One-Finger Salute

Now they're lying about lying

The Bush administration is getting in way over its head with the whole lying about Iraqi WMD bit. Now they've begun lying about their earlier lies.

Unidentified Bush regime officials recently made the preposterously ludicrous claim that the CIA never passed along doubts it had about the veracity of British "intelligence" that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. The CIA not expressing concern over such an important matter to such a micro-managing, ball-busting administration as the Bush administration? Such an idea should strain the credulity of even the most sycophantic Bush supporter.

In fact, the CIA did pass along doubts regarding the purported Iraq-Niger transaction - in March 2002. There's more:

Senior intelligence officials said the CIA on several occasions after March 2002 told administration policymakers about its doubts about claims Iraq was seeking uranium. When the State Department on Dec. 19, 2002, posted a reference to Iraq not supplying details on its uranium purchases, the CIA raised an objection, "but it came too late" to prevent its publication, the senior intelligence official said.

But these warnings certainly would have come in time to prevent this garbage from being included in Bush's state of the union address. Except, now, there are apparently a multiplicity of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium all over Africa:

The official added that in his speech the president talked about purchases from Africa and did not specifically mention Niger, adding that Bush's comments were "based on a multiple of other sources."

Which are? What are the details on these? And whay have they been withheld until now?

Not only that: the Independent reports that the CIA warned the British government in early 2002 that the Iraq-Niger reports were not reliable:

The CIA warned Britain that claims Iraq had tried to get uranium from Niger were false, months before the Government published the allegation in an intelligence dossier justifying military action against on Iraq.

Should we believe that the CIA would warn the British government about this - but not the White House?

What the hell is going on here? Why do administration officials continue to construct one lie after another on the issue? What are they hiding? The fact that so much doubt about this claim - which certainly made its way to the White House - did not deter administration officials from presenting it as gospel fact is beyond troubling. It is outright deceit. Either they knew it was not true when they included it in all of their pronouncements, or they did not care whether it was true or not. Either way, it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration has nothing but contempt for the intellect of American citizens and their right to transparent and accountable government.

Museum looting: what actually happened?

David Aaronovitch on the Baghdad museum looting:

This indictment of world journalism has caused some surprise to those who listened to George and others speak at the British Museum meeting. One art historian, Dr Tom Flynn, now speaks of his "great bewilderment". "Donny George [head of the Iraqi antiquities department] himself had ample opportunity to clarify to the best of [his] knowledge the extent of the looting and the likely number of missing objects," says Flynn. "Is it not a little strange that quite so many journalists went away with the wrong impression, while Mr George made little or not attempt to clarify the context of the figure of 170,000 which he repeated with such regularity and gusto before, during, and after that meeting." To Flynn it is also odd that George didn't seem to know that pieces had been taken into hiding or evacuated. "There is a queasy subtext here if you bother to seek it out," he suggests.

As is becoming clearer as the situation develops, the looting of the Iraqi National Museum is not nearly as bad as originally reported. That is a very good thing, for Iraqis and everyone else. Commentators, including myself, who gave credence to the original reports were wrong. It should be admitted. This is one instance, though, where I am happy to say that I was wrong.

However, Aaronovitch's conclusions do not necessarily follow:

Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks [sic] of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.

As noted above, I admit that I was wrong on this account. I do not try to minimize or dismiss that. But it is preposterous to condemn Western academia on this one. They were simply working with the information that was provided to them by the media. At that point, there was no reason to doubt the reporting of numerous journalists working for various organizations with different publishing philosophies. It is entirely understandable that academics who work with materials from ancient Iraq would be angry over credible reports of widespread looting - "universally reported", to use Aaronovitch's words. Why should academics have had some special knowledge of the situation, the reporting on the situation or George's behavior (whatever it was - there are still unanswered questions on this account) in this instance?

But the media do not deserve excessively harsh treatment, either. Some people, such as InstaPuny, are treating this as some kind of media "hoax", whose sole purpose has been to make Bush and all of America look bad. Here's a note to the crusaders damning the media for erroneously reporting the looting: the media fuck up all the time. Journalists, editors, publishers, they all make mistakes. The fact that a media outlet publishes material that turns out to be false is regrettable, but it happens frequently enough. Demanding 100% accuracy all the time is ludicrous.

What matters, in terms of credibility, is whether or not a media outlet will a) note frankly that it made a mistake, and b) whether it will follow the story to its proper, truthful conclusion in a timely manner. In the case of the museum looting, the media are meeting both of these conditions. The more important media sources (e.g., the NY Times, Guardian, BBC, etc.) are covering the recovery of artifacts previously thought to have been stolen in a prominent manner. Clearly, they are staying with the story and investigating what actually went on.

The fact that the media are doing a reasonable journalistic job with the museum looting story is clear when we compare it to the way that they handled the Bush regime's claims on Iraqi WMD and the necessity of war prior to the conflict. In that instance, there was widespread failure across the mainstream American media to examine the issue critically, even though there were a number of claims that should have raised red flags and set off alarm bells in editorial offices from New York to the smallest backwater hick town in the US. Scott Ritter's statements, the plagiarized British dossier, the fradulent claim that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger - all of these should have prompted immediate investigations by the big media in the US (as they did in Britain and the rest of Europe). Yet, in the US, only marginal far left publications (e.g., The Nation, Counterpunch) bothered to really do this. The mainstream media failed to take the issue seriously in a timely manner, preferring to be cheerleaders for the Bush administration. Real coverage in that case might have affected the course of events.

In other words, bad initial reporting on the looting was a mistake, but it is being corrected and, importantly, it did not contribute to "policy" decisions that are going to affect the entire Middle East, and the world, for the next half century. It didn't change anything. On the other hand, poor and inexcusable reporting on the US's claims regarding Iraqi WMD probably played a major role in making the war possible.

It should be added that there are still many unanswered questions about the whole museum looting episode. First, some important pieces do seem to still be missing. Second, there needs to be a more in-depth look at exactly why US forces did not secure the museum sooner and instead were ordered to do things like staging fake rallies and guarding the oil ministry. This needs to be sorted out. Did US field commanders know ahead of time the artifacts would be hidden? If so, how? If this is not the case, then this negligence should not be simply dismissed. Finally, the responsibility for this matter needs to be assigned properly - not in a knee-jerk manner that absurdly implicates people who had nothing to do with it. Continued media attention wil help ensure that this happens.

Furious, I conclude two things from all of this. One is that some commentators will always seek to shift the blame away from people to whom it should be assigned. A target sitting unawares is always easier to hit than one that is moving (usually away from the scene of the crime). The second is that the media will always be condemned for screwing up on matters which, while certainly important, do not change the course of events or seriously impact public opinion, while real failures are either ignored or applauded.

NOTE: Originally published on 11 June 2003; new date the result of a technical screw-up.

The Middle East "Road Map" and Palestinian Refugees

Following the mutual back-slapping at the recent Israeli-Palestinian-US summit at Aqaba, many observers are cautiously optimistic about a renewal of the "peace process". Despite the numerous difficult problems that must be solved (including water rights, the status of Jerusalem, and borders), and despite the failure of previous similar efforts (the Wye River Memorandum, the Tenet agreement), the general feeling and hope is that the "road map" will lead to a permanent peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The one issue that will make or break the "road map" - and any plan that envisages a "two-state solution" - is that of the Palestinian refugees. Israelis and Palestinians, and observers who are familiar with the contemporary history in the Middle East, know this. Ariel Sharon certainly knows this - which is why he demanded several times before the summit that the Palestinians throw away their right of return as a precondition for any talks. The Palestinians also know this, which is probably why they've never pressed to have the issue addressed at the outset of any negotiations they've undertaken with Israel. But if we assume that two states will be set up side by side in Mandate Palestine, what will happen to the 3-4 million stateless Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt?

This is by far the most important and difficult issue between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But the US's "road map", like the previous plans, places it as the last of all the outstanding problems to be resolved. This is ass-backwards logic - leaving the central matter, the actual root of the entire problem - to be settled last. The refugees are not peripheral; their fate (and since they have very little control over what happens to them, it is an appropriate choice of words) will to a large extent determine what happens in the Middle East for the forseeable future. Treating the refugees as if they are simply a small detail to be rectified has been one major reasons why all the previous peace efforts failed. The "road map", by not addressing the situation of the refugees, is itself on a course to reach the same dead end that its predecessors did.

For there to be real peace in the Middle East, the refugees must be given a real say in their future when it comes time for any "final settlement". This entails that they be given a real choice, not one offered over the barrel of a gun. Despite decades of the most racist propaganda, it is clear that they are legitimate refugees - even the Israeli government itself has no problem using the term. They should not have their future determined by Israeli government fiat. In my opinion, they have the right to choose whether to return to their lands and/or properties inside the state of Israel or accept compensation and resettlement in a third country. I do not think that this is likely to happen. But officials, commentators, "experts", and others who are not prepared to offer them this basic choice should be honest with themselves and admit two things (assuming that they identify with these principles in the first place): they do not believe in democratic principles and they reject the idea of human rights.

The question of democracy: It is often said that Arafat and his regime are "corrupt" and "undemocratic". The question then is why should the "undemocratic" Arafat (or his hand-picked and unelected successor Abu Mazen) be allowed to sign away the rights of 3-4 million people? The idea that the US, which is now trumpeting "democracy" in the Middle East, or Israel, which claims to be the "only democracy" in the Middle East, could insist that an unelected leader make such a crucial decision for people he does not represent is preposterous. If the US actually wants to be bring democracy to the region, it should begin by bringing the refugees, who have no political voice at all for the last 55 years, into the picture. It is difficult to imagine something more undemocratic than insisting that so many people cannot participate at all in determining their own future or that millions of people should be shoved off into a country they did not choose.

Those supporters of Israel who claim that the state will somehow become "less democratic" if the refugees go back home should explain why this oasis of democracy did everything it could to get so many Palestinians to leave in the first place. It does not befit a "democracy" to expel large numbers of people en masse based solely on ethnicity - but that is what happened in 1947-1948:

In "1948 and After" Benny Morris examines the first phase of the exodus and produces a detailed analysis of a source that he considers basically reliable: a report prepared by the intelligence services of the Israeli army, dated 30 June 1948 and entitled "The emigration of Palestinian Arabs in the period 1/12/1947-1/6/1948". This document sets at 391,000 the number of Palestinians who had already left the territory that was by then in the hands of Israel, and evaluates the various factors that had prompted their decisions to leave. "At least 55% of the total of the exodus was caused by our (Haganah/IDF) operations." To this figure, the report's compilers add the operations of the Irgun and Lehi, which "directly (caused) some 15%... of the emigration". A further 2% was attributed to explicit expulsion orders issued by Israeli troops, and 1% to their psychological warfare. This leads to a figure of 73% for departures caused directly by the Israelis. In addition, the report attributes 22% of the departures to "fears" and "a crisis of confidence" affecting the Palestinian population. As for Arab calls for flight, these were reckoned to be significant in only 5% of cases... [ellipsis in original].

The issue of human rights: The idea that only certain people or groups of people should not be subject to acts such as murder, arbitrary dispossession, and ethnic cleansing is not new. This is an idea that was already known by the beginning of history and almost certainly goes back into the Neolithic (in the Near East, approximately 9000-4000 BCE), if not further. But this is not what human rights, in the commonly understood modern sense of the term, entails. The modern concept of human rights is universal. That is, they apply to all human beings, regardless of ethnicity, religion, etc. This includes the Palestinians. Ignoring or overlooking egregious human rights violations such as ethnic cleansing and massive arbitrary property confiscation renders the idea of a code of universal human rights worthless.

Some "doves" claim that Arabs and Jews cannot "share the land". Both Amos Oz and Avi Shlaim have made almost identical statements to this effect recently. Since these two writers both advocate a "two-state solution", it is clear that what they are referring to is the old "single, secular, democratic state" idea. Yet that has never been really tried. However, in the long run, it may be the only hope for real, lasting peace in the Middle East.

Posted by Manumission @ 20:29 -- Link