According to National Security Agency historian Robert Hanyok, his recent work outlining a deliberate NSA cover-up following the Gulf of Tonkin incident has been suppressed by the agency since 2001, in part because of Weaponsgate. “He said N.S.A. historians began pushing for public release in 2002, after Mr. Hanyok included his Tonkin Gulf findings in a 400-page, in-house history of the agency and Vietnam called ‘Spartans in Darkness.’ Though superiors initially expressed support for releasing it, the idea lost momentum as Iraq intelligence was being called into question, the official said.“
Category: World at Large
Tehran talks terror.
As if the revelations of Syria’s role in the Hariri assassination weren’t disturbing enough, now the recently-elected president of Iran, a state with nuclear ambitions, is making nightmarish and freakshow statements reasserting the goal of Israel’s destruction. With rhetoric escalating and five years of Dubya’s “with-us-or-against-us” diplomacy helping to shore up hardliners across the Middle East, it seems Iraq may soon be the least of our problems in the region.
Dubious Milestones in Baghdad.
As Iraq announces the approval of its draft constitution (which passed in a manner Slate‘s Fred Kaplan has deemed “the worst of both worlds“), the war claims its 2000th US military casualty. (Of these, 357 were under 21, 487 were National Guard, and 1863 — over 9 in 10 — have died since Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” fiasco.) We’re still well under the casualty rate for Vietnam, true, but what comfort is that to the families of the fallen? Two thousand US men and women have been killed in the line of duty, and this blatantly amateurish administration still has no plan either to win or to disengage from a conflict they orchestrated, other than “stay the course.” As with so much else under this president, the conduct of this war from its inception has been shameful and unacceptable — in short, a national embarrassment.
First Blood for Fitzgerald?
As breaking everywhere this morning, it seems Scooter Libby, for one, has clearly perjured himself in the Plamegate investigation. Whatsmore, his boss, “Big Time” Dick Cheney, may well have initiated the smear campaign against Valerie Plame, in order to promote the administration’s push for war in Iraq. What else has Fitzgerald uncovered? We should know within 72 hours.
Fleeing the sinking ship.
“‘The real anomaly in the administration is Cheney,’ Mr. Scowcroft told Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker. ‘I consider Cheney a good friend – I’ve known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore.'” As Cheney consigliere Scooter Libby preps for a likely Plamegate perp walk, the NYT refocuses on the broader question of our entry into the Iraq war. And, as the Scowcroft quote attests (and as Medley also notes), prominent Republicans are starting to pile on. “‘Iraq was at core a war of choice, and extraordinarily expensive by every measure – human life, impact on our military, dollars, diplomatically,’ said Mr. [Richard] Haass, a former senior State Department official under President Bush.“
Or, as former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson puts it, “[T]he case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my study of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy didn’t know were being made.“
Update: Jeffrey Goldberg discusses his Scowcroft piece, and Slate‘s Fred Kaplan evaluates it, noting that George H.W. Bush is also something of a Dubya critic in the article. Speaking of Scowcroft, Dubya Sr. says: “He has a great propensity for friendship. By that, I mean someone I can depend on to tell me what I need to know and not just what I want to hear….[He] was very good about making sure that we did not solely consider the ‘best case,’ but instead considered what it would mean if things went our way, and also if they did not.” Listen up, sonny…Papa just learned you.
The Road to Damascus.
Grace in Gotham.
“As quintessentially American as Ms. Part is Russian, Gillian Murphy joined ABT in 1996, instantly raising our national banner of strong, brisk, technical prowess.” By the way, my sister’s fall ABT season began on Wednesday, so if you’re in the New York area and looking to partake of some choice offerings of world-class ballet, head on down to City Center. The Fall Repertoire includes Afternoon of a Faun, Apollo, Dark Elegies, Gong, The Green Room, In the Upper Room, Kaleidoscope, Rodeo, and Les Sylphides.
The Once and Future Quake.
“Earth, that living, seething, often inhospitable and not altogether intelligently designed thing, has again shrugged, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis are dead…Americans reeling from Hurricane Katrina, and warned of scores of millions of potential deaths from avian flu, have a vague feeling — never mind the disturbing rest of the news — of pervasive menace from things out of control. Too vague, according to Simon Winchester.” In light of the horrifying calamity in Pakistan this past weekend (as well as Katrina and the tsunami), George Will peruses Simon Winchester’s new book on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
American Hero.
“Tillman had very unembedded feelings about the Iraq War. His close friend Army Spec. Russell Baer remembered, ‘I can see it like a movie screen. We were outside of [an Iraqi city] watching as bombs were dropping on the town…. We were talking. And Pat said, “You know, this war is so f***ing illegal.” And we all said, “Yeah.” That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.'” By way of a friend of mine from high school, The Nation‘s Dave Zirin explains how the Dubya administration’s use of slain NFL safety (and Chomsky fan) Pat Tillman as poster boy for the Iraq war was, like so much else in the lead-up to this conflict, built on lies.
Bipartisan Backlash.
“We are Americans, and we hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people no matter how evil or terrible they may be. To do otherwise undermines our security, but it also undermines our greatness as a nation.” Behind Sen. John McCain, who knows as well as anyone why we must set limits on our interrogation policies, the Senate votes 90-9 to rebuke the White House and constrain future interrogation abuses at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and around the world. For his part, Catkiller Frist earlier tried to smother the amendment, but ultimately ended up voting for it. Wouldn’t want a vote for torture on our 2008 transcript now, would we?