Veterans for Common Sense

Ten years ago today the leaders of three hostile ethnic and religious communities in a war-ravaged land reluctantly agreed — thanks to overwhelming U.S. military and political pressure — to stop fighting and live together under their country’s first-ever democratic government. The Dayton accords, which created a fragile confederation and ended Bosnia’s civil war, have been successful enough to earn two days of high-level ceremonies in Washington, including a gala luncheon tomorrow at the State Department hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It’s hard to avoid the comparison between the country deemed a quagmire in the 1990s and the one where the United States is bogged down today.

Start with the U.S. and other NATO troops who began arriving in Bosnia shortly before Christmas 1995. There were 60,000 of them at first in a country of 4 million, or more than twice as many per capita as now are deployed in Iraq. Ten years later they are still there — the American contingent left only a year ago. All sides agree they will have to stay on for years to come, since Bosnia’s police and army forces are still not ready to take over full responsibility for security. Billions have meanwhile been spent on reconstruction, under the supervision of a Western proconsul with the power to overrule the Bosnian government.

Despite all those years of heavy-handed occupation, the Western forces have never captured Bosnia’s foremost insurgents. Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who together oversaw the deliberate murder of thousands of civilians, are still at large. Serb leaders in Bosnia only now are beginning to show some willingness to renounce the poisonous nationalism that caused the war. The current Bosnian Serb president, Dragan Cavic, reportedly has promised to call for Karadzic to surrender during this week’s events in Washington.

Like Iraq’s Sunnis, the Bosnian Serbs were forced to abandon a regime of genocide and domination by a punishing U.S. military campaign. Unlike Iraqis, however, the Bosnians were subjected to an equally forceful American diplomatic offensive. Their leaders, along with those of neighboring Serbia and Croatia, were sequestered at a military base in Dayton, Ohio, and browbeaten for 21 days by an international tag team led by one of the toughest and most capable U.S. diplomats, Richard Holbrooke.

Even then, the best that could be achieved was a deeply flawed plan for federalism that allowed the creation of Serb and Muslim-Croat ministates united by the weakest of national governments. There was a three-member rotating presidency, 14 ministries of education and 15 police agencies. The Serb statelet, at first, was little more than an appendage of its neighbor Serbia, then still an adversary of the West.

This week’s events are in part an effort to fix Bosnia’s constitution, after a decade-long timeout. The Serbs, who have resisted most, have been energetically worked over by both the Bush administration and the European Union; Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the department’s third-highest official, has devoted a large slice of his time to it since the beginning of this year. Burns hopes the Serbs and other Bosnians arriving in Washington today will announce their acceptance in principle of constitutional reforms, including abolition of the tripartite presidency. By April, it is hoped, the Bosnian parliament will ratify amendments that could finally open the way to an effective national government, foreign investment and the prospect of eventual integration into the European Union.

So, in summary: Bosnia has had proportionately more Western troops than Iraq and more money for reconstruction. It has had aggressive high-level diplomacy by a unified transatlantic coalition, backed by both Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington. It has been given 10 years by those governments, which have repeatedly resisted the temptation to pull their troops out. Even so, it is only now that a new generation of Bosnian leaders is willing to consider the political compromises necessary to stabilize their country without foreign forces or high commissioners.

They will arrive in a Washington where, one month after the ratification of a similarly imperfect constitution in Iraq, Democrats are calling for a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops, and where even the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, is hinting that Iraqis have 180 days to pull their country together. They will lunch at a State Department that has delegated the daunting work of forging an Iraqi compromise to its ambassador in Baghdad, with next to no help from the president or U.S. allies and no power to sequester anyone on a military base. The Bosnians will have a chance to hear both Democrats and Republicans talk, not about how to succeed in the latest American intervention but about how the other party is lying about it.

Perhaps they will conclude that their tiny Balkan country is far more important to the United States and its security than Iraq. That, anyway, is what the record shows.

Situated at the junction of the Conemaugh and Stonycreek rivers, Johnstown is best known for the Great Flood of 1889, in which a 35-foot wall of water roared into town and killed more than 2,000 residents in 10 minutes.

But this week, the town that boasts “The Flood’s Over” in its promotional literature has a new distinction: It is the hometown of a hawkish congressman who is saying no to the Iraq war.

Democratic Rep. John P. Murtha — a Marine veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars — on Thursday issued a dramatic call for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. And on Friday, in interviews with about two dozen of his Johnstown constituents, reaction was vigorous — much of it approving.

“We should never have been in there to begin with,” said Leo Ratchford, a white-haired retired steel worker walking down Main Street. “Those are religious factions fighting each other. Whoever’s the most vicious is going to win and take over the country.”

In front of the U.S. Post Office near Johnstown’s Central Park, Lynda Saintz bundled up against the 30-degree weather. “My son’s going to be deployed in Afghanistan,” said the 49-year-old housewife. “I’m against the war in Iraq. I’m against the war in Afghanistan. I’m scared because of my son. I’m scared because of every mother’s son.”

Not everyone hailed the congressman. On the website of the local Tribune-Democrat newspaper, http://www.tribune-democrat.com , many readers criticized Murtha.

And among those interviewed, several were angry at Murtha for what they viewed as a betrayal of U.S. troops and the president.

“We have to finish the job,” said Jim Belle, 48, a regular at Scott’s by the Dam, a bar reminiscent of TV’s “Cheers.”

“You don’t undermine the president at a time of war,” he added. “It’s bad for the troops.”

But Cindy McLachlan, wife of the bar’s owner, was in Murtha’s corner. “Bring them home,” she said. “It’s time.”

Murtha may have tapped into a well of public discontent in this community of 80,000. But it is not the type of antiwar sentiment one might hear at a rally organized by MoveOn.org, the online liberal advocacy group.

The weariness voiced about the war here sounds more rueful, expressing a sense that America once again had gone to war to do good only to be rebuffed by the intransigence of its enemies.

“When we first went in, I can’t say I was against it,” said Mary Cunningham, a Democrat who has lived in Johnstown for 22 years and swims with other seniors every morning. “At this point, we’ve got into another Vietnam.” As for Murtha, she said: “He’s finally being honest. He speaks from his heart. He has experience. He speaks for me.”

Murtha, 73, grew up in this part of western Pennsylvania, delivering newspapers and working at a gas station during high school. He won his House seat in 1974 and has been reelected handily since then.

Steel production was once the heart of Johnstown’s economy. But the mills — long since silenced by economic change — await transformation into what city officials hope will be a surge of health research and high-technology concerns.

A new conference center can seat 1,000 for dinner, the local sports stadium has undergone an $8-million renovation and, thanks to Murtha, some federal agencies — such as the National Drug Intelligence Center — have headquarters here.

As in many areas of Pennsylvania, the community’s population has been shrinking, as young people leave to find jobs elsewhere. In the 2000 census, Pennsylvania lost two congressional seats, and Murtha was thrown into a Democratic primary with another congressman, Rep. Frank Mascara. Murtha won easily.

“A group of us Republicans changed registration to vote for him and then switched right back,” said Arlene Johns, a regional editor at the Tribune-Democrat. “That’s how much respect he has.”

Called “an American Legion kind of Democrat,” Murtha supported the Persian Gulf War in 1991 but opposed intervention in Bosnia and deployment in Somalia.

At the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, he questioned whether troops had the proper equipment and called for the reinstatement of the draft. As the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, Murtha rankled Republicans during last year’s presidential election when he said the Pentagon had to change direction in Iraq or the war would be “unwinnable.”

His call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, a process he said could take about six months, sparked Republican retribution Friday. GOP leaders forced a vote on a resolution that expressed “the sense of the House … that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately,” knowing it would be overwhelmingly defeated. The resolution lost by a vote of 403 to 3.

But the rebuff aimed at Murtha is not likely to sting here.

“I agree with him 100{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d},” said Lucy Machuta, a lifelong Republican who once lived near Murtha. Asked if she had previously supported the war, Machuta said, “In the beginning, yes, but now it is useless. It’s like an open Vietnam.”

Asked if congressional rejection of a resolution to withdraw troops would sway her views, Machuta said: “No. Is Congressman Murtha going to change his mind? I’m not changing mine either.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Rep. John P. Murtha

Born: June 17, 1932, in New Martinsville, W.Va.

Education: B.A. in economics, University of Pittsburgh, 1962; graduate studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1962-65

Home: Johnstown, Pa.

Family: He and his wife, Joyce, have been married for 50 years. They have three children and three grandchildren.

Military service: Murtha served in the Marine Corps from 1952 to 1955, working up to a post as drill instructor and earning an officer’s commission. After his discharge from active duty, he joined the Marine Reserve. He reenlisted and served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967, receiving the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. After Vietnam, he served in the reserves until 1990, retiring as a colonel.

Political career: After serving in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1969 to 1974, Murtha was elected U.S. representative in 1974, becoming the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the U.S. House. He has been reelected 16 consecutive times. He voted for the 1991 Persian Gulf War resolution and the 2002 resolution granting President Bush authority to use force in Iraq. In 2004, he was one of two House members who voted to reinstate the military draft. He is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee. He is the author of “From Vietnam to 9/11: On the Front Lines of National Security” (2003).

Rep. John Murtha, the Democrat whose call for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq set off a furor last week, on Sunday predicted U.S. forces would leave Iraq before next year’s U.S. congressional elections.

The Pennsylvania lawmaker, a Vietnam veteran and respected authority on the military, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he expected more people to come around and share his views and that U.S. troops should be withdrawn in 2006.

Asked if that meant U.S. troops would be out of Iraq before November congressional elections, Murtha said, “You have hit it on the head.”

President George W. Bush’s approval ratings have been sinking in the polls in tandem with growing public disapproval of the Iraq war and even some Republicans have started to question aspects of the administration Iraq’s timetable and strategy.

The U.S. House, in an unusually raucous session on Friday, defeated a nonbinding resolution calling for an immediate troop withdrawal. Democrats denounced the vote as a political stunt meant to attack and isolate Murtha.

But Murtha predicted that more and more Americans, in government and private life, would come to the same conclusion he had, that U.S. military occupation was making the situation in Iraq worse and that a political solution was needed.

“I have never seen such an outpouring in the 32 years I’ve been in Congress of support and people with tears in their eyes, people walking along clapping when I’m walking through the halls of Congress, saying something needed to be said,” Murtha said.

“It’s not me. It’s the public that’s thirsting for an answer to this thing,” he added.”

Bush and top administration officials in the past few days lashed out sharply against critics of the Iraq policy. But the president, speaking in Beijing, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were both more muted about their opponents on Sunday although both strongly defended their Iraq policy.

Bush, dogged by questions about Iraq during a week-long Asia tour, said “Congressman Murtha is a fine man, a good man who served our country with honor and distinction as a Marine in Vietnam and as a U.S. congressman.”

Rumsfeld, who appeared on four Sunday talk shows, said debate about war is and should be part of the democratic process, but that Murtha’s call for an immediate withdrawal would strengthen U.S. enemies and embolden terrorists.

“That would be a terrible thing for our country and for the safety of our people,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

Rumsfeld depicted progress in Iraq in both the political and military arenas. “The Iraqi security forces are doing an excellent job. They’re well-respected by the Iraqi people. They’re engaged in the fight,” he said on FOX News Sunday.

Rumsfeld also reiterated his support for the war to topple Saddam Hussein, even knowing now that the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was flawed. But he said Bush had never directly asked him for his views on an invasion.

“I wasn’t asked,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I’m sure the president understood what my views were.”

While commending Murtha’s record as a veteran and lawmaker, Rumsfeld pointed out that neither Republicans nor Murtha’s fellow Democrats had rushed to embrace his ideas.

An Open Letter To Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald From Former White House Counsel John W. Dean

November 18, 2005

The Honorable Patrick J. Fitzgerald
Special Counsel
Bond Federal Building
1400 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Special Counsel Fitzgerald:

Excuse my being so presumptuous as to send you this open letter, but the latest revelation of the testimony, before the grand jury, by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has raised some fundamental questions for me.

In your post as Special Counsel, you now have nothing less than authority of the Attorney General of the United States, for purposes of the investigation and prosecution of “the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity.” (The employee, of course, is Valerie Plame Wilson, a CIA employee with classified status, and the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.) On December 30, 2003, you received a letter from the Deputy Attorney General regarding your powers. On February 6, 2004 you received a letter of further clarification, stating without reservation, that in this matter your powers are “plenary.” In effect, then, you act with the power of the Attorney General of the United States.
 
In light of your broad powers, the limits and narrow focus of your investigation are surprising. On October 28 of this year, your office released a press statement in which you stated that “A major focus of the grand jury investigation was to determine which government officials had disclosed to the media prior to July 14, 2003, information concerning Valerie Wilson’s CIA affiliation, and the nature, timing, extent, and purpose of such disclosures, as well as whether any official made such a disclosure knowing that Valerie Wilson’s employment by the CIA was classified information.”

If, indeed, that is the major focus of your investigation, then your investigation is strikingly limited, given your plenary powers. To be a bit more blunt, in historical context, it is certainly less vigorous an investigation than those of your predecessors who have served as special counsel — men appointed to undertake sensitive high-level investigations when the Attorney General of the United States had a conflict of interest. (Here, it was, of course, the conflict of Attorney General John Ashcroft that led to the chain of events that resulted in your appointment.)

The Teapot Dome Precedent

As I am sure you are aware, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Owen J. Roberts, a Philadelphia attorney at the time, and former U.S. Senator Atlee Pomerene, then practicing law in Ohio, as special counsels to investigate and prosecute on behalf of the government any wrongdoing related to the so-called Teapot Dome inquiry. That investigation related to the improper dissipation of government assets — dubious oil leases to Edward L. Doheny and Harry F. Sinclair.

Several years ago, I had an opportunity to spend several weeks at the National Archives going through the files of Special Counsels Roberts and Pomerene. I urge you to send a member of your staff to do the same, for they are highly revealing as to the aggressive — yet appropriate — nature of their investigation and actions.

What you will find is that Roberts and Pomerene, before figuring out exactly who was to blame and going after them, first sought to protect the interest of the United States by ending the further dissipation of the nation’s oil reserves to Doheny and Sinclair, and seek restitution.

In brief, they started by taking protective civil measures. Only with that accomplished did they move on to criminal prosecutions. Why have you not done the same?

Your investigation also relates to the dissipation — if not the irreparable destruction — of a government asset: Valerie Plame Wilson. As you no doubt know, the U.S. Government invested a great deal of money in her special education and training, as well as other aspects of her covert status. Then, either intentionally, or with gross negligence, senior Bush administration officials blew Valerie Wilson’s cover. (Prior to the disclosure, her status was not, as some have claimed, an “open secret”: Rather, as you yourself have said, the fact that she was a CIA asset was not previously well-known outside the intelligence community.)

Yet there is no evidence that you have made any effort whatsoever to undertake any civil remedies dealing with this either intentional or grossly careless destruction of a government asset. As acting Attorney General for this matter, you have even more authority than did Special Counsels Roberts and Pomerene.

Those who leaked the information about Valerie Wilson breached signed contracts they had made with the government. These contracts, moreover, were not to be taken lightly: They enforced profoundly important obligations to national security, on the part of the very people who were supposed to be serving that end.

Why are you not enforcing those contracts? Why have you not urged the president to sanction those who have released national security information? The president has said he would fire those who committed crimes — but breach of such profoundly important contracts, even if it does not rise to the level of a crime, is surely cause for dismissal, as well.

You should so urge the President. And if he is not willing to take appropriate action with those who have dishonored their offices, and broken their contracts, you ought to go to court and get an injunction to remove their security clearances.

Again, their agreement with the government was the very understanding upon which they were (and continue to be) given classified information. Now that they have breached it, the vital predicate for those clearances is gone.

The Watergate Precedent

Even more troubling, from an historical point of view, is the fact that the narrowness of your investigation, which apparently is focusing on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (making it a crime to uncover the covert status of a CIA agent), plays right into the hands of perpetrators in the Administration.

Indeed, this is exactly the plan that was employed during Watergate by those who sought to conceal the Nixon Administration’s crimes, and keep criminals in office.

The plan was to keep the investigation focused on the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters — and away from the atmosphere in which such an action was undertaken. Toward this end, I was directed by superiors to get the Department of Justice to keep its focus on the break-in, and nothing else.

That was done. And had Congress not undertaken its own investigation (since it was a Democratically-controlled Congress with a Republican President) it is very likely that Watergate would have ended with the conviction of those caught in the bungled burglary and wiretapping attempt at the Democratic headquarters.

Now, with a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican President, you (a Republican appointee) are the last bulwark of protection for the American people. We must hope you will keep faith with them.

It was well understood at the Nixon White House, and it surely is at the Bush White House, that government attorneys do not look to prosecute those for whom they work. We knew that career government lawyers simply were not going to be looking for crimes at the White House — not because they acted with corrupt intent, but simply because it is no one’s instinct to bite the hand that feeds them.

When Archibald Cox was appointed special counsel — under pressure from the U.S. Senate as a condition to confirm Attorney General Elliot Richardson — he immediately recognized what had occurred. While no Department of Justice lawyer was found to have engaged in the cover up, their timidity had facilitated it. Cox was fired because he refused to be intimidated. His firing became a badge of honor for all those who do the right thing, regardless of the consequences.

While I have no reason to believe you are easily intimidated, all I can say is that your investigation, thus far, is falling precisely within the narrow confines — the formula procedure — that was relied upon in the first phase of the Watergate cover-up by the Nixon administration.

So narrow was your investigation that it appears that you failed to learn that Bob Woodward had been told of Valerie Wilson’s CIA post until after you had indicted Scooter Libby. While I have no doubt you know your way around the Southern District of New York, and the Northern District of Illinois, Washington DC is a very different place.

With all due respect, Mr. Fitzgerald, I believe you are being had. I believe that you were selected with the expectation that you would conduct the narrowest of investigations, and it seems you have done just that.

The leak of Valerie Wilson’s status did not occur in a vacuum. Republicans in Congress do not want to know what truly happened. You are the last, best hope of the American people in this regard.

I can tell you, as someone who travels about the country, that Americans — regardless of their political disposition — are deeply troubled by this case. And, increasingly so, by the limits you have apparently placed on your investigation.

To right-minded Americans, the idea that Administration officials have betrayed their national security obligations, yet remain in their jobs, is nothing short of appalling. Beyond politics is patriotism: Patriotic Americans want to see you not only prosecute those who compromised and endangered Valerie Plame Wilson, but also force the Administration to clean house with respect to those who did this, which you can accomplish through appropriate civil action.

As one who does know something about the way Washington works, I hope you will actually use the plenary powers you have been granted to implement what I understood to be the announced policy of the Department of Justice for which you work — a zero tolerance policy for leaks.