The Common Ills: Lying can make you very popular

Friday, November 12, 2010

Lying can make you very popular

Truth telling rarely wins accolades but lying can make you very popular -- very, very popular. Take the SOFA, Status Of Forces Agreement, that George W. Bush and company rammed through the Iraqi Parliament on November 27, 2008 -- see that day's entries:

In the 24 hours after it passed the Parliament, three reporters working for major US outlets told the truth about the SOFA. One is a friend of many years. The three explained that this was a treaty replacing the United Nations mandate. While the UN mandate was a one year measure, the White House and Nouri wanted to avoid doing a yearly renewal so the SOFA was three years.

The SOFA allowed US troops to remain in Iraq -- the same way the UN mandate did. That's all it did. If it was not renewed or renegotaited, the US would have to leave Iraq -- also true if the yearly option in the SOFA -- which either side could exercise -- was implemented, the kill-clause. While three could tell the truth, the rest of the press corps -- we're talking Big Media here, it was Thanksgiving, which mean Beggar Media was on yet another lengthy vacation -- rushed to run with the Bush White House spin that this meant the Iraq War ended in 2011.

Now to end a war, you can negotiate a peace treaty. The SOFA was not a peace treaty and so it was really appalling when the beggars of Panhandle Media were done celebrating the colonization of the Americas showed up and were eager to lie. Tom Hayden, for example, damn well knows what a peace treaty is from his various work during Vietnam. But Tom-Tom didn't want to tell you the truth-truth.

I noted that three reporters -- real reporters -- told the truth in real time and one is a friend of several years. The response to truth telling? Angry e-mails, angry letters and angry phone calls from readers. Forget any pressure from government officials, the real surprise was the response of the public. The friend no longer covers Iraq and stated, two weeks after the Parliament voted, 'I'm done with this.' Done with telling the truth about the SOFA. The backlash was just too extreme and too hateful.

I understand that, I do. We've gotten nasty e-mails, usually from UPFJ 'friends,' for the last two years attacking and screaming and ranting. Because we dared to tell the truth. And we stuck to it. This year alone, Ryan Crocker (former US Ambassador to Iraq), Joe Biden (Vice President), Philip J. Crowley (State Dept spokesperson) and, this week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have stated the obvious: The US military can remain in Iraq past 2011 if a new treaty is negotiated or the SOFA renegotatied.

That's not surprising. All along the purpose of the SOFA was to replace the UN mandate -- in part because Nouri and the White House wanted Iraq our of receivership (a detail the UN Security Council has again explored this week).

Margaret Warner went to Iraq this year and interviewed Joe Biden and it became obvious that the White House was considering extending the US military presence beyond 2011. And the response from a number of viewers was to contact The NewsHour (PBS) and ask how that could be when The NewsHour had repeatedly, for the last years, told them that the SOFA meant the end of the Iraq War.

The friend I was mentioning before? She advised me to walk away from the SOFA. She knew the crap you get for telling the truth about it. She just stopped and had nothing else to do with the SOFA (she never lied, she just dropped the whole issue).

It was easier for reporters to bend to the Bush White House and put their spin out as fact -- this despite the fact that the spin was a lie, this despite the fact that some were provided with a legal analysis demonstrating that the Bush spin on the SOFA was a lie.

Now that could be ancient history. But it's not. It's instructive in demonstrating how little things change.

The Barack White House wants spin and the same outlets are lying again.

Nouri al-Maliki did not become the (new) Prime Minister of Iraq yesterday. That's not what Jalal Talabani did. He doesn't have that power. There is a system of checks and balances.

As President of Iraq, Talabani can -- and did -- name a prime minister-designate. That's now Nouri. Designate. Nominee. It's conditional. He has thirty days to meet the conditions and, if he should fail to meet the demands, Talabani has to name a new designate.

That is not me spinning. That is not me whoring for the White House. That is the law and it's outlined in Iraq's Constitution, Article 76:

First: The President of the Republic shall charge the nominee of the largest
Council of Representatives bloc with the formation of the Council of Ministers
within fifteen days from the date of the election of the President of the Republic.

Second: The Prime Minister-designate shall undertake the naming of the members
of his Council of Ministers within a period not to exceed thirty days from the date
of his designation.

Third: If the Prime Minister-designate fails to form the Council of Ministers
during the period specified in clause “Second,” the President of the Republic shall
charge a new nominee for the post of Prime Minister within fifteen days.

Fourth: The Prime Minister-designate shall present the names of his members of
the Council of Ministers and the ministerial program to the Council of
Representatives. He is deemed to have gained its confidence upon the approval,
by an absolute majority of the Council of Representatives, of the individual
Ministers and the ministerial program.

Fifth: The President of the Republic shall charge another nominee to form the
Council of Ministers within fifteen days in case the Council of Ministers did not
win the vote of confidence.

You can find [PDF format warning] Iraq's Constitution here.

Now last week, while we were in DC, we were asking a number of people, why Philip J. Crowley's remarks -- public remarks at a press briefing -- were not being covered? From the October 25th "Iraq snapshot:"

Philip J. Crowley: Well, we have a Status of Forces Agreement and a strategic framework. The Status of Forces Agreement expires at the end of next year, and we are working towards complete fulfillment of that Status of Forces Agreement, which would include the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next year. The nature of our partnership beyond next year will have to be negotiated. On the civilian side, we are committed to Iraq over the long term. We will have civilians there continuing to work with the government on a range of areas – economic development, rule of law, civil society, and so forth. But to the extent that Iraq desires to have an ongoing military-to-military relationship with the United States in the future, that would have to be negotiated. And that would be something that I would expect a new government to consider. [. . .] Should Iraq wish to continue the kind of military partnership that we currently have with Iraq, we're open to have that discussion.

A Pentagon correspondent explained/insisted that everyone already knew that. No, they didn't. Thankfully when Robert Gates made his similar remarks this week, they were actually covered -- due to Matthew Lee and Anne Gearen doing their job and doing it very well. You'd think the liars -- and certainly those who've attacked -- would take some accountability at this point but, of course, that hasn't happened. They were wrong about the SOFA, they were wrong in public, they attacked those who refused to take part in the spin (MSM spun for Bush, Beggar Media spun for Nouri insisting he had forced the US into concessions! -- in your dreams). They've never gotten honest and they probably never will. Tom Hayden, for example, will never admit that his two-year output on Iraq (small even before Barack was sworn in) was built around a lie when it came to the SOFA -- he won't even acknowledge a faulty premise.

And I don't know that that's fine, Ijust know that that is. That's how it is. That's how it's always been.

Now here we have another lie from a White House about Iraq. We have the lie that a major thing took place yesterday and Iraq has a new prime minister and the administration has not only dispatched the anonymice, they've also got the White House on the record. Here's Barack quoted by CNN:

There are still challenges to overcome, but all indications are that the government will be representative, inclusive and reflect the will of the Iraqi people who cast their ballots in the last election. This agreement marks another milestone in the history of modern Iraq. Once again, Iraqis are showing their determination to unify Iraq and build its future.

If Bush had said that, Beggar Media would be ripping him apart today but it's their Christ Child so they'll all stare down at their hymnals and pretend not to scoff at Barack's wave of Operation Happy Talk -- where he's forever finding "milestones."

Iraq has no prime minister. The stalemate continues. Are we going to be told that truth or will the same liars continue lying?

The friend who told the truth (briefly) about the SOFA called this morning. "You're not going to make a big deal out of Nouri not being the new Prime Minister yet, are you?" It is tempting to be liked and to be part of the crowd that just averts their eyes and pretends like the acid rain is actually bottled water. But if you start whoring, you never stop. You can't just whore a little and we've certainly seen that with once-trusted voices destroying their own careers, their own legacies and their own reputations in order to get Barack Obama into the White House. Whether it was repeating the lie that he was receiving all his funding from "small donors" (even after NYT documented the realities on where he was getting his funding) or averting their eyes in March 2008 when Samantha Power publicly declared that Barack's "promise" on the Iraq War wasn't a promise, they have demonstrated that whoring leads to other whoring. They're useless now. Several of them -- Robert Parry being one -- thought they could show up a few weeks back and influence the 2010 mid-terms. They don't get that their reputations are destroyed -- that they destroyed them by their own actions. Because once you start whoring, you forever justify it to yourself. 'Oh, I'll have Colin Powell on and not press him about his lies to the UN but it's okay because my audience needs to hear from him.' And you'll do a softball interview like Ted Koppel did with Colin for years and years while kidding yourself that you accomplished something. (That describes Rachel Maddow, yes, but I was actually thinking of another self-promoter.)

And following the mid-term elections, the crash and burn of Barack's G20 appearance, I get that the White House desperately wants to change the narrative and to do so immediately but that's not my job and I am troubled by those billing as 'independent' who see it as their own job. On the plus, while it took all this time for the realities of the SOFA to emerge (emerge in the press), we will know within 30 days whether or not Nouri will move from prime minister-designate to prime minister.

March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted in August, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's eight months and four days and still counting.

That paragraph should be very familiar. It's the general recap that appears here near daily. Read the above and find where in it we mention the Speaker or the President. We don't. No one did. The stalemate was over who would be prime minister. Iraq has a prime minister-delegate, they do not have a prime minister so the stalemate continues. Maybe Nouri will be the prime minister, maybe he won't. But at present, there is only a prime minister-delegate.

TV notes. On PBS' Washington Week, Naftali Bendavid (Wall St. Journal), Jackie Calmes (NYT), Tom Gjelten (NPR) and Martha Raddatz (ABC) join Gwen around the table. Gwen now has a weekly column at Washington Week and the current one is "Truth and Consequences: Or What Happens When The Election Ends." This week, Bonnie Erbe will sit down with Gloria Feldt, Nicole Kurokawa, Irene Natividad and Sabrina Schaeffer to discuss the week's news on the latest broadcast of PBS' To The Contrary. And this week's To The Contrary online extra is a discussion about abortion and Twitter. Turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:

Shaleionaires
While some complain that extracting natural gas from shale rock formations is tainting their water supply, others who have allowed drilling on their property are getting wealthy and becoming "shaleionaires." Lesley Stahl reports.

Haiti
The earthquake made things in already-poor Haiti bad enough, but now a cholera epidemic is threatening to kill more Haitians, whose living conditions after the quake help to spread the water-borne infection. Byron Pitts reports.

Medal of Honor
The first living soldier to win the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War tells Lara Logan in an emotional interview just what he did to earn the nation's highest combat honor and how the recognition makes him uncomfortable.

60 Minutes, Sunday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Radio notes, today on The Diane Rehm Show (begins airing on many NPR stations at 10:00 a.m. EST and streaming live online), Diane's panelists for the first hour (domestic) are Jeanne Cummings (Politico), Ron Elving (NPR) and Jerry Seib (Wall St. Journal); for the second hour (international), Diane's joined by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Washington Post), David Sanger (NYT) and Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy Newspapers). And Grandmothers Against the War's Joan Wile is the author of Grandmothers Against the War: Getting Off Our Fannies and Standing Up for Peace. This is her latest column:

AFGHAN PEACE KIDS TELLS U.S. PEACE GRANDMOTHERS DURING SKYPE CONFERENCE: "TELL YOUR COUNTRY TO STOP BOMBING AND KILLING US -- WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS LIKE YOU"

by Joan Wile, author, "Grandmothers Against the War: Getting Off Our Fannies and Standing Up for Peace" (Citadel Press, May '08)

A remarkable Skype conference was held Tuesday, Nov. 9, at which three New York City peace grannies and a California high school peace class spoke at length with seven members of the Afghan Youth Peace Conference (AYPC) in a mutual desire to end the war in Afghanistan. The conference meant so much to the Afghan kids that they came from distant valleys and stayed overnight in a mud-house in order to participate.

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers in Bamiyam Province

For over an hour, the grannies, the U.S. students and Afghan youthful peacemakers all exchanged ideas and expressions of solidarity and affection in what they hope will be a step toward ending the unjustified hostilities in that besieged country. The seven Afghan kids spoke over and over of their desire for Americans to recognize that they are human beings just like us; they spoke of the losses they have suffered because of the war and their fervent wish for it to end. "Tell your government to stop bombing and killing our people," pleaded one of the boys.

The grandmothers were extremely impressed with the intelligence and grasp of issues demonstrated by the youngsters. Two of the grannies, Miriam Poser and Barbara Walker, told the kids they would like to visit them in their small village in the Bamiyam province 100 miles NW of Kabul, and are now making plans to go in April of 2011 "with bags of healthy treats and all kinds of school supplies."

A member of New York City's Grandmothers Against the War conceived the idea of "adopting" the Afghan youths after reading a stirring article on an online blog written by members of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VFCV) who had spent a week with them.

She contacted as many peace associates as she could find and got an overwhelmingly positive response of support from people and groups as diverse as the Atlanta (GA) Grandmothers for Peace and the New York City chapter of the Gray Panthers, plus many individuals such as Gold Star Families activist Dede Miller and her sister, Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan; Lorraine Krofchok, President of Grandmothers for Peace International; Barbara Harris of the Granny Peace Brigade, and so many more.

Dede Miller suggested organizing for a Peace Summit through Skype between the Afghan kids and U.S. high school peace groups and arranged for the peace club of Tracy High School in Cerritos, led by teacher and Military Families Speak Out member, Pat Alviso, to join in the dialogue.

Tracy High School peace club during Skype conference with Afghan Youth Peace

Volunteers Nov. 9, 2010

One Afghan kid made the startling statement, "Please tell them (the U.S. government) to stop sending money to our country" in answer to a California student's question, "What should our governments do to bring about peace?" The Afghan boy explained that he had heard of widespread corruption and the result that money never reaches its target, the people in need, but instead is gobbled up by the powerful and rich.

He urged instead that we reach out with their message of peace. The children never asked for any material aid, partly because they are skeptical about their postal service, but mostly out of the purity and urgency of their desire to stop the conflict raging around them. The grandmothers promised to reach out in every way possible, and one of the California students said "We'll do our best to open the eyes of America."

Their admirable leader, Hakim, a young doctor from Singapore who has been mentoring the Afghan group for several years and acted as interpreter for the Skype meeting, stated that they don't believe either government is listening to the people's voices and we must change that. We grannies and our Tracy High School compatriots ardently hope that we can in some small measure be an effective part of that change.

As one boy said, quoting an Afghan proverb, "Mountains can't reach mountains, but man can reach man."

(If any of you reading this article are interested in lending your support to this project, even if only to endorse it, please contact me at joanwile@grandmothersagainstthewar.org)