GROKKING REAL EYES
November 2 2004
Election Day
BLACK TUESDAY HOME PAGE
Real Eyes Day 1 American Nightmare
***You are here...Real Eyes Day 2 Psychological Element
Real Eyes Day 3 BOOKS Will they ever trust us again?
Real Eyes Day 4 YOU'RE FIRED!
Real Eyes 5 Wallow In Chaos, And Laugh
Real Eyes 6 Michael Moore First Thoughts and KERRY WON
Real Eyes 7 The Election 2004 was Hacked!
There is a psychological element here
There is a psychological element here, for the
American people, a desire to believe the president of
the United States.
The realization that the president of the United
States would distort - knowingly distort issues or
even negligently misinform them on issues that will
result in the death of America’s sons and daughters is
so monstrous that most good and Decent and patriotic
Americans can’t believe that. They don’t want to
believe that, that’s just too awful to contemplate
that the president would do that to them.
--- Greg Thielman - Intelligence analyst
***********************
MUST READ:
Joe Trippi
The Revolution will not be televised,
Democracy, the internet and the overthrow of
everything.
This is the story of how Trippi's revolutionary use of
the Internet and an impassioned, contagious desire to
overthrow politics as usual grew into a national
grassroots movement and changed the face of politics
forever. But it's also more than that.
It's about how to engage Americans in real dialogue,
how business leaders, government leaders, and anyone
else can make use of the most revolutionary idea to
come along since man first learned to light a fire. No
... not the Internet. Or computers. Or
telecommunications.
Democracy.
For those who thought the Dean campaign ended with a
screaming speech in an Iowa ballroom, this book is a
wake-up call. Joe Trippi explains how -- right now --
Internet democracy is transforming every aspect of
American life by evenly distributing power. He reveals
innovations that are on the horizon, which companies
are poised to become first-movers in this new era, and
which are in danger of being left behind.
From his behind-the-scenes look at Dean's shocking
rise and fall to his "seven inviolable, irrefutable,
ingenious things your business or institution or
candidate can do in the age of the Internet that might
keep you from getting your ass kicked but then again
might not," Joe Trippi offers an inspiring glimpse of
the world we are becoming.
And he shows how power, in the hands of all of us,
changes everything.
***********************
Jon Stewart
Inaction
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html/102-7999820-5708159
Sure, we could write a pithy blurb on why now is the
perfect time to get America (The Book): A Citizen's
Guide to Democracy Inaction, from Jon Stewart and the
writers of The Daily Show, but it's much easier--and
funnier--to let Jon tell you about it himself
*********************************
"We're shocked and pretty much appalled that
Republicans would sink to this in the last 48 hours of
the campaign"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041101/ap_on_el_pr/misleading_voter_calls
********************************
Give Bush A Brain
***********************
It's the Incompetence, Stupid
***********************
By Amy Quinn, AlterNet
Posted on November 1, 2004, Printed on November 1,
2004
http://www.alternet.org/story/20361/
When Osama bin Laden reappeared on our television
screens a mere four days before Election Day, he did
indeed deliver the much- anticipated "October
Surprise." But contrary to the predictions of paranoid
liberals and optimistic conservatives, his
reappearance did not mark the veritable coup de grace
for the Bush reelection campaign.
The sight of a well-rested, healthy bin Laden — with
no dialysis machine in sight and sporting a tan that
he clearly could not have acquired in an underground
cave — was a poke in the eye of a White House that has
done its best to frame him as a desperate fugitive of
justice. The videotape was instead a sour reminder of
the administration's unqualified failure in fighting
terrorism: Bin laden, still standing strong and tall
after three years of the much-touted "war on terror."
It's no accident that Bin Laden's turn in the
spotlight came at the end of a week marked by a
furious political debate over the missing 360 tons of
explosives from the Al Qaqqa facility in Iraq. The
White House variously tried to pin the blame on Saddam
Hussein (They were moved before Baghdad fell!); revive
its tattered justifications for the Iraq War (Aha! We
thought liberals said there were no WMD!); minimize
the situation (What is 360 tons in the grand scheme of
things?); or simply pass the buck (Liberal New York
Times targets Bush). In other words, the Bush
administration did everything except admit its mistake
— in this case, errors in its post-war planning, or
rather, the lack thereof.
Bin Laden’s reappearance and the missing munitions are
part of the same story. It's the story of a President
who has consistently mistaken blind conviction for
strength. It's the story of a man who, irrespective of
partisanship, lacks the most important quality of a
good leader: judgment. Each time George W. Bush has
been faced with a set of choices on Iraq — before,
during, and after the war — he has unerringly picked
the worst option available.
As Bill Maher observed on HBO a couple of weeks ago:
"It's the incompetence, stupid!"
Unilateralism, the New American Way
Four years ago, Candidate Bush pledged to create a
"humble" U.S. foreign policy based on international
cooperation, and scoffed at the idea of "nation
building." Those turned out to be the proverbial
famous last words as the rhetoric of the campaign was
replaced by the radical foreign policy of the Bush
presidency.
The transformation required the right trigger, the
right justification. And Al Qaeda provided it on Sept
11, 2001.
The radical reorientation of U.S. foreign policy
manifested itself almost immediately after the
attacks, made plain in the President's now infamous
assertion: "(E)ither you are with the United States or
you are with the terrorists." It marked the birth of
what would come to be known as the Bush Doctrine. Nine
months later, he clarified the tenets of this
uber-aggressive philosophy to West Point graduates:
preemptive strikes, military unilateralism,
preservation of the United States' status as the sole
superpower, and a crusade to spread "democracy" around
the world, by any means necessary.
It was a doctrine in search of a war. And that the war
came to be with Iraq was hardly surprising. It was no
secret that senior ranking officials in the
administration were itching to finish the job that
they perceived as left undone by the President’s
father in the first Gulf War. As former
counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and Bush’s own
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill would later attest,
Vice-President Dick Cheney was eager to use the Sept.
11 attacks as an excuse to move against Iraq within
hours of the tragedy.
George Bush was faced with a clear choice: Option A,
crack down on Al Qaeda at a time when its members were
on the run; Option B, pursue a war that would at best
deliver an ideological victory of dubious value. He
chose war with Iraq.
Once the President made that one bad decision, he
committed himself to the series of lies and
misrepresentations that would be required to justify
it. His advisors proceeded to "cherry pick" unreliable
intelligence to make the case for war, which included
claims about Saddam's arsenal of WMD, links to Al
Qaeda, and the imminent threat he posed to the United
States. According to a study by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman
(D-CA), Bush and his top four advisors made 237
misleading statements about Iraq to the American
public, elected officials, and international diplomats
in the run up to war. Secretary of State Colin Powell
sat before the UN Security Council and presented
mountains of "evidence" on Iraq’s weapons stockpiles
to the world that has since been discredited.
The Bush administration chose to risk the United
States' reputation and credibility in the world to
pursue a war of its choosing simply because it could.
To make matters worse, committed to his unilateralist
stance, Bush did not take the required measures to
ensure international support for the United States in
the impending conflict. He cavalierly cut short the UN
weapons inspection process that was underway in Iraq
and declared war on the strength of a shaky coalition,
which included only one other significant military
ally, the United Kingdom, and was made up of nations
whose own people opposed the war.
The irony is that if the Bush administration had
chosen instead to allow the UN inspections to
continue, we would have learned exactly what Charles
Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, told us last
month: There were no weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq.
On Mar. 6, 2003, just 14 days before the invasion of
Iraq, Bush chose to deride the UN: "If we need to act,
we will act, and we really don’t need United Nations
approval to do so." The Bush administration stuck to
its go-it-alone approach in the aftermath of the
invasion by choosing to exclude companies from
countries that did not participate in the war from
receiving reconstruction contracts.
Bush also turned down the opportunity to change course
when he rejected the UN’s offer to play a central role
in post-war security and reconstruction. Rather than
share power and control with "outsiders," Bush
relegated the UN to the job of providing food,
medicine and other humanitarian needs. It's a job that
the UN soon found itself unable to do as Iraq's
security continued to deteriorate and the United
States found itself faced with a defiant insurgency.
Today, it's the Iraqi people and the U.S. soldiers who
are paying the price for this outright rejection of
the UN charter and the willingness, as UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan recently said, to violate
international law.
As reconstruction has ground to nearly a halt and
security has deteriorated in Iraq, the motley number
of the "coalition of the willing" is steadily
declining. In recent months, nine countries have
either pulled their troops from Iraq or withdrawn from
the coalition. At the war’s start, the coalition
countries represented 19.1 percent of the world’s
population; that number now stands at a paltry 14
percent.
More importantly, the U.S. is now courting the very
countries it excluded from the reconstruction, and
asking them for financial aid to help rebuild Iraq and
maintain security on the ground.
Among the most tragic results of the Bush
administration's decision to ignore and even violate
international law is the torture in the Abu Ghraib
prison. According to Human Rights Watch, "The pattern
of abuse resulted from decisions made by the Bush
administration to bend, ignore, or cast rules aside."
While Bush tried to cast the perpetrators’ behavior as
an aberration, over 300 allegations of abuse have been
filed against soldiers involved in post 9/11 military
operations.
The Abu Ghraib revelations dealt a mortal blow to the
already failing efforts to win the trust of the Iraqi
people, who, along with most other people in the
Middle East, viewed the torture as yet more
confirmation of American bad faith toward Arabs in
particular, and Muslims in general. They also outraged
many former generals who warned of future consequences
for American prisoners of war.
Yet the President shows no signs of reversing his
policies toward the use of torture. Recent news
reports reveal that the Justice Department may also
have violated the Geneva Convention when it gave a
green light to the CIA to secretly transport prisoners
captured in Iraq out of the country for
interrogations. In the process, the CIA concealed
detainees from the International Red Cross and other
authorities. On Oct. 27, Amnesty International
released a new report which concluded that the Bush
administration failed to substantially change the
policies and practices that led to torture and
ill-treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and other
detention facilities.
Even today, the United States could still take a
different approach — a conciliatory, and yes, even
humble, approach to reach out to its allies and the
Iraqi people. But the President instead chooses to
keep charging down the road to international
isolation.
Plan? What Plan?
In the summer of 2002, Secretary Powell — now resigned
to the Bush administration's determination to go to
war despite his repeated warnings — led a State
Department initiative, titled The Future of Iraq
Project, to bring together Iraqi exiles from around
the world to put together a comprehensive plan of
reconstruction. Its recommendations, based on almost a
year's worth of planning, were dismissed outright by
the Department of Defense.
Told over and again by a wide array of experts —
including conservative think tanks such as the Council
on Foreign Relations, overseen by former Republican
defense secretary James Schlesinger — that the war
would require more troops for peacekeeping, the Bush
administration chose instead to stick to the fanciful
idea that intensive bombing (shock and awe) would be
sufficient to cow Iraqis into submission — the few who
wouldn't be celebrating in the streets.
Despite overwhelming intelligence from the CIA, the
Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, and the State
Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research that
chaos could erupt after Saddam’s overthrow, the United
States invaded Iraq with 140,000 soldiers, who were
poorly informed or trained to deal with the chaos that
would follow.
Commenting on the immediate aftermath of the invasion,
Army Secretary General Thomas White said, "We
immediately found ourselves shorthanded in the
aftermath. We sat there and watched people dismantle
and run off with the country." Former U.S.
Administrator in charge of the Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, echoed this
mistake more recently saying, "We never had enough
troops on the ground."
The error would have far-reaching repercussions,
sowing the seeds of the intractable insurgency that
would soon ensue.
The failure to create a comprehensive and effective
post-war plan is perhaps the best example of the
President's lack of judgment. Rather than heed the
caution of his veteran advisers, George Bush chose
instead to rely on the rosy prognostications of the
hawks in his administration. Their plan: Simply walk
into Baghdad, bask in the adulation of cheering
Iraqis, handoff the country to the U.S.-anointed heir,
the now discredited Iraqi National Congress leader
Ahmed Chalabi, and leave. It was less a plan than
ideological fantasy.
The result: widespread looting that alienated the
Iraqi people; unguarded arsenals of weapons that would
enable the insurgents to inflict a bloody toll on both
soldiers and civilians. Yet at the time, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would dismiss the looting
with a throwaway comment: "Freedom is messy."
Already hamstrung by insufficient troops, the Bush
administration soon compounded its error when it
bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and approved CPA
chief Paul Bremer’s decision to disband the Iraqi army
and dismiss tens of thousands of Iraqi civil servants.
In one fell swoop, the United States dismantled the
Iraqi state but without the resources or the will to
replace it. Not only did the decision exacerbate the
near state of anarchy in Iraq, it also created
thousands of unemployed, disaffected, and often armed
Iraqis, immediately boosting the insurgent ranks. The
Iraqi resistance has since quadrupled in strength from
5,000 to 20,000.
A Failed Reconstruction
Having made a misguided decision to go to war and
botched the post-war planning, the Bush administration
could still have saved the situation in Iraq by
winning the proverbial "battle for the hearts and
minds." The support of the Iraqi people would have
gone a long way in helping the U.S. military secure
and stabilize Iraq.
The President, however, proved more willing to promote
the interests of his corporate supporters than the
welfare of the Iraqis. The Bush administration chose
to award lucrative reconstruction contracts to U.S.
and "coalition of the willing" companies instead of
investing in qualified Iraqi firms. and building
Iraq’s local resources. As companies such as
Halliburton received no-bid contracts, it confirmed
many Iraqis' suspicions that their nation was merely a
cash cow to be milked for U.S. corporate interests.
Those suspicions were only confirmed by the CPA's
spending patterns. When Bremer left Baghdad on June
28, the U.S. had spent less than 2 percent of its
funds to repair Iraq’s shattered infrastructure. The
U.S. reconstruction schemes bred further distrust when
the CPA allocated $19 billion of the $20 billion in
Iraqi oil revenue to pay U.S. private contractors.
Unlike most U.S. reconstruction funds, the Iraqi oil
fund did not require competitive bidding or
transparency measures and the U.S. kept almost full
control of the funds. Twenty-six criminal
investigations into the CPA’s fraud, waste, and abuse
are now underway.
The sluggish pace of reconstruction also became one
more factor fueling the insurgency. Having promised
250,000 jobs to the Iraqis, the U.S. managed to employ
only 30,000 as part of its various projects.
Disaffected unemployed Iraqis, eager for any type of
income to feed their families, became vulnerable to
insurgents who offered them up to $500 to participate
in attacks on U.S. forces, their perceived Iraqi
sympathizers, and U.S.-led reconstruction projects.
The rising strength of the resistance in turn stalled
most reconstruction efforts. Most foreign run
reconstruction projects ground to a halt when the risk
of kidnappings spiked in April 2004. To address the
security crisis, the Bush administration further
shifted $3.5 billion of the $18.4 billion that
Congress approved for Iraq reconstruction away from
restoring essential services such as water, sewage,
and electricity and toward security and oil-related
areas.
As sabotaged water, sewer, oil, and electricity
projects remain in disrepair, frustration on the
streets grows as does support for the insurgency to
drive out the United States. The result is an
entrenched cycle of failure: the insurgency diverts
resources toward security, which in turn creates
greater popular anger, which then strengthens the
insurgency.
To earn the trust of the Iraqi people, President Bush
could have directed reconstruction funds through a UN
supervised public works program that prioritized
building the institutional capacity of Iraqi
businesses and employment of Iraqi citizens. He chose
instead to favor his closest corporate allies and
squander the remaining opportunity to win the peace.
Today, only 2 percent of Iraqis consider the U.S. as
"liberators." Faced with this rising tide of popular
anger, Bush has chosen to try and bomb it out of
existence. He waited a mere four days for negotiations
to work in Fallujah before he returned to bombing its
residents on Oct. 13 — just two days before the Muslim
holy month of Ramadan. And this even though the
negotiations between U.S. and interim government
representatives and prominent Sunnis revealed a rift
between the local Iraqi insurgents and foreign
"jihadists" operating in Falluja. Instead of seizing
an opportunity to isolate foreign fighters, the
President instead chose to pursue a course of action
that will surely be viewed on the streets of Iraq and
elsewhere in the Middle East as confirmation of
America's war on Islam.
The Bush Definition of Democracy
"Freedom" is one of the President's favorite words.
It's also the word he employs these days to justify
the war, now that his other rationales have proven
hollow. Yet his administration's track record in
establishing democracy in Iraq is poor, to say the
least.
In the past 18 months, the Bush administration has
shown little inclination to let Iraqis rule
themselves. Following the fall of Baghdad, the CPA
appointed Iraqi expatriates with no established local
political support as members of the Iraqi Governing
Council, even as it sidelined popular local leaders.
The Bush policy has been crystal clear: Block Iraq’s
radical religious leadership from attaining power and
ensure a government sympathetic to American political
and economic goals.
The policy has backfired. The very constituencies Bush
sought to exclude are now more popular than ever. For
example, when the Bush team shut down the newspaper of
cleric Moqtada al Sadr in April 2004, support for al
Sadr grew rapidly as did violent street attacks on the
U.S. military. The result: American soldiers suffered
the highest death toll in that month since the
invasion.
The "transfer of sovereignty" on June 28, 2004 to the
interim government has been almost entirely symbolic.
The U.S. maintains control of almost every aspect of
Iraqi life through its 138,000 troops, 20,000
U.S.-funded private foreign national contractors, and
100 official orders issued by the CPA that are
designed to benefit U.S. interests — orders that
cannot be undone even by a democratically-elected
Iraqi government.
While the U.S. orders may lock in policy, they cannot
control public opinion. According to a new
U.S.-financed poll by the International Republican
Institute, the very same religious parties that the
U.S. has tried to marginalize in Iraq would win a
national election if it were held today. At the same
time, U.S.-backed interim government candidates are
losing support and credibility with each passing
month.
Despite daily abductions, assassinations, ambushes,
and bombings, Bush insists that the elections will
proceed as scheduled in January 2005. Rumsfeld, on the
other hand, has told reporters that violence may lead
authorities to exclude certain "hot spots," like
Fallujah, from voting.
A plan for democracy that relies on disenfranchisement
for success is a recipe for disaster. Yet the
President is determined to "stay the course."
The Price of Incompetence
If the President continues to make the wrong choice
over and over again, it's perhaps because he does not
have to pay the price for his decisions.
A report published by the Lancet Medical Journal on
its web site last Friday reveals that 100,000 people,
nearly all of them Iraqi civilians, have been killed
in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. The
numbers of wounded are likely to be far, far higher.
As for the U.S soldiers, the numbers only tell half
the story. The Pentagon only counts the 1,500 dead and
7,500 plus injured in direct combat. There are tens of
thousands more who have been disabled for life by
injuries that are non-combat related. Since the
ceremonial transfer of power on June 28, U.S. military
casualties (dead and wounded) have risen to 747 per
month — up from 415 during the 14-month period under
the CPA.
The burden has grown heavier as the tours of over
20,000 troops have been extended in Iraq beyond their
active duty contracts, amounting to a de facto back
door draft. The harsh realities on the ground are
taking their toll: 52 percent report low morale and
one in six show signs of a mental health disorder.
The President's poor planning has been borne by the
51,000 U.S. soldiers and contractors who found
themselves in a war zone without proper body armor.
This month, soldiers from the 343rd Quartermaster
Company are facing potential court martial for
refusing orders to transport a fuel convoy because
their vehicles were unsafe and they were not provided
the standard armed escort for the mission. The army
referred to the defiance as "a temporary breakdown in
discipline," yet a growing number of soldiers, who
have come home disillusioned and angry, are now
breaking ranks to speak out against the President's
Iraq policy.
The war that was supposed to pay for itself now rivals
the average monthly cost of the Vietnam War at $5.1
billion per month. The astronomical price tags for
Bush’s war and Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy have
plunged the U.S. into record deficits that will top
$422 billion this year. Looking ahead to the projected
three-year occupation, the bill for each American
taxpaying household will add up to approximately
$3,500.
In December 2002, White House Economic Advisor
Lawrence Lindsey was fired for predicting that an Iraq
war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion.
It turns out that his estimate actually erred on the
conservative side. The President, if reelected, plans
to ask Congress for another $70 billion, putting the
cost of this war thus far at more than $200 billion.
George Bush's errors have been many and their
consequences deadly. Yet if reelected, there is little
hope that he will choose differently or better. Why,
he hasn't even learned to listen to his own advisors.
In September, the President dismissed his own National
Intelligence Council’s warning that the current path
in Iraq is likely to lead to civil war as "just
guessing."
George W. Bush is the man who won’t ask for
directions. Sitting in the driver’s seat, his gaze is
fixed on the horizon, ignoring danger signs along the
road and refusing to yield. Every time his passengers
suggest they are lost and need to change course he
shoots them that famous Bush glare, shifts his
puckered lips to the right and bears down on the gas.
© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights
reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/20361/
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Bush's False Doctrine
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G. Henry M. Schuler
November 01, 2004
Last week, The Washington Post only told half the
story of Libya's deal with the Bush administration.
Here, Libya expert Henry Schuler exposes the truth:
George W. Bush entered the souk desperate to vindicate
his Iraq invasion at home and was willing to sacrifice
U.S. national security to do it. As the dust settles,
Bush has his claim, Gadhafi is strengthened, America's
credibility is shot and the A.Q. Khan network remains
at large.
Henry Schuler was first posted to Libya in 1957 as a
naval intelligence officer, served as an executive in
the oil industry, and retired as a Middle East scholar
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
George Bush never stops repeating that the world has
been completely changed by the horrific attacks of
9/11. But his words are belied by his actions which
demonstrate that the age-old mix of carrot and stick
remains firmly entrenched in U.S. foreign policy. Now,
let it be clear that this time-tested approach to
international relations is entirely appropriate (and
probably inescapable), provided it is executed with
unclouded vision, untainted motives, unambiguous
signals and unwavering resolve. Sadly, the Bush White
House has ignored all of these prerequisites in its
use of carrots and sticks.
Needing A Deal
Bush’s political advisor Karl Rove has spun both
carrots and sticks into the web of campaign rhetoric
that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney spout with
increasing shrillness in the closing days of this
campaign. The emphasis is, to be sure, on the
pre-emptive use of muscular sticks in Iraq, but Rove
recognizes that growing numbers of American voters
know in their guts that it has been executed without
attention to the prerequisites. Instead, U.S. vision
has been clouded by neoconservative ideology; motives
have been tainted by the commercial interests of
Halliburton and countless security companies; signals
have been distorted by a succession of U.S. proconsuls
and their Iraqi stand-ins; and unwavering resolve has
become a stubborn, faith-driven certainty. But all of
those criticisms of the administration’s use of sticks
are well known, so let’s refocus on the flip side of
the "Bush Doctrine."
The carrots, as packaged by Rove, focus on the
supposed intimidation and conversion of Mu’ammar
Gadhafi, long considered the godfather of
international terrorism. Perhaps the only head of
state to call openly for the killing of Americans, his
record of condoning, supporting and perpetrating
terrorist acts all over the world is impeccable, if
that is an appropriate word. George Bush’s
predecessors used every tool in pursuing him:
commercial embargo, diplomatic rupture, international
isolation, judicial prosecution, and when all else
failed, the bombing of his Tripoli headquarters in
1986. The results of these sticks were mixed—and the
collateral damage very unfortunate—but America’s
vision, motives, signals and resolve had been clear
since the Reagan presidency.
After decades of acrimony and mistrust, President Bush
and his only staunch ally, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, suddenly heaped lavish praise on Gadhafi in
December of last year, making him the veritable poster
child of a "reformed rogue." The carrots were quick to
follow this unseemly—and in the event—overly hasty
rehabilitation.
Quid Pro Quo
Bush’s resumption of diplomatic contact opened the
door for our European allies to resume full diplomatic
relations with Gaddafi and to send their leaders on
state visits, including, within the last six months,
Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder, and Silvio Berlusconi
(twice). They were, of course, accompanied by CEO’s of
European oil companies, aircraft manufacturers, and,
since earlier this month, high tech arms salesmen.
Their U.S. counterparts were not far behind once Bush
lifted the economic sanctions that President Reagan
had used to signal that America could not be bought
with Libyan oil concessions and billion dollar
purchase contracts. No longer was it necessary for
U.S. companies to operate in Libya through the fiction
of foreign subsidiaries, as Halliburton had done for
18 years while incurring stiff fines for violations of
sanctions that Dick Cheney could not get lifted until
he became vice president.
With unrivaled chutzpah, Bush and Cheney endlessly
argue that these carrots were granted in exchange for
Gadhafi’s "renunciation of terrorism" in August 2003
and his "relinquishment of weapons of mass
destruction" (WMD) in December of that same year.
Within four months of accepting, on August 15, 2003,
Gadhafi’s artfully hedged renunciation of terror and
his halfhearted acceptance of responsibility for the
1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 (which killed 270 innocent
travelers, three-quarters of them American citizens),
the White House learned that Gadhafi had recently
launched his most brazen terrorist plot yet. In March
2003, Gadhafi had personally instructed and paid a
naturalized American citizen to enlist Al Qaeda-linked
Saudi jihadists to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince
Abdullah.
Had this been attempted—let alone accomplished—it
would have destabilized the entire Middle East, made
$50 oil look like a bargain, and denied the United
States desperately needed Saudi support in the war on
terrorism. Fortunately, the American participant,
Abdurahman Alamoudi, was detained at London’s Heathrow
Airport carrying an undeclared $340,000 (one million
Saudi rials) to Mecca as a down payment on the plot.
That fortuitous discovery occurred on Aug. 16,
2003—just one day after the Bush administration had
accepted Gadhafi’s "renunciation of terrorism."
Covering The Failure
Upon returning to the United States in September,
Alamoudi was arrested and charged with
terrorist-related activities. In the course of plea
bargaining, he provided sworn testimony about
Gadhafi’s personal involvement, testimony that was
fully corroborated by FBI interrogation of Libyan
intelligence operatives and Saudi jihadists who had
been captured in late November when the plot neared
fruition. Although the federal prosecutor and judge
(with the full support of Attorney General John
Ashcroft) used Alamoudi’s admission of involvement in
the terrorist assassination plot to sentence him two
weeks ago to 23 years for violating some routine
sanctions, he was not formally charged with terrorism.
The Bush administration’s decision not to pursue the
terrorist assassination plot prior to Tuesday’s
election strongly suggests that the deal that the
White House struck with Gadhafi last December went
beyond the admitted quid pro quos, to include immunity
from American prosecution for the plot to kill
Abdullah. Indeed, Gadhafi’s son and intended
successor, Saif-al-Islam, has told journalists that
his father has received assurances that the United
States "would not interfere with his continuation in
office," a formulation remarkably similar to that
which permitted him to remain in charge after his 1998
surrender of two low-level bombers of Pan Am 103 for
trial in The Hague. Because admission of such a deal
would have totally destroyed Bush’s claim to be
fighting terrorism on a worldwide basis, it was
decided not to prosecute Alamoudi to avoid having to
prosecute his co-conspirators, most notably Mu’ammar
Gadhafi.
Before leaving the subject of Gadhafi’s so-called
renunciation of terror, it should be noted that within
six months of its issuance, Libyan Prime Minister
Shruki Ghanem told the BBC that his country had paid
$2.7 billion to the victims solely to gain U.S.
concessions, not as a sincere acknowledgment of
responsibility. When this threatened to bring down the
Bush administration’s painstakingly constructed house
of cards, the Libyan press agency corrected the
record. But it is noteworthy that Ghanem was never
rebuked and remains prime minister to this day.
So what did Bush get for giving Gadhafi a "get out of
jail free card"? He obtained a pledge to cooperate on
WMD that is proving as hollow as his pledge to
renounce terrorism. Yes, he turned over some
centrifuge parts that had never been removed from
their crates plus an obsolete Chinese weapon design
found in a Karachi dry cleaner’s wrapper. But the only
deployable WMD was a large quantity of World War I era
mustard gas. This motley lot of equipment was hastily
shipped to the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory in
Tennessee, which Bush promptly visited for some
campaign footage. But the International Atomic Energy
Agency was largely disdainful of Libya’s so-called WMD
program.
Bush’s spinmeisters argue that even if Gadhafi gave up
little equipment of real value, he helped to unravel
Pakistan’s Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan’s smuggling network.
The trouble with that spin is that former CIA director
George Tennet revealed in a speech at Georgetown
University in February 2003 that British and American
intelligence had penetrated Khan’s network months
before Gadhafi’s Dec. 19th "renunciation." Having
seized the computer of the longtime British middleman
between Gadhafi and Khan in June 2003, the
intelligence agencies used its information to identify
the ship that would carry nuclear equipment from Dubai
to Tripoli and searched it in an Italian port in
September 2003. The timing of this interdiction not
only discredits Gadhafi’s claim of voluntary
cooperation, but it also raises questions about
assertions that Saif-al-Islam, Gadhafi’s son,
instituted negotiations over WMD just before the U.S.
invasion of Iraq. Although Dick Cheney, Richard Perle
and Eliot Abrams argued that the impending invasion of
Iraq intimidated Gadhafi into surrendering WMD, it
hardly gibes with the fact that the September parts
delivery was not canceled at that time. Nor is it
consistent with the fact that the assassination plot
was launched at precisely this time by summoning
Alamoudi to Tripoli on March 13, 2003, less than a
week prior to the invasion.
Finally, with respect to Gadhafi’s pledge of WMD
cooperation, it is noteworthy that Libyans profess
ignorance about the two most important questions that
U.S. counter-proliferation experts have: How did Libya
obtain a small quantity of highly enriched uranium and
where was a second shipment of centrifuge parts
diverted after the interdiction of the first? It is
virtually inconceivable that the Libyans do not know
the answers because, during the 1970s, Gadhafi
financed Dr. Khan’s quest for an "Islamic bomb," a
successful quest that became the basis for Khan’s
smuggling network. Gadhafi thus shares with Khan the
responsibility for facilitating the nuclear
achievements of Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.
Sheikh v. Cowboy
How then did Gadhafi win both rehabilitation and
immunity from George Bush when the White House knew
about the plot against Prince Abdullah and had
penetrated the Khan network? The answer lies in
Gadhafi’s extensive experience in Western electoral
maneuvering. He has long played a significant role in
European politics, providing campaign funds, awarding
lucrative contracts, suborning newspapers, and
covertly backing preferred candidates. This is not to
suggest that he has influenced U.S. campaigns with
equal impact. Rather, it appears that Gadhafi fully
recognized that Bush desperately needed to claim
success for the "Bush Doctrine" in the Middle East. It
was already clear by December 2003 that success was
unlikely to come in Iraq prior to our November 2004
election. Gadhafi thus offered Bush an opportunity "to
spin a Libyan silk purse out of an Iraqi sow’s ear."
As he attacks John Kerry’s alleged "flip-flopping,"
George Bush has consistently asserted the importance
of clear and consistent presidential signals to friend
and foe alike. Unfortunately, his signals do not pass
his own test.
Consider first those Libyans and other Arabs who seek
human rights, the rule of law, and some form of
representative government They view U.S. rapprochement
with Gadhafi simply as an extension of Washington’s
50-year record of bolstering repressive and corrupt
regimes in the region. This comes at a particularly
dangerous time as Bush has announced grandiose plans
for the entire Middle East. It is seen simply as a new
ploy in America’s grand plan to use dictatorial
regimes to serve short-term U.S. strategic interests.
Endangering America
The signal to would-be terrorists and those in the
Middle East whom we hope will oppose them is even more
dangerous. When President Bush used his January 20th
State of the Union address to tout Gadhafi’s pledge to
relinquish WMD as evidence that "Because of American
leadership and resolve, the world is changing for the
better," aspiring weapons proliferators knew better.
Similarly, when terrorists heard President Bush make
an unequivocal assertion that "Libya has turned its
back on terror" in an April 13th report to the
American people, they had only to listen to the
widespread Middle Eastern press coverage of the plot
against Prince Abdullah. And how do you think Abdullah
reacts when American officials demand greater
cooperation in hunting jihadists and shutting down
suspect charities?
Have Bush’s Libyan carrots met the prerequisite tests
any better than his Iraqi sticks? Sadly, the answer is
a resounding no. Vision has been clouded by
election-year political objectives; motives have been
distorted by the financial interests of oil companies
and personal injury lawyers who will get more than
$500 million of the payment to the Pan Am victims;
signals have been muddled by the misrepresentations of
Bush and Cheney; and a lack of resolve is proclaimed
by failure to prosecute the plotters against Prince
Abdullah.
That’s a heavy price to pay for a partisan election
gambit.
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