Ray McGovern

Initial press reports on information provided to the Senate by Robert Gates, President George W. Bush’s nominee for the post of defense secretary, show Gates hewing very closely to the rhetoric of his predecessor. Gates is more parrot than innovator in his responses to a questionnaire given him by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which … Continue reading “Gates, Hadley:
More of the Same”

(Full disclosure: Ray McGovern is indebted to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld for TV notoriety on May 4, when McGovern’s impromptu questioning after a Rumsfeld speech in Atlanta elicited denials later shown to be false after fact-checks by the TV networks. McGovern’s acquaintance with Robert Gates, whom the president has picked to succeed Rumsfeld, goes back 36 … Continue reading “The Cheney-Gates Cabal”

When President George W. Bush was asked at his news conference last Wednesday whether we are winning in Iraq, he answered, "Absolutely; we’re winning." The disingenuousness was almost enough to provoke sympathy for the beleaguered president as he lived through another bad week with further diminished credibility. A letter winner in cheerleading at Andover and … Continue reading “Bush the Cheerleader”

Addressing the use of torture Wednesday, President George W. Bush played to the baser instincts of Americans as he strained to turn his violation of national and international law into Exhibit A on how "tough" he is on terrorists. His tour de force brought to mind the charge the Athenians leveled at Socrates – making … Continue reading “The Torturer’s Apprentice”

Talk about chutzpah! I was suffering a bit from outrage fatigue yesterday but was shaken out of it as soon as I downloaded an unusually slick paper, “Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States,” released this week by House intelligence committee chair, Pete Hoekstra. No, not “Hoaxer.” This is … Continue reading “Hoekstra’s Hoax: Hyping Up the Iran ‘Threat’”

Who can forget the chutzpah of President George W. Bush as he bragged to Bob Woodward, “I’m commander in chief…. That’s the interesting thing about being president … I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.” Wrong, Mr. President. You and Vice President Cheney seem to have missed “Constitution 101.” And you seem to … Continue reading “The Constitution: Checking a Would-Be King”

But the world desperately needs an “E” for EXIT from the march of folly toward a wider Middle East war that is increasingly likely to result from plural U.S. foreign policy fiascos – in Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon, for starters; in Syria and Iran for the next stage. Fortunately, Webster’s does allow the insertion of … Continue reading “Sadly, the Plural of ‘Fiasco’ Requires No ‘E’”

The truth will out. If you fabricate, or acquiesce in the fabrication of, evidence used to "justify" launching a war of choice, you will have to live with that for the rest of your life. Call me quaint, but having spent 27 years in intelligence on both the analysis and operations ends of the business, … Continue reading “Intelligence Officers, Learn From History”

This may seem a bit quaint, perhaps even obsolete, but it used to be standard procedure to require intelligence before deciding to make war. Unless you have been asleep these past several months, you know that this sequence was reversed in 2002 when the White House ordered intelligence “fixed” to justify a prior decision for … Continue reading “Next Victim: Iran
or North Korea?”

Hope is here. The cold light of truth is piercing the cloud of lies conjured by Donald Rumsfeld and others about the war in Iraq – even in the defense secretary’s own bailiwick. A Matter of Conscience… Several months ago, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada decided that U.S. involvement in Iraq is illegal and … Continue reading “The Courage to Face the Consequences”