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This Is Change?

20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House

JEREMY SCAHILL / AlterNet 20nov2008

 

U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good.

Obama has a momentous opportunity to do what he repeatedly promised over the course of his campaign: bring actual change. But the more we learn about who Obama is considering for top positions in his administration, the more his inner circle resembles a staff reunion of President Bill Clinton's White House. Although Obama brought some progressives on board early in his campaign, his foreign policy team is now dominated by the hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990s. This has been particularly true since Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the Democratic primary, freeing many of her top advisors to join Obama's team.

"What happened to all this talk about change?" a member of the Clinton foreign policy team recently asked the Washington Post [article below]. "This isn't lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time."

Amid the euphoria over Obama's election and the end of the Bush era, it is critical to recall what 1990s U.S. foreign policy actually looked like. Bill Clinton's boiled down to a one-two punch from the hidden hand of the free market, backed up by the iron fist of U.S. militarism. Clinton took office and almost immediately bombed Iraq (ostensibly in retaliation for an alleged plot by Saddam Hussein to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush). He presided over a ruthless regime of economic sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and under the guise of the so-called No-Fly Zones in northern and southern Iraq, authorized the longest sustained U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam.

Under Clinton, Yugoslavia was bombed and dismantled as part of what Noam Chomsky described as the "New Military Humanism." Sudan and Afghanistan were attacked, Haiti was destabilized and "free trade" deals like the North America Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade radically escalated the spread of corporate-dominated globalization that hurt U.S. workers and devastated developing countries. Clinton accelerated the militarization of the so-called War on Drugs in Central and Latin America and supported privatization of U.S. military operations, giving lucrative contracts to Halliburton and other war contractors. Meanwhile, U.S. weapons sales to countries like Turkey and Indonesia aided genocidal campaigns against the Kurds and the East Timorese.

The prospect of Obama's foreign policy being, at least in part, an extension of the Clinton Doctrine is real. Even more disturbing, several of the individuals at the center of Obama's transition and emerging foreign policy teams were top players in creating and implementing foreign policies that would pave the way for projects eventually carried out under the Bush/Cheney administration. With their assistance, Obama has already charted out several hawkish stances. Among them:

Obama did not arrive at these positions in a vacuum. They were carefully crafted in consultation with his foreign policy team. While the verdict is still out on a few people, many members of his inner foreign policy circle -- including some who have received or are bound to receive Cabinet posts -- supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Some promoted the myth that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. A few have worked with the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, [Outside link] whose radical agenda was adopted by the Bush/Cheney administration. And most have proven track records of supporting or implementing militaristic, offensive U.S. foreign policy. "After a masterful campaign, Barack Obama seems headed toward some fateful mistakes as he assembles his administration by heeding the advice of Washington's Democratic insider community, a collective group that represents little 'change you can believe in,'" notes veteran journalist Robert Parry, the former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter who broke many of the stories in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

As news breaks and speculation abounds about cabinet appointments, here are 20 people to watch as Obama builds the team who will shape U.S. foreign policy for at least four years:

Joe Biden

There was no stronger sign that Obama's foreign policy would follow the hawkish tradition of the Democratic foreign policy establishment than his selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. Much has been written on Biden's tenure as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but his role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq stands out. Biden is not just one more Democratic lawmaker who now calls his vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq "mistaken;" Biden was actually an important facilitator of the war.

In the summer of 2002, when the United States was "debating" a potential attack on Iraq, Biden presided over hearings whose ostensible purpose was to weigh all existing options. But instead of calling on experts whose testimony could challenge the case for war -- Iraq's alleged WMD possession and its supposed ties to al-Qaida -- Biden's hearings treated the invasion as a foregone conclusion. His refusal to call on two individuals in particular ensured that testimony that could have proven invaluable to an actual debate was never heard: Former Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Hans von Sponeck, a 32-year veteran diplomat and the former head of the U.N.'s Iraq program.

Both men say they made it clear to Biden's office that they were ready and willing to testify; Ritter knew more about the dismantling of Iraq's WMD program than perhaps any other U.S. citizen and would have been in prime position to debunk the misinformation and outright lies being peddled by the White House. Meanwhile, von Sponeck had just returned from Iraq, where he had observed Ansar al Islam rebels in the north of Iraq -- the so-called al-Qaida connection -- and could have testified that, rather than colluding with Saddam's regime, they were in a battle against it. Moreover, he would have pointed out that they were operating in the U.S.-enforced safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan. "Evidence of al-Qaida/lraq collaboration does not exist, neither in the training of operatives nor in support to Ansar-al-Islam," von Sponeck wrote in an Op-Ed [article below] published shortly before the July 2002 hearings. "The U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA know perfectly well that today's Iraq poses no threat to anyone in the region, let alone in the United States. To argue otherwise is dishonest."

With both men barred from testifying, rather than eliciting an array of informed opinions, Biden's committee whitewashed Bush's lies and helped lead the country to war. Biden himself promoted the administration's false claims that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, declaring on the Senate floor, "[Saddam Hussein] possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking nuclear weapons."

With the war underway, Biden was then the genius who passionately promoted the ridiculous plan to partition Iraq into three areas based on religion and ethnicity, attempting to Balkanize one of the strongest Arab states in the world.

"He's a part of the old Democratic establishment," says retired Army Col. Ann Wright, the State Department diplomat who reopened the U.S. embassy in Kabul in 2002. Biden, she says, has "had a long history with foreign affairs, [but] it's not the type of foreign affairs that I want."

Rahm Emanuel

Obama's appointment of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff is a clear sign that Clinton-era neoliberal hawks will be well-represented at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A former senior Clinton advisor, Emanuel is a hard-line supporter of Israel's "targeted assassination" policy and actually volunteered to work with the Israeli Army during the 1991 Gulf War. He is close to the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council and was the only member of the Illinois Democratic delegation in the Congress to vote for the invasion of Iraq. Unlike many of his colleagues, Emanuel still defends his vote. As chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, Emanuel promoted the campaigns of 22 candidates, only one of who supported a swift withdrawal from Iraq, and denied crucial Party funding to anti-war candidates. "As for Iraq policy, at the right time, we will have a position," he said in December 2005. As Philip Giraldi recently pointed out on Antiwar.com  [article below], Emanuel "advocates increasing the size of the U.S. Army by 100,000 soldiers and creating a domestic spying organization like Britain's MI5. More recently, he has supported mandatory paramilitary national service for all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25."

While Obama has at times been critical of Clinton-era free trade agreements, Emanuel was one of the key people in the Clinton White House who brokered the successful passage of NAFTA.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

For all the buzz and speculation about the possibility that Sen. Clinton may be named Secretary of State, most media coverage has focused on her rivalry with Obama during the primary, along with the prospect of her husband having to face the intense personal, financial and political vetting process required to secure a job in the new administration. But the question of how Clinton would lead the operations at Foggy Bottom calls for scrutiny of her positions vis-a-vis Obama's stated foreign-policy goals.

Clinton was an ardent defender of her husband's economic and military war against Iraq throughout the 1990s, including the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which ultimately laid the path for President George W. Bush's invasion. Later, as a U.S. senator, she not only voted to authorize the war, but aided the Bush administration's propaganda campaign in the lead-up to the invasion. "Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his nuclear program," Clinton said when rising to support the measure in October 2002. "He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members … I want to insure that Saddam Hussein makes no mistake about our national unity and for our support for the president's efforts to wage America's war against terrorists and weapons of mass destruction."

"The man who vowed to deliver us from 28 years of Bushes and Clintons has been stocking up on Clintonites," New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently wrote [Article Below]. "How, one may ask, can he put Hillary -- who voted to authorize the Iraq war without even reading the intelligence assessment -- in charge of patching up a foreign policy and a world riven by that war?"

Beyond Iraq, Clinton shocked many and sparked official protests by Tehran at the United Nations when asked during the presidential campaign what she would do as president if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," she declared. [Article Below]  "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Clinton has not shied away from supporting offensive foreign policy tactics in the past. Recalling her husband's weighing the decision of whether to attack Yugoslavia, she said in 1999, "I urged him to bomb. … You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?"

Madeleine Albright

While Obama's house is flush with Clintonian officials like former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Defense Secretary William Perry, Director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning Greg Craig (who was officially named Obama's White House Counsel) and Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, perhaps most influential is Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State and U.N. ambassador. Albright recently served as a proxy for Obama, representing him at the G-20 summit earlier this month. Whether or not she is awarded an official role in the administration, Albright will be a major force in shaping Obama's foreign policy.

"It will take time to convince skeptics that the promotion of democracy is not a mask for imperialism or a recipe for the kind of chaos we have seen in the Persian Gulf," Albright recently wrote [Article Below]. "And it will take time to establish the right identity for America in a world that has grown suspicious of all who claim a monopoly on virtue and that has become reluctant to follow the lead of any one country."

Albright should know. She was one of the key architects in the dismantling of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. In the lead-up to the 1999 "Kosovo war," she oversaw the U.S. attempt to coerce the Yugoslav government to deny its own sovereignty in return for not being bombed. Albright demanded that the Yugoslav government sign a document that would have been unacceptable to any sovereign nation. Known as the Rambouillet Accord, it included a provision that would have guaranteed U.S. and NATO forces "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout" all of Yugoslavia -- not just Kosovo -- while also seeking to immunize those occupation forces "from any form of arrest, investigation or detention by the authorities in [Yugoslavia]." Moreover, it would have granted the occupiers "the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment." Similar to Bush's Iraq plan years later, the Rambouillet Accord mandated that the economy of Kosovo "shall function in accordance with free-market principles."

When Yugoslavia refused to sign the document, Albright and others in the Clinton administration unleashed the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia, which targeted civilian infrastructure. (Prior to the attack, Albright said the U.S. government felt "the Serbs need a little bombing.") She and the Clinton administration also supported the rise to power in Kosovo of a terrorist mafia that carried out its own ethnic-cleansing campaign against the province's minorities.

Perhaps Albright's most notorious moment came with her enthusiastic support of the economic war against the civilian population of Iraq. When confronted by Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” that the sanctions were responsible for the deaths of "a half-million children … more children than died in Hiroshima," Albright responded, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." (While defending the policy, Albright later called her choice of words "a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong.")

Richard Holbrooke

Like Albright, Holbrooke will have major sway over U.S. policy, whether or not he gets an official job. A career diplomat since the Vietnam War, Holbrooke's most recent government post was as President Clinton's ambassador to the U.N. Among the many violent policies he helped implement and enforce was the U.S.-backed Indonesian genocide in East Timor. Holbrooke was an Assistant Secretary of State in the late 1970s at the height of the slaughter and was the point man on East Timor for the Carter Administration.

According to Brad Simpson, director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, "It was Holbrooke and Zbigniew Brzezinski [another top Obama advisor], both now leading lights in the Democratic Party, who played point in trying to frustrate the efforts of congressional human-rights activists to try and condition or stop U.S. military assistance to Indonesia, and in fact accelerated the flow of weapons to Indonesia at the height of the genocide."

Holbrooke, too, was a major player in the dismantling of Yugoslavia and praised the bombing of Serb Television, which killed 16 media workers, as a significant victory. (The man who ordered that bombing, now-retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, is another Obama foreign policy insider who could end up in his cabinet. While Clark is known for being relatively progressive on social issues, as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, he ordered bombings and attacks that Amnesty International labeled war crimes.)

Like many in Obama's foreign policy circle, Holbrooke also supported the Iraq war. In early 2003, shortly after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the UN, where he presented the administration's fraud-laden case for war to the UN (a speech Powell has since called a "blot" on his reputation), Holbrooke said: "It was a masterful job of diplomacy by Colin Powell and his colleagues, and it does not require a second vote to go to war. … Saddam is the most dangerous government leader in the world today, he poses a threat to the region, he could pose a larger threat if he got weapons of mass destruction deployed, and we have a legitimate right to take action."

Dennis Ross

Middle East envoy for both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Ross was one of the primary authors [Article Below] of Obama's aforementioned speech before AIPAC this summer. He cut his teeth working under famed neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon in the 1970s and worked closely with the Project for the New American Century. Ross has been a staunch supporter of Israel and has fanned the flames for a more hostile stance toward Iran. As the lead U.S. negotiator between Israel and numerous Arab nations under Clinton, Ross' team acted, in the words of one U.S. official who worked under him, as "Israel's lawyer." [Article Below]

"The 'no surprises' policy, under which we had to run everything by Israel first, stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking," wrote U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller in 2005. "If we couldn't put proposals on the table without checking with the Israelis first, and refused to push back when they said no, how effective could our mediation be? Far too often, particularly when it came to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, our departure point was not what was needed to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides but what would pass with only one -- Israel." After the Clinton White House, Ross worked for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy [Outside Link], a hawkish pro-Israel think tank, and for FOX News, where he repeatedly pressed for war against Iraq.

Martin Indyk

Founder of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Indyk spent years working for AIPAC and served as Clinton's ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, while also playing a major role in developing U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran. In addition to his work for the U.S. government, he has worked for the Israeli government and with PNAC.

"Barack Obama has painted himself into a corner by appealing to the most hard-line, pro-Israel elements in this country," Ali Abunimah, founder of ElectronicInifada.net [Outside Link], recently told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, describing Indyk and Dennis Ross as "two of the most pro-Israel officials from the Clinton era, who are totally distrusted by Palestinians and others across the Middle East, because they're seen as lifelong advocates for Israeli positions."

Anthony Lake

Clinton's former National Security Advisor was an early supporter of Obama and one of the few top Clintonites to initially back the president-elect. Lake began his foreign policy work in the U.S. Foreign Service during Vietnam, working with Henry Kissinger on the "September Group," a secret team tasked with developing a military strategy to deliver a "savage, decisive blow against North Vietnam."

Decades later, after working for various administrations, Lake "was the main force behind the U.S. invasion of Haiti in the mid-Clinton years," according to veteran journalist Allan Nairn, whose groundbreaking reporting revealed U.S. support for Haitian death squads in the 1990s. "They brought back Aristide essentially in political chains, pledged to support a World Bank/IMF overhaul of the economy, which resulted in an increase in malnutrition deaths among Haitians, and set the stage for the current ongoing political disaster in Haiti." Clinton nominated Lake as CIA Director, but he failed to win Senate confirmation.

Lee Hamilton

Hamilton is a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was co-chairman of both the Iraq Study Group and 9/11 Commission. Robert Parry, who has covered Hamilton's career extensively, recently ran a piece on Consortium News [Article Below] that characterized him this way: "Whenever the Republicans have a touchy national-security scandal to put to rest, their favorite Democratic investigator is Lee Hamilton. … Hamilton's carefully honed skill for balancing truth against political comity has elevated him to the status of a Washington Wise Man."

Susan Rice

Former Assistant Secretary of Sate Susan Rice, who served on Bill Clinton's National Security Council, is a potential candidate for the post of ambassador to the U.N. or as a deputy national security advisor. She, too, promoted the myth that Saddam had WMDs. "It's clear that Iraq poses a major threat," she said in 2002. "It's clear that its weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that's the path we're on." (After the invasion, discussing Saddam's alleged possession of WMDs, she said, "I don't think many informed people doubted that.")

Rice has also been a passionate advocate for a U.S. military attack against Sudan over the Darfur crisis. In an op-ed co-authored with Anthony Lake, she wrote, "The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan's oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy -- by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing."

John Brennan

A longtime CIA official and former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Brennan is one of the coordinators of Obama's intelligence transition team and a top contender for either CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence. He was also recently described by Glenn Greenwald [Article Below] as "an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity." While claiming to oppose waterboarding, labeling it "inconsistent with American values" and "something that should be prohibited," Brennan has simultaneously praised the results achieved by "enhanced interrogation" techniques. "There has been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has, in fact, used against the real hard-core terrorists," Brennan said in a 2007 interview. "It has saved lives. And let's not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the death of 3,000 innocents."

Brennan has described the CIA's extraordinary rendition program -- the government-run kidnap-and-torture program enacted under Clinton -- as an absolutely vital tool. "I have been intimately familiar now over the past decade with the cases of rendition that the U.S. Government has been involved in," he said in a December 2005 interview. "And I can say without a doubt that it has been very successful as far as producing intelligence that has saved lives."

Brennan is currently the head of Analysis Corporation, a private intelligence company that was recently implicated [Article Below] in the breach of Obama and Sen. John McCain's passport records. He is also the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) [Outside Link], a trade association of private intelligence contractors who have dramatically increased their role in sensitive U.S. national security operations. (Current Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is former chairman of the INSA.)

Jami Miscik

Miscik, who works alongside Brennan on Obama's transitional team, was the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. She was one of the key officials responsible for sidelining intel that contradicted the official line on WMD, while promoting intel that backed it up.

"When the administration insisted on an intelligence assessment of Saddam Hussein's relationship to al-Qaida, Miscik blocked the skeptics (who were later vindicated) within the CIA's Mideast analytical directorate and instructed the less-skeptical counterterrorism analysts to 'stretch to the maximum the evidence you had,' " journalist Spencer Ackerman recently wrote in the Washington Independent [Article Below]. "It's hard to think of a more egregious case of sacrificing sound intelligence analysis in order to accommodate the strategic fantasies of an administration. … The idea that Miscik is helping staff Obama's top intelligence picks is most certainly not change we can believe in." What's more, she went on to a lucrative post as the Global Head of Sovereign Risk for the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers.

John Kerry and Bill Richardson

Both Sen. Kerry and Gov. Richardson have been identified as possible contenders for Secretary of State. While neither is likely to be as hawkish as Hillary Clinton, both have taken pro-war positions. Kerry promoted the WMD lie and voted to invade Iraq. "Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try?" Kerry asked on the Senate floor in October 2002. "According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons … Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents."

Richardson, whose Iraq plan during his 2008 presidential campaign was more progressive and far-reaching than Obama's, served as Bill Clinton's ambassador to the UN. In this capacity, he supported Clinton's December 1998 bombing of Baghdad and the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq. "We think this man is a threat to the international community, and he threatens a lot of the neighbors in his region and future generations there with anthrax and VX," Richardson told an interviewer in February 1998.

While Clinton's Secretary of Energy, Richardson publicly named Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, as a target in an espionage investigation. Lee was accused of passing nuclear secrets to the Chinese government. Lee was later cleared of those charges and won a settlement against the U.S. government.

Robert Gates

Washington consensus is that Obama will likely keep Robert Gates, George W. Bush's Defense Secretary, as his own Secretary of Defense. While Gates has occasionally proved to be a stark contrast to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he would hardly represent a break from the policies of the Bush administration. Quite the opposite; according to the Washington Post, in the interest of a "smooth transition," Gates "has ordered hundreds of political appointees at the Pentagon canvassed to see whether they wish to stay on in the new administration, has streamlined policy briefings and has set up suites for President-elect Barack Obama's transition team just down the hall from his own E-ring office." The Post reports that Gates could stay on for a brief period and then be replaced by Richard Danzig, who was Clinton's Secretary of the Navy. Other names currently being tossed around are Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (a critic of the Iraq occupation) and Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, who served alongside Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Ivo H. Daalder

Daalder was National Security Council Director for European Affairs under President Clinton. Like other Obama advisors, he has worked with the Project for the New American Century and signed a 2005 letter from PNAC to Congressional leaders, calling for an increase in U.S. ground troops in Iraq and beyond.

Sarah Sewall

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance during the Clinton administration, Sewall served as a top advisor to Obama during the campaign and is almost certain to be selected for a post in his administration. In 2007, Sewall worked with the U.S. military and Army Gen. David Petraeus, writing the introduction to the University of Chicago edition of the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. She was criticized for this collaboration by Tom Hayden, who wrote, "the Petraeus plan draws intellectual legitimacy from Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, whose director, Sarah Sewall, proudly embraces an 'unprecedented collaboration [as] a human rights center partnered with the armed forces.'”

"Humanitarians often avoid wading into the conduct of war for fear of becoming complicit in its purpose," she wrote in the introduction. "'The field manual requires engagement precisely from those who fear that its words lack meaning."

Michele Flournoy

Flournoy and former Clinton Deputy Defense Secretary John White are co-heading Obama's defense transition team. Flournoy was a senior Clinton appointee at the Pentagon. She currently runs the Center for a New American Security, a center-right think-tank. There is speculation that Obama could eventually name her as the first woman to serve as defense secretary. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported: "While at CNAS, Flournoy helped to write a report that called for reducing the open-ended American military commitment in Iraq and replacing it with a policy of 'conditional engagement' there. Significantly, the paper rejected the idea of withdrawing troops according to the sort of a fixed timeline that Obama espoused during the presidential campaign. Obama has in recent weeks signaled that he was willing to shelve the idea, bringing him more in line with Flournoy's thinking." Flournoy has also worked with the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.

Wendy Sherman and Tom Donilon

Currently employed at Madeline Albright's consulting firm, the Albright Group, Sherman worked under Albright at the State Department, coordinating U.S. policy on North Korea. She is now coordinating the State Department transition team for Obama. Tom Donilon, her co-coordinator, was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Chief of Staff at the State Department under Clinton. Interestingly, Sherman and Donilon both have ties to Fannie Mae that didn't make it onto their official bios on Obama's change.gov website. "Donilon was Fannie's general counsel and executive vice president for law and policy from 1999 until the spring of 2005, a period during which the company was rocked by accounting problems," reports the Wall Street Journal.

* * *

While many of the figures at the center of Obama's foreign policy team are well-known, two of its most important members have never held national elected office or a high-profile government position. While they cannot be characterized as Clinton-era hawks, it will be important to watch Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, co-coordinators of the Obama foreign policy team. From 2000 to 2005, McDonough served as foreign policy advisor to Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle and worked extensively on the use-of-force authorizations for the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which Daschle supported. From 1996 to 1999, McDonough was a professional staff member of the House International Relations Committee during the debate over the bombing of Yugoslavia. More recently, he was at the Center for American Progress working under John Podesta, Clinton's former chief of staff and the current head of the Obama transition.

Mark Lippert is a close personal friend of Obama's. He has worked for Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Democratic Policy Committee. He is a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve and spent a year in Iraq working intelligence for the Navy SEALs. "According to those who've worked closely with Lippert," Robert Dreyfuss recently wrote in The Nation, "he is a conservative, cautious centrist who often pulled Obama to the right on Iraq, Iran and the Middle East and who has been a consistent advocate for increased military spending. 'Even before Obama announced for the presidency, Lippert wanted Obama to be seen as tough on Iran,' says a lobbyist who's worked the Iran issue on Capitol Hill, 'He's clearly more hawkish than the senator.' "

* * *

Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to bring change to Washington. "I don't want to just end the war," he said early this year. "I want to end the mindset that got us into war." That is going to be very difficult if Obama employs a foreign policy team that was central to creating that mindset, before and during the presidency of George W. Bush.

"Twenty-three senators and 133 House members who voted against the war -- and countless other notable individuals who spoke out against it and the dubious claims leading to war -- are apparently not even being considered for these crucial positions," observes Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy. This includes dozens of former military and intelligence officials who spoke out forcefully against the war and continue to oppose militaristic policy, as well as credible national security experts who have articulated their visions for a foreign policy based on justice.

Obama does have a chance to change the mindset that got us into war. More significantly, he has a popular mandate to forcefully challenge the militaristic, hawkish tradition of modern U.S. foreign policy. But that work would begin by bringing on board people who would challenge this tradition, not those who have been complicit in creating it and are bound to continue advancing it.

Jeremy Scahill pledges to be the same journalist under an Obama administration that he was during Bill Clinton and George Bush's presidencies. He is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and is a frequent contributor to The Nation and Democracy Now! He is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.

source: 21nov2008

Clinton Among Top Picks For State

Richardson, Kerry Join Senator on Obama's Shortlist 

ANNE E. KORNBLUT & MICHAEL D. SHEAR / Washington Post 15nov2008

 

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is among the top contenders to become secretary of state in Barack Obama's administration, officials familiar with the selection process said, part of what appears to be an effort by the incoming president to reach out to former rivals and consider unexpected moves as he assembles his Cabinet.

Obama secretly met with his rival for the Democratic nomination in Chicago on Thursday night, and as news of the visit leaked it sparked a day-long frenzy of speculation that she had been offered, and probably would accept, the position. Clinton allies expressed delight at the prospect, while some Obama supporters reacted with shock at the prospect of the president-elect naming her the nation's top diplomat. Aides to Obama and Clinton gave no formal comment on the meeting or whether the job had been offered.

As word of Clinton's emergence as a serious candidate spread, Obama held a separate meeting Friday with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic official said, a signal that another opponent in the Democratic nominating contest with a deep résumé is also under consideration.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who worked aggressively for Obama's election, is also on the shortlist, two officials said. Any of those three would present opportunities and challenges for Obama as he tries to piece together a Cabinet that is diverse and that would bring the kinds of qualifications that could calm some doubts about his experience.

Clinton, a former first lady who won 18 million votes in the Democratic primaries, would bring star quality to a position that will be critical in the incoming president's effort to keep his promise of changing the nation's image around the world.

But nominating Clinton would come with substantial risks for Obama, adding a potential degree of tension to an inner circle that has prided itself on cohesiveness. Nor would Clinton, who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, be an obvious choice to convey the message of change that has defined Obama.

In addition to her initial differences with Obama on Iraq, Clinton also faced sharp criticism during the primaries when she said she had endured sniper fire in Bosnia, despite television footage showing otherwise. Some Obama supporters also questioned her foreign policy experience, arguing that it has largely been based on her travels as a presidential spouse rather than being rooted in diplomacy.

Perhaps the most pressing question is whether Clinton would pass the rigorous Obama vetting process, which would include a thorough examination of her husband Bill Clinton's private business since leaving office. Obama aides had said during the primaries that Hillary Clinton was not seriously considered for vice president in part because of the work of the former president, who has made millions giving speeches to foreign entities and companies, including some in China and Saudi Arabia, since 2001 and would be required to fully disclose his private work and to name the donors to his presidential library and global charity. His decision to serve on the board of the Yucaipa Cos., a California private equity firm run by billionaire Ronald W. Burkle, his friend, raised eyebrows, as did questions about whether he played a role in helping a Canadian financier land a uranium contract in Kazakhstan.

The Obama transition team is requiring that all candidates for the Cabinet and other senior positions complete a 63-question application, in addition to undergoing an extensive FBI background check, before their Senate confirmation hearings, according to an Obama adviser involved in vetting candidates who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the personnel process. Candidates and their spouses must detail their finances and all corporations, partnerships, trusts, business entities, as well as political, civic, social, charitable, educational, professional, fraternal, benevolent or religious organizations they have been involved with during the past 10 years.

But officials familiar with the process expressed no doubt that Clinton could receive Senate confirmation.

Substantive policy differences exist between Obama and both Clinton and Richardson. While Clinton is generally more hawkish than the president-elect, Richardson, during the campaign, called for an even faster withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq than Obama did.

Richardson has also said he would meet unconditionally with leaders of Iran and North Korea, and he supported free trade pacts. He called for a "new realism" in foreign policy that focused on increased diplomatic efforts around the world. An e-mail sent to Richardson's spokesman late Friday went unanswered.

Clinton, in a televised appearance Friday, said she would not speculate about Obama's Cabinet selections -- a slight shift in tone from before her meeting with him, when she said she would be happy to remain in her role as a senator. Her aides referred questions about the process to the Obama transition team, whose officials would not comment. Advisers warned that only a handful of officials know where Clinton ranks on Obama's shortlist.

But one Clinton veteran in touch with the transition team called it a "real possibility," while another Clinton associate she has a "very good chance" of getting the job. Obama aides cautioned against reports that the president-elect had formally offered Clinton the position, though they did not entirely reject the speculation, a marked difference from their response to reports over the summer that Obama was considering her as a running mate.

"Obviously, Hillary's got to make this decision herself," said Terence R. McAuliffe, who was her campaign chairman. "She's a spectacular senator, and health care is something she wants to battle on. But as secretary of state, she would have 100 percent name ID and she is a beloved figure who is continually rated the most admired woman in the world."

As rumors of a possible Clinton selection mounted, some Obama supporters privately expressed dismay that their hopes of bringing wholesale differences to Washington might be dashed. Clinton administration veterans are dominating some of early phases of the Obama administration, with John D. Podesta, who was Bill Clinton's chief of staff, leading the transition effort and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), a Clinton administration official, tapped to serve as White House chief of staff.

"What happened to all this talk about change?" said a member of the Clinton foreign policy team. "This isn't lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time."

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who supported Obama during the Democratic primaries, said it would be a "dream team on the global scene" and would "just on its face change foreign policy."

But Sharpton acknowledged that some African Americans would not support the choice. "The downside is a lot of people are still upset with the Clintons about their behavior during the primary. A lot of people are saying, 'Don't reward them.' " But he added that "clearly, Hillary Clinton has credentials. Barack Obama says he loves the book 'Team of Rivals,' so maybe he's trying to put together a Cabinet like Abe Lincoln."

Obama has taken several steps aimed at projecting bipartisan harmony since winning the presidency, including announcing that he will sit down on Monday with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his opponent in the general election. Obama is expected to raise issues, such as energy policy, where the two could find potential agreement.

Obama is considering keeping Robert M. Gates, a Republican, on as defense secretary. He has also urged Democrats to refrain from retaliating against Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, despite the Connecticut independent's ardent support for McCain. And advisers with connections to the Obama transition are floating the idea of New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat who aggressively backed Clinton in the primaries, as a possible Treasury secretary.

For Clinton, a move to State, where she would be the third woman to run the department, would offer an opportunity to lead a sprawling agency facing daunting challenges worldwide, a big leap from her role in the Senate, where she is still relatively junior and does not hold a committee chairmanship.

She does, however, carry the respect of her Senate colleagues, which probably would aid the confirmation process. In an interview, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a confidant of McCain, said Clinton would be an excellent choice for the post.

"She'll easily be confirmed if she gets chosen," Graham said. "That kinda surprised me, but she wouldn't be a bad choice at all. If she were chosen, she has the portfolio and the skills that would make her uniquely qualified for the job."

Staff writers Alec MacGillis, Michael Abramowitz, Michael A. Fletcher and Philip Rucker and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

source: 21nov2008

Call Bush's Bluff

HANS von SPONNECK / Znet 22jul2002

 

During the 17 months of the Bush administration just about everything has gone wrong for the US government in preparing the public for military strikes against Iraq. Convincing friendly governments and allies has not fared much better. Acts of terrorism against US facilities overseas and the anthrax menace at home could not be linked to Iraq. Evidence of al-Qaida/lraq collaboration does not exist, neither in the training of operatives nor in support to Ansar-al-Islam, a small fundamentalist group which allegedly harbours al-Qaida elements and is trying to destabilise Iraqi Kurdistan. In the aftermath of the carnage of September 11, the political landscape in the Middle East has changed dramatically. Years of US double standards in dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have taken a heavy toll. The Arab, Turkish and Kurdish public in the area is wary of facing more turmoil, suffering and uncertainty.

The Beirut summit of the Arab League in March signalled that all 22 governments want to see an end to the conflict with Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Iraq have since reopened their border at Arar and Saudi businessmen are selling their wares in Baghdad. Iraq has agreed to return Kuwait's national archives and to discuss the issue of missing Kuwaitis. Iran and Iraq have accelerated the exchange of refugees. Syria has normalised its relations with Iraq. Lebanon has done the same. Hardly a week passes without Turkish and Jordanian officials and business delegations visiting Iraq. Jordan's national airline flies five times a week between Amman and Baghdad. Airlinks exist between Damascus and Baghdad. Iraqi Kurdistan maintains contacts with Baghdad at scientific, cultural and sports levels and tries to make the best out of its present (albeit tenuous) local stability. Iraq's political and economic isolation in the Middle East is all but over.

A wave of senior US visitors has tried to dislocate these trends towards normalisation and reconciliation in this troubled region. The US administration has put the UN secretary general on a short leash in his meetings with the Iraqi authorities. The only topic worthy of discussion according to the Americans is the return to Iraq of the UN arms inspectors. This became most apparent during the recently concluded talks with the Iraqis in Vienna.

Europe is increasingly uncomfortable with this unilateral insistence on solving the Iraqi conflict militarily. In varying degrees the same applies to countries in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has served notice that the Sultan air base near Riyadh will not be available for a new US offensive against Iraq. Under severe US pressure, Qatar has agreed to permit the transfer of logistics from Saudi Arabia to its territory. A political crisis is looming in Jordan as a result of US demands to use Jordan as a possible staging area in a war against Iraq. A similar debacle will face the Turkish government once the prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, decides to relinquish his post and fresh elections are scheduled. An entire region is being destabilised to suit American preferences for political change in Iraq.

Concurrently, a systematic dis- and mis-information campaign, one of the biggest ever undertaken by the US authorities, is intensifying. The US and the international public are being sedated daily with increasing doses of propaganda about the threat Iraq poses to the world in 2002. In the forefront of those advocating war against Iraq has been the US deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who sees a military solution as the only option. On July 14 he stated in Istanbul: "President Bush has made it clear how dangerous the current Iraqi regime is to the United States and that it represents a danger we cannot live with indefinitely."

To make such statements without offering supporting evidence is irresponsible. It promotes government-induced mass hysteria in the US and is meant to garner bipartisan support for military action. A war on Iraq justified by conjecture is politically foolish and morally repugnant. In the words of the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Rowan Williams: "It is deplorable that the world's most powerful nations continue to regard war, and the threat of war, as an acceptable instrument of foreign policy."

The US Department of Defence and the CIA know perfectly well that today's Iraq poses no threat to anyone in the region, let alone in the United States. To argue otherwise is dishonest. They know, for example, that al-Dora, formerly a production centre for vaccine against foot and mouth disease on the outskirts of Baghdad, and al-Fallujah, a pesticide and herbicide manufacturing unit in the western desert, are today defunct and beyond repair. The UN concluded the former had been involved in biological agent research and development and the latter in the production of materials for chemical warfare. UN disarmament personnel permanently disabled al-Dora in 1996. During a visit with a German TV crew to al-Dora in mid-July - a site chosen by me and not the Iraqi authorities - I found it in the same destroyed condition in which I had last seen it in 1999. Al-Fallujah was partially destroyed in 1991 during the Gulf war and again in December 1998, during operation desert fox. In between a UN disarmament team disabled all facilities in any way related to weapons of mass destruction there, including the castor oil production unit. My visit this month disclosed beyond any doubt that the castor oil unit was inoperable. Remnants of other production facilities are used to manufacture herbicides and pesticides for plant protection and household use.

One does not need to be a specialist in weapons of mass destruction to con clude that these sites had been rendered harmless and have remained in this condition. The truly worrying fact is that the US Department of Defence has all of this information. Why then, one must ask, does the Bush administration want to include Iraq in its fight against terrorism? Is it really too far-fetched to suggest that the US government does not want UN arms inspectors back in Iraq? Do they fear that this would lead to a political drama of the first order since the inspectors would confirm what individuals such as Scott Ritter have argued for some time, that Iraq no longer possesses any capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction? This indeed would be the final blow to the "war against Iraq" policy of the Bush administration, a policy that no one else wants. The Iraqis would be well advised to seize this opportunity and open their doors without delay to time-limited arms inspectors, thereby confirming that they indeed have nothing to hide.

This would make a US war against Iraq next to impossible and start the long journey towards the country's return to normality. What was it that Paul Wolfowitz said on the west front of the US Capitol on April 15? "May God bless all the peacemakers in the world." He still has a chance to be among them.

Hans von Sponeck was the UN humanitarian aid coordinator for Iraq from 1998-2000 and has just returned from a two-week stay in Iraq

source: 21nov2008

AIPAC's Man in the Obama Camp

PHILIP GIRALDI / Antiwar.com 18nov2008

 

Barack Obama's first appointment, that of Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, is quite frankly unsettling and suggests that voters who had hoped for real change in Washington will be disappointed. There should also be some concern on the part of Americans who believe that a close and continuing relationship with a foreign government might disqualify one for high office in the United States.

Emanuel, far from serving as a neutral gateway to the president, has some very strong views on foreign policy, particularly regarding the Middle East, views that are closer to those of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney than they are to the millions of voters who thought that Obama would put an end to "wars of choice." And Obama appears to share at least some of those views, though he might be driven primarily by unwillingness to antagonize Israel's numerous cheerleaders in the Democratic Party. During the presidential campaign Obama refused to meet with American Muslims, and on a fact-finding trip to the Middle East last summer he spent several days in Israel but only 45 minutes with Palestinian leaders.

More recently, Obama did not respond to a congratulatory letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the only world leader to be snubbed in that fashion. In his first press conference on Nov. 7, Obama, who has promised to do "everything in his power" to denuclearize Iran, reiterated that Iran's development of a nuclear weapon would be unacceptable, a position adhering closely to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) line. There are also reports that Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has already called Vice President-elect Joe Biden to tell him that even talking to Iran would be a sign of weakness, a signal that Israel might be willing to unleash its all-powerful lobby against the Obama administration if it is perceived as going too far.

The extremely partisan and foul-mouthed Emanuel, who has the reputation of a junkyard dog, is a retread from the Clinton White House, where he served in two senior advisory positions after demonstrating his expertise in fundraising during the 1992 presidential campaign. Though born in Chicago, he was an Israeli citizen through his father until he, according to his own account, renounced his dual citizenship when he turned 18. When the United States went to war with Iraq in 1991 the 31-year-old Emanuel rushed off to join the colors, though the colors in this case were the blue and white flag of Israel. He claims that he was a civilian volunteer in the Israeli army who was assigned the task of "rust-proofing brakes" on military vehicles, an assertion that has been questioned because his father's background suggests that he would likely have been offered something much more important.

Emanuel's father, an Israeli physician, was a member of the terrorist group Irgun in the 1940s. Irgun was responsible for blowing up the King David Hotel and ethnically cleansing much of Palestine through selective massacres of Arab civilians. In an interview in the Jerusalem Post, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel said he was convinced that his son's appointment as White House chief of staff would be good for Israel. "Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he was quoted as saying. "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House." Commenting on his father's statement, Rahm Emanuel noted that Obama does not need his influence to "orientate his policy toward Israel."

Other Israelis and prominent American supporters of Israel also see Emanuel as their man in the White House. The respected Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz hailed his appointment, describing him unambiguously as an Israeli. William Daroff of the United Jewish Communities also praised Emanuel, describing him as "a good friend of Israel, coming from good Irgun stock." Ira Forman, head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, welcomed the appointment, saying, "It's just another indication that despite the attempts to imply that Obama would somehow appoint the wrong person or listen to the wrong people when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship … that was never true," an indication that some will actually expect Emanuel to act on behalf of Israel when the chips are down.

Emanuel left the Clinton administration in 1998 and went to work for Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and head of the Chicago investment bank Wasserstein Perella. He made $18 million in a little over two years. He was deliberately placed in a position where he could exploit his White House connections, which he did, to obtain a nest egg to finance his political career. In 2000 he was named by Clinton to the board of Freddie Mac, where he earned an additional $260,000 but was later criticized for not taking his oversight responsibility seriously. In 2002, he was elected to Congress, where he was noted for his ability to attract large political contributions. Emanuel soon moved into a leadership position, eventually becoming chairman of the Democratic Caucus in January 2007, the fourth-ranking Democrat in Congress.

In Congress, Emanuel has been a consistent and vocal pro-Israel hardliner, particularly close to right-wing politicians such as Ariel Sharon and Bibi Netanyahu, sometimes even more so than President Bush. In June 2003 he signed a congressional letter criticizing Bush for being weak in his support of Israel. The letter, signed by 34 Democrats, stated, "We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror." The letter supported Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders because it "was clearly justified as an application of Israel's right to self-defense."

Not surprisingly, Emanuel has always been in favor of the Iraq war, and he supports an aggressive policy toward Iran. In his 2006 book with the pretentious title The Plan: Big Ideas for America he advocates increasing the size of the U.S. Army by 100,000 soldiers and creating a domestic spying organization like Britain's MI5. More recently, he has supported mandatory paramilitary national service for all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25.

Emanuel has always expressed intense hostility toward antiwar Democrats. When, in November 2005, Congressman Jack Murtha made his proposal for withdrawal from Iraq, Emanuel quickly declared that "Jack Murtha went out and spoke for Jack Murtha." In late 2005 and early 2006, Emanuel played a key role as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in lining up candidates to run against the Republicans for congressional seats in November 2006. Out of 22 candidates vetted and supported financially by Emanuel, 20 were pro-war, despite the fact that the Democratic Party base was not. Antiwar candidates were routinely denied funding and support from his DCCC. Only eight of Emanuel's candidates won, a percentage considerably lower than the success rate for other Democrats, possibly because voters had a hard time embracing their pro-war positions.

In a June 2006 congressional debate on Iraq policy, Emanuel made his own views clear, declaring, "The debate today is about whether the American people want to stay the course with an administration and a Congress that has walked away from its obligations or pursue a real strategy for success in the war on terror. … Democrats are determined to take the fight to the enemy." In his speech, Emanuel fully embraced the questionable "War on Terror" concept and aligned himself far to the right of the Democratic Party base, which, at the time, was 60 percent in favor of immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

In July 2006, Emanuel was one of several congressmen who called for the cancellation of an impending speech before Congress by visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki because Maliki had called Israel's bombing of Lebanon "aggression." Emanuel was joined by his close friend and DSCC counterpart Sen. Charles Schumer, who asked; "Which side is he on when it comes to the war on terror?" Emanuel described the Lebanese and Palestinian governments as "totalitarian entities with militias and terrorists acting as democracies" in a subsequent speech on July 19 regarding a House resolution supporting Israel's bombing, which produced thousands of civilian casualties.

On March 12, 2007, the Democratic Party leadership announced that it would separate the issue of Iran from consideration of funding measures for the troop surge in neighboring Iraq. Opponents of a possible military action against Iran had sought specific language in the appropriation that would deny funding for any military operations outside Iraq without prior congressional approval. The proposal had seemed reasonable enough, given the Bush administration's track record on the use of force, but apparently it was not acceptable to Emanuel. AIPAC mobilized immediately and began an intensive lobbying campaign against the proposal, instructing its supporters to call and write Congress, adding that it is best to telephone just after lunch, when there are more staffers available to answer the phone. Emanuel organized resistance to the measure from inside the House of Representatives and promised AIPAC early in the process that the offensive language would be dropped. The Democratic Party subsequently held a number of closed-door meetings on the issue and decided that the prohibition would not be included in the funding measure because of "possible impact on Israel."

During the summer of 2008, Emanuel was a key player in the marginalization and humiliation of former president Jimmy Carter, whose book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid had outraged Israel's supporters. Carter was not allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention, an unprecedented snub toward a former president and a further indication, if one was needed, that in American politics it is possible to do or say nearly anything as long as one does not criticize Israel.

And now Emanuel is the president's chief of staff, one of the most powerful positions in the White House. Perhaps there is a limit to the mischief that he will be able to do; at this point one can only adopt a wait-and-see policy. One thing is certain, however. If the subject is Israel, Emanuel knows very clearly where his loyalty lies.

source: 21nov2008

Team of Frenemies

MAUREEN DOWD / New York Times 16nov2008

 

It’s a cool idea, Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

At long last, the feminist icon would represent the feminist ideal of getting a room of her own, all on her own.

Running for the Senate and the presidency, Hillary felt entitled to get money, endorsements and support because she was the wife of Bill Clinton — and at times the victim of Bill Clinton.

If she became secretary of state, she would be getting the job despite her husband — and because of her own transformation in the primaries from a legacy applicant to a scrappy one.

After balking during his wife’s campaign at releasing records of his business dealings and big donors to his presidential library, Bill would have to stop spewing about Barack and start spilling to him.

As Newsweek reported, last January Bill got so worked up in a phone call with Donna Brazile that he ranted, “If Barack Obama is nominated, it will be the worst denigration of public service.” The magazine also revealed that “the former president had amassed an 81-page list of all the unfair and nasty things the Obama campaign had said, or was alleged to have said, about Hillary Clinton.”

If Hillary wants to be Madame Secretary, Bill will have to put away the 81-page list and pick up the 63 questions in the Obama vetting questionnaire, an unprecedented deep probe of potential cabinet members and their spouses.

Even if Bill scurries past the questions on sexual harassment claims, conflicts of interest, civil suits, real estate holdings, federal investigations, diaries, gifts worth more than $50 and Internet aliases, the Clintons will still have to grapple with No. 8: “Briefly describe the most controversial matters you have been involved with during the course of your career.” (It would take books, and it has.)

Not to mention No. 62: “Do you know anyone or any organization ... that might take steps, overtly or covertly, fairly or unfairly, to criticize your nomination, including any news organization?”

In his desire to channel the character of Lincoln and create a team of rivals on his cabinet, Obama may be willing to overlook the array of conflict-of-interest issues posed by the rivals he vanquished.

(Lincoln appointed a New York senator, William Seward, as his secretary of state. He promptly bought Alaska, known as “Seward’s Folly,” which ended up bringing us the folly of Sarah Palin).

There are Obama aides and supporters who are upset that The One who won on change has ushered in déjà vu all over again. The man who vowed to deliver us from 28 years of Bushes and Clintons has been stocking up on Clintonites.

How, one may ask, can he put Hillary — who voted to authorize the Iraq war without even reading the intelligence assessment — in charge of patching up a foreign policy and a world riven by that war?

You can hear the gnashing of teeth from John Kerry — who thought the job was promised to him in return for his endorsement after New Hampshire — and Bill “Judas” Richardson, who met Friday with Obama in Chicago to discuss the job.

And Joe Biden would probably like a little less blond ambition at State so he could be the shadow secretary. But as James Carville has said, a campaign is the time to stab your enemies and a transition is the time to stab your friends.

Hillary is probably ready to ankle out of the Senate. The point of the Senate was to be a staging area for her presidential race, and that’s done.

She’s not a player there. Her bid to get the health care issue away from Ted Kennedy was stymied recently when Kennedy refused her request to create a special subcommittee that she would head.

And why should the woman who made 18 million cracks go back to being junior to Chuck Schumer, if she could be toasted from Dublin to Dubai?

On the down side, Hillary would be taking over a big and demoralized government bureaucracy, after proving with her campaign that she does not know how to run a big and demoralized group of people.

On the up side, she would never have to exaggerate her foreign policy résumé again; this time, she really would be brokering peace and flying into places where they’d try to fire at her.

And if she worked hard enough — and she would — she could restore clarity to Foggy Bottom, the striped-pants center of diplomacy so maligned and misused by W. and Dick Cheney on their Sherman’s march to war in Iraq and in their overwrought bid to become the only hyperpower.

If Barry chooses Hillary as secretary of state, a woman who clearly intimidated him and taught him to be a better pol in the primaries, it doesn’t signal the return of the Clinton era. It says the opposite: If you have a president who’s willing to open up his universe to other smart, strong people, if you have a big dog who shares his food dish, the Bill Clinton era is truly over.

Appointing a Clinton in the cabinet would be so un-Clintonian.

source: 21nov2008

Clinton Says U.S. Could "Totally Obliterate" Iran

DAVID MORGAN / Reuters

 

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could "totally obliterate" Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.

On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle against fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel)," Clinton said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them," she said.

"That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic," Clinton said.

Her comments appeared harder than a week ago, when during a presidential debate she promised "massive retaliation" against any Iranian attack on Israel.

Obama rejected Clinton's rhetoric as saber rattling on a day when Pennsylvania Democrats voted in a party primary contest that could help decide which Democrat will face Republican John McCain for the White House in the November general election.

"One of the things that we've seen over the last several years is a bunch of talk using words like 'obliterate,'" Obama, an Illinois senator, said in a separate ABC interview. "It doesn't actually produce good results. And so I'm not interested in saber rattling."

CONTRADICTION ACCUSATION

The Obama campaign also issued a statement saying Clinton was contradicting her remarks at an August debate, where Obama spoke in favor of taking unilateral military action in Pakistan if the United States had actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of senior al Qaeda members.

Clinton had said she did not believe "people running for president should engage in hypotheticals" and called it a mistake "to telegraph" what U.S. strategy might be at a time of unrest inside Pakistan.

At a Tuesday news conference in the Philadelphia suburb of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, Clinton said the question of Iran merited hypothetical discussion because a nuclear Tehran would require straightforward Cold War-style deterrence. "It's a question not of what might be on or off the table," she said.

Meanwhile, Obama said he would respond "forcefully and swiftly" to an Iranian attack against Israel or any other U.S. ally, whether conventional or nuclear.

Iran, which Washington and its allies charge is seeking nuclear arms, has voiced war-like rhetoric in recent years amid speculation its nuclear facilities could face U.S. or Israeli military action.

Tehran denies it is trying to acquire nuclear weapons and says it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons but, as part of a policy of "strategic ambiguity," has not confirmed or denied the nature of its arsenal.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad outraged the international community in 2005 by saying "Israel should be wiped off the map." A week ago, a senior Iranian army commander said Iran would "eliminate" Israel in response to any military attack from the Jewish state.

Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Conshohocken; Editing by Eric Walsh and Bill Trott

source: 21nov2008

The Wisdom of Madeleine Albright

JOHN P. (OREGON) / Barack Obama website 11nov2008

 

Madeleine Albright, "Looking Back with Pride, Looking Forward with Hope" as it appears on the Huffington Post today.

"Sixty years ago today, a ship carrying my family sailed around the Statue of Liberty into New York harbor. Having fled first Nazism then Communism, we had finally arrived in the United States. Aside from the birth dates of my children, it was the most important day of my life.

The America in which I grew up was known as a champion of international law, a builder of strong alliances, a defender of freedom, and an inspiration to those forced to live behind the Iron Curtain. Americans have good reason to look back with pride.

Last Tuesday, we were given good reason to look forward with hope.

There is a promise in Senator Obama's election that goes beyond any explicit pledge made during the campaign. That potential may be found in the reaffirmation of America's identity as a true land of opportunity and in the confounding of damaging assumptions about our country that have spread unchecked across the globe these past eight years.

As President-elect Obama warned in his victory speech, we must be patient. The election's outcome provides no guarantee that the multi-faceted woes we currently face will soon disappear. Every president inherits headaches; President Obama will inherit the whole emergency room. The challenges we must meet in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat from al Qaeda, the dangers of economic breakdown and environmental stress, will not be resolved in the first one hundred or even the first one thousand days of a new administration. To expect otherwise is to misunderstand the complexity of today's world.

It might be tempting to suggest that all our next president must do is mimic the example of my first president, Harry Truman -- and turn back the clock to the era of our Greatest Generation. After all, American power and prestige were then at their height; we had defeated Hitler, founded the UN, launched NATO, and forged the Marshall Plan.

Shouldn't it be the new administration's goal to recapture that golden moment? The answer is no.

Back in 1948, Japan and Germany were occupied by foreign troops, Europe was in ruins, China was engulfed in civil war, and much of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East were still under colonial rule. Americans might want to revisit the era of Truman; but the world has other dreams.

To young people across the globe, the cold war, let alone the second World War, is ancient history. The conflict that has made the deepest impression on them is Iraq -- and the image of America many now carry in their heads is shaped less by Omaha Beach than Guantanamo Bay.

President Obama's mission will be to restore America's influence in a world with numerous centers of power and multiple sources of danger. To succeed, he must be persistent. It will take time to get our fiscal house in order, to extract ourselves responsibly from Iraq, and to develop a more effective response to violent extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It will take time to formulate innovative policies toward each of the many trouble spots around the globe -- from the Middle East and Caucasus to the Sudan and Congo It will take time to restore our nation's reputation as a champion of human rights and international law, and to show a renewed commitment to fighting the axis of evil -- poverty, ignorance, and disease.

It will take time to convince skeptics that the promotion of democracy is not a mask for imperialism or a recipe for the kind of chaos we have seen in the Persian Gulf. And it will take time to establish the right identity for America in a world that has grown suspicious of all who claim a monopoly on virtue and that has become reluctant to follow the lead of any one country.

It will take time for the next president to succeed, but the opportunity will be there. There is no doubt that a guiding hand is needed. That direction is unlikely to come from those now opposing our values: from radical populists, aggressive nationalists, autocratic modernizers, or the apostles of holy war.

Such guidance could well come from a new brand of American leader, a leader who listens and who blends Truman's judgment with an up to date sense not only of what is possible but of what can become possible through the right blend of energy and faith; and it could come from a country that has just voted freely and peacefully to choose its president for the 56th time.

We cannot go back to that distant day, three score years ago, when my family arrived on these shores. That world is gone. We can, however, hope to build a future of greater justice, broader prosperity, and larger freedom, with the United States once again serving as a cornerstone.

That will be President Obama's mandate -- and the responsibility of us all."

source: 21nov2008

Obama's Mideast Experts Emphasize Talks

Former Diplomats Help Senator Hone Possible Agenda

JAY SOLOMON / Wall Street Journal 16jun2008

 

WASHINGTON -- In fine-tuning his foreign-policy agenda, Barack Obama is turning to a core group of Middle East experts who have spent more than a decade, in Democratic and Republican administrations, exploring avenues to engaging Iran and Syria.

Chief among them are Dennis Ross, former President Clinton's lead Mideast negotiator; James Steinberg, a deputy national-security adviser under Mr. Clinton; and Daniel Kurtzer, a career diplomat who developed Mideast policy under President Bush and his father.

Some of these experts, such as Messrs. Ross and Steinberg, don't describe themselves as formally part of Sen. Obama's campaign for president. But their involvement illustrates the increasing influence on Sen. Obama's thinking of some of the Democratic Party's foreign-policy veterans, now that the long nominating process is over.

These three men were among the principal authors of Sen. Obama's speech this month on the Middle East before a pro-Israel lobbying group, according to the Obama campaign. The speech was viewed as the candidate's most expansive yet on international affairs. The U.S. senator from Illinois pledged during the address to break from the Bush administration and explore high-level engagements with Iran and Syria in a bid to stabilize Iraq and the broader Middle East.

In interviews, these strategists describe a campaign that sees potential diplomatic openings in the Middle East should Sen. Obama be elected in November and begin pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq. But they also acknowledged that there are real lessons to be learned from previous U.S. efforts to engage Tehran and Damascus, during the 1990s, which drew mixed results.

Sen. Obama's philosophy is that you "approach the world, and you approach it through engagement: You shore up alliances, and you engage with enemies," said Mr. Kurtzer, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005. "But occasionally you have to hit them, too."

Sen. Obama's call for high-level engagement with Tehran has sparked controversy on the campaign trail and fueled charges from political opponents in both parties that he is dangerously inexperienced in foreign policy. Sen. Obama has refined an initial campaign pledge made last year to meet with Iran's leadership unconditionally during his first year in office.

Sunday, Iran's leadership responded coolly to an offer, made by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany, of new economic incentives in exchange for Tehran's suspending its nuclear-development work. Iranian leaders suggested they wouldn't agree to any deal that requires Tehran to suspend its uranium-enrichment work.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain noted this month that the Clinton administration's effort in 1998 to open a dialogue with Tehran's former reformist leader, President Mohammad Khatami, was rebuffed and did nothing to retard Iran's pursuit of nuclear technologies.

Sen. McCain believes any attempt to reach out to Iran's current hard-line government, particularly President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could result in a worse outcome.

"Such a spectacle would harm Iranian moderates and dissidents as the radicals and hard-liners strengthen their position and suddenly acquire the appearance of respectability," Sen. McCain said.

Members of Sen. Obama's brain trust, however, draw a different lesson from the Clinton overture. Mr. Ross thinks it illustrates the need to reach out to the right leaders in Tehran, rather then the most public ones. Mr. Ross says Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the only official inside Iran's theocracy with the power to authorize and execute the suspension of Iran's nuclear program and its support for militant groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

"The key is to understand that the channel needs to be to the supreme leader," said Mr. Ross, noting that Washington likely would need to make contact secretly or by using a third party.

Advisers to Sen. Obama play down charges from conservatives that there is a downside risk if U.S. efforts to engage Iran fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program immediately. They stress that any overtures would be made only after extensive deliberations inside Washington, as well as with U.S. allies. But they said such an initiative would unify the international community on Iran, while shifting the blame for any failure to resolve the nuclear issue squarely onto Tehran.

"There are no guarantees diplomacy will succeed, but you also know that if it doesn't you've strengthened your hands with other people," said Mr. Steinberg, who served as deputy national-security adviser from 1996 to 2000.

Sen. Obama announced this month his willingness, should he be elected, to back a recent Israeli initiative to explore peace talks with Syria over the disputed Golan Heights region. The Bush administration has been lukewarm to supporting this peace track, because of charges that Damascus has been actively working to destabilize Lebanon and the Palestinian territories as well as facilitating the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. Washington also charged Syrian President Bashar Assad in April with secretly developing a nuclear program, a charge Damascus denies.

Members of Sen. Obama's Middle East team, however, said they believed Damascus should be tested diplomatically because success could undermine Syria's military alliance with Iran. They said such a development could drastically shift the power balance in the Middle East while stanching the flow of arms to Hezbollah and Hamas. Syria also could become a partner in stabilizing Iraq, they say.

"You have to go through every detail with the Syrians to reach a comfort level with them," said Mr. Kurtzer. "If they reach the comfort zone, they say 'yes.' "

In the final days of Mr. Clinton's administration, Israel and Syria appeared close to a land-for-peace deal, which ultimately collapsed. Mr. Kurtzer believes in retrospect that not enough time was made in building a consensus between Damascus and Jerusalem before trying to hammer home an agreement. Mr. Ross, meanwhile, believes significant economic incentives would need to be offered by Washington to Syria as part of any comprehensive pact that would draw Damascus away from Iran's orbit.

"When Syria negotiates, they want something from us. They want the economic payoffs," Mr. Ross said.

source: 21nov2008

Israel's Lawyer

AARON DAVID MILLER / Washington Post 23may2005

 

I'm not a lawyer by training, but I know one when I see one. For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel's attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations. If the United States wants to be an honest and effective broker on the Arab-Israeli issue, than surely it can have only one client: the pursuit of a solution that meets the needs and requirements of both sides.

The case for Israel-first advocacy is compelling. Israelis live in a dangerous neighborhood; they have only one real friend and critically important security requirements that the United States is committed to furthering. Practically speaking, Israel sits on land the Arabs want, so without Israel's trust and confidence there can be no peace process.

Having worked for the past six secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, I believe in the importance of a strong U.S.-Israeli relationship. Paradoxically, it is our intimacy with the Israelis that gives America -- only America -- the capacity to be an honest and effective broker. Arab governments have come to accept this reality. That is why -- even now -- when our credibility is so diminished in the region, they continue to press for U.S. engagement.

In fact, the Arabs may well understand something we have forgotten. When we have used our diplomacy wisely and functioned as advocates and lawyers for both sides, we have succeeded. In the history of U.S. peacemaking, only three Americans have managed to play this role effectively. Two secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and James Baker, gained Israel's trust but met Arab needs as well in brokering the disengagement agreements of the 1970s and the Madrid conference in 1991. President Jimmy Carter employed the same two-client approach in mediating the 1978 Camp David accords and the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

Unfortunately, too often we lose sight of the need to be advocates for both Arabs and Israelis. The most recent example of this was the Clinton administration's effort in 1999-2000 to broker final deals between Israel, Syria and the Palestinians.

With the best of motives and intentions, we listened to and followed Israel's lead without critically examining what that would mean for our own interests, for those on the Arab side and for the overall success of the negotiations. The "no surprises" policy, under which we had to run everything by Israel first, stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking. If we couldn't put proposals on the table without checking with the Israelis first, and refused to push back when they said no, how effective could our mediation be? Far too often, particularly when it came to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, our departure point was not what was needed to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides but what would pass with only one -- Israel.

This critique should not diminish then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's boldness at Camp David or Yasser Arafat's failure to negotiate seriously there. But the primary issue was neither Barak's generosity nor Arafat's perfidy; instead, the emphasis should have been on assessing, coldly and objectively, what it would take to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides. If we knew the gaps were too large (and we suspected they were), we should have resisted Barak's pressure to go for a make-or-break summit and then blame the Palestinians when it failed. What we ended up doing was advocating Israel's positions before, during and after the summit.

The "who lost Camp David" debate isn't worth having anymore. What is of value is learning lessons for the future. And one lesson is that there should be no inherent contradiction between our special relationship with Israel and our capacity to be an effective broker in Arab-Israeli negotiations. We can still be Israel's close friend and work with Israelis and Palestinians to ensure that the needs of both sides are met. In this regard, the Bush administration is not off to a particularly good start. It has been exceedingly deferential to Israel's political and security needs without any equivalent sensitivity to the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who has all the right instincts and intentions but needs our help.

Yet none of this is fatal. Abbas's visit to Washington this week will offer an opportunity to begin this process, perhaps with the same kind of letter of assurance on core Palestinian needs that President Bush gave to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last year on Israeli needs. Beyond this, once Gaza withdrawal is secured and Palestinians can effectively control terrorism and violence, the administration must recalibrate its role -- lawyering now for both sides: Palestinians need a settlements freeze and a pathway to permanent-status negotiations; Israelis need a comprehensive end to Palestinian terrorism, violence and incitement.

If the administration is prepared to be tough, fair, and an advocate for both Israelis and Palestinians, it may find itself with a real opportunity not only to make Gaza work but also to move on and lay the basis for two states living alongside one another in peace and security. None of this will come quickly or easily, but then nothing of real value in life usually does. Just ask Kissinger, Carter and Baker.

The writer worked at the State Department for 25 years as a Middle East negotiator and adviser on Arab-Israeli affairs.

source: 21nov2008

Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Hyde

JERRY MELDON / Consortium News 27mar2008

 

Editor’s Note: Whenever the Republicans have a touchy national-security scandal to put to rest, their favorite Democratic investigator is Lee Hamilton. Over the years, Hamilton has developed a reputation as a very reasonable fellow who knows how far he can go without ruffling too many important feathers.

Hamilton’s carefully honed skill for balancing truth against political comity has elevated him to the status of a Washington Wise Man. In this guest essay, however, Jerry Meldon suggests that attendees at a Tufts conference on the Middle East might want to ask Hamilton about his past compromises with history.

(Plus, at the end of the essay, you may want to read an addendum from reporter Robert Parry on two questions that might be posed to Hamilton about decisions he made in wrapping up the so-called “October Surprise” case):

 

When former Rep. Lee Hamilton gives the keynote address – entitled “Iraq: Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond” – at a Tufts University symposium on March 27, he may be thankful if he doesn’t have to discuss “yesterday.”

He probably would prefer not to revisit fateful decisions he made while chairing investigations into Republican dirty work, especially those that let George H.W. Bush off the hook and cleared George W. Bush's path to the White House.

As veteran journalist Robert Parry has persuasively argued at Consortiumnews.com, the Bush family name squeaked through the 80’s and early 90’s essentially mud-free, only because:

--On Christmas Eve 1992, lame-duck President George H.W. Bush pardoned six of his earlier co-conspirators in the Iran-Contra affair (the Reagan-Bush White House’s diversion of profits from illegal arms sales to Iran to bankroll Nicaragua’s contra terrorists in defiance of a congressional ban). Until he was pardoned that day, former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger might have bought clemency by testifying against co-conspirator Bush.

-- After Bush left office on Jan. 20, 1993, President Bill Clinton (along with other senior Democrats, including Hamilton) cut short a congressional inquiry into Bush’s secret billion-dollar loans to Saddam Hussein and did nothing to help Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh penetrate the Iran-Contra cover-up.

--Hamilton also soft-pedaled two key congressional inquiries. The first investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987 and the second examined allegations that the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign team had struck a treasonous deal with the hostage-holding Iranian government while Jimmy Carter was still president.

Conventional wisdom has attributed the target-friendliness of those latter investigations to Mr. Hamilton's celebrated spirit of bipartisanship.

After all, what else could have persuaded Hamilton to narrow the scope of the Iran-Contra investigation in order to placate Dick Cheney and the rest of the committee's Republicans, if not his desire to appear bipartisan?

And how else to explain Hamilton’s ill-advised decision to join with the panel’s Republicans (in defiance of all but one other Democrat) and immunize the testimony of a man on whom it had the goods, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North (whose operations in the Old Executive Office Building had been exposed by reporter Parry in 1985-86)?

Thus emboldened, the cocky Col. North proceeded to cover up for then-Vice President Bush, and North was spared a felony record because his later criminal conviction was reversed because of his immunized testimony, which Hamilton had helped arrange.

Hamilton’s Iran-Contra performance was troubling. But he went several steps further when he chaired the October Surprise Task Force and handed the Reagan-Bush administration a deck full of get-out-of-jail-free cards.

In the lead-up to the 1980 election, Republicans feared that Jimmy Carter would pull off an "October Surprise" and talk the Iranians into releasing 52 American hostages. Carter's failure to do so led to Reagan’s landslide victory.

However, over the next several years, a parade of individuals alleged that Carter failed only because the Republicans had secretly agreed to arm Iran in exchange for a delay in the hostages’ release.

Heated Republican denials notwithstanding, the fact remained that the Iranians chose to end the hostages’ 444-day ordeal within hours of Reagan’s inauguration. To put the nasty rumors to rest more than a decade later, the House Foreign Affairs Committee formed a task force under the leadership of Henry Hyde, R-Illinois, and … Lee Hamilton.

The task force was charged with examining allegations that in the summer and fall of 1980 Republican heavyweights, notably the vice presidential candidate, former CIA director George H.W. Bush, and the campaign director, future CIA director William J. Casey, had secretly flown to Europe to strike the fateful deal.

The key issue was the veracity of Bush’s and Casey’s alibis.

In the heat of his 1992 re-election campaign, an angry President Bush accused the task force of waging a “witch hunt.” Obligingly, Hamilton and Hyde disclosed that partially redacted Secret Service records backed Bush's alibi, thus clearing him of suspicion.

However, Spencer Oliver, chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, objected, asking why key sections of those records were blacked out; why one crucial entry asserted a trip to a Maryland country club that Bush never took; and why the identity of a person who supposedly met with Bush was withheld from the task force.

Oliver charged that the Bush administration was stonewalling:

“They have sought to block, limit, restrict and discredit the investigation in every possible way … President Bush’s recent outbursts [about] his whereabouts in mid-October of 1980 are disingenuous at best since the administration has refused to make available the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear Mr. Bush.”

Journalist Parry adds: “The Bush administration flatly refused to give any more information to the House task force unless it agreed never to interview [Mr. Bush's] alibi witness and never to release [that person’s] name. Amazingly, the task force accepted the administration’s terms.”

Hamilton’s treatment of Mr. Bush was outrageously deferential. But it was pit-bull-like compared to how he handled the attempts to provide the late Mr. Casey with an alibi.

The Republicans first insisted that Casey could not have flown to meet with the Iranians when it was alleged that he did, because on that particular weekend he had attended a historical conference in London.

But that alibi had to be ditched when historian and conference attendee Robert Dallek reported that Casey had missed a strategically timed morning session.

No problem.

A new alibi was introduced that instead placed Casey at California’s Bohemian Grove retreat. As it turned out, Casey had indeed stayed at the Bohemian Grove, only not on the decisive weekend.

Unfazed, Hamilton’s task force acted as if Casey's alibi remained solid and issued a report that exonerated both Casey and Bush.

Not long afterward, task force co-chair Henry Hyde acknowledged that Casey’s 1980 passport had vanished along with key pages in his personal calendar.

Unperturbed, Lee Hamilton penned a New York Times Op-Ed in which he cited Casey’s so-called alibi in insisting that the House task force’s report “should put the controversy to rest once and for all.”

Only later did journalist Robert Parry rummage through the task force’s records to discover a photograph of the 16 men who had been at the Bohemian Grove on that notorious weekend in the summer of 1980 in the company, it was claimed, of William Casey.

Casey was not in the photo, a fact that the task force had conveniently neglected to report. [For more details on the October Surprise mystery, see Parry’s 2004 book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

So, on March 27 – as Mr. Hamilton participates in the Fares Center’s symposium, “The United States and the Middle East: What Comes Next After Iraq?” – the Tufts community will have the opportunity to ask Mr. Hamilton exactly why he has repeatedly kept Americans in the dark about critical episodes of their nation’s history in dealing with the Middle East.

Jerry Meldon is an associate professor of chemical engineering at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He can be contacted at jerry.meldon@tufts.edu

Addendum from reporter Robert Parry:

If someone does get to ask Hamilton a question or two on the October Surprise case, there are two new points worth pressing him on:

One, task force chief counsel Larry Barcella told me in an interview that so much incriminating evidence was pouring in to the task force at the end of 1992 that he recommended to Hamilton that the investigation be extended a few months so the new material could be evaluated.

Hamilton refused and instead ordered the report to be issued exonerating the Bush-Casey crowd. Barcella said Hamilton cited the complexity of getting the task force re-authorized heading into a new Congress.

But shouldn't evidence of such a serious political crime and of such an important historical event take precedence over clerical matters like getting an extension approved?

Two, on Jan. 11, 1993, just two days before the House task force issued its debunking report, Hamilton received a classified report from the Russian Duma's national security committee revealing what Moscow's intelligence files showed about the U.S. October Surprise controversy.

The Russian report confirmed that Casey, Bush and CIA officer Robert Gates had attended meetings in Europe with senior Iranian officials regarding the Iran hostage crisis in 1980.

However, the House task force did nothing with this remarkable report, besides stick it in a box with other papers from the investigation.

Two days later, on Jan. 13, 1993, Hamilton presided over a press conference dismissing the October Surprise allegations, but he made no reference then or at any time since to the Russian report, which I later recovered from the files.

Barcella told me that the task force didn't want to be bothered with trying to get it declassified. So they stuck it in the box. (He envisioned it ending up in a giant government warehouse, like in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”)

But why didn't Hamilton (who took over as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 1993) arrange for the Russian report to be declassified and shared with the American people?

I know these may not be exactly topical questions, but they do relate to U.S. dealings with the Middle East, especially given Iran's current role in Iraq. Many of the same Iranians from the October Surprise case (such as Karrubi and Rafsanjani) are still active.

Thanks. Robert Parry

source: 21nov2008

The Democrats of 2002 and 2007 haven't gone anywhere

Their eagerness to award Joe Lieberman with a powerful Homeland Security
chairmanship is an important reminder of what the Democrats are.

GLENN GREENWALD Salon 12nov2008

 

Though it hasn't happened yet, it is appearing increasingly likely that Senate Democrats -- led by Barack Obama (who seems to be playing a much more active role in all of this than his spokesperson yesterday suggested) -- are going to choose Joe Lieberman to serve as their Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the next Congress. If that happens, there will be one important silver lining: it will remind many people, who have understandably forgotten due to the euphoria last week, exactly what most Beltway Democrats are, what their priorities and beliefs are, and to whose opinions and concerns they do and do not pay attention.

It is worth remembering that the Democrats who are going to exert dominant political control are the same ones who have provoked so much scorn -- rightfully so -- over the last several years, and particularly since 2006. This is the same Democratic Party leadership which funded the Iraq War without conditions (and voted to authorize it in the first place); massively expanded the President's warrantless eavesdropping powers; immunized lawbreaking telecoms; enacted the Patriot Act and then renewed it with virtually no changes; didn't even bother to mount a filibuster to stop the Military Commissions Act; refrained from pursuing any meaningful investigations of Bush lawbreaking; confirmed every last extremist Bush nominee, from Michael McConnell to Michael Mukasey; acquiesced to even the worst and most lawless Bush policies when they were briefed on them; and on and on and on. None of that has changed. That is still who they are.

Joe Lieberman didn't merely campaign against Barack Obama and several other Democrats. That's the least of his sins. He was not only among the most vocal supporters of the Iraq War, but at least as bad, has endorsed and supported every last radical Bush policy to expand executive power and surveillance activities while destroying core constitutional liberties and checks and balances. He used his Chairmanship for only one purpose: to block oversight into Bush scandals and corruption. He has spouted the most defamatory attacks, not only against Barack Obama, but against war opponents generally. More significantly still, Democrats in his own state -- his own constituents -- booted him out of the party, no longer wanting to be represented by him.

That is who Senate Democrats appear well on their way to selecting to serve as their Chairman of Homeland Security, of all committees. That's because nothing that Lieberman has done really bothers them. Endorsing the Iraq War and the full panoply of radical Bush policies isn't disqualifying in the least because so many of them also endorsed that and support it, or, at the very least, it's not a priority for them. They care even less what their "base" thinks, what the so-called "Left" wants. Few things in this world are less likely than them ever taking even a mild stand -- such as stripping Lieberman of his Chair -- in order to defend some sort of political principle, or to punish ineptitude, or to announce that there are certain lines to the Right that can't be crossed. They don't do that. They never have. And it shouldn't surprise anyone that they won't now.

This reveals much about the Beltway mentality. Politicians are not only permitted, but actually encouraged, even required, to scorn the Left. There's even an adoring term for that ("Sister Soljauh") which is almost unanimously considered a truly shrewd and honorable thing to do. By stark contrast, merely replacing someone in the position of a deeply influential Chairmanship who has strayed way too far to the Right and turned himself into a leading advocate for the most wretched policies is considered horribly divisive. To do that is a vindictive, partisan purge (on what planet is it improper for a political party to want to empower people who agree, rather than disagree, with its ostensible views?).

These are all lessons that have been learned long ago, re-inforced by one episode after the next. But it's important to be reminded of them again, and few things will rub everyone's faces in it as vividly as this Lieberman episode will.

John Cole today insisted that Obama shouldn't be criticized for things he hasn't actually done, and that, in particular, anonymous reports about what he "intends" to do should be viewed with much skepticism. Others have urged patience before judging an Obama administraiton that doesn't even exist yet. That's all fair enough, and I agree with that entirely, as far as it goes. In fact, on several occasions over the past few days, I've made that point myself, and specifically wrote:

We ought to wait to see what Obama does before forming conclusions about him and, certainly, before launching all sorts of criticisms at him. He was just elected four day ago and he's not actually the President yet.

But that doesn't mean we should remain passive and quiet on issues that we know are going to be vehemently contested (and I don't think John suggested that). It isn't as though we don't know what these Democrats are and what they are inclined to do. We've seen them in action when in the minority and when in the majority, and nobody needs to sit around waiting as though we can't anticipate what's going to happen.

We know there are going to be major wars -- not with Republicans, but among Democrats, and especially the party's leaders -- over things like closing Guantanamo, imposing an absolute ban on torture, restoring habeas corpus, withdrawing from Iraq, reducing executive secrecy and increasing transparency, imposing mild limits and oversight on the surveillance state, returning the Congress to its proper role, and especially investigating prior crimes of high government officials. More generally, there's going to be immense pressure for Obama to prove that he's "centrist" by making only minor modifications, not major changes, to prevailing Bush policies -- a view that is a principal motivating belief of the Democratic Party.

Yesterday's vague and poorly-sourced Wall St. Journal article reporting that "Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies" is not, in my view, evidence of what Obama will do, but it is definitely compelling evidence that people close to him -- those whom he has chosen to be influential -- are pushing him in that direction. Notably, the article actually describes minor modifications to (as opposed to wholesale overhaul of) Bush's torture policies as the "centrist" and "pragmatic" approach.

It's just a fact that there are all sorts of people close to Obama who have enabled those Bush policies and who are mobilizing now and attempting to ensure that nothing meaningful occurs in these areas. It simply is noteworthy of comment and cause for concern -- though far from conclusive about what Obama will do -- that Obama's transition chief for intelligence policy, John Brennan, was an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity. It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore that and to just adopt the attitude that we should all wait quietly with our hands politely folded for the new President to unveil his decisions before deciding that we should speak up or do anything.

Politicians respond to constituencies and pressure. Constituencies which announce their intention to maintain respectful silence all but ensure that their political principles will be ignored.

The Democrats haven't exactly covered themselves with glory on these matters and they don't exactly inspire any confidence. That is why this prediction from Howie Klein will almost certainly prove to be true:

This whole thing was a ruse and it wouldn't surprise me if they welcome Holy Joe back into the fold unanimously and the whole caucus sings "For He's The Jolly Good Fellow" on "Fox & Friends" . . . .

It's a secret ballot but I bet there aren't half a dozen votes for tossing him out of his chairmanship.

The Democrats of 2002 and 2007 are the same Democrats of today. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, they would force everyone to remember that. It looks like they're going to do it sooner, and in some perverse way, they deserve thanks for that.

It can't be emphasized enough that the election last week was but the first step to changing things meaningfully. None of that is likely to matter much unless as much energy and effort is now devoted to changing the Democratic Party as was just expended to remove the right-wing from power.

UPDATE: One can find a thoroughly articulated case against Joe Lieberman, complete with some of his worst transgressions, here. Those wishing to call Senators to convey your sentiments about this matter can use this tool to do so.

source: 21nov2008

Chief of Firm Involved in Breach is Obama Adviser

KATE BOLDUAN / CNN 22mar2008

 

WASHINGTON — The CEO of a company whose employee is accused of improperly looking at the passport files of presidential candidates is a consultant to the Barack Obama campaign, a source said Saturday.

John O. Brennan, president and CEO of the Analysis Corp., advises the Illinois Democrat on foreign policy and intelligence issues, the source said.

Brennan briefed the media on behalf of the campaign this month.

The executive is a former senior CIA official and former interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

He contributed $2,300 to the Obama campaign in January.

When asked about the contribution, a State Department official told CNN's Zain Verjee, "We ethically awarded contracts. Political affiliation is not one of the factors that we check."

On Friday, the department revealed that Obama's passport file was improperly accessed three times this year, and the security of passport files of the two other major presidential candidates -- Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain -- had also been breached.

Three contract employees are accused in the wrongdoing, including the one who works for Analysis Corp. and who was disciplined. That contract employee accessed McCain's file in addition to Obama's. None of the contract employees was identified.

The other two contract employees worked for Stanley Inc. They were fired.

The Washington Times, which broke the story Thursday night that Obama's records had been improperly accessed, reported Saturday that the State Department inquiry is focusing on the Analysis Corp. employee. Also, the investigation by the department's inspector general will include polygraph tests for supervisors in the passport section to find out whether there was any political motive.

The department spokesman said Saturday that he would not comment on whether the department was administering polygraphs to employees in connection with the investigation.

"While this is a rare occurrence, we regret the unauthorized access of any individual's private information," the company said Friday in a statement.

Stanley has had contracts with the department since 1992 and was recently awarded a $570 million contract to continue providing support for passport processing. Its CEO, Philip Nolan, contributed $1,000 to the Clinton campaign. Watch how contractor execs are linked to campaigns »

The department official said the three contract employees worked in three offices in the Washington area. One office does consular work and visas on evenings, holidays, weekends and overnights; another office issues passports; the third office scans and files materials.

The source said there has been no problem in the past with the Analysis Corp. employee, who has "extensive" experience. The worker has been with the company for years and has always worked under a State Department contract.

Explaining that the department had "complimented" this person for work in the past, the source said the individual is considered a "terrific" employee, except for this one instance, characterized as an "aberration."

The department asked the Analysis Corp. not to take any administrative action against the employee while the investigation is under way.

On Friday, the company released a statement saying it would fully cooperate with the federal investigation. The source said the Analysis Corp. has told the employee to do the same.

Echoing the State Department spokesman Friday, this source said there is no indication the motivation was anything but curiosity.

The source said Analysis Corp. learned of its employee's actions from the State Department on Friday morning. In its statement, Analysis Corp. confirmed that one of the accused was an employee and called the incident "isolated."

CNN's Zain Verjee contributed to this report.

source: 21nov2008

Intelligence Matters

Oh Dear God Not Jami Miscik

SPENCER ACKERMAN / Washington Independent 11nov2008

 

My friend Siobhan Gorman has a great piece in The Wall Street Journal anticipating that Obama won’t significantly change Bush’s intelligence policies, which would be a human-rights travesty and a massive betrayal of his promise for a new beginning.

Read her whole piece for the full flavor and context. I want to focus on just one aspect of it. Namely this:

The intelligence-transition team is led by former National Counterterrorism Center chief John Brennan and former CIA intelligence-analysis director Jami Miscik, say officials close to the matter. Mr. Brennan is viewed as a potential candidate for a top intelligence post. Ms. Miscik left amid a slew of departures from the CIA under then-Director Porter Goss.

Oh. Dear. God. There aren’t many intelligence professionals I hold in less esteem than Miscik. Miscik, you see, was head of intelligence analysis during the 2002 turmoil over Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction and non-existent ties to Al Qaeda, and according to the 2004 Senate intelligence committee report about what went wrong, she pretty much disgraced herself. When the administration insisted on an intelligence assessment of Saddam Hussein’s relationship to Al Qaeda, Miscik blocked the skeptics (who were later vindicated) within the CIA’s Mideast analytical directorate, and instructed the less-skeptical counterterrorism analysts to “stretch to the maximum the evidence you had.” And, as the maraschino cherry on top of this disaster, Miscik decamped to a lucrative position at the now-bankrupt Lehman Bros.

It’s hard to think of a more egregious case of sacrificing sound intelligence analysis in order to accommodate the strategic fantasies of an administration. If there’s an alternative explanation, I haven’t heard it. The idea that Miscik is helping staff Obama’s top intelligence picks is most certainly not change we can believe in.

source: 21nov2008

 

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