A Different Approach For The 2004 Campaign

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http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-05/29solomon.cfm
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ZNet Commentary
A Different Approach For The 2004 Campaign May 31, 2003
By Norman Solomon

Eighteen months from now, citizens will vote for president. If the 2004 campaign is anything like the last one, the election returns will mark the culmination of a depressing media spectacle.

For news watchers, the candidates and the coverage can be hard to take. Appearances on television are apt to become tedious, nauseating or worse. Campaign ads often push the limits of slick pandering. Journalists routinely seem fixated on "horseracing" the contest instead of reporting about the huge financial interests that candidates have served.

Media-driven campaigns now dominate every presidential race, badly skewed in favor of big money. And while millions of progressive-minded Americans are eager to have an impact on the political process, they often face what appears to be a choice between severe compromise and marginalization.

Remarkable transitions occur during presidential campaigns. People who are usually forthright can become evasive or even downright dishonest -- in public anyway -- when they declare themselves to be fervent supporters of a particular contender. Nuances and mixed assessments tend to go out the window.

Too often, "supporting" a candidate means lying about the candidate. Flaws rapidly disappear; virtues suddenly appear. Replicated at the grassroots, some kind of PR alchemy transforms longtime opportunists into profiles in courage and timeworn corporate flacks into champions of the common people.

This sort of dissembling was a big problem in 2000, when many left-leaning supporters of Al Gore ended up straining to portray the vice president as a steadfast foe of injustice. Under the perceived rules of the media game, they could not acknowledge Gore's sleazy aspects or the reality that he had done a lot to help move the nation's center of political gravity to the right. In countless media debates, Gore supporters tried to promote their standard-bearer as an implacable enemy of privilege -- notably unlike the actual candidate.

For a long time, many Democratic Party activists have privately bemoaned the party's subservience to corporate power while publicly extolling Democratic leaders as exemplary. The rationale for this schizoid behavior is that it's necessary for promoting a coherent media image.

There's at least one big problem: For millions of potential voters, that tactic just doesn't ring true. When they're invited to go along with a political line that lauds nominated hacks as visionaries, a lot of people would rather not vote -- or would much prefer to cast ballots for a small-party candidate who has no chance of winning but whose campaigners at least seem interested in being truthful and building an honest movement.

But what if progressive supporters of the Democratic presidential nominee tried something different next year? What if they resolved to be candid for all the world -- including all the news media -- to hear? The contrast would be striking.

Old mode: "Candidate X is an inspiring leader."

New mode: "Candidate X is rather phony, but compared to President Bush he's a knight in shining armor."

Old mode: "The record of Candidate X shows that he will return integrity to the White House."

New mode: "The record of Candidate X shows that he's a craven servant of corporate America. But I'm going to vote from him because George W. Bush is even worse."

Old mode: "Candidate X will bring balance to U.S. foreign policy."

New mode: "Candidate X is a deplorable militarist, but Bush is even more dangerous."

The new mode might sound a bit strange, even bizarre. But that ought to tell us something -- when candor seems weird and preposterous claims seem quite normal.

Such an approach could attract many progressives who want to end the Bush presidency but also want to be truthful in the process. For those who find the Democratic nominee to be odious but not as odious as George W. Bush, a new option would emerge -- what might be called "denunciatory support."

Candor during an election year may seem like a radical departure with hazy consequences. Admittedly, it's no guarantee of anything -- except more clarity and less obfuscation in American politics.

________________

Norman Solomon is co-author of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." For an excerpt and other information, go to: www.contextbooks.com/new.html

WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=410730

WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz
By David Usborne

30 May 2003

The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged.
The extraordinary admission comes in an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, in the July issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.

Mr Wolfowitz also discloses that there was one justification that was "almost unnoticed but huge". That was the prospect of the United States being able to withdraw all of its forces from Saudi Arabia once the threat of Saddam had been removed. Since the taking of Baghdad, Washington has said that it is taking its troops out of the kingdom. "Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to the door" towards making progress elsewhere in achieving Middle East peace, Mr Wolfowitz said. The presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia has been one of the main grievances of al-Qa'ida and other terrorist groups.

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Mr Wolfowitz tells the magazine.

The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell. They come to light, moreover, just two days after Mr Wolfowitz's immediate boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, conceded for the first time that the arms might never be found.

The failure to find a single example of the weapons that London and Washington said were inside Iraq only makes the embarrassment more acute. Voices are increasingly being raised in the US ­ and Britain ­ demanding an explanation for why nothing has been found.

Most striking is the fact that these latest remarks come from Mr Wolfowitz, recognised widely as the leader of the hawks' camp in Washington most responsible for urging President George Bush to use military might in Iraq. The magazine article reveals that Mr Wolfowitz was even pushing Mr Bush to attack Iraq immediately after the 11 September attacks in the US, instead of invading Afghanistan.

There have long been suspicions that Mr Wolfowitz has essentially been running a shadow administration out of his Pentagon office, ensuring that the right-wing views of himself and his followers find their way into the practice of American foreign policy. He is best known as the author of the policy of first-strike pre-emption in world affairs that was adopted by Mr Bush shortly after the al-Qa'ida attacks.

In asserting that weapons of mass destruction gave a rationale for attacking Iraq that was acceptable to everyone, Mr Wolfowitz was presumably referring in particular to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He was the last senior member of the administration to agree to the push earlier this year to persuade the rest of the world that removing Saddam by force was the only remaining viable option.

The conversion of Mr Powell was on full view in the UN Security Council in February when he made a forceful presentation of evidence that allegedly proved that Saddam was concealing weapons of mass destruction.

Critics of the administration and of the war will now want to know how convinced the Americans really were that the weapons existed in Iraq to the extent that was publicly stated. Questions are also multiplying as to the quality of the intelligence provided to the White House. Was it simply faulty ­ given that nothing has been found in Iraq ­ or was it influenced by the White House's fixation on the weapons issue? Or were the intelligence agencies telling the White House what it wanted to hear?

This week, Sam Nunn, a former senator, urged Congress to investigate whether the argument for war in Iraq was based on distorted intelligence. He raised the possibility that Mr Bush's policy against Saddam had influenced the intelligence that indicated Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.

This week, the CIA and the other American intelligence agencies have promised to conduct internal reviews of the quality of the material they supplied the administration on what was going on in Iraq. The heat on the White House was only made fiercer by Mr Rumsfeld's admission that nothing may now be found in Iraq to back up those earlier claims, if only because the Iraqis may have got rid of any evidence before the conflict.

"It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict," the Defence Secretary said.

* The US military said last night that it had released a suspected Iraqi war criminal by mistake. US Central Command said it was offering a $25,000 (315,000) reward for the capture of Mohammed Jawad An-Neifus, suspected of being involved in the murder of thousands of Iraqi Shia Muslims whose remains were found at a mass grave in Mahawil, southern Iraq, last month.

The alleged mobile weapons laboratories

As scepticism grows over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, London and Washington are attempting to turn the focus of attention to Iraq's alleged possession of mobile weapons labs.

A joint CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency report released this week claimed that two trucks found in northern Iraq last month were mobile labs used to develop biological weapons. The trucks were fitted with hi-tech laboratory equipment and the report said the discovery represented the "strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biowarfare programme".

The design of the vehicles made them "an ingeniously simple self-contained bioprocessing system". The report said no other purpose, for example water purification, medical laboratory or vaccine production, would justify such effort and expense.

But critics arenot convinced. No biological agents were found on the trucks and experts point out that, unlike the trucks described by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, in a speech to the UN Security Council, they were open sided and would therefore have left a trace easy for weapons inspectors to detect. One former UN inspector said that the trucks would have been a very inefficient way to produce anthrax.

Katherine Butler

This Week of Music

Ok, the little trend to veer away from politics for a bit has gotten out of control. This next week is filled with great music here in the Rogue Valley and I just have to rave about it. For my friends outside the valley, hopefully these fine musicians will play in your area soon. Keep them in mind!

Tonight (too late I know) - Karsh Kale and his Realize band will be playing at the Armory. Kale plays table and cooks up a wild dance music, very modern, electronic and imaginative. I'm there! http://www.karshkale.com/ http://www.oneworldseries.org/

Saturday 10, Kelly Joe Phelps at the Unitarian Center. Possibly the finest slide guitar out there! http://www.kellyjoephelps.com/ http://www.stclairevents.com/

Monday 12, David Lynn Grimes is playing at the Siskiyou Brew Pub in Ashland for a KSWild.org fundraiser. He's a folk singer and story teller, as well as an environmental activist. Alice DiMicele will be joining him! http://www.alicedimicele.com/ and http://www.kswild.org/

Tuesday 13, Dar Williams is playing at the Craterian in Medford. She's a sweet young folk singer. Very personal and wonderful. http://www.darwilliams.com/

Wednesday 14, Living Daylights at the Q's Music Hall in Ashland. Jazzy fusion trio. As good as it gets! http://www.livingdaylights.com/

Thursday 15, this is the big day. Wear your dancing shoes with extra socks. Taarka at the Siskiyou Brew Pub. Joanne Rand at the Standing Stone for a Headwaters fundraiser and the headliner of the night CHARLIE HUNTER QUINTET at Q's. This is phenomenal jazz. Hunter plays the 8 string guitar covering melodies and bass with what sounds like 4 hands. http://www.charliehunter.com/ http://www.headwaters.org/

Whew!

Hope to see you out and about, dancing and swaying, smiling and laughing!
John