Reality on the Ballot

[Guest guest]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/090404.html

 

Reality on the Ballot

 

By Robert Parry

September 4, 2004

 

Election 2004 suddenly is not just about whether John

Kerry or George W. Bush will lead the United States

the next four years. It’s not even about which of the

candidates has better policies or is more competent.

 

This election has become a test of whether reality

still means anything to the American people, whether

this country has moved to essentially a new form of

government in which one side is free to lie about

everything while a paid “amen corner” of ideological

media drowns out any serious public debate.

 

For weeks now, George W. Bush’s campaign has been

radically testing the limits of how thoroughly one

party can lie, misrepresent and smear without paying

any price and indeed while reaping rewards in the

opinion polls. Bush personally capped off this binge

of dishonesty with his acceptance speech at the

Republican National Convention, continuing his pattern

of lying about how the war in Iraq began.

 

Before a national television audience, Bush repeated

his false account of the run-up to the Iraq War,

asserting he had no choice but to invade because

Saddam Hussein refused to disarm or to comply with

United Nations inspection demands. The reality is that

not only did Hussein say publicly – and apparently

accurately – that Iraq no longer possessed stockpiles

of banned weapons but he allowed U.N. inspectors into

Iraq in November 2002 and gave them free rein to

examine any site of their choosing.

 

As the saying goes, you can look it up. U.N. chief

inspector Hans Blix said he was encouraged by the

Iraqi cooperation as his inspectors checked out sites

designated as suspicious by Washington but found

nothing. According to Blix, the Bush administration

then forced the U.N. inspectors to leave in mid-March

2003 so the invasion could proceed.

 

“Although the inspection organization was now

operating at full strength and Iraq seemed determined

to give it prompt access everywhere, the United States

appeared as determined to replace our inspection force

with an invasion army,” Blix wrote in his book,

Disarming Iraq.

 

But that was not what Bush told the American people.

Bush rewrote the historical record to make his

invasion seem more reasonable. Bush said:

 

“We went to the United Nations Security Council, which

passed a unanimous resolution demanding the dictator

disarm, or face serious consequences. Leaders in the

Middle East urged him to comply. After more than a

decade of diplomacy, we gave Saddam Hussein another

chance, a final chance, to meet his responsibilities

to the civilized world. He again refused, and I faced

the kind of decision no president would ask for, but

must be prepared to make.”

 

Even though the people of the world lived through

those events less than a year and a half ago, Bush

sees no apparent risk in fabricating the history.

Indeed, he began revising the record within months of

the invasion and has not been challenged by the U.S.

press corps for his dishonesty. In July 2003, for

instance, Bush said about Hussein, “we gave him a

chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let

them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request,

we decided to remove him from power.”

 

Bush reiterated that war-justifying claim on Jan. 27,

2004, saying: “We went to the United Nations, of

course, and got an overwhelming resolution -- 1441 --

unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must

disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which

obviously meant the world felt he had such programs.

He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he

did not let us in.”

 

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spun the same

historical point in an op-ed article in the New York

Times on March 19, the war’s first anniversary. “In

September 2002, President Bush went to the United

Nations, which gave Iraq still another ‘final

opportunity’ to disarm and to prove it had done so,”

Rumsfeld wrote, adding that “Saddam Hussein passed up

that final opportunity” and then rejected a U.S.

ultimatum to flee. “Only then, after every peaceful

option had been exhausted, did the president and our

coalition partners order the liberation of Iraq,”

Rumsfeld wrote.

 

Brazen Lying

 

Beyond the brazen lying about the U.N. inspections,

Bush and Rumsfeld also ducked two other obvious

historical points: that the U.N. Security Council

refused to sanction the invasion (so the inspectors

would have more time to do their work) and that U.S.

forces failed to find any stockpiles of illegal

weapons in Iraq. The facts on the ground would seem to

lead to a logical conclusion that Iraq actually was in

compliance with the U.N. resolutions. Hussein’s

compliance might not have come willingly – previous

U.N. inspections and U.S. bombing raids in 1998

apparently destroyed many of the Iraqi weapons – but

it amounted to compliance nonetheless.

 

Still, what is almost as remarkable as Bush’s obvious

lie is the breathtaking arrogance with which it is

delivered. Bush and his advisers must have concluded

that they are free to say virtually anything – no

matter how false or misleading – without fear of

adverse consequences. Certainly, with the built-in

echo chamber of Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio, Rupert

Murdoch’s Fox News and Sun Myung Moon’s Washington

Times, Bush has reason for this confidence.

 

Bush’s lie about the run-up to war also doesn’t stand

alone. His campaign has peddled a string of dubious

and bogus assertions about Kerry’s record, including

claims that he voted for (name-any-number-of) tax

increases or that he opposed weapons systems (without

noting that leading Republicans, including former

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, also had considered

them obsolete or excessive).

 

Even more troubling, Republicans have smeared Kerry’s

war record, including raising unfounded questions

about whether he earned the Bronze Star that he won

for heroism and at least one of his three Purple

Hearts. A well-financed front group, called Swift Boat

Veterans for Truth, spearheaded these attacks with

assistance from operatives close to George W. Bush’s

campaign.

 

As these anti-Kerry veterans spun out their story,

much of the national press corps fell into line. CNN

competed with Fox News to promote the dubious claims

as serious news.

 

However, several major newspapers, including the New

York Times and the Los Angeles Times, examined the

historical record and exposed the group’s claims as

deceptive and contradictory. Many of the anti-Kerry

veterans were not in position to know what the

circumstances were on Kerry’s boat when he swung it

around and rushed back to pull Jim Rassmann, a Special

Forces soldier, out of the water. Rassmann has said

Kerry’s boat was taking small-arms fire, an account

that matches what others on board have said and what

the Navy’s contemporaneous records show.

 

The smears were particularly ugly because whatever

anyone thinks of Kerry, it was well-known that serving

as captain of a swift boat in the Mekong Delta was one

of the most hazardous assignments in Vietnam. The

casualty rate for those junior officers was

staggering. Anyone who captained one of those boats

into enemy territory demonstrated extraordinary

bravery, regardless of the details of any engagement.

 

But the conservative news media and mainstream

outlets, such as CNN, let themselves be used to

promote the dubious charges. The impact on Kerry’s

reputation has been devastating, sending him into

freefall in national polls.

 

Deniability

 

For his part, George W. Bush refused to specifically

denounce the attacks on Kerry, saying only that all

political advertising from independent groups should

be banned. In effect, Bush equated the dishonest swift

boat veterans’ attacks against Kerry's war record with

questions raised by some liberal groups about how Bush

slipped past better-qualified candidates to get a

position in the Texas Air National Guard and then

failed to fulfill even those duties.

 

Sinking to even a lower level, Republicans also

sneered at Kerry’s three Purple Hearts for Vietnam War

wounds, implying that he was a faker. Former

Republican Sen. Bob Dole suggested falsely that Kerry

had won two Purple Hearts on the same day and didn’t

even bleed, though Dole later issued a half-hearted

apology for his remarks.

 

As Bush stayed in the background maintaining his

“deniability,” his Republican allies continued to

hammer home the “theme” of Kerry’s supposed cowardice,

distributing band-aids with purple hearts at the

Republican National Convention. Republican delegates

wore these band-aids on their chins, cheeks and hands

as a way to mock Kerry’s wounds. The band-aids were

handed out by Morton Blackwell, who runs a Virginia

training school for Republicans called the Leadership

Institute.

 

Blackwell honed some of his own propaganda skills as a

special assistant for public liaison for President

Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Blackwell participated in

“public diplomacy” or “perception management”

operations that were designed to sell the American

people on the need to support hard-line rightist

regimes in Central America to crush leftist

insurgencies.

 

In one of those Reagan-Bush propaganda operations, the

White House warned that if leftist rebels gained power

in Central America, the United States would be flooded

with “feet people,” hundreds of thousands of Central

American refugees. The effectiveness of this “theme” –

playing on the racial and ethnic fears of white

Americans in the Southwest – had been tested by

Reagan’s pollster Richard Wirthlin. Although the

argument was dubious since Central Americans already

were fleeing into the United States to escape the

violence inflicted by the region’s brutal right-wing

security forces, Reagan added his voice to the

“feet-people” theme in a White House speech.

 

Blackwell also understood the value of the emotional

“feet-people”argument. “We may be in a no-lose

situation,” he said at the time. “If the president’s

opponents succeed in Congress” in blocking Reagan’s

Central America military funding, “the refugees are

coming – and the public will hold [the Democrats]

accountable.”

 

Selective Editing

 

In some ways, the second ad produced by the anti-Kerry

Swift Boat veterans may be even more troubling than

the first because of what it portends for the future

of a meaningful American democracy. In the second ad,

the anti-Kerry veterans cropped Kerry’s 1971 testimony

when he appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against

the War. The selective editing made it appear that

Kerry was accusing veterans of committing atrocities

in Vietnam.

 

“They personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads,”

the clip of Kerry’s testimony says as one of the

anti-Kerry veterans intones, “The accusations that

John Kerry made against the veterans who served in

Vietnam was just devastating.”

 

But what Kerry actually was doing was recounting

testimony given by Vietnam veterans at a conference

where some had confessed to committing atrocities.

Instead of accusing these veterans of committing these

acts, Kerry was simply relaying their testimony to the

senators. Anyone listening to this ad, however, would

have a completely false impression of what Kerry

meant. The ad is a very dirty trick.

 

Beyond the deception, there’s also the fact that

atrocities were committed in Vietnam. Massacres,

torture, rapes and mutilations occurred on all sides.

But it now appears that even a young man, who serves

in combat and returns to the United States, can’t

describe the brutal reality of war without

disqualifying himself for the Presidency. Only

patriotic platitudes are acceptable.

 

By ripping Kerry's quotes out of context and

effectively doctoring his meaning, the Republican

attack machine has demonstrated that it can destroy

the reputation of anyone who dares engage the American

people in anything like a meaningful debate. In

contrast, the machine's favored candidate can act as

irresponsibly as he wishes and have his behavior

protected.

 

Three Decades

 

The Republicans have been constructing this attack

machine for three decades. Initially, it was a

defensive reaction to Richard Nixon’s resignation over

the Watergate scandal. The goal was to build a network

of conservative media, think tanks and attack groups

to protect a future Republican from another Watergate

debacle.

 

But the senior George Bush was among the first to

recognize that this machinery could be used

offensively as well as defensively. This new

capability was unveiled in a national political

campaign in 1988 when Bush used it to take apart

Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Aided

by the emerging conservative news media, especially

Moon’s Washington Times, the Republicans questioned

Dukakis’s sanity and his patriotism.

 

For his part, George H.W. Bush implied that Dukakis

was un-American for belonging to the American Civil

Liberties Union and for vetoing a Massachusetts bill

that would have compelled public school students to

pledge the flag every day. In a foreshadowing of the

Swift Boat attacks on Kerry, an “independent” pro-Bush

group aired a racially provocative ad about a

convicted black murderer, Willie Horton, who raped a

white woman while on a Massachusetts prison furlough.

 

Since 1988, this conservative media machine has

continued to grow exponentially, creating a kind of

gravitational pull that has caused the mainstream news

media to drift to the Right, partly so journalists can

protect themselves from accusation of being “liberal.”

This combination of factors has left the Democrats

nearly defenseless when the Republicans unleash a

propaganda barrage during a campaign season.

 

At least until recently, the Democrats and liberals

failed to invest any significant sums in a similar

attack apparatus. Now, they are finding that their

belated recognition of the danger is too little, too

late.

 

Devastated

 

The smears against John Kerry’s patriotism, honesty

and courage have inflicted severe – possibly

irreversible – damage on his candidacy for president.

According to some polls, Bush has opened up a

double-digit lead. The national news media can be

expected to fill up the next several weeks with

commentary about how brilliantly Bush succeeded in

“defining” Kerry and how Kerry failed to respond

appropriately.

 

The larger danger, however, is that the United States

may not have another meaningful national election for

the foreseeable future. The Bush family and the

Republican attack machine may have gained the power to

effectively pick new presidents. Whoever stands in

their way will be destroyed. That can happen to

Republicans in the primaries, as Sen. John McCain

learned in 2000, but it will certainly occur to the

Democrats in the general election.

 

For their part, the Democrats can be expected to go

through the quadrennial process of looking for a

“perfect” candidate who will be impervious to the

Republican smears. But there is no such candidate.

There also may be no practical way for a majority of

the American people to see through the cleverly

designed attacks as they are amplified through the

conservative echo chamber, turning the target into a

national laughingstock, as Al Gore learned in 2000.

 

If that is indeed the case – and if these tactics

succeed in politically destroying John Kerry this fall

– the United States can be said to have succumbed to a

new form of government that will be democratic in name

only, with elections transformed into largely

ceremonial affairs for affirming the Republican choice

without meaningful consultation with the American

people about the best policies to pursue. The nation

is already dangerously far down that road.

 

Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra

stories for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the

1980s, has just completed a book entitled, Secrecy &

Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.