BUSH WATCH...WALTER C. UHLER

Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).

April 13, 2006

On "Preventive War," Kissinger Becomes Bush's "Useful Idiot"

Thus, although the pretext will be one of preventing Iran from getting the bomb, you can bet the farm that if the bombs cause an October surprise - they will have been dropped to prevent any possibility of Bubble-boy's impeachment.

More Astounding Editorial Incompetence at The Philadelphia Inquirer

By Walter C. Uhler

Longtime readers of The Philadelphia Inquirer know that the Inky is shrinking; both in its physical size and in its news reporting and editorial capabilities. Reports of insufficient profitability (from Wall Street analysts and greedy shareholders) have spurred rumors of the sale of the Inky as part of piecemeal, profit-gouging dismantling of its parent company, Knight Ridder. That threat has prompted buyouts and retirements of some of the Inky's seasoned editors.

Thus, the Inky appears to be trapped in a self-fulfilling cycle of self-destruction: One can attempt to increase profits by reducing the size and quality of the paper - until there's too little space for news, too little news worth purchasing, too few purchasers worth advertising and too little advertising worth publishing.

The Inky's editorial board has contributed to the paper's decline. First, in the midst of buyouts, it failed to buy out Chris Satullo. Satullo's a font of mediocrity, who fashions himself as a centrist. Yet, Eric Alterman surely got it right when he complained: "Journalism is just about the only field whose practitioners routinely justify themselves on the basis of the fact that they receive criticism from 'both sides.'"

But the real damage has come with the hiring of Jonathan Last and the elevation of Kevin Ferris. The hiring of Mr. Last appears to be an act of desperation. [See Note at the end of article] Consider this: One of America's foremost neoconservatives, Francis Fukuyama, has just repudiated the "now in shambles" neocon ideology, because it is led by American Leninists who "wrongly conflated" the "new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction" with "the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally." In a word, neocons played a critical role in conning Americans into supporting the invasion of Iraq. Now, they are in retreat around the country. Yet, the Inky saw fit to hire Mr. Last -- a Commentary/Weekly Standard neocon "dead ender."

Simply read Mr.Last's Inky column on Iran, dated January 29, 2006. It's in that column -- and in the wake of U.S. human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib -- that Mr. Last disingenuously attempts to obscure the nuclear reality in the Middle East (i.e., actual possession of nukes by the United States and Israel) by making the following, predictably neocon, assertion: "We care whether or not a country has WMD capabilities only because of its record on human rights."

"Only?" Does that mean that the world does not care about nuclear proliferation, as long as new members respect human rights? Of course not. Mr. Last spouts such neocon nonsense only to lay the groundwork for his recitation of Iran's human rights abuses, and thus, deflect attention away from Iran's legitimate security concerns. As such, it is purely neocon propaganda designed to rile America's boobiosie. But, it also demonstrates how bankrupt neoconservatism has become. Yet, "Center Cut" Satullo disingenuously denied that Last's hire constituted a "great leap rightward."

But, the increased prominence given to Mr. Ferris is equally unfortunate. Not only is his column a vessel for talking-points from politicians on the far right, it's a vessel always ready to capsize, due to the dead weight of Ferris's mind and pen. But who could have expected better from him? After all, Ferris already had reached his level of incompetence when he was Inky's "Letters" editor and often permitted the dumbest of letters to be published. (For more on Ferris, see my article, The Stinky INKY, http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/stinky_inky.html)

Yet, judging by a letter in the Feb. 23, 2006 issue of the Inky, the current "Letters" editor is just as dull. Consider how dull an editor must be to publish a letter in which the writer admits that President Bush was wrong about Iraq's WMD and tight ties to al Qaeda, but then cites previous trumped up events - the attack on the Maine and the Tonkin Gulf incident - not only to justify and applaud Bush's "courage" in world affairs, but also to claim: "History will treat Bush's involvement in Iraq kindly." As if history has treated stupid, warmongering American behavior in the wake of the Maine and the Tonkin Gulf incident "kindly!"

As someone who believes that newspapers have played an indispensable role in reporting the news and expressing opinion, its disheartening for me to watch ever shrinking, increasingly stinking Inky news reporting further besmirched by the right wing bias and incompetence of its editorial board. But there appears to be no remedy in sight.

[NOTE: Until I hear word to the contrary, I'm inclined to believe that the hiring of Mr. Last came at the expense of a "serious proposal" made on 11 August 2005 by the Inquirer's Commentary page editor, John Timpane. Mr. Timpane offered me temporary employment as one of five modern-day Myrmidons, bloggers who would swarm like ants over the news and/or the Inquirer's reporting of it. As one of the two liberal Myrmidons (which Timpane intended to balance with two conservatives and one independent), I would be required to write at least two columns per week, but one every Sunday. I also would be free to "basically kick the crap out of" his Commentary pages.

Recalling my often harsh criticism of the Inky -- for its generally craven support for Bush's lies about Iraq's WMD and ties to al Qaeda during the run-up to his illegal, immoral invasion - Timpane began his email by writing: "I wouldn't blame you if you were surprised or suspicious about what follows." In what followed, however, Timpane did acknowledge: "In some ways, I invite you as a way to say we have not had enough space for your views. This is one way to give you more space."

(I accepted those terms, but, except for an email in October that reaffirmed his commitment to the project, nothing came of Timpane's "serious proposal." Since then I've become genuinely suspicious.)

But even disregarding more space for my views, Timpane's project would have brought the Inquirer more forcefully into the virtual world, and with a genuinely balanced blogger staff to boot. Instead, the poor saps stuck in the paper world simply got another neocon "dead-ender."]

"Accuracy in Media" Validates Goering's Axiom

By Walter C. Uhler

Why, of course, the people don't want war...But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship

[Democratic] voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." --- Hermann Goering

Complete liberty of contradiction and disproving our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right --- John Stuart Mill (from, On Liberty)

Although I normally waste little attention on the partisan, ill-informed, mean-spirited apologists for President Bush's illegal, immoral invasion and now incompetent, terrorist-incubating occupation of Iraq -- such as Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and most of our now discredited neocons -- I never question their right to air their often venomous propaganda. After all, I've accepted John Stuart Mill's arguments about the value of even bad ideas in the open marketplace of ideas.

However, following Mill, I must object whenever these right-wing extremists attempt to stifle open debate by resorting to the tactics so accurately described above by Hermann Goering. Unfortunately, a few days ago my attention was drawn to just such tactics spewing from the word processors at "Accuracy in Media" (AIM).

"Accuracy in Media" is anything but; something I learned after the editor of Uruknet inadvertently vented frustrations to me about an egregiously erroneous and hypocritical AIM report - "Terrorists Target and Intimidate U.S. Media."

You see, I was attempting to discover why Uruknet had delayed publishing my latest article ("More Proof of Prewar Intelligence Manipulation by the Bush Administration). What I inadvertently learned was this: Not only was Uruknet once again being subjected to assaults by malevolent hackers who, apparently, disdain freedom of speech, but it also had suffered slander from Accuracy in Media, whose writers appear to share the hackers' illiberal disdain.

Although ostensibly an analysis of the media response to the bomb "that almost took the lives of ABC World News Tonight co-anchor Bob Woodruff and ABC cameraman Doug Vogt," AIM's report was little more than a deliberate attempt to stifle free speech.

Consider AIM's erroneous assertion: "A website devoted to the 'Iraqi resistance,' www.uruknet.info, openly declared in a matter of fact manner that 'An Iraqi resistance bomb exploded by an Iraqi puppet army column in the area of the northern Baghdad suburb of at-Taji, severely wounding American ABC TV news anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt who were traveling with puppet troops.'"

AIM also objected to the fact that, "Absolutely no remorse was expressed for the injuries to Woodruff and Vogt."

Now, I must admit that the phrase "puppet army," rang discordantly in my ear and certainly implied "no remorse" -- until I recalled the words of renowned conservative scholar, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Talking about the so-called transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government, Brzezinski asserted: "I think it's a good step in the right direction. But I would avoid using Orwellian language in describing it. This is not a transfer of power, a handover to a sovereign government. We are transferring limited authority to a satellite government [like the former East European satellites of the Soviet Union?], a satellite government that is still to establish its legitimacy and the longer we stay, the more difficult it will be before it to [sic] gain legitimacy."

Thus, "puppet army" might be the appropriate phrase after all.

In fact, however, AIM's assertion was wrong on two counts. First, as the editor of Uruknet wrote, "we declared nothing." The sentence in question was "from the IRR, published by many websites and that we reported from Iraq.war.ru website." The editor also wrote that Uruknet had posted President Bush's State of the Union Address. Second, because, as the editor added, "We never add our own comment to the articles or document [sic] we publish," Uruknet couldn't possibly express remorse about the injuries to Woodruff and Vogt.

Thus, the intrepid writers at AIM were well into their hatchet job when they resurrected memories of "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy - especially his infamous question, "Have you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?" - by claiming that, "this 'Iraqi resistance' website has established links to organizations based in the U.S." that "constitute the main forces behind the various 'anti-war' demonstrations held in the U.S." To such obnoxious McCarthyite allusions, Uruknet's editor gave a direct answer: "Uruknet has no links to the organizations."

Yet, even after three self-serving errors, AIM boldly jumped into the slime of slander when it called Uruknet a "pro-terrorist website." But, that's a game that anybody can play, especially if they're willing to take a page from Herr Goering's playbook.

To throw such slander back at AIM, simply cite the numerous patriotic Americans, from the renowned (Ret.) Gen. Odom and Congressman Murtha to this writer, who have concluded that the Bush administration's invasion and incompetent occupation of Iraq have sparked the proliferation of terrorists and terrorist attacks around the world. Then add the CIA's latest intelligence reports on terrorism, which support such conclusions. Finally, lower yourself to AIM's Goering-based level of journalism. The result? An objective conclusion that the Bush administration and its supporters - including AIM -- are "pro-terrorist."

Unfortunately AIM's Goering-based calumny had yet to complete its course. Having tarred Uruknet with slander, hoping to make it stick, AIM then attempted to spread it around -- across "a leftist fifth column in the U.S." that includes the following websites: "buzzflash, common dreams, Counterpunch, Daily Kos, Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio, truthout and The Nation."

A "leftist fifth column?" Imagine how gratified Goering would be to learn that AIM had once again validated his political axiom. .

But, "wow!" Whereas, naïve little ol' me thought that these websites were correcting the misinformation supplied by the New York Times (which published Judith Miller's stenographic reports of Ahmad Chalabi's lies and withheld it scoop about NSA's illegal eavesdropping until after Bush was safely reelected) or a Philadelphia Inquirer (the ever shrinking and increasingly stinking Inky appears "hooked" on conservative columnists, especially neoconservatives already discredited by their support for the illegal, immoral invasion), AIM saw a "fifth column" devoted to handing Osama bin Laden "a victory on the battlefield."

As if al Qaeda's terrorists had anything to do with Iraq until our fool of a President allowed the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal to cultivate their worldwide proliferation and incite them to pay a visit!

(Want a reality check? For two consecutive years, Moscow's prominent political commentator, Vyacheslav Nikonov, has informed me that, although Russia has a long-term interest in stability in the Middle East, in the short term, America's debacle in Iraq benefits Russia in three ways: (1) it causes the price of oil to rise, and Russia exports much oil, (2) it draws terrorists away from Chechnya, so fewer Russians are killed by terrorists, and (3) it ties down America and, thus, prevents it from making further mischief around the world.)

Before closing, one more crucial point needs to be made about the some of the reporters at AIM. They are hypocrites.

For proof, simply read their "patriotic" gore of the Clinton administration's "illegal war" against Yugoslavia. On May 5, 1999, for example, AIM's two main McCarthyites, Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid, wrote about Clinton's "no-win war in Yugoslavia." Questioning reports in the New York Times and Washington Post about an "alleged Serb massacre of Albanians," Irvine and Kincaid asserted: "In other words, the Clinton Administration may have gotten the U.S. involved through an incident that was manipulated and staged for propaganda value." Then, they added, "this isn't the only dubious report or claim that has come out of the White House, NATO or the American media during this war."

Yet, Mr. Kincaid voiced no such suspicions about the Bush administration's prewar intelligence manipulations "staged for propaganda value." In fact, sixteen months after its invasion of Iraq -- and still finding no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) -- Kincaid made the following astounding assertion: "Saddam had a nuclear weapons program. He was seeking uranium from Africa. And he was trying to reconstitute this program. The President had that information. He provided that information to the American people and the Congress. And it has stood the test of time" (my emphasis). Oh, really?

Was Kincaid ignorant of the CIA's briefing of Bush, on 21 December 2002, about Iraq's WMD? During that briefing, the only evidence presented "on nuclear weapons," concerned the convening of "a group of Iraq's main atomic scientists, dubbed the 'nuclear mafia,'" which, according to the CIA "'implied' preparations to resume nuclear weapons research." [Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, p. 249] Frustrated by the entire briefing, "Bush turned to [CIA Director, George] Tenet: 'I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?'" [Woodward, p. 249]

But let us return to AIM's reporting on Clinton's "illegal war" against Yugoslavia. Its May 21, 1999, article cast doubt on Secretary of State, Madeline Albright's indictment of Serbian forces: "Horrific patterns of war crimes…are emerging in Kosovo: systemic executions, organized rape and a well-planned program of terror and expulsions." Now I ask you: "Do AIM's doubts mean that Irvine and Kincaid were 'pro-terrorist?'"

Check it all out. In AIM's critique of Clinton's "illegal war," you'll find much of the same rhetoric that they today hypocritically label "pro-terrorist," and "fifth-column," when applied to Bush's illegal war by Uruknet, buzzflash, common dreams, Counterpunch, Daily Kos, Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio, truthout and The Nation.

Finally, you simply must read AIM's "Media Monitor" of May 26, 1999. Irvine and Kincaid were a riot. First, they reminded readers that the Clinton administration approved "the ethnic cleansing of perhaps a half million Serbs from Croatia in 1995." Then they approvingly cited a recent editorial by Joseph Baldacchino titled, "Can a Decadent Nation Impose International Peace?"

Although it's a great question and even more appropriate for present day America under George W. Bush's lawless regime, Messrs. Irvine and Kincaid limited its use to "the decadent qualities of Clinton personally."

But notice the irony: Baldacchino called for "revitalizing the institutions and customs of justice and the kind of restraint that is the highest achievement of civilization…It will require increased respect for the spirit of constitutionalism at home and the history, customs, and sovereign immunities of other nations."

"Restraint -- the highest achievement of civilization?" "Increased respect for the spirit of constitutionalism at home?" "Sovereign immunities of other nations?" The Bush regime craps on these virtues, virtually every day!

But, hold on! For the moment, let's put aside the mountains of evidence indicting the Bush administration for lack of restraint - its tax cuts for the rich, energy policy designed by and for energy industry, political manipulation of scientific findings, unconstitutional authorization of NSA eavesdropping on American citizens, political manipulation of prewar intelligence about Iraq, lies about Iraq's WMD and ties to al Qaeda and, most egregious, a war of choice rather than necessity - let's, instead, simply ask whether the good folks at AIM exercised "restraint" when they borrowed from Hermann Goering's playbook to unjustifiably besmirch as "pro-terrorist" and "fifth column" the liberal websites which decry the Bush administration's reckless violation of the "sovereign immunities of other nations."

Doesn't such a failure of restraint justifiably earn AIM the title "Hypocritical Brownshirts." And doesn't their McCarthyite reporting validate Hermann Goering's axiom?

More Proof of Prewar Intelligence Manipulation by the Bush Administration

By Walter C. Uhler

Writing in the March/April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar has launched a furious assault on the Bush administration for its manipulation of prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and links to al Qaeda. Mr. Pillar should know, because he was the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia (NESA) from 2000 to 2005.

Most damaging is his assertion: "The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made." That decision, of course, was to invade Iraq. And, as we know, plenty of evidence exists -- especially as provided by Bush administration insider, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- to prove that the Bush administration plotted, from its very first day in office, to effect regime change in Iraq.

Pillar's firsthand proof of intelligence manipulation appears to be unassailable: The Bush administration "went to war without requesting - and evidently without being influenced by - any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq…As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war."

As Pillar correctly notes, it was the Senate -- not the Bush administration -- that requested such a strategic-level assessment, the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Yet, what precipitated that request was the "cherry-picking" from intelligence about aluminum tubes, by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, which exaggerated how close Iraq was to acquiring nuclear weapons. Presumably, such manipulation is what Pillar has in mind when he complains about how "the administration selected pieces of raw intelligence to use in the public case for war, leaving the intelligence community to register varying degrees of private protest when such use started to go beyond what analysts deemed credible or reasonable."

But, much worse than mere cherry-picking for exaggeration from legitimate, if partial, intelligence was the Bush administration's attempt to frighten Congress -- just a few weeks before it was scheduled to vote on a resolution to support war -- by falsely proclaiming the existence of links connecting Iraq with al Qaeda. Why? Because the intelligence community already had expressed its doubts about such links in four classified reports. Thus, there existed no legitimate intelligence to cherry-pick from.

Nevertheless, but from pure fabrication, President Bush falsely warned against allowing al Qaeda to become "an extension of Saddam's madness." Not to be outdone, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld falsely claimed, "that American intelligence had 'bulletproof' evidence of links between al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq."

Anyone who had read the four classified reports would have known that Bush and Rumsfeld were making false statements. Which means that virtually every senior official in the Bush administration was an accomplice.

Unfortunately, few individuals outside the Bush administration knew about those four classified intelligence reports. And Pillar doesn't mention them in his article. But our British allies in the war against Iraq knew what was going on. And, now, so do we, thanks to the individual who leaked the highly classified "Downing Street Memo" of July 2002.

According to that memo, the Chief of British Intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet the following information about his recent talks in Washington: "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Moreover, as Pillar confirms, "the greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments [precisely] concerned …the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda." In fact, it required only the first of those four classified reports -- co-authored by Pillar's NESA and issued to the President's Daily Brief principals on September 21, 2001 -- to provoke neoconservatives in the Pentagon to establish a small office tasked with cultivating that very discrepancy.

That office, staffed by untrained but appropriately biased political hacks, was set up by Douglas Feith and called the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCEG). According to Pillar, with the formation of that group, "The administration's rejection of the intelligence community's judgments became especially clear." Not only did the PCEG deliberately resurrect and disseminate damning, but erroneous, raw intelligence about Iraq's links to al Qaeda (raw intelligence that the intelligence community already had dismissed), it also solicited raw intelligence from now discredited anti-Saddamist defectors programmed by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.

Thus, was it an accident that the PCEG's "intelligence" affirming Iraq's links to al Qaeda found its way into the pre-invasion public utterances of the Defense Secretary, National Security Adviser, Vice President and President? Didn't Cheney speak for them all when he wrote the following note on one of Feith's briefings: "This is very good…Encouraging…Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of the CIA."

"Encouraging?" Manipulating evidence to go to war is "encouraging?" Perhaps that entire exercise best explains why the least enthusiastic member of Bush's war party, Colin Powell, called Feith's group a "Gestapo office."

A recent poll indicated that 53 percent of Americans supported the impeachment of President Bush, "if it was in fact proven that Bush had lied about the basis for invading Iraq." Thus, it's up to that 53 percent to determine whether the very establishment of a "Gestapo office" dedicated to supplanting legitimate classified reports with discredited and ultimately false intelligence that, in turn, was used eagerly and uncritically by senior Bush administration officials, constitutes anything other than the "BIG LIE" that so-called totalitarian regimes had perfected in the past.

The views expressed are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bush Watch.