Scrubbing reality

Q: What does the Bush administration do with bad news?

A: It starts thinking like the Stalin “administration.”

What else, other than scrubbing reality – which Uncle Joe performed with bureaucratically ruthless efficiency -- would you call the State Department’s recent decision to purge unwelcome news by simply suppressing its publication? 

Admittedly the bad news was really bad, even for this administration. It seems the international-violence bean-counters over at the National Counterterrorism Center tabulated last year’s terrorist attacks and the number popped out as 625.

By itself, the number is perhaps a tad unstartling. By comparison to 2003’s count, however, it’s hair-raising, because that count – and the use of emphasis is a sad way to have to put it – was only 175. So we suffered a blistering three-and-a-half-fold increase in “significant” attacks in just one year. Worse yet, the 2003 count itself was the highest on record since experts started counting in 1985.

And even worse than that, the 625 number did not include attacks on American military personnel in Iraq. One cringes at the thought of the true count had those terrorist attacks – emanating from what the president himself calls “a central front in the war on terror” -- been counted in, oh, say, a terrorist attack count.

So what does the administration do with data that contradicts its tireless claims of “winning the war on terrorism”? It just quashes its publication. Presto. Contradiction begone; bad news be expurgated. It’s the happy miracle of censorship.

Like Baghdad Bob insisting his capital city was safe from the Western hordes as they perched on his city’s boundary, we live in a safer world only through a propaganda machine of negation and denial.

We know the truth of the matter because of an insider somewhere handing it to former State Department official and CIA analyst, Larry Johnson, both of whose shoes I’m glad I’m not in right now. The backwash won’t be pretty.

Naturally an unnamed State Department source hastened to the administration’s rescue in denying as “categorically untrue” that suppression of the counterterrorism center’s report was done for political reasons. Uh-huh. And John Gotti was nothing more than a gregarious, neighbor-hood plumbing supplies salesman.

Somewhat attenuating the official source’s claim of political innocence were those intelligence analysts interviewed for the Knight-Ridders newspaper story only on the basis of anonymity because “they feared White House retribution.” Where these analysts would get such an idea is beyond all of us, I’m sure. They’re just ninnies, I guess.

Aside from the very real reality that this cowboy administration has largely contributed to the explosion in international terrorism, there remains the very troubling question of its willingness to operate with the fundamental honesty demanded of elected officials by a democratic society. Strike that. The question is not even up-for-grabs any longer.

Every presidential administration in modern history has, from time to time, taken to manipulative, if not censorial, behavior. It is the nature of any political beast. But this administration – from scrubbing environmental reality from Web sites to shutting down long-term fiscal projections to censoring what amounts to objective condemnations of its foreign policy – has routinely set new lows in manipulation and dishonesty. 

The truly troubling aspect of the administration’s latest suppression of reality is not that its behavior was shocking – it’s that it was completely expected. Any society that fancies itself an open one cannot tolerate routine, top-down dishonesty for long and remain open for long. And that is the nature of any manipulated beast.

Comments

[The Oracel]

Funny that you mentioned Baghdad Bob in your article.

Just yesterday I decided that whenever I have the misfortune of mentioning Bush in any conversation, I will forthwith use the new moniker "Baghdad Bush."

It fits. Perfectly.

And I will also use this moniker for his chief spokesman "Baghdad Scottie." And the veep "Baghdad Dick." And the Secretary of War "Baghdad Donnie."

In fact, I think I will start calling all Republicans who were for starting the war in Iraq on falsified and hyped intelligence "Baghdad......."

"Baghdad Tommy" Delay
"Baghdad Billy" Frist
"Baghdad Denny" Hastert
"Baghdad Annie" Coulter
"Baghdad Rushie" Limbaugh
"Baghdad Billy" O'Reilly
"Baghdad Matty" Drudge
"Baghdad Mikie" Savage

Hey, join in the game. People who have heard of the infamous "Baghdad Bob" will instantly understand the connection between the reality-challenged "Baghdad Bob" and all the reality-challenged Republicans.