at-Largely

Brian Williams' "Truthiness" in Advertising

Posted by Brad Jacobson

For some time now, MSNBC has been running commercials touting their election coverage team's commitment to providing information that better enables Americans to make informed choices at the voting booth. But in context of the unfolding Pentagon TV war analysts scandal, one of these promos (which I believe is new) stood out for its particular hypocrisy.

To a melodramatic background score that's one part patriotic sentimentality (scene in Mel Gibson movie after character's army triumphs), one part childhood wonder (kids riding bikes in the sky to silhouette of the moon in E.T.), and one part lovers reuniting after a long separation (archetypal open-armed sprint across verdant meadow), this is the TV promo's content:

TEXT GRAPHIC: Decision 2008

TEXT GRAPHIC: Why Do People Care About Politics?

IMAGE: "VOTE HERE" sign with people standing in line behind it.

BRIAN WILLIAMS VOICEOVER: This is a participatory democracy.

TEXT GRAPHIC: Know

IMAGE: Black and white shot of people voting in the foreground; full-color American flag hanging prominently in the background.

BRIAN WILLIAMS VOICEOVER: I think you owe it to your democracy to know as much as you can about what's going on.

IMAGE: Old man (again in black and white), holding an American flag (again in full color) and seated on a bench, is gazing out toward the New York harbor.

TEXT GRAPHIC: That's Why You Care

TEXT GRAPHIC: That's Why We Cover It

IMAGE: Brian Williams' face, then the major faces of MSNBC election coverage.

TEXT GRAPHIC: MSNBC Decision 2008

TEXT GRAPHIC: MSNBC The Place for Politics

To this day, however, Brian Williams and MSNBC, along with CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC, have failed to respond to a PBS NewsHour request for an interview about The New York Times exposé, which revealed ex-generals-turned-TV war analysts, shilling directly for the Pentagon, appeared regularly on their programs. (Yesterday, Media Matters published a study that found "since January 1, 2002, the analysts named in the Times article -- many identified as having ties to the defense industry -- collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR.")

Williams, who in that MSNBC promo says, "This is a participatory democracy" in which "you owe it to your democracy to know as much as you can about what's going on," has, along with his network colleagues, prevented millions of people from knowing what's gone on in the run-up to the war in Iraq and over the course of the occupation. Williams champions our participatory democracy in MSNBC's ad yet fails to share with his viewers any information about what President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, presciently predicted would be the single greatest threat to our democracy - the "military-industrial complex."

On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower - a Republican president, former lifetime military man and war hero - explicitly cautioned: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Yet here's Williams only acknowledgment of his network's involvement with these Pentagon-shilling TV war generals - not from behind his anchor desk but on his NBC Nightly News blog The Daily Nightly (April 29, 2008):

Chess, Poker, Global Thermonuclear War?

Um, folks, this is a bit disturbing via Wired:

"The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is.  And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected."

The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online.  The Air Force recently put together a "Cyberspace Command," with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion "national cybersecurity initiative."  That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks.  "You used to need an army to wage a war," a recent Air Force commercial notes.  "Now, all you need is an Internet connection."

Liquid Lunching With Rummie

Posted By Cernig

Audio segments from the Pentagon's document dump reveal that fun and games were had by all at a Christmastime 2006 luncheon hosted by Donald Rumsfield for the Pentagon's pet military analysts:

As documented by Newsvine, it all went down at a valedictory luncheon Rumsfeld hosted for those analysts on December 12, 2006. Many of the "message force multipliers" named in the original New York Times piece were in attendance, including David L. Grange, Donald W. Sheppard, James Marks, Rick Francona, Wayne Downing, and Robert H. Scales, Jr. They were treated to an extraordinary conversation (Newsvine has highlights, the hour-long clip of which can be found here) with Rumsfeld, that included many jaw-dropping moments, such as Rumsfeld admitting that in Iraq, the U.S. "can't lose militarily, but...can't win by military means alone," an agreement that Iraq could use a Syngman Rhee-type dictator (because that's what democracy smells like!), and a lengthy passage where Rumsfeld jokingly offers a bottle of champagne to anyone who could kill Moqtada al Sadr. You sure don't see too many people joking on al Sadr these days!

But by far the most extraordinary part of this luncheon is the antipathy the gathered members exhibit toward the American people for having the temerity to vote the Democrats back into power. When Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong bemoans the lack of "sympathetic ears" on Capitol Hill, Rumsfeld offers that the American people lack "the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats." What's to be done? According to Rumsfeld, "The correction for that, I suppose, is [another] attack."

Meddlers!

By Cernig

We've heard a lot recently about US allegations that Iran is interfering in Iraq, aiding insurgents with weaponry and training, but Iran has also long said that both the US and Britain back insurgents inside Iran and we hear rather less about that.

That might change if Iran goes ahead with a lawsuits, as it claimed today, against both nations for aiding terrorists who allegedly blew up a mosque.

Iran's judiciary said on Monday it would file international lawsuits against the United States and Britain, accusing them of providing financial support to those behind a blast in a mosque that killed 14 people.

Iran's intelligence minister last week said Iran had arrested five or six members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States who he said were involved in the explosion that also wounded 200 in the southern city of Shiraz. Iranian officials had previously said the April 12 blast, during an evening prayer sermon by a prominent local cleric, was caused by explosives left over from an exhibition commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Judiciary spokesman Ali-Reza Jamshidi told state television the terrorists behind the bombing were agents of the U.S. and British governments in Iran. "The relationship of those who planted the bombs in Shiraz with the U.S. and Britain was identified and they were being financially supported and in fact they acted as foreign agents in Iran," he said. "In view of the documents obtained the judiciary in cooperation with the government and the Foreign Ministry will file lawsuits with international authorities against their supporters, who on the one hand claim to fight terrorists and on the other hand provide them with equipment," he said.

He was clearly referring to Britain and the United States, but did not give details on how Tehran would take legal action against them. Iran has in the past accused the two countries of trying to destabilize the Islamic Republic by supporting rebels, mainly those in sensitive border areas.

The British government recently failed to prevent judges from ordering the removal of the main suspect in foreign-backed meddling in Iran, the MeK, from being removed from the UK's terror list. Iran isn't too happy about that, summoning the British ambassador to protest the removal - and in truth the British government didn't try too hard to keep the MeK on the list. Neoconservatives and rightwing regime-change advocates have given the MeK heavy political backing in the last few years in both the US and UK and it seems likley that the US State Department will follow suit when it next reviews the MeK's inclusion in October.

Sadr Surrenders? Nope

Posted By Cernig

An article from McClatchy today reports a "big concession" from the Sadrist movement which it says is "a surprising capitulation that seemed likely to be hailed as a major victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki"

Followers of rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr agreed late Friday to allow Iraqi security forces to enter all of Baghdad's Sadr City and to arrest anyone found with heavy weapons...

In return, Sadr's Mahdi Army supporters won the Iraqi government's agreement not to arrest Mahdi Army members without warrants, unless they were in possession of "medium and heavy weaponry."

The agreement would end six weeks of fighting in the vast Shiite Muslim area that's home to more than 2 million residents and would mark the first time that the area would be under government control since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.

Rightwing pro-occupation bloggers in America are positively gloating at the news, claiming all kinds of victory for Maliki's government.

But not so fast. Who gets what out of this deal? For once, Jules Crittenden has it almost right.

Al-Maliki gets a win. Big power broker stops the killing, Mahdi Army rolls over and everyone goes how. Al-Sadr gets one. It was all about Sadr City residents leaning on the Sadrists. Al-Maliki to the resuce.

Al-Sadr gets a big win. His private army lives to extort, intimidate, murder another day. But Iran could have the biggest win.  Heat’s off.  Maybe that U.S. drawdown continues. Lower election season profile.

News reports and statements from Iraqi government members say that once again Iran played a big role in getting Maliki to back off from wiping out his main political rival, through pressure on Sadr as well as on the ISCI and Dawa parties. The deal thus consolidates Iran as the main Big Brother neighbour for Iraq's Shiite majority and makes it's influence there well-nigh unshakeable. Witness Maliki's back-pedalling on U.S. claims of Iranian weaponry.

As to Sadr, winning an armed conflict with the U.S. and the Iraqi central government was never an option for him. He's succeeded in splitting the Iraqi Army off from U.S. aid against his movement - thus neutralising the threat to his militia, as Crittenden notes, because the Iraqi Army on its own cannot defeat the Mahdi Army despite U.S. spin to the contrary. Maliki has backed off from earlier demands that the Mahi Army be dissolved and there will, it seems, be a four day ceasefire before the Iraqi Army begins to search the teeming slum for heavy weapons. Best of luck to them with that, after giving the militias so much time to hide everything.

But far more important for him is that he now keeps his political hopes alive, with elections where his movement can expect to make considerable inroads against his ISCI rivals looming. That was always the prize, and he has taken it.

As I wrote on April 22nd, the outlook from now is what Anthony Cordesman described: "both sides become locked in a lingering intra-Shi’ite power struggle that mixes violence with political power plays." As my colleague Eric Martin noted at the time, that dim outlook was Cordesman's best case scenario. So now we have the best of all possible "victories" in Iraq, with a Sadrist "capitulation" that is really nothing of the sort but instead prolongs the low-scale Shiite civil war in both the military and political arenas.

Red Alert - While you were counting polls...

My good friend and former CIA spook Phil Giraldi has some disturbing news in the American Conservative:

"There is considerable speculation and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants.  The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the only senior official urging delay in taking any offensive action.  The decision to go ahead with plans to attack Iran is the direct result of concerns being expressed over the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, where Iranian ally Hezbollah appears to have gained the upper hand against government forces and might be able to dominate the fractious political situation.  The White House contacted the Iranian government directly yesterday through a channel provided by the leadership of the Kurdish region in Iraq, which has traditionally had close ties to Tehran.

<snip>

It is to be presumed that the attack will be as “pinpoint” and limited as possible, intended to target only al-Qods and avoid civilian casualties.  The decision to proceed with plans for an attack is not final.  The President will still have to give the order to launch after all preparations are made."

I have said this before and I will say it again. I am convinced that the Cheney-side of the Bush-Cheney administration will take a scorchand burn policy on their way out. They know a Democrat will take the White House, so I suspect strongly that sometime after the November election, but before the new President is sworn in, this bunch will launch a hit on Iran and leave the mess for the new administration. If we only had a Congress who could decide on matters of war... oh well.

"CounterProductive," I Respectfully Disagree

My good friend Jeff Huber, a retired military man and author whom I respect and who blogs here, has in his recent post compared Andrew Cockburn's piece in CounterPunch to the propaganda of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon of The New York Times. I must very respectfully disagree. Jeff writes:

At least one high profile war critic sounds alarmed by a recent revelation that Mr. Bush signed a “secret finding” against “the Iranian regime” six weeks ago.  I’m frankly less than agog about it.

In a May 2 CounterPunch article, Andrew Cockburn wrote that Bush has launched a “covert offensive” on Iran that is "unprecedented in its scope."  The “directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan.”  The directive, according to Cockburn, also permits an expanded range of actions, “up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.

<snip>

Cockburn seems to want us to get excited that this Lebanon-to-Afghanistan offensive may involve assassination.  H.G. Wells’ bells, fellow citizens, we’re already assassinating people in Somalia with freaking cruise missiles.  We’re doing the same thing in Pakistan with Hellfire missiles fired from pilotless spy planes; the folks who pickle off the missles are dweebs sitting at consoles in an Air Force base in Nevada. "

Let's go to my reporting on Iran (which has been on hold while I have been covering selective prosecution):

Bush Punts The Gitmo Trials

Posted By Cernig

Via Jeralyn at Talk Left comes the news that the Bush administration has punted the entire thorny problem of Gitmo, its detainees and their trails to the next incumbent.

Nearly seven years later, however, not one of the approximately 775 terrorism suspects who have been held on this island has faced a jury trial inside the new complex, and U.S. officials think it is highly unlikely that any of the Sept. 11 suspects will before the Bush administration ends.

Though men such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, are expected to be arraigned in coming months -- appearing publicly for the first time after years of secret detention and harsh interrogations -- officials say it could be a year or longer before worldwide audiences will see even the first piece of evidence or testimony against them.

Jeralyn thinks it likely that any of the three candidates will close Gitmo and then scrap the military tribunals system which has made such a sick joke of American justice in favor of civil trials or trials under the full panoply of military law.

Personally, I'm doubtful about that. Arraignments before Bush's time ends are a pretty transparent attempt to "lock in" the tribunals system for the next President, who would be faced with either going with the current system or arraigning anew and then holding trails that would be even further delayed. Worse, the next President has to know that fair trials will lead to most, if not all, of those charged being released because evidence against them will be tainted by torture allegations. It will be a straight-on contest between doing the right thing and caving in the face of a certain political storm rightwing outrage when "confessed terrorists" walk free. Given their records to date, I've no confidence whatsoever in any of the three deciding to do the right thing.

The "Indiana Market" Analogy

Posted By Cernig

Ovet at VetVoice, Brandon Friedman is scathing about Pentagon-led plans for a $5 billion Green Zone development in Iraq which will include condos, a Western-style mall and a Marriott.

I guess my main question (among the many) would be this: Since when is the American military charged with driving economic development in Iraq?  I wonder what the Iraqis think of the American military making plans to build lavish, Western-style condos and a shopping mall in central Baghdad.  And second, even if the American government is responsible for something like this, where the fuck is the State Department?   

Am I insane, or should the Pentagon be planning our exit from Baghdad--and not five billion-dollar "zones of influence?"  If Iraq wants something like this, then Iraqis should get to planning.  Not the U.S. military.  If they want help, they can ask Condi's State Department.  Or maybe the EU.  Or the UN.  Or their Arab neighbors.  (Forget the last one.  It'll never happen.)

Places like Iraq desperately need private investment, but I think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here.  And let's be honest, I don't think we're anywhere close to being ready for something like this.

Spencer Ackerman sees it as a drain on Iraqi resources as well as a propaganda gift to insurgents.

In a city consumed by chaos, war, occupation, corruption, intermittent and unreliable electricity, sewage overflows that you sometimes have to wade through, food shortages, public-health crises, you know what you shouldn’t build? "…luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad." ....That sort of indifference to the suffering of Iraq is provocative. If I was Moqtada Sadr, I would use it as a rallying cry.

James Joyner, on the other hand, argues that the gap between rich and poor is always with us.

Presumably, companies investing $1 billion in facilities will have a great stake in working to improve the infrastructure, security, rule of law, and other things necessary to ensuring the success of their business venture. Even for conglomerates, that’s real money.

At what point is it conscionable to build luxury hotels? Certainly, most of Cairo, Egypt is a slum by Western standards. Yet, there you will find more than a dozen magnificent luxury hotels, mostly clustered into a central zone, which cater to well-off tourists. Is that immoral? Or does it provide jobs for locals and gradually improve their standard of living?

For that matter, while America’s inner cities are a far cry from Baghdad, many of them are nonetheless impoverished, crime-ridden, and dysfunctional. Yet, almost all of them have luxury hotels, condos, restaurants, and so forth. Indeed, that’s true of our nation’s capital, where $500 a night hotels and restaurants selling $200 bottles of wine are within easy walking distance from neighborhoods none of the patrons of said establishments would venture into at night.

This argument is an echo of the oft-used rightwing talking point that Iraq is no more dangerous to life and limb than living in inner-city America and has also been advanced by the company responsible for building Baghdad's new "Zoo and Entertainment Experience".

Well, you live here in Southern California and there’s drive-bys and everything else. So there’s danger everywhere, and I think the key thing is this will be tremendous for Baghdad.

This argument might well be termed the "Indiana Market" Analogy, after a particularly infamous example - and it's one that Fester debunked some time back.

Major, 100+ fatality car bombings have occurred several times a year for the past two years in Iraq. The United States has experienced no car bombs during this time frame. The same applies to suicide bombings, company sized ambushes of the New York Police Department, the overrunning of the Montana State House, the capturing of the governor of Missouri and the assassination of the director of the Washington D.C. METRO system. These are common types of events in Iraq. If the US was as dangerous as Iraq, we would be seeing these actions occurring here. We don't.

Advanced math or statistics is not needed to say that there is a significant difference in risk and security between Iraq and the United States. All that is required is some willingness to look at history and an unwillingness to believe that clapping louder will make things better.

Let me make it plain - there is no time at which a useful equivalence can be drawn between experiencing drive-bys and airstrikes, between muggings and IEDs. Using the Indiana Market Analogy is either dishonest or simply illogical. The end.

Posted By Cernig

Ovet at VetVoice, Brandon Friedman is scathing about Pentagon-led plans for a $5 billion Green Zone development in Iraq which will include condos, a Western-style mall and a Marriott.

I guess my main question (among the many) would be this: Since when is the American military charged with driving economic development in Iraq?  I wonder what the Iraqis think of the American military making plans to build lavish, Western-style condos and a shopping mall in central Baghdad.  And second, even if the American government is responsible for something like this, where the fuck is the State Department?   

Am I insane, or should the Pentagon be planning our exit from Baghdad--and not five billion-dollar "zones of influence?"  If Iraq wants something like this, then Iraqis should get to planning.  Not the U.S. military.  If they want help, they can ask Condi's State Department.  Or maybe the EU.  Or the UN.  Or their Arab neighbors.  (Forget the last one.  It'll never happen.)

Places like Iraq desperately need private investment, but I think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here.  And let's be honest, I don't think we're anywhere close to being ready for something like this.

Spencer Ackerman sees it as a drain on Iraqi resources as well as a propaganda gift to insurgents.

In a city consumed by chaos, war, occupation, corruption, intermittent and unreliable electricity, sewage overflows that you sometimes have to wade through, food shortages, public-health crises, you know what you shouldn’t build? "…luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad." ....That sort of indifference to the suffering of Iraq is provocative. If I was Moqtada Sadr, I would use it as a rallying cry.

James Joyner, on the other hand, argues that the gap between rich and poor is always with us.

Presumably, companies investing $1 billion in facilities will have a great stake in working to improve the infrastructure, security, rule of law, and other things necessary to ensuring the success of their business venture. Even for conglomerates, that’s real money.

At what point is it conscionable to build luxury hotels? Certainly, most of Cairo, Egypt is a slum by Western standards. Yet, there you will find more than a dozen magnificent luxury hotels, mostly clustered into a central zone, which cater to well-off tourists. Is that immoral? Or does it provide jobs for locals and gradually improve their standard of living?

For that matter, while America’s inner cities are a far cry from Baghdad, many of them are nonetheless impoverished, crime-ridden, and dysfunctional. Yet, almost all of them have luxury hotels, condos, restaurants, and so forth. Indeed, that’s true of our nation’s capital, where $500 a night hotels and restaurants selling $200 bottles of wine are within easy walking distance from neighborhoods none of the patrons of said establishments would venture into at night.

This argument is an echo of the oft-used rightwing talking point that Iraq is no more dangerous to life and limb than living in inner-city America and has also been advanced by the company responsible for building Baghdad's new "Zoo and Entertainment Experience".

Well, you live here in Southern California and there’s drive-bys and everything else. So there’s danger everywhere, and I think the key thing is this will be tremendous for Baghdad.

This argument might well be termed the "Indiana Market" Analogy, after a particularly infamous example - and it's one that Fester debunked some time back.

Major, 100+ fatality car bombings have occurred several times a year for the past two years in Iraq. The United States has experienced no car bombs during this time frame. The same applies to suicide bombings, company sized ambushes of the New York Police Department, the overrunning of the Montana State House, the capturing of the governor of Missouri and the assassination of the director of the Washington D.C. METRO system. These are common types of events in Iraq. If the US was as dangerous as Iraq, we would be seeing these actions occurring here. We don't.

Advanced math or statistics is not needed to say that there is a significant difference in risk and security between Iraq and the United States. All that is required is some willingness to look at history and an unwillingness to believe that clapping louder will make things better.

Let me make it plain - there is no time at which a useful equivalence can be drawn between experiencing drive-bys and airstrikes, between muggings and IEDs. Using the Indiana Market Analogy is either dishonest or simply illogical. The end.

War Stenography

Posted By Cernig

Michael "Judy In Drag" Gordon today re-earned his place as the Bush administration's stenographer-in-chief with an anonymously-sourced report alleging that Iran is using Hizbullah as a proxy to train other proxies among Iraq's Shiite militants. Glenn Greenwald writes:

As usual with Gordon's articles, nothing is done here other than uncritically repeating Bush administration claims under the cover of anonymity. Virtually every paragraph in this article is nothing more a mindless recitation of uncorroborated assertions which he copies from Bush officials and then weaves into a news narrative, with the phrase "American officials say" tacked on at the end or the phrase "according to officials" unobtrusively interspersed in the middle.

With the fact that this might as well be an official White House briefing taken for granted, Dr. iRack at Abu Muqawama blog writes that he suspects the claims are still "at least mostly" true. However, even "at least mostly" leaves a lot of gap for the most important aspect of the story, the intent of the Iranian leadership, as well as particular details of the "evidence", to fall through.

Dr. iRack notes that:

existence of 2008 vintage Iranian weapons per se is not evidence of direct involvement by the Iranian government (or the Quds force), since they theoretically could have been sold on the black market.

But sources out with the White House indicate that such trade is more than simply theoretical. Ever since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, the regional black trade in arms has been at an all-time high. From Pakistan to the Lebanon, prices for weapons have more than tripled since the invasion of Iraq. Three Pakistani arms-dealers were among the first arrested when the Iraqi Army moved into Basra recently - presumably selling the wares of Pakistan's huge cottage-industry arms bazaars who boast they can copy any weapon so well, right down to the markings, that even its designer cannot tell the difference.

American weapons such as Glock pistols which were "mislaid" in Iraq in 2004 have turned up, by the score, in the hands of Kurdish terrorists and even ordinary criminals in Turkey - yet no-one is accusing the U.S. government of deliberately aiding such groups. These arms travel through the region along Silk Road smuggling paths which were old in Jesus' time, making a joke of secure borders. Just as was the case with many missing American items in Iraq, these trades are often fuelled by individual officials enriching themselves by surreptitiously selling off their national arsenals or re-directing imports to the benefit of their own offshore bank accounts. Evcery nation in the region, too, sells weaponry - home produced and imported for re-export - to anyone who wants them. Shipments of arms by the Saudi government have turned up in Iraq too, to rather less publicity than Iranian ones.