Bush's Political Survival Depends on Terror Threats
An evil symbiosis does exist between Muslim terrorists and American politicians, but it is not the one Republicans describe. The jihadists need George W. Bush to sustain their cause. His bloody crusade in the Middle East bolsters their accusation that America is out to destroy Islam. The president has unwittingly made himself the lead recruiter of willing young martyrs.
More to the point, it is equally true that Bush desperately needs the terrorists. They are his last frail hope for political survival. They divert public attention, at least momentarily, from his disastrous war in Iraq and his shameful abuses of the Constitution. The "news" of terror -- whether real or fantasized -- reduces American politics to its most primitive impulses, the realm of fear-and-smear where George Bush is at his best.
So, once again in the run-up to a national election, we are visited with alarming news. A monstrous plot, red alert, high drama playing on all channels and extreme measures taken to tighten security.
The White House men wear grave faces, but they cannot hide their delight. It's another chance for Bush to protect us from those aliens with funny names, another opportunity to accuse Democrats of aiding and abetting the enemy.
This has worked twice before. It could work again this fall unless gullible Americans snap out of it. Wake up, folks, and recognize how stupid and wimpish you look. I wrote the following two years ago during a similar episode of red alerts: "Bush's 'war on terrorism' is a political slogan -- not a coherent strategy for national defense -- and it succeeds brillantly only as politics. For everything else, it is quite illogical."
Where is the famous American skepticism? The loose-jointed ability to laugh at ourselves in anxious moments? Can't people see the campy joke in this docudrama called "Terror in the Sky"? The joke is on them. I have a suspicion that a lot of Americans actually enjoy the occasional fright since they know the alarm bell does actually not toll for them. It's a good, scary movie, but it's a slapstick war.
The other day at the airport in Burlington, Vermont, security guards confiscated liquid containers from two adolescent sisters returning home from vacation. The substance was labeled "Pure Maple Syrup." I am reminded of the Amish pretzel factory that was put on Pennsylvania's list of targets. Mothers with babes in arms are now told they must take a swiq of their baby formula before they can board the plane. I already feel safer.
The latest plot uncovered by British authorities may be real. Or maybe not. We do not yet know enough to be certain. The early reporting does not reassure or settle anything (though the Brits do sound more convincing than former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who gave "terror alerts" such a bad reputation). Tony Blair is no more trustworthy on these matters than Bush and Cheney. British investigators are as anxious as their American counterparts to prove their vigilance (and support their leaders). The close collaboration with Pakistani authorities doesn't exactly add credibility.
One question to ask is: Why now? The police have had a "mole" inside this operation since late 2005, but have yet to explain why they felt the need to swoop down and arest alleged plotters at this moment (two days after the Connecticut primary produced a triumph for anti-war politics).
The early claim that a massive takedown of a dozen airliners was set for August 16 is "rubbish," according to London authorities. So who decided this case was ripe for its public rollout? Blair consulted Cheney: What did they decide? American economist Jamie Galbraith was on a ten-hour flight from Manchester, England, to Boston on the day the story broke, and has wittily reflected on other weak points in the official story line.
The point is, Americans are not entirely defenseless pawns. They can keep their wits and reserve judgment. They can voice loudly the skepticism that Bush and company have earned by politicizing of the so-called "war" from the very start. Leading Democrats are toughening up. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid uses plain English to explain what the Republicans up to -- using genuine concerns of national security "as a political wedge issue. It is disgusting, but not surprising."
Instead of cowering in silence, the opposition party should start explaining this sick joke. Political confusion starts with the ill-conceived definition of a "war" that's best fought by police work, not heavy brigades on a battlefield. Forget the hype, call for common sense and stout hearts.
All we know, for sure, is that Bush and his handlers are not going to back off the fear-and-smear strategy until it loses an election for them. Maybe this will be the year.
William Greider is the author of, most recently, "The Soul of Capitalism" (Simon & Schuster).
What is absolutely confounding to me is the situation with the airplanes. These assholes have gone completely off the deep end with regard to searches and banning of items. They continue to waste enormous sums of money to make sure people who are incapable of any possible crime on an airplane are thorougly searched.
They further this behavior by thoroughly searching the same passengers, time and again, when they clearly pose no threat to the airplane. A simple background check will clearly show that I'm never going to be a person who is going to attempt to hijack an airplane.
But, absent their behavior regarding airplanes, all other avenues of entry to the US are relatively wide open. I can send a container with a nuclear warhead right into most of the cargo terminals and the chances of detection are about 2%. Does the administration tighten any of the controls on these items every time they scream "terrorist". The answer is no, they don't. And why not? Because they don't give a shit about security in this country. They simply use a show of force at the airports to remind the public that the terrorists are going to strike at any minute. This serves their interests and commands a fairly large group of the popluation to support the administration simply because there has not been another terrorist attack since 9/11.
The entire situation is rigged purely for shock value and to reinforce the fact that GWB and company is strong on terrorism and will get the job done.
Nothing can be further from the truth and I sincerely hope that the poulace will get it's proverbial head out of its ass and finally realize what's going on.
Osama and his thugs know that.....
The more they play you the more they look good for the ignorants that follow him.....
Simple strategy.....
GW has been all Osama could have hoped for and then some. The man sold airline stocks short before the 9/11 attack. Anticipating an all-out offensive from the U.S. in Afgahnistan, he had Gen. Masoud assasinated two days before the 9/11 attack. He boldly predicted that the U.S. would invade and set up camp somewhere in the ME in the near future in order to garner support for his cause, and GW made him look like a genius. He's been two steps ahead of the game from day one. In the meantime, GW has been playing politics: The Nexus of Politics and Terror
What is absolutely confounding to me is the situation with the airplanes. These assholes have gone completely off the deep end with regard to searches and banning of items. They continue to waste enormous sums of money to make sure people who are incapable of any possible crime on an airplane are thorougly searched.
They further this behavior by thoroughly searching the same passengers, time and again, when they clearly pose no threat to the airplane. A simple background check will clearly show that I'm never going to be a person who is going to attempt to hijack an airplane.
But, absent their behavior regarding airplanes, all other avenues of entry to the US are relatively wide open. I can send a container with a nuclear warhead right into most of the cargo terminals and the chances of detection are about 2%. Does the administration tighten any of the controls on these items every time they scream "terrorist". The answer is no, they don't. And why not? Because they don't give a shit about security in this country. They simply use a show of force at the airports to remind the public that the terrorists are going to strike at any minute. This serves their interests and commands a fairly large group of the popluation to support the administration simply because there has not been another terrorist attack since 9/11.
The entire situation is rigged purely for shock value and to reinforce the fact that GWB and company is strong on terrorism and will get the job done.
Nothing can be further from the truth and I sincerely hope that the poulace will get it's proverbial head out of its ass and finally realize what's going on.
Ryanair to sue British government for £3m
Ryanair is to sue the UK government for £3.3m for losses it says it incurred because of tighter aviation security.
Ryanair gave the government a one-week deadline to normalise the procedures introduced following the foiling of an alleged plot to bomb airliners.
Passengers are limited to taking one small piece of hand luggage, and are being subjected to frequent searches.
Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary called the measures "a shambles". The government said the airline had no legal grounds.
'Government failure'
The government has still failed to get UK security back to normal
Michael O'Leary, Ryanair chief executive
Dublin-based Ryanair said it would give the proceeds to charity.
"It is a shambles and a cock-up and we are giving terrorists and extremists a victory," Mr O'Leary said.
"The government has, two weeks after the events of 10 August, still failed to get UK security back to normal."
Mr O'Leary warned that the current security measures would result in delays over the Bank Holiday weekend.
The government has said it will not pay compensation or "compromise security" by easing travel restrictions until the threat level has significantly receded.
We do not believe that Ryanair have any legal grounds
Department of Transport
It said the 1982 Aviation Security Act gave it the power to implement measures for the safety and protection of the travelling public.
"We do not believe that Ryanair have any legal grounds," said a spokesman for the Department of Transport.
"We continue to face a serious security threat and we will not compromise security."
But Ryanair plans to use provisions within a separate law - the 2000 Transport Act - to seek compensation for losses incurred between 10 and 16 August.
Chaotic scenes
After details of the alleged bomb plot emerged, the government banned passengers from taking any hand luggage onto flights leaving the UK.
The measures led to chaotic scenes at Heathrow and other leading UK airports as hundreds of flights were cancelled and thousands of passengers experienced long delays.
Restrictions were eased slightly several days later but the measures have been fiercely criticised by Ryanair, BA and other carriers.
BA has said it is considering seeking compensation from airports operator BAA for failing to handle airport security efficiently during the emergency.
The security clampdown has been particularly problematic for Ryanair because it prefers to put as little luggage into plane holds as possible to ensure a quick turnaround of flights and thus maintain lower prices.
It has called for larger briefcases to be allowed as hand luggage and for the current policy of searching every second passenger passing through X-ray security to be relaxed.
The carrier has also claimed it is "nonsensical" to reduce hand luggage on outbound flights but not on inbound services.
The Fear Factor
President Bush's new argument for staying the course in Iraq: It'll only get worse if we leave.
Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 4:47 p.m. ET Aug 25, 2006
Aug. 25, 2006 - If you think things are bad now, they will be worse if we leave. That’s the essence of President Bush’s argument for staying the course in Iraq. Bush is doing what he always does—shamelessly ramping up the fear factor. He says if U.S. troops leave Iraq, the terrorists will be right behind them, bringing Baghdad to America. He’s brought ruin to Iraq and his policies are helping create our worst nightmare, a nuclear Iran. How much worse can it get?
Bush’s original sin was to politicize U.S. intervention in Iraq. He used the war to transform an aimless presidency into one of Churchillian dimensions, and now that it’s all turned sour, he has nothing to fall back on. Bush is as beleaguered now as Lyndon Johnson was during Vietnam—with one key difference. The worse the news is from Iraq, the more positive Bush is that he’s right. As Vietnam raged on, Johnson became less certain he was doing the right thing.
Victory no longer appears possible in Iraq, yet Bush’s rhetoric is more bullish than ever about the correctness of his course. U.S. forces are not leaving Iraq as long as he’s president. His model is Prime Minister Winston Churchill, defeated by an ungrateful British public after leading the country through war, a lonely figure vindicated by history. To achieve stability in Iraq, Thomas Ricks, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post and author of “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” (Penguin 2006), says U.S. forces can expect to stay for 10 to 15 years, on top of the three they’ve already been there. “And that’s the optimistic scenario,” he says.
We learned from tapes of phone conversations released years after the fact how skeptical Johnson was that the war in Southeast Asia could be won, and how he worried about the senselessness of sending people to die there. His dilemma, which he articulates, is that he didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war. In the spring of ’64, well before the major troop escalation, Johnson had serious doubts about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. “It just worries the hell out of me ... I don’t think it’s worth fighting for,” he told his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy.
In his public utterances Johnson talked of “the progress” made in Vietnam, describing things as he wanted them to be, as if he believed that by the force of his will he could transform what was or had already happened, writes Doris Kearns Goodwin in her 1976 biography of LBJ. He was spending long hours choosing among bombing targets and awaking at three in the morning fretting that some errant bomb might inadvertently spark war with China or Russia. Privately he was tormented, uncertain about the course he was on and unable to muster the political courage to change. The public knew nothing of his anguish until he abruptly withdrew from the presidential primaries in March of ’68, coupling his stunning announcement with a statement that he would begin to de-escalate American involvement in Vietnam.
If Bush is experiencing any self-doubt about the course he has thrust upon the country, he didn’t show it in his nearly hour-long press conference on Monday. “Presidents care about whether people support their policies,” Bush said in response to a question. “Of course I care.” But he added, leaning into the podium and eyes blazing. “I’m going to do what I think is right and if people don’t like me for it, that’s just the way it is.”
The more we learn about the policymaking that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the more frightening the picture becomes. Bush’s policies did not undergo rigorous analysis. Dissent was equated with disloyalty, and young Americans were led into battle with the worst war plan in the country’s history, according to Ricks, who is extremely knowledgeable and no softie. Any leader who commits young men and women to battle must have private doubts. They wouldn’t be human if they didn’t. We know Johnson did and failed to act on them. Doesn’t Bush have any doubts?
Bush believes victory is possible in Iraq if only he perseveres. True enough, the history of the region is yet to be written, but in the short term—say the next generation—the prospects are grim. “The name of the game right now is not achieving victory—it is preventing a major defeat from becoming a catastrophic defeat,” says Dr. Ernest Evans, a military scholar who teaches at several schools connected to the U.S. Army Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. “I would define a major defeat as pulling out of Iraq and leaving behind complete chaos. I would define a catastrophic defeat as attacking Iran in a desperate effort to salvage Iraq and igniting a regional war. These are the painful choices before the Republic.”
Time for a little history lesson. From Sept of 2002. These guys talk so flippantly of what is about to kill over 100,000 people. Keep in mind that we know now the Bush was well aware that Iraq had no real nuclear program, and read his lies:
Marketing Iraq: Why now?
September 12, 2002 Posted: 7:50 PM EDT (2350 GMT)
By William Schneider
CNN Senior Political Analyst
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- There's a big question hanging over President Bush's Iraq policy: Why now? Why, more than 11 years after the Gulf War, is it suddenly so urgent for the U.S. to go after Saddam Hussein now?
Some people are asking, is President Bush's Iraq offensive being driven by the fall election? An idea the vice president calls ``reprehensible.''
"The suggestion that I find reprehensible is the notion that somehow, you know, we saved this and now we've sprung it on them for political reasons," Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" last week.
But some people in very high places are warning that a life-and-death policy like Iraq "must not be a simple matter of political convenience, " as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday.
What's the political convenience? Strategist Dick Morris spelled it out in a recent column: ``Polls show that only one issue works in Bush's favor: terrorism.''
President Bush addressing the U.N. General Assembly Thursday.
Does Morris think the president is, as they say, ``wagging the dog'' to divert attention from other issues?
``He doesn't need to wag the dog,'' Morris writes. ``He just needs to talk about wagging it to make the impact to keep control of Congress.''
Even the White House has hinted at a political strategy. As long ago as last January, Bush strategist Karl Rove said, "We can also go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military and thereby protecting America."
Why did the Administration wait until September to make its case against Iraq? White House chief of staff Andrew Card told The New York Times last week, ``From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.''
In his speech to the United Nations, President Bush tried to shut down the political speculation. This is a life-and-death matter, the President insisted. "Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year," he told the U.N. General Assembly in New York Thursday.
To those who say, we want more evidence that there's a real threat, the Administration says, we can't wait for a smoking gun to turn up. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said on CNN's Late Edition recently.
To those who smell politics, the administration's answer is, sure, a crisis may benefit the president politically. So what? An issue of this magnitude should be the focus of a political campaign. What's wrong with that?
Set in the foggy bottom, we hear the strains of, "Dueling Op/Ed's"
Wowie ZahawieSorry everyone, but Iraq did go uranium shopping in Niger.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, April 10, 2006, at 4:43 PM ET
In the late 1980s, the Iraqi representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency—Iraq's senior public envoy for nuclear matters, in effect—was a man named Wissam al-Zahawie. After the Kuwait war in 1991, when Rolf Ekeus arrived in Baghdad to begin the inspection and disarmament work of UNSCOM, he was greeted by Zahawie, who told him in a bitter manner that "now that you have come to take away our assets," the two men could no longer be friends. (They had known each other in earlier incarnations at the United Nations in New York.)
At a later 1995 U.N. special session on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Zahawie was the Iraqi delegate and spoke heatedly about the urgent need to counterbalance Israel's nuclear capacity. At the time, most democratic countries did not have full diplomatic relations with Saddam's regime, and there were few fully accredited Iraqi ambassadors overseas, Iraq's interests often being represented by the genocidal Islamist government of Sudan (incidentally, yet another example of collusion between "secular" Baathists and the fundamentalists who were sheltering Osama Bin Laden). There was one exception—an Iraqi "window" into the world of open diplomacy—namely the mutual recognition between the Baathist regime and the Vatican. To this very important and sensitive post in Rome, Zahawie was appointed in 1997, holding the job of Saddam's ambassador to the Holy See until 2000. Those who knew him at that time remember a man much given to anti-Jewish tirades, with a standing ticket for Wagner performances at Bayreuth. (Actually, as a fan of Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung in particular, I find I can live with this. Hitler secretly preferred sickly kitsch like Franz Lehar.)
In February 1999, Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore. It was from Niger that Iraq had originally acquired uranium in 1981, as confirmed in the Duelfer Report. In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein's long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious. Italian intelligence (which first noticed the Zahawie trip from Rome) found it difficult to take this view and alerted French intelligence (which has better contacts in West Africa and a stronger interest in nuclear questions). In due time, the French tipped off the British, who in their cousinly way conveyed the suggestive information to Washington. As everyone now knows, the disclosure appeared in watered-down and secondhand form in the president's State of the Union address in January 2003.
If the above was all that was known, it would surely be universally agreed that no responsible American administration could have overlooked such an amazingly sinister pattern. Given the past Iraqi record of surreptitious dealing, cheating of inspectors, concealment of sites and caches, and declared ambition to equip the technicians referred to openly in the Baathist press as "nuclear mujahideen," one could scarcely operate on the presumption of innocence.
However, the waters have since become muddied, to say the least. For a start, someone produced a fake document, dated July 6, 2000, which purports to show Zahawie's signature and diplomatic seal on an actual agreement for an Iraqi uranium transaction with Niger. Almost everything was wrong with this crude forgery—it had important dates scrambled, and it misstated the offices of Niger politicians. In consequence, IAEA Chairman Mohammed ElBaradei later reported to the U.N. Security Council that the papers alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium connection had been demonstrated to be fraudulent.
But this doesn't alter the plain set of established facts in my first three paragraphs above. The European intelligence services, and the Bush administration, only ever asserted that the Iraqi regime had apparently tried to open (or rather, reopen) a yellowcake trade "in Africa." It has never been claimed that an agreement was actually reached. What motive could there be for a forgery that could be instantly detected upon cursory examination?
There seem to be only three possibilities here. Either a) American intelligence concocted the note; b) someone in Italy did so in the hope of gain; or c) it was the product of disinformation, intended to protect Niger and discredit any attention paid to the actual, real-time Zahawie visit. The CIA is certainly incompetent enough to have fouled up this badly. (I like Edward Luttwak's formulation in the March 22 Times Literary Supplement, where he writes that "there have been only two kinds of CIA secret operations: the ones that are widely known to have failed—usually because of almost unbelievably crude errors—and the ones that are not yet widely known to have failed.") Still, it almost passes belief that any American agency would fake a document that purportedly proved far more than the administration had asked and then get every important name and date wrapped round the axle. Forgery for gain is easy to understand, especially when it is borne in mind that nobody wastes time counterfeiting a bankrupt currency. Forgery for disinformation, if that is what it was, appears at least to have worked. Almost everybody in the world now affects to believe that Saddam Hussein was framed on the Niger rap.
According to the London Sunday Times of April 9, the truth appears to be some combination of b) and c). A NATO investigation has identified two named employees of the Niger Embassy in Rome who, having sold a genuine document about Zahawie to Italian and French intelligence agents, then added a forged paper in the hope of turning a further profit. The real stuff went by one route to Washington, and the fakery, via an Italian journalist and the U.S. Embassy in Rome, by another. The upshot was—follow me closely here—that a phony paper alleging a deal was used to shoot down a genuine document suggesting a connection.
Zahawie's name and IAEA connection were never mentioned by ElBaradei in his report to the United Nations, and his past career has never surfaced in print. Looking up the press of the time causes one's jaw to slump in sheer astonishment. Here, typically, is a Time magazine "exclusive" about Zahawie, written by Hassan Fattah on Oct. 1, 2003:
The veteran diplomat has spent the eight months since President Bush's speech trying to set the record straight and clear his name. In a rare interview with Time, al-Zahawie outlined how forgery and circumstantial evidence was used to talk up Iraq's nuclear weapons threat, and leave him holding the smoking gun.
A few paragraphs later appear, the wonderful and unchallenged words from Zahawie: "Frankly, I didn't know that Niger produced uranium at all." Well, sorry for the inconvenience of the questions, then, my old IAEA and NPT "veteran" (whose nuclear qualifications go unmentioned in the Time article). Instead, we are told that Zahawie visited Niger and other West African countries to encourage them to break the embargo on flights to Baghdad, as they had broken the sanctions on Qaddafi's Libya. A bit of a lowly mission, one might think, for one of the Iraqi regime's most senior and specialized envoys.
The Duelfer Report also cites "a second contact between Iraq and Niger," which occurred in 2001, when a Niger minister visited Baghdad "to request assistance in obtaining petroleum products to alleviate Niger's economic problems." According to the deposition of Ja'far Diya' Ja'far (the head of Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear weapons program), these negotiations involved no offer of uranium ore but only "cash in exchange for petroleum." West Africa is awash in petroleum, and Niger is poor in cash. Iraq in 2001 was cash-rich through the oil-for-food racket, but you may if you wish choose to believe that a near-bankrupt African delegation from a uranium-based country traveled across a continent and a half with nothing on its mind but shopping for oil.
Interagency feuding has ruined the Bush administration's capacity to make its case in public, and a high-level preference for deniable leaking has further compounded the problem. But please read my first three paragraphs again and tell me if the original story still seems innocuous to you.
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