A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government. –Edward Abbey
Although they are archived elsewhere on this site, I'll reproduce the cut chapters on Bob Woodward (and why he will rot in Writer Hell [and/or real hell, if there is one])
Part One is a revised chapter from the book. Parts Two through Four are new.
You can scroll down for a pdf page for other World Affairs cut chapters.
STATES OF DENIAL (Part One)
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
The nonfiction book by Bob Woodward I was reading and which slightly exacerbated my terminal loneliness and nudged me further towards the brink of a nervous breakdown was called Veil, The Secret Wars of the CIA. I was seeking a better handle on the CIA’s antics in Central America back in the 1980s, which is the time frame of my reinvented screen story about The Meaning of Life. (Note: I’m referring to my screen adaptation of my novel, Cosmic Banditos, for John Cusack’s production company.)
Not only did I not get a better handle on the CIA’s antics in Central America back in the 1980s, or anything else, but my reading of Veil resulted in a rush of insight of the negative variety, a dispiriting one. Woodward’s book is so packed with lies by omission and outright lies, plus blatant gaslighting/perception management, that it’s safe to say that the book itself is a lie. See, I already knew a bit about the 1980s, having been around then (including in Central America) and having paid attention to what was going on while doing so. In fact, all one need to have done during the 1980s — aside from being around — would have been to be conscious, i.e., not comatose, to realize that Woodward’s book, his nonfiction book, is a lie. One example: Endings. Important, right? Woodward sees fit to end Veil, The Secret Wars of the CIA with a lie on every level you can lie in a nonfiction book. He ends it with a chapter describing a personal visit with CIA director William Casey on his deathbed (from the brain tumor).
About two sentences into this, I knew Woodward had made up the scene. Remember that when it comes to making up stuff, I know whereof I speak — the old one, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter comes to mind.
But I could have forgiven that lie, which was only about facts, i.e., Woodward’s deathbed visit to Casey having never happened. I’ve lied about facts myself. Sometimes it’s okay, sometimes not. What Woodward does, however, in the deathbed scene he made up, is to lie in subtext as well — in what is really going on — which kind of lying is a sin, for the commission of which writers will rot in Writer Hell.
Here’s the scene: Casey, on his deathbed, admits to having known about the diversion of Iran arms sales funds to the contras. The subtext here is that Casey didn’t actually have anything directly to do with the diversion. He knew about it.
Technically, Woodward wasn’t outright lying. But what he left out of his nonfiction narrative is that Casey knew about the diversion because he had been instrumental in planning and executing it.
A whopper of a lie by omission, no?
Another thing Woodward left out of his nonfiction narrative about the CIA in the 1980s involves drug trafficking by the contras. Casey and his protégé, Oliver North, didn’t just know about Contra drug trafficking, they were likewise indirectly involved in the planning of it, plus the cover up. (In 1989, Oliver North was barred entry in Costa Rica for being a known drug trafficker.)
In Veil, Woodward doesn’t even mention the contras and drug trafficking, let alone that Casey and North knew about it, let alone that they were involved in the planning and subsequent cover up. Since the Contra war in Nicaragua was one of the secret wars of the CIA of the title of Woodward’s book, one would think that the CIA’s involvement in drug trafficking to finance that war would bear mention, no? This is Bob Woodward writing. (There’s a surf break in northern Costa Rica called Ollie’s Point, so named because it’s near a clandestine landing strip North used to run cocaine into the United States. Point being: if the ragamuffin surfers who named the break knew about North’s smuggling antics, why didn’t this legendary journalist?)
A question: Since other journalists from that time knew about all this, how did Bob Woodward miss it? (Bob Parry’s excellent book, Lost History, is a good summation of what was known at the time.) The answer is that he didn’t miss it. He just left it out of his nonfiction narrative, for reasons related to Woodward having turned into a sniveling toady of the powers that be.
Of Bob Woodward’s nonfiction books since All the President’s Men, at the time of my brink-hovering I had only read Veil, The Secret Wars of the CIA. Out of (morbid) curiosity I went on to read two of his subsequent books. In The Commanders, purported to be the definitive history of the U.S. military’s overthrow of Manuel Noriega, Woodward devotes one sentence to U.S. history with the Panamanian dictator. Here it is, the one sentence:
“Although he once had been one of the CIA’s key Latin American assets, the administration now viewed (Noriega) as an outlaw and an enemy of U.S. interests.”
…the administration now viewed Noriega as an outlaw and an enemy of U.S. interests…
In his definitive history, Bob Woodward justifies the U.S. invasion of another country by telling us… nothing… nothing whatever…
Do you think maybe Woodward left out some stuff about Noriega’s relationship to the CIA in his nonfiction narrative? I mean aside from not even mentioning the CIA’s collusion with Noriega on drug trafficking (likewise to fund the contras) and aside from not even mentioning the list of treaties and international laws solemnly signed by the United States that were broken by the invasion. Nor does he mention that the unilateral aggression of invading another country without “imminent threat” (or any threat) is the same crime for which Nazis were executed at Nuremburg. Noriega being an “outlaw” (a drug trafficker) was fine and dandy as long as some of the drug money made its way to the illegal war the CIA was supporting, but when the dictator quit cooperating, colluding with the CIA in big-time criminal activities, he was now an “enemy of U.S. interests” and his country was fair game for invasion.
But my favorite lie by omission, one near and dear to my heart, comes in Woodward’s Plan of Attack – his definitive history of our conflict with Saddam Hussein. Woodward does better, wordage-wise, in this one, devoting one whole page (out of 450) to U.S. history with “The Beast of Baghdad.” A little problem, though: In his one page history Woodward skips from the 1970s to the 1990s, leaving out the 1980s. Not a word about the decade of the 1980s. Right. The decade during which the U.S. and The Beast of Baghdad were close allies and the U.S., under Reagan then Bush I, was actively and knowingly aiding and abetting The Beast of Baghdad in his crimes against humanity.
Here’s the thing: Bob Woodward himself classifies his books, his nonfiction books, as being “somewhere between the news and the history books.”
Let’s take him on his word on that.
See if you concur: People who provide a democratic society (like what the United States is purported to be) with news (meaning journalists) should maybe question what the bastards in power tell them about their antics, not just parrot them as facts. Same goes for the writers of history books, which mold the minds of our children.
In his books, Bob Woodward does not question anything the bastards tell him. He just parrots them as facts. Bob Woodward’s books, his nonfiction books, which are something “between the news and history,” are lies. That I had this rush of insight about the journalist who in the 1970s questioned everything and in so doing uncovered the truth, then followed the truth wherever it led, even to the toppling of a president, and who was a hero of mine, and who was now the personification of why Orwell was an optimist, slightly exacerbated my terminal loneliness.1
[1] Footnote:If the rewriting (or erasing) of history, which is what Woodward does in his books (the erasure of the 1980s from his history of U.S. relations with Iraq, for example), sounds vaguely familiar: This was the protagonist Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984. Smith, along with the rest of the world of that story, was intimidated, threatened, bullied, into denial/lying via “jackboots on human faces.” That the jackboots are unnecessary in the real world of today to get Woodward (and the rest of the mainstream media) to rewrite history is the basis of my observation that Orwell was an optimist.
Part Two follows.
STATES OF DENIAL (Part Two)
In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
–George Orwell
Aside from Bob Woodward, there’s another journalist who used to have a modicum of integrity but is now a sniveling toady of the powers that be: Christopher Hitchens. In the April, 2006 issue of Vanity Fair Hitchens describes how Bush and Tony Blair, in a meeting back on April 16, 2004 were discussing the possibility of bombing the Al Jazeera office in Qatar, Al Jazeera being a news organization that’s critical of Bush/Blair.
Hitchens mentions this in the context of his trying to get U.S. citizenship, saying that since he had once visited an Al Jazeera office, he might be considered to have had “contact with suspected-terrorist targets”; he infers that this wouldn’t look good on his citizenship application.What Hitchens seems to have forgotten (since he doesn’t see fit to mention it) is that blowing up the offices of a news organization is at the very least a war crime, most likely outright aggression (since Quatar is a neutral country in the “war”), a crime for which Nazi’s were executed.
Assuming that deaths would have resulted from the bombing Bush and Blair were discussing, Hitchens also seems to have forgotten that fellow journalists, if it’s appropriate to label Hitchens thus, would have been slaughtered; this seems to bother him not a whit, nor does it occur to him that if Bush has no problem in murdering journalists who do no agree with him, Hitchens himself might eventually be a target, should he ever revert back to his critical views of Bush and his gang. Plus, he is, currently at least — like the Al Jazeera folks he sees no problem in murdering — a foreign journalist. (Hitchens quite correctly points out the Bush/Blair conspiring in 2004 puts in doubt that the U.S. bombing of the Al Jazeera office in Baghdad in 2003 was a “regrettable accident,” as the U.S. claimed. What he does not bother to point out is that a journalist was killed in this attack – murdered. His name was Tareq Ayyoub, a man with a wife and a family and a life and who was reporting on the war as he saw it — there is no evidence whatsoever that Al Jazeera has ties to any terrorist groups, let alone that Ayyoub was so linked.)
I find this chilling. Be advised, though, that I am not chilled that Bush would conspire (with another head of state) to murder journalists – biz as usual. What is chilling is that Hitchens’ state of denial could be so deep-rooted (up there with Bob Woodward’s, even) that he doesn’t notice the implication thereof (that he himself might someday be a Bush/Blair target of assassination).
A more serious upshot of the state of denial phenomenon – which is the standard mode for not only individuals, Hitchens, say (or the denial-maestro himself, Bob Woodward) but various sociopathic closed systems (the media, say, as epitomized by Bob Woodward) – is that it can have disastrous effects on the agenda that motivated the lies that are at the bottom of the denial in the first place. An obvious example is Bush’s catastrophic “miscalculation” that the Iraqis would welcome his invading force “with open arms.”
Although it’s unlikely that many tears were shed over the toppling of Saddam, consider the history – meaning the real history, not the perception-managed media rewrite of it (via Bob Woodward, for one) – of U.S. involvement with Iraq over the past quarter century. Here’s a very brief recap, and let’s try to Put Ourselves In An Average Iraqi’s Place: In 1991 the U.S. attacks your country, killing who knows how many rank and file soldiers. (No official “body count” was kept but estimates are as high as 100,000, the vast majority being poor conscripts with no choice in the matter of being in uniform. Although, yes, the death of opposing forces is inevitable in war, remember I’m dealing with the delusion of the “open arms” theory here. Point being: Put Yourself In The Place of these 100,000 dead grunts’ loved ones regarding welcoming the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation with “open arms.”)
In the course of the 1991 conflict the U.S. bombs and destroys your civilian infrastructure (to create chaos and desperation amongst the populace), which (oh-by-the-way) is a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions, plus the U.N. Charter (both of which the U.S. not only signed but largely formulated). So “collateral damage,” a.k.a. civilian deaths, are not only due to direct military action but also the long-term effects of no power (hospitals need it), a dearth of potable water and so forth.
Then, the war “won,” for the ensuing decade (the 1990s) the U.S. subjects your country to more civilian infrastructure destruction, plus illegal economic sanctions (commonly defined as “economic terrorism”) that result in the deaths of at least 500,000 people, virtually all civilians, a high percentage of which are infants and young children (who are most in need of the unavailable food, medicine, potable water, etc.). These sanctions were supposedly meant to weaken Saddam.
Since the decade-long de facto slaughter of your countrymen took place mostly during the Clinton presidency, let’s see what his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, had to say about it. Albright, when asked on 60 Minutes if the deaths of a half million civilians was worth the effect (weakening Saddam), she replied, “Yes, we think it was worth it.” (See http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084 for an analysis of Albright’s remark.)
She and her boss thought it was “worth it” in the face of the warnings of virtually every credible Middle East authority that the sanctions would in fact strengthen Saddam, not weaken him. And, as predicted, the sanctions had nothing to do with Saddam’s exit. I wonder if Clinton/Albright still think those half million corpses were “worth it.” How about you, in your Average Iraqi persona? How are your arms doing? Do they feel like “opening”? (It’s hard for me to resist bringing up Al Franken – who is so fond of exposing the lies and hypocrisies of others – and his love for Bill Clinton. A half million innocents dead because of Clinton’s policy, and his spokesperson claims it was “worth it.” A question for Al: How do you get through the day with this one? Does the title of Bob Woodward’s new book come to mind?)
Then, in 2003, came Bush’s “Shock and Awe,” which for you and your loved ones translated to “Death and Maiming,” mostly via indiscriminate bombing of urban centers. (Here, as an Average Iraqi, you might also recall the 2003 “Cut the head off the serpent” “smart” bombing of a civilian restaurant that killed 18 civilians, missing Saddam, who was lunching elsewhere.)Although, again, there is no official body count for “unworthy victims” like you and your countrymen, we have to assume that as a result of military action and economic sanctions the total dead from U.S. “policy” toward your country since 1991 is approaching one million.
But, Bush’s perception management machine would argue, the U.S. has rid your country of a brutal dictator; that is not arguable, right? In Putting Yourself In An Average Iraqi’s Place, let’s go along with this and assume that you hated Saddam with a passion; let’s even assume you yourself were tortured by his regime and, further, lost a loved one via his mass murdering of dissidents.
There’s another problem here, though, for the “open arms” theory: Unlike with Bob Woodward’s “definitive history” of U.S. relations with Iraq, in our little recap we’re going to leave in the decade of the 1980s, which was when the worst of Saddam’s crimes were perpetrated. (I refer to Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, in which he omitted the decade of the 1980s from his history of U.S./Iraqi relations. Presumably, Woodward did this because during the 1980s the U.S. and Saddam were close allies — I’ll not try reader patience with another reference to the title of Bob Woodward’s new book as the psychological condition that would allow the legendary journalist to do this.)
So for you as an Average Iraqi, the memory of Saddam and his inhumanity is inextricably tied to direct U.S. support, even to the torture you personally underwent; the equipment and methods having been at least in part CIA supplied. (The torture of course continued on during the U.S. occupation, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.)And if in your Average Iraqi persona you’re a Kurd or have Kurd loved ones – and since no one (like Bob Woodward) rewrote history for you — you will likely remember that the helicopters with which Saddam dropped poison gas on you and your loved ones were supplied by the United States, as were the chemical components used to make the poison gas. This was in 1988, with foreknowledge of what Saddam would use the choppers and chemicals for. (See http://www.casi.org.uk/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html for a summation of U.S. economic relations with Saddam’s Iraq, including a list of the U.S. corporations that made a buck selling Saddam the choppers and chemicals.)
Yes, if you include the 1980s in your history of U.S. relations with Iraq the total number of Average Iraqis dead as a direct result of U.S. “policy” comes to well over a million. And we’re not even counting the failed 1991 coup against Saddam (after the first Gulf War), in which the rebellious forces seeking to overthrow Saddam were put down with the help of the U.S. military. Deaths of the anti-Saddam forces are estimated in the tens of thousands. Perhaps in your Average Iraqi persona, at least one of the anti-Saddam rebels was a loved one. (See http://www.representativepress.org/evenafter.html.)
Point being: Aside from the handful of toadies installed in the new puppet regime, it’s difficult to imagine even one Iraqi, Average or otherwise, that has not been subjected to U.S. “policy” – a friend or loved one killed by violence or economic sanctions, or maimed or tortured.
One million equals about 1 in 25 Iraqis dead. If translated to the U.S., which has about ten times the population of Iraq, we’d be contemplating 10 million U.S. citizens killed.
Can you wrap your mind around that number?
A question for Bush and his gang: What state of denial were you living in with your “open arms” theory? (A similar question for Bob Woodward: What State of Denial were you living in that you failed to point out any of this in your definitive books on the Bush presidency and its relations with Iraq?)
One more question for both Bush and Bob: Are you really surprised that 95% of the “insurgents” in Iraq are Average Iraqis, and that in their “open arms” are cradled AK 47s or RPGs?
An observation: It’s one thing for Bush and his gang (with the collusion of Bob Woodward) to rewrite history, to perception-manage the truth behind their greed-driven empire-building, but quite another when they themselves believe the rewrite. We are now going beyond the State of Denial Woodward (plus Hitchens, plus most of the American public) inhabit.
We are now exiting that State of Denial and entering the state of full-blown insanity.
A chapter cut from the book.
STATES OF DENIAL (Part Three)
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
–George Orwell
Today as I write, March 20, 2006, is the third anniversary of the start of Bush’s Iraq war. Dubya, as he’s affectionately referred to by certain journalists that maintain the illusion of taking issue with him, held a press conference today, wherein he answered questions.
A press conference? Answered questions?
Here’s a question: Where were the journalists at the press conference?
There weren’t any. It’s now gotten to where Dubya’s perception management machine doesn’t even trust the usual toady-journalist plants to ask the agreed-upon puff questions that allow the shitball motherfucker to answer with talking points. The questions were from the likes of local high school students (plants, every one) reciting talking point queries Dubya already knew about, plus a couple morons asking how they can help him spread democracy.
Hold on. This is too easy.The good stuff was in V.P. Cheney’s little speech today, timed to complement Dubya’s debacle, his insult to your intelligence, his utter contempt for your intelligence. But Cheney: Cheney –who gets to shoot scumbags with a shotgun (a lawyer) and face no repercussions – tells us that the war in Iraq is being misrepresented by the media because the media shows the violence over there.
Listen: I’m not going where you think I’m going with this. Again, too easy. Where I’m going is more to the root of why the world is so fucked up than Cheney’s latest relatively minor a priori insult to your intelligence, utter contempt for your intelligence.Where I’m going is to the subtext of Cheney’s insult, which subtext being that in the U.S. of A. we have an adversarial media. This is the complaint put forth by Dubya and his gang, right? The media are biased. That the media are indeed biased there is no doubt: They are biased in that they don’t question anything about motives, about the real agenda of the administration — not just the current one, but, say, the last five, all of which are guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and outright aggression. Crimes for which Nazis were executed at Nuremberg. (The last five being Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan and Carter. If you’re surprised at my inclusion of that nice man Jimmy Carter in the crimes against humanity club, I’ll give you just one example, although there are scads: Carter actively and knowingly aided and abetted the Shah of Iran in the torture and murder of tens of thousands of human beings. He even liked the Shah of Iran, who, by any reasonable definition, was a monster.)
But: “The media are biased against this administration.” This is the claim, right?
Perception Management Commandment 8: When the truth or image of a situation is a problem, claim the reverse, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, and if at all possible try to muster outrage and/or moral indignation, as you do so. If you’re not up to outrage or indignation, beleaguered sadness will do.
Since the truth/image problem for Dubya and his gang is that the media are biased for them (meaning not challenging them on their motives and Big Lies), they just claim the reverse, i.e., that the media are biased against them. And the media love this since it sounds like they’re doing their job, i.e., questioning the powers that be. (Which is the media’s job in a democracy.) Boom, everyone’s happy. (Except maybe George Orwell, embarrassed from the grave for his excess optimism.)
In order to see how Perception Management Commandment 8 works, lets imagine How It Went in a few other situations where there was a truth and/or image problem for Bush and a couple of his predecessors. (There are so many choices here that I’ll just do this off the top of my head):The 1989 invasion of Panama was not only illegal according to UN resolutions and international treaties solemnly signed by the U.S. (and therefore are “supreme laws of the land”), but was outright aggression. So let’s listen in on Bush I’s perception management gang debating how to solve this truth/image problem:
“Our problem is we have no right to invade Panama.”
“No just cause, eh?”
“None whatsoever.”
“So how about if we call the invasion ‘Operation Just Cause.’”
“Great.” (Instead of listing the international treaties, laws, resolutions, and conventions broken by the invasion and kidnapping of Noriega, I’ll ask you this: If in 1998 Sudan invaded the U.S. or otherwise attempted to kidnap Bill Clinton for his destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant by flying bombs (which directly caused the deaths of the tens of thousands deprived of the medicine the plant produced) , what would be your reaction? That’s completely different is it? Yes, it’s different: Clinton’s offense was at the very least a terrorist act and a crime against humanity, probably outright aggression, and inarguably mass murder, not drug dealing, which was the complaint against Noriega [most of his drug crimes having been committed with the tacit or outright approval of the CIA, for whom he was working for most of the 1980s]. That’s the only difference, if rule of law means anything.)
Another truth/image problem, this one for Junior, for Dubya: The environmental amendment he wants to push through will increase rather than decrease air pollution:
“The amendment will dirty the skies, turn it brown.”
“The amendment will turn the skies brown, huh?”
“No question.”
“How about we call it ‘The Blue Skies Amendment?”
“Great.” (See http://www.cdt.org/righttoknow/20060517epa.pdf#search=%22blue%20skies%20amendment%20%2B%20congress%22)
Education:
“The legislation we need to push through will result in a lot of children being left behind in their education.”
“We’ll call the legislation ‘No Child Left Behind’.”
“Great.” (See http://nochildleft.com/2003/jancov03.html#index) Iraq.
“
"It’s obvious that the last thing we’re going to do is give the Iraqis any freedom.”
“‘Operation Iraqi Freedom?”
“Great.” (See… Christ, just think about it)
My favorite, though, the one near and dear to my heart, goes back to the Reagan Administration’s perception management of their terrorism in Nicaragua. In order for the American people to accept the death, misery, and horror perpetrated in their name the CIA helped set up a domestic propaganda operation to lie about everything (by the way, CIA involvement in domestic operations of any sort is illegal). The name of the operation that would lie about everything?“Project Truth.” (A good source for the truth of Project Truth is Pulitzer nominee Bob Parry’s book, Lost History.) The media, of course, are old hands at this. Let’s imagine How It Went when Fox was setting up its cable news network.
“What about our problem of us having to go along with Rupert Murdock’s lunatic right wing politics?”
“You mean our reportage not being fair and balanced?”
“Right.”
“How about we come up with a catchy slogan?” (I’ll not insult your intelligence by saying anything here.)
You get the idea: Billy O’s “No Spin Zone” spun off from “Fair and Balanced”And so forth.A couple of concepts come to mind in all this.
Contempt is one. Not so much contempt for truth, which is a given, but contempt for our, your, intelligence.
Contempt. What else?To once again plug fellow journalist Bob Woodward’s latest effort: State of Denial, which is the only explanation for why so few people (including Woodward) see the contempt for what it is.
____________
STATES OF DENIAL (Part Four)
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
–George Orwell
April 6, 2006. Nine days until my self-imposed, symmetry-inspired deadline to finish this book before I have to leave this little Caribbean island. It’s going to be close.
CNN. I generally let it rip, turn CNN loose in the background as I write. This to surround myself with lies, steep myself in them, wallow in them. The BBC sometimes. (But how I lament the lack of the Fox News Network on this island!) Such perspective, such (darkly) comic relief it all is, as I hit the true homestretch, sprint for the wire.
Lies.
Woodward. Bob Woodward. I’ve been reading Bob Woodward to further steep myself in lies, and in Lies.
Here’s a little passage from his book, Veil; The Secret Wars of the CIA, that got my attention:
"…after (CIA Director) Casey had worked with the Saudi intelligence service and its ambassador in Washington to arrange the assassination of the archterrorist Fadlallah. Instead of Fadlallah, the car bomb had killed at least eighty people, many innocent."
When I came across this passage I had to stop and read it again, wondering how and why it had gotten into a book by Bob Woodward. With all his toadying lies by omission, outright lies and Lies, how and why had Woodward included in his book this doozey of an admission?
I knew of the 1985 Beirut car bombing and that the CIA had been behind it from so-called dissident literature: The mainstream press in their contemporaneous reporting of the incident — and it of course bore minimal discussion since the victims were Arabs — did not spill the beans about who was responsible, although you would think it worthy of at least cursory mention.
Details: The car bomb was placed in front of a mosque, timed to detonate as the worshippers were leaving. Aside from the 80-plus human beings killed outright, 250 or so were maimed or injured, mostly women and children. The bomb destroyed most of a city block and severely damaged the mosque; an infant in its crib on the next block was killed by flying debris. The explosion was nothing short of catastrophic; in the realm of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Woodward devotes six pages of Veil to this incident; he really had the dope on it. This being Bob Woodward, let’s take him on his word that he has his facts straight.
Some facts: President Ronald Reagan had to sign a specific presidential finding before the operation could be carried out (after signing a finding allowing it to be set up). The plan involved a car bomb rather than a “cleaner” assassination – a sniper or other type of lone gunman, say – so the Israelis, who have no problem with mass killings of Lebanese (or any Arabs), could be blamed. They wanted it to be a mess, a slaughter.
But they fuck up. Fadlallah isn’t nearby and over 300 people are killed or maimed.
Hold on. Notice the last two words of the above quoted passage from Veil, Bob Woodward’s definitive history of the CIA in the 1980s. Woodward characterizes the car bomb casualties thus: “many innocent.” Since neither Fadlallah nor any other suspected terrorists were apparently killed or maimed, where does Woodward come up with “many innocent”? As far as he knows, the victims were all innocent, no?
A question for Bob: Which of the victims was guilty? And guilty of what?
Imagine something. Imagine you’re there in Beirut at the mosque right after the explosion, dazed and wandering around in the smoke and debris and torn bodies looking for a loved one, a child, say.Your six year-old daughter, say. You slip and fall. Getting up you realize that that you stepped on the slick and bloody stomach and intestines of your child, who had been eviscerated by shrapnel. She’s not quite dead yet and is crying out for you. You try to gather up her guts and put them back inside her…
Enough, huh? I mean who needs to actually reflect on what it was like that day? Who needs to think about the specific human beings who were slaughtered?
Point being: Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, and William J. Casey, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, did this. (For UK readers: A British intelligence operative was involved in the planning as well.)
Here’s how Woodward sums up the incident: “(Casey) was too smart not to see that he and the White House had broken the rules, probably the law.”
Broken the rules? Probably the law? A question for Bob: What State of Denial were you living in that you could claim that a car bombing that slaughters scores and maims hundreds is rule breaking? What are we doing here, playing Parcheesi? Probably law breaking? You want a list of laws, international and domestic – plus supreme laws of the land, this land, the U.S. of A.– that were broken in this collusion between the President and CIA Director? On the other hand, it’s now explained why in all your books, your nonfiction books, wherein the word “terrorism” (or its variations, like “terror” or “terrorist”) are used in total hundreds of times, you never define the word. Bob, I’m going to define it for you, the way you use it: It’s terrorism if it’s done to us. If we do it, it’s… something else.
I’ll again ask the question regarding Woodward’s book about the secret wars of the CIA: How and why had Woodward included this doozey of an admission?Answer: Because the car bombing that killed and maimed hundreds of people wasn’t terrorism, but just an unfortunate incident in “the war on terror.” (In the U.S. government’s list of terrorist acts of 1985, the Beirut car bombing does not appear. Perhaps the title of Bob Woodward’s new book was referring to this circumstance. Then again, perhaps not.)
Here’s an observation, plus a question, for Bob Woodward: In the 1970s you were largely responsible for toppling a president for obstruction of justice, yet you now consider a President’s collusion in mass murder to be rule breaking? Did something awful happen to you or am I missing something here?
#
As described, I wrote the above in April of this year (a chapter in my new book, later cut). As I now write the date is October 1st, six months later. I just watched Bob Woodward on C-Span’s Book TV, pitching State of Denial.
Woodward’s appearance on Book TV was interesting in that it was made clear up front by the moderator that there would be no audience Q & A of Bob Woodward, the author of a book the subject of which is states of denial.
An audience Q & A following an author’s appearance is a staple of Book TV.
Why no Q & A this time?
Bob Woodward, the legendary journalist who brought down a corrupt president by asking questions, did not want to answer questions.Why not? Why did legendary journalist Bob Woodward not want to answer questions?
One possible answer: Because he was afraid someone might have asked if State of Denial is about the psychological condition someone might be living under to think that a president’s collusion in mass murder is rule breaking.
Another possible answer: Because he was afraid someone might have asked if something awful had happened to him.
Click here for a PDF file containing cut passages about World Affairs. (Two are versions of the above: scroll past them!)
