Robert Novak: Unabashed Whore for the Ultra Right

Robert Novak: Unabashed Whore for the Ultra Right
Using Our Boys to Feather His Nest
by Mac MacArthur

Sunday, April 11, 1999 --- New York (APJP) -- I received this e-mail from an incensed reader this morning:

Subject: Letter To The Editor
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 03:29:42 -0400
From: [name withheld]
To: editors@apj.us

There was an article posted on one of the "Freeper" that was a repeat of a column written by Robert Novak, that I think deserves to be dissected by a professional journalist. I suspect that these people make up a number of articles that appear on their site; but I am pretty sure this one is genuine.

In this column, Mr. Novak claims that he had a tip that the Serbs were going to kidnap some of our soldier's; but said he didn't act on this tip, because he couldn't confirm it. Given that 90% of what we see or read in the mainstream press is based on rumor, unconfirmed tips, and in some cases the author's imagination, I really cannot believe what Mr. Novak says is his reason for withholding this information from the public.

He states, and rightly so, that the President is responsible for the security of our troops. Well, I think that Mr. Novak is responsible for making public information about the possible kidnapping of our troops, before it happens. If he had done this, maybe precautions could have been taken to prevent this tragedy.

I sure noticed that he did not hesitate to make this information public after those three young men were captured. Therefore, I have wonder if his motives were to keep quiet, in order to mount another attack on President Clinton. If so, then Mr. Novak is to be reviled.

However, I am not a journalist; so I would appreciate having the viewpoint of journalists whose opinions I respect. Therefore I would appreciate your review and comments.

Thank You

So, I phoned the Chicago Sun-Times and found the article in question. Sure enough, there it was -- an after-the-fact attack on the Clinton Administration for "allowing" our boys to be kidnapped.

The Novak piece, published on April 8th, 1999, is full of bluster and little fact. It is quintessential Novak, proud operative for the ultra-right. Most of you have seen him on his own television show along with his sidekick, the more soft-spoken "Roly" Evans, who most often plays Ed McMahon to Novak's Carson. Only John McLaughlin out-Novaks Novak in pure bamboozelism and unfettered prevarication.

Novak titled his little editorial "Seizure of U.S. troops a mystery." I wondered just what the "mystery" was to Novak. As I saw it, three of our men were either patrolling the border or on a mission for our government and NATO. They were ambushed and captured -- another in the million-story horror of war throughout the ages. But Novak, weasel that he is, decided to use this overplayed anecdote -- which pales in the penumbra of thousands upon thousands of Kosovars lying starving or dead on the blood trail of genocide from Belgrade to Macedonia -- in order to bash the White House, nothing more.

Let's take a look at his pap, and see it for what it is: an unbelievable, self-serving pile of rotting cabbage which purports to make Novak an "insider" and the President a moron.

April 8, 1999
BY ROBERT NOVAK
SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

I received a call March 23 from a national security source who told me of secret U.S. intelligence that Serb forces were prepared to abduct American troops stationed in Macedonia. I could not confirm the tip, and besides, it seemed inconceivable that the U.S. military would permit this to happen.

Now, wait a minute. Stop and think: who in the world would telephone Novak, of all people, to tell him that "Serb forces were prepared to abduct soldiers stationed in Macedonia?" One little fact seems apparent on its face: if any opposition army had the chance to capture men from the other side, they would. We would do the same, I assure you, and for good reason -- less men, less damage.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

But to Novak, who is anything but stupid and everything that's malicious, it seems "inconceivable" that the U.S. military would "permit" this to happen.

"Permit" it to happen? What the Uncle Sam in Hell does that mean? Is there now some kind of war convention that mandates opposing forces to request permission to shoot, maim or capture men or women from the other side? Of course not. But Novak has to lull the dull reader into believing this in order to make the rest of his evil case.

Wrong indeed. On March 31, three American soldiers were seized along the Macedonia-Kosovo border in an incident drenched with ambiguity and mystery. Sen. John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has departed from his steadfast support of the U.S.-NATO attacks on Yugoslavia to raise serious questions about what in the world the American troops were doing the day they were taken prisoner.

What's really happening here is that Novak wants to know exactly what happened in the capture sequence of our three soldiers. That way he can make more money, which, after all, is his rasion d'ètre. All he knows is what NATO chose to tell him, and that's not near enough to hang BIll Clinton, whom Novak wants you to suppose is running troop movements from the Oval Office on a minute-by-minute, man-by-man basis. He selects John Warner of all people as his foil -- Warner, who is perhaps the most disrespected senior citizen of the Senate, the man who married Liz Taylor for her money and her glitz in order to win and keep his seat, then cast her aside like an old, worn out shoe. Warner has, of course, like the rest of the right wing GOP, decided to flip over 180 degrees on warfare and become a dove for the sole purpose of keeping the barrage of attacks on President Clinton going at full speed. Novak does not mention, of course, that it isn't his, Warner's, or anyone in Congress's business what those men were doing the day they were captured. The Pentagon and the Commander-in-Chief -- the civilian Commander-in-Chief, wisely designed by the founding fathers -- are the only ones who may know and, for that matter, have a right to know right now. The men may have gotten lost. They may have been on a classified mission to blow something (or someone) up. They may have followed some women into the woods. It does not matter -- whatever occurred, it is not public business. To my mind, the fact that they were captured belies a mission about which NATO is intentionally unrevealing. Perhaps the generals want to try it again, with three other boys, or perhaps they are embarrassed to say the men were on a mission to assassinate Führer Milosevic. Whatever the case, it certainly isn't Warner's business, -- let alone Novak's or anyone else's.

No answers have been given to Warner, but the most haunting question is unasked: Why was the intelligence report on the danger of abduction ignored? The chairman, a former secretary of the Navy and a stalwart friend of the military, did not ask simply because he did not know. The warning was not shared with him.

Of course no answers were given to Warner. He cannot be trusted. "Haunting question?" If it was so haunting, why didn't you print it, Novak? As our reader pointed out, perhaps you could have trumpted a warning that would have saved these boys from capture. Certainly it wasn't because Novak hoped it would happen so he could put Bill Clinton in a similar position to JImmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or other Presidents who must bear the public wrath over dead, wounded and missing troops -- or was it? Novak's convenient excuse -- that he could not confirm his original tip -- is as pathetic an excuse as a drunken teen telling his parents that he didn't "realize" the punch at the party was spiked.

Such a failure of communication typifies the U.S. operation in Macedonia. Rather than a sinister motive to deceive, the events there suggest bumbling that is out of character with the image of a high-tech superpower projected in Washington and Brussels briefings.

"A failure of communication?" The intelligence report -- if you can call it that -- was just one of a thousand such reports that stream over the desks of national security staff every day. It seems obvious to me that in any war, the army on the other side is plotting to capture its enemy.

Why is this such a surprise to Novak?

Well, the answer is that it isn't. Novak, like any 7th grade schoolboy, knows that war has few if any rules -- and that capturing soldiers is not against those rules that do exist. Yet the liar (and Novak is a liar and twister of truth in my opinion) attempts to convince you that some dunce who works for the National Security Council was sitting around a few weeks before the soldiers were captured and read a report from Macedonia from another dunce who writes "We have information that the Serbs want to capture NATO soldiers!"

In Novak's fantasy, the NSC staffer rushes to the Oval Office: "Mr. President, Mr. President, the Serbs may capture some of our men! What shall we do? What shall we do?"

The President, if you would believe Novak's subtrefuge, replies "Who cares? Let them. It will boost voter approval for this war!" What the President ought to have said, according to Novak's line of unreason, was "What!!? Capture soldiers during a war? I will not stand for such a thing! Stop them immediately. If just one of our boys is captured, it's your job!!!"

It surely was no secret that any adversary of the United States would consider imitating Iran's 1979 manipulation of American public opinion by holding hostages, but the secret intelligence was much more precise. It was known to NATO staff officers in Brussels, demolishing the possible explanation that the warning was not passed to the Pentagon by the State Department.

Huh? Mr. Novak, I think that capturing soldiers is not really a "manipulation" of the American public. It is simply a reality of the tragedy of warfare. What Iran has to do with this is beyond even your Disneyesque imagination. The fact that some NATO fool in Brussels read this so-called "intelligence" has absolutely no point although you strain to make one. It would be like NATO intelligence freaking out over a report that Serb soldiers were "actually going to use bullets" to defend themselves. What "alarm" would the be passed to the Pentagon then?

"WARNING: BULLETS MAY BE USED AGAINST U.S. TROOPS IN SERBIA AND SURROUNDING COUNTRIES"

Yeah, right.

You are absurd, Mr. Novak -- simply and connivingly absurd.

Even without the intelligence report, however, Warner on April 1 asserted that "to have put U.S. soldiers within just a few miles of a hostile border, someone has to provide this senator an answer to that question." When the senator visited U.S. troops on a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Macedonia last September, "you could clearly see the difficulty in delineating these borders. I mean, they're not marked."

Speaking of absurd, Senator Warner's statement that someone had better provide him an answer about why U.S. soldiers were within a few miles of Serbia makes him the Emperor of Absurdity. What kind of nonsense is this? Why were soldiers a few miles from the border of a country upon which we were making war? It boggles the mind. But, then again, it is Senator Warner that made this ludicrous demand, is it not? The reader must realize that this farce is designed solely to put your otherwise keen insight to bed -- in deep slumber -- while Novak rants about nothing, absolutely nothing but the most common conduct of war.

Once the troops were dispatched to the border in a Humvee, however, the U.S. Army's standard procedure prescribed a "rapid reaction force"--probably including another land vehicle and an armed helicopter--ready in case the patrol was attacked. But there was no such preparation, even with U.S. bombardment under way in nearby Kosovo.

How does Novak know? If the troops were dispatched on a secret mission there wouldn't be any helicopters or support troops circling around bringing attention to them. If the men were just "cruising" on a much needed lark, there wouldn't be a patrol to rescue them either. In any case, Novak is simply whistling in the wind, as usual.

Most puzzling, however, is why the soldiers were in Macedonia at all March 31. They had belonged to the 350-man American contingent that was part of the UN peacekeeping force assigned to the former Yugoslav republic six years ago. But that operation was canceled in February, when China used its UN Security Council veto to terminate the peacekeeping mission (because of Macedonian ties with Taiwan).

Most puzzling? Novak wishes you to believe that you should be puzzled as to the whereabouts of our men on March 31st -- as if this is some magic date that we must adhere to in our military planning and operations. Yes, Mr. Novak, they may have belonged to a UN peacekeeping force at on time -- THAT'S WHY THEY WERE CHOSEN TO BE WHERE THEY WERE -- NOW A PART OF A NATO WARMAKING FORCE, you idiot! (Excuse the lack of nicety here, but one does get angry, doesn't one?)

That mission officially ended Feb. 28, with 350 Americans removing UN blue berets and replacing them with Army helmets. Their subsequent status is unclear. Warner was told the troops were under NATO command, only providing "force protection" for the 12,000 men (no Americans included) assembled in Macedonia to move into Kosovo for peacekeeping. But when asked whether they were under UN or NATO command, a Pentagon spokesman said, "They are U.S. soldiers." That means they were under American operational command.

How conveniently unclear to Novak. No, it doesn't mean they were under American command -- and Novak uses the term "operational" command to disguise this. It simply means that the Pentagon was sick of stupid questions like Novak's. Whether under U.S. or NATO command, those three boys were part of a team made up of men and women from 19 different nations. They are loyal to all of them. They are trying to protect all of them: French, British, German, Dutch -- and fifteen other nationalities.

What possible significance does this paragraph have? None, really -- except to attempt to weave another lie into his basket of deceit to "prove" that the Pentagon is in league with the White House to "fool" the American people into thinking that Bill Clinton might really care about every single U.S. soldier or sailor injured, captured, or killed.

Well, Mr. Novak, he does care -- certainly more than you. The President isn't making a mockery of this action merely to further his political or, in your case, theatrical career.

Warner publicly posed these questions on April 1: "Why were these troops still in Macedonia over a month after the UN mission ended? Who decided to keep these troops in Macedonia, and for what purpose? What was the assigned mission of these troops?" That sounds like a senatorial investigation in the making, but Warner is a senator of the old school who abhors any dissonant message sent from Capitol Hill to Belgrade while the war is being fought.

Yes, it does sound like yet another Senate investigation of the White House and the Pentagon it controls by law -- another waste of millions of dollars by the Imperial Congress over nothing but the insane ranting of a second-rate "journalist" who is, in reality, nothing more than a thespian hired by the GOP to discredit anything that William Jefferson Clinton is involved in.

Warner's House counterpart, Chairman Floyd Spence of the National Security Committee, might not be quite that bipartisan. So, just before an all-Republican congressional delegation headed by Spence departed for Europe last Friday, the scheduled stop in Macedonia was peremptorily canceled. It could not have been because of danger, with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott visiting there Sunday. Is there something about the abduction of the soldiers that the Defense Department wants to keep from prying Republican congressmen?

Go ahead readers, laugh out loud. Novak, "genius" that he is, wants you to believe that the Pentagon would have allowed Senator Warner and Congressman Spence to stop over in Macedonia to make televised trouble for the Commander-in-Chief, and that the military couldn't trust them not to find out the truth -- that men get captured duirng wars, and that wars are not planned by the second, and that during wars bad things happen that, even if anticipated, could not possibly all be countered.

No, Mr. Novak. Senator Warner and Congressman Spence were not allowed in Macedonia because the Pentagon was not going to allow these two flakes to make a mockery of our men merely to get another cheap rabbit punch in for the endless and tiresome GOP quest to humiliate the White House.

Robert Novak, you should be ashamed of yourself. You should be ashamed at your pretense of being a good journalist or even editorialist. You should be especially ashamed of using the personal tragedy of three young men now captive in the enemy camp in your cooked-up scenario to humiliate other fine men and women who defend this nation and prosecute its wars.

You are a pathetic excuse for a human being; a malicious and all-too-wealthy self-serving trodder of the boards, a man who will stoop to anything to purvey lies designed to hurt others is a man who deserves not a ounce of respect.

If you had any sense, any dignity at all, you would retire and leave the world to better men, to real newsmen and women who do their damndest to report the truth.

Click here for Mac MacArthur's previous commentary in American Politics Journal.