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22 Feb 2003 @ 00:37, by Jenese James
Sweden Offers Free-speech Refuge To U.S. Officials
By Dennis Hans
Scoop.co.nz | Fiction/Satire
Friday 21 February 2003
Sweden Providing Platform for U.S. Officials Cowed by Bush intimidated bureaucrats regain their voice as protected guests of a genuinely democratic regime.
STOCKHOLM - Blaine Williams hasn't stopped grinning since he arrived in Sweden two weeks ago. Several times a day he'll approach a complete stranger, offer a handshake and a smile, introduce himself as a former CIA analyst from America, and proceed to tell the bewildered Swede all the things he knows that directly contradict President George W. Bush's declarations about Saddam Hussein's intentions and capabilities.
"Free at last!" Williams exclaimed to a reporter as he sat on his front porch and waved to new neighbors. "I was stuck in a totalitarian bureaucracy for 14 months. What a relief it is to say in public who I am and what I think."
Williams is the first of dozens of former U.S. government employees expected to take refuge in Sweden over the next several months, courtesy of a bold project of the new social democratic government.
On October 15, the Swedish Parliament appropriated 500 million dollars for the "Palme Plan." Named for former Swedish president Olaf Palme, it promotes the virtues of free and honest speech among government officials in underdeveloped democracies.
"Swedes have always been generous in providing economic aid to countries with underdeveloped economies," said Erland Carlsson, the parliamentarian who conceived the Palme Plan. "But we've done little to promote democratic development in underdeveloped democracies."
Some leaders of underdeveloped democracies have welcomed Sweden's "democracy teams," encouraging their efforts to create a culture of candor and transparency in the corridors of power. Those efforts comprise the overt component of the Palme Plan. The covert component kicks in when a leader is hostile to the very notions of candor and transparency.
Palme, who was Carlsson's political mentor, believed his greatest failure as president was his inability, during the Vietnam War, to persuade U.S. officialdom of the virtues of public candor. "Palme believed that if the national security bureaucracy had not been cowed into silence in the face of a torrent of deceit from a determined White House, the U.S. would never have invaded and destroyed Vietnam," Carlsson said.
An October 8 story in the Houston Chronicle, by Jonathan Landy and Warren Strobel ( [link]), convinced Carlsson that the same suffocating environment had enveloped key sectors of the Bush administration.
Thirteen officials from the CIA, State Department and Pentagon, many with vast experience in the Middle East and South Asia, told Landy and Strobel the same thing: The White House has squelched dissent, imposed conformity and silence, demanded skewed analyses to justify its hard line, and repeatedly exaggerated or falsified intelligence information to inflate the Saddam threat.
What most alarmed the Swedish MP was that none of the analysts were willing to be quoted by name. Some were too frightened even to be quoted anonymously.
"I couldn't help thinking that if these informed, respected patriots could raise their voices openly and in unison, they'd stop the administration's chicken hawks in their tracks," Carlsson said. "Public and congressional support for the war path would whither, and the president would be exposed as the world's most crooked 'straight shooter.'"
Borrowing Bush's Brilliant Idea
When Bush insisted that U.N. weapons inspectors be able to take Iraqi scientists and their families outside of Iraq for interviews, thus protecting the scientists from possible retaliation by Saddam's secret police, Carlsson had the solution that had eluded Palme so many years ago.
"That's it!" he told a colleague. "We'll offer U.S. bureaucrats and their families safe passage to Sweden and a secure environment from which they can speak freely and publicly to the folks back home. They can stay here at our expense until a climate of openness and honesty prevails in the Bush administration."
In addition to Williams, 28 other bureaucrats and their families are en route to Stockholm. All were spirited out of Washington by a team of Swedish secret agents who had honed their rescue skills in Yugoslavia and the Congo.
Once the former officials settle into their new homes and get comfortable with saying who they are and what they think, they'll spend their time giving speeches an interviews.
Former CIA analyst Williams is already a sensation on Swedish TV as a regular guest on the top-rated chat show, Nugen Farger ("Hard Rugby"). On a recent edition, he parsed a string of Bush's statements on Iraq, including assertions at a Republican fundraiser that Saddam Hussein hopes to deploy al Qaeda as his "forward army" against the West, and that "we need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind."
"I can assure you," Williams told Swedish viewers, "that no one at CIA believes a word Bush said. What's more, no one at CIA believes that Bush believes a word Bush said."
Strong words, and Williams anticipates an echo chamber as more of Sweden's newest residents regain their voice. But he wonders if members of the U.S. news media, particularly those he calls "the boobs on the tube," will dare to listen.
- Dennis Hans files fantastic stories from cities he's never visited for the Wishful Thinking Express. He is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Post (Canada) and online at TomPaine.com, Slate and The Black World Today (tbwt.com), among other outlets. He has taught courses in mass communications and American foreign policy at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg. Dennis is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant and can be reached at mailto:HANS_D@popmail.firn.edu
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Category: Articles
3 comments
22 Feb 2003 @ 13:42 by sharie : 29 Officials DEFECT from the U.S.
This is shocking news, Jenese! Sweden offers $500 million to revitalize "under-developed democracies" such as in the U.S.!
This is such great news!
Have you seen this, it's a reiteration of what's being said on NCN newslogs:
***What the Bush Gang Really Wants
***The Roots of the Iraq War
by WILLIAM BLUM
Which is the more remarkable -- that the United States can openly announce to
the world its determination to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its
government in the absence of any attack or threat of attack from the intended
target? Or that for an entire year the world has been striving to figure out
what the superpower's real intentions are?
There are of course those who accept at face value Washington's stated
motivations of "liberating" the people of Iraq from a dictatorship and
bestowing upon them a full measure of democracy, freedom and other eternal
joys fit for American schoolbooks. In light of a century of well-documented
US foreign policy which reveals a virtually complete absence of such
motivations, along with repeated opposite consequences, we can dispense with
this attempt by Washington to win hearts and mindless.
Presented here are some reflections about several of the causes that make the
hearts of the imperial mafia beat faster in regard to Iraq, which may be
helpful in arguing the anti-war point of view:
Expansion of the American Empire: adding more military bases and
communications listening stations to the Pentagon's portfolio, setting up a
command post from which to better monitor, control and intimidate the rest of
the Middle East.
Idealism: remaking the world in what the true believers see as America's
image, with free enterprise and Judeo-Christianity as core elements; here is
Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, now at the American Enterprise
Institute (one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq): "If we just
let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we
don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this
thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do
very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
Oil: the sine qua non of Middle East policy, yesterday, today and tomorrow;
to be in full control of Iraq's vast reserves, with Saudi oil and Iranian oil
waiting defenselessly next door; OPEC will be stripped of its independence
from Washington and will no longer think about replacing the dollar with the
Euro as its official currency; oil-dependent Europe may think twice next time
about being so uppity.
Globalization: Once relative security over the land, people and institutions
has been established, the transnational corporations will march into Iraq
ready to privatize everything at fire-sale prices, followed closely by the
IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization and the rest of the international
financial extortionists.
Arms industry: As with each of America's endless wars, military manufacturers
will rake in their exorbitant profits, then deliver their generous political
contributions, inspiring Washington leaders to yet further warfare, each war
also being the opportunity to test new weapons.
Israel: The men driving Bush to war include long-time militant supporters of
Israel, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith, who, along
with the rest of the powerful Israeli lobby, have advocated smashing Iraq for
years. Israel has been playing a key role in the American military buildup to
the war. Besides getting rid of its arch enemy, Israel could use the
opportunity to carry out its final solution to the Palestinian question --
transferring them to Jordan, (liberated) Iraq, and anywhere else that
expanded US hegemony in the Middle East will allow. Iraq's abundant water
could be diverted to relieve a parched Israel.
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II,
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8 Sep 2009 @ 17:27 by Erich Scheinert @68.99.213.189 : desperate to leave USA
As an atheist and a homosexual I am desperate to leave the USA.Anyone not in the USA cannot imagine what life is like in this theocratic nation.The only people here that actually get a taste of freedom are the ones who are willing to goosestep in line with our divisive domestic and foreign policies.What has the USA given to the world community besides death and mountains of trash?
Other entries in Articles
10 Aug 2003 @ 19:22: letter to America
19 Apr 2003 @ 01:45: what is peace part II
13 Apr 2003 @ 04:14: late night musings on life
12 Apr 2003 @ 16:25: staged media event beemd live to millions as big fat lie
20 Mar 2003 @ 22:55: message from the heart - PART IV
16 Mar 2003 @ 19:55: message from the heart PART III
15 Mar 2003 @ 23:11: message from the heart - PART II
13 Mar 2003 @ 01:55: message from the heart PART I
28 Feb 2003 @ 01:07: the coalition of the coerced
22 Feb 2003 @ 23:19: more on the euro vs the dollar
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