Neocon-Christian Right Alliance

How the Neocon-Christian Right Alliance Brought Down the House of Bush

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted November 21, 2007.

Craig Unger shares the untold story of how a band of true believers seized the executive branch, started the Iraq war, and still imperils America’s future.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to investigative journalist Craig Unger in Washington, D.C., here with Democracy Now! He is author of the new book The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future. The book examines how neoconservatives secretly forged an alliance with the Christian Right during the Bush presidency and helped make the case for war in Iraq. Craig Unger is the contributing editor at Vanity Fair, also author of the book House of Bush, House of Saud.

Craig, welcome to Democracy Now!

CRAIG UNGER: Thanks for having me, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Why don't you start off by laying out the thesis of this book.

CRAIG UNGER: Well, I think when most people look at the Middle East conflict today, they frame it in terms of Islam versus the West. I want to try looking at a new paradigm, and that is, I want to examine fundamentalisms, and by that I mean not just Islamic fundamentalism, but Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, as well. And I really throw in neoconservatism as sort of a secular form of fundamentalism, which are in conflict with a modern post-Enlightenment world. And I think that’s a larger conflict that has gotten us into trouble today in the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about President Bush, President George W. Bush's relationship with George H.W. Bush, a central theme that runs through The Fall of the House of Bush.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, you may have seen there have been a raft of stories recently that they have a very congenial relationship. Last summer, the New York Times had them playing horseshoes out in Kennebunkport, Maine. And on the surface, I think that’s the case. I interviewed Bob Strauss, for example, who had been chairman of the National Democratic Party. He was a friend of Bush Sr.’s and had been ambassador to Moscow when the elder George Bush was president. And he said that when he had dinner with the two men, they would just be gossiping, talking about, “Oh, how’s Susie doing in Midland, Texas?” and so on.

But under the surface, I think there’s a real very deep conflict that has affected millions of lives, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and they represent almost polar opposite points of view. I call the first chapter in my book “Oedipus Tex.” And if you look at the current Bush administration, you realize he has put together an administration consisting of some of his father's worst enemies. For example, his father was a very congenial man, had very few bitter enemies, but one of them was certainly Donald Rumsfeld. In addition, his father had very little -- was not terribly fond of the Christian Right, and at one point he called them the “extra chromosome crowd,” a remark for which he had to apologize.

And finally, his father had been doing battle with the neoconservatives as early as 1976. If you go back to that period, Bush Sr. was then head of the CIA, and you see the young neocons then had put together what was known as Team B, and they began to challenge the CIA’s intelligence on the Cold War. This was the era of detente. They were saying the CIA was a bunch of liberals who were being soft on the Soviet Union. And they tried to come up -- they began to politicize intelligence and distort it and come up with a much tougher line. And in there I think you see a lot of the foreshadowing of the events we're going through today.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about how President Bush and Vice President Cheney made the case for war in Iraq, I want to turn to comments made by Dick Cheney in September of 1992. At the time, he was President George H.W. Bush's Secretary of Defense. During an address at the Economic Club of Detroit, Cheney was asked why the United States didn’t bury Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. This is how he responded close to fifteen years ago.

DICK CHENEY: At the end of the war in the Gulf, when we made the decision to stop, we did so because we had achieved our military objectives -- that is, when we decided to halt military operations. Those objectives were twofold: to liberate Kuwait and, secondly, to strip Saddam Hussein of his offensive military capability, of his capacity to threaten his neighbors. And we had done that.

There is no doubt in my mind, but what we could have gone on to Baghdad and taken Baghdad, occupied the whole country. We had the 101st Airborne up on the Euphrates River Valley about halfway between Kuwait and Baghdad. And I don’t think, from a military perspective, that it would have been an impossible task. Clearly, it wouldn’t, given the forces that we had there.

But we made a very conscious decision not to proceed for several reasons, in part because as soon as you go to Baghdad to get Saddam Hussein, you have to recognize that you’re undertaking a fairly complex operation. It’s not the kind of situation where we could have pulled up in front of the presidential palace in Baghdad and said, “Come on, Saddam. You’re going to the slammer.” We would have had to run him to ground. A lot of places he could have gone to hide out or to resist. It would have required extensive military forces to achieve that.

But let's assume for the moment that we would have been able to do it, we got Saddam now and maybe we put him down there in Miami with Noriega. Then the question comes, putting a government in place of the one you’ve just gotten rid of. You can’t just sort of turn around and away; you’ve now accepted the responsibility for what happens in Iraq. What kind of government do you want us to create in place of the old Saddam Hussein government? You want a Sunni government or a Shia government, or maybe it ought to be a Kurdish government, or maybe one based on the Baath Party, or maybe some combination of all of those.

How long is that government likely to survive without US military forces there to keep it propped up? If you get into the business of committing US forces on the ground in Iraq to occupy the place, my guess is I’d probably still have people there today, instead of having been able to bring them home.

We would have been in a situation, once we went into Baghdad, where we would have engaged in the kind of street-by-street, house-to-house fighting in an urban setting that would have been dramatically different from what we were able to do in the Gulf, in Kuwait in the desert, where our precision-guided munitions and our long-range artillery and tanks were so devastating against those Iraqi forces. You would have been fighting in a built-up urban area, large civilian population, and much heavier prospects for casualties.

You would have found, as well, I think, probably the disintegration of the Arab coalition that signed on to support us in our efforts to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait, but never signed on for the proposition that the United States would become some kind of quasi-permanent occupier of a major Middle Eastern nation.

And the final point, with respect to casualties, everybody, of course, was tremendously impressed with the fact that we were able to prevail at such a low cost, given the predictions with respect to casualties in major modern warfare. But for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it was not a cheap or a low-cost conflict. The bottom-line question for me was: How many additional American lives is Saddam Hussein worth? The answer: Not very damn many. I think the President got it right both times, both when he decided to use military force to defeat Saddam Hussein’s aggression, but also when he made what I think was a very wise decision to stop military operations when we did.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dick Cheney, speaking in September of 1992 at the Economic Club of Detroit. Our guest is investigative journalist Craig Unger. Pretty astounding, Craig.

CRAIG UNGER: It’s an extraordinary tape. And Cheney made statements like that again and again between ’92 and 1994. And he really forecasted all the problems we’re encountering today. It’s a shame he didn’t look at them again. But, if anything, to me, it shows his duplicity.

At about the same time -- remember, he was Secretary of Defense back then, and under him he had some of the key neoconservatives who became architects of the Iraq war today. He had Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Zalmay Khalilzad. And about the same time, they had just written what was known as the Defense Policy Guidance paper, sometimes known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. And this was a paper that became -- that outlined our current strategy. It was a radical new vision for overhauling the Middle East. You see the seeds of the Iraq war in it.

When it was leaked to the New York Times, it was -- it caused a great outrage. And then-President Bush, the elder President Bush, rejected it out of hand. He thought it was far too radical and rightwing. But Cheney secretly liked it a lot, and he told Khalilzad, for example, “You’ve come across a new rationale for American security.” This was a vision to create American dominance throughout the new century, as just after the end of the Cold War.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Bob Strauss, his position and his observations about the two, knowing them very well, George Sr. and Jr. -- well, not exactly “Jr.” since he doesn’t have the “H,” but forty-three and forty-one, as you put it.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, he said one thing that was -- he had only a few comments, but they were both very acute. One is, he said Bush Sr. doesn’t know how to strut; George W., Jr., doesn’t know how not to strut. I also asked him if there was one word that described the current president, and he said he was “incurious.” He was just too incurious to be president. And so you see this battle, the conflict between two George Bushes, evolve over a series of years.

George W. Bush was not the favorite son in the family. His older brother, Jeb Bush, really was. And in 1994, the two men were running for governor of Florida and Texas, respectively. And Jeb was favored to win; George W. was favored to lose in Texas. In fact, exactly the opposite happened. And at that point, George W. Bush became the leading sort of -- began to win the Oedipal sweepstakes in the family, and he became frontrunner to become a presidential candidate.

AMY GOODMAN: George W. Bush’s comments about “cut and run,” a direct cut at his father?

CRAIG UNGER: I think it was. And what you see then -- this was during the buildup to the Iraq war -- he said he was reflecting back to 1991, when his father was president during the first Gulf War and had been criticized by the neocons. Now, the normal etiquette between former and sitting presidents is they don’t criticize each other, and here he had made a public comment that seemed to be a slap at his father.

I interviewed people who had been talking to the elder President Bush at that time, and Bush said, “You know what? I’m going to have Brent Scowcroft talk to him.” And what you see in my book is Brent Scowcroft as an intermediary between the two generations, between the two George Bushes.

If there’s a hero in the book, it is Scowcroft. He’s in a very delicate position. He’s a very close friend of the elder President Bush. He has a condo in Kennebunkport, Maine, for example. And he wants to sustain that friendship. So when he talks out publicly, he is talking with the assent of the elder President Bush. And as early as October of 1991, you see him begin -- he sees it coming. He sees the neoconservatives taking over, and he starts to speak out. And you see him writing in the Wall Street Journal and other places, in the Washington Post and so on, saying that we should not go on and attack Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about one of the main stories in your book, and that is this point you made at the top of the show, that it wasn’t a failure of intelligence, the Iraq war; in fact, it was the success. Talk about it.

CRAIG UNGER: Right, well, a lot -- I think everyone knows about the Valerie Plame Wilson affair and Joe Wilson. What people -- and it’s sometimes referred to as Nigergate. People sometimes forget the source was what is known as the Niger documents. Now, these were documents that grew out of a robbery that took place in the Niger embassy over the last weekend in the year of 2000 and January 1, 2001.

Now, remember, the timing is very important. George W. Bush has not taken office yet, but the neocons know they have a friend in the office -- coming into the White House. So they have had this strategy in development for many years, going back to as early as 1992, you see it begin to take shape. Now, finally, they have an opportunity to begin to try to implement it. And as early as 1998, they had begun going down to Austin. You see Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams going down to Austin, where George W. Bush is governor.

Bush Sr. has been trying to educate his son, in terms of foreign policy. He thinks the old-line realists will prevail. By that, I mean Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and, one had thought, Condoleezza Rice, James Baker, for example. But, in fact, a radical group of neocons have been going down there, and they’ve sort of been indoctrinating George W. Bush. The first review of my book, Radar magazine calls it “the greatest brainwashing since the Manchurian Candidate.”

So when the Niger embassy break-in takes place, it’s in the Niger embassy in Rome. I actually went there for Vanity Fair. It’s a terribly unprepossessing building. If the Watergate burglary is sometimes described as a third-rate burglary, well, this is a fourth-rate one, and almost nothing of value is taken, just a few documents and some stationary. But these documents were used as the basis for forgeries of documents that said that Saddam Hussein was going to buy 500 tons of yellow cake uranium from the Republic of Niger. It’s a very poor African company -- country. Its only real export is uranium.

These documents then became circulated, though there are many, many, many unanswered questions about them. Everyone agrees on one thing, and that is that they were forgeries. They were phony. And I discovered, as I began to trace them, I discovered that they had been discredited on at least fourteen separate occasions by various government agencies, by the CIA, by the intelligence arm of the State Department, and so forth. Yet they still manage to be inserted in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, and therefore in that speech they became a causis belli, a cause for war.

AMY GOODMAN: And the role of Dick Cheney in the manufacture -- well, you call it a PSYOPS operation, psychological operations?

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, in terms of the Niger documents, I’m not sure I do have a direct link with Dick Cheney, but what you see, you see Stephen Hadley says that he forgot that they had been discredited. Now, it’s hard to believe, if you think about vetting a presidential address, not just a presidential address, but a State of the Union address, one that is calling for war, that this is -- you know, it sort of defies imagination that the government can forget this on fourteen different occasions.

But with regard to Cheney, you see him playing a remarkable role overall in putting together a team of neocons and assembling extraordinary amounts of executive power. What we really see going on here is the putting together of sort of an alternative national security apparatus. We have a $40 billion intelligence apparatus, when you put together the CIA and the various intelligence units in the State Department and the Pentagon and so on. What Cheney was was a brilliant master of the bureaucracy. You can trace him and Rumsfeld back to the Gerald Ford administration. There, they executed a brilliant bureaucratic coup that seemed to oust Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, head of the CIA William Colby, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. And so, they had a real mastery of the bureaucracy. They knew how to bring the bureaucracy to a halt, how to grease the wheels when necessary. They were able to put in people like John Bolton in the State Department to keep an eye on Colin Powell.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Craig Unger. His book is just out this week; it’s called The Fall of the House of Bush. You write about the significance of Pat Robertson, especially significant now with his endorsement of Rudolph Giuliani, and you go through his history, back to -- well, talk about Pat Robertson's father.

CRAIG UNGER: Well, he was a United States senator himself, and he comes from a very well-off family. Pat Robertson had put together quite a fortune in broadcasting. And yet, he’s really an unusual character, I mean, in the sense that he was one of the first leaders of the Christian Right who had enormous political clout. At the same time, I think he’s a little too extreme to have won public office. He speaks in tongues. It’s hard to imagine practices like that going on in the Oval Office.

Yet, in the Iowa primary of 1988, you see a great turning point, where Vice President Bush is then running for office. He’s the sitting vice president for an extremely popular president, Ronald Reagan. And he seems to be a strong favorite to win the next presidency. But in the Iowa primary, he comes in third behind Pat Robertson. And that’s the headline that you see the power of the Christian Right there, and he realizes he has to turn to his son, George W. Bush, to help bring the Christian Right into his campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: And Robertson was very careful there. He had a very deliberate strategy, kept reporters out of his meetings, his rallies, wanting to stay under the media radar screen so that the underestimates of his popularity would lead to big headlines when he actually organized to the point where he had such a high standing in the poll.

CRAIG UNGER: Absolutely. This is the birth of what’s sometimes called “dog-whistle politics.” And you see the Christian Right is broadcasting one message to their base, and the general electorate doesn’t seem to get it. George Bush and Karl Rove became masters of this in their campaign. And, for example, you would see George W. Bush campaigning with Roger Staubach. To the general public, that meant he was campaigning with a Super Bowl football star, but to the Christian Right, that meant he was campaigning with one of the faithful, that he was one of them.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the points you make is the people who are under attack in this current administration -- George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell -- they all have these military records, and the people who attack them -- Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Khalilzad -- did not fight.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Those are the so-called “chicken hawks.” And, you know, it’s interesting, when you go around the country talking about this stuff, how rightwing talk show hosts will sometimes say this is a leftwing book. But in truth, the hero is Brent Scowcroft, who is an extremely moderate Republican who speaks out again and again, even though he’s in a very delicate position because of his friendship with Bush Sr. And most of my sources are really Republicans. There are a lot -- at one point, I have nine military and intelligence officials speaking out. They’re lifelong members of the military. Most of them are lifelong Republicans, as well.

And they have seen their party seized. Today, the Republican Party is basically a function of the Christian Right or the neoconservatives. In another world, someone like Chuck Hagel would be a serious candidate in the Republican Party. Today, a moderate like Hagel is marginalized within the party. And I think you'll see in the next election, whoever is the Republican candidate is almost certain to be committed to the current policies of George W. Bush.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk, Craig Unger, about American evangelism in this book. You talk about George Bush’s religion. And you talk about Tim LeHay, as well as the new right’s multibillion-dollar effort bankrolled by billionaire philanthropists to completely reframe the national debate. Talk about -- begin with George W. Bush and his religion and his story of his conversion with Billy Graham, which he says isn’t true.

CRAIG UNGER: Right. Well, the widespread story -- and he wrote about it, or at least it was ghostwritten, in his campaign autobiography for 2000, A Charge to Keep -- it’s a story George Bush has told again and again, that in 1985 Billy Graham was in Kennebunkport, Maine with him and his parents, and the two men went for a long walk, and it was at that moment that he began to accept Christ.

Well, Billy Graham himself says he has absolutely no memory of it. But more than that, I talked to Mickey Herskowitz, who’s a Houston sportswriter and a close friend of Bush Sr., and he was hired to ghostwrite that campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep. And as he was ghostwriting it, during that process, he had about twenty sit-down interviews with George W. Bush in Austin, and he very specifically asked Bush what conversation took place with Billy Graham. At the time, Bush had absolutely no memory of the conversation himself. So Herskowitz sort of prodded him, and he said, “Well, would he have said something like, ‘Are you right with Jesus?’” And Bush said, “No, he wouldn’t have said that.” Well, at a certain point, Herskowitz gave the tapes to Karen Hughes, who was Bush’s communications director, and in the course of finishing the book, Herskowitz's words were put in Billy Graham's mouth.

Now, I later went back, and I found a guy named Arthur Blessitt. And it turns out that even earlier, it was Blessitt who really converted Bush to Jesus. In 1984, he had made a trip to Midland, Texas and then met at a Holiday Inn. There were three people present at the meeting: Bush, a member of his Bible studies group named Jim Sale -- I talked to Jim Sale -- and Arthur Blessitt himself, who I also interviewed.

And Blessitt is most famous for carrying a twelve-foot cross of Jesus around the world. He’s been to more than 300 countries, walked 30,000 miles. And he had a Jesus Coffee House in Los Angeles, where he was most famous for what was called the toilet baptism. His congregation consisted mostly of Hell’s Angels people, bikers and so forth, and they would dump their drugs in the toilet, flush it down the toilet and embrace Jesus.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s who you say influenced George W. Bush, converted him?

CRAIG UNGER: Right. He actually seems like a very nice man. He’s not quite as distinguished a figure as Billy Graham, however, and I think it plays better politically. But, you know, in addition, this -- I think the secular world has basically misunderstood the Christian Right and doesn’t quite understand the depth of this as a movement.

And I traveled undercover with Tim LeHay, who is the prophet of the "Left Behind" series. His books have sold an astonishing 63 million copies. I traveled with him to the battlefield of Armageddon, where they believe the final conflict would take place. And I also did research, and I began to trace it back to its roots, the roots of the Christian Right. And we often talk about the battle of the blue states or the red states or the cultural wars in America. I think it’s actually a much more profound division of faith versus science.

AMY GOODMAN: Craig Unger, with the story, this undercover tour you took, walking where Jesus walked, with LeHay, and the scene that you describe touring the ancient fortress city of Megiddo?

CRAIG UNGER: Yes. Megiddo is -- from Megiddo, we get the term Armageddon, where the final conflict will take place. “Har” means “hill” in Hebrew, and “Har Megiddo” is how we get the word “Armageddon.” And in the Book of Revelations, this is where the final conflict will take place.

And I was walking up the hill with LeHay and about ninety of his followers, and as you look over this spectacularly beautiful pastoral valley, you see a valley that, in their view, won’t be so -- they see a vision that is not so bucolic. They see that it will be filled with blood, the blood of as many as two billion people. And I talked with them about that, and they say there will be a river of blood, 200 miles long, about four-and-a-half feet deep. And I asked one of them when all this would take place. And they said, “Very soon, but not soon enough. Any day now.” So they see this fantasy is taking place, and this is sort of one of the horrific visions that is spelled out in the Book of Revelation.

AMY GOODMAN: Filled with the blood of the more than two billion people who did not accept Jesus Christ as their savior.

CRAIG UNGER: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: And Tim LeHay’s relationship with George W. Bush?

CRAIG UNGER: Well, LeHay is one of the founders of the Council for National Policy. Now, this is a not-very-well-known group, but it’s an umbrella group that oversees dozens of Christian Right groups, like Focus on the Family, which is James Dobson’s group. The Moral Majority was part of it, and so on. And within it was a much smaller group called the Arlington Group, of about fifty religious leaders. Now, they were in regular contact with Karl Rove. And what you have in the Christian Right is as many as 80 million adult evangelicals. You have about 200,000 pastors, and they operate almost as precinct captains did in the labor unions for the Democratic Party. So this is a vast populist movement that operates as part of the Christian Republican Party, and they have regular contact with the White House.

AMY GOODMAN: Craig Unger, I want to thank you very much for joining us. The book has just come out this week. It’s called The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

Cut Israel Off

By Charley Reese

11/16/07 "Antiwar" -- - It is long past time for American politicians to quit carrying water for the state of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby. Congress' craven obedience to the lobby is a disgrace.

America's strategic interests in the Middle East lie with the Arab countries. Israel is a strategic and economic liability. The U.S. government's slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S.

Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it's the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don't want peace. That is a big lie. The Palestinians made an enormous concession when they agreed to settle for a state on 18 percent of Palestine. Saudi Arabia proposed several years ago a peace plan in which all of the Arab countries would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israelis rejected it out of hand, just as they reject Arab efforts to have the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. The Israelis employed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and again in 1967 to make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. For 40 years, the Israelis have refused to give back the Palestinian and Syrian lands they seized in war. They have blatantly violated international law by building settlements on occupied land, and by violating the airspace of other sovereign countries.

Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave. At the same time, the Israelis, in cahoots with the American government, maintain a charade of proposed peace talks. They of course never come to fruition. The Israeli government is not about to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they give the Palestinians anything, it will be a patchwork of enclaves completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Having created 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Israelis have from the beginning refused to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses, all of which Israel confiscated on the specious grounds that they were "abandoned property."

Without U.S. aid, which now is conservatively estimated to total $108 billion (think of the infrastructure and schools that amount could build in the U.S.), and without the U.S. wielding its veto every time the United Nations tries to act, none of this would be possible.

It is not just the Muslim world that hates our pro-Israel foreign policy, for sound reasons that it is unjust and cruel. Europeans and others around the world are contemptuous of America's slavelike obedience to a small foreign power. It has gotten to the point that to be seen as an ally of the United States is viewed negatively.

The Arab and Muslim people, with the exception of al-Qaeda, don't hate America or Americans. It is the pro-Israel foreign policy and, of course, our invasions of two Muslim countries that they hate. Virtually all of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda generated in this country has its source in the Israeli lobby and in Israel itself.

Thanks to the unconstitutional largess of the cowardly Congress, Israel is a rich country and one of the world's leading military powers. It doesn't need American aid. It is time to quit dancing to the tune of a lobby with dual loyalties and to pursue America's interests.

Americans are being betrayed by their own politicians, and it's time to treat those scoundrels with the contempt they deserve.

A Meaner, Nastier TSA

I am no fan of the TSA. It is a sham and a waste of tax dollars. I avoid flying whenever possible because of the TSA. Contrary to popular belief, and contrary to what the good Germans at the DHS would have US believe, the TSA does not protect US. The TSA is a conditioning mechanism to soften the American public into accepting total government control in the police state that the United States is becoming.

by Becky Akers

Just in time for Thanksgiving’s travelling throngs, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has agreed to "introduce ‘more aggressive, visible and unpredictable security measures’" at airports. Apparently, molesting the handicapped, groping grandmothers, and killing passengers don’t suffice.

The TSA is evil enough to dream this up on its own, but it didn’t have to. The "recommendation" came from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) after its undercover investigators tested "checkpoints at 19 airports in March, May and June of this year" – as they have many times. And, as usual, the GAO found holes the size of a jumbo jet in the alleged "security": "It is possible to bring the components for several IEDs [improvised explosive device] and one IID [improvised incendiary device] through TSA checkpoints and onto airline flights without being challenged by transportation security officers." Yeah, but "transportation security officers" never miss your bottle of Coke, so it all balances out.

Merely smuggling weapons didn’t satisfy the GAO’s goofballs; they wanted to concoct them first in a sort of Martha Stewart-meets-Al Qaeda farce. I guess heading over to the FBI and borrowing something stolen from Randy Weaver would have been too easy. And so our industrious goons trolled the Net, where they "learned about the components to make an improvised explosive device and an improvised incendiary device." Seems it’s news to the GAO, even if not to normal folks, that websites offer instructions for assembling bombs. The subtext here is that such sites ought to be shut down – a tad extreme so long as the far more dangerous gop.com and democrats.org flourish.

Having implied that free speech can be lethal, the GAO tacitly maligned commerce as well, with agents shopping for the bomb’s ingredients "at local stores.... Investigators were able to purchase the components for the two devices [IED and IID] for under $150…" Rep. John Mica (R-FL) seized the chance to parade his gutlessness yet again: "What's really scary is they're using the components that are readily available on the open market." I don’t know about you, but I’m hardly terrified that entrepreneurs provide kerosene and ammonia. Rather, I’m grateful they do so cheaply lest more of our taxes be squandered on this lunacy.

The GAO’s success in sneaking its purchases through the checkpoints proves the TSA’s futility: CBS News fears that "...a team of terrorists working together could easily beat the system. ‘If you start to break up all the components [of an IED or IID] over several different people, and you bring them in in different ways, on your person, in your carry-on luggage, how is a TSA screener supposed to put all those pieces together?’ says CBS News security analyst Paul Kurtz." But the Feds take a contrary lesson from the TSA’s inability to detect "components": screeners should abuse us serfs more "aggressively" and "unpredictably." Why is it that every time the TSA fails, passengers pay the price?

This is only the latest of the agency’s scandals. Its incompetence and chicanery have been hogging headlines for weeks now. In October, USA Today "obtained" a "classified report." It said screeners’ "failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers" in 60% of the tests run at Chicago O’Hare last year and in 75% of those at Los Angeles International. Such jaw-dropping scores are about average for the TSA: screeners routinely miss most of what agents try to smuggle.

And that’s despite cheating. Though they aren’t supposed to know that they’re being tested, let alone the investigators’ identities, what contraband they’re carrying and where they’ve stashed it, screeners are often alerted to all those details. And have been for years.

But only recently did we learn who’s cluing them in. Earlier this month, NBC News reported that "those tipoffs may have come from high officials" at the TSA – specifically, from Mike Restovich, Assistant Administrator of Security Operations. On April 28, 2006, he emailed "Federal Security Directors" at airports nationwide a "NOTICE OF POSSIBLE SECURITY TEST." Mike advised that "This information is provided for your situational awareness." Let’s hope Restovich retched at such noxious jargon, but probably not. He then announced that "several airport authorities and airport police departments [why do airports have police departments? Are we passengers or prisoners?] have recently received informal notice of possible DOT/FAA security testing at airports around the nation." There followed a description of the investigators, their whereabouts, and how they would bamboozle screeners.

This set the usual nitwits roaring. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, caterwauls each time more of the TSA’s dishonesty surfaces as though it’s the first. True to form, he wrote TSA chief "Kip" Hawley, "Any effort to undermine the integrity of covert testing of TSA's screening checkpoints is unacceptable." He posted his letter on the Committee’s website, no doubt in the interests of transparent government.

Bennie also convened a hearing on Wednesday to further the pretence that he’s saving us from the TSA. This charade was as slickly packaged as the latest bestseller, complete with title and subtitle, "Cover Blown: Did TSA Tip Off Airport Screeners about Covert Testing?" Duh. Bennie tried to make his sound bites equally slick: "Our government cannot play on our fears of an attack and then try to 'cheat' its way through its mid-term exams," decreed the politician who plays like a maestro on those fears.

Meanwhile, Kip dragged his sorry butt to the hearing’s microphone: "There was no intent to tip off. There was no cheating." How to explain Restovich’s wretched email, then? "Neither the Transportation Department nor the Federal Aviation Administration – which were [sic] referenced in the e-mail – conduct undercover tests at TSA checkpoints, Hawley said…. The official who sent the e-mail found the reference to these two agencies suspicious and decided to share it with federal security directors at airports across the country..." See? As always, the TSA was protecting us despite our doubts and ingratitude. The email "was sent not as a tip-off, but out of concern that al-Qaida or other terrorists might be posing as transportation officials."

Yep. That’s our concern, too.

November 19, 2007

Rudy is not presidential material...

What "That Regan Woman" Knows
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 18 November 2007

New Yorkers who remember Rudy Giuliani as the bullying New York mayor, not as the terminally cheerful "America's Mayor" cooing to babies in New Hampshire, have always banked on one certainty: his presidential candidacy was so preposterous it would implode before he got anywhere near the White House.

Surely, we reassured ourselves, the all-powerful Republican values enforcers were so highly principled that they would excommunicate him because of his liberal social views, three wives and estranged children. Or a firewall would be erected by the firefighters who are enraged by his self-aggrandizing rewrite of 9/11 history. Or Judith Giuliani, with her long-hidden first marriage and Louis Vuitton 'tude, would send red-state voters screaming into the night.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. But how quickly and stupidly we forgot about the other Judith in the Rudy orbit. That would be Judith Regan, who disappeared last December after she was unceremoniously fired from Rupert Murdoch's publishing house, HarperCollins. Last week Ms. Regan came roaring back into the fray, a silver bullet aimed squarely at the heart of the Giuliani campaign.

Ms. Regan filed a $100 million lawsuit against her former employer, claiming she was unjustly made a scapegoat for the O. J. Simpson "If I Did It" fiasco that (briefly) embarrassed Mr. Murdoch and his News Corporation. But for those of us not caught up in the Simpson circus, what's most riveting about the suit are two at best tangential sentences in its 70 pages: "In fact, a senior executive in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani's presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik."

Kerik, of course, is Bernard Kerik, the former Giuliani chauffeur and police commissioner, as well as the candidate he pushed to be President Bush's short-lived nominee to run the Department of Homeland Security. Having pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors last year, Mr. Kerik was indicted on 16 other counts by a federal grand jury 10 days ago, just before Ms. Regan let loose with her lawsuit. Whether Ms. Regan's charge about that unnamed Murdoch "senior executive" is true or not - her lawyers have yet to reveal the evidence - her overall message is plain. She knows a lot about Mr. Kerik, Mr. Giuliani and the Murdoch empire. And she could talk.

Boy, could she! As New Yorkers who have crossed her path or followed her in the tabloids know, Ms. Regan has an epic temper. My first encounter with her came more than a decade ago when she left me a record-breaking (in vitriol and decibel level) voice mail message about a column I'd written on one of her authors. It was a relief to encounter a more mellow Regan at a Midtown restaurant some years later. She cordially introduced me to her dinner companion, Mr. Kerik, whose post-9/11 autobiography, "The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice," was under contract at her HarperCollins imprint, ReganBooks.

What I didn't know then was that this married author and single editor were in pursuit of not just justice, but sex, too. Their love nest, we'd later learn, was an apartment adjacent to ground zero that had been initially set aside for rescue workers. Mr. Kerik believed his lover had every moral right to be there. As he tenderly explained in his acknowledgments in "The Lost Son" - published before the revelation of their relationship - there was "one hero who is missing" from his book's tribute to "courage and honor" and "her name is Judith Regan."

Few know more about Rudy than his perennial boon companion, Mr. Kerik. Perhaps during his romance with Ms. Regan he talked only of the finer points of memoir writing or about his theories of crime prevention or about his ideas for training the police in the Muslim world (an assignment he later received in Iraq and botched). But it is also plausible that this couple discussed everything Mr. Kerik witnessed at Mr. Giuliani's side before, during and after 9/11. Perhaps he even explained to her why the mayor insisted, disastrously, that his city's $61 million emergency command center be located in the World Trade Center despite the terrorist attack on the towers in 1993.

Perhaps, too, they talked about the business ventures the mayor established after leaving office. Mr. Kerik worked at Giuliani Partners and used its address as a mail drop for some $75,000 that turns up in the tax-fraud charges in his federal indictment. That money was Mr. Kerik's pay for an 11-sentence introduction to another Regan-published book about 9/11, "In the Line of Duty." Though that project's profits were otherwise donated to the families of dead rescue workers, Mr. Kerik's royalties were mailed to Giuliani Partners in the name of a corporate entity Mr. Kerik set up in Delaware. He would later claim that he made comparable donations to charity, but the federal indictment charges that $80,000 he took in charitable deductions were bogus.

Amazingly, given that he seeks the highest office in the land, Mr. Giuliani will not reveal the clients of Giuliani Partners. Perhaps he has trouble remembering them all. He testified in court last year that he has no memory of a mayoral briefing in which he was told of Mr. Kerik's association with a company suspected of ties to organized crime.

Ms. Regan's knowledge of Mr. Giuliani isn't limited to whatever she learned from Mr. Kerik. She used to work for another longtime Giuliani pal, Roger Ailes, the media consultant for the first Giuliani campaign in 1989 and the impresario who created Fox News for Mr. Murdoch in 1996. A full-service mayor to his cronies, Mr. Giuliani lobbied hard to get the Fox News Channel on the city's cable boxes and presided over Mr. Ailes's wedding. Enter Ms. Regan, who was given her own program on Fox's early lineup. Mr. Ailes came up with its rather inspired first title, "That Regan Woman."

Who at the News Corporation supposedly asked Ms. Regan to lie to protect Rudy's secrets? Her complaint does not say. But thanks to the political journal The Hotline, we do know that as of the summer Mr. Giuliani had received more air time from Fox News than any other G.O.P. candidate, much of it on the high-rated "Hannity & Colmes." That show's co-host, Sean Hannity, appeared at a Giuliani campaign fund-raiser this year.

Fox News coverage of Ms. Regan's lawsuit last week was minimal. After all, Mr. Giuliani dismissed the whole episode as "a gossip column story," and we know Fox would never stoop so low as to trade in gossip. The coverage was scarcely more intense at The Wall Street Journal, whose print edition included no mention of the suit's reference to that "senior executive" at the News Corporation. (After bloggers noticed, the article was amended online.) The Journal is not quite yet a Murdoch property, but its editorial board has had its own show on Fox News since 2006.

During the 1990s, the Journal editorial board published so much dirt about the Clintons that it put the paper's brand on an encyclopedic six-volume anthology titled "A Journal Briefing - Whitewater." You'd think the controversies surrounding "America's Mayor" are at least as sexy as the carnal scandals and alleged drug deals The Journal investigated back then. This month a Journal reporter not on its editorial board added the government of Qatar to the small list of known Giuliani Partners clients, among them the manufacturer of OxyContin. We'll see if such journalism flourishes in the paper's Murdoch era.

But beyond New York's dailies and The Village Voice, the national news media, conspicuously the big three television networks, have rarely covered Mr. Giuliani much more aggressively than Mr. Murdoch's Fox News has. They are more likely to focus on Mr. Giuliani's checkered family history than the questions raised by his record in government and business. It's astounding how many are willing to look the other way while recycling those old 9/11 videos.

One exception is The Chicago Tribune, which last month on its front page revisited the story of how, after Mr. Giuliani left office, his mayoral papers were temporarily transferred to a private, tax-exempt foundation run by his supporters and financed with $1.5 million from mostly undisclosed donors. The foundation, which shares the same address as Giuliani Partners, copied and archived the records before sending them back to New York's municipal archives. Historians told The Tribune there's no way to verify that the papers were returned to government custody intact. Mayor Bloomberg has since signed a law that will prevent this unprecedented deal from being repeated.

Journalists, like generals, love to refight the last war, so the unavailability of millions of Hillary Clinton's papers has received all the coverage the Giuliani campaign has been spared. But while the release of those first lady records should indeed be accelerated, it's hard to imagine many more scandals will turn up after six volumes of "Whitewater," an impeachment trial and the avalanche of other investigative reportage on the Clintons then and now.

The Giuliani story, by contrast, is relatively virgin territory. And with the filing of a lawsuit by a vengeful eyewitness who was fired from her job, it may just have gained its own reincarnation of Linda Tripp.

Bush-Cheney Really Are Planning to Attack Iran!

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted November 17, 2007.

Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, demonizing another Muslim nation -- and the Dems are supporting it. We've got to shut them down.

Look out -- here they come again! Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, waving the bloody flag of 9/11, demonizing another Muslim nation, shouting warnings about weapons of mass destruction, bellowing for regime change, and generally trying to whoop up a new war. Having done so well in Iraq, George W and Cheney are pushing feverishly to hype up a national-security threat and commit our nation, our bedraggled military, our depleted treasury, and our country's already-tarnished name to another of their fantasyland, neocon, preemptive invasions of a sovereign people who are doing no harm to us. Their target this time: Iran.

You might be thinking, oh, come on, Hightower, surely not. You're paranoid -- even the Bushites aren't that crazy. I wish.

The drums of war

For such leading neocon zealots as Norman Podhoretz, bombing and even invading Iran are about protecting "our" Mideastern oil, strengthening Israel's regional power, and continuing Western control of the restive Muslim majority in the Middle East. Podhoretz and other true believers assert that there's an urgent need for Israel and the West to crush Iran's Muslim government now, frantically wailing that it intends to destroy America and control the world. Even though Iran has made no threats to the U.S., the neocons see regime change there as the key to winning "World War IV" (they insist that the Cold War was World War III) against what they have dubbed "Islamofacism."

How nutty are they? Podhoretz concedes that by attacking such an influential Islamic nation, Bush would "unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we've experienced so far look like a lovefest." Yet this Dr. Strangelove maniacally declares, "I pray with all my heart that he will." Now there's a prayer to a truly fiendish god!

George W, who is so besotted by Podhoretz that he has bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him, has bought into this guy's insanity. Adopting Podhoretz's inflamed doomsday stance, Bush recently accused Iran of preparing for global war (though W only ranks it as WW III), and Bush's bombastic sidekick, Cheney, has now threatened that Tehran will suffer "serious consequences" if it doesn't do what Washington wants. Just as they did in the run-up to their 2003 Iraq attack, the Bushites are now pounding out a drumbeat of propaganda to soften up the public, enlist the compliant media, and cow soft-spined Democratic leaders. You'll recognize some familiar themes (a.k.a. lies) in BushCheney's rationale for a "preventive" war of aggression against Iran:

Claim: Iran is in cahoots with al Qaeda, the demons who crashbombed America on 9/11. Actually, no. Iran is a Shiite nation that has long been in opposition to the Sunni-exclusive Islam preached by al Qaeda. Indeed, even before al Qaeda's attacks on America, Iran's leaders vehemently opposed the terrorist group's presence in neighboring Afghanistan, and Iran was one of the first Muslim countries to condemn the 9/11 assault. Iran also has willingly turned over al Qaeda suspects to the U.S.

Claim: WMDs! Iran is on the brink of making a nuclear bomb, thus posing an imminent threat to America and to our national interests. Not so. Iran has no nuclear weapons and is nowhere near having the ability to build one. As a signer of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium to make electrical power (something our own country does every day). The Iranian government regularly allows inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency access to its nuclear facilities, and this UN agency (which is the one that turned out to be right about the lack of WMDs in Iraq) has found no evidence that Iran is trying to make a bomb. Even if it were, it would be years away from having one. There certainly is no imminent threat of an Iranian nuclear assault on any country, including our own, which is 7,000 miles away. Plus, Bush's own former top commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, points out that the U.S. lived with a nuclear Soviet Union throughout the Cold War and now lives with a number of nuclear nations, including China and Pakistan, so "there are ways to live with a nuclear Iran." It's simply a lie that the Bushites must rush to war to keep us from being nuked.

Claim: Those dastardly Iranians are meddling in our war in Iraq by supplying weapons to our enemies and by sending intelligence agents to undermine Iraq's government. Not likely. While some Iranianmade weapons have turned up in Iraq, there've been no findings of a large or regular influx and no evidence that the Iranian government itself is even tacitly behind it. Remember that Iran's leaders are Shiites who do not like al Qaeda and do not support the Sunni insurgency, so the only Iraqi force that Tehran would want to help is the Shiite majority that Bush himself has put in charge. As for Iranian "operatives" in Iraq, the two countries share long familial and cultural relationships, so there are a lot of Iranians in Iraq all the time. In fact, Iraq's Shiite-led government is pro-Iranian and has many economic and even military agreements with Tehran. Indeed, when U.S. troops "captured" a group of Iranians in a Baghdad hotel this summer, they turned out to be energy experts invited to Iraq by Prime Minister Maliki, who had them released.

On the warpath

Not that Iran's military/political/ theocratic leaders are a bunch of sweethearts, by any means. That country's loudmouth, Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, makes himself an easy target for Bushite demonization, and all peace-seeking governments must be vigilant toward Iran's potential for belligerence. This requires steady engagement, smart diplomacy, military subtlety, and careful consideration of the complexities embodied within Iran's rich, proud, 6,000-year-old culture.

Unfortunately, BushCheney doesn't do engagement, diplomacy, subtlety, or complexity. If there's an international need to shell a pecan, the Bushites go at it with a sledgehammer, blissfully ignorant of their own ignorance. Do you think, for example, that George W is even aware that President Ahmadinejad can rant and rave all he wants, but he is not in charge of his country's foreign policy, which is in the firm grip of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei?

But realities did not deter Bush and the neocons from miring our country in Iraq, and now they are aggressively putting us on a path to war with Iran.

• In August, Bush announced, "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Teheran's murderous activities."
• Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed last month that Cheney has instructed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans for attacking Iran.
• Hersh added that the bombing would be accompanied by selected "incursions" into Iran by U.S. Special Forces units.
• The London Telegraph reported in September that the Pentagon has developed a list of some 2,000 bombing targets in Iran.
• There are plans for both a limited "surgical" bombing of the Iranian military's training sites and a broad bombing that would include nuclear-power facilities and other targets.
• Two aircraft carriers, a flotilla of U.S. Navy warships, and numerous cruise missiles have been put in place at the Strait of Hormuz, on Iran's southern shore. In fact, half of our navy's warships now sit within striking distance of Iran.
• The Pentagon has suddenly started building a new U.S. military base near the Iraqi town of Badrah, right up against Iran's border.
• In September, Israel launched a preemptive raid in Syria to destroy a construction site that Israelis claim might have been the beginning of a nuclear reactor -- even though Syria has no nuclear-weapons program and could legally build a reactor for electric power. Cheney gave U.S. approval for Israel's strike only after leaders there refused his pleas that they bomb Iran's nuclear-power plant instead.

Yes, the U.S. Air Force and Navy have the razzle-dazzle firepower to destroy 2,000 Iranian targets in short order (not to mention thousands of Iranian civilians, for many of the targets are in populated places). But what happens the next day? Remember those neocon promises, just before the bombing of Iraq in 2003, that our troops would be showered with rose petals by a grateful public? Here we go again. Still intoxicated with the same ideological delusions, the neocons offer nothing but vague assurances that the Iranian masses will greet our forces as liberators and spontaneously overthrow the Tehran regime. In fact, opposition leaders inside Iran say that even the talk of a U.S. military attack is disastrous for their movement, for such reports strengthen hardliners in Iran and weaken those who want to reach out to the West. Iranians are Iranians first, and when a foreign power threatens to bomb or invade their country, they unite.

On Day Two (as well as on Days Three, Four, and so on), Iran most certainly will respond, and the results could be truly hellish for America. That furious wave of anti-Americanism that Podhoretz gleefully predicts would have explosive results in Iraq (further endangering our besieged troops), in such neighboring countries as Saudi Arabia, in the cities of Europe, and right here in the States, where our own citizens could become retaliatory targets.

Then there's oil. Iran and its allies could block the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which connects all of the oil-producing Persian Gulf states to their foreign markets. Up to twenty-five percent of the world's oil must pass through this strategic waterway, and shutting it down would cause prices to zoom astronomically, creating havoc for our oil-soaked economy.

What to do?

You might hope that cooler heads will prevail. Republican political operatives, for example, are aghast at the possible '08 fallout ("Every Republican is going to be defeated," cried one). Also, the generals don't want this -- they know that they don't have the manpower for a real war with Iran. Nor will Bush have a "coalition of the willing" this time -- even the doggishly loyal British government thinks attacking Iran is madness. Then there's Putin of Russia, who pointedly traveled to Iran last month to declare that no one should "even think of making use of force in this region."

However, as a former Bush official told Hersh, "Cheney doesn't give a rat's ass" about any of that, "and neither does the president." The chickenhawks are screeching for war, and they are immune to sanity.

Well, surely, you say, the Democrats will finally stand up to these knuckleheads. After all, Congress has all the power it needs to say no [see last month's Lowdown], and the time for saying it is now, before the shooting starts, before the Bushites start hiding behind the rhetorical cloak of "support the troops."

But the Democrats' congressional leadership is already waffling, and some of their presidential candidates are joining Bush in rattling our sabers at Iran, hoping to appear commander-in-chiefish. Astonishingly, the Senate passed a resolution on September 26 by a 76-22 vote that endorses Bush's confrontation with Tehran! The Kyl-Lieberman amendment buys into the Bushite myths about Iran, calls for the entire Iranian military to be designated "Global Terrorists" under a Bush executive order, and states that it should be U.S. policy to use all instruments of our national power (specifically including "military instruments") to confront the "destabilizing influence" of Iran.

Democrats -- especially Sen. Hillary Clinton -- are now trying to deny that their vote for this resolution gave Bush a free pass to go after Iran, claiming that the resolution was only meant to apply to Iranian interference in Iraq. Intentions are nice, but Bush is not. The amendment's language plainly allows plenty of wiggle room, and the Bushites have shown that they will interpret even an errant sneeze as permission to do whatever they want. Besides, why the hell would Democrats pass anything involving the expansion of this horrible war? Voters put them in charge of Congress to go the opposite way, not to buck up Bush with a new piece of warmongering that Sen. Jim Webb has called "Cheney's fondest pipe dream."

We the People have to be the leaders. More than ever, we have to get noisy. We can't just wring our hands -- there are things we can do:

• First, connect with our allies in Congress, including the 22 senators who voted against the Kyl-Lieberman surrender to Bush (list available here). Let antiwar lawmakers know you're behind them, ask them to get still noisier on this, and ask that they develop an inside-outside strategy to rally and focus our national outrage against expanding Bush's Iraq disaster into Iran.
• Second, demand that your Congress critters (whatever their stripe) use all their congressional powers (to control spending, launch investigations, declare war, etc.) to say that the president can take no preemptive military action against Iran without a full, constitutionally mandated declaration of war by Congress.
• Third, connect with any and all of the savvy grassroots groups in this issue's "Do Something" box. Use their information, sign all of their petitions, spread their materials, and join their actions.
• Fourth, talk, talk, talk, and talk some more -- in church, at school, with your neighbors and coworkers, at town hall meetings, in family phone calls or visits, on talk radio, at candidate forums, in supermarket check-out lines... wherever you can find an ear. The vast majority of Americans have not heard what Bush is up to, and they won't like it. The most effective way to reach them and activate them is by personal contact -- i.e., you. Talk to someone about it every day.
• Fifth, don't let Democrats waffle. Iraq was Bush's war (and his political debacle), but Iran would be a product of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and they will be responsible either for allowing it...or for stopping it.
• Sixth, come up with your own action idea, and let the rest of us know how we can support and spread it.

Be brave. Be loud. Your country needs you.

The Scarlet Hypocrites

November 17 / 18, 2007

Republicans, Christians and the All-American Politics of Adultery

By DAVID ROSEN

Christian conservative leader Pat Robertson recently endorsed Rudy Giuliani's presidential candidacy. The announcement gained media attention and provoked considerable commentary, but quickly dissipated as Giuliani's protégé in strong-arm deception, Bernie Kerik, faced a 16-count federal indictment. Today, Robertson's endorsement has all but evaporated from public discourse, reflecting its inherent meaninglessness.

Robertson's endorsement of Giuliani drew much attention due to the odd-couple nature of their alignment. It was a political marriage few anticipated and exposes the deeper crisis faced by the Republican Party in the wake of the ongoing debacle of both the Bush administration and the Christian right. Robertson's endorsement represents a pragmatist's bet on "who can beat Hillary," thus dropping any pretense to the higher moral calling that, for more than a quarter-century, fueled his opportunistic career.

Most remarkable, the two old-time artful dodgers skillfully sidestepped any mention of abortion and gay rights, issues that for Robertson and the Christian right, let alone the other Republican presidential candidates, have been cornerstone concerns during the last two presidential cycles. Equally surprising, no mention of Giuliani's adulterous past found its way into their orgy of backslapping political revelry.

The Seventh Commandment states: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." [Exodus 20:14] Nathaniel Hawthorne published "The Scarlet Letter" in 1850. In this classic American gothic tale, the central character, Hester Prynee, gives birth to Pearl, her out-of-wedlock daughter, and refuses to name the father. Set against a grim background of the later-17th century New England witchcraft trials, Hester is found guilty of adultery and forced to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her chest.

One can only wonder why, as the electoral season gets underway, Giuliani and other Republican worthies are not being forced by their devout Christian supporters to wear Hester Prynee's scarlet "A"?

* * *

Adultery, marital infidelity and sexual scandal plague the Republican Party and the Christian right. In 2006, the shameful sexual exploits of former Congressmen Mark Foley (R-FL) and Don Sherwood (R-PA) and the Rev. Ted Haggard as well as the ongoing pedophile scandal rocking the Catholic Church (to say nothing of the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal) contributed significantly to the Democrats' Congressional victories.

The 2008 election is shaping up to follow inline with 2006. So far, the sexual exploits of Senators David Vitter and Larry Craig as well as Randall L. Tobias (former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development) have been front-page scandals.

Now, "America's Mayor" faces the unraveling of a well-orchestrated cover-up, an unraveling that can put the final nail in the GOP's electoral coffin. As reflected in his unquestioning support for Kerik ("America's Police Chief" who himself had an adulterous affair with publisher Judith Regan), good judgment has never been considered one of Giuliani's strongest attributes.

As many will recall, in May 2000, Giuliani held an outrageous press conference to publicly announce his intention to divorce his second wife, actress Donna Hanover. Surprised, Hanover held a follow-up press conference in which she declared, "I had hoped that we could keep this marriage together. For several years, it was difficult to participate in Rudy's public life because of his relationship with one staff member."

The soon-to-be-former Mrs. Giuliani was referring to Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas, Giuliani's former communications director. Giuliani and Lategano-Nicholas denied allegations of a sexual liaison. Giuliani is also accused of having an ongoing, if discreet, sexual liaison while married to Hanover with his current wife, Judith Nathan, herself a survivor of two previous marriages. Little of this dubious personal history of a man who could become president finds its way into the mainstream media.

Nor do the questionable sexual and personal relations of other prominent Republicans find coverage in the popular media. Take, for example, John McCain. According to Nicholas Kristof of the "New York Times," in 1979 and while still married, McCain aggressively courted Cindy Hensley, a 25-year-old woman from a well-to-do family. He then divorced his wife, Carol, who had raised their three children while he was a prison-of-war in Vietnam, married Ms. Hensley and launched his political career bankrolled by his new wife's family money.

Fred Thompson, the former senator turned actor turned presidential aspirant, was assailed by James Dobson, founder of ultra-conservative Focus on the Family, for being "wrong on issues dear to social conservatives." Dobson was offended by Thompson's opposition to a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and his support of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation. Unstated, but not far from Dobson and other Christian fundamentalist resentment of Thompson, is his trophy bride, his second wife, Jeri Kehn, who he married in 2002; he divorced his first wife, Sarah Lindsay, in 1985.

Then we have those upstanding Christian Republicans and former congressmen, Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich. In "No Retreat, No Surrender," DeLay recounts his early political career in the Texas Legislature and his exploits involving serial adultery.

Gingrich, who led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for his oral tryst with Monica Lewinsky in the White House, is reported to have had adulterous liaisons with Anne Manning, Callista Bisek and an unnamed volunteer. Invoking Clinton's now-infamous "is" defense, Gingrich claimed that oral sex is not sexual intercourse and thus does not rise to the level of adultery.

Gail Sheehy revealed Gingrich's 1977 affair with Manning in Washington while he was married to his first wife. ["Vanity Fair," September 1995] However, in 1981 Gingrich divorced his first wife, Jackie Battley, while she was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment; he divorced his second wife, Marianne Ginther, on Mother's Day 1999, when Gingrich's long-running affair with Callista Bisek, a congressional aide, was exposed. Seeking absolution, Gingrich confessed his sins to Dobson, who, along with Jerry Falwell, forgave him. No scarlet letters for these worthies.

Moving these affairs from the scandalous to the absurd, DeLay insisted that he was morally superior to Gingrich: "I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There's a big difference." And adds, "Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time."

* * *

Adultery is an all-American sin. Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" was written one-hundred-and-fifty years after the colonial witchcraft trials. Among early New England colonialists, adultery was a capital crime punishable by hanging or being branded with an "A" on the forehead. Other sexual practices denounced as sins included premarital sex, bestiality, masturbation, fornication, incest, rape, polygamy, interracial sex and sodomy as well as temptations like carnality, licentiousness, lust and seduction.

While Hester Prynee suffered public ridicule and the shame of wearing a scarlet "A," early colonial women often met far worse fates. Two women, Elizabeth Seager and Rachel Clinton, were charged with witchcraft and adultery; their lives were spared. However, three women (Alice Lake, Martha Corey and Suzannah Martin) were accused of witchcraft and having illegitimate children; they were executed. And ten other women were accused of having sex with Satan and their individual fates vary.

Since Independence, adultery by leading political figures has been an ongoing scandal. In the 1828 presidential election, Andrew Jackson was assailed as a bigamist over the timing of his marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards which occurred before her divorce was legally finalized. After assuming office in 1874, Grover Cleveland was confronted by newspaper reports claiming he had an affair with Mrs. Maria Crofts Halpin, who accused him of fathering her illegitimate 10-year-old son, Oscar Folsom Cleveland. While he never admitted paternity, Cleveland sent child support to Mrs. Halpin.

The prying eye of public notoriety got sharper as the 20th century unfolded. Warren Harding had an affair for fifteen years with Carrie Fulton Phillips, the wife of a friend, James Phillips, and Nan Britton, thirty years his junior, with sexual liaisons with her in the White House and with whom he fathered an illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth Ann. And then there are the extra-marital relations of FDR, Ike, JFK, Clinton and, least we forget, the rumored indiscretions by Bush-the-lesser with Margie Denise Schoedinger and Tammy Phillips.

Estimates range widely as to the current rate of adultery in America. For example, in a 1991 survey conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center 10 percent of married women reported that they had engaged in extramarital relations; in a 2002 follow-up study, 15 percent of women reported that had engaged in such relations; in both studies, 22 percent reported engaging in such relations. [Newsweek, July 12, 2004]

In a 1997 Ball State University study found that women 18- to 40-years are just as likely to commit adultery as men of comparable age. Reports in "Men's Health Best Life" (2003) place husband infidelity at one in 20 (5%) and wife infidelity at one in 22 (4.6%); "Oprah" magazine (2004) found that wife infidelity was at 15 percent. However, Joan Atwood and Limor Schwartz, reporting in the "Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy" (2002), estimate that 45-55 percent of married women and 50-60 percent of married men engage in extramarital sex during their marriage.

While popular sexual practice is changing and martial infidelity appears more widespread and more tolerated, twenty-four states still outlawed adultery as of 2004; ten states had anti-fornication statutes prohibiting sex before marriage.

States define adultery differently, the laws vary considerably and prosecution is arbitrary. For some states, adultery involves sexual intercourse outside marriage; for others, it occurs when a married person lives with someone other than his or her spouse. In West Virginia and North Carolina, for example, it involves "lewdly and lasciviously associate" with anyone other than one's spouse.

Adding more confusion, individual states prosecute adultery differently and punishment also varies. Adultery is a felony in Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma and Idaho, but a misdemeanor everywhere else. Most states litigate both people involved, but Colorado, Georgia, Nebraska, North Dakota and Utah only punish the married person. [Franklin Foer, Slate, June 15, 1997]

However, states rarely enforce adultery laws. The most recent prosecution appears to have taken place in Virginia in 2003-2004. It involved John R. Bushey, Jr., a 66-year-old attorney for Luray, VA, who had an affair with Nellie Mae Hensley, 53-years-old. While Hensley was divorced, Bushey was married and, when the affair ended, the spurned lover complained to the police who brought a misdemeanor adultery charge against him. He accepted 20 hours of community service as punishment.

While we can little expect the religious right to brand an "A" on the forehead of Giuliani, DeLay, Gingrich and other adulterous Republicans, one can only hope that the righteous Christians who support these politicians will raise the issue of adultery as the presidential campaign gets into high gear.

David Rosen can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.

Worshipping the Military, or the Society it Defends?

November 16, 2007

Worshipping the Military, or the Society it Defends?

Doug Bandow

On much of the Right the U.S. military has become sacrosanct. Those most enthused about making war around the globe while never donning a uniform seem most determined to turn the Pentagon into a national idol. But if we are to have a national idol, it should be our system of ordered liberty, which the military is tasked to protect. Our democratic republic, and the larger civilian society surrounding it, are the end; the armed services are the means. America's founders were not fond of standing militaries. They suffered under the British occupation and through war with British regulars and German mercenaries. For years the famed Boston massacre was commemorated by notables denouncing standing militaries. Although some nationalistic colonists, such as Alexander Hamilton, desired a strong nation state, the majority of newly free Americans feared creation of a permanent military establishment. Despite the Constitution's grant of authority for the federal government to employ regulars, early administrations primarily relied on state militias. Until the Cold War the U.S. maintained only a modest standing army in peacetime. Gunpowder politics won some war heroes the presidency – George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and Ulysses Grant come to mind. But most early presidents were noted more for their political than military skills. And some victorious soldiers, such as Winfield Scott, were notorious political losers. Little changed even as the U.S. entered the more militaristic 20th century. Military service in Cuba enriched Teddy Roosevelt's resume, but his New York political success propelled him to the presidency. Even then he lost in 1912 to Woodrow Wilson, a man about as divorced from military service as, well, the passel of neocons who today push for war with any number of nations around the globe. Even America's successful generals of World War I ended up respected rather than venerated. Indeed, after World War I the military was a backwater, especially as Americans grew disillusioned with the disastrous impact of the supposed war for democracy. During World War II most men passed through the military, which at its peak hosted 13 million men in uniform. Cold War conscription ensured that military service remained common among men even in nominal peacetime. The military provided a shared, if not always positive, national experience. Too many people suffered through the indignities of military life to exalt it. The Vietnam War changed everything. More men evaded or avoided service. The military's role was increasingly perceived as oppressive and immoral. A sizable portion of the population became hostile towards or at least embarrassed by the military's involvement in Vietnam. Some of these people, sadly, turned their anger against individual service members. Since then the military's image has dramatically rebounded. The Reagan administration turned the All-Volunteer Force, which endured a difficult birth in 1973, into a dramatic success. Later military successes – against lesser opponents, to be sure, but notable successes, nevertheless – increased respect for the military. While scandals bedeviled civilian institutions, the armed services proved their effectiveness. Moreover, the fact that military service was voluntary highlighted the sacrifice made by military personnel. Those serving in difficult circumstances chose to eschew the greater material rewards and physical safety of civilian life. Military life is hard, as I've seen personally, with a father and brother-in-law, as well as numerous friends, who made the military a career. They deserve praise for putting on the uniform, choosing a lifestyle that most Americans, including me (and so many of today's ivory tower hawks), do not want to adopt. But some on the Right have moved well beyond respect for military service. They are demanding that the military – as an institution, and its members as individuals – be placed on pedestals beyond criticism. Of course, generals always have been involved in politics, and decisions by generals always have had enormous political impact. But, conservatives now gravely intone, generals are to be praised and affirmed without question ... at least when supporting the Iraq War. For instance, MoveOn.org's attack on Gen. David Petraeus set off a landslide of professed outrage on the Right. Most of these observers had cheerfully trashed retired generals who criticized Bush administration policy. Conservatives ignored the fact that many within the military, including Adm. William Fallon, the theater commander, disagree with Petraeus on important issues. And conservative warhawks were unconcerned by rumors of the General's potential political ambitions. Rather, the Right decided that any attack on Gen. Petraeus was not just unconscionable, but treasonous. I found MoveOn.org's ad to be unfair and nasty, but hardly beyond the pale in a robust political debate, especially one in which which the administration, on behalf of which Gen. Petraeus was speaking, had repeatedly and shamelessly misled the public. Once he began representing this administration's war policies, he lost any presumption of impartiality, accuracy, or believability. MoveOn's attack was obnoxious, not obscene. Even worse, however, the Right has taken almost any criticism of the war to be an attack on the military. To argue that the war has been hopelessly bungled and the administration's expansive goals have been hopelessly unrealistic is routinely attacked as desiring America's defeat. Criticism is taken as the equivalent of defeatism and treason. Indeed, all Americans are viewed as having an obligation to slather praise on the military, irrespective of its performance or the validity of the cause in which it labors. The armed services are seen as a tragically fragile flower. The slightest criticism at home, in a democratic republic which loudly proclaims the importance of government accountability around the world, is said to threaten troop morale. That is, without a constant refrain of Hosannas, irrespective of the facts on the ground, American troops will feel like quitting and going home. This perspective would be silly if it was not so dangerous. An administration and conservative movement which together irresponsibly pushed the U.S. into an unnecessary war must not be allowed to exempt themselves from criticism in the name of honoring the troops. While some service personnel in battle might find an open, vibrant political debate at home to be disconcerting, as citizens they must understand that the democracy which they serve requires open, robust political debate. People who can endure guerrilla combat in Iraq can endure criticism of administration policies in Washington. Beyond the routine political demagoguery is a cultural attitude on the Right which seems to treat the military as an institution superior to civilian organizations. Often there is reverence rather than respect for the military. This stands the American experiment on its head. It must be clearly understood: War is not a high ideal, let alone the highest ideal. War is hideous, a monstrosity. While it sometimes leads to the most sublime sacrifice and heroism, it more often results in unparalleled barbarity. Even good people often end up doing horrible things. Economies are wrecked. Communities and societies are destroyed. Institutions are eradicated. Families are broken and dispersed. People are slaughtered and maimed. Killing in war – so often widespread and indiscriminate – may sometimes be necessary in a dangerous world where evil men gain control of powerful nation states. But war should always be a last resort. The very notion of a war of choice, the view that unleashing war is a matter of discretion, is outrageous. War is not just another option. War inevitably means death and destruction. And, as evident in Iraq, like in so many other supposedly easy conflicts begun with irresponsible frivolity by foolish politicians, wars rarely turn out as planned. Even the most supposedly humanitarian military action usually has non-humanitarian consequences. Morever, military service is not the most honorable human endeavor. In the best case, of course, it is honorable – sacrificing to protect one's family, community, and country. Sacrifice in war that often includes injury, maiming, and death. Sacrifice that puts others before self. But it is not always honorable. One can easily point to foreign militaries which have behaved in ways that violate many of the principles which Americans hold dear. One can also point to earlier American forces – during the Mexican-American War and counter-insurgency campaign against Filipino independence fighters, for instance – which acted dishonorably, sometimes under orders, sometimes not. One can even point to discreditable military actions today. The modern U.S. military is very good, but it is not perfect. Of course one should recognize the complexities and exigencies of war before rendering judgment on the actions of its participants. But one still must render judgment on military actions. Doing so is particularly important when the military purports to represent the highest ideals in acting for humanitarian purposes. Indeed, American military action often does nothing to promote the ends officially advanced. In Iraq, as in Bosnia, as in Vietnam, and as in most every other conflict, war supporters routinely opine that servicemen and women are "defending our freedom." But that is almost never the case. Neither invading nor occupying Iraq had anything to do with preserving the liberty of Americans. Bombing Serbia did nothing to preserve American freedoms. Frankly, the failure of U.S. wars to advance American liberties is evident throughout U.S. history. The War of 1812, while arguably justified by repeated British provocations, was notably imprudent at the time and was motivated in significant part by an avaricious desire to seize Canada. The Mexican-American War was a matter of pure continental aggrandizement. The Spanish-American War and ensuing suppression of the Filipino insurgents were imperialist excursions at their worst. World War I was an unnecessary and foolish leap into an imperial slugfest in which no participant had clean hands. Moreover, the U.S. managed to transform the prospect of a negotiated peace into a one-sided allied victory, which led to a far worse conflict a generation later. Without the Versailles Treaty there would have been no Nazi Germany, no Adolf Hitler, no German Blitzkrieg, no Holocaust, no World War II. Thank you, Woodrow Wilson. Involvement in World War II and the Cold War was much harder to avoid, given the threat of hegemonic domination by Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Union. Washington also helped set up the circumstances leading to the Korean War, entangling the U.S. But the Vietnam War – effectively taking on France's discredited and useless colonial empire – was another completely unnecessary tragedy. Indeed, though war proponents warned that losing would have catastrophic consequences, the result turned out to have virtually no geopolitical impact. Within two decades the Soviet Union was gone, China was reforming, and Vietnam was pushing for relations with America. So much for protecting the U.S. from anything, let alone defending American liberties. Of course, that doesn't mean military service is not honorable even when the ends determined by politicians are imprudent, foolish, and dishonorable. But honorable military service remains a means rather than an end. It is the means to achieve a peaceful, prosperous, virtuous, and free society. Achieving that end should be our highest political, and thus military, objective. Some people find peace boring. That is as it should be. A free society, with people protected from violence at home and abroad, is the best environment for Americans to worship God, form families, enjoy friends, attend school, aid the needy, create clubs, play sports, travel for pleasure, and do the many, many other common, simple, mundane tasks that give life its meaning. People who are engaging in these activities, pursuing happiness, to use Thomoas Jefferson's apt phrase in the Declaration of Independence, also are engaging in honorable behavior. And behavior that ultimately enriches our society. Protecting that society is why we deploy a military. Defending this system obviously is a high calling. But the most important, most worthy, most fundamental institutions are civilian. We create a military to defend civilian society. We do not create a civilian society to support the military. Even today, when the political authorities have thrust the nation into an unnecessary war with horrible, counterproductive consequences, we should recognize the sacrifice of the men and women who serve in the military. Their service can be set apart from the flawed cause for which they have been deployed. A military is needed in a dangerous world. Those who are willing to give up the benefits of civilian life for the rest of us deserve applause. Certainly we should never blame those in uniform for the mistakes of their political overseers; we should never treat disrespectfully brave men and women ordered to perform unpopular tasks. Military personnel very often demonstrate courage, competence, and steadfastness in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. But we also should respect servicemen and women enough to acknowledge their moral responsibility for their own decisions. In particular, patriotic young people should ask whether it makes sense to join when their service is likely to be perverted and misused by those in power. Any family should be pleased and proud, even if understandably worried, when a son or daughter, or father or mother, joins the U.S. military to defend our liberties. However, the decision-making calculous is different for potential recruits and their families when the military is deployed for other purposes, as in Iraq. At some point, it behooves the young men and women of America to work to end unnecessary, imprudent, and unjust wars by refusing to fight them. The issue goes well beyond Iraq. Today U.S. foreign policy has virtually nothing to do with defending America. Instead, the U.S. is busy protecting populous and prosperous allies, engaging in violent social engineering in dysfunctional Third World states, and nagging other countries to comply with the latest whims of Washington policy-makers. Against America today there is no serious adversary, potential adversary, or collection of theoretical adversaries. Yet the U.S. possesses the most powerful military on earth – thousands of nuclear warheads, alliances with most other advanced industrialized states, a globe-spanning air force, a dozen carrier groups, and ground forces capable of defeating any conventional foe. Washington accounts for half of the globe's military spending. Terrorism appropriately remains of great concern. But most of what the U.S. government does – whether defense spending, troop deployments, alliance commitments, invasions and bombings, and other interventions – has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. Ironically, 9/11 demonstrated that America's vast "defense" spending did not prepare the Pentagon to actually defend the nation when it was most necessary. Moreover, Washington's promiscuous intervention, especially in the Middle East, evidently generated violent blowback in the form of terrorism against the U.S. homeland. Patriotism towards country transcends any foreign policy. But loving America does not mean loving American foreign policy. Indeed, today the latter should be criticized, opposed, and resisted by those who most love their country, including anyone inclined to serve in the military. The problem of U.S. foreign policy has been exacerbated by the break-down in constitutional checks and balances. The Constitution mandates a declaration of war before the president plunges the nation into hostilities. But presidents now routinely claim the right to unilaterally wage war and Congresses, irrespective of their partisan composition, usually refuse to constrain the president. As a result, the military has become the president's personal army, available to promote whatever ideological whim, no matter how fantastic, that motivates him and his closest advisers. As a result, members of the service and potential recruits are the last line of defense for American liberties. Indeed, the AVF, by relying on volunteers, gives average people, and especially young people, the power to end American involvement in counterproductive occupations and wars irrespective of what Washington politicians desire. The military and its members deserve appreciation, honor, and respect. But not worship. The military exists only to protect civilian society. And members of that civilian society are entitled, even required, to conduct a robust debate over what uses of the military are proper, moral, and prudent. That debate is most important when the conflict has gone badly, administration deceptions have been exposed, presidential promises have been unfulfilled, and executive incompetence has been routine. Like today.