A Columnist Who Doesn't Know Himself or His Country
Here he goes again. In 2004, David Brooks told us that John Kerry had "a brain of sculpted marshmallow," and he never missed a chance to ridicule Kerry with some variation of George Wallace's old barb about liberal "pointy headed professors who can't park their bicycles straight."
Brooks tells us now (subscription req'd) that Al Gore is a "radical technological determinist" whose book The Assault on Reason "reminds us that whatever the effects of our homogenizing mass culture, it is still possible for exceedingly strange individuals to rise to the top.... While most politicians react to people, Gore reacts to machines..."
Always and everywhere, such insulting cheap shots are the fallback strategy of someone whose own worldview, left or right, is crumbling: When George Orwell reported in Homage to Catalonia in 1937 that the Spanish Civil War wasn't what the Anglo-American left wanted to believe, The Daily Worker's David Brooks, one Harry Pollitt, called him a "disillusioned little middle class boy."
Among conservatives, the fallback position now involves blaming liberals in similar terms, inflating their shortcomings and hypocrisies to lend a false integrity and coherence to conservative lies. Liberals like Gore make easy targets, having done well by a system whose deepening inequities they don't fundamentally challenge but don't wholeheartedly defend. They tend to have a weakness for moralistic, symbolic gestures (moralism about racial preferences, hope for technological fixes) that don't seriously address the problems.
Say, then, if you will, that Gore is a pointy-headed autodidact, a political stumblebum, a naif. But then consider the people his attackers champion. And begin to suspect that there's something that Brooks doesn't understand about the ways a republic needs more public reason and even a little "strangeness" like Kerry's or Gore's -- more than like, say, Rudy Giuliani.
Throughout 2004, Brooks did never give us a metaphor analogous to "sculpted marshmallow" to describe the brain of either of the two "exceedingly strange" men he was helping to keep the presidency and vice presidency, to which they'd risen in the strangest election imaginable. Yet only a year after their (and Brooks') 2004 victory, as the Iraq venture went from bad to worse, he told The Nation's Ayal Press that, ""Sometimes in my dark moments I think [Bush is] 'The Manchurian Candidate' designed to discredit all the ideas I believe in."
Isn't that a little strange? Brooks thinks Al Gore is stranger. He is annoyed by "the chilliness and sterility of [Gore's] worldview," which "allows almost no role for family, friendship, neighborhood, or just face-to-face contact. [Gore] sees society the way you might see it from a speaking podium - as a public mass exercise with little allowance for intimacy or private life."
Sure, and George W. Bush is the regular kind of guy whom every other all-American guy would like to have a beer with. And "family, friendship, neighborhood," etc. are for regular guys like Brooks' "patio man." But think a minute about how Bush "sees society" from a triple-riveted podium, before triple-vetted audiences of triple-"enlisted" listeners. Contrast that "public mass exercise" with Eric Pooley's unforgettable account of Al Gore's recent national speaking tour with his "global warming" show.
The more you think about it, the more David Brooks himself begins to look a little strange.
From Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson on, the American Republic has always relied critically on the strangeness of autodidacts, eccentrics, bounders, blowhards, and more. Consider most American inventors and entrepreneurs. Even in the 1980s, Bill Gates said that Japan's booming economy wouldn't bury us, because we're far less aristocratic or regimented. Here, he said, "three guys in a garage" really can re- invent our communications and cultural networks.
I thought Brooks knew that. But our "patio man" is too busy trying to ingratiate and insinuate himself into a civic culture he doesn't understand. Gore's enthusiasm for new science and technology is bumptious, sometimes misguided: "Has Al Gore ever actually looked at the Internet?" Brooks taunts, in full denial that Gore's experience of Internet interactivity comes from his experience as an investor, advisor, and Google board member, not to mention 16 years in "face-to-face" contact with ordinary Americans while in Congress. Brooks, by contrast, has inhabited only the communications world - and not as an entrepreneur, like, say, Ned Lamont.
What matters here a widely-shared, growing misapprehension, which Republicans cultivate, that public reasoning is less important to a republic than "family, friendship, neighborhood or just face-to-face contact." Actually each has its vital role, but neo-conservatives have been subverting the place of public reason with a beguiling sophistry that appeals to unreasonable impulses, as Brooks does by insulting Kerry and Gore.
Al Gore's struggle, like that of Barack Obama and other decent candidates, puts flesh on Griel Marcus's understanding that the ideals of America are "too big to live up to and too big to escape." The country's genius and the strength rest on a paradox: Its classical liberalism and free markets rely on civic-republican virtues and beliefs which the liberal state and free markets themselves can't fully nurture or enforce, because they have to honor the autonomy -- the "strangeness" -- of free individuals.
The conservative truth here, which its propagandists harp on at liberals' expense, is that if enough free individuals are going to rise above their narrower interests at times and "find themselves" more fully by giving to the whole, their inclination to do that will have to be nurtured intensely somehow, not by the state - or, heaven help us, a state religion - but by "family, friendship, neighborhood, or just face-to-face contact."
But the liberal side of the paradox reminds us that, no matter what autonomous individuals do in private, a republic has to induce and equip them defend their private preferences through reasoned arguments and bargaining that address the needs of others who may disagree but still want the republic to cohere.
Alexander Hamilton sketched the stakes that define this country when he wrote that history seemed to have destined Americans, "by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."
How might the worst happen? "History does not more clearly point out any fact than this, that nations which have lapsed from liberty, to a state of slavish subjection, have been brought to this unhappy condition, by gradual paces," wrote Founder Richard Henry Lee. Hence Ben Franklin's answer in 1787 to a bystander outside Independence Hall who asked what kind of government was being formed: "A republic, if you can keep it." Unreason and impulse are the default logics of human history; republican freedom is a fragile, if world-historical gain. It requires cultivation and nurture.
Al Gore's argument in "The Assault on Reason" is that we are being brought gently into something less by sound-bite savants like David Brooks, who argue that the cornucopia of consumption is liberating. Gore argues that radio and television, owned as they are by conglomerates driven to emphasize entertainment and diversion over reason, have weakened the citizenry and strengthened the sophists. He hopes that Internet interactivity will keep the big guys from cornering the marketplace of ideas.
And, yes, he is more than a bit wishful in saying this. Just how wishful Gore is depends on Americans who are determined to be free, not brought low "by gradual paces" with the help of soothsayers like Bush and Brooks, who tell them they're free while serving powers that are encroaching on their freedom.
John Adams wasn't blaming only government when he warned that, "[w]hen the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American Constitution is such as to grow every day more and more encroaching. ... The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependants and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society."
The point was that you don't strengthen freedom by handing the people over from their elected officials to their paymasters; the polity has to remain sovereign over the economy. What does this mean, exactly? The liberal state empowers corporate entities and investors who can tyrannize and degrade people in daily life, even if not ostensibly in public politics (although it doesn't take them long to invade the latter, as well.)
Gore avoids a dramatic answer, although he does slam "corporate consolidation and control" of the electronic media (including, he warns, the Internet). This makes him a fat target for the Brookses, but Gore is defending the same Lockean, entrepreneurial capitalism conservatives champion under the name of "free markets." He's challenging them to admit that vast economic engines, bought and sold anomically at the click of a broker's mouse, have few of the entrepreneur's virtues, and less of the ordinary citizen's regard for a republic in which we sometimes transcend our own private interests.
The Republican conservative strategy, and David Brooks' very modus operandus as a columnist, was sketched very well in Thucydides' account of the Mytilene debate, during which Diotodus convinces Athenians not to fall for the smears which vulcan orators like Brooks lay on candidates like Kerry and Gore. Diodotus warns Athenians not to trust a speaker who,
knowing that he cannot make a good speech in a bad cause, ... tries to frighten his opponents and his hearers by some good-sized pieces of misrepresentation. ... The good citizen, instead of trying to terrify the opposition, ought to prove his case in fair argument. And... when a man's advice is not taken, he should not even be disgraced, far less penalized. [If instead the losing candidate is treated respectfully, even when his advice is rejected,] speakers will be less likely to pursue further honors by speaking against their own convictions in order to make themselves popular; and unsuccessful speakers, too, will not struggle to win over the people by the same acts of flattery....
[Instead] a state of affairs has been reached where a good proposal honestly put forward is just as suspect as something thoroughly bad, and the result is that just as the speaker who advocates some monstrous measure has to win over the people by deceiving them, so also a man with good advice to give has to tell lies if he expects to be believed. And because of this refinement in intellectuality, the state is put into a unique position; it is only she to whom no one can ever do a good turn openly and without deception. For if one openly performs a patriotic action, the reward for one's pains is to be thought to have made something oneself on the side. ....
Dear Mr. Sleeper
Thanks for taking on Brooks. When I read his column last night I thought it was appalling personal and mean. Having not read Gore's book it is hard to know what to say about it except if Gore believes that without the printing press the West would not have had democracy, or at least its modern liberal form, that seems correct.
It is also interesting that Brooks is himself a proponent of a form of Darwinism himself. He seems to be part of a new group of conservatives who find in Darwin and new discoveries about the brain support of a naturalistic conservatives. In so doing he always leaves out the way humans adapt to the cultures and societies within which we live.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
May 29, 2007 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
This may be my all-time favorite tpmcafe post. Beautifully done, Jim!
May 29, 2007 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You hit the nail on the head with this post - well done. The Adams quite was quite telling. I'm hopeful that more and more people will pay attention to this stark warning; a warning which has obviously come true these days.
It never ceases to amaze me - people who oppose Bush's criminal wars of aggression are continually labelled as something awful - America Haters, with the terrorists, the cut and run crowd, or whatever other buzzword they've decided to spew.
But the reality is quite different. It's these war lovers that are acting with complete hatred towards everything this country is supposed to stand for - liberty, peace, prosperity...
They're quite willing to give up all that to quench their thirst for power, profits and war. The time for this to end is now.
Some further thoughts on this issue:
"The America-Haters Strike Again" - click here
May 29, 2007 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brooks editorial was disgusting, a show and tell of political smear, a pretense, a sham engagement. It is appalling that Brooks feels entitled to dump this bile into the public consciousness after hundreds of thousands have died because of toxic conservative fantasies. He has no shame. It is astonishing that as spin lies ridicule and opportunism have come to constitute our political discourse, Brooks tries to shoot the messenger who speaks of the restoration of truth. This more than anything undermines the credibility of Brooks.
The notion that Gore believes in machines not people is of course a farce. The technologies Gore writes about enable ordinary people to become a part of the discourse of ideas. This must be something that the likes of Brooks finds threatening.
May 29, 2007 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
David Brooks - a D level journalist formerly enamored with George W. Bush (an F level politician and human being).
Tom
May 29, 2007 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was disgusting. The David Brooks who appears on the Lehrer Hour seems like a reasonable person. The person who wrote today's column , I'd cross the street to avoid.
The day after the election in 2000 a couple of the commentators were highly annoyed when they were told they could see Gore , which meant they could see him playing touch football with his kids and I suppose a few of their friends. Where in the world does Brooks get the idea that Gore shuns human contact.
Gore is who he is. He can be boring , which he knows. He once appeared with a cardboard dummy of himself to make that point.. He does rant. He was a theology student after the service for a reason.. That is who he is.
If he adopted W's posture (phony , see below) of the guy with whom you could drink a beer that would be the pretence.
And OBTW Gore was deeply involved in the creation of the Net when he served on the House military affairs committee which approved and had oversight over Arpanet thus fostering the packet switching technology which makes the Net possible.
While I am ranting let me quote from a letter in the Boston Globe a few years ago . A musician. For extra money he plays in small groups at parties in peoples' ( rich peoples) houses. Including once playing at the Bush summer house in Maine . W was there.
Of all the times he's played in such places it stood out , he said , because of the absolute indifference with which he was treated. None of his other gigs had even come close to so completely ignoring his existence .
Gore is a complex human being. Interested in people but also interested in speculating about the kinds of - I think fascinating-things which Brooks finds pompous.
W is a facade. Perhaps even to himself.
If Brooks can't see that , what can he see ?
May 29, 2007 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just can't understand David Brooks. He can be one of the most astute columnists writing today. He can bring a new viewpoint and transparency to a murky situation. Most of his columns however are not so sharp, they are addressed to the public image of reality rather than to the reality itself, trying to insinuate his rather unpleasant beliefs into our worldview.
Then, sometimes he can be really and extremely obnoxious, makes you wonder how he can keep his job. Does anyone believe this inhuman picture of Al Gore? It is the columnists version of swift-boating -- take the strongest characteristics of your opponent, throw in some snark and some lies, shake well, and come out with an unflattering portrait that bears no relation to reality.
Jim Sleeper please keep it up -- this is exactly the kind of deconstruction we need.
May 29, 2007 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brooks is the poster boy for the solipsistic political elites - Newt comes to mind - in today's Republican party. (Somebody said that if someone professes to be a solipsist, throw a rock at his head. If he ducks, he's a liar.)
Every time Brooks exposes himself in public, what we see is a self-absorbed egotist.
May 29, 2007 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Promise us you'll never defend Al Gore again. It isn't journalists like Brooks who are a danger to American liberalism - we know what their motive is, it is journalists like Sleeper, who pretend a "balance" while damning and undermining the cause.
"Yes," says Mr. Sleeper, "Gore is a naif, an autodidact, a political stumblebum, he's even strange, but your guy is stranger." Why thank you, Mr. Sleeper, thank you for repeating (and even adding to - "a political stumblebum?") the canards heaped upon Gore by the media. That's quite a spirited defense, the "boy are these guys strange, but sometimes strange guys have some good ideas and we should listen to them" defense.
Don't offer any examples,or quotes or evidence to support such a claim, but you read it somewhere so it must be true. It isn't the Brookses of this country that got Bush (and those like him) elected, it is people like you, Mr. Sleeper, who serve as echo chambers for them, all in the cause of "balance."
May 29, 2007 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
George W Bush. Potemkin President.
May 29, 2007 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brooks is barely worth the time anymore, but I suppose if one is going to address his particular perversities, it is best to do it in the detailed fashion Jim Sleeper has done above. But why be so hard on Gore? Is he really such an eccentric who can only be defended by citing the worse qualities and mannerisms of his critics?
When I read the Brooks piece, I rolled my eyes at the string of unfounded assertions and baseless, mean-spirited, and personal attacks against Gore. The idea that Gore doesn't care about people is preposterous. It is not necessary to agree with Gore's arguments in his lectures on global warming to see that he is engaged with the audience and their concerns as people. One might make that criticism of some others on the left (and definitely on the right), but Al Gore? A charge absolutely without merit -- really to the point of being ridiculous.
After all, hasn't Brooks, in making the charge, tipped his cards to reveal just how lazy a thinker he often is? Isn't Brooks's critique of Gore's purported worldview ( "the chilliness and sterility" which "allows almost no role for family, friendship, neighborhood, or just face-to-face contact. [Gore] sees society the way you might see it from a speaking podium – as a public mass exercise with little allowance for intimacy or private life.") just a prefabricated right wing critique of Marxist determinism going back a century or more? Brooks strongly suggests that Gore harbors a totalitarian worldview -- one, say, like that in Nineteen Eighty-four or Brave new World. Oh, PuhLEEEZE!
As is his habit, Brooks has dragged out both the straw man and the argument with which to defeat him. It's efficient, but intellectually dishonest and incredibly lazy. Brooks's writings, and his apearances on television, have more of the stink of desperation about them than ever before because the people and ideas he defends have utterly failed in front of the whole world. It doesn't take a genius to see it, and, contrary to what Brooks probably thinks, it definitely doesn't take a genius to be David Brooks
Pantheon
May 29, 2007 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seems to me Brooks is only proving Gore's point. After all the books is about the assault on reason and when was the last time we had a reasoned argument from Brooks.
May 29, 2007 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've often thought the same thing about Mr. Brooks. I believe it's dependent on what he's trying to accomplish. For example, when he actually wants to probe and issue honestly, he can be very insightful and helpful--when he begins to try and protect his political territory, however (ie, knocking back what is shaping up to be a strong run by Gore, should he choose to take that route) he quickly devolves to the abhorrent, shallow, yet sadly effective, tactics of the rest of the neo-con right.
Hopefully challenges like Mr. Sleeper's will help him see that, and keep him doing the former work, rather than the latter...but I'm not holding my breath.
May 29, 2007 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am rarely in the business of praising posters, but I'll admit this post stands out by its sheer intelligence.
The contrast between Friedman and Brooks is striking. Both of them are intellectual mediocrities. But whereas Friedman contributes glib, superficial entries for "The Idiot's Guide to the World" Brooks suffers from the opposite problem. His major problem is that he is very very "deep" but unfortunately he has absolutely nothing to say. Zilch.
But he fancies himself as the next Weber and Paine rolled into one, so he has to take the nothingness that seeps out of his brain and make it sound deep and insightful.
Try this and explain to yourself why this guy still has a job as a journalist.
The politician must have been Lieberman and the reader YOU!
May 29, 2007 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice post, but I wonder if it’s better to ignore blowhards like Brooks or try to gin up a movement against them. Sometimes I think the more eyeballs they get, pro or con, the more their prestige. I don’t know how all of these Bushy pundits who have been so totally and completely wrong with all of the crap they have been shoveling for years, keep getting promoted and given bigger megaphones.
BevD makes a good point, though, I don’t think Mr. Sleeper was conceding Brooks take on Gore and Kerry. Perhaps, he could have been more unequivocal about it. These guys are in no way cold, naive geeks any more then they are the unpatriotic cowards that the draft-dodging cowardly warmongers made them out to be.
On a side note: Artappraisor- If you see a post as “average,” why rate it? Giving threes to good honest arguments (and fives to comparable ones) is just down-rating lite.
May 29, 2007 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
What struck me immediately about Brooks' column was that he was trotting out his faux populist pose. He does this rather often to score cheap political points. I think Sleeper hit the nail right on the head in his first graf with the George Wallace comparison. The difference might be that while Wallace probably was a dyed-in-the-wool anti-intellectual (which is not to say that he didn't amp it up for political mileage), Brooks is a cynic who just puts on the overalls-and-beer act to hide his--and his Party's--elitist agenda.
May 29, 2007 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The contrast between Friedman and Brooks is striking. Both of them are intellectual mediocrities. But whereas Friedman contributes glib, superficial entries for "The Idiot's Guide to the World" Brooks suffers from the opposite problem. His major problem is that he is very very "deep" but unfortunately he has absolutely nothing to say. Zilch."
I am not so sure about Brooks' depth, but I think you have put it very strikingly. They are both employed by one of the elite newspapers in this country and widely honored by academic institutions. Is it any wonder then that the level of political discourse in this country is so puerile and fantastic; when push comes to shove, Brooks always find his pseudo-intellectual path back to the intellectually barren, idea-less, political culture that genuflects before the leadership of Bush. I wonder if the Times, which seemed to be trying out Ann Althouse for a while, intends to unleash that intellectual giant as well.
May 29, 2007 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why does Brooks blow hot and cold, as you say? The best assessment of David Brooks I've ever read was in The Washington Monthly a few years ago: "Paradise Glossed: The Problem With David Brooks" by Nicholas Confessore. It's at
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0406.confessore.html
Confessore pores over Brooks' two books of "comic sociology" and his writings, not only in the Times, and finds an almost unvarying pattern: Brooks shifts back and forth from being a wry, insightful, and charming chronicler of American mores to being a Republican and/or neo-conservative hack, running interference for people and policies you'd think he'd be too smart to take on. When he's in his "hit man" mode, for some gullible liberals it's like the thirteenth chime of a clock, which not only startles them but casts doubt on the clock itself.
Beyond Confessori's marvelous (and marvelously written) piece, I have my own explanation for this, which has lot to do with Brooks' own past and cultural hard-wiring. But I haven't written it.
May 30, 2007 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't mean to sound hard on Gore. I meant to lance the boil of Brooks' stereotypes by conceding that others may share them, but the point is to vindicate Gore as a public leader, even if not a presidential candidate. In case you missed it, I argued here a few days ago that a Gore-Obama ticket could help the republic:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2007/may/24/gore_obama_and_a_coalition_against_the_politics_of_fear
May 30, 2007 12:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
That doesn't make much sense. You don't "lance the boil of Brooks' stereotypes" by agreeing with them and reinforcing them.
You built your entire argument on the premise that Gore and Kerry are "strange" and you didn't offer one example to support the claim. In fact, you seem to contradict it - you claim that Gore is addicted to the empty political gesture while maintaining the status quo. So does that make him "strange" or pretty much like every other politician?
May 30, 2007 5:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for this. I don't know why any intelligent person would bother to read David Brooks. He's just more noise in the MSM machine.
He regularly demonstrates his paucity of logical thinking in columns that the NY Times should be ashamed to run. That the NYT chooses to feature him and his colleague, Tom Friedman, is simply more evidence of how low the standards of NY Times have fallen.
May 30, 2007 5:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dumbing down discourse seems of a piece with undercutting public education and less federal activity in general. The result is less attention paid to Washington, which suits the suits just fine.
Hamilton emphasized one result of federal law being supreme--it would touch citizens directly, and therefore lead to increased scrutiny by the citizen. The inverse is what seems desired now.
May 30, 2007 6:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
But only in Bobo's world.
May 30, 2007 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
May 30, 2007 7:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
On a side note: Artappraisor- If you see a post as “average,” why rate it? Giving threes to good honest arguments (and fives to comparable ones) is just down-rating lite.
Artappraiser considers himself to be the arbitor of all things; he absolutely despises and expression of passion in a post. To rate an enthusiastic post as "average" is his method of put down.
Jan
May 30, 2007 7:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
But I haven't written it.
No fair...now I'll have to wait, Jim. Write on, McDuff.
My explanation? I default to Annie Ross:
My analyst told me (what) that I was right out of my head but I said dear doctor (yeah) I think that it's you instead 'cause I have got a thing that's unique and new it proves that I'll have the last laugh on you 'cause instead of one head I got two and you know two heads are better than one [link]
Neoboho
May 30, 2007 9:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Today, Friedman decries Iranian paranoid thuggery in detaining a grandma. What is of course missing from sophomoric Tom's account is any attempt to place the incident in context. Instead he prefers to openly stoke the fires for American airstrikes and new instability in the Middle East; we already have a Friedman Unit to measure his famous time intervals for the Friedman failure in Iraq ("democratic dominos are neat" for this boy-wonder); another measure is needed for stupidity in journalism and I would recommend Friedman as a basic unit.
Returning to his consistent puerile and sophomoric blather, Friedman makes no mention in his blather today of this February 6, 2007, AP report
"One Iraqi government official also said the diplomat was detained Sunday by a special Iraqi army unit that reports directly to the U.S. military... Tehran condemned the abduction and blamed U.S. forces in Iraq." or of the previous "History of detentions
The incident comes nearly a month after U.S. detained five Iranians in northern Iraq and accused them of having links to an Iranian military faction blamed for funding and arming Iraqi militants....
The White House also has authorized U.S. troops in Iraq to kill or capture Iranian agents deemed to be a threat, saying evidence was mounting that Iran is supporting terrorists inside Iraq and is a major supplier of bombs and other weapons used to target U.S. forces. Tehran has denied the charges."
or of this USA Today/AP report: "Iranian diplomat says CIA tortured him"
"TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian diplomat freed two months after being abducted in Iraq accused the CIA of torturing him during his detention, state television reported Saturday.
Jalal Sharafi said the CIA questioned him about Iran's relations with Iraq and assistance to various Iraqi groups, according to state television.
"Once they heard my response that Iran merely has official relations with the Iraqi government and officials, they intensified tortures and tortured me through different methods days and nights," he said."
or of the Us efforts to destabilize the regime in Iran as oulined in this report:
"Bush Authorizes New Covert Action against Iran"
Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:
ABC News, May 22, 2007. The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.
"I can't confirm or deny whether such a program exists or whether the president signed it, but it would be consistent with an overall American approach trying to find ways to put pressure on the regime," said Bruce Riedel, a recently retired CIA senior official who dealt with Iran and other countries in the region.
A National Security Council spokesperson, Gordon Johndroe, said, "The White House does not comment on intelligence matters." A CIA spokesperson said, "As a matter of course, we do not comment on allegations of covert activity."
The sources say the CIA developed the covert plan over the last year and received approval from White House officials and other officials in the intelligence community.
Officials say the covert plan is designed to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program and end aid to insurgents in Iraq.
"There are some channels where the United States government may want to do things without its hand showing, and legally, therefore, the administration would, if it's doing that, need an intelligence finding and would need to tell the Congress," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official.
Current and former intelligence officials say the approval of the covert action means the Bush administration, for the time being, has decided not to pursue a military option against Iran.
"Vice President Cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike," said former CIA official Riedel, "but I think they have come to the conclusion that a military strike has more downsides than upsides."
The covert action plan comes as U.S. officials have confirmed Iran had dramatically increased its ability to produce nuclear weapons material, at a pace that experts said would give them the ability to build a nuclear bomb in two years.
Riedel says economic pressure on Iran may be the most effective tool available to the CIA, particularly in going after secret accounts used to fund the nuclear program.
"The kind of dealings that the Iranian Revolution Guards are going to do, in terms of purchasing nuclear and missile components, are likely to be extremely secret, and you're going to have to work very, very hard to find them, and that's exactly the kind of thing the CIA's nonproliferation center and others would be expert at trying to look into," Riedel said.
Under the law, the CIA needs an official presidential finding to carry out such covert actions. The CIA is permitted to mount covert "collection" operations without a presidential finding.
"Presidential findings" are kept secret but reported to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other key congressional leaders.
The "nonlethal" aspect of the presidential finding means CIA officers may not use deadly force in carrying out the secret operations against Iran.
Still, some fear that even a nonlethal covert CIA program carries great risks.
"I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within Iran," said Vali Nasr, adjunct senior fellow for Mideast studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"And this covert action is now being escalated by the new U.S. directive, and that can very quickly lead to Iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow," Nasr said.
Other "lethal" findings have authorized CIA covert actions against al Qaeda, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
Also briefed on the CIA proposal, according to intelligence sources, were National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams.
"The entire plan has been blessed by Abrams, in particular," said one intelligence source familiar with the plan. "And Hadley had to put his chop on it."
Abrams' last involvement with attempting to destabilize a foreign government led to criminal charges.
He pleaded guilty in October 1991 to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress about the Reagan administration's ill-fated efforts to destabilize the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in Central America, known as the Iran-Contra affair. Abrams was later pardoned by President George H. W. Bush in December 1992.
In June 2001, Abrams was named by then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to head the National Security Council's office for democracy, human rights and international operations. On Feb. 2, 2005, National Security Advisor Hadley appointed Abrams deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for global democracy strategy, one of the nation's most senior national security positions.
As earlier reported on the Blotter on ABCNews.com, the United States has supported and encouraged an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, that has conducted deadly raids inside Iran from bases on the rugged Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan "tri-border region."
U.S. officials deny any "direct funding" of Jundullah groups but say the leader of Jundullah was in regular contact with U.S. officials.
American intelligence sources say Jundullah has received money and weapons through the Afghanistan and Pakistan military and Pakistan's intelligence service. Pakistan has officially denied any connection.
A report broadcast on Iranian TV last Sunday said Iranian authorities had captured 10 men crossing the border with $500,000 in cash along with "maps of sensitive areas" and "modern spy equipment."
A senior Pakistani official told ABCNews.com the 10 men were members of Jundullah.
The leader of the Jundullah group, according to the Pakistani official, has been recruiting and training "hundreds of men" for "unspecified missions" across the border in Iran."
Now Tom Friedman has the NY Times as his platform to spread his cock-and-bull just as William Safire ("Atta in Prague") and Judith Miller ("WMD, WMD, WMD"), but one should not mistake what one reads in the NY Times with anything remotely resembling a true or realistic picture of the world. Indeed Iran paranoid! Iran thuggery! Oh, the outrage.
May 30, 2007 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, a new heterodox "science" of psychoanalysis of anonymous internet raters by studying their ratings. Well, you have my judged my sex wrong, for one.
Don Key: if you don't like my ratings, you can counteract them with your own. Everyone has a vote, that's the way it works.
May 30, 2007 10:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, I vote that you don’t down-rate commenters just because you think they are somehow “radical.”
May 30, 2007 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, now you have completed the picture:
Artappraiser considers herself to be the arbitor of all things; she absolutely despises any expression of passion in a post. To rate an enthusiastic post as "average" is her method of put down.
Too bad...
Jan
May 30, 2007 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
"absolutely despises any expression of passion"
The rating system exists so we can all be the "arbitor of all things."
You are wrong about artappraiser's ratings. In fact she downrates name-calling and personal attacks. Attacking a public figure (like Brooks) is not appropriate for this website. Attacking a fellow poster is worse. Attacking an invited columnist is even worse.
I agree with most of her ratings.
May 30, 2007 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
One thing missing from this discussion is Brooks' ecological niche. I would guess that he is read exclusively by liberals. Conservatives wouldn't be interested. He makes his living trying to explain true conservatives to us liberals.
I'd be curious to know evidence for or against this view.
May 30, 2007 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I think he's sort of the inverse Newt: whereas Gingrich the self-styled "revolutionary" clearly revels in his bomb-throwing and even in his lies for the cause, what looks like egotism in Brooks seems more a kind of self-inflation of the deeply insecure. Brooks has always struck me as much more like the misfit smart kid who somehow finds himself adopted by the school's star quarterback, and is forever working to prove his value by letting him copy his homework and cheat off his tests. I can't decide whether the good stuff is his self-loathing forcing intermittent bursts of intellectual honesty or just the awareness that maintaining some credibility is important to the cause (and he is in the Times, after all).
Nice piece, Jim Sleeper, about Brooks and more -- thanks for the effort.
May 30, 2007 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
What?
Attacking a public figure (like Brooks) is not appropriate for this website.
Criticizing Brooks' failings including his many factual errors as a writer (public figure?) is not the same as attacking. If Brooks's latest diatribe against Gore is not personal, then what is?
I agree with most of her ratings.
Good for you. I sometimes do; I often don't. That doesn't equal an attack either; I guess one person's passionate post is just name-calling to someone else.
Jan
May 30, 2007 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, it’s no big deal in the scheme of things but it’s wrong to use ratings to muffle criticism. Attacking a public figure like Brooks (through reasoned criticism) is exactly what this website is all about. Sure, flat out name-calling and ad hominid attacks deserve down-rating. But that is not what we’re talking about.
Artappraiser went down this thread rating people, not their comments, with threes, which next to the fives given to equivalent comments is a put-down. In the past, she's used ones and twos. It's her right but is not called for. Like others, I have been one-rated by artappraiser once, I recall, for pointing out that the government had a weak case against their highly-touted terrorists like Padilla. No name calling and nothing even inflammatory. I was attacking artappraiser’s rating game, not her personally, and just as it is her right to rate as she wants, it is my right to question it.
May 30, 2007 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's maybe a lost cause, but Count Grigori Potemkin was an able, energetic and ruthless politician who built several cities as Catherine the Great's first proconsul in the vast territories she conquered from the Ottomans. The "villages" slur was concocted by his enemies at court after Catherine's successful tour of these - including the expected stage-management; but Sebastopol wasn't built of cardboard.
A better comparison would be Marie Antoinette; she may never have said "let them eat cake", but even her sympathetic biographers don't deny she was vain and clueless, and failed to escape from the bubble of Versailles.
May 30, 2007 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do not want to get directly into a discussion of ratings but I really do not think what you are saying is correct. There are two posts here (on this thread) from a poster that have earned his (or her) comments a 2 from artappraiser. I do not care about that; I care about your comment and how divorced it seems from my reality. Please explain your comment in regard to these. Here is the first:
" ' I am not so sure about Brooks' depth',
Heh.
Nor am I.
But in Bobo's world he's a very, very deep thinker. And serious too!"
and here is the second:
" 'I just can't understand David Brooks. He can be one of the most astute columnists writing today. He can bring a new viewpoint and transparency to a murky situation.'
But only in Bobo's world."
Are you really going to say these posts are worthy of a 2 because of name-calling or personal attacks?
May 30, 2007 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Attacking a public figure is not appropriate for this website? You don't say... with the inability to talk about Bush, Rove, Cheney, et al. (all public figures) it's going to be awfully quiet around here!
May 31, 2007 1:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Please explain your comment in regard to these."
OK I will. In the first case, noblesseoblige made (IMHO) a very intriguing and interesting comment, and then you VLaszlo responded very appropriately, adding to the conversation. Then gonzone made a snarky put-down of Brooks with no real content. Or rather, I should say that if there is content I don't understand it.
In the second case, I myself made the first comment. It was a serious comment on an issue I had often wondered about it and I tried to be as clear as I could. Again gonzone replied with a snarky put-down (of Brooks and maybe of me as well), again with unclear content.
I could be generous and assume that gonzone means "I disagree. Brooks is never worthy of attention. He and those who read his columns and his books are living in their own world divorced from reality."
Or I could assume that these comments are like the us-against-them snipes that fill the screens of the FreeRepublic and so many other blogs. I don't know. So I think a 2 rating "Marginal" below average is just about right for these two comments.
May 31, 2007 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I strongly disagree. But an argument over ratings isn't really worthwhile.
May 31, 2007 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Terrific piece, and just the sort of detailed, intellectually serious argumentation that's needed in this sentence fragment age. This one spears a fellow who has skated on thin intellectual ice for years.
June 9, 2007 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink