News n Notes from the Web

The Nuclear Threat - From Within

"We have recognized the dangers of nuclear proliferation in an age of terrorism, but have then pursued policies that may well create incentives for states to develop nuclear weapons as quickly as possible."
- Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.),, November 18, 2004, on the Senate floor.. The Bush Administration's 2002 "Nuclear Policy Review" explicitly expanded the rationale and targeting list for the potential use of U.S. nuclear weapons.

"I was not comfortable with the Administration’s emphasis on new nuclear weapons initiatives in the fiscal year 2004 budget request and repeated in the fiscal year 2005 request. I view the Advanced Concepts research proposal, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator study, and the effort to reduce the nuclear test readiness posture to 18 months as very provocative and overly aggressive policies that undermine our moral authority to argue that other nations should forego nuclear weapons. We cannot advocate for nonproliferation around the globe and pursue more useable nuclear weapons options here at home."
- Rep. David Hobson [316k](R.-OH), Chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, August 2004

"The only research involving nuclear weapons should involve finding ways to discourage their spread. It's mind-boggling that the administration seems more interested in finding new uses for them."
- New York Times Editorial

Once Again, No Regrets
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, January 13, 2005; 11:43 AM

On the same day that the White House conceded that its futile search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was, indeed, finally over, President Bush told Barbara Walters that the invasion of Iraq was "absolutely" worth it.

ABC News reports: "The invasion of Iraq, which ousted Saddam Hussein and has cost the lives of some 1,300 U.S. military personnel and billions of dollars, was 'absolutely' worth it, despite the absence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, President Bush told ABC News' Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview that will air this Friday."


ABC's The Note provides this excerpt:
"Barbara Walters: This was our main reason for going in. So now when we read, 'Okay, the search is over,' what do you feel?

"President Bush: Well, like you, I felt like we'd find weapons of mass destruction. Or like many, many here in the United States, many around the world, the United Nations thought he had weapons of mass destruction, and so therefore, one, we need to find out what went wrong in the intelligence gathering. Saddam was dangerous. And . . . the world was safer without him in power.

"Walters: But was it worth it if there were no weapons of mass destruction? Now that we know that that was wrong? Was it worth it?

"Bush: Oh, absolutely."

In the briefing room, press secretary Scott McClellan only grudgingly acknowledged what Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer had written in the morning paper: That the hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq had come to an end. In fact, it came to an end before Christmas.

From the transcript of the daily briefing: "Well, at this point, the members of the Iraq Survey Group that are still there in Iraq -- I mean, obviously, if they hear additional reports about anything, they will follow up on those reports. But I think Charles Duelfer [the senior CIA adviser who led the weapons hunt in 2004] has made it pretty clear, and it's my understanding that the comprehensive report he issued last year is essentially the completion of his work."

The Associated Press helpfully chronicles administration statements on WMD before and after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Among them:
• "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." -- Vice President Cheney, Aug. 26, 2002.

And:
• "Saddam Hussein is a man who told the world he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he's got them." -- Bush, Nov. 3, 2002.

And let's all remember that these comments came considerably before then-CIA Director George J. Tenet's assertion that the WMD case was a "slam dunk," in late December of 2002. By that point, Bush and Cheney had clearly already made up their minds.

Paging the WMD Commission
McClellan, faced with a fusillade of questions from reporters about how the president could have been so wrong, suggested yesterday that the White House would have nothing new to say on that topic until a presidential commission looking into intelligence failures makes its report in March.

"The President's focus is on is looking at the recommendations from the independent commission on weapons of mass -- on intelligence relating to weapons of mass destruction that he appointed . . . ," he said.

"So the President looks forward to seeing the recommendations from the Silberman-Robb commission when they release those recommendations. And he is committed to acting on those recommendations, to make sure we take steps to improve our intelligence."

And in what may be the first leak out of the ultra-secretive panel, Bill Gertz reports in today's Washington Times that the commission has fired one of the FBI agents on its staff.

"The female FBI agent, who was assigned to work for the commission, improperly removed a highly classified CIA report produced for the panel that contained criticism of the FBI for its conduct of weapons-related intelligence gathering, the sources said.

"According to the officials, the document was removed from a secure vault and given to FBI headquarters official David Szady, a senior counterintelligence officer. A short time later, FBI officials voiced criticism of the CIA report to the commission, triggering an investigation that led to the female agent, who was not identified by name."

Sort of sounds like no one wants to take the blame.

According to the latest cryptic update on the mysterious commission's Spartan Web site, here's what happened at their last secret meeting: "Secretary of State Colin Powell met with the Commission on December 16 to provide his views and perspectives of the Intelligence Community. Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Advisor, met with the Commissioners on December 17 to discuss a wide range of intelligence and policy issues.

"Throughout the three-day meeting, Commissioners received more than a dozen briefings from the Commission's working groups on a full range of intelligence topics and issues. Additionally, the Commissioners reviewed and discussed a proposed framework that will guide the preparation of the Commission's report in the upcoming months."

Here's some background on the commission's members.

Lowering Expectations in Iraq
Robin Wright and Jim VandeHei write in The Washington Post: "With just over two weeks until the Iraqi elections, the United States is lowering its expectations for both the turnout and the results of the vote, increasingly emphasizing other steps over the next year as more important to Iraq's political transformation, according to U.S. officials. . . .

"'I would . . . really encourage people not to focus on numbers, which in themselves don't have any meaning, but to look on the outcome and to look at the government that will be the product of these elections,' a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity at a White House briefing yesterday. The official highlighted the low voter turnout in U.S. elections as evidence that polling numbers are not essential to legitimacy."

Carol Giacomo writes for Reuters: "President George W. Bush's ambitious, and some say risky, vision for democracy in the Middle East is very much at stake in the Jan. 30 Iraq election.

"Having failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush clings to the goal of establishing democracy there as a justification for launching the war that ousted Saddam Hussein and has so far killed more than 1,000 Americans.

"If the election pushes Iraq into deeper chaos or civil war, prospects for democracy could suffer across the region, including in states looking to Baghdad as a model for replacing dictators with popularly-chosen leaders, some critics say."
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Administration Agitprop [Editorial]

Washington Post - Saturday, January 8, 2005; Page A18
"IT WAS BAD judgment." That was the response of Armstrong Williams, television commentator and pundit, when we asked yesterday whether he had, as alleged in a USA Today story, accepted $241,000 of government money in exchange for promoting the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind education reform legislation. Mr. Williams also confirmed that the contract he signed with Ketchum Inc., a public relations firm hired by the Education Department, not only obliged him to run advertisements during his show but to also "regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts" and to encourage other producers to "periodically address NCLB" as well. Mr. Williams, a commentator who appeared on MSNBC, CNN and Fox, as well as on his own syndicated program, "On the Right Side," also published a handful of articles directly or indirectly praising the Bush administration's education policy, none of which noted that he was accepting money from the Education Department. Asked whether he was aware of the codes of ethics published by multiple journalists' and broadcasters' associations, which explicitly forbid members to accept money for promoting particular views, Mr. Williams said, "I don't know anything about these kinds of documents."

At least Mr. Williams -- who now says, "I never want anybody to have the perception that I'm only advocating something because I'm paid for it" -- has the belated good sense to realize that this was all a big mistake. His newspaper syndicate has already canceled his column, and one television network dropped his program. It is much less clear that the Bush administration, whose policies lay behind this remarkable ethical violation, either understands the error or is prepared to suffer any consequences. In response to questions yesterday, the Education Department put out an inane statement saying that "children do better in school when their parents are involved, which is why the Department has undertaken broad outreach to help parents -- particularly those in minority and low-income communities -- take advantage of the No Child Left Behind law."

Nor is this the first time the Bush administration has been caught walking a fine line between ordinary explanation of government policies and covert propaganda. Last year the Department of Health and Human Services was severely criticized by the Government Accountability Office for producing advertisements designed to hype Medicare reforms in advance of the election. This week the GAO condemned a White House ad campaign against drug abuse: Although the ads in question appeared to be news reports, they were in fact paid announcements disguised as journalism. At least two other agencies have used fake news reports to trumpet their achievements as well. There are always gray areas in relations between politicians and journalists, but a $241,000 payment, or an ad designed to look like an authentic news report, is black and white.

Covert propaganda is more than unethical; it is against the law for taxpayer dollars to be used "for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States," unless approved by Congress. Congress should investigate, as this administration does not seem to understand the lines it has crossed.
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Out of Balance
The world rarely takes notice of disasters and wars until they cross a mind-boggling threshold of pain. Are Americans starting to feel the same way about U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq?
By Christopher Dickey - Paris Bureau Chief, Middle East Regional Editor
Newsweek - Updated: 5:30 p.m. ET Jan. 4, 2005

Jan. 4 - The English novelist Aldous Huxley, best known for “Brave New World,” once wrote a disturbing essay called “Usually Destroyed” about the scale of human suffering. The vast growth of population had multiplied the scope of tragedy beyond our ability to comprehend, he warned 50 years ago. "The catastrophes and crimes of the twentieth century can transform almost 10 times as many human universes into private hells as did the catastrophes and crimes of 2,000 years ago.”

The weight of the enormous statistics is numbing, in fact. As we too-cynical journalists know, each example of war and pestilence must now cross a mind-boggling threshold of pain before the world takes notice. (In 1989, I’ll never forget, NEWSWEEK International ran a two-sentence brief that began, “DIED: An estimated 10,000 Ethiopians [mostly children ages 3 to 18] from an unusually virulent strain of meningitis…”) Since then we’ve seen stories of hundreds of thousands, even a million people at a time, slaughtered in cruel and seemingly incomprehensible conflicts, or struck down by AIDS and other plagues, before they really made headlines. You may have noticed that not until the number of 100,000 tsunami victims was in sight did the United States mobilize serious relief efforts.

Yet, for all that, we got used to the notion these past 30 years that the American public had no tolerance for the pain of its own soldiers dying. The Reagan administration reinforced that idea when it pulled out of Lebanon a few months after a devastating suicide attack on a U.S. Marine barracks killed 241 soldiers in October 1983. The Clinton administration drove the point home when it withdrew from Somalia after the infamous “Blackhawk Down” incident that killed 18 Americans in 1993. Even victories underscored the image of a nation unwilling to feel pain: The Gulf War of 1991 was declared a victory and abruptly stopped when the United States had lost 148 soldiers killed in action; the Kosovo War was waged in 1999 without the loss of a single American serviceman or woman.

Some humanitarian activists, of all people, used to find it reprehensible that Americans were so reluctant to shed their own blood to save others. Bernard Kouchner, one of the founders of the famous French aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders, used to preach about the duty to interfere when atrocities and suffering were at hand. Throughout the 1990s such activists pressed hard for more military interventions in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and, yes, Iraq.

Well, here we are. And what have we discovered? The death of Americans is becoming just another numbing statistic: 1,340, so far. According to the macabre but weirdly matter-of-fact blog Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, over the last six months Americans have been dying at a rate of almost three a day. On average, more die every week than in Blackhawk Down; more die every four months in Iraq than were killed in the Beirut bombing. An infinitely greater number are killed than in Kosovo. In another 20 months, at this rate, we’ll have lost more Americans in Iraq than were killed on September 11, 2001. Yet there is no sign that the Bush administration’s resolve has been shaken, because the American public seems to have grown quite used to these numbers.

Is this a good thing? Arguably it is. The United States cannot—dare not—subscribe to the idea that the only wars it will fight are the ones where it suffers next to no casualties. To do so is to invite attack by terrorists who think a Beirut bombing or the downing of a Blackhawk will shatter American will. So, the fact we no longer seem to be shrinking from the risks is good. But, good for what? If the war is creating a training ground for more holy warriors bent on America’s destruction, as this one certainly is, then is that helpful?

When you see the few thousand U.S. troops dispatched to the tsunami zones delivering aid, you can’t help but feel proud that they are doing good. When you hear that the president has committed, just in time, $350 million to tsunami victims, that’s very commendable. But then you look at Iraq, if you can bring yourself to do that anymore, and you see we’ve got more than 10 times as many troops there as we’ve sent to help the tidal wave victims, and we are spending $350 million in Iraq every couple of days. And somehow the scale doesn’t seem to balance.

The real distinction, of course, is that our humanitarian intervention in the tsunami areas is just that. Our humanitarian intervention in Iraq started out as something else: a political grand design, a cynical crusade, a monumental miscalculation. As a result, in this brave new world, we have learned that we can die. But we are still left asking ourselves why.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
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