As the clock ticks, it appears Israel will have to pick between two frightful scenarios; attack Iran or live with a nuclear Iran and the constant fear of annihilation. This choice crossed my mind during a recent trip to Israel. While at the ancient fortress of Masada overlooking the Dead Sea, the tour guide proclaimed […]
Today is the twentieth anniversary of the enactment of one of the most important, far-reaching bipartisan initiatives of the twentieth and, thus far, the twenty-first century: the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, originally known as the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act. It was twenty years ago today that an initiative that began as an amendment […]
The New York Times carried an article last week by David Sanger and William Broad providing additional detail about the mysterious blast that leveled Iran’s major missile test center on Nov. 12, killing one of the country’s top rocket scientists and others. The article also provides useful hints to sources, without ultimately shedding any new […]
The end of 2011 is fast approaching and with it the departure of U.S. forces and equipment from Iraq by December 31st so thought I’d pass on some of my thoughts. In November, I participated in two Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers Roundtables on our force drawdown efforts there. One was with Army Brigadier General […]
If you are one of the few to hold a high place in the Chinese Communist Party life has to be good. You are running one of the world’s greatest powers and you don’t have to worry about elections next Fall, or the next Fall, or the…However, there is one major hangup to being part […]
The New York Times gets it wrong again…after all I’ve written about spin, diversion, and just plain sloppy reporting on Fast and Furious, New York Times reporter Ginger Thompson lands on page A1 with a claim that DEA agents are ‘walking’ narco-dollars into Mexico and back to the cartels the same way ATF, we now know, has been ‘walking’ lethal, military-grade weapons across the US-Mexico border into the hands of cartel killers.
Bunkum.
US Drug Agents Launder Profits for Mexican Cartels isn’t true or fair or even journalism.
What it is, instead, is public relations, a business that, unlike old-fashioned reporting, is safe, simple, and sure to enhance the bottomline for all concerned–corporate owners, editors, and reporters. PR is the new news, the art of pitching client-friendly narratives by pinning them to the general assumptions and fact set of the audience. The New York Times is not the first to go, nor will it be the last.
The point is–it’s working.
Ginger Thompson and the New York Times do us a disservice, not just because they play to our concern for the 40,000 men, women and children already lost to political corruption and criminal greed, but because they portray the commitment of the American people to the rule of law as naïve, misplaced, and unattainable.
Indeed, what the reporter suggests (Is this her aim or just bad research?) is that US law enforcement has proved it is unable to make a difference, that federal agents are bunglers or miscreants, and that, if we aren’t careful, the ‘good guys’ sent in to solve the problem may instead become the worst part of it.
Back up, Ginger. The only kind of money laundering investigations DEA is allowed to conduct today are the kind designed “‘never to embarrass the government of Mexico,” which means US enforcement’s “war against drugs” is, at best, only a skirmish…
Not all is doom and gloom. Somewhat contrary to initial expectations, Russia and China joined in a firm new IAEA resolution, again calling upon Tehran to come completely clean. The UK and France are pressing European foreign ministers to adopt an oil embargo, joining the United States, and while that is not likely to have […]
A recent reading of E. M. Forster’s novel, A Passage to India, prompted me to reflect on the West’s drawn out engagement in Afghanistan. The centerpiece of this prescient narrative is an incident in an ancient cave in Northwestern India between an Indian doctor and an English woman during the heyday of the British Raj. […]
Co-Authored with William Sweet U.S.-Russia 123 and New START A relatively busy year in arms control and nonproliferation started out with two events that were set into motion the year prior: entry into force for the U.S. Russian Agreement for Civilian Nuclear Cooperation (the so-called 123 agreement) and the bilateral New START agreement. The congressional […]
2011 evidenced our inability to predict substantial change and respond to tumultuous events. The ramifications of foreign policy decisions will not show their true colors for some time. Below, I discuss notable states – Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Qatar, Cuba, Burma, Ivory Coast, Norway, Israel, and Palestine – that I believe are important because of their effects on peace […]
On November 22, 2011, CNN hosted a debate between the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination, this time dedicated to the theme of national security. The debate was sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), two of the most conservative think tanks in the US, with considerable influence in shaping policies […]
I recently came across two worthwhile pieces on Persian Gulf states punching above their weight. The first is a New York Times analysis of Qatar, the lil’ oil rich country that could: Qatar is smaller than Connecticut, and its native population, at 225,000, wouldn’t fill Cairo’s bigger neighborhoods. But for a country that inspires equal […]
Yesterday’s New York Times and presumably other major newspapers as well carried a small story on an inside page about a violent explosion that took place at an Iranian test facility, killing one of the country’s top rocket scientists, among others.”There was immediate speculation that Israeli saboteurs were responsible for the blast, which Israeli officials […]
Differences in interepretation of the IAEA report center on what it says–literally and between the lines–about whether Iran continued with weaponization activities after 2003. As they say in television, let’s go to the videotape. The report says in Paragraphs 19 and 20 that in the late 1990s or by the early 2000s, weaponization activities were […]
I have written previously about efforts by House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Ranking Member Howard Berman to tighten the rules regarding the export of nuclear technology. Well, like a moth to the flame, I’ve been drawn back into that fold. I have written a piece which has been published by the […]