Salon: Glenn Greenwald

How the military analyst program controlled news coverage: in the Pentagon's own words

Glenn Greenwald — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:48:00 PDT

(updated below)

On the question of whether the Pentagon maintained an illegal covert domestic propaganda program -- and on the broader question of whether the American media's political coverage is largely shaped and controlled by the U.S. Government -- I don't believe it's possible to obtain more conclusive evidence than this:

These are excepts from a memorandum sent on January 14, 2005 -- just before President Bush was to be inaugurated for his second term -- from Capt. Roxie T. Merritt, the Director of DoD Press Operations, to several top Pentagon officials, including Larry Di Rita, the top aide to Donald Rumsfeld (pp. 7815-7816 (.pdf)). It reports on Merritt's conclusions and proposals in the wake of a Pentagon-organized trip to Iraq for their military analysts:

BACKGROUND
One of the most interesting things coming from this trip to Iraq with the media analysts has been learning how their jobs have been undergoing a metamorphosis. There are several reasons behind the morph . . . with an all voluntary military, no one in the media has current military background. Additionally we have been doing a good job of keeping these guys informed so they have ready answers when the networks come calling.
CURRENT ISSUES
The key issue here is that more and more, media analysts are having a greater impact on the television media network coverage of military issues. They have now become the go to guys not only for breaking stories, but they influence the views on issues. They also have a huge amount of influence on what stories the network decides to cover proactively with regard to the military. . . .
RECOMMENDATION
1.) I recommend we develop a core group from within our media analyst list of those that we can count on to carry our water. They become part of a "hot list" of those that we immediately make calls to or put on an email distro list before we contact or respond to media on hot issues. We can also do more proactive engagement with this list and give them tips on what stories to focus on and give them heads up on issues as they are developing. By providing them with key and valuable information, they become the key go to guys for the networks and it begins to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts by the networks themselves . . . .
3.) Media ops and outreach can work on a plan to maximize use of the analysts and figure out a system by which we keep our most reliably friendly analysts plugged in on everything from crisis response to future plans. This trusted core group will be more than willing to work closely with us because we are their bread and butter and the more they know, the more valuable they are to the networks. . . .
5.) As evidenced by this analyst trip to Iraq, the synergy of outreach shops and media ops working together on these types of projects is enormous and effective. Will continue to exam (sic) ways to improve processes.

The response from Di Rita, in full (ellipses in original):

This is a thoughtful note. . . I think it makes a lot of sense to do as you suggest and I guess I thought we were already doing a lot of this in terms of quick contact, etc. . . We ought to be doing this, though, and we should not make the list too small . . . .

So the Pentagon would maintain a team of "military analysts" who reliably "carry their water" -- yet who were presented as independent analysts by the television and cable networks. By feeding only those pro-Government sources key information and giving them access -- even before responding to the press -- only those handpicked analysts would be valuable to the networks, and that, in turn, would ensure that only pro-Government sources were heard from. Meanwhile, the "less reliably friendly" ones -- frozen out by the Pentagon -- would be "weeded out" by the networks. The pro-Government military analysts would do what they were told because the Pentagon was "their bread and butter." These Pentagon-controlled analysts were used by the networks not only to comment on military matters -- and to do so almost always unchallenged -- but also even to shape and mold the networks' coverage choices.

Even a casual review of the DoD's documents leaves no doubt that this is exactly how the program worked. The military analysts most commonly used by MSNBC, CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC routinely received instructions about what to say in their appearances from the Pentagon. As but one extreme though illustrative example, Dan Senor -- Fox News analyst and husband of CNN's Campbell Brown -- would literally ask Di Rita before his television appearances what he should say (7900, 7920-21), and submitted articles to him, such as one he wrote for The Weekly Standard about how great the war effort was going, and Di Rita would give him editing directions, which he obediently followed.

Among the most active analysts in this program were all three of the most commonly used MSNBC commentators -- Gen. Montgomery Meigs, Gen. Wayne Downing, and Col. Ken Allard. They were frequently summoned by Chris Matthews and (in the case of Downing) by Brian Williams as NBC's resident experts. Matthews referred to them as "HARDBALL's war council" on January 17, 2005, when he had all three of them on together to bash The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh for reporting that the Pentagon was preparing attack plans against Iran -- an article that, like most Hersh articles, infuriated Di Rita and other DoD officials. The next day, Allard proudly wrote to Di Rita:

As you may have seen on MSNBC, I attributed a lot of what [Hersh] said to disgruntled CIA employees who simply should be taken out and shot.

In light of all of this, it is very hard to dispute the excited analysis of an unnamed Lt. Col when, in a March 4, 2005 email to various Pentagon officials (7751), he described the military analyst program as producing a "big payback." He then went further:

There are about 50 retired military analysts that are part of this group. . . . these are the folks that end up on FOX, CNN, etc. interpreting military happenings. These calls are conducted frequently and offer HUGE payback. . . . these end up being the people who carry the mail on talk shows.

On the Los Angeles Times blog a couple of weeks ago, Scott Collins opined that the principal reason the military analyst story had "no legs" (meaning that the original NYT story received so little subsequent coverage in the establishment media) is this:

Many Americans confronted with stories of media manipulation by government officials aren't, at this point, shocked and awed. Instead they've come to expect it. Increasingly, they consider the media simply a mouthpiece for whoever has the most power. You don't have to tell John Q. Public that the fix is in; he takes it for granted. . . .
So, many Americans, confronted with evidence that TV's talking heads are taking orders not just from government officials but also military-contractor clients, can be excused for not being all that surprised.

Clearly, the principal reason the story has received virtually no coverage on the television networks is because the story reflects so poorly on them. But as to his primary point, I don't believe Collins is right. The public has long been inculcated with the notion that we have a "liberal media" that opposes and undermines whatever Republicans do, etc. etc. Yet here is mountains of evidence as conclusive as can be as to how the Government/media cartel actually functions -- media outlets and their corporate parents rely on the Government for all sorts of favors and access and, in return, do nothing to displease them. To the contrary, the Bush administration itself here is proudly touting its ability to control media content and ensure the presence only of pro-Government voices with regard to war and military matters.

It's true that there are plenty of people who understand the core government-amplifying function of the establishment media, but there are also plenty of people -- likely far more -- who don't. That's precisely why the television networks are so eager to suppress and conceal these revelations and the endlessly illuminating evidence which supports them.

UPDATE: Each time I've written about this story, someone -- including, once, one of the producers of the show -- writes to point out that PBS' News Hour did broadcast a segment a couple of weeks ago examining the issues underlying the scandal. Indeed they did, and it was quite a good discussion. The transcript for that show can be read, and the show itself viewed, here.

On a different note, from the "for-what-it's-worth" department, Harry Reid was at FDL's Book Salon today to promote his new book, and this was the answer he gave when someone asked about whether he was planning to hold hearings (h/t Lish, who asked the question):

The answer is yes. I have personally spoken to Chairman Levin and he is tremendously concerned as I. And we are proceeding accordingly.

What is worth noting is that that's the first time Senate leadership has said they intend to hold hearings. In its recent article on the media's "deafening silence" over this story, The Politico said that if there were Congressional hearings held, then "the networks would be hard-pressed to continue their de facto blackout." I guess we'll find out if that's true.

CNN, the Pentagon's "military analyst program" and Gitmo

Glenn Greenwald — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:43:00 PDT

The Pentagon has posted to its website the roughly 8,000 pages and audio tapes it was forced to provide to the New York Times regarding its "military analyst" program. Anyone who reads through them, as I've now done, can only be left with one conclusion (other than being extremely impressed with David Barstow's work in putting together this story): if this wasn't an example of an illegal, systematic "domestic propaganda campaign" by the Pentagon, then nothing is.

Despite this, the truly extraordinary blackout by the major television and cable news networks -- which were complicit in this program -- continues. Howard Kurtz of CNN and The Washington Post previously called this blackout "pathetic", and yesterday, The Politico published a relatively impressive article further documenting the "deafening silence" from the networks at the center of this story. As the article noted:

While bloggers have kept the story simmering, Democratic congressional leaders also are speaking out, calling for investigations that could provoke the networks to finally cover the Times story Ã¢ÂÂ and, in effect, themselves.

Beyond the networks' keeping this scandal completely concealed from their viewers, The Politico story noted that only two network executives -- CNN's President Jim Walton and ABC's President David Westin (.pdf) -- even bothered to respond to the letters sent by Rep. Rosa DeLauro to all networks demanding answers with regard to their complicity in this program. When responding, the two executives -- exactly as Brian Williams was when he was finally forced by blog-inspired commenters to respond (on his blog, but not on NBC) -- were casually dismissive of the entire matter, insisting that they had done nothing wrong (other than CNN's acknowledgment that they failed to detect a conflict of interest with regard to a single military analyst they had used).

Let's just lay out some of the relevant facts about what happened -- looking at one episode illustrating how this entire program worked and what CNN specifically did. Then, we can see whether CNN served as an eager instrument for a corrupt domestic propaganda campaign by the Pentagon, or whether, as Walton claims, CNN acted with perfect propriety. Tomorrow, we'll do the same with regard to ABC.

* * * * *

In June of 2005, communications officials in the Pentagon began planning a military-sponsored trip to Guantanamo for selected retired military officers who were currently working as "news analysts" for various television networks and magazines. Amnesty International had just issued its most scathing report yet about Gitmo, as part of its 2005 report on America's "new gulag of prisons around the world beyond the reach of the law and decency." It specifically called Gitmo "the gulag of our times," and detailed years of extreme abuses that had taken place there.

To counter Amnesty's findings, the Pentagon planned the Gitmo trip over the course of two weeks in mid-June. They eventually confirmed June 24 as the date for the tour, with a list of ten participants, including retired Gen. Don Shepperd of CNN, along with various "military analysts" from MSNBC and Fox.

From the beginning, the whole trip was transparently propagandistic, and there was no possibility that the participants could learn anything meaningful about Gitmo. It was a one-day itinerary (pp. 7476-7477). They left Andrews Air Force Base at 6:45 a.m. on June 24, and did not land in Cuba until 10:00 a.m. Virtually the entire 3 hour plane ride was filled with "briefings" by various DoD officials, and after they landed -- and before they were taken to the detention camps -- they were given another 90 minutes of briefings.

They did not even arrive at Camp Delta -- where the detainees are kept -- until 12:35 p.m. that afternoon. After a 50-minute lunch with the troops, they began a guided tour of Camp Delta at 1:20 p.m. which lasted a grand total of one hour and 25 minutes. Packed into that 85-minute tour was a viewing of an interrogation, a tour of an "unoccupied cellblock," and a visit to the detention hospital. That was all the time they spent touring Camp Delta: 85 minutes.

Then, at 2:45 p.m., they were brought to Camp V for 10 minutes, followed by a tour of Camp X-Ray for 35 minutes. Then they left Cuba -- to fly home, with the "wheels up" on their plane at exactly 4:30 p.m. the same day, arriving back at Andrews that night at 7:45 p.m. They were then brought back to the Pentagon at 8:00 p.m. They spent a grand total of 3 hours and 55 minutes at the Guantanamo detention facilities, with almost one hour of that devoted to lunch with the troops. That was the sum total of their grand tour of the detention facility: less than 3 hours. And then the propaganda campaign to malign and dispute the extensive, amply documented findings of Amnesty was unleashed in full.

* * * * *

In a "trip report" he filed with his Pentagon handlers, CNN's Gen. Shepperd explicitly acknowledged both the blatantly propagandistic purpose of the trip, as well as the extremely limited and controlled scope of information to which he had access in a single-day trip (7434). Shepperd stated:

"Did we drink the 'Government Kool-Aid?' -- of course, and that was the purpose of the trip." In his Pentagon report, Shepperd added the obvious: that "a one day visit does not an expert make," that "the government was obviously going to put its best foot forward to get out its message," and that "former military visitors are more likely to agree with government views than a more appropriately skeptical press."

Shepperd's statement as to the purpose of the GITMO trip -- to have the pro-government analysts "drink the government Kool-Aid" -- was unquestionably accurate, as multiple Pentagon documents reflect. As but one example, a planning email from Pentagon official Dallas Lawrence, dated June 21, 2005, highlighted the importance of scheduling the Gitmo trip to ensure that The American Spectator's Jed Babbin could participate, noting (7486):

He is hosting a number of radio shows this summer. I would have to think he would have every member of Congress on to talk about their trip together -- a definite plus for us looking to expand the echo chamber.

Shepperd, despite being employed by CNN as an "analyst," clearly had as his first priority ensuring the success of the Pentagon's messaging mission. Upon returning from the Gitmo trip, Shepperd, on June 25, sent an email to Pentagon officials praising the Gitmo tour and telling them: "let me know if I can help you." He signed the email: "Don Shepperd (CNN military analyst)" (7470):

Demonstrating how controlled by the Pentagon were these "analysts," Shepperd's email to "help" was forwarded to top Rumsfeld aide Larry Di Rita, who replied (7470): "OK, but let's get him briefed on Khatani so he doesn't go too far on that one" -- referring to the so-called 20th hijacker Mohammed al-Khatani, whose Guantanamo interrogation had been particularly brutal, as he "was stripped naked, isolated, given intravenous fluids and forced to urinate on himself, and exercised to exhaustion during interrogations that lasted 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 days."

* * * * *

"Helping" the Pentagon is exactly what Shepperd, pretending to be an "independent analyst" on CNN, then proceeded to do. In numerous appearances on CNN talking about Gitmo, no mention was ever made of Khatani or other specific, documented abuses. To the contrary, Shepperd's "analysis" -- broadcast all over CNN -- was exactly what it would have been had Rumsfeld himself written the script.

Shepperd -- after his half-day visit -- went on several CNN shows and opined emphatically about how great things were at Guantanamo and how reports from Amnesty were "totally false." On the day of the Guantanamo "tour" -- June 24, 2005 -- CNN's Betty Nguyen conducted a live telephone interview with Gen. Shepperd that went as follows:

NGUYEN: We have just established a line to Guantanamo Bay, to our military analyst General Don Shepperd. He arrived there as part of a trip put together by the Pentagon in wake of that human rights report that criticized conditions at the U.S. prison for war detainees. General Shepperd on the phone with us right now.
General Shepperd, what do you see so far while being there?
MAJ. GEN. DONALD SHEPPERD, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, . . . I tell you, every American should have a chance to see what our group saw today. The impressions that you're getting from the media and from the various pronouncements being made by people who have not been here, in my opinion, are totally false.
What we're seeing is a modern prison system of dedicated people, interrogators and analysts that know what they are doing. And people being very, very well-treated. We've had a chance to tour the facility, to talk to the guards, to talk to the interrogators and analysts. We've had a chance to eat what the prisoners eat. We've seen people being interrogated. And it's nothing like the impression that we're getting from the media. People need to see this, Betty. . . .
I have been in prisons and I have been in jails in the United States, and this is by far the most professionally-run and dedicated force I've ever seen in any correctional institution anywhere.

Here's what Shepperd reported about the hand-picked interrogation he watched:

NGUYEN: Let's back up for just a moment, because you said you said watched an interrogation.
SHEPPERD: Yes.
NGUYEN: Kind of explain to us how that played out. And were there any instances of abuse or possible abuse?
SHEPPERD: Absolutely not. These -- when I sat and watched them, I want to be very careful in describing them. And I don't want to describe how we watched or anything of that sort. But basically, you're able to observe interrogations. They have various ways of monitoring the interrogations and what have you and letting you see what's going on. With the interrogations that we watched were interrogators, there were translators that translated for the detainee and there were also intelligence people in there.
And they're basically asking questions. They just ask the same questions over a long period of time. They get information about the person's family, where they're from, other people they knew. All the type of things that you would want in any kind of criminal investigation. And these were all very cordial, very professional. There was laughing in two of them that we...
NGUYEN: Laughing in an interrogation?
SHEPPERD: ... in the two of them that we watched. Yes, indeed. It's not -- it's not like the impression that you and I have of what goes on in an interrogation, where you bend people's arms and mistreat people. They're trying to establish a firm professional relationship where they have respect for each other and can talk to each other. And yes, there were laughing and humor going on in a couple of these things. And I'm talking about a remark made where someone will smirk or laugh or chuckle.
NGUYEN: All right. General Don Shepperd, we appreciate your time and that look inside Gitmo, with you being there on this tour. Thank you for that.

CNN then put a transcript of the interview on CNN.com with this headline:

On June 27, Gen. Shepperd appeared on CNN with Soledad O'Brien, who introduced him as a "CNN military analyst" just back from Gitmo. Shepperd "reported":

What we saw in Guantanamo bears no resemblance to what we are reading in the print press out there. Most of the people writing about this, I believe, have never been there.
What I saw is we have -- we have impressions of an old facility, Camp X-ray, that was closed three years ago. What we have now is a modern, well-constructed prison, guarded by very, very dedicated people, doing an extremely tough job in the midst of very, very dangerous people, Soledad.

Shepperd then went on to claim that interrogators are still getting "valuable information" even from detainees held there for years. In fact, "we have really gotten a lot of information to prevent attacks in this country and in other countries with the information they're getting from these people. And it's still valuable."

Shepperd managed to reach all of these findings -- and to label Amnesty's findings "totally false" -- by virtue of a single, three-hour guided tour. Shepperd is the President of The Shepperd Group, which "provides expert guidance and consulting services to defense contractors." CNN's viewers were never told about that.

* * * * *

All television and print appearances of what the Pentagon called "our analysts" were meticulously tracked. Shepperd's live CNN call was particularly celebrated at the Pentagon, in an email entitled "Transcript of Don Shepperd's Remarks on CNN a little while ago" 7471):

The Pentagon's analysts faithfully reported back to their handlers with pride about their success in getting booked on shows and being able to spout their talking points. From an email sent by one of the Gitmo trip participants, Gordon Cucullu, to top Pentagon aides (7444):

["I did a Fox & Friends hit at 0620 this morning. Good emphasis on 1) no torture, 2) detainees abuse guards, and 3) continuing source of vital intel"].

Those who served the Pentagon's messaging mission were rewarded. The American Spectator's Babbin emailed the Pentagon a column he had written defending Gitmo, lambasting "the outrageous lies of the Democrats," and attacking Dick Durbin, who had criticized Gitmo the prior week ("if you watch the video of Durbin's speech, you'll see . . . his face morphing into that of Jane Fonda's"). Babbin's email header about Durbin (7496): "The man disgusts me." The same day, Pentagon officials excitedly noted that "Bill O'Reilly read [Babbin's] GTMO article and wants Jed on the show Thursday." That prompted this email from top Rumsfeld communications aide Larry Di Rita (7495):

Conversely, those whose media commentary displeased the Pentagon had their access cut off. In May, 2006, Greg Kittfield wrote a cover story for National Journal featuring criticism by numerous retired generals of Rumsfeld's war management. In response, Pentagon official Bryan Whitman circulated an email which read: "Given this cover story by Kittfield, I don't think we need to find any time for Kittfield on the Secretary's calender."

The Pentagon comprehensively tracked every word uttered by their "surrogates," as their chosen messengers, back from Gitmo, spread out over MSNBC, CNN, ABC, Fox, and various newspapers and magazines -- all presented as independent analysts -- proclaiming Gitmo to be the very model of human rights and sterling respect for detainees. Here is the DOD's self-satisfied summary of the tidal wave of propaganda produced by its three-hour, staged tour (7416):

Just to underscore how these retired military officers were anything but "independent news analysts," here is an email memorializing how two of them -- NBC's Montgomery Meigs and Jack Jacobs (the latter of whom was specifically praised by Brian Williams as an independent journalist) -- actually engaged in media strategy sessions with the Pentagon in order to maximize the efficacy of the Pentagon's Gitmo messaging program (7442):

These same individuals, after planning media strategies with the Pentagon, were then repeatedly presented to MSNBC viewers as independent analysts to assess the Pentagon's conduct at Gitmo. From the Pentagon's tracking summary of Meigs' and Jacobs' post-trip media appearances:

* * * * *

This Gitmo trip and the ensuing "analysis" was but one small -- though highly representative -- episode that was part of the Pentagon's five-year propaganda program aimed at shaping domestic opinion on the Iraq war, the "War on Terrorism" generally, and virtually every controversy relating in any way to the Pentagon. It is difficult to see how this could be anything but illegal [for an analysis of laws prohibiting covert domestic propaganda activities, see here, here, here, and here< (.pdf)].

But what is most extraordinary about all of this is that huge numbers of Americas who were subjected to this propaganda by their own Government still don't know that they were, because the television networks which broadcast it to them refuse to tell them about it, opting instead to suppress the story and stonewall any efforts to find out what happened. As corrupt as the Pentagon was here, our nation's major media outlets were at least just as bad. Their collective Pravda-like suppression now of the entire story -- behavior so blatantly corrupt that even the likes of Howie Kurtz and The Politico are strongly condemning them -- has become the most significant and revealing aspect of the entire scandal.

Neocons and the truth: Bitter enemies to the end

Glenn Greenwald — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:36:00 PDT

(updated below)

In a July, 2006 article in Rolling Stone -- entitled "Iran: The Next War" -- the superb journalist James Bamford detailed the shady activities of numerous neoconservatives inside and out of the U.S. Government to plan an attack on Iran. Bamford focused on the role played by Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute and National Review, who created and began implementing an attack scheme in coordination with the Pentagon's then number-three official, Doug Feith, and Feith's deputy, Larry Franklin (subsequently convicted of felonies for passing classified information to AIPAC).

A couple weeks after Bamford's exposè was published, National Review enlisted former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy and talk show host Mark Levin jointly to author a defense of Ledeen and, more importantly, to savage Bamford for writing what they claimed was a pack of lies. The McCarthy/Levin article was entitled "Rolling Smear," sub-headlined "James Bamford writes a fiction about our Michael Ledeen," and accused Bamford of being "the latest in a growing crowd of hacks to smear our friend Michael Ledeen."

McCarthy and Levin specifically attacked Bamford's disclosure that Ledeen "had arranged a covert meeting in Rome with a group of Iranians [and Feith's team] to discuss their clandestine help" in attacking Iran. Said McCarthy and Levin:

Bamford, to the contrary, wants to turn the meeting into a nefarious plot by Ledeen and the neocons to push the nation into war with Iran. Yet, anyone even vaguely familiar with Michael's work knows that he has opposed military action against Iran -- notwithstanding that he was years ahead of most experts in accurately portraying Iran's role as the terror master at the center of the jihadist network.

So Bamford's claim was "embarrassing" because "anyone even vaguely familiar with Michael's work knows that he has opposed military action against Iran." Got that?

Here's Ledeen yesterday, writing in National Review's Corner (h/t sysprog):

Time to Attack Iranian Terror Camps? [Michael Ledeen]
So says John Bolton, and he's right. As you know, I have been proposing this for years. I always thought it was only a matter of time before we were compelled to take this action, which is a legitimate form of self-defense. And while we're at it, we should do the same thing to the Syrian camps as well. It isn't "sending a message," it's acting to protect our guys by fighting back in the proxy war the mullahs have been waging since 1979. Faster, please?

More amazingly, a mere two weeks before McCarthy and Levin wrote that "anyone even vaguely familiar with Michael's work knows that he has opposed military action against Iran," Ledeen himself wrote at The Corner that "I would insist that my soldiers have the right of 'hot pursuit' into Iran and Syria, and I would order my armed forces to attack the terrorist training camps in those countries."

In late 2006, I wrote about virtually identical deceit from this same group, that time with regard to Iraq. On National Review in December of 2006, Ledeen -- just as the Beltway establishment was finally turning against the war in Iraq and in the wake of a lengthy Vanity Fair article identifying the neocons who were to blame -- claimed: "I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place."

In fact, Ledeen, throughout 2002 and 2003, had repeatedly and explicitly urged the invasion of Iraq in countless venues, including: The Wall St. Journal's Op-Ed Page ("If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support"); in an interview with David Horowitz's Front Page ("Question #2: Okay, well if we are all so certain about the dire need to invade Iraq, then when do we do so? Ledeen: Yesterday."); on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews ("if President Bush is to be faulted for anything in this so far, it's that he's taken much too long to get on with it, much too long"); and in National Review (calling for "the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the terror masters").

That war-cheerleading neoconservatives of this strain are completely unbound by the truth is not news. Obviously, the war they unleashed in Iraq is the most compelling proof of that. But sometimes when the lying is so blatant, one can't help but note it.

The same is true for the complete lack of accountability. Ledeen is a so-called "Freedom Scholar" at the revered and widely-cited American Enterprise Institute and a Contributing Editor at National Review. An intense email campaign over his Iraq comments to AEI and National Review's Editor Rich Lowry demanding a retraction or some comment from them on Ledeen's blatant falsehoods over his Iraq stance was simply ignored, as will be this episode concerning the article by McCarthy and Levin smearing Bamford due to Ledeen's alleged opposition to attacking Iran.

This isn't just a matter of documenting guilt with regard to what happened with Iraq. The Washington Post's David Ignatius today became just the latest establishment spokesman to warn (or celebrate) that "judging from recent statements by administration officials, there is also a small, but growing, chance of conflict with Iran."

The neoconservative war-lovers behind this effort have not changed, nor have their tactics. They realize, as many of them acknowledge, that they will have four more years in power if John McCain is elected. But they also realize that he may not be, and that their last hope for their long-desired attack on Iran lies in convincing the current administration to provoke one before its tenure ends. As much as one wishes it weren't true, as much as the fixation on petty election issues might obscure it, the truly depraved extremist group that brought us the invasion of Iraq still exerts substantial influence and is quite busy trying to exert it.

UPDATE: It isn't just the American neocons, but also the Israelis, who are escalating the "Attack Iran" campaign. The Jerusalem Post yesterday "reported" that "with Iran racing forward with its nuclear program, Israel now believes the Islamic Republic will master centrifuge technology and be able to begin enriching uranium on a military scale this year" (h/t quick strategy) and:

The new assessment moves up Israel's forecasts on Teheran's nuclear program by almost a full year -- from 2009 to the end of 2008. According to the new timeline, Iran could have a nuclear weapon by the middle of next year.

According to several commenters, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. was on Fox News this morning making the same fear-mongering claim.

The principal tactic Israel-centric neocons have repeatedly used with Bush to induce him to attack Iran has been to tell him that history will judge him based on whether he permits Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. From The Weekly Standard's Irwin Stelzer, writing about a 2007 White House luncheon with Bush, historian Andrew Roberts, and a group of necons:

The closing note was a more serious one. Roberts said that history would judge the president on whether he had prevented the nuclearization of the Middle East. If Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries will follow. "That is why I am so pleased to be sitting here rather than in your chair, Mr. President." There was no response, other than a serious frown and a nod.

Norman Podhoretz, when telling the President to bomb Iran, used the same tactic:

"I urged Bush to take action against the Iranian nuclear facilities and explained why I thought there was no alternative," said Podhoretz, 77, in an interview with The Sunday Times. . . .
He also told Bush: "You have the awesome responsibility to prevent another holocaust. You're the only one with the guts to do it." . . . .
"The president has said several times that he will be in the historical dock if he allows Iran to get the bomb. He believes that if we wait for threats to fully materialise, we'll have waited too long -- something I agree with 100%,' Podhoretz said.

And now, magically up pops these new reports from Israel warning that the deadline to stop Iran's nuclear bomb is the end of the year -- right before George Bush leaves office. Bush has less than eight months left to fulfill his history-mandated mission "to prevent another holocaust" by attacking Iran, or else "be in the historical dock if he allows Iran to get the bomb." They're as transparent as they are dishonest and bloodthirsty.

McCain embraces Bush's radical views of executive power

Glenn Greenwald — Wed, 07 May 2008 05:39:00 PDT

John McCain yesterday delivered a speech in which he hailed the inspiring constitutional principles of Government on which our country was founded, including the central goal of avoiding excessive, unlimited power in any one branch, secured by checks and balances from the other two branches:

In America, the constitutional restraint on power is as fundamental as the exercise of power, and often more so. Yet the framers knew that these restraints would not always be observed. They were idealists, but they were worldly men as well, and they knew that abuses of power would arise and need to be firmly checked. Their design for democracy was drawn from their experience with tyranny. A suspicion of power is ingrained in both the letter and spirit of the American Constitution. . . .
The executive, legislative, and judicial branches are often wary of one another's excesses, and they should be. They seek to keep each other within bounds, and they are supposed to. And though you wouldn't always know it from watching the day-to-day affairs of modern Washington, the framers knew exactly what they were doing, and the system of checks and balances rarely disappoints.

Sadly, though, McCain lamented that "there is one great exception in our day" to these principles. Surely "the exception" to which McCain refers must be the fact that we've lived for the last eight years under a President who literally has claimed powers greater than those possessed by the British King; whose underlings have promulgated radical and un-American theories literally vesting him with the power to rule outside of the law, who has exploited a political and media culture devoid of "suspicion of power" when exercised by the White House, and who has acted with no meaningful constraints or checks from Congress and virtually none from the judiciary? No, actually, that isn't the "exception" to which McCain was referring at all. Instead:

[It] is the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power. For decades now, some federal judges have taken it upon themselves to pronounce and rule on matters that were never intended to be heard in courts or decided by judges. With a presumption that would have amazed the framers of our Constitution, and legal reasoning that would have mystified them, federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically. Assured of lifetime tenures, these judges show little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress, and the states. They display even less interest in the will of the people.

According to John McCain, then, executive power in the U.S. now is exactly what it should be, perfectly in line with what the Founders envisioned -- except that it is too constrained by a judiciary which "show[s] little regard for the authority of the president." To McCain, the only real problem with our system of checks and balances is that the judiciary has too much power, and the President not enough.

This was exactly the view of the world articulated by George Bush last November when he spoke to the Federalist Society. In that speech, Bush had the audacity to tout the central importance of "separation of powers" and warned that "tyranny" can be avoided only if all three branches "resist the temptation to encroach on the powers the Constitution accords to others." Bush then went on -- just like McCain yesterday -- to lament that our Constitutional framework was endangered not by a President who has seized the defining powers of an autocrat, but rather, by "activist" judges. Not only is McCain's view of presidential powers identical to Bush's, his speech yesterday -- in terms of structure, arguments and even some wording -- was almost an exact replica of the one Bush delivered to the Federalist Society.

Virtually every abuse of the last eight years has its roots in the Bush/Cheney view of the President as Monarch, and John McCain clearly endorses its fundamentals. Indeed, when responding to a questionnaire on executive power circulated to all the candidates by The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage earlier this year, McCain (while paying lip service to nice principles and even taking the extreme position that he would never issue a signing statement) refused to say that there was even a single aspect of Bush's use of executive power that he found unconstitutional or otherwise objectionable:

10. Is there any executive power the Bush administration has claimed or exercised that you think is unconstitutional? Anything you think is simply a bad idea?
McCain declined to answer this question.

By contrast, Obama answered the same question at length, and said:

I also reject the view, suggested in memoranda by the Department of Justice, that the President may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security, and that he may torture people in defiance of congressional enactments . . .
I believe the Administration's use of executive authority to over-classify information is a bad idea. We need to restore the balance between the necessarily secret and the necessity of openness in our democracy Ã¢ÂÂ which is why I have called for a National Declassification Center.

Obama then went on specifically to identify numerous issues -- torture, detention of Americans as "enemy combatants" without due process, warrantless surveillance, violations of international treaties, the lawless creation of military commissions -- which he said were unconstitutional or otherwise objectionable expressions of excessive Presidential power. By contrast, McCain refused to identify even a single Bush assertion of power he rejects.

Ultimately, these are the issues which are the most consequential in determining what type of country we will be, and what type of government we will have (and these issues, therefore, receive the least attention from most of our establishment journalists, for whom there is a perfectly inverse relationship between the significance of an issue and the interest they have in it). All of the other issues of significance flow from these differences.

In a superb new book, entitled The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, Gene Healy documents the multiple ways our political system has been corrupted by an out-of-control, unchecked Executive that could not be any more antithetical to the "presidency of limited powers and modest goals the Framers gave us in 1787." As Healy demonstrates, allowing the President to transmute into some central, omnipotent figure of authority -- as Bush/Cheney have done and as McCain seems to embrace -- "is the source of much of our political woe and some of the gravest threats to our liberties," and -- more significantly still -- this model (as the Founders recognized) virtually guarantees a state of ever-expanding militarism and endless war:

Throughout American history, virtually every major advance in executive power has come during a war or a warlike crisis. Convince the public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to action fall, as power flows to the commander in chief.
Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms . . . . Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism or natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on.

As the amazing commenter Pow Wow repeatedly documents here (see here for one typically excellent example), Congress has "increasingly deferred, dangerously and slavishly, to the presidency, which today very much resembles a monarchy," a state of affairs which -- for the reasons Healy describes -- makes endless war and imperial behavior almost inevitable. As Pow Wow puts it: "The choice for Americans today . . . is between Empire and Republic. We cannot have both."

The central truth of the 2008 election is that, with the exception of a few relatively inconsequential and symbolic matters, John McCain enthusiastically embraces the Bush/Cheney worldview in every way that matters. His ludicrous speech yesterday -- actually complaining that it is the judiciary that wields too much power and is excessively limiting presidential powers -- simply leaves no doubt about that.

The right's selective political manipulation of Catholicism

Glenn Greenwald — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:19:00 PDT

(updated below)

Yesterday, National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez -- one of the crassest political exploiters of Catholicism in the country -- demanded to know: "what were any Catholic sisters doing voting for either Clinton or Obama?" Andrew Sullivan responded that "being a Catholic does not mean membership in the Republican party" and that "this political co-optation of faith is sickening - and typical." That prompted this from Lopez:

As I say on Vatican Radio and elsewhere when asked to comment, Catholic does not equal Republican or Democrat. Catholic does mean taking seriously the Church's teaching on innocent human life, however. And Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should therefore both make Catholics pause for grave reasons. And Catholic sisters who are presumably teaching the faith through word and deed should know that.

But it's hard to imagine how a Catholic could disregard "the Church's teaching on innocent human life" more than Lopez -- or John McCain. From Fox News, two weeks prior to the invasion of Iraq:

Pope John Paul II and top Vatican officials are unleashing a barrage of condemnations of a possible U.S. military strike on Iraq, calling it immoral, risky and a "crime against peace."

John McCain's entire worldview on foreign policy, cheered on excitedly by Lopez -- not only with regard to endless war in Iraq but also Iran and beyond -- is nothing but a vehement violation and rejection of "the Church's teaching on innocent human life":

[Then-Cardinal-now-Pope] Ratzinger has said, "A preventive war is not in the Catechism."
Civilta Cattolica points out that an American attack on Iraq would be motivated in large part by political and economic reasons rather than military necessity and rejects the Bush argument that a preventive war should be considered a defensive action. Archbishop Martino said that "a preventive war is a war of aggression."

Here is what Lopez and her candidate, John McCain, have done to "innocent human life" when -- to use Lopez's words from her ugly 2004 political crusade to excommunicate John Kerry -- they "act[ed] out of conformity with the public teaching of the Catholic Church":

A car bomb blew up in the capital's Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City on Thursday, killing at least four people, as a new survey suggested that the civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1 million. . . .
According to the ORB poll, a survey of 1,461 adults suggested that the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million. . . .
It was the highest estimate given so far of civilian deaths in Iraq. Last year, a study in the medical journal Lancet put the number at 654,965, which Iraq's government has dismissed as "ridiculous."

Of course, the exact numbers are in dispute because of how nonexistent is the concern among her beloved Bush administration for "innocent human life":

Thousands of Iraqi civilians have also died as a result of conflict and its bloody aftermath -- but officially, no one has any idea how many.
Human rights groups say the occupying powers have failed in their duty to catalogue the deaths, giving the impression that ordinary Iraqis' lives are worth less than those of soldiers.

This is what tawdry religious manipulators like Lopez have been doing for years -- selectively accepting slivers of moral dogma and religious institutions purely for political gain, while advocating policies that could not be more opposed to that dogma and those institutions.

That's how many of the right-wing ideologues who are responsible for this, and want much more of it -- such as Lopez -- can continue to parade around as faithful Catholics righteously devoted to the sanctity of "innocent human life," even as they wage war against the Church's explicit teachings and, by doing so, continue to obliterate more "innocent human life" than virtually any other political faction in the world.

In our political discourse, that's how warped the concept of "moral issues" has become. As McCain supporter Gary Bauer (about whom McCain recently said: "I am honored to have Gary Bauer's support, and his advice and counsel will be critical as we continue to bring our Party together for victory in November") once put it: a Vermont court's ruling on same-sex marriages "was in some ways worse than terrorism." Somehow, the policies of ours which result in the greatest obliteration of innocent human life -- or its complete degradation -- are totally drained of any moral component. And the entire playing field of "moral issues" is thus ceded to religious hucksters like Lopez and her political comrades as they openly support the most morally grotesque, and irreligious, policies imaginable.

UPDATE: As Mona notes in comments (and as she wrote about here), long-time right-wing advocate and prominent devout Catholic Doug Kmiec (formerly Dean of Catholic University and a Professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Law) recently endorsed Barack Obama and made several of these points:

As a Catholic looking at candidates, my faith instructs me to look at the whole person respective to the church's social teaching on wages, education, issues of family, culture, responsibility toward the environment, the reduction of mindless or excess consumption. And the Catholic Church was quite explicit about the concept of preemptive war being contrary to the principles of just war. One of the things that happened to Catholics over the last two decades is because of the evil of abortion, we've been somewhat less mindful of the need to serve those around us -- those who are calling upon us for assistance in a tangible way. . . .
When I look at Obama's eloquent speeches, his references to Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, those are so much a part of modern Catholic education. And the preferential option for the poor or solidarity with the poor, how that is not heard by the Catholic mind has troubled me. So one of the reasons for speaking out at this point, and one of the reasons to peak out on Easter Sunday, is to have my fellow Catholics reexamine this topic and listen with more careful ear.

Kmiec was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the both the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations.

Things that don't exist in Harry Reid's world

Glenn Greenwald — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:28:00 PDT

(updated below - Update II)

Harry Reid was on The Daily Show last night (to promote his book, ironically entitled The Good Fight) and said that Joe Lieberman "supports us on virtually everything except the war." This is exactly what Reid has said repeatedly about Lieberman ("Joe Lieberman is my friend, and he is a good Democrat, votes with us on everything, except the war. So Joe Lieberman is easy to work with"). Two weeks ago, a NYT article on Lieberman quoted Reid praising him and then immediately added:

A member of the Senate Democratic leadership, who insisted on not being identified, said: "The bloggers want us to get rid of him. It ain't happening." He added: "We need every vote. He's with us on everything but the war."

Leave aside the insulting absurdity of talking about "the war" as though it's just one garden-variety political issue out of many. And also leave aside that Lieberman happens also not to be "voting with the Democrats" on the small matter of the presidential election. Beyond that, this claim that Lieberman votes with Democrats "on everything but the war" -- made repeatedly by Reid [and two weeks ago in the NYT by "a member of the Senate Democratic leadership" too scared to be quoted (if it's not Reid)] -- is a total falsehood, but nonetheless quite revealing about how the Senate Democratic leadership thinks.

Here are some non-war votes from Lieberman since the Democrats took over Congress in 2006:

Bill to ban the CIA from using waterboarding:

Democrats -- 45-1

Republicans - 5-46

Lieberman- NAY

Cloture vote on bill to restore habeas corpus (which Lieberman voted to abolish in 2006):

Democrats - 50-0

Republicans - 5-42

Lieberman - NAY

Vote to strip retroactive amnesty for telecoms out of the FISA bill (h/t Matt Browner-Hamlin):

Democrats -- 31-16

Republicans - 0-48

Lieberman - NAY

Vote to specify that FISA is the "exclusive means" by which the President can spy on telephone and email communications:

Democrats -- 49-1

Republicans - 9-40

Lieberman - NAY

Confirmation of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General:

Democrats -- 6-40

Republicans - 47-0

Lieberman - YEA

Cloture vote to proceed to consideration of No-Confidence Resolution for Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General:

Democrats -- 47-0

Republicans - 6-37

Lieberman - NAY

Obviously, Reid's repeated claim that Lieberman "votes with us on everything, except the war" is demonstrably false. But when he repeatedly makes that claim, I don't think Reid is consciously lying. It's just that, in Harry Reid's world (and in the world of the Democratic leadership generally), things like warrantless eavesdropping, the abolition of habeas corpus, telecom amnesty, the corrupt politicization of the Justice Department, chronic lying under oath, and the legalization of torture just don't exist. They don't matter. They're non-issues. And that is precisely why those radical, destructive measures are continuously permitted -- approved and endorsed -- by the Reid-led, Democratic-controlled Senate.

UPDATE: Several commenters and emailers, including Paul Dirks, argue that Reid views all of the above-listed issues as being part of "the war," broadly defined. Maybe. But if Reid and his comrades actually embrace the rhetorical deceit that things like the abolition of habeas corpus, warrantless eavesdropping, telecom amnesty, torture and Alberto Gonzales' behavior are all part of "the war" -- whatever that might mean -- then (a) that's even worse than the explanations I offered and (b) it makes the statement that Lieberman "votes with us on everything, except the war" all the more misleading and/or meaningless, since "the war" defined that way encompasses most matters of significance.

UPDATE II: Via email, a reader makes a critical point:

I have yet to hear a single Democrat articulate a strategy on this that at all takes into account the reality that, in just about four months, Lieberman is going to speak to the full Republican National Convention and millions of TV viewers in prime time and rip our Marixst, terrorist, elitist Presidential candidate to shreds with a sorrowful lament that the Democratic Party has long left sensible, moderate Americans like him - and John McCain - behind.
What will the story be on September 4th 2008, the morning after Lieberman's speech, and the day of McCain's acceptance? And how is leadership working to frame this now?

The strategy appears to be to have Harry Reid run around talking about what a great guy Joe Lieberman is, what a solid, centrist and loyal Democrat he is, how easy he is to work with. That's brilliant. The reader goes on to note:

To compare, this was how Reid and Durbin reacted to Zell [Miller] four years ago - to ignore him. That worked well. And their response then seems absolutely draconian compared to their current stance towards Joe:
Roll Call
September 8, 2004 Wednesday
Carter Fires Back At Miller Speech
BYLINE: By Mark Preston and Paul Kane ROLL CALL STAFF
Senate Democratic leaders said there were no plans to penalize Miller for his disloyalty, such as stripping him of his committee assignments.
"Why should we?" asked Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "It is a free country. He's irrelevant to the Caucus." . . . "I don't think that anyone here feels that there is anything to be gained" from retribution, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). "He checked out of our Caucus so long ago that only the press considers him a Democrat."

As DanJoaquinOz notes in comments, Lieberman is already saying things about Obama like this -- on Fox News: "I'd hesitate (!) to say he's a Marxist, but his views are far to the left of mine and I think mainstream America's." Yet Harry Reid and the rest of the Democratic leadership run around defending Lieberman -- one of the most extremist politicians in America -- and building up his credentials as a solid, mainstream Democrat, ensuring that the painfully predictable punch he delivers at the Republican Convention lands that much more potently. Reid, as always, sure is fighting The Good Fight.

Who needs Dana Perino when you have the NYT's Michael Gordon?

Glenn Greenwald — Mon, 05 May 2008 04:23:00 PDT

(updated below - Update II)

On Meet the Press yesterday during an interview with Barack Obama, Tim Russert said:

The administration, we have reported at NBC, are drawing up some plans for potential airstrikes in Iran at different missile weapons factories or special force compounds because we have indications, evidence that the Iranians are helping some of their supporters within Iraq to kill U.S. troops.

It's unclear whether the "we" in Russert's statement ("we have indications, evidence") refers to the U.S. Government or NBC News, though that distinction is essentially nonexistent. Russert didn't bother to describe this purported "evidence" leading to our planning air strikes against Iran, but he did then ask Obama: "If it could be demonstrated that was a fact, would you be in support of such limited attacks in Iran?"

Like clockwork, the administration's most stalwart surge supporter/journalist -- the New York Times' Michael Gordon -- has a lengthy article today bolstering the administration's war-justifying accusations against Iran. It claims in the lead sentence that "militants from the Lebanese group Hezbollah have been training Iraqi militia fighters at a camp near Tehran," and that "the training, the Americans say, is carried out at several camps near Tehran that are overseen by the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Command, and the instruction is carried out by militants from Hezbollah, which has long been supported by the Quds Force."

As usual with Gordon's articles, nothing is done here other than uncritically repeating Bush administration claims under the cover of anonymity. Virtually every paragraph in this article is nothing more a mindless recitation of uncorroborated assertions which he copies from Bush officials and then weaves into a news narrative, with the phrase "American officials say" tacked on at the end or the phrase "according to officials" unobtrusively interspersed in the middle, as in:

In a possible effort to be less obtrusive, it appears that Iran is now bringing small groups of Iraqi Shiite militants to camps in Iran, where they are taught how to do their own training, American officials say.
The militants then return to Iraq to teach comrades how to fire rockets and mortars, fight as snipers or assemble explosively formed penetrators, a particularly lethal type of roadside bomb made of Iranian components, according to American officials. The officials describe this approach as Ã¢ÂÂtraining the trainers."

As presented, the "news" here isn't that Bush officials are making these accusations; the news, as Gordon reports it, is what the Iranians are allegedly doing, all based on anonymous, unchallenged Bush claims. It's nothing more than yet another Bush administration press release masquerading as a New York Times article on Iranian involvement in Iraq.

Worse, despite noting that "there has been debate among experts about the extent to which Iran is responsible for instability in Iraq," the article does not contain a single skeptical word about any of these accusations, nor does it quote a single "expert" who questions or disputes them. This omission is particularly glaring in light of this McClatchy article from yesterday reporting that "the Iraqi Government seemed to distance itself from U.S. accusations towards Iran," which echoes an Agence-France-Press report that "Iraq said on Sunday it has no evidence that Iran was supplying militias engaged in fierce street fighting with security forces in Baghdad." There's not a word about any of that in Gordon's article (though it does note that the Iraqi government "announced Sunday that it would conduct its own inquiry into accusations of Iranian intervention in Iraq and document any interference").

Gordon's reporting is as predictable as it is uncritical and unreliable. Any time the administration ratchets up its war-threatening rhetoric with Iran, Gordon -- who was almost as responsible as Judy Miller for some of the NYT's most dubious pre-war articles uncritically mouthing administration claims -- pops up with a prominent article that does nothing other than repeat Government claims as fact. In fact, the claims he breathlessly passes along today -- that Iran is using Hezbollah to train Iraqi militants to kill American troops inside Iraq -- are the exact same claims he uncritically "reported" in July of last year, also based exclusively on the claims of Bush officials.

As always, Gordon does all this by granting anonymity to Bush officials to recite these accusations even though (a) such anonymity plainly violates (in multiple ways) the NYT's own anonymity policy adopted in the wake of the Judy-Miller/Michael-Gordon debacle and (b) Gordon's Iran reporting has been specifically criticized by the NYT's previous Public Editor, Byron Calame, for granting anonymity to Bush officials to make accusations without any explanation as to why anonymity was granted, and Calame also criticized Gordon's "editors [because they] didn't make sure all conflicting views were always clearly reported." (Five months later -- in July, 2007 -- the current Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, also criticized Gordon's reporting (among others) for "slipp[ing] into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda's role in Iraq").

Yet here are the NYT and Gordon, yet again, employing exactly these same tactics to disseminate administration accusations against its current Enemy. As Calame put it back in February of 2007 while criticizing Gordon's reporting on Administration claims of Iranian involvement in Iraq:

COVERAGE of the American saber-rattling about Iranian intervention in Iraq posed an important test for The New York Times, given the paper's discredited pre-war articles about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. And it has triggered a rash of complaints from readers who believed The Times was again serving as a megaphone for the White House. . . .
The situation closely parallels the pre-war period when The Times prominently reported that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Deeply shamed when they were not found, the paper publicly acknowledged that its coverage had been "insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged."

The administration's war-threatening rhetoric against Iran has plainly reached new heights in the last several weeks. Whether they really intend to follow through on those threats before Bush leaves office is unclear, though some commentators with a history of insight and prescience -- such as Scott Ritter -- are convinced they will. But what is clear is that the administration has no better ally in disseminating its war-provoking accusations than Michael Gordon and his NYT Editors, for whom "reporting" consists of repeating whatever Bush officials say -- no matter how significant or dubious -- and to do so without challenge and while baselessly granting them anonymity to make their provocative accusations without accountability.

* * * * *

"The Art of the Possible" is a newly launched blog devoted to "bring[ing] together liberal and libertarian writers who agree on certain politically and morally enlightened essentials." Its writers include Jim Henley and Mona of Unqualified Offerings. They have published an interview with me this morning on an eclectic variety of topics.

UPDATE: The blog Abu Muqawama, which often has excellent coverage of the Middle East and terrorism-related issues, has an analysis of the Gordon story today (h/t Laura Rozen). They label Gordon "a good reporter" but then add this about today's article (emphasis in original):

This is the official U.S. case. Michael Gordon is a good reporter, but he is highly reliant on high-level official (anonymous) sources for stories like this. As one of Dr. iRack's trusted friends points out, Gordon "is in essence repeating a narrative that was given to him." In other words, none of this is "independent" of the information that MNF-I is likely to provide--it is the information that MNF-I is likely to provide. The danger in stories like this is the risk of creating an echo chamber that produces the illusion of outside corroboration for administration claims when they do no such thing. Instead, stories like this should be viewed as narrative "shaping" operations. Moreover, it is worth remembering that Michael Gordon has a track record here of uncritically parroting administration positions. After all, this is the same Gordon who penned many stories with his colleague Judy Miller on Iraqi WMD based on anonymous official sources--stories that were then cited as corroborating evidence by senior U.S. officials who, it turned out, were the conduits for the information in the first place.

I really don't understand how a reporter who "is in essence repeating a narrative that was given to him" by the Government; none of whose reporting in this article is "independent"; and whose reporting thus carries "the risk of creating an echo chamber that produces the illusion of outside corroboration for administration claims" and who "has a track record of uncritically parroting administration positions" can possibly -- at the same time -- be considered a "good reporter." Isn't all of that behavior the defining attribute of a rank government propagandist, and the very antithesis of "good reporting"?

It was this "echo chamber" behavior by Gordon that allowed Dick Cheney to go on Meet the Press prior to the invasion and claim that even the NYT reported that Saddam had sought to obtain aluminum tubes of the type necessary to build a centrifuge. The Government had fed Miller and Gordon that claim; they mindlessly re-printed it; and then the Government cited their "reporting" as proof that it was true. How can someone who did that -- and continues repeatedly to do it -- be anything close to a "good reporter"?

In any event, the fact that even those who consider Gordon to be a "good reporter" recognize what his work really is speaks volumes about the true function of Gordon and his NYT editors. Abu Muqawama counsels that "we should reserve at least a bit of critical judgement" about the government claims passed on by Gordon's story, but "critical judgment" of that sort would, by definition, already be built into any story by an actual "good reporter," and it is that complete lack of critical judgment which is the hallmark of Gordon's reporting.

UPDATE II: For a superb analysis of the current situation in Iraq, including the role of Iran, see this detailed piece by the always-excellent journalist Nir Rosen, who spent several years in Iraq after our invasion.

For real journalism on Iraq, watch this interview (in two 10-minute clips) of Rosen by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now from last month, after Rosen returned from his latest trip to Iraq (where he does not rely on the U.S. military to select his itinerary and herd him around):

The media, the right and 1988: Endless deja vu

Glenn Greenwald — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:42:00 PDT

(updated below)

A large bulk of the political and pundit class are forever stuck in 1972, reflexively viewing every political conflict through its myopic prism (any war-opponent-candidate = George McGovern = loser). But as a New York Times article by Robin Toner this morning illustrates, the far more relevant precedent for this year's election is 1988. Toner quotes something I wrote after Barack Obama's Philadelphia race speech to define the critical question:

Sometimes, as Senator Barack Obama seemed to argue earlier this year, a flag pin is just a flag pin.
But it can never be that simple for anyone with direct experience of the 1988 presidential campaign. That year, the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts.
The memory of that campaign -- reinforced, for many, by the attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam war record in the 2004 election -- haunts Democrats of a certain generation. . . .
Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has promised a different politics, one that rises above the fray and the distractions of wedge issues. As Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon, recently put it, "The entire Obama campaign is predicated on the belief that it is no longer 1988."
But is that true?

That is the central question in 2008. For exactly that reason, I devote a substantial portion of Great American Hypocrites to analyzing the twisted, petty personality-based themes that dominated that election -- and that led to the victory of an extremely unpopular and distrusted political figure: George Bush the First -- because that is when the GOP pioneered the manipulative playbook that they have been using ever since to destroy the "character" and personality of Democratic candidates. And the circumstances that prevailed in the 1988 election make it an almost perfect parallel to this year's election.

Just as is true now, Americans heading into the 1988 election had endured almost two full terms of Republican rule under a President who -- contrary to the Myth of the Canonized Ronald Reagan -- they had come to distrust and disapprove of. That's why 1987 and early 1988 polls continuously showed George Bush the First running far behind prospective Democratic challengers -- because the GOP brand, like now, was profoundly discredited among the citizenry (though to a lesser extent than it is now). From a March 3, 1987 NYT article by then-reporter E.J. Dionne:

President Reagan's approval rating has plunged to its lowest level in more than four years, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
The survey, taken Saturday and Sunday after the release of the report of a Presidential commission on the Iran arms deal, found that 42 percent of those surveyed approved of the way Mr. Reagan was handling his job and 46 percent disapproved.
It was his lowest rating since January 1983, when 41 percent approved of his performance. . . . About half the 1,174 adults interviewed by telephone said Mr. Reagan was lying about key aspects of the Iran arms affair. Only a quarter said he was in charge of what went on in his Administration, down significantly from earlier surveys. . . .
Vice President Bush has also suffered a significant drop in his popularity. This time 32 percent of those surveyed said they had a favorable opinion of him and 19 percent a negative view; in January 43 percent were favorable and 23 percent unfavorable. . . .
Still, the erosion has clearly hurt Mr. Bush politically. Asked how they would vote if the 1988 election were held now, 47 percent of registered voters said they would back former Senator Gary Hart, the Democrat with the most support in surveys of his party, and only 34 percent chose Mr. Bush. . . .
But almost every other measure in the survey indicated a deep erosion in Mr. Reagan's popularity.
Approval of Mr. Reagan's handling of foreign policy was at the lowest level of his Presidency: only 29 percent of those surveyed approved; 58 percent disapproved.
And, in a response that was tougher on Mr. Reagan than the commission was, a majority of those surveyed said they did not believe Mr. Reagan's statement that he forgot when he approved the arms sales to Iran. They were asked: "Ronald Reagan has said he does not remember when he approved the arms sales to Iran. Do you think he really does not remember, or is he lying about that?" Thirty-five percent said they believed Mr. Reagan; 51 percent said he was lying. . . .
Half those surveyed thought the affair was at least as serious as Watergate, and about as many said it was of "great importance" to the country, as against a third who thought it had some importance and a sixth who thought it was of little importance.

For those reasons, just as is true now, the GOP operatives running Bush the First's campaign -- Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes -- realized that they could never win the election if Americas voted on the basis of substance, policy positions and issues. They thus resolved to shift the playing field away from issues to manipulative, adolescent questions of patriotism, manliness, and personal likability. Hence: Dukakis is an effete elitist who doesn't believe in the Pledge of Allegiance; he looks dorky ~~bowling~~ wearing a helmet; he proved he wasn't a man when he failed to show primal rage when asked in a debate about his wife being hypothetically raped, etc. etc.

With the help of a media enthralled to such shallow, easy-to-chatter-about attacks, they succeeded in electing a highly unpopular figure from a scandal-plagued, discredited party. And Republicans, with their media partners, have been using that depraved playbook ever since, and will continue to do so this year. For the 1988 election, Reagan's severe economic mismanagement, his disastrous foreign policy filled with savage covert wars, and widespread perceptions that top Reagan officials had blatantly lied about breaking the law were all just disappeared. Actual issues played virtually no role in George Bush the First's 40-state triumph.

* * * *

In exactly the same way, John McCain's only hope for winning is to ensure a similar disappearance of the issues which Americans continuously say are most important to them -- namely, the disastrous Bush/Cheney economic policies and the need to extricate ourselves from the Iraq War. If the actual concerns of American voters are allowed to determine the election outcome -- as they did in 2006 -- the GOP has no chance. Thus, the only prospect for a McCain victory is to have the media flood the country with the types of childish, gossipy trash that has predominated thus far -- lapel pins and Pledge of Allegiance symbolism and endless fixations on pastor sermons. That is what makes all the dark plagues which our political and media class have enabled -- those images of dead Iraqi children and foreclosure signs and crushing collective debt and collapsed American credibility and a truly lawless government -- blissfully disappear.

The GOP's hope that the media will do its part to continue to degrade our political discourse this way is understandable. It is, after all, Matt Drudge who rules their world. A lowly, Rush-Limbaugh-created, right-wing gossip-monger is the Walter Cronkite of their era.

The Right knows it can rely on the establishment press to repeat endlessly whatever smears it spits out, knowing that journalists (a) find such chatter irresistible because of how cheap and easy and fun it is to disseminate and (b) have a built-in excuse for doing so: "tiny sideshows are what The Little People care about, and thus we oh-so-reluctantly must cover them." Thus, the last two months of news cycles have been dominated by precisely such chatter, to the exclusion of one huge political story after the next -- torture memos, suspension of the Fourth Amendment, domestic propaganda programs, endless bloodshed in Iraq, more threats towards Iran. And there is no end in sight to this conduct. Indeed, it is only getting worse.

Today's Washington Post front page thus features yet another long, trite article -- headlined: "Obama Faces Test in Asserting His Own Brand of Patriotism" -- that yet again recycles Obama's lapel choices, his questionable belief in the Pledge of Allegiance, the Weather Underground, etc. etc. etc. As always, the GOP's central strategy of transforming our national elections into small-minded, juvenile gossip fests has no better friend than our establishment press.

And it's all "justified" by the media the same way, time and again. Just as when the Post ran a repellent front-page article detailing "assertions that [Obama] is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia" and "alleg[ations] that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a 'Muslim plant' in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran" -- and then "justified" it by claiming that it was newsworthy since they were "rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet" -- the Post today justifies its lengthy coverage of Obama's "questionable patriotism" on the ground that "cable and radio talk shows," "foes" and random voters were talking about it.

That's the same excuse ABC News' Charlie Gibson gave last week for his disgraceful fixation on non-issues during the Democratic debate, in a recent interview where he was criticized for his behavior by Arianna Huffington:

Well, if you're gonna get into the debate, -- I know we're taking it to task a lot about that. But all that went to the issue of whether Barack Obama is electable. That's an issue that's being much debated now.

That's the only job of the modern "journalist" as they see it: to repeat whatever trash is whispered in their ears by political operatives. If right-wing strategists or opposition campaigns are chattering about some lowly attack, they have no choice but to repeat it -- and not just repeat it, but repeat it endlessly, have it dominate their political "reporting." After all, as Gibson says: "That's an issue that's being much debated now." Of course, the only reason those sideshows are "being much debated now" is because Gibson and his friends never stop talking about them, but that's the endless self-referential loop that fuels their destruction of our political culture.

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Periodically, journalists will admit that they serve as vital instruments used by the Right to disseminate personality smears, and even claim to regret it, only to continue doing exactly that. During the 2004 election, the NYT's Adam Nagourney (along with Richard Stevenson) actually granted anonymity to a GOP operative in a front-page article to say that John Kerry "looks French" and that John Edwards is the "Breck Girl." With our country in the middle of a brutal, already unpopular war in the Middle East and burdened by an already distrusted President, those stupid slurs became the dominant themes of the 2004 election. Three years later -- following the media's tawdry "flood the zone" coverage of John Edwards' haircut (in which Nagoruney, like most of his colleagues, gleefully participated) -- Nagourney published a mea culpa of sorts for his 2004 article, stating the bleeding obvious:

In both instances [Kerry looks French and Edwards is the Breck Girl], we were attempting to flesh out for readers the White House's plans for discrediting prospective Democratic opponents. Both people quoted were at the senior levels of the Bush political operation. And in both cases -- as Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards could certainly attest by the end of 2004 election -- the Bush machine had followed through on the plan it laid out 18 months earlier to define the Democrats on Republican terms.
Our story may have had the result of not only previewing what the Bush campaign intended to do, but, by introducing such memorably biting characterizations into the political dialogue, helping it.

What an epiphany. When the NYT prominently repeats anonymous, adolescent right-wing smears on its front pages, it not only "introduces" those smears but also "helps" them! But that's the modus operandi of our establishment press. That's what drove the media's fixation on deriding the nerdy, unmanly, unpatriotic Michael Dukakis in 1988, and that media/right-wing bond was solidified when they were fed one titillating tidbit after the next by the lowest sewers of the right-wing noise machine during the Clinton sex scandals -- which only the media and the Right, but not the country, cared about.

It is this degraded media dynamic which the GOP is counting on to elect John McCain. The establishment media is more than geared up to play its role in amplifying those petty smears; by and large, it's all they do. And the central, and still unknowable, variable is whether the citizenry -- driven by the belief that our country is fundamentally off-track and that the GOP is responsible -- will be able to rise above the two-headed Right-wing/media monster and thereby refuse to elect as President a candidate who will continue policies that the vast majority of them hate.

UPDATE: It is true that, by the time Reagan left office, the nostalgia over his riding off into the sunset caused an end-of-the-presidency spike in his approval ratings (though still not as high as Bill Clinton's was when he left office). But unlike Clinton, who enjoyed sustained high approval ratings for the bulk of his second term (between 50-65%), Reagan's approval ratings were low by any measure (below 50% or just at that level) beginning in 1986, for virtually all of 1987, and well into 1988 -- until post-presidential nostalgia caused a substantial spike with just a few months to go in his second term. Under no metric can Ronald Reagan be considered a "popular President" during his the last two years in office, and there is much to support the opposite conclusion.