Letter from the US: Sex scandal diverts attention from threat to Iraq

Sex scandal diverts attention from threat to Iraq

By Barry Sheppard

For the past two weeks, the allegations that President Bill Clinton had an affair with a young woman working in the White House has drowned out other major news.

The scandal broke the day the pope began his visit to Cuba. All the major TV news anchor people were in Cuba to cover this important development, but immediately flew back to plunge into the sordid mess.

This had the effect of downplaying the pope's opposition to the US blockade of Cuba and the preparation for a possible bombing campaign against Iraq.

Washington is demanding the right to "inspect" everywhere and anywhere it wants in Iraq, supposedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, including in the headquarters of the Republican Guard and Saddam Hussein's living quarters. Iraq charges that the inspectors are really spies.

We should first of all note that the US military tried to kill Hussein and his family by bombing what it thought were his residences during the Gulf War, and stated just a few months ago that they would be targets again, along with the headquarters of the Republican Guard.

The hypocrisy of the US is underscored by a number of facts:

lWashington, with collaboration from the Soviet Union, armed Hussein to the teeth, including with materials to make nerve gas, to bolster Iraq's war against the Iranian revolution in the 1980s.

lDuring that war, Iraq used nerve gas against Kurds within Iraq, killing tens of thousands. This was reported at the time, but there was no outcry from Washington.

lThe country with the largest stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction is the US. It was the US — and only the US — that used atomic bombs against civilian populations.

lThe Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act, which Clinton signed in 1997, would allow the president to bar international inspections of US nerve gas facilities which "may pose a threat to the national security interests".

Washington wants an excuse to keep up or even tighten the economic blockade of Iraq, despite the extreme hardships it is causing for ordinary Iraqis, and in spite of calls from Russia, France and other countries for a phasing out of the blockade.

Washington insists on maintaining the blockade for the same reason it wants to renew a bombing campaign against the small country: to demonstrate that, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, the US is the major power in the region.

It hopes to send a pointed message to the Palestinians that had they better sign up with Israel's program of setting up an apartheid state. And it is a warning to all the Arab peoples of the Middle East to similarly accept Israel's terms.

Small wonder that the Iraqi government and people don't think Washington ever wants to end the sanctions.

The immorality of the blockade is underscored by the fact that 4000-5000 Iraqi children die each month from the combined effects of malnutrition, unclean drinking water and lack of medical supplies. The estimated death toll to date stands at around half a million children.

Clinton's aggressiveness against Iraq and other crimes against humanity put the sex scandal in perspective. The focus on his personal foibles and personality dominates public discourse to the detriment of major policy issues.

The legal issue involved is not whether Clinton had an affair with the young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, but whether he lied about it in a deposition taken under oath in the Paula Jones suit charging Clinton with sexual harassment, and whether he urged Lewinsky to lie about it under oath in the same lawsuit. Those issues are before a grand jury, and the outcome is not certain.

Clinton's credibility concerning his sexual attachments is low. He is reported to have admitted to an affair with Gennifer Flowers in his deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit, something he has vociferously denied in the past. Names of other women keep popping up.

His tactics right now are to appear presidential and keep quiet about it, while Hillary Rodham Clinton has gone on the offensive, denying the allegations and attacking the special prosecutor who is trying to get the criminal indictment against Clinton as part of a right-wing cabal.

There is some truth in her attack. The special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, is on the extreme right wing of the Republican Party. He is a member of the Federalist Society, a right-wing legal group in Washington. Starr was counsel in a Wisconsin "school choice" case against public education.

Starr was chosen as special prosecutor by Congressional right-wingers to look into the Whitewater scandal, which centred on the Clintons' alleged financial wrongdoing. He wasn't able to come up with enough evidence in that investigation (although the Clintons' financial manoeuvres stink to high heaven).

A peculiarity of these special prosecutors is that once they begin an investigation on one topic, they can branch out on anything else that comes along.

When she worked in the White House, Monica Lewinsky made friends with a certain Linda Tripp, who apparently has an axe to grind against Clinton. Lewinsky spoke to Tripp over the telephone about the alleged affair with Clinton.

Tripp contacted a right-wing literary agent, Lucianne Goldberg, who says she counselled Tripp to tape-record Lewinsky secretly, which Tripp did. This secret tape recording is illegal, but prosecutors say they won't charge Tripp because they would have difficulty proving that she knew it was a crime.

Then Tripp contacted a lawyer, George Conway, also of the Federalist Society. He put Tripp in contact with another Federalist Society member, James Moody, who took the tapes to Starr.

Starr had Tripp wear a "wire" to record further comments from Lewinsky, also without her knowledge. Then Starr and a group of FBI men swooped on Lewinsky, told her about the secret recordings and grilled her for nine hours without any legal counsel for her present.

But to charge the president with a crime, Starr had to have knowledge of the deposition Clinton made in the Paula Jones lawsuit, where he denied having an affair with Lewinsky. This deposition is not public.

It seems that Starr, in pursuing the criminal case, is working in tandem with Jones' lawyers in the civil case. How did Starr know about Clinton's deposition? Why did Jones' lawyers ask Clinton about Lewinsky, before the scandal broke?

It's also interesting that Starr offered to write a brief in support of Jones, and George Conway wrote a supreme Court brief for Jones.

Jones' case is being backed by an ultra-right Christian Coalition group.

None of this exonerates Clinton. Jones has every right to sue Clinton for sexual harassment. It's entirely possible that Clinton used his influence to stifle her career in the Arkansas state government when he was governor, after she refused his advances.

If Clinton did lie under oath, and try to get Lewinsky to lie, then that is a crime. Whether most people would think this is enough to impeach him is another matter.

While the polls show big shifts from day to day, Clinton's popularity after he gave his State of the Union address actually rose to 68%, above what it was before the scandal broke. Blacks especially have been outspoken in his defence.

Such polls don't really mean much. People tend to support the president during an economic upturn, such as we are now experiencing.

Perhaps one thing we can learn from this mess is that US capitalist politics and politicians on all sides stink, and we should keep our focus on the major issues of capitalist policy, which are aimed against working people at home and abroad.