- On the Sunday before Christmas, a fidgety George W. Bush
interrupted regular programming on U.S. networks to deliver an address
to the nation that painted the Iraq War and the War on Terror in the same
black-and-white colors he has always favored.
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- Despite the media's conventional wisdom about Bush's
new "realism" on Iraq, the old canards were still there - Saddam
Hussein choosing war by rejecting United Nations weapons inspectors; blurred
distinctions between Iraqi insurgents and non-Iraqi terrorists; intimations
that Bush's critics are "partisan" while he embodies the national
interest.
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- Plus, there was the same old stark choice between success
and failure. "There are only two options before our country - victory
or defeat," Bush declared, brushing aside the political and military
ambiguities of the Iraq War and the War on Terror.
-
- But Bush's speech and his curious hand gestures as he
sat behind a desk in the Oval Office suggested a twitchiness over his apparent
realization that the nation increasingly doubts his leadership.
-
- Indeed, it appears the American people finally have begun
to understand the costs in blood, money and freedoms that have resulted
from letting the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks become a justification
for transforming the United States into a modern-day empire led by an autocrat
who claims the untrammeled right to strike at his perceived enemies abroad
and crack down on his opponents at home.
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- Wiretaps
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- A day earlier, an angrier-looking Bush used his weekly
radio address to denounce as "irresponsible" senators who resorted
to the filibuster to demand more civil-liberties protections in a revised
version of the Patriot Act.
-
- Bush also lashed out at press disclosures of his three-year-old
decision to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by personally
approving warrantless electronic eavesdropping on international communications
by people inside the United States.
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- "As a result (of the disclosure), our enemies have
learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure
of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk,"
Bush said. "Revealing classified information is illegal."
-
- Bush's outrage might seem strange to some observers since
he has refused to punish his deputy chief of staff Karl Rove for leaking
the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame after her husband,
former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused Bush of twisting intelligence
to build his case for invading Iraq in 2003.
-
- But Bush apparently has judged that he, as president,
and his close advisers can decide which laws they wish to obey and when,
while simultaneously condemning those outside their circle of power for
violating the same laws.
-
- This attitude follows Bush's view that the "commander
in chief" clause of the U.S. Constitution grants him virtually unlimited
powers as a "war president" as long as the War on Terror lasts,
a concept of executive authority that recalls the days of absolute authority
claimed by Medieval kings and queens.
-
- Already, Bush has asserted that his "commander in
chief" powers allow him to arrest citizens and hold them indefinitely
without charges; to authorize physical abuse of prisoners; to invade other
countries without the necessity of congressional approval; and to ignore
international law, including the U.N. Charter and other treaty obligations.
-
- As the New York Times reported on Dec. 16 and Bush confirmed
on Dec. 17, he also is claiming - as his constitutional right - the power
to wiretap Americans without court review or the presentation of evidence
to any impartial body.
-
- When Bush is challenged on these authorities, he asserts
that he is following the law, although it is never clear which law or whether
anyone other than his appointed lawyers have advised him on the scope of
his power.
-
- (Conservative legal scholars may have to stretch their
notion of the "original intent" of the Founders to explain how
the writers of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 decided to give a future president
the authority to use spy satellites to intercept phone calls and other
electronic communications.)
-
- It's also not clear what evidence exists to support Bush's
charge that disclosure of his wiretapping decision damages the national
security and endangers U.S. citizens.
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- Under the FISA law dating back to the 1970s, electronic
eavesdropping has been permitted inside the United States against foreign
agents, including anyone collaborating with an international terrorist
group. The law only requires a warrant from a secret court, which rarely
rejects an administration request.
-
- Presumably, al-Qaeda terrorists inside the United States
were aware that their communications were vulnerable to intercepts, explaining
why the Sept. 11 attackers were careful to avoid telephonic contacts abroad.
But the terrorists would have no way to know whether electronic eavesdropping
might be done with or without a warrant, under FISA or Bush's order.
-
- Yet, Bush's complaint that disclosure of his personal
wiretapping authority endangers national security presupposes the terrorists
knew that their phone calls would somehow be immune from a FISA court warrant
but susceptible to Bush's wiretap order.
-
- Since that assumption makes no sense, one can only conclude
that Bush threw in the accusation about endangering national security to
impugn the patriotism of his critics and rev up his base, much as he did
during the run-up to invading Iraq when skeptics were shouted down as traitors
and liars. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com's "Politics of Preemption."]
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- Questionable Targets
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- Bush's assertion of his unilateral authority to wiretap
anyone he wishes also raises questions about whether some of his eavesdropping
is aimed at political opponents or journalists, rather than terrorists.
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- While Bush claims his wiretaps were vital to the national
security, they came at a time when the FISA court was approving record
numbers of warrants for secret surveillance. According to FISA's annual
report for 2004, there were a record 1,758 applications for spying authorization
that year and none was denied by the special court.
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- The administration's explanation for why additional secret
wiretaps were needed is that Bush's order saves time when a quick wiretap
is required, such as when a foreign terrorist is captured and his phone
records are seized.
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- But the FISA court can clear warrants in a few hours
- or Bush could exercise emergency powers under the law to conduct wiretaps
for 72 hours before obtaining approval from the court. That emergency provision
was inserted in the law to give presidents leeway when the threat was a
surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union with the potential of wiping
out nearly the entire U.S. population.
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- Even during the Cold War, the FISA provisions were acceptable
to Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. But now,
with a much less severe threat from al-Qaeda terrorists, George W. Bush
has decided that the law must be waived at his discretion, bypassing the
court on hundreds and possibly thousands of surveillance orders.
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- That suggests other motives may exist for some of these
wiretaps, such as the possibility that some intercepted conversations would
be rejected by even the rubber-stamping FISA court, like requests to spy
on activists, politicians or journalists.
-
- The Bush administration, for instance, has accused the
Arab news network al-Jazeera of collaborating with al-Qaeda and U.S. news
executives are known to communicate with al-Jazeera over access to its
exclusive video. Would these phone calls and e-mails be covered by Bush's
extraordinary wiretap authority?
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- Bush's right-wing allies also have labeled some American
journalists, such as Seymour Hersh, traitors for writing articles about
the War on Terror that reveal secret operations that Bush has wanted to
keep hidden. Plus, there may be U.S. politicians or activists communicating
with Islamic leaders overseas.
-
- While the full range of Bush's intercepts is not known,
the administration's use of National Security Agency intercepts was an
issue earlier this year, when it was disclosed that John Bolton, Bush's
nominee to be United Nations ambassador, had requested names of Americans
that had been excised from NSA transcripts for privacy reasons.
-
- Senate Democrats demanded that documents be turned over
on 10 cases in which Bolton used his position as under secretary of state
for arms control to obtain the names. The White House refused to provide
the information and Bush evaded the need for Senate confirmation of Bolton's
ambassadorship by making him a "recess appointment."
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- Hand Gestures
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- As for Sunday's prime-time Iraq War speech, Bush broke
with the reassuring tradition of a president sitting behind the Oval Office
desk with hands folded. Instead, Bush took to waving his arms as he delivered
the speech.
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- "Grim-faced, yet with a trace of anxiety in his
eyes, Bush delivered the remarks seated rigidly at a desk, making a variety
of hand gestures," observed Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales.
[Washington Post, Dec. 19, 2005]
-
- Some of Bush's strange body language may be explained
by the fact that even he must realize that his assertions include a number
of falsehoods, such as his routine deception that Saddam Hussein defied
U.N. demands on destroying his weapons of mass destruction and on letting
in U.N. weapons inspectors.
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- "It is true that [Hussein] systematically concealed
those [WMD] programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors,"
Bush told the nation. "He was given an ultimatum - and he made his
choice for war."
-
- But it is not true that Hussein blocked the work of U.N.
weapons inspectors. In fact, he acquiesced to a U.N. ultimatum and let
them back into Iraq in November 2002. Chief inspector Hans Blix said his
team was finally given free rein to examine suspected WMD sites, but Bush
forced the inspectors to leave so the invasion could proceed.
-
- As it turned out, Hussein was telling the truth when
he said there were no WMD caches left. After the invasion, Bush's own team
of inspectors concluded that Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been destroyed by
earlier U.N. inspections and by U.S. bombing during the Clinton administration.
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- Yet, beginning a few months after the U.S. invasion -
as it became clear there was no WMD and as U.S. casualties mounted - Bush
began rewriting history, claiming that Hussein had not let the U.N. inspectors
in, thus forcing Bush to invade. This lie presumably made Bush appear more
reasonable.
-
- On July 14, 2003, Bush said about Hussein, "we gave
him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And,
therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."
-
- In the following months, Bush repeated this claim in
slightly varied forms.
-
- On Jan. 27, 2004, Bush said, "We went to the United
Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution - 1441 - unanimous
resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons
programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He
chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in."
-
- Eventually, this false history became part of Bush's
regular litany about the war. Despite the fact that it was an obvious lie
- the U.S. news media had witnessed the work of the U.N. inspectors inside
Iraq - Bush was rarely challenged about his historical revisionism. [For
details, see Consortiumnews.com "President Bush, With the Candlestick."]
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- Terrorists or Insurgents
-
- Similarly, Bush continues to blur the distinctions between
the Sunni-led Iraqi insurgency that has often used roadside bombs to attack
American troops and the relatively small number of non-Iraqi terrorists
who have exploded bombs aimed at civilian targets.
-
- Bush has employed the rhetorical device of using insurgent
and terrorist synonymously, much as he and Vice President Dick Cheney used
juxtaposition to convince millions of Americans that the Iraqi government
was somehow responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.
-
- In his Dec. 18 speech, for instance, Bush said, "the
terrorists will continue to have the coward's power to plant roadside bombs
and recruit suicide bombers," making no distinction between the tactics
of the insurgents and the terrorists.
-
- The danger from this sleight of hand is that it blocks
consideration of possible resolution of the Iraq War. Many military analysts
believe the only realistic route toward a reasonably successful policy
in Iraq is to address the political and economic concerns of Iraq's Sunni
minority - who want a U.S. withdrawal, more political clout and a share
of the nation's oil revenues - while isolating the relatively small number
of foreign jihadists.
-
- Though Bush has made some concessions to this reality
in recent speeches, he chose to return to his broad-brush rhetoric in the
national address. Again, it was a case of good versus evil, victory or
surrender, his way or the highway.
-
- "Defeatism may have its partisan uses," Bush
said of his critics, "but it is not justified by the facts."
-
- Bush also resorted to a favorite tactic of ascribing
ridiculous notions to his critics. "If you think the terrorists would
become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might
make sense to leave them alone," Bush said.
-
- The president then returned to his long-time claim that
Islamic extremists are motivated by their hatred of America's freedom.
-
- "The terrorists do not merely object to American
actions in Iraq and elsewhere, they object to our deepest values and our
way of life," Bush said. "And if we were not fighting them in
Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Southeast Asia, and in other places, the terrorists
would not be peaceful citizens, they would be on the offense, and headed
our way."
-
- Again, Bush was reprising rhetoric that exaggerates or
misstates the enemy's goals and capabilities as a way to box in the U.S.
political debate and shut the door on reasonable alternative strategies.
-
- Bush continues to discuss al-Qaeda as if it is a powerful
international force on par with Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, when many
analysts see it as a fringe organization that was driven out of most Islamic
countries, almost to the ends of the earth - or in this case to the mountains
of Afghanistan.
-
- Without doubt, al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists exploited
a letdown in U.S. security in 2001 to conduct an extraordinary attack on
New York and Washington, but a realistic assessment of its actual clout
is important in calibrating a response.
-
- If al-Qaeda is actually a marginal organization that
can be isolated even more by the West adopting a respectful approach to
the Muslim world, then Bush's approach of invading Arab countries - and
curtailing American liberties - makes no sense, unless Bush's real motives
are something else: say, controlling Middle East resources and transforming
the United States into a modern one-party state with him or his allies
in permanent control.
-
- The analysis that follows from Bush's assertion of unlimited
presidential powers and his deceptive explanations to the American people
about Iraq suggests two alternative theories. Either Bush is increasingly
unstable, incapable of discerning reality from his own propaganda, or he
is concealing his real agenda with misleading arguments.
-
- Put differently, either the United States is experiencing
a kind of modern "madness of King George" - like what happened
when King George III became unstable in the years after losing the Colonies
- or the American people are living under a cunning Machiavelli with a
calculated method to his apparent madness.
-
- Either way, the prospects are troubling for American
democracy - and it may not be clear which of the alternative scenarios
is more worrisome.
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- _____
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- Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in
the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy
& Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be
ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com,
as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project
Truth.'
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