Romney and Huckabee's Religious Intolerance

Nonbelievers have long been more tolerant of believers in office than the other way around.

At Salon.com, Joe Conason writes:

Distasteful as all the Bible thumping and ostentatious piety of the Republican presidential aspirants certainly are, the time may have come to address their religious pretensions directly, instead of turning away in mild disgust. For the truth is that no matter how often candidates like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee promise to uphold the Constitution and protect religious freedom, they are clearly seeking to impose the restrictive tests of faith that the nation's founders abhorred.

The most egregious offender against basic American civics today is Huckabee, who told a group of students at Liberty University, the center of higher learning founded by the late Jerry Falwell, that his sudden rise in the Iowa polls is an act of God. He compared the improvement in his political fortunes to the New Testament miracle of the loaves and fishes. He wasn't joking, as both his demeanor and his words demonstrated.

The Rev. Huckabee has proved willing to risk his oversold reputation as the "nice" evangelical with a primary strategy that draws attention to his qualifications as a "Christian leader," in contrast to the suspect Mormonism of Romney. Huckabee was honest enough not to deny that he believes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a cult -- and in fact, many if not most of his fellow Southern Baptists regard the LDS church as a satanic cult.

In response, Romney delivered an address that simultaneously pleaded for religious tolerance and urged intolerance of what he termed the "religion of secularism." The former Massachusetts governor at once declined to discuss the specific dogmas of his own faith while seeking to convince the bigots in his political party that, like them, he accepts Jesus Christ as the Son of God and his Savior. (Actually, Mormon beliefs about Jesus, which Romney insists he will not abandon, are considerably more complicated than his speech implied and bear little resemblance to the theology of orthodox Christianity.)

Whatever bland assurances they may offer to the contrary, both Romney and Huckabee have implicitly endorsed religious tests for a presidential candidacy. Both suggest that only leaders who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are qualified to lead. Huckabee says that we should choose a president who speaks "the language of Zion," meaning a fundamentalist Christian like himself. Romney says that among the questions that may appropriately be asked of aspiring presidential candidates is what they believe about Jesus Christ, a question he endeavored to answer in a way that would assuage suspicions about his own religion.

So if these two worthy gentlemen seek to exploit or extol their own faith, why should we bar ourselves from exploring the subject more deeply? They have invited a discussion of the sublime and the absurd in their religious doctrines, and of how those doctrines would influence them in office. We have already seen the destruction inflicted on America and the world by a dogmatic chief executive who believes that God urged him to wage war. (And let's not forget that Rudolph Giuliani, among others, has echoed the notion that President Bush was divinely chosen and inspired.)

We can begin with Romney's speech Thursday, in which he declared, as Joan Walsh noted with alarm, that there can be no liberty without faith. "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom ... Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

This statement is so patently false that it scarcely deserves refutation. If Romney has studied the bloody history of his own church, then he knows that the religious fervor of its adversaries drove them to deprive the Mormons not only of their freedom but their lives, and that the Mormons reacted in kind. If he has studied the bloody history of the world's older religions, then he knows that the most devout Christians of all sects have not hesitated to suppress, torture and murder "heretics" throughout history. Only the strictest separation of church and state has permitted the establishment of societies where freedom of conscience prevails -- and those freedoms are firmly rooted in societies where organized religion has long been in decline.

Surely Romney knows that Mormonism, in particular, was historically hostile to liberty for blacks as well as women. The founders of his church believed that God had cursed the world's dark-skinned people. They rejected abolitionism and later the civil rights movement. And their acceptance of full membership for African-Americans in the LDS church dates back only 30 years.

If Romney is going to attack humanists and secularists as "wrong," then let him explain why they were so far ahead of his church on the greatest moral issues of the past half-century.

As for Huckabee, let him answer a few pertinent questions about his faith, too. Does he actually believe in creationist dogma that insists the planet is less than 10,000 years old, and that humans once walked with dinosaurs? How would that loony idea influence his science policies as president? Is he a believer in "end times" eschatology, which holds that American foreign policy should be shaped by the coming Armageddon in the Middle East? Would he apply the harsh punishments of the Old Testament to biblical sins such as homosexuality and adultery?

Phonies like Huckabee and Romney complain constantly about the supposed religious intolerance of secular liberals. But the truth is that liberals -- including agnostics and atheists -- have long been far more tolerant of religious believers in office than the other way around. They helped elect a Southern Baptist named Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976, and today they support a Mormon named Harry Reid who is the Senate majority leader -- which makes him the highest-ranking Mormon officeholder in American history. Nobody in the Democratic Party has displayed the slightest prejudice about Reid's religion.

Liberals and progressives have no apologies to make, or at least no more than libertarians and conservatives do. Cherishing the freedoms protected by a secular society need not imply any disrespect for religion. But when candidates like Romney and Huckabee press the boundaries of the Constitution to promote themselves as candidates of faith, it is time to push back.

The GOP's Spreading Plague

Voters are notoriously slow in voting out politicians accused of corruption, but they may reach the tipping point with the latest revelations.

Joe Conason writes:

To be an honest Republican these days must be to wonder what awful revelation is coming next -- and how the Grand Old Party, which once claimed to represent political reform, became a front for sleaze, corruption and cynical criminality. Across the country, from the Capitol to statehouses, Republican officials are under indictment, under investigation or under suspicion.

This week's headlines featured the indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay and the probe of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, but the infection of venality among their fellow partisans is now reaching epidemic proportions. So widespread is the plague that keeping track of all the individual cases, and their increasingly baroque variations, has become a distinct challenge.

Consider Jack Abramoff, once the prince of K Street lobbyists and a dedicated right-wing ideologue who boasted of his powerful connections to DeLay, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the entire Republican apparatus in Washington. Already under investigation by the Justice Department for his influence peddling among House members, including DeLay, and his swindling of Indian tribes, Abramoff was indicted last month for bank fraud in a separate South Florida case involving a casino boat company that he partly owned.

The fraud allegedly committed by Abramoff and his business partner Adam Kidan involved a phony wire transfer they used to purchase a controlling interest in SunCruz from the company's founder, Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, in 2001.

Abramoff and Kidan later fell out with Boulis in a bitter business dispute that turned violent. In February 2001, gunmen ambushed Boulis on a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., highway and shot him repeatedly. On Tuesday, Florida authorities arrested three New York men with mob connections for the Boulis killing. Two of the men -- Anthony Moscatiello and Tony Ferrari -- had received payments totaling more than $240,000 from Kidan and Abramoff. Moscatiello, a longtime associate of the Gambino Mafia family, and Ferrari were supposedly providing food and consulting services to SunCruz -- or so Kidan claimed when questioned by prosecutors. There is no evidence, however, that Moscatiello and Ferrari provided any services to the company.

Connecting the dots isn't difficult here: Kidan and Abramoff want to get rid of Boulis, who won't go away. Kidan and Abramoff hire Moscatiello and Ferrari with SunCruz money. Moscatiello and Ferrari allegedly whack Boulis, without any motive of their own. If the Broward County state's attorney has sufficient evidence to win convictions for a capital crime, some people will probably be talking soon in hope of avoiding the hot shot.

The stunning fall of Abramoff, who has yet to hit bottom, is certainly the most colorful tale of Republican depravity. The corporate money laundering to Texas politicians that led to DeLay's conspiracy indictment, and the suspicious insider stock transaction that spurred investigations of Frist by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, seem mundane by comparison. Outrage will be warranted if their misconduct is proved, but everyone sadly knows that these felonies are now common practice in our political and corporate culture.

Corporate misbehavior has also brought down right-wing publisher Conrad Black, neoconservative strategist and former Bush advisor Richard Perle and the entire corporate board of Hollinger Inc., the Republican-friendly media conglomerate formerly controlled by Lord Black -- and that he and others are plausibly accused of illicitly looting for their own benefit. Furious shareholders forced Black to relinquish control of the company and are suing him, as well as Perle and former Black deputy David Radler, for $500 million. The SEC is also suing Black and Radler, and the Justice Department is investigating the former Hollinger directors.

Last month, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who also happens to be the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, accepted Radler's guilty plea to mail fraud and wire fraud. Radler is now believed to be cooperating in the prosecution of what former SEC chairman Richard Breeden, a Republican who investigated Hollinger on behalf of shareholders, termed a "corporate kleptocracy."

Kleptocratic morality evidently ruled at least two Republican statehouses in the Midwest as well. Currently under indictment are former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, whose trial on bribery charges began last week, and Gov. Robert Taft of Ohio, who pleaded no contest last month to charges of accepting illegal gifts from a state contractor.

That contractor is Thomas Noe, a coin dealer who received lucrative investment deals with the state's Workers Compensation Fund and is now at the center of a gigantic scandal known as "Coingate." More than $12 million has disappeared from the fund, and former GOP official Noe stands accused of laundering money to various Republican politicians, including the Bush-Cheney campaign. Like Abramoff, Noe is a Bush "Pioneer," responsible for raising at least $100,000 for the president last year.

Still another Pioneer is currently under criminal investigation in a celebrated corruption case involving Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a prominent Republican representative from San Diego with a senior position on the House defense appropriations subcommittee. On Aug. 18, FBI and IRS agents raided the offices of defense contractor and Bush fundraiser Brent Wilkes.

Wilkes is reportedly a former business associate of Mitchell J. Wade, the head of a defense contracting firm called MZM Inc. who is under investigation in San Diego for alleged bribery of Cunningham. According to newspaper reports, Wade purchased a home owned by Cunningham at a price inflated by at least $700,000, and also permitted the congressman to use his 42-foot yacht free of charge. Federal agents searched Wade's offices in July.

Although prosecutors have brought no criminal charges in the case yet, they have filed civil court documents describing the home sale as a violation of federal bribery laws -- and Cunningham, who has served in Congress for decades, has already announced that he will not seek another term next year.

The Republican National Committee's new treasurer, Robert Kjellander, is under investigation too. (Naturally, he is also a Bush Pioneer.) Not long after he assumed his new post at the party's Washington headquarters, Kjellander received a federal subpoena for records of his dealings with the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, a state pension fund, and the Carlyle Group. Federal prosecutors are reportedly looking into alleged corruption at the fund, and have asked Kjellander to provide information about a $4.5 million fee he received from Carlyle for his role in arranging investments by the fund with the huge private equity fund. Carlyle, of course, is closely connected to the Bush administration, including the president's father, George H.W. Bush, who has worked for the firm as a rainmaker and advisor.

In fairness, it should be said that all these pols and parasites may be innocent (except for those already convicted), or at least not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is also true that voters have historically been slow to evict politicians from office because of corruption charges.

But public opinion of congressional Republicans is hitting new lows, and Americans are growing furious about the war in Iraq, the government response to Hurricane Katrina and rising energy prices. The natural impulse to throw the rascals out can only be encouraged by the Gilded Age spectacles now unfolding in Washington and in cities across the country as the indictments continue to come down between now and November 2006.

The Case for War Has Not Been Made

Colin Powell showed that Saddam Hussein is resisting disarming. But he didn't prove that he's an immediate threat.



At Salon.com, Joe Conason reports:
Show and tell As Colin Powell outlined his case against Iraq before the U.N. Security Council, with CIA director George Tenet sitting behind him, two questions kept occurring to me: Does this information prove that war is the best and only means to implement Resolution 1441? And if this information is accurate, was it provided to the UNMOVIC inspectors in full compliance with the responsibilities placed on all member states by that resolution? (Full text of Powell's remarks is here.)There are legitimate questions about the interpretation of what the tapes and satellite pictures mean, as we know from reported disputes within and between U.S. agencies over interpretation of intelligence about Iraq. Lacking the technical ability to evaluate this information, we will have to wait for other interpretations to emerge, if they do.

So let's assume that all of the evidence presented by Powell can be taken at face value, as described by him. A Gallup poll today showed that on this issue, he is far more trusted than the president by most Americans, for good reason. Meanwhile, the intercepted conversations played by the secretary of state do seem to reveal panic among members of the Iraqi officer corps over the arrival of inspectors. The tapes suggest that the Republican Guard and other units have tried to conceal evidence of forbidden weapons. Those conversations also indicate more broadly that Iraq is not handing over all its weapons and information to UNMOVIC forthrightly, as required by 1441.

To an untrained eye, the satellite photographs are more difficult to judge, as Powell acknowledged. Pictures of buildings don't tell us what's inside them. If decontamination vehicles have been detected outside certain facilities, that too suggests concealment.

Information obtained from human informants is subject to all the traditional doubts about testimony from defectors, and is therefore less convincing. And even based on defector and prisoner testimony, the information regarding Baghdad's alleged links with Osama bin Laden is still thin. (An essay in today's Wall Street Journal by former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen advises the administration to drop this line of argument, but it's only available online to subscribers.) Powell didn't even try to suggest that Iraq was involved in any specific terrorist attacks on the United States, let alone the Sept. 11 atrocity.


There was quite a lot of other pertinent information missing from Powell's address. It is hard to listen to him talk about Saddam's violations of human rights and his gassing of the Kurds, without wondering why those events didn't bother the Reagan and Bush administrations when they were actually occurring. (It's easier to understand why he omitted any reference to the American role in arming Iraq and the subsequent coverup under his old boss, the president's father.)

What was most noticeably absent from Powell's presentation, however, was any evidence that Iraq is a present threat to its neighbors or any other nation -- and thus must be invaded and subdued immediately. He showed that Saddam has sought an arsenal of mass destruction, and that his regime is still resisting disarmament. But he inadvertently made some arguments for continued inspections backed by force, rather than war.

"This effort to hide things from the inspectors is not one or two isolated events, quite the contrary," he said. "This is part and parcel of a policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years, a policy set at the highest levels of the Iraqi regime." No doubt true -- and yet the U.N. inspection team between 1991 and 1998 destroyed tens of thousands of tons of chemical and biological weapons, prohibited missiles and the Iraqi nuclear program in its entirety, despite Saddam's duplicity. What the inspectors are now trying to find is a small fraction of what their predecessors found and neutralized.

Powell also pointed to the documents found by inspectors in the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, an achievement he attributed to "intelligence they were provided." If sharing U.S. intelligence with the inspectors can locate documents in a private home, why not continue with that process?

"Tell me, answer me, are the inspectors to search the house of every government official, every Baath Party member and every scientist in the country to find the truth, to get the information they need, to satisfy the demands of our council?" the secretary demanded. They don't need to do that. Finding every scrap of paper is not the mandate of the inspectors. Locating weapons and laboratories is their job, and Powell only offered glancing indications that the U.S. has made that easier.

There was also a clue that American confidence in the data presented by Powell is not absolute. His presentation about links between Iraq and al-Qaida included a satellite photograph described as a "terrorist camp" in northern Iraq where operatives are trained in the use of poisons. "You see a picture of this camp," he said. "The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons ... Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq."

If the United States firmly believes that its satellites have located an al-Qaida training camp in northern Iraq, why haven't our bombers, jets and missiles destroyed it already? On the ground, northern Iraq is friendly Kurdish territory, and the U.S. and its allies control the airspace.

Nothing Powell said proved that war is necessary now. He didn't justify the potential deaths of thousands of people and the unforeseeable dangers of an invasion by the U.S. and its coalition. He didn't convince the Security Council to change course in support of immediate war. What he did prove is that inspections ought to continue and intensify -- and if Iraq tries to frustrate them as the regime did in 1998, there will still be plenty of time for military action.

French kiss-off France is no longer an ally of the United States, according to neocon eminence Richard Perle, who told a conference in New York yesterday that other friends in Europe "must develop a strategy to contain our erstwhile ally or we will not be talking about a NATO alliance." Insofar as Perle sometimes plays "bad cop" for the Bush White House as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, his remarks suggest a bullying approach that is growing worse as they move closer to war. (Several days ago on Fox News, Perle accused the French government of pursuing an Iraq policy controlled solely by oil interests.)

At the New York event Perle also suggested that the United States should never again consult the U.N. Security Council on a matter of important policy. Such is Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy at its worst: provoke America's oldest friends, bluster about dumping the U.N. when we don't get our way immediately, and dismantle the most important military alliance in the world in a fit of pique. It sounds eerily like the John Birch Society, circa 1962.

Perle's hostility to France is nothing new, but it made me recall today that he owns a very nice little house in the south of France. It's near the town of Gordes in the Luberon. I know because I went to a New Year's Day party at that house two years ago (he wasn't there). Maybe he's sold his share of it.