President Tlevesoor rides again

The power of a fantasy is not always reduced by its ludicrousness. Tin-pot “Il Duce” of Italy, Benito Mussolini, envisioned himself as heir to Julius Caesar and proposed twentieth-century Italy as a “New Roman Empire.”

 

George W. Bush, whose personal fondness for dressing up in costumes has been amply demonstrated, apparently fancies himself the rightist avatar of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a figure on the world’s stage on course to reverse everything accomplished by FDR and by the New Deal.

 

The parallel, which exists only in Mr. Bush’s mind, is becoming progressively more overt. CNN reports that the president is about to set out on a course of public speeches to compare the “war on terror” to WW2. The objective, bizarre as it is, is to make the “war on terrorism” seem a global war, and thus to make it into a global war. That innocent people are dying by thousands, and that American service personnel are being injured and killed, hardly weighs in the scales. The odd unit in the White House wanted to invade the Middle East (“We’re at war,” Bob Woodward quotes Bush as saying immediately after 9/11), and they did it; they want to exert an inappropriate control over the other branches of government, the states, and the press, and they’re doing that too.

 

The objective is not to reduce terrorism but to pump it up into the “global war” that administration mouthpieces keep claiming it is, relying partly on the self-evident fact that every nation includes a young male population, and partly on the reliability of their own policies to inspire hatred around the globe. Any thinking person knows you can’t actually fight “terror” with a “war” or send legions around the world to deal with guerrilla tactics, but the administration and its media outlets use the most transparently offensive Orwellian language to discredit peace itself, or any notion that maps onto rationality, and every Bush appointment and policy amounts basically to throwing gasoline on the flames. Meanwhile, that we actually have, in office, in the White House, an odd crew that at some level wants a world war is so genuinely unthinkable that it is almost impossible to state in public discourse. The unthinkable has become unmentionable, but it’s happening: our President Tlevesoor is operating to reverse Roosevelt on every significant foreign and domestic policy.

 

The signs are accumulating. Bush has made increasingly explicit criticisms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt personally, including remarks about “Yalta” made abroad. Inveterate antagonists of New Deal policies including Social Security are being nominated by Bush for positions they would never have gotten before, including judgeships. The White House has even attacked Social Security (backing off for now), and according to Professor Yoshi Tsurumi of Baruch College, who taught Bush at Harvard Business School, Bush referred to Social Security and Medicare as “socialism” thirty years ago. Tsurumi has confirmed these remarks to me in a telephone interview.

 

The assault through private depredations is not just on Social Security but on all security. The Bush administration is not merely attacking Social Security; it is bent on undermining all security for a huge and self-confident middle class. The attacks are indirect as well as direct. When an employer like Wal-Mart moves into an area without providing affordable health benefits, the cost of employee health care is thrown upon Medicare. Policy moves that weaken private charity or state services throw a further health burden upon Medicaid. Meanwhile, corporate employers are not exactly being encouraged to provide good pensions for their employees. While corporate income at the top goes ever upward with bonuses, stock options and “golden parachutes” either not tied to performance or tied mainly to stock price, pensions are joining health insurance as a benefit out of reach even for middle management. A court decision allowed bankrupt United Airlines to break its pension promises.

 

Meanwhile, the White House has not supported the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which was designed to shore up employees’ retirement plans like those at United. And while taxing huge inheritances is falsely called a “death tax,” the administration continues to impose what amounts to a “survival tax”; patients in long-term care or assisted living generally have to use up all their assets in the world to qualify for Medicaid. And it goes without saying that any effort to prevent or to redress abuses through collective bargaining, public agencies like OSHA, or private litigation is savagely opposed by everyone working with the White House.

More on ‘Plamegate’: not just trifles

Even a short chronology from the over-all ‘Plamegate’ timeline is informative:

 

April 21, 2003: Judith Miller article appears in the New York Times, buttressing administration claims about Iraq WMDs (“smoking gun” etc); Miller also appears on Fox News the same day making the same claims about an Iraqi scientist as source for WMD claims.

 

April 22, 2003: Miller appears on PBS with similar claims.

 

June 7, 2003: New York Times reporters Judith Miller and William Broad publish an article, “Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use,” substantively revising or deflating Miller’s previous reporting on Iraq bio-weapons.

 

(Sarcastic Internet comment: “Using a canvas-sided truck for production of an inflammable gas always made more sense from an engineering standpoint.”)

 

June 8, 2003: then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appears on Meet the Press, maintaining that administration allegations about Iraq WMD were not inflated or wrong and denying that warnings or qualification reached the top level of the administration.

 

June 9, 2003: former ambassador Joseph Wilson gets in touch with Times editor David Shipley, who offers him “fifteen hundred words to tell my story,” according to Wilson’s book (The Politics of Truth, p. 332).

 

June 10, 2003: a State Dept memo by a Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst refers to Mrs. Wilson/Valerie Plame, and expresses continuing INR doubts re the Niger uranium.

 

June 30 (approx.): Joe Wilson emails his op-ed column to the Times, according to Wilson in response to emailed questions. He also states that some time that week, he discussed the piece with Shipley. The op-ed casts serious doubt on administration claims that Iraq tried to purchase “yellowcake” uranium from the poor African nation of Niger.

 

July 5: at “about 10:30 p.m.,” according to Wilson’s book, the op-ed hits the Times web site; at 10:32 Wilson gets a call from a New York Post reporter; at 10:34 he gets a call inviting him on Meet the Press the next day (p. 333).

 

July 6, 2003: Joseph Wilson’s op-ed appears in the New York Times.

July 7, 2003: the White House retracts the allegation that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger.

(This claim underlay the “sixteen words” in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech. Reportedly it was also inserted into a Dec. 2002 State Department “fact sheet” on Iraq by John Bolton, now our ambassador to the U.N.)

July 7: Bush and other members of his administration take off on a trip to Africa.

July 8: I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, VP Cheney’s chief of staff, meets with Judith Miller and they discuss Wilson’s wife; a friend of Wilson’s encounters conservative columnist Robert Novak; and the friend then informs Wilson that Novak mentioned Wilson’s wife in connection with Niger.

July 8 or July 9: presidential aide Karl Rove talks with Novak; Wilson’s wife is mentioned.

July 11: Novak’s column naming Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative and saying that she had suggested his Niger trip, as “confirmed by two senior administration officials,” goes out on the AP wire; Karl Rove holds conversation about Mrs. Wilson with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper (Cooper then emails his bureau chief about the conversation; email now has been turned over to the grand jury); Karl Rove emails Stephen Hadley about the conversation

July 12, 2003: an administration official tells Washington Post Walter Pincus that  Wilson’s Niger trip was a “boondoggle” from his wife, a WMD operative.

July 14, 2003: Novak’s column appears in many daily newspapers.

July 16, 2003: then-CIA head George Tenet testifies to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the president had been “warned off” some wording regarding Niger and alleged Iraq WMD. (The president subsequently accepted Tenet’s resignation from the CIA.)

July 20, 2003: Andrea Mitchell at NBC tells Wilson that a senior White House source told her to press Wilson’s family relations rather than the 16 words.

July 21, 2003: Chris Matthews tells Wilson that Karl Rove called his wife “fair game.”

July 24: the CIA reports possible violations to then-Attorney General Ashcroft. According to the blog “Daily Kos,” the web site of oddly un-credentialed White House reporter “Jeff Gannon” (Guckert, who also solicits sex on the Internet with some mention of money) debuts the same day.  (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/9/191334/075)

July 30: the CIA files a crime report regarding the Plame leak with the Department of Justice.

August, 2003: the Washington Times publishes apiece by PNAC member Frank Gaffney Jr. implying bias at the INR: “This bureau’s intelligence products have tended to reflect the policy predilections of State’s permanent bureaucracy, rather than the facts.” Subsequently, rightwing web sites target the INR as a holdover of treasonous liberals.

Sept. 26, 2003: DOJ’s Counterespionage section decides to pursue a criminal investigation.

Sept. 29: DOJ requests FBI to investigate the leak; DOJ notifies CIA that Counterespionage also requested an investigation.

Sept. 30: at least 12 hours later, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales emails White House staff, telling them to preserve all materials and emails relating to the investigation.

Oct. 3: White House gives staff until 5:00 p.m. on Oct. 7 to turn over phone logs, records, etc., pertaining to the leak.

Nov. 3, 2003: “Talon News,” i.e. Jeff Gannon/Guckert, posts a third segment on Joe Wilson, casting doubts on the INR and its notes/memo re the CIA meeting that instigated Wilson’s Niger trip.

Nov. 7, 2003, a Friday:  John J. Kokal of the INR is found dead at bottom of the State Department building. Kokal worked in the Near East division. According to a D.C. Fire Department spokesman, he “was wearing a dress shirt, tie and slacks, but was not wearing shoes nor a suit jacket.”

[A shorter version of this piece appeared in this week’s Prince George’s Sentinel. ]