The US, UN & Iraq III

That must be part of what is called "free speech." c.ii.

timber

You suggest in your earlier post that certain key transgressions (the incubator disinformation bit) are held up by the media and circled with flashing neon lights and that (I think you are suggesting) we can therefore fall prey to the notion that governments lie more often than they really do.

Boy, do I think you have this one down side up.

No, blatham, I think that governments and politicians get caught more often than they don't, and its generally The Press that catches them.

I'm sure governments in western democracies are constantly being exposed over little transgressions, that's part of the deal done to ensure that when it comes to the BIG LIE, they are all on side. It works too, this current outrage in Iraq being a classic example.

Good point, Steve.

Timber says, in response to others' comments on the UN and the Security Council:



This is where I depart with UN naysayers. I would feel much less safe in this world if there were no UN, vitiated as it now is. Even the idea of the UN and what it is supposed to do, no matter how often it fails, makes this a better world. It was developed because of need -- not to deny that world geopolitics had much to do with its structure, nor even to deny that its creation was clearly self-serving for some nations -- and that need exists more today than ever before.

To say that such a forum is functionally unachieveable because it might be cumbersome and ineffective sometimes, and even fail completely in many of its goals, is not a defensible argument. All of us fail everyday in being the kind of people we want to be, and our institutions fail because we run them. The UN is at its weakest right now because we made it so. If the US acted as if it were part of the world, not as if it ran the world, then the UN would be significatnly more effective. Not perfect, but effective. And I agree with those who say that the Security Council should go. I wish I were a brilliant enough thinker to restructure the UN as a better institution, but even if I am not, I would not throw out the baby with the bath water.

timber old chum, I'm afraid I quite fail to see the difference you suggest is there in your reply above. Politicians, you seem to be saying, get busted for instances of disinformation more often than they don't? I do not believe it, certainly not in the short run. Maybe years later (Patriot missle) or decades later (Nixon on jews) but that's not much of a consolation. That it is the press who do the busting seems unavoidable, as even if it is another politician or insider doing the whistle-blowing, the press is the vehicle for information release.

Of course, because we have such a discouraging plethora of deceit examples in your and my living memory (hell, just in the last year for goodness sakes) folks like myself are not going to believe these guys. It isn't that they tell nothing but untruths, but that's not very helpful.

So, no, I certainly won't believe them when they find WOMD and file folder contents showing ties between Sadaam and Osama, not when they keep independents out of the search. It isn't that those things aren't there, it is that I cannot trust the speakers who've set up the post war search this way. And you shouldn't either. You're smart enough to understand why science research procedes under stringent proof and verification requirements, and political figures have a hell of a lot more interest in finding what they want than does some chemist looking at molecules.

Re the reconfiguration of the UN...

that such an endeavor would be difficult isn't really a bolt out of the blue revelation. What international agreement involving complex issues and differing interests ever has been simple and easy? Or which has achieved idyllic perfection for everyone?

So, let's be honest about all this and assume that the voices decrying internationalist arrangements DON'T WANT THEM.

And that points squarely at the US, particularly this administration. It is with no small surprise that we folks here who come from outside of the US find so many Americans contributing on a2k who buy into this US uber scheme. I mean jesus, have a bit of prudent humility, even if not some historical knowledge-inspired tempering of 'aint we gloryful' delusion.

Truly, what the hell are you guys doing?

Bush
Does the fruit fall far from the tree?


Drug Buy Set Up For Bush Speech
DEA Lured Seller to Lafayette Park
By Michael Isikoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, Sept. 22, 1989; Page A01

White House speech-writers thought it was the perfect visual for President Bush's first prime-time address to the nation -- a dramatic prop that would show how the drug trade had spread to the president's own neighborhood.

"This is crack cocaine," Bush solemnly announced, holding up a plastic bag filled with a white chunky substance in his Sept. 5 speech on drug policy. It was "seized a few days ago in a park across the street from the White House . . . . It could easily have been heroin or PCP."

But obtaining the crack was no easy feat. To match the words crafted by the speech-writers, Drug Enforcement Administration agents lured a suspected District drug dealer to Lafayette Park four days before the speech so they could make what appears to have been the agency's first undercover crack buy in a park better known for its location across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House than for illegal drug activity, according to officials familiar with the case.

In fact, when first contacted by an undercover DEA agent posing as a drug buyer, the teenage suspect seemed baffled by the agent's request.

"Where the {expletive} is the White House?" he replied in a conversation that was secretly tape-recorded by the DEA.

"We had to manipulate him to get him down there," said William McMullan, assistant special agent in charge of DEA's Washington field office. "It wasn't easy."

White House and DEA officials said they did nothing improper in their efforts to help Bush illustrate how widespread the local trade is. A senior White House official said the DEA was never asked to manufacture an arrest for the president's speech.

According to DEA officials, the suspect had been the target of a three-month undercover investigation before the White House request and had sold crack to agents on three previous occasions in other parts of the city.

DEA officials said yesterday they have held off on arresting the suspect in hopes that he would sell a larger amount of crack to undercover agents and could be charged with a more serious offense.

"We were negotiating for a kilogram of crack and we were trying to identify his organization," said McMullan. "We were going to make that undercover buy anyway. What difference does it make where it happened -- whether it was in front of the White House . . .or in front of the Supreme Court?"

DEA had planned to make an arrest this week, but the attempt fell through when the suspect failed to show up for a scheduled meeting with a DEA undercover agent. Another attempt will be made next week when a federal grand jury is expected to return indictments against him and possibly some of his confederates, said DEA spokesman Mario Perez.

Kevin Zeese, a defense lawyer who specializes in drug cases, said DEA's efforts to maneuver the suspect to the area around the White House may enable his lawyer to argue that he was a victim of "outrageous government conduct."

This would not help his defense against the three earlier crack sales, Zeese said. Nevertheless, "I think it's disgusting," he said. "The situation is not bad enough that they have to create a false situation? It's the government creating a hoax so they can rev up the war effort."

As described by White House and DEA officials, the trail that brought crack to the White House began last month in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the president was on vacation and preparing for the speech that would unveil his anti-drug program. The idea of the president holding up crack was included in some drafts and Bush quickly approved. "He liked the prop," said one White House aide. "It drove the point home."

Officials said that communications director David Demarest, who oversees the speech-writers, then asked Cabinet affairs secretary David Bates to contact the Justice Department about getting the drugs. Instructions to Justice were to find some crack that fit the description in the speech, not to go out and arrest someone just for the speech, aides said.

But little crack is actually sold around the White House, especially in Lafayette Park, according to local law enforcement officials.

"We don't consider that a problem area," said Maj. Robert Hines, commander of criminal investigations for the U.S. Park Police, which patrols the park. "There's too much activity going on there for drug dealers . . . . There's always a uniformed police presence there."

Hines said there have been about a half dozen arrests for marijuana possession in the park this year, but no record of any crack dealing in the park "except for that DEA buy."

The Justice Department official who got the White House call -- Richard Weatherbee, a special assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh responsible for drug policy -- phoned James Millford, executive assistant to DEA Administrator Jack Lawn. On Aug. 25, Millford called McMullan in the Washington field office.

"Do you have anything going on around the White House?" McMullan recalled Millford saying.

"I don't know about the White House," McMullan said he replied, but said there was an undercover buy his agents were hoping to negotiate "four or five blocks away."

"Any possibility of you moving it down to the White House?" Millford asked, according to McMullan. "Evidently, the president wants to show it could be bought anywhere."

Millford did not return phone calls from a reporter. Frank Shults, chief public affairs spokesman at DEA headquarters, confirmed that Millford called McMullan and asked if there were any active cases near the White House. The location of undercover buys "are highly negotiable between the buyer and the seller," he said. "That vicinity was as logical as any other location."

At that point, the undercover DEA agent called the suspect and attempted to set up a meeting to buy crack in Lafayette Park. But making arrangements proved difficult. At first, the suspect seemed not to know what or where the White House was, McMullan said. When finally told it was the residence of the president, he replied, "Oh, you mean where Reagan lives."

The meeting came off as planned. At about 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 1, the undercover agent met the suspect and purchased three ounces of crack from him for about $2,400, according to the DEA. Another DEA agent who was hiding nearby took color photographs of the transaction, McMullan said.

But there was one more worry for the DEA: Since the suspect had not been arrested, there was always the possibility that he would see Bush holding up the crack on television, figure out what was going on and flee.

When Bush gave his speech on the evening of Sept. 5, McMullan and the undercover agent were both at the White House. The undercover agent stood in the Oval Office to maintain "chain of custody" over the crack -- a legal phrase that refers to the government's requirement that it prove any drugs presented in court as evidence are the same drugs used in the crime.

Meanwhile, McMullan was in a Secret Service command post, worried that the suspect would be tipped off by Bush's speech.

"If there was a problem, we were going to take the guy right away," McMullan said. But, "he had absolutely no idea what went on."

Staff writer David Hoffman contributed to this report.

© The Washington Post Co.

Blatham -- you are very polite to Timber about that piece of Orwellian logic, but I want to take it quite seriously and counsel him never to leave his house. Things are very, very different out here in the real world.

LOL

Sometimes I forget that timber once said, he was acting here as advocatus diaboli :wink:

blatham, As a member of the US, I'm more apt to question how this administration does anything and everything, because it affects us more directly than you foreigners. In addition to that, I have never trusted GWBush. After seeing how the members of this administration works, I'm one of the few members of this country that discounts most things I hear coming out from Washington DC. There are too many things that comes out of the mouths of Washington DC wolves that may sound good on the surface, but has no teeth. I'll remain a skeptic, and just hope that we install another administration next year - not only to save the US, but the world at large. c.i.

Walter

Yes, timber did confess to that. And I think he is doing a swell job. The confusion here is simply that my firm too has been retained by an employer with, oddly enough, the very same name.

ci

I do know, old friend. And your notions apply to so many other Americans as well. It's a dilemma for myself (and I assume for the other non-Americans here) to write sentences that don't indict every American citizen who's ever been born, and not end up with huge and unwieldy preface clauses everywhere, such as..."I direct this comment to only those Americans who seek to boycott Dixie Chicks records, but who at the same time, abhor the many death threats they received..."

But also, it is the case that one can get less discerning when angry. I know that a President's popularity can be counted on to rise after a war, and it is evident in this case that such a national mood occurs quite regardless of factors one would think relevant, such as truth and consistency in rationale for the war's prosecution, overwhelming international disagreement, highly questionable legality, and the sort of dictatorial smugness evident in a policy of unilateral pre-emption. One wants to grab a map, pull that line around the border of the US really tight, and give the whole think a very big shake.

But that is unfair of me, and I apologize for my anger.

Tartar, Anybody that didn't have a boogy-man hiding under their beds knew that Iraq was not a threat to the US or it's neighbors. Why so many Americans bought into this administration's rhetoric is still a mystery to me - even now. c.i.

It's the big question, the biggest one, in my view. The administration only has to state something emphatically and, even if they later modify it or reverse it, it stays in the American mind. Where's Lola?

I'm here. Did you call, Tartarin?

An opinion on self-inflicted deafness, Lola? Please?!

Yesterday I had a discussion with an old friend whom I haven't seen in a few months. She was up here in my study and saw the screen saver I have of my daughter in a peace demonstration in L.A. on oscar night, proudly holding up a protest poster, designed by herself, declaring F--K the WAR. My friend said, "Oh, Lola (not my real name :wink: ) you're not against the war are you?" When I started to ask crucial questions about the Bush administration and it's motives, she began to look surprised. She said, "well, I just assumed 'they' knew something we didn't know, and I had to believe them." So today I forwarded by email a copy of the above article to her. (Thanks for that, tartarin) Many people in this country are busy trying to make a living or superfluous things like that, you know raising kids, etc. and they don't have time to question. All they see is a little stuff on the nightly news or the headlines and they assume they can trust their government. It's sad that we can't.

And I think you're right, Tartarin. Many people are afraid to question. They are afraid to look beneath the surface. So they engage in self deception. It's up to us to motivate them.

I have many acquaintances who have said those very words. He, GWB, must know stuff that he has through Intelligence that we do not know. If he thinks we must go to war against Iraq, he knows more than I do, and I have to go along with him.

I am and have been totally frustrated that people -- ordinary, living and breathing, intelligent (?) people -- bought into that line.