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 30 Oct 2003 @ 07:54
Bush press conference: the bigger the crisis, the bigger the lies
By David Walsh and Barry Grey
30 October 2003
The contrast between rhetoric and reality reached new heights at the press conference held by President Bush October 28. It was Bush’s first news conference since July 30 and only the second since early March, several weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq.
The conditions under which the event was held were indicative of the crisis atmosphere surrounding the White House. According to the New York Times, Bush decided to hold the press conference Tuesday morning, and it was announced publicly only 90 minutes before it was scheduled to begin.
White House officials said a press conference had been under consideration for several weeks. It is likely that Bush’s mentors had intended for him to meet the press in the aftermath of diplomatic successes—the UN resolution backing the American occupation of Iraq, the international donors’ conference in Madrid—and a triumphant tour of Iraq by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
In the event, Wolfowitz’s tour was something of a public relations disaster, ending with the Pentagon official fleeing a rocket attack on his heavily guarded hotel in downtown Baghdad—a bold guerrilla action that was followed the next day by four virtually simultaneous car bomb attacks on police stations in Baghdad and the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Evidently, the president’s advisers felt obliged to put Bush before the microphones to counter the political fallout from the reversals on the ground in Iraq. One commentator called the move “a desperate effort by a White House that’s trying to stem serious erosion in public support for its handling of Iraq.”
Bush proved his usual inane and banal self, unable to provide a coherent or substantive answer to a single question. Even the usually fawning New York Times had to admit that Bush “stumbled over his lines at times, and his usual good-natured jousting with reporters occasionally turned snippy.”
In his opening remarks Bush presented a view of events ludicrously at odds with reality. Citing America’s “continuing work in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the president declared: “The world is safer today because Saddam Hussein and the Taliban are gone.” This under conditions of a growing guerrilla war in Afghanistan and the single most bloody day of anti-US violence in Baghdad since the beginning of the American occupation.
The president was no less surreal when he turned to domestic affairs. He declared himself “optimistic about the future of the economy,” but said nothing about the impact of another $87 billion to fund the occupation of Iraq on a federal budget deficit already at record levels, dozens of state governments on the brink of insolvency, trade and payments deficits reaching new heights every month, and a dollar already under mounting international pressure.
In response to a reporter’s question about the spate of car bombings in Iraq, Bush offered the following profundity: “That’s what terrorists do. They commit suicide acts against innocent people and then expect people to say, ‘Well, gosh, we better not try to fight you anymore.’”
Bush did not explain how it was that “terrorists” had “found recruits” willing to sacrifice their lives to drive out the US forces. According to Bush’s inverted logic, American colonial rule is synonymous with peace and freedom, and resistance to this rule is, by definition, terrorism inspired by hatred of peace and freedom.
Another reporter asked Bush about his administration’s refusal to hand over critical White House documents, including reports on presidential daily briefings, to the commission investigating the September 11 attacks in New York City and Washington DC. Bush replied, “It is important for me to protect national security. ... It’s important for the writers of the presidential daily brief [sic] to feel comfortable that the documents will never be politicized and/or unnecessarily exposed for public purview.”
This is a truly remarkable argument. A commission whose mandate is to reveal the causes for the greatest failure of intelligence and internal security in US history is to be deprived of crucial documents on the grounds of—intelligence and national security!
Repeating the administration mantra that Iraq is “a new front in the war in terror”—a front created by Washington’s unprovoked invasion—Bush repeated another standard administration line, calling Iraq a “particular battle in the war on terror.” In other words, this is only one of many more wars to come.
When he was asked to “level” with the American people “about the difficulty and scope of the problem in Iraq,” Bush could only mutter: “Iraq’s a dangerous place. That’s leveling. It is a dangerous place.”
The president’s contempt for the soldiers, their families and the American people as a whole was captured in his response to a perfectly legitimate question: would Bush promise that “a year from now ... you will have reduced the number of troops in Iraq?” Bush’s response: “This is a trick question, so I won’t answer it.”
Bush’s ignorance and indifference to democratic principles emerged in response to a question about the possibility of adding more US troops to the forces already on the ground in Iraq. The president replied, “That’s a decision by John Abizaid [the overall commander of US forces in Iraq]. General Abizaid makes the decision as to whether or not he needs more troops.”
Really? Is the United States a military dictatorship? Who elected General Abizaid? (For that matter, who elected George W. Bush?) According to the US Constitution, there is civilian control of the armed forces.
No one in the press corps challenged this attack on fundamental constitutional principles.
One of the more bizarre, but revealing, moments in the press conference occurred when Bush turned his attention to the 2004 elections. He suggested that the American people would be patient with the ongoing difficulties in Iraq “during an election year, because they tend to be able to differentiate between, you know, politics and reality.” He then expanded on his conception of politics: “a lot of noise and a lot of balloon drops and a lot of hot air. And I’ll probably be right in the mix of it, by the way.”
Two things are revealed by this remark—first, unabashed cynicism, and second, Bush’s disinterest in politics in any conventional sense. To Bush, politics is simply mass manipulation and deception. It is a diversion from the “real” role of the president, which is to pursue with the requisite ruthlessness the aims of the American financial oligarchy, both abroad and at home.
That such a cipher is able to pursue his program of war and social reaction is, above all, a testament to the lack of serious opposition from the Democratic Party. The absence of opposition from within the political and media establishment signifies that the program of the Bush administration embodies the policy of the US ruling elite.
See Also:
US shaken by barrage of attacks from Iraqi resistance
[28 October 2003]
Tens of thousands in Washington demand end to US occupation of Iraq
[27 October 2003]
White House bans news coverage of coffins returning from Iraq
[23 October 2003]
As Bush lies, Iraq seethes against US occupation
[18 October 2003] More >
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 27 Mar 2003 @ 17:20
Casualties at Home
>
> March 27, 2003
> By BOB HERBERT
>
> WASHINGTON - On Tuesday, as President Bush was asking
> Congress for the first installment of the hundreds of
> billions of dollars needed to finance the war in Iraq and
> its aftermath, the students and teachers at a high school
> within walking distance of the White House were struggling
> through their daily routine in a building that has no
> cafeteria, no gymnasium, no student lockers, not even a
> fully reliable source of electricity.
>
> A few weeks ago bricks were falling from the facade of the
> building, which is more than 100 years old.
>
> As we continue the relentless bombing of Baghdad, which the
> military tells us is the necessary prelude to saving it,
> it's fair to ask when the rebuilding of essential
> institutions like the public schools will begin here at
> home. (Don't hold your breath. The money for that sort of
> thing has completely evaporated.)
>
> "We actually have rooms where the water comes in when it
> rains," said Sheila Mills Harris, the principal of the
> School Without Walls, an academically rigorous high school
> that routinely finishes first or second in the District of
> Columbia's rankings.
>
> Laura Bush has visited the school, which has won a series
> of national honors. But academic honors and a visit by the
> first lady are, frankly, irrelevant in an era in which
> social concerns - such as support for public schools and
> health care, and the need to assist the poor, the hungry
> and the unemployed - have been forced to the perimeter of
> public consciousness. Those issues, crucial to our
> conception of ourselves as a just and humane people, have
> been devalued and shunted aside by an administration that
> is committed to an ill-advised, budget-busting war and a
> devastating parade of tax cuts for the very wealthy.
>
> With our attention riveted on the death and destruction in
> Iraq, and the continued threat to Americans in the war
> zone, the other very serious problems facing the U.S. get
> short shrift. We knew last fall that the proportion of
> Americans living in poverty had risen, and that income for
> middle-class households had fallen.
>
> We know that unemployment, especially long-term
> unemployment, is a big problem. And we've known that the
> states are facing their worst budget crisis since the Great
> Depression, a development that has led, among other things,
> to drastic cuts in education aid that are crushing the
> budgets of local public school districts.
>
> These issues aren't even being properly discussed. The Bush
> administration sounds the alarm for war and blows the
> trumpet for tax cuts, and Congress plunges ahead with the
> cuts in domestic programs that must inevitably follow. The
> voices of those who object are effectively silenced by the
> war propaganda and the fear of seeming unpatriotic.
>
> With attention thus deflected, the administration and its
> allies in Congress have come up with one proposal after
> another to weaken programs that were designed to help
> struggling Americans.
>
> In his budget last month the president offered a plan to
> make it more difficult for low-income families to obtain
> government benefits, including tax credits and school lunch
> assistance. This month, as The Times' Robert Pear reported,
> the administration proposed changes in the Medicare program
> that would make it more difficult for elderly people, many
> of them frail, to appeal the denial of benefits like home
> health care and skilled nursing care.
>
> The extent to which the most vulnerable Americans are being
> targeted is appalling. Billions of dollars in cuts have
> been proposed for food stamp and child nutrition programs,
> and for health care for the poor.
>
> Collectively, these are the largest proposed cuts in
> history. Even cuts for veterans' programs are on the table
> - in the midst of a war!
>
> The administration is actually fighting two wars - one
> against Iraq and another against the very idea of a humane
> and responsive government here at home.
>
> At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, the war
> against Iraq will end. Americans will then have the
> opportunity to look around and be stunned by the fix we'll
> be in. We'll look at the enormous costs of the postwar
> occupation in Iraq, and at the social and economic
> dislocation that's occurring here. And we'll look at the
> disaster that the federal budget has become. We'll be
> broke, and we'll ask ourselves, again and again, "What have
> we done?"
>
> [link]
ex=1049783213&ei=1&en=ff3e79f7548a3d31
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16 Mar 2003 @ 10:16
We've Become Such Good Little Germans
If We Care About Elizabeth Smart, Why Not the Children of Iraq? by KURT NIMMO Earlier this week America received good news. Elizabeth Smart, 15, was discovered alive, unharmed, and in good health. She was apparently abducted nine months ago by a mentally deranged homeless preacher, Brian David Mitchell. Today the newspapers all across America ran photographs of a smiling and rosy-cheeked Elizabeth, her father Ed, and younger sister Mary Katherine.
Today America celebrates the return of this innocent child to her loving parents. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, people were not so happy with the fate of their children. In the days before Utah police found Elizabeth Smart, Anglo-American aircraft bombed Basra, Iraq, a not uncommon occurrence. Six children in Al Jumohria, a poor section of town, were killed while they slept. "I walked down the street where the missile had struck in the early hours," writes John Pilger, "it had followed the line of houses, destroying one after the other. I met the father of two sisters, aged eight and 10, who were photographed by a local weddings photographer, Nabil al-Jerani, shortly after the attack. Their bodies were unlike the other four children, who were blown to bits, their limbs and flesh in the overhead wires... These two little girls were left intact. In Nabil's photographs, they are in their nightdresses, one with a bow in her hair, their bodies perfectly engraved in the rubble of their homes, where they had been bombed to death, murdered, in their beds." These horrid photographs were published in the UK Mirror, not the New York Times.
In Britain, where the press enjoys more freedom than it does in America, the people are overwhelmingly against Bush's Iraq attack. In general, America is unaware of the dead children of Iraq -- children killed in our name by Bush and Blair and other war criminals. "Look closely at their images on these pages," Pilger advises, "they are the faces of a stricken nation of whom 42 per cent are children. When Blair speaks about the 'moral case' for sending hundreds of missiles against this nation of so many children, as well as new types of cluster bombs and bunker bombs and microwave bombs, and shells tipped with pure uranium, a form of nuclear weapon, the images of the two sisters provide an eloquent commentary on the Prime Minister's Christian 'morality'." It would seem, as well, there is scant Christian "morality" in America, even as our un-elected president claims to be a servant of Jesus, the King of Peace. Why do so few of us care about the children of Iraq? Are they any less precious than Elizabeth Smart? Why do polls (CBS News/New York Times) indicate an unbelievable 55% of Americans have reached the conclusion that the US must invade Iraq? Are the people who participate in such polls cold and calculating monsters -- like their president, whom so many seem to admire, if we are to believe other polls that bother to track such things -- or are they brainwashed, do they simply tune out the reality of what Bush's invasion will ultimately mean: tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, nearly half of them children, killed or seriously injured, maimed for life, traumatized?
We don't read about such stark possibilities in the New York Times, nor does Sean Hannity discuss them on Fox News. Many of us, if we even bother to glint to truth, are too busy "making a living" or watching sit-coms. Life's complicated enough without taking the weight of the world upon our shoulders. Besides, Saddam is an evil man. He has bio and chem weapons, never mind that Reagan and Dubya's daddy sold them to him. If a bomb like the one dropped on Al Jumohria were released over the neighborhood in Salt Lake City where Elizabeth Smart lives, if it resulted in American kids blown to bits while they sleep, what would the good American people say, what would they do? Wouldn't they want to track down the cold-blooded murderers of such a heinous crime and bring them to justice? Is it possible more than a few, especially the parents and relatives of the murdered kids, would take the law into their own hands and hunt down the perpetrators and string them up to the nearest tree? Is it fair to say most Americans would consider the pilots and bombardiers of such a hellish operation terrorists? Are Palestinians who attack IDF troops or Israeli settlers to avenge the murder of their loved ones terrorists? Or is their one standard for Americans and Israelis, another for Arabs? Is Elizabeth Smart's life more important than any number of Iraqi kids?
Unfortunately, we have become a nation of good Germans. In Nazi Germany, average people looked the other way when the Gestapo dragged off neighbors who happened to be Jewish, or Marxists, or homosexuals, or leaders of the local labor union. They knew what Hitler did in Poland, on the Russian front, to partisans in France and Holland and a dozen other places in Europe. The German people weren't stupid -- they knew what Hitler was all about. Hitler told the German people they were better than all other people. Bush tells the good American people Arabs envy them for their Playstations, their SUVs, their freedom to go to McDonalds unmolested. They hate our civilization, our way of life, these backward Arabs. Bush tells Americans these things and Americans believe him. In order to demonstrate their agreement they paste plastic flag decals on everything.
Did Raafat Ghussein, the 18-year-old art student of Palestinian-born Lebanese parents, hate our civilization in the few short years of her life before she died in the Libyan city of Tripoli, one of 55 victims of a Reagan vendetta against Muammar Qaddafi? When Raafat's parents, Bassem and Saniya, attempted to sue Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for civilian deaths during the air raids, an American judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, dismissed the lawsuit as "frivolous," and characterized the case as one that "offered no hope whatsoever of success." He then fined Ramsey Clark, who helped Bassem and Saniya Ghussein file the lawsuit, for wasting his time. "I will only return to America when I know someone will listen to me and say: 'yes, it was our fault your daughter died, and I am sorry.' So long as they think my daughter's death is 'frivolous,' I won't go back," Bassem told The Christian Science Monitor. Even if an apology were forthcoming, Bassem may want to stay in Libya -- America is no longer a welcome land for Arabs. John Ashcroft has demonstrated as much. So have other Amricans who can't tell the difference between an Indain and an Iranian when they assault them on the street.
Is it possible we don't care about Raafat Ghussein, or the 10,000 Iraqi children who died in February, 1999, from entirely preventable diseases (as documented by UNICEF), or the 14,396 children, age five and under, who died of diarrhea, pneumonia and respiratory infections, and malnutrition over a two month period the same year, all because Clinton, a popular US president, insisted the Iraqi people must suffer and die for the political sins of their leader? Isn't the death of more than 500,000 Iraqi children over a ten-year period -- the direct result of a brutal sanctions regime imposed by the US and the UN -- an immense, even unpardonable crime against humanity? Shouldn't George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, and George Bush Junior be brought before the International Criminal Court and charged with crimes against humanity?
If Americans want the head of Osama bin Laden on a stick, why not George Bush's, or his father's, or Clinton's? Is it possible Osama bin Laden is correct -- we are immune to hypocrisy, we are arrogant and immoral? Sadly, on the day Bush attacks Iraq, the American people will be guilty of supporting a leader who engages in mass murder -- just as Hitler and Stalin and the German and Russian people were guilty of the same. Ignorance is no excuse. Believing Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal is no excuse.
We know what will happen on the day Bush attacks Iraq -- our newspapers, televisions, websites tell us, Bush and his demented Pentagon advisors waste no time informing us. They tell us about new and more deadly daisycutters, they even release videotapes of these new bombs, which pack the wallop of small nukes. They tell us about the feverish pace of cruise missile production. They talk causally of "mini-nukes" and how we must use them without hesitation. They discuss "shock and awe," tell us the first 48 hours in Baghdad will be like nothing we've ever imagined. Bush's advisors and "experts" tell us these things with the bureaucratic dispassion of Adolf Eichmann. We don't seem to care. If it gets too hot we simply roulette on over to M-TV or ESPN. Instead of thought, we check out what the Osbournes are up to.
We know what they are going to do -- and yet when the pollster calls we tell him yes, Saddam must be eliminated, no matter the cost, and the UN and the rest of the world (especially the French) can take a long hike into irrelevance. Bush offers no proof of Saddam's threat, and yet large numbers of us say he's a good man doing what's right. Like good Germans, we follow mindlessly in lockstep behind this new Fuhrer who will surely lead us down the path to destruction. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi girls -- as precious and loved by their parents as Elizabeth Smart -- will die horribly by incineration, blunt force trauma, decapitation, evisceration, starvation, and disease in the days, weeks, and months after Bush unleashes the most awesome and frightening war machine the world has ever devised. Unperturbed, most of us will go about with our "civilized" lives, blind to the immense and unimaginable suffering of average Iraqis. Bush, of course, will never face the ICC. Chances are slim he will be impeached. We can only hope he will lose his job come a year from November.
In Britain, meanwhile, it appears Bush's accomplice in potential mass murder, Tony Blair, may indeed lose his job if the UN does not back the Iraq attack and the US and Britain go it alone. Forty of his MPs are calling for him to resign -- to make way for someone who will "stand up to President Bush," as the Mirror put it. Obviously unconcerned with Blair's mounting problems, Rumsfeld said Washington still expects "a significant military contribution from the United Kingdom," regardless of what the people of Britain or rebellious PMs have to say about it. Bush will have his war, no matter what -- even if Tony Blair is taken out in the process. Rumsfeld has spoken.
So when Fox and CNN roll the footage of jets launching from aircraft carriers -- or cruise missiles pluming into the midnight sky with their murderous payloads -- think of Elizabeth Smart. Think about how she is lucky to live in the most "civilized" nation in the world. Be thankful we have finally licked the "Vietnam Syndrome," which is say too many of us no longer care if 50,000, 500,000, or 5,000,000 people must be condemned to miserable and wholly unavoidable deaths in order for Bush and the elite he represents to make a point. Think about how we have become good Germans -- and good Christians like Bush. Think about how our government is capable of committing genocide while we go to the mall and shop until we drop.
Don't think about what it will eventually mean.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent online gallery. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com We highly recommend regular visits to Nimmo's website, Another Day in the Empire More >
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4 Feb 2003 @ 19:08
WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq
US military chief admits American troops already in Iraq
By Bill Vann
4 February 2003
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
Even as the Bush administration embarks on the final act in the diplomatic charade within the United Nations Security Council, it has already launched military action on Iraqi territory.
The Pentagon admitted last week that American ground troops are now operating in the north of the country, while US and British warplanes have dramatically intensified their bombing campaign against both military and civilian targets, principally in the south.
Air Force General Richard Meyers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed press reports that US soldiers have been deployed inside Iraq, while refusing to provide any details on how many are in the country or where they are operating. Other top Pentagon officials said that the deployment involves Special Operations troops who are working in conjunction with CIA contingents in Kurdish regions in the north of Iraq.
US forces are reportedly crossing the border into Iraq from both Turkey and Jordan, whose armies are covertly collaborating with Washington. Meanwhile, representatives of the US-sponsored Iraqi opposition have reported that US military cargo planes are using an 8,500-foot-long runway near the town of Irbil in northeastern Iraq.
The preliminary buildup in this region is in large measure driven by a key strategic aim of the coming war—the seizure of Iraq’s oil resources. The oil wells around the Kurdish city of Kirkuk are presently pumping a million barrels a day, and proven reserves in the area amount to more than 10 billion barrels. US military action would likely begin with a drive by Special Forces troops to ensure that Washington winds up in possession of this rich prize and preventing the Iraqi regime from blowing up the fields.
The CIA and Pentagon are also concerned about potential attempts by Kurdish separatists or even Turkey to seize the oil wells for themselves. The Turkish military has repeatedly deployed troops inside Iraq as part of its protracted war of repression against its own Kurdish population.
The Pentagon has also changed the rules of engagement for pilots flying in the so-called “no-fly” zones that Washington and London unilaterally enforce over southern and northern Iraq. Last month alone, US and British warplanes bombed at least three dozen targets, most of them in the southeast of the country.
Ostensibly imposed as a “humanitarian” operation aimed to defend the Shi’ite population in the south and the Kurdish minority in the north, the no-fly zones are sanctioned by no UN mandate and have been used to wage a low-level air war against Iraq, while training US and British pilots for a full-scale invasion. Notwithstanding the humanitarian pretext for the bombings in the “no-fly” zones, US and British warplanes have ceased their flights in the north whenever the Turkish military decided to carry out its own bombing raids against Kurdish villages.
The Pentagon has claimed that its attacks in the no-fly zones are in response to anti-aircraft fire or Iraqi radar having locked onto US warplanes. But the US military is now using each such incident as the pretext for bombing as many as eight separate targets, most of which are in no way connected to the alleged threats to US and British aircraft. Pilots are supplied with the coordinates of pre-determined targets for each sortie.
The clear intent of these bombing raids is to wipe out all Iraqi air defenses within the main corridor that US troops will use in a push across the Kuwaiti border towards Baghdad. This would clear the way not only for unfettered US bombing, but also the use of helicopters and transport planes to bring in troops and supplies.
In a number of cases, bombs supposedly aimed at radar installations or anti-aircraft positions have fallen on heavily populated areas, resulting in the killing and wounding of Iraqi civilians. The Western media barely bothers to report these deaths, which now occur almost every other day.
In one such incident last December 1, missiles slammed into a building housing the state-owned Southern Oil Company in the densely populated city of Basra, killing four office workers and passersby and wounding 27 others. On December 26, bombs again struck civilian targets—including a mosque—in southern Iraq, killing three people and wounding 16.
Iraq has reported over 1,400 civilians killed by US and British attacks over the past 10 years. While Washington has dismissed virtually every report of civilian casualties, the UN’s own statistics indicate that close to 400 have died in bombings carried out over the past four years alone.
These attacks, which kill and maim men, women and children and destroy the basic infrastructure of an already war-ravaged country, are only a foretaste of the “overwhelming firepower” that the Pentagon promises to unleash against Iraq. Plans leaked by the Pentagon promise that a firestorm of some 800 cruise missiles will rain down on Baghdad, a city of nearly 5 million people, in the first 48 hours of the US war. In all, the US plans to unleash some 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles against the country in the first two days of the military assault.
As unprovoked acts of aggression against an essentially defenseless population, the deployment of troops in northern Iraq and the no-fly zone bombings—not to mention the slaughter yet to come—constitute war crimes according to the provisions of the United Nations Charter and long-standing tenets of international law.
In both legal and moral terms, these actions are comparable to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 or Japanese imperialism’s rape of China during the same period. Behind all of the lies about “weapons of mass destruction” and Baghdad sponsorship of terrorism, the motivation is likewise similar—the attempt to overcome systemic economic and social crises at home by means of aggressive war against a weak and oppressed nation.
Yet it is the governments of Bush and Blair, those responsible for this aggression, that will be going to the UN Security Council this week as Iraq’s accusers, posing as the defenders of “peace.” The claims by both governments to be driven by concern for the inviolability of UN resolutions and international law reek with hypocrisy.
The buildup to war has exposed the UN itself as a pliant tool of imperialism. It is institutionally incapable of indicting Washington and London for war crimes; such treatment is reserved only for small, impoverished countries. At the most, it will provide a public charade behind which the five permanent members of the Security Council thrash out the terms of a sordid bargain: a second resolution authorizing full-scale war in return for a share in the carve-up of Iraq’s oil wealth.
See Also:
Bush’s claims on Iraqi weapons—lies in pursuit of war
[1 February 2003]
Blix report to the UN: diplomatic charade masks US imperialist war aims
[29 January 2003]
Casting about for a pretext for war
Washington insists Iraqi scientists submit to private interviews
[25 January 2003]
One-quarter of British army sent for war vs. Iraq
[23 January 2003] More >
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31 Dec 2002 @ 13:05
Sweden Offers Free-speech Refuge To U.S. Officials
By Dennis Hans | [link]
From: Editor
[Changing Planet] Sweden Offers Free-speech Refuge To U.S. Officials
Sweden Providing Platform for U.S. Officials Cowed by Bush
Intimidated bureaucrats regain their voice as protected guests of a genuinely democratic regime.
By: Dennis Hans - 12/11/02
Also Published at www.liberalslant.com
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. More >
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