses until late March, when he read the specific charges, and he certainly never authorized or encouraged anything like this.
Now we have Seymour Hersh, who originally broke the scandal in last month’s New Yorker, with a new claim of something appalling: that a secret Pentagon program code-named Copper Green “encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.”
And who signed off on this program? None other than Donald Rumsfeld.
The program, on which President Bush was reportedly briefed, was designed to take away responsibility for prisoner interrogation in Iraq from the CIA and give it to the Pentagon, bringing the environment more into line with the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A former intelligence officer quoted in Hersh’s article described the program as “grab whom you must, do what you want.” (For the record, a Pentagon press release vociferously criticized the Hersh report, calling it “outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.”)
According to Hersh, military intelligence officers took over the interrogation process and were given free rein to do whatever they wanted. With so many interrogators, contractors and others walking around Abu Ghraib out of uniform, even the military officer supposedly in charge of the prison, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was unsure who was who. The end result, according to a Pentagon consultant, was one in which “the ends justify the means.”
As for Rumsfeld’s denials, Hersh says the secretary was notified of the abuses just days after military policeman Joseph Darby blew the whistle two months earlier. It may well be that Rumsfeld simply ignored those reports, believing them to be routine interrogation procedures under the new rules. (In the aftermath of the revelations, the Pentagon supposedly revised the interrogation policies to explicitly prohibit such abuses, although it’s far more telling that most of the attention was given to barring photography.)
As if all that wasn’t enough, it was also revealed that the Pentagon program was rooted in a memo by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, written shortly after the 9/11 attacks, in which he claimed that al Qaeda prisoners were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. “In my judgment,” Gonzales wrote, “this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”
“Quaint?” The prohibition of torture and other physical pressures is “quaint?”
Then again, the Bush Administration has always claimed that al Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo were not subject to the Geneva Convention’s protections. And since the object of the secret Pentagon program was to “Gitmo-ize” the operations at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons, we should not be terribly surprised that the situation spun out of control as spectacularly as it did.
In a way, the Abu Ghraib scandal is indicative of the Iraq mess as a whole; the Administration marched us into this situation with ideological blinders firmly in place, refusing to even consider the possibility that all might not go exactly as according to plan. The only response to anything going wrong is a desperate attempt to spin the story into something – anything – less damaging.
But when this spin-proof scandal emerged (after all, it’s kind of difficult to put a happy face on physical and sexual abuse), the White House dug in and refused to hold anyone other than grunt-level soldiers accountable. The problem is that this approach no longer works. It is now public knowledge that these tactics were approved by those higher up the chain of command, and it remains to be seen how (or indeed if) the Administration will react.
5/07/2004
Friendless
It had to happen eventually. After ten seasons of the “I’ll Be There for You” theme song, a couple of hundred episodes and enough coffee to set the hardest heart aflutter with caffeine overload, Friends had its grand finale last night. Even with the truly monstrous level of hype with which NBC flogged the upcoming show for weeks, we all knew this particular series could not possibly end on an unhappy note, and we were not disappointed. (Note: If you missed it, here come some spoilers, so you may want to skip this until you do see it. If you did see it, or if you didn’t and don’t care, read on.)
To recap: Monica and Chandler became the proud parents of twins via adoption and headed to their new life in Westchester, Phoebe and her new husband Mike resolved to have kids of their own, and Ross and Rachel finally ended up together. (He really was her lobster after all.) Even Gunther, after pining away for Rachel for most of the series, finally confessed his love only to be shot down. Only Joey did not have a life-changing event in the finale, but take heart -- a spinoff in which he moves to Los Angeles is coming this fall.
Friends gave us quite a few memorable moments over its ten-year run. Ross gave away his first ex-wife when she married her girlfriend in a ceremony officiated by Newt Gingrich’s sister, drove off the second when he mistakenly said Rachel’s name during the ceremony, and then divorced the third one (Rachel herself) after a drunken Las Vegas wedding. Chandler and Monica fell in love, scrambled to hide their relationship, brought it out into the open, got married, dealt with infertility and decided to adopt. (To which one of my son’s favorite babysitters, who was herself adopted, cheered, “Adoption rules!”)
Joey played a doctor on Days of Our Lives until the writers killed him off by dropping him down an elevator shaft, got the lead in a horrendously bad detective show where his sidekick was a robot, and along the way slept with every woman in sight. Rachel became a high-powered fashion executive, hired a hunky assistant solely for his looks (it seems the sexual harassment rules of the '90s never quite found their way into her office), and had a daughter out of wedlock. Phoebe became the surrogate mother for her brother’s triplets, made a music video, and tried to seduce Chandler, all while having the same delightfully ditzy presence through the years.
Me, I’m still wondering how everyone was able to afford those big Manhattan apartments while working as...well, nothing, apparently, as everyone always had time to hang out in a coffee shop in the middle of the day.
The show mirrored trends in the entertainment industry, not always for the better. As TV turned to the anorexic look, Rachel and Monica both changed from perfectly attractive and curvy women who were constantly inundated with men to shrill, bony stick figures who couldn’t get arrested. The allegedly Jewish characters of Ross and Monica always had Christmas trees everywhere with an occasional menorah or Jewish star barely visible in the background. Why couldn’t we see an episode where Ross takes his son Ben to synagogue or Monica has everyone over for a Passover Seder? (Ross did, however, dress up as the “Holiday Armadillo” to teach Ben about Chanukah.)
But, in the end, when you got right down to it, Friends was about six people who always stuck it out through thick and thin, navigating plot points both reasonable and ridiculous, uttering jokes ranging from classic gags to the occasional clunker. And as much as we wanted to smack them from time to time, they ended up being just regular people, with neuroses and bizarre personalities just like everyone else.
So let’s raise a cup of our favorite coffee to Friends. As long as it lives on in syndication, continuing to make the show’s creators and stars filthy rich, it will continue to be part of television history. And I still want to know if that orange couch from Central Perk will go to the Smithsonian.
To recap: Monica and Chandler became the proud parents of twins via adoption and headed to their new life in Westchester, Phoebe and her new husband Mike resolved to have kids of their own, and Ross and Rachel finally ended up together. (He really was her lobster after all.) Even Gunther, after pining away for Rachel for most of the series, finally confessed his love only to be shot down. Only Joey did not have a life-changing event in the finale, but take heart -- a spinoff in which he moves to Los Angeles is coming this fall.
Friends gave us quite a few memorable moments over its ten-year run. Ross gave away his first ex-wife when she married her girlfriend in a ceremony officiated by Newt Gingrich’s sister, drove off the second when he mistakenly said Rachel’s name during the ceremony, and then divorced the third one (Rachel herself) after a drunken Las Vegas wedding. Chandler and Monica fell in love, scrambled to hide their relationship, brought it out into the open, got married, dealt with infertility and decided to adopt. (To which one of my son’s favorite babysitters, who was herself adopted, cheered, “Adoption rules!”)
Joey played a doctor on Days of Our Lives until the writers killed him off by dropping him down an elevator shaft, got the lead in a horrendously bad detective show where his sidekick was a robot, and along the way slept with every woman in sight. Rachel became a high-powered fashion executive, hired a hunky assistant solely for his looks (it seems the sexual harassment rules of the '90s never quite found their way into her office), and had a daughter out of wedlock. Phoebe became the surrogate mother for her brother’s triplets, made a music video, and tried to seduce Chandler, all while having the same delightfully ditzy presence through the years.
Me, I’m still wondering how everyone was able to afford those big Manhattan apartments while working as...well, nothing, apparently, as everyone always had time to hang out in a coffee shop in the middle of the day.
The show mirrored trends in the entertainment industry, not always for the better. As TV turned to the anorexic look, Rachel and Monica both changed from perfectly attractive and curvy women who were constantly inundated with men to shrill, bony stick figures who couldn’t get arrested. The allegedly Jewish characters of Ross and Monica always had Christmas trees everywhere with an occasional menorah or Jewish star barely visible in the background. Why couldn’t we see an episode where Ross takes his son Ben to synagogue or Monica has everyone over for a Passover Seder? (Ross did, however, dress up as the “Holiday Armadillo” to teach Ben about Chanukah.)
But, in the end, when you got right down to it, Friends was about six people who always stuck it out through thick and thin, navigating plot points both reasonable and ridiculous, uttering jokes ranging from classic gags to the occasional clunker. And as much as we wanted to smack them from time to time, they ended up being just regular people, with neuroses and bizarre personalities just like everyone else.
So let’s raise a cup of our favorite coffee to Friends. As long as it lives on in syndication, continuing to make the show’s creators and stars filthy rich, it will continue to be part of television history. And I still want to know if that orange couch from Central Perk will go to the Smithsonian.
5/04/2004
Not the Way a Liberator Behaves
For a full year, in the face of ferocious international disbelief and skepticism, the Administration has tried to sell the invasion of Iraq as a war of liberation, not of occupation. The Iraqi people, it was said over and over again, were freed from the darkness of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny and brought into the light of American emancipation. With a relentless public-relations endeavor, the White House has valiantly attempted to put the best face on an ever-mounting military and diplomatic disaster.
All these efforts have now been destroyed.
The revelation that American soldiers physically and sexually abused Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison (which, in a bitter irony, was the main torture chamber used by Saddam’s regime) has demolished America's image in Iraq and much of the Arab world. We are now seen as torturers, worse than simple occupiers and certainly not liberators. Every photograph showing grinning American men and women posing with naked Iraqis and forcing them into sexual poses is a guaranteed recruiting poster for the insurgency which has wreaked so much havoc on the occupation.
The disclosure that American military brass in Iraq not only knew this was happening but actually approved it merely adds another layer of disgust. Weeks ago, the Pentagon issued a secret internal report detailing the abuse; a few soldiers directly implicated were quietly disciplined and everything was hushed up. It never even reached Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s desk.
Then CBS got hold of the report and the photos, publicizing them on 60 Minutes II. The reaction was immediate, and expected. President Bush declared he was shocked, shocked, that such a thing could happen, but steadfastly claimed that only “a few people” were involved. Fox über-pundit Bill O’Reilly and other conservative media voices, after taking a moment to mumble that yes, it’s terrible, the people who did this should be punished, ripped into CBS for reporting it.
The floodgates are now opening. More and more Iraqis are coming forward to say that they, too, were physically abused by their American captors. Women report rape and/or the threat of rape. Men report frequent beatings as a regular part of interrogation. Amnesty International’s report says that while allegations of such mistreatment are all too frequent, “virtually none...has been adequately investigated by the authorities.” The British newspaper The Guardian reported that when the Red Cross came to visit Abu Ghraib, their inspectors were kept away from the prison facilities. It was only in recent weeks that the American occupation authorities even released prisoner lists, ending months of agony for thousands of Iraqi families who literally did not know whether their loved ones were alive or dead.
Some might say that this is much ado about nothing, that the Iraqis in prison did terrible things and deserve what they get. While there is no doubt that Saddam’s regime did indeed commit heinous crimes against the Iraqi people, the basic truth remains that we are better than this. No self-respecting American soldier should ever take part in such activities, and no officer should ever sanction them. This is not the way a liberator behaves.
It will be very difficult for the American occupation authorities to recover from this blow to its credibility, but it is not impossible. The government should take the following steps, immediately if not sooner:
1. Punish those responsible for these outrages, not just the individuals who committed them but their superiors who allowed them to happen. The accountability should lead as far up the chain of command as needed; nobody should be immune due to their rank or position.
2. Open the prisons to unlimited inspection by human rights groups such as the Red Cross and Amnesty International. The short-term disgruntlement over this will be more than outweighed by being able to prove to the world that the abuses have stopped.
3. Allow prisoners to see their families. Post security guards if needed, but Iraqis need to be able to see that their loved ones are alive and well.
Sunshine has always been the best disinfectant. Once the abuses have been ended and the perpetrators have been disciplined – and get more than just a slap on the wrist – the better chance we have of regaining the trust of the Iraqi people and the Arab world.
Then again, as pretty much everything about the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been exposed as lies, deception, and wishful thinking, it may well be too late.
All these efforts have now been destroyed.
The revelation that American soldiers physically and sexually abused Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison (which, in a bitter irony, was the main torture chamber used by Saddam’s regime) has demolished America's image in Iraq and much of the Arab world. We are now seen as torturers, worse than simple occupiers and certainly not liberators. Every photograph showing grinning American men and women posing with naked Iraqis and forcing them into sexual poses is a guaranteed recruiting poster for the insurgency which has wreaked so much havoc on the occupation.
The disclosure that American military brass in Iraq not only knew this was happening but actually approved it merely adds another layer of disgust. Weeks ago, the Pentagon issued a secret internal report detailing the abuse; a few soldiers directly implicated were quietly disciplined and everything was hushed up. It never even reached Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s desk.
Then CBS got hold of the report and the photos, publicizing them on 60 Minutes II. The reaction was immediate, and expected. President Bush declared he was shocked, shocked, that such a thing could happen, but steadfastly claimed that only “a few people” were involved. Fox über-pundit Bill O’Reilly and other conservative media voices, after taking a moment to mumble that yes, it’s terrible, the people who did this should be punished, ripped into CBS for reporting it.
The floodgates are now opening. More and more Iraqis are coming forward to say that they, too, were physically abused by their American captors. Women report rape and/or the threat of rape. Men report frequent beatings as a regular part of interrogation. Amnesty International’s report says that while allegations of such mistreatment are all too frequent, “virtually none...has been adequately investigated by the authorities.” The British newspaper The Guardian reported that when the Red Cross came to visit Abu Ghraib, their inspectors were kept away from the prison facilities. It was only in recent weeks that the American occupation authorities even released prisoner lists, ending months of agony for thousands of Iraqi families who literally did not know whether their loved ones were alive or dead.
Some might say that this is much ado about nothing, that the Iraqis in prison did terrible things and deserve what they get. While there is no doubt that Saddam’s regime did indeed commit heinous crimes against the Iraqi people, the basic truth remains that we are better than this. No self-respecting American soldier should ever take part in such activities, and no officer should ever sanction them. This is not the way a liberator behaves.
It will be very difficult for the American occupation authorities to recover from this blow to its credibility, but it is not impossible. The government should take the following steps, immediately if not sooner:
1. Punish those responsible for these outrages, not just the individuals who committed them but their superiors who allowed them to happen. The accountability should lead as far up the chain of command as needed; nobody should be immune due to their rank or position.
2. Open the prisons to unlimited inspection by human rights groups such as the Red Cross and Amnesty International. The short-term disgruntlement over this will be more than outweighed by being able to prove to the world that the abuses have stopped.
3. Allow prisoners to see their families. Post security guards if needed, but Iraqis need to be able to see that their loved ones are alive and well.
Sunshine has always been the best disinfectant. Once the abuses have been ended and the perpetrators have been disciplined – and get more than just a slap on the wrist – the better chance we have of regaining the trust of the Iraqi people and the Arab world.
Then again, as pretty much everything about the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been exposed as lies, deception, and wishful thinking, it may well be too late.
4/29/2004
Too Much Democracy?
At a time when Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq while attempting to install a Western-style democracy (according, that is, to the White House’s reason du jour for invading and occupying that country), one would think democracy is a good thing.
Apparently not, according to Senator Zell Miller of Georgia. He has a solution to all the peskier aspects of democracy, such as some Senators taking seriously their Constitutional imperative to provide “advice and consent” on judicial nominees. As he put it in a speech on the Senate floor yesterday, “What this Government needs is one of those extreme makeovers they have on television, and I am not referring to some minor nose job or a little botox here and there.”
His solution is blindingly simple: repeal the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which junked the back-room appointment of Senators by state legislatures and opened the process up to popular election. In pursuit of this lofty goal, he introduced S.J. Res. 35, a proposed constitutional amendment to do just that.
So let me get this straight – Miller’s answer to arguments over unfunded mandates, judicial nominations, and a border fence with Mexico (which he blames on “nutty environmentalists”) is less democracy? He claims that an appointed Senate would be free of “special-interest tyranny,” and that “we now have too many Senators who are mere cat’s-paws for the special interests.” Of course, in his world, the state legislatures are beacons of citizen responsiveness, a far cry from the reality of how they actually work.
To give him credit, he knows his proposed amendment is, to put it mildly, a long shot. “I know it doesn't stand a chance of getting even a single cosponsor, much less a single vote beyond my own,” he said.
You have to admit, the notion of keeping the people out of the people’s business does have a distinct appeal. It would be so much easier without all this messy debate, these untidy disagreements, this awkward hindrance to the government’s business that is democracy.
But on further reflection, this may not be quite the act of political buffoonery it appears to be. One of the chief Republican complaints of recent years is that the Senate occasionally refuses to confirm a few of the more odious of President Bush’s judicial nominees. (It should be mentioned that despite all the GOP fuss, Senate Democrats blocked just four nominees, approving 173 more.) So what better way to turn the Senate into a toothless rubber stamp than by turning it into a tool of the state legislatures?
Ever since the 2000 Census, Republicans around the country have put a lot of effort into gerrymandering state legislatures to maximize potential Republican districts and minimize potential Democratic ones, usually by breaking up traditionally Democratic districts so they form parts of several GOP-majority districts instead of combining into a single one. Engineering as many Republican-dominated legislatures as possible means, under Miller’s proposed amendment, a larger number of Republican senators – meaning a Senate far more likely to go along with whatever a Republican President may care to do. If a Democrat gets elected President, the same scheme would guarantee a recalcitrant Senate.
And Miller, by a staggering coincidence, is a rogue Democrat who votes with the Republicans nearly all the time and is in thick with the GOP leadership. Indeed, this year he wrote A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, in which he bashes his ostensible party for supposed loony leftism.
It seems to be quite a plan. Fortunately, no one has yet gone on record as co-sponsoring it.
Apparently not, according to Senator Zell Miller of Georgia. He has a solution to all the peskier aspects of democracy, such as some Senators taking seriously their Constitutional imperative to provide “advice and consent” on judicial nominees. As he put it in a speech on the Senate floor yesterday, “What this Government needs is one of those extreme makeovers they have on television, and I am not referring to some minor nose job or a little botox here and there.”
His solution is blindingly simple: repeal the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which junked the back-room appointment of Senators by state legislatures and opened the process up to popular election. In pursuit of this lofty goal, he introduced S.J. Res. 35, a proposed constitutional amendment to do just that.
So let me get this straight – Miller’s answer to arguments over unfunded mandates, judicial nominations, and a border fence with Mexico (which he blames on “nutty environmentalists”) is less democracy? He claims that an appointed Senate would be free of “special-interest tyranny,” and that “we now have too many Senators who are mere cat’s-paws for the special interests.” Of course, in his world, the state legislatures are beacons of citizen responsiveness, a far cry from the reality of how they actually work.
To give him credit, he knows his proposed amendment is, to put it mildly, a long shot. “I know it doesn't stand a chance of getting even a single cosponsor, much less a single vote beyond my own,” he said.
You have to admit, the notion of keeping the people out of the people’s business does have a distinct appeal. It would be so much easier without all this messy debate, these untidy disagreements, this awkward hindrance to the government’s business that is democracy.
But on further reflection, this may not be quite the act of political buffoonery it appears to be. One of the chief Republican complaints of recent years is that the Senate occasionally refuses to confirm a few of the more odious of President Bush’s judicial nominees. (It should be mentioned that despite all the GOP fuss, Senate Democrats blocked just four nominees, approving 173 more.) So what better way to turn the Senate into a toothless rubber stamp than by turning it into a tool of the state legislatures?
Ever since the 2000 Census, Republicans around the country have put a lot of effort into gerrymandering state legislatures to maximize potential Republican districts and minimize potential Democratic ones, usually by breaking up traditionally Democratic districts so they form parts of several GOP-majority districts instead of combining into a single one. Engineering as many Republican-dominated legislatures as possible means, under Miller’s proposed amendment, a larger number of Republican senators – meaning a Senate far more likely to go along with whatever a Republican President may care to do. If a Democrat gets elected President, the same scheme would guarantee a recalcitrant Senate.
And Miller, by a staggering coincidence, is a rogue Democrat who votes with the Republicans nearly all the time and is in thick with the GOP leadership. Indeed, this year he wrote A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, in which he bashes his ostensible party for supposed loony leftism.
It seems to be quite a plan. Fortunately, no one has yet gone on record as co-sponsoring it.
4/28/2004
Adoption for Your Amusement
What were they thinking?
Last weekend, the ABC news magazine show 20/20 ran a promotional spot for an upcoming segment called “Be My Baby.” “Barbara [Walters] will bring you what might be called the ultimate reality show,” co-anchor John Stossel proclaimed. “As you watch, a pregnant teenager will decide which of five couples gets her baby.”
It was utterly repulsive, and gave the impression that ABC was running some sort of depraved contest with a baby as the grand prize. The network was flooded with calls from horrified viewers and quickly backtracked, saying that the segment isn’t really what the promo said it is, but rather a thoughtful examination of open adoption. Nevertheless, the spot was hurriedly (and wisely) replaced with a considerably more restrained one.
As anyone who has ever adopted a child knows, adoption is not a game. It is not a competition. It does not have winners and losers. Rather, it is a very personal process which makes would-be parents look deep within themselves and determine whether or not they really want to have children. Our son was adopted, so I speak from personal experience.
For her part, Walters should have known this, as her daughter was adopted as well. The fact that she did not object to this promo (she is, after all, the show’s main talent; it seems highly unlikely that it would not have been run by her) speaks volumes about her judgment.
Of course, this is not to say that adoption is a taboo subject. The Discovery Health Channel’s show Adoption Stories profiles families and their children via adoption, going through the process from start to finish, and does so with respect and good taste. ABC could learn a thing or two from it.
Last weekend, the ABC news magazine show 20/20 ran a promotional spot for an upcoming segment called “Be My Baby.” “Barbara [Walters] will bring you what might be called the ultimate reality show,” co-anchor John Stossel proclaimed. “As you watch, a pregnant teenager will decide which of five couples gets her baby.”
It was utterly repulsive, and gave the impression that ABC was running some sort of depraved contest with a baby as the grand prize. The network was flooded with calls from horrified viewers and quickly backtracked, saying that the segment isn’t really what the promo said it is, but rather a thoughtful examination of open adoption. Nevertheless, the spot was hurriedly (and wisely) replaced with a considerably more restrained one.
As anyone who has ever adopted a child knows, adoption is not a game. It is not a competition. It does not have winners and losers. Rather, it is a very personal process which makes would-be parents look deep within themselves and determine whether or not they really want to have children. Our son was adopted, so I speak from personal experience.
For her part, Walters should have known this, as her daughter was adopted as well. The fact that she did not object to this promo (she is, after all, the show’s main talent; it seems highly unlikely that it would not have been run by her) speaks volumes about her judgment.
Of course, this is not to say that adoption is a taboo subject. The Discovery Health Channel’s show Adoption Stories profiles families and their children via adoption, going through the process from start to finish, and does so with respect and good taste. ABC could learn a thing or two from it.
4/23/2004
Fooling Some of the People
Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time, and even all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.” The White House is having great success at fooling some of the people.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, one of the most ubiquitous propaganda lines used by the Administration was that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were bosom buddies. Ground into our brains with endless insinuation, we were indoctrinated to believe that by invading Iraq, we were striking back against the people who attacked us on 9/11, that it was but one battle in the “war on terror,” that there was no difference between the secular Hussein and the Islamist bin Laden. It was so spectacularly successful that even American troops sent to Iraq fell for it, as shown by the examples of “this is for 9/11” comments heard from more than one soldier.
Of course, it wasn’t true. Iraq and al Qaeda were well known to loathe each other and each saw the other as mortal enemies. The Administration, having been told as such by CIA and the State Department, knew this full well, but went right on saying otherwise. After all, the American people were far more likely to support an unprovoked invasion of a country which didn’t attack us if they thought they were connected to those who did, and if they believed Iraq was directly responsible for 9/11, so much the better.
We now have more proof on just how successful this misinformation campaign was. The Program in International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland just released the results of a study showing that 37% of the American people believe that Hussein gave “substantial support to al Qaeda” with another 20% believing that he was “directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks.” Additionally, 45% believe that “clear evidence” was found linking Hussein and al Qaeda. None of these are even remotely true, but that didn’t stop the Administration from touting them anyway.
When a similar study was published earlier this year, the White House’s response was the same as their reaction to anything they don’t like – they simply ignored it and plowed ahead saying the same thing. Even in last week’s press conference, President Bush claimed that al Qaeda “lost an ally in Baghdad” when Iraq was invaded.
Just how divorced from reality is the White House? We all know that they tend to look at everything through rose-tinted glasses – for example, the Administration’s ludicrous insistence that the ongoing carnage in Iraq is actually a sign of success. (So if everyone is killed, does that mean we win?) Willfully ignoring repeatedly established fact, however, is very different. Numerous children’s stories say that if you believe something hard enough and long enough, it happens. So, apparently, does the White House.
The sheer gall in constantly rolling out the same rhetoric which has already been shown to be false is breathtaking, and also rather unsettling. If President Bush sincerely believes in a nonexistent Hussein-bin Laden connection despite all the evidence against it, one wonders what else he believes. Then again, he was quoted in Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack as refusing to consult his father (the first President Bush) on the matter of Iraq, saying that “He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice...there’s a higher Father that I appeal to.” Sounds like we now have a governmental decision-making process literally based on blind faith rather than reason and experience.
On the other hand, Bush et al may simply be having a good laugh at our expense, popping champagne corks in the Oval Office and celebrating their success in having put such a whopper over on the American public.
I’m not sure which one is scarier.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, one of the most ubiquitous propaganda lines used by the Administration was that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were bosom buddies. Ground into our brains with endless insinuation, we were indoctrinated to believe that by invading Iraq, we were striking back against the people who attacked us on 9/11, that it was but one battle in the “war on terror,” that there was no difference between the secular Hussein and the Islamist bin Laden. It was so spectacularly successful that even American troops sent to Iraq fell for it, as shown by the examples of “this is for 9/11” comments heard from more than one soldier.
Of course, it wasn’t true. Iraq and al Qaeda were well known to loathe each other and each saw the other as mortal enemies. The Administration, having been told as such by CIA and the State Department, knew this full well, but went right on saying otherwise. After all, the American people were far more likely to support an unprovoked invasion of a country which didn’t attack us if they thought they were connected to those who did, and if they believed Iraq was directly responsible for 9/11, so much the better.
We now have more proof on just how successful this misinformation campaign was. The Program in International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland just released the results of a study showing that 37% of the American people believe that Hussein gave “substantial support to al Qaeda” with another 20% believing that he was “directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks.” Additionally, 45% believe that “clear evidence” was found linking Hussein and al Qaeda. None of these are even remotely true, but that didn’t stop the Administration from touting them anyway.
When a similar study was published earlier this year, the White House’s response was the same as their reaction to anything they don’t like – they simply ignored it and plowed ahead saying the same thing. Even in last week’s press conference, President Bush claimed that al Qaeda “lost an ally in Baghdad” when Iraq was invaded.
Just how divorced from reality is the White House? We all know that they tend to look at everything through rose-tinted glasses – for example, the Administration’s ludicrous insistence that the ongoing carnage in Iraq is actually a sign of success. (So if everyone is killed, does that mean we win?) Willfully ignoring repeatedly established fact, however, is very different. Numerous children’s stories say that if you believe something hard enough and long enough, it happens. So, apparently, does the White House.
The sheer gall in constantly rolling out the same rhetoric which has already been shown to be false is breathtaking, and also rather unsettling. If President Bush sincerely believes in a nonexistent Hussein-bin Laden connection despite all the evidence against it, one wonders what else he believes. Then again, he was quoted in Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack as refusing to consult his father (the first President Bush) on the matter of Iraq, saying that “He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice...there’s a higher Father that I appeal to.” Sounds like we now have a governmental decision-making process literally based on blind faith rather than reason and experience.
On the other hand, Bush et al may simply be having a good laugh at our expense, popping champagne corks in the Oval Office and celebrating their success in having put such a whopper over on the American public.
I’m not sure which one is scarier.
4/21/2004
Israel Is Always Wrong
Let me get this straight – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announces that his country will unilaterally withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip and a large part of the West Bank, evacuating all Jewish communities within, and turning them over to Palestinian control. In effect, Sharon is giving up on negotiations, finally admitting that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side, and cutting Israel’s losses. Not surprisingly, the Greater Israel proponents are infuriated, seeing the disengagement plan as nothing less than surrender to Palestinian terrorism.
The response from the Palestinians and their allies, on the other hand, is rage, threats and condemnation.
The portion of the media that is friendly to the Palestinians denounced the Sharon plan as a “land grab” for holding on to part of the West Bank, conveniently ignoring that under the plan, Israel will in fact give up a large amount of land and pull out. The media also went ballistic when President Bush endorsed the plan, saying that he does not support a Palestinian “right of return” which would allow the Palestinian refugees and their descendants to move to Israel instead of a Palestinian state, destroying the Jewish state demographically.
(The “right of return” has been the subject of much misconception and misinformation over the years, so here’s a short primer on the topic:
In 1947, the United Nations approved a partition plan for what was at the time British Mandatory Palestine, dividing it between the Jewish and Arab communities, with Jerusalem to be internationalized. The Jews accepted the plan while the Arabs, threatening riots and chaos, rejected it, and when Israel declared independence in 1948, the surrounding Arab nations instantly declared war and invaded. While the fighting was ongoing, about half a million Arabs fled their homes in what is now Israel. Some were genuinely expelled by Israeli soldiers, in a tragedy long acknowledged by the Jewish state. But most left because they were told to do so by their own leaders, who promised they would only be away for a short time until the Jews were pushed into the sea. When the Jews perfidiously fought back and won, the Arab leaders promptly abandoned the refugees to the UN, who built camps to hold them as an allegedly temporary solution.
Over the years, Israel has made numerous attempts to rectify the refugee situation, only to have each and every one, even substantive improvements to the camps, rejected by the Arabs. Even when the PLO took over the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, nothing at all was done with the camps. This is because the Arabs do not want a solution to the problem; they want to keep the refugees as desperate and miserable as humanly possible, to be used as weapons against Israel, both in terms of propaganda and as a ready source of terrorists.
It is an interesting historical parallel that about half a million Jews fled or were expelled from various Arab countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Unlike the Arab response to the Palestinians, the Jews were welcomed to Israel with open arms and quickly integrated into Israeli society. Thus, there is no Jewish refugee problem.)
Turning back to the current situation – what is wrong with this picture? The Palestinians are given large tracts of land on which to build a state, no reciprocal action necessary, and their reaction is to threaten war.
The simple fact is that, according to the Palestinians, everything Israel does is wrong. No exceptions. Nothing short of national suicide will satisfy them, because that is what they want. If you pay attention to the Arabic-language Palestinian media, you will quickly learn that the PLO speaks out of both sides of its mouth. In English, they call for negotiations, justice and peaceful coexistence. In Arabic, they call for the destruction of Israel and the expulsion and/or massacre of its Jewish citizens. (For numerous examples translated into English, see the websites of Palestinian Media Watch and the Middle East Media Research Institute.)
Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once said that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” When they were offered an independent state in 2000 at Camp David and again at Taba, which would have taken up all of Gaza, virtually all of the West Bank, parts of East Jerusalem, and a portion of the Negev Desert to make up the difference, it was rejected with a hail of bullets and bombs. It was the best deal they will ever be offered. In this time of relentless terror, each proposal the Palestinians reject is guaranteed to be replaced with a worse one.
Hopefully, they will realize at some point that Israel is not going anywhere, and that it is in everyone’s best interests to accept a two-state solution. (This also applies to the Israelis who claim all of the West Bank and Gaza as literally God-given. The Palestinians aren’t going anywhere, either.) If the Palestinians turn their energies away from terrorism and hatred and instead focus on building a new society dedicated to peace and a new Middle East, there’s nothing they can’t accomplish.
But they have to take that first step before anything else. And, sadly, no one sees that happening anytime soon.
The response from the Palestinians and their allies, on the other hand, is rage, threats and condemnation.
The portion of the media that is friendly to the Palestinians denounced the Sharon plan as a “land grab” for holding on to part of the West Bank, conveniently ignoring that under the plan, Israel will in fact give up a large amount of land and pull out. The media also went ballistic when President Bush endorsed the plan, saying that he does not support a Palestinian “right of return” which would allow the Palestinian refugees and their descendants to move to Israel instead of a Palestinian state, destroying the Jewish state demographically.
(The “right of return” has been the subject of much misconception and misinformation over the years, so here’s a short primer on the topic:
In 1947, the United Nations approved a partition plan for what was at the time British Mandatory Palestine, dividing it between the Jewish and Arab communities, with Jerusalem to be internationalized. The Jews accepted the plan while the Arabs, threatening riots and chaos, rejected it, and when Israel declared independence in 1948, the surrounding Arab nations instantly declared war and invaded. While the fighting was ongoing, about half a million Arabs fled their homes in what is now Israel. Some were genuinely expelled by Israeli soldiers, in a tragedy long acknowledged by the Jewish state. But most left because they were told to do so by their own leaders, who promised they would only be away for a short time until the Jews were pushed into the sea. When the Jews perfidiously fought back and won, the Arab leaders promptly abandoned the refugees to the UN, who built camps to hold them as an allegedly temporary solution.
Over the years, Israel has made numerous attempts to rectify the refugee situation, only to have each and every one, even substantive improvements to the camps, rejected by the Arabs. Even when the PLO took over the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, nothing at all was done with the camps. This is because the Arabs do not want a solution to the problem; they want to keep the refugees as desperate and miserable as humanly possible, to be used as weapons against Israel, both in terms of propaganda and as a ready source of terrorists.
It is an interesting historical parallel that about half a million Jews fled or were expelled from various Arab countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Unlike the Arab response to the Palestinians, the Jews were welcomed to Israel with open arms and quickly integrated into Israeli society. Thus, there is no Jewish refugee problem.)
Turning back to the current situation – what is wrong with this picture? The Palestinians are given large tracts of land on which to build a state, no reciprocal action necessary, and their reaction is to threaten war.
The simple fact is that, according to the Palestinians, everything Israel does is wrong. No exceptions. Nothing short of national suicide will satisfy them, because that is what they want. If you pay attention to the Arabic-language Palestinian media, you will quickly learn that the PLO speaks out of both sides of its mouth. In English, they call for negotiations, justice and peaceful coexistence. In Arabic, they call for the destruction of Israel and the expulsion and/or massacre of its Jewish citizens. (For numerous examples translated into English, see the websites of Palestinian Media Watch and the Middle East Media Research Institute.)
Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once said that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” When they were offered an independent state in 2000 at Camp David and again at Taba, which would have taken up all of Gaza, virtually all of the West Bank, parts of East Jerusalem, and a portion of the Negev Desert to make up the difference, it was rejected with a hail of bullets and bombs. It was the best deal they will ever be offered. In this time of relentless terror, each proposal the Palestinians reject is guaranteed to be replaced with a worse one.
Hopefully, they will realize at some point that Israel is not going anywhere, and that it is in everyone’s best interests to accept a two-state solution. (This also applies to the Israelis who claim all of the West Bank and Gaza as literally God-given. The Palestinians aren’t going anywhere, either.) If the Palestinians turn their energies away from terrorism and hatred and instead focus on building a new society dedicated to peace and a new Middle East, there’s nothing they can’t accomplish.
But they have to take that first step before anything else. And, sadly, no one sees that happening anytime soon.
4/17/2004
Rock Bottom for Reality TV
I know it has been said many times before that reality TV has sunk so low it cannot go any further. And each time, it has been proven wrong as it outdoes itself again and again, each time enthralling viewers with its train-wreck fascination. From the smarmy almost-prostitution of Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire to the merry voyeurism of Big Brother and its clones to the greedily self-delusional women of Joe Millionaire (not to mention the sequel!), the genre keeps plumbing new depths.
Personally, I thought the absolute worst came with The Littlest Groom, in which a 4'5" man looked for love among women of similar height, with a few average-height women thrown in for good measure. It was little more than a multi-hour short joke and brought back memories of the 1938 film The Terror of Tiny Town, which starred "Jed Buell's Midgets in a rollickin', rootin', tootin', shootin' drama of the great outdoors."
How foolish of me. For now comes along the very latest in reality television – surgery for your amusement! ABC did it first with Extreme Makeover, in which "lucky individuals are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime chance" to be refurbished by a team of "the nation's top plastic surgeons, eye surgeons and cosmetic dentists." The now-rebuilt people are shown delighted with their new bodies as they return to whatever passes for normal life with them.
But, as we all know, good enough simply cannot be left alone; showing before-and-after photos just isn't sufficiently humiliating and/or titillating. So Fox (who else?) got into the game with The Swan, which not only puts these allegedly lucky people under the knife, but also pits them against each other in a beauty pageant afterwards. Or, as the Fox website puts it, "Each week feathers will fly as the inevitable pecking order emerges. Those not up to the challenge are sent home. Those who are will go on to compete in a pageant for a chance to become 'The Ultimate Swan.'"
Not be left out, MTV chimed in with I Want a Famous Face, featuring people who for whatever reason want to be transformed into a look-alike of their favorite star, whether that be Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, or what have you. For sheer wretchedness, this one actually edges out The Swan, as difficult as that is to imagine. What kind of person would be so obsessed with, say, Britney Spears, that she would actually volunteer to go under the knife and be altered into a freakish clone? Or what kind of man would want to become a shadow of Elvis? And to have it all shown on television. (One wonders what their lives will be like in 20-30 years, when Pamela Anderson is just a bad memory.)
What's next for reality TV? How about The Death House, where condemned prisoners compete against each other; the winner gets a pardon and the loser gets the chair – broadcast live, of course. (No, wait, they already did that in the film The Running Man. Oh, what the hell, put it on anyway and call it a remake.) Or perhaps Sexy Mamas, in which wannabe parents experiment with new sexual positions and fertility treatments, with the winners getting pregnant. (This one can be shown twice: once on network TV with all the naughty bits fuzzed out, and once on pay-per-view with everything displayed for all to see.) Maybe Who Wants to Be My Mommy and Daddy?, where viewers all across America get to vote on which couples can adopt which children. (The really scary part is that this idea was actually pitched to a network but thankfully was not picked up. A patent application was submitted, however.)
We all know why reality television is king of the airwaves. It's cheap to produce, has a ready-made audience of voyeurs, and has an even readier-made pool of applicants who are so dazzled by the chance to get on the boob tube that they will risk national humiliation, disfiguration, and worse. I for one desperately hope that the genre will burn itself out, and soon. I'm not sure how many more editions of Temptation Island can be shown before people start throwing their TVs out the window.
Personally, I thought the absolute worst came with The Littlest Groom, in which a 4'5" man looked for love among women of similar height, with a few average-height women thrown in for good measure. It was little more than a multi-hour short joke and brought back memories of the 1938 film The Terror of Tiny Town, which starred "Jed Buell's Midgets in a rollickin', rootin', tootin', shootin' drama of the great outdoors."
How foolish of me. For now comes along the very latest in reality television – surgery for your amusement! ABC did it first with Extreme Makeover, in which "lucky individuals are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime chance" to be refurbished by a team of "the nation's top plastic surgeons, eye surgeons and cosmetic dentists." The now-rebuilt people are shown delighted with their new bodies as they return to whatever passes for normal life with them.
But, as we all know, good enough simply cannot be left alone; showing before-and-after photos just isn't sufficiently humiliating and/or titillating. So Fox (who else?) got into the game with The Swan, which not only puts these allegedly lucky people under the knife, but also pits them against each other in a beauty pageant afterwards. Or, as the Fox website puts it, "Each week feathers will fly as the inevitable pecking order emerges. Those not up to the challenge are sent home. Those who are will go on to compete in a pageant for a chance to become 'The Ultimate Swan.'"
Not be left out, MTV chimed in with I Want a Famous Face, featuring people who for whatever reason want to be transformed into a look-alike of their favorite star, whether that be Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, or what have you. For sheer wretchedness, this one actually edges out The Swan, as difficult as that is to imagine. What kind of person would be so obsessed with, say, Britney Spears, that she would actually volunteer to go under the knife and be altered into a freakish clone? Or what kind of man would want to become a shadow of Elvis? And to have it all shown on television. (One wonders what their lives will be like in 20-30 years, when Pamela Anderson is just a bad memory.)
What's next for reality TV? How about The Death House, where condemned prisoners compete against each other; the winner gets a pardon and the loser gets the chair – broadcast live, of course. (No, wait, they already did that in the film The Running Man. Oh, what the hell, put it on anyway and call it a remake.) Or perhaps Sexy Mamas, in which wannabe parents experiment with new sexual positions and fertility treatments, with the winners getting pregnant. (This one can be shown twice: once on network TV with all the naughty bits fuzzed out, and once on pay-per-view with everything displayed for all to see.) Maybe Who Wants to Be My Mommy and Daddy?, where viewers all across America get to vote on which couples can adopt which children. (The really scary part is that this idea was actually pitched to a network but thankfully was not picked up. A patent application was submitted, however.)
We all know why reality television is king of the airwaves. It's cheap to produce, has a ready-made audience of voyeurs, and has an even readier-made pool of applicants who are so dazzled by the chance to get on the boob tube that they will risk national humiliation, disfiguration, and worse. I for one desperately hope that the genre will burn itself out, and soon. I'm not sure how many more editions of Temptation Island can be shown before people start throwing their TVs out the window.
4/09/2004
Fried Rice
Watching National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testifying before the 9/11 commission had something of a surreal air about it. Here was a woman who spent days making the talk-show rounds, insisting that she would love to testify but simply did not have the time, representing an Administration which fought the commission so fiercely it only convinced Americans that they had something to hide.
In the end, obtaining Rice's testimony, as enlightening as parts of it turned out to be, may well turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. The price was steep: the commission had to agree not to call anyone else from the Administration under oath and not to recall Rice at all. The commission will be allowed to question President Bush, but any testimony has to be brief, private, not under oath – and given with Vice President Cheney in the same room. (Speculation immediately started circulating as to why Cheney has to be there, with most explanations along the lines of "nobody trusts Bush to say the right thing without Cheney there to keep him in line.")
In her testimony, Rice claimed that nothing pointed towards an imminent terrorist attack – only to contradict herself moments later when she reluctantly admitted that the notorious August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Her attempts to depict the PDB as "frustratingly vague" as to the "manner of attack" also self-destructed when a commissioner said that according to the PDB, "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."
Trying to salvage the situation, she said the PDB was actually about "historical" information rather than a current warning. Nobody believed her; after all, at the time numerous intelligence reports warned of just such an imminent attack. And her vain attempts to repaint Bush's pre-9/11 activities as gunning for Osama bin Laden were simply pathetic, if for no other reason that anyone who paid any attention to the news in 2001 knows that al Qaeda wasn't anywhere on the Administration radar at the time.
The overall impression of her testimony fits perfectly with the long-standing White House pattern of never admitting mistakes no matter what. Whenever anything goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault. Rice spent hours blaming the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Richard Clarke, Bill Clinton – everyone except the people who were actually in charge that terrible September morning.
Yesterday's events are indicative of the White House attitude towards the 9/11 commission as a whole. After fighting the victims' families for months on the need for any investigation at all, the Administration grudgingly created it but stalled every inch of the way. Refusing to divulge information, refusing to allow testimony, stonewalling like mad – it's like the White House is wearing a large sign saying "We Have Something To Hide, And It's Pretty Darn Big."
Just this week, it was revealed that the White House withheld thousands of pages of documents dating back to the Clinton Administration from the commission, claiming they did not need to see them even though Clinton staffers had already given their approval. (They do not seem to understand that it's up to the commissioners to determine whether items are relevant or not.) The Administration also announced that they would scrutinize the commission's report line-by-line before its release, raising immediate suspicion that anything politically unpleasant would be removed (as happened with the Congressional 9/11 report, when the White House excised information on al Qaeda connections with the Saudi royal family), or at least held up until after the election.
The Administration wants to keep 9/11 as an event solely to be exploited for political purposes, whether it's whipping up public support for invading Iraq or for re-election ads showing a stalwart Bush facing down the evildoers. Any honest debate and/or introspection are officially, in the words of New York Times columnist William Safire, a "blame game," a "you-should-have-known inquisition." God forbid we should try to learn anything from what happened.
Could the 9/11 attacks have been prevented? Maybe, maybe not. A definitive answer may never be known. But that is hardly an excuse for the Bush Administration to drag its feet as it has. They owe it to the nation – and especially to the families – to stop obstructing the commission's work and to support a full, fair and public accounting of what happened.
In the end, obtaining Rice's testimony, as enlightening as parts of it turned out to be, may well turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. The price was steep: the commission had to agree not to call anyone else from the Administration under oath and not to recall Rice at all. The commission will be allowed to question President Bush, but any testimony has to be brief, private, not under oath – and given with Vice President Cheney in the same room. (Speculation immediately started circulating as to why Cheney has to be there, with most explanations along the lines of "nobody trusts Bush to say the right thing without Cheney there to keep him in line.")
In her testimony, Rice claimed that nothing pointed towards an imminent terrorist attack – only to contradict herself moments later when she reluctantly admitted that the notorious August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Her attempts to depict the PDB as "frustratingly vague" as to the "manner of attack" also self-destructed when a commissioner said that according to the PDB, "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."
Trying to salvage the situation, she said the PDB was actually about "historical" information rather than a current warning. Nobody believed her; after all, at the time numerous intelligence reports warned of just such an imminent attack. And her vain attempts to repaint Bush's pre-9/11 activities as gunning for Osama bin Laden were simply pathetic, if for no other reason that anyone who paid any attention to the news in 2001 knows that al Qaeda wasn't anywhere on the Administration radar at the time.
The overall impression of her testimony fits perfectly with the long-standing White House pattern of never admitting mistakes no matter what. Whenever anything goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault. Rice spent hours blaming the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Richard Clarke, Bill Clinton – everyone except the people who were actually in charge that terrible September morning.
Yesterday's events are indicative of the White House attitude towards the 9/11 commission as a whole. After fighting the victims' families for months on the need for any investigation at all, the Administration grudgingly created it but stalled every inch of the way. Refusing to divulge information, refusing to allow testimony, stonewalling like mad – it's like the White House is wearing a large sign saying "We Have Something To Hide, And It's Pretty Darn Big."
Just this week, it was revealed that the White House withheld thousands of pages of documents dating back to the Clinton Administration from the commission, claiming they did not need to see them even though Clinton staffers had already given their approval. (They do not seem to understand that it's up to the commissioners to determine whether items are relevant or not.) The Administration also announced that they would scrutinize the commission's report line-by-line before its release, raising immediate suspicion that anything politically unpleasant would be removed (as happened with the Congressional 9/11 report, when the White House excised information on al Qaeda connections with the Saudi royal family), or at least held up until after the election.
The Administration wants to keep 9/11 as an event solely to be exploited for political purposes, whether it's whipping up public support for invading Iraq or for re-election ads showing a stalwart Bush facing down the evildoers. Any honest debate and/or introspection are officially, in the words of New York Times columnist William Safire, a "blame game," a "you-should-have-known inquisition." God forbid we should try to learn anything from what happened.
Could the 9/11 attacks have been prevented? Maybe, maybe not. A definitive answer may never be known. But that is hardly an excuse for the Bush Administration to drag its feet as it has. They owe it to the nation – and especially to the families – to stop obstructing the commission's work and to support a full, fair and public accounting of what happened.
4/07/2004
Nader, Raiding
Four years ago, when Ralph Nader entered the presidential race as the Green Party candidate, he provided a much-needed alternative to a Democratic candidate who concentrated on running away from his record and a Republican candidate who ran mostly on his name and his family connections. Of course, enough Democratic voters who were disgusted with Al Gore's campaign voted for Nader that George W. Bush was able to win Florida (with a little help from the Supreme Court) and hence the election.
Back in 2000, the arguments against a Nader vote were largely theoretical. After all, Bush was mostly an empty suit at that point, with not much to define him except slogans and his record as governor of Texas. (Unlike most states, the governor of Texas has little power, relatively speaking, so Bush's Austin record didn't offer much to run on.) The progressive community watched in horror as Gore turned his back on the Clinton Administration's accomplishments, apparently terrified that people would connect him with Bill Clinton's personal scandals. With no major-party candidate espousing a progressive agenda, it's not surprising that many nominally Democratic voters deserted the Gore ticket in droves.
But after three-plus years of a Bush Administration, we now know what would be in store with a Bush re-election. More wars based on false pretenses, more sky-high budget deficits, more gargantuan tax cuts for those who need them the least, more government spying on citizen and non-citizen alike, more fake economic math, and more obsessive secrecy.
On the other hand, the progressive community is not very enthusiastic about John Kerry. While he is considerably better than Bush, his record in the Senate is hardly as liberal as the Bush campaign likes to make out. He is the chosen candidate of the Democratic Leadership Council, the power structure that was instrumental in moving the party away from its progressive roots and towards the political center in the 1990s. (This is why the DLC and the national party were so horrified by Howard Dean's candidacy; he took on the party in addition to the Administration.)
As it stands now, Kerry has a pretty good chance of defeating Bush in November. (Of course, with seven months until Election Day, anything can happen in the interim.) Until Nader is factored into the equation, that is. Current polls show that while Kerry holds a more-or-less consistent lead over Bush, that lead disappears if Nader becomes a third choice.
Nader is perfectly within his rights to run for President, and is equally within his rights to claim that there is no substantive difference between Bush and Kerry. But it doesn't make him right. While Kerry's positions may not be as different from Bush's for many Democrats' liking, he is by far better than Bush. (He cannot possibly be worse.) Many Democrats this year have adopted the slogan "Anybody But Bush," and are apparently determined to support the party nominee no matter who it is.
Four years ago, the Gore campaign said that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." We didn't realize the truth of that slogan at the time. It remains to be seen whether enough Democrats will accept Kerry as is, warts and all, rather than going for a more ideologically pure candidate. The objective this year is to defeat Bush in November. Let's keep our collective eye on the ball.
Back in 2000, the arguments against a Nader vote were largely theoretical. After all, Bush was mostly an empty suit at that point, with not much to define him except slogans and his record as governor of Texas. (Unlike most states, the governor of Texas has little power, relatively speaking, so Bush's Austin record didn't offer much to run on.) The progressive community watched in horror as Gore turned his back on the Clinton Administration's accomplishments, apparently terrified that people would connect him with Bill Clinton's personal scandals. With no major-party candidate espousing a progressive agenda, it's not surprising that many nominally Democratic voters deserted the Gore ticket in droves.
But after three-plus years of a Bush Administration, we now know what would be in store with a Bush re-election. More wars based on false pretenses, more sky-high budget deficits, more gargantuan tax cuts for those who need them the least, more government spying on citizen and non-citizen alike, more fake economic math, and more obsessive secrecy.
On the other hand, the progressive community is not very enthusiastic about John Kerry. While he is considerably better than Bush, his record in the Senate is hardly as liberal as the Bush campaign likes to make out. He is the chosen candidate of the Democratic Leadership Council, the power structure that was instrumental in moving the party away from its progressive roots and towards the political center in the 1990s. (This is why the DLC and the national party were so horrified by Howard Dean's candidacy; he took on the party in addition to the Administration.)
As it stands now, Kerry has a pretty good chance of defeating Bush in November. (Of course, with seven months until Election Day, anything can happen in the interim.) Until Nader is factored into the equation, that is. Current polls show that while Kerry holds a more-or-less consistent lead over Bush, that lead disappears if Nader becomes a third choice.
Nader is perfectly within his rights to run for President, and is equally within his rights to claim that there is no substantive difference between Bush and Kerry. But it doesn't make him right. While Kerry's positions may not be as different from Bush's for many Democrats' liking, he is by far better than Bush. (He cannot possibly be worse.) Many Democrats this year have adopted the slogan "Anybody But Bush," and are apparently determined to support the party nominee no matter who it is.
Four years ago, the Gore campaign said that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." We didn't realize the truth of that slogan at the time. It remains to be seen whether enough Democrats will accept Kerry as is, warts and all, rather than going for a more ideologically pure candidate. The objective this year is to defeat Bush in November. Let's keep our collective eye on the ball.
4/03/2004
But Is It True?
On April 2, the Labor Department announced that the U.S. economy added an astounding 308,000 jobs in March. The financial markets applauded, sending the Dow Jones up by 97 points and the dollar significantly higher. After years of stagnant employment rates and a "jobless recovery," it's good news indeed.
But is it true?
The fact that the question is even being asked is an indicator of how untrustworthy the Bush Administration has become. After all, we have been down this road before.
In the fall of 2003, when the White House was pressing Congress to pass the much-vaunted Medicare prescription-drug benefit bill, much of the opposition said that it would massively subsidize the health-care and pharmaceutical industries while delivering only token benefits to senior citizens. About a dozen Republican "deficit hawks," already uneasy about the skyrocketing federal budget deficit ($521 billion and climbing), complained about the $399 billion price tag and voted yes only after severe pressure. After the bill was safely passed into law, the White House announced that the "recalculated" cost would be $550 billion - a full third more than Congress and the public had been told.
Several weeks ago, it was revealed that the Administration had known the price tag would be higher all along, and deliberately cooked the books to get the bill passed. Richard Foster, Medicare's head cost analyst, had originally calculated that the bill's ten-year price would in fact be $550 billion. His then-supervisor, Thomas Scully, ordered him to suppress the figure and substitute a more politically acceptable $399 billion on pain of termination. (Scully has since left the government and become - surprise, surprise! - a highly paid health-care lobbyist.)
There is a considerable difference between putting a political spin on the numbers to make them look good and altering the numbers in the first place. The first is simply normal politics, while the second is blatantly dishonest. Does no one in the Administration remember that this is how Enron got flushed down the toilet?
Now, when the White House is rightfully criticized on its job-creation performance in an election year, along comes a highly favorable job report. The question has to be asked: are the job numbers genuine, or are they just making it up - again?
Not to put too fine a point on it, the White House has only itself to blame for such speculation. Having been shown that they will use intentionally fake math to get a bill passed, one can be forgiven for now looking at each and every set of numbers from the Administration with a skeptical eye.
But is it true?
The fact that the question is even being asked is an indicator of how untrustworthy the Bush Administration has become. After all, we have been down this road before.
In the fall of 2003, when the White House was pressing Congress to pass the much-vaunted Medicare prescription-drug benefit bill, much of the opposition said that it would massively subsidize the health-care and pharmaceutical industries while delivering only token benefits to senior citizens. About a dozen Republican "deficit hawks," already uneasy about the skyrocketing federal budget deficit ($521 billion and climbing), complained about the $399 billion price tag and voted yes only after severe pressure. After the bill was safely passed into law, the White House announced that the "recalculated" cost would be $550 billion - a full third more than Congress and the public had been told.
Several weeks ago, it was revealed that the Administration had known the price tag would be higher all along, and deliberately cooked the books to get the bill passed. Richard Foster, Medicare's head cost analyst, had originally calculated that the bill's ten-year price would in fact be $550 billion. His then-supervisor, Thomas Scully, ordered him to suppress the figure and substitute a more politically acceptable $399 billion on pain of termination. (Scully has since left the government and become - surprise, surprise! - a highly paid health-care lobbyist.)
There is a considerable difference between putting a political spin on the numbers to make them look good and altering the numbers in the first place. The first is simply normal politics, while the second is blatantly dishonest. Does no one in the Administration remember that this is how Enron got flushed down the toilet?
Now, when the White House is rightfully criticized on its job-creation performance in an election year, along comes a highly favorable job report. The question has to be asked: are the job numbers genuine, or are they just making it up - again?
Not to put too fine a point on it, the White House has only itself to blame for such speculation. Having been shown that they will use intentionally fake math to get a bill passed, one can be forgiven for now looking at each and every set of numbers from the Administration with a skeptical eye.
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