MediaBloodhound

Op-Ed Column: NY Times Pens Love Letter to Giuliani

The mainstream media’s penchant for covering national elections as if they were high school popularity contests continues with New York Times reporter Michael Powell’s gushing portrait of GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

Following the establishment media mold, Powell dispenses with substance altogether and gets right down to what matters most: image. 

After an anecdotal intro depicting Giuliani’s softer touch on the campaign trail (he dances around an elderly woman’s criticism of the Bush administration’s approach to fighting terrorism with the words: “Ma’am, I really respectfully disagree”), Powell, who boasts in accompanying video commentary of covering “America’s mayor” for fifteen years, is ready to crown his homecoming king.

The dyspeptic, “not afraid to suggest his opponents have really deep-seated psychological problems” Republican mayor of fact and legend has taken a holiday. What’s left on the presidential campaign trail is a commanding daddy of a candidate, a disciplined fellow who talks about terrorism and fiscal order and about terrorism some more.

To make sure his “daddy of a candidate” metaphor sticks in our minds - that it resurfaces in columns nationwide, is christened through the echo chamber of the Sunday morning talk show circuit and cements itself in the campaign’s vernacular - Powell then delivers a truly penetrating contrast between his newly branded media caricature of Giuliani and the already media-accepted caricatures of his competitors.

If Hillary Rodham Clinton is the nurturer warrior and Barack Obama the college idealist and John McCain the tough but irreverent flyboy, then Mr. Giuliani is the father, the talk-tough-on-terror, I’m-comfortable-wielding-authority guy. 

Mark me down, then, as the nauseous-but-resolute-media critic, the I-can’t-believe-this-tripe-still-passes-for-news guy.

With fifteen years of experience on the Giuliani beat, you would expect Powell to bring at least a modicum of substantive historical context to a report on Rudolph Giuliani the Presidential Candidate, to reveal how his record as mayor – the demythologized version - might point to his approach as president. But the only historical context we receive once again revolves around image.

Mr. Giuliani was always a visceral pol; he knows when to retract the canines. Before the 1993 mayoral campaign, Democratic operatives assured all who would listen that they would poke until Mr. Giuliani unleashed his inner Mr. Hyde. It never happened. In November, he beat the incumbent mayor, David N. Dinkins.

And that’s the most insightful historical perspective of the article.

Powell also deconstructs the staid trajectory of Giuliani’s wardrobe:

In dress, he plays to type. Other candidates go open-necked or pull flannel shirts out of the closet for New Hampshire.

Not the former mayor. He dresses in the one-size-too-large suits he has favored since his days as a federal prosecutor, with the top shirt button fastened and tie knotted tight. It is difficult to imagine anyone asking him a “really dopey” (two favorite Giuliani words now in abeyance) question about his favored style in underwear, as someone once did of Bill Clinton.

An un-“dopey” journalist, Powell thankfully keeps his probing eye on Giuliani’s choice of suits and height of shirt buttoning.

And, of course, what kind of mainstream portrait of a candidate would this be without a hair analysis (complete with its very own comb-over definition)?

Mr. Giuliani has made upgrades. The comb-over, his decades-long insistence on combing his hair across a substantial expanse of cranium, is history. His remaining hair is slicked back and comes to rest in a tight nest of graying curls.

To give Powell credit, it’s a nicely written paragraph: “His remaining hair is slicked back and comes to rest in a tight nest of graying curls.” As a sentence, it’s undeniably lyrical, vivid, a line worthy of, say, celebrated short story writer Alice Munro.

As journalism, however, it’s vapid and pointless. Ten more American soldiers died in Iraq today, along with scores of Iraqis, and a New York Times journalist – in a news article - is comparing the merits of a presidential candidate’s former and current coif, a candidate with hardly any hair on his head, no less.

The rest of Powell’s love letter heats up the hero worship, shamelessly contributing to the media's Mythology of Rudy.

David Pass, 31, journeyed to Olgethorpe to hear Mr. Giuliani. He cannot hide his enthusiasm. “He lets you know exactly where he stands,” Mr. Pass said. “He’s not afraid to say what he believes.”

[…]

They wait patiently for the man who will be introduced as America’s mayor, and they will give him a standing ovation.

[…]

He flashes a smile, and the patrons stand and clap and slip arms around him and cadge autographs and photographs.

[…]

More often, the image that comes to mind as Mr. Giuliani traipses into a string of packed, applauding rooms in Alabama, Georgia and New Hampshire is of a rock star, if that rocker happened to be a balding and slightly hunched former mayor.

In Atlanta, Mr. Giuliani offers to take questions, and a stout blond woman in a red pantsuit shoots straight up, raising her hand and nearly shouting, “I think you are sooooo handsome.”

(In 1994, a woman in Queens translated the same compliment into New Yorkese; she peered carefully at Mr. Giuliani and acknowledged, “You look a lot better in person.”)

At the root of his celebrity lies Mr. Giuliani’s performance on Sept. 11, 2001. The shadow of that day is inescapable; he is prayed for, applauded and asked to reminisce. And the refrain from those who listen to him is the same: When President Bush was flying to and fro, when Vice President Dick Cheney went to his bunker, Mr. Giuliani was the eloquent voice and face of America.

[…]

But conversation usually circles back to that September day. When the towers fell, Mr. Giuliani was certain of what he saw.

Defense is for the surrender crowd. He is about playing offense, and with a strong stomach: More electronic surveillance, more Patriot Act, more tough “but legal” interrogation methods. Mr. Giuliani peers at the smiling residents of Tuscaloosa.

“Right now, as we sit here enjoying breakfast, they are planning on coming here to kill us,” he warns them. “I don’t blame people for not getting it before 9/11. But I do blame people who don’t get it now.”

He circles his hands around his head, as though to bat away America’s cobwebs.

“The Democrats want to take us back on defense,” he says. “You can feel it; you can hear it.”

Unmentioned is Giuliani’s mayoral record of institutionalized police brutality directed at minorities, the 41 bullets fired into the body of Amadou Diallo and the rape of Abner Louima with a broomstick a symbol of NYC law enforcement run amok under the Giuliani administration. All the more reason why Powell’s nearest allusion to such incidents is not only grossly insufficient but unseemly.

Mr. Giuliani laughs, he gestures expansively, he even pokes fun at his tendency to wax a wee bit authoritarian. (He suggests a touch of the cane was necessary to impose discipline on that liberal asylum known as New York.)

Missing, too, is any reference to the fact that Giuliani failed to protect 9/11 workers from inhaling the poisonous dust at Ground Zero, leading to untold sickness and death, persistent illnesses that have destroyed lives and will continue to do so in the future. Most of which could’ve been prevented had America’s mayor actually protected his citizens. Recent news reports confirm that Giuliani knew the air was dangerous to breathe but chose not to inform the public and to ensure that all 9/11 workers wore protective masks.

Sure, Powell could've mentioned this. But why ruin a good fairytale?

Story of the Day: Cheney's Commencement Speech at West Point

With May on pace to be the deadliest month of the year for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and fresh off the war funding victory with Congress, Vice President Dick Cheney addressed the graduating class of West Point today.

You won't see anything more than a couple of canned soundbites on the networks. If that. Our national newspapers won't do much better. Another item you aren't likely to hear any mainstream journalists mention (one of those many 800-lb. gorillas) is Cheney's five draft deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam, of which he so tactfully said, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."

While perfectly contextual to the story at hand - a hawkish vice president, who fixed intelligence to precipitate the invasion of Iraq, delivers commencement speech to a fresh crop of soldiers bound for his disastrous war of choice - mainstream news outlets are loathe to point to our vice president's jaw-dropping hypocrisy. 

So, instead, what we're often left with when we watch such events through the prism of our mainstream media is the feeling of a world gone mad. An utter dislocation of reality. Another enabling moment of big media journalism. 

Here is the unadulturated version of Cheney's speech. I promise you won't be disappointed. It's vintage Cheney, right down to: "We're fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first, and hit us hard."

Never mind that enemy wasn't Iraq.

Op-Ed Column: The Eminently Relevant “Irrelevant” Jimmy Carter

Think the mainstream media has improved since its utter meltdown in the run-up to the Iraq War?

Think again.

In case you’ve been under a rock the last few days, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published an interview on Saturday in which former President Jimmy Carter, among other things, said, "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.”

Considering that retired U.S. military generals, former heads of state, historians, politicians, pundits, and the majority of Americans and human beings around the world would concur (or have concurred) with Carter’s assessment, it’s certainly less an incendiary statement than it is an honest, arguably obvious, critique.   

You try and name a foreign policy decision that degraded America’s standing in the eyes of the world more than did the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Regardless, the Bush administration reacted as expected. Ignore the substance of the attack and disparage the messenger. On Sunday, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, “I think it's sad that President Carter's reckless personal criticism is out there," adding, "I think it's unfortunate. And I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments."

I’m sure it is “sad” and “unfortunate” (though “infuriating” is probably closer to the truth) for those in the Bush administration to hear a former president level such a clear-eyed criticism, one that resonates at home and abroad, underscoring the accumulating wreckage of this White House’s tragic foreign policy and calculated mendacity. Though, of course, that’s not what Fratto implied. Instead, his words were a desperate attempt to paint Carter as a pathetic has-been – a one-term president defined completely by his failure to bring home American hostages from Iran rather than by his greatest accomplishment in office, bringing peace between Israel and Egypt, and his Herculean humanitarian efforts after leaving office that brought him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Hardly irrelevant, as far as effecting positive change in the world – you don’t win the Nobel Peace Prize by perfecting your golf swing (Ford), chairing boards of nefarious corporations (Bush I, Carlyle Group, respectively) or making record-breaking public speaking paydays (Reagan) - no former president has worked as tirelessly, courageously and selflessly than the now 82-year-old Carter. Moreover, as John Nichols notes in The Nation: “It seems that, if Carter really was as ‘irrelevant’ as the Bush White House would have us believe, the president's aides would not be attacking the former president in such immediate and aggressive terms.” 

What’s more, in a 2004 survey among 415 historians, 81% concluded the Bush administration was a “failure.” In the 2006 Rolling Stone article highlighting this study, author and leading U.S. historian Sean Wilentz wrote, “Twelve percent of the historians polled - nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success - flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.”

Finally, nothing in our Constitution bars a former president from criticizing a sitting one. As Joan Walsh pointed out in Salon yesterday:

In earlier, less prissy times, presidents were hard on one another -- Teddy Roosevelt bashed Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, and Herbert Hoover bashed FDR's social policy. Even former President Gerald Ford, apparently one of history's nicest presidents if not the most effective, called Carter's presidency a "disaster" and said he "disagreed strongly" with Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq, which he called a "mistake." Sure, Ford's remarks to Bob Woodward were embargoed until after his death -- but not until after Bush's death, which is what Ford might have done if he wanted to obey the supposed commandment that presidents not speak ill of their successors.

Ironically, completely lost as well in the mainstream media’s surface discussion of Carter’s criticism is how the former president’s statement aims to begin mending the very image of America for which he’s castigating this administration for demolishing. As John Nichols also notes : “By making it perfectly clear that Americans are unsettled by their president's reckless disregard for the rule of law and common sense at home and abroad, Carter helps to separate Bush from America in the eyes of the world, which is a very, very good thing for the American people.”

Care to argue with that? Be my guest.

Nevertheless, even as the ever-gracious Carter softened his statements yesterday - no doubt under pressure from the growing media backlash inspired by the White House (and potentially due to the Democratic leadership’s preference that Mr. Carter not steal any thunder from its crop of ’08 frontrunners) – here’s how Today co-host Meredith Vieira handled the topic yesterday:

MEREDITH VIEIRA: And President Jimmy Carter joins us from St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana this morning, where he and the folks from Habitat for Humanity are marking an important milestone.

President Carter, good morning to you.

PRESIDENT CARTER: Good morning.

VIEIRA: Before we talk about your work down there, sir, you did make headlines over the weekend for blasting the Bush administration as "the worst in history." You have criticized the administration before, but never so vehemently. What provoked those words, that choice of words, and why now?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, what I was actually doing was responding to a question comparing this administration's foreign policy with that of Richard Nixon. And I think Richard Nixon had a very good and productive foreign policy. And my remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted, but I wasn't comparing the overall administration, and I was certainly not talking personally about any president. But –

VIEIRA: Are you saying --

PRESIDENT CARTER: -- there's no doubt in my mind -- I'm sorry?

VIEIRA: I was saying, you said your remarks might have been careless. Are you saying now that you believe they were careless or reckless?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Well, I think they were, yes, because they were interpreted as comparing this whole administration to all other administrations, when what I was actually doing was responding to a question about foreign policy between Richard Nixon and this administration. And I think that this administration's foreign policy, compared to President Nixon's, was much worse.

VIEIRA: But not the worst in U.S. history?

PRESIDENT CARTER: No, that's not what I wanted to say. I wasn't comparing this administration with other administrations back through history, but just with President Nixon's.

VIEIRA: Do you believe, sir, that as a former president it is appropriate to criticize the man sitting in the Oval Office, particularly during a time of war?

And there it is: in mid-2007, with the overwhelming majority of Americans certain our country is on a tragic course and that the Iraq invasion was a catastrophic mistake, with nearly 40% of our citizens now embracing the prospect of impeachment for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, establishment journalists like Vieira are still impugning the patriotism of those who criticize this White House.

It's precisely the kind of feckless journalism that helped to facilitate our hellish misadventure in Iraq.

The interview continues with more of the same: at no time does Vieira consider the substance of Carter’s critique, or why the Bush administration might be so compelled to personally attack him without ever addressing his criticisms.

Nonetheless, the backdrop of Vieira’s satellite interview with Carter spoke volumes.

While the Bush White House perpetuates its rudderless bloodbath in Iraq, the former president, forced to backtrack from a perfectly rational assessment of this administration’s reckless foreign policy, was in New Orleans building houses for people who lost them during Hurricane Katrina and dispensing something for which the mainstream media seems to hold him endlessly in contempt: hope, wisdom and truth.

Shame on you, Mr. Carter.

Story of the Day: R.I.P., "Sutton Impact"

Sad but true, Ward Sutton illustrated his last "Sutton Impact" on April 17.

During the GWB years, no political cartoonist has been more incisive, original and painfully funny. Pound for pound, Sutton's combined illustrative range, conceptual depth and textual flair reigned supreme. You never knew what you were going to get next; you just knew it would be quality.

Mr. Sutton, all the best in your new pursuits and thanks for the light your strip gave us during some of our country's darkest years.

-MediaBloodhound

Story of the Day: Americans Long Held Hostage in Colombia, MSM Snores

Did you know three American citizens are being held hostage in the jungles of Colombia for four years running?

If not, don't feel bad. While the story popped up sporadically in alternative media here and in both big (BBC) and more alternative (The Guardian) media in the U.K., it has largely received the cold shoulder from the U.S. mainstream press.

It's hard to imagine the same lack of media interest if a Democratic president sat in the White House - you know, someone from the "Mommy Party." But, of course, a Republican president - especially a self-proclaimed "war president" whose number one priority is the "war on terror" - gets a free pass when U.S. hostages are held captive on his watch. No double standard there.

Further indication of the short shrift this story still receives here? Today, our Paper of Record, The New York Times, places it in the world briefing section at the bottom of page A8 - a 106-word, four-sentence blurb.

Moreover, do a little digging and you realize the Bush administration and its corporate mercenaries (I'm being literal here, think Blackwater) are the direct beneficiaries of the U.S. media's hands-off approach to this hostage saga. Also highlighting the endlessly frustrating tendencies of our Paper of Record, the following is from a 2004 New York Times article (no doubt buried in its own pages) that was excerpted in CorpWatch:

After their tiny plane crashed deep in the jungles of southern Colombia, three American civilians on a mission to search for cocaine labs, drug planes and, occasionally, guerrilla units were taken hostage by Marxist rebels.

A year later, the men's families say the captives have been all but forgotten. Some say that is the way American officials and the men's employers want it to be.

The three Americans -- Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes -- worked cloaked in secrecy for two subsidiaries of Northrop Grumman, the huge military contractor, in an arrangement used increasingly by the United States government in conflict zones from Colombia to Afghanistan.

The men's families and critics of American policy here say the case sheds light on a shadowy world of secret operations that employ private contractors in deals that make it easy to skirt public scrutiny and for all to wash their hands if something goes wrong.

"My complaint about use of private contractors is their ability to fly under the radar and avoid any accountability," Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, said. "Now we're finding out that because of their low profile, and so little scrutiny, they are able to avoid liability or responsibility for these individuals."

American officials and executives at Northrop Grumman bristle at the suggestion that they have not done all they can to secure freedom for the men. Diplomats say there is probably little that they can do.

[...]

The number of Americans working in Colombia for private contractors has nearly doubled in two years to 400, the congressional limit. Hundreds more are citizens of Colombia and other countries. American law also allows up to 400 military officials in Colombia.

There are now two dozen American companies here, with the contracts for antidrug programs worth $178 million last year. They spray coca fields, operate eavesdropping devices, organize alternative development programs, repair airplanes, assess intelligence and advise the Colombian Defense Ministry.

[...]

American officials, here and elsewhere, say using contractors saves money, provides essential services and specialists and frees military forces that are already stretched thin. They also say the three men taken captive were working within the legal limits set by the Congress.

But critics say that for American policy makers, the political risks surrounding Washington's deepening involvement in Colombia's conflict made using contractors preferable to placing American forces or intelligence officers in similar jeopardy.

[...]

As for those taken captive, the FARC is using them as bargaining chips for a prisoner exchange and has hidden them well. Though American forces tracked the Americans after their capture, the trail has since been lost.

"The intelligence picture has, candidly, dried up," General James Hill, commander of American forces in Latin America, told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Oct. 29. "We get very little intelligence on them. We do not know exactly where they are."

What little is known of their fate comes from "Held Hostage in Colombia," a documentary by two American producers, Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes, featuring interviews with the hostages conducted by a Colombian journalist, Jorge Enrique Botero.

"I don't want more deaths," Mr. Stansell, sitting with his fellow crew members as armed guerrillas stood by, said in the documentary, excerpts of which were shown on "60 Minutes II." "I don't want to die. I don't want anybody dying trying to get me out of here."

The families are demanding negotiations to secure the release of the captives, but American policy forbids talks with the FARC, which the State Department has labeled a terrorist group.

"The Americans are truly making no effort to get them out," said a Western diplomat. "The Americans could be there 10 years."

Ten years. But fortunately for the Bush administration, our media continues to look the other way. Maybe the U.S. hostages should root for a Democratic victory in '08.

Story of the Day: Reuters Bases Report on "War on Terror" Shill

"Iraq a 'Terrorist Disneyland' if U.S. Goes: Expert."

I spotted this headline while sifting through today's news and couldn't help but wonder, first, about its curious timing. With President Bush battling against any timetables for withdrawal of U.S. troops, this report is just the sort of "news" the White House so desperately needs. 

The opening four paragraphs present Rohan Gunaratna's (the "expert's") conclusions:

A U.S. troop pullout from Iraq would leave the country as a potent launchpad for international terrorism and Washington would be forced to go back in within a couple of years, a leading al Qaeda expert said on Tuesday.

Rohan Gunaratna told a security conference at Lloyd's of London insurance market that Iraq, like Afghanistan in the 1990s, would become a "terrorist Disneyland" where al Qaeda could build up its strength unchallenged.

If U.S., British and other coalition troops withdrew from Iraq in the next year, he said, "certainly the scale of attacks that would be mounted inside Iraq, and using Iraq as a launching pad to strike other Western countries -- countries in Europe, North America - would become such that after two or three years, the U.S. forces will have to go back to Iraq."

The Singapore-based academic and writer said the epicenter of international terrorism had already switched from Afghanistan to Iraq. "In many ways, the terrorist threat has now shifted 1,500 miles closer to Europe."

Then I wondered who exactly is Rohan Gunaratna? Is his expertise genuinely reliable or is he just another White House shill?

In an informative 2003 exposé on Mr. Gunaratna in the Australian newspaper The Age, journalist Gary Hughes writes:

Gunaratna was the right person in the right place at the right time.

The world’s media outlets were looking for experts to interpret how and why the world had changed and the Sri Lanka-born academic was great "talent", providing dire warnings about the threat of Osama bin Laden’s shadowy al-Qaeda network.

No one seemed to worry that, until the September 11 attacks, Gunaratna’s acknowledged expertise had been largely confined to the activities of Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the Tamil Tigers. 

In May 2002, as Australian SAS troops were hunting bin Laden’s followers south-east of Kabul, Gunaratna’s book Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror became an instant bestseller and his reputation grew accordingly, being described as one of the world’s foremost experts on Islamic terrorism.

Gunaratna, 42, had ridden a wave of success driven by the basic laws of supply and demand - there were not enough experts to meet the demand from the media and publishers for intelligence analysts able to provide a catchy quote or headline. And Gunaratna appeared happy to break the mould of the public’s traditional idea of an academic analyst, making at times startling claims based on what he said were his own intelligence "sources" and criticising governments - including Canberra - for not doing enough and being too concerned about civil liberties.

Gunaratna was also seized upon by the Australian media, including newspapers published by Fairfax, and promoted virtually unquestioningly as the leading authority on Islamic terrorism, particularly after the Bali bombing in October last year.

But Gunaratna and others who belong to this new breed of media-friendly commentators, who blur the distinction between academic analysis and politics and base research on information from anonymous intelligence sources, are causing concern in some circles.

But that's only the beginning. Hughes continues to peel that onion:

Also under scrutiny are the financial links between analysts who highlight the dangers posed by terrorists and private corporations that stand to make money from an increased atmosphere of fear.

Members of Australia’s intelligence community, and in particular ASIO, are known to be dismissive of many of Gunaratna’s more sensational statements, such as claims that alleged military chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah network and senior al-Qaeda member Hambali had regularly visited Australia.

In Britain, The Observer newspaper’s home affairs editor and long-time writer on Islamic terrorist groups, Martin Bright, describes Gunaratna as "the least reliable of the experts on bin Laden". He says Gunaratna is often used by the British authorities as an expert witness in the prosecution of Islamist terror suspects because they can rely on him to be apocalyptic.

In Australia, journalist and commentator on intelligence issues Brian Toohey is one of the few to have openly questioned Gunaratna’s credentials, describing him as a "self-proclaimed expert" and dismissing some of his claims as "plain silly". He uses as an example a warning by Gunaratna published in November 2001 in the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council Review that terrorist groups might try to influence Australian politicians by rallying "10,000 or 20,000 votes" in their electorates.

David Wright-Neville is senior research fellow at the Centre for Global Terrorism at Monash University and until 2002 was a senior terrorism analyst in the Office of National Assessment. Although he won’t comment directly on Gunaratna, or any other individual analyst, he says that, like in any other profession, the abilities of so-called terrorism experts ranges from the very good down to questionable.

The lack of scrutiny of their abilities, says to Wright-Neville, is partly due to the shortage of analysts and experts available to meet the massive demand for public knowledge.

He says problems arise when analysts don’t make it clear when they leave the secure ground of known facts and enter into their own extrapolation when commenting to the media. The results can be headlines based on conjecture rather than reality.

Hughes then delves into Mr. Gunaratna's conflicts of interest, which include ties to the Carlyle Group:

He did a master of arts at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University in 1996 and research at the University of Illinois and University of Maryland. While at Maryland, he worked with Admiral Stansfield Turner, one-time head of US intelligence. While at Notre Dame, he linked up with the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Scotland’s St Andrews University and its massive database on terrorist incidents going back to 1968. He also got to know the centre’s then head, Dr Bruce Hoffman, with whom he has co-authored a yet to be published book on terrorism.

Gunaratna moved to Scotland to complete his doctorate at St Andrews and work as a research fellow at the terrorism and political violence centre. He also got open access to the centre’s large terrorism database, one of just a small handful of such databases scattered around the world.

The database is a combination of material gathered by St Andrews and the Rand   Corporation, the non-profit US thinktank established by the US Air Force. Now known as the RAND-St Andrews database on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict, it is largely maintained and updated by more than 30 students who comb the internet and newspapers and magazines from around the world for information on terrorist operations.

The database is not the only link between Rand and St Andrews and Rand and Gunaratna. Bruce Hoffman, the founder of the St Andrews centre for terrorism study, is now a vice-president of Rand and chief of its Washington office. And Rand, St Andrews, Gunaratna and Jane’s worked together last year as private   advisers to Risk Management Solutions, helping the private American corporation develop a "US terrorism risk model" to sell to insurance companies worried about terrorist strikes.

Rand, in turn, is linked to the $US3.5 billion Carlyle Group, which holds stakes in some of the world’s biggest arms and defence corporations, through the former US defence secretary and deputy CIA director Frank Carlucci, who is chairman of the group and a Rand board member.

The Carlyle Group employs former President George Bush as a senior adviser, uses former US Secretary of State James Baker as its senior counsellor and has former British Prime Minister John Major as chairman of its European arm. Earlier this year, it bought a third of QinetiQ, the company floated by Britain’s Ministry of Defence to commercially exploit non-secret security and defence technology. QinteQ has been negotiating with the British Government to buy the soon-to-be-privatised Security, Languages, Intelligence and Photography College, where British spies   are trained.

In his biographical details on the site of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, where he is an assistant professor, Gunaratna states one of his past positions was "principal investigator, QinetiQ Project on Terrorist Information Operations".

Finally, there's the matter of fabricating his credentials:

Gunaratna’s credentials in biographical information published in books, magazines, newspapers and on the internet, are at first glance impressive. His book Inside Al Qaeda states: "Rohan Gunaratna, the author of six books on armed conflict, was called to address the United Nations, the US Congress and the Australian Parliament in the wake of September 11, 2001. He is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St Andrews University, Scotland. Previously, Gunaratna was principal investigator of the United Nations’ Terrorism Prevention Branch and he has served as a consultant on terrorism to several governments and corporations."

After The Sunday Age made detailed checks on Gunaratna’s biographical details, he confirmed last week that there was no such position as principal investigator at the UN’s Terrorism Prevention Branch and he worked there in 2001-02 as a research consultant. He also confirmed that, rather than directly addressing the UN, Congress and the Australian Parliament, he had actually spoken at a seminar organised by the parliamentary library, given evidence to a congressional hearing on terrorism and delivered a research paper to a conference on terrorism organised by the UN’s Department for Disarmament Affairs.

You would think Reuters might question the conclusions of such a dubious expert, especially considering the timing of his statement. At the very least, it might present views of other terrorism experts. Or cite the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate that confirmed the U.S. occupation of Iraq is fueling global terrorism rather than containing it.

Instead, compounding this journalistic malpractice, Reuters quotes only two other sources, both of whom agree with Gunaratna:

"I'd be very cautious about withdrawing from Afghanistan in circumstances where the field was left to the Taliban," said [Sir Richard] Mottram, Permanent Secretary for Intelligence, Security and Resilience at the Cabinet Office. He declined comment on Iraq.

A former head of Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6 described Gunaratna's analysis as convincing.

"Clearly al Qaeda are focusing on Iraq now, and focusing on some sort of propaganda victory over the United States," Sir Richard Dearlove told reporters.

"Whether that's an actual victory or not, if they can claim in the Muslim world that they've done well, then that puts us in a very difficult position. This is really an aspect of withdrawal that hasn't been properly considered. That's why I think we can't just let Iraq go its own way."

This article reads like a White House press release script-doctored by Rove and Cheney. It is establishment journalism at its worst. What we've come to expect from the likes of Fox News and the New York Post.

In fact, it doesn't come close to living up to Reuters own standards. Here's an excerpt from the introduction of A Handbook of Reuters Journalism: A Guide to Standards, Style and Operations:

Everything we do as Reuters journalists has to be independent, free from bias and executed with the utmost integrity. These are our core values and stem from the Reuters Trust Principles. As a real-time, competitive news service whose reputation rests on reliability, we also value accuracy, speed and exclusivity. The way in which we, as Reuters employees, live these values is governed by the Reuters Code of Conduct. That code, with a few notable exceptions that apply specifically to journalists, governs the behaviour of all Reuters employees and is essential reading. As journalists, however, we have additional responsibilities if we are to fulfil the highest aspirations of our profession – to search for and report the truth, fairly, honestly and unfailingly.

Even more apropos is the section in the handbook titled "Take No Sides, Tell All Sides":

As Reuters journalists, we never identify with any side in an issue, a conflict or a dispute. Our text and visual stories need to reflect all sides, not just one. This leads to better journalism because it requires us to stop at each stage of newsgathering and ask ourselves “What do I know?” and “What do I need to know?” In reporting a takeover bid, for example, it should be obvious that the target company must be given an opportunity to state their position. Similarly in a political dispute or military conflict, there are always at least two sides to consider and we risk being perceived as biased if we fail to give adequate space to the various parties.

This objectivity does not always come down to giving equal space to all sides. The perpetrator of an atrocity or the leader of a fringe political group arguably warrants less space than the victims or mainstream political parties. We must, however, always strive to be scrupulously fair and balanced. Allegations should not be portrayed as fact; charges should not be conveyed as a sign of guilt. We have a duty of fairness to give the subjects of such stories the opportunity to put their side.

Maybe it's time for the "scrupulously fair and balanced" editors and journalists at Reuters to dip back into their own handbook.

Special Report: Moyers, Wolf, and Journalism in Crisis (Part II)

(Read Part I here.)

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. --Naomi Wolf

Legalizing torture. Establishing secret gulags. Nullifying habeas corpus. Spying on average Americans. Abusing presidential signing statements. Chilling free speech and freedom of the press with accusations of treason.

The establishment media’s complicity in selling the war in Iraq helped to open a Pandora’s box of unimaginable proportions. In addition to the subsequent unraveling of our Constitution and our democracy’s most sacrosanct principles (which added to our plummeting standing in the world), over 3,375 U.S. soldiers and, by some estimates, over half a million Iraqis have lost their lives since the invasion; a 2006 National Intelligence Estimate concluded the Iraq War has sharply increased global terrorism; and Afghanistan is once again largely under the control of the Taliban.

All of that would be damning enough, but compounding this journalistic negligence is the establishment media’s sustained and ongoing complicity.

Ask yourself this:

• Who facilitated the environment to make torture a debatable issue?

• Who permitted Bush administration officials to boast of the Taliban’s defeat in Afghanistan long after clear evidence showed otherwise?

• Who allowed the Pentagon and the White House to scapegoat a few low-level grunts for the entire Abu Ghraib scandal even though documents clearly show that torture and its foundations were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, from then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to torture architect Alberto Gonzales to President Bush and Vice President Cheney?

• Who focused round-the-clock coverage on the arrest of John Mark Karr and death of Anna Nicole Smith yet barely batted an eye at the Military Commissions Act, one of the most alarming anti-democratic laws in our nation’s history, which made torture permissible, whacked habeas corpus, and granted the president sole power to detain and disappear any American citizen he alone deems an “enemy combatant”?

• Who even sat on their hands while this White House threatened their very livelihood, their basic right to report the facts, as in the case of New York Times editor Bill Keller, besieged by threats of treason and execution for breaking the story of the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping of American citizens (despite the fact The Times had sat on the story for a year)?

Of course our establishment media, that’s who. And through disingenuous frames, negligent omission, underreporting or total disregard, its members continue to grease the wheels of our ever eroding democracy.

In “Fascist America, In Ten Easy Steps,” Naomi Wolf highlights a frightening example of encroaching fascism that occurred just over two months, one that received little or no attention in mainstream news outlets:

Professor Walter F. Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list.”

"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."

"That'll do it," the man said.

Wolf cautions, “We need to look at history and face the ‘what ifs.’ For if we keep going down this road, the ‘end of America’ could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now."

But if our nation’s biggest news outlets aren’t reporting and discussing such stories or signify their insignificance by relegating them to the back pages, it greatly hinders the average American’s ability to see this writing on the wall, to break through the natural incredulity that indeed this is occurring on American soil, to our neighbors, to respected members of our communities.

Packaging is key, too.

Consider the April 29th story on the front page of The New York Times, “U.S. Asks Court to Limit Lawyers at Guantanamo.” First, there’s the use of “U.S.” instead of “White House” or “Bush administration” or even “U.S. government” or “Justice Department.” According to polls, the majority of U.S. citizens (even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for that matter) certainly do not agree with how detainees are being treated at Guantanamo and would think it perplexing at best and unconscionable at worst to reduce the detainees’ access to their lawyers.

While the article, which appeared on the cover of The Times, did include quotes from lawyers who rebuked these proposals, it was frontloaded (and reinforced by that headline) with the administration’s argument. The legal community, in fact, erupted over these latest efforts by the Justice Department. So what happened? The next day The Times reported their response in an article titled “Bar Criticizes Proposed Detainee Rules,” a 270-word article, less than a quarter of the size of the 1,262-word front-page spread from the day before. And the page on which it was printed? The very bottom of A15. Here’s the opening line: “The Bush administration is trying to evade responsibility for problems at the Guantánamo Bay prison by falsely blaming defense lawyers, the New York City Bar says.”

Imagine the impact this story might have had if it was given equal visibility and depth of coverage. Instead, this damning news nugget, which actually reflects the overwhelming opinion of Americans, not only escapes wider view but is also almost certain not to find its way onto the nightly news programs and into our national political discourse.

Moreover, nearly daily in alternative media sources and often buried within our national papers of record, like The Times or Washington Post, stories of this administration’s ceaseless attempts to override the Constitution, cite unprecedented executive privilege and further impinge on our citizens’ civil liberties surface and resurface as if in a vacuum separate from the media establishment’s world, where chummy press conferences exhume more laughs than facts, and conflicts of interest, like attendance at lavish state dinners, go on unabated.

Forget about the recent news that the U.S. Army has officially designated American journalists “non-traditional threats,” lumping them into the same category as drug cartels, warlords and al Qaeda. Never mind that more than one-fifth of the detainees at Guatanamo Bay already cleared for release may languish there for months or years to come. Or that the Bush administration is still working hard to illegally spy on average Americans.

What was on our national media’s radar as these stories recently unfolded? The state of John Edwards' hair.

Like soothsayers examining tea leaves, Washington pundits combed through the tale of Edwards’ pricey haircut to report that it cast doubt on everything from his ability to lead to his track record of fighting for the poor and middle class.

Four years after the invasion of Iraq, this kind of stupidity still passes as serious news and substantive discourse among the media elites in Washington. While proponents of media reform and alternative news outlets are growing in popularity and there have been encouraging signs in pushing the occasional unreported or underreported story into the mainstream while beating back some ludicrous received notions, members of the establishment media show no more willingness to question their methods than they do to admit their mistakes leading up to the war. 

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, in commenting on David Halberstam’s untimely death, wrote:

If there was one thing above all else that David taught us, it was to be skeptical of official accounts, to stay always on guard against the lies, fabrications, half-truths, misrepresentations, exaggerations and all other manifestations of falsehood that are fired at us like machine-gun bullets by government officials and others in high places, often with lethal results.

“You have to keep digging,” he would say, “keep asking questions, because otherwise you’ll be seduced or brainwashed into the idea that it’s somehow a great privilege, an honor, to report the lies they’ve been feeding you.”

Adhering to the basic tenets of sound journalism is not brain surgery, but it shouldn’t be taken lightly either. It involves, or should involve, a public trust. Somewhere along the line too many in our mainstream media forgot that the honor and privilege of being a journalist is in providing oversight to our elected officials and reporting the truth to the American people.

The Wounded-Courier: Bush Appoints Al Qaeda No. 2 Man “War Czar”

WASHINGTON – In a new video released yesterday, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second in command, made a strong plea for American forces to remain in Iraq, calling Democratic legislation that would impose a timetable for troop withdrawal an admission of “America’s failure and frustration.”

And someone in the White House was listening.

President Bush confirmed this morning that his administration’s long search for a war czar to oversee the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is over: al-Zawahiri is their man.

National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, who led the search to fill this new cabinet position, said he was “very confident” in Mr. al-Zawahiri’s abilities and that’s why he suggested him during a phone call to the president late last night. 

“No one has made the case for the necessity of U.S. soldiers to stay in Iraq better than has Mr. al-Zawahiri,” Hadley said on Meet the Press this morning. When asked by host Tim Russert if creating the position of war czar (Hadley prefers “implementation and execution manager”) was an effort to distance himself from an unpopular war, Hadley replied, “You know, Tim, I heard some talk in the media about that. But my job is to keep this train running. People have already seen what Mr. Al-Zawahiri can do as far as shaping his message to bolster this president’s war strategy. But when the American people see what can happen when he works directly with President Bush, I think talk about finding someone else to absorb the public’s frustration will be exposed as nothing more than partisan fiction.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appearing on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, expressed her full confidence in Mr. Hadley’s choice. “Look, Stephen is a very, uh, capable person. And so when he says that Mr. al-Zawahiri is the right man for the job, I trust his assessment 100%.” But Schieffer questioned what many in Washington are considering the boldest move yet in the president’s evolving Iraq strategy: “This is one of the key men who masterminded 9/11, arguably the man, as he’s considered the brains behind Bin Laden. His mentor. Can you really justify hiring him?” Rice, her brow knitted, explained, “Bob, we have been charged by the American people to win this war on terror. When we don’t talk with our enemies, the Democrats and the media say we aren’t being diplomatic enough, or we’re not exhausting all avenues of political engagement. You know, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. I can’t think of a better way to have an inside track on this war than for the president to have Mr. al-Zawahiri’s ear round-the-clock.”

Vice President Dick Cheney, who sat down with Tim Russert following Hadley’s segment, called the appointment of al-Zawahiri “more incontrovertible proof of the connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.” When Russert noted that al-Zawahiri’s new role as war czar didn’t necessarily have a correlation to Saddam Hussein being connected to the 9/11 attacks, Cheney responded, “Uh, Tim, I think it’s pretty clear-cut what the reality is, and to deny it at this point, frankly, gravely risks providing comfort to the enemy. Since I trust you appreciate the life this job affords you, and your role in Washington, I suggest you not miss a beat and do that thing you do where we immediately move on to another question and pretend this part of the discussion never took place.”

On Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol called al-Zawahiri’s hiring a “full-frontal assault on the war on terror, in which the normal rules of engagement must be tossed out the window.” Kristol went to say, “Whereas much of our foreign policy has revolved around the age-old aphorism ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ the Bush administration has wisely cut out the middle man. Now, unfettered, they can work hand-in-hand with our enemies.” But Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote today that “while many Americans, not to mention people around the world, have long found the timing of these al Qaeda tapes more than a little suspect, the Bush administration seems to be saying, ‘Whoop! There it is!’”

President Bush, boarding Air Force One this morning, said, “Mr. al-Zawahiri is the right man for the job. I stand by Stephen Hadley’s choice all the way.” When asked about the inherent day-to-day difficulties in working with a known international fugitive, Mr. Bush didn’t seem too phased by the challenge. “Conference calls. Email. Text messaging. It is 2007. Look, Mr. al-Zawahiri will be a freelance but dedicated employee of this White House. Together we’ll get the work of the people done.”

So far Mr. al-Zawahiri could not be reached for comment.

NYT Front|Back: Failed Fitness Coach vs. "Doomed" Iraq Reconstruction

FRONT:

Yankees, Hurting, See Culprit: The Fitness Coach
The New York Yankees, suffering more injuries than usual this year, decide to fire their fitness coach. Uh, that’s the story, folks. Read all about this front–page news.

Intro:

With one misstep on Tuesday, Phil Hughes, a Yankees rookie pitcher, lost his chance for a no-hitter. On Wednesday, Marty Miller lost his job.

Miller was not the manager. He was not even on the playing roster. He was the first-year strength coach, and he became the Yankees’ latest casualty in a dreary 10-14 start to the season that includes four hamstring injuries to pivotal players.

BACK (bottom of page A14):

Iraq Reconstruction Is Doomed, Ex-Chief of Global Fund Says
Think Iraq looks grim? Add to this tragic nightmare the billions of taxpayer dollars wasted on an ill-conceived reconstruction effort, one that not only helped to fuel the insurgency, but in doing so sealed its fate.   

How did it all go so wrong?

While the United States initially donated $10 million to the fund, which now totals about $2 billion, Mr. Bell [former chairman of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq] said that it had shown no sign of giving more. He said many programs paid for directly by the United States appeared to have foundered because of a tendency by American officials to keep control.

“They go in and tell their guys how to do things,” he said. “It’s a microcosm of what the Bush administration has tried to do with the intervention. But you can’t impose mind-sets.”

Who could’ve predicted this? Though warning signs existed years before, here’s a flashback to an article in The Washington Post, “Despite Billions Spent, Rebuilding Incomplete,” from November 12, 2006:

Yet those inside the reconstruction effort say security concerns were hardly the only problem. Poor planning and coordination by U.S. officials meant that even successful individual projects failed to do the job; for example, health-care centers were built at great cost but had no water and sewer service. Poor work-site management by contractors meant that some projects went awry. And now that the United States is handing over reconstruction efforts to Iraq, many involved with the process worry that the Iraqis don't have the training or the money to keep U.S.-built facilities running.

This was not how the rebuilding of Iraq was supposed to go. In the fall of 2003, six months after the U.S. invasion, President Bush promised Iraq "the greatest financial commitment of its kind since the Marshall Plan." Top administration aides said they considered that plan, which helped rebuild Europe after World War II, to be a model for Iraq. Congress soon passed a spending bill that, while offering less money than the Marshall Plan, was expected to be enough to get Iraq back on its feet.

Riding through the streets of the northern city of Mosul three years later, taxi driver Sattar Khalid Othman has barely noticed.

"What reconstruction?" Othman said in an interview last week. "Today we are drinking untreated water from a plant built decades ago that was never maintained. The electricity only visits us two hours a day. And now we are going backwards. We cook on the firewood we gather from the forests because of the gas shortage."

Yesterday, once again, The Times bumps a damning Iraq article from its cover in favor of journalistic candy. Today, five more U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, with eleven others wounded.

Sure hope another Yankee doesn't pull a hamstring tonight.

Op-Ed Column: The Illusion of Red/Blue Blog Parity

The following is a response to "The Illusion of a Nation Divided" by Mark Buchanan, his inaugural post in The New York Times blog Our Lives as Atoms. This began as a simple comment over there. Then snowballed.

Mark, while I appreciate your genuine intellectual curiosity and agree that - as countless, though not well publicized, polls like the one you mentioned have proved - this country is much less polarized than we are made to feel, your argument is riddled with reductive propositions and conclusions about politics, media and blogs.

From the start, you overlook the two biggest promoters of the red state/blue state great divide: the establishment media and the Bush administration. The greatest benefactors of this received notion.

Without such a construct (or frame) and the knowledge that major U.S. news outlets operate within it, the Bush administration would have much greater difficulty defending such actions as, say, torture. Basic democratic principles, our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions were all on the extreme periphery during the White House and media-framed “torture debate” (debating what in America would once seem unthinkable). Instead, the principal frame was: Are Democrats and liberals too weak on terrorists and terrorism? So the American public saw, read and listened to conservatives who vociferously defended the right to torture (oftentimes invoking the quaint Orwellian legal language “interrogation techniques”), parroting daily administration talking points on this. Their views were in the forefront of this “debate” even though they represented a minority of Americans.

(Incidentally, the majority of Republicans in this country may not support torture. But we do know for a fact that this administration and the overwhelming majority of the former Republican-led Congress did and still do. That’s not partisan rhetoric; it’s stipulated in legislation where abuses like water-boarding – a known torture technique born of the Spanish Inquisition and practiced by the Nazis – are sanctioned by law.)

Mainstream news outlets, believing this kind of extreme contrast (as disingenuous as it is) makes for good TV, have milked the red state/blue state, he said/she said, Crossfire-style faux balance for years. Numerous studies and venerable journalists, including Bill Moyers, have documented just how stacked news talk shows are in favor of conservatives. (And during the Bush years especially, extremist ones at that.) It’s the dirty little secret that’s regularly discussed in media watchdog circles, but those in the establishment media are loathe to admit this, let alone discuss it. This, too, engenders the false appearance of a stark political divide in the country.

Moreover, relying so heavily on the Adamic and Glance study, you fail to draw a distinction between “red and blue bloggers” that is crucial to the validity of your argument. Yes, red bloggers tend to link more to red bloggers and blue bloggers to blue bloggers. But you don’t consider why. The answer is directly related to the disingenuous Great Divide to which your argument is intending to debunk: the predominance of red state bloggers, much like right-wing radio hosts and members of this undeniably extremist administration, are far from moderate or even conservative. Most are on the very same right-wing fringe as those aforementioned pundits who led the charge to allow the administration to “legally” torture. In genuine stark contrast, the majority of blue state bloggers were compelled to begin their sites to combat not run-of-the-mill partisanship, but the kind of relentless mendacity and anti-democratic views coming from this White House that the predominance of red state blogs, along with their extremist counterparts on radio and TV and in print, tend to promote.

Thus, in attempting to debunk one Great Divide, the political views of the American populace, you foster the myth of another, that there is a parity of vitriol and mindless partisanship between red and blue bloggers. It’s no accident that establishment media, this administration and even Democratic hawks like Joe Lieberman have all led the charge to perpetuate this received notion, too.