Month: March 2006

Christopher Hitchens calls for détente with Iran! (While covering his ass for previous warmongering, but still…)

In a very interesting piece at the Telegraph, self-described imperialist Niall Ferguson revisits Gladstone’s six principles of foreign policy. One struck me as particularly fitting in light of Bush’s India-Pakistan tour:

“Even when you do a good thing,” Gladstone wisely observed, “you may do it in so bad a way that you may entirely spoil the beneficial effect; and if we were to make ourselves the apostles of peace in the sense of conveying to the minds of other nations that we thought ourselves more entitled to an opinion on that subject than they are… well, very likely we should destroy the whole value of our doctrines.” Substitute the word “freedom” for “peace”, and there you have the crux of the case against President Bush.

Or imagine that the “good thing” in this case is limiting nuclear proliferation, then enjoy this mind-blowing statement from the emperor. Regarding Pakistan’s request to receive the same deal on civilian nuclear technology Bush had just given India, Bush said,

We discussed the civilian nuclear program and I explained to him [Musharraf] that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories.

I’m not a big fan of Gen. Musharraf, but he must be possessed of a truly Christ-like forbearance to endure a lecture on his own country’s history and needs from a man who not so long ago was unable to name the leaders of India and Pakistan.

Good God. Did you know about this? Credit card payments at a certain percentage above one’s average payment automatically trigger an investigation by Homeland Security.

(Via LRC.)

Well, Murray Waas at the National Journal has another scoop, and this ought to be a big one.

It seems Waas has confirmed that Bush was told about the State Department’s INR, the DOE and the IAEA’s insistance that those infamous aluminum tubes were for rockets back in October of 2002. Rice has lied repeatedly, claiming that Bush never heard of such a thing until after the war started. The only reason they were getting away with it was because the administration had only released portions of the National Intelligence Estimates, but never the president’s summeries.

Never mind the fact that there were major dissents from within the government on the pages of the major American newspapers throughout the later part of 2002, and the beginning of 2003.

We are supposed to let him off the hook for that oversight with the common assumption that the man can barely read and doesn’t bother with the news.

HUME: How do you get your news?

BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you’ve got a beautiful face and everything.

I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.

HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you’ve…

BUSH: Practice since day one.

HUME: Really?

Now it is clear that Bush had been told that Iraq was not enriching uranium, and had no intention of causing harm to the United States unless attacked. The State Department even correctly predicted that even if the US did invade Iraq, Saddam still wouldn’t attack the US mainland.

So, this is just one more piece for the growing pile of evidence that the president knew good and well that he was completely full of it when he tried to pretend that Iraq was a threat to the United States. There’s Woodward, “F*** Saddam. We’re taking him out.” Paul O’Neil, “From the first cabinet meeting…” Richard Clark “Wolfowitz was pushing Myroie’s crack-pottery, but I told ’em!” The Downing Street Memos “Intelligence is being fixed around the policy.” and now a credible report about the NIE’s that Bush is known to have read “in Tenet’s presence.”

I still have one question that maybe some bloggers out there can answer, Who is “Joe the CIA agent” featured prominently in this New York Times piece from October 3, 2004 who was supposedly the major force in getting the CIA to back the Pentagon neocons’ lies about the tubes?

Considering the state of near total war that existed between the CIA and OSP, this seems like an interesting avenue to go down.

Any takers?

Update: Oops, it was CIA Joe, Joe T. (Turner?), not CIA Mike. Cooperative Research has a bit of information which makes him seem to be just some jerk, pushing his own crap on everyone, rather than a neocon plant, which is, of course, the easiest explanation. If Dick Cheney’s shopping for a bill of goods, why not sell him some and get a promotion? What’s a few hundred thousand dead people compared to a nice retirement?

Harry Browne died last night.

Harry was one of the leading antiwar voices within the libertarian movement. The author of 12 books, he was the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000.

Harry was one of the first libertarians to speak out after 9/11, taking a strong anti-intervention position at a time when virtually all that could be heard were calls for bombing everyone back into the stone age. He showed a direction to libertarians on the proper post-9/11 response with his strident op-eds (see more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and still more.)

Harry had been suffering a painful illness for the past year.

We at Antiwar.com will miss his presence and his insightful thoughts.

The DownsizeDC.org blog is posting memorial messages.

What makes the nuclear programs of India and Iran so different, other than the fact that, unlike the former, the latter is a signatory to the Nonproliferation Treaty and has no nuclear weapons program? From President Bush’s press conference in New Delhi:

Q: Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, following up on this just a touch, what kind of message, sir, does it send to the world that India, which has been testing as late as 1998, nuclear testing, and is not — has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — is this a reward for bad behavior, as some critics suggest? And what kind of message does it send to other countries that are in the process of developing nuclear technology? Why should they sign the NPT if India is getting a deal without doing so, sir?

PRESIDENT BUSH: What this agreement says is things change, times change, that leadership can make a difference, and telling the world — sending the world a different message from that which is — what used to exist in people’s minds.

I — listen, I’ve always said this was going to be a difficult deal for the Prime Minister to sell to his parliament, but he showed great courage and leadership. And it’s difficult for the American President to sell to our Congress, because some people just don’t want to change and change with the times. I understand that. But this agreement is in our interests, and therefore, Jim, I’m confident we can sell this to our Congress as in the interest of the United States, and at the same time make it clear that there’s a way forward for other nations to participate in a — in civilian nuclear power in such a way as to address nonproliferation concerns.

India has charted a way forward. You heard the Prime Minister talk about going to the IAEA. That group exists to help safeguard — safeguard the world from proliferation.

Listen, I proposed reprocessing agreements — that stands in stark contrast to current nuclear theology that we shouldn’t reprocess for proliferation concerns. I don’t see how you can advocate nuclear power, in order to take the pressure off of our own economy, for example, without advocating technological development of reprocessing, because reprocessing will not only — reprocessing is going to help with the environmental concerns with nuclear power. It will make there — to put it bluntly, there will be less material to dispose.

And so I’m trying to think differently, not to stay stuck in the past, and recognize that by thinking differently, particularly on nuclear power, we can achieve some important objectives, one of which is less reliance on fossil fuels; second is to work with our partners to help both our economies grow; and thirdly is to be strong on dealing with the proliferation issues.

Remember the magic words:

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.