While Tenet, Joseph, and probably even Rice seem poised to go down in flames over the yellowcake flap, at least they won't have it as bad as the British fall guys. Dr. David Kelly, a career civil servant who was referred to--even by those in Parliament who conducted the inquiry into his role--as the Labour Party's scapegoat for the Iraq affair, has been found dead in London.
A transcript of his testimony to Parliament can be found here. Kelly was noticeably shaken during his testimony, appearing overwhelmed at times. In that light, suicide is being considered by British authorities to be a likely cause of death.
I have no desire to speculate as to whether the suicide theory is true. If it indeed is, Kelly is nonetheless a casualty of the British version of the backpedalling we are experiencing here in the States. He was wrongly fingered by those in power, and forced to defend actions that he had not himself taken. Either way, it is clear that the pressue--of whatever sort--was just too much.
Friday, July 18, 2003
Sometimes I feel that instead of my own blog, I should just have a link to Salon. I doubt that many people read Salon on a daily basis, because of their subscription policy, and that's a shame. Their investigative reporting has been running circles around the broadcast media. With the meaty exceptions of the Washington Post, NPR, and the New York
Times, there is no other daily news source of actual reporting anymore.
Yesterday, Mark Follman conducted an interview with Ray McGovern, who sits on the steering committeee of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. In the interview, McGovern goes into detail about the credentials and accomplishments of his peers in VIPS, and then tears into the current state of intelligence politicization in the US. He also provides an analogy between Iraq and the Gulf of Tonkin, that is especially insightful due to the fact that McGovern worked in the Agency then.
McGovern also confirms that his sources were fingering Robert Jospeh and the NSC's fulcrum for the State of the Union speech before Tenet named him before Congress yesterday. A little background on the Joseph matter.
Times, there is no other daily news source of actual reporting anymore.
Yesterday, Mark Follman conducted an interview with Ray McGovern, who sits on the steering committeee of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. In the interview, McGovern goes into detail about the credentials and accomplishments of his peers in VIPS, and then tears into the current state of intelligence politicization in the US. He also provides an analogy between Iraq and the Gulf of Tonkin, that is especially insightful due to the fact that McGovern worked in the Agency then.
McGovern also confirms that his sources were fingering Robert Jospeh and the NSC's fulcrum for the State of the Union speech before Tenet named him before Congress yesterday. A little background on the Joseph matter.
Thursday, July 17, 2003
It didn't take long for leaks to reveal the identity of the administration figure fingered by George Tenet as the person who fought to keep discredited assertions in the President's State of the Union Address.
It was... National Security Council Member Robert Joseph.
You can read some background on Joseph at the top of this older, unrelated article.
Minister of Information Press Secretary Scott McClellan (the new Ari Fleischer) dismissed thse revelations as partisan, political, and (a term that they ought to stop using, as it only increases the appearance of disconnected buffoonery) "revisionist history." Revisionist history? It only happened six months ago, and the whole god damned point is that we don't have an agreed-upon narrative as to what went down [i.e., a history].
NBC has previously reported that Joseph, the NSC official, and the CIA’s weapons proliferation director, Alan Foley, argued back and forth about whether the reference should have been in the speech. Sources have told the network that, after Foley objected to the first draft of the passage, Joseph came up with the suggestion of attributing it to the British, asking Foley if that would make it technically correct. Since the British were reporting it, Foley had to acknowledge that the passage was factually accurate, even though the CIA did not think the assertion was true, according to the sources.
Foley never consulted his superiors on the dispute, so Tenet never read or approved it, the sources said.
One senator who attended Wednesday’s Intelligence Committee hearing told NBC News that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed surprise when they learned that Tenet had not read the State of the Union speech and had not even heard of the controversy surrounding the 16 words until long after the speech had been delivered.
The CIA’s inspector general and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are investigating whether Foley should have consulted higher-ups and whether Joseph exerted undue influence, among other issues, the sources said.
McClellan has not even been on the job a week, and he is already being made to throw away his future career. George Tenet identified Jospeh before the Senate, which last time I checked had 100 members. That's 100 people who are probably as amazed as I am at the gall required for the most dishonest and manipulative administration in US history (move over, Hoover) to accuse the director of the CIA of being partisan or trying to rewrite history. 100 people who know that McClellan is full of shit, anyway.
It was... National Security Council Member Robert Joseph.
You can read some background on Joseph at the top of this older, unrelated article.
NBC has previously reported that Joseph, the NSC official, and the CIA’s weapons proliferation director, Alan Foley, argued back and forth about whether the reference should have been in the speech. Sources have told the network that, after Foley objected to the first draft of the passage, Joseph came up with the suggestion of attributing it to the British, asking Foley if that would make it technically correct. Since the British were reporting it, Foley had to acknowledge that the passage was factually accurate, even though the CIA did not think the assertion was true, according to the sources.
Foley never consulted his superiors on the dispute, so Tenet never read or approved it, the sources said.
One senator who attended Wednesday’s Intelligence Committee hearing told NBC News that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed surprise when they learned that Tenet had not read the State of the Union speech and had not even heard of the controversy surrounding the 16 words until long after the speech had been delivered.
The CIA’s inspector general and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are investigating whether Foley should have consulted higher-ups and whether Joseph exerted undue influence, among other issues, the sources said.
McClellan has not even been on the job a week, and he is already being made to throw away his future career. George Tenet identified Jospeh before the Senate, which last time I checked had 100 members. That's 100 people who are probably as amazed as I am at the gall required for the most dishonest and manipulative administration in US history (move over, Hoover) to accuse the director of the CIA of being partisan or trying to rewrite history. 100 people who know that McClellan is full of shit, anyway.
The Nation has published article--written by conservative U of Chicago professor Bob Novak--accusing the Bush admitration of "outing" the CIA-agent wife of Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador sent to Niger by Dick Cheney to verify uranium claims. It has been Wilson's testimony and conversation with the press that have cemented the substance of this brewing scandal. It appears that, motivated by revenge, they revealed Mrs. Wilson's undercover status, thereby endangering her life.
The catch here is that doing so is a federal crime. The Bush administration is run like the mafia. If there is any question as to whether this offensive against Wilson is purely political, consider this quote, from the elder President Bush, commending Wilson for his service:
"Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq....The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job."
Not that W should be expected to follow his father's lead on all issues, but it seems unlikely that Bush and Co.'s complaints about the Wilsons are remotely legitimate. After all, it was Cheney who chose to dispatch him on the fact-seeking mission to Niger. Maybe he should have called it a "bullshit-seeking mission."
Lies and hubirs are only one part of the package that the American public are now seeing as historically odious. It all fits into a larger pattern of abuse of the military and intelligence agencies. This childish and illegal action will follow Bush around for the rest of his political career: about 18 months, or so.
The catch here is that doing so is a federal crime. The Bush administration is run like the mafia. If there is any question as to whether this offensive against Wilson is purely political, consider this quote, from the elder President Bush, commending Wilson for his service:
"Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq....The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job."
Not that W should be expected to follow his father's lead on all issues, but it seems unlikely that Bush and Co.'s complaints about the Wilsons are remotely legitimate. After all, it was Cheney who chose to dispatch him on the fact-seeking mission to Niger. Maybe he should have called it a "bullshit-seeking mission."
Lies and hubirs are only one part of the package that the American public are now seeing as historically odious. It all fits into a larger pattern of abuse of the military and intelligence agencies. This childish and illegal action will follow Bush around for the rest of his political career: about 18 months, or so.
Shit Hits Fan
Sen. Dick Durbin told ABC news that George Tenet has named names in his closed-door testimony this morning, inexplicably linking an administration official (who Durbin did not name to the press) to the allegations that the President's people strongarmed Intelligence into including the forged Iraq-Niger yellowcake link in the State of the Union address.
"He (Tenet) certainly told us who the person was who was insistent on putting this language in which the CIA knew to be incredible, this language about the uranium shipment from Africa," Durbin said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"And there was this negotiation between the White House and the CIA about just how far you could go and be close to the truth and unfortunately those sixteen words were included in the most important speech the president delivers in any given year," Durbin added.
The latest round of official polls showed Bush's approval rating dropping a stark 9% in two weeks. Impromptu (and less dependable, to be sure) polls this week show his support drying up rapidly. But at this point, as satisfying as it may be to those of use who have called a spade a spade since the dishonest rush to war to began, it is imperative that we avoid encapsulating the fallout from this situation entirely within the confines of a "blame game." It is natural to speculate as to who the "fall guy" will be, and likewise it is natural for one to try to determine which single individual should shoulder the blame.
It is dangerous for these tendencies to be allowed to entirely characterize our national response to the Executive branch's defrauding of the populace. The quest to divine individual agency for a given transgression, often branded as "conspiracy theory" can be a misleading and fruitless project. History shows us that conspiracies are rarely as commonplace as is the perception of conspiracies. To determine whether events were manipulated purposefully and with forethought will always require tha any amount of solid data be tempered with speculation about the intentions of others.
History also shows us that narrative does matter. Indeed, after speculation and politics are stripped away, narrative is almost all that history that has left. A sequence of events is what it is. This is especially important when looking at transgressions of a state or large organization, or any sort of corruption or dishonesty that can be described as systemic: when one discusses the inequities of global trade, and the economic system that leaves many of the world's poor without any assistance, one is unlikely to do so in terms of a group of shady characters in a dark room. No one would allege that racism was a conspiracy hatched by a few white people with the conscious goal of tarnishing our society long after emancipation and suffrage. Yet that racism is a messy and multifaceted social institution doesn't change the fact that it is worth addressing as a society.
When a problem is systemic, so too need be its solution. Where does the "blame game" lead us? We identify and purge the guilty party. Heads roll, etc. We personify our problems, and wrap them up in one individual. That speaks eerily of the large numbers of Americans who believed (without literal prompting form the administration, even) that Saddam Hussien was responsible for 9/11, and to simply turn this illogic on its head will get us nowhere. While, obviously, our leaders must be held accountable for their actions, and while maybe some heads ought to be rolling over the Iraq hoodwink, simply finding out who to fire is not going to address the root causes of our current mess.
Odd, that perhaps the 20th century's greatest critic of power can give us the tool to look past the urge to assign blame as our sole means of recourse. Michel Foucault's theory of the instrument effect can be invaluable to this process. Essentially, to paraphrase Foucault, intentions are irrelevant to history. What happens, happens, and a society can and should act based on only that. One needn't allege a conspiracy of the rich to note that access to resources and services is unequal for members of different economic classes, and one is only wasting their time trying to finger those responsible rather than searching for real, structural remedies.
Such is the case with the inquiry into the lies surrounding the Iraq war. What is the narrative at play? What do we know happened? We know that the Executive branch was given unprecedented and unconstitutional powers, and that they abused them. In the press, the story has centered around the abuses themselves, the lies, the forged evidence and the hubris. All of this misses the broader underlying problem: the granting of those new powers in the first place.
Step away from the politics and invective. What is the situation in Iraq right now, as it looks to one's eyes, not his mind or heart?
Today, Paul Bremer rules the country from Saddam's palace, while the Iraqi people sit in the dark without adequate water or electricity.
It is likely that Bremer never intended to become some sort of distant viceroy. Why would he want to? But Iraqis are nonetheless saddled with this scene.
The war deal was sealed not when Bush lied to the public, or when Rumsfeld or Rice lied to cover that up, but back in October, 2002, when Congress abdicated their duty to decide whether or not the nation waged war. It was sealed when the PATRIOT ACT and numerous executive orders created an environment of Executive secrecy never before seen in the US. Most importantly, it was sealed when we Americans--either because of a misleading press, our own laziness, or the incentive to forget provided by our nice $300 Bush tax cut checks--refused to stand up and fight, not even for what we know is "right" so much as for the systems that are intended to arbit what is right for us in the first place.
Bush's Iraqi adventure has turned into his own political Stalingrad not because of politics or policy, and not because he and his have spit on our ideals--it is our process that has been violated. American constitutional democracy is not about values, or ideas, or identity. It is about procedure. It is about the independence and integrity of our institutions. Checks and balances are not a feature of our system of government, they are our system of government. To piss that away in a fury of flag-waving and Fox News exclusive explosion footage is to not understand what makes this nation unique.
I see people right now, people who were vocally antiwar even long before the war began, acting pleased and gratified at current events, as if the pointless deaths of thousands are ever somthing to be happy to have been right about. By villainizing only individuals, and ignoring the bigger picture, we could become the equivalent of those who led themselves believe that Saddam planned the World Trade Center attacks, and that their security could be enhanced by the removal of his regime. Simply removing from power those who abused our new system of unchecked war declarations and evaporating transparency does nothing to prevent the monster from simply growing a new head.
It is our duty--and Congress' manifest mandate--to reinstate real oversight and real procedure. Our democracy's immune system is failing, and some of use are pattig ourselves on the back for kicking a cold.
If we look hard enough for the fall guy or the villain, we are likely to miss the one that we see in the mirror every morning.
Sen. Dick Durbin told ABC news that George Tenet has named names in his closed-door testimony this morning, inexplicably linking an administration official (who Durbin did not name to the press) to the allegations that the President's people strongarmed Intelligence into including the forged Iraq-Niger yellowcake link in the State of the Union address.
"He (Tenet) certainly told us who the person was who was insistent on putting this language in which the CIA knew to be incredible, this language about the uranium shipment from Africa," Durbin said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"And there was this negotiation between the White House and the CIA about just how far you could go and be close to the truth and unfortunately those sixteen words were included in the most important speech the president delivers in any given year," Durbin added.
The latest round of official polls showed Bush's approval rating dropping a stark 9% in two weeks. Impromptu (and less dependable, to be sure) polls this week show his support drying up rapidly. But at this point, as satisfying as it may be to those of use who have called a spade a spade since the dishonest rush to war to began, it is imperative that we avoid encapsulating the fallout from this situation entirely within the confines of a "blame game." It is natural to speculate as to who the "fall guy" will be, and likewise it is natural for one to try to determine which single individual should shoulder the blame.
It is dangerous for these tendencies to be allowed to entirely characterize our national response to the Executive branch's defrauding of the populace. The quest to divine individual agency for a given transgression, often branded as "conspiracy theory" can be a misleading and fruitless project. History shows us that conspiracies are rarely as commonplace as is the perception of conspiracies. To determine whether events were manipulated purposefully and with forethought will always require tha any amount of solid data be tempered with speculation about the intentions of others.
History also shows us that narrative does matter. Indeed, after speculation and politics are stripped away, narrative is almost all that history that has left. A sequence of events is what it is. This is especially important when looking at transgressions of a state or large organization, or any sort of corruption or dishonesty that can be described as systemic: when one discusses the inequities of global trade, and the economic system that leaves many of the world's poor without any assistance, one is unlikely to do so in terms of a group of shady characters in a dark room. No one would allege that racism was a conspiracy hatched by a few white people with the conscious goal of tarnishing our society long after emancipation and suffrage. Yet that racism is a messy and multifaceted social institution doesn't change the fact that it is worth addressing as a society.
When a problem is systemic, so too need be its solution. Where does the "blame game" lead us? We identify and purge the guilty party. Heads roll, etc. We personify our problems, and wrap them up in one individual. That speaks eerily of the large numbers of Americans who believed (without literal prompting form the administration, even) that Saddam Hussien was responsible for 9/11, and to simply turn this illogic on its head will get us nowhere. While, obviously, our leaders must be held accountable for their actions, and while maybe some heads ought to be rolling over the Iraq hoodwink, simply finding out who to fire is not going to address the root causes of our current mess.
Odd, that perhaps the 20th century's greatest critic of power can give us the tool to look past the urge to assign blame as our sole means of recourse. Michel Foucault's theory of the instrument effect can be invaluable to this process. Essentially, to paraphrase Foucault, intentions are irrelevant to history. What happens, happens, and a society can and should act based on only that. One needn't allege a conspiracy of the rich to note that access to resources and services is unequal for members of different economic classes, and one is only wasting their time trying to finger those responsible rather than searching for real, structural remedies.
Such is the case with the inquiry into the lies surrounding the Iraq war. What is the narrative at play? What do we know happened? We know that the Executive branch was given unprecedented and unconstitutional powers, and that they abused them. In the press, the story has centered around the abuses themselves, the lies, the forged evidence and the hubris. All of this misses the broader underlying problem: the granting of those new powers in the first place.
Step away from the politics and invective. What is the situation in Iraq right now, as it looks to one's eyes, not his mind or heart?
Today, Paul Bremer rules the country from Saddam's palace, while the Iraqi people sit in the dark without adequate water or electricity.
It is likely that Bremer never intended to become some sort of distant viceroy. Why would he want to? But Iraqis are nonetheless saddled with this scene.
The war deal was sealed not when Bush lied to the public, or when Rumsfeld or Rice lied to cover that up, but back in October, 2002, when Congress abdicated their duty to decide whether or not the nation waged war. It was sealed when the PATRIOT ACT and numerous executive orders created an environment of Executive secrecy never before seen in the US. Most importantly, it was sealed when we Americans--either because of a misleading press, our own laziness, or the incentive to forget provided by our nice $300 Bush tax cut checks--refused to stand up and fight, not even for what we know is "right" so much as for the systems that are intended to arbit what is right for us in the first place.
Bush's Iraqi adventure has turned into his own political Stalingrad not because of politics or policy, and not because he and his have spit on our ideals--it is our process that has been violated. American constitutional democracy is not about values, or ideas, or identity. It is about procedure. It is about the independence and integrity of our institutions. Checks and balances are not a feature of our system of government, they are our system of government. To piss that away in a fury of flag-waving and Fox News exclusive explosion footage is to not understand what makes this nation unique.
I see people right now, people who were vocally antiwar even long before the war began, acting pleased and gratified at current events, as if the pointless deaths of thousands are ever somthing to be happy to have been right about. By villainizing only individuals, and ignoring the bigger picture, we could become the equivalent of those who led themselves believe that Saddam planned the World Trade Center attacks, and that their security could be enhanced by the removal of his regime. Simply removing from power those who abused our new system of unchecked war declarations and evaporating transparency does nothing to prevent the monster from simply growing a new head.
It is our duty--and Congress' manifest mandate--to reinstate real oversight and real procedure. Our democracy's immune system is failing, and some of use are pattig ourselves on the back for kicking a cold.
If we look hard enough for the fall guy or the villain, we are likely to miss the one that we see in the mirror every morning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)