Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Must Read Book Review The following is a review of Eric Alterman’s What Liberal Media? Although long it is definitely a must read – not only for its comically telling points regarding how truly conservative the media has become or for highlighting not only the strengths but also the weakness of the book, but also for giving us an invaluable historical insight into how and why the myth of the “librul” media was born.   His explanation (hanging on the Chicago police riot of 1968) is far from a complete answer but it does provide a piece of the puzzle (the reflexive deferral of media elites to the right-wing) that is not often addressed by more structural explanations (dealing with media ownership and pressures of “professionalization”).   What is missing in this exploration of the issue is an analysis of why people instinctively distrust the media. Although this is most often chalked up to the “liberal permissiveness” of the media I think a better explanation can be found in the utterly cynical ways in which folks from the media seek to exploit their fellow citizens.   “Liberal” is not the same as “cynical” but somehow the two have been associated at some level in the public discourse. George Wallace, civil rights, Dick Nixon, the “silent majority,” Viet Nam – all of these ultimately had a role to play in transforming the cynical media into the “intellectual” “snobbish” “effete” media.   Read the review – it is thought provoking (thanks to the horse for the link).   Eyes Right Conservatives Are Winning The Media War. How Do They Do It? WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? THE TRUTH ABOUT BIAS AND THE NEWS BY ERIC ALTERMAN BASIC BOOKS. 267 PP. $25 REVIEWED BY RICK PERLSTEIN Scenes from the front lines of the American Liberal Media Expeditionary Force’s campaign to rout the forces of conservatism: •CNN, which right-wingers have been known to call the “Clinton News Network,” chooses as its lead commentator for George W. Bush’s spring 2002 Middle East policy speech . . . Pat Robertson. • On the crucial Manhattan front, New York magazine fields as its sole national correspondent one of the editors of The Weekly Standard; the New York Observer carries a regular column by a National Review editor; rabid liberal-hater Michael Kelly leaves his watch as The New Yorker’s Washington columnist to take over the “liberal” New Republic, then the “liberal” Atlantic, now columnizing in the “liberal” Washington Post — joined there by conservatives George Will, Robert Novak, Charles Krauthammer, and a guest battalion sermonizing on the wisdom of war with Iraq. • Rock-and-decadence Rolling Stone holds down the culture-war front with conservatives P.J. O’Rourke and Tom Wolfe. • In the Internet theater, genuinely liberal Salon includes among its cadre of columnists David Horowitz and Andrew Sullivan. Slate recruits a Weekly Standard editor as a regular, and even features articles by Charles Murray. •On the networks: NBC uses Rush Limbaugh as an election analyst in 2002, Robert Bork as a commentator during the Clinton impeachment (ABC chooses William Bennett), and CBS rewards correspondent Bernard Goldberg for publishing an anti-CBS op-ed screed by moving him to a cushy job with better benefits. With friends like these, my fellow liberals, who needs enemies? It’s one of the best arguments to be found in Eric Alterman’s new book: in outlets classed by conservatives as liberal, and even in ones that are actually liberal, the other side is routinely invited in as part of the mix. In conservative publications, almost never. It wasn’t always so. In the early decades of its existence the National Review frequently ran liberal, and even Marxist, writers, including John Kenneth Galbraith, Murray Kempton, and Eugene Genovese. When I had a chance to sit down with William F. Buckley a couple of years ago, I reminded him of that tradition, and lamented its passing. It turned out that recollection of same had escaped him: we never ran liberals, he told me. I wondered about the reason for the memory lapse: perhaps, at this late date — post-Whitewater, postimpeachment, in the full flower of Limbaughism — that there once was a time when conservatives could fraternize with liberals was literally unimaginable to them. Why do the conservative media fight politics as a life-and-death struggle whereas an avowed leftist like me can look at an old tradition like National Review’s publishing liberals and conservatives side by side and think it’s kind of nifty? That contrast, between conservative bunkerism and liberal openness, speaks to the very structural heart of the difference between conservatives and liberals. We Americans love to cite the “political spectrum” as the best way to classify ideologies. The metaphor is incorrect: it implies symmetry. But left and right today are not opposites. They are different species. It has to do with core principles. To put it abstractly, the right always has in mind a prescriptive vision of its ideal future world — a normative vision. Unlike the left (at least since Karl Marx neglected to include an actual description of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” within the 2,500 pages of Das Kapital), conservatives have always known what the world would look like after their revolution: hearth, home, church, a businessman’s republic. The dominant strain of the American left, on the other hand, certainly since the decline of the socialist left, fetishizes fairness, openness, and diversity. (Liberals have no problem with home, hearth, and church in themselves; they just see them as one viable life-style option among many.) If the stakes for liberals are fair procedures, the stakes for conservatives are last things: either humanity trends toward Grace, or it hurtles toward Armageddon. This is why conservatives spy left-wing authoritarians everywhere. Seeing the world in terms of norms and presuming others do the same, they easily mistake a liberal tolerance for diverse options, even unconventional options, as an endorsement of the unconventional options. The presence of gay people on TV, for example, looks like a recommendation of homosexuality. That break in the natural order tempts chaos; chaos invites panic. Which is why conservatives fight by any means necessary to make the world look the way they insist it must look, while liberals are busy playing fair. And which is why it is now more accurate to say, as Eric Alterman, The Nation columnist and MSNBC.com blogger, does, that even as it “so perfectly contradicts conventional wisdom . . . the bias of the American media is more conservative than liberal.” They fight the media war ruthlessly, and they are winning. How have they done it? One way is by lying. James Baker convinced the press of the Democrats’ “unending legal wrangling” in the Florida recount fiasco of 2000 before the Democrats had filed a single lawsuit (the Republicans had filed all of them). Another way is by cheating. When Charles Murray’s Losing Ground was published in 1984, conservative backers paid pundits up to $1,500 each to attend a weekend seminar where Murray massaged them with his argument that federal antipoverty programs increased poverty — a claim that, once scholars had time to examine it but after all the fulsome columns were written, proved to be nonsense. (The same process repeated itself when Murray’s The Bell Curve was published ten years later.) And they’ve won by propounding a Big Lie — the kind that, simply by getting repeated so often, feels so true that those who claim it false look like wreckers and lunatics. “There are certain facts of life so long obvious they would seem beyond dispute,” it runs. “One of these is that there is a left-wing tilt in the media.” Alterman says that’s dead wrong. For many, that will seem an amazing claim to make. But even more amazing is the evidence he adduces to prove that liberals don’t run the media: he quotes conservatives admitting it. “I’ve gotten balanced coverage,” Patrick Buchanan said of his 1996 presidential campaign, “and broad coverage — all we could have asked. For heaven’s sakes, we kid about the ‘liberal media,’ but every Republican on earth does that.” The conservative press, Republican über-activist Grover Norquist points out, unlike the so-called liberal media (Alterman fliply refers to them throughout as the “SCLM”), “is self-consciously conservative and self-consciously part of the team.” Like any classic Big Lie, the one about the so-called liberal media is based on strategic calculation: calling the media liberal works. I don’t think any conservatives would try to argue that the media have become more liberal in the last decade or so; yet Alterman cites one recent study that found a “fourfold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in the news” compared to twelve years ago. But only the most foolish conservatives would attempt to argue that this finding reflects an objective increase in media liberalism in the intervening years. The test of any case involving measurement of ideological influence is how that influence affects those in the center — for the people who aren’t already on the extremes are the ones who move most when the balance tips. And to be sure, a figure like Ann Coulter is burned mercilessly in What Liberal Media? What Alterman refers to as her “Tourette’s outbursts” — Coulter has a compulsion to call for liberals’ deaths — should be enough to discredit her; he also provides a handy online appendix (see WhatLiberal Media.com) cataloging the ungodly train of errors in her book Slander. Same with Bernard Goldberg. Alterman reminds us that Goldberg’s claim that only conservatives are condescendingly identified as ideologues on network TV (“conservative judge Robert Bork,” as opposed to “Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe”) has been statistically disproved more than once, though it’s still treated as gospel. And there is a thick, fine chapter on “The (Really) Conservative Media,” detailing the extent to which self-consciously conservative organs alone represent a sizable chunk of our media firmament. But Alterman’s real flames are reserved for the way moderate journalists, some of whom sometimes even get pigeonholed as liberals, have adjusted their professional standards to get conservatives taken seriously. Sweat, Howard Kurtz: your fawning profiles of conservative lights like Andrew Sullivan, Sean Hannity, and Bill Kristol earn you deserved comparison to the writers at Tiger Beat magazine. Kindly turn in your deanship, David Broder: your constitutional antipathy for the alleged disruptiveness of the left is rarely matched in your assessments of the right. Gray Lady, some things are not fit to print — like when you reported that Ken Lay slept in the Lincoln Bedroom as a guest of President Clinton after the claim appeared, unsourced and untrue, on the Drudge Report. Alterman’s research, really, is excellent; his unique contribution to this debate is his dedicated trawling of transcripts for those moments when pundits reveal their inane prejudices during the endless stretches of air they have to fill on cable TV. (In a section on how journalists allowed their personal antipathy to shockingly bias their political coverage of Al Gore, he catches a 1999 Chris Matthews logorrhea on the subject of Gore’s three-button suit: “Is there some hidden Freudian deal here or what? I don’t know, I mean, Navy guys used to have buttons on their pants. I don’t know what it means.”) It’s stunning to revisit the vitriol of the powerful Michael Kelly on the subject of Bill Clinton, the caving of journalists before the Bush administration during the War on Terrorism (Cokie Roberts of SCLM standby NPR on the subject of Donald Rumsfeld: “[I’m] a total sucker for the guys who stand up with all the ribbons on and stuff, and they say it’s true and I’m ready to believe it”), and the systematic collapse of journalistic probity during the high-tech economic boom times of the late nineties. MARKETS SURGE AS LABOR COSTS STAY IN CHECK, ran one front-page New York Times headline on April 30, 1997 — which would be the way the propagandists in George Orwell’s 1984 might translate the phrase “The Rich Got Richer While Poor Got Poorer.” It’s even more stunning — an argument clincher, in fact — to read what Republicans were saying in the run-up to Election Day 2000: they acknowledged plans, if Bush won the popular vote and Gore won the electoral college, to fight the outcome to the point of rendering Gore’s presidency illegitimate in the eyes of the public. (Chris Matthews endorsed this with the backassward presumption that, “Knowing him as we do,” Gore “may have no problem taking the presidential oath after losing the popular vote.”) After Election Day, the press bent over backward to treat Bush like the president-elect when he wasn’t, and savaged Al Gore for not conceding the “fact” outright. Alterman even quotes self-described liberal pundits Richard Cohen and Al Hunt making the astonishing argument that everyone should be happy at Bush’s election, because “Bush would be better at . . . restraining the GOP Dobermans.” An acknowledgment, in other words, that a whip-sawing Republican tail deserves to wag the majoritarian dog. History, looking at the 2000 election, will not treat this profession kindly. Much of this isn’t new — he leans often on work by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Salon’s Eric Boehlert, and tips his hat frequently to contributors to these pages; he also borrows often from his own Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy. All the same it’s great having all this stuff rounded up in one place. There are flaws: the production feels a bit hasty (he reports on events that happened only six weeks before I received the galleys, a remarkably fast turnaround), he’s nasty in an ad hominem way to those on the left he disagrees with, he occasionally calls the kettle black (shortly before a chapter entitled “You’re Only As Liberal As The Man Who Owns You,” he identifies himself as an “independent” Weblogger for General Electric’s MSNBC.com). Alterman’s style is a little grating. There’s lots of throat-clearing and digressing, and he betrays a smarmily knowing insider’s tone, referring throughout to what “no one believes” and what “we all know” — excluding, implicitly, those who don’t think like media types, the people whom it should be precisely part of the task of this book to try to understand. And here we get to the biggest problem of the book. The fact of the matter is that vast majorities of Americans don’t trust the media, that their dominant explanation as to why has to do with its so-called liberalism, and that such antipathy, though accelerated of late, certainly predates conservative movement attempts to exploit it. Why? Alterman doesn’t venture any ideas. History would help. Though a historian himself (we all should look forward to his forthcoming book When Presidents Lie: Deception and Its Consequences, based on his Stanford dissertation), there’s none of it here. That hampers Alterman. At key points, he acknowledges the essential soundness of part of the conservatives’ argument: that there indeed exists a profoundly felt, and widespread, feeling of division between the cosmopolitan professionals of the media and what was messily but usefully labeled in 2000 America’s “red states” — especially so on the softer issues, the cultural issues. Bill O’Reilly may indeed talk like “an ignorant drunk.” But an analytical question Alterman ignores is why he’s so damned popular. Coordinated conservative strategy is certainly not enough to explain it. For the image of the liberal media has stuck, partly, Alterman says, because of conservatives’ ceaseless bruiting of the charge; but it also has stuck because so many Americans never needed any prompting to perceive media denizens as brie-eaters, indifferent to culturally conservative values. This baseline middle-American distrust of the media that Alterman at key points forces himself to concede is hardly just a creation of conservative propaganda. The fact is that figures like O’Reilly have been a structural component of our civic life at least since 1968 — when a cultural resentment long and obscure in the gestation finally popped its chrysalis and took wing. That was the year, at the height of the Vietnam War, that the Democrats held their national convention in Chicago, a makeshift band of left-wing protesters came to disrupt it — and the convention site was ringed by an unscalable barbed-wire fence, to be electrified, in case of emergency, at the flick of a switch. Perhaps a tenth of the protesters in their designated sites far from that hall were beaten by the rampaging Chicago police. That is well remembered. What is less well remembered is that one in five of the reporters and cameramen covering the event were sent to the hospital. At the convention site, Mike Wallace was socked in the jaw. There came a moment of extraordinary professional solidarity from the sachems of journalism in response. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Katharine Graham, Otis Chandler, executives from all three networks, and the editor in chief of Time jointly dispatched an unprecedented telegram to Mayor Richard J. Daley, accusing him of streetside censorship of a story “the American public as a whole has a right to know about.” Their response seemed to them merely common sense, a rallying point: they, after all, not Mr. Daley, were the trained, trusted experts on public opinion in this country. The police riot was clearly a travesty. “These,” Tom Wicker wrote, “were our children in the streets, and the Chicago police beat them up.” Who could disagree? The guardians of public opinion were mistaken in their every assumption. For America did not see Chicago as Tom Wicker did; it saw it as Mayor Daley did. The bumper stickers showed it even before the polls: “We Support Mayor Daley and His Police.” Huge majorities blamed the protesters for their own fate, though many also blamed the media — CBS received thousands of calls accusing them of hiring cops to beat up the kids. Newsies suddenly awoke to find themselves hated the way bosses were hated. And the media’s inward, anguished, bending over backward to not appear liberal, which Alterman describes so effectively in the present day, was born. Not untypical was The Washington Post’s retrospectively exonerating the police, allowing that, “of course” policemen should be agitated by (no kidding) men in beards. Richard Nixon rode resentment of the media all the way to the White House that year; and, in 1972, to the greatest landslide in American electoral history (the conservative Nixon aide William Safire rode the media penitence all the way to the op-ed page of The New York Times.) A die was cast; conditions were set. The SCLM had been established in many Americans’ minds. What this generation’s ruthless conservatives were able to do was exploit that organic, if diffuse, mood; to make it stick long after it made any conceivable sense if it ever did. And that’s where Alterman picks up the story: he surveys the damage. Like the news itself, What Liberal Media? is decidedly a first draft of a necessarily deeper inquiry into the whys and wherefores of a development central to understanding our politics over the last three-and-a-half decades. And that’s just fine, because when it comes to the present, Eric Alterman does a hell of a job taking the argument to a whole new level. Enjoy this piece? Consider a CJR trial subscription. Rick Perlstein is the author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. He is at work on a book about the Nixon years. 7:58:27 PM

Another must-read site… …is tbogg.   Not only does he have lots of interesting tid-bits, but he provides plenty of funny, sarcastic comments to put them in proper perspective. For example:   Blocking Democratic judicial nominations officially declared: "Youthful Indiscretions".   Today President Dim Son declared that blocking Presidential Judicial nominees just isn't fair. At least not now. Oh hell, let him explain, as best he can:   President Bush, his appeals court nomination of Miguel Estrada mired in party politics, called Tuesday for a ban on judicial filibusters and a mandatory vote on all court nominations he and future presidents send to the Senate.   In a letter read on the Senate floor by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, Bush called for a permanent rule "to ensure timely up or down votes on judicial nominations both now and in the future, no matter who is president or which party controls the Senate. This is the only way to ensure our judiciary works and that good people remain willing to be nominated to the federal bench."   [snip...]   But Democrats said GOP senators have blocked Democratic judicial nominees from getting confirmation votes in the Senate as well.   "Because that precedent stands in the way of their political ends, Republicans now seek to deny their own words and their own actions," said Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. "They're here today to claim that the Constitution is threatened by the very same procedures that they themselves have employed. They're here today to claim the Constitution is going to be threatened by the very same powers that it grants."   But Bush called on the Senate to get beyond the past. "I ask senators of both parties to come together and end the escalating cycle of blame and bitterness and to restore fairness, predictability and dignity to the process," Bush said in the letter.   Of course, Bush could always nominate some of Clinton's appointees again, to make up for what happened between 1992-2000. He'll probably get to that right after his swearing in at Mensa. So in the meantime, just file Republican judicial obstructionism in the "Youthful Indiscretions" folder along with cocaine usage, infidelity, DUI's, selling technology and weapons to the enemy, and insider trading. It's that folder right there...the big thick one.....   posted by Tom at 2:21 PM   12:44:38 PM

Need a laugh?   Bad news got you down?   Is the world going to hell in a hand-basket?   Are unelected frauds propped up by plutocrats and media-moguls and fundamentalist hucksters getting you down?   You are not alone…   …click here for some badly needed comic relief!   (thanks to Atrios for the heads-up)   12:26:27 PM

Blair is Twisting in the Wind… …and desperately grasping for any kind of means to extricate himself from a trap of his own making. He has pledged British aid to Bush in the US crusade in Iraq but he has also pledged to his own people to go to war only under the auspices of the UN.   How can Tony square the circle when the rest of the UN has smoked out the falsehoods and misrepresentations that the US has employed to try and manufacture a pretext for war?   This latest gambit is the bait by which he means to set the trap: lay out a set of “stringent” (in some cases impossible – but at the very least embarrassing) criteria to “avoid” war and then wait for Iraq to “fail.” Or, at the very least claim that the UN “failed” by not endorsing the criteria.   How ridiculous are some of the criteria?   Well for one, the Iraqis would be required to “destroy” materials that we don’t even have proof that they have. Think about it. Iraq has been under more scrutiny than any other government for the past decade. The US intelligence community has satellites that can read license plates off of a car. Are you seriously telling me we don’t know if they have 10,000 liters of anthrax or not? And how do you destroy “forthwith” 10,000 liters of something you do not have?   Same goes for the provisions regarding biological weapons.   And, if by some miracle the Iraqis did have all the weapons that Blair insinuates (but doesn’t demonstrate), and if they destroy them – what is to prevent the US from saying “aha, we knew they couldn’t be trusted – therefore we best go to war”?   In other words Blair is constructing a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario: the Iraqis are blamed if they don’t destroy weapons they may well not have, and (if they had them) they are damned if they do destroy such weapons – because the mere fact of having them demonstrates how duplicitous and dangerous they are.   None of this is about disarmament or peace – it is all about Tony Blair trying to have his cake (Bush’s war) and eat it too (by staying in charge in Britain).   British Propose Tests for Iraq With the U.N. Security Council still deeply split on disarming Baghdad, London's envoy says 'we are busting a gut' to reach a compromise.   By Maggie Farley and Paul Richter, Times Staff Writers   Britain continued efforts today to craft a compromise U.N. Security Council resolution that would give Saddam Hussein a list of tests to prove Iraq's commitment to disarmament as U.S. patience with diplomacy dwindled. At the same time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the notion put forward by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday that British troops might not participate in a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. "This country should not take military action unless it is in our interests to do so," Blair said today. "But the reason why I believe it is important that we hold firm to the course we have set out is because what is at stake here ... is whether the international community is prepared to back up the clear instruction it gave to (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein with the necessary action." Some Labour legislators had seized on Rumsfeld's suggestion that Britain might play a non-combat role as a window for Blair to avoid war and possible political disaster. "There is no perception in here at the moment that the prime minister has made any headway at all with those who are opposed to his policy," said Labour legislator Bob Marshall-Andrews. Deep divisions remain in the 15-member U.N. Security Council on how much more time Iraq should get, with France and Russia insisting that they will veto any proposal that gives a green light to war. "We are busting a gut to see if we can get greater consensus in the council," said British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock on Tuesday. He added that he expects a vote by Friday. "We are going to go on talking until we find a way forward through the Security Council together." The new conditions proposed by Blair's government would include: • A television appearance by Saddam renouncing weapons of mass destruction. • Iraq's permission for 30 key weapons scientists to travel to Cyprus to be interviewed by U.N. weapons inspectors. • The destruction "forthwith" of 10,000 liters of anthrax and other chemical and biological weapons Iraq is suspected of holding. • The surrender of and explanation about biological weapons production. • A commitment to destroy proscribed missiles. • An accounting for unmanned aerial vehicles. Desperate for U.N. backing before joining an attack on Iraq, British officials have quietly pushed aside the current draft that demands that Hussein fully disarm by Monday or face invasion. British negotiators have indicated that they could stretch the proposed deadline but warned against pushing the issue beyond month's end. The United States is willing to accept moving the deadline past Monday but not by much. Bolstered by polls that show growing public acceptance of an attack on Iraq even without U.N. backing, Washington is losing patience with the U.N. process. "There's a little room for a little more diplomacy, but not much time," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, shooting down a compromise proposal suggesting a 30-day or 45-day deadline extension as a "non-starter." In an attempt to give Britain some breathing room, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested that America could take military action against Iraq not only without the United Nations' blessing, but also without Britain's help. "To the extent that they [the British] are able to participate, that would obviously be welcomed," Rumsfeld said in response to a reporter's question. "To the extent they're not, there are workarounds, and they would not be involved, at least in [the military] phase of it." Rumsfeld's comments were intended to give the British maneuverability, U.S. officials said. But surprised British officials quickly reaffirmed that more than 40,000 troops Prime Minister Tony Blair has pledged would accompany U.S. forces into battle. Rumsfeld issued a statement later saying he did not doubt Britain's commitment to seeing Iraq disarmed. Britain has proposed giving Hussein 10 days to prove that Iraq has taken a "strategic decision" to disarm by fulfilling a set of tests or benchmarks. If Iraq makes that decision, a second phase would begin with more time to verify Baghdad's full disarmament. "There is a two-stage process," Greenstock said. "One is to be convinced that Iraq is cooperating, the other is to disarm Iraq completely." Ten days is not enough time, say the Security Council's "middle ground" countries that hold swing votes and are asking for a 45-day window. Canada, a non-council member which has been playing the role of mediator, proposed an alternative of three weeks. A New York Times/CBS poll found that while 52% of Americans favor giving inspections more time, 55% said they would support military action without U.N. support. The poll was taken of 1,010 adults March 7-9. The margin of error was 3%. But for at least a few more days, the U.S. and Britain will continue to vie for council support against France, Russia and China, who say force is not yet necessary to neutralize Iraq. French President Jacques Chirac said Monday that France would veto the resolution "whatever the circumstances," while Russia has said it would veto the proposed resolution now on the table, leaving room for potential compromise. Of the 10 nonpermanent council members, Spain, Bulgaria and Cameroon have sided with the U.S., and Germany and Syria with the French, while the rest say they are still seeking middle ground. In negotiations that one diplomat described as "gradual, painful and unproductive," consensus was beginning to emerge around a handful of tests for Iraq to meet — by Monday, if the U.S. has its way, or up to six weeks later if other countries get theirs. At the top of the list would be demands for interviews outside Iraq with scientists associated with the country's past weapons programs. Such interviews are seen as the best potential source of information about Iraq's current capabilities. Other tasks would measure Iraq's cooperation and actual disarmament, calling on authorities to destroy stocks of deadly VX nerve gas and anthrax or to credibly account for their past destruction. Iraq might also have to complete destruction of Al-Samoud 2 missiles that are deemed by the United Nations as exceeding a 93-mile limit and to prove that a newly discovered fleet of drones does not surpass U.N. restrictions and cannot deliver biological or chemical weapons, as inspectors suspect. "We're talking at the Bush-Blair level, to [France, Russia and China], to the middle six and others," said a senior diplomatic source close to the negotiations. "You get an inch from one side, and you use that to get an inch from the other." The main disagreements center on how to judge Iraq's compliance and whether an attack would be automatic if Baghdad failed to meet the deadline, say diplomats on both sides of the negotiations. While President Bush, Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar work the phones, British envoys are doing the nitty-gritty work to secure the nine votes needed for the resolution to pass. And then they must win Washington's approval for the deal as well. Even if France or Russia vetoed the resolution, Britain and the U.S. hope they can claim a kind of moral victory, painting the rejection as "unreasonable" and saying that they are acting to protect their own people from a realistic and horrible threat. It is a high-stakes gamble for all, but especially for Britain. Blair's Cabinet members, the British public and legal scholars are challenging the legitimacy of a war conducted without the Security Council's explicit mandate. A poll published Monday showed that only 19% of the British public is behind military action without a U.N. resolution, and a member of Blair's Labor Cabinet, Clare Short, threatened to step down if Britain went to war without a U.N. mandate. Other council members, notably the resolution's co-sponsor Spain, and Pakistan, are also feeling intense pressure. Aznar faces a possible backlash in local elections in May, and Pakistan, which has privately signaled its probable support to U.S. officials, said Tuesday that it might abstain from a vote if the resolution did not change. In a televised address to the nation Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali said: "It would be very difficult for Pakistan to support war against Iraq. This goes against the interests of my nation and of my government." But as a reward for Pakistan's cooperation in the anti-terrorism campaign and its potential support in the Security Council, the White House has asked Jamali to visit March 28. Bush will also welcome Cameroon's president within the next 10 days, U.S. officials said. Outside the council, staunch U.S. ally Australian Prime Minister John Howard is under attack at home for sending 2,000 troops to the Middle East, and Arab nations that support the Bush administration — mostly behind the scenes — are nervous about growing dissent among their publics. An open debate in the Security Council that began Tuesday made clear that the prospect of war on Iraq has plenty more opponents. In the first half of a two-day session on Iraq, non-council members had a chance to air their views. Times staff writers Robin Wright and Edwin Chen in Washington as well as Reuters contributed to this report.   11:19:22 AM

Blair’s Government in Crisis Folks over in Britain aren’t any happier than I am about Tony Blair’s enabler routine.   Unlike the Chimposter however, this could cost Blair his office.   It would not come about through a fall of the government (the Conservative party supports war regardless of circumstance) but rather through a revolt in his own party. In a parliamentary system a party’s leader must maintain the support not only of the entire parliament as a whole but also of the party which they head. If Blair were forced to resign it would be by his fellow party members who would elect a new party leader without the necessity of new elections and without changing the current party make-up of parliament.   A similar situation occurred IIRC when John Major took over from Maggie Thatcher. Major did not instigate the rebellion, so when it did occur – and when it was obvious that Thatcher was toast – she threw her remaining support behind Major as a way of preventing her enemies within the Conservative party from gaining a full triumph. This may be the very sort of scenario we see in coming weeks with regard to the Labor party of Tony Blair.   Hope he’s happy he hitched his wagon to Resident “dead or alive.”   Once-Popular Blair Struggles for Support Discontent over Iraq stance swells in Britain, including in the ruling party, as the prime minister tries to rally U.N. allies.   By Janet Stobart and Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writers   LONDON -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair struggled against political troubles at home and overseas Tuesday, appealing for unity in the U.N. dispute over Iraq while antiwar rumbles grew louder among Britons and in his Labor Party. Blair warned that Russia and France have played into the hands of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by threatening to veto a proposed Security Council resolution authorizing war on Iraq. "My concern is if countries talk about using a veto in all sets of circumstances, the message that sends to Saddam is: 'You're off the hook,' " Blair said after meeting with Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso of Portugal, an ally in the Iraq crisis. "I hope we won't talk about vetoes, but rather we will try and find common ground that allows a way through." Blair said he was working "flat out" on a deal that would salvage the proposed Security Council resolution, which he desperately needs to justify a war to the British public. Recent days have brought steady bad news for Blair, whose once formidable popularity has dived when he needs it the most. He withstood a chilly reception Monday during a televised discussion with 20 female activists who oppose war. His international development minister, Clare Short, and about half a dozen ministerial aides have threatened to resign if war comes about without a resolution. The prime minister's failure to retaliate by dumping Short has been interpreted as a sign of weakness. As Blair tries to bridge the gap between Europe and the United States, the horizon has turned darker at home. A new poll showed that only 19% of Britons back military action without U.N. approval. Blair's alliance with the Bush administration has also worsened his estrangement from leftist "Old Labor" forces, a rift that predates the Iraq crisis. Union leaders told him they oppose a unilateral invasion of Iraq. "Our position is clear: We want to go through the United Nations, and that's what the prime minister is trying to do," Brendan Barber, general secretary-elect of the Trade Union Congress, said after meeting with Blair. Commentators estimate that a breakdown at the U.N. could incite a rebellion of as many as 200 Labor legislators, up from the 122 who defied Blair in a vote against his Iraq policy last month. The unhappiness in the restive Labor Party has gathered enough momentum that a few legislators suggested that Blair consider resigning. In Parliament on Tuesday, rebels challenged Blair to change course. "He should use his great leadership skills to persuade George Bush that to go ahead with war now might advance the hegemony of the United States, might advance a new world order where military America tries to dominate a world run for it and a small coterie of allies, but in so doing will actually make the problems of terrorism worse," said Hilton Dawson, a member of Parliament. If Blair insists on going forward without the U.N., Dawson said, the prime minister should "consider his position." That euphemism for resignation was echoed by Tam Dalyell, a veteran Labor member of Parliament and vocal antiwar campaigner. "As soon as it becomes clear that the U.N. is disregarded ... a letter will go out to our colleagues asking for a special conference of the Labor Party," Dalyell said. He predicted that dissident Laborites will "put forward a resolution that if there is no U.N. mandate and if there is not a vote in the [House of] Commons before the commitment of British troops, then we ask the prime minister to consider his position as leader of the party." The sniping does not endanger Blair's job, especially because the conservative opposition is his most ardent ally on Iraq. But the approaching showdown at the U.N. could very well decide his future. Blair "is in a very tricky position," said George Jones, a professor of government at the London School of Economics. If the Iraq crisis turns out successfully, Jones said, "he would be one of Britain's greatest national leaders. If things go wrong, I think he will resign." But Blair retains the allegiance of the rank and file, Labor Party chairman John Reid insisted Tuesday. "Stories about bonfires of party cards being ripped up are a lie," he said. Stobart reported from London and Rotella from Paris.   11:00:44 AM

Keystone Kops on the World Beat Yep, that’s what Bush policies have made the US look like – inept bullies determined to get their way or else…   Gene Lyons March 12, 2003 No Guts, No Glory            Following President Bush's carefully-scripted press conference, some impertinent questions: First, does anybody on earth believe Bush when he says he hasn't made up his mind to attack Iraq? Does he even expect to be believed? Second, in stampeding to war, does the president actually intend to offend and alienate the entire known world? Or is this White House simply incompetent? Third, has it occurred to Bush's handlers that their ceaseless lies and bungling risk alienating American voters too?            Last question first: Bush's somnambulistic performance aside, what gave the press conference its dull, formulaic tone was that he was methodically working down a list of reporters prepared by White House spokesman Ari Fliescher. Needless to say, none of the timorous sad sacks and cable TV courtiers deemed tame enough to be chosen was rude enough to say so, but a reputable poll had just appeared showing Bush losing the 2004 election to a generic Democrat.            According to Reuters, "[t]he Feb. 26-March 3 nationwide survey of U.S. voters by...Quinnipiac University found that by a 48 percent to 44 percent margin, voters would pick the as yet unknown candidate out of nine Democrats running over the Republican incumbent." The survey had a 2.8 percent margin of error.            An Ipsos-Reid survey released March 10 gave similar evidence of a dramatic decline in Bush's political standing. Just 39 percent of voters now say they'd definitely re-elect Bush, with 34 percent definitely opposed and 24 percent thinking about it.            Both the dreadful economy and scary stories hinting that Bush sees himself on a divine mission in Iraq appear to have alarmed the sane majority. If we must have soothsayers, my preference would be a president who dabbles in astrology to an adept of the Book of Revelation. Gemini, after all, is rarely advised to nuke Taurus.            How long until Washington courtier-pundits drop their ritual references to President Junior's fabulous popularity?            Meanwhile, the harder Team Bush tries to bluff the U.N. Security Council as they once so memorably bluffed the U.S. Supreme Court, the more ill will accumulates. Ignored or pooh-poohed by the American media, the London Observer's revelation that the National Security Agency was conducting a wiretap and spying campaign against U.N. diplomats from countries neutral or opposed to the administration's Iraq policy provoked a furor in world capitals.            The Observer got its hands on an internal NSA memo advising spies to seek            "insights as to how membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/dependencies, etc."            Maybe everybody does it, as the usual anonymous former State Department sources claimed. If so, it was a particularly bad time for the U.S. to get caught, since there seems no legitimate need for such information except to strong-arm or suborn reluctant nations in secret. A U.N. investigation is under way.            Meanwhile, Turkish parliamentarians told the New York Times that Bush administration heavy-handedness—threats and bribes rather than appeals to national self-interest—caused the defeat of a resolution permitting U.S. troops to be based there. Evidently, the Turks feel no immediate danger from bordering Iraq.            Paul Krugman wrote a pungent column about the stupidity of Bush's public threat to "discipline" Mexico—the one foreign country he supposedly understands—if its Security Council vote opposed U.S. wishes. Instead of chastening President Vicente Fox, Bush's words stirred nationalistic outrage.            Add growing indications of chicanery and fraud in the U.S. case against Iraq, and it's no wonder the odious Saddam, playing a much weaker hand, appears to be diplomatically outmaneuvering the White House.            First came the plagiarized British "intelligence" report used in Secretary of State Powell's Security Council presentation. It was lifted, typos and misspellings intact, from a ten year old graduate student's thesis.            Then came Gilbert Cranberg's careful parsing in the Des Moines Register of that intercepted phone conversation Powell cited between two Iraqi military officers. It turns out that a supposedly incriminating exchange about hiding evidence never happened. It doesn't appear in the official State Department transcript.            Last Friday, chief U.N. nuclear arms inspector Mohammed El Baradei announced that it had been definitively proven that aluminum tubes Bush and Powell insisted showed Saddam's plans to make nuclear weapons had innocent uses. He also said that letters the U.S. claimed documented Iraq's attempt to buy uranium from an African country were a clumsy forgery.            If Bush were a real leader, he could acknowledge that absent Iraqi nukes, there's no need for haste. He could yield to world opinion and give the French, Russians, Chinese and Germans what they say they want: time for U.N. inspectors to finish disarming Saddam. The world would praise his statesmanship. Pressure would shift to the Security Council to prove itself. Alas, there's no sign Bush has the guts for peace. 10:44:50 AM

You know it’s bad when… …your credibility is being constantly shredded by the current Iraqi regime.   But that is just what is happening with Powell, Bush and the rest of the Bush regime. They’ve made all sorts of crazy assertions designed to stampede  the public into war hysteria – about nuclear weapons, purchases or uranium, links to al Qaeda, weapons of mass destruction, remote control planes that can reach the US - and the Iraqis have time and again easily punctured each overblown, inaccurate statement.   Why would you hand your foes such ammunition? Why would you purposely make statements that can be so easily exposed, thereby damaging your own credibility?   I can only think that the Bushies have such a low opinion of the public (perhaps based on their experience with the public’s nominal representatives in the US media) that they basically think they can say anything with impunity. But it turns out that there is a price to be paid – at least with regard to foreign nations who are not swamped in the jingoism that passes for media coverage here in the US. People and their governments in the rest of the world look at us and see a rogue regime that will lie, bully and steal to get what it wants.   The lies include references to reports on the Iraqi nuclear program that simply don’t exist, the use of forgeries (now exposed) purporting to prove Iraq purchases of uranium, false assertions of links to al Qaeda (not to mention the equally mendacious attempt to claim Iraq represents a “second front” in the war on terror), and now the latest whopper – that reconnaissance drones made of duct tape and balsa wood represent a threat to the US.   And the Bushies wonder why no one is willing to take them at their word or trust their judgment?   Iraqis: "Smoking gun" made with duct tape By Niko Price   March 12, 2003  |  Al-Taji, Iraq -- A remotely piloted aircraft that the United States has warned could spread chemical weapons appears to be made of balsa wood and duct tape, with two small propellors attached to what look like the engines of a weed whacker.   Iraqi officials took journalists to the Ibn Firnas State Company just north of Baghdad on Wednesday, where the drone's project director accused Secretary of State Colin Powell of misleading the U.N. Security Council and the public.   "He's making a big mistake," said Brig. Imad Abdul Latif. "He knows very well that this aircraft is not used for what he said."   In Washington's search for a "smoking gun" that would prove Iraq is not disarming, Powell has insisted the drone, which has a wingspan of 24.5 feet, could be fitted to dispense chemical and biological weapons. He has said it "should be of concern to everybody."   The drone's white fuselage was emblazoned Wednesday with the words "God is great" and the code "Quds-10." Its balsa wood wings were held together with duct tape. Officials said they referred to the remotely piloted vehicle as the RPV-30A.   Latif said the plane is controlled by the naked eye from the ground. Asked whether its range is above the 93-mile limit imposed by the United Nations, he said it couldn't be controlled from more than five miles.   Latif said the exact range will be determined when the drone passes to the next testing stage.   Ibn Firnas' general director, Gen. Ibrahim Hussein disputed assertions by Powell and White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer that the drone was capable of dispensing biological and chemical weapons.   "This RPV is to be used for reconnaissance, jamming and aerial photography," he said. "We have never thought of any other use."   The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, complained this weekend that chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix didn't mention the drone in his oral presentation to the Security Council on Friday.   Blix mentioned the drone in a 173-page written list of outstanding questions about Iraq's weapons programs last week. While small, Blix said, drones can be used to spray biological warfare agents such as anthrax. He said the drone hadn't been declared by Iraq to inspectors.   But Iraq insisted it declared the drone in a report in January -- and Hussein held up its declaration to prove it. The confusion, he said, was the result of a typo: The declaration said the wingspan was 14.5 feet instead of 24.5 feet as stated by Powell.   "When we discovered the mistake we addressed an official letter correcting the wingspan," he said. He showed that letter to reporters as well. He suggested inspectors had already seen the drone when the correction was made, but said: "No one of the inspectors noticed the difference."   "We are really astonished when we hear that this RPV was discovered by inspectors, when it was declared by Iraq," Hussein said. "Nothing is hidden."   Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the U.N. weapons inspectors, said the United Nations was investigating the drone's capabilities, and said he was unsure whether Iraq reported the drone before inspectors found it on an airfield or after.   Iraq seized on the issue of the drone -- along with early reports from Washington that Iraqi fighter jets threatened a U.N.-sponsored U-2 reconnaissance plane on Tuesday -- as proof that Washington is trying to mislead the world about Iraq's weapons programs in its push for war.   "You can imagine the exaggerations the Americans are capable of," said Maj. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors.   The United States has been searching for a way out of an impasse created by its demand that Baghdad be given an ultimatum to disarm or face war, which has so far failed to gather enough support in the Security Council.   Amin said the United Nations advised Iraq of one U-2 flight Tuesday, but that two U-2s entered Iraq's airspace. Multiple flights are permitted under a U.N. Security Council resolution approved last November, but the United Nations agreed to inform Iraq in advance.   U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity said Iraq launched fighter jets, which threatened one of the planes. Amin disputed that, saying the jets "did not take any measures."   Iraqi workers in al-Taji, meanwhile, were destroying three more Al Samoud 2 missiles Wednesday, banned by the United Nations because they can fly farther than allowed, and two trucks full of components for the missile, said Odai al-Taie, a senior Information Ministry official.   Before Wednesday's destruction, Iraq had destroyed 55 of its approximately 100 missiles, as well as 28 warheads, two casting chambers, two launchers and five engines -- all associated with the Al Samoud 2 program. Tools and computer software used for launching have also been destroyed.   9:37:30 AM