MAGNIFICENT column by Tom Engelherdt (at TomDispatch.com) sums up, in one commentary, TWO DECADES worth of servile idiocy and/or outright lies by the national "major media," starting with the slavish to "Conventional Wisdom" and feckless-to-power DC press corps.
Remember, President Clinton was IMPEACHED for "lying under oath," and Martha Stewart was CONVICTED, and IMPRISONED, _NOT_ for "insider trading" or "dumping stock" but for "lying" to FBI (SEC?) investigators.
But two days ago, the Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, LIED (badly and miserably at that), under oath, to a Congressional committee (the Senate Judiciary Committee), for the third time out of his three appearances before that committee. In one moment Mr. Gonzales stating that he did not go to the room of hospitalized then Attorney General John Ashcroft, late at night, to discuss the "terrorist surveillance act, " and then in the next moments agreeing that he had taken with him the document to EXTEND the TSA for the sedated Ashcroft (who had given up his powers to go under surgery) to sign!
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG WRONG! is the insanity the DC press corps has inflicted on America over the past dozens+ years... here is a compilation of those falsehoods and bogus issues by the numbers.
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Wrong Again!Bush's Logic and Ours
By Tom Engelhardt (Tomgram: Only in Washington)
July 15, 2007
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174820
Short, perhaps, of Jefferson Davis, has any American leader ever been more relentlessly wrong? Since September 12, 2001, hardly a single move this administration has made in foreign policy hasn't turned out -- and relatively quickly at that -- to be the equivalent of a roadside bomb, exploding under the Humvee of American foreign policy.
For the benefit not of the public, but of our Congressional representatives who may have been in Washington a little too long and spent a little too much time reading the Washington-inspired press corps, here, at a glance, is the actual record of the President and his administration on Iraq (and allied topics) since 2001.
Top administration officials, the President, and/or Vice President claimed that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program; that he was searching for yellowcake uranium in Niger; that the Iraqi dictator had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (and that they knew where these were); that he had "mobile biological warfare labs"; that he had unmanned aerial vehicles capable of spraying the East Coast of the U.S. (hundreds of miles inland, no less) with deadly toxins, including anthrax; that he was allied with al-Qaeda; and that he had something to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
Top administration officials, the President, and/or Vice President claimed that the Iraqis -- the previously oppressed Shiites, in particular -- would welcome us as liberators ("I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators" -- Dick Cheney); that they might strew "bouquets" of flowers at the feet of our troops; that the war would be a "cakewalk"; that the war and occupation would cost perhaps $40 billion or, at most, $100 billion (actual cost so far: at least $450 billion); that the occupation could easily be funded thanks to the "sea of oil" on which Iraq "floated"; that the neighbors in the region, especially Syria and Iran, would be shock-and-awed into submission or would fall before our might -- as some neocons then put it: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."; that, by August 2003, American troop strength in that country would be down to 30,000-40,000 troops.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
On September 14, 2001, George W. Bush stood on a pile of rubble in downtown New York City, a megaphone in his hands, and swore that "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon"; not so long after, he claimed that Afghanistan had been "liberated" from the Taliban and al-Qaeda; soon after, he ordered American military attention (and crucial forces) shifted from Afghanistan and those al-Qaeda remnants to Iraq, where plans for a much-desired invasion were already in progress; on May 1, 2003, speaking under a "mission accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, he proclaimed "major combat" in Iraq "ended"; in July 2003, he challenged the Iraqi insurgency ("bring ‘em on").
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
In the ensuing years, the President promised "victory" in Iraq again and again, and he has indicated that "progress" was being made there in just about every speech or news conference he's ever given on the subject. On November 30, 2005, the President announced that he had a specific "strategy for victory in Iraq" in a speech in which he used the word "victory" 15 times and "progress" 28 times; until the Golden Mosque in Samarra was bombed in late February 2006, he and his top officials and military commanders continued to insist that Iraq was not in a state of incipient civil war; throughout all these years, he and his Vice President have repeatedly indicated that the press was simply feeding bad news to the American public and avoiding the "good news" in Iraq.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
Top administration officials, the President and/or the Vice President claimed that the following were "milestones" and/or "turning points" in Iraq: the killing of Saddam's two sons in July 2003; the capture of Saddam himself in December 2003 (The President even accepted Saddam's pistol from some of the American soldiers who captured him as a memento and placed it in a study beside the Oval Office, near a bust of Winston Churchill. "He really liked showing it off," according to a visitor); the official turning over of, as the President put it, "complete, full sovereignty" to an Iraqi "interim government" in June 2004; the "purple finger" election of January 30, 2005 that led to the writing of the Iraqi Constitution; the nationwide voting of December 15, 2005 that elected a national parliament; the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006 (about which the President felt so strongly that he personally congratulated the pilot of the plane that killed him on a trip to Baghdad and returned home reportedly feeling "buoyant").
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
When, before the invasion of Iraq, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki testified before Congress that "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed for an occupation of Iraq, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called him "wildly off the mark" and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared him "far off the mark"; when a relatively small American force took Baghdad in April 2003 and stood by while the Iraqi capital and its cultural treasure houses were looted, the Defense Secretary declared "freedom's untidy" and "stuff happens"; in June 2004, Wolfowitz denied that an insurgency was even taking place in Iraq ("An insurgency implies something that rose up afterwards ... [This] is a continuation of the war by people who never quit…"); by that June, the administration's viceroy in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, had already officially dissolved the Iraqi military and issued 97 legal orders, "binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people" (to remain in force even after any transfer of political authority), meant to control practically all Iraqi acts down to how you drove your car; in these years, the administration's representatives refused to deal diplomatically with Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
The Pentagon arrived in Iraq with plans to build four vast permanent military bases; later, the administration embarked on the construction of the largest embassy on the planet ("George W's Palace," as Iraqis sardonically dubbed it) in the heart of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone; American officials, handing out enormous no-bid contracts to crony corporations, promised that Iraq would be "reconstructed," that electricity service would be suitably restored; that potable water would be delivered; that damaged sewage systems would be repaired; and that the oil industry would soar above the production levels of the end of the Saddam era.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
This January, in a speech to the nation, the President announced a "new way forward in Iraq" and assured Americans that his new "surge" plan would: "change America's course in Iraq," "help us succeed in the fight against terror," and "put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad"; that "America would hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced"; that "the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November"; that "Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis"; that "Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year"; that "the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution"; that the administration plan would use "America's full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East," "bring us closer to success," and "hasten the day our troops begin coming home."
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong again!
And the flood of misstatements, mistakes, missed predictions, and mistaken assessments of the Iraqi and global situations continue to pour in. To take just a few examples from the last week of news:
*Since 2005, the President has been repeating the ad-jingle-style mantra about the Iraqi military: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." In fact, $19 billion dollars has already been poured into training, advising, and equipping that military and the Iraqi police. Yet, according to the White House Progress Report, "Despite stepped-up training, the readiness of the Iraqi military to operate independently of U.S. forces has decreased since President Bush's new [surge] strategy was launched in January." Outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Peter Pace, in fact, claims that "the number of Iraqi army battalions that operate independently, with no assistance from U.S. forces, has dropped from 10 to six over the last two months."
*The President promised in January that, in areas touched by his surge plan, American and Iraqi troops would begin to establish real "security," end sectarian cleansing, and allow no place to be a "safe haven" for militias. However, Julian E. Barnes and Ned Parker of the Los Angeles Times, reporting from a militia-controlled Baghdad neighborhood, write: "[A]s the experience of the troops in Ubaidi indicates, U.S. forces so far have been unable to establish security, even for themselves. Iraqis continue to flee their homes, leaving mixed areas and seeking safety in religiously segregated neighborhoods. About 32,000 families fled in June alone, according to figures compiled by the United Nations and the Iraqi government that are due to be released next week."
*The President began his global war on terror by swearing that the U.S. would be eternally "on the hunt" for al-Qaeda and has claimed ever since that U.S. forces have radically weakened Osama bin Laden's organization (though, just recently, a frustrated Congress raised the price on Osama's head from $25 million to $50 million). At his most recent news conference, Bush offered the slippery formulation: "[B]ecause of the actions we have taken, al Qaeda is weaker today than they would have been." But a new administration intelligence report from the National Counterterrorism Center entitled "Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West," reportedly claims that "the terrorist network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks."
*The President has constantly pointed to "progress" in Iraq. As Bob Woodward just revealed in the Washington Post, however, CIA Director Michael Hayden, offering an assessment of progress to the Iraq Study Group in a meeting last November, stated that "the inability of the [Maliki] government to govern seems irreversible." He added that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around.... We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function." Last week as well, a new intelligence assessment, a document signed off on by all 16 of the agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community, offered significantly grimmer news than the already grim White House interim Progress Report on possibilities for Iraqi national reconciliation and so "cast new uncertainty about the chances of success for President Bush's plan to contain the war through the deployment of an additional 28,000 U.S. troops, mostly in and around Baghdad."
But why go on? Only in Washington would such a consistent record of woeful failure lead to "stalemate." Only in Washington would a group of officials with such a record still be able to set the basic ground rules for debate. No individual would go back to the lot that sold you a string of automotive lemons, or let the doctor who had repeatedly misdiagnosed your disease (and maybe killed your neighbor with an overdose of anesthetic), operate on you.
In relation to Iraq, the situation can be summed up this way: The greatest gamblers in our history rolled the dice for a long-desired invasion, based on a dream of dominating the oil heartlands of the planet. This vision of a Pax Americana planet was based on the vaunted ability of the highest-tech military anywhere to dominate all in its path. (Domestically, a high-tech, well-oiled, utterly disciplined Republican Party was to establish political and lobbying dominion -- a Pax Republicana -- over Washington and the nation for a generation or more to come). On both imagined dominions, as on everything else, they were wrong. They were, that is, wrong in their expectations at the planetary level, and they have been wrong at every lesser level ever since. It has proven to be a cavalcade of stupidity.
If you take just the situation in Iraq in six-month increments, starting with the taking of Baghdad in 2003, any reasonable assessment would conclude that the American position has weakened and the country grown more chaotic, dangerous, and murderous in each of them. There is no reason to believe that, under the ministrations of this President, this Vice-President, these officials, and this set of military commanders anything could possibly change for the better as long as we remain stuck on the idea of occupying Iraq.
That's the logic of recent history. If you prefer the logic of dreams and of an empire of stupidity, then do stick with the present "stalemate."
Otherwise, it would make more sense to play an opposite's game with whatever positions the President and his officials take. Your odds on being right are guaranteed to be phenomenally high. Why, in fact, listen to them for one more second? Why be forced to look back and say "Wrong again!" one more time?
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books).
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