Politics and Press

German Realpolitik Redux

An earlier posting to this blog reviewed the case of Khaled el-Masri, a German-Lebanese who was kidnapped by CIA agents and spirited off to Syria for five month interrogation at the end of which the CIA had learned that he had been a salesman in Bavaria – whoops. Munich prosecutors then indicted the CIA operatives and Munich’s liberal paper the Sueddeutsche Zeitung commented, “The great ally is not allowed to simply send its thugs out into Europe’s streets.”

Our friends the MacKenzie brothers commented that the German Foreign Minister was unlikely to press the issue with his American counterpart since realpolitik bothers the Germans – a view which seemed right to this writer.

In today’s Washington Post, Craig Whitlock provides a different slant that indicates that realpolitik might just be alive and well in certain circles within Germany. It turns out that German intelligence agents were directly involved in the rendition of another German citizen, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, who had been involved in the Hamburg cell that planned the 9/11 attack. He is being held in Syria and the German role has created a political, if not moral, dilemma for a country that publicly tends to resist realpolitik while privately behaving like one of the boys.

Bush and the Germans; Rendition and Iraq

The German judiciary is looking to indict several CIA operatives for their kidnapping of a German-Lebanese citizen suspected of terrorist activities. He was sent to a prison in Afghanistan where he was questioned and – according to him tortured – for five months before being told that “whoops – we got the wrong guy” and sent home.

There are some interesting insights into the CIA program and the run-up to the Iraq invasion in an interview of the former chief of the CIA’s Europe Division (Tyler Drumheller) on the website of the German news weekly, Der Spiegel. Drumheller is the author of On the Brink, a memoir of his time in the CIA. A few quotes from the interview are below. The full interview can be read here.

Drumheller: It was Vice President Dick Cheney who talked about the “dark side” we have to turn on. When he spoke those words, he was articulating a policy that amounted to “go out and get them.” His remarks were evidence of the underlying approach of the administration, which was basically to turn the military and the agency loose and let them pay for the consequences of any unfortunate — or illegal — occurrences.

Drumheller: …I once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation, and her chief concern was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it. …

SPIEGEL: One of the crucial bits of information the Bush administration used to justify the invasion was the supposed existence of mobile biological weapons laboratories. …

Drumheller: … Curveball was an Iraqi who claimed to be an engineer working on the biological weapons program. … Curveball was a sort of clever fellow who carried on about his story and kept everybody pretty well convinced for a long time. … The administration wanted to make the case for war with Iraq. They needed a tangible thing, they needed the German stuff. They couldn’t go to war based just on the fact that they wanted to change the Middle East. They needed to have something threatening to which they were reacting.

SPIEGEL: …it turned out to be the centerpiece in Powell’s presentation — and nobody had told him about the doubts.

Drumheller: I turned on the TV in my office, and there it was. So the first thing I thought, having worked in the government all my life, was that we probably gave Powell the wrong speech.

Putin’s Russia and Terrorism

Anne Applebaum has published an excellent piece on the deterioration of Russian democracy – and more serious issues – in today’s Slate. Beginning with the recent nuclear murder of Alexander Litvinenko, Applebaum looks backward through other murders of critics of Russian President Putin, considers the enormous corruption of state resources taken by old KGB friends of Putin, and remembers the suspicious bombing of Russian apartment buildings which led to Putin claiming to join the so-called war on terrorism, which gave him carte blanche to wage war on Chechnya. And then there is the matter of the first known act of nuclear terrorism that just might have been committed by our Russian friends.

Rather than repeat here Applebaum’s impressive list of what is wrong with Russia in 2006, I refer you to her piece.

Chechen War Reporter Found Dead

Our Kiwi correspondent forwards this story that is at the heart of the relationship of politics and the press in Russia:
As the url for this blog suggests, the focus here is often the intersection of policy and journalism. In some parts of the world that intersection too frequently produces carnage. This is surely case with the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the woman who the head of Russia’s journalism union has “described as the conscience of the country’s journalism.” It seems appropriate to draw readers’ attention to this report from the NY Times on her life and death.

Anne Applebaum has published a remembrance and an analysis of the situation for independent journalists in Russia for Slate. It is not pretty, but is worth reading to remind us of the courage that many journalists have and the price that some of them pay. And we are certainly not talking about Bill O’Reilly.

Martin Amis Reflects on Extreme Islamism

Our intrepid Kiwi correspondent has referred me to a powerful critique of extreme Islamism by Martin Amis carried in the Guardian’s Observer. In it Amis says what I believe many are thinking but backing away from actually saying, probably out of obeisance to political correctness. It is a lengthy piece, published in three parts and is introduced thusly:

“…On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, one of Britain’s most celebrated and original writers analyses – and abhors – the rise of extreme Islamism. In a penetrating and wide-ranging essay he offers a trenchant critique of the grotesque creed and questions the West’s faltering response to this eruption of evil…”

Part one, with links to parts two and three can be read here.

Condi’s Incompetence

According to the new Woodward book, verified today by White House sources, Secretary Rice has conveniently misplaced or misfiled in her mind a meeting with George Tenet in July 2001 in which he urgently warned of an impending attack by Al Qaeda.

In an administration overloaded with incompetence, Rice is a particularly fatuous figure. Warned about an Al Qaeda attack she never flinched – just ignored it. As head of the National Security Agency she supported the invasion of Iraq based on phony evidence.  Either she knew it was phony and ignored it or did not know when she should have. As Secretary of State she supported a misguided bombing campaign of Lebanon by Israel despite Lebanon being one of our few friends in the region. She followed that up by refusing to support a ceasefire, which would have spared Lebanon a portion of the violence visited on it. She has consistently presented the view that we cannot negotiate directly with North Korea or Iran without appearing weak. North Korea is now about to test a nuclear device; Iran continues to move – albeit slowly – toward development of nuclear weapons.

Is there a single positive accomplishment in her nearly 6 years in positions of influence?

The Americanization of Canadian Media

The role of the Canadian press in the Maher Arar fiasco presents some interesting parallels to the Judith Miller run-up to Iraq reporting fiasco. Miller, at the time a NY Times correspondent, was used by anonymous administration sources to publish deceptive information intended to aid in the selling of the Iraq War. While it was never clear how much she actually believed of what she wrote the consequences are obvious and the damage has been done.

The Arar fiasco, as reported in today’s NY Times business section, included CTV’s (Canada’s largest private TV network) main nightly news show broadcasting that information from ”senior government officials in various departments” showed that Mr. Arar had given Syrian officials information about Al Qaeda and terrorist cells in Canada.

Juliet O’Neill published a 1,500-word, front-page article in The Ottawa Citizen under the headline ”Canada’s Dossier on Maher Arar.”  Her article cited leaked documents and a ”security source.” They revealed, the report said, that the Canadian police had ”caught Mr. Arar in their sights while investigating the activities of members of an alleged Al Qaeda logistical support group in Ottawa.”

The NY Times reports that ”although the leaks have now been shown to be completely false, Scott Anderson, The Citizen’s editor in chief, said last week that he had no regrets about publishing the report. ”Just the opposite. The story stands up completely,” he said.”

Anderson’s response is absurd.  The issue here is the laziness of reporters who will run with anyone’s garbage for a front-page scoop and the weakness of editors who refuse to push their reporters to do the hard work of serious journalism. Leaks from anonymous sources may be a necessary journalist tool but their use requires the hard work needed to verify them before destroying someone’s reputation or helping to start a war.

Brain Dead at the White House

Ok– the NY Times and Washington Post have reported on the NIE report that our Iraq fiasco has increased the terrorist threat; the President’s response is a typical moronic babble to the effect that we should not have been provided this information and that he would release – selectively – further information that would make it plain as can be that our Iraq fiasco was a wonderful adventure – as long as your kid wasn’t one of the ones giving it up for a pile of Texas bullshit. I understand that the press thinks it needs to treat this crap seriously – I just wonder why?

Skippy has consistently lied about everything connected to Iraq and the press was complicit in this (see Judith Miller et alia) It is actually not clear why he did it – was it his Daddy’s failure in 1991 to finish it off and a Freudian need to one-up him? Was it the Israel lobby that moved him? The direct voices from God? Wolfkowitz’s nutty obsession with Iraq? Cheney’s desire to set up a profit machine for Halliburton?

There is really no good reason for it and the puzzle remains because Skippy seems to actually believe what his speechwriters have written. What seems clear is that we have a president who does not enjoy good mental health. He avoids reality, believes he speaks personally with God, sends young Americans to death on a series of known lies, has destroyed the reputation of Colin Powell a former American hero, supports the most incompetent Defense Secretary in the country’s history, and has the audacity to go on TV and claim that everyone around him is naive. If only we knew what he knows. It is past time for America to embrace sanity.

The Clowns on the Hill

Senators McCain, Warner and Graham, made a half-hearted attempt to salvage habeas corpus from the administration’s Constitution wreckers. Sen. Spector, having caved once already this month, on the wire-tapping bill, has re-discovered his spine and called for hearings on the bill, called by Rolling Stone’s Tom Dickinson the “Abu Ghraib Authorization and Whitewash Act of 2006″.
Is the Senate really ready to throw the U.S. Constitution under the train to further the political interests of the loonies in the Bush administration? Probably.

Senator Spector was likely driven by the embarrassment of a bill removing the precious Constitutional protection of habeas corpus heading for the Senate floor with no hearings in his Judiciary Committee.  But given his having collaborated with Vice President Cheney on the wiretap whitewash there is no reason not to believe that the American people will once again be sold down the river.