Thursday, January 29, 2004
The Dead Center
By ROBERT B. REICH
The dismal fifth-place showing by Senator Joseph Lieberman in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday serves as both reminder and motivator to the other Democratic presidential candidates on what it will take to win in November. For so long now, everyone has assumed that recapturing the presidency depends on who triumphs in the battle between liberals and moderates within the party. Such thinking, though, is inherently flawed. The real fight is between those who want only to win back the White House and those who also want to build a new political movement — one that rivals the conservative movement that has given Republicans their dominant position in American politics.
Senator Lieberman's defeat on Tuesday could be a good indicator of which side is ahead. To their detriment, Mr. Lieberman and the perennially dour Democratic Leadership Council have been deeply wary of any hint of a progressive movement, preferring instead an uninspired centrist message that echoes Republican themes.
On the other extreme is Howard Dean, who could be called the quintessential "movement" Democrat. His campaign is both grass-roots and reformist, and is based on the proposition that ordinary people must be empowered to "take back America." Similar threads can also be seen in the campaigns of Senators John Edwards and John Kerry. (Full disclosure: I've been helping Senator Kerry.) It was no accident after last week's caucuses in Iowa that a beaming Senator Edwards told supporters they had "started a movement to change America."
I hope that Mr. Edwards and the others will stay on message — and movement. After all, Democrats have seen what the Republican Party has been able to accomplish over the years. The conservative movement has developed dedicated sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only get out the vote, but also spend the time between elections persuading others to join their ranks. It has devised frames of reference that are used repeatedly in policy debates (among them: it's your money, tax and spend, political correctness, class warfare).
It has a system for recruiting and electing officials nationwide who share the same world view and who will vote accordingly. And it has a coherent ideology uniting evangelical Christians, blue-collar whites in the South and West, and big business — an ideology in which foreign enemies, domestic poverty and crime, and homosexuality all must be met with strict punishment and religious orthodoxy.
In contrast, the Democratic Party has had no analogous movement to animate it. Instead, every four years party loyalists throw themselves behind a presidential candidate who they believe will deliver them from the rising conservative tide. After the election, they go back to whatever they were doing before. Other Democrats have involved themselves in single-issue politics — the environment, campaign finance, the war in Iraq and so on — but these battles have failed to build a political movement. Issues rise and fall, depending on which interests are threatened and when. They can even divide Democrats, as each advocacy group scrambles after the same set of liberal donors and competes for the limited attention of the news media.
As a result, Democrats have been undisciplined, intimidated or just plain silent. They have few dedicated sources of money, and almost no ground troops. The religious left is disconnected from the political struggle. One hears few liberal Democratic phrases that are repeated with any regularity. In addition, there is no consistent Democratic world view or ideology. Most Congressional Democrats raise their own money, do their own polls and vote every which way. Democrats have little or no clear identity except by reference to what conservatives say about them.
Self-styled Democratic centrists, like those who inhabit the Democratic Leadership Council, attribute the party's difficulties to a failure to respond to an electorate grown more conservative, upscale and suburban. This is nonsense. The biggest losses for Democrats since 1980 have not been among suburban voters but among America's giant middle and working classes — especially white workers without four-year college degrees, once part of the old Democratic base. Not incidentally, these are the same people who have lost the most economic ground over the last quarter-century.
Democrats could have responded with bold plans on jobs, schools, health care and retirement security. They could have delivered a strong message about the responsibility of corporations to help their employees in all these respects, and of wealthy elites not to corrupt politics with money. More recently, the party could have used the threat of terrorism to inspire the same sort of sacrifice and social solidarity as Democrats did in World War II — including higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for what needs doing. In short, they could have turned themselves into a populist movement to take back democracy from increasingly concentrated wealth and power.
But Democrats did none of this. So conservatives eagerly stepped into the void, claiming the populist mantle and blaming liberal elites for what's gone wrong with America. The question ahead is whether Democrats can claim it back. The rush by many Democrats in recent years to the so-called center has been a pathetic substitute for candid talk about what the nation needs to do and for fueling a movement based on liberal values. In truth, America has no consistent political center. Polls reflect little more than reflexive responses to what people have most recently heard about an issue. Meanwhile, the so-called center has continued to shift to the right because conservative Republicans stay put while Democrats keep meeting them halfway.
Democrats who avoid movement politics point to Bill Clinton's success in repositioning the party in the center during the 1990's. Mr. Clinton was (and is) a remarkably gifted politician who accomplished something no Democrat since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had done — getting re-elected. But his effect on the party was to blur rather than to clarify what Democrats stand for. As a result, Mr. Clinton neither started nor sustained anything that might be called a political movement.
This handicapped his administration from the start. In 1994, when battling for his health care proposal, Mr. Clinton had no broad-based political movement behind him. Even though polls showed support among a majority of Americans, it wasn't enough to overcome the conservative effort on the other side. By contrast, George W. Bush got his tax cuts through Congress, even though Americans were ambivalent about them. President Bush had a political movement behind him that supplied the muscle he needed.
In the months leading up to the 1996 election, Mr. Clinton famously triangulated — finding positions equidistant between Democrats and Republicans — and ran for re-election on tiny issues like V-chips in television sets and school uniforms. The strategy worked, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Had Mr. Clinton told Americans the truth — that when the economic boom went bust we'd still have to face the challenges of a country concentrating more wealth and power in fewer hands — he could have built a long-term mandate for change. By the late 90's the nation finally had the wherewithal to expand prosperity by investing in people, especially their education and health. But because Mr. Clinton was re-elected without any mandate, the nation was confused about what needed to be accomplished and easily distracted by conservative fulminations against a president who lied about sex.
As we head into the next wave of primaries, the Democratic candidates should pay close attention to what Republicans have learned about winning elections. First, it is crucial to build a political movement that will endure after particular electoral contests. Second, in order for a presidency to be effective, it needs a movement that mobilizes Americans behind it. Finally, any political movement derives its durability from the clarity of its convictions. And there's no better way to clarify convictions than to hone them in political combat.
A fierce battle for the White House may be exactly what the Democrats need to mobilize a movement behind them. It may also be what America needs to restore a two-party system of governance and a clear understanding of the choices we face as a nation.
Robert B. Reich, former United States secretary of labor, is a professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University and the author of the forthcoming "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America."
By ROBERT B. REICH
The dismal fifth-place showing by Senator Joseph Lieberman in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday serves as both reminder and motivator to the other Democratic presidential candidates on what it will take to win in November. For so long now, everyone has assumed that recapturing the presidency depends on who triumphs in the battle between liberals and moderates within the party. Such thinking, though, is inherently flawed. The real fight is between those who want only to win back the White House and those who also want to build a new political movement — one that rivals the conservative movement that has given Republicans their dominant position in American politics.
Senator Lieberman's defeat on Tuesday could be a good indicator of which side is ahead. To their detriment, Mr. Lieberman and the perennially dour Democratic Leadership Council have been deeply wary of any hint of a progressive movement, preferring instead an uninspired centrist message that echoes Republican themes.
On the other extreme is Howard Dean, who could be called the quintessential "movement" Democrat. His campaign is both grass-roots and reformist, and is based on the proposition that ordinary people must be empowered to "take back America." Similar threads can also be seen in the campaigns of Senators John Edwards and John Kerry. (Full disclosure: I've been helping Senator Kerry.) It was no accident after last week's caucuses in Iowa that a beaming Senator Edwards told supporters they had "started a movement to change America."
I hope that Mr. Edwards and the others will stay on message — and movement. After all, Democrats have seen what the Republican Party has been able to accomplish over the years. The conservative movement has developed dedicated sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only get out the vote, but also spend the time between elections persuading others to join their ranks. It has devised frames of reference that are used repeatedly in policy debates (among them: it's your money, tax and spend, political correctness, class warfare).
It has a system for recruiting and electing officials nationwide who share the same world view and who will vote accordingly. And it has a coherent ideology uniting evangelical Christians, blue-collar whites in the South and West, and big business — an ideology in which foreign enemies, domestic poverty and crime, and homosexuality all must be met with strict punishment and religious orthodoxy.
In contrast, the Democratic Party has had no analogous movement to animate it. Instead, every four years party loyalists throw themselves behind a presidential candidate who they believe will deliver them from the rising conservative tide. After the election, they go back to whatever they were doing before. Other Democrats have involved themselves in single-issue politics — the environment, campaign finance, the war in Iraq and so on — but these battles have failed to build a political movement. Issues rise and fall, depending on which interests are threatened and when. They can even divide Democrats, as each advocacy group scrambles after the same set of liberal donors and competes for the limited attention of the news media.
As a result, Democrats have been undisciplined, intimidated or just plain silent. They have few dedicated sources of money, and almost no ground troops. The religious left is disconnected from the political struggle. One hears few liberal Democratic phrases that are repeated with any regularity. In addition, there is no consistent Democratic world view or ideology. Most Congressional Democrats raise their own money, do their own polls and vote every which way. Democrats have little or no clear identity except by reference to what conservatives say about them.
Self-styled Democratic centrists, like those who inhabit the Democratic Leadership Council, attribute the party's difficulties to a failure to respond to an electorate grown more conservative, upscale and suburban. This is nonsense. The biggest losses for Democrats since 1980 have not been among suburban voters but among America's giant middle and working classes — especially white workers without four-year college degrees, once part of the old Democratic base. Not incidentally, these are the same people who have lost the most economic ground over the last quarter-century.
Democrats could have responded with bold plans on jobs, schools, health care and retirement security. They could have delivered a strong message about the responsibility of corporations to help their employees in all these respects, and of wealthy elites not to corrupt politics with money. More recently, the party could have used the threat of terrorism to inspire the same sort of sacrifice and social solidarity as Democrats did in World War II — including higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for what needs doing. In short, they could have turned themselves into a populist movement to take back democracy from increasingly concentrated wealth and power.
But Democrats did none of this. So conservatives eagerly stepped into the void, claiming the populist mantle and blaming liberal elites for what's gone wrong with America. The question ahead is whether Democrats can claim it back. The rush by many Democrats in recent years to the so-called center has been a pathetic substitute for candid talk about what the nation needs to do and for fueling a movement based on liberal values. In truth, America has no consistent political center. Polls reflect little more than reflexive responses to what people have most recently heard about an issue. Meanwhile, the so-called center has continued to shift to the right because conservative Republicans stay put while Democrats keep meeting them halfway.
Democrats who avoid movement politics point to Bill Clinton's success in repositioning the party in the center during the 1990's. Mr. Clinton was (and is) a remarkably gifted politician who accomplished something no Democrat since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had done — getting re-elected. But his effect on the party was to blur rather than to clarify what Democrats stand for. As a result, Mr. Clinton neither started nor sustained anything that might be called a political movement.
This handicapped his administration from the start. In 1994, when battling for his health care proposal, Mr. Clinton had no broad-based political movement behind him. Even though polls showed support among a majority of Americans, it wasn't enough to overcome the conservative effort on the other side. By contrast, George W. Bush got his tax cuts through Congress, even though Americans were ambivalent about them. President Bush had a political movement behind him that supplied the muscle he needed.
In the months leading up to the 1996 election, Mr. Clinton famously triangulated — finding positions equidistant between Democrats and Republicans — and ran for re-election on tiny issues like V-chips in television sets and school uniforms. The strategy worked, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Had Mr. Clinton told Americans the truth — that when the economic boom went bust we'd still have to face the challenges of a country concentrating more wealth and power in fewer hands — he could have built a long-term mandate for change. By the late 90's the nation finally had the wherewithal to expand prosperity by investing in people, especially their education and health. But because Mr. Clinton was re-elected without any mandate, the nation was confused about what needed to be accomplished and easily distracted by conservative fulminations against a president who lied about sex.
As we head into the next wave of primaries, the Democratic candidates should pay close attention to what Republicans have learned about winning elections. First, it is crucial to build a political movement that will endure after particular electoral contests. Second, in order for a presidency to be effective, it needs a movement that mobilizes Americans behind it. Finally, any political movement derives its durability from the clarity of its convictions. And there's no better way to clarify convictions than to hone them in political combat.
A fierce battle for the White House may be exactly what the Democrats need to mobilize a movement behind them. It may also be what America needs to restore a two-party system of governance and a clear understanding of the choices we face as a nation.
Robert B. Reich, former United States secretary of labor, is a professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University and the author of the forthcoming "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America."
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Elephants Can't Fly
By THOMAS FRIEDMAN
DAVOS, Switzerland — A year ago, at the Davos World Economic Forum, I saw elephants fly. Yes, sir, right here in the Swiss Alps I saw big ideas defying gravity. At this year's Davos forum, though, all the elephants came crashing down. Turns out elephants can't fly after all — and the world is a better place for it.
Since Davos gathers together a sample of global leaders, business executives and social activists, it's a good place to take the world's pulse. Last year's Davos was dominated by three big ideas. The first was put forth by Bush officials that the U.S. not only was ready to invade Iraq largely on its own, but could also pull off regime change there without the help of either the U.N. or major allies — France, Germany and Russia.
This year, Vice President Dick Cheney, who, more than any Bush official resisted cooperation with the U.N. in the Iraq war, made a firm, low-key defense of the U.S. policy. But after Mr. Cheney spoke, a "senior administration official" privately told reporters that the Bush team was ready to give the U.N. pretty much whatever authority it wanted to help oversee Iraq's transition to elections — and the only thing standing in the way was whether the U.N. would assume the risks. It turns out that while there is no regime in the world the U.S. can't destroy on its own, there is also none that it can rebuild on its own.
Last year, France was indulging its illusion that it could galvanize all the antiwar, anti-U.S. sentiment to make itself the great global Uncola to America's Coca-Cola — the new balancer to America. It would be a win-win for President Jacques Chirac. He would enhance his political stature at home by opposing America and make France the supreme power in Europe, marginalizing Britain.
A year later, France was not only unable to stop the war, but it paid a big price in Europe. "It turned out to be lose-lose for France," remarked Peter Schwartz, head of the Global Business Network. By going to such lengths to oppose the U.S., and by denouncing those Europeans who sided with America, France drove pro-U.S. Europeans, like Poland and Spain, deeper into the U.S. camp, noted Mr. Schwartz. This, in turn, gave Poland and Spain more backbone to resist German and French demands for greater control over E.U. affairs.
France was not quite the elephant it thought it was, and the winds of anti-Americanism couldn't carry it any farther than its real economic and military weight. Thud.
The last elephant to crash were the antiglobalization protesters, who almost shut Davos down the last two years. This year, they were nowhere. Maybe because this year it was the Western business executives who were besieging their colleagues from India and China. They wanted to hear from the Indians about how Western firms can shift more service jobs — ranging from software design to reading X-rays — to India, and from the Chinese how they can absorb more manufacturing. With the world's two biggest developing countries doing so well by globalizing in their own ways, it's no wonder much of the hot air has come out of the antiglobalization movement, which never did have any real alternative growth strategy.
So in the end, the laws of gravity in geopolitics and geoeconomics brought everyone back to earth.
"What we have here are not friendships regained but lost illusions," says Josef Joffe, editor of Germany's Die Zeit. "With the Bush administration politely asking the U.N. for help in Iraq, Gulliver now realizes that . . . the most important interests require legitimacy and cooperation, especially in Iraq. The French and Germans learned that by trying to make the giant stumble, they ended up splitting Europe. So now you have this teeth-gnashing effort at rapprochement. It is a sobering up and a rethinking of power on both sides of the Atlantic — and no one is having fun doing it. . . . The Bush team has not really been converted to a more generous view of diplomacy, and the Europeans still have their fears and own agenda."
In short, gravity has moderated everyone's behavior, but big disagreements about how to order the world still lurk beneath this surface calm. Any new big crisis could bring them all to the surface. So enjoy this calm, but don't look underneath. French foreign affairs expert Thierry de Montbrial told me that this moment reminded him of a joke: Mikhail Gorbachev was once asked how — in one word — he would sum up the Soviet economy. "Good," he said. Then he was asked how — in two words — he would sum up the Soviet economy: "Not good," he said.
Elephants Can't Fly
By THOMAS FRIEDMAN
DAVOS, Switzerland — A year ago, at the Davos World Economic Forum, I saw elephants fly. Yes, sir, right here in the Swiss Alps I saw big ideas defying gravity. At this year's Davos forum, though, all the elephants came crashing down. Turns out elephants can't fly after all — and the world is a better place for it.
Since Davos gathers together a sample of global leaders, business executives and social activists, it's a good place to take the world's pulse. Last year's Davos was dominated by three big ideas. The first was put forth by Bush officials that the U.S. not only was ready to invade Iraq largely on its own, but could also pull off regime change there without the help of either the U.N. or major allies — France, Germany and Russia.
This year, Vice President Dick Cheney, who, more than any Bush official resisted cooperation with the U.N. in the Iraq war, made a firm, low-key defense of the U.S. policy. But after Mr. Cheney spoke, a "senior administration official" privately told reporters that the Bush team was ready to give the U.N. pretty much whatever authority it wanted to help oversee Iraq's transition to elections — and the only thing standing in the way was whether the U.N. would assume the risks. It turns out that while there is no regime in the world the U.S. can't destroy on its own, there is also none that it can rebuild on its own.
Last year, France was indulging its illusion that it could galvanize all the antiwar, anti-U.S. sentiment to make itself the great global Uncola to America's Coca-Cola — the new balancer to America. It would be a win-win for President Jacques Chirac. He would enhance his political stature at home by opposing America and make France the supreme power in Europe, marginalizing Britain.
A year later, France was not only unable to stop the war, but it paid a big price in Europe. "It turned out to be lose-lose for France," remarked Peter Schwartz, head of the Global Business Network. By going to such lengths to oppose the U.S., and by denouncing those Europeans who sided with America, France drove pro-U.S. Europeans, like Poland and Spain, deeper into the U.S. camp, noted Mr. Schwartz. This, in turn, gave Poland and Spain more backbone to resist German and French demands for greater control over E.U. affairs.
France was not quite the elephant it thought it was, and the winds of anti-Americanism couldn't carry it any farther than its real economic and military weight. Thud.
The last elephant to crash were the antiglobalization protesters, who almost shut Davos down the last two years. This year, they were nowhere. Maybe because this year it was the Western business executives who were besieging their colleagues from India and China. They wanted to hear from the Indians about how Western firms can shift more service jobs — ranging from software design to reading X-rays — to India, and from the Chinese how they can absorb more manufacturing. With the world's two biggest developing countries doing so well by globalizing in their own ways, it's no wonder much of the hot air has come out of the antiglobalization movement, which never did have any real alternative growth strategy.
So in the end, the laws of gravity in geopolitics and geoeconomics brought everyone back to earth.
"What we have here are not friendships regained but lost illusions," says Josef Joffe, editor of Germany's Die Zeit. "With the Bush administration politely asking the U.N. for help in Iraq, Gulliver now realizes that . . . the most important interests require legitimacy and cooperation, especially in Iraq. The French and Germans learned that by trying to make the giant stumble, they ended up splitting Europe. So now you have this teeth-gnashing effort at rapprochement. It is a sobering up and a rethinking of power on both sides of the Atlantic — and no one is having fun doing it. . . . The Bush team has not really been converted to a more generous view of diplomacy, and the Europeans still have their fears and own agenda."
In short, gravity has moderated everyone's behavior, but big disagreements about how to order the world still lurk beneath this surface calm. Any new big crisis could bring them all to the surface. So enjoy this calm, but don't look underneath. French foreign affairs expert Thierry de Montbrial told me that this moment reminded him of a joke: Mikhail Gorbachev was once asked how — in one word — he would sum up the Soviet economy. "Good," he said. Then he was asked how — in two words — he would sum up the Soviet economy: "Not good," he said.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
La lezione di democrazia di un seggio di periferia
di GIANNI RIOTTA
CONCORD (New Hampshire) - Una scuola perduta nei boschi, strada gelata, i fari delle auto che cercano incerti il comizio notturno. La palestra del liceo di South East Street è gremita, femministe adolescenti, studenti ecologisti, pensionati, massaie, canuti reduci del Vietnam con all'occhiello il distintivo «No war». Aspettando il senatore democratico John Edwards, nell'ultima assemblea prima del voto in New Hampshire, la folla paziente sfida l'inverno, per una spiegazione, un ragionamento, una risposta decisiva. Un compositore inganna l'attesa lavorando allo spartito musicale, qua una croma, là una chiave di violino sul pentagramma. Guardo la gente appollaiata sulle scomode seggiole metalliche e penso alle polemiche livide dell'ultimo anno. Lo scrittore Gore Vidal: gli Stati Uniti sono in mano a «una giunta militare». Il linguista Noam Chomsky: a Washington impera «il nuovo fascismo». Lo storico francese Emmanuel Todd: «la decomposizione dell'amministrazione americana» ammorba il pianeta. Sono questi cittadini i pretoriani del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale? Sono loro i guerrafondai a caccia di barili di petrolio, spietati nell'imporre patatine fritte e Hollywood in ogni landa? Quartiere per quartiere, qui in New Hampshire, lo Stato che vedeva ieri in vantaggio il senatore progressista John Kerry contro il radicale Howard Dean, l'ondata di antiamericanismo si svela per quello che è, propaganda e risentimento. Nel 2000 votarono 104.283.351 americani, solo l'India rivaleggia in dimensioni tra le democrazie. Il senatore Edwards, quando finalmente arriva, giovane, sorridente, spigliato, evoca temi cari ai critici degli Usa, la povertà, il divario ricchi-ceto medio, le scuole d'élite e dei ghetti, la sanità perfetta e gli ospedali lazzaretto.
Infine le «Due Americhe», «una amata come paladina della democrazia, dei diritti civili e della tolleranza, l'altra detestata, arrogante e unilaterale».
Ecco il Paese che va al voto, tra dibattiti e difficoltà. Altro che «giunta militare», il seggio allestito in periferia nella parrocchia Immacolata Concezione è animato da formichine democratiche come nel romanzo di Calvino «La giornata di uno scrutatore», una nonnina per presidente, già 387 voti a mezzogiorno e un pensionato a premiare Kerry: «Dobbiamo battere Bush!». Quanto alla «macchina del consenso», magari in Italia avessimo giornali e tv che se le danno in diretta con i candidati, senza censure, lottizzazioni, conflitti di interessi. «Voi giornalisti fate solo spettacolo» lamenta il candidato Dean, cocco dei media un mese or sono. E' la stampa democratica, bellezza, e farei a cambio con la nostra informazione oggi stesso! Il vicepresidente Dick Cheney, dopo il lungo isolamento, è andato in missione in Svizzera e a Roma perché anche la Casa Bianca teme ora di restare isolata e prova a riaprire il dialogo. Non sarà facile: la nuova biografia del premier inglese Tony Blair scritta da Philip Stephens racconta che Cheney, afflitto da «viscerale unilateralismo», sabotò «con una sua guerriglia» perfino il fedele alleato Blair ai tempi della guerra in Iraq. I democratici giurano, da Kerry a Edwards, che, ripresa la Casa Bianca, «risaneranno i rapporti con europei e l'Onu». L'America ricomincia a cercare il mondo, ma il mondo deve ricominciare a capire l'America. A novembre andrà a votare una superpotenza divisa, incerta ed ansiosa.
Decisa nel difendersi dal terrorismo, ma perplessa sulla strategia giusta e ansiosa di avere amici sinceri.
L'unilateralismo non sarà facile da battere, alligna a destra con il consigliere Richard Perle che propone un dissennato «ritiriamoci dall'Onu!», ma anche nel paternalismo dei liberal: la columnist del New York Times Maureen Dowd scrive sprezzante che in Iraq Bush ha per alleati solo «cani barboncini e lacchè» e il lettore italiano Carlo Nebbia fulmina da Torino, chiedendole se consideri i carabinieri caduti a Nassiriya «barboni o lacchè». Mezza America vuole il dialogo con l'Europa. Vedremo presto cosa decide l'altra metà.
www.corriere.it/riotta
di GIANNI RIOTTA
CONCORD (New Hampshire) - Una scuola perduta nei boschi, strada gelata, i fari delle auto che cercano incerti il comizio notturno. La palestra del liceo di South East Street è gremita, femministe adolescenti, studenti ecologisti, pensionati, massaie, canuti reduci del Vietnam con all'occhiello il distintivo «No war». Aspettando il senatore democratico John Edwards, nell'ultima assemblea prima del voto in New Hampshire, la folla paziente sfida l'inverno, per una spiegazione, un ragionamento, una risposta decisiva. Un compositore inganna l'attesa lavorando allo spartito musicale, qua una croma, là una chiave di violino sul pentagramma. Guardo la gente appollaiata sulle scomode seggiole metalliche e penso alle polemiche livide dell'ultimo anno. Lo scrittore Gore Vidal: gli Stati Uniti sono in mano a «una giunta militare». Il linguista Noam Chomsky: a Washington impera «il nuovo fascismo». Lo storico francese Emmanuel Todd: «la decomposizione dell'amministrazione americana» ammorba il pianeta. Sono questi cittadini i pretoriani del Nuovo Ordine Mondiale? Sono loro i guerrafondai a caccia di barili di petrolio, spietati nell'imporre patatine fritte e Hollywood in ogni landa? Quartiere per quartiere, qui in New Hampshire, lo Stato che vedeva ieri in vantaggio il senatore progressista John Kerry contro il radicale Howard Dean, l'ondata di antiamericanismo si svela per quello che è, propaganda e risentimento. Nel 2000 votarono 104.283.351 americani, solo l'India rivaleggia in dimensioni tra le democrazie. Il senatore Edwards, quando finalmente arriva, giovane, sorridente, spigliato, evoca temi cari ai critici degli Usa, la povertà, il divario ricchi-ceto medio, le scuole d'élite e dei ghetti, la sanità perfetta e gli ospedali lazzaretto.
Infine le «Due Americhe», «una amata come paladina della democrazia, dei diritti civili e della tolleranza, l'altra detestata, arrogante e unilaterale».
Ecco il Paese che va al voto, tra dibattiti e difficoltà. Altro che «giunta militare», il seggio allestito in periferia nella parrocchia Immacolata Concezione è animato da formichine democratiche come nel romanzo di Calvino «La giornata di uno scrutatore», una nonnina per presidente, già 387 voti a mezzogiorno e un pensionato a premiare Kerry: «Dobbiamo battere Bush!». Quanto alla «macchina del consenso», magari in Italia avessimo giornali e tv che se le danno in diretta con i candidati, senza censure, lottizzazioni, conflitti di interessi. «Voi giornalisti fate solo spettacolo» lamenta il candidato Dean, cocco dei media un mese or sono. E' la stampa democratica, bellezza, e farei a cambio con la nostra informazione oggi stesso! Il vicepresidente Dick Cheney, dopo il lungo isolamento, è andato in missione in Svizzera e a Roma perché anche la Casa Bianca teme ora di restare isolata e prova a riaprire il dialogo. Non sarà facile: la nuova biografia del premier inglese Tony Blair scritta da Philip Stephens racconta che Cheney, afflitto da «viscerale unilateralismo», sabotò «con una sua guerriglia» perfino il fedele alleato Blair ai tempi della guerra in Iraq. I democratici giurano, da Kerry a Edwards, che, ripresa la Casa Bianca, «risaneranno i rapporti con europei e l'Onu». L'America ricomincia a cercare il mondo, ma il mondo deve ricominciare a capire l'America. A novembre andrà a votare una superpotenza divisa, incerta ed ansiosa.
Decisa nel difendersi dal terrorismo, ma perplessa sulla strategia giusta e ansiosa di avere amici sinceri.
L'unilateralismo non sarà facile da battere, alligna a destra con il consigliere Richard Perle che propone un dissennato «ritiriamoci dall'Onu!», ma anche nel paternalismo dei liberal: la columnist del New York Times Maureen Dowd scrive sprezzante che in Iraq Bush ha per alleati solo «cani barboncini e lacchè» e il lettore italiano Carlo Nebbia fulmina da Torino, chiedendole se consideri i carabinieri caduti a Nassiriya «barboni o lacchè». Mezza America vuole il dialogo con l'Europa. Vedremo presto cosa decide l'altra metà.
www.corriere.it/riotta
Monday, January 26, 2004
Ex-Inspector Says C.I.A. Missed Disarray in Iraqi Arms Program
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 — American intelligence agencies failed to detect that Iraq's unconventional weapons programs were in a state of disarray in recent years under the increasingly erratic leadership of Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A.`s former chief weapons inspector said in an interview late Saturday.
The inspector, David A. Kay, who led the government's efforts to find evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs until he resigned on Friday, said the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies did not realize that Iraqi scientists had presented ambitious but fanciful weapons programs to Mr. Hussein and had then used the money for other purposes.
Dr. Kay also reported that Iraq attempted to revive its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2000 and 2001, but never got as far toward making a bomb as Iran and Libya did.
He said Baghdad was actively working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin until the American invasion last March. But in general, Dr. Kay said, the C.I.A. and other agencies failed to recognize that Iraq had all but abandoned its efforts to produce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons after the first Persian Gulf war, in 1991.
From interviews with Iraqi scientists and other sources, he said, his team learned that sometime around 1997 and 1998, Iraq plunged into what he called a "vortex of corruption," when government activities began to spin out of control because an increasingly isolated and fantasy-riven Saddam Hussein had insisted on personally authorizing major projects without input from others.
After the onset of this "dark ages," Dr. Kay said, Iraqi scientists realized they could go directly to Mr. Hussein and present fanciful plans for weapons programs, and receive approval and large amounts of money. Whatever was left of an effective weapons capability, he said, was largely subsumed into corrupt money-raising schemes by scientists skilled in the arts of lying and surviving in a fevered police state.
"The whole thing shifted from directed programs to a corrupted process," Dr. Kay said. "The regime was no longer in control; it was like a death spiral. Saddam was self-directing projects that were not vetted by anyone else. The scientists were able to fake programs."
In interviews after he was captured, Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister, told Dr. Kay that Mr. Hussein had become increasingly divorced from reality during the last two years of his rule. Mr. Hussein would send Mr. Aziz manuscripts of novels he was writing, even as the American-led coalition was gearing up for war, Dr. Kay said.
Dr. Kay said the fundamental errors in prewar intelligence assessments were so grave that he would recommend that the Central Intelligence Agency and other organizations overhaul their intelligence collection and analytical efforts.
Dr. Kay said analysts had come to him, "almost in tears, saying they felt so badly that we weren't finding what they had thought we were going to find — I have had analysts apologizing for reaching the conclusions that they did."
In response to Dr. Kay's comments, an intelligence official said Sunday that while some prewar assessments may have been wrong, "it is premature to say that the intelligence community's judgments were completely wrong or largely wrong — there are still a lot of answers we need." The official added, however, that the C.I.A. had already begun an internal review to determine whether its analytical processes were sound.
Dr. Kay said that based on his team's interviews with Iraqi scientists, reviews of Iraqi documents and examinations of facilities and other materials, the administration was also almost certainly wrong in its prewar belief that Iraq had any significant stockpiles of illicit weapons.
"I'm personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction," Dr. Kay said. "We don't find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on.
"I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990's. Somewhere in the mid-1990's, the large chemical overhang of existing stockpiles was eliminated."
While it is possible Iraq kept developing "test amounts" of chemical weapons and was working on improved methods of production, he said, the evidence is strong that "they did not produce large amounts of chemical weapons throughout the 1990's."
Regarding biological weapons, he said there was evidence that the Iraqis continued research and development "right up until the end" to improve their ability to produce ricin. "They were mostly researching better methods for weaponization," Dr. Kay said. "They were maintaining an infrastructure, but they didn't have large-scale production under way."
He added that Iraq did make an effort to restart its nuclear weapons program in 2000 and 2001, but that the evidence suggested that the program was rudimentary at best and would have taken years to rebuild, after being largely abandoned in the 1990's. "There was a restart of the nuclear program," he said. "But the surprising thing is that if you compare it to what we now know about Iran and Libya, the Iraqi program was never as advanced," Dr. Kay said.
Dr. Kay said Iraq had also maintained an active ballistic missile program that was receiving significant foreign assistance until the start of the American invasion. He said it appeared that money was put back into the nuclear weapons program to restart the effort in part because the Iraqis realized they needed some kind of payload for their new rockets.
While he urged that the hunt should continue in Iraq, he said he believed "85 percent of the significant things" have already been uncovered, and cautioned that severe looting in Iraq after Mr. Hussein was toppled in April had led to the loss of many crucial documents and other materials. That means it will be virtually impossible to ever get a complete picture of what Iraq was up to before the war, he added.
"There is going to be an irreducible level of ambiguity because of all the looting," Dr. Kay said.
Dr. Kay said he believed that Iraq was a danger to the world, but not the same threat that the Bush administration publicly detailed.
"We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq," he said. "And now we know that there was little control over Iraq's weapons capabilities. I think it shows that Iraq was a very dangerous place. The country had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were terrorist groups passing through the country — and no central control."
C.I.A. Missed Signs of Chaos
But Dr. Kay said the C.I.A. missed the significance of the chaos in the leadership and had no idea how badly that chaos had corrupted Iraq's weapons capabilities or the threat it raised of loose scientific knowledge being handed over to terrorists. "The system became so corrupt, and we missed that," he said.
He said it now appeared that Iraq had abandoned the production of illicit weapons and largely eliminated its stockpiles in the 1990's in large part because of Baghdad's concerns about the United Nations weapons inspection process. He said Iraqi scientists and documents show that Baghdad was far more concerned about United Nations inspections than Washington had ever realized.
"The Iraqis say that they believed that Unscom was more effective, and they didn't want to get caught," Dr. Kay said, using an acronym for the inspection program, the United Nations Special Commission.
The Iraqis also feared the disclosures that would come from the 1995 defection of Hussein Kamel, Mr. Hussein's son-in-law, who had helped run the weapons programs. Dr. Kay said one Iraqi document that had been found showed the extent to which the Iraqis believed that Mr. Kamel's defection would hamper any efforts to continue weapons programs.
In addition, Dr. Kay said, it is now clear that an American bombing campaign against Iraq in 1998 destroyed much of the remaining infrastructure in chemical weapons programs.
Dr. Kay said his team had uncovered no evidence that Niger had tried to sell uranium to Iraq for its nuclear weapons program. In his State of the Union address in 2003, President Bush reported that British intelligence had determined that Iraq was trying to import uranium from an African nation, and Niger's name was later put forward.
"We found nothing on Niger," Dr. Kay said. He added that there was evidence that someone did approach the Iraqis claiming to be able to sell uranium and diamonds from another African country, but apparently nothing came of the approach. The original reports on Niger have been found to be based on forged documents, and the Bush administration has since backed away from its initial assertions.
Dr. Kay added that there was now a consensus within the United States intelligence community that mobile trailers found in Iraq and initially thought to be laboratories for biological weapons were actually designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, or perhaps to produce rocket fuel. While using the trailers for such purposes seems bizarre, Dr. Kay said, "Iraq was doing a lot of nonsensical things" under Mr. Hussein.
The intelligence reports that Iraq was poised to use chemical weapons against invading troops were false, apparently based on faulty reports and Iraqi disinformation, Dr. Kay said.
When American troops found that Iraqi troops had stored defensive chemical-weapons suits and antidotes, Washington assumed the Iraqi military was poised to use chemicals against American forces. But interviews with Iraqi military officers and others have shown that the Iraqis kept the gear because they feared Israel would join an American-led invasion and use chemical weapons against them.
Role of Republican Guards
Dr. Kay said interviews with senior officers of the Special Republican Guards, Mr. Hussein's most elite units, had suggested that prewar intelligence reports were wrong in warning that these units had chemical weapons and would use them against American forces as they closed in on Baghdad.
The former Iraqi officers reported that no Special Republican Guard units had chemical or biological weapons, he said. But all of the officers believed that some other Special Republican Guard unit had chemical weapons.
"They all said they didn't have it, but they thought other units had it," Dr. Kay said. He said it appeared they were the victims of a disinformation campaign orchestrated by Mr. Hussein.
Dr. Kay said there was also no conclusive evidence that Iraq had moved any unconventional weapons to Syria, as some Bush administration officials have suggested. He said there had been persistent reports from Iraqis saying they or someone they knew had see cargo being moved across the border, but there is no proof that such movements involved weapons materials.
Dr. Kay said the basic problem with the way the C.I.A. tried to gauge Iraq's weapons programs is now painfully clear: for five years, the agency lacked its own spies in Iraq who could provide credible information.
During the 1990's, Dr. Kay said, the agency became spoiled by on-the-ground intelligence that it obtained from United Nations weapons inspectors. But the quality of the information plunged after the teams were withdrawn in 1998.
"Unscom was like crack cocaine for the C.I.A.," Dr. Kay said. "They could see something from a satellite or other technical intelligence, and then direct the inspectors to go look at it."
The agency became far too dependent on spy satellites, intercepted communications and intelligence developed by foreign spies and by defectors and exiles, Dr. Kay said. While he said the agency analysts who were monitoring Iraq's weapons programs did the best they could with what they had, he argued that the agency failed to make it clear to American policy makers that their assessments were increasingly based on very limited information.
"I think that the system should have a way for an analyst to say, `I don't have enough information to make a judgment,' " Dr. Kay said. "There is really not a way to do that under the current system."
He added that while the analysts included caveats on their reports, those passages "tended to drop off as the reports would go up the food chain" inside the government.
As a result, virtually everyone in the United States intelligence community during both the Clinton and the current Bush administrations thought Iraq still had the illicit weapons, he said. And the government became a victim of its own certainty.
"Alarm bells should have gone off when everyone believes the same thing," Dr. Kay said. "No one stood up and said, `Let's examine the footings for these conclusions.' I think you ought to have a place for contrarian views in the system."
Finds No Pressure From Bush
Dr. Kay said he was convinced that the analysts were not pressed by the Bush administration to make certain their prewar intelligence reports conformed to a White House agenda on Iraq.
Last year, some C.I.A. analysts said they had felt pressed to find links between Iraq and Al Qaeda to suit the administration. While Dr. Kay said he has no knowledge about that issue, he did believe that pressure was placed on analysts regarding the weapons programs.
"All the analysts I have talked to said they never felt pressured on W.M.D.," he said. "Everyone believed that they had W.M.D."
Dr. Kay also said he never felt pressed by the Bush administration to shape his own reports on the status of Iraq's weapons. He said that in a White House meeting with Mr. Bush last August, the president urged him to uncover what really happened.
"The only comment I ever had from the president was to find the truth," Dr. Kay said. "I never got any pressure to find a certain outcome."
Dr. Kay, a former United Nations inspector who was brought in last summer to run the Iraq Survey Group by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, said he resigned his post largely because he disagreed with the decision in November by the administration and the Pentagon to shift intelligence resources from the hunt for banned weapons to counterinsurgency efforts inside Iraq. Dr. Kay is being succeeded by Charles A. Duelfer, another former United Nations inspector, who has also expressed skepticism about whether the United States will find any chemical or biological weapons.
Dr. Kay said the decision to shift resources away from the weapons hunt came at a time of "near panic" among American officials in Baghdad because of rising casualties caused by bombings and ambushes of American troops.
He added that the decision ran counter to written assurances he had been given when he took the job, and that the shift in resources had severely hampered the weapons hunt.
He said that there is only a limited amount of time left to conduct a thorough search before a new Iraqi government takes over in the summer, and that there are already signs of resistance to the work by Iraqi government officials.
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 — American intelligence agencies failed to detect that Iraq's unconventional weapons programs were in a state of disarray in recent years under the increasingly erratic leadership of Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A.`s former chief weapons inspector said in an interview late Saturday.
The inspector, David A. Kay, who led the government's efforts to find evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs until he resigned on Friday, said the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies did not realize that Iraqi scientists had presented ambitious but fanciful weapons programs to Mr. Hussein and had then used the money for other purposes.
Dr. Kay also reported that Iraq attempted to revive its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2000 and 2001, but never got as far toward making a bomb as Iran and Libya did.
He said Baghdad was actively working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin until the American invasion last March. But in general, Dr. Kay said, the C.I.A. and other agencies failed to recognize that Iraq had all but abandoned its efforts to produce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons after the first Persian Gulf war, in 1991.
From interviews with Iraqi scientists and other sources, he said, his team learned that sometime around 1997 and 1998, Iraq plunged into what he called a "vortex of corruption," when government activities began to spin out of control because an increasingly isolated and fantasy-riven Saddam Hussein had insisted on personally authorizing major projects without input from others.
After the onset of this "dark ages," Dr. Kay said, Iraqi scientists realized they could go directly to Mr. Hussein and present fanciful plans for weapons programs, and receive approval and large amounts of money. Whatever was left of an effective weapons capability, he said, was largely subsumed into corrupt money-raising schemes by scientists skilled in the arts of lying and surviving in a fevered police state.
"The whole thing shifted from directed programs to a corrupted process," Dr. Kay said. "The regime was no longer in control; it was like a death spiral. Saddam was self-directing projects that were not vetted by anyone else. The scientists were able to fake programs."
In interviews after he was captured, Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister, told Dr. Kay that Mr. Hussein had become increasingly divorced from reality during the last two years of his rule. Mr. Hussein would send Mr. Aziz manuscripts of novels he was writing, even as the American-led coalition was gearing up for war, Dr. Kay said.
Dr. Kay said the fundamental errors in prewar intelligence assessments were so grave that he would recommend that the Central Intelligence Agency and other organizations overhaul their intelligence collection and analytical efforts.
Dr. Kay said analysts had come to him, "almost in tears, saying they felt so badly that we weren't finding what they had thought we were going to find — I have had analysts apologizing for reaching the conclusions that they did."
In response to Dr. Kay's comments, an intelligence official said Sunday that while some prewar assessments may have been wrong, "it is premature to say that the intelligence community's judgments were completely wrong or largely wrong — there are still a lot of answers we need." The official added, however, that the C.I.A. had already begun an internal review to determine whether its analytical processes were sound.
Dr. Kay said that based on his team's interviews with Iraqi scientists, reviews of Iraqi documents and examinations of facilities and other materials, the administration was also almost certainly wrong in its prewar belief that Iraq had any significant stockpiles of illicit weapons.
"I'm personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction," Dr. Kay said. "We don't find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on.
"I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990's. Somewhere in the mid-1990's, the large chemical overhang of existing stockpiles was eliminated."
While it is possible Iraq kept developing "test amounts" of chemical weapons and was working on improved methods of production, he said, the evidence is strong that "they did not produce large amounts of chemical weapons throughout the 1990's."
Regarding biological weapons, he said there was evidence that the Iraqis continued research and development "right up until the end" to improve their ability to produce ricin. "They were mostly researching better methods for weaponization," Dr. Kay said. "They were maintaining an infrastructure, but they didn't have large-scale production under way."
He added that Iraq did make an effort to restart its nuclear weapons program in 2000 and 2001, but that the evidence suggested that the program was rudimentary at best and would have taken years to rebuild, after being largely abandoned in the 1990's. "There was a restart of the nuclear program," he said. "But the surprising thing is that if you compare it to what we now know about Iran and Libya, the Iraqi program was never as advanced," Dr. Kay said.
Dr. Kay said Iraq had also maintained an active ballistic missile program that was receiving significant foreign assistance until the start of the American invasion. He said it appeared that money was put back into the nuclear weapons program to restart the effort in part because the Iraqis realized they needed some kind of payload for their new rockets.
While he urged that the hunt should continue in Iraq, he said he believed "85 percent of the significant things" have already been uncovered, and cautioned that severe looting in Iraq after Mr. Hussein was toppled in April had led to the loss of many crucial documents and other materials. That means it will be virtually impossible to ever get a complete picture of what Iraq was up to before the war, he added.
"There is going to be an irreducible level of ambiguity because of all the looting," Dr. Kay said.
Dr. Kay said he believed that Iraq was a danger to the world, but not the same threat that the Bush administration publicly detailed.
"We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq," he said. "And now we know that there was little control over Iraq's weapons capabilities. I think it shows that Iraq was a very dangerous place. The country had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were terrorist groups passing through the country — and no central control."
C.I.A. Missed Signs of Chaos
But Dr. Kay said the C.I.A. missed the significance of the chaos in the leadership and had no idea how badly that chaos had corrupted Iraq's weapons capabilities or the threat it raised of loose scientific knowledge being handed over to terrorists. "The system became so corrupt, and we missed that," he said.
He said it now appeared that Iraq had abandoned the production of illicit weapons and largely eliminated its stockpiles in the 1990's in large part because of Baghdad's concerns about the United Nations weapons inspection process. He said Iraqi scientists and documents show that Baghdad was far more concerned about United Nations inspections than Washington had ever realized.
"The Iraqis say that they believed that Unscom was more effective, and they didn't want to get caught," Dr. Kay said, using an acronym for the inspection program, the United Nations Special Commission.
The Iraqis also feared the disclosures that would come from the 1995 defection of Hussein Kamel, Mr. Hussein's son-in-law, who had helped run the weapons programs. Dr. Kay said one Iraqi document that had been found showed the extent to which the Iraqis believed that Mr. Kamel's defection would hamper any efforts to continue weapons programs.
In addition, Dr. Kay said, it is now clear that an American bombing campaign against Iraq in 1998 destroyed much of the remaining infrastructure in chemical weapons programs.
Dr. Kay said his team had uncovered no evidence that Niger had tried to sell uranium to Iraq for its nuclear weapons program. In his State of the Union address in 2003, President Bush reported that British intelligence had determined that Iraq was trying to import uranium from an African nation, and Niger's name was later put forward.
"We found nothing on Niger," Dr. Kay said. He added that there was evidence that someone did approach the Iraqis claiming to be able to sell uranium and diamonds from another African country, but apparently nothing came of the approach. The original reports on Niger have been found to be based on forged documents, and the Bush administration has since backed away from its initial assertions.
Dr. Kay added that there was now a consensus within the United States intelligence community that mobile trailers found in Iraq and initially thought to be laboratories for biological weapons were actually designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, or perhaps to produce rocket fuel. While using the trailers for such purposes seems bizarre, Dr. Kay said, "Iraq was doing a lot of nonsensical things" under Mr. Hussein.
The intelligence reports that Iraq was poised to use chemical weapons against invading troops were false, apparently based on faulty reports and Iraqi disinformation, Dr. Kay said.
When American troops found that Iraqi troops had stored defensive chemical-weapons suits and antidotes, Washington assumed the Iraqi military was poised to use chemicals against American forces. But interviews with Iraqi military officers and others have shown that the Iraqis kept the gear because they feared Israel would join an American-led invasion and use chemical weapons against them.
Role of Republican Guards
Dr. Kay said interviews with senior officers of the Special Republican Guards, Mr. Hussein's most elite units, had suggested that prewar intelligence reports were wrong in warning that these units had chemical weapons and would use them against American forces as they closed in on Baghdad.
The former Iraqi officers reported that no Special Republican Guard units had chemical or biological weapons, he said. But all of the officers believed that some other Special Republican Guard unit had chemical weapons.
"They all said they didn't have it, but they thought other units had it," Dr. Kay said. He said it appeared they were the victims of a disinformation campaign orchestrated by Mr. Hussein.
Dr. Kay said there was also no conclusive evidence that Iraq had moved any unconventional weapons to Syria, as some Bush administration officials have suggested. He said there had been persistent reports from Iraqis saying they or someone they knew had see cargo being moved across the border, but there is no proof that such movements involved weapons materials.
Dr. Kay said the basic problem with the way the C.I.A. tried to gauge Iraq's weapons programs is now painfully clear: for five years, the agency lacked its own spies in Iraq who could provide credible information.
During the 1990's, Dr. Kay said, the agency became spoiled by on-the-ground intelligence that it obtained from United Nations weapons inspectors. But the quality of the information plunged after the teams were withdrawn in 1998.
"Unscom was like crack cocaine for the C.I.A.," Dr. Kay said. "They could see something from a satellite or other technical intelligence, and then direct the inspectors to go look at it."
The agency became far too dependent on spy satellites, intercepted communications and intelligence developed by foreign spies and by defectors and exiles, Dr. Kay said. While he said the agency analysts who were monitoring Iraq's weapons programs did the best they could with what they had, he argued that the agency failed to make it clear to American policy makers that their assessments were increasingly based on very limited information.
"I think that the system should have a way for an analyst to say, `I don't have enough information to make a judgment,' " Dr. Kay said. "There is really not a way to do that under the current system."
He added that while the analysts included caveats on their reports, those passages "tended to drop off as the reports would go up the food chain" inside the government.
As a result, virtually everyone in the United States intelligence community during both the Clinton and the current Bush administrations thought Iraq still had the illicit weapons, he said. And the government became a victim of its own certainty.
"Alarm bells should have gone off when everyone believes the same thing," Dr. Kay said. "No one stood up and said, `Let's examine the footings for these conclusions.' I think you ought to have a place for contrarian views in the system."
Finds No Pressure From Bush
Dr. Kay said he was convinced that the analysts were not pressed by the Bush administration to make certain their prewar intelligence reports conformed to a White House agenda on Iraq.
Last year, some C.I.A. analysts said they had felt pressed to find links between Iraq and Al Qaeda to suit the administration. While Dr. Kay said he has no knowledge about that issue, he did believe that pressure was placed on analysts regarding the weapons programs.
"All the analysts I have talked to said they never felt pressured on W.M.D.," he said. "Everyone believed that they had W.M.D."
Dr. Kay also said he never felt pressed by the Bush administration to shape his own reports on the status of Iraq's weapons. He said that in a White House meeting with Mr. Bush last August, the president urged him to uncover what really happened.
"The only comment I ever had from the president was to find the truth," Dr. Kay said. "I never got any pressure to find a certain outcome."
Dr. Kay, a former United Nations inspector who was brought in last summer to run the Iraq Survey Group by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, said he resigned his post largely because he disagreed with the decision in November by the administration and the Pentagon to shift intelligence resources from the hunt for banned weapons to counterinsurgency efforts inside Iraq. Dr. Kay is being succeeded by Charles A. Duelfer, another former United Nations inspector, who has also expressed skepticism about whether the United States will find any chemical or biological weapons.
Dr. Kay said the decision to shift resources away from the weapons hunt came at a time of "near panic" among American officials in Baghdad because of rising casualties caused by bombings and ambushes of American troops.
He added that the decision ran counter to written assurances he had been given when he took the job, and that the shift in resources had severely hampered the weapons hunt.
He said that there is only a limited amount of time left to conduct a thorough search before a new Iraqi government takes over in the summer, and that there are already signs of resistance to the work by Iraqi government officials.
'These Values Are Universal'
Adnan Pachachi, 80, is currently serving as president of the Iraqi Governing Council, having returned to his country after 35 years in exile. The following is excerpted from a session last week with reporters and editors of The Post:
Q: What about the basic law for Iraq? He [Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani] seems to have a problem with it.
A: Well, we informed him that the basic law will be based on, you know -- we have a very good bill of rights in the basic law ensuring equality before the law, equality between men and women. We acknowledge that Islam is the official religion of the state, but it is one of the sources of legislation, which means there are other sources, too, and also it ensures the freedom of religion for all, for everyone. It's quite a progressive law. I mean, we haven't had anything like it for a long time.
Do you think setting off car bombs and shooting down helicopters, how is that likely to evolve?
Well, I think, you know, these acts of violence have decreased to some extent, and they are now lashing out at mostly Iraqi civilian targets. I think it's partly out of desperation, and partly in order to destabilize the country and to prevent it from going back to normal.
I think after there is full sovereignty and an Iraqi government that manages the affairs of the country really free from any foreign pressure or interference, I think the situation will improve. Of course, the economic situation will have a direct influence. But the economy is improving.
Who is responsible for the attacks?
Well, it's a combination of, obviously, the remnants of Saddam supporters and also infiltrators from outside. You know, you have the al Qaeda, for example. . . . They say they are in a state of permanent war against the United States, and Iraq is chosen as a convenient and suitable battlefield. But they will hit Americans wherever they can.
And all the suicide bombers, I would say 99 percent, if not 100 percent, come from outside. This method of resistance, if you like to call it that, by blowing yourself up -- suicide -- is unknown in Iraq. It's against the culture of Iraqis. It's very easy to come to Iraq, and they are coming from all the neighbors, from Iran, from Syria, from other places, too. But I believe that sooner or later they'll realize that this is a no-win situation. The Americans are not going to withdraw from Iraq.
How would you describe public attitudes toward the United States?
Well, there is a certain ambivalence, really, because people don't like foreign occupation, this is obvious. And also, you know, the presence of a large number of American troops has created friction every now and then -- the checkpoints and the frequent going into houses and the arrests and so on and so forth have caused certain bitterness and anger.
But on the other hand, a lot of people realize that there is no other way of combating terrorism and there was no other way of getting rid of Saddam. So, you know, you have to balance the two things.
Do you expect to see Saddam Hussein tried in Iraq?
Yes. We have set up a special tribunal to try cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity. I think it's going to be a fair trial and an open trial with due process and all the guarantees to the accused: lawyers, the right of appeal, transparency. . . . Certainly it's quite different from the kind of trials Saddam held in Iraq when the accused faced the charges and within half an hour he is before a firing squad.
We are trying to do something in Iraq which is quite new for the region and that's why people are rather doubtful that we can succeed, that it is somehow against the whole culture -- which is, of course, nonsense. I don't think that democracy and supremacy of law are the possession of only the Western countries, the Western people, no.
People forget that France was ruled by absolute monarchs for almost a thousand years, so you can't say the French and the Europeans and the Americans are somehow fit for democracy, but the people of our region are not.
You see, these values are universal. Values of freedom, democracy, of human rights, equality before the law, you know, all these things belong to the whole world.
Is there a danger that some guarantees, some basic freedoms, will be granted to Iraqis who in large numbers don't want them yet, specifically regarding women and regarding religion and so forth?
Well, of course, we have religious fanatics in Iraq, as I imagine you have here, too. But the thing that we shouldn't forget is that the majority of Iraqis are secular in outlook. We hear a great deal about ayatollahs and about religious figures and clerics and so on, but really they represent a minority of Iraqis. Of course, they are better organized and they are able to get people out in the streets. But the majority of Iraqis -- I would call them the silent majority -- in fact are secular in outlook. What divides Iraqis is not the accident of their birth to a certain religion and certain sect but their political differences.
What has it been like for you personally coming back?
Well, my wife keeps on telling me I should have my head examined. But when I first went to Baghdad after 35 years' absence, you know, I had a mixed feeling. One of elation and happiness to see the country after all these years and one of deep sadness to see what had happened to this country, which after all is blessed with so many good things -- it has all the natural resources, fertile land, a long history, a lot of water and oil obviously. And a hard-working, intelligent, I think, and well-educated population.
In 1978 the per capita [income] in Iraq was equal to that of Spain and Portugal, and now it is about one-sixth of Portugal and Spain. Iraq is really a very, very sad story. And I felt that if I could be of any help, if I could contribute something, whatever it is . . . . I'm nearing the end of my life, obviously, so if I can do something in the few years left, at least I will have done something that would make me happy and would feel that life can be useful sometimes.
Adnan Pachachi, 80, is currently serving as president of the Iraqi Governing Council, having returned to his country after 35 years in exile. The following is excerpted from a session last week with reporters and editors of The Post:
Q: What about the basic law for Iraq? He [Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani] seems to have a problem with it.
A: Well, we informed him that the basic law will be based on, you know -- we have a very good bill of rights in the basic law ensuring equality before the law, equality between men and women. We acknowledge that Islam is the official religion of the state, but it is one of the sources of legislation, which means there are other sources, too, and also it ensures the freedom of religion for all, for everyone. It's quite a progressive law. I mean, we haven't had anything like it for a long time.
Do you think setting off car bombs and shooting down helicopters, how is that likely to evolve?
Well, I think, you know, these acts of violence have decreased to some extent, and they are now lashing out at mostly Iraqi civilian targets. I think it's partly out of desperation, and partly in order to destabilize the country and to prevent it from going back to normal.
I think after there is full sovereignty and an Iraqi government that manages the affairs of the country really free from any foreign pressure or interference, I think the situation will improve. Of course, the economic situation will have a direct influence. But the economy is improving.
Who is responsible for the attacks?
Well, it's a combination of, obviously, the remnants of Saddam supporters and also infiltrators from outside. You know, you have the al Qaeda, for example. . . . They say they are in a state of permanent war against the United States, and Iraq is chosen as a convenient and suitable battlefield. But they will hit Americans wherever they can.
And all the suicide bombers, I would say 99 percent, if not 100 percent, come from outside. This method of resistance, if you like to call it that, by blowing yourself up -- suicide -- is unknown in Iraq. It's against the culture of Iraqis. It's very easy to come to Iraq, and they are coming from all the neighbors, from Iran, from Syria, from other places, too. But I believe that sooner or later they'll realize that this is a no-win situation. The Americans are not going to withdraw from Iraq.
How would you describe public attitudes toward the United States?
Well, there is a certain ambivalence, really, because people don't like foreign occupation, this is obvious. And also, you know, the presence of a large number of American troops has created friction every now and then -- the checkpoints and the frequent going into houses and the arrests and so on and so forth have caused certain bitterness and anger.
But on the other hand, a lot of people realize that there is no other way of combating terrorism and there was no other way of getting rid of Saddam. So, you know, you have to balance the two things.
Do you expect to see Saddam Hussein tried in Iraq?
Yes. We have set up a special tribunal to try cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity. I think it's going to be a fair trial and an open trial with due process and all the guarantees to the accused: lawyers, the right of appeal, transparency. . . . Certainly it's quite different from the kind of trials Saddam held in Iraq when the accused faced the charges and within half an hour he is before a firing squad.
We are trying to do something in Iraq which is quite new for the region and that's why people are rather doubtful that we can succeed, that it is somehow against the whole culture -- which is, of course, nonsense. I don't think that democracy and supremacy of law are the possession of only the Western countries, the Western people, no.
People forget that France was ruled by absolute monarchs for almost a thousand years, so you can't say the French and the Europeans and the Americans are somehow fit for democracy, but the people of our region are not.
You see, these values are universal. Values of freedom, democracy, of human rights, equality before the law, you know, all these things belong to the whole world.
Is there a danger that some guarantees, some basic freedoms, will be granted to Iraqis who in large numbers don't want them yet, specifically regarding women and regarding religion and so forth?
Well, of course, we have religious fanatics in Iraq, as I imagine you have here, too. But the thing that we shouldn't forget is that the majority of Iraqis are secular in outlook. We hear a great deal about ayatollahs and about religious figures and clerics and so on, but really they represent a minority of Iraqis. Of course, they are better organized and they are able to get people out in the streets. But the majority of Iraqis -- I would call them the silent majority -- in fact are secular in outlook. What divides Iraqis is not the accident of their birth to a certain religion and certain sect but their political differences.
What has it been like for you personally coming back?
Well, my wife keeps on telling me I should have my head examined. But when I first went to Baghdad after 35 years' absence, you know, I had a mixed feeling. One of elation and happiness to see the country after all these years and one of deep sadness to see what had happened to this country, which after all is blessed with so many good things -- it has all the natural resources, fertile land, a long history, a lot of water and oil obviously. And a hard-working, intelligent, I think, and well-educated population.
In 1978 the per capita [income] in Iraq was equal to that of Spain and Portugal, and now it is about one-sixth of Portugal and Spain. Iraq is really a very, very sad story. And I felt that if I could be of any help, if I could contribute something, whatever it is . . . . I'm nearing the end of my life, obviously, so if I can do something in the few years left, at least I will have done something that would make me happy and would feel that life can be useful sometimes.
Sunday, January 25, 2004
War of Ideas, Part 6
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 25, 2004
DAVOS, Switzerland
For the past few weeks I've tried to lay out the tactics we in the West can adopt to strengthen the moderates in the Arab-Muslim world to fight the war of ideas against the forces of intolerance within their civilization — which is where the real war on terrorism will either be won or lost. But if there is one thing I've learned in examining this issue it's this: ideas don't just spread on their own. Ideas spread in a context. So often, since 9/11, people have remarked to me: "Wow, Islam, that's a really angry religion." I disagree. I do agree, though, that there are a lot of young Muslims who are angry, because they live in some of the most repressive societies, with the fewest opportunities for women and youth, and with some of the highest unemployment. Bad contexts create an environment where humiliation — and the anger, bad ideas and violence that flow from it — are rife. In short, it is impossible for us to talk about winning the war of ideas in the Arab-Muslim world without talking about the most basic thing that gives people dignity and hope: A job.
"For a long time now, I've felt that what we're really facing is not a clash of civilizations, but a clash of generations," argued David Rothkopf, a former acting U.S. under secretary of commerce. "You have an aging developed world, particularly Europe, that is trying to protect its jobs, and you have a young, job-seeking, job-needing emerging world, particularly the Muslim world, that will go anywhere and do anything to either seize the job opportunities or express their frustration with not having opportunities."
Just read the numbers and weep: of the 90 million Arab youth today (between the ages of 15 and 24), 14 million are unemployed, many of them among the 15 to 20 million Muslims now living in Europe. "There's not enough jobs and not enough hope," Jordan's King Abdullah told the Davos economic forum. According to the 2003 Arab Human Development Report, between 1980 and 1999 the nine leading Arab economies registered 370 patents (in the U.S.) for new inventions. Patents are a good measure of a society's education quality, entrepreneurship, rule of law and innovation. During that same 20-year period, South Korea alone registered 16,328 patents for inventions. You don't run into a lot of South Koreans who want to be martyrs.
I was at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley a few days ago, and they have this really amazing electronic global map that shows, with lights, how many people are using Google to search for knowledge. The region stretching from Morocco to the border of India had almost no lights. I attended a breakfast at Davos on the outsourcing of high-tech jobs from the U.S. and Europe to the developing world. There were Indian and Mexican businessmen there, and much talk about China. But not a word was spoken about outsourcing jobs to the Arab world. The context — infrastructure, productivity, education — just isn't there yet.
So what to do? A lot of help can and should come from Europe. Although America is often the target, Europe has been the real factory of Arab-Muslim rage. Europe has done an extremely poor job of integrating and employing its growing Muslim minorities, many of which have a deep feeling of alienation. And Europe has done a very poor job of investing in North Africa and the Middle East — its natural backyard.
America is far from perfect in this regard, but by forging the Nafta free trade agreement with Mexico, the U.S. helped create a political and economic context there that not only spurred jobs and the modernization of Mexico, but created the environment for its democratization. Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo remarked to me: "I don't think I would have been successful in political reform without the decent economic growth we had [spurred by Nafta] from 1996 to 2000. Those five years, we had average growth of 5 percent." It was in that optimistic environment that Mexico had its first democratic transition from the ruling party to the opposition.
So if you take anything away from this series, I hope it's this: The war of ideas among Arabs and Muslims can only be fought and won by their own forces of moderation, and those forces can only emerge from a growing middle class with a sense of dignity and hope for the future. Young people who grow up in a context of real economic opportunity, basic rule of law and the right to speak and write what they please don't usually want to blow up the world. They want to be part of it.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 25, 2004
DAVOS, Switzerland
For the past few weeks I've tried to lay out the tactics we in the West can adopt to strengthen the moderates in the Arab-Muslim world to fight the war of ideas against the forces of intolerance within their civilization — which is where the real war on terrorism will either be won or lost. But if there is one thing I've learned in examining this issue it's this: ideas don't just spread on their own. Ideas spread in a context. So often, since 9/11, people have remarked to me: "Wow, Islam, that's a really angry religion." I disagree. I do agree, though, that there are a lot of young Muslims who are angry, because they live in some of the most repressive societies, with the fewest opportunities for women and youth, and with some of the highest unemployment. Bad contexts create an environment where humiliation — and the anger, bad ideas and violence that flow from it — are rife. In short, it is impossible for us to talk about winning the war of ideas in the Arab-Muslim world without talking about the most basic thing that gives people dignity and hope: A job.
"For a long time now, I've felt that what we're really facing is not a clash of civilizations, but a clash of generations," argued David Rothkopf, a former acting U.S. under secretary of commerce. "You have an aging developed world, particularly Europe, that is trying to protect its jobs, and you have a young, job-seeking, job-needing emerging world, particularly the Muslim world, that will go anywhere and do anything to either seize the job opportunities or express their frustration with not having opportunities."
Just read the numbers and weep: of the 90 million Arab youth today (between the ages of 15 and 24), 14 million are unemployed, many of them among the 15 to 20 million Muslims now living in Europe. "There's not enough jobs and not enough hope," Jordan's King Abdullah told the Davos economic forum. According to the 2003 Arab Human Development Report, between 1980 and 1999 the nine leading Arab economies registered 370 patents (in the U.S.) for new inventions. Patents are a good measure of a society's education quality, entrepreneurship, rule of law and innovation. During that same 20-year period, South Korea alone registered 16,328 patents for inventions. You don't run into a lot of South Koreans who want to be martyrs.
I was at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley a few days ago, and they have this really amazing electronic global map that shows, with lights, how many people are using Google to search for knowledge. The region stretching from Morocco to the border of India had almost no lights. I attended a breakfast at Davos on the outsourcing of high-tech jobs from the U.S. and Europe to the developing world. There were Indian and Mexican businessmen there, and much talk about China. But not a word was spoken about outsourcing jobs to the Arab world. The context — infrastructure, productivity, education — just isn't there yet.
So what to do? A lot of help can and should come from Europe. Although America is often the target, Europe has been the real factory of Arab-Muslim rage. Europe has done an extremely poor job of integrating and employing its growing Muslim minorities, many of which have a deep feeling of alienation. And Europe has done a very poor job of investing in North Africa and the Middle East — its natural backyard.
America is far from perfect in this regard, but by forging the Nafta free trade agreement with Mexico, the U.S. helped create a political and economic context there that not only spurred jobs and the modernization of Mexico, but created the environment for its democratization. Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo remarked to me: "I don't think I would have been successful in political reform without the decent economic growth we had [spurred by Nafta] from 1996 to 2000. Those five years, we had average growth of 5 percent." It was in that optimistic environment that Mexico had its first democratic transition from the ruling party to the opposition.
So if you take anything away from this series, I hope it's this: The war of ideas among Arabs and Muslims can only be fought and won by their own forces of moderation, and those forces can only emerge from a growing middle class with a sense of dignity and hope for the future. Young people who grow up in a context of real economic opportunity, basic rule of law and the right to speak and write what they please don't usually want to blow up the world. They want to be part of it.
