BY JAMES TARANTO
[Intelligence professionals] are coming forward because they are fiercely proud of the deepest ethic in the intelligence world--that intelligence should be nonpolitical--and are disgusted at efforts to turn them into propagandists. . . .
The atmosphere within the intelligence community is so poisonous, and the stakes are so high--for the credibility of America's word and the soundness of information on which American foreign policy is based--that an outside examination is essential.
In that column, Kristof introduced the world to a group that styles itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. This outfit made another appearance in yesterday's column:
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spies, issued an open letter to Bush Monday reflecting the view of many in the intelligence community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Cheney's resignation.
So who are these purported voices for "sanity" and against "politicization"? Blogger William Sjostrom did some online sleuthing, and here's what he found:
VIPS does not seem to have a website, but its email is vips@counterpunch.org, and their open letter appears to have been published at CounterPunch (run by Alexander Cockburn, the Nation columnist), an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing Bush to Hitler. VIPS also published an open letter in opposition to the war at Common Dreams back in February. The spokesman for VIPS is Raymond McGovern, a retired CIA analyst. McGovern's email is also at CounterPunch. He is giving a briefing today [Tuesday] with Rep. Dennis Kucinich. McGovern has compared the Iraq war to Vietnam, even saying that it could lead to nuclear war. He has charged that if WMDs are found in Iraq, they may well have been planted. He believes Tenet's job is safe because if Tenet were fired, he would reveal that the White House ignored intelligence warnings pre-9/11. McGovern has urged CIA analysts to illegally release classified documents to show what he believes to be true, specifically citing Daniel Ellsberg.
Another member of the VIPS steering committee is William Christison, who among other things believes that the Bush administration is attempting to colonize the Middle East, jointly with Israel. He believes that the war on terror is being used to turn the US into a military dictatorship. He is also a backer of the left-wing UrgentCall, along with people such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Kingsolver, Julian Bond, and Jonathan Schell.
None of this proves that VIPS is evil, or even wrong. It does say that Kristof is trying to pass off a fairly left-wing group as a group of non-partisan "professionals."
The question is: Was Kristof merely duped, or is this part of a broader pattern of dishonesty and delusion at the New York Times?
A
Confederacy of Dunces
What is one to make of Bob Graham? The sober-seeming Florida senator seems to
be going absolutely gaga. The Miami Herald reports on a jaw-dropping comment
he made Monday in Miami Beach, site of the NAACP convention:
With his rivals beginning to eclipse him on his signature issue, Graham intensified his criticisms, telling reporters before the candidates' forum that Bush's deceptions would land him in more trouble if the Democrats controlled Congress.
"If the standard of impeachment that the Republicans set for Bill Clinton, that a personal, consensual relationship was the basis for impeachment, would not a president who knowingly deceived the American people about something as important as whether to go to war meet the standard of impeachment?" Graham said.
Graham is actually the second member of Congress to call for Bush's impeachment over the liberation of Iraq; Rep. John Conyers, an ultraleftist Michigan Democrat, did so in March at a rally by the anti-American group ANSWER, whose head, Ramsey Clark, has a Web site called VoteToImpeach.org. A similar site, Impeach-Bush-Now.org, is run by Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois law professor who thinks bar crawls are a civil rights violation. Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, who though not a former Enron adviser is the Left Coast's answer to Paul Krugman, endorsed the idea yesterday.
In fairness to Graham's fellow Democrats, most of them do not appear to be endorsing the views of such crackpots. The Washington Post reports that "many Democrats said" Graham's floating the idea of impeachment was, in the Post's paraphrase, "the most hyperbolic and unhelpful statement so far."
But what the heck--hyperbolic and unhelpful statements are fun, so let's dwell on this one awhile. In the first place, Graham repeats the Democratic myth that Clinton was impeached for a "personal, consensual relationship." This is as accurate as saying that President Nixon was forced to resign over a third-rate burglary. In fact, the offenses for which Clinton was impeached were actual crimes: perjury and obstruction of justice. No one has alleged that anyone has committed any crime with regard to the State of the Union kerfuffle, and indeed if making debatable statements in political speeches were against the law, it's hard to think of any politician who would escape impeachment or prosecution.
Of course, an official needn't violate a criminal statute to be impeached. The Constitution stipulates that treason and bribery are impeachable offenses, but otherwise leaves it to Congress's discretion to define "high crimes and misdemeanors." Congress could, if a majority saw fit, impeach a president over a policy disagreement, which is essentially what Graham hints at doing.
Such an impeachment on purely political grounds would be a complete break with recent precedent. During the 20th century, Congress impeached 10 officials: Clinton and nine federal judges. As the chart on this page shows, all were charged with actual crimes, mostly financial corruption of one sort or another. (Of the 10, five were convicted and removed from office; four, including Clinton, were acquitted of all charges, and one resigned before his Senate trial began.)
To find a precedent for a prospective impeachment of Bush, you have to go back 135 years. As legal scholar Douglas O. Linder explains:
In May, 1868, the Senate came within a single vote of taking the unprecedented step of removing a president from office. Although the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson was ostensibly about a violation of the Tenure of Office Act, it was about much more than that. Also on trial in 1868 were Johnson's lenient policies towards Reconstruction and his vetoes of the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act. The trial was, above all else, a political trial.
In 1868, of course, the U.S. was also in the aftermath of a war, but a much different one from the conflict in Iraq. Not only was it several orders of magnitude bloodier--at least 600,000 Americans died on both sides--but the postwar political challenge was enormous: to reunite a divided country. The terms on which the South would rejoin the Union were the basis of the dispute between Johnson and the Radical Republicans, who dominated Congress.
Those who now speak of impeaching Bush over the liberation of Iraq seem to wish for another civil war; fittingly, Francis Boyle is active in a Hawaii secession movement. Which is fine; there's room for all kinds in diverse, pluralistic America. But at a time when America is at war with real enemies, someone like Bob Graham, who as a senior senator and former Intelligence Committee chairman actually holds a position of some responsibility, would be well advised to treat the interests of his country with more seriousness.
Is
There Really Snow Amid All That Hot Air?
"The United States' credibility, as far as the case they presented to the
world, is eroding like snow melting on a hot August day in Cape Cod."--Rep.
William Delahunt (D., Mass.), quoted in the Boston Globe, July 16
Collateral
Improvements
Good news from Saudi Arabia, says the Washington Times' Arnaud de Borchgrave:
The 24,000-strong Saudi royal family has finally conceded that the root cause of Islamist terrorism has been its own Wahhabi ideology. . . .
Following the al Qaeda suicide bombings of apartment buildings in Riyadh on May 12 that killed 35, including eight Americans, Saudi security and intelligence organizations reported what the royal family was loath to hear: Almost 1,000 Saudi clerics are either linked to, or in sympathy with, al Qaeda. They have been fired or banned from addressing worshippers after Friday prayers. Acting in the name of King Fahd, who is too ill to rule, Crown Prince Abdullah has issued new regulations prohibiting any reference to jihad, or holy war, in radio and television broadcasts.
The royals are also drafting new regulations that the Wahhabi clergy will most probably consider sacrilegious. The new rules would actually remove elements of Wahhabi doctrine--Islam's strictest interpretation of the Koran--as it is presently taught in mosques and schools around the kingdom.
This sounds too good to be the whole truth, but if it's even partially true, it's the best news yet in the war against terrorists. The Associated Press notes another straw in the wind suggesting greater Saudi openness:
When Saudi columnist Hussein Shobokshi mused in print about a future in which his daughter drives and works as a lawyer and he votes and attends human rights conferences, he touched on many fiercely contested questions in this conservative kingdom.
The response included death threats as well as a call from Crown Prince Abdullah, the country's reform-minded de-facto ruler. Abdullah "told me that he liked the article, but that I shouldn't make so many people angry," said Shobokshi.
"The negative reaction has been scathing," the AP notes. "Shobokshi received e-mails wishing him cancer and calling him a goat, a cow, and an infidel trying to steer the country away from Islam." That the story was published at all, though, has to be a good sign.
If Saudi Arabia is making halting steps toward joining the civilized world, the May 12 Riyadh bombings have to get some of the "credit." But the liberation of Iraq is likely also having an effect. As blogger Steven Den Beste notes:
Now we no longer need the Saudis. We've withdrawn our forces, and we no longer need the command center which is there. With Iraq's oilfields back online, a disruption in Saudi crude shipments (no matter why) will no longer threaten to make the world economy go into spasms. And that means we no longer have to treat them with kid gloves.
More good news comes from the Associated Press in Beirut, which reports that "hundreds of Syrian troops have begun dismantling bases in Lebanon, officials said Tuesday, moving to reduce Syria's military profile in the country."
"By redeploying its troops," a Lebanese newspaper editor tells the AP, "Syria signaled its readiness to loosen its military grip on Lebanon, a move that will certainly please America, the West and its Lebanese critics." Why is Damascus so eager to please America? Could it have something to do with those 170,000 troops just over the border in Iraq?
More
Good News for the War Effort
"France Rules Out Sending Troops to Iraq"--headline, Associated Press,
July 15
Don't
Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that actor Johnny Depp "now plans
to make Paris his permanent home because the United States 'mortifies' him with
its 'childish freedom fries and freedom toast.' " Rationalizations
for supporting a genocidal dictator are so much more sophisticated.
Ari Fleischer Imitates Us
From "Handicapping the Democrats" by James
Taranto, OpinionJournal.com, June 30:
Even if Dr. Dean loses, he will have proved himself a pioneer in electronic campaigning. . . . Al Gore, the Democrat who lost the last presidential election by a hair's breadth, famously claimed in 1999 that while in Congress, he "took the initiative in creating the Internet." His party may end up wishing he hadn't.
From an interview with departing White House press secretary Ari Fleischer in the Denver Post, July 13:
Q: Are you aware that the people who support the Ari Fleischer fan-club website on the Internet (www.probush.com/arifanclub.htm), refer to you as "hot"?
A: Just proves that Al Gore never should have invented the thing.
Deion's
Denial
An item
yesterday on a dispute between former football star Deion Sanders and an
auto-repair shop repeated the latter's claim that Sanders had told him Jesus
told him to pay only $1,500 of the $4,000-plus bill. The Dallas Morning News
account of the lawsuit notes that the former Cowboy vigorously denied the owner's
claim, contending that the owner had given him an estimate of $1,500 for the
repairs. We have no way of knowing whose account is true, but Sanders did win
the lawsuit.
Not
Too Brite--XCVIII
"The heatwave sweeping Germany claimed an unlikely victim when a man sleeping
on a roof to escape the high temperatures rolled off, suffering fatal injuries,"
Reuters reports from Berlin.
Oddly Enough!
Who
Knew?--I
"Uninsured Pay More For Prescription Drugs, Report Says"--headline,
Washington Post, July 16
Who
Knew?--II
"Not looks or money but rather life-long fidelity is what most people seek
in an ideal mate, according to a Cornell University behavioral study."--Cornell
press release, July 7
Is
Our Children Learning?
"Impoverished Chad Begins Pumps Oil Through Pipeline"--headline, Associated
Press, July 16
Your
Tax Dollars at Work
"A convicted killer seeking a sex change is entitled, at taxpayer expense,
to medical treatment that could lead to gender reassignment, a federal judge
in Albany held yesterday," reports the New York Law Journal. "The
judge made clear that he is not ordering a sex change or a specific medical
regimen for Mark L. Brooks, a/k/a Jessica M. Lewis. Rather, he is requiring
the state to provide medical and psychiatric services to determine the appropriate
course of action."
You
Are What You Eat
From a San Jose Mercury News article on Gov. Gray Davis: "Although he has
lost two statewide elections, Davis remains one of California's most successful
political figures. He's risen to those heights through a focus and discipline
few others have exhibited. Davis is so regimented that he eats a turkey sandwich
for lunch virtually every day."
Look
Mère, No Hands!
"Lance Armstrong retained his overall lead at the Tour de France after
the tenth stage Tuesday, despite losing time to protesters who blocked the route,"
reports the Associated Press:
The race was marked by a protest that forced the main pack of riders to stop flat in their tracks after supporters of radical farmer Jose Bove ran into the road and blocked cyclists near Pourrieres, about 147 kilometers (91 miles) into the race.
Tour officials immediately ruled that the protest was "a normal race incident," meaning that the riders who lost time because of the protest would not get it back.
Only in France is it "normal" for antiglobalization wackos to interfere with an athletic event. Though we have to admit, French bicyclists are a pretty impressive bunch. They manage to get around without using their handlebars, since their hands are always in the air.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Richard Warner, Bob Dudolevich, Raghu Desikan, Steve Zak, Charlie Gaylord, Ed Lasky, Robert LeChevalier, John Dodds, Joel Goldberg, Joshua Brook, Barak Moore, Richard Bowles, Fran Farrelly, Don Bosch, Ed Morrissey, Robert Stewart, James Stuchell, Dave Hauck, Steven Getman, James Eckert, Chris DeLange, Tom Elia, Rob McCann, Jason Osborn and Tom George. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
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