YOU CAN'T POINT FINGERS IF YOU'RE COVERING YOUR EYES

Let’s try to stay a step ahead of the crowd, otherwise we’re in danger of talking about what it talks about, and believing what it believes.

The talk now is about finger-pointing over Who Screwed up on WMD? Who is responsible for creating a false rationale for invading Iraq? Was it the White House? Or the CIA?

Reporters are madly trying to figure this all out, to explain who might have had whom do what. Did the CIA provide inaccurate information? Or did it provide accurate information and get ignored? If it did provide inaccurate information, was that because the White House made it do so? Or is it incompetent or just incapable?

What this all ignores is the utterly political nature of intelligence gathering. It also ignores the failed history of efforts to reform the intel community.

Reforming the intel community requires concerted, and Herculean, action by president and Congress. The president isn’t interested, because, although he likes getting accurate, unbiased information from the CIA, he also likes getting information that confirms his agenda. The Congress might or might not like to do anything about this, but it has a track record of noisy probes that produce nothing. The reasons are many – a revolving door between congressional committee investigators and the agencies they investigate; committee members with their own dark secrets and their own political ambitions; an inability to coax accurate information from the spook houses; and, not inconsiderably, the absence of an enforcement mechanism.

You could hold hearings into the failure of hearings to accomplish anything.

##


- posted by Russ @ 9:15 AM

Everybody, duck.

Former chief weapons inspector David Kay is calling for an independent inquiry into prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs. The Bush Administration does not want one, nor do leading Congressional Republicans.

Which is strange, since Kay says he does not believe that the administration pressured analysts to exaggerate the threat.

Something makes no sense here. If Kay is right, then the administration and its backers should be the first ones supporting an inquiry. If they’re not keen to let an independent body explore problems with intelligence-gathering, one can only conclude that (a) they’re never for any independent inquiries of anything, or (b) they’re worried that the probe will reveal that intelligence analysts did not give them a basis for their war, or (c) they’re worried that intelligence analysts will admit to being pressured to produce reports that supported predetermined policy.

“The White House left open the possibility that it would eventually undertake a broad review of whether the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies are properly structured to fight the proliferation of unconventional weapons,” according to the New York Times.
If so, one can bet we will never learn the results. Almost everyone can recall seeing and reading about hearings, probes and inquiries into defective intelligence gathering, and, especially, politically-influenced analysis. But when was the last time you recall seeing evidence that anything inside the intelligence community had actually been changed to address the many problems that get aired? Some would argue that these secret agencies can’t be revealing their inner workings, and so we can’t get to know what changes were made. Well, that’s all ridiculous. If you can talk about structural problems, you can talk about structural solutions. I’d certainly like to hear an explanation of how a public discussion of fundamental administrative changes would threaten the national security.

##
- posted by Russ @ 6:33 AM

The Bush Administration is deep into a brisk new regimen worthy of an extremely second-rate Olympic games. There’s hedging. There’s ducking. There’s hair-splitting. And there’s backpedaling. Even a famous dodger like Bill Clinton would have to be impressed.

Every athlete has his motivation. For the administration, all this shucking and jiving is inspired by a keen desire to escape responsibility for starting a war over something that did not exist. Namely, the vast stores of weapons of mass destruction that the White House claimed Saddam Hussein had and was in danger of using.

So, on Tuesday, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan told journalists that it was the media – not the administration -- who chose to use the word 'imminent.' "We used 'grave and gathering' threat", McClellan said, apparently managing not to crack a smile.

A quick search of articles does show that the word imminent was a paraphrase used by journalists. But as an analysis by Reuters points out, while Bush never literally called Iraq an "imminent threat" he did call the situation "urgent." Vice President Dick Cheney called it, "mortal" and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was “immediate.”

Rumsfeld testified before Congress in September, 2002, that: "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”

In an October 7, 2002 televised speech to the nation, Bush himself likened the standoff with Iraq to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and warned that Saddam Hussein "could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists" like the al-Qaida network.

Meanwhile, if the White House didn’t itself introduce “imminent” into the lexicon of war-boosting, it certainly didn’t mind hearing it used. On January 26, 2003, when a CNN reporter asked, "Is he [Saddam Hussein] an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?" White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett answered: "Well, of course he is"

Even after the conflict, this imminency continued to be acceptable. On May 7, 2003, a reporter posed this question: "We went to war, didn't we, to find these [WMD] - because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true?" And White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer responded: "Absolutely. One of the reasons that we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction. And nothing has changed on that front at all."

And now, some things are starting to change. In earnest.

##
- posted by Russ @ 11:48 AM

HEY! INSPECTIONS WORKED!

Decent report, by the longtime WMD reporter Charles Hanley, being distributed by the Associated Press last night. The point: Inspections worked.

In fact, that does seem to be the key lesson of the Iraq debacle. The UN’s inspection regime did work pretty well. Whatever WMDs existed, whatever WMD development programs existed, the Iraqi government took steps that resulted in compliance with an international mandate.

That undergirds those who argue that concerted truly international action is the solution to proliferation problems. In fact, it’s a solution to all kinds of problems. That, we may remind ourselves, is exactly the purpose of the UN, the reason it exists.

The next question then is: What does the administration have to say about this? Presumably, White House reps will finesse this, as they have finessed so many other turnabouts, unfavorable revelations and comeuppances. But the media should do its job, and press for accountability. Because if inspections worked in the first place, then the war was, as presented, unnecessary. And so, perhaps, are other adventures already on the drawing board.

Time now to focus the spotlight where it belongs: ‘Mr. President, didn’t the UN turn out to be justified in opposing a rush to hostilities? Are you rethinking your repeated unwillingness to give the United Nations the support it needs to further the cause of peace?”

##
- posted by Russ @ 7:25 AM

POSTED WITHOUT COMMENT (from the moveon.org website)

During this year's Super Bowl, you'll see ads sponsored by beer companies, tobacco companies, and the Bush White House. But you won't see the winning ad in MoveOn.org Voter Fund's Bush in 30 Seconds ad contest. CBS refuses to air it....(here's the ad) (requires broadband to view properly)




- posted by Russ @ 6:13 AM

REVISIONISM NONPAREIL AND DEMOCRACY US- AND IRAQ-STYLE

So, have you heard the latest? Now, the UN is good again. For the longest time, the Bush administration wanted the irritatingly uncooperative United Nations to have no role in decision- or peace-making in Iraq. The cumbersome world body was expected to administer aid in the country and expose its staff to constant physical danger without having any say in this very-international crisis.

Now, however, with the triumph of Iraq looking all the less apparent precisely as the November US elections take on a certain singularity, something had to give. So Paul Bremer and the administration are rapidly abandoning all insistence on a unilateral US right to call the shots. Indeed, they’re even starting to allow all kinds of alternative scenarios to loom. And so, the other day, we had a meeting between the Iraqi Governing Council and the United Nations – with one Paul Bremer having flown all the way to New York to participate. The possibility of Iraqi elections, and all the wild card outcomes involved, once anathema to Washington, is even on the table.

They’re rolling up the sidewalk faster than you can say ‘debacle’. Add this to the other little problem -- the Al-Qaeda and WMD (weapons of mass destruction) justifications for the war that vanished – and you now have an administration whose primary achievement is two things: a war with no clear reason and a peace with no clear plan.

Count on a good election to focus the thinking, speed conciliation and get results. All praise democracy.

- posted by Russ @ 1:53 AM

WAR GIVES US "OOMPH"

In an interview this week with AP that probably did not get as much attention as it warranted, the chief of the US army, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, said that events from September 2001 onward had a “silver lining” – giving the army a chance to change and improve.

"War is a tremendous focus... Now we have this focusing opportunity, and we have the fact that [terrorists] have actually attacked our homeland, which gives it some oomph."

Now, there’s no question that combat experience is the best way to train soldiers for combat experience. But this certainly raises an interesting question. How much was the war in Iraq motivated by a desire to give the US military a chance to justify itself, and, more importantly, provide justification and a guaranteed future to military contractors, who remain a leading funder of political campaigns and power in Washington?

It’s abundantly clear that the reconstruction was a bonanza, but it would be interesting to see what kind of input the military-industrial complex had in what should have been strictly strategic security calculations about whether to attack at all.

Here’s a reasonable guess as to what we’d find: War as practice and war as profit are now such tolerated notions in this land of rapidly sliding standards, that advocates can talk about such things publicly, and without fear of consequences. We’ve come a long way, baby.

- posted by Russ @ 9:38 AM

Posted (Almost) Without Comment:

Seattle-ites are all wound up about an op-ed, by one Neal Starkman, that ran a couple of weeks ago in the local Post-Intelligencer. Starkman claims that the media fail to be honest in their perpetual praise of the average voter's wisdom. It is included here for purposes of discussion, and in no way suggests that I think the country is in as bad a shape as it is in...oops...

.
THE S FACTOR EXPLAINS BUSH'S POPULARITY

Millions of words have been written as to the motivations of voters. Particularly in close elections, as in the 2000 presidential contest, pundits and laypeople alike have speculated on why people voted for whom. The exit poll has been a major tool in this speculation.

But the speculation misses the mark by far. It's increasingly obvious, for example, that none of the so-called theories can explain President Bush's popularity, such as it is. Even at this date in his presidency, after all that has happened, the president's popularity hovers at around 50 percent - an astonishingly high figure, I believe, given the state of people's lives now as opposed to four years ago.

What can explain his popularity? Can that many people be enamored of what he has accomplished in Iraq? Of how he has fortified our constitutional freedoms with the USA Patriot Act? Of how he has bolstered our economy? Of how he has protected our environment? Perhaps they've been impressed with the president's personal integrity and the articulation of his grand vision for America?

Is that likely?

Granted, there are certain subsections of the American polity that have substantially benefited from this presidency. Millionaires and charismatic Christians have accrued either material or spiritual fortification from Bush's administration. But surely these two groups are a small minority of the population. What, then, can account for so many people being so supportive of the president?

The answer, I'm afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It's the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don't ask it, the media don't report it, the voters don't discuss it. [more here]


- posted by Russ @ 9:25 AM

ANY BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS INVOLVED IN THIS MAG? (a real news item...)

Magazine Apologizes After Directing Hikers Over Cliff

LONDON (Jan. 22) - A hiking magazine apologized on Thursday after it published a route plan that would have sent walkers striding into thin air off the north face of Britain's largest mountain, Ben Nevis.

The magazine, Trail, missed a vital bearing needed to guide climbers off the summit of the Scottish mountain in bad weather.

Anyone who had followed the magazine's directions would have plunged down a sheer cliff into nearby Gardyloo Gully.

Editor Guy Procter, himself a keen hillwalker, said that Trail published 200 routes every year and had never made a similar mistake before.

"I should have picked it up at the final proofreading stage, but unfortunately it slipped through," he told Reuters. The error was spotted by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, which published a warning about the "dangerous bearing" on their website.

Procter said he was confident his readers always carried maps while hill-walking and would therefore immediately notice the error




- posted by Russ @ 7:17 AM

DEAN'S PHONY 'MELTDOWN' AND THE MEDIA

The so-called Dean “meltdown,” claims that his campaign is finished, and his forced contrition, are all symptoms of how debased the political dialogue has become.

It’s true that Dean yelled at his Monday night rally in Iowa. And so what? Basically, at a pep rally, he yelled like a football coach. This is described as being “unpresidential.” But says who? Besides, what’s the definition of ‘presidential?’ Isn’t giving insulting nicknames to world leaders unpresidential? Isn't sending hundreds of American soldiers to die for uncertain and misrepresented ends in Iraq unpresidential – or worth considering as such? Isn’t having an incredibly poor grasp of essential world facts and an aversion to detail and active decision-making unpresidential?

As far as I can tell, the worst Howard Dean has done is to try to be himself. (And, when criticized for that, to show some willingness to alter his demeanor.) But neither of those is good enough for a media that smells a good story – allegedly about personality, much more interesting than issues.

We saw and see nearly every news outlet playing the footage of the rally again and again. We see headlines in the less-cautious papers about Dean “imploding”, and gleeful spin from Republican strategists that Dean is “finished.”

From Slate (“Mean Dean Loses Steam”) to the New York Post (“DEAN'S BALLOT-BOX CONSPIRACY THEORY),” it’s all about painting him as unseemly, unstable, irrationally angry, rather than focusing on his ideas. And yet, carefully scrutinized, virtually everything the man has said accords with the beliefs and understanding of a significant portion of the American populace, and, significantly, of what has been reported in the media.

But once something like this “meltdown” story gets started, the media goes into a kind of inexorable black hole, and the pull is so great it becomes hard for thinking journalists and editors to resist.

Ed Muskie probably wouldn’t have been a bad president, nor would George Romney or John McCain, all of whom got slammed for showing quintessentially human traits on the campaign trail. As each could attest, candor isn’t a priority in this society. People want to hear what makes them feel good and safe and strong, no matter the reality.

As for Dean, one doesn't need to take sides to see that the treatment of this man is unbecoming of the media. It's also going to be seen in retrospect as colossally one-sided, not in any way balanced by comparable scrutiny or criticism of his rivals.

##
- posted by Russ @ 6:07 AM

THE PHONY DEAN "MELTDOWN"

I’d argue that the Dean “meltdown,” claims that his campaign is finished, and his forced contrition, are all symptoms of how debased the political dialogue has become.

It’s true that Dean yelled at his Monday night rally in Iowa. And so what? Basically, at a pep rally, he yelled like a football coach. This is described as being “unpresidential.” But says who? Isn’t giving insulting nicknames to world leaders unpresidential? Isn't sending hundreds of American soldiers to die for uncertain and misrepresented ends in Iraq unpresidential – or worth considering as such? Isn’t having an incredibly poor grasp of essential world facts and an aversion to detail and active decision-making unpresidential?

As far as I can tell, the worst Howard Dean has done is to try to be himself. Or, even worse, according to critics, to show some flexibility in demeanor when it is demanded of him.

The guy just can’t win with the media and the pundits, which again suggests that he CAN win in the long run. And that scares people.

One doesn't need to take sides to see that the treatment of this man is unbecoming of the media. It's also going to be seen in retrospect as colossally one-sided, not in any way balanced by comparable scrutiny or criticism of his rivals.

##


- posted by Russ @ 5:37 AM

THE CANDOR TABOO

Today, a suicide truck bomb killed 18 in Baghdad, wounded 56. Yesterday, 3 soldiers were killed. The day before…..

At what point, do you suppose, the other Democratic presidential candidates will apologize to Howard Dean for lambasting him over his comment that Saddam’s arrest did not make us any safer?

They likely won’t, of course, at least not until they’re endorsing him in the general election. And then it will shift to President Bush’s surrogates to do the shushing.

Dean’s primary opponents could do better. Instead of archly scolding the doctor for not holding his tongue, they could be rushing to distinguish themselves with a more nuanced interpretation of Dean’s blunt remark, or to offer better solutions to the ongoing Iraqi debacle. That’s a better way to prove their mettle.

The implicit ban on candor in politics today is perhaps the principal factor in this country’s dangerous moral drift. Moreover, it’s indicative of Democrats’ lack of self-confidence. Until this state of affairs changes, and Democrats are trying to outdo, not undo, each other, their party will continue to transmit the message that it’s not quite ready for prime time.

- posted by Russ @ 2:44 AM

DECIPHERING DAVID BROOKS

Can the New York Times’ conservative columnist David Brooks get any more mediocre or insincere? In today's column, he declares that even though he can’t vote in the primaries, he does have an interest in seeing a “serious and responsible” Democrat nominated. And so he grades the Democrats.

One thing is certain: whoever he doesn’t like is probably the best challenger to President Bush.

On INTEGRITY/LEADERSHIP, he gives an “A” rating to Richard Gephardt, noting that he “has stuck tenaciously to his positions…” Well, that’s a new one. Gephardt is generally famous for shifting almost every significant position over the years, except for several issues of central importance to organized labor, which has historically been a consistent and staunch backer of his. For details on this, see Doug Ireland’s Los Angeles Weekly column . His lowest rating goes to Howard Dean, who gets an “F” because “He's vague about what he's for, but he's venomous toward anyone who disagrees with him. If elected, political discourse would sink to new lows.” Read: Howard Dean’s one tough dude, and I’d hate to see him in a debate with Bush or a surrogate. He’s perhaps the only Democrat who has what it takes to rumble with the snarling dogs in Karl Rove’s kennel.

On DOMESTIC POLICY: He gives Lieberman an “A” for his free trade views. Dean gets a “C” because on the stump he “rejects Clintonite centrism [but] in Vermont he exemplified it. If he won, [which of these Deans] would serve?” What Brooks appears to be saying is he can’t understand how Bush will be able to attack a candidate who knows that Vermont’s (or any state’s) problems are not synonymous with America’s, and who appreciates that each playing field requires its own rules. Again, he’d probably like to give Dean an “F”, but can’t justify it, which suggests clever politics on Dean’s part. The “F” he gives to Gephardt, because he “would capitalize on rising protectionist sentiment in the G.O.P. to erect trade barriers, setting off ferocious conflicts with the rest of the world and impoverishing workers here and abroad.” No comment on the ‘ferocious conflicts’ his own favorites seem to relish provoking, or the fact that workers here and abroad aren’t exactly on easy street under the current regime. He seems most to fear that protectionism would have broad appeal, because it’s not as simple as such a negative term implies-- but a rejection too of the global dominance of mega-corporations, and an endorsement of the right of nations to react to
conditions that harm workers while helping only an elite.

On FOREIGN AFFAIRS, he pins an “A” on Gephardt, because “He believes in aggressive action to prevent further attacks.” What Brooks presumably really means is that Gephardt, having backed the White House on the Iraq war, would be a weak opponent because he could not marshal the one issue that would get a lot of Americans out to vote against Bush. Dean, not surprisingly, gets the lowest rating, a “C”. “His advisers and speeches are on the dovish side, but he claims that his instincts, despite his Iraq war stand, are hawkish.” What he really means, presumably, is that Dean was against a falsely-justified, unnecessary war, but is open to using US military power where it can actually advance legitimate global security interests. Again, this must terrify Brooks, since the stance is consistent with broad sentiment in the American public.

He concludes by calling it “a pretty strong field of candidates” and that, besides Gephardt and Dean, “if any of the other guys were elected, the country would be fine.” Translation: probably only Gephardt and Dean have the issues to beat Bush. And, based on the grades he’s bestowed, only Dean has the moxie and political smarts to pull it off. Expect a lot of uncreative pundits and analysts to misread the true message here, and therefore to conclude that the weak candidates would somehow be the strongest.

- posted by Russ @ 4:31 AM

BUSH LONG SAW MOON AS DISTRACTION
[UPhi]

President Bush’s ambitious new manned moon-and-later-mars exploration project was long a part of White House contingency plans, according to a former administration official. The claim emerged in a new book by a former Small Street Journal reporter.

Asked about this as he headed off to his ranch for his third visit of the new year, Bush denied any advance lunar plans. “That’s nonsense,” he said. “Anyone who knows me would realize that I thought a moon was what you did to another guy from your car window. I only got this darned idea of exploration recently. And it’s a great one.”

Administration officials, however, sought to caution reporters. “Look,” said a senior White House official. “This is nothing new. The Clinton administration was interested in the moon long before we were. I mean, the moon has always been a US target.”

According to former NASA official Paul O’rion, however, Bush talked during pre-9/11 National Security meetings about the need to use the moon as a distraction if and when Karl Rove ran out of rhetorical devices, or in the event that a big international problem reared its head. “The president had always asked if there wasn’t some way to avoid foreign policy decisions altogether by concentrating on bigger targets,” O'rion explains in the book, The Price of Royalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O’rion.

Bush, asked later about the conflicting explanations of his new space initiative, insisted that the main point was being lost. “Let’s face it – we’ve just got to be aware of all the places that might threaten us. Saddam and Osama are nuthin compared to little green men.”

##



- posted by Russ @ 3:35 AM

FORGET THE 'RED' STATES. HOW ABOUT THE BLACK AND BROWN ONES?

Today, pretty much everyone cedes to the Republicans the so-called “Red States,” mostly in the South and West, which seem to nearly always vote GOP.

But the math suggests otherwise. There's enormous potential for Democratic voters amongst a huge untapped pool of Latino and black citizens. For example, in South Carolina, out of 800,000 eligible black voters and 575,175 registered black voters, only 282,000 voted in 2002.

According to Kevin Gray, author of the forthcoming book, "The Death of Black Politics", the black community would indeed register and vote if approached by a massive door-to-door effort, and would respond both to economic issues and to the war and occupation of Iraq.

Another vein of vote wealth is Latinos in the Southwest. Writing in The Nation, Joe Velasquez and Steve Cobble note that “There are as many unregistered Latinos who are American citizens as there were Latino voters in 2000 -- more than 5.5 million. These potential voters are not likely Bush voters, despite Republican rhetoric."

Assuming these statistics are correct, in November the Democratic Party could walk away with a decisive victory. It would be interesting to know what steps are either underway or planned to deal with this. And, if they are not underway, it would be equally interesting to find out why not.


- posted by Russ @ 5:07 AM

THIS JUST IN: HIGH-RANKING SPOOKS TELL ALL.....

Officially-sanctioned leaks are about as reliable as Pat Robertson’s assurance that he speaks directly to God. We all know this to be the case. We do. Yet, time and again, the media engages in the ancient if discredited ritual of airing the stuff. Here’s the latest:

In Slate’s Today’s Papers column, the always perceptive Eric Umansky comments on USA Today’s lead story for Monday, on the intelligence behind the recent Orange Alert. Intelligence officials told the paper that it had a new source that was giving them, for a change, information about specific possible targets rather than generalized comments about hitting America where it hurt most. The officials wouldn’t talk more about the source, but declined to identify it as human, so USAT decided it’s probably some kind of newfangled communications intercept.

Well, then, writes Umansky, a question seems in order: “If this new source is so valuable, why would officials risk blowing its cover by bragging about it to USAT?”

He’s spot-on. If the intelligence community had figured out a way to tap into Al Qaeda conversations, it’s ridiculous to think that they would admit this and destroy the whole point of the operation – to gather information. Logic suggests that what the officials are putting out is deliberate disinformation. The stakes are too high for it to be otherwise.

Time and again, we’ve learned, after the fact, that what was aired for public consumption was fabricated for strategic purposes. Indeed, this administration’s plans to deliberately plant false data in the foreign media – supposedly nixed when they became publicly known – should be enough to sensitize journalists to info-management agendas. Well, should be. But leaks, credible or not – and by and large not -- are a big part of the business of news. And that isn’t going to change anytime soon.

##
- posted by Russ @ 10:07 AM

BROADER NOT BRODER

As the campaign season heats up, one can't help but wonder: do we really need David Broder to referee events?

The other day in the Washington Post, Broder, covering his 7,865th presidential primary, did what he so often does: he got in a tizzy about someone not following protocol. His target: none other than Howard Dean, who of course worries a lot of conventional people.

Broder filed a dispatch that read like a warning to the Democrats that this particular grey sheep was straying too far from the flock. The following is typical. "Dean has found so many ways in a short time to set people's teeth on edge -- with his comments about the Confederate flag, about his struggle to bring himself to talk religion
in the South, about his variant positions on Medicare and trade and other issues
-- that this is clearly a pattern."

Well, so too can a pattern be evinced in the coverage provided by Broder and so many of his jaundiced colleagues on the campaign bus. Instead of celebrating candor, they censure it. Instead of saying that an unrehearsed president would be refreshing, they call for better self-control, and more scripting. Instead of rewarding someone for saying important things that need to be said, they dwell on the unpleasantness of it all. They're a bit too much like proprietors of British finishing schools for the likes of their countrymen.

This is a place where we're supposed to say what we mean, even if sometimes we say it a little crudely, offend a few sensibilities. That's the price of moving forward.
- posted by Russ @ 10:48 AM

Today, I got a CNN Breaking News Alert e-mail, but when I read it, I at first assumed it was a joke.

"U.S. terror alert to be dropped to yellow, or elevated, today, sources tell CNN."

Huh? Color-coded terror alert levels are already meaningless. But now we have to hear about them being adjusted upwards or downwards. And some segments of the American media is so unquestioning of the whole exercise that they're willing to announce, in advance, the mere possibility that this most vague of all warnings is going to be adjusted at all.

Has anyone seen any evidence that these alerts are anything other than a huge con? I mean, what was the intelligence that supported them? And did any of the predicted acts follow? More importantly, what practical steps could the general public have taken in response to these notices? Were we expected to stay home? Avoid crowded places? Cancel travel plans?

It seems about time for a slightly less credulous attitude toward the matter from the media. And a few more answers from the authorities.
- posted by Russ @ 9:25 AM

In a worthwhile piece on TomPaine.com, Ray McGovern, a former career analyst with the CIA, notes some of the many ways in which President Bush has been given unusual license to flout standards, guidelines, rules, traditions, agreements, principles, and more. He mentions one point of particular interest, because it is so seldom appreciated: the crucial role of the foreign media in reporting American news and analysis that their US colleagues miss.

McGovern mentions specifically the Australian press, and indeed the Aussies – together with the British – regularly do laps around stateside media on topics primarily of domestic import. Their stories do a great service when US reporters finally pick up on them.

But in fact reporters from all over the world are often busy doing our work for us. There are of course good reasons for this, not the least of which is that a journalist faces far fewer pressures to self-censor when writing about affairs an ocean away. American foreign correspondents and freelancers working abroad also often push the envelope beyond where local journalists will go.

Still, as long as the US is the world’s only superpower, the failure of its own media to be aggressive enough at the process of self-examination constitutes a serious and growing crisis. The failure to tell the American people the truth about the Administration’s double-talk on rationale for invading Iraq was bad enough, but it may be just the beginning.

- posted by Russ @ 1:49 AM

Well, he’s back. Another audiotape from Osama bin Laden has just been aired – and the speaker’s identity confirmed. It ran, of course, on the al-Jazeera cable network, which says it played only 14 of 47 minutes for its Arabic-speaking audiences. The rest of us, notably the presumed future targets of the man and his acolytes, got much less, just very short summaries of it in our electronic, digital and print media.

We presumably missed a lot, and that’s a bad thing. No matter how despicable bin Laden is, his message is important – and his analysis. It’s therefore both surprising and disappointing that Western media haven’t made more of an effort to scrutinize and publicly discuss the exact nature of the threat posed by Osama, as laid out by the man himself. As unpleasant as the topic is, we’d be better off with fewer color-coded alerts and more attention to the seriousness, logic, focus, content and persuasiveness of Osama’s appeal to anti-Western sentiment around the world.

But we don’t get that, in part because American news organizations have for the past two years adopted a policy of pre-censoring the public pronouncements of Al Qaeda’s leadership. A closer look at this practice reveals how self-defeating it is.

When the first videotape appeared, shortly after 9/11, the Bush Administration cautioned the media not to run more than brief excerpts, warning that the messages could contain coded instructions for more acts of terror. But, in a recent interview, even National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack showed how foggy this rationale is. “[V]ideotapes broadcast in their entirety over the air could be a way for bin Laden and al Qaeda to send messages to their followers and their group,” McCormack told me early last year. “We don’t know if that is a fact [italics added], but we had concerns…” The fact is, nearly two years after the September 11 attacks, with numerous Al Qaeda officials in custody, there’s still no indication of coding at all.

The censorship actually began back in the fall of 2001, following a conference call with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, when ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox agreed to “screen” tapes prior to broadcasting audio or video. Since Rice’s warning, numerous videos and audios have been aired in some “screened” form. Exactly what qualifies network personnel to “screen” the tapes is no more clear than what such a “screener” might look for or cut out. CNN created a senior executive committee to deal with the tapes on a case by case basis, but won’t say more.

Whatever the justification for keeping the public away from such material, this past February, during the lobbying campaign for an Iraq invasion, the White House suddenly did a 180. Citing a new tape as proof of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Colin Powell actually did advance promotion for its upcoming airing on Al Jazeera. Following Powell’s cue, Fox News treated the release as breaking news, becoming the first US network out of the box with a full airing of the 16-minute tape (with an English voice-over). Other networks followed, albeit more cautiously, playing just pieces of it.

"There was no indication from the administration that it could present a security concern," Fox vice president John Moody told the Washington Post. The reason, he implied, was that this new message was an audiotape not a videotape.

The idea was that terrorists, using a craft known as steganography, can bury much more coded digital content inside a videotape . But this distinction makes no sense to those knowledgeable about the state of the art. “If I have to give a message that is short and sweet I can use audio,” says Dr. Sushil Jajodia, director of George Mason University’s Center for Secure Information Systems. “The claim that somehow audio is okay but video is not -- that’s absolutely not true.”

In any case, as long as overseas Arabic-language channels, which don’t take their instructions from the Bush administration, broadcast large portions of the tapes to an audience that presumably includes Al Qaeda operatives, the only result of U.S.-media self-censorship is to deprive Americans of seeing and hearing their sworn nemesis first hand. (The absurdity was only compounded by the revelation that Osama has been corresponding with his agents via hand-delivered letters.)

We desperately need to find effective ways to engage and comprehend the world beyond the current vengeance and retribution. The larger media organizations, so effective at transmitting official pronouncements, could start playing a more constructive role by refusing to serve on the Bush administration’s news management team, and by bringing in smart analysts to tell us what, exactly, Osama is talking about.


- posted by Russ @ 1:09 PM

The following email is circulating. It's good for a little humor relief, but BE SURE TO READ TO THE END:

It is time to take a serious look at our involvement there.

Every day there are news reports about more deaths. Every night
on the TV are photos of death and destruction. Why are we still there?

The land is too large to secure all of it. The bad people causing this damage can roam anywhere, and we can't possibly police the whole place. Why are we still there?

We occupied this land, which we had to take by force, but it causes us nothing but trouble. Why are we still there?

Their government is unstable, and in the process of changing. Why are we still there?

Refugees are fleeing by the thousands, driven from their homes. Why are we still there?

It will cost billions to rebuild, which we can't afford. Why are we still there?

There are more than 1000 religious sects.

We can't even secure the borders. Why are we still there?

And to repeat. Every day we hear of more Americans killed in this dangerous land.

It is clear!

We must abandon California


- posted by Russ @ 2:09 PM

Perhaps you have noticed, but now, every day – every single day, it seems, is TerrorDay. The promise of September 11, a never-ending global war, has essentially come true. Every day, American soldiers die. Every day, there’s some crisis or apparent threat to the lives or well-being of Americans or other westerners – passenger planes that must be turned around or escorted by fighter jets, bomb scares, actual bombings, colored alerts. The invasion of Iraq played a tremendous role in ratcheting up the conflict, but in any case, it is clearly getting worse, steadily.

Do we just cower and seek to distract ourselves, do we just accept this as a fait accompli? The alternative is to demand that something be done – something truly constructive. Maybe it’s time for some global peace talks. Maybe we can start discussing international confidence-building measures that would show the world – the whole world, all ethnicities, races, religions, that we mean business when it comes to peace. That doesn’t mean abandoning security, but it does mean trying to make security real.

Is it not remarkable that the political leadership in the United States – of both parties – hasn’t seen this as a priority? After the “victory” in Iraq, it should be easier than ever to present this from a position of putative strength and beneficence. In any case, positive action doesn’t seem like some fuzzy feel-good anymore. It seems like common sense. And it may be the only way out of this never-ending nightmare. Soon, even the most jingoistic among us will have to admit that.

- posted by Russ @ 5:51 AM

HOLIDAY BREAK: LIQUID VIENNA

We’ve had a pretty wet time here in Vienna. Not the weather. Too cold for rain, too clear for snow. No, I’m talking about internally wet. It’s a balmy minus-7 centigrade out, so we typically walk for a few minutes, then we duck into a café. Then we walk for a few minutes, then we duck into another café. Then we….Anyway, we end up drinking a lot.

Today, prior to dinner, we’d already had black tea, hot rum punch, café au lait, chamomile tea…. Usually, we start getting beverage-bored. So we venture into varied terrain. Coffee with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Cocoa. Tea caffeinated and tea herbal. Red wine. Hot wine. Aperitif. Now, I feel that our drinking borders on desperation. Our bladders really don’t want any more abuse. We’ve gotten the bathroom stops down to rituals of incredible efficiency. We hardly bother to explain that we’re going, or where we’re going. We do, however, admit to growing fascination over the wide variance in cleanliness standards and differing perceptions of what constitutes comfort – even amongst establishments of the same socio-economic caliber.

When our out-of-sight business is done, we sometimes talk about thirst-quenching accoutrements and the subtleties of preparation. We notice which places serve tea in glasses [nice!], which bother with the honey and lemon [all too few], about the wide-ranging interpretations of latte and macchiato. We amuse ourselves with the tri-language menus that actually bother to explain, in Italian, what a cappuccino is [and we didn’t even agree with the definition!]. We think about how long it is okay to stay in one place without spending a lot or eating, and so we end up wandering into another category of excess – the food we don’t really need or want. Today, I had a 15-Euro plate of beef because I thought I was ordering a 5-Euro goulash soup I didn’t really want. We also weigh how much creamy pastry we can consume without effecting how much we weigh. We constantly ask each other what time it is so we can figure out how the unnecessary food will affect the timing of our unnecessary dinner, and whether the beverages will affect our ability to stay awake or get to sleep.

We also find ourselves drawn into conversations, sometimes taxing small-talk ones, with other characters who haunt cafes. Often, these are immigrants who notice my laptop and so want me to explain to them how their mobile phone with the digital camera works (I have no idea) and in fact to update them on all developments in consumer electronics from the past decade. Others simply want to chat, which can mean an hour of small, pleasant misunderstandings. The fellow we met today, from Egypt, kept saying “and now I have to go” – but didn’t. When he finally did, we were a little exhausted. It felt like time for a drink. All of which proves that urban winter holidays can be an awful lot of work. Personally, when I get back home from this glugfest, I’m taking a vacation.

- posted by Russ @ 5:36 PM

Thought-provoking item brought to our attention by Sam Smith's Progressive Review: the US's largest cable tv provider, Comcast, has nixed running marijuana policy reform ads, including those dealing with the extremely timely issue of medical marijuana. The Marijuana Policy Project hoped to convince the presidential candidates to get chatty on the usually verboten topic by dropping about $10,000 on "issue ads" before New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

Comcast, which is donating $50 MILLION worth of free airtime to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America for its own tv ads, obviously doesnt want to get anywhere near anything non-mainstream, even for the vast sum of $10,000. And who could blame the company?

And yet we still live in a country where controversial positions are supposed to be aired and discussed (if less so all the time) and so Comcast and its competitors probably shouldn't be allowed to keep MPP off its screens. And so one modestly ingenious solution has been fashioned: a congressional candidate in New Hampshire has offered to run the medical marijuana message in his own TV ads. Because tv providers can't straight-arm advertising monies from federal candidates, it looks like ComCast is stuck.

Perhaps what's most interesting here is the precedent. Might we soon see all manner of people running for political office solely for the purpose of enabling debate over sensitive matters? No telling where this could lead. With so many odious special interests abusing pass-throughs to influence voters, maybe this development is the unanticipated flip side -- more, not less democracy. Stay tuned.

- posted by Russ @ 1:47 PM

The Bush Administration, without conservative primary opposition, is moving swiftly to secure an easy victory in November by neutralizing the political middle. It has hit on the perfect solution: become Democratic!

If you don't believe me, check out today's New York Times op-ed by Secretary of State Colin Powell (with a little ghost-writing, presumably, from presidential Machiavelli-in-residence Karl Rove.) There's scarcely a thing in there that a Democrat wouldn't support. More to the point, it reads like the kind of claims Al Gore might have made if he'd been rounding out a first term. Consider the particulars: a new constitution for Afghanistan, pro-democracy diplomacy in the Middle East and elsewhere, AIDS funding, battles against slavery and child labor, peaceful pressure on troublesome states Iran and North Korea, and downright friendliness with the likes of Russia, China and India. The only reality check on the White House's pre-makeover rhetoric is the claim that thanks to the administration, Iraq is no longer "an incubator for weapons of mass murder that could have fallen into terrorists' hands." The beauty of this is that it continues the Rose Garden Sidle -- that little shimmy, step by step, from ever having actually claimed that Iraq posed some kind of an imminent threat. By the time the Democratic Convention rolls around, the admin will be claiming to have made Iraq a place where "people who once briefly considered becoming terrorists were enticed into more positive activities."
- posted by Russ @ 1:01 PM