Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler used his June 19 column to respond to FAIR's June 14 Action Alert regarding Post reporter Dana Milbank's use of the term "wing nuts" to describe activists pressing the media to take the Downing Street memos more seriously.

The relevant portion of Getler's column is below, followed by FAIR's response.

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The Washington Post
June 19, 2005 Sunday

HEADLINE: Memos, 'Wing Nuts' and 'Hit Lists'
BYLINE: Michael Getler
BODY:

The bulk of the mail last week, by far, was focused once again on the "Downing Street Memo." This is the memo produced by a national security aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, based on notes taken in a meeting with Blair and his top advisers on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq. It is marked "Secret and strictly personal--UK eyes only" but was leaked to the Sunday Times of London and published May 1.

Included in the note-taker's account was an assessment by the chief of British intelligence, after returning from a visit to Washington, that: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The memo, and the coverage and interpretation of it, continue to generate contention, especially among critics of the war and Bush administration policy. The overwhelming majority of e-mails I received last week seemed to have been prompted by a write-in campaign sponsored mostly by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal, self-described media watchdog organization.

Their target this time was a column by Post staff writer Dana Milbank on June 8 in which the term "wing nuts" was used. Many of the e-mailers said the reference disparaged the real concerns of many people that the administration misrepresented the situation that led the country to war.

Milbank is one of the paper's most talented and observant reporters. On the other hand, for the past several months he has also been serving as a columnist, frequently writing observations that go beyond straight reporting in a column labeled "Washington Sketch" that appears in the news pages of the A-section. On Friday, for example, The Post covered an unofficial antiwar hearing on Capitol Hill only in a Milbank column. Several readers found this inappropriate.

Unfortunately, it has never been announced or explained to Post readers that reporter Milbank is also now columnist Milbank. The reference to "wing nuts," as in left-wing nuts and right-wing nuts, appeared in the June 8 column, not a "news story," as many e-mailers wrongly stated. This is also understandable because FAIR neglected to tell its subscribers that this was clearly marked as a "Washington Sketch" and not a news story.

Milbank's column was about the June 7 Bush-Blair news conference in Washington and it reported that "Democrats.com, a group of left-wing activists" had sent e-mails offering a "reward" for anyone who could get an answer from Bush about the report that intelligence had been "fixed" around Iraq policy. Later in the column, Milbank wrote that a reporter who did ask such a question, and who had no idea of the activists' e-mails, "wasn't trying to satisfy the wing nuts."

Post Assistant Managing Editor Liz Spayd said "the term referred to one specific group" and not everyone who was questioning coverage of the memo. As for the term "wing nuts," she said "that word is probably sharper than it should have been." I agree. It was a needless red flag that undoubtedly would be read as disparaging beyond the group that Milbank was referring to. But columnists do get more leeway and the term has infiltrated political discussion in these heated times.

Here's Milbank's view: "While you have been within your rights as ombudsman over the past five years to attempt to excise any trace of colorful or provocative writing from the Post, you are out of bounds in asserting that a columnist cannot identify as 'wingnuts' a group whose followers have long been harassing this and other reporters and their families with hateful, obscene and sometimes anti-Semitic speech."

Much of the mail criticizing Milbank was also directed at op-ed columnist Michael Kinsley, who, in a June 12 column, said leftist activists' continued focus on the memo showed an ability to develop "a paranoid theory." Later in the week, The Post's editorial page also weighed in on the Downing Street memos (another has been leaked), saying: "They add nothing to what was publicly known in July 2002." That also brought mail.

I have a different view. The July 23 memo is important because it is an official document produced at the highest level of government of the most important U.S. ally. Its authenticity has not been disputed. Whatever some people said or wrote three years ago, there has never been--except for this memo--any official, authoritative claim or confirmation that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Blair denied that at the news conference. But could the secret minutes of such a meeting be wrong? Maybe there's a different interpretation, or maybe "fixed" means something different in British-speak.

Or maybe Blair could produce the former intelligence chief, and the note-taker, for a news conference or open parliamentary session and let reporters or legislators ask for an elaboration on the assessments in the memo.

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FAIR continues to be puzzled by Getler's persistent references to FAIR as a "self-described media watchdog organization," which seems to be an attempt to marginalize FAIR's work. One could just as easily call Post reporters "self-described" journalists working for a "self-described" newspaper.

Getler's attempt to rationalize Milbank's choice of words is also peculiar. Getler stressed that Milbank has a special status at the paper as a "columnist, frequently writing observations that go beyond straight reporting in a column labeled 'Washington Sketch' that appears in the news pages of the A-section." This could present problems, according to Getler: "Unfortunately, it has never been announced or explained to Post readers that reporter Milbank is also now columnist Milbank."

Indeed, the Post could do a much better job of explaining Milbank's status. It's worth noting that you get to Milbank's pieces through the "News" section of the Washington Post's website, not through the "Opinion" section. Milbank's latest piece (6/18/05) has a line at the end noting, "Staff writer Lila de Tantillo contributed to this report"--an odd thing for the Post to add to an opinion column.

Still, despite the Post's lack of clarity, the ombudsman blames FAIR for any confusion:

"The reference to 'wing nuts,' as in left-wing nuts and right-wing nuts, appeared in the June 8 column, not a 'news story,' as many e-mailers wrongly stated. This is also understandable because FAIR neglected to tell its subscribers that this was clearly marked as a 'Washington Sketch' and not a news story."

This comment suggests that "Washington Sketch" is a well-known category of opinion journalism, and not a name that the Post invented to label some of Milbank's writings starting in March. Similar labels are often put on "news analysis" pieces, such as Elizabeth Bumiller's "White House Letter" in the New York Times.

In the end, however, what category the Post thinks Milbank's writing should be placed in is beside the point. Whatever you want to call it, his piece used the slur "wing nuts" to describe people calling for coverage of a patently newsworthy controversy that was largely ignored by mainstream media--in other words, people calling on the media to do their jobs.

Getler notes that the term "wing nuts" "undoubtedly would be read as disparaging beyond the group that Milbank was referring to." But even the use of the term to refer only to Democrats.com is problematic. In back-and- forth emails posted on the Democrats.com website ( http://www.democrats.com/milbank ), Milbank provides no evidence that the group was responsible for any "hateful, obscene [or] anti-Semitic speech."

It is not unusual for people who work in the public eye to receive criticism, some of it intemperate, angry and abusive. FAIR receives such emails and calls on a daily basis, sometimes including anti-Semitic taunts and death threats. But to respond in kind to such hostility in one's journalism is a mistake-- in a news article or a "Washington Sketch" column. In the "wing nuts" piece, Milbank refers to another journalist as a "consummate professional." Milbank's use of name-calling removes him from that category.

Indeed, Milbank's displeasure with Downing Street Memo activists seems to be unprofessionally twisting his coverage of the issue. When Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) convened a panel to discuss the issue, Milbank ridiculed the event in what Getler correctly notes was the Post's only coverage of the event (6/17/05):

"In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe. They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official."

Milbank dragged Democrats.com into the story, misleadingly referring to the group as "the event organizer"; After Downing Street, a coalition of some 60 groups including Democrats.com, put together an off-site closed-circuit viewing of the panel for the overflow crowd, though the way Milbank refers to the "organizers" of the actual panel two paragraphs later a reader could easily conclude that Democrats.com were responsible for the panel itself. Milbank harped on stickers, T-shirts and leaflets seen at the overflow viewing; needless to say, the Washington Post does not usually cover congressional hearings by talking about the material distributed by random individuals on the Capitol steps.

Conyers wrote a letter in response to Milbank's article, noting that the meeting was held in a basement room for a reason: "Despite the fact that a number of other suitable rooms were available in the Capitol and House office buildings, Republicans declined my request for each and every one of them."

Milbank went to great lengths to mock the event, turning a Republican effort to block an investigation of a significant document into evidence of Democratic delusions. One can't help but wonder whether Milbank has allowed a personal grievance to slant his coverage of a major topic.

NOTE: Dana Milbank can be reached at sketch@washpost.com. As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you maintain a polite tone.

The Washington Post is a joke.

In the past month I have watched the "venerable" institution run its Deep Throat/Watergate connection into the ground as it basks in the self-congratulatory glow only the media heaps upon itself. Countless interviews, editorials and debates have chronicled a descent into madness where news reports focus on how news was reported.

Fascinating.

Seriously, who cares? I don't think the universe stands redefined because of the actions of one whistleblower with questionable motives, nor do I consider Woodward and Bernstein a crack crime-fighting duo looking to unseat Richard Nixon. I did, however, respect the paper's act of taking a subversive story and nurturing it, particularly in the face of an administration loathe to reveal its secrets.

Now 30 years later history is repeating itself. The citizens of the United States live under the rule of an administration with so many well-documented lies and crimes no insider is even needed to blow a story open. Draconian laws strip us of our freedoms and warhawks send our friends and family to die in illegal wars. These kinds of issues cry out for fair and accurate reporting – or perhaps a vigilant voice that has long stood for holding government accountable?

Those cries will go unheeded. As the Post's sole piece – Dana Milbank's condescending piece of trash – on Representative John Conyers' (D-Michigan) Downing Street Memo hearings last week can attest, the Post has no desire to hold anybody accountable for anything. They just want to relive old glories, even in the face of appearing grossly hypocritical. The American people can't piece things together, can they?

If they've been raised on the mass media of the past two decades, not likely.

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The Downing Street Memo is not something that will go away. The consciousness raised by its emergence in May is growing, and it is only conspicuous by its absence in mainstream press and television.

While it shares the spotlight as a damning piece of evidence showing Bush's complicity in starting war at all costs, the memo is merely one of a dozen proofs that the president and his advisors lied to initiate combat in Iraq. Lies that were all propagated through mainstream media outlets in the United States, lies that were routinely forgotten or ignored when time for a retraction came.

Conyers' decision to hold a hearing outlining the lies that led the United States down the path to war should be an important and vital part of maintaining our democracy. It certainly demands more attention from one of the self-styled bedrocks of journalism than the drunken scribblings of a clearly biased columnist like Dana Milbank.

If you have not read Milbank's column, I invite you to do so now. Since its publication, the piece has been so thoroughly vetted as irresponsible journalism the Post rechristened it as a feature and not news.

In it you'll find members of Congress reduced to caricatures of kindergarten "playmates" engaged in a game of dress-up and running around like deluded patrons of the "land of make-believe." Snide, caustic remarks are made about everything and everyone; not even the décor of the room escapes unremarked. Veteran analysts and emotional parents alike were discredited as part of the lunatic fringe.

No accurate account of the hearings is present in Milbank's hatchet job. And this is the only account of the event the Washington Post chose to run.

It is so replete with inaccuracies Conyers wrote a letter to the paper refuting every silly and irresponsible point Milbank made. "Pravda on the Potomac" is a great read; Conyers truly is a dedicated servant of the People and his refrained rhetoric shows what class he has when dealing with an idiot.

All of this, however, raises the question: Why is the Washington Post trying to bury and discredit the kind of news it built its reputation on during the Nixon years? The Downing Street Memo paints President Bush in an even more unfavorable light than the money trail Woodward and Bernstein followed in the '70s – it proves undeniably that the tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq were for naught. It proves Bush is a war criminal more interested in the urban legend that Saddam tried to whack his daddy than in trying to keep American infrastructure from collapsing.

And, damn it, it makes for a great read.

I can understand why the hearings were broadcast on CSPAN-3 – the president obviously wants this downplayed as much as possible. But news outlets? Their reputations are already in the toilet after repeated flubbings of facts, plagiarism and attention to infotainment at the expense of actual news. Regardless of what they might lead us to believe, the media rely on people to buy it or watch advertisements. With declining ratings and readerships, how much of a profit margin are the executives willing to give up just to curry favor with the gang of thugs and miscreants in charge?

Forget even the profit line – how much respect is the Washington Post willing to toss in the Potomac in an attempt to dismiss truth from the public record? I know that Capitol Hill is one big orgy of power and persuasion, but look at what happened with Bob Woodward. By striking up a friendship with Mark Felt early in his career, Woodward inadvertently parlayed his dedication to the story into almost a celebrity career. What journalist nowadays climbs the ranks by investing in the trust of the disgruntled serfs in the White House? Those are the people with the best information, not the sycophants who tow the party line.

Better information, better work, more name recognition. It's win-win. But Washington, D.C. lives in its own little bizarro universe where fiscal responsibility means more spending, where red means go and green means stop, and mind-numbing idiocy is rewarded.

Looks like Dana Milbank is in for a promotion, then.

Appearing on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey repeated the false assertion -- which conservatives in the media have made and which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embraced during a previous interview with Matthews -- that the word "fixed," as used in the Downing Street memo, means something other than "cooking the books" in British parlance. [...]

When Hardball guest host David Gregory asked Woolsey about this line, Woolsey stated: "I think that's not what 'fixing' means in these circumstances. I think people are not listening to British usage. I don't think they're talking about cooking the books." But British sources have said that "British usage" conforms exactly to the interpretation Woolsey tried to reject:

* British Sunday Times reporter Michael Smith, the reporter who first disclosed the memo on May 1, ridiculed the notion that "fixed" has a different meaning in Britain in a Washington Post online chat: "There are number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the U.K. who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it."

* A British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) documentary in March quoted the Downing Street memo more than a month before the Sunday Times published it. BBC reporter John Ware explained: "By 'fixed' the MI6 chief meant that the Americans were trawling for evidence to reinforce their claim that Saddam was a threat."

* When the Sunday Times first disclosed the memo on May 1, it noted the Bush administration's attempt "to link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks" as an example of "fixing" the intelligence around the policy: "The Americans had been trying to link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks; but the British knew the evidence was flimsy or non-existent. Dearlove warned the meeting that 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.' "

* David Hughes, political editor of London's Daily Mail, argued in a May 2 column that the meeting detailed in the Downing Street memo "led inexorably to the publication of the 'sexed-up' Iraq weapons dossier two months later," referring to a now-famous 2003 report by BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan alleging that a British dossier on Iraq had been "sexed up" to hype the Iraqi threat. [...]

It's bad enough that the Bush administration had so little international support for the Iraqi war that their "coalition of the willing" meant the U.S., Britain, and the equivalent of a child's imaginary friends. It's even worse that, as the British Downing Street memo confirms, they had so little evidence of real threats that they knew from the start that they were going to have manufacture excuses to go to war. What's more damning still is that they effectively began this war even before the congressional vote.

With Congressman John Conyers holding hearings, the media are finally starting to cover the Downing Street memo. [...]

The document is damning, particularly coupled with the testimony of former Bush ghost-writer Mickey Herskowitz that Bush was talking about invading Iraq as early as 1999. But it's even more disturbing as we start learning that this administration began actively fighting the Iraq war well in advance of the March 2003 official attack--before both the October 2002 US Congressional authorization and the November United Nations resolution requiring that Saddam Hussein open the country up to inspectors.

I follow Iraq pretty closely, but was taken aback when Charlie Clements, now head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, described driving in Iraq months before the war "and a building would just explode, hit by a missile from 30,000 feet –‘What is that building?'" Clements would ask. "'Oh, that's a telephone exchange.'" Later, at a conference at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base, Clements heard a U.S. General boast "that he began taking out assets that could help in resisting an invasion at least six months before war was declared."

Earlier this month, Jeremy Scahill wrote a powerful piece on the website of The Nation, describing a huge air assault in September 2002. "Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace," Scahill writes. "At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air- defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist."

Why aren't we talking about this? As Scahill points out, this was a month before the Congressional vote, and two before the UN resolution. Supposedly part of enforcing "no fly zones," the bombings were actually systematic assaults on Iraq's capacity to defend itself. The US had never declared war. Bush had no authorization, not even a fig leaf. He was simply attacking another nation because he'd decided to do so. This preemptive war preempted our own Congress, as well as international law.

Most Americans don't know these prewar attacks ever happened. There was little coverage at the time, and there's been little since. The bombings that destroyed Iraq's air defenses were under the radar for both the American media and American citizens.

If coverage of the Downing St memo continues to increase, I suspect the administration will try to dismiss it as mere diplomatic talk, just inside baseball. But they weren't just manipulating intelligence so they could attack no matter how Saddam Hussein responded. They weren't only bribing would-be allies into participation. They were fighting a war they'd planned long before. They just didn't bother to tell the American public.

Paul Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books), named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and American Book Association. See http://www.theimpossible.org/ You can read more about the Downing St memo at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org

This is great investigative work, and further evidence that Bush and the neocons were planning pre-emptive military action long before September 11th, and no matter what WMD intelligence revealed--Chris

With a small ceremony on April 26, 2003, control of Prince Sultan Air Base was handed back to the government of Saudi Arabia. Since the mid-nineties it had been the premier US air base in the region and the nerve center for all air force operations in the Gulf. As the home of the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC), the base was the primary command and control facility responsible for orchestrating the air campaigns for both Operation Southern Watch in Iraq and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

The timing of the closing of PSAB seemed odd, coming just weeks after the official start of military actions in Iraq. It should have, at the very least, caused unwanted logistical problems for the Pentagon and regional commanders, but it didn't. A contingency plan had long been in the works, not only for Prince Sultan Air Base, but also for the entire map of the Middle East, including Iraq.

Long before the US pullout, a new home for the operations had secretly been built in the deserts of Qatar. What had been in October 2001 "nothing more than a runway and a field of sand covered by two-dozen tents and a few warehouses", the Al Udeid Air Base was transformed in a few short months into one of the largest air bases in the world.

Published reports and official DOD statements claimed that the amazing transformation was the result of the heroic response of US servicemen to the tragedy of 9-11. A determined military had beaten indeterminate odds to transform a barren wasteland into a state of the art military base in order to "take the war to the terrorists".

The true story of the building of Al-Udeid is actually quite different. The planning for the mammoth base had in fact taken place long before Sept. 11, and actual work on the base began as early as the spring of 2001. The building of Al Udeid turns out not to be a "miracle in the desert" in response to a heinous attack, as touted by the military, but rather a required step on the path to regime change in Iraq.

It has long been accepted knowledge that the Bush Administration was working feverishly towards regime change in Iraq during the 18-month period between 9-11 and the official start of the war in March of 2003. The Downing St Minutes confirmed that the Administration was set on a path to war at least as early as mid-summer of 2002. The accounts of Paul O'Neil and Richard Clarke verified that Iraq was a front burner issue for the Administration from the very first day, and only intensified after the attacks. Yet finding hard evidence to prove that planning for the war in Iraq was taking place prior to 9-11 has been hard to find. A look at the building of Al Udied can provide that evidence. [...]

Now try to work this one out. Before the war on Iraq, Britain witnessed a ferocious debate over whether the case for conflict was legal and honest. It culminated in the largest demonstration in the country's history, as a million or more took to the streets to stop the war. At the same time, the US sleepwalked into battle. Its press subjected George Bush to a fraction of the scrutiny endured by Tony Blair: the president's claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida were barely challenged. While Blair had to cajole and persuade his MPs to back him, Bush counted on the easy loyalty of his fellow Republicans - and of most leading Democrats.

Yet now the picture has reversed. In Washington Iraq remains close to the centre of politics while in Britain it has all but vanished. So the big news on Capitol Hill is the Democrats' refusal to confirm John Bolton, the man Bush wants to serve as US ambassador to the UN, in part because of suspicions arising from the lead-up to war.

Meanwhile, RAF planes were involved last weekend in bombing raids in north-west Iraq - a marked escalation of their role - and British politics barely stirs. America has woken up; we are aslumber.

The best illustration of this strange reversal is the curious fate of the Downing Street memo. Leaked to the Sunday Times just before the election, it contained a slew of striking revelations. It minuted a meeting of Blair, Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon and a clutch of top officials back on July 23 2002 - when both Bush and Blair were adamant that no decision had been taken - and confirms that, on the contrary, Washington had resolved to go to war. Despite Straw's insistence that the case against Saddam was "thin", the course was set. According to the memo, Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, explained that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As if that were not devastating enough - vindicating one of the anti-war camp's key charges, that the decision for war came first and the evidence was "fixed" to fit - the leaks have kept coming. In the past fortnight, six more documents have surfaced, their authenticity not challenged. One shows that Britain and the US heavily increased bombing raids on Iraq in the summer of 2002 - when London and Washington were still insisting that war was a last resort - even though the Foreign Office's own lawyers had advised that such action was illegal. These "spikes of activity" were aimed at provoking Saddam into action that might justify war. Other documents confirm that Blair had agreed to back regime change in the spring of 2002, that he was warned it was illegal and that ministers were told to "create the conditions" that would make it legal. Other gems include the admission that the threat from Saddam and WMD had not increased and that US attempts to link Baghdad to al-Qaida were "frankly unconvincing".

Taken together, these papers amount to an indictment of the way the British and American peoples were led to war. In Britain they have scarcely made a dent, but in America they have developed an unexpected momentum. Initially circulated on left-leaning websites, they have now broken out of the blogosphere and into the mainstream. The big newspapers have editorialised on the topic; last week Democratic congressmen held unofficial hearings into the memos; whole campaigns have formed solely to publicise their existence. (Now downingstreetmemo.com is there as an alternative to thankyoutony.com, where Americans are invited to signal their gratitude to their staunchest ally.) The memos have earned the two definitive accolades of a hot political issue: their own abbreviation - the DSM - and a customised line of T-shirts. ("Read the memo or die" is available in extra-large.)

The administration has been put on the defensive, lamely insisting that the decision for war was only taken in February 2003. Some Democrats believe the distance between that claim and these memos supplies the vital element of any scandal: proof that the president lied. They argue that if a fib about a dalliance with an intern was enough to see Bill Clinton impeached, lies that led to the deaths of 1,600 US troops and hundreds of thousands of uncounted and unnamed Iraqi civilians deserve at least the same treatment.

That's not going to happen - at least not while Republicans control both the House and Senate, chairing the committees that are meant to investigate such matters. It's also true that, while the mainstream US press has given space to the DSM issue, much of the coverage has sought to play down the documents' importance. (Having failed to expose the holes in the administration's case before the war, the American media is perhaps embarrassed to show how gaping those holes were.) One senior Democrat I spoke to yesterday suggested that the lead-up to war will never become a pivotal question because "it's not in Americans' nature to look backward". The focus now, he says, even among opponents of the war, is on "how to get out of this mess - not how we got into it".

Comment: And yet, as the author pointed out, most Democrats were complicit in the invasion of Iraq - so why should we bother listening to "one senior Democrat's" claim that opponents of the war aren't focusing on how we got into this mess? The truth about how Bush and the Neocons pulled a fast one on the American public regarding both 9/11 and Iraq is the key issue. The Democrat's statement is like saying, "Well, Bush murdered my son, but I don't care why or how it happened - I just want to figure out some way that we can convict him so I can get on with my life." Obviously, the motive involved and especially the evidence of the crime are essential to any prosecution. Otherwise, the murderer walks free.

For all that, the awkward questions linger. Last week Harry Reid, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, explained his opposition to Bolton's nomination partly in terms of the Downing Street memo: that document had established that "hyping intelligence" happened and he wanted to know if Bolton had ever been involved in similar exercises.

Even when the past is put to one side, Iraq continues to have a salience in the US that it lacks here. Coverage of the daily cost of the occupation remains intense, with a constant gaze on the insurgency that refuses to fade away.

What explains this contrast? Part of it is bad timing. The first memo was leaked in the dog days of a British election campaign after a week dominated by the publication of the attorney general's famed advice. Journalists decided that voters were Iraq-ed out and so gave the memo much less coverage than it deserved. The election itself has played a role too. The assumption is that Britons delivered their verdict on Iraq by cutting Labour's majority and therefore the reckoning has, at least partially, happened. That is certainly how the government likes to play it: privately, ministers will hint that the whole Iraq business was a bit of a nightmare but it's behind us now and we can all move on.

The trouble is, it is not behind us. The occupation continues and people are still dying, daily, in substantial numbers. In the US the realisation seems to be dawning that this episode represents, at the very least, a case of maladministration, of desperately poor governance. That failure should be investigated, by Commons committees as much as by congressional ones, not because some of us cannot let go of the past - but because there is no other way to ensure such folly never happens again.

When the Watergate scandal was unfolding, our nation was justifiably outraged. We were justifiably outraged that the Nixon Administration was involved in the burglary of the offices of their political opponents. We were justifiably outraged that the Nixon Administration was attempting to cover up this crime.

However, it seems to me that the Watergate scandal pales in comparison to the George W. Bush Administration's lying to the American people and the world about the reason to attack and invade another sovereign country.

Where is the outrage?

Where is the outrage the the so-called weapons of mass destruction had absolutely nothing to do with why the Bush Administration wanted to invade Iraq? The Bush Administration was not deceived about weapons of mass destruction--the Bush Administration did the deceiving.

Where is the outrage that innocent Iraqi citizens and American soldiers are dead or crippled for life because of the lies of the Bush Administration?

Kirk Muse
Mesa, AZ - USA

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve." -- Attorney General John Ashcroft - in defense of the USA Patriot Act (Source: Press Report, Center for Public Integrity)

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."-- Hermann Goering, cabinet member under Adolf Hitler (Source: Transcript of Nuremberg Trials)

Talk about two peas in a pod… Sounds to me like two brothers in mission and creed. I found these quotes in a must read article by Chuck Baldwin entitled Remembering the Lessons of Germany's Past at www.newswithviews.com. It's an article about a set-up. Read.

Today I've been thinking about vulnerability. I am a vulnerable person. I'm old, I can't run, I don't have wealth, riches, social connections, cabal connections, genetic perfections, genius, an army, weapons, globalist aspirations, acreage, non-profit status, or any status for that matter. I'm just an ordinary commoner, and that makes me vulnerable.

But as a commoner, and with 99% of the world's people along side of me, I do not like to be threatened by the likes of the 1%, such as Mr. Ashcroft, who speaks as if I am a criminal. So, to you, Mr. Ashcroft, I have an absolute right to disagree with anything you say, because you are my employee and you work for me. You need to rescind that arrogant, elitist comment, whereby you just demeaned, insulted, and threatened American citizens. In fact, you need to step down because you do not represent the American citizenry. You represent the agenda of the 1% and therefore YOUR RESOLVE is the real danger to OUR way of life and country.

Now, with that said, let us consider other facts. Everywhere I turn, I see behavior modification in action. I see it on television, in ecology and other sciences, in the pharmaceutical and health industries, all schools and universities, all laws and hidden legislation, all executive orders, all deed-restricted communities, all transportation issues, all law enforcement powers, all food and water issues, and in every other system that has anything, whatsoever, to do with homo sapiens.

We are constantly told what to do, where to go and not go, what to eat and not eat, how to die, what pets to keep and not keep, how to raise our children, what gods we can and cannot worship, what to say and not say, how to be sane, what to wear, what to buy, where to buy, where to live and not live, on and on… We are also told that American-style freedom is being spread across the globe. American freedom?

At this stage of the game, I would like to know precisely what I am free to do. I'd like to see that list, for liberty and freedom contradict all the above AND all the following:

· ELF technology
· RFID technology
· Verichips
· Real ID
· Compulsory Mental Health Screening of ALL people
· COPS (Community Oriented Policing Service)
· COMPASS
· Psychotronic/electromagnetic weapons technology
· Partnership/Stakeholding bureaucracies
· Eminent Domain
· GPS
· GIS
· Global Mapping
· Digital Video Recording Systems
· Stun Guns
· Internet Monitoring
· Spy Camera Technologies
· S. 517 (109th Congress, 1st Session), "To establish the Weather Modification Operations and Research Board, and for other purposes."
· Detention Camps
· Operation TIPS
· TIA – Total Information Awareness

This list could go on for pages, but you get the picture. So again, I repeat, what am I free to do amidst the behavior modification brainwash and the police state, which is operational, today, in America?

Wouldn't it be something if one, just one, politician would come forth and say to us, "Okay, I will tell you the truth. You are to be totally controlled by the elite, because if you don't do what they tell you to do, they can destroy you in many, many ways. You are totally powerless and 'we' changed the way that you think, the way that you live, and now you are slaves because we purposefully destroyed your Constitutional rights and freedoms. The wealthiest people in the world desired total, physical ownership of the planet, including all natural resources, and they desired that you become a managed species. Having the money and the weapons to enforce these wishes, their goals were accomplished. You, the commoners, who are not in their leagues, nor their ballparks, are looked upon as an invasive profit-taking species, and you are therefore to be controlled by drugs, incarceration, or by any other means necessary. If you cause any problems, whatsoever, or if you are a 'useless eater,' you are to be removed from the general population and/or eliminated." [...]

With the Downing Street Minutes that unmask his lies, with his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lost, with his poll numbers tumbling, with Republicans jumping ship, with the economy tanking and with parents shielding their children from his military recruiters, why is George W. Bush still smiling, swaggering and acting like the dictator he hopes to become?

The friction from the grinding wheels of unintended consequences have lit a fire, the flames of which need to be fanned until they consume Bush, his whole administration, and the worthless whores and pimps in Congress.

But neither the flames nor the smoke in the reality-based community have yet gotten through to Bushworld, where reality is whatever he and his necons says it is. Bush's delusional thinking allows him to believe that the Planning Scenarios dreamt up by the Homeland Security Council, coupled with making permanent, and adding to, the dreadful Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, better known as the USA PATRIOT Act, will provide him with all the tools and protections he needs against dissidents (terrorists in his parlance) foreign and domestic.

In his article, Orwellian "Scenarios": Emergency Preparedness Against the "Universal Adversary", Michael Chossudovsky brilliantly lays out how the Planning Scenarios call for labeling all who oppose the Bushistas as "Universal Adversaries" and using every apparatus of the federal, state and local governments in dealing with "foreign terrorists," "domestic radical groups," "state sponsored adversaries" and "disgruntled employees."

Then there is the latest attempt to repeal the 22nd Amendment, which limits a president to two terms in office. If the bill, H.J. Res. 24 - sponsored by Congressman Steny D. Hoyer (D-Md.) and co-sponsored by Congressmen Howard L. Berman (D-Cal.), Frank Pallone, Jr., (D-NJ), Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minn.) and F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wisc.) - gets a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress this time and is ratified by three-quarters of the states before the 2008 election, George W. Bush can be president for life.

Shoot, he's stolen two presidential elections and with a majority of voting machines now controlled by his corporate friends and supporters, why not go for the third and final time? That's less embarrassing - if a Bush is ever embarrassed by anything - than pulling a Papa Doc or Baby Doc Duvalier and just up and declaring himself "president for life." Of course, if the amendment fails, he could go that route.

With these thoughts dancing in Bush's nearly empty skull, you can see why he is still smiling. In Bushworld, war can be declared on any nation at any time for any reason or no reason and "Universal Adversaries" can be disappeared into gulags, tortured and killed. There is no punishment for the inhabitants of Bushworld: not for stealing elections; not for the attacks they perpetrated on September 11, 2001; not for waging illegal wars on Afghanistan and Iraq; not for torture, murder, destruction of other people's countries and heritage; not for stealing other people's wealth and resources; not for squandering their own nation's wealth or depriving Americans of their freedoms.

In the reality-based community, however, the wheels of unintended consequences have not only started a fire, as the American people awaken from the corporate media induced slumber, but, once in motion, the wheels can't be stopped.

Bush can ignore the Downing Street Minutes, and corporate media harpies, such as Dana Milbank, can make fun of hearings such as the one Rep. John Conyers conducted last Thursday, but the American people are beginning to realize how they were snookered into an illegal war on Iraq and the word impeachment grows louder by the day from every corner of the land: Impeach Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales!

George W. can go on the radio every Saturday, as he did this past one, and falsely tie 9/11 to Iraq, but only his deluded diehard supporters will believe him. Condoleezza Rice can continue to utter the lie, as she did on Fox News Sunday, that her boss's administration said before the criminal invasion of Iraq "that this is a generational commitment," but the people haven't forgotten that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld said it would be a cakewalk and the Iraqis would greet the invaders with hugs and flowers.

Watergate, too, started off with a little smoke about a "third-rate burglary," which was brushed off by most of the news media at a time when not all the major media were yet in the hands of a few corporations. Then came a small flame when it was revealed the burglars had long-standing ties to the CIA.

The flame wasn't big enough to deprive Richard Nixon of reelection, but it continued to grow, forcing him to stand before the American people and disingenuously declare, "Your president is not a crook." Ah, but he was worse than a crook, which we will get to in a minute.

Despite what was later written in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's "All the President's Men," about Nixon taking to the bottle, as the flames grew higher and higher; wandering the corridors of the White House at night, talking to portraits of dead presidents; forcing the criminal, Henry Kissinger, to get down on his knees with him to pray in the Oval Office, Nixon still had a sense of self-preservation and listened to his advisors and the members of Congress who told him to resign before a Bill of Impeachment was passed. It would be surprising if Bush and his gang did likewise.

For those who believe Nixon was the victim of a bloodless coup d'état, perhaps he was. For Watergate and the cover-up were not his biggest crimes. His biggest crime was committed during his 1968 election campaign, when, on the one hand, he was telling the American people he had a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War, while, on the other hand at the urging of Kissenger, he illegally sent Anna Chenault to tell South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu not to attend the peace negotiations in Paris; that the US would give him a better deal.

Given the fact that Donald Graham, the late publisher of the Washington Post, was CIA and his widow, Katherine, who became publisher upon his death, was either CIA herself or just soft on the agency, might explain why she allowed then cub reporters Woodward (who also has CIA ties) and Bernstein to keep on the Watergate story when newspapers, such as The New York Times, were dismissing it as a non-story. And how helpful it was to have the aid of Mark Felt, who claims he was Deep Throat; Felt who was a great admirer FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and who, as number two man in the FBI, was the boss of the illegal COINTELPRO operation. Perhaps, in their minds, it was better to throw Nixon to the wolves over Watergate than have the sordid mess come out about a presidential candidate that had gotten away with disqualifying himself for office by interfering in foreign policy and, thereby, causing the deaths of thousands more American troops and Vietnamese.

With the Bush family's ties to the Washington Post, this time around the Post seems bent on protecting George W. by either not reporting, dismissing or making light of his crimes.

But the filth keeps leaking like pus from a gangrenous limb and all the lies cannot stem the stench or stop the rot.

Yes, George W. may be smiling, when he's not snarling and acting like king of the mountain, which is why we, in the reality-based community, must keep fanning the flames of impeachment until they consume him and all in his rotten administration.

Those who attempt to caution or contradict Bush Washington about even the smallest matter are doomed. They are the Unbelievers, and for their independence will be mercilessly attacked by the psychopathic charlatans who wield great power in an administration that has deteriorated into a monstrous circus of arrogance, self-deception and malevolence. The onslaughts of the zealots are aimed at destroying the careers and reputations of those who dare question the deceit and knavery of the Head Charlatan. It does not matter how distinguished the victims might be; it is of no consequence that they may have been for decades loyal servants of the American Constitution; and it is irrelevant that they might have a world-wide reputation for honesty.

The Cheney-Bush imperium has dictated that neither dissent not challenge can be permitted.

Irrespective of harm to individuals, or to their organizations, colleagues, friends and families, the unbelievers must be destroyed. The fact that most of the unbelievers are foreigners adds a surreal dimension of shrill self-righteousness to the process of demolition. The American psyche is now in such a tailspin of hysterical xenophobic suspicion that anything foul will be believed of a foreigner, especially if the foreigner is -- Oh, Horror -- a Muslim associated with the United Nations.

Much persecution by the fundamentalist quasi-Christians in Washington begins at home, where the case of the CIA deep-cover agent Valerie Plame has been forgotten by the US media. In Britain there would have been investigative journalists crawling all over the place revealing the foulness of those who betrayed (forget the word 'leaked', for this was a matter of high policy) her identity, thus placing her in physical danger -- but not as much danger as all the contacts she made over the years in some exotic and evil places. We'll never know how many of them have died horribly because her identity was made public by traitors. Her anti-Bush crime was to be married to a man who questioned the ludicrous Bush lies about non-existent nuclear weapons in Iraq which formed the basis of the nuclear "mushroom cloud" claptrap by Cheney and Rice.

But Plame's husband, a former ambassador, had told the truth, and therefore had to be punished. They couldn't lay a hand on him, personally, and although he was investigated to the hilt there was nothing that the sleazy knaves around Bush could do to him, officially. So how else could they make him pay and suffer for his insolence to The Great Leader?

That's a simple matter - providing you have a mind like a festering dungheap that has been shat on by a troop of rabid baboons suffering from terminal diarrhea. What you do is to destroy his wife's career, which they did. As I've written before, any independent FBI team could have discovered within days the identity of the rancid filth who betrayed Ms Plame. But the investigation has dragged on for over a year and it is most unlikely that there will be legal proceedings against the rats who have been traitors to their country, because they are loyal to Bush.

With regret we'll pass over the matter of the many CIA analysts who have been sacked in the last year or so because they refused to cook the books for Cheney-Bush. They would forfeit every last cent of their pensions were their stories to be told. (But one of them -- at least -- is writing a memoir to be published after his death.) So let's go to the revolting Bolton and his mean and petty destruction of Mr Jose Bustani, former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Nobody remembers Mr Bustani, but he was the man who advocated sending UN chemical weapons' inspectors to Iraq in 2002. President Cheney-Bush didn't want this, because it would have shown -- and did show, eventually -- that Iraq had not a grain or drop of chemicals that could have been delivered by missiles which it didn't have, either. (The really funny thing is that Bush has stated on record that Saddam Hussein would not permit weapons inspectors to enter Iraq, which is an out-and-out lie, and that Bush himself has forbidden UN weapons inspectors to enter the country since he invaded it. Up is down; black is white; lies are truth in Bushland.) So Bolton, the man that Bush is foisting upon the world as his personal representative to the United Nations (which would also be funny were it not so sick) phoned Mr Bustani and was "menacing".

It was claimed that Mr Bustani "was not responsive to US and other countries' positions". For 'other countries' read the prime minister of Britain, one Tony Blair, a lying, manipulative, devious little two-faced creep who fits well in Bush Washington.

Bolton had demanded that Bustani appoint Americans (approved by Bolton) to his staff and that the (eventual) UN inspection results be altered, but got no satisfaction. So Washington threatened to withdraw its financial support for the OPCW if Mr Bustani remained its chief. Then the US insisted on a special session of the OPCW, having bribed and bullied its members beforehand to vote its way. They managed to get Mr Bustani sacked a year before the end of his tenure. (I'm happy to say that his country made him ambassador to the UK, although I doubt he'll be seeing many of Blair's politicized officials.)

It was an easy victory for Bush and Blair. Exit another little problem. Easy peasy, says Washington: now that we have got rid of one embarrassment, let's look for another Unbeliever to victimize.

So here is the barely believable tale of another decent man who was sacked because Bush Washington knew he was honest. And the man wasn't only sacked, but his appointment was eliminated. Let's begin with his brief biography:

"Cherif Bassiouni, Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law [in Chicago] serves as president of DePaul's International Human Rights Law Institute, the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy, and the International Association of Penal Law in Paris . . . From 1995-1998, he was vice-chairman of the UN General Assembly's Committee for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court and in 1998 was elected chairman of the [Committee]. Professor Bassiouni is the author and editor of 54 books and 176 law review articles . . . He has received numerous honors, including the Order of Merit of the Austrian Republic (1990) [etc, etc. . . ] In 1999, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong work to establish an International Criminal Court."

Mr Bassiouni is a truly distinguished international figure.

He leaves Cheney, Rice, Bush, Rumsfeld and the rest of the weird bunch at the starting post. For a start he speaks foreign languages. (And remember how Rice, that supposed expert on Russia with supposedly fluent Russian, somehow mixed up the words for "yes" and "no" during an interview with a Russian TV station. I doubt Professor Bassiouni would do that in either English, Arabic or French, the languages he speaks most fluently.) But the Bush people managed to get him sacked from his appointment as the UN's independent investigator into human rights in Afghanistan. It wasn't easy for them to get him out, of course. The process went through various stages, and the beginning of the saga was as bizarre as the rest of it.

First, Washington tried to stop any investigation whatever into human rights violations in Afghanistan. Then when it became obvious that this demand was preposterous, because the place is a sink of hideous persecution, especially against women, the fallback position -- stand by to shriek with laughter -- was to demand that US troops be excluded from all investigations into human rights violations. And this -- it becomes even more surreal -- was after it was revealed that there had been torture by American soldiers of illegally detained inmates at the Abu Ghraib hellhole.

But Professor Bassiouni had offended the zealots well before he went to Afghanistan. He had, after all, been a staunch advocate of the International Criminal Court. This organization is feared and detested by Cheney-Bush people because it might at some stage be able to hold US soldiers accountable for atrocities and war crimes if the US justice system refuses to indict them on such charges. In the eyes of the Cheney-Bush people (and of many millions of American citizens) it is not permissible for US soldiers to be judged by foreigners, no matter their atrocities.

Therefore Professor Bassiouni was by definition a major enemy of the Cheney- Bush Imperial project. An Unbeliever. He had to be eradicated.

His report on human rights violations in Afghanistan wasn't even mentioned by most US media (so what's new?), but the Independent newspaper in the UK recounted that "The [Bassiouni] report, based on a year spent traveling around Afghanistan interviewing Afghans, international agency staff and the Afghan Human Rights Commission, estimated that around 1,000 Afghans had been detained and accused US troops of breaking into homes, arresting residents and abusing them."

That was in April. Since then we have been told about horrifying torture and even murder of Afghans by US soldiers. I've written about this before, but think it appropriate to repeat one paragraph:

"It was a joke to these US soldiers that their helpless Afghan captives died lingering deaths, suffering hellishly for days from soldiers' fists and feet and dogs before merciful release. The documents given to the New York Times include one terrifying quotation concerning one of the tortured and murdered men : "Everyone heard him cry out and thought it was funny." We are now told that the men were "young and poorly trained", as if this could be justification for torture and murder. "Oh, excuse me while I ram this broomstick up your ass, but I'm young and poorly trained". Tim Golden's opening sentence in the Times sums it up : "Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him". Can you imagine this? Are we really talking about soldiers of the American Army?"

Can anyone be human who actually torments a dying human being and laughs at him? Who were the dozens of Americans who were so vile, so grotesquely barbaric as to think it 'funny' that a despairing man is crying out from the pain they have inflicted on him?

There could be no justification for this, even on the fatuous Cheney/Rumsfeld grounds that they would obtain information from what was left of the agonized minds in the wrecked bodies that had been deliberately crippled by giggling military degenerates. By no stretch of the imagination can this treatment be called other than violation of human rights.

The torturers were US soldiers whom Bush is determined to protect from independent investigation. Little wonder the commander-in-chief and his people go to any lengths to pervert the course of justice, because, according to the US official report into the atrocities : "Military spokesmen maintained that both men died of natural causes, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides."

The US military has plumbed the depths of deceit. It has descended to the very bowels of deception and dishonesty. Nobody can ever trust the US military, ever again, to tell the truth. Until, at least, there is a cleansing of the filth, as happened in the traumatic post-Vietnam years, when the US Army was set again on the track of honor from which it has since strayed in the most disgraceful fashion.

So Professor Bassiouni (an American citizen as well as Egyptian) had to be discredited, vilified and sacked. Which he was. And the reasons for his dismissal and for eradication of the position of Human Rights Investigator in Afghanistan came from the usual US source "who preferred not to be named". The anonymous official said that the "human rights situation in Afghanistan is no longer troubling" and that in any case Bassiouni was "grandstanding" "to bolster his resume".

That sort of fatuous lie and malevolent vilification plays well almost everywhere in America, and is spread assiduously by the psyops machine of the snake oil salesmen in Washington.

Contrary to the fetid vomit of the tame Cheney-Bush mouthpiece, the human rights situation in Afghanistan is appalling. Living there is grim unless you are a warlord or a drug baron (usually combined) or an associate of same, or in a government appointment, or a highly paid (as they all are) member of a foreign aid or consultancy organization. There is no law, save that of local chieftains; there are no rights, except for the powerful and their adherents. The place is a human rights' cesspit. And the US military has been up to its eyeballs in keeping up the good old Afghan traditions of torture and merciless persecution of weak individuals in secret prisons to which they forbid entry by such as Professor Bassiouni. No wonder they wouldn't let him in to the hideous jails where US soldiers torment and laugh at dying men.

And as for the allegation that Professor Bassiouni produced his Report in order to flesh out his CV . . . . This could be thought up only by the cruddiest of the cruds; the most putrid of guttersnipes; the foulest of all serpentine pestilence that slithers from beneath the flattest rock into a welcoming sewer. It beggars belief that even the Bush courtiers could stoop to such depths as these. But they do.

Professor Bassiouni wrote that " . . . the Coalition [read US - there are no other foreign troops involved in torture and murder] forces' practice of placing themselves above and beyond the reach of the law must come to an end." But it was Professor Cherif Bassiouni who came to an end. Which goes to show that nobody dare question the Cheney-Bush imperial project without being subjected to retribution by the demented zealots whose holy mission is to destroy the Unbelievers.

Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com

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