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2003-11-17 - 10:56 a.m.

A Truly Foolish Adventure

Professor Robert Manne of LaTrobe University in Australia has written an insightful article in The Age about the invasion of Iraq. Here's an excerpt:

Concerning the justification for the invasion, overwhelmingly the most important fact is the failure to find even one "weapon of mass destruction". Oddly enough, it is now obvious that Iraq's oft-repeated pre-war claim - that it did not possess WMDs - was true. One of the most important questions the Anglophone democracies must now face is how and why their citizens were so comprehensively misled.

At present, best evidence suggests the near-total politicisation of the intelligence process by a Washington pro-war cabal, whose leader was US Vice-President Dick Cheney. It is now known that this cabal created its own intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans; that stale or worthless intelligence, supplied either by carpetbaggers or Iraqi exiles, was re-analysed to get the required results; that the pro-war group overrode the more cautious judgements of intelligence professionals; and that, in the end, they convinced not only President George Bush but even more intelligent people, such as the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, of the deadly danger of Saddam Hussein's vast WMD arsenal.

I've been saying the same thing for weeks, but it bears repeating until the truth is out on the table for all to see.

His article concludes:

As things stand, the coalition must now choose in Iraq between two different kinds of disaster. If their troops stay the course, they seem certain to face increasing popular hostility and military threat. If they depart relatively soon, Iraq will almost certainly descend into chaos of a fearful kind. To remain will be terrible; to leave probably worse. In my years of observing Western foreign policy, I have never witnessed a more foolish adventure than the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.

This article is also printed in full here.

2003-11-09 - 4:31 p.m.

More About Bush Administration Lies

Here are two more articles about the Bush Administration's lies that got us into an unnecessary and expensive war in Iraq, unrelated to the 9/11 attack, which has destroyed our credibility and respect in the world, ruined the lives of many of our soldiers' families through death and injury, and wasted the treasure of our nation.

Both articles are by Andrew Gumbel, in The Indendent. The first is called, Case for war confected, say top US officials, and here is a short excerpt:

Between them, the two dozen interviewees reveal how the pre-war intelligence record on Iraq showed virtually the opposite of the picture the administration painted to Congress, to US voters and to the world. They also reconstruct the way senior White House officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - leaned on the CIA to find evidence that would fit a preordained set of conclusions.

"There was never a clear and present danger. There was never an imminent threat. Iraq - and we have very good intelligence on this - was never part of the picture of terrorism," says Mel Goodman, a veteran CIA analyst who now teaches at the National War College.

The second article is called, 'No President has lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably'.

An excerpt follows:

"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably ... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything."

It will, Mr McGovern believes, take a change of president and a change of CIA director to even begin to repair the damage done by what he sees as an overt politicisation of the intelligence business. But even that may not be enough.

2003-11-09 - 3:11 p.m.

Al Gore Gives a Strong Speech on Civil Liberties and the Bush Administration's Misuse of Power

This afternoon, I happened to switch to CSPAN while Al Gore was giving a speech, so I listened to the rest of it, and was impressed by his strong statements on what has gone wrong with the Bush Administration's "war on terror," and how the basic foundations of our democracy are threatened by the assault on civil liberties in the "Patriot Act". Following are some excerpts, but you can read the whole speech at Scoop NZ

I want to challenge the Bush Administration’s implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists.

Because it is simply not true.

In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.

In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.

In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.

In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.

In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually weakening not strengthening America.

In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press and the people.

Indeed, this Administration has turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head. A government of and for the people is supposed to be generally open to public scrutiny by the people -- while the private information of the people themselves should be routinely protected from government intrusion.

But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal information about American citizens. Under the rubric of protecting national security, they have obtained new powers to gather information from citizens and to keep it secret. Yet at the same time they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly relevant to the war against terrorism.

They are even arrogantly refusing to provide information about 9/11 that is in their possession to the 9/11 Commission – the lawful investigative body charged with examining not only the performance of the Bush Administration, but also the actions of the prior Administration in which I served. The whole point is to learn all we can about preventing future terrorist attacks,

Two days ago, the Commission was forced to issue a subpoena to the Pentagon, which has – disgracefully – put Secretary Rumsfeld’s desire to avoid embarrassment ahead of the nation’s need to learn how we can best avoid future terrorist attacks. The Commission also served notice that it will issue a subpoena to the White House if the President continues to withhold information essential to the investigation.

And the White House is also refusing to respond to repeated bipartisan Congressional requests for information about 9/11 – even though the Congress is simply exercising its Constitutional oversight authority. In the words of Senator McCain, “Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the September 11 attacks feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public’s confidence in government.”

In a revealing move, just three days ago, the White House asked the Republican leadership of the Senate to shut down the Intelligence Committee’s investigation of 9/11 based on a trivial political dispute. Apparently the President is anxious to keep the Congress from seeing what are said to have been clear, strong and explicit warnings directly to him a few weeks before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial airliners and use them to attack us.

Astonishingly, the Republican Senate leadership quickly complied with the President’s request. Such obedience and complicity in what looks like a cover-up from the majority party in a separate and supposedly co-equal branch of government makes it seem like a very long time ago when a Republican Attorney General and his deputy resigned rather than comply with an order to fire the special prosecutor investigating Richard Nixon.

There is much more...

And meanwhile, the real story is that while the administration

manages to convey the impression that it is doing everything possible to protect America, in reality it has seriously neglected most of the measures that it could have taken to really make our country safer.

For example, there is still no serious strategy for domestic security that protects critical infrastructure such as electric power lines, gas pipelines, nuclear facilities, ports, chemical plants and the like.

They’re still not checking incoming cargo carriers for radiation. They’re still skimping on protection of certain nuclear weapons storage facilities. They’re still not hardening critical facilities that must never be soft targets for terrorists. They’re still not investing in the translators and analysts we need to counter the growing terror threat.

The administration is still not investing in local government training and infrastructures where they could make the biggest difference. The first responder community is still being shortchanged. In many cases, fire and police still don’t have the communications equipment to talk to each other. The CDC and local hospitals are still nowhere close to being ready for a biological weapons attack.

The administration has still failed to address the fundamental disorganization and rivalries of our law enforcement, intelligence and investigative agencies. In particular, the critical FBI-CIA coordination, while finally improved at the top, still remains dysfunctional in the trenches.

The constant violations of civil liberties promote the false impression that these violations are necessary in order to take every precaution against another terrorist attack. But the simple truth is that the vast majority of the violations have not benefited our security at all; to the contrary, they hurt our security.

And the treatment of immigrants was probably the worst example. This mass mistreatment actually hurt our security in a number of important ways.

But first, let’s be clear about what happened: this was little more than a cheap and cruel political stunt by John Ashcroft. More than 99% of the mostly Arab-background men who were rounded up had merely overstayed their visas or committed some other minor offense as they tried to pursue the American dream just like most immigrants. But they were used as extras in the Administration’s effort to give the impression that they had caught a large number of bad guys. And many of them were treated horribly and abusively.

And, later...

Indeed, the most worrisome new factor, in my view, is the aggressive ideological approach of the current administration, which seems determined to use fear as a political tool to consolidate its power and to escape any accountability for its use. Just as unilateralism and dominance are the guiding principles of their disastrous approach to international relations, they are also the guiding impulses of the administration’s approach to domestic politics. They are impatient with any constraints on the exercise of power overseas -- whether from our allies, the UN, or international law. And in the same way, they are impatient with any obstacles to their use of power at home – whether from Congress, the Courts, the press, or the rule of law.

There is much more here, and you should read the whole powerful speech to realize the danger to our democracy posed by the current administration, and how much better off we might have been were it not for the political decision of the Supreme Court that gave us this president.

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