Category Archives: WMD

Deal with a Devil

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Some thoughts on the Libyan devel­op­ments of this weekend:

Libya has been work­ing to shed its pariah image for years, but it still hasn’t gone far enough

There’s no doubt Libya has been a bad seed since the 1969 coup brought Col. Muam­mar Abu Min­yar al-Qadhafi to power. His gov­ern­ment exported ter­ror­ism, rev­o­lu­tion and gen­er­ally rocked the boat wher­ever pos­si­ble. But because of the United Nations sanc­tions imposed in 1992 for the bomb­ing of Pan Am 103 over Locker­bie, Scot­land in 1988, Libya’s sup­port for ter­ror­ism has been wan­ing. In 1999, the sanc­tions were sus­pended and on Sept. 12, 2003, they were finally lifted. How­ever, Libya is still a nasty place to live, with mas­sive human rights vio­la­tions on par with Sad­dam Hussein’s. Human Rights Watch says

Over the past three decades, Libya’s human rights record has been appalling. It has included the abduc­tion, forced dis­ap­pear­ance or assas­si­na­tion of polit­i­cal oppo­nents; tor­ture and mis­treat­ment of detainees; and long-term deten­tion with­out charge or trial or after grossly unfair tri­als. Today hun­dreds of peo­ple remain arbi­trar­ily detained, some for over a decade, and there are seri­ous con­cerns about treat­ment in deten­tion and the fair­ness of pro­ce­dures in sev­eral on-going high pro­file tri­als before the Peo­ples’ Courts. Libya has been a closed coun­try for United Nations and non-governmental human rights investigators.

Sound famil­iar? By the way, today, Dec. 21, 2003 is the 15th anniver­sary of the Locker­bie attack that killed 270 peo­ple. Fam­ily mem­bers of the vic­tims are not pleased with this deal. Pres­i­dent Bush, in his remarks on Fri­day, made no men­tion of the bomb­ing. So Amer­ica gets to over­look a his­tory of ter­ror­ism and human rights abuses and Qad­hafi likely gets full diplo­matic recog­ni­tion and and end to the eco­nomic and diplo­matic iso­la­tion that many Libyans resented. The unin­tended con­se­quence will be that Col. Qad­hafi just got a new lease on his polit­i­cal life, since this will allow him to crack down on dis­sent, much of which has been of the Islamist variety.

This leads me to another point:

Point­ing to the Iraq war as the dri­ving force in get­ting Libya to coop­er­ate is just an attempt to claim a suc­cess from the deba­cle that Iraq has become.

British Defense Sec­re­tary Geoff Hoon said, “We showed after Sad­dam Hus­sein failed to coop­er­ate with the UN that we meant busi­ness and Libya, and I hope other coun­tries, will draw that lesson.”

Hm. Have we? And will they? A good chunk of the U.S. mil­i­tary is tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan or oth­er­wise engaged. It’s highly unlikely the U.S. could mount another mil­i­tary cam­paign to top­ple a gov­ern­ment even if it had good rea­son to do so. The threat of a Iraq-sized inva­sion is an empty one and Iran, Sudan, North Korea and, yes, Libya know it.

Instead of fear­ing the Bush Doc­trine of pre­emp­tive attacks, “bad guy” coun­tries can see that pos­sess­ing WMDs is a good way to wring con­ces­sions from a super­power they might not have received oth­er­wise. Because the U.S. doesn’t have any other choice. It’s these rogue nations with WMDs that are argu­ing from a posi­tion of strength, not the U.S.

Pres­i­dent Bush said on Fri­day,

We obtained an addi­tional United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion requir­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein to prove that he had dis­armed, and when that res­o­lu­tion was defied, we led a coali­tion to enforce it. All of these actions by the United States and our allies have sent an unmis­tak­able mes­sage to regimes that seek or pos­sess weapons of mass destruc­tion. Those weapons do not bring influ­ence or pres­tige. They bring iso­la­tion and oth­er­wise unwel­come con­se­quences. (Empha­sis added.)

Some prob­lems with that. No Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion have been found. Iraq said it didn’t have them, and damned if Saddam’s regime wasn’t telling the truth this time. The whole world thinks the WMD charge is a MacGuf­fin. By the way, the res­o­lu­tion Bush men­tioned, UNSCR 1441, said:

The Secu­rity Council, …

Decides that, in order to begin to com­ply with its dis­ar­ma­ment oblig­a­tions, in addi­tion to sub­mit­ting the required bian­nual dec­la­ra­tions, the Gov­ern­ment of Iraq shall pro­vide to UNMOVIC, the IAEA, and the Coun­cil, not later than 30 days from the date of this res­o­lu­tion, a cur­rently accu­rate, full, and com­plete dec­la­ra­tion of all aspects of its pro­grammes to develop chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal, and nuclear weapons, bal­lis­tic mis­siles, and other deliv­ery sys­tems such as unmanned aer­ial vehi­cles and dis­per­sal sys­tems designed for use on air­craft, includ­ing any hold­ings and pre­cise loca­tions of such weapons, com­po­nents, sub-components, stocks of agents, and related mate­r­ial and equip­ment, the loca­tions and work of its research, devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties, as well as all other chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal, and nuclear pro­grammes, includ­ing any which it claims are for pur­poses not related to weapon pro­duc­tion or material; …

all of which it appears now Iraq actu­ally did. The gov­ern­ment of Iraq said they didn’t have any uncon­ven­tional weapons and — whad­dya know?! — they didn’t.

I was as sur­prised as any­one. I called the 7,000-page Iraqi dec­la­ra­tion that the coun­try was “devoid of weapons of mass destruc­tion” a sui­cide note, and won­dered what the Iraqis were up to. (Note to con­sis­tency watch­ers: Before the war, I believed Sad­dam pos­sessed some kind of uncon­ven­tional arse­nal, just not one worth going to war over. Some chems, cer­tainly, maybe some bio­log­i­cals, no nukes — that was my guess. I was wrong.)

Plac­ing the Libyan deal in the con­text of the Iraq war is what is so infu­ri­at­ing. Actu­ally, it’s this administration’s shift­ing ratio­nales, attempts to claim suc­cesses and cyn­i­cal of-the-momentism that are really infu­ri­at­ing. I mean, the ratio­nale for invad­ing Iraq right this very minute was to dis­arm the coun­try of WMDs and remove an immi­nent threat to the sur­vival of the United States. When that threat (and the arse­nal) were proven to be a lie — or a gross incom­pe­tence in read­ing intel­li­gence data — the war became one of lib­er­a­tion. And now the United States makes a deal with an oppres­sive dic­ta­tor who killed a lot of inno­cent civil­ians — and a fair num­ber of Amer­i­cans — in a string of ter­ror­ist attacks. And claims a failed pol­icy and a quag­mire were the rea­sons for this bit of good news.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s a good thing that Libya has agreed to give up its uncon­ven­tional weapons pro­grams; any suc­cesses in rid­ding the world of nasty weapons are wel­come. But let’s not kid our­selves here. This is a deal with a devil, and the U.S. is mak­ing it because it has no other choice; forcible regime change is out of the ques­tion because the U.S. doesn’t have the resources. This is a big win for Qad­hafi, a smaller win for Amer­i­can and Britain, and a wash for the peo­ple of Libya who now have a leader with a soft­ened image, but still a fist of iron.

*UPDATE 12/22* Juan Cole has some “excel­lent thoughts”:http://www.juancole.com/2003_12_01_juancole_archive.html#107199393231717277 on this issue. George over at War​blog​ging​.com also “weighs in”:http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000780.php, and includes a handy “dic­ta­tor com­par­i­son chart.” And Josh Mar­shall, again, “finds a real nugget”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_12_21.html#002338 in the Pak­istan con­nec­tion to Libya’s WMD programs.

Mukhabarat Agent: No WMDs here!

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The _Jerusalem Post_ has an inter­est­ing inter­view with a for­mer colonel in Saddam’s secret police, the _Mukhabarat_, who says Iraq had no WMDs in the run-up to war.

Con­cern that Sad­dam had actively con­cealed deadly weapons of mass destruc­tion served as one of pri­mary rea­sons’ for the Coali­tion forces’ inva­sion of Iraq in March.
“In 1991 we were very close to devel­op­ing a nuclear weapon, but had noth­ing at the time of the [March 2003] war, after so many years of [UNSCOM] inspec­tions,” said the agent, adding, “they destroyed everything.”

It will come as lit­tle sur­prise to peo­ple who read this blog and oth­ers, but this is just one more lit­tle stone added to the moun­tain of evi­dence that the White House lied about/misused/screwed up what­ever intel­li­gence it was get­ting about WMD pro­grams in Iraq.
But, and this fits in with every­thing I encoun­tered in Iraq and from my own research and read­ings, Sad­dam was also fooled — by “mani­a­cally syco­phan­tic com­man­ders and body­guards who deceived him into believ­ing that Iraq” stood a chance again the United States’ mil­i­tary.
I also believe Sad­dam felt he could bluff the West by claim­ing to have no WMDs, which is what every­one thought he would say, while act­ing like he did. By behav­ing like he had a royal flush when all he had was a measly pair of sixes, he could buck up his stand­ing in the Arab world as the only leader to stand up to the United States, main­tain his grip on his sub­jects who well remem­bered the gas attacks on the Kur­dish north from 1984 – 1988 and keep his hold on power. But Amer­ica called his bluff and now the world is what it is. I imag­ine the White House is feel­ing a bit like it won a huge pot of Monop­oly money.
Two lead­ers lying, for their own pur­poses rather than for the good of their peo­ple. And such a mess of it all now. Today, Juan Cole reports, “three U.S. sol­diers have been wounded in Kirkuk and Mosul”:http://www.juancole.com/2003_12_01_juancole_archive.html#107173487313180742; pro-Saddam demon­stra­tions con­tinue in Mosul, where police shot four stu­dents and pro­test­ers attacked Turk­men offices in the city; road­side bombs were exploded in Humairah and Bagh­dad; a senior mem­ber of the “Supreme Coun­cil for Islamic Revolution”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000451.php#000451 from the al-Hakim fam­ily has been killed; and a for­mer Ba’ath offi­cial was lit­er­ally torn limb from limb by a mob in Najaf.

Yet more on Paul Moran

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I may very well regret this, but in the inter­est of fair­ness and/or throw­ing gaso­line on a dying fire, I’m reprint­ing Shel­don Rampton’s email to me — with his full per­mis­sion — in which he responds to Eric Camp­bell, the Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Corp. reporter who defended Paul Moran’s work in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan. (And whose crit­i­cism led me to apol­o­gize.) Ramp­ton is the co-author of “Weapons of Mass Decep­tion,” which was the orig­i­nal prod to this whole Paul Moran imbroglio.

1585422762.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgAs the co-author with John Stauber of “Weapons of Mass Decep­tion,” I read with inter­est your recent apol­ogy about Paul Moran, the Aus­tralian TV cam­era­man who was killed in Iraq and who also worked for the Ren­don Group. How­ever, I think you have apol­o­gized exces­sively and pre­ma­turely.
In “Weapons of Mass Decep­tion,” John and I describe Moran’s work for Ren­don very briefly, but there is more to the story than we tell there. We decided not go go into fur­ther detail, partly because a more exten­sive telling didn’t seem to fit within the flow of that chap­ter. How­ever, the facts in total are actu­ally MORE dis­turb­ing than you would imag­ine from the brief men­tion that appears in our book. More­over, I would chal­lenge some of the state­ments that Eric Camp­bell made in his com­ments to you.
To begin with, Camp­bell refers to an “unend­ing rep­e­ti­tion of false claims” about Moran. How­ever, Colin James, the reporter who first wrote about Moran’s rela­tion­ship with the Ren­don Group, con­tin­ues to stand by his story. James works for the “Ade­laide Adver­tiser,” and he learned about Moran’s work for Ren­don when he attended his funeral. Accord­ing to “The Bul­letin,” an Aus­tralian news mag­a­zine, James sat down with “two close friends and two of Moran’s broth­ers” the day after the funeral:

They drank cof­fee and rem­i­nisced about their friend the altar boy, the sea scout, the livewire. The jour­nal­ist was inquir­ing of the cameraman’s work in north­ern Iraq when one of the friends men­tioned that Moran worked for a “shad­owy” com­pany. Shad­owy com­pany, won­dered the jour­nal­ist. What­ever could you mean?
The friend men­tioned a name: the Ren­don Group. He talked of Moran’s involve­ment in help­ing an Iraqi defec­tor escape and Moran’s work with the INC. Moran, he said, had helped mobilise a pop­u­lar upris­ing against Sad­dam Hussein’s regime and trained dis­si­dents in the use of hid­den cam­eras. There were the renowned “Paul Moran chan­nels” � he seemed able to con­tact impor­tant peo­ple with lit­tle bother � and the “James Bond lifestyle”. In short, Moran had spent a decade, on and off, try­ing to desta­bilise Sad­dam Hussein’s regime for a com­pany hired by both the CIA and Pen­ta­gon.
Per­haps Moran’s death wasn’t so ran­dom, after all. Per­haps this nice guy had a secret. Well, that’s how the jour­nal­ist reported it, any­way. Colin James, an Ade­laide Adver­tiser reporter with a 1994 Walk­ley Award, stands by his story. No one demurred while one friend spun tales about Moran, he says. James’ main fear dur­ing the inter­view was that his eyes might turn into saucers. He rushed back to the office and punched “Ren­don Group” into an inter­net search engine. And his eyes grew wider.

The URL for the above story is as fol­lows: http://​bul​letin​.ninemsn​.com​.au/​b​u​l​l​e​t​i​n​/​E​d​D​e​s​k​.​n​s​f​/0/
B1B47ED7DABBEDBCCA256D480013C030?OpenDocument
It should be noted that Colin James did not intend his story to be any sort of attack or crit­i­cism of Moran’s work. To the con­trary, it was head­lined “Moran’s secret cru­sade against the tyranny of Sad­dam,” and it is full of lauda­tory com­ments about Moran by his griev­ing friends. You can read James’ story at the fol­low­ing URL:
http://​www​.thead​ver​tiser​.news​.com​.au/​p​r​i​n​t​p​a​ge/ 0,5942,6239116,00.html
Clearly, James’ account dif­fers from Eric Campbell’s claim that Moran merely “did occa­sional audio visual pro­duc­tion work [for] Ren­don and other PR com­pa­nies.” More­over, James’ account is cor­rob­o­rated and ampli­fied in a TV seg­ment for the Aus­tralian news pro­gram Date­line. You can read a tran­script of the pro­gram and view the video at the fol­low­ing URL:
http://​www​.sbs​.com​.au/​d​a​t​e​l​i​ne/
trans.php3?dte=2003 – 07-23&title= Paul+Moran+Story
The Date­line pro­gram inter­viewed Zaab Sethna, a long­time spokesman for the Iraqi National Con­gress. Accord­ing to Sethna, he and Moran began work­ing together more than a decade ago, prior to Oper­a­tion Desert Storm:

When I first met Paul we were work­ing for the gov­ern­ment of Kuwait. That ended after Kuwait was lib­er­ated by the Amer­i­cans and then the Ren­don group came back us to.
We weren’t employ­ees we were on con­tract. The Ren­don group came back to us and said, “We now have a con­tract to bureau­cracy, to kind of do anti-Saddam pro­pa­ganda on behalf of the Iraqi oppo­si­tion.“
So, there was some radio, some tele­vi­sion, there was like a trav­el­ling human rights exhi­bi­tion around the world to show Saddam’s human rights vio­la­tions. There was send­ing out press releases, kind of stan­dard pub­lic rela­tions. What we did�nt know, what the Ren­don group didn’t tell us, was in fact it was the CIA that had hired them to do this work so we hired on…

More­over, Moran’s rela­tion­ship with the INC and the Ren­don Group led to one of the high-profile inter­na­tional news sto­ries that pur­ported to doc­u­ment a covert Iraqi pro­gram to develop weapons of mass destruc­tion. As Sethna explains in the Date­line piece, Moran was cho­sen by the INC as one of only two reporters (the other was Judith Miller of the New York Times) invited to inter­view Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri, an Iraqi defec­tor who claimed that he had been used by Sad­dam to build spe­cialised bunkers and other facil­i­ties for chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal and nuclear weapons research. After Miller and Moran did their sep­a­rate sto­ries on al Haideri, he dis­ap­peared into a U.S. wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gram. You can see some of the sto­ries about Iraq that were based on al Haideri’s alle­ga­tions at the fol­low­ing URLs:
http://​www​.cbsnews​.com/​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​0​2​/​0​1​/​1​8​/​e​v​e​n​i​n​g​n​e​ws/ main324937.shtml
http://​usinfo​.state​.gov/​t​o​p​i​c​a​l​/​p​o​l​/​t​e​r​r​o​r​/​0​1​1​2​2​1​0​7​.​htm
http://​observer​.guardian​.co​.uk/​w​o​r​l​d​v​i​e​w​/​s​t​o​ry/ 0,11581,669024,00.html
As this exam­ple illus­trates, it is inac­cu­rate for Camp­bell to char­ac­ter­ize Paul Moran as merely a cam­era­man. The Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion also treated him as a reporter and allowed him to break a story that was of major impor­tance in mak­ing the case for war with Iraq. To have this story reported by some­one who has worked closely with both the Ren­don Group and the Iraqi National Con­gress is a clear case of con­flict of inter­est. Eric Camp­bell is merely blow­ing smoke when he tries to use the dis­tinc­tion between a “con­tract worker” and an “employee” as his basis for claim­ing that no such con­flict existed. It is also strik­ing that no one has been able to sub­stan­ti­ate al Haideri’s detailed descrip­tions (includ­ing loca­tions) of an exten­sive weapons pro­gram that included under­ground stor­age facil­i­ties. As Scott Rit­ter has pointed out, it would have been impos­si­ble for Sad­dam Hus­sein to destroy such facil­i­ties quickly with­out leav­ing a trace in the days pre­ced­ing the war. There is a good chance that al Haideri’s claims about weapons facil­i­ties were the basis for Don­ald Rumsfeld’s claim on March 30 that “We know where they are.” But if we knew where they are, why haven’t we found them by now?
I think that it is also rather disin­ge­nous for Camp­bell to com­plain that it is now “too late to repair the dam­age” of allegedly “false claims” about Moran that have cir­cu­lated on the Inter­net. Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of Colin James’s story in the Ade­laide Adver­tiser, Moran’s fam­ily and friends were asked repeat­edly to clar­ify the facts about his life and work, and they repeat­edly declined to do so, usu­ally cit­ing their grief as the rea­son for remain­ing silent. The Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion has also been very “eco­nom­i­cal with the truth” in its com­ments on the mat­ter. For exam­ple, here is the URL to a tran­script from ABC’s “Media Watch,” which com­ments on the Ade­laide Adver­tiser:
http://​www​.abc​.net​.au/​m​e​d​i​a​w​a​t​c​h​/​t​r​a​n​s​c​r​i​p​t​s​/​s​8​3​2​0​3​2​.​htm
The ABC response con­sists of call­ing Colin James’s story “a super­fi­cial piece” and then declin­ing to com­ment fur­ther on grounds that it wasn’t “a story most of the Aus­tralian media followed” — a clas­sic “non-denial denial” that fails to iden­tify a sin­gle error of fact in James’s story while insin­u­at­ing that some­thing was wrong with it. And how can Moran’s peo­ple have it both ways? If the Colin James story wasn’t fol­lowed by most of the media, how can it have caused the intense grief and suf­fer­ing of which they com­plain? And if they can’t be both­ered to pub­licly cor­rect any errors in the story, why should we take them at face value now when they com­plain that errors have gone uncor­rected? And what errors specif­i­cally are they talk­ing about? The only error that Camp­bell men­tions in his com­plaint to you is that Moran worked on con­tract for Ren­don rather than being an “employee.” That’s arguably an error on your part (not ours), but it’s a pretty nit-picky com­plaint, given the extent of Moran’s rela­tion­ship with the Ren­don Group.
As for the com­plaint that Moran is being vil­lainized, John and I never char­ac­ter­ized him as a vil­lain, and nei­ther did you. I think Camp­bell brought up that claim for the pur­pose of emo­tional intim­i­da­tion. I have no doubt that Camp­bell liked Paul Moran and resents read­ing crit­i­cism of his work. I also have no rea­son to doubt that Moran believed in the cause of the Kurds, and he prob­a­bly also believed in the work he did for the INC. Peo­ple who work on pub­lic rela­tions cam­paigns often inter­nal­ize the beliefs of their clients. “Sin­cer­ity of belief,” how­ever, is not a valid defense against the spe­cific charge of con­flict of inter­est, and by any rea­son­able inter­pre­ta­tion, Moran crossed that line. To say that this is the case does not mean that Moran was a vil­lain, and it is not intended to con­vey any dis­re­spect for the dead. Out of respect for the LIVING, how­ever, I think the pub­lic is enti­tled to know the full story of how we were sold the war on Iraq.

Shel­don Ramp­ton
Edi­tor, PR Watch (www​.prwatch​.org)
Author of books includ­ing:
Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sis­ter Cities
Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
Mad Cow USA
Trust Us, We’re Experts
Weapons of Mass Deception

There is obvi­ously more to this story than a first — or sec­ond or third — glance shows. I’ll be work­ing on this one over the next few days.

There is no spoon…

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Is George Bush going mad? Los­ing his grip on reality?

In a photo op in the Oval Office with U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Kofi Annan yes­ter­day, Bush made a com­ment at the very end of the event that didn’t quite jibe with the col­lec­tively agreed upon reality:

The larger point is, and the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion is, did Sad­dam Hus­sein have a weapons pro­gram? And the answer is, absolutely. *And we gave him a chance to allow the inspec­tors in, and he wouldn’t let them in.* And, there­fore, after a rea­son­able request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the deci­sions we made will make Amer­ica more secure and the world more peace­ful. (Empha­sis added.)

Now, I don’t know about you, but I dis­tinctly remem­ber Hans Blix et al. run­ning around Iraq while Sad­dam was in power, often accom­pa­nied by Iraqi min­ders who were there, one would sus­pect, on the orders of Sad­dam Hussein.

Joe Cona­son over at Salon has a good take on this, includ­ing this nugget: “Another recent pres­i­dent once said some­thing that was bla­tantly untrue, if fairly triv­ial, and the video­tape of his state­ment was replayed again, and again, and again, and again…” He also points to Dana Milbank’s _Washington Post_ cov­er­age of the event, which has this mar­velously under­stated passage:

The president’s asser­tion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspec­tors appeared to con­tra­dict the events lead­ing up to war this spring: Hus­sein had, in fact, admit­ted the inspec­tors and Bush had opposed extend­ing their work because he did not believe them effective.

I can just imag­ine the uncom­fort­able shuf­fling of feet in the room as reporters glanced to each other. “Did he just really say that?” they may have whis­pered to each other once Bush was out of earshot.

Actu­ally, I take that back. Judg­ing from a quick Nexis search, most reporters yes­ter­day com­pletely missed the com­ment. Nexis reveals just 10 hits on the quote, and five of them are the same Knight-Ridder story, one is a story in the Irish Times, which gives Bush’s com­ment head­line treat­ment, and another is a CNN tran­script of the event. The last three are gov­ern­ment tran­scripts. News­day has some­thing on it, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer quotes it, but — aston­ish­ingly — doesn’t address it all. “The best way for the White House to resolve the mat­ter once and for all — of course — is for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion actu­ally to locate weapons of mass destruc­tion,” writes Blitzer. “Short of that, the debate will not only con­tinue but is likely to inten­sify in the weeks and months to come.”

Shame, shame, you guys in the D.C. press corps.

[UPDATE On his first day on the job, new White House press sec­re­tary Scott McClel­lan had to respond to Bush’s “he wouldn’t let them in” state­ment. He said this:

*Q* Two quick ques­tions, one on Iraq. When the Pres­i­dent said of Sad­dam Hus­sein, we gave him a chance to allow the inspec­tors in and he wouldn’t let them in, why didn’t he say that, when the inspec­tors went into Iraq?

*MR. McCLEL­LAN:* What he was refer­ring to was the fact that Sad­dam Hus­sein was not com­ply­ing with 1441, that he con­tin­ued his past pat­tern and refused to com­ply with Res­o­lu­tion 1441 of the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil, which was his final oppor­tu­nity to com­ply. And the fact that he was try­ing to thwart the inspec­tors every step of the way, and keep them from doing their job. So that’s what he’s refer­ring to in that statement.

*Q* But that isn’t what he said.

*Q* Just quickly on a dif­fer­ent sub­ject, on North Korea. …

Argh! Why the hell did some­one not keep up on that line of questioning?]

Any­way, state­ments like Bush’s are truly freaky, and remind me of his Social Secu­rity line in the clos­ing days of the 2000 elec­tion (“They want the fed­eral gov­ern­ment con­trol­ling the Social Secu­rity like it’s some kind of fed­eral pro­gram!”) He often says stu­pid things when he’s under stress, and when he’s com­ing up with whop­pers like this, Ari Fleischer’s asser­tions that the pres­i­dent has “moved on” don’t quite ring true. And it’s play­ing havoc with the Bush White House’s aura of inevitability.

Much of Team Bush’s suc­cess has been because offi­cials are adept at pre­sent­ing a _fait accompli_ to oppo­nents and the pub­lic. They also like to imbue Bush with some kind of Pope-like infal­li­bil­ity, sort of like he’s the Gipper’s vicar. THis tech­nique worked in Florida, when he assumed a pres­i­den­tial stance in the days after the elec­tion, even though every­one knew by that point that it was very much up in the air. It worked for a while after May 1, when Bush landed on the USS Abra­ham Lin­coln and declared the Iraq war as a “mis­sion accomplished.”

As long as the Wash­ing­ton press corps and an apa­thetic pub­lic allowed the White House to do this, it worked like a charm. Unfor­tu­nately — for Bush — it now looks like that era is over. There’s blood in the water and toss­ing DCI George Tenet over the side won’t do much to calm the churn, espe­cially after the White House has made con­tra­dic­tory dec­la­ra­tions regard­ing the CIA.

There’s no doubt the White House is in dis­ar­ray and in full dam­age con­trol mode. The ura­nium story may be the spark to ignite a full-on for­est fire of media scrutiny lick­ing at Bush’s toes as he makes con­vo­luted state­ments regard­ing Iraq. And if that hap­pens, the larger story about the rea­sons for war might get so hot, it will be radioactive.