Monday, June 23, 2003

Re: The Masters of Spin Dear Friends: This Newsweek Web Exclusive brings us more on Bush and the Masters of Spin. Soldiers may be dying, children may be starving, the economy (for the majority of Americans) may be going to hell, but who needs reality when you've got spin? _________________________ Newsweek Web Exclusive June 20, 2003 Capitol Letter: The Masters of Spin by Eleanor Clift Why the Bush Administration is the Most Arrogant in Memory      June 20--The long, hot summer has begun in Iraq. American GIs are dying almost daily. So are Iraqis. But that hasn't stopped President Bush from embarking on a fund-raising spree premised on his triumphal role as commander in chief. Who needs reality when you've got spin?      The pre-war spin was all about weapons of mass destruction and the price of U.S. inaction. Bush said we couldn't afford to wait until there was a mushroom cloud. Critics who suspect the intelligence data about Saddam's nuclear program was hyped are brushed aside like gnats on an elephant. Bush says they're engaging in "revisionist history," which is on a par with calling Watergate a third-rate burglary. Bush wins the spin for now. The debate over weapons of mass destruction is an inside-the-Beltway story; its not resonating with the public. The bigger question is existential: do the gods punish hubris? This is the most arrogant administration in memory. Every day brings another issue where a careful observer of the political scene cannot believe what's happening. The latest outrage has the White House spinmeisters editing a report by the EPA on the status of the environment to omit mounting concern about climate change. The spinners have already stricken the phrase "global warming" in favor of the more benign "climate change." The offending line declared, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment. "In its place, the White House inserted a bunch of gobbledygook about how the "complexity of the Earth system" and various "interconnections" make it a challenge to render scientific judgments. Howls from environmentalists go unanswered. The administrations attitude is like the phone company before the breakup of AT&T when Lily Tomlin, the comedic actress, appeared on stage as a telephone operator telling irate customers, "We don't care. We don't have to. Were the phone company." Karl Rove, the grand wizard of spin, is a smart man with a historical perspective. He is a student of the American consciousness, and he knows that the American public is disengaged from politics. That's the reality that makes voters today uniquely susceptible to such deceptive spin. Apocalyptic assertions by Bush and other administration officials in the months leading up to the war created the impression of such an imminent threat that its not surprising Americans got confused. One third of those questioned in a poll taken by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland believe that U.S. forces have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Twenty-two percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons in the recent war. Most Americans have no idea who the Democratic candidates are, and Bush's fund-raising blitz is designed to envelop his re-election in an aura of inevitability. Its summer in Washington even though the dreary, wet weather feels like April. If by Labor Day, U.S. inspection teams haven't found WMD and Iraq is looking like a quagmire, then the public might wake up and credibility could become a serious issue for Bush. As insurance against that outcome, Bush is shifting the political conversation to a looming confrontation with Iran, which will keep war alive as an issue for 2004. An uninformed public disengaged from politics and an administration that knows no shame are the ideal conditions for Bush to win a second term. Democrats once hoped that a return to domestic issues, where they hold an advantage, would be Bush's undoing. But the White House spin machine succeeds here, as well. Republicans who ordinarily deplore big government are cheering the potential expansion of Medicare to provide a prescription-drug benefit to senior citizens. Never mind that the Rube Goldberg scheme under discussion in Congress wont go into effect until 2006 or that millions of seniors would pay more for their drugs with the benefit than they currently do without it, Bush will strut like the greatest savior of seniors since FDR brought us Social Security.     The House just voted to repeal the estate tax permanently, a windfall for trust-fund kids that was sold on the false premise that it saves farm families from destitution at the hands of the IRS. Reporters in the farm belt failed to find a farmer with a hardship story that would illustrate the GOP's argument. Even the American Farm Bureau Federation said it couldn't cite a single example of a farm lost because of estate taxes. The House votes tax breaks for millionaires while children of low-income families and military families get left behind.         One of the key strategies of the GOP is to portray Democratic critics as un-American. Remember the anonymous Bush strategist quoted some months ago suggesting Sen. John Kerry looks French. There will be two GOP campaigns: the flag-waving one on the surface that Bush is involved with, and then the sub-rosa campaign waged by surrogates that will be less gentlemanly. A very strong point in Bush's favor is that there hasn't been another attack on U.S. soil. Hes kept us safe, and hes kept us fearful, a potent combination that Democrats haven't yet figured how to crack.        © 2003 Newsweek, Inc. _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 6:29:05 PM

Re: Ray McGovern Interview Dear Friends: We're pleased to feature an interview with ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern, member of the Steering Group for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and a long-time favorite of ours. The following interview originally appeared in Die Tagesspiegel, one of Berlin's largest daily papers. _________________________ CounterPunch June 23, 2003 Washington Lied An Interview with Ray McGovern by Marc Pritzke Editors' Note: Former CIA official, Ray McGovern, has leveled serious accusations at the Bush administration in connection with the war in Iraq. McGovern served as a CIA analyst for almost 30 years. From 1981 to 1985 he conducted daily briefings for Ronald Reagan's vice president, George Bush, the father of the incumbent president. The following interview originally appeared in Die Tagesspiegel, one of Berlin's largest daily papers. Imagine this appearing in the Sunday edition of the New York Times.   The US Senate Intelligence Committee this week began hearings on the dispute over the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What do you expect will come of this? Nothing. The committee chairman, Republican Pat Roberts, has already refused to ask the FBI to investigate allegations that Iraq has tried to obtain uranium from Niger. This, despite the fact that in making these allegations, administration officials knowingly relied on crudely forged documents. In a Memorandum for President Bush dated May 1 you speak of a "policy and intelligence fiasco." What do mean by that? Take, for example, the business about the aluminum tubes that Iraq tried to obtain. According to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, these were "only suited to nuclear weapons programs." But nuclear engineers have been virtually unanimous in deciding that the pipes are not suitable for that. Despite this, President Bush on October 7, 2002 said that Iraq could possibly produce a nuclear weapon within a year. These are deliberate distortions. Lies. When a US president decides it is necessary to go to war, he has to procure intelligence to prove the need for war. And what happens, in your experience, if the "proof" is too thin? In that case it gets inflated. So, for example, an incident in the Tonkin Gulf involving a North Vietnamese "attack" on a US warship--which "attack" never took place--nonetheless was deliberately used by President Johnson to get Congress' endorsement for war with North Vietnam. This current administration had decided by September 2002 to make war on Iraq--five months before Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech at the UN. What was missing was the intelligence basis to justify the decision for war. But the intelligence is still not conclusive. And in the case of the uranium Iraq was said to be seeking, it was based on forged documents. That didn't make any difference. In retrospect, the train of thought in the White House at the time is clear: How long can we keep the forged documents from the public? A few months? In that case we can use the documents to get Congress to endorse war with Iraq and then wage it and win it before anyone discovers that the "evidence" was bogus. In addition, the administration has very artfully taken advantage of the trauma of September 11. So, for example, al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were always mentioned in the same breath, without any proof of a connection between the two. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said that, if you repeat something often enough, the people will believe it. On October 7, 2002 Bush said, without any evidence to support it, that what is to be feared is that in Iraq's case, the "smoking gun" could come in the form of a "mushroom cloud." National Security Adviser Rice repeated this on October 8, and Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke did so on October 9. On October 11 Congress voted for war. And no one saw through this? This is largely the fault of US mainstream media. No one told the people what was really going on. But doesn't the US press have a reputation for good investigative reporting? It did once. But that reputation goes back 30 years to the time of Vietnam and Watergate. The investigative reporting of those days is a thing of the past. The mainstream press now marches to the drumbeat of the administration. CounterPunch _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ========= 6:28:31 PM

Re: Bush Propaganda Film Dear Friends: Want to talk about revisionist history? An up-coming infomercial entitled DC 9/11 heaps praise on a "presidential" Bush, and lauds his courage of action during 9-11. The film was produced and written by Lionel Chetwynd, a direct associate of Bush, in close co-operation with Mr Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove. Chetwynd denies his film is propaganda, insisting that it's a straightforward docudrama.   The film is part of an emerging pattern whereby the anniversaries of September 11 are exploited as political advertisements for the Bush administration. This year it will be the airing of DC 9/11; next year, with just two months to go before the next presidential election, it will be the Republican National Convention in New York. As  New Yorker, a Texas, and a civilized human being I am deeply offended by his latest attempt at twisting the truth to serve his own selfish needs. September 11 was tragic, as was America's shock and awe bombing of Iraq. We must not allow these events to be turned into justifications for  the lies of Bush and his administration. _________________________ The Independent (UK) June 22, 2003 Bush-Backed Feature Film of 9/11 Casts Him as Scourge of 'Tinhorn Terrorists' by Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles According to one version of history, President George Bush was so slow to react to the momentous attacks of 11 September 2001 that he continued reading to a group of primary school children in Florida even after being informed of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Centre. Then, after making an anodyne remark about finding "the folks who committed this act", he was whisked off in Air Force One, first to Shreveport, Louisiana and thence to an underground bunker in Nebraska, where he was hastily coached in the art of responding to the crisis in an appropriately presidential manner. That, however, is not the George Bush who emerges from a new television docudrama due to air on cable in time for the second anniversary of the attacks this September. In this version, the President is all swagger and seize-the-moment bravado. "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me," he says. "I'll be at home. Waiting for the bastard." "But Mr President ..." stammers his Secret Service chief. "Try 'Commander-in-Chief'," Mr Bush corrects him, "whose present command is, 'Take the President home!'" If this scenario sounds like wishful thinking cooked up by the Republican National Committee, it probably is, given that the film, entitled DC 9/11, was produced and written by a direct associate of the President's, Lionel Chetwynd, in close co-operation with Mr Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove. From the administration's point of view, it is arguably, the most successful attempt to date to recruit Hollywood to help the White House in its war on terrorism - or, in this case, its war on the Democratic presidential nominee in the November 2004 election. Mr Chetwynd is not only a well-known conservative in Hollywood circles, with credits spanning political dramas and biblical stories. He also sits on the White House Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Mr Rove, meanwhile, has a special eye for propaganda - not only did he conceive of Mr Bush's recent post-Iraq Top Gun-style landing on an aircraft carrier, he was also the one who explained away the President's peregrinations on 11 September by claiming, less than convincingly, that Air Force One itself was under direct threat of attack. Although nobody has seen the finished product, the script of DC 9/11 was leaked to the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, which described its portrayal of "a nearly infallible, heroic president with little or no dissension in his ranks and a penchant for delivering articulate, stirring, off-the-cuff address to his colleagues". At one point, according to the script, he tells Democratic Party leaders: "I won't be seeking a declaration of war. With a shadowy enemy, specificity makes that problematic." That sounds awfully sophisticated for the malapropism-prone George Dubya. Amazingly, Mr Chetwynd denies his film is propaganda in any form. He insists that everything in the film comes from the public record - either published accounts or information gleaned from his own interviews with the President, the White House chief of staff Andy Card, Mr Rove and others. "This isn't propaganda," he told the The Washington Post last week. "It's a straightforward docudrama. I would hope what's presented is a fully coloured and nuanced picture of a human being in a difficult situation." The fact that it paints its subject in the best possible light at every turn certainly can't hurt the Bush cause, however. It is part of an emerging pattern whereby the anniversaries of 11 September are exploited as political advertisements for the Bush administration. This year it will be the airing of DC 9/11; next year, with just two months to go before the next presidential election, it will be the Republican National Convention in New York.  © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ================================== 6:27:59 PM

Re: Bush NYC fund-raiser Dear Friends: While these may be the best of times for George W., this is not such a great moment for America. What of tax cuts? Jobs? Government services? The environment? These are not topics that will be explored in depth at this evening's presidential fund-raiser in Manhattan. And you can bet that there will not be any straight talk about the quagmire we are sinking into in Iraq, or the outlandish deceptions that the president employed to get us in there. Mr. Bush is expected to pull in $5 million at this evening's sit-down, and may ultimately raise an astonishing quarter of a billion dollars for his re-election bid. And you can also bet that this money won't be going to any "liberal revisionist" causes. Time to wake up America. ________________________ The New York Times June 23, 2003 The Money Magnet by Bob Herbert It's a great time to be George W. Bush. The president will waltz into Manhattan today for another $2,000-a-plate fund-raiser, the latest stop on his fabulously successful dining-for-dollars tour. These are fun events at which the fat cats throw millions of dollars at the president to reinforce their already impenetrable ring of influence around the national government. Mr. Bush is expected to pull in $5 million at this evening's sit-down, and may ultimately raise an astonishing quarter of a billion dollars for his re-election bid. During a brief stop Friday at a reception in Greensboro, Ga., where he picked up a quick $2.2 million, the president happily told his supporters, "You put the wind at my back." I'm sure there's no connection between fat-cat fund-raising and, say, federal tax policy. But there was some particularly interesting information about the Bush tax cuts in an article yesterday by The Times's David E. Rosenbaum. Citing data from a study by Citizens for Tax Justice, Mr. Rosenbaum pointed out that the richest 1 percent of Americans will get an average tax reduction of nearly $100,000 a year, while "the tax relief most people will receive is quite meager." Half of all taxpayers will get a cut of less than $100 this year. By 2005, three-quarters will get less than $100. The middle class and working people don't seem to mind that they've been blithely left behind. Mr. Bush's approval ratings are way high, so high they've got the terminally timid Democrats scared to death to confront the president head on. The man who elbowed his way into the White House with a minority of the popular vote is on a roll. But while these may be the best of times for George W., this is not such a great moment for America. Start anywhere. Tax cuts? Mr. Bush has behaved like a profligate parent who spends every dollar the family has accumulated, mortgages everything the family owns and maxes out every credit card he can get his hands on. At some point in this scenario the children and grandchildren will be left with nothing but a mountain of debt. Jobs? More than three million private-sector jobs have been lost on this president's watch. People are staying out of work longer and the pay gains of the late 90's are being eroded. Time Magazine recently asked, "Why are American workers dying the death of a thousand pay cuts?" Government services? Prepare to wave goodbye to Medicare and Social Security as you've known them. Right wingers have always wanted to cripple the government's social service programs and now they are racing toward achievement of that poisonous goal. With the president's tax cuts bankrupting the government, there will be no money left for meaningful support of even the most popular social programs. The environment? Among other things, the Bush White House does not like global warming. So it just edits out, eliminates, erases important references to it in official government documents. Gas-guzzling S.U.V.'s are good. But in the Bush II White House, global warming as most scientists know it doesn't even exist. We've got some waking up to do. A budget catastrophe is hammering state and local governments across the country, driving up taxes and fees, and driving out important government services. This story is still not getting the attention it deserves. Some public school districts have had to shorten the school year because they ran out of money. In some areas medical services to seriously ill individuals are being curtailed. In some jurisdictions, criminal offenders are being released from prison early, and some criminal laws are not being enforced because of a lack of funds. Because of cuts in the police budget, station houses in Portland, Ore., now close at night. These are not topics that will be explored in depth at this evening's presidential fund-raiser. And you can bet that there will not be any straight talk about the quagmire we are sinking into in Iraq, or the outlandish deceptions that the president employed to get us in there. No, this will be a fun evening filled with the sound of joyous plutocratic laughter. Mr. Bush will leave with his pockets bulging and the wind at his back. The reality of life in George Bush's America for working men and women, and for the poor, will be left for others to attend to, presumably in some post-Bush administration.  Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company _______________________________ In peace, Otoño ________________________________ Read all about it and get the news that matters by receiving the War and Peace Watch. To subscribe, send an e-mail to:  Reikiworks@compuserve.com Thank you for your support, The War and Peace Watch publisher. contact:  Otoño Johnston ============================================================ (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment  for research and educational purposes only.) ============================================================ 6:26:34 PM