Just hours before his departure for Africa, the President managed, as on September 11th, as so many other times in the election campaign, to be surrounded by photogenic tots — in this case at a Head Start program in suburban Washington. There, he unveiled a plan to turn Head Start back to the now encumbered, hopelessly debt-ridden states, where its money would be mixed in with other pre-education funds and who knows what else. (“Why would anyone want to turn Head Start into Slow Start or No Start,” asked Senator Ted Kennedy.) The fact is no past program to make life slightly better for those who aren’t doing well in America, no program, in fact, to make life better for any of us (except the tax-dividend wealthy) goes undismantled or, in the style of this administration, unlied about.
And speaking of lies, in the wake of yesterday’s stinging op-ed in the New York Times by Joseph C. Wilson, the diplomat sent to Niger to check out the Iraqi Uranium story, the White House finally admitted that it twern’t so, Joe. As David Sanger of the Times (Bush Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin, White House Says) put it,
“The White House statement appeared to undercut one of the key pieces of evidence that President Bush and his aides had cited to back their claims made prior to launching an attack against Iraq in March that Mr. Hussein was ‘reconstituting’ his nuclear weapons program.”
As White House spokesman Ari Fleischer put it, “There is zero, nada, nothing new here.” And this, in fact, is — a rarity for this administration — no lie. As those who were reading these dispatches before the war know, Congressional Representative Henry Waxman challenged the President directly on this in a letter posted at his website. Little new has been added to the tale except that now it qualifies as a media story whereas in those days, when it might have made a significant difference, more or less no place other than my site (and then Mother Jones on-line) made note of it.
Today in the Los Angeles Times, columnist Robert Scheer has written a devastating op-ed on these lies, A Diplomat’s Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied, which says in part:
“In a Washington Post interview, Wilson added, ‘It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question, what else are they lying about?’ Those are the carefully chosen words of a 23-year career diplomat
“This is not some minor dispute over a footnote to history but rather raises the possibility of one of the most egregious misrepresentations by a U.S. administration. What could be more cynical and impeachable than fabricating a threat of rogue nations or terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons and using that to sell a war?…
As White House spokesman Ari Fleischer put it, “There is zero, nada, nothing new here.” And this, in fact, is — a rarity for this administration — no lie. As those who were reading these dispatches before the war know, Congressional Representative Henry Waxman challenged the President directly on this in a letter posted at his website. Little new has been added to the tale except that now it qualifies as a media story whereas in those days, when it might have made a significant difference, more or less no place other than my site (and then Mother Jones on-line) made note of it.
Today in the Los Angeles Times, columnist Robert Scheer has written a devastating op-ed on these lies, A Diplomat’s Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied, which says in part:
“In a Washington Post interview, Wilson added, ‘It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question, what else are they lying about?’ Those are the carefully chosen words of a 23-year career diplomat
“This is not some minor dispute over a footnote to history but rather raises the possibility of one of the most egregious misrepresentations by a U.S. administration. What could be more cynical and impeachable than fabricating a threat of rogue nations or terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons and using that to sell a war?…
“The world is outraged at this pattern of lies used to justify the Iraq invasion, but the U.S. public still seems numb to the dangers of government by deceit.”
Quote of the day: “Some frustrated troops stationed in Iraq are writing letters to
representatives in Congress to request their units be repatriated.’Most
soldiers would empty their bank accounts just for a plane ticket home,’ said
one recent Congressional letter written by an Army soldier now based in
Iraq. The soldier requested anonymity. ‘Make no mistake, the level of morale for most soldiers that I’ve seen has hit rock bottom,’ said another soldier, an officer from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq.
“The open-ended deployments in Iraq are lowering morale among some ground
troops, who say constantly shifting time tables are reducing confidence in
their leadership. ‘The way we have been treated and the continuous lies told
to our families back home has devastated us all,’ a soldier in Iraq wrote in
a letter to Congress.”
That’s from a recent Christian Science Monitor piece (Ann Scott Tyson, Troop morale in Iraq hits ‘rock bottom’) which also points out that though there are 150,000 American troops inside Iraq, another 80,000 support them in the region and that ever-extending tours of duty are making people in the Pentagon nervous about losing disgruntled soldiers and reservists long term.
By the way, it’s not only the troops in Iraq who are increasingly upset, so are the families of our troops here at home. A reader just pointed me to a fascinating new website set up by some families of Americans in Iraq, filled with their letters and calling for us to “Support the troops: Bring them home now!!!” I think it significant that this call should come first in this war from such a source. Check it out: www.mfso.org)
In the meantime, however upbeat the White House and Rumsfeld’s Pentagon try to remain, military anxieties are growing almost by the day. Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Molly Moore report in today’s Washington Post in a piece whose title tells it all, Urban Combat Frustrates Army:
“As attacks on occupation forces in Iraq escalate, assailants in Baghdad have used the capital’s bustling crowds, tall buildings and busy streets as avenues for surprise strikes and easy escapes — elements of urban warfare that U.S. troops managed to avoid during the military campaign to topple the government of Saddam Hussein.”
And yesterday, Thomas E. Ricks and Rajiv Chandrasekaran (In Postwar Iraq, the Battle Widens) reported that:
“The new approaches employed in the Iraqi attacks last week are provoking concern among some that what once was seen as a mopping-up operation against the dying remnants of a deposed government is instead becoming a widening battle against a growing and organized forcePentagon officials continue to insist that the U.S. military is not caught in an anti-guerrilla campaign in IraqBut a growing number of military specialists, and some lawmakers, are voicing concern about trends in Iraq. There is even some quiet worry at the Pentagon, where some officers contend privately that the size of the U.S. deployment in Iraq is inadequate for force protection, much less for peacekeeping
“The increase in the use of mortars in recent attacks is especially troubling, military experts noted . Military organizations using mortars tend to operate in teams of at least 10, noted one specialist in infantry tactics. “That means a leader and a plan”
You can feel the men of this administration in and out of the Pentagon twisting and squirming to avoid the language of Vietnam, just as somewhere along the line the Bush administration is likely to start twisting and squirming to avoid the language of Watergate. To accept labels from either of those memory-events is likely to be a bit analogous to swallowing rat poison. But somewhere in the background, behind the plans for multinational forces — the Indians are reputedly already getting cold feet about sending troops — and in Tommy Franks strange denial on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that more troops are needed now (“The sense that I have right now is that it’s not time to send in additional troops”) lies the dreaded word, “escalation.”
Let me escalate myself, then, with two of the more powerful pieces I’ve seen in awhile. The first is today’s column by Jim Carroll in the Boston Globe on what to make of our President’s war against evil. Carroll, as ever, minces no words (“When the president speaks, unscripted, from his own moral center, what shows itself is a bottomless void.”) Don’t miss a word of it and then, if you want to understand our situation in Iraq by understanding the Iraqi experience of this war, whatever you do, don’t miss the remarkable two-part piece by Observer reporter Ed Vulliamy (picked up off the ZNET website), which should win an award. It’s painful as well as heartrending to read. He reminds us that practically every Western reporter in Iraq managed to traipse through the hospital in which Jessica Lynch was “rescued,” and none of them seem to have bothered to visit the wounded Iraqis in the next room. Like Jessica Lynch, their bodies are shattered; unlike her they seem to remember everything. Tom
Bush’s war against evil
By James Carroll
The Boston Globe
July 8, 2003In the gothic splendor of the National Cathedral, that liturgy of trauma, George W. Bush made the most stirring – and ominous – declaration of his presidency. It was Sept. 14, 2001. ”Just three days removed from these events,” he said, ”Americans do not yet have ”the distance of history.” But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”
The statement fell on the ears of most Americans, perhaps, as mere rhetoric of the high pulpit, but as the distance of history lengthens, events show that in those few words the president redefined his raison d’etre and that of the nation – nothing less than to ”rid the world of evil.” The unprecedented initiatives taken from Washington in the last two years are incomprehensible except in the context of this purpose.
To read more Carroll click here
Iraq
The Human Toll
by Ed Vuillamy
July 07, 2003It was Rahad’s turn to hide. The nine-year-old girl found a good place to conceal herself from her playmates, the game of hide and seek having lasted some two hours along a quiet residential street in the town of Fallujah, on the banks of the Euphrates. But while Rahad crouched behind the wall of a neighbour’s house, someone else – not playing the game – had spotted her, and her friends; someone above. The pilot of an American A-10 ‘tank-buster’ aircraft, hovering in a figure of eight. He was flying an airborne weapon equipped with some of the most advanced and accurate equipment for ‘precision target recognition’ in the Pentagon’s arsenal. And at 5.30pm on 29 March, he launched his weapon at the street scene below.
The ‘daisy-cutter’ bounced and exploded a few feet above ground, blasting red-hot shrapnel into the walls not of a tank but of houses.
To read more Vulliamy — and you must — click here