www.csua.org/u/krw -> tomdispatch.com/post/174894/jonathan_schwarz_bill_kristol_s_obscure_masterpiece
In a roiling mass of neocons, right-wingers, and liberal war hawks, he's certainly been in fierce competition for the title of "wrongest" of all when it came to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But, okay, for the one person on the planet who doesn't know -- it's Bill Kristol. The notorious Mr Kristol, the man whose crystal ball never works. But isn't it the essence of American punditry that serial mistakes don't matter and no one is ever held to account (as in this primary season) for ridiculous predictions that add up to nothing?
one-year contract, "The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual -- and somehow that's a bad thing How intolerant is that?" Since no one in the mainstream is accountable for anything they've written, the management of the Times can exhibit remarkable tolerance for error in its gesture to the neocon right by hiring a man who's essentially never right. His has been a remarkable winning record when it comes to being right(-wing) by doing wrong. Former Saturday Night Live contributor Jonathan Schwarz pays homage to that record in what follows. Tom The Lost Kristol Tapes What the New York Times Bought By Jonathan Schwarz Imagine that there were a Beatles record only a few people knew existed. And imagine you got the chance to listen to it, and as you did, your excitement grew, note by note. You realized it wasn't merely as good as Rubber Soul, or Revolver, or Sgt. And now, imagine how badly you'd want to tell other Beatles fans all about it. You loved it when Bill said invading Iraq was going to have "terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East"? You have the original recording of him explaining the war would make us "respected around the world" and his classic statement that there's "almost no evidence" of Iraq experiencing Sunni-Shia conflict?
two-hour appearance on C-Span's Washington Journal on March 28, 2003, just nine days after the President launched his invasion of Iraq. Yet it's a masterpiece, a double album of smarm, horrifying ignorance, and bald-faced deceit. While you've heard him play those instruments before, he never again reached such heights. It's a performance for the history books -- particularly that chapter about how the American Empire collapsed. At the time Kristol was merely the son of prominent neoconservative Irving Kristol, former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle (aka "Quayle's brain"), the editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, and a frequent Fox News commentator. He hadn't yet added New York Times columnist to his resum. Opposite Kristol on the segment was Daniel Ellsberg, famed for leaking the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era. Their discussion jumped back and forth across 40 years of US-Iraqi relations, and is easiest to understand if rearranged chronologically. So, sit back, relax, and let me play a little of it for you. To start with, Ellsberg made the reasonable point that Iraqis might not view the invading Americans as "liberators," since the US had been instrumental in Saddam Hussein's rise to power: Here's how he put it: "ELLSBERG: People in Iraq... "ELLSBERG: In 1963, when there was a brief uprising of the Ba'ath, we supplied specifically Saddam with lists, as we did in Indonesia, lists of people to be eliminated. And since he's a murderous thug, but at that time our murderous thug, he eliminated them...
Ellsberg here is referring to US support for a 1963 coup involving the Ba'athist party, for which Saddam was already a prominent enforcer -- and then another coup in 1968 when the Ba'athists consolidated control, after which Saddam became the power behind the nominal president.
written about it on the New York Times op-ed page just two weeks before the Kristol-Ellsberg broadcast. He'd been near the apex of government as Quayle's chief of staff during the first Gulf War in 1991.
advocating the overthrow of the Saddam regime for years. He'd co-written an entire book, The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission, calling for an invasion of that country. Nevertheless, Kristol was ignorant of basic, critical information about US-Iraq history. It's as though we're riding in the back seat of a car driven by people who demanded the wheel but aren't sure what the gas pedal does or what a stop sign actually looks like. Moreover, when Ellsberg tells Kristol this information, he demonstrates no desire to learn more; nor, as best as can be discovered, has he ever mentioned it again. Those colored lights mean something about whether I'm supposed to stop or go? Anyway, let's talk more about how all of you complaining in the back seat hate freedom. He appears to be better informed and therefore shifts to straightforward lies: "ELLSBERG: Why did we support Saddam as recently as when you were in the administration? And the answer is-- "KRISTOL: We didn't support Saddam when I was in the administration.
worked in the Reagan administration as Education Secretary William Bennett's chief of staff -- when the US famously supported Saddam's war against Iran with loans, munitions, intelligence, and diplomatic protection for his use of chemical weapons. After George HW Bush was elected in 1988, Kristol moved to the same position in Vice President Quayle's office. During the transition, Bush's advisors examined the country's Iraq policy and wrote a memo explaining to the incoming President the choice he faced. In a nutshell, this was "to decide whether to treat Iraq as a distasteful dictatorship to be shunned when possible, or to recognize Iraq's present and potential power in the region and accord it relatively high priority. Internal State Department guidelines from the period stated, "In no way should we associate ourselves with the 60 year-old Kurdish rebellion in Iraq or oppose Iraq's legitimate attempts to suppress it." The Commerce Department loosened restrictions on dual-use WMD material, while Bush the elder approved new government lines of credit for Saddam over congressional objections. And Saddam was receiving private money as well: most notably from the Atlanta branch of Italian bank BNL.
later report that companies wanting to sell to Iraq were referred to them by Kristol's then-boss, Vice President Quayle. One Quayle family friend would end up constructing a refinery for Saddam to recycle Iraq's spent artillery shells. The Bush Justice Department prevented investigators from examining transactions like this, while Commerce Department employees were ordered to falsify export licenses. As Kristol and Ellsberg discuss the buildup to the 1991 Gulf War, Kristol, of course, continues to fiddle with reality: "KRISTOL: So you were against the liberation of Kuwait. At that time, a number of four star military people, former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were foursquare for containing Saddam, preventing him by military means from getting into Saudi Arabia...
"KRISTOL: The argument was not that the sanctions could get him out of Kuwait. The argument was that we could keep him out of Saudi Arabia. Who seriously thought he could be expelled from Kuwait by sanctions? "ELLSBERG: Practically everyone who testified before Senator Nunn, who is no left-wing radical. Ellsberg is correct, of course: On November 28, 1990, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral William Crowe testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and its chairman Sen.
to his knees" -- by which Crowe meant Iraq would be "pushed out of Kuwait." The same message was delivered by General David Jones, another former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman. The next day, the lede in a page one New York Times story was that Crowe and Jones had "urged the Bush Administration today to postpone military action against Iraq and to give economic sanctions a year or more to work." It's not like Kristol could have missed all this, since the Bush administration immediately disputed such commentary -- and one of its point men for the push back was none other than Dan Quayle.
specifically cited the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee" where "voices have argued that the Bush Administration should allow ti...
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