© August 28, 2003
The Daily Brew
With 10,000 screaming fans in Seattle, Howard Dean's rock star summer
tour sure looks like the hottest show in politics. In a two day swing
through the Northwest last weekend, almost fifteen thousand came out to see people-powered Howard. This was the same weekend that the White House cancelled an appearance in Tacoma Washington because planned protests promised to be large enough to make the nightly news. Padding his lead in New Hampshire, with his internet cash machine humming, Dean has the look of a guy about to break away from the pack for good.
But for all his success, Dean isn't a man who interests William Kristol and Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard. They could care less about a former Vermont Governor who is on the verge of running away with the Democratic nomination. You would think Kristol and Barnes would be covering Dean's prairie fire. You would be wrong. As I write this, two of the three top stories at the Standard's website are about a former NATO commander who hasn't even announced his candidacy, and who is largely unknown to the democratic base.
To be sure, earlier this month the Standard was doing the usual grunt
work for the White House, dishing out Karl Rove's standard weekly spin
points about the governor. According to the August 4 issue, Dean was
"an antiwar McGovernik who will lead his party to a crushing defeat."
Comically, instead of comparing Dean to Bush, the Standard compared
Dean's military record to Kerry's, neatly avoiding the "AWOL" problem. But the Standard still allowed that Dean had a chance, if only because Dean has tapped into a partisan hatred of George Bush created since "a substantial segment of the party's base has been radicalized to the point where it does not recognize the legitimacy of the Bush presidency."
Kristol and Barnes are partially correct; a substantial segment of the
party's base does not recognize the legitimacy of the Bush presidency. This is to be expected, since more people across America, as well as Florida, voted for Al Gore. But the Standard is disingenuous in suggesting that the benefits of Bush's illegitimacy can only inure to Howard Dean. It is obvious that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will benefit from a backlash from Bush's illegitimacy. The nominee will also benefit from the disaster spawned by Bush's following the incompetent advice of neocon chickenhawks like Kristol and Barnes. And if the nominee is Kerry or Clark, they will also benefit greatly from any comparison between their own biography, and that of AWOL Texas Air National Guardsman, Bush. For that reason, they are right to fear that the man who will ultimately benefit from all this outrage isn't Dean; it is Wesley Clark.
In back to back pieces now dominating the Weekly Standard website, the
Standard has attacked Clark with what they obviously hope to make the
standard narrative about the General. In the August 25 issue, the
magazine accuses Clark of putting forth "three versions" of a story
that he received a call at his home the afternoon of September 11,
2001, urging him to say on CNN that the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon were connected to Iraq. The charge is repeated in a story in the September 1-8 issue: "Another slippery candidate from Arkansas." Not surprisingly, the Standard is spinning the facts wildly. The right wing media carnival is being given its marching orders. They are to attack Wesley Clark for changing his story about that phone call.
So, did Clark give "three versions" of the story? Of course not. If
you read the just the quotes in the Standard, instead of the spin, that much is obvious. Let's review.
The Standard begins by pointing out that on "Meet the Press" on June 15 of this year, Clark noted that intelligence about the Iraqi threat had been hyped. (While Bush himself has essentially conceded this point, the Standard apparently has not.) The magazine quotes the exchange.
"Hyped by whom?" asked moderator Tim Russert.
CLARK: "I think it was an effort to convince the American people to do
something, and I think there was an immediate determination right after 9/11 that Saddam Hussein was one of the keys to winning the war on terror. Whether it was the need just to strike out or whether he was a linchpin in this, there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."
RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"
CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around
the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on
CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You've got to say this is
connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected
to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's
your evidence?' And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had--Middle East think tanks and people like this, and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. But I never personally saw the evidence and didn't talk to anybody who had the evidence to make that connection."
Note that while Clark says that the White House was asserting there was a linkage between 9/11 and Iraq, he does NOT say that he got the call from the White House asking him to affirm that linkage. Instead, he says the call was from "Middle Eastern think tanks and people like this." As we will see, that is Clark's story, and he sticks to it.
The next time Clark addresses the point it is two weeks later, when he
is accosted by Faux News' Sean Hannity. Again, the Standard faithfully printed the exchange.
(Quoting directly from the Standard) "Referring to the Russert
transcript above, Hannity said of the call, "I think you owe it to the
American people to tell us who."
Clark replied, "It came from many different sources, Sean."
HANNITY: "Who? Who?"
CLARK : "And I personally got a call from a fellow in Canada who is
part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence
information. He called me on 9/11."
HANNITY: "That's not the answer. Who in the White House?"
CLARK: "I'm not going to go into those sources."
Unless you are an editor at the Weekly Standard, the substance of this
second exchange is entirely consistent with the first. Clark again
says there were "many sources" for the story that the White House
wanted to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Clark repeats his prior claim
that he himself was called by someone who was part of a Middle Eastern
think tank. He is a bit more specific, allowing that the call came
from Canada, but he clearly does NOT claim that the call came from the
White House. When pressed on his sources who are in the White House,
he refuses to identify them. Two right wing talking heads, Hannity and Russert, have now been given the same version of events by Clark. But in the spin addled brains of Kristol and Barnes, Clark has somehow changed his tune.
The water then gets muddied a bit. Three days later, in his usually
unassailable New York Times column, Paul Krugman makes an
uncharacteristic mistake. He states:
"Literally before the dust had settled, Bush administration officials
began trying to use 9/11 to justify an attack on Iraq. Gen. Wesley
Clark says that he received calls on Sept. 11 from 'people around the
White House' urging him to link the attack to Saddam Hussein."
Even if the timing described in Krugman's first statement is in doubt,
the substance is not. Public statements by the Bush White House reveal that 9/11 was continually used by members of the administration to justify its eventual attack on Iraq. While the question of exactly when they started to discuss this amongst themselves might be an issue, the fact that they eventually did is indisputable, and Krugman was hardly being unfair to the White House for stating the obvious.
However, in the second statement, Krugman clearly mischaracterized
Clark's prior remarks. As shown by the transcripts published in the
Weekly Standard, Clark did NOT say that "people around the White House'
urging him to link the attack to Saddam Hussein." On two separate occasions, Clark had identified these people as members of "Middle Eastern think tanks." How did General Clark respond to
Krugman's column? By writing this letter to the Times:
"I would like to correct any possible misunderstanding of my remarks on 'Meet the Press,' quoted in Paul Krugman's July 15 column, about
'people around the White House' seeking to link Sept. 11 to Saddam
Hussein.
I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country,
asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House
asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. Subsequently, I learned
that there was much discussion inside the administration in the days
immediately after Sept. 11 trying to use 9/11 to go after Saddam
Hussein.
In other words, there were many people, inside and outside the
government, who tried to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11.
WESLEY K. CLARK
Little Rock, Ark., July 18, 2003"
Thus, not only had Clark been entirely consistent in identifying the
source of the call in his public statements, when he became aware that
his assertion had been mischaracterized in the press, he took the time
to correct the record. For the third time, Clark said the exact same
thing.
One might have expected the Weekly Standard to take the opportunity to
attack the White House's least favorite Ivy League economist. After
all, it was Krugman who got the facts wrong, not Clark. But that would have meant conceding the obvious and devastating point that the Bush administration dishonestly exploited 9/11 to attack Iraq. It also would have required praising the General for correcting the record.
The Bush White House (and thus the editors of the Weekly Standard)
aren't served by this bit of inconvenient truth. So, comically, they
have instead attempted to provoke yet another GOP psuedo-scandal by
pretending that Wesley Clark's statements were somehow inconsistent.
But as we have just seen, quotes from their own magazine prove the
opposite. Clark consistently said two things. First, he said that he
had a call from a Middle Eastern think tank. Second, he said the White House trying to connect 9/11 to Saddam Hussein from virtually the minute it happened.
We may never know whether Clark got a call from someone in a think tank on 9/11. But either does the Standard. All we do know is that ever since he began talking about it, his story has been entirely consistent and the emerging Republican spin point here is simply another Big Lie. We may also never know exactly when the Bush administration started trying to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. Wesley Clark says his sources tell him it started immediately. No one has proven otherwise.
But whether Clark's sources were right or wrong, we do know this. We
do know that no linkage has ever been brought forth. And we also know
that last January, when Bush was giving the hard sell on the war in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, he stated the following:
"But, see, our fellow citizens must understand that September the 11th, 2001 changed the equation. It's changed the strategic outlook of this country, because we're not protected by oceans. The battlefield is here. And therefore, we must address threats today as they gather, before they become acute.
There's a reason why the world asked Saddam Hussein to disarm -- for 12 years. And the reason why is because he's dangerous. He's used them. He tortures his own people. He's gassed his own people. He's attacked people in the neighborhood.
What's changed for America -- besides the fact that he's still
dangerous and can create havoc with friends in the neighborhood -- is
that there's now a shadowy terrorist network which he could use as a
forward army, attacking his worst enemy and never leave a fingerprint
behind, with deadly, deadly weapons. And that's what's changed."
So, as the Right wing media starts attacking General Clark for an
obscure phone call trying to link 9/11 with Iraq, gently point out that no matter what the Weekly Standard says, Clark's story has been
entirely consistent. You might also want to mention that, in contrast, George Bush's public statements related to the very same issue are demonstrably false.
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