Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 11, 2007 12:21:48 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Asking Why Petraeus Wasn't Sworn In Gets ex-CIA Official
Ray McGovern Thrown Out
'Swear Him In' Provokes Expulsion
By Ray McGovern
September 10, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/091007a.html
“Swear him in.”
That’s all I said in the unusual silence this afternoon as first
aid was being administered to Gen. David Petraeus’s microphone at
the hearing before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs
Committees.
It had dawned on me that when House Armed Services Committee
Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Missouri, invited Gen. Petraeus to make his
presentation, Skelton forgot to ask him to take the customary oath
to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I had no idea that would be enough to get me thrown out of the
hearing.
I had a flashback to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in early
2006, when Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, reminded chairman Arlen
Specter, R-Pennsylvania, that Specter had forgotten to swear in the
witness, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; and how Specter
insisted that that would not be necessary.
Now that may, or may not, be an invidious comparison. But Petraeus
and Gonzales work for the same boss, who has a rather unusual
relationship with the truth. How many of his senior staff could
readily be convicted, as was the hapless-and-now-commuted Scooter
Libby, of perjury?
So I didn’t think twice about it. I really thought that Skelton
perhaps forgot, and that the 10-minute interlude of silence while
they fixed the microphone was a good chance to raise this seemingly
innocent question.
The more so since the ranking Republican representatives had been
protesting too much. In the obverse of “killing the messenger,”
they had been canonizing the messenger with protective fire.
Ranking Armed Services Committee member Duncan Hunter, R-
California, began what amounted to a SWAT-team attack on the
credibility of those who dared attack the truthfulness of the
sainted Petraeus, and issued a special press release decrying a
full-pager in the New York Times equating Petraeus with “Betray-us.”
Hunter served notice on any potential doubters, insisting that
Petraeus’s “capability, integrity, intelligence...are without
question.” And Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida, ranking member of
the House Foreign Affairs Committee, echoed that theme, unwittingly
choosing another infelicitous almost-homonym for the charges
against Petraeus—“outrageous.”
Indeed, Hunter’s prepared statement, which he circulated before the
hearing, amounted to little more than a full-scale “duty-honor-
country” panegyric for the general.
On the chance we did not hear him the first time, Hunter kept
repeating how “independent” Petraeus is, how candid and full of
integrity, and compared him to famous generals who testified to
Congress in the past—Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Schwarzkopf.
Advisedly, Hunter avoided any mention of Gen. William Westmoreland,
commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, who fell tragically short on
those traits. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Is Petraeus Today’s
Westmoreland.”]
If memory serves, the aforementioned generals and Westmoreland were
required to testify under oath. And this was one of the main
sticking points when CBS aired a program showing that Westmoreland
had deliberately dissembled on the strength of Communist forces and
U.S. “progress” in the war.
When Westmoreland sued CBS for libel, several of his subordinates
came clean, and Westmoreland quickly dropped the suit. The analogy
with Westmoreland—justifying a White House wish to persist in an
unwinnable war —is the apt one here.
If Petraeus is so honest and full of integrity, what possible
objection could he have to being sworn in?
I had not the slightest hesitation being sworn in when testifying
before the committee assembled by Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, on
June 16, 2005. Should generals be immune? Or did his masters wish
to give him a little more assurance that he could play fast and
loose with the truth without the consequences encountered by
Scooter Libby.
With the microphone finally fixed, it quickly became clear.
Petraeus tried to square a circle in his very first two paragraphs.
In the first, he thanks the committees for the opportunity to
“discuss the recommendations I recently provided to my chain of
command for the way forward.” Then he stretches credulity well
beyond the breaking point—at least for me:
“At the outset, I would like to note that this is my testimony.
Although I have briefed my assessment and recommendations to my
chain of command, I wrote this testimony myself. It has not been
cleared by, nor shared with, anyone in the Pentagon, the White
House, or Congress.”
Is not the Commander-in-Chief in Petraeus’s chain of command?
As Harry Truman, D-Missouri, would have said, “Does he think we
were born yesterday?”
Ray McGovern was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early
sixties and then a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990. He had a front-
seat for the charades orchestrated by Westmoreland in Vietnam.
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