“You don’t listen to the president? We’re gonna mop the floor with the whole fuckin’ world. The whole world’s gonna be under our control. So what are you worked up about? “
I know the country is feeling all gushy and gooey about our handpicked Iraqi George Washington and all, but it’s probably good to keep in mind that in spite of Junior’s eloquent rendering of his courage in facing Saddam’s henchmen at the foot of the bed in his posh London townhouse, Allawi is reportedly a homicidal maniac himself. This explains why Bush and Cheney love him so much, but the press corpse should probably be a little bit more skeptical:
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.
They say the prisoners – handcuffed and blindfolded – were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city’s south-western suburbs.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they “deserved worse than death”.
The Prime Minister’s office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.
But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister’s personal security team watched in stunned silence.
[…]
Given Dr Allawi’s role as the leader of the US experiment in planting a model democracy in the Middle East, allegations of a return to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor are likely to stir a simmering debate on how well Washington knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely what he envisages for the new Iraq.
There is much debate and rumour in Baghdad about the Prime Minister’s capacity for brutality, but this is the first time eyewitness accounts have been obtained.
A former CIA officer, Vincent Cannisatraro, recently told The New Yorker: “If you’re asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does. He was a paid Mukhabarat [intelligence] agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff.”
[…]
The witnesses said the Iraqi police observers were “shocked and surprised”. But asked what message they might take from such an act, one said: “Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny. This is the new Iraq.
“Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and soldiers not to be scared if they kill anyone – especially, they are not to worry about tribal revenge. He said there would be an order from him and the Interior Ministry that all would be fully protected.
“He told them: ‘We must destroy anyone who wants to destroy Iraq and kill our people.’
“At first they were surprised. I was scared – but now the police seem to be very happy about this. There was no anger at all, because so many policemen have been killed by these criminals.”
[…]
One witness justified the shootings as an unintended act of mercy: “They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk.”
[…]
The Herald has established that as many as 30 people, including the victims, may have been in the courtyard. One of the witnesses said there were five or six civilian-clad American security men in a convoy of five or six late model four-wheel-drive vehicles that was shepherding Dr Allawi’s entourage on the day. The US military and Dr Allawi’s office refused to respond to questions about the composition of his security team. It is understood that the core of his protection unit is drawn from the US Special Forces units.
[…]
The two witnesses were independently and separately found by the Herald. Neither approached the newspaper. They were interviewed on different days in a private home in Baghdad, without being told the other had spoken. A condition of the co-operation of each man was that no personal information would be published.
Both interviews lasted more than 90 minutes and were conducted through an interpreter, with another journalist present for one of the meetings. The witnesses were not paid for the interviews.
Dr Allawi’s office has dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government.
[…]
US officials in Iraq have not made an outright denial of the allegations. An emailed response to questions from the Herald to the US ambassador, John Negroponte, said: “If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy’s press office is concerned, this case is closed.”
It’s worth noting that the reporter of this piece, Paul McGeough, is a widely respected hotshit investigative journalist. This story was buried, but it’s probably true. Allawi is a gangster, which explains his comfortable affiliation with the dumbshit Soprano of American politics, Junior Bush.
For too long our culture has said, “If it feels good, do it.” Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: “Let’s roll.” In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self. We’ve been offered a unique opportunity, and we must not let this moment pass.
Inspiring words from the man who said:
“I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.”
I have not been among those pumping my fist in blog triumphalism, but I have to say that when I went to Google News tonight and saw at the top of the page…
Vice President Cheney’s delicate sensibilities were bruised today by Senator Kerry’s bad manners:
“I must say I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Senator Kerry showed for this man of courage when he rushed to hold a press conference and attack the prime minister, a man America must stand beside to defeat the terrorists,” Cheney told an audience in St. Joseph, Missouri.
“John Kerry is trying to tear down all the good that has been accomplished, and his words are destructive to our effort in Iraq and in the global war on terror.
“As Prime Minister Allawi said in his speech, and I quote, ‘When political leaders sound the siren of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourages more violence,'” Cheney added.
If there is one thing that the Bush Cheney administration will not stand for it’s disrespect to our allies around the world.
It’s quite clear that any criticism of the president’s leadership in a time of war is sounding the siren of defeatism in the face of terrorism. It’s another example of what Zell Miller decried at the Republican convention — Democrats determined to bring down the commander in chief by contesting an election. What could be more antithetical to freedom and democracy than that?
Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace, and America’s determination to lead the world in confronting that threat.
The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime’s own actions — its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices terror against its own people. The entire world has witnessed Iraq’s eleven-year history of defiance, deception and bad faith.
[…]
Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?
[…]
Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles — far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations — in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We’re concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. And, of course, sophisticated delivery systems aren’t required for a chemical or biological attack; all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.
[…]
Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.
Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network.
[…]
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his “nuclear mujahideen” — his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists.
[…]
Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, “Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world,” he said, “where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril.”
Understanding the threats of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring.
David Kay, The Central Intelligence Agency’s outgoing chief weapons:
“I’m personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction,” he said on Saturday. “We don’t find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on. I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990s.”
Q. In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you’d made in your life and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. You’ve looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say? And what lessons have you learned from it?
A. Hmmm. I wish you’d have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. I’m sure historians will look back and say, Gosh, he could have done it better this way or that way. You know, I just I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn’t yet.
I would have gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even though what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would have called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein. See, I happen to believe we’ll find out the truth on the weapons. That’s why we sent up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth as exactly where they are. They could still be there. They could be hidden, like, the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm.
One of the things that Charlie Duelfer talked about was that he was surprised at the level of intimidation he found amongst people who should know about weapons and their fear of talking about them, because they don’t want to be killed. You know, there’s this kind of, there’s this terror still in the soul of some of the people in Iraq. They’re worried about getting killed. And therefore, they’re not going to talk. And it’ll all settle out. We’ll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time.
However, the fact that he had the capacity to make them bothers me today just like it would have bothered me then. He’s a dangerous man. He’s a man who actually not only had weapons of mass destruction — and the reason I can say that with certainty is because he used them. And I have no doubt in my mind that he would like to have inflicted harm or paid people to inflict harm or trained people to inflict harm on America because he hated us.
You know, I hope I don’t want to sound like I’ve made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t — you just put me under the spot here and maybe I’m not quick, as quick on my feet as I should be.
In Washington, in the tense months before war in Iraq, Charles Duelfer was confident. “Of course he is developing his weapons of mass destruction,” the American arms expert wrote of Saddam Hussein.
In Baghdad, however, Hans Blix was much less convinced. The UN weapons inspector, on the eve of the conflict, remarked sadly on the likelihood that armies would be “waging the war at a tremendous cost, and in the end find there was very little”.
In the end, as a hurricane distracted Americans, as terrorist car bombings and US air strikes bloodied Iraq, the findings of a Duelfer-led investigation were quietly leaked in Washington.
And, after 16 months of trying, what his teams have found is less than little.
In fact, the only unconventional weapon turned up in Iraq wasn’t turned up by the Americans at all, but by the other side, Iraq’s shadowy resistance.
In May, in an incident causing no serious injuries, insurgent fighters in Baghdad rigged an old artillery shell as a roadside bomb, apparently unaware it was loaded with sarin nerve agent.
Otherwise, two or three stray shells have been discovered with traces of degraded agent – far short of the 100 to 500 tons of usable chemical weapons that Secretary of State Colin Powell warned of on February 5 2003, as he sought a UN blessing for the US-British invasion.
Q Mr. President, you say today that the work in Iraq is tough and willremain tough. And, yet, you travel this country and a central theme of your campaign is that America is safer because of the invasion of Iraq. Can you understand why Americans may not believe you?
PRESIDENT BUSH: No. Anybody who says that we are safer with SaddamHussein in power is wrong. We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein defied the demands of the free world. We went into Iraq after diplomacy had failed. And we went into Iraq because I understand after September the 11th we must take threats seriously, before they come to hurt us.
And I think it’s a preposterous claim to say that America would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power. I certainly know that that’s the case for America and I certainly know it’s the case for the Iraqi people. These are people who were tortured. This good man was abed in a London flat, and he wakes up with two Saddam henchmen there with axes, trying to cut him to pieces with an axe. And, fortunately, he’s alive today; fortunately, we call him friend and ally. But he knows what it means to have lived under a society in which a thug like Saddam Hussein would send people with axes to try to kill him in bed in a London flat. No, this world is better off with Saddam Hussein in prison.
Q Sir, may I just follow, because I don’t think you’re really answering the question. I mean, I think you’re responding to Senator Kerry, but there are beheadings regularly, the insurgent violence continues, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. My question is, can you understand that Americans may not believe you when you say that America is actually safer today?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein were still in power. This is a man who harbored terrorists — Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Zarqawi. This is a man who was a sworn enemy of the United States of America. This is a man who used weapons of mass destruction. Going from tyranny todemocracy is hard work, but I think the argument that says that Saddam Hussein — if Saddam Hussein were still in power, we’d be better off is wrong.
King.
Q Sir, I’d like you answer Senator Kerry and other critics who accuse you of hypocrisy or opportunism when, on the one hand, you put so much stock in the CIA when it said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and now say it is just guessing when it paints a pessimistic picture of the political transition.
[…]
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, got it. Listen, the other day I was asked about the NIE, which is a National Intelligence Estimate. This is a report that talks about possibilities about what can happen in Iraq, not probabilities. I used an unfortunate word, “guess.” I should have used, “estimate.” And the CIA came and said, this is a possibility, this is a possibility, and this is a possibility. But what’s important for the American people to hear is reality. And the reality is right here in the form of the Prime Minister. And he is explaining what is happening on the ground. That’s the best report. And this report was written in July, and now we are here in September, and as I said, “estimate” would have been a better word.
Shortly after our two faced president took office it was revealed that his single largest political contributor had been running a congame on his workers and investors to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. He quickly came up with a 10 point plan to ensure that CEOs could never snow their investors like that again.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the country really should be run like a business and that bush has been out CEO for the last four years. Has our prez lived up to his CEO requirements?
1.) Each investor should have quarterly access to the information needed to judge a firm’s financial performance, condition, and risks.
“It’s hard for me to explain why we need to make [the tax cuts] permanent. It’s kind of like some of the things that happen in Washington. On the one hand, they taketh away. On the other hand, they giveth.
— Denver, Colorado Sep. 27, 2002
2.) Each investor should have prompt access to critical information.
It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.
— Reuters, May 5, 2000
3.) CEOs should personally vouch for the veracity, timeliness, and fairness of their companies’ public disclosures, including their financial statements.
“The CIA laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like,” he said
— Washington, D.C., September 22, 2004
4.) CEOs or other officers should not be allowed to profit from erroneous financial statements.
“The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway.”
— Annandale, Virginia, Aug. 9, 2004
5.) CEOs or other officers who clearly abuse their power should lose their right to serve in any corporate leadership positions.
“Q: So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that’s not very comforting. This is a moral question. Is terr — torture ever justified?
GWB: Look, I’m gonna say it one more time. I can — if I can — maybe — maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That oughtta comfort you. We — we’re a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws. And that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of — from me to the government.”
— Savannah, Georgia, Jun. 10, 2004
6.) Corporate leaders should be required to tell the public promptly whenever they buy or sell company stock for personal gain.
“I remember campaigning in Chicago one time, and the guy said, would you ever deficit spend? I said, well, only if we were at war, or the country was in recession, or there was a national emergency. I didn’t realize we were going to get the trifecta.” — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Apr. 3, 2002
7.) Investors should have complete confidence in the independence and integrity of companies’ auditors.
“You know, capitalism is only as strong as the integrity of the people involved in the process. And these leaders will tell you that you’ve got to be open with your employees. Otherwise, they’re not going to work for you very hard.
— Washington, D.C., Jan. 9, 2004
8.) An independent regulatory board should ensure that the accounting profession is held to the highest ethical standards.
Sometimes things aren’t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures.
— Justifying his oil firm’s accounting record, Washington, D.C., July 8, 2002
9.) The authors of accounting standards must be responsive to the needs of investors.
Look, I don’t care about the numbers. I know the facts.
— St. Petersburg, Florida, Mar. 8, 2002
10.) Firms’ accounting systems should be compared with best practices, not simply against minimum standards.
“In order to make sure the country was stronger, I pulled this page out of the economic textbook, the page that says, if you let people keep more of their own money, they’re going to spend it on a good or a service. If they spend it on a good or a service, somebody will produce the good and service. And if somebody produces a good or service, some American is more likely to find work.”
Via TAPPED I see that John Edwards has begun to use some of his great primary speech in the stretch of this campaign.
I posted a glowing review of this speech back in June of 2003 because I thought it was one of the best examples of reframing the economic issues I had seen in many a day. He takes the language of the right and throws it right back at them in a way that’s very difficult for them to deflect:
“It’s the most radical and dangerous economic agenda to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy,” he told an audience outside in Cleveland. “We don’t know all of the details, but we know that people who inherit hundreds of millions will pay nothing; firemen and waitresses and working people will pay everything. And we know his plan will take away the most important incentive for the single most important form of ownership: it will eliminate entirely the tax deduction for home mortgage interest.”
Now, I don’t happen to think that socialism corrupts the nature of our economy, but you can bet that most Americans have been brainwashed to think that. The key here is to jettison the word “socialism” on to the ashheap of history and tie the Republicans into it by saying they have a similarly “radical and corrupt” economic plan. This is using their own propaganda against them and it’s very smart.
The TAPPED post goes on to point out that Bush really has proposed changes to the tax code that would eliminate the home mortgage deduction. That fits in nicely with another part of Edwards speech that goes like this:
Our economy, our people, and our nation have been undermined by the crony capitalists who believe that success is all about working the angles, working the phones, and rigging the game, instead of hard work, innovation and frugality. And these manipulators find comfort in an Administration which, through its own example, seems to embrace that ethic. We will never turn this country around until we put our economy and our government back in line with our values.”
[…]
It’s time for a new approach that trusts people to make the most of their own lives and gives them the chance to do so. It’s time to stop emboldening entrenched interests and start empowering regular people. Above all, it’s time to end the failed conservative experiment and return to the idea that made this country great: Instead of helping wealthy people protect their wealth, we should help working people build their wealth.”
I just love the way this appropriates all the comfortable GOP catch phrases — projecting their own critique back back at them while redefining the positive ones for our own purposes. It’s a very effective way to make the permeation of GOP rhetoric in the national subconscious work for us instead of against us.
It also has the value of confusing the Republicans. It’s one of the most creative uses of political rhetoric I’ve seen in this campaign. I’m glad they are using it.
“…the question about CBS, and I don’t mean to be skirting this, but I don’t know how they expect us to trust them on anything else they do, particularly when it’s in this presidential race. This is a problem for them, folks. Now they’re trying to make it go away by stonewalling it with this independent commission but you’ve got a major, major federal crime here.”
“You start tying these connections together … I said I’m so scared because I know what’s going on with my party,” Democratic strategist Pat Caddell told FOX News. “The fact is, [Burkett] did not approach CBS, CBS approached him looking for the documents, which means someone tipped CBS off … which could be a violation of the law.”
On Wolf Blitzer today, they devoted a full segment to the question of whether the forgeries were a crime. Joe DiGenova, former federal prosecutor de jour, said that a special prosecutor with subpoena power was needed to find out who tried to interefere with a federal election during wartime. Blitzer seemed to agree that the subject was so serious that somebody needed to get to the bottom of it.
Later, Brit Hume had some new nonsense about Mary Mapes and federal prisoners in Colorado.
Fasten your seatbelts. The Wurlitzer is gearing up. It’s possible that it won’t have legs, but the set up for a long term mediawhore feeding frenzy is being put in place. The good news is that Joe Lockhart and Mike McCurry are the two most experienced flacks on planet in dealing with this garbage.
Jeffrey Dubner at TAPPED takes the Kerry campaign to task for following up the DNC’s hard hitting rhetoric of yesterday on the Roger Stone rumor with what he calls a weak-kneed follow-up today:
“Mr. President, this is a shameful advertisement that shows a disturbing disregard for those fighting and sacrificing in Iraq, and you should repudiate it immediately.”
He points out that they will never get the Bush campaign to repudiate anything so they show themselves weak by failing to get results.
But, everybody knows very well that Bush is not going to repudiate it and that is exactly why they are saying it. This is the way the game is played. It’s why Ed Gillespie gets the vapors every time the Democrats say boo and calls it “political hate speech.”
It’s called phony sanctimony and it works very well, as the Republicans have shown for years. They always shed crocodile tears and call the other side’s attacks vicious and beyond the pale while they are sticking the shiv in as hard as they can. The difference is that this time we stuck the shiv in too.
On Hardball just now, Ben Ginsberg just claimed that Barnes, the NY Times, the Boston Globe, CBS, Joe Lockhart and Terry McAuliffe coordinated the memos story and the liberal media just isn’t giving it the kind of scrutiny they gave the Swift Boat story.
Chris asked whether this controversy now means that the public should also be skeptical of the media’s Iraq reporting going forward.
Deborah Orin made the important point that the bloggers who “exposed” the forgeries also are very skeptical of the reporting on Iraq so perhaps that should be a lesson for all of us.
