Senator Kerrey Speaks on Government/Media Complicity

by Joel Bleifuss and Senator Bob Kerrey

The following appeared in "The First Stone" column of "IN THESE TIMES", October 3-9, 1990, and is reprinted here with permission. If you don't read the rest, catch the last section starting with "APPEAL TO REASON" which mostly is quoting Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, in a speech he made before the Senate on September 19. Too bad the tax-paying citzens of this land don't get more coverage of this kind of straight-forward talk in the "free [corporate] press" we supposedly enjoy here in the U S of A, and, more generally, of points of view that differ from, or challenge, the state/official party line. Champion the freedom to get exposure to a much more inclusive and wide-ranging set of opinions concerning public debate of the issues challenging "our way of life"? Naaaawww...

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

by Joel Bleifuss

The best way to follow the devolution of U.S. policy in the Gulf is to read the newspaper that has become the unofficial mouthpiece of record for the Bush White House -- the "New York Times." In any one issue's coverage of the war-to-be, a mathematically inclined reader could count on two hands the quotes or observations attributed to people with names; the rest are from anonymous sources identified as "administration officials." Sometimes those officials don't exist. As the "Columbia Journalism Review" has reported, "Times" policy dictates that reporters attribute their personal conjectures to unnamed government officials. This makes it hard to know whose voice you're hearing. Take the case of the "Times"' man for all seasons, diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman -- former CIA intern, current tennis partner and confidant of Secretary of State James Baker and Pulitzer-prize-winning-journalist-turned-propagandist.

MORALITY SPLAY: In mid-August, as U.S. troops were being deployed in Saudi Arabia, Bush claimed to be defending "our way of life." A couple weeks later the president's stated mission was to preserve the "security and stability of the Persian Gulf." Lest idealists among you get the idea that noble values like democratic and economic rights have anything to do with this coming war, forget it. This time -- in the lingering spirit of the '80s -- it's not even a pretext. Friedman wrote on September 2, "In the last 50 years the U.S., whatever its oratory, has tended to support democracy when it serves the interest of stability and to back away from insisting on it when it could destabilize an area of national interest. At stake in the Gulf is the stability of oil supplies..." Friedman could have added, "and the stability of oil profits" -- a subject on which George Bush has expressed a keen interest. In 1986, oil was $10 a barrel and our president's friends and colleagues who own and operate the U.S. oil industry were finding it hard to maintain their way of life. In spring of that year the former Texas oilman and then-vice president went to Saudi Arabia and convinced King Fahd to agree, along with Iran, to lower production. Within a few months the price of oil was up to $20 a barrel. Now, four years later, we are on the verge of war that could make all the oil under Iraq and Kuwait ours -- under the name of gulf stability and the New World Order. On September 23, Friedman, defining the nature of the anti-Saddam coalition, wrote, "[D]eep down the U.S. understands that many of its partners are in the coalition only because of a coincidence of interests, not because they share a common sense of moral purpose... While the U.S. has sent troops from afar, infusing this situation with its traditional moralism in foreign policy, many of its partners see the confrontation as just business."

BIG BUSINESS: What is this moral purpose that Friedman says the U.S. has but its allies lack? Perhaps he has in mind the "moral purpose" that guided U.S. policy toward Iraq in the '70s, when Henry Kissinger reigned as national security advisor and secretary of state. Kissinger, a self-styled Metternich turned Hessian-consultant-for-hire (recall his apologies for Chinese brutality on behalf of his corporate clients) was the principal architect of the last U.S. foreign-policy disaster in the Middle East. Remember the Shah of Iran? The Shah was brought to power by the CIA in 1953 and kept there with billions of dollars in U.S. weaponry, financial aid and internal security instruction. Former CIA analyst on Iran Jesse Leaf, told the "New York Times"' Seymour Hersh that the CIA, among other things, contributed technical training in torture techniques. (CIA officials deny the charge, saying Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, took care of the "hard stuff.") In 1976, Amnesty International reported that Iran had the "highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran." And no country was a better friend to Iran than the U.S. But such friendship has a price. In March 1975, Iran and the U.S. signed an accord that required Iran to buy $15 billion in U.S. goods and services over the next five years. That agreement was the largest of its kind in history -- up until last month when Bush proposed his $20 billion arms deal with the Saudis.

BLOOD KURDLING CRIME: In May 1972, at the request of the Shah, Nixon and Kissinger agreed to supply Kurdish rebels with millions of dollars in military hardware. According to William Blum in his definitive book, "The CIA: A Forgotten History," the Shah wanted the secessionist Kurds armed in order to distract Iraq from its feud with Iran. But the Kurds, who feared being ultimately abandoned by the Shah, would initially only accept support from the U.S. So for three years the Kurdish resistance was supported by $16 million from the U.S. and untold millions from Iran. However, in March 1975 the Shah met with Iraq's then-vice president, Saddam Hussein, and negotiated peace -- on the condition that the U.S. and Iran abandon their support for the Kurds, which was done immediately. The day after the treaty was signed, Iraq went on the offensive, attacking the Kurdish rebels, and within a week the Kurds cabled this message to the CIA: Complete destruction is hanging over our head. No explanation for this. We appeal [to] you and [the] USG[overnment] to intervene according to your promises..." And the Kurds sent Kissinger this message: "Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone. We feel Your Excellency that the U.S. has a moral and political responsibility toward our people who have committed themselves to your country's policy." Neither the CIA nor Kissinger responded to these pleas. Hundreds were killed and thousands of Kurds -- men, women and children, many barefoot with only the clothes on their backs -- were forced to flee Iraq over the mountains for Iran. According to a 1976 report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence (known as the Pike Report), "Over 200,000 refugees managed to escape into Iran. Once there, however, neither the U.S. nor Iran extended adequate humanitarian assistance. In fact, Iran was later to forcibly return over 40,000 of the refugees, and the U.S. government refused to admit even one refugee into the U.S. by way of political asylum, even though they qualified for such admittance." When the Pike Committee questioned Kissinger on his role in betraying the Kurds, His Excellency responded, "Covert Action should not be confused with missionary work."

APPEAL TO REASON: Although sane voices are speaking out against current U.S. gulf policy, their words for some reason have a problem filtering through the national-news media. For example, on September 19 Sen. Bob Kerrey, the Nebraska Democrat and decorated Vietnam veteran, gave a stunning speech before the U.S. Senate, a small portion of which follows: "Since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait last month ... I have been personally and greatly troubled. Something in all of the rationale and all the explanations seems to be missing. At first the missing piece was what the president did not tell the American people. Speaking to a nation that knew very little about Saddam Hussein, he filled in the blank with a picture of Adolf Hitler. This was more than a comparison. It was the rationale... Missing was the story of years of American support for this modern Hitler -- support from our ambassador to Iraq, support which continued in the face of direct evidence that Iraq might be only hours away from invading Kuwait... . I continue to feel strong personal reservations about the nature and extent of our committment, because the scope of the threat invoked by the president does not seem to be reflected in the attitude of many of the soldiers [I visited] in Saudi Arabia who were shouting at Gen. Colin Powell, `When do we get to go home? Why did you take away our basic allowance for quarters?' ... I am profoundly uneasy about the instant deployment of over 100,000 American troops, sold to the American people on the false assertions that Saddam Hussein is Adolf Hitler, that our way of life is at clear and present danger, that we have as much at stake as we did in World War II. At this moment I believe our military action was improperly rationalized, incompletely thought out and dangerous. It is dangerous because it could provoke the war we seek to prevent... One of the most disturbing assumptions in all of this is the one that declares: If we do not defang Hussein now, he will just be back in a few years to do the same thing. The assumption here is that we should remove with force what we have never in earnest attempted to remove through other means. Recall that not long ago our Commerce Department was cabling `Hooray for you!' to American entrepreneurs seeking to export nuclear-weapons technology to Iraq... Our men and women in uniform are dear enough that we owe them our last full measure of candor before we ask them for their last full measure of devotion... Imagine if [the president] had told us of his willingness to comply with a Saudi request for armed support, but also shown us the intelligence photographs which made Saudi fears credible... Imagine if he had told us of the need to take arms to defend a new world order, but also explained exactly what that new world order is... The new world order described vaguely by the president surely does not mean a continuation of this old practice of selling weapons to the enemy of our enemy... Twenty billion dollars [in arms sales to Saudi Arabia] is a lot of money, Mr. President, for an economy struggling to keep its head above the recessionary waters swirling around us. However, we should be careful -- very careful -- not to let our foreign policy be completely dominated by the concerns of those who sell oil and weapons..."

A complete copy of this speech can be obtained by writing: Sen. Bob Kerrey, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510, or call the Senate switchboard at 202/224-3207, and ask to be piped through to Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska's office.