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31 Dec 2002 @ 13:05, by Sandi Hunter
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.
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Category: Projects
3 comments
31 Dec 2002 @ 17:37 by spiritseek : Amazing
Just the kind of break the world needs is for another country to step in and try to voice the truth. My heart soars with this news, may others follow.
1 Jan 2003 @ 00:07 by vaxen : Wow!
Thankyou so much for the inspiration sandi! If there was'nt such a media blackout here in the states maybe people really could begin to wake up out of the sorry state of affairs inflicted upon them by the fascist oligarchs in 'power!' Man this is wonderful! Do you think this will encourage others in the beureau's of deceit to come forth here? Probably not for they would most certainly be murdered. Land of the free, home of the brave?
7 Feb 2003 @ 16:29 by sevenlamb : Why only officials? Sweden Blows!
Classist bastards! Where are the rest of us citizens supposed to hide as our persons and families, dreams and planet are reduced to ash and mechanism by our own slave labor...great - it's safe for officials in the world again. Just what I was hoping for.
When will it be safe for children? Or forests? Or whales?
(great article tho!) :)
Other entries in Projects
2 Aug 2006 @ 17:19: Positive reasons....
26 May 2006 @ 15:31: Rise and Fall of the American Empire
19 Apr 2004 @ 01:50: Kerry on "Meet the Press"
19 Jan 2004 @ 17:48: Let's Stop Hitler Again......
14 Jan 2004 @ 21:57: The World Mind and Consciousness
30 Oct 2003 @ 07:54: Bush press conference
27 Mar 2003 @ 17:20: Casualties at Home
16 Mar 2003 @ 10:16: Elizabeth Smart X100,000
4 Feb 2003 @ 19:08: American troops already in Iraq
17 Dec 2002 @ 10:44: REVOLT! White American Uprising
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