Sidney Blumenthal

Ridicule and contempt

Sidney Blumenthal — 2006-05-05T05:45:00Z

The most scathing public critique of the Bush presidency and the complicity of a craven press corps was delivered at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday by a comedian. Bush was reported afterwards to be seething, while the press corps responded with stone-cold silence. In many of their reports of the event they airbrushed out the joker.

Stephen Colbert performed within 10 yards of Bush's hostile stare and before 2,600 members of the press and their guests. After his mock praise of Bush as a rock against reality, Colbert censured the press by flattering its misfeasance. "Over the last five years you people were so good - over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out ... Here's how it works: the president makes decisions ... The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spellcheck and go home ... Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!". (...)

- / Comment is free

White House Snow job

Sidney Blumenthal — 2006-04-27T01:03:00Z

The hiring of Tony Snow, the former Fox News anchor and talk show host, as White House press secretary is an attempt to put a human face on a damaged administration at war with the press. Unlike President Bush's previous press secretaries, Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, Snow has no history with George W Bush, or, perhaps as important, no relationship with Karl Rove, "The Architect," Bush's chief political aide who reigns supreme over the communications operation. (...) - / Comment is free

Walking the White House plank

Sidney Blumenthal — 2006-04-19T18:22:00Z

The resignation of the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, is an event of almost complete insignificance except insofar as the beleaguered White House presents it as an important change. Meanwhile, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, under siege from dissenting ex-generals demanding his firing for arrogant incompetence, stays.

McClellan is a flea on the windshield of history. On the podium, he performed his duty as a slow-flying object swatted by a frustrated and flustered press corps. Inexpressive, occasionally inarticulate and displaying a limited vocabulary, his virtue was his unwavering discipline in sticking to his uninformative talking points, fending off pesky reporters, and defending the president and all the president's men to the last full measure of his devotion. Inside the Bush White House, he was a non-player, a factotum, the instrument of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist and deputy chief of staff. McClellan played no part in the inner councils of state. He was the blank wall erected in front of the press to obstruct them from seeing what was on the other side. McClellan's stoic façade was unmatched by a stoic interior. He was a vessel for his masters, did whatever he was told, put out disinformation without objection, and was willing to defend any travesty. He is the ultimate dispensable man. (...)

- / Comment is free

The tethered goat strategy

Sidney Blumenthal — 2006-04-06T23:14:00Z

Since the Iraqi elections in January, US foreign service officers at the Baghdad embassy have been writing a steady stream of disturbing cables describing drastically worsening conditions. Violence from incipient communal civil war is rapidly rising. Last month there were eight times as many assassinations committed by Shia militias as terrorist murders by Sunni insurgents. The insurgency, according to the reports, also continues to mutate. Meanwhile, President Bush's strategy of training Iraqi police and army to take over from coalition forces - "when they stand up, we'll stand down" - is perversely and portentously accelerating the strife. State department officials in the field are reporting that Shia militias use training as cover to infiltrate key positions. Thus the strategy to create institutions of order and security is fuelling civil war. (...) - / Guardian

I, DeLay

Sidney Blumenthal — 2006-04-04T20:37:43Z

The fall of Tom DeLay, the most powerful Republican leader in the Congress, creates a crisis for his party and the political machine he built.

The resignation of Tom DeLay is the crashing conclusion of his garish career but hardly the end of his legal troubles or the demise of the partisan political machine he constructed. The former majority leader of the House of Representatives has been the Republican strongman in the Congress, known as "The Hammer." As the party whip, he hung a bullwhip on his wall as a symbol of intimidation. The style of the former exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas was bullying and crude. He called the Environmental Protection Agency "the Gestapo," ran a smear operation out of his office that would have won the admiration of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and grabbed whatever he wanted as his right of lordship. When a meek restaurateur in a Capitol Hill steakhouse politely asked DeLay to put out his large cigar because of the city's no smoking law, DeLay bellowed, "I am the government!" And he was not wrong. (...)

- / Comment is free

The imprisoned president

Sidney Blumenthal — 2006-03-04T16:57:58Z

The delusions of heroism that trap George W Bush are reinforced by the culture of servility that surrounds him, says Sidney Blumenthal.

Republicans representative of their permanent establishment have recently and quietly sent emissaries to President Bush, like diplomats to a foreign ruler isolated in his forbidden city, to probe whether he could be persuaded to become politically flexible. These ambassadors were not connected to the elder Bush or his closest associate, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, who was purged in 2005 from the president's foreign intelligence advisory board and scorned by the current president.

Scowcroft privately tells friends who ask if he could somehow help that Bush would never turn to him for advice. So, in one case, a Republican wise man, a prominent lawyer in Washington who had served in the Reagan White House, sought no appointments or favours and was thought to be unthreatening to Bush, gained an audience with him. In a gentle tone, he explained that many presidents had difficult second terms, but that by adapting their approaches they ended successfully, as President Reagan had. (...)

[March 3, 2006]

- / openDemocracy

Hail to the New chief

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-12-15T14:05:00Z

At the low point of his presidency, after a disastrous first year of his second term, his domestic programmes out of favour, his foreign policy out of strategy, George Bush has at last attracted an imitator. David Cameron, 39, the new leader of the Conservative party, a fresh face without wear and tear, unabashedly claims to personify the future. He seems to embrace aspects of Blair's policies, so as to present himself as Blairite without the burdens of having been Blair: a "reformer" without a past. His implied promise is to conserve Blair's achievements and continue some version of their logic, while casting doubt on the commitment of Blair's rivals and critics within his party. Cameron is New Labour without Labour, just New. But the strategy is not new; it is adapted from the playbook of Bush's 2000 campaign.

Bush confronted a popular two-term Democratic president credited with peace and prosperity. Clinton's vice president was his natural successor. Republican positions on domestic policy were almost uniformly unpopular. (...)

[page 31 | Comment & Debate]

- / Guardian

Bin Laden's little helper

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-09-30T11:30:00Z

President Bush has no adviser more loyal and less self-serving than Karen Hughes. As governor of Texas, he trusted the former Dallas television reporter-turned-press secretary with the tending of his image and words. She was mother hen of his persona. In the White House, Hughes devoted heart and soul to Bush as his communications director until, suddenly, she returned home to Texas in 2002, citing her son's homesickness. There were reports that Karl Rove, jealous of power, had been sniping at her.

From her exile, Hughes produced Ten Minutes from Normal, a deeply uninteresting and unrevealing memoir. Long stretches of uninformative banality are broken by unselfconscious expressions of religiosity - accounts of how she inserted Psalms 23 and 27 into Bush's speeches after 9/11, the entire sermon she delivered aboard Air Force One on Palm Sunday. Hughes quotes the then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice: "I think Karen missed her calling. She can preach." (...)

[page 32 | Comment & Debate]

- / Guardian

Questioning the President

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-08-26T01:06:00Z

A servile Congress has let Bush go on permanent vacation. But with US security hanging in the balance, it's time to ask the hard-hitting questions.

President Bush took a brief break this week from his monthlong vacation to deliver speeches in Utah and Idaho calling for staying the course in Iraq. Because American soldiers have died there, we must continue. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for," Bush said in Salt Lake City on Monday.

He moved his vacationing in between to the Tamarack Resort in Donnelly, Idaho, where he made a short statement to the traveling White House press corps. He described the drafting of the Iraqi constitution as an "amazing event" in its guarantees of democracy and women's rights, and compared its deliberations to those at the Philadelphia convention that gave rise to the U.S. Constitution. "We had a little trouble with our own conventions writing a constitution," he said. Then he took a few questions. (...)

- / t r u t h o u t

Bush's unhappy holidays

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-08-18T11:25:00Z

Home on the range more than the deer and the antelope play. Near a drainage ditch by the road leading to Prairie Chapel, President Bush's Texas ranch, the mother of a dead soldier has pitched a tent. Cindy Sheehan has refused to leave until she is granted an audience with the president. Her son, 24-year-old Army Spc Casey Sheehan, a Humvee mechanic, was killed in Baghdad's Sadr City on April 4 2004, and she calls her makeshift vigil in memorial "Camp Casey".

Her previous meeting with Bush has only impelled her to seek the satisfaction of another one. "He didn't even know Casey's name. Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject."

Bush has sent out emissaries, including his national security adviser Stephen Hadley, to reason with her, but she remains adamant. Her emotional drama and outspoken opposition to the Iraq war have become daily news. Every twist in her standoff provides grist for expanded coverage. (...)

[page 25 | Comment]

- / Guardian

Above the rule of law

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-08-05T12:44:00Z

Britain should avoid any compromise with the dirty war that the Bush administration is waging against terrorism

Almost every significant aspect of the investigation to bring the London terrorists to justice is the opposite of Bush's "war on terrorism". From the leading role of Scotland Yard to the close cooperation with police, the British effort is at odds with the US operation directed by the Pentagon.

Just months before the London bombings, upon visiting the Guantánamo prison, British counter-terrorism officials were startled that they did not meet with legal authorities, but only military personnel; they were also disturbed to learn that the information they gathered from the CIA was unknown to the FBI counter-terrorism team and that the British were the only channel between them. The British discovered that the New York City Police Department's counter-terrorism unit was more synchronised with its methods and aims than the US government was. (...)

[page 23 | Comment]

- / Guardian

Selling the War

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-07-29T00:01:00Z

When your mission is failing, is it enough simply to rename it? Not if you care about credibility.

Never before has a president suddenly discarded his self-proclaimed "mission." But after declaring himself the commander in chief in the "global war on terror," President Bush has tossed the catchphrase aside in an elusive search for a new one. The "global war on terror" was his slogan to link the war in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq, the battle supposedly being one and the same. The quest for a new slogan is more than a public relations gesture. It reflects not only the failure but also the vacuum of his strategy.

Since Bush's speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., on June 28, for which the White House asked for and received national television coverage, and in which Bush reaffirmed "fighting the global war on terrorism," mentioned "terror" or "terrorism" 23 more times, and compared this "global war on terrorism" with the Civil War and World War II, his administration has simply dropped the words that more than any others Bush has identified as the reason for his presidency.

Throughout July, administration officials have substituted new words for the old. Instead of trumpeting the "global war on terrorism," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have sounded the call to "a global struggle against violent extremism." Medals have been awarded to brave U.S. soldiers stamped "Global War on Terror." Will new medals now be minted? (...)

- / t r u t h o u t

Democracy was only an afterthought

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-07-21T19:30:00Z

On the day of the London bombings, President Bush proclaimed: "The war on terror goes on." Through the 2004 campaign, his winning theme was terror. He achieved the logic of a unified field theory connecting Iraq to Afghanistan by threading terror through both, despite the absence of evidence. He insisted that if we didn't fight the terrorists there, we would be fighting them at home. In January, the CIA's thinktank, the National Intelligence Council, issued a report describing Iraq as the magnet and training and recruiting ground for terrorism. The false rationale for the invasion had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With his popularity flagging, Bush returned to the formulations that succeeded in his campaign. (...)

[page 26 | Comment]

- / Guardian

Rove's War

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-07-15T01:44:00Z

Bush's right-hand man is dispatching his troops to smear Joe Wilson — and save himself. He may win in Washington, but the special prosecutor will have the last word.

This is Karl Rove's war. From his command post next to the Oval Office in the West Wing of the White House, he is furiously directing the order of battle. The Republican National Committee lobs its talking points across Washington, its chairman forays the no-man's-land of CNN. Rove's lawyer, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial board are sent over the top. Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay man the ramparts, defending Rove's character. (...)

- / t r u t h o u t

The enemy within

Sidney Blumenthal — 2005-03-10T13:29:00Z

In the heat of the battle over the Florida vote after the 2000 US presidential election, a burly, mustachioed man burst into the room where the ballots for Miami-Dade County were being tabulated, like John Wayne barging into a saloon for a shoot-out. "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count," drawled John Bolton. And those ballots from Miami-Dade were not counted.

Now that same John Bolton has been named by President Bush as the US ambassador to the UN. "If I were redoing the security council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world," Bolton once said. Lately, as undersecretary of state for arms control, he has wrecked all the nonproliferation diplomacy within his reach. Over the past two decades he has been the person most dedicated to trying to discredit the UN. George Orwell's clock of 1984 is striking 13. (...)

- / Guardian