May 19, 2008

Dear Admiral Fallon:

I have not been able to find out how to reach you directly, so I have drafted this letter in the hope it will come to your attention.

First, thank you for honoring the oath we commissioned officers take to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.  As you are doubtless aware, that oath has no expiration date; it remains on active duty, so to speak.

You have let it be known that, even though you are now retired, you do not intend to speak, on or off the record, about the looming war with Iran.

You are acutely aware of the dangers of attacking Iran, but seem to be allowing an inbred reluctance to challenge your erstwhile commander in chief to trump that oath, and to prevent you from letting the American people know of the catastrophe about to befall us if, as seems likely, our country attacks Iran.

Two years ago I lectured at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.  I found it highly disturbing that, when asked about the oath they took upon entering the academy, several of the “Mids” thought it was to the commander in chief.  This brought to my mind the photos of German generals and admirals (as well as top church leaders and jurists) swearing personal oaths to Hitler.  Not our tradition, and yet…..

I was aghast that only the third Mid I called on got it right—that the oath is to protect and defend the Constitution, not the president.

Attack Iran: Trash the Constitution

No doubt you are very clear that an attack on Iran would be a flagrant violation of the Constitution of the United States, which stipulates that treaties ratified by the Senate become the supreme law of the land; that the United Nations Charter treaty—which the Senate ratified by a vote of 89 to 2 on July 28, 1945—expressly forbids attacks on other countries, unless they pose an imminent danger; that there is no provision allowing some other kind of “pre-emptive” or “preventive” attack against a nation that poses no imminent danger; and that Iran poses no imminent danger to the United States or its allies.

You may be forgiven for thinking: Isn’t 41 years of service enough; isn’t it enough that I resigned in order to remove myself from a chain of command with no conscience or respect for national or international law—that I shuddered at the thought of being charged in some earthly or heavenly court as a war criminal, if I “just followed orders” and helped start an unprovoked war on Iran?  Isn’t making my misgivings known to journalists last year, realizing fully that this could be a career-ender—isn’t all that enough?

With respect, sir, no, that’s not enough.  The stakes here are extremely high, and together with the integrity you have already shown goes still further responsibility.  Sadly, the vast majority of your general officer colleagues have, for whatever reason, ducked that responsibility.  You are pretty much it.

In their lust for attacking Iran, administration officials will do their best to marginalize you, but you do not strike me as one likely to be deterred by that.  And, prominent a person that you are, the corporate media surely will try to do the same, if you exposed the lies given as justification for attacking Iran.

Indeed, there are clear signs the media have been given their marching orders to support an attack on Iran—to include pre-censorship of factual stories exposing administration hyperbole and fecklessness, as the White House and the Pentagon paint a dubious portrait of the dangers posed by Iran.

Preparing a Captive Audience for War…

At the CIA I used to analyze the Soviet press, so you will understand when I refer to the Washington Post and the New York Times as the White House’s Pravda and Izvestiya.  Sadly, these days it is as easy as during the days of the controlled Soviet press to follow our own government’s evolving line with a daily reading of our own controlled press.

In a word, our newspapers are dutifully revving up for war on Iran, and are even trotting out some of the most widely discredited cheerleaders for war on Iraq—the New York Times’ Michael Gordon of aluminum tubes fame, for example, who is again parroting what he gets from administration officials and casting it as news.

In some respects the manipulation and suppression of information in the present lead-up to an attack on Iran is even more flagrant and all encompassing than in early 2003 before the invasion of Iraq.

It seems entirely possible that you are unaware of a recent misadventure that speaks volumes about this—unaware precisely because the media have put the wraps on it.  So let me adduce one striking example of what is afoot here.  The example has to do with the studied, if disingenuous, effort over recent months to blame all the troubles in southern Iraq on the “malignant” influence of Iran.

Sadly, some of your erstwhile colleagues are among the dramatis personae.

…But Covering Up Fiasco

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen told reporters on April 25 that Gen. David Petraeus would be giving a briefing “in the next couple of weeks” that would provide detailed evidence of “just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability.”  Petraeus’ staff alerted U.S. media to a major news event in which captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then destroyed.

Small problem.  When American munitions experts went to Karbala to inspect the alleged cache of Iranian weapons they found nothing that could be linked credibly to Iran.

News to you?  That’s because this potentially embarrassing episode went virtually unreported in the media—like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no corporate media to hear it crash.  So Mullen and Petraeus live, uninhibited and unembarrassed, to keep searching for Iranian weapons so the media can then tell a story more supportive of the orders they have been given to find ways to blame Iran for the troubles in Iraq.  Luckily for them, a fiasco is only a fiasco if folks know about it.

Media suppression of this misadventure is the most significant aspect of this story, in my view, and a telling indicator of how difficult it is to find honest reporting on these key issues.

Meanwhile, the Iraqis announced that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had formed his own Cabinet committee to investigate U.S. claims about Iranian weapons, and to attempt to “find tangible information and not information based on speculation.”

Dissing the Intelligence Estimate

Top officials from the president on down have been dismissing the key judgment of the National Intelligence Estimate released on December 3, 2007, a judgment concurred in by the 16 intelligence units of our government, that Iran had stopped the weapons-related part of its nuclear program in mid-2003.

Always willing to do his part, the malleable CIA chief, Michael Hayden, on April 30 publicly offered his “personal opinion” that Iran is building a nuclear weapon—the National Intelligence Estimate notwithstanding.  For good measure, Hayden added:

“It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to the highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq….Just make sure there’s clarity on that.”

Voicing his various “opinions,” Hayden is beginning to sound like the overly clever lawyers who advised him, orally, that it would be just fine to order NSA to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and like the other attorneys who approved water boarding.

And, please; tell me why we should care about Hayden’s “personal opinion?”  My neighbor Suzie, who gets her news from FOX, keeps voicing her “personal opinion” that all Muslims want to kill Americans, that generals with blue uniforms are the most trustworthy, and that weapons of mass destruction will still be found in Iraq.

But, seriously, I don’t need to tell you about the Haydens and the other smartly saluting, desk-riding headquarters generals here in Washington.

The Price of Silence

What I would suggest is that you have a serious conversation with a real general, Gen. Anthony Zinni, one of your predecessor CENTOM commanders (1997 to 2000).  As you know probably better than I, this Marine general is an officer of unusual integrity.  Nevertheless, when placed into circumstances very similar to those you now face, he could not find his voice.  And so he missed his chance to interrupt—or at least slow down—the juggernaut to war in Iraq.  You might ask him how he feels about that now, and what he would advise in current circumstances.

Zinni happened to be one of the honorees at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on August 26,2002, at which Vice President Dick Cheney delivered the exceedingly alarmist speech, unsupported by our best intelligence, about the nuclear threat and other perils awaiting us at the hands of Saddam Hussein.  That speech not only launched the seven-month public campaign against Iraq leading up to the war, but set the terms of reference for the Oct. 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate fabricated—yes, fabricated—to convince Congress to approve war on Iraq, which it did ten days later.

Gen. Zinni later shared publicly that, as he listened to Cheney, he was shocked to hear a depiction of intelligence that did not square with what he knew.  Although Zinni had retired two years earlier, his role as consultant had required him to stay up to date on intelligence relating to the Middle East.  One Sunday morning three and a half years after Cheney’s speech, Zinni told Meet the Press. “There was no solid proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction…I heard a case being made to go to war.”

Zinni had as good a chance as anyone to stop an unnecessary war—not a “pre-emptive war,” since there was nothing to pre-empt—and Zinni knew it.  What he and other knowledgeable officials could—and should—have tried to block was a war of aggression, defined at the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as the “supreme international crime.”

Sure, Zinni would have had to stick his neck out.  He may have had to speak out alone, since most senior officials, like then-CIA Director George Tenet, lacked courage and integrity.  In his memoir published a year ago, Tenet writes that Cheney did not follow the usual practice of clearing his August 26, 2002 speech with the CIA; that much of what Cheney said took him completely by surprise; and that Tenet “had the impression that the president wasn’t any more aware of what his number-two was going to say to the VFW until he said it.”

It is difficult to believe that Cheney’s shameless speech took “slam-dunk” Tenet completely by surprise.  We know from the Downing Street Minutes, vouched for by the UK as authentic, that Tenet told his British counterpart on July 20, 2002 that the president had decided to make war on Iraq for regime change and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”

Encore: Iran

Admiral Fallon, you know this to be the case also now with respect to the “intelligence” being fixed to “justify” war with Iran.  And no one knows better than you that your departure from the chain of command has turned it over completely to smartly saluting martinets.  No doubt you have long since taken the measure, for example, of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  So have I.

I was his branch chief when he was a young, disruptively ambitious, CIA analyst.  When Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey sought someone to shape CIA analysis to accord with his own conviction that the Soviet Union would never change, Gates leaped at the chance, proved his mettle, and bubbled right up to be chief of analysis.  After Casey died, Gates admitted to the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus that he (Gates) watched Casey on “issue after issue sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued.”  Gates’ entire career showed that he learned well at Casey’s knee.

So it should come as no surprise that, despite the unanimous judgment of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran stopped the weapons-related aspects of its nuclear program in mid-2003, Gates is now repeating the party line that Iran is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.  Some of his earlier statements were more ambiguous, but Gates recently took advantage of the opportunity to bend with the prevailing winds and freshen his own loyalty oath—to the president.

In an interview on events in the Middle East with a New York Times reporter on April 11, Gates was asked whether he was on the same page as the president, Gates replied, “Same line, same word.”  I imagine you are no more surprised at that than I.  Bottom line:  Gates will salute smartly and transmit the order, legal or illegal, if Cheney persuades the president to let the Air Force and Navy loose on Iran.

You know the probable consequences; you need to let the rest of the American people know.

A Gutsy Precedent

Can you, Admiral Fallon, be completely alone; can it be that you are the only general officer to resign on principle?  And, of equal importance, is there no other general officer, active or retired, who has taken the risk of speaking out in an attempt to inform Americans about President George W. Bush’s bellicose fixation with Iran.  Thankfully, there is.

Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, took the prestigious job of Chairman, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board when asked by the younger Bush.  From that catbird seat, Scowcroft could watch the unfolding of U.S. policy in the Middle East.  Over decades dealing with the press, Scowcroft had honed a reputation of quintessential discretion.  Thus, it was all the more striking when he did what he decided he had to do to warn Americans about what may be the president’s most dangerous fixation.

In an interview with London’s Financial Times in mid-October 2004 Scowcroft was harshly critical of the president, charging that Bush had been “mesmerized” by then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.  “Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger,” Scowcroft said.  “He has been nothing but trouble.”

Needless to say, Scowcroft was given his walking papers and told never to darken the White House doorstep again.  His very troubling observations have been largely shunned in the media, and banned from polite conversation here in Washington, although the insight they provide is worth a thousand erudite op-eds.  Testifying before Congress on June 16, 2005, I alluded to Scowcroft’s comments, and was widely pilloried in the media the next day for being, you guessed it, “anti-Semitic.”

A Bush Commitment?

There is ample evidence that Sharon’s successors believe they have extracted a commitment from President Bush to “take care of Iran” before he leaves office, and that the president has done nothing to disabuse them of that notion—no matter the consequences.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum at Sharm el Sheikh on Sunday, Bush threw in a gratuitous reference to “Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.”

“To allow the world’s leading sponsor of terror to gain the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations.  For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Pre-briefing the press, Bush’s national security adviser Stephen Hadley identified Iran as one of the dominant themes of the trip, adding repeatedly what seemed to be the PR formula of the day; namely, that Iran “is very much behind” all the woes afflicting the Middle East, from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq, even to Afghanistan.

The Rhetoric is Ripening

In the coming weeks, at least until U.S. forces can find some real Iranian weapons in Iraq, the rhetoric is likely to focus on what I call the Big Lie—the claim that Iran’s president has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.”  In his controversial speech in 2005, Ahmadinejad was actually quoting from something Ayatollah Khomeini had said in the early eighties.  Khomeini was expressing a hope that a regime that was treating the Palestinians so unjustly would be replaced by a more equitable one.

A distinction without a difference?  I think not.  Words matter.  As you may already know (but most Americans don’t), the literal translation from Farsi of what Ahmadinejad said is “The regime occupying Jerusalem much vanish from the pages of time.”  Contrary to what the administration and corporate media would have us all believe, the Iranian president was not threatening to nuke Israel, push it into the sea, or wipe it off the map—or, as is so often heard, “destroy” it.

President Bush is way out in front on this issue, and this comes through with particular clarity when he ad-libs answers to questions.  On October 17, 2007, long after he had been briefed on the key intelligence finding that Iran had stopped the nuclear weapons-related part of its nuclear development program, the president spoke as though, well,  “mesmerized.”  He said:

“But this—we got a leader in Iran who has announced he wants to destroy Israel.  So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems you ought to be interested in preventing them from have (sic) the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.  I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.”

Some contend that Bush does not really believe his rhetoric.  I rather think he does, for the Israelis seem to have his good ear, with the tin one aimed at the U.S. intelligence he has repeatedly disparaged.  But, frankly, which would be worse: that Bush believes Iran to be an existential threat to Israel and thus requires U.S. military action?—or that he knows it’s just rhetoric to “justify” U.S. action to “take care of” Iran for Israel?

What You Can Do

Admiral Fallon, you can surely speak authoritatively about what is likely to happen—to U.S. forces in Iraq, for example—if Bush orders your successors to begin bombing and missile attacks on Iran.  I imagine you have spent more than one sleepless night sorting through the full array of Iranian options for serious retaliation.

And you could readily update Scowcroft’s remarks, by drawing on what you observed of the Keystone Cops efforts of White House ideologues like Iran-Contra convict Elliot Abrams, supported by amateurish covert action operatives and Israeli intelligence, to overturn by force the ascendancy of Hamas in 2006-07 and Hezbollah.  (Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misleading Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, but was pardoned by the first President Bush on Dec. 24, 1992.)

Clearly, it is the arch-neoconservative Abrams, aided, instructed, and abetted by the vice president, who is running U.S. policy toward the Middle East.  And it is just as clear that the status of the secretary state has been reduced simply to “frequent flyer.”

It is easy to understand why no professional military officer would wish to be in the position of taking orders originating from the likes of Abrams—not to mention the vice president.

If you weigh in, as I believe your (non-expiring) oath to protect and defend the Constitution dictates, you might conceivably prompt other sober heads and courageous hearts to speak out.  I hope you will agree that an attack on Iran can still be prevented, but it seems that this will take more outspokenness and energy than those of us who see what is coming have been able to muster so far.  And the controlled press is a huge problem.

Were you to speak out strongly at this stage, the media could not ignore you.  I cannot bring myself to believe that you, like so many on the Hill, would be cowed at the prospect of being pilloried by FOX and branded anti-Semitic.  And, who knows; perhaps some of those former subordinate officers who admire you for what you have done, will be encouraged to go and do likewise.

And, in the end, if profound ignorance and ideology—supported by a captive corporate press and abetted by political parties supine before the Israel lobby—enable an attack on Iran, and the Iranians, for example, take thousands of our troops hostage in southern Iraq, you will be able to look in the mirror, and at the rest of us, and say at least you tried.

You will not have to live with the remorse of not knowing what you might have made possible, had you been able to shake your reluctance to speak out.

Leadership does not end with retirement; neither do oaths.

Respectfully,

/s/

Ray McGovern
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Ray McGovern, a veteran Army intelligence officer and then CIA analyst for 27 years, now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.

The original version of this article appeared on Consortiumnews.com.

“It is time for new leadership that understands the way to win a debate with John McCain or any Republican who is nominated is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq.” Senator Obama on January 30, 2008

Keith Olbermann refers to it as the “Obama rebuttal,” the argument that Senator’s Clinton’s “experience and that of Republican rival, John McCain led to their participation in the worst American foreign policy mistake in decades if not centuries, a single Senate vote in 2002, authorizing the use of military force in Iraq.”

The statement is accurate, the way a broken clock is accurate twice a day.

It looks at a single date, October 11, 2002, when both Clinton and McCain both voted for the Iraq resolution, and then ignores everything they said and did thereafter. If you look at the entire record, the pre-war positions of Hillary Clinton and John McCain were polar opposites. Any suggestion otherwise is more than a little misleading.

Clinton’s position was substantially similar to that of Hans Blix, who believed that Saddam would never allow intrusive WMD inspections without the threat of force. But once the inspections were under way, neither Clinton nor Blix saw any basis or pursuing military action. McCain’s position was like Dick Cheney’s. He didn’t care about inspectors or evidence of WMD. He just wanted war, period. He demanded as much in his speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies on February 13, 2003, one day before Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei presented the U.N. with their initial findings - that there was nothing there. And, just like he does today, McCain justified his stance by perverting history.

Obama and the media prefer to suggest some equivalency between the pre-war positions of Senators Clinton and McCain, conflating the October 2002 vote with the decision to invade in March 2003. As I’ve explained before on HuffPost, this is less than entirely honest. Republicans and their lapdogs have been pulling this same stunt since 2004. Here was the Republican party line used against presidential candidate John Kerry:

“[L]arge stockpiles of mass destruction do not exist. Saddam may have had the intent, the interest, but they’re not there. John Kerry is obviously going to try to take advantage of it. Every time he does you hear George Bush and Dick Cheney saying, `Well, that’s interesting senator, because you voted to authorize the war.’ … [T]hus far, what President Bush has been able to say is, “Well, I believed they [WMD] were there. Former President Clinton believed they were there. John Kerry believed they were there. If it was a mistake, it was an honest mistake.” That’s his view.” Tim Russert on Today, September 17, 2004

“That’s his view,” said Russert. But what about the facts that Russert kept from NBC’s viewers? John Kerry did not “vote to authorize the war” without exhausting all other means of peaceful resolution. On October 2, 2002, John Kerry said, “The vote that I will give to the president is for one reason and one reason only, to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections.” [emphasis added] Nor did John Kerry “believe” that the WMD were there at the time of the invasion. As he said, on March 14, 2003, “Nothing I have seen in the intelligence over the last years suggests to me that in terms of threat to the United States that there is, at this moment, such a compelling rationale that there is a distinction of weeks or months.” In other words, Kerry said Blix should have all the time he needed.

Back then, Russert blurred this clear-cut distinction to make the Republicans look better. Now, Olbermann and others blur that same distinction to make Hillary Clinton look worse.

Read John McCain’s speech at the Center for Strategic & International Studies to get the full effect of his verbal grandiosity and hysteria - very much at odds with that aw-shucks persona we see on television. And then compare it with Senator Clinton’s statements at the time.

“Today, new threats to civilization again defy our imagination in scale and potency. I believe Iraq is a threat of the first order, and only a change of regime will make Iraq a state that does not threaten us and others, and where a liberated people assume the rights and responsibilities of freedom.
…
“Proponents of containment claim that Iraq is in a “box.” But it is a box with no lid, no bottom, and whose sides are falling out. Within this box are definitive footprints of germ, chemical and nuclear programs, and from it has come blood money for Palestinian terrorists, and support for the international terrorism of al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam.”

The evidence for these “definitive footprints of germ, chemical and nuclear programs,” from which comes “support for the international terrorism of al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam,” was nowhere in the NIE. (A “footprint” means there’s an industrial infrastructure, which is more substantial than a few suspicious trucks or aluminum tubes.) Here’s what Mohamed ElBaradei reported, with his usual 100% accuracy, on the “definite footprint of a nuclear program” one day after McCain’s speech:

“As I have reported on numerous occasions, the IAEA concluded, by December 1998, that it had neutralized Iraq’s past nuclear programme and that, therefore, there were no unresolved disarmament issues left at that time.”

Senator McCain then gave his phony analytic framework:

“For a policy of containment to work, as it did in the Cold War, four components are necessary: reliable allies; a clear goal with a consistent doctrine; the economic and military capability to enforce the doctrine; and the political will to support the demands of the policy. …We enjoy none of these assets today with regard to Iraq.

“Today, Iraq is growing stronger, not weaker, under a policy of containment. We are also dealing with a regime driven more by the unstable character of a risk-taking mass murderer than by the caution that mutually assured destruction encouraged in an enemy with a more intelligent appreciation of its vulnerability.
…

“The United States does not have reliable allies to implement a policy to contain Iraq. West Germany was a front-line state in the Cold War, as Saudi Arabia is today a front-line state and key “ally” in the confrontation with Iraq. During the Cold War, West Germany welcomed the deployment of hundreds of thousands of Americans and hundreds of military installations on its soil; placed few restrictions on American forces stationed there; worked hand-in-glove with us to conduct military training and exercises; and permitted us to station tactical and theater nuclear missiles on its soil sufficient to defend Western Europe.

Except the U.S. military was stationed on land, sea and air throughout the Persian Gulf, in Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, United Arab Emirates and in Saudi Arabia. Backstopping U.S. force, if necessary, were Israel’s significant military resources.

Then there’s McCain’s delusional insinuation that Iraq’s military power was ever comparable to that of the Soviet Union. McCain was ignoring that other dirty little secret, which was apparent to anybody who took a cursory look. The U.N. sanctions worked. Notwithstanding the kickbacks to Saddam, which involved skimming off the top, Iraq’s industrial capabilities had been decimated by the sanctions imposed after the first Gulf war. As ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council,

“[D]uring the past four years at the majority of Iraqi sites industrial capacity has deteriorated substantially due to the departure of the foreign support that was often present in the late ’80s, the departure of large numbers of skilled Iraqi personnel in the past decade and the lack of consistent maintenance by Iraq of sophisticated equipment.”

Senator Clinton’s position was far more prosaic, given her affinity for the facts. For her, military action was always subject to one simple question, can we avert the threat of WMD by some other means? Here’s what she announced to the media:

“Hillary Clinton tells Irish TV she is against war with Iraq,” Irish Times, February 8, 2003

“Hillary Clinton prefers ‘peaceful solution’ in Iraq,” Associated Press March 3, 2003 “[Clinton said the US] should continue its attempts to build an international alliance rather than going to war quickly with Iraq…[I]nspection is preferable to war, if it works, the New York Democrat said.”

Senator Obama, like any honorable politician, goes after his opponent by framing the past in a way that’s advantageous to him. Fair enough. But neither he, nor the media, are recounting the complete story in an entirely fair and evenhanded way.

————-

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What are the odds the Bush administration … will heed the admonitions of “[c]urrent and former intelligence officials [who] say the Bush Administration’s National Intelligence Estimate regarding terrorist threats to the United States does not provide evidence to support its assertions and may have inflated the domestic threat posed by the Lebanese political and military group Hezbollah, perhaps because it receives financial support from Iran”? (For her Raw Story article, Larisa Alexandrovna interviewed numerous intelligence experts on and off the record, including Robert Baer.)

… will enact recommendations by a presidential commission on veterans’ healthcare — even though former senator Robert Dole (R-Kansas) today told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that many of the simple but dramatic changes for veterans’ disability claims and care can be instituted immediately by the executive branch, without need to pass legislation?

… will act on the recommendations of its just-appointed food safety panel (oh, lord, another panel, which I swear is all about kicking the can down the road)? Particularly with “the benign neglect, if not outright dismantling, of government agencies designed to oversee food safety” and “the situation represent[ing] a disaster waiting to happen”? (This is such a damn fine editorial — and frightening — I insist you read it: “Nation had better make food safety a high priority again.”)
 

What do all of these crises have in common? They’re victims of the Bush administration’s systematic politicalization of information and its systematic starvation of federal agencies.

The systematic starvation includes the privatizing of Medicare. Writes Congressman Pete Stark today:

A decade ago, Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested he’d like to see Medicare “wither on the vine” and cease to guarantee quality health care to our seniors and people with disabilities. Today, Republicans are putting Gingrich’s plan into action. They’re fighting to continue massive overpayments to Medicare’s private plans at the expense of the traditional Medicare program.

Thanks to years of Republican “reform,” private insurers receive, on average, 12 percent more than the government pays for care in traditional Medicare. That’s what every independent, objective and non-partisan organization that has taken a look at Medicare’s payments policies has found.

Why then do Republicans insist on continuing these overpayments? Because their holy grail is privatization, not “fiscal responsibility.” The more private insurers are paid to provide Medicare’s benefits, the greater their profits and the bigger their incentive to sign up beneficiaries. And the more people enrolled in private plans, the easier it will be for Republicans to pursue full-fledged Medicare privatization.

Republicans hope to turn all of Medicare into a voucher that seniors and people with disabilities could use to purchase private insurance. This would eliminate Medicare’s guaranteed benefit and force beneficiaries to fend for themselves. The result will be higher costs, fewer benefits, and less health care for Medicare’s beneficiaries.

Unfortunately, Republican efforts are already bearing fruit. Thanks to overpayments, the number of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in private plans has skyrocketed in recent years. Today, nearly one in five seniors and people with disabilities are enrolled in the private plans Republicans misnamed “Medicare Advantage.” This despite “Medicare Advantage” plans’ ability to charge seniors and people with disabilities more than traditional Medicare for a whole host of services – everything from hospital stays to home health care and chemotherapy drugs to durable medical equipment.

The ongoing Republican effort to privatize Medicare, in other words, is very different from their failed attempt to privatize Social Security. While the Republican attack against Medicare lacks the pomp and circumstance of their effort to privatize Social Security, it is much more deliberate, much more successful, and just as dangerous!

A neighbor of mine is disabled and surviving on just over $1,000 per month. The neighbor is about to become eligible for Medicare, and is scrambling to find policies to fill all the gaps in Medicare. I sent him to a friend who has expertise in health plans, and she helped him through the confusing, conflicting information he’s getting. He can’t get state help because he receives about $400 per month too much. He gets Medicare’s Plan A but must buy Plan B (for doctors’ visits and tests) for $94.00 per month.

He is looking for a prescription drug policy, but can’t find one that will cover all of his medications, even though all come in generic form. He will probably buy a plan that costs him about $30.00 per month and he must pay another $90.00 per month to the pharmacy. By the way, he could renew his Costco membership, get a ride with me, and buy all his drugs for 1/4 to 1/3 what Medicare is paying the drug companies, but he realizes no savings from buying his drugs for less money. That’s because the less he pays for his drugs, the longer it will take him to get past the deductible. Is that nuts, or what? But the Republicans made sure their lobbyist buddies in the pharmaceutical industries got their wallets padded first.

He’s also looking for a Medigap policy, which can cost anywhere from $135 to $644 per month, depending on which insurance agent he talks to. He’s probably going to get one of the cheaper Medigap plans, for about $145 per month.

So, with that Medicare that Newt Gingrich disdains so much, even in its present form, his monthly medical insurance and medications are going to cost him at least $355 per month. That’s not counting any overages his doctors and a hospital may charge him. That leaves him just over $600 per month for rent, utilities, telephone, car insurance, gas — oh, and food.

Veterans are reporting similar expenses, and they must also cope with traveling long distances to get to a veterans health care facility.

I have some ideas for what we can do about all this, but I’d like to hear yours.

Larry C Johnson

There is a significant and unexplained disconnect between the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Defending the Homeland and the April 2006 NIE, Trends in Global Terrorism. The 2006 NIE made the case:

United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa’ida and disrupted its operations; however, we judge that al-Qa’ida will continue to pose the greatest threat to the Homeland and US interests abroad by a single terrorist organization. We also assess that the global jihadist movement—which includes al- Qa’ida, affiliated and independent terrorist groups, and emerging networks and cells—is spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts.

Got it? Al Qa’ida is damaged and disrupted.

Now, 15 months later we are informed that Al-Qa’ida is back—-tanned, rested and ready:

Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al-Qa’ida senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al-Qa’ida will intensify its efforts to put operatives here.

So, how do we get from “seriously damaged” to “regenerated”? According to the latest NIE, a significant share of the blame resides with and in Pakistan. But do we really know what is going on?
 

A careful reading of the NIE on The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland fails to reveal any empirical or intelligence data to justify the conclusions. For example, if we had intelligence that an increasing number of foreigners had crossed into Waziristan during the last three years, received training, and departed the area then there would be some legitimate basis for concern about a “regenerated” Al-Qa’ida. But no such evidence or facts are proffered to make such a case. That is odd. Even in unclassified key judgments one should expect some reference to the underlying data supporting the assessment that a capability has regenerated. But there is none.
More troubling is the underlying assumption that there are active training camps in this area? Really? Then why are they still standing? Why have we not seen a smoking hole in the ground where these alleged camps once stood? George Bush promised in the wake of 9-11 that a country must decide if it is with us or against us. And that countries that harbored terrorists would pay a price.

Let’s concede that the Waziristan portion of Pakistan is wild and ungovernable by the authorities in Islamabad. If there are such camps then Predator drones armed with hellfire missiles should be taking those camps out. If people trained in those camps are coming out equipped to do terror why have none been arrested or detained?

I agree that Osama Bin Laden and Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri want bad things to happen to Americans and American cities. But their malevolent intent and desires do not translate into hard capabilities. So what is up DNI Director Mike McConnell? Is the DNI and the NIC confusing their fears with reality? It sure looks like it. It is time for the Senate and House intelligence committees to get some firm, clear answers.

During July 18’s Hardball, Chris Matthews called on Judith Miller for her expertise on the just-released NIE (read Larry’s assessment instead), on Al Qaeda, and her “report for the Manhattan Institute‘s ‘City Journal’ on how the New York and Los Angeles police departments are working to prevent another terrorist attack.” Matthews began:

Judy, you‘re a hero to the press. You are definitely a woman to be trusted with secrets. And thank you for coming on this program. Let‘s talk about what matters more to people than press shields and all the rest that we care about. I‘m in Los Angeles right now. I‘m up there in a—I was up in a Renaissance Hotel the other night, looking down—actually, when I got up this morning—seeing this whole city, crowded city, below me. Is it safe?

There’s more:
 

Matthews asked her a number of softball questions about terrorism, which she responded to with stock answers that any twit could come up with — like this:

MILLER: Look, terrorists have to be lucky only once to succeed. The defenders have to be lucky and good all the time.

That’s deep. Then Matthews closed the interview with this:

MATTHEWS: Judy, I believe in you. You‘re great. And by the way, I didn‘t ask you about Scooter Libby because—because the president didn‘t let‘s make it clear what happened here. If he had pardoned the guy, we could talk because there‘d be no further legal action against him. But because he‘s now floating around there in limbo, as the guy with clemency commutation but still appealing his case, you can‘t talk about the case.

MILLER: That‘s right.

MATTHEWS: I completely understand that. I sympathize with you.

MILLER: Thank you, Chris.

MATTHEWS: And I sometimes even sympathize with Scooter Libby.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: Anyway, thank you, Judy Miller.

(LAUGHTER)

MILLER: Thank you, Chris Matthews.

MATTHEWS: OK.

P.S. Butters tells me that there’s a rumor that Kate Beckinsale may play Judith Miller in a movie. Beckinsale’s fans are having a fierce debate about the ethics of playing a woman who sold the administration’s lies that took us to war.

AND: What’s on YOUR mind?

UPDATE: Uh, judy, it’s touching you’re investigating how police departments in major U.S. cities are preparing for terrorism, but the war you falsely peddled is what is SUCKING UP most of the money to fight terrorism:

Cost of the “war on terror” keeps rising

A new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the price tag could reach $758 billion — most of that is for Iraq.

Read all at Salon.

Larry C Johnson

Today’s release of the unclassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate, Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland, is a black eye for the Bush Administration propaganda campaign that Iraq is making America safer. Despite White House efforts to persuade the public that we are vanquishing Al Qaeda, the intelligence community sees things differently. It is the equivalent of George Bush trying to pass off a pig wearing lipstick as a foxy debutante, but frantic spin notwithstanding the naked critter is still a pig.

Here are the two critical key judgments from the estimate:

We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups.

Of note, we assess that al-Qa’ida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland. In addition, we assess that its association with AQI helps al-Qa’ida to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks.

It is important to understand that work on this NIE started in November 2006 and circulated in April/May 2007 for comment; so it is not reflecting new, startling intelligence. The Senators and Representatives with access to the classified portions of the NIE need to ask some tough questions. For starters, what is the evidence that Al Qaeda has “regenerated” its ability to attack the continental United States? I am skeptical of this claim because we have witnessed a marked decline in mass casualty terrorist attacks outside of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006.

Set aside the Bush Administration rhetoric on terrorism and look at its actions. In November 2001, when Osama Bin Laden was surrounded in Tora Bora, the CIA officer leading the charge, Gary Berntsen, called for reinforcements to finish off the Al Qaeda Chief. General Tommy Franks and General Dell Dailey turned him down. Bin Laden escaped.

Several recent books, including Woodward’s State of Denial, document that George Bush directed Secretary of Defense to start planning the invasion of Iraq in October of 2001. The focus on Iraq took Al Qaeda off of the hook.

George Bush and his apologists keep insisting that we are fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. While there are individuals in Iraq who would consider themselves affiliated in some fashion with Bin Laden, the fact is that most of the violence is sectarian in nature and has little to do with Al Qaeda. I was in Iraq a year ago with the U.S. military forces who are devoting their energies to tracking down and killing AQ operatives. Despite a steady body count and capture of suspects, the overall level of violence in Iraq has continued to rise. In other words, success in killing and capturing suspected AQ operatives is having no effect on stemming the rise in violence.

Why is Bin Laden and his number two, Ayman Zawahair, still running free? The answer is pretty simple–the Bush Administration has not made their capture or elimination a priority. Here we are approaching the six year anniversary of the 9-11 attacks and there still is no one in charge of hunting down the Al Qaeda leaders. CIA is working the issue as are U.S. special operations forces. But the full panoply of the U.S. Government’s resources have not been marshaled nor organized. If you are going to have a Czar in the White House then for my money it ought to be a “Where in the World is Osama” Czar.

The folks ostensibly responsible for coordinating the counter terrorism effort–Fran Townsend and her clumsy deputy, Juan Zarate–are over their heads and incapable of swimming in deep water. I have no personal animus against either, but good friends throughout the national security bureaucracy describe the two of them as incompetent. Someone is supposed to harness the energy of the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of State and create a coherent strategy. But they have failed to do so and no one else has stepped into the void. Therefore we should not be surprised that Al Qaeda reportedly is thriving in the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan.

Check out whitehouse.gov. Terrorism is not listed as one of the key focus issues on the left side of the page. That speaks volumes. George Bush does not get briefed every morning on the status of the hunt for Bin Laden. Knowledgeable friends still on the inside tell me that he is not demanding progress reports. Finding Bin Laden is not a priority issue for Bush.

Perhaps George Bush needs to go back and review his notes from Harvard Business School. Set a goal, organize the necessary resources to accomplish the goal, and make it a priority. But as Al Qaeda regenerates what is President Bush going to do? He has his August vacation in Crawford to worry about. That is his true priority.