AMY GOODMAN: 1953 was also a seminal date for today, and that was when Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, went to Iran and led a coup against Mohammed Mossadegh under Eisenhower.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people's governments, especially in the Middle East. I don't know why we felt that -- you can understand Latin America, because Latin America was always an area in which people would come to the United States, say, “You've got to help us down there. These are banditos, and they don't know anything. And, you know, they don’t have a government. Just intervene and save our property.” And the United States did it a lot in the ’20s. Of course, Eisenhower was part of that culture. He had seen it.
But in the Middle East, we had never been there. We established a relationship during World War II, of course, to keep the Germans out of Iran. And so, the Soviets and the Brits put an Allied mission together. At the end of World War II, the Soviets didn't want to withdraw, and Truman called their bluff in the United Nations. And Eisenhower knew all of this. And Iran somehow became incorporated into the American defense perimeter. And so, his view would have been, we couldn't allow a communist to take over.
AMY GOODMAN: But wasn't it more about British Petroleum?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh, it's always -- there are always interests. The truth is, about the Middle East is, had there been no oil there, it would be like Africa. Nobody is threatening to intervene in Africa. The problem is the opposite. We keep asking for people to intervene and stop it. There's no question that the presence of petroleum throughout the region has sparked great power involvement. Whether that was the specific motivation for the coup or not, I can't tell you. But there was definitely -- there's always been this attitude that somehow we could intervene and use force in the region. I mean, that was true with -- I mean, imagine us arming and creating the Mujahideen to keep the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Why would we think we could do that? But we did. And, you know, my lesson on it is, whenever you use force, there are unintended consequences, so you should use force as a last resort. Whether it's overt or covert, you pay enormous consequences for using force.
Mar 2nd
Right-wing water carriers go after Al...
OLBERMANN: He may never run for office again, and the man chosen president over him has now come around to his way of thinking about global warming. But face it, to the far right, Al Gore is still an inconvenient truth teller. Hard on the heels of his documentary’s Oscar came the headlines a non-partisan think tank had revealed that Mr. Gore’s own personal energy bill is 20 times the national average.
So is our third story tonight outrageous hypocrisy, a minor embarrassment or a demonstration of a different kind of wind power? First, that allegedly non-partisan think tank, which just happens to have gotten its story picked up by the notorious Drudge Report today, is called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. Twenty seven-year-old President Jason Drew Johnson, hailing from the same American Enterprise Institute that takes money from big oil, cheer-leads the war in Iraq and consistently, and now to pretty consistent laughter, downplays global warming.
That said, even a partisan think tank can get the facts straight. So the facts, last year, Gore’s Tennessee property consumed almost 221,000 kilowatt hours, 20 times the national average. It cost him more than 16,300 dollars. But Johnson’s press release, calling on Gore to walk the walk when it comes to home energy use, omits several other key facts. The former vice president’s home has 20 rooms, including home offices for himself and his wife, as well as a guest house and special security measures.
Furthermore the Gores buy energy produced from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. Tonight, COUNTDOWN confirmed with the local utility officials that their program, called the Green Power Switch, actually costs more for the Gores, four dollars for every 150 kilowatt hours. Meaning, by our calculations, our math here, that the Gores actually chose to increase their electric bill by more 5,893 dollars, more than 50 percent, in order to minimize carbon pollution.
The utility is also telling us that some smaller homes consume energy in the same range of usage as does the one on the Gores’ property. Surprise, surprise, there seems to be political subtext here.
Mar 1st
AMY GOODMAN: Chalmers Johnson, you connect the breakdown of constitutional government with militarism.
CHALMERS JOHNSON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the signs of the breakdown of constitutional government and how it links?
CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, yes. Militarism is the -- what the social side has called the “intervening variable,” the causative connection. That is to say, to maintain an empire requires a very large standing army, huge expenditures on arms that leads to a military-industrial complex, and generally speaking, a vicious cycle sets up of interests that lead to perpetual series of wars.
It goes back to probably the earliest warning ever delivered to us by our first president, George Washington, in his famous farewell address. It’s read at the opening of every new session of Congress. Washington said that the great enemy of the republic is standing armies; it is a particular enemy of republican liberty. What he meant by it is that it breaks down the separation of powers into an executive, legislative, and judicial branches that are intended to check each other -- this is our most fundamental bulwark against dictatorship and tyranny -- it causes it to break down, because standing armies, militarism, military establishment, military-industrial complex all draw power away from the rest of the country to Washington, including taxes, that within Washington they draw it to the presidency, and they begin to create an imperial presidency, who then implements the military's desire for secrecy, making oversight of the government almost impossible for a member of Congress, even, much less for a citizen.
It seems to me that this is also the same warning that Dwight Eisenhower gave in his famous farewell address of 1961, in which he, in quite vituperative language, quite undiplomatic language -- one ought to go back and read Eisenhower. He was truly alarmed when he spoke of the rise of a large arms industry that was beyond supervision, that was not under effective control of the interests of the military-industrial complex, a phrase that he coined. We know from his writings that he intended to say a military-industrial-congressional complex. He was warned off from going that far. But it's in that sense that I believe the nexus -- or, that is, the incompatibility between domestic democracy and foreign imperialism comes into being.
Feb 27th
OLBERMANN: Mr. Scheuer, given how often the Republicans said during the debate last week in the House that insurgents in Iraq would follow us home if we left Iraq, which battleground is actually more central to the war against terrorists? Is it al Qaeda starting to rebuild training camps that it had in Afghanistan or the Taliban rebuilding them in the neighboring nation of Pakistan? Or is this the central place still the civil war in Iraq?
SCHEUER: No, the central place in terms of an attack inside the United States is Afghanistan and Pakistan. When the next attack occurs in America, it will be planned and orchestrated out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qaeda values Iraq primarily for the entree it gives them into Jordan, into Syria, into the Arab peninsula, and into Turkey.
We‘ve really signed—for example, we‘ve signed Jordan‘s death warrant by the—through the war in Iraq. But actually, the people who will plan the next attack in the United States are those who are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, sir.
Feb 26th
SEAN: So you might be working for Uncle Sam.
WILL: I don't know.
SEAN: Gerry says the meeting went well.
WILL: I guess.
SEAN: What did you think?
WILL: What did I think?
WILL: Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed.
Now the politicians are sayin' "send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some guy from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute, little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink seven and sevens and play slalom with the icebergs and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil, and kills all the sea-life in the North Atlantic. So my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive so he's got to walk to the job interviews which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue-plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State.
WILL: So what'd I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure I'll eliminate the middle man. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? Christ, I could be elected President.
Feb 24th
AMY GOODMAN: What will you do if the US attacks Iran?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, I’m not going to pay my income taxes. I just am in such despair over the consequences of that war and the fact that there just really is no -- seems to be no organized opposition. And I think that I have a kind of moral responsibility as someone who comes out of the Middle East and has, I mean, directly, you know, friends throughout the years that I spent there who would suffer tremendously from that. And I sort of -- it may not change anything, and it may be sort of futile, but I think that at least when it’s over, I’ll have earned the right to ask for their forgiveness.
Feb 23rd
OLBERMANN: A new report shows that the Bush administration has been using inflated statistics about its antiterror activity to pat itself on the back, justify the erosion of civil liberties, and to argue for additional spending of your tax dollars.
…said report comes not from the left nor even from the Democrats, but from the Inspector General‘s Office of the Bush Justice Department, which tells us the administration‘s terror statistics includes such crimes as drug trafficking, immigration violations, and that scourge of free societies everywhere, marriage fraud.
The report says, any crime that was originally suspected as terrorism, or was just investigated by an antiterrorism unit, ended up as a terrorism statistic, which in turn was used by lawmakers to help shape our national policies.
OLBERMANN: The first question seems obvious, but specifically, how does the president benefit by getting these numbers wrong?
BOIES: Well, I think in two ways. First, it escalates the fear of terrorism. And certainly, the concern about terrorism, and domestic terrorism in particular, has been an important aspect of this administration‘s policy. So that I think by increasing the apparent terrorist threat, that, sir, is a political advantage.
Second, I think by overstating the number of terrorism convictions, it helps the administration make the case that it‘s being tough on terrorism, that it‘s being successful in prosecuting terrorism. And I think that we know from these statistics that both of those claims are somewhat overexaggerated.
Feb 23rd