Mother Jones Daily

May 5, 2003

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"As a Muslim and a human I'm not 100% comfortable with the war. All those civilians over there are innocent and haven't done anything, and they have a chance of being hurt." -- Naveed Muhammed, a Muslim crewman aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. "Saddam's regime deals with the Iraqi people as numbers, not as human beings." -- an Iraqi civilian searching for his brother's body.   Occupation Watch: Iraqis Try To Document Past (LA Times) (Alternet); Baathists Return to Their Posts (Washington Post) Weapons Watch: Finding Arms Not Top Priority (The Star Online); Evidence of Threats to Israel (NY Times); Nuclear Thefts Worry IAEA (Arab News) Saddam Watch: Saddam Speaks? (The Sydney Morning Herald); A Son and $1 Billion Missing (CNN)

 
Flyboy Fallout
Bush's jet landing on the USS Abraham was slick, no question. But it may come back to haunt him.
P L U S :
Powell's X-Ray Vision
The Pentagon's war hawks prove fallible, once again. This time, it's over Guantanamo Bay.
Flyboy Fallout
Last week, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press that the president would land on the USS Abraham air carrier to give his "end of major combat" speech in a snazzy Viking jet. (The speech wasn't a "victory" speech, because calling it a victory would trigger pesky international rules of war from the Geneva Conventions, requiring Bush to do things like free the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.) Given the obvious benefits of having a photo-ready, high-octane event, it was handy that the USS Abraham was supposed to be stationed far out to sea. "It will not be a helicopter arrival, because the ship is so far out at sea," Fleischer said. Bush landed in the jet.

Now Reuters is reporting that, as it turns out, a helicopter could easily have landed on the USS Abraham. It was only 30 miles off the coast of San Diego. In fact, it was so close to shore that Bush's handlers told the Associated Press that they had to slow the massive carrier down and angle it carefully so as to show open water and not the San Diego skyscrapers in the background of the TV coverage.

The justification for Bush's actions melted away, but only after the photo opp was over and the cameras had turned elsewhere. Sound familiar?

Fleischer explained later that the president just wanted to see what it was like. "The president wanted to land on it, on an aircraft that would allow him to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing," Ari Fleischer told Reuters. "He wanted to see it as realistically as possible," he said.

It's worth noting that the president has flown before. The editors at The Boston Globe harked back to their extensive investigation into Dubya's record as a member of the Texas Air National Guard in 2000, where they found he had been basically unaccounted for or, AWOL, for more than a year's worth of his service. The Globe's editors wondered:

"It makes political sense for Bush to wrap himself in the military success of the moment. He owns Iraq and the foreign policy it represents, anyway, whatever happens from this point forward. Even so, he may yet come to regret that flamboyant, self-indulgent flyboy moment. There was an arrogance to using genuine military men and women as extras for a future campaign ad - and a dishonesty, too.

Like many rich, privileged, or otherwise politically well-connected young American men, he avoided real war. Like many young men - Republicans and Democrats - he refused and still refuses to acknowledge his effort to avoid combat. Did it cross his mind when he was ordering troops to Iraq, or afterwards, when he was comforting wives, mothers, and children of dead American soldiers? His answer to that question would be interesting to hear."

As a televised media event, Bush's flamboyant entrance seems to have been pulled off without provoking such niggling questions. Thousands of people crowded to meet the USS Abraham, and Bush's handlers had the new fathers among the troops come off board first to meet their babies. Republicans are lauding his appearance as an admirably staged reaffirmation of his foreign policy, and a "critical re-evaluation of the modern mandate for military action," as William J. Buckley wrote for Yahoo News:

Nothing in the barrage of criticism that followed his declaration of September 2001 has affected the president's thinking or vitiated his commitment. He has now history itself to point to, to the effect that what needs to be done to target terrorists and their supporters, we can do without open, or unspoken, or furtive fear that superseded canons of moral restraint will enfeeble our resolution, and distract our purpose."

But the very slickness of Bush's stunt may, in fact, come back to haunt him. With "Top Gun" headlines and pictures of Bush in a flight suit flooding the airwaves, Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) has already delivered a pointed speech questioning the propriety of Bush's actions:

"President Bush's address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures," Sen. Robert Byrd, D- West Virginia, said in a sharply worded speech delivered on the Senate floor. "American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the president's policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial."
...
"As I watched the president's fighter jet swoop down onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, I could not help but contrast the reported simple dignity of President Lincoln at Gettysburg with the flamboyant showmanship of President Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln," Byrd said.

Byrd, who has been a persistent and vocal critic of Bush's policies toward Iraq, said a "salute" to America's warriors was appropriate, but he added, "I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech."

It remains to be seen whether Byrd's words will have any traction. The American press has so far been noticeably soft on Bush. Paul Krugman, in the New York Times, wrote that British journalists told him they laughed all the way through the affair:

"If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel.

But U.S. television coverage ranged from respectful to gushing.
...
Let me be frank. Why is the failure to find any evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program, or vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons (a few drums don't qualify -- though we haven't found even that) a big deal? Mainly because it feeds suspicions that the war wasn't waged to eliminate real threats. This suspicion is further fed by the administration's lackadaisical attitude toward those supposed threats once Baghdad fell. For example, Iraq's main nuclear waste dump wasn't secured until a few days ago, by which time it had been thoroughly looted. So was it all about the photo ops?

Well, Mr. Bush got to pose in his flight suit. And given the absence of awkward questions, his handlers surely feel empowered to make even more brazen use of the national security issue in future."

One thing is certain: Bush's bomber jacket got exponentially more coverage than the Democratic presidential debates. Bush's Viking sortie is a first in many ways -- the first time a sitting president has appeared in full military garb to fly a plane, and the first salvo launched in Campaign 2004. As the editors at the Christian Science Monitor put it, the "Dems debated, Bush Won.":

"Thursday night made the president's strategy clear. In short: Appear in flight suits whenever possible. Over the next few months Bush may talk about tax cuts or the economy, but you can bet there will be military hardware nearby. Right now, the administration is probably planning a series of campaign stops at army/navy surplus stores. This is why the Republicans chose New York City for their convention in 2004 along with a September date. As long as the campaign focuses on 'the continuing war on terror' the president's people are happy."

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Powell's X-Ray Vision

Sometimes, it seems, even the Pentagon yields to pressure.

Over the weekend, word leaked that Secretary of State Colin Powell sent his counterpart at Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, a "strongly worded" letter criticizing the Pentagon's glacial pace in deciding the fate of its Guantanamo Bay detainees. Relaying the complaints of US allies, Powell demanded the release of many of the prisoners, most of whom have been held without charge or legal counsel for more than a year, and asked that the process be sped up in accordance with international law. Coming just as global outrage was peaking over news that the military is holding children captive, the letter prompted a "furious row between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defence chief Donald Rumsfeld that became so bitter President Bush had to intervene," the London Mirror's Richard Wallace reports.

		Tuesday, May 6 Monday, May 5 Friday, May 2 Thursday, May 1 Wednesday, April 30

Evidently, Bush decided in Powell's favor, because yesterday the Pentagon grudgingly announced the release of at least a dozen captives, with the promise of more to come. Naturally, the Pentagon denies that Powell's letter or international pressure had anything to do with the release. But timing is everything, as they say.

The US media has, by and large, almost ignored Powell's incendiary letter. But the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle weigh in with a column praising Powell for "speaking up for the finest American traditions of civil liberties and legal rights." They also take the time to reiterate a point that, pre-Sept. 11, few would have felt the need to mention: wholesale detentions without charges are unconstitutional.

"It's way past time to adjudicate these crimes or determine the status of these detainees. Long-term mass detentions of people who have not been accused of any crimes are inconsistent with the democratic values that are supposed to define the American way."

It's not as if the Pentagon has agreed to empty the cages at Guantanamo, however. While announcing the release of 12 detainees, the military also let slip that more than twice that number will be arriving soon to take their places. As the Associated Press reports, that's a net increase in Gitmo's population, from 660 to 680.

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