Don and Dick's Excellent Adventure

There are many who would argue – and I include myself among them – that the over-arching strategy of the current government is to instill enough fear into the populace that implementing both domestic and global strategies that would otherwise be viewed with skepticism and concern will be readily accepted. The belief, of course, is that the route to those strategies lies in making the people fearful enough that they will not only be easily amenable to ceding individual freedoms, but insist that they be stripped of their hard-fought-for rights, all in the name of being protected from evil. The best example of the benefits of this fear-mongering is the invasion of Iraq and the arguments for our indefinite presence on its soil. So, too, was the passage of the Patriot Act, detention policies that allow the government to hold American citizens without charging them or providing access to courts,  and,  legislation that, by its silence, allows and hence condones physical torture of prisoners of war and anyone unlucky enough to be labeled an “enemy combatant”.

It is not a coincidence that we find Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney at the apex of these policies. Theirs has been a close relationship bred of a mutual belief in American military, political and economic supremacy and a myopic assurance that the best way to accomplish the realization of policies intended to facilitate this supremacy on a global level is to create an environment of fear that welcomes with open arms these designs on global dominance.

The factual distortions and inflammatory rhetoric that are part of the Bush administration’s strategy to win the hearts and minds of the American people are but echoes of a past that because of the players and strategy draw remarkable parallels (and hopefully provide lessons) between the events of forty years ago and today.

The month after Gerald Ford was sworn in as the thirty-eighth President in September 1974, he brought Donald Rumsfeld back from NATO as the White House chief of staff. Rumsfeld quickly installed his protégé, Dick Cheney, as his deputy, the same aide-de-camp role that Cheney had played under Rumsfeld in the Nixon administration. The two men held these positions for more than a year, until 1975 when Ford appointed Rumsfeld his secretary of defense and named Cheney to be Rumsfeld's successor as White House chief of staff.

Rumsfeld, already possessed of a reputation as one of the toughest “in fighters” in government, quickly turned his attention to undoing some of the mistakes he believed to have been committed during the Nixon presidency, most notably, the lessening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. In late 1975 and early 1976,  Rumsfeld began a frontal challenge to then-Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger's policies of dÈtente and arms control (SALT) with the Soviet Union that he had negotiated while in the Nixon White House by claiming, without valid bases, that the Soviet Union remained a significant and gathering threat to the United States. In a press conference given at the DOD in 1976, for example,  Rumsfeld told the media:

“The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing."

Replace the words, “Soviet Union” and “they” with “Saddam Hussein” and “the Iraqis”, and you have one of the speeches Don delivered from the same podium twenty five years or so later. Remarkable.

A major component of Rumsfeld’s strategy was the creation of Team B, a committee comprised of “outside experts” gathered to assess the quality and validity of threat assessments being circulated by the CIA. Ironically, it as W’s father, as then-director of the CIA who approved the creation of Team B at the behest of a number of conservative cold warriors and hard liners,  chief among them, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz (might we call them Bush’ “A” Team?).

Given the opportunity to undertake an objective analysis of the data being produced by the CIA, Team B consistently interpreted the information in its worst light drawing conclusions that invariably led to a near-Dooms Day scenario. It reported, for instance, that the Soviets would have 500 intercontinental Backfire bombers capable of striking the United States by 1984. In reality, only 235 were ever deployed. Team B also claimed that the Soviets were working on an anti-acoustic submarine, though they failed to find any evidence of one. The hawks of the time explained away this lack of evidence by stating that ‘the submarine may have already been deployed because it appeared to have evaded detection.’" (“Its Time To Bench ‘Team B’”, Lawrence Korb, Aug. 18, 2004, Center for American Progress)

Team B also contended that the CIA was consistently underestimating Soviet military expenditures. With the advantage of hindsight, we now know that Soviet military spending increases began to slow down precisely as Team B was writing about "an intense military buildup in nuclear as well as conventional forces of all sorts, not moderated either by the West's self-imposed restraints or by SALT." Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of powerful new Soviet WMDs were unproven - they said the lack of proof proved that undetectable weapons existed - they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration. Trillions of dollars were poured into the military-industrial complex. It was ultimately proven, however, that they --  Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz -- had been wrong all along about Soviet weapons of mass destruction and their intention to use them and that the CIA had been right. Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that they were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time, regardless of what the US did - just as the CIA had indicated in its threat analyses and National Intelligence Estimates. “For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created calls for the United States to "rearm." In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thoroughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup. As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and health care system. From the world's greatest creditor nation, the United States became the world's greatest debtor--in order to pay for arms to counter the threat of a nation that was collapsing.” (“Team B: The trillion-dollar experiment”, Anne Hessing Cahn, April 1993 pp. 22, 24-27 (vol. 49, no. 03) © 1993 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).

The suspicions and fear-mongering that surrounded the deliberate over-estimate of the Soviet threat during the ‘70s and early ‘80s morphed into the fear mongering by many of the same persons about the threat posed by Iraq we are currently facing. Though Team B’s work ultimately ended during the Clinton administration, its effort to impose its distorted world view was taken up by “The Committee on the Present Danger” and ultimately by the “Project for the New American Century” (PNAC). As with Team B’s advocacy during the ‘70s and ‘80s, PNAC, in 1998, urged then-President Clinton to recognize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and immediately remove him from power by strategic means. The signatories of that letter included old Team B’ers, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle with an assist from the now notorious, John Bolton. Though PNAC has sponsored the authorship of a large number of position papers since its inception in 1997, it was its blueprint for global domination, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century”, authored by former Team B member, Wolfowitz and others in 2000, which has garnered the most attention for PNAC because of its contention that an overthrow of Hussein and the establishment of an American presence in Iraq was essential first step to preserving and protecting American interests and superiority abroad.

Most assuredly, the echoes of the past are continuing to reverberate through our lives. If there is a distinction to be drawn it is in the success realized by Rumsfeld and Cheney in gaining access to an administration that is not simply open to their ideology but one that embraces its principles and the means of imposing this ideology upon the American people by any means necessary including fear, intimidation and demagoguery.

One can only hope that as with any echo, its reverberations will grow faint and eventually become silent.

Ray of Light

There is so much that is negative and so much negativity about our world today and I admit to both falling prey to and perpetuating both with the essays and commentary in this blog. In many respects, if you care…if you are concerned, it is easy to get swept up in the foul energy that pervades so much about the world and easy to forget that there may just be an escape from this potentially consuming sense of … what…despair (is that too strong an emotion)? Easy to forget that there is a way to live without intolerance, without hate and without ignorance….until something like “Paper Clips” comes along to remind us that there is hope for us after all if we are simply willing to stop for a moment and allow for the kind of renewal that this brilliant film instills in anyone lucky enough to see it.

If you’re not familiar with the film, “Paper Clips” is the story of several middle school teachers in Whitwell, population 1600, an entirely Christian and almost exclusively white community in rural Tennessee who sought a way to expose their students to ideas and experiences that they would never encounter in their very insular and isolated small community and, in doing so, impart to them a lesson about hate, intolerance and prejudice. The event that they chose could not have been more removed from their existence --- the Holocaust and the six million Jews who were exterminated in death and work camps throughout Europe. That none of them…students, teachers, principal, had likely ever met a Jew, let alone experienced anything in their lives that could provide a context or framework to even begin to understand what had happened during those dark years makes the project all the more remarkable. Trying to come to grips with the sheer enormity of the loss – how to understand just what six million means – they learn that the Norwegians wore paper clips on their lapels as a way to show their resistance to Hitler’s policies and so decide to honor the six million by collecting paper clips, one for each soul that was lost at the hands of the Nazis. Over the next several years, because of the relentless dedication of school principal, Linda Hooper and teachers, David Smith and Sandy Roberts, the project continued and gradually gained national and international attention and, in doing so, eventually accumulated more than 29 million paper clips from all over the world, many donations accompanied by letters from Holocaust survivors or the children of Holocaust survivors and many simply accompanied by notes from strangers who were touched by the effort and wanted to make some sort of contribution. Indeed, one such gift came in a small valise which contained handwritten notes from German school children apologizing to Anne Frank for that which she and her family had endured. The words and pictures that provided the group with a basic understanding of the horrific event were transcended by a visit from four survivors who spoke first in a local Methodist church and then at a school assembly, giving voice – thick with Eastern European and Yiddish accents – to the horrors that they witnessed and ultimately survived and it is certainly the visceral impact of their individual and collective stories which finally and for once drove home the true impact and import of the images – so alien and distant – that the students and educators had viewed to acquaint themselves with the object of their lesson.

Ultimately, the teachers and students decide that the best way to bring closure to the project is to create a memorial to the victims and, with the aid of two visiting German journalists, Dagmar and Peter Schroeder, locate a rail car in Germany that was used by the Nazis to transport Jews to death camps in Eastern Europe. The Schroeders arrange to have the car brought to the United States and finally to Whitwell where its journey finally ends. In the words of Linda Hooper, it would no longer be a symbol of death, but one of hope. With a memorial garden surrounding it, the car becomes the final resting place for eleven million of the paper clips, one each for the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and intellectuals who met their end at the hands of the Nazi regime. There is an unmistakable spiritual quality to the memorial that is palbable on the screen and one can only imagine the power of standing in the boxcar where so many met their end.

It is difficult to say exactly what it is about the film that provides such a powerful response to the world we have created for ourselves. Perhaps it is the genuine innocence of those 8th and 9th graders juxtaposed against the horrors that befell countless children like themselves or the realization…certainly for the first time…that words, however innocently uttered in ones’ community and among friends and family, can have tragic consequences when the stereotypes and prejudices that hide within those words are played out to their most illogical and horrible conclusion.

What is most telling and most powerful about the film is the unmistakable sense that it is the innocence and not the evil that wins in the end.

The film is available on HBO on Demand and certainly can be rented from your local video store. See it.

Darth Cheney

One of these days, Dick Cheney is going to slip and invoke Jack Bauer’s name in the middle of one of his diatribes against his critics for certainly it is with the fictitious CTU officer whom Mr. Cheney best relates. One can only imagine the Vice President pining for a world like the one in which Bauer operates, unfettered by limitations imposed by moral code or law in which the government’s efforts to secure information from the enemy are limited only by the ingenuity of the interrogator. In lobbying to remove any limitations imposed by the McCain-sponsored anti-torture legislation upon the CIA’s ability to secure information from “enemy combatants”, Mr. Cheney certainly has in mind “24’s” second season, among others, in which Bauer coerced a confession from a Middle Eastern terrorist by showing him a live video feed of his children being shot one by one until the terrorist “gave up” the information Bauer sought (the terrorist is not told that the killings had been staged and that his children were actually alive) and later murdered a suspected terrorist during interrogation (he simply pulled his weapon and executed the shackled suspect) in order to re-establish his undercover status and make contact with the target of the investigation. Mr. Cheney’s lobbying efforts and rhetoric make clear his conviction that the CIA requires the same freedom afforded Mr. Bauer in order to carry out its mandate. Most assuredly, Mr. Cheney shares Jack’s firm belief that the ends justify and excuse the means.

It may very well be that Dick Cheney is crazy. Yet, given that it is Cheney and not Bush who is generally believed to be the de facto leader of the free world, the thought that the behavior that we have witnessed over the past five plus years is driven by insanity rather than a perverse sense of right and entitlement is so frightening that one almost embraces the idea that the Vice President has simply perfected the art of demagoguery and political vitriol rather than being driven by inner demons. Nevertheless, his recent efforts in support of torture and characterization of claims by Senate Democrats that he and the President misled the country about pre-war intelligence as “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city” does raise concern about the man’s health and, consequently, that of the country.

In discerning the state of Mr. Cheney’s mental health and his often acerbic oratory, let us consider, for the moment, his latest charges about the honesty of those who press for an explanation from the administration about its use of intelligence to support its invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is indeed with some gratification that Mr. Cheney’s accusations are comparative in nature, leaving room for acts of dishonesty that exceed those of his critics. While one might be tempted to accord the likes of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff or his own “Scooter” Libby as title holder of “dishonest” and “reprehensible”, it may very well be none other than the Vice President himself who wears that crown proudly.

Even before considering his conduct during his Vice Presidency, it is important to know who it is we are dealing with.

For example, beyond the damage wrought by Halliburton during his tenure at the company’s helm, Cheney negotiated the disastrous (for Halliburton) acquisition of Dresser Industries in 1998 (disastrous because in doing so Halliburton also acquired more than $700 million of Dresser’s asbestos-related liability), and then used two Dresser subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., to sell water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through a foreign intermediary in violation of UN sanctions. Not surprisingly, in a July 30, 2000 interview on ABC’s “This Week”, Cheney steadfastly denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries did any business with Baghdad.

As for his behavior since the 2000 elections?

• Continuing to use intelligence received from a captured Al Qaeda operative, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, concerning Iraq training Al Qaeda agents in the use of biological and chemical weapons in 2003 and 2004 to suggest to the American people that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda despite being told in February 2002 that the intelligence was wrong;


• Perpetuating mis/dis-information that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction when it was clear that none existed;


• Continuing to suggest that there existed a connection between the attacks of September 11th and Hussein, repeatedly referring to a meeting between one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta and Iraqi agents in Prague weeks before the attacks without any basis in fact for doing so;


• Conducting secret meetings with executives from several of the largest oil producing companies in the world during which the Vice President promulgated administration policy concerning drilling, exploration and pricing. Significantly, not only has Cheney steadfastly refused to share any information about the meeting, but just this past week we witnessed the spectacle of the very oil executives who either attended the meeting or were represented at the meeting denying that they attended the meeting during Congressional hearings;


• Pushing for legislative exemptions to permit the CIA and Army intelligence to torture enemy combatants and captured insurgents; and,


• The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. (First reported in Philip Geraldi in the Aug 1, 2005, issue of The American Conservative)

If the Vice President is not responding to his inner demons, then why have we been subjected to this type of abuse of power? In the words of Joshua Marshall in his Washington Monthly piece, “Vice Grip: Dick Cheney is a Man of Principles. Disastrous Principles” (Jan/Feb 2003):

“Cheney is conservative, of course, but beneath his conservatism is something more important: a mindset rooted in his peculiar corporate-Washington-insider class. It is a world of men--very few women--who have been at the apex of both business and government, and who feel that they are unique in their mastery of both. Consequently, they have an extreme assurance in their own judgment about what is best for the country and how to achieve it. They see themselves as men of action. But their style of action is shaped by the government bureaucracies and cartel-like industries in which they have operated. In these institutions, a handful of top officials make the plans, and then the plans are carried out….In such a framework all information is controlled tightly by the principals, who have "maximum flexibility" to carry out the plan. Because success is measured by securing the deal rather than by, say, pleasing millions of customers, there's no need to open up the decision-making process. To do so, in fact, is seen as governing by committee. If there are other groups (shareholders, voters, congressional committees) who agree with you, fine, you use them. But anyone who doesn't agree gets ignored or, if need be, crushed. Muscle it through and when the results are in, people will realize we were right is the underlying attitude”.

Righteousness and entitlement...entitlement and righteousness.

The question Marshall ultimately poses, “Why, though, has the press failed to grasp Cheney's ineptitude” is at the core of why we find ourselves in this mess. Revelations this week that Bob Woodward was apparently the first (at least this week) member of the fourth estate to obtain information from a highly placed source (and did so before “Scooter Libby” apparently shared the information with Judy Miller, Bob Novak or Matt Cooper) simply reinforces the now-realized understanding that the press has existed to serve rather than report upon this government; that driven by corporations more interested in the money that so-called, “inside information” will generate rather than in the veracity of the information and the motives of those sharing the information, the press – the print media in particular – has come to be viewed by this administration as its voice and ally rather than its watchdog. Consequently, rather than raising concern about Cheney’s words and actions, people like Woodward and Miller willingly pass along the VP’s comments without comment of their own simply to maintain access at the risk of their own journalistic integrity. That no one in the media, for many months, said nary an unkind word about Mr. Cheney has damaged this nation, and by extension, the world as much as Mr. Cheney’s words and conduct.

Deeds and Words

I am admittedly very frustrated with the direction that the country has taken (as these posts will attest) and with Bush’ apparent ignorance about his responsibilities as defined by the Constitution and by the precedents set by his predecessors. Out of curiosity, I spent some time looking at how several of our more prominent Presidents have viewed their responsibilities as manifested by their words, more than their deeds. While there are glimpses of their philosophies in mid-term speeches, it is invariably in the Inaugural Speech that you find the President in his most eloquent discourse about the Presidency and his duty as principal guardian of the rights granted and protected by the Constitution.

Working my way back through time, I looked at the first time speeches given by Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy, Roosevelt (Franklin, not Teddy), Lincoln, Monroe, Adams, Jefferson and, of course, Washington and surprisingly found relatively little lengthy discussion about how the then newly-elected standard bearer viewed his duty to his constituents. Lincoln, for example, was understandably consumed with the then-imminent destruction of the Union (first term) and the need for healing (second term). Jefferson spoke at some length about the relatively new Constitution in terms of the freedoms it conveyed, most notably (are you listening George?), religious freedom and the imperative that church and state be kept separate. Washington, humbled by his selection as the nation’s first leader, sounded tired and overwhelmed by the task that lay before him. While nearly all, of course, described an agenda for the succeeding four years, none spoke at length about the Presidency in terms the President’s responsibility to unify the citizenry behind the common goal of establishing and perpetuating America’s responsibility to lead at home and abroad with honesty, integrity and civility …until I came across these words:

Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.

I know this is in our reach because we are guided by a power larger than ourselves who creates us equal in His image.

And we are confident in principles that unite and lead us onward.

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.

Today, we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character.

America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility. A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness…..

We must live up to the calling we share. Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this commitment, if we keep it, is a way to shared accomplishment…..

The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom. We will defend our allies and our interests. We will show purpose without arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth.

That the speaker of these grandiose ideals was none other than George W. in his first inaugural address makes what has transpired over the past four plus years all the more difficult to accept.
Putting aside the real possibility that these ideals were uttered by Mr. Bush with tongue firmly planted in cheek and accepting, for the moment, that there was actually an element of belief in what he said on the steps of the Capitol nearly five years ago, it is indeed astonishing that his deeds not only failed to live up to those ideals, but have made a mockery of the very principles that he espoused that day.

“And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity….America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility. A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness…”? While the nation has most assuredly been fractured and divided during its life, those divisions have invariably been driven by events and not by or at the urging of its President. Yet, if there is anything that defines Mr. Bush and all that he is about, it was his pandering to the fundamentalist religious right in the wake of the Miers’ nomination. His is not a world defined by unity or good will or respect or fair dealing unless each of those virtues is proffered for the purpose of furthering his own fundamentalist view of the world. There is, in fact, no room for civility or forgiveness or any these values (undoubtedly learned through his “Twelve Step” program and new found belief that Jesus Christ is his savior and the answer to all questions) unless you are “one of us” for indeed if you are not one of George’s “us”, you are, by definition, one of “them”. Us versus them? Red state versus blue state? Republican versus Democrat? Liberal versus….well liberal is too dirty a word to even provide a counterpoint to anything in W’s world. This divisiveness has not evolved independently of the man sitting in the Oval Office, but, again, borne of a world view that defines itself by the divisiveness it creates. Whether it is in his dealings with many of our former (and hopefully future) allies abroad or with vast segments of the population which never accepted George Bush into their lives, if you are not with George, you are against him.

It remains to be seen how widespread and long-lasting the damage is. Certainly for the families of the dead and wounded, the damage will never see an end. It is also likely that the damage to the world community will not see an end for many years to come. Hopefully, as the standard bearer for Jesus’ newly gathering army on these shores, Mr. Bush does not see himself as a modern day Richard the Lionhearted launching a new Crusade to take on the Muslim infidel, Saladin north of Jerusalem yet one does get the distinct impression that indeed that is precisely how Mr. Bush envisions his legacy unfolding. At home, the vision has taken many forms: voucher programs built into the “No Child Left Behind” legislation; the expressed support for “intelligent creation” which has already led the Kansas school board to again change its curriculum to emphasize religious over scientific explanation and, of course, the religious litmus test for the selection of judges to all levels of the Federal judiciary to name but a few examples.

Where does it leave the rest of us (who, by the way, I suspect are actually the majority of populace) who actually believe in the efficacy and guiding principles of the Constitution and continue to resist the demagoguery of this evangelical President? Take solace and know that you have the full faith and support of our founding fathers who, having only then recently been denied fundamental freedoms by the Crown, spent considerable time and energy drafting the rules of governance and required that the nation’s leadership not only espouse religious and political freedom, but guard it above all. As Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address:

“[L]et us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions”.

Are you listening, George?

Clinton and Bush: Differing Responses to the Same Intelligence

What follows is my email response to Jonah Goldberg’s op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post- Dispatch, “Democrats’ Hypocrisy is Hurting America” though the response is intended for all those Bush apologists who defend Bush’s conduct by pointing to Clinton’s reliance upon the same intelligence about Hussein’s capacity to wage war.

What you failed to note or acknowledge is that what Clinton was advocating in response to the then-available intelligence was not war but more strenuous sanctions and inspections. Iraq, during the nineties, as a result of Bush I and Clinton, was isolated and largely impotent. The only people pushing a different viewpoint about Iraq's capacity were Iraqi ex-patriots like Chalabi and the authors of PNAC's 2000 paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (Wolfowitz, Libby, Zackheim, the Kagens and Schmitt). Clinton, to his credit, did not succumb to these PNAC ideologues and their 1998 letter urging a more aggressive response to the then-available "intelligence" about Hussein's capacity to wage war and was certainly roundly criticized by PNAC and its followers (and, I suspect, by you, as well) for not acting. It is misleading (and does a great dis-service to the discussion about Bush' push to war) to simply point out that Clinton "believed" the intelligence about Hussein; the point is not what may have been known, but what was done about that intelligence and what both Presidents did with the information. Clinton, again, pushed for more sanctions and more inspections; Bush took the "intelligence" and ran with it, picking and choosing his way through the intelligence to make his case for war. There is no question that he and/or his advisors chose to ignore intelligence that undercut the initial assumptions. It was incumbent upon Mr. Bush to make absolutely certain that the intelligence he was acting on was accurate before he decided to throw so many lives into the meat-grinder that has become Iraq. That he didn't is nothing but arrogance and utter incompetence. With so many dead and wounded (Iraqi, American, British, Italian et al), I think we owe it to ourselves and to our allies to understand why we now find ourselves in this situation. If, as it appears, the reasons include mis-information and dis-information, Mr. Bush owes it to the dead and wounded to acknowledge his culpability.

The Man Behind the Curtain Wins

So, how does a sitting President make one of the worst betrayals of public trust and possible acts of treason magically disappear? Well, you take full advantage of a fourth estate that is so eager to please that it will fall over itself chasing its own tail.

You keep a close eye on the comings and goings of the Special Prosecutor, fully aware that indictments against members of your team are likely and that they are just as likely to be handed down before the grand jury disbands on October 28, 2005.

You devise a strategy to use the nomination process to divert attention from the coming indictments by asking one of your loyalists to agree to “accept” a nomination to become an associate justice of the supreme court with the understanding and expectation that the nomination will be withdrawn well before the "nominee" is to be questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

You thereupon have the loyalist “withdraw” her nomination on the pretense that continuing her nomination will neither serve the interests of the country or the post to which she has been nominated. In truth, again, it was never the intention to allow Harriet Miers to get anywhere near the Senate Judiciary Committee as it is readily understood that she has neither the legal qualification or political muscle necessary to satisfy even the most ardent of supporters; that being the good soldier, hers was the unenviable task of absorbing punishment from every quarter until the day it became clear that indictments were near and her services were no longer necessary. The timing of the "withdrawal", however, is actually not intended to coincide with the expected indictments or to compete with if not completely divert attention away from the pending criminal prosecution. It is rather the eventual nomination of a new associatejustice which is expected to distract the media and public from the soon-to-be-announced indictments.

You either have foreknowledge that the indictments will not be handed down until Friday or simply catch a break because Fitzpatrick is not ready to go public until Friday afternoon. As a result, whereas Libby’s indictment and the shroud of corruption that the indictment would otherwise throw over the White House would have dominated the news had the indictment been handed down earlier in the week, the Friday disclosure allows the shroud to dissipate over the ensuing weekend despite extensive coverage by the Times, The Post and other news outlets.

You then announce the nomination of Samuel Alito to succeed the Miers’ “nomination” at 8am on the Monday following the Libby indictment. By doing so, it is the Alito nomination and not the Libby indictment which immediately becomes the news of the day as the morning talk shows are coming on the air. In doing so, you choose someone who you know will appease your base and, at the same time, antagonize the moderates in your party as well as nearly the entire Democratic party. The resulting firestorm of protest -- the likely threats of a filibuster and the ensuing implementation of the dreaded "nuclear option" -- and the media attention is receives further serves to put distance between the Libby indictment and talk of the corruption reaching Big Karl and the VP and the day's discourse.

You unleash your minions -- the Pat Buchanans, the Bill Kristols and the rest of the gang -- to take to the airwaves and proclaim the whole thing much ado about nothing and, with little or no response invited or provided, the "fair and balanced" characterization morphs into a generally accepted view of the indictment and the events that led up to it.

In the meantime, the resulting media attention and hysteria surrounding Judge Alito -- who he is, what he stands for and how he is likely to vote once he takes his seat on the court -- dominates the print, television and internet media for weeks if not months to come as the nomination process drags on. Scooter who?

Alls well that ends well, eh?