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Saturday, December 14, 2002
"yet another phony businessman, this time as treasury secretary."
Daniel Gross predicts Snow will have little trouble playing such games of financial self-delusion. Anyone who could fit the Bush team's horribly deformed policy slipper probably stinks as badly as the economy, Gross opines in Slate. Bush, Gross contends, has appointed "yet another phony businessman, this time as treasury secretary."
"Snow's record in business bears more resemblance to that of George W. Bush, marked by poor market performance and outsized compensation. In fact, like Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and OMB Director Mitch Daniels Jr., Snow is a skilled bureaucratic operator who sidled to the top level of a large company from government posts. As a rule, these access capitalists are prized not for their business acumen but for their ability to open doors in Washington and foreign capitals.
...
Snow is leaving [his] company with more debt than it has had at any time in the past seven years. Today CSX has difficulty generating sufficient cash to meet all its obligations. And this is the man President Bush has hired to manage the nation's debt? As Jesse Eisinger sharply notes in today's Wall Street Journal: 'Mr. Snow is clearly a guy who understands deficit spending.'"
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:19 PM
Plantation Mentality or Fascist?
A Lott to Answer For
A quick retrospective of Trent Lott's political career reveals a man openly hostile to the politics of inclusion.
By Tim Dickinson
December 13, 2002
1968 -- Begins his political career as administrative assistant to US Rep. William M. Colmer, a one-time Dixiecrat and staunch segregationist.
1972 -- Elected to the US House of Representatives, taking over Colmer's seat--with his mentor's blessing--as a Republican.
1978 -- Introduces bill restoring Jefferson Davis' U.S. citizenship.
1980 -- At a rally for Ronald Reagan in Jackson, Miss., Lott praises Thurmond much as he will 22 years later.
"You know if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."
1981 -- Intervenes at the US Supreme Court to defend the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University in South Carolina, under review because the school openly discriminates against any student "engaged in an interracial marriage or known to advocate interracial marriage or dating."
"Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy."
1983 -- Votes against making the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.
"Look at the cost involved in the Martin Luther King holiday and the fact that we have not done it for a lot of other people that were more deserving."
1984 -- In an interview with Southern Partisan magazine, Lott explains why he opposed expanding the Voting Rights Act.
"They are still trying to exact Reconstruction legislation that is just not fair."
1984 -- In a speech to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Mississippi, Lott sells the Party of Lincoln.
"The spirit of Southern Civil War leader Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform."
1988 -- Elected to the US Senate.
1992 -- Delivers a keynote address to the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor to the segregationist White Citizens' Councils of the 1960s.
"The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction, and our children will be the beneficiaries."
1996 -- Votes no on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would have prohibited job discrimination based on sexual orientation. He argues:
"Its goal is not fairness for individuals. Its goal is social revolution.... ENDA is part of a larger and more audacious effort to make the public accept behavior that most Americans consider dangerous, unhealthy, or just plain wrong."
1997 -- Chosen by Senate Republicans to be Majority Leader.
1997 -- In an interview with Time, Lott acknowledges that he supported segregation while a student at the University of Mississippi.
"Yes, you could say that I favored segregation then. I don't now... The main thing was, I felt the federal government had no business sending in troops to tell the state what to do."
1997 -- When asked why his name was included among informants and other "state actors" in the sealed files of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission -- a state segregationist spy agency -- Lott replies awkwardly:
"I don't have the foggiest idea. I've never heard such a thing and never was involved in any way and don't have any idea. I suspect that even if it is true, I mean that could involve, you know, preachers, newspaper reporters, whatever. I really don't know anything about it."
It is later revealed that Lott had written a letter to Sovereignty Commission director W. Webb Burke in 1969 on behalf of Colmers. Lott expressed his gratitude for a "resolution passed by your commission commending the Mississippi congressional delegation for their interest in requesting a full-scale investigation in the mysterious death" of a white marine in Vietnam. The marine had allegedly been shot by minority soldiers for wearing a Mississippi flag on his fatigues.
1998 -- CCC spokesman Mark Cerr tells the Washington Times:
"Trent Lott is one of our members. He's been a member for a long time."
1998 -- Asked whether homosexuality is a sin, Lott replies:
"Yes, it is." He goes on to compare gays to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs, but says, "You should not try to mistreat them or treat them as outcasts."
1999 -- Lott refuses to allow a Senate hearing on the nomination of James Hormel, a gay man, to be Ambassador to Luxembourg.
1999 -- When Lott's longstanding ties to the CCC become a minor scandal, Lott spokesman John Czwartacki tells reporters:
"This group harbors views which Senator Lott firmly rejects. He has absolutely no involvement with them either now or in the future"
2000 -- Lott Votes no on expanding hate crimes to include those based on sexual orientation. Czwartacki explains:
"Our point is that every crime is a hate crime."
2001 -- Lott is the only senator to vote against the confirmation of Judge Roger Gregory, who became the first ever black judge in the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Nov 8, 2002 -- In an interview about immigration on FoxNews, Bill O'Reilly asks Lott:
O'REILLY: Why not back up the Border Patrol with the military, whether it's National Guard or straight troops? Why not do it?
LOTT: Well, I think we should do it.
O'REILLY: Do you really?
LOTT: ...Oh, absolutely.
O'REILLY: You're the first politician I've heard...
LOTT: Look, most politicians run around worried about civil libertarians and being sued by the ACLU.
Nov 16, 2002 -- The CCC unanimously passes the following resolution praising Lott:
WHEREAS Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi this month publicly and courageously called for placing U.S. troops on the border to protect our country against the invasion of illegal aliens
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Council of Conservative Citizens commends Sen. Lott for his statement and that The Council calls on President Bush to fulfill his constitutional duty and place U.S. troops on the border to halt the invasion of the United States by illegal immigrants.
Dec 7 2002 -- At a party celebrating Thurmond's 100th birthday, Lott notes that his home state of Mississippi supported Thurmond's anti-integration candidacy.
"We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:13 PM
Source: U.S. Firms on List Aided Iraq Arms Development
By Mohamad Bazzi
NewsDay | United Nations Correspondent
December 13, 2002
United Nations -- Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons programs lists American companies that provided materials used by Baghdad to develop chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s, according to a senior Iraqi official.
The public release of such a list could prove embarrassing for the United States and highlight the extent to which the Reagan and first Bush administrations supported Iraq in its eight-year war with neighboring Iran in the 1980s. U.S. military and financial assistance to Iraq continued until Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
The Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not name the companies or discuss how much detail the Iraqi declaration gives about them. The official said the American firms are named along with other foreign companies that provided arms and ingredients for making chemical and biological weapons to Iraq.
The declaration, which was submitted to UN weapons inspectors Saturday, was mandated under a new Security Council resolution that requires Iraq to declare and destroy all of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Iraqi leaders insist they no longer have any such weapons, but the United States and Britain accuse Hussein of continuing with a secret program to develop banned weapons – and have threatened to go to war to disarm Iraq.
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, said Tuesday that he does not intend to release the names of foreign companies that provided material to Iraq. He said such firms could be valuable to UN inspectors as sources of information about Iraq's weapons program. If the inspectors "were to give the names publicly, then they would never get another foreign supplier to give them any information,” Blix said.
A Bush administration official declined to comment on U.S. companies' presence in the declaration, or the potential embarrassment if the list were made public. "The issue is not so much who the suppliers are. The issue is really Iraq's program and making sure that Iraq declares what it has,” said the official, who asked not to be named. "We want companies to be able to provide information to the weapons inspectors. It's important to find out what the Iraqis may have received.”
Other officials in Washington declined to comment. But U.S. officials have long acknowledged close military collaboration with Iraq while it was at war with Iran, which Washington viewed as a greater threat.
A 1994 report by the Senate Banking Committee concluded that "the United States provided the government of Iraq with ‘dual-use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.”
This assistance, according to the report, included "chemical warfare-agent precursors; chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings; chemical warfare filling equipment; biological warfare-related materials; missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment.”
There is dissension within the council over the handling of Iraq's declaration. Under a deal quietly worked out over the weekend, the United States received the sole copy of the dossier and supporting material that was intended for the council. Washington then made duplicates for the four other permanent council members: Britain, France, Russia and China. Blix said the other 10 rotating council members will get edited copies of the dossier by Monday, with any information that could help countries develop weapons of mass destruction excised by UN inspectors.
Arms experts say it is likely that companies from all five permanent council members sold materials to Iraq that were used to develop its weapons. "All the permanent five members are probably on the Iraqi supplier list. They all have advanced chemical and biological industries,” said Susan Wright, a research scientist at the University of Michigan and co-author of the book "Biological Warfare and Disarmament.”
Wright said the release of a supplier list containing American companies would embarrass the United States. "It would bring people's attention to something that the Bush administration would rather forget about: that the United States was a supplier state to Saddam Hussein, even after it became clear that he was producing and using chemical weapons,” she said.
At the heart of U.S. and other foreign trade with Iraq in the 1980s were so-called "dual-use” materials, which have both civilian and military applications. Under the new Security Council resolution, Iraq had to account for all its dual-use programs and materials.
The 1994 Senate report found that the United States had licensed dozens of companies to export various materials that helped Iraq make mustard gas, VX nerve agent, anthrax and other biological and chemical weapons. The report also said "the same micro-organisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program.”
Shipments to Iraq continued even after the United States learned Hussein had used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish villagers in northern Iraq in 1988, according to Senate investigators.
The U.S.-Iraqi relationship flourished from February 1986, when then-Vice President George Bush met with Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Nizar Hamdoon, and assured him that Baghdad would be permitted to receive more sophisticated U.S. technology, until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Over that four-year period, the Reagan and Bush administrations approved licenses for the export of more than $600 million worth of advanced American technology to Iraq, according to congressional reports.
"The United States had a very different posture toward Iraq in the 1980s, when it was politically and militarily advantageous to use Iraq as an ally against Iran,” Wright said. "Our attitude toward Iraq has been opportunist, rather than principled.”
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:27 PM
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
The recent dust-up over Trent Lott’s comments on the occasion of Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday are notable not merely for the despicable sentiments Lott expressed – in fact, they should come as no surprise, given Lott’s history. What is unusual is that a Republican is actually getting in trouble for saying the kind of thing at least some people in the GOP no doubt still believe. When Lott proclaimed, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either,” he was speaking true to form.
Consider what would happen if it were revealed that Tom Daschle has longstanding ties to the American Communist Party – what would be his fate? But it is almost never mentioned that Lott has such ties to white supremacists. Lott has on multiple occasions addressed gatherings of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a latter-day successor to the notorious White Citizens Councils, which were affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. Speaking at the CCC’s national conference in Greenwood, Mississippi on April 11, 1992, Lott told the assembled group, “The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy.” When asked a few years later about his appearances before the CCC, Lott simply lied, saying he had “no firsthand knowledge” of the group. Days later, a copy of the CCC’s newsletter, Citizens Informer (which regularly runs Lott’s columns) turned up with a photo of Lott standing in front of the CCC banner, addressing the convention. Lott then issued a statement distancing himself from the group, of which is uncle is a member.
Although the press eventually made a story out of Lott’s remarks about Thurmond after a number of Democrats squawked, reactionary politics on the right tends to be greeted with a shrug. The ever-growing dominance of the Republican Party by Southerners has over time made their ideology appear to reporters to be mainstream, while liberal Democrats are characterized as extremists whose ideology places them outside “real” Americans. But when John Ashcroft lauds the magazine Southern Partisan – a neo-confederate journal that regularly defends slavery and praises the KKK – by saying “Your magazine also helps set the record straight” about the old South – it is considered par for the course for a conservative.
When was the last time you heard Trent Lott referred to as a “Mississippi conservative”? If a liberal comes from a place that votes reliably Democratic, on the other hand, his home is used to portray him as an outsider. Consider the evaluations of Senator John Kerry as he has entered the presidential race. “He lends himself to caricature as the haughty Massachusetts liberal,” said the New York Times. On CNN, Kate O’Beirne said Kerry sounds “like a left-wing Massachusetts liberal.” Sean Hannity asked William Bennett, “Does he have a shot, a Massachusetts liberal?” Bennett responded, “The problem, he is, and this isn't name calling now, he's a Massachusetts liberal.” CNN’s Bill Schneider put his finger on the problem: “Kerry is by any definition a liberal. Even worse, a Massachusetts liberal.” Cokie Roberts, the eternal defender of the conventional wisdom, summed it up: “But it is also true that if John Kerry does win the nomination for the Democratic Party, that could be a problem for the party. He is a Massachusetts liberal.” The Scripps-Howard news service put out a set of baseball-card like descriptions for eight Democrats considering runs for the White House. Kerry’s read, “Age: 58. Current job: Senator. Political description: Massachusetts liberal.”
There are plenty of other examples, but you get the idea. And Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, found upon her ascension that she had been rechristened “San Francisco Liberal Nancy Pelosi.” But what do the particular politics of Massachusetts and San Francisco tell us about Kerry and Pelosi? While San Francisco is the nation’s most liberal large city, Pelosi’s issue positions are squarely within her party – she supports gay rights, for instance, but so does virtually the entire Democratic caucus. There is even less about Massachusetts that makes it or John Kerry somehow unusual.
In contrast, the fact that Trent Lott hails from Mississippi actually tells us something about him, putting his propensity to fraternize with neo-confederates and his occasional Freudian slips revealing a nostalgia for segregation in context. In this Lott is far different from a conservative from Idaho or Orange County, California.
Ever since Richard Nixon employed the “Southern strategy” in 1968 – using code words like “law and order” to convince white Southerners that he was on their side when it came to racial issues – the Republican Party has used racial appeals to gain the support of white voters. The most egregious example, of course, was George H.W. Bush’s use of the William Horton story to convince Americans that if Michael Dukakis were elected, hordes of dark-skinned convicts would rampage across the land, raping and pillaging. One appalling footnote to the 1988 campaign that has been largely lost to history is that before 1988, Horton was known as “William.” Someone in the Bush campaign – perhaps Lee Atwater or Roger Ailes, although we will never know - apparently decided that “William” didn’t sound quite black enough, so he was rechristened as “Willie” whenever the story was told. The press obliged by adopting the appellation.
After the 2000 election, a group of Republican Congressional staffers met to devise strategies to prevent African-Americans and people who belonged to labor unions from voting, the latest in a long line of Republican “ballot security” efforts. One disgusted McCain aide said sarcastically, “We could poll-tax them. And giving them shitty voting machines seems to be the latest tactic.” In 2002 as in years past, there were reports from all over the country of efforts by Republicans to prevent African-Americans from voting. In Baltimore, flyers turned up in black neighborhoods telling people that they couldn’t vote if they had any unpaid parking tickets or overdue rent. In Arkansas, Republican poll workers confronted African-American voters, demanding to see identification and photographing them. In Tennessee, GOP poll-watchers were instructed to raise objections to any voter who had registered by motor-voter. In the run-off election to determine the winner of Louisiana’s Senate race, residents of predominately African-American public housing projects found flyers on their doors reading, “Vote!!! Bad Weather? No problem!!! If the weather is uncomfortable on election day (Saturday December 7th) Remember you can wait and cast your ballot on Tuesday December 10th.” Which of course they couldn’t.
These anecdotes don’t indicate that the Republicans are the party of racism and Jim Crow, and the party as a whole is not responsible for the actions of every volunteer working for its candidates anywhere. But they do show the racist strain that continues to run through the GOP.
Although many analysts called Saxby Chambliss’ victory over Max Cleland in the Georgia Senate race the biggest upset of the 2002 election, the part of the story most people missed was the role played by the Confederate flag. Republican governor candidate Sonny Perdue beat heavily favored incumbent Roy Barnes by trumpeting his intention to hold a referendum to reverse Barnes’ decision to change the state flag, relegating the Stars and Bars to a postage stamp in a row of former emblems along the bottom of the revised flag. The flag issue motivated thousands of rural white voters to get out and vote, spurred on by an aggressive organizing campaign by the Sons of Confederate Veterans – Perdue won 95 of the 96 counties that are more than 65% white. T-shirts and bumper stickers read, “Change the Governor, Keep the Flag.” They went to the polls to vote for Perdue, but when they got there they pulled the lever for Chambliss as well. But once his victory was secured, Perdue began to back off, saying he now wanted to study the issue.
The Republican indulgence of those who pine for the glory of the antebellum South reaches all the way to the top. Let’s recall what happened in the 2000 South Carolina primary, where one of the most pressing issues was whether the state would do away with the Confederate flag. The Stars and Bars had flown over the South Carolina statehouse since 1962, (Georgia put theirs up in 1956, Alabama in 1963), installed by segregationists as a giant “fuck you” to the federal government, proclaiming their fealty to Jim Crow. In South Carolina in 2000, the issue pitted conservatives arguing that the flag represented “Southern heritage” against pretty much everyone else in the world, who know what the flag really means. Unwilling to embrace the Confederate flag but frightened of alienating the white South Carolinians who supported it, both Bush and McCain steadfastly refused to take a position on the issue. Both asserted that the decision should be left to the people of South Carolina – as though there was some question of a presidential directive on the flag - but wouldn’t say what their own opinion was. In a debate in Columbia on January 7, moderator Brian Williams tried mightily to pin Bush down:
WILLIAMS: Gov. Bush, a few blocks from here, on top of the state capitol building, the Confederate flag flies with the state flag and the U.S. flag. It is, as you can hear from the reaction of tonight’s crowd of 3,000 people from South Carolina, a hot button issue here. The question is: Does the flag offend you personally?
BUSH: The answer to your question is -- and what you’re trying to get me to do is to express the will of the people of South Carolina is what you’re trying to get --
WILLIAMS: No, I’m asking you about your personal opinion --
BUSH. The people of South Carolina. Brian, I believe the people of South Carolina can figure out what to do with this flag issue. It’s the people of South Carolina --
WILLIAMS: If I may --
BUSH: I don’t believe it’s the role of someone from outside South Carolina and someone running for president to come into this state and tell the people of South Carolina what to do with their business when it comes to the flag.
WILLIAMS: As an American citizen, do you have a visceral reaction to seeing the Confederate flag --
BUSH: As an American citizen, I trust the people of South Carolina to make the decision for South Carolina.
Truly some heavy lifting in the evasion department. On February 15, Larry King moderated another debate in South Carolina, and tried again to get Bush to reveal his feelings about the flag: “If your state of Texas then proposed the Confederate flag,” King asked, “you would campaign against it?” Displaying his commitment to tackling the tough issues, Bush replied, “We’ve got the Lone Star flag flying over Texas. Let’s talk about that issue.” Strangely, no one took him up on his offer.
In October of 2000, long after the primaries were over, McCain admitted that he had concealed his true feelings. “Clearly the thing that drove the decision not to get involved was polling, which I shouldn’t have done,” he said. “I think the right stance would have been from the beginning to say that it should come down.” McCain went on to admit that he showed “a singular lack of courage.” This is a quality McCain knows something about; it takes courage to admit you were wrong, more so to admit you were cowardly.
Bush bobbed and weaved, keeping his actual opinion on the Confederate flag a secret from the voters. As a political strategy it worked, but on the question of moral and political leadership it was shameful. If Bush actually believed the flag should stay up but kept that belief a secret, then he is an enabler of bigots. If he actually believed it should come down but kept that belief a secret, he is a stunningly unprincipled opportunist. Either way, he’s a moral coward. And reporters, ever mindful of being accused of being liberal northeastern elitists, let him get away with it.
While Trent Lott may or may not be a racist, there is little evidence that George W. Bush is. But the South Carolina primary showed that like many in his party, Bush was willing to enter a Faustian bargain, giving a wink and a nod to neo-confederates in order to win.
In watching the complex dance Lott and other Republicans are doing to deal with the fallout from his statement at Thurmond’s party, I was reminded of what I saw in 1990 when, as a naïve recent college graduate, I traveled to North Carolina to do get-out-the-vote work for Harvey Gantt, the African-American former Charlotte mayor who was challenging Jesse Helms. The race would perhaps be best remembered for Helms’ television ads, including the famous “White Hands” spot showing a man angrily crumpling a rejection letter (“You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota,” the ad said).
I saw two parts of the complexity of racial feelings among southern whites, one in a small town in the eastern part of the state, and one in Charlotte. Organizing in rural areas, the Gantt campaign didn’t bother contacting a single white voter – none of them were voting for Gantt, so there was no point; instead, we worked on getting black voters to the polls. But a few days before election day, I found myself talking to a young white man about my age who had spotted the Gantt button on my chest. He explained to me what the election was all about: “This is about racial defense,” he said. “Jesse’s been in there 18 years, he knows what’s what. You get some goddamn nigger in there, he’ll fuck everything up.”
But in Charlotte I saw something very different, when a group of Gantt staffers went incognito to a Helms rally in a junior high gymnasium. Of the dozen or so speakers that preceded Helms, none got a more excited reception than Rosie Grier, the African-American former football star and conservative minister. When Grier said, “This election is not about race,” the crowd erupted in an enormous cheer. Of course, the election was about nothing but race, but those in the audience were grateful for assurance from a black man that voting for Helms didn’t make them racists.
Republican leaders understand that they need both of these kinds of voters. So come election time, they give a wink and a nod to the most retrograde elements of their party, assuring them that if you consider Jim Crow the good old days, the GOP is your home. To be sure, there are millions of white Southerners of good will who vote Republican for any number of reasons. But the GOP needs the bigot vote, too.
Don’t hold your breath for words of condemnation from the Bush administration or Lott’s Republican colleagues in the Congress. While a number of conservative writers have condemned Lott, his real crime was being too explicit; one could almost hear Republicans whispering, “Ix-nay on the egregation-say!” under their breath.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:27 PM
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
December 11 - 17, 2002
Small Arms Make Big Trouble
Dismember Los Alamos
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Small Arms Make Big Trouble
Pocket Rocket
As the experts spend their time plowing through the 12,000-page arms report released by the Iraqis last week, and as Bush insiders continue their cynical debate on how best to serve their twin desires for warmongering and political advancement, the real source of future terrorist threats keeps percolating, with little official comment. Despite what the Bushies would have us believe, Al Qaeda still poses a far greater danger to so-called homeland security than either Saddam Hussein or the Democrats. And the unsuccessful missile attack last month on an Israeli jet taking off from a Kenyan airport provides a frightening glimpse of what may be to come from bin Laden's group.
Called man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, shoulder-fired weapons are easily concealed and, as the name suggests, can be launched by a single individual. They're able to hit a fast-moving target at over 10,000 feet, which means commercial airliners are vulnerable over many miles of their takeoff and landing paths. These weapons have been used widely against military planes, and are cited as one reason for keeping long-range bombers at high altitudes in the recent U.S. bombing runs over Afghanistan.
The attack on the Israeli plane came from old Soviet Strela missiles, a weapon similar to the American Stinger. These missiles are heat-seeking and were used against aerial targets during the Cold War. After the Afghan war between the Soviets and the U.S.-sponsored mujahideen in the 1980s, piles of shoulder-fired missiles remained for the pilfering. They're also easily procured on the international market, and can even be welded together with home-mixed explosives and timing devices bought at Radio Shack.
"Persistent rumors indicate that bin Laden's personal bodyguards may be equipped with Stingers, ostensibly to counter airborne attack," wrote Jane's International Security News. "If this is true, then Al Qaeda represents the most significant threat to international civil aviation." The magazine lists 24 publicly reported shoot-downs from 1996 to 2000, many of them by rebels from Chechnya. Planes were also attacked in South Asia, Bosnia, and Colombia, where top Irish Republican Army technical people are on trial for helping the insurgent FARC.
To understand the disruptive power of relatively small arms fire, you need only turn to the IRA's campaign against English rule. Between 1985 and 1987, the IRA managed to import SA-7s from Libya with the intent of deploying them against British planes patrolling the southern border of Northern Ireland. But by the time the IRA got around to firing them, the batteries were dead. As Ed Moloney, the knowledgeable Irish journalist and author of A Secret History of the IRA, said in a Voice interview, IRA operatives—world experts in kitchen-table munitions—also came to the United States in that era and hooked up with Richard Johnson, an American scientist with high-level security clearance. He was arrested while helping them develop a scheme for their own brand of shoulder-launched missile, and he's still in jail today.
Though foiled in their efforts to shoot down planes, the IRA showed what havoc could be wreaked with similar low-level munitions. In addition to inventing the car bomb, which they used to shut down London's financial center, they paralyzed Heathrow Airport in the early 1990s in a mock attack with mortars buried in the ground nearby and stashed in the trunks of cars in the parking lot. Deliberately left unarmed, these caused little damage yet briefly disrupted international travel and sounded a warning of what might one day happen.
One can imagine the panic if a similar mortar were shot from the back of a car parked on a New York City street, not to mention the effect of a shoulder-launched missile blasted off a Long Island beach at a plane approaching a JFK runway. Even a near miss could have a devastating impact on the economy. "There is no protection against these kinds of attacks," said Moloney. "The only solution to this problem, in the end, is a political solution."
Today, an estimated 500 million such weapons circulate freely around the globe. The situation is likely to worsen in the near future, when more of these outdated but deadly weapons hit the market as former Eastern-bloc countries upgrade their arsenals to meet NATO standards. Between 1997 and 2000, for example, the Ukrainian arms business grew tenfold, as it exported some $1.5 billion worth of guns. Ukrainian traders have been linked to the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.
Making matters worse is the American policy of privatizing the military, opening the way for private multinational companies to get involved in providing the personnel, as well as the weaponry, to wage the world's wars. A major report released last month by the Center for Public Integrity reports that some 90 such companies are engaged in 110 countries around the globe.
"The strong links between the U.S. government and many of the private military companies that contract with them has presented questions regarding the revolving door between government and the private sector," said the center's report. The study notes that in 1992, the Pentagon—under then defense secretary Dick Cheney—paid a firm called Brown & Root $3.9 million for a classified analysis of ways private companies could support American troops in hot spots. That same year, wrote the center, the Pentagon handed Brown & Root another $5 million "to update the report." Of course, Brown & Root is a subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation, where Dick Cheney later served as CEO, from 1995 to 1999. Maybe it was money well spent. If anyone knows how the mercenary business works, it ought to be the vice president.
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Lab Workers Looting the Plant
Dismember Los Alamos
Think back to the Chinese American scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was held in solitary confinement for nine months under suspicion of being a spy. The basis of this accusation was that he had transferred classified computer codes from a secure system at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked, to unclassified computers and then to portable cassette tapes—presumably a rare breach of security.
But in a recent report, prepared by the lab's chief financial officer, Los Alamos reveals that its employees seem to play fast and loose with gear from this highly secret atomic research institute. Last month Los Alamos fired two of the key whistle-blowing employees who brought the lab's widespread fraud and theft to public attention.
Here's a sampling of the 141 items (in all, worth $1.3 million) listed as lost or stolen:
Personal computer ($3467)
Printer ($11,037)
DVD recorder ($450)
Power transformer ($9290)
Still camera ($600)
Workstation ($9750)
Leak detector ($18,685)
Printer ($473)
Handheld computer ($371)
Digital camera ($869)
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:59 PM
BuzzFlash presents Southern Style
by Rebecca Knight
December 11, 2002 SOUTHERN STYLE
Lessons To Be Learned
Southern Style
by Rebecca Knight
* * *
"The first lesson is that if you're a Democrat in the House or Senate, it doesn't matter how you vote or what you say or how patriotic you try to be. The Bush machine will try to smash you anyway. Consequently there is no percentage in making nice with this administration, especially after it showed its willingness this fall to politicize security issues."
-- E. J. Dionne, The Washington Post, Dec. 10, 2002
* * *
Amen, Mr. Dionne, amen. Democrats should heed Mr. Dionne's statement. Bush and company play smash-mouth politics regardless of how many times a Democrat has voted their way and regardless of how patriotic a Democrat is. To them it's not about policy. It's not about political stances. It's not about patriotism. It's about winning.
It's about winning. Period. In a previous column, "Why I Am A Democrat," the take-no-prisoners style of the Republican Party was laid out for the reader by using Republican words and strategies from one of their own publications. That column was vindicated by this year's mid term elections. Their attacks on Max Cleland, the Democratic Senator from Georgia and Vietnam veteran who lost limbs in combat, were vicious and disgraceful. Proof positive that they will do anything and say anything to win.
Democrats, meanwhile, stammer, stutter, and squirm out of opportunities to lay claim to issues that are extremely vital to the American public for fear of being labeled unpatriotic. Unpatriotic? How is it unpatriotic to stand up for what is right, for what is best for poor Americans, working-class Americans, and even wealthy Americans. How is it unpatriotic to get the facts out about how policy decisions by the current administration impact the daily lives of every American? Is it unpatriotic simply because we are in a time of "war?"
Hypocrisy is at work here, ladies and gentlemen. Technically we are not at war. Congress has not declared war. Yes, we are fighting terrorism all around the world and God bless our military men and women who serve with honor. But since when did having our military in action prohibit the scrutiny of a sitting president? Apparently, it was prohibited upon the installation of George W. Bush in the White House. Oh, but it was okay to criticize Bill Clinton. Never forget the famous line of Senator Trent Lott in 1999: "We can support our troops without supporting our president."
While our Democratic candidates tiptoe around for fear of some Republican accusing them of being less than a true blue American, the Republicans are walking off with elections! It is as simple as that.
Ralph Nader recently wrote an article entitled "The Robo Candidate," which describes a type of standard issue Republican campaign strategy. This is how it goes: "We now can select the candidate from any state to beat the Democrats, frame the issues, convey the slogans, raise the money, buy the TV ads and even provide the robo-rebuttals for the debates. And we bring in Bush and Air Force One for the finale with total media coverage totally unchallenged. It's working again and again. The Dems are in a panic, falling all over themselves to agree with the President."
Sadly, there is some truth to this supposedly mythical Republican campaign belief. Just why is that? Ralph concisely summed it up this way: "Somehow, the Democrats believe that they can beat the opposing Republican Party by never criticizing its leader – George W. Bush – America's burgeoning Big Brother whose snooping, liberty-violating and anti-worker ways are getting a free ride on the backs of our crumbling democracy, while giant corporations are laughing all the way to the bank on the backs of the small taxpayers who are forced to subsidize them."
Democrats, the issues are on our side. We know that. We just have to insist that our candidates prove it. We have to insist that they stop their squeamish, cowardly ways. We have to take the offensive rather than remaining constantly on the defensive. That is where the Republican tactics have put us, but that is not where we belong.
How do we accomplish that goal? Know the facts. Speak up about the facts. Write letters about the facts. Pound the facts home on as many issues as possible. Protest!
Protest the media, which is complicit in allowing a forum for Republicans to spread their falsifications about Democratic ideals and policies. For far to long Democrats have allowed Republicans to paint us into corners. It must stop. It must stop right now!
Republicans call Democrats the party of tax and spend. Is that a fact? No, it is not. In reality the Republican Party is a party of borrow and spend. Republicans say that Democrats practice class warfare. In fact, Republicans have been practicing class warfare for many years through tax policy and corporate welfare. Bush recently cut the pay increase due federal employees, but re-activated bonuses for appointees. There can be no better example than this.
Okay, unemployment rose to 6% recently. Thank you George W. Bush. This means that 94% of Americans are employed. The rest are having a difficult time. If we cannot afford to help 6% of the American populace, we are, indeed, in severe trouble. In the late 1990s social welfare programs cost the average American taxpayer $400 per year. Corporate welfare programs cost the average American taxpayer about $1,400 per year. Those numbers are probably even more slanted in favor of corporations now. Who deserves help more? Who would most Americans prefer to help with their tax dollars? The Democratic Party stands for helping the people. This is a winning issue.
Check these out:
DEMOCRATS VS. REPUBLICAN on the issue of THE U.S. ECONOMY:
http://www.eriposte.com/economy/other/demovsrep.htm
Bush's Tax Cut Tilts to the Very Rich: http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?
site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ctj.org%2F
Some Companies Pay No Taxes and Even Receive Rebates:
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,1080,00.html
Giveaways to the Rich and Corporations:
http://www.ctj.org/html/publist.htm#corporate
Corporate Tax Payments Near Record Low This Year: http://www.ctj.org/html/corp0302.htm
Facts On Corporate Welfare:
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/428/1/87/
Economic issues are not the only area where Democrats represent the majority of Americans. There are many others, including the environment, social issues, civil liberties, civil rights, etc.
And don't let Republicans take the moral high ground! Their vitriol directed at the Democratic Party resulting from the Clinton scandal does not hold up when the light of day is shined on members of their own party. We know that. They attempt to paint the Democratic Party as corrupt, yet they defend the likes of Nixon, Agnew, G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, John Poindexter, and the numerous adulterers within the Republican Party.
It's time to set our own agenda and get it before the public. Some are attempting to do just that. Al Gore, for example, has been speaking out. He strongly criticized Trent Lott for his racist statement made at the birthday gathering for Strom Thurmond. Gore also challenged Bush not to invade Iraq now, but to focus on fighting terrorism. Gore also said that Bush should remove his entire economic team. Sure, Gore takes a lot of heat from the media, but he is right on these issues. Look what happened. Lott weakly apologized and is still under fire for his remarks. Bush fired his economic team. Perhaps not because of Gore's comments, but at least Gore led the way in speaking out. See how easy it is. When Democrats start speaking out, they will get enough attention to make a difference.
There are many lessons to be learned from the recent mid-term elections. The most important one is to stand our ground, speak up, tell the truth to the people, and demand that Democratic elected officials and candidates fight the Bush administration. Obviously that is the only way!
* * *
PERSONAL NOTE: BuzzFlash has informed me that some faithful readers are inquiring about the infrequency of my columns recently. Please bear with me and have patience. I have not given up, nor will I ever give up. This may be the busiest time of my personal life as my daughter and only child is celebrating her 18th birthday on Friday, graduating from high school in a few days, and going away to college the first week of January. All of this and Christmas, too!
* * *
Rebecca Knight is a native Tennessean, who grew up in Nashville, and currently resides in a small town near Nashville. Ms. Knight's political awareness evolved through the civil rights movement, the Vietnam era, the Watergate era, and the cold war. The debacle of the 2000 election increased her sense of responsibility for political activism. You may contact Rebecca Knight via e-mail at tennessee_gal655@yahoo.com.
© 2002 by Rebecca Knight
Unless otherwise noted, all original
content and headlines are © BuzzFlash.
Contact BuzzFlash for reprint rights.
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Molly Ivins: The cynicism of this insult is just flabbergasting
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
By MOLLY IVINS, Creators Syndicate
AUSTIN, Texas — Good grief. I turn my back for 10 minutes, and they bring back the old War Criminal.
Two generations of Americans have come to adulthood since Henry Kissinger last held political power, so I need to explain that War Criminal is not an affectionate sobriquet: The man is, in fact, a war criminal — wanted for questioning in Chile, Argentina and France (concerning French citizens who disappeared in Chile). He cannot travel to Britain, Brazil and many other countries because they cannot guarantee his immunity from legal proceedings.
Molly Ivins writes about politics, current events and other bizarre happenings.
In addition to his role in the Chilean coup that brought the regime of Gen. Pinochet to power, Kissinger is wanted for questioning about the international terrorist network called Operation Condor, which conducted killings, kidnappings and bombings in several countries, including this one — the 1976 bombing in Washington, D.C., that killed a noted Chilean dissident and his companion.
Kissinger's most notorious crime was the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War. William Shawcross argued persuasively in his book "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia" that the Cambodian bombing unleashed the Khmer Rouge on that country — which, if true, certainly ups Kissinger's body count.
He is also a notorious liar. He has lied repeatedly to Congress, the press and the public; he is a toady to power and a lackey of the Establishment, and for many years now the hireling of despotic regimes around the world. Old Cover-Up Kissinger, the man who double-crossed the Iraqi Kurds ... just the man to lead an independent inquiry into 9-11.
The cynicism of this insult to the families of those who died on 9-11 is just flabbergasting. We knew the Bush administration opposed the whole idea of an independent inquiry, but this adds supreme insult to injury.
The cover-up has already started: Kissinger insists he need not reveal the identities of his client regimes. He said law firms are not required to reveal the names of their clients. That's a two-lie answer, no record for Henry the K. He doesn't run a law firm, he runs an international consulting business. And in the second place, law firms are indeed obliged to publicly register their lobbying clients. The only time I ever interviewed Kissinger, he told me three lies in the first sentence he spoke, each word. Dropping. From. His. Mouth. Like. A. Stone. He lies with more authority than anyone I have ever known.
For those of you who are interested in learning more about our most famous living war criminal, I recommend Seymour Hersh's book "The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House," which was widely attacked but no factual error was ever found in it. Also, Christopher Hitchens' "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" is a definitive argument for the war criminal charge.
If you want to get something good out of this cynical ploy, you can at least haul out your old Tom Lehrer records and tool down memory lane. Lehrer, the great social satirist, stopped writing the day they gave Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.
Meanwhile, our neo-con hawks have moved from the bellicose to the bizarre. Ken Adelman, a member of Bush's Defense Policy Board, has joined several other hawks in direct attacks on Islam. Calling Islam a peaceful religion "is an increasingly hard argument to make," announced Adelman. "The more you examine the religion, the more militaristic it seems. After all, its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus."
Another member of the Pentagon advisory board, Eliot Cohen, says, "Nobody would like to think that a major world religion has a deeply aggressive and dangerous strain in it — a strain often excused or misrepresented in the name of good feelings. But uttering uncomfortable and unpleasant truths is one of the things that defines leadership."
The Christian right has gone completely batty on the subject: Rev. Jerry Falwell called Mohammed "a terrorist," Rev. Franklin Graham said Islam is "evil" and so forth.
Let's see, where does that leave Christianity, the religion of peace and love, founded by the Prince of Peace?
Among the more notable Christian crimes were the unbearably bloody Crusades, the Thirty Years War, the Inquisition, innumerable pogroms, regular slaughter of Protestants, counter-slaughter by Protestants, genocide against Native Americans (featuring biological warfare), slavery, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, Northern Ireland ... and the list goes on and on and on.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Especially when they are making bellicose statements and beating the war drums relentlessly for what may be an unnecessary war.
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accesswater2030@yahoo.com 2:07 PM
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Abuse the retarded, remove the strange and starve the elderly.
Changes would shield employers
By Leigh Strope AP Labor Writer
WASHINGTON The Bush administration plans to propose new regulations today that would protect employers from age discrimination liability when a company converts its traditional retirement pension benefit to a different arrangement called a "cash balance plan.'
Such conversions typically mean less money for workers closer to retirement age. Currently there is a moratorium on government approval of conversions. But that would be lifted if the regulations are approved after a public comment period and an April meeting of the Internal Revenue Service.
Cash balance plans usually consist of a percentage of pay by a worker plus interest that can be paid out as a lump sum if the worker leaves the company after working there for a certain period. Unlike a 401(k) plan, employees neither own the accounts or make investment decisions. Unlike a traditional pension plan, the worker isn't guaranteed annual benefits after retiring.
Critics say the proposed rules favor employers by allowing them to establish all the terms of the plan, including the return rates paid and the value of a worker's current benefit in the old plan.
"This is deregulation of pension plans and it is going to cost employees dearly, especially employees over 40 years of age,' said Rep. George Miller of California, ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee.
Companies increasingly converted their costlier traditional pension plans to cash balance plans starting early last decade. The plans are cheaper to administer and attract younger workers because of their portability.
Pension laws prohibit companies from reducing benefits that already have been accrued. But they can cut or eliminate future benefits.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:23 PM
Monday, December 09, 2002
Nat Hentoff
We'll All Be Under Surveillance
Computers Will Say What We Are
December 6th, 2002 4:30 PM
How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. —George Orwell, 1984
The writers who most influenced me were: Charles Dickens (a superb journalist—in his appalled description of a hanging at New York's Tombs, for example—as well as an enduring novelist) and Arthur Koestler (whose Darkness at Noon taught me when I was 15 that dishonest means irredeemably corrupt all ends, no matter how noble). But above all was George Orwell, who, like Thoreau, listened to his own drum.
Orwell died in 1950. Prophetic as he was in 1984, however, he could not have imagined how advanced surveillance technology would become. His novel is now being actualized in real time at the Defense Department, headed by the Washington press corps's favorite cabinet officer, the witty Donald Rumsfeld.
John Markoff of The New York Times broke this story on February 13, when he wrote that retired admiral John Poindexter, national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan, "has returned to the Pentagon to direct a new agency that is developing technologies to give federal officials access to vast new surveillance and information-analysis systems."
There was scarcely any follow-up in the media until Markoff, on November 9, aroused the dozing press by reporting that "the Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe—including the United States."
Without any official public notice, and without any congressional hearings, the Bush administration—with an initial appropriation of $200 million—is constructing the Total Information Awareness System. It will extensively mine government and commercial data banks, enabling the FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies to collect information that will allow the government—as noted on ABC-TV's November 14 Nightline—"to essentially reconstruct the movements of citizens." This will be done without warrants from courts, thereby making individual privacy as obsolete as the sauropods of the Mesozoic era. (Intelligence from and to foreign sources will also be involved.)
Our government's unblinking eyes will try to find suspicious patterns in your credit-card and bank data, medical records, the movies you click for on pay-per-view, passport applications, prescription purchases, e-mail messages, telephone calls, and anything you've done that winds up in court records, like divorces. Almost anything you do will leave a trace for these omnivorous computers, which will now contain records of your library book withdrawals, your loans and debts, and whatever you order by mail or on the Web.
As Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley pointed out in the November 17 Los Angeles Times: "For more than 200 years, our liberties have been protected primarily by practical barriers rather than constitutional barriers to government abuse. Because of the sheer size of the nation and its population, the government could not practically abuse a great number of citizens at any given time. In the last decade, however, these practical barriers have fallen to technology."
Once the story of Americans being under constant surveillance began to have legs, press interest was particularly heightened by the Defense Department's choice to head this unintended tribute to George Orwell. Poindexter, as Turley reminded us, "was the master architect behind the Iran-Contra scandal, the criminal conspiracy to sell arms to a terrorist nation, Iran, in order to surreptitiously fund an unlawful clandestine project in Nicaragua."
Poindexter was convicted of lying to Congress and destroying documents. His sentence was reversed because he had been granted immunity for testifying in the case. But the evidence against him stands. So this lawbreaker has been put in charge of a project, paid for by our tax dollars, to direct all kinds of personal information on all of us into interconnected computers.
As Richard Cohen wrote in The Washington Post, "Soon, another computer—this one a behemoth—will reassemble us digitally, authoritatively, and we will be what it says we are."
In all the media stories I've seen on this creation of a real-life Big Brother, Poindexter's boss, Donald Rumsfeld, has gotten a pass from the press in that he escapes mention as the Bush cabinet member who approved the hiring of Poindexter. And since Rumsfeld is a hands-on administrator, he must surely know what Poindexter is doing with his initial $200 million budget.
As usual, George W. Bush, the commander-in-chief of the Pentagon, has been ignored by the press as the ultimate authorizer of the Total Information Awareness System—except for one reference. Queried about Poindexter's Iran-Contra history, Bush said, "Admiral Poindexter has served our nation very well."
In Orwell's 1984, "the telescreen [at home] received and transmitted simultaneously," so that the viewer could be seen and heard by Big Brother. Now under development are advanced forms of interactive television that will also make this prophecy real.
Meanwhile, on National Public Radio, Larry Abramson reported that the Office of Information Awareness, which Poindexter heads, is developing techniques of "face recognition, using CCTV camera systems that would allow government officials to identify individuals moving in public space." As we move, we could also be identified by the way we walk or the sound of our voices. And in an editorial, The Washington Post added, "If computers can learn to identify a person through a video camera, then constant surveillance of society becomes possible too."
Democrat Russell Feingold of Wisconsin—the only member of the Senate to vote against the USA Patriot Act—urges that the administration "immediately suspend the Total Information Awareness program . . . until Congress has conducted a thorough review," and cut off the funding until then. But why even consider continuing the funding at any point?
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 11:37 AM
Sunday, December 08, 2002
washingtonpost.com
Back, But Not By Popular Demand party's scandal-scarred lions must be seen in the context of this governing strategy. If you try something controversial and get away with it, it makes you stronger. The recent appointments -- and the refusal to even acknowledge the legitimate outcry they have occasioned -- are a deliberate demonstration of power, a flaunting of contempt for opposition and dissent, in the expectation that such a show will likely deter, not spur, critics.
By David Greenberg
Sunday, December 8, 2002; Page B01
This fall the Democrats came in for some ribbing over the weakness of their bench. When the party suddenly had to field last-minute replacements in crucial Senate races, it exhumed Greatest Generation septuagenarians Frank Lautenberg and Walter Mondale instead of tapping young comers. Now, surveying the presidential aspirants for 2004, some mentioners are eyeing a contender from two decades ago, the newly minted elder statesman Gary Hart.
Who says there are no second acts in American life?
But if the Democrats' resuscitation of their Pleistocene leadership shows a lack of imagination, the Republicans' recent revival of their own dinosaurs betrays something far more troubling: a hostility to dissent and an eagerness to exercise power that are dismayingly redolent of the heavies they seek to resurrect.
Two weeks ago, President Bush placed Henry Kissinger, a veteran of the Nixonian era of secrecy, White House intrigue and dubious foreign ventures, in charge of uncovering intelligence and security flaws preceding the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Then last week, the president gave the National Security Council's top Middle East job to Iran-contra rogue Elliott Abrams. Meanwhile, outrage has belatedly fastened on February's naming of another Iran-contrarian, the pipe-puffing John Poindexter, to run a Big Brother-like Pentagon operation called Total Information Awareness that promises -- if news reports can be believed -- to harvest all known information about everybody into a searchable Internet database. Perhaps we'll see Poindexter and Abrams convene a reunion within the administration, where they can relive their heyday with other contra war alumni who are serving in the administration.
You might think that a few of these folks would have had their careers ended by their misdeeds. And you might think that being tough on crime, long a GOP mantra, begins at home. You'd be wrong: On the matter of these men's sordid pasts, the Bush administration has shown an indulgence and permissiveness that would make Dr. Spock blanch. (If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been indicted.) As a result, these vintage villains are not on parole but on parade. It's an '80s nostalgia party, as thrown by Ed Meese.
In one sense, these appointments shouldn't be shocking, since Iran-contra has now -- strange to tell -- receded into history. Many of today's White House correspondents weren't old enough to drink beer when Poindexter, as national security adviser, led up the illegal Iran-contra scheme or when Abrams, as a State Department official, abetted the efforts. These journalists are not likely to hype the story. Indeed, even devoted political junkies might be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what Poindexter and Abrams did wrong.
(The answer: Poindexter supervised the secret arms-for-hostages sales to Iran that violated Ronald Reagan's professed policies and possibly also the Arms Export Control Act. He green-lighted the funneling of profits from those sales to the Nicaraguan contras, in knowing defiance of a law barring government funding of those rebels. And he concealed his activities, destroyed evidence and lied to Congress. Abrams also misled Congress about the scheme.)
The public's natural forgetfulness was assisted by the work of Republican judges and higher-ups. Poindexter was convicted by a federal jury for lying and obstruction of justice. Though sentenced to prison, he escaped hard time thanks to conservative appellate judges Laurence Silberman and David Sentelle (later of Lewinsky affair fame), who overturned his conviction; they ruled that independent counsel Lawrence Walsh had relied too much on testimony that the NSC adviser himself gave while under congressional immunity.
Abrams won his Get Out of Jail Free card from an even higher authority. Convicted on two counts of lying to Congress, he avoided even probation and community service when, as a lame duck, President Bush senior gave Abrams and five others Christmas Eve pardons that ensured that no more information would surface. Bush's pardons helped give Iran-contra its final burial. Unlike Watergate, which has remained the benchmark for political wrongdoing for 30 years even as people forget its byzantine details, the Reagan scandals have lately grown dim -- occluded, partly, by the recent wash of gauzy tributes to the senescent former president in his twilight years.
In their own time, of course, the Watergate felons staged comebacks, too. John Ehrlichman reinvented himself as a pulp novelist, G. Gordon Liddy as a radio talk-show host and Chuck Colson as a man of the cloth. (The last of these strategies was briefly pursued also by Abrams, who rode the coattails of his father-in-law, conservative commentator Norman Podhoretz, into the world of letters where, as a born-again Jew, he took to browbeating his co-religionists about the evils of both intermarriage and strict church-state separation.) Significantly, however, until now none of the Nixon crowd ever returned to positions of government authority, only to the role of cultural curiosities.
What's more, they all knew they would be forever tied to Watergate. Indeed, they counted on our memory of their notoriety to earn them attention in their new guises; had their criminal behavior not catapulted them to fame in the Nixon years, no one would have ever published (or read) an Ehrlichman novel, aired (or tuned in to) a Liddy broadcast or printed (or commented on) a Colson op-ed. In contrast, Poindexter, Abrams and company are relying on our amnesia to effect their transformations into upstanding citizens worthy of wielding power again.
In the current crop of Republican retreads, Watergate survivor Kissinger is the exception that proves this rule. Unlike Liddy or Colson, Kissinger had (and still has) a reputation apart from the Nixonian miasma. He is counting on our selective memory: the China opening, not the secret bombing of Cambodia; shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, not the phony peace in Vietnam or his meddling in Chile. He has used his image as a pillar of the foreign policy establishment to shirk accountability for his role in what John Mitchell famously called the "White House horrors." What's unfortunate about the left's hyperbolic "war criminal" taunts is that Kissinger's actions were plenty bad without any embellishment.
Another reminder may be in order: As Nixon's national security adviser, Kissinger (as he admitted in his own memoir) targeted journalists and administration officials to be secretly -- and, the Supreme Court ruled, illegally -- wiretapped. That sordid episode, which started in 1969, was the first of many abuses of power that fell under the collective rubric of Watergate and brought Nixon down. But Kissinger emerged from the rubble unscathed because he was as deft at charming Washington's elites as Nixon was inept. He convinced those influential circles that his ouster would imperil what remained of an American foreign policy in 1973 and 1974. And many of them still rally to his defense.
But the question remains: Why has Bush chosen to resuscitate men with rather unusual résumés? The answer is that he appears not to think they did anything wrong.
For all the differences between Watergate and Iran-contra, the scandals shared one key aspect: their perpetrators' belief in the virtue of secrecy and White House prerogative at the expense of democratic rules. Kissinger justified wiretapping private citizens without a warrant -- Watergate's first chapter -- by claiming that "national security" was at stake; we now know it wasn't, and he would have needed a court order, anyway. Iran-contra was, at bottom, a purposeful ploy to subvert Congress's will because administration officials judged that they were better suited to the big boys' work of fighting communism and terrorism.
Poindexter and Abrams, like Nixon and Kissinger, harbored a contempt for Congress, for the opposition party and for the public, all of whom they considered short-sighted and ignorant, meddlesome and soft. These groups not only didn't have to approve of what was going on, it was decided; they didn't even have to know.
If you can't see any immorality and illegality at work here, then you might downplay these scandals as mere politics -- as some Bush aides seem inclined to do. Abrams, for one, wrote a book chalking up his criminal conviction to "political differences." Queried about Abrams, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer called Iran-contra -- in what was, technically, an accurate description -- "a matter of the past." Watergate isn't whisked away so easily, but it should be remembered that in the summer of 1974, Karl Rove, then head of the College Republicans, was among the active minority fighting Nixon's impeachment -- circulating literature that painted the constitutional crisis as nothing more than a political witch hunt. Few dare voice that view today, but one wonders how many former foot soldiers, deep down, still believe it.
Still, you might ask, if the Bush team can't grasp the wrongdoing its recent appointees committed, doesn't it at least grasp the political sensitivities? On the contrary. Ever since the Florida recount fight, the Bush governance strategy has been to assert that they're in the right and to brook no intimations otherwise.
All along, the Bush team has understood that images can be self-fulfilling -- and that the best way to shore up a shaky position is to act as if your legitimacy isn't in doubt. If your decisions are assailed, hang tough, grit your teeth, shrug off the questioners and brazen it out. That attitude has been particularly marked in the waging of the war on terrorism, where the administration's fetish for secrecy and disdain for Congress are eerily reminiscent of -- guess who? -- John Poindexter and Henry Kissinger.
The attempt to rehabilitate the party's scandal-scarred lions must be seen in the context of this governing strategy. If you try something controversial and get away with it, it makes you stronger. The recent appointments -- and the refusal to even acknowledge the legitimate outcry they have occasioned -- are a deliberate demonstration of power, a flaunting of contempt for opposition and dissent, in the expectation that such a show will likely deter, not spur, critics.
Why has Bush appointed Kissinger, Poindexter and Abrams? It's like the old riddle: because he can.
David Greenberg, a visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is a historian and columnist for Slate. His book on Richard Nixon and political image-making is due out from W.W. Norton next fall.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:13 PM
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