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1950s McCarthyism meets millennial mass media
In an episode beside which the every-day run-of-the-mill McCarthyism permeating today’s media seems tame, the administration and the right-wing press have chosen to take extreme measures to silence dissent. In the ‘50s, standing up to right- wing ideologues merely meant prison time and or long-term unemployment. Under Bush it now means possible assassination.
On July 6 the New York Times ran an op-ed piece written by veteran diplomat Joseph Wilson, entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” He wrote: “I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” In February 2002 Wilson had been sent to Niger at the request of the CIA to investigate reports that the Iraqis had attempted to buy uranium there. Wilson’s conclusion that the reports were highly doubtful was duly reported back to the CIA and State Department.
The documents upon which Bush’s famous 16 words (“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”) were based were, as Wilson put it, “so obviously forged that an Italian tabloid more accustomed to publishing bare breasts … would not publish them.”
Wilson was not the first to note publicly that the Niger documents were forged. Seymour Hersch, early on, had exposed the forgery in the New Yorker. But Wilson’s article, coming from within the administration itself, riled the White House and energized critics on both sides of the aisle. Said Wilson, “My Republican friends have said ‘you have given us the ammunition we need to rein in this neo-conservative juggernaut.’ What my Democratic friends have said [is] ‘Congratulations, you’re the baboon who threw the turd that hit the target that finally stuck.’”
The Bush administration response was swift if not skillful. Within 36 hours they had mobilized the first of their ad hominem attacks against Wilson. Right-wing columnist Cliff May, writing in the National Review, called Wilson “no disinterested career diplomat — he’s a pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an ax to grind.”
Apparently feeling that this effort to discredit a career diplomat wasn’t enough, Caspar Weinberger was called out of his cushy chair as chairman of Forbes Inc. to write an article in the rabidly right-wing Wall Steet Journal. Wilson said the article totally mischaracterized his article. “The great irony, of course, is [that] Casper Weinberger is the one man who, but for the grace of a presidential pardon, might well have been doing hard time,” Wilson said. “How badly he had served his president.”
Amazingly, Weinberger’s article claimed that we had to remove Saddam Hussein “before he used nuclear weapons on his neighbors or us.” Clearly, the ex-Secretary of Defense has also been misled by Bush administration propaganda. It has been known for some time that Iraq had neither nuclear weapons nor the capability of making them.
Finally, in the most disgusting move of all, the Bush administration chose to attack the ambassador’s wife, certainly ruining her career and possibly endangering her life, all in one fell swoop. Using the dean of right-wing dim bulbs, Robert Novak, a loathsome talk-show hack who would need a step ladder to be able to lick Geraldo Rivera’s boots, no less than two administration officials leaked the allegation that Mrs. Wilson, Valerie Plame, was an operative for the CIA. Under the 1982 Intelligence Identification Act revealing the identity of a CIA agent is a federal offense.
“The purpose of doing this was not to shut me up, I’d already said my piece,” Wilson explained. “The purpose was very, very clear, to intimidate others who might step forward. I’ve made that very clear in a number of interviews I did in the aftermath of this. That’s the way I saw this. I continue to speak out on that. There are going to be hearings in the two committees with jurisdiction, the two intelligence committees and quite possibly the government reform committee as well. And hopefully those analysts who have spoken privately and on background to the press, talking about pressures they felt talking about other aspects of the manipulation of intelligence, will be willing to step forward despite, I think, their justifiable concerns that their good names and perhaps the names of their families will be dragged into this as well.”
Inslee speaks about captives and missing weapons
One question that has had little or no attention in the media concerns the captivity of members of the Iraqi regime and intelligence gathered from them. The Ebbtide asked Congressman Inslee about this:
Ebbtide: One thing that doesn’t seem to come up very often is exactly what is the situation of the Iraqi regime detainees. What kind of conditions are they being held in, why are they being held, and isn’t it obvious that there should be some intelligence that’s devolved from their captivity. Isn’t it obvious to assume that the administration does, in fact, know if there are weapons of mass destruction or not, as a result of that intelligence?
Inslee: Well, those are big questions, but first off I hope and trust that these folks are being held in humane conditions, and I believe that to be the case. I think the military by and large has very difficult circumstances but has honored the premise of America, to treat captives with humanity. I believe that’s happened. Second, I think there’s very, very vigorous intelligence gathering going on with people who are in American custody. I think it has been extraordinarily active, and to date, as far as information that has been shared with the U.S. Congress, extraordinarily unproductive as far as indicating that there was a reconstituted nuclear program, connections with al-Queda and ongoing efforts to cooperate with al-Queda or a host of the other impressions that the administration created before the war. I think it’s been, to be honest with you, stunning that we haven’t found, to date, some measure of at least some leftover chemical weapons from the Iran war. It’s just stunned me that we haven’t found those. I assumed, tend to believe, they still probably do exist and probably we’ll, at some point, find at least some residual chemical weapons from the Iran war. Because, if nothing else, probably some have been misplaced, because we know they existed in 1991.
Ebbtide: Is the administration just stalling on this issue hoping that its going to go away?
Inslee: I’d be very surprised if this were the case. I would assume that the administration is as anxious as anyone else to know what the facts are in regard to weapons of mass destruction. And I think the British have been more candid. They’ve concluded that many of the impressions made were simply inaccurate. The’ve already reached that conclusion. And I think the administration’s own rhetoric has indicated that’s the case. Because before the war, they said they had weapons. [Then] the administration started to say no, they had programs. Now, it’s sort of like they kind of had hopes for programs. That’s the direction they’re going, so I don’t think that’s the case.