Our Wonderful World

Finally, the truth is seeping out. Contrary to how President George W. Bush has tried to justify the Iraq war in the past, he has now clumsily-if inadvertently-admitted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was aimed primarily at seizing predominant influence over its oil by establishing permanent (the administration favors "enduring") military bases.

He made this transparently clear by adding a signing statement to the defense appropriation bill, indicating that he would not be bound by the law's prohibition against expending funds:

"(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq," or

"(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq."

But, if you have been asleep for the past five years, you may ask, what about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its ties to al-Qaeda? A recent study by the Center for Public Integrity found that Bush made 260 false claims about these in the two years following 9/11. He was followed closely by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell with 254. Nor can they any longer pretend they were deceived by faulty intelligence, since hard evidence that continues to accumulate shows they knew exactly what they were doing.

Moreover, it has become abundantly clear that the "surge" of 30,000 troops into Iraq was aimed-pure and simple-at staving off definitive defeat until Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are safely out of office. Some, but not all, of those 30,000 troops are slated for withdrawal, but those who still expect more sizable withdrawals have not been reading the tea leaves. It is altogether likely there will still be 150,000 U.S. troops, and even more than that number of contractors, in Iraq a year from now.

In the administration's view, the oil-and-bases prize is well worth the indignity of refereeing a civil war and additional troop casualties. That view was reflected recently in the words of a well-heeled suburbanite, who suggested to me, "You must concede that a few GIs killed every week is a small price to pay for the oil we need. Many more died in Vietnam, and there wasn't even any oil there."

That person was unusually blunt, but I believe his thinking may be widely shared, at least subconsciously, by those Americans who are not directly affected by the war-which is to say he vast majority. It is easier to assimilate and parrot the administration's dishonesty than to confront the reality that these are consequential lies. They bring untold death and destruction-and not only in Iraq, where several hundred thousand civilians are dead and one out of six families have been displaced-but to thousands of our fellow citizens as well.

The Human Cost

Not only have almost 4,000 American troops been killed, but another 30,000 have been wounded in action. Veterans Administration documents obtained by Veterans for Common Sense show that nearly 264,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans already have been treated at VA hospitals, including more than 100,000 for mental health conditions.

According to a Harvard University report, the VA is projected to spend up to $700 billion over the next 40 years for medical care and disability payments for veterans of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Add the billions sunk every week into the quagmire of Iraq-it is madness.

We are approaching a trillion-dollar war, while our Treasury is bankrupt, our economy is in shambles, and our infrastructure crumbles. The only things on an upward swing are the profits of oil companies...and suicides in the military.

For a fraction of the money wasted on an un-winnable occupation-cum-armed-referee-duty in Iraq, premium health care could be provided to every American, including veterans, whom we owe big time, and the almost 50 million of our brothers and sisters who lack health insurance.

The iniquities of war have widened the inequities in our society, stretching the gap between the haves and the have-nots. It is not right for me, one of the haves, to have so disproportionate a share of the nation's wealth and opportunity. Nowhere is this more obvious than the access to excellent health care to which privilege has "entitled" me. A recently discovered challenge to my health brought this home to me like a ton of bricks.

Why Me?

The doctors said they needed more tissue from what they called the "mass" in my lower abdomen, so they could determine what kind of cancer had set up shop there. There was some sense of urgency, so just days later a surgeon made room for me at the end of a very busy New Year's Eve.

The cutting was over; the stitches were in; the pain was slight; and there I was, wide awake in a comfortable hospital room, welcoming 2008 with painful questions.

For the hundredth time I found myself asking, Why me?

But wait-it may not be what you're thinking.

The troubling question was why was I privileged to have prompt access to the best in medical care, when such is not available to most of our veterans and some 50 million other Americans. We are called to be concerned about our brothers and sisters. It did not seem fair.

Why was it that I could expect excellent doctors to plan a therapy regime that would probably shrink the grapefruit-sized cancerous "mass" and add still more years to my 68? What about the others? Without access to good doctors and advanced medical technology, is it likely that they would not become of their "mass" until it was the size of a melon-and perhaps too late?

Waking Up

The anesthesia had worn off, and the only real discomfort came from the dangling questions. December had brought surprise and new awareness. I needed some quiet time to process it all, and the turn of the year seemed appropriate. So I turned off the TV and scribbled what follows.

To hear I had been invaded by cancer was a bummer. But from the very start that unwelcome surprise was softened by awareness that I was one of the lucky ones. No, not "lucky"-privileged.

A health insurance card lay in the white knapsack full of privilege that I carry around with me, usually without much awareness on my part. The voice of conscience was whispering that it is not right to be unaware. One out of six Americans have no insurance card in their knapsack or in the plastic bag that serves as their chest of drawers. Is that the America of which we were once so proud?

It started with my swollen right leg. No big deal, I thought; I had simply sprained that ankle too many times playing basketball. And besides, varicose veins run in my family. Small wonder my blood was having trouble circulating down that way.

But at my annual physical my doctor saw it differently. We needed to find out what was causing the swelling. Sclerotherapy, a sophisticated, expensive procedure seemed indicated, but would my insurance cover it? It would, so we went ahead.

But the swelling got worse, suggesting some kind of blockage higher up. Enter the world of multimillion-dollar technology-CT-scan, PET-scan, and pinpointing of the mass, followed quickly by a needle biopsy. All covered by insurance.

It looked like lymphoma. But the oncologist wanted to be sure of exactly what variety of lymphoma it was before he decided what the optimum treatment regime might be. Hence, the New Year's Eve surgery and extraction of tissue immediately dispatched to the Mayo Clinic for a thorough pathology report. See what I mean about privileged?

Stress Tests ...

My thoughts went back to the thallium stress test before the surgery. The nurses injected some dye and measured my heart on an accelerating treadmill to induce stress. They encouraged me, and stood ready to catch me if I fell off. I found myself thinking of less benign ways to induce stress-stress positions, sensory deprivation, and what President Bush calls "an alternative set of procedures." And my thoughts went to Guantanamo and the hundreds of prisoners flown there in shackles with no assurance they would survive the kind of deliberately induced stress they would encounter there.

And then they strapped me onto a narrow gurney where I had to remain still for twenty minutes while another million-dollar machine hovered low over my chest and took pictures. There were two technicians and nurses there to ensure my comfort and allay my concerns. And I thought of the gurneys of Guantanamo and the strapped-in prisoners surrounded by other kinds of folks, including physicians and psychologists who, in a mockery of the Hippocratic oath, do their best to inflict, not alleviate pain.

... and Suicide

I also thought of the two dozen Guantanamo detainees who tried to starve themselves to death two and a half years ago. They, too, were strapped onto gurneys, while thick plastic tubes were forced through their noses to force-feed enough nourishment to keep them alive, lest the Bush administration be embarrassed. On June 10, 2006 three detainees did succeed in hanging themselves, the first successful suicides after 41attempts by some 25 individual detainees.

Those detainees' hope was for the release that comes with death; I could hope for healing.

The three who killed themselves incurred the wrath of Guantanamo commander, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris, Jr., who announced that the suicides were "not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare against us." In similar spirit, Colleen Graffy, deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC that the suicides "certainly (are) a good PR move to draw attention."

I wonder how Graffy would describe the actions of those U.S. veterans experiencing such suffering that they, too, commit suicide. A CBS study showed that in 2005 alone, 6,256 veterans of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan took their own lives, many of them after experiencing very long waiting lines for medical treatment. That is an average of 17 suicides a day. Shame on us!

As for those on active duty, "Soldier Suicide at Record Level," a report by the Washington Post's Dana Priest on Jan. 31, shows that in 2007 suicides among active duty soldiers reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980.

Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, 25, made the most recent known suicide attempt. On Monday evening, as the president gave his State-of-the-Union address, Whiteside swallowed dozens of antidepressants and other pills, after leaving a note expressing the hope that "this will help other soldiers." Thanks to a Good Samaritan neighbor, who quickly called Walter Reed Army Medical Center authorities, Whiteside's survived. She has now been transferred from the intensive care unit to the psychiatric ward.

Lt. Whiteside is a high achieving graduate of the University of Virginia and had been given high ratings by her Army superiors. She decided to talk to Dana Priest late last year, after a soldier Whiteside had befriended at the psychiatric ward of Walter Reed Army Medical Center hanged herself after being discharged without benefits.

Blame

Many U.S. servicemen and women can blame their cancer on contamination from the depleted uranium used in artillery and other shells and toxic chemicals that have saturated regions of Iraq, including populated areas, leading to a spurt of cancer illnesses.

Against this background, I reflected on how fortunate I was that the cause of the cancer that had invaded me would probably remain a mystery. I wondered how it would feel to be able to trace a fatal disease to the instruments of war; how it would feel to be an Iraqi parent watching a child die of cancer, or living in fear that a new child might be born with serious birth defects.

No, I cannot blame my illness on someone's negligence, or cavalier disregard of the consequences of highly toxic weaponry. But thousands of Iraqis can. And so, too, can those U.S. troops who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq-including in the virtually "casualty-less" Gulf War in 1991. How many Americans are aware that, of the almost 700,000 deployed to theater during the 1991 Gulf War, roughly one in three has sought medical care from the VA?

You didn't know that? Please ask yourself why.

Higher Powers and Favorite Philosophers

President Bush has recently taken to talking again about his "higher power" and redemption.

The higher power with whom I try to stay in touch is concerned first and foremost with justice and then (only then) peace. In the biblical sense, peace is no more nor less than the experience of justice.

I would guess the Bush's higher power was appalled at the Coliseum-type spectacle Monday evening, as the President of the United States played cheerleader for Team America killing still more people-to standing ovations from his supporters in Congress.

Nor would the person President Bush has called his "favorite political philosopher," Jesus of Nazareth, be likely to endorse the spectacle, much less join in. He had a pretty clear take on all this.

As we reflect on the growing inequality in this country, manifested so clearly in whether or not one has access to quality health care, we might remind the president of what his favorite philosopher had to say about goats-not as in "My Pet Goat," but goats portrayed as lining up for a serious, long-term "alternative set of procedures."

And the goats will turn and ask: 'Lord, when did we see you ... ill ... and not attend to your needs?'

And he will answer: 'As often as you neglected to do it for the least of these, you neglected to do it for me.' (Matthew 25)

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Straight Talk About the Straight Talker Who Will be Our Next Leader

Every time I hear the media say Sen. John McCain "of Arizona" it makes me crazy. McCain has done as little for Arizona as possible and it shows. The state is Mississippi in the Southwest, an Appalachia with golf courses, the epicenter of a brewing socio-environmental calamity. It is a place frighteningly behind in the competitive world of the 21st century, however much it provides a haven for a certain kind of rich person and, until recently, for real-estate players. Arizona was never anything but a national political platform for McCain.

If McCain had been governor, his apathy would be an especially tempting target. Even so, as a senator he has done as little as possible in education, research, transportation, health care, the environment...the list goes on and on. Most days one wondered if Arizona even had senators representing it, rather than trying to be national political figures.

McCain a "maverick"? A maverick would have been pushing to rebuild American's passenger-train system as an essential step in easing oil dependency and combating global warming (not to mention traffic congestion). Instead, McCain has waged a vendetta against Amtrak, not to reform but to kill it. Real straight talk would have told Arizonans they can't keep building subdivisions in the forests and avoid the consequences of fires. It would have rallied the state to protect its environment rather than to turn it into a vast grotesque strip mall. Not Sen. McCain.

At this point, so-called conservatives are saying, "Yeah! That's just what we want! Property rights! Tax cuts! Yahyahyah!!..."

So why do I keep hearing that so many so-called conservatives hate McCain, or mistrust McCain? I guess it's a sign of what conservatism has become: a doctrine as rigid and "faith based" as communism in its day, and far from the body of ideas that animated Barry Goldwater -- a man truly "of Arizona."

McCain differed from the rigid party line on immigration. Big deal. Here the fire breathers want a pony: a cheap Arizona economy without the brown people who make it possible. Taxes? After rightly saying it was unprecedented for the nation to cut taxes in wartime, McCain retreated and now is another tiresome tax cutter who will "cut the budget."

Unlike the chicken-hawks, McCain is a genuine military hero and understands the seriousness of sending Americans to war. Yet here, too, he seems to promise more of the same in the Middle East. We need a serious discussion about withdrawal from Iraq and its consequences, but no candidate, right or left, is offering it. McCain apparently believes we can sustain this self-inflicted wound for 100 years.

Indeed, the more he panders to so-called conservatives, the less he has even the ashes of independence left in his campaign kitbag. So the right will embrace him, because the right loves power more than even rigid doctrine, and especially the overwhelming power that has accrued to corporate interests over 25 years.

The big question is whether the media will truthfully report on McCain's record and policy proposals. So far, they're still in love. I can't even imagine another four years of the catastrophic policies the senator proposes to continue if he makes it to the White House.

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Nightmare Image of the Day

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So Why is the Newspaper Business Screwed Up?

I would just add that it just ain't newspapers -- it's all journalistic media.

Mary McCarthy said famously of Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

It’s tempting to say the same about the many diagnoses of what ails the newspaper world. We hear endlessly that the troubles are a result of the Internet, new technology, “people don’t read anymore,” and, my favorite, “people don’t have as much time as they used to.” As if there was once a 36-hour day, or people who once worked 12-hour shifts while raising large families had this abundance of time.

These forces are real. And yes, a big swath of the public is distracted by celebrity gossip and gets its “news” from blogs, television and talk radio. What’s less noted is how newspapers themselves contributed to the dumbing down of America. What’s most frustrating is that the discussion fails to focus on the more significant reasons behind the decline in newspaper journalism. They are:

-The creation of monopoly markets and, through consolidation, cartels of newspaper ownership. Economic history shows us that monopolies and cartels always commit suicide. Divorced from the imperatives of real competition, monopolies easily slip into a self-centered world of bureaucratic conformity and a desire to protect the status quo. They became slow and rigid, in other words, road kill for competitors.

-Consolidation of newspapers into large, publicly held companies. This removed newspapers from their communities and killed a sense of holding a public trust. And it left them at the mercy of Wall Street. Newspaper executives promised returns that are nearly impossible for any (legal) entity to sustain year after year. Everything came to depend on delivering these short-term “growth” numbers to the Street. Among the biggest losers was the ability to invest in future technologies and the ability to shift to meet changing consumer habits. Those wouldn’t deliver instant double-digit margins. Thus, newspaper companies failed to start, or failing that, buy, a Yahoo or Craig’s List.

-A largely defensive strategy took hold, even though history shows that no company under siege ever merely cut its way to recovery. Significantly, investment in the unique intellectual capital of newspapers – journalism – was constantly reduced. Newsrooms lost much of their top talent. Marketing, more important than ever in business, was never a newspaper strength, and was cut to the bone. Research and development received little more than lip service, or was another tool to hand down demands for shorter, dumber, fluffier stories. There was little interest on the advertising side in the kind of “skunk works” that might have leapfrogged from print to online before the crisis became acute. No longer did the smartest business-school grads want to work on the business side of newspapers. A thousand cuts hurt readership. One example: eliminating stock tables antagonized the most loyal readers, older folks who weren’t online. Many went away. Multiply that around every newspaper each time a key reader destination was eliminated. The cutback of international coverage comes just as America's future is more and more determined by world events (yes, even the soccer mom's ability to fill up her SUV).

-Groupthink was a natural outgrowth of monopolies and the demands of Wall Street. This was hastened by the ascendancy of Gannett and its (for a while) superior returns. A startlingly conformist agenda emerged all over: design over content; short, uninteresting (but non-irritating to advertisers) stories, etc. The universe of different tactics, strategies and innovations that a competitive industry would have evolved never happened. The industry became strikingly inwardly focused, insulated from a changing world. When change was noted, it somehow always produced moves that degraded the news product. Years were spent developing “new editorial products” to attract non-readers. This was a questionable use of resources, as surveys and focus groups showed most of these people wouldn’t read anyway, and certainly not subscribe seven days a week to a print edition. But the resources to do them were diverted away from coverage that served existing readers. Industry leaders were singularly cavalier about their loyal customers, while chasing ones they had little chance to attracting.

-Leadership collapsed under the weight of these forces. A generation of managers that would go along with these dictates rose, while those with other ideas were pushed out or aside. These surviving managers – of course with honorable exceptions – were singularly incapable of dealing with the historic turning points facing newspapers. Every day they came in hoping to not make a mistake, to merely preserve the business they had, or to push through artificial, top-down, one-side-fits-all formulas, usually backed by questionable research. At some chains, the jobs of editors became little more than gathering stuff for graphic do-dads and implementing the content rules cooked up at headquarters. These were once the front-line leaders who made the biggest difference in the quality of a product based, inexorably, on the written word, well told. The simple creed of "get a great story and put it in the newspaper (or online)" went away. For example, experienced police reporters went away -- even though it's clear that well-done cop stories draw readers. In their place was a 21-year-old taking dictation from a police public-affairs announcement.

-The biggest problem, of course, had nothing to do with the newsrooms. It was the collapse of an unsustainable business model. Simply put, the model involved sending miniskirted saleswomen out to sell ads at confiscatory rates to lecherous old car dealers and appliance-store owners. Protecting these profits, whether from national, local or classified ads, became the central focus of newspaper bosses. These areas were the most vulnerable to new competitors. But the condition of the industry by the 1990s – risk averse, promising unrealistic margins, losing its best talent, ignoring ideas outside its preconceived notions – left it unable to meet these threats.

The newspaper was always a tricky balance, where advertising paid for an independent news operation. The best newspapers carried it off. But news alone could never “pay for itself.” It would be have been difficult for any mature industry to face the sea changes that swamped newspapers. But a more decentralized, competitive industry might have found its way. Imagine if one company would have turned a “dying” PM newspaper into an online newspaper? It would have been very lean, but a wonderful competitive weapon. Imagine if another would have bought Yahoo in its infancy and both fed off its innovation and used it as a news and advertising platform?

Now the tailspin continues, and the damage to our democracy is hard to overstate. It's no coincidence that the United States stumbled into Iraq and is paralyzed before serious challenges at home and abroad at precisely the moment when real journalism is besieged. It almost might make the conspiracy minded think there was a grand plan to keep us dumb.

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A Step Closer to Fascism

For years, as many as 200 members of Immanuel Bible Church and their friends have gathered in the church's fellowship hall to watch the Super Bowl on its six-foot screen. The party featured hard hitting on the TV, plenty of food -- and prayer.

But this year, Immanuel's Super Bowl party is no more. After a crackdown by the National Football League on big-screen Super Bowl gatherings by churches, the Springfield church has sacked its event. Instead, church members will host parties in their homes.

Immanuel is among a number of churches in the Washington area and elsewhere that have been forced to use a new playbook to satisfy the NFL, which said that airing games at churches on large-screen TV sets violates the NFL copyright.

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New Cinema from the WGA

Watch the Fun at Grand Central Terminal!

Inside Beloved Leader's Beautiful Mind

Some English poof sticks his nose into our business:

Everyone has a picture on the wall with some personal meaning. When the art lover in question is George Bush, however, and he can't stop telling us all his eccentric views about it, our interest is naturally piqued.

Bush, it seems, has a great passion for a 1916 cowboy scene by WHD Koerner that hangs in his office. He loves telling people about its significance to him. According to The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg, published next month, when governor of Texas, Bush told staff the painting was called A Charge To Keep, a quote from his favourite Methodist hymn by Charles Wesley. He urged them to absorb the moral lesson of this "beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us," he said.

Yet a little digging by Weisberg has revealed that the picture in question originally portrayed a bad man, not a good man. It was first used in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916 to illustrate a story about a horse thief, and captioned as a picture of his flight from the law. Only later did it illustrate a story about Methodism.

There are a lot of funny things about this story: the art itself isn't one of them. Bush's favourite painting comes from a tradition of 19th- and early-20th-century art that inspired the later film westerns of John Ford. Koerner's painting is a minor but decent example of the genre.

If you think it's kitsch, look again at those sensitively suggested smoky mountains, that powerful observation of a horse's motion. It is not in itself a shameful thing to love.

Bush's fantastical interpretation of it is another matter. Of course, it's unfair to laugh at someone for doing what everyone does when we look at art - seeing it his way. You bring the art history books, I'll fetch the rope.

Lynne Segal, professor of gender studies
This is such an exhausted cliche of masculinity: the loner on his horse, the heroic, old-fashioned western archetype. It is symptomatic of the fact that Bush lives in a fantasy world, as many American men do, where you can invent a story and place yourself at the centre. You are a hero, not just of your own life, but leading others, too.

Yet this solipsistic vision seems so at odds with the knowledge - a knowledge that you would expect most of us to have today - that others create and shape our world. Instead, this kind of American masculine imagery suggests that you have to be not just the first among equals but heading the pack, leading the way forward.

Darian Leader, psychoanalyst
The painting itself is fairly dull. What is interesting is that Bush has invested a great deal in it, and seems to use it as a symbol of what he sees as his own mission. He interprets it as the story of missionaries spreading the word of truth and freedom, an impulse that informed the invasion of Iraq, when in fact it is a depiction of thieves on the run from the law. It's a good example of repression: when we want to avoid an unpleasant truth, it has a habit of returning. There is a wonderful complement to this in a speech Tony Blair gave to troops in Iraq, during which he referred to "weapons of mass distraction". This painting is Bush's Freudian slip.

It also seems to illustrate a legacy being passed from father to son. It is almost impossible to understand Bush's aspirations without thinking of what he saw as the unfinished business of his father. This painting suggests that if you want to understand Bush, you need to understand his father, and that's a psychological truth that has an impact on world politics.

Joanna Bourke, military historian
There is a military feel to this painting. The men are armed and obviously fleeing, but the enemy is invisible, hidden in a huge expanse of rough, tough landscape. Bush clearly identifies with the main character in the painting: he is the leader of men, tough and masculine, travelling light with a magnificent animal between his thighs.

The war depicted here is partly against nature. It represents the taming of the great frontier. But there's also a clear link to the American civil war, and to the battle against the wild Indians: the traditional American goodies and baddies. For Bush, the foreign baddies are terrorists, both abroad and within. Of course, the irony is that, in the painting, the men on horseback are the bandits. Bush is interpreting this as a utopian scene, as bandits often do, when in fact what is depicted is simple masculine criminality.

Derek Draper, psychotherapist and ex-Labour spin doctor
Bush's mistaken enthusiasm suggests several psychological interpretations. The first will most readily appeal to committed Bush-haters: it is evidence of his tendency to misread situations and confuse right with wrong. A more subtle insight might involve imagining Bush's inner world: for so long inhabited by the demons of drink, drugs and failure. His mind might resist a too-close-to-home image of a troubled man fleeing for his life and have to see instead the strong, heroic adventurer he has convinced himself he has become.

Most revealing, though, is the simple fact that a healthy mind would look at this image and not be certain what it depicted. Bush, though, as he once told Senator Joe Biden, doesn't "do nuance". Instead he invariably replaces "not-knowing" with prejudiced certainty. A foolish psychological mindset when it comes to art or life; a catastrophic one in politics.

The Rightists Play Us; You Really Think They Wouldn't Support the Pandering, Flip-Flopping Straight Talker??

Innncredible! I mean, if you believe this load of crap....

On Wednesday, we brought you some of the more apoplectic reactions from conservatives after Sen. John McCain's victory in Florida's Republican primary. Well, the tenor of the debate on the right over McCain's candidacy has by no means cooled over the past couple of days. If anything, as we get to the key primaries of Super Tuesday, the anger over the prospect of Republican presidential candidate John McCain has grown. Some prominent conservatives are even threatening drastic action.

Take Ann Coulter. In an appearance on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes" that's now been widely remarked upon, she told the two hosts that if McCain was nominated, and running against Sen. Hillary Clinton, she'd vote for Clinton.

The brothers Limbaugh -- Rush and lesser-known sibling David -- have been hitting McCain hard in recent days. On Rush's Web site, in a list of quotes from his Thursday broadcast he includes, among others, "McCain's kind of like the Clintons in a sense: you tell the truth about them and they think it's a personal attack" and "Lindsey Graham is certainly close enough to John McCain to die of anal poisoning." (We hope there's some sort of legitimate reference in that second one that we're just not getting, but we doubt it.) Then David, in a column on Townhall.com Friday, wrote, McCain "is the anti-conservative. He instinctively sides against conservatives and relishes poking them in the eye.

"He enjoys cavorting and colluding with our political enemies and basks in the fawning attention they give him. Adding insult to injury, he now pretends to be the very thing he is not: an across-the-board Reagan conservative."

Then there's Michelle Malkin, last seen implying that perhaps there was something amiss with the voting in Florida that led to McCain's win, who was set off again by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appearance with McCain Thursday. "So, Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed John McCain. He extolled McCain for 'reach[ing] across the political aisle to get things done' ...

"To which I say: When did it become the Republican Party's top priority to 'get things done?'" Malkin wrote.

She continued: "'Get things done' is mindless liberal code for passing legislation and expanding government.

"And as McCain's ample legislative record demonstrates, 'reaching across the political aisle' never entails pulling opponents to the right. It always entails selling out the right.

"How about defending our side of the political aisle?"

In a column, Thomas Sowell went after McCain's prized reputation as a "straight talker." "We have been hearing for years that Senator John McCain gives 'straight talk' and his bus has been endlessly referred to as the 'Straight Talk Express.' But endless repetition does not make something true," Sowell wrote. "... When confronted with any of his misdeeds, Senator McCain tends to fall back on his record as a war hero in Vietnam.

"Let's talk sense. Benedict Arnold was a war hero but that did not exempt him from condemnation for his later betrayal."

Meanwhile, McCain's chief remaining rival on the Republican side, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, is quickly racking up endorsements from influential conservatives. Sean Hannity, previously a barely closeted supporter of Rudy Giuliani's, was one of the first to jump. Hannity's fellow radio host Laura Ingraham endorsed Romney on her show Friday morning; joining her for the broadcast was former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Santorum, who has been outspokenly anti-McCain, made his endorsement of Romney official on Ingraham's show. In a conference call with conservative bloggers on Friday, Romney acknowledged the support he's gotten, saying: "When Sean Hannity says he's voting for me, when Laura Ingraham says she's endorsing me ... Rush has been going after McCain pretty aggressively. Michael Reagan has been pretty aggressive. The world of conservatism is pretty solidly behind my effort."

The right is not entirely anti-McCain, though. The New York Times on Friday printed a good roundup of conservatives ready to rethink their position on him, the New York Post endorsed him, radio host Michael Medved suggested his fellow hosts needed to come to grips with the reality of the situation, and the McCain campaign itself has kept up a steady patter of e-mails to reporters announcing new endorsements, including Ted Olson, the former solicitor general who's a favorite of conservatives.

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Olbermann on Telco Fascism; Our Leaders Continue to Bring Freedom to America (Not)

In a blistering condemnation of President Bush's willingness to go to the wall for corporations he relies on to spy on Americans, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann says the president's message in his State of the Union address calling for immunity of telecommunications companies is a "textbook example of fascism."

Bush and Congressional Democrats are in a pitched fight over whether to free telecoms from legal liability as part of an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The president says the companies should be rewarded for their cooperation in the war on terror; critics say legal immunity would preclude any oversight of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program that ensnared US citizens.

Olbermann accused Bush's threat to veto any bill without immunity of aiding the terrorists, when coupled with his threat that failing to act on a permanent FISA expansion would weaken US national security.

"You told Congress, if you do not act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened, and our citizens would be in greater danger," Olbermann said. "Yet you you are willing to weaken that ability. You will subject us, your citizens, to that greater danger. This is simple enough for you to understand. If Congress approves a new FISA act without telecom immunity, and sends it to your desk, and you veto it, you, by your own terms and your own definitions, you will have just sided with the terrorists."

The host further excoriated Bush for refusing to even acknowledge corporate assistance, always couching his calls for immunity by describing companies "believed" or "alleged" to have assisted his still-classified program.

"If you, sir, are asking Congress and us to join you in this shameless, breathless, literal textbook example of fascism, the merged efforts of government and corporations who answer to no government, you still don't have the guts to say the telecom companies did assist you in your efforts?" Olbermann asked. "Will you and the equivocators who surround you like a cocoon never go on the record about anything? Even the stuff you claim to believe in?"

Ironically, Olbermann notes, that Vice President Dick Cheney did go on the record about telecom involvement, when he spoke to conservative talker Rush Limbaugh Wednesday.

"The Vice President probably shouldn’t have phoned in to the Rush Limbaugh Propaganda-Festival yesterday. Sixth sentence out of Mr. Cheney’s mouth: The FISA bill is about, quote, 'retroactive liability protection for the companies that have worked with us and helped us prevent further attacks against the United States,'" Olbermann said. "Oops. Mr. Cheney is something of a loose cannon, of course. But he kind of let the wrong cat out of the bag there."

Some critics dismissed Olbermann as a hyberbolic ranter who relies on over-the-top rhetoric.

"The MSNBC host, who once scolded public figures who use Nazi references, made his own latest invocation of Nazi Germany, as he compared the telecoms to the Krupp family who were convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg," wrote conservative media critic Brad Wilmouth. "Olbermann: 'It begins to look like the bureaucrats of the Third Reich trying to protect the Krupp family industrial giants by literally rewriting the laws of Germany for their benefit. And we know how that turned out. Alfred Krupp and 11 of his directors were convicted of war crimes at Nuremburg.'"

Unable to reach a final agreement on how to update FISA and whether to give immunity to the telecoms, Congress this week passed a 15-day extension to the Protect America Act, a temporary FISA extension forced through Congress just before its August recess.

On Monday, the Senate will resume debate on the FISA expansion, after Republicans backed off their demands that all proposed amendments be subjected to a 60-vote majority, according to Congressional Quarterly. The subscription-only Capitol Hill journal reports:

Three amendments to be voted on next week will address retroactive immunity for companies being sued for allegedly assisting the National Security Agency in its warrantless surveillance program.

One, by Democrats Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, would simply remove the immunity provisions, which are a priority for the Bush administration.

Another, by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., would substitute the federal government as the defendant in the lawsuits. Both would only need a simple majority for adoption.

A third, by Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would require the companies to justify their actions before the secret FISA court, which would then decide whether immunity was warranted. It would require 60 votes to be adopted.

Some critics see the move as just another GOP gambit to block immunity from passing.

"It seems rather clear what happened here. There are certain amendments that are not going to get even 50 votes -- including the Dodd/Feingold amendment to strip telecom immunity out of the bill -- and, for that reason, Republicans were more than willing to agree to a 50-vote threshold, since they know those amendments won't pass even in a simple up-or-down vote," writes Glenn Greenwald, a prominent blogger covering the FISA fight.

"But then, there are other amendments which might be able to get 50 votes, but cannot get 60 votes -- such as Feinstein's amendment to transfer the telecom cases to the FISA court and her other amendment providing that FISA is the "exclusive means" for eavesdropping -- and, thus, those are the amendments for which the GOP insisted upon a 60-vote requirement."

During his comment, Olbermann reiterated the revelation from former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who blew the whistle on his former company's collusion with the National Security Agency, that he connected a "Big Brother machine" to funnel every piece of communication crossing AT&T's wires into an NSA database.

"This isn't about finding that kind of needle in a haystack, this isn't even about finding that haystack" Olbermann said. "This is about scooping up every piece of hay there ever was."

Link.

Our Leaders' Intelligence?

When the Tonkin Gulf incident took place in early August 1964, I was a journeyman CIA analyst in what Condoleezza Rice refers to as "the bowels of the agency." As current intelligence referent for Russian policy toward Southeast Asia and China, I worked very closely with those responsible for analysis of Vietnam and China.

Out of that experience I must say that, as much as one might be tempted to laugh at the bizarre antics of last week's incident involving small Iranian boats and U.S. naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, this is -- as my old Russian professor used to say -- nothing to laugh.

The situation is so reminiscent of what happened -- and didn't happen -- from Aug. 2-4, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin, and in Washington, it is in no way funny. At the time, the United States had about 16,000 troops in South Vietnam. The war that was "justified" by the Tonkin Gulf resolution of Aug. 7, 1964, led to a buildup to 535,000 U.S. troops in the late '60s, 58,000 of whom were killed -- not to mention the estimated 2 million Vietnamese who lost their lives by then and in the ensuing ten years.

Ten years. How can our president speak so glibly about ten more years of a U.S. armed presence in Iraq? Wonder why he doesn't know anything about Vietnam.

Intelligence lessons from Vietnam and Iraq

What follows is written primarily for honest intelligence analysts and managers still on "active duty." The issuance of the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran was particularly welcome to those of us who had been hoping there were enough of you left who had not been thoroughly corrupted by former CIA Director George Tenet and his flock of malleable managers.

We are not so much surprised at the integrity of Tom Fingar, who is in charge of national intelligence analysis. He showed his mettle in manfully resisting forgeries and fairy tales about Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction." What is, frankly, a happy surprise is the fact that he and other nonideologues and noncareerist professionals have been able to prevail and speak truth to power on such dicey issues as Iran-nuclear, the upsurge in terrorism caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the year-old NIE saying Iraq is headed for hell in a handbasket (with no hint that a "surge" could make a difference).

But those are the NIEs. They share the status of "supreme genre" of analytic product with the President's Daily Brief and other vehicles for current intelligence, the field in which I labored, first in the analytic trenches and then as a briefer at the White House, for most of my 27-year career. True, the NIE "Iraq's Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction" of Oct. 1, 2002, (wrong on every major count) greased the skids for the attack on Iraq on March 19, 2003. But it is more often current intelligence that is fixed upon to get the country into war.

The Tonkin Gulf events are perhaps the best case in point. We retired professionals are hopeful that Fingar can ensure integrity in the current intelligence process as well as in intelligence estimates.

Salivating for wider war: Tonkin Gulf

Given the confusion last Sunday in the Persian Gulf, you need to remember that a "known known" in the form of a nonevent has already been used to sell a major war -- Vietnam. It is not only in retrospect that we know that no attack occurred that night.

Those of us in intelligence, not to mention President Lyndon Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, all knew full well that the evidence of any armed attack on the evening of Aug. 4, 1964, the so-called "second" Tonkin Gulf incident, was highly dubious. But it fit the president's purposes, so they lent a hand to facilitate escalation of the war.

During the summer of 1964 President Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were eager to widen the war in Vietnam. They stepped up sabotage and hit-and-run attacks on the coast of North Vietnam. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later admitted that he and other senior leaders had concluded that the seaborne attacks "amounted to little more than pinpricks" and "were essentially worthless," but they continued.

Concurrently, the National Security Agency was ordered to collect signals intelligence from the North Vietnamese coast on the Gulf of Tonkin, and the surprise coastal attacks were seen as a helpful way to get the North Vietnamese to turn on their coastal radars. The destroyer USS Maddox, carrying electronic spying gear, was authorized to approach as close as eight miles from the coast and four miles from offshore islands, some of which had been subjected to intense shelling by clandestine attack boats.

As James Bamford describes it in "Body of Secrets":

The twin missions of the Maddox were in a sense symbiotic. The vessel's primary purpose was to act as a seagoing provocateur -- to poke its sharp gray bow and the American flag as close to the belly of North Vietnam as possible, in effect shoving its five-inch cannons up the nose of the Communist navy. In turn, this provocation would give the shore batteries an excuse to turn on as many coastal defense radars, fire control systems and communications channels as possible, which could then be captured by the men ... at the radar screens. The more provocation, the more signals ...

The Maddox's mission was made even more provocative by being timed to coincide with commando raids, creating the impression that the Maddox was directing those missions and possibly even lobbing firepower in their support ...

North Vietnam also claimed at least a 12-mile limit and viewed the Maddox as a trespassing ship deep within its territorial waters." (pp. 295-296)

On Aug. 2, 1964, an intercepted message ordered North Vietnamese torpedo boats to attack the Maddox. The destroyer was alerted and raced out to sea beyond reach of the torpedoes, three of which were fired in vain at the destroyer's stern. The Maddox's captain suggested that the rest of his mission be called off, but the Pentagon refused. And still more commando raids were launched on Aug. 3, shelling for the first time targets on the mainland, not just the offshore islands.

Early on Aug. 4, the Maddox's captain cabled his superiors that the North Vietnamese believed his patrol was directly involved with the commando raids and shelling. That evening at 7:15 (Vietnam time) the Pentagon alerted the Maddox to intercepted messages indicating that another attack by patrol boats was imminent.

What followed was panic and confusion. There was a score of reports of torpedo and other hostile attacks, but no damage and growing uncertainty as to whether any attack actually took place. McNamara was told that "freak radar echoes" were misinterpreted by "young fellows" manning the sonar, who were "apt to say any noise is a torpedo."

This did not prevent McNamara from testifying to Congress two days later that there was "unequivocal proof" of a new attack. And based largely on that, on the following day (Aug. 7) Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution bringing ten more years of war.

Meanwhile, in the trenches

By the afternoon of Aug. 4 (Washington time), the CIA's expert analyst on North Vietnam (let's call him "Tom") had concluded that probably no one had fired on U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf over the past 24 hours. He included a paragraph to that effect in the item he wrote for the Current Intelligence Bulletin, which would be wired to the White House and other key agencies and appear in print the next morning.

And then something unique happened. The director of the Office of Current Intelligence, a very senior officer whom Tom had never before seen, descended into the bowels of the agency to order the paragraph deleted. He explained:

"We're not going to tell LBJ that now. He has already decided to bomb North Vietnam. We have to keep our lines open to the White House."

"Tom" later bemoaned -- quite rightly: "What do we need lines open for, if we're not going to use them and use them to tell the truth?"

A year or two ago, in the wake of the policy/intelligence fiasco on Iraq, I would have been inclined to comment sarcastically, "How quaint; how obsolete." But the good news is that the analysts writing the National Intelligence Estimates have now reverted to the ethos in which "Tom" and I were proud to work.

Today's analysts/reporters of current intelligence need to follow their good example. And we trust that Tom Fingar will hold their feet to the fire. For if they don't rise to the challenge, the consequences are sure to be disastrous. This should be obvious in the wake of the Tonkin Gulf experience, not to mention the more recent performance of senior officials before the attack on Iraq in 2003.

The late Ray S. Cline, who at the time was the boss of the director of Current Intelligence, said he was "very sure" that no attack took place on Aug. 4. He suggested that McNamara had shown the president unevaluated signals intelligence which referred to the (real) earlier attack on Aug. 2 rather than the nonevent on the 4th. There was no sign of remorse on Cline's part that he didn't step in and make sure the president was told the truth.

We in the trenches knew there was no attack; and so did the director of Current Intelligence as well as Cline, who was deputy director for Intelligence. But all knew, as did McNamara, that President Johnson was lusting for a pretext to strike the North and escalate the war. And so, like B'rer Rabbit, they didn't say nothin'.

Commenting on the interface of intelligence and policy on Vietnam, a well-respected, retired senior CIA officer addressed:

... the dilemma CIA directors and senior intelligence professionals face in cases when they know that unvarnished intelligence judgments will not be welcomed by the president, his policy managers and his political advisers ... [They] must decide whether to tell it like it is (and so risk losing their place at the president's advisory table), or to go with the flow of existing policy by accentuating the positive (thus preserving their access and potential influence). In these episodes from the Vietnam era, we have seen that senior CIA officers more often than not tended toward the latter approach. CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968 --Harold P. Ford

Bummer. I wish there were more of a sense of anger at that.

Back to Iran. This time, we all know that the president and vice president are seeking an excuse to attack Iran. There is a big difference from the situation in the summer of 1964, when President Johnson had intimidated all his senior subordinates into using deceit to escalate the war. Bamford comments on the disingenuousness of Robert McNamara when he testified in 1968 that it was "inconceivable" that senior officials, including the president, deliberately used the Tonkin Gulf events to generate congressional support for a wider Vietnam war.

In Bamford's words, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had become "a sewer of deceit," with Operation Northwoods and other unconscionable escapades to its credit. Then-Under Secretary of State George Ball commented, "There was a feeling that if the destroyer got into some trouble, that this would provide the provocation we needed."

Good news: It's different now

As indicated above, we now have more integrity at the top of the intelligence community. But, in my view, the main thing that has prevented Bush and Cheney from attacking Iran so far has been the strong opposition of the uniformed military, including the Joint Chiefs. The circumstances attending the misadventure last Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz are far from clear. But the incident certainly shows that our senior military need all the help they can get from intelligence officers more concerned with the truth than with "keeping lines open to the White House" and doing its bidding.

In addition, today the intelligence oversight committees in Congress seem to be waking from their Rip Van Winkle-like slumber. It was Congress, after all, that ordered the controversial NIE on Iran/nuclear (and was among those pushing strongly that it be publicized). And the flow of substantive intelligence to Congress is much larger than it was in 1964 when, remember, there were no intelligence committees as such.

So listen, you inheritors of the honorable profession of current intelligence, don't let them grind you down. If you're working in the bowels of the agency and you find that your leaders are cooking intelligence to a recipe for casus belli, think long and hard about the oath you took to protect the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic." Should not that oath transcend in importance any secrecy promise you had to agree to as a condition of employment?

By sticking your neck out, you might be able to prevent ten years of unnecessary war.

Link.

Vox Populi

Link.

Yet More Bad News; Fallout from the Iraq Fandango

And what have we all gotten for this?

As many as 121 Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007, a jump of some 20 percent over the year before, officials said Thursday.

The rise comes despite numerous efforts to improve the mental health of a force stressed by a longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the most deadly year yet in the now six-year-old conflict in Afghanistan.

Internal briefing papers prepared by the Army's psychiatry consultant early this month show there were 89 confirmed suicides last year and 32 deaths that are suspected suicides and still under investigation.

More than a quarter of those — about 34 — happened during deployments in Iraq, an increase from 27 in Iraq the previous year, according to the preliminary figures.

The report also shows an increase in the number of attempted suicides and self-injuries — some 2,100 in 2007 compared to less than 1,500 the previous year and less than 500 in 2002.

The total of 121 suicides last year, if all are confirmed, would be more than double the 52 reported in 2001, before the Sept. 11 attacks prompted the Bush administration to launch its counter-terror war. The toll was 87 by 2005 and 102 in 2006.

Officials said the rate of suicides per 100,000 active duty soldiers has not yet been calculated for 2007. But in a half million-person active duty Army, the 2006 toll of 102 translated to a rate of 17.5 per 100,000, the highest since the Army started counting in 1980, officials said. The rate has fluctuated over those years, with the low being 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001.

That toll and rate for 2006 is a revision from figures released in August because a number of pending cases have since been concluded. Officials earlier had reported 99 soldiers killed themselves in 2006 and two cases were pending — as opposed to the 102 now confirmed. It's common for investigations to take some time and for officials to study results at length before releasing them publicly.

Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general, has said that officials found failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and the stress of their jobs have been main factors in soldiers' suicides. Officials also have found that the number of days troops are deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries contributes to that stress.

With the Army stretched thin by years of fighting the two wars, the Pentagon last year extended normal tours of duty to 15 months from 12 and has sent some troops back to the wars several times. The Army has been hoping to reduce tour lengths this summer. But the prospect could depend heavily on what Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, recommends when he gives his assessment of security in Iraq and troop needs to Congress in April.

A succession of studies on mental health in the military have found a system that might have been adequate for peacetime has been overwhelmed by troops coming home from war. Some troop surveys in Iraq have shown that 20 percent of Army soldiers have signs and symptoms of post-traumatic stress, which can cause flashbacks of traumatic combat experiences and other severe reactions. About 35 percent of soldiers are seeking some kind of mental health treatment a year after returning home under a program that screens returning troops for physical and mental health problems, officials have said.

Officials have worked to set up a number of new programs and strengthen old ones for providing mental health care to the force. The Army also has been working to stem the stigma associated with getting therapy for mental problems, after officials found that troops are avoiding counseling out of fear it could harm their careers.

Link.

Our Leaders' Latest Success

In the latest violence, the deputy governor of Afghanistan's Helmand province has been killed in a bomb attack on a mosque, officials say.

'Failing state'

The three reports have appeared two years after a road map for international assistance was agreed in London.

Oxfam said a "major change of direction... to avert a humanitarian disaster" in Afghanistan was needed.

In an open letter, Oxfam predicts a "humanitarian disaster" in the country, pointing out that millions of dollars of development aid is being wasted.

The charity says that the international approach towards Afghanistan is lacking in direction and is "incoherent and uncoordinated".

"There are very many factors to explain the increasing insurgency, and of course criminality and the role of warlords and drugs traffickers is very important," said Matt Waldman, policy advisor on Afghanistan for Oxfam International.

"But we also have to understand that recruitment is much easier when people are living in desperate circumstances," he said.

'Resurgent violence'

The two American-based reports also warned that a new approach was needed to prevent Afghanistan becoming a "failed or failing state".

The US Atlantic Council began its report with the words: "Nato is not winning in Afghanistan" and talks of a stalemate.

"Without urgent changes Afghanistan could become a failed or failing state," it said.

"If Afghanistan fails, the possible strategic consequences will worsen regional instability, do great harm to the fight against Jihadist and religious extremism, and put in grave jeopardy Nato's future as a credible, cohesive and relevant military alliance."

Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has rejected the suggestion that Nato is not winning the battle with the Taleban.

He told the BBC that the security situation was mixed, with violence localised. "Nato's own figures show 70% of the violence occurs in 10% of the districts."

He said the authors of the Atlantic Council report "were guilty early on of excessive optimism - of naive idealism - and they are now connecting with some of the realities in Afghanistan".

On Wednesday another body, the American Afghanistan Study Group, warned that "resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, too few military forces and insufficient economic aid" were all contributing to the country's woes.

In a separate development, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told President Bush that his country's troops will not stay in Afghanistan unless Nato deploys a further 1,000 soldiers in the restive province of Kandahar, where there is currently a Canadian contingent of 2,500 troops.

Seventy-eight Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since Canadian troops were deployed in 2002.

The Taleban have mounted a comeback in Afghanistan over the past two years.

The south of the country has seen the worst violence since the Taleban were thrown out of power in the US-led invasion of 2001.

The Nato-led force has almost 37,000 troops in Afghanistan.

Link.

Is this News to You?

In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in “surreptitious” communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials during the commission’s 20-month investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

Shenon, who led The New York Times’ coverage of the 9/11 panel, reveals the Zelikow-Rove connection in a new book entitled The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, to be published next month by TWELVE books. The Commission is under an embargo until its February 5 publication, but Washington DeCoded managed to purchase a copy of the abridged audio version from a New York bookstore.

In what’s termed an “investigation of the investigation,” Shenon purports to tell the story of the commission from start to finish. The book’s critical revelations, however, revolve almost entirely around the figure of Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs prior to his service as the commission’s executive director. Shenon delivers a blistering account of Zelikow’s role and leadership, and an implicit criticism of the commissioners for appointing Zelikow in the first place—and then allowing him to stay on after his myriad conflicts-of-interest were revealed under oath.

Shenon’s narrative is built from extensive interviews with staff members and several, if not all, the commissioners. He depicts Zelikow as exploiting his central position to negate or neutralize criticism of the Bush administration so that the White House would not bear, in November 2004, the political burden of failing to prevent the attacks.

The Commission includes these specific revelations:

• Kean and Hamilton appreciated that Zelikow was a friend and former colleague of then-national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, one of the principal officials whose conduct would be scrutinized. Zelikow had served with her on the National Security Council (NSC) during the presidency of Bush’s father, and they had written a book together about German reunification. The commission co-chairmen also knew of Zelikow’s October 2001 appointment to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. According to Shenon, however, Zelikow failed to disclose several additional and egregious conflicts-of-interest, among them, the fact that he had been a member of Rice’s NSC transition team in 2000-01. In that capacity, Zelikow had been the “architect” responsible for demoting Richard Clarke and his counter-terrorism team within the NSC. As Shenon puts it, Zelikow “had laid the groundwork for much of went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?”

• Karen Heitkotter, the commission’s executive secretary, was taken aback on June 23, 2003 when she answered the telephone for Zelikow at 4:40 PM and heard a voice intone, “This is Karl Rove. I’m looking for Philip.” Heitkotter knew that Zelikow had promised the commissioners he would cut off all contact with senior officials in the Bush administration. Nonetheless, she gave Zelikow’s cell phone number to Rove. The next day there was another call from Rove at 11:35 AM. Subsequently, Zelikow would claim that these calls pertained to his “old job” at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

• The full extent of Zelikow’s involvement with the incumbent administration only became evident within the commission on October 8, 2003, almost halfway into the panel’s term. Determined to blunt the Jersey Girls’ call for his resignation or recusal, Zelikow proposed that he be questioned under oath about his activities. General counsel Daniel Marcus, who conducted the sworn interview, brought a copy of the résumé Zelikow had provided to Kean and Hamilton. None of the activities Zelikow now detailed—his role on Rice’s transition team, his instrumental role in Clarke’s demotion, his authorship of a post-9/11 pre-emptive attack doctrine—were mentioned in the résumé. Zelikow blandly asserted to Marcus that he did not see “any of this as a major conflict of interest.” Marcus’s conclusion was that Zelikow “should never have been hired” as executive director. But the only upshot from these shocking disclosures was that Zelikow was involuntarily recused from that part of the investigation which involved the presidential transition, and barred from participating in subsequent interviews of senior Bush administration officials.

• Some two months later, as Bob Kerrey replaced disgruntled ex-Senator Max Cleland on the panel, the former Nebraska senator became astounded once he understood Zelikow’s obvious conflicts-of-interest and his very limited recusal. Kerrey could not understand how Kean and Hamilton had ever agreed to put Zelikow in charge. “Look Tom,” Kerrey told Kean, “either he goes or I go.” But Kean persuaded Kerrey to drop his ultimatum.

• In late 2003, around the time his involuntary recusal was imposed, Zelikow called executive secretary Karen Heitkotter into his office and ordered her to stop creating records of his incoming telephone calls. Concerned that the order was improper, a nervous Heitkotter soon told general counsel Marcus. He advised her to ignore Zelikow’s order and continue to keep a log of his telephone calls, insofar as she knew about them.

• Although Shenon could not obtain from the GAO an unredacted record of Zelikow’s cell phone use—and Zelikow used his cell phone for most of his outgoing calls—the Times reporter was able to establish that Zelikow made numerous calls to “456” numbers in the 202 area code, which is the exclusive prefix of the White House.

• Even after his recusal, Zelikow continued to insert himself into the work of “Team 3,” the task force responsible for the most politically-sensitive part of the investigation, counter-terrorism policy. This brief encompassed the White House, which meant investigating the conduct of Condoleeza Rice and Richard Clarke during the months prior to 9/11. Team 3 staffers would come to believe that Zelikow prevented them from submitting a report that would have depicted Rice’s performance as “amount[ing] to incompetence, or something not far from it.”

In Without Precedent, Kean and Hamilton’s 2006 account of the 9/11 panel, the two co-chairmen wrote that Zelikow was a controversial choice

. . . [but] we had full confidence in Zelikow’s independence and ability—and frankly, we wanted somebody who was unafraid to roil the waters from time to time. He recused himself from anything involving his work on the NSC transition. He made clear his determination to conduct an aggressive investigation. And he was above all a historian dedicated to a full airing of the facts. It was clear from people who knew and worked with him that Zelikow would not lead a staff inquiry that did anything less than uncover the most detailed and accurate history of 9/11.

Shenon’s radically different account of the commission’s inner workings promises to achieve what none of the crackpot conspiracy theorists have managed to do so far: put the 9/11 Commission in disrepute.

Link.

Quote of the Day

God bless Our Leaders. Never has this country been run by greater losers and screw-ups. (Well, at least their core Big Wealth supporters have been made happy).

"There was plenty of intelligence. That intelligence
was mismanaged. Instead of addressing that
mismanagement we gave the intelligence
community more money, more authority, and
they're less accountable. That's ultimately going
to prove catastrophic."

- Mike German, former undercover anti-terrorist
agent for the FBI, famed Whistleblower, and
author of "Thinking Like a Terrorist"

If You Can't Laugh at this, You have a Stunted Sense of Humor

If this whole Heath Ledger tragedy has taught
me anything, it's that I'm not the only one
who makes numerous inappropriate calls to
Mary-Kate Olsen with a dead body in the room.

(Brad Simanek)
http://www.slightlyamusing.com