082004

The Nossiter Net
The net that shall enmesh them all
Edited, Written, and Published by J.C. Nossiter

The Morning Mendacity
Friday, August 20th, 2004

The Nossiter Net is cast to snare some of the riper rascalities of the day. Comments? editor@nossiter.net

The smears began before publication. Richard Clarke had an axe to grind because his position as counter-terrorism czar had been downgraded. Mr. Clarke had the promise of a job in a Kerry White House. There were questions, CNN’s Wolfe Blitzer said, about his private life. Mr. Clarke is so obviously a man of unimpeachable integrity that his book about the catastrophic incompetence of the Bush Administration before, during, and after 9/11, Against All Enemies, remained a must-read for all concerned citizens. But if you throw enough mud, some of it sticks. Hence a Republican friend of mine the other day: “Richard Clarke has a credibility problem.” Only for the painfully credulous, it’s true, but there are enough of those to matter.

The Clarke smears came in the wake of the Joseph Wilson smears. The former Ambassador, who exposed the Bush Administration’s lies about the Iraqis trying to buy uranium from Niger, was unsound, dishonest; his wife arranged the investigatory job in Niger for him. The Wilson smears crossed the line into criminality when the Administration exposed his wife as a CIA operative. Some of the mud inevitably stuck to Mr. Wilson’s own book about the Administration’s malfeasance.

The Wilson smears came in the wake of the Paul O’Neil smears. The former Secretary of the Treasury described the obsession his boss, President Bush, had with Iraq long before 9/11 in Ron Suskind’s book The Price of Loyalty. Mr. O’Neil, the White House said, had an axe to grind because he was fired. He was inaccurate. He misappropriated government documents. Mr. O’Neil’s story has been corroborated, and he himself has said the Bush people can do little real damage to an aged, wealthy white guy, but some of the mud can’t help but stick.

And now come the John Kerry smears. He takes both sides of every issue. He changes his mind. He has too many houses. He looks “French.” Most outrageous of all, he didn’t earn his medals in Vietnam. A well-funded group of war veterans has come out of the woodwork to lend their names to a campaign, by book and television commercial, to deny that Mr. Kerry’s combat medals were truly merited. The allegation flies in the face of all military records and eyewitness accounts. The group is funded to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars by one Bob Perry, a Texas developer who happens to be a major George W. Bush backer going back to his gubernatorial days. Never mind that the group’s story keeps changing and that now, as The Washington Post reported Wednesday morning, one of the group’s own military records contradict his assertions. Never mind that the group’s chief spokesman is an old Nixon operative used three decades ago to attack the young anti-Vietnam John Kerry, and now brought out of mothballs for the ’04 election.

Smears obviously don’t need to be true to be effective. The act of smearing, by raising doubts, is enough. The smear changes the discussion from substance, what happened and when and who did what to whom, to vague but disturbing questions of integrity and honor and honesty. In the absence of any factual counter-arguments to the well-documented charges of lying incompetence laid at the Bush administration’s door, smears are not only an effective tactic but the only possible tactic. But isn’t it about time the press, by uncritcally broadcasting the Administration line, stopped being complicit?
©J.C. Nossiter 2004