Author: Jeff Huber

I only recently discovered Father Jonathan Morris, a web and on-air commentator for Fox News.  I have no way of knowing if Father Jonathan genuinely believes the things he writes and says, or if he’s simply hiring out his clerical collar in an effort to bestow faux moral legitimacy on the standard menu of right wing talking points.

That Fox bills him as their “Papal contributor” strongly suggests the latter.  Iconoclastic columnist James Wolcott seems to view Father Jonathan in that light as well.  In a Vanity Fair column from last fall, Wolcott wrote, “Leave it to Fox News to find the first neocon pinup priest to sign up as an on-air analyst.”

Under the fold: shepherds and sheep…

I thought the “neocon pinup priest” epithet might be a bit harsh.  Until, that is, I read Father Jonathan’s recent article on the Haditha incident titled “War is Messy.”  It’s a set piece of Rovewellian propaganda from start to finish.  

Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammunition, Blame the Media

Father Jonathan’s article opens with a familiar bit of neoconservative revisionist history on the Vietnam Conflict:

Not long ago our country, led by bad news, betrayed our soldiers. We lost political will and we lost the war. How quickly we forget.

Now, as then, according to this hogwash, if we “lose” the war in Iraq it will be because bad news in the media caused Americans to “betray the troops.”  

The likes of Father Jonathan never want to admit that now, as then, defeat will come as a result of the acts of bad men who started a bad war for bad reasons and ran it badly.  That would be too much like, uh, confessing the truth.  

On the subject of the Haditha affair, Father Jonathan tells us that the Pentagon is preparing the public for bad news, but the bad news isn’t the “revelation of criminal battle rage of a group of men in uniform.”  No, the kind of bad news the Pentagon is preparing us for is “bad news reporting, the kind that leads public opinion to betray the very men and women who risk their lives for ours.”

And thus we’re back to the main theme.  The sin wasn’t the crime; the sin was reporting the crime, which constitutes a betrayal.  

Not content with repetition of his false main premise, Father Jonathan goes on to launch a “double straw man” attack on the media by putting words in the mouth of a general who puts words in the mouth of the collective press.

“Don’t take the bait, mass media,” says Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli in the apocryphal speech Father Jonathan writes for him.  “The deplorable actions of a few men are not representative of our military. Our soldiers, in contrast to the enemy, know the difference between right and wrong. In fact, it’s part of their training.”

I haven’t seen a single accusation in any reputable media outlet that suggests “the deplorable actions of a few” are representative of the overall moral behavior of the military.  But you can bet a month’s worth of collection plate contributions that Father Jonathan’s Fox News audience will take his word for it that the entire “liberal” media is accusing every United States soldier, seaman, airman and Marine of eating babies for breakfast.  

And just to make sure he’s got every block in the anti-media playbook checked, Father Jonathan gets in the obligatory dig about how media reports of bad news “threaten morale,” as if the real threat to morale weren’t the incompetence and dishonesty of the troops’ Commander in Chief, their Secretary of Defense, and the liege-men generals who have made successful military careers out of saying “yes.”  

As far as I’m concerned, Jonathan Morris has every right to hire himself out as a chorister in Karl Rove’s noise philharmonic, but if he’s going to do that, he really ought to quit hiding behind his pulpit and passing himself off as a representative of the Pope.  As Wolcott put it, “It is not the job of a priest to be a pretty buttboy for the Pentagon and the warmaking powers of the United States.”

I won’t presume to guess what God makes of the guy, but in my judgment, political whore clerics like Jonathan Morris make pedophile priests seem downright saintly.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.  

It didn’t take long for young Mister Bush to execute step two of the Iran diplomacy stratagem.

Under the fold: standoffs, choices, excuses…

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a disingenuous offer to join in UN talks with Iran if Iran suspended its uranium enrichment activities.  Iran has long insisted on its “inalienable right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and that it has no intention of attempting to develop nuclear weapons, despite claims to the contrary by Rice and other Bush administration luminaries.

As I and many others predicted, rejected the offer, describing it–justifiably–as the propaganda it was.  

Thursday, as reported by the Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press:

President Bush said Thursday that the standoff over Iran’s suspected nuclear program is headed for the U.N. Security Council if Tehran continues to refuse to halt uranium enrichment.

“We’ll see whether or not that is the firm position of their government,” Bush said after a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House. “If they continue their obstinance … then the world will act in concert.”

This Bushism was eerily resonant of something published earlier in the day in a New York Times article: “And while the Europeans and the Japanese said they were elated by Mr. Bush’s turnaround, some participants in the drawn-out nuclear drama questioned whether this was an offer intended to fail, devised to show the extent of Iran’s intransigence.”

The Bush administration continues to use fuzzy rhetoric to blur the distinction between Iran’s desire to build a nuclear energy industry and its alleged ambition to develop nuclear weapons.  

One of its leading echo chamberlains, David Brooks, repeated that mantra on Imus this morning, stating that having nuclear weapons was a “big deal” for Iran.

Imus said the Iran business is sounding like a replay of the Iraq situation.

You know it’s obvious when Don sees it.

Brooks said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a “nut case.”  Expect to hear more and more of that epithet.  Where did this propaganda vector start?  Best I can tell, it came from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who last April called Ahmadinejad a “psychopath” and likened him to Hitler.

Remember back when Saddam Hussein was a Hitler-like psychopath?

And how about North Korea’s Kim Jong Il?  According to one blogger, Jong Il and Hitler actually share a fan club.  

Russia’s Vladimir Putin has also been compared to Hitler.  

David Brooks himself has likened Iraqi Shia leader Moqatdr al Sadr to Hitler, calling him a “thug” and a “brown shirt.”

How many Hitlers can you have in any given 70-year period?

Also on this morning’s Imus, Brooks praised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her openness with the American people.  “Openness,” to Brooks, must mean a willingness to openly deceive, distort, dis-inform, and most importantly, frighten.  I’m waiting for her to let “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” slip out again.  

Some news sources are speculating that Condi’s offer to Iran was made over the objections of Vice President Cheney, who theoretically wants to skip straight to the bombing phase of negotiations.  

I’m not convinced that’s the case at all.  This phony “deal” she’s offered Iran is one they almost have to refuse.  

If anything, it looks to me like Condi’s handing Cheney the excuse he needs to hammer Iran on a silver platter.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

I’m not at all convinced that this latest overture to Iran is a “diplomatic breakthrough.”  It sounds to me like the same sort of designed-to-fail negotiation tactics we’ve been employing all along.  

Like the Energizer Bunny, Condi Rice is still going, banging the same drum she thumped on to march us into the Iraq fiasco.

Her speech from yesterday, in which she offered Iran the same offer they can’t not refuse that she’s been offering through proxies all along, was a classic piece of Rovewellian prevarication.  

Under the fold: an offer Iran can’t not refuse…

She began, as propagandists often do, with a remarkably flawed if not downright false main assumption: “The pursuit by the Iranian regime of nuclear weapons represents a direct threat to the entire international community…”

We don’t know for a fact that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, and no one, including Rice, has any credible evidence that such is the case.  All of the Bush administration’s arguments that Iran desires nuclear bombs are based on “negative proof.”  Iran can’t prove they’re not pursuing them, therefore they must be.  This is the precise sort of solipsism that Rice and her political sugar daddies used to drive us into the Iraq train wreck.  

The International Atomic Energy Agency has found no proof that an Iranian nuclear weapons program exists.  Iran has long avowed that it has no intention of developing one, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to support that position publicly.  

We have no particular reason to take anything Ahmadinejad says at face value, but we have every reason to dismiss out of hand every syllable that comes from Condi Rice’s mouth.  

Not content to have floated her “fuzzy” main assumption once, Rice quickly repeated it.

“The Iranian government’s choices are clear. The negative choice is for the regime to maintain its current course, pursuing nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community and its international obligations.”

Again, is pursuing nuclear weapons really the Iranian government’s “current course,” or is it simply doing what it says it’s doing, pursuing a nuclear energy program?  If the latter is the case, how exactly is it defying the international community and its international obligations?

Predictably, Condi didn’t address those questions.

But she did jump to a third iteration of the fuzzy main assumption, expanding it in the process:

“In view of its previous violations of its commitments and the secret nuclear program it undertook, the Iranian regime must persuasively demonstrate that it has permanently abandoned its quest for nuclear weapons.”

Serious questions exist as to whether Iran has violated any aspect of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  The supposed violations Iran has been accused of are described in the treaty itself as “confidence-building measures, which are voluntary, and non legally binding.”

One fairly good argument, offered by David Morrison in Italy’s Uruknet, says the the U.S., by demanding that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program, is in itself a major violation of the NPT, which states that:

Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.

And as we discussed a moment ago, it doesn’t seem that Iran has done anything that doesn’t conform to the first two articles of the treaty.

And oh, by the way, how could Iran “abandon its quest for nuclear weapons” if it never had such a quest in the first place?  

Stick and Kick Diplomacy

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad insists on his country’s “inalienable right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the NPT, and he has good reason to.  Previous offers by Russia and the Big 3 European Union nations (England, France and Germany) to provide Iran with energy grade uranium were specious.  Having a nuclear energy program without being able to make your own energy grade uranium is like being allowed to grow your own food as long as you grow it on someone else’s property.  You’ll always be at the mercy of someone else to provide you with a basic survival and prosperity resource.  There’s little wonder that Ahmadinejad turned down the Russian and EU offers, and there’s little hope that he’ll accept this latest ruse from Rice.

He’d be foolish to.  Moreover, he’d be acting irresponsibly as the notional head of Iran’s state.

And yet that, once again, is the deal that Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State and former professor of political science at Stanford University, is offering him.  

The United States is willing to exert strong leadership to give diplomacy its very best chance to succeed.

Thus, to underscore our commitment to a diplomatic solution and to enhance the prospects for success, as soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran’s representatives.

In other words, the U.S. will talk directly to Iran as soon as it promises to give up something it has a U.N. mandated “inalienable right” to keep, and has already said that it won’t give up.  

Ahmadinejad has gained significant domestic political capital in Iran with his stance on the uranium enrichment issue.  Does Rice honestly think he’ll back down on it now?  

Fred Kaplan at Slate thinks the key part of this overture is “as soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities…”  “Suspends” versus “halt and dismantle” it’s program, Kaplan thinks, may be subtle shift in policy that convinces Iran to come to the table and hear what we have to say.  

Kaplan also thinks that even though we’re not offering bi-lateral talks, but are simply offering to join the multi-lateral process already underway at the UN, the Iranian delegate and the U.S. delegate will talk one on one eventually, even if it’s just over lunch or after hours.

Maybe something could come from that.  Unless, of course, the U.S. delegate is John Bolton, in which case we’ll know for sure the Bush administration isn’t at all serious about finding a diplomatic solution.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

I’ve avoided discussing the Haditha incident before now because it is disturbing at so many levels.  

Under the fold: another tangled web…

Time Magazine first reported in March of 2006 that the military’s original description of a firefight that had occurred on November 2005 in the Iraqi town of Haditha was inaccurate.

The next day, a Marine communique from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast and that “gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire,” prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding one other.

But over the ensuing months, eyewitness reports from Iraqis indicated that the civilians had not died in the bomb blast; they had been killed by the Marines, who went on a “rampage” and killed 15 people–including seven women and three children–in their homes.  

In January, after Time presented military officials in Baghdad with the Iraqis’ accounts of the Marines’ actions, the U.S. opened its own investigation, interviewing 28 people, including the Marines, the families of the victims and local doctors. According to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military’s initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents.

On May 18, Representative John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) revealed at a press conference that the Haditha incident was “much worse than reported in Time magazine.”  

The right wing infosphere launched another swift boat campaign against Murtha, stating he had “condemned” the Marines and accused him, once again of being a “traitor.”  (No, I won’t provide links to any of that.)

Today, the New York Times published this:

Files Contradict Account of Raid in Iraq

A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq…

So, it’s a safe bet that something happened in Haditha other than what the military initially reported, and it wasn’t good.

What’s Disturbing?

Don’t get too taken by all the “devil dog, steely-eyed killer” image of the standard United States Marine you may have exposed to over the years.  Yeah, these guys are trained to fight like demons, but they’re also disciplined.  For that discipline to have broken down in Haditha, as it appears to have, signals to me that something terribly wrong happened–most likely a complex set of circumstances that caused these Marines to react “incorrectly” in the conduct of a type of tactical mission that has shown time and again to produce little if any operational or strategic benefit.  

I’m equally disturbed that Congressman Murtha was once again swift boated for bringing up a situation that had already been revealed by open press sources.  We’re in a sorry state when speaking the truth and informing the public is described as treasonous.  

I’m incredibly disturbed that the military once more appears to have tried to cover up bad news.  We have no way of knowing, just now, where the false story about Haditha originated, just as we can’t tell who first put out the first false reports of the circumstances of Pat Tillman’s death, or of Jessica Lynch’s capture and eventual rescue.  

But wherever the spin started, the result is the same.  We can’t trust anything we hear from official government sources.  As I discussed in You Can’t Handle the Truthiness, a sole superpower’s most important instrument of policy may well be the credibility of its information environment.  And that is most like the largest casualty of America’s woebegone excursion to Iraq.  

We’re still hearing “stay the course” and “complete the mission” talk from the Bush administration.  But we have yet to hear specifics on what the “course” or the “mission” might actually be.  

That’s what disturbs me the most.  The Iraqi security forces are showing no signs of “standing up” and the new Iraqi government appears to be sitting down on the job.  There seems to be no end in sight to this nightmare.  

And American soldiers and Marines will continue to be put in Haditha-like situations for reasons our national leadership can’t (or won’t) explain to us.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Here were this retired Navy veteran’s thoughts on Memorial Day.  

We suffer under a regime that gives a glad hand to America’s veterans as it exploits and abuses them to support its hidden agenda.  

Though its vision of a U.S. global dominance enforced by military power is a proven failure by any coherent measure of effectiveness, the American neoconservative movement refuses to concede the obvious.  America’s armed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have produced more instability in the world than existed prior to them.  America’s standing and prestige in the world have all but vanished.  

Under the fold: the unknowns…

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan called on America to become the “shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” George Herbert Walker Bush encouraged America to become a “kinder, gentler nation” and to use its strength as “a force for good.”

Those were wonderful, inspirational sentiments.  It’s too bad that neoconservatism, as embodied in the young Mister Bush’s administration, has turned our nation into one of history’s greatest bullies.  What’s worse is that neoconservative policies and strategies have done profound damage to all of America’s instruments of national power.

Our military might, on which we spend more that the defense budgets of the rest of the world combined, has been demonstrably ineffective at achieving America’s foreign policy aims.  We are, at present, engaged in a “generational war” that has no end in sight with an enemy that has no army, no navy, no air force, and no military budget whatsoever.    

Our economic clout is now rivaled by the European Union and China.  There’s a very real possibility that the euro and or the yen may replace the U.S. dollar as the world’s currency standard.

Our information environment is an Orwellian quagmire.  Domestic and foreign consumers alike can no longer trust any information that comes from the U.S. government, and our so-called “free press” has become–wittingly or not–a hapless echo chamber for the propaganda of Karl Rove and his henchmen.  

Our diplomacy defies the very definition of the word itself.  We’re presently attempting to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions through uncooperative proxies who have more to lose than gain by going along with our desires.  

It’s in this context that I’m particularly sickened by the public proclamations of young Mister Bush and his echo chamberlains who are using this Memorial Day as an opportunity to promote their delusional, sinister agenda.  

Buy our war or we’ll shoot this dog.  

If Bush had wanted to give America a genuine message, he wouldn’t have delivered his Memorial Day speech before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  He would have given it in front of the Monument to the AWOL Texas Air National Guardsman.  

Which would, in fact, have been the White House.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Hooray that the Iraqi’s have stood up a government.  Mission accomplished again.

Now let’s get down to what good that’s really done.  

This from BBC News yesterday:

Iraqis shot ‘for wearing shorts’

Under the fold: the really, really, really long war…

The coach of Iraq’s tennis team and two players were shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday, said Iraqi Olympic officials…

…Witnesses said the three were dressed in shorts and were killed days after militants issued a warning forbidding the wearing of shorts…

…Two of the athletes stepped out of the car and were shot in the head, said one witness. The third was shot dead in the vehicle.
“The gunman took the body out of the car and threw it on top of the other two bodies before stealing the car,” said the witness, who requested anonymity.
He said leaflets had been recently distributed in the area warning residents not to wear shorts…

After all this time and all this talk about “standing down as they stand up,” Baghdad is still under control of militias that declare their own capital crimes through pamphlet and judge and execute them on the streets.

Last Tuesday, 40 people were killed in attacks across Iraq.  Also on Tuesday, the Bush administration began playing down prospects of reducing U.S. troop levels in Iraq any time soon.

Mister Bush said that Iraq’s government will assess its security needs and its security forces and work with U.S. commanders.  “We haven’t gotten to the point yet where [Iraq’s] new government is sitting down with our commanders to come up with a joint way forward,” he said.  

If they haven’t sat down with U.S. commanders to “find a way forward” yet, they’re sitting down on the job.  They’ve had enough time in their busy schedules to publicly back Iran’s right to pursuit of peaceful nuclear energy.  I happen to agree with that sentiment, but it sure seems like Iraq’s new government has a lot more immediate things on its plate than worrying about the internal affairs of another country.  And it doesn’t seem like anything could require the more immediate attention of Iraq’s government than getting its own security situation under control.  

White House press secretary Tony Snow said, “We’re not going to sort of look at our watches and say, ‘Oop, time to go.’  The conditions on the ground tell us that our job’s not done.”  

And Brigadier General Carter Ham, deputy Joint Chiefs of Staff operations director, said of reducing troop levels, “We want to do it as soon as we can, but you can’t do it too fast,” and cautioned against “rushing to failure.”

No, General, no need to rush.  Failure has all the patience in the world.  It will wait until you’re ready for it.  

The excuses for “staying the course” in Iraq are wearing so thin you can see through them on a cloudy day.  Back in October, I wrote “Ten Bad Reasons for ‘Staying the Course’ in Iraq” for the ePluribus Media Journal.  Since then, the Bush administration and its echo chamberlains have sprung several more bad reasons.  

— If we leave now, Iraq will turn into chaos.  

Iraq is already in chaos.  Our military presence created it.  Our continued military presence sustains it.

— If we leave now, the chaos in Iraq will spread throughout the Middle East.

We can’t control the chaos in Iraq.  If it spreads throughout the Middle East, our troops in Iraq won’t able to do anything about it.

— If we leave now, Iraq will be vulnerable to invasion from its neighbors.  

After watching what happened to the mightiest nation in world history when it invaded Iraq, who would want to repeat the experience?

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Last March, on the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, Mister Bush promised to “finish the mission” in Iraq with “complete victory.”  He made no mention of when this complete victory might be achieved.  More importantly, though, he didn’t bother to describe what complete victory might consist of.  

The stark truth is that there is no such thing as “complete victory” in a situation like the Iraq scenario.  Bush and his high-powered advisers either know that or they’re utterly incompetent.  

In the latter case, they need to be handcuffed, either literally through impeachment proceedings or figuratively through election of a Congress that can put them in a cage.  

In the former case, they’re determined to maintain their regime’s power by insisting, in Orwellian fashion, on pursuing victory in a war that can’t be won.  If that’s what’s going on, and enough of the electorate continues to support their policies, then we are in for a long war indeed.

An adage of military art says that wars aren’t over until the losers decide they are.  

And if the losers who presently run this country continue to have their way, their war will go on until the sun blinks out.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

So.

Zacarias Moussaoui confessed to being part of the 9/11 plot, and was sentenced to life in prison on May 4th.  Yesterday, Osama bin Laden released a videotape on the web stating that Moussaoui had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.  

Which of those two guys is telling the truth?  If one or the other of them were a member of the Bush administration, it would be easy to tell.

Under the fold: oh, what a tangled web we weave…

In 1998, the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century urged President Bill Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein from power by military force in order to protect “our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil[.]”

In 2002, as the Bush administration pushed for an invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s deputy Tariq Aziz told the New York Times that “The reason for this warmongering policy toward Iraq is oil and Israel.”  

In early 2006, Mister Bush admonished his critics not to accuse him of invading Iraq for “oil” or “because of Israel.”

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In August 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

In September 2002, Senator Joe Lieberman said, “Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States.”

Later that month, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

In November 2002, Ms. Rice said, “He already has other weapons of mass destruction. But a nuclear weapon, two or three our four years from now — I don’t care where it is, when it is — to have that happen in a volatile region like the Middle East is most certainly a future that we cannot tolerate.”

In May 2003, she said, “U.S. officials never expected that we were going to open garages and find weapons of mass destruction.”

On last Sunday’s Meet the Press, host Tim Russert asked Rice why, given the administration’s assertions about Iraq’s WMD, anyone should believe them now regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions.  

Rice’s reply: “Well, let’s remember, first of all, that the United States didn’t go and say Iraq is a, is a problem on the WMD side.”

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In his 2005 State of the Union Address, Mister Bush said that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his country has no desire to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.  

Who are we to believe?  Ahmadinejad says a lot of incendiary, crazy sounding things.  But then so does Mister Bush.  And as far as I know, Iran’s president hasn’t lied to me yet, which is a lot more than I can say for America’s president.

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We know that the Bush administration has manipulated the U.S. information media–both overtly and covertly–to spread propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation.  As Daniel Schulman of Columbia Journalism Review so aptly puts it, our government uses “‘truth based’ information…as a substitute for the truth.”

Comedian Stephen Colbert’s reinvention of the word “truthiness” as an adjective to describe the Bush administration’s rhetoric was selected by the American Dialectic Society as its 2005 Word of the Year.

A noted political scientist once identified the key tools of national power as diplomacy, information, military and economy.  While the policies and actions of the Bush regime have done significant damage to all of America’s tools of power, the most seriously affected victim may be our information environment.  In the post-Dubya world, we’ll be able to rebuild our military and bring our deficit under control.  We’ve done both of those things before.  We will heal our diplomatic prowess overnight simply by replacing all the diplomats (just getting rid of John Bolton will be a 100 percent improvement).

But will anyone ever really trust us again?  Will Americans ever be able to trust their own government?  Will we ever feel confident about the authenticity of anything we read or hear or see in the news media?  Will there ever be a “spontaneous” public moment that we won’t suspect of being staged?  Is there any aspect of daily intercourse that hasn’t been infected by “truthiness?”

When acquaintances recommend a service or product to you, will you ever stop wondering if they’re getting paid to spread “word of mouth” advertising?  

Will there ever again be meaningful political discussion that isn’t a rehash of carefully crafted and echoed talking points?  Will you ever again not question whether the people you’re talking to actually believe what they’re saying, or even understand what they’re saying actually means?

I really wish I knew of a sure fire way to heal the horrific wound our national trust has suffered, but I don’t.  

It may be a good sign, however, that thanks to the likes of Stephen Colbert, we can at least laugh about the fact that we all know our nation’s leaders are lying to us.  

Hopefully, the next step will be that Americans go to the polls in unprecedented numbers come November and do something about it.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

I tend to lean in agreement with the argument that says we don’t do anyone a favor by offering multi-language services because they allow some segment of the immigrant population–however large or small that segment may be–to navigate through daily life in America without ever becoming fluent in the English language.  But we’ve had such services for decades now, and if American society is collapsing, it isn’t because the signs on some grocery stores in Los Angeles read Super Mercado.  

Under the fold: por que?

So I’m more than a little dismayed at the pro and con furor going on over the proposed immigration bill amendments that will make English the “official language” of the United States of America.  Aside from whipping up emotions, what would such an amendment accomplish?  

I don’t know what if any federal laws are on the books that require any commercial enterprise or any agency in federal, state, or local government to provide other-than-English services.  But by and large, the law that governs multi-language services is the law of supply and demand.  If you’re a merchant in China Town, you’re probably wise to cater to the desires of your Chinese-speaking customers.  If you’re a politician in a city that has a large Hispanic voter population, you’ll be inclined to approve of multi-lingual signs in city facilities.  Ever get annoyed at that Espanola menu option when you call your phone company?  Well, get used to living with the aggravation, because if your phone company weren’t making money on people who use that option, it wouldn’t be on the menu.

Legislating English as America’s “official” language, or stating in law that no one has an “inherent right” to multi-language services is not likely to change where, when, or how these services are offered.  To get rid of those services would require legislation that bans them, and the men and women in our Congress won’t go anywhere near a proposed law like that.  And would Congress ever dream of making it illegal for immigrants to use their native languages in their own homes and neighborhoods?  I’ll tell you what, I’ll scream bloody murder if the Language Police ever come knocking on my door demanding I turn over my great uncle’s German bible!

The proposed “English amendments” have as much real impact as the immigration reform bill itself.  Building a great wall along the border that can be tunneled under or climbed over won’t slow down illegal immigration or the illegal enterprises that support it.  Nor will adding six thousand border guards, whatever agency they happen to work for.  

The proposed immigration legislation serves two purposes.  

First, it’s an appeal to both ends of the split electorate baby.  It courts the immigrant vote and the vote of businesses that employ immigrants and contribute to campaign funds.  At the same time, it woos the segment of the population that wants to limit immigration for a variety of reasons ranging from labor issues to outright bigotry.  

Second, and perhaps more importantly, it’s a smoke screen that’s masking a bevy of government failures and scandals.  

Whatever the immigration reform bill winds up looking like, it will do for immigration reform what the Homeland Security bill did for Homeland Security.  But don’t worry.  It won’t cost you anything.  Whatever the Social Security surplus doesn’t cover we’ll throw on our tabs with non-English speaking nations like China and Japan.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

The administration still insists that it hopes diplomacy will solve the Iranian nuclear program controversy.  But it’s insisting on diplomatic measures that are unlikely to succeed.

Under the fold: “stick and kick” diplomacy…

It’s bad enough that we’ll only talk to Iran through proxies in the United Nations–we’re negotiating with the negotiators–but to top it off, the deal we’re authorizing the negotiators to negotiate with Iran is manifestly bogus.

A Reuters report from Monday carried the Bush machine’s latest attempt to puppeteer an agreement with Iran.

The European Union is ready to share the most sophisticated civilian nuclear technology with Iran if it agrees to halt uranium enrichment on its soil, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Monday.

But the initiative seemed likely to be rejected by Iran.

Iran is likely to reject the deal for the same reason it rejected an almost identical deal offered by the Russians a few months ago.  It’s a raw deal.  Saying you can have a nuclear energy program if you don’t enrich uranium on your own soil is like saying you can have an automobile industry as long as you don’t make your own cars in your own country.  

Thinking Iran would fall for a scam like that is the rough equivalent of trying to buy 21st century Manhattan for a fistful of wampum.  Only young Mister Bush and Dick and Don and Condi would think they might get away with it.  Or maybe they know they can’t get away with it, and don’t care.

Are They Really That Dumb?

In January 2006, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said, “There is simply no peaceful rationale for the Iranian regime to resume uranium enrichment.”  

Condi’s becoming more and more like her fellow Bush administration luminaries all the time.  It’s difficult to say whether she actually believes her own balderdash or if she figures she can say anything and nobody will call her on it no matter how ridiculous it is.

The argument that an oil rich nation like Iran doesn’t have a legitimate reason to pursue nuclear energy is a non-starter.  Iran has reasonable ambitions to emerge as a modern industrial nation.  Building up its infrastructure will require increased energy consumption.  The less of its own oil it needs to provide its domestic energy needs, the more it has to sell to other, larger emerging nations like China.  

As time marches on, Iran’s big oil clients will move away from fossil fuel energy to nuclear energy.  At some future date, the demand and price of oil will drop to the point where it’s not worth the cost of pulling it out of the ground.  Other emerging nations of what we once called the “third world” will want to make the jump straight to nuclear energy, and will be looking to import the technology from countries that already have mature nuclear energy programs.

If, at that point, Iran cannot enrich its own uranium, it will be up the creek of proverbs without a paddle.  Nobody will want to buy its oil, it won’t have the kind of nuclear energy anybody wants to import, and it will be wholly dependent on other nations to supply fuel for its reactors.  

One might reasonably expect Secretary of State and former professor of political science at Stanford University Condoleezza Rice to understand that.  Is she playing dumb, or is she just being dumb?

Middle East, Take Two

Even as he echoes the diplomacy mantra, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is planning two big show-of-force demonstrations aimed at bringing Iran into line with America’s demands: the big “bunker buster” test in Nevada and a multi-battle group naval exercise in the Arabian Gulf.  

In “stick and carrot” diplomacy, you give an adversary a choice between a nice, tasty carrot and a club upside the head.  What the Bush administration is practicing with Iran is “stick and kick” diplomacy.  Take a club upside the head or a steel-toed boot up the other end.

For reasons we previously discussed, Iran cannot accept a “no enrichment” agreement.  If America continues to insist on one, we’ll all too probably watch a rerun of the Iraq show.  

“Negative proof” arguments that the target nation has or seeks to possess weapons of mass destruction (we can’t prove they don’t have or want them, therefore they must have or want them).

Comparisons of the target nation’s head of state to Hitler, and claims that he’s psychotic.  

Scare noise about “state sponsor of terrorism” and “destabilizing influence.”

Half-baked attempts at diplomacy that have little chance of succeeding.  When they don’t succeed, blaming France, Germany, China, Russia, the UN, and any other scapegoat that happens to be handy.

What about a “catalyzing event,” the next Pearl Harbor on 911?  The U.S. naval maneuvers in the Gulf will supply ample opportunity for such a thing.  Games of “chicken” on the high seas lead to shots being traded.  Maybe a surface combatant hits a mine.  Maybe an Iranian patrol boat gets lucky and hits an aircraft carrier with an anti-ship missile.

And the mightiest nation in history jumps headfirst into another quagmire.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

Last Friday and over the weekend, we saw a telling example of just how dangerous the global information environment has become.

Friday afternoon, over a cold carbonated beverage at the neighborhood watering hole, my retired Army buddy said, “You heard the latest about Iran?”

“No,” I said.  I hadn’t been plugged into a news source for almost an hour, so I was behind the news cycle.  “What about Iran?”

“The UN found yellow cake in one of their nuclear facilities,” he said.

Under the fold: well, not exactly…

I cut happy hour short, went home, and jumped on Google.  Here were the first headlines and lead stories I found.

From Reuters:

UN finds new uranium traces in Iran – diplomats
Fri May 12, 2006 11:16 AM BST

U.N. inspectors have discovered new traces of highly-enriched uranium on nuclear equipment in Iran, deepening suspicions Tehran may still be concealing the full extent of its atomic enrichment programme, diplomats said.

The headline in Calcutta, India’s Telegraph read “Fresh Iran uranium traces found.”  

The second paragraph in the Saturday morning Toronto Sun article read, “This revelation is likely to strengthen U.S. arguments that Tehran wants to develop nuclear arms.”

The lead paragraphs in the Saturday New York Times piece said:

Atomic inspectors have found traces of highly enriched uranium on equipment linked to an Iranian military base, raising new questions about whether Iran harbors a clandestine program to make nuclear bombs, diplomats said yesterday.
It is the second such discovery in three years of United Nations inspections in Iran. As the Security Council debates how to handle the atomic impasse with Tehran, the finding is likely to deepen skepticism about Iran’s claims that its program is entirely peaceful.

But a deeper analysis of the story shows that the sensational war drum banging found in the headlines and lead paragraphs of the world’s major papers is utter bosh.

Buried nose deep in the NYT article is the factoid that, “…the traces of highly enriched uranium could be explained by the inadvertent contamination of machinery that Iran obtained abroad.”

“Obtained abroad,” in Iran’s case, mainly means “bought second, third or fourth hand from Pakistan.”  Pakistan is the most primitive nation on the planet to possess nuclear technology.  Many regions of that country look uncivilized even by medieval standards.  Indiana Jones’ felt hat, leather jacket, bullwhip, and metal canteen would seem like high tech survival gear to the average Pakistani.  

So what does it say about the state of any of Iran’s advanced technology programs–nuclear or otherwise–that it’s buying high tech industrial equipment from Pakistan?

And what’s the surprise that any “dual use” equipment Iran bought from Pakistan is contaminated with traces of enriched uranium?

What do we mean by “traces,” and what sort of equipment were the traces found in?

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Committee (IAEA) discovered the traces through a microscopic particle analysis of swabs taken from vacuum pumps earlier this year.  Vacuum pumps that were purchased from, yes, Pakistan.  

The diplomats who leaked information about the “new” discoveries and said they were further evidence that Iran may be pursuing development of weapons grade uranium “demanded anonymity in exchange for divulging the confidential information.”  If you haven’t picked up on the code yet, that’s shorthand for “diplomats who wanted to spread propaganda and disinformation in the press without having it blow back in their faces when it turns out to be disinformation and propaganda.”  

At the end of the day, there was nothing new about this “news.”  IAEA inspectors have found microscopic traces of highly enriched uranium before in dual use equipment that Iran bought from Pakistan before.  It doesn’t prove or disprove anything regarding Iran’s intentions toward acquiring nuclear weapons.  It’s just another muffled tap on the war drum.  

But for the grace of timing, this misleading story could have created a firestorm of misdirected reaction.  Fortunately, it appears to have taken a nosedive.  It wasn’t discussed on any of the Sunday political talking point shows that I watched, and hasn’t appeared to grow legs in any of the major U.S. newspapers.  That could be because it broke on a Friday and was noise jammed by the more sensational stories about the NSA spying program and General Hayden’s nomination to head the CIA.  It might also just be that the greater mainstream media took a look at the story and said, “Eh, this looks like we’re being manipulated, let’s not push it too hard.”  But that’s giving the mainstream media a lot more credit than they deserve, given their track record during the Bush regime.  

In any case, don’t expect “new” Iraq story to disappear for good.  If ugly stuff comes out in the Hayden nomination hearings next week, or if Karl Rove gets indicted in the traitor-gate affair, or some equally spectacular item unfavorable to the Bush administration comes to light, stand by for an all out distraction campaign centering on the “threat” from Iran.  

And when the story reemerges, logically impaired Americans like my retired Army friend won’t recall the nuance about contaminated equipment bought from Afghanistan.  They’ll be completely swayed by the hyperbolic and misleading rhetoric of the likes of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who just this morning wrote:

As it races to acquire nuclear weapons, Iran makes clear that if there is any trouble, the Jews will be the first to suffer…

… When Iran’s mullahs acquire their coveted nukes in the next few years, the number of Jews in Israel will just be reaching 6 million.

Keep in mind that Krauthammer is more than simply a right wing bull feather merchant who writes ill-tempered articles for some of America’s leading publications.  As a member of the Project for the New American Century he was one of the influential neoconservatives who, days after on September 11, 2001, exhorted young Mister Bush to “remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq” even if “evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack.”

And he and his cohorts will doubtless continue to urge action against Iran even if evidence of their alleged ambition to obtain nuclear weapons never amounts to more than microscopic traces of enriched uranium discovered in contaminated dual use equipment the Iranians bought from Pakistan.  

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.