Colin Powell Gets Mad at Me

In his new book, It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership, Colin Powell writes this about his 2003 presentation at the United Nations about Iraq's supposed WMD: "I get mad when bl*ggers accuse me of lying – of knowing the information was false. I didn’t."

Well, I'm a blugger, and I accuse Colin Powell of lying. The evidence is overwhelming that he knew much of what he said in front of the Security Council was false.

This may not seem plausible to people who know Powell only via the media image he's carefully constructed over decades – that of being Washington's last honorable man. As journalist Margaret Carlson said in 2003, "Whatever Colin does, I’ll go with."

But in fact Powell's image has about as much to do with reality as what he told the UN. Though his entire career Powell has eagerly bent the truth to please his superiors. He started his climb up the Army ladder by covering up the massacre of civilians by U.S. troops in Vietnam, even serving as a character witness for a general who apparently shot Vietnamese from helicopters for fun. During the 1980s, when Powell was assistant to then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, he also helped cover up the Iran-contra scandal, and almost certainly deceived congressional investigators. (If there were a Museum of Washington's Funniest Lies, it would have its own wing for Powell's statement that, "To my recollection, I don't have a recollection.")

So everyone's default assumption should have been that Powell would lie to Americans and the world at the UN. And – as anyone can see just by looking at what's in the public record – he did. Below is a look line by line through Powell's presentation to demonstrate the chasm between what he knew and what he said.

:(

Here's Daniel Handler talking about Maurice Sendak:

He inspired every author, from Judy Blume to Daniel Handler, who ever wanted to go a little too far.

"It's almost impossible to overstate his importance," says Handler, known for the Lemony Snicket "Series Of Unfortunate Events" books. "He's a North Star in the firmament of anyone who makes children's books, in particular for his dark and clear-eyed view of the world that was kindred to me when I was in kindergarten and kindred to me now. He gives neither the comfort nor the horror of sentimentality."...

Handler, 42, says Sendak has been so much a part of his life he can't think of a time he wasn't aware of him. Sendak's books were all over his room and in his home today. To even attempt praise of "Where the Wild Things Are" is like saying "Hamlet" is a good play, he notes. Sendak's genius is how he weaves together the real and the magical without telling you which is which.

"'Where the Wild Things Are' starts with a boy being sent to his room and proceeds to take him to an enormous and irrational world without really telling us if it's real. But if you're a small child it does seem real and that's what matters," Handler says.

"Both my son and my wife cried this morning at the news of his death. That might sum up his career in a nutshell."

If you'd like to get in a little weeping yourself, you could listen to Fresh Air's rebroadcast of their interviews with Sendak, especially their last interview starting around 27:00, and even more especially the end of the last interview at about 42:40.

—Jon Schwarz

How Can You Prevent People From Expressing Their Feelings Toward Me?

This is from a recent New Republic article by Alec MacGillis about how the hedge fund industry has turned against Obama since 2008:

The former Democratic fund-raiser reminded me that masters of the universe rarely get much guff in their daily routine: “The guy at the top, the name on the door who raises all the money and makes the big decisions: How’s that guy treated? How many times does someone tell that guy that he might not be a good guy, that, you know, you’re kind of a dick? These guys are not used to getting dinged at all.”…

For all the brashness and bravado that goes with their world, it seems the managers are oddly insecure about their purpose. For years, “most people in the financial service sector were viewed with enormous, out-of-the-box respect and adulation,” says [Bill] Daley. “These guys were on pedestals, and now that pedestal’s gone, and now, in a lot of people’s minds, the industry doesn’t have that glow, and that bothers them, and now they join that with the president and his theoretically bashing the wealthy. They’ve got to blame somebody, and they blame him...Former Official B told me, “Whether it’s [former Fed Chairman Paul] Volcker saying there’s been no financial innovation worth a shit since the ATM or the president saying his thing, they’re hypersensitive.” Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank was more scathing: “They don’t just want us to represent their interest, they want to be told that what they do is very good. They want to be honored for what they do for society. And Obama has hurt their feelings. Raising their taxes is not simply a blow to their income. It is a blow to their psychic income, a failure to recognize the enormous good they do for the world.”

And this is from a 2002 article about Saddam Hussein:

Saad al-Bazzaz was summoned to meet with Saddam in 1989. He was then the editor of Baghdad's largest daily newspaper and the head of the ministry that oversees all of Iraq's TV and radio programming…

Saddam complained about an Egyptian comedy show that had been airing on one of the TV channels: "It is silly, and we shouldn't show it to our people." Al-Bazzaz made a note. Then Saddam brought up something else. It was the practice for poems and songs written in praise of him to be aired daily on TV. In recent weeks al-Bazzaz had urged his producers to be more selective. Most of the work was amateurish—ridiculous doggerel written by unskilled poets. His staff was happy to oblige. Paeans to the President were still aired every day, but not as many since al-Bazzaz had changed the policy.

"I understand," Saddam said, "that you are not allowing some of the songs that carry my name to be broadcast."

Al-Bazzaz was stunned, and suddenly frightened. "Mr. President," he said, "we still broadcast the songs, but I have stopped some of them because they are so poorly written. They are rubbish."

"Look," Saddam said, abruptly stern, "you are not a judge, Saad."

"Yes. I am not a judge."

"How can you prevent people from expressing their feelings toward me?"

Al-Bazzaz feared that he was going to be taken away and shot. He felt the blood drain from his face, and his heart pounded heavily. The editor said nothing. The pencil shook in his hand. Saddam had not even raised his voice.

"No, no, no. You are not the judge of these things," Saddam reiterated.

If you'd like to believe that I'm not just comparing hedge fund guys to Saddam Hussein, but am also comparing Obama to Saad al-Bazzaz, that's up to you.

—Jon Schwarz

The Lighter Side of Torture

Jose Rodriguez, former Director of the National Clandestine Service at the CIA, has written a book called Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives. It turns out that waterboarding (1) isn't torture and (2) is so incredibly horrible that it forced terrorists to give up information they never would have otherwise.

So that's pretty funny. But this part is even funnier:

You don't join the CIA if you have an overwhelming urge to be universally loved. But it is hard to explain how debilitating it can be to be constantly undermined and second-guessed.

My first significant experience with inquisition-by-overseer came during the mid eighties when I was stationed in Central America. The CIA found itself embroiled in the so-called Iran-Contra controversy.

So...being questioned about possible violations of the Constitution is like an inquisition. What's apparently not like an inquisition is using torture techniques actually used in the inquisition.

P.S. Hard Measures was written "with" (i.e., by) Bill Harlow. Harlow used to be George Tenet's spokesman/lickspittle, and also wrote Tenet's book At the Center of the Storm. And Harlow told one of the most blatant and egregious WMD lies in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. So he was clearly the man for this job.

P.P.S. Rodriguez worked in the CIA's El Salvador station during the eighties, so given the massive amount of hideous torture in which he must have been involved during that period, it's not surprising that he doesn't get the fuss over a little waterboarding.

—Jon Schwarz

The Two Constituencies of Liberalism

This is from the 1987 book Mortal Spendor: The American Empire in Transition by pundit Walter Russell Mead:

[Jimmy Carter] decided there was room on the national state for a politician dedicated to the "restoration" of the traditional American idealism in world affairs — an idealism so warmly admired by all the people of the hemisphere, from the Sioux to the Panamanians…

Liberalism has two constituencies, and each secretly believes that it is using the other. On the one hand are the idealistic, sometime naive grassroots liberals who stand for progress, tolerance, democracy and compassion. They believe that the present economic system can support all these values, and they believe that the United States can and should take the lead in easing the misery of the poor here and abroad. This popular liberalism in its dear fuzzy way hopes and believes that any advance in the welfare state and in central planning prepares the country for some form of social democracy, the peaceful transition to a mild form of socialism.

Corporate liberalism, the second constituency, believes that social programs are the grease that keep the wheels of industry turning. It would rather have the grassroots liberals administering social programs than scheming for social change; it favors government intervention in the economy because only such intervention can create the safe and predictable world in which large corporations can flourish.

Wars in the Third World expose the split in liberal ranks. They make clear who is using whom. Emerging social democracies do not intervene on behalf of blood-soaked oligarchies, but highly centralized corporate states do it all the time.

Man that's good writing. It makes it especially distressing that now, 25 years later, Mead's such an embarrassing right-wing hack. (Did you know that global warming doesn't exist because some male babies still get circumcised? Plus Al Gore is quite fat.) But that's life, I guess.

Anyway, if you come across something written by Walter Russell Mead these days and you're wondering whether you should pay any attention to it, here are two things to keep in mind:

1. In Mortal Splendor, Mead said that Henry Kissinger "lied gamely" during the Vietnam war:

Since 1917, when America first became a major player in world politics, foreign policy has been formulated, and often carried out, behind the scenes. A smoke screen of policy rationales has been laid down for public consumption: Truth, Justice and the American Way. But the serious players have always known that the game was much more complex. To quote again from the Kissinger memoirs:

Our entry into World War one was the inevitable result of our geographical interest in maintaining freedom of the seas and preventing Europe's domination by a hostile power. But true to our tradition, we chose to interpret our participation in legal and idealistic terms.

Until the Indochinese War, popular ignorance about the basis of American foreign policy was, if anything, an asset to the conduct of that policy. Major wars were presented as crusades forced on a pacific United States. Anyone saying what Kissinger said about World War I while the war was in progress would have been locked up if not lynched – particularly if the speaker had been a German-Jewish immigrant and a Harvard professor, to boot. During World War I Kissinger himself would have said nothing of the kind; he would have joined in the effort to present the war as a moral crusade – as, indeed, he did during the Indochinese War and as he continues to do with respect to the situation in Central America.

Later in the book, Mead says that "the American government lends itself well to bribery and influence peddling" and describes how Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller lobbied the government to let the deposed Shah of Iran into the U.S. Meanwhile, Rockefeller was CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank, which had made tons of money off the Shah, and Kissinger had gotten "a sizable Rockefeller retainer." Mead's conclusion: "George Washington, hearing of such a state of affairs, might well have assumed that his worst fears for the Republic were being confirmed."

2. After changing his mind about stuff, Mead became the "Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy" at the Council on Foreign Relations.

P.S. I assume it goes without saying that Walter Russell Mead is a graduate of Stutts University.

—Jon Schwarz

Taking Responsibility

By: John Caruso

I've mentioned in passing here that I worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during Israel's 2002 invasion.  After many years I've finally posted the full account, starting with our breaking of the siege of Arafat's compound and ending with our breaking of the siege of the Church of the Nativity, with stops in between in Ramallah, Jenin, Gaza and Hebron.  Despite the changes that have taken place since then there's (unfortunately) hardly a word that doesn't still apply today.

If you're curious, you can read it here.

— John Caruso