Bessette/Pitney’s AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS: DELIBERATION, DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP reviews the idea of "deliberative democracy." Building on the book, this blog offers insights, analysis, and facts about recent events.
As tensions between the United States and Iran rise in the aftermath of the American drone strike that killed the country’s most powerful commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a new Morning Consult/Politico survey finds fewer than 3 in 10 registered voters can identify the Islamic republic on an unlabeled map.
Data suggest that there are imbalances in the geographical distribution of recruits. The South contributes more new recruits per capita than any other region of the United States. Roughly 44% of new recruits in FY2015 came from the South, while 13% were from the Northeast Region (see Figure 7).275 Some of this disparity may be due to a higher concentration of large military installations and, thus, greater exposure to the military in the South. While every Member of Congress is likely to have servicemembers and veterans in his or her district, some may have a greater concentration of military-connected constituents. Thus, legislative priorities related to defense manpower, pay, and benefits can also vary depending on the size of local constituencies.ira
The possibility of war with Iran has raised questions about the military draft. Under current law, women do not have to register, but men do. From the Selective Service System:
Virtually all male U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live, and male immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, residing in the United States, who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service.
The law says men must register with Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthday. That means men are required to register with Selective Service sometime during the 30 days before their 18th birthday, their 18th birthday, and the following 29 days after their 18th birthday – that is a 60-day registration period.
Men who do not register with Selective Service within the 60-day window are technically in violation of the law and should register as soon as possible. Late registrations are accepted up to the 26th birthday. However, once a man reaches his 26th birthday and still has not registered with Selective Service, it is too late!
It’s important to know that even though a man is registered, he will not automatically be inducted into the military. Registering with Selective Service does not mean you are joining the military.
Registration is the Law — A man’s only duty right now under the Military Selective Service Act is to register at age 18 and then to let Selective Service know within 10 days of any changes in the information he provided on his registration form until he turns 26 years old.
Fairness and Equity — By registering all eligible men, Selective Service ensures a fair and equitable draft, if ever required. However, there has not been a draft since 1973. Insurance for the Nation — By registering, a man’s voluntary participation helps provide a hedge against unforeseen threats. It is a relatively low-cost insurance policy for our nation. Civic Duty — It’s your responsibility to ensure that young men 18 through 25 understand the law so they can make an informed decision about registration compliance. Currently, more than 90 percent of eligible young men are registered. It’s a civic duty of every young man to comply with the law.
Protect Eligibility for Future Benefits — It’s what a man’s got to do. By registering, a young man stays eligible for jobs, college loans and grants, job training, driver’s license in most states, and U.S. citizenship for immigrant men.
Our adversaries and strategic competitors probably already are looking to the 2020 US elections as an opportunity to advance their interests. More broadly, US adversaries and strategic competitors almost certainly will use online influence operations to try to weaken democratic institutions, undermine US alliances and partnerships, and shape policy outcomes in the United States and elsewhere. We expect our adversaries and strategic competitors to refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other’s experiences, suggesting the threat landscape could look very different in 2020 and future elections.
Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians. Moscow may employ additional influence toolkits—such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack-andleak operations, or manipulating data—in a more targeted fashion to influence US policy, actions, and elections.
Beijing already controls the information environment inside China, and it is expanding its ability to shape information and discourse relating to China abroad, especially on issues that Beijing views as core to party legitimacy, such as Taiwan, Tibet, and human rights. China will continue to use legal, political, and economic levers—such as the lure of Chinese markets —to shape the information environment. It is also capable of using cyber attacks against systems in the United States to censor or suppress viewpoints it deems politically sensitive.
Iran, which has used social media campaigns to target audiences in both the United States and allied nations with messages aligned with Iranian interests, will continue to use online influence operations to try to advance its interests.
Adversaries and strategic competitors probably will attempt to use deep fakes or similar machine-learning technologies to create convincing—but false—image, audio, and video files to augment influence campaigns directed against the United States and our allies and partners.
Adversaries and strategic competitors also may seek to use cyber means to directly manipulate or disrupt election systems—such as by tampering with voter registration or disrupting the vote tallying process—either to alter data or to call into question our voting process. Russia in 2016 and unidentified actors as recently as 2018 have already conducted cyber activity that has targeted US election infrastructure, but we do not have any intelligence reporting to indicate any compromise of our nation’s election infrastructure that would have prevented voting, changed vote counts, or disrupted the ability to tally votes.
Republican governors are rallying to stop state money from flowing to Iran, vowing to do what they can to stymie the lifting of sanctions on the Islamic Republic, independent of President Obama’s nuclear deal.
Under the terms of that deal, Mr. Obama pledged to push states to give up their own sanctions that spurred divestment from or contracting with Iranian interests — but a group of governors has rejected that.
“These state-level sanctions are critically important and must be maintained,” the governors wrote in a letter to the president.
They earned a major backer Tuesday in House Speaker John A. Boehner, who threw his support behind the effort, saying state-level sanctions are an appropriate tool. He urged other governors to join the effort.
Because the deal Mr. Obama negotiated with Iran isn’t deemed a treaty, it cannot override those state-level sanctions. The administration has pledged to Iran, however, that it will encourage states to lift their restrictions.
Federal law explicitly authorizes states and local governments to sanction Iran. From Public Law 111-195:
EC. 202. <> AUTHORITY OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS TO DIVEST FROM CERTAIN COMPANIES THAT INVEST IN IRAN.
(a) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that the United States should support the decision of any State or local government that for moral, prudential, or reputational reasons divests from, or prohibits the investment of assets of the State or local government in, a person that engages in investment activities in the energy sector of Iran, as long as Iran is subject to economic sanctions imposed by the United States. (b) Authority to Divest.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a State or local government may adopt and enforce measures that meet the requirements of subsection (d) to divest the assets of the State or local government from, or prohibit investment of the assets of the State or local government in, any person that the State or local government determines, using credible information available to the public, engages in investment activities in Iran described in subsection (c). (c) Investment Activities Described.--A person engages in investment activities in Iran described in this subsection if the person-- (1) has an investment of $20,000,000 or more in the energy sector of Iran, including in a person that provides oil or liquified natural gas tankers, or products used to construct or maintain pipelines used to transport oil or liquified natural gas, for the energy sector of Iran; or (2) is a financial institution that extends $20,000,000 or more in credit to another person, for 45 days or more, if that person will use the credit for investment in the energy sector of Iran.
(d) Requirements.--Any measure taken by a State or local government under subsection (b) shall meet the following requirements: (1) Notice.--The State or local government shall provide written notice to each person to which a measure is to be applied. (2) Timing.-- <> The measure shall apply to a person not earlier than the date that is 90 days after the date on which written notice is provided to the person under paragraph (1). (3) Opportunity for hearing.--The State or local government shall provide an opportunity to comment in writing to each person to which a measure is to be applied. If the person demonstrates to the State or local government that the person does not engage in investment activities in Iran described in subsection (c), the measure shall not apply to the person. (4) Sense of congress on avoiding erroneous targeting.--It is the sense of Congress that a State or local government should not adopt a measure under subsection (b) with respect to a person unless the State or local government has made every effort to avoid erroneously targeting the person and has verified that the person engages in investment activities in Iran described in subsection (c).
Overall, 43% of Americans support the deal. This falls short of a majority, but supporters significantly outnumber opponents of the deal, who make up 30% of the public. Fully a quarter of Americans (26%) are undecided, however.
Support for the deal falls along familiar political lines. 60% of Democrats back the agreement, which could mark a major legacy acheivement for a Democratic president. 55% of Republicans oppose the deal. Yet Republicans are more likely to support the Iran deal (28%) than Democrats are to oppose (13%), and independents are narrowly in favor (38-31%) with 31% undecided.
Americans also tend to think Iran, not the U.S. and its allies, got the most out of the deal, by 38% to 11%. 20% say both got about the same amount – the “win-win” described by Iran’s foreign minister after the deal was announced.
If Iran breaks the agreement and begins developing a nuclear weapon, majorities of nearly all political and demographic groups say they would approve of the US and its allies taking military action against Iran. Overall 64% say they would approve of using military force in this event, against only 18% who would disapprove.
And if public confidence in the deal is an indication, support for military action may soon be tested. Only 23% of Americans are even somewhat confident the deal will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, while 27% are “not so confident” and another third are “not confident at all”.
Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz write at Foreign Policy:
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not enter into Tuesday’s historic deal with six world powers to reset relations with the West. It was the promise of more than $100 billion in sanctions relief, rather, that greased the wheels of the recently completed diplomacy in Vienna. And though the windfall of cash will certainly strengthen its position, the real prize for Iran was regaining access to a little-known, but ubiquitous banking system that has been off-limits to the country since March 2012.
SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is the electronic bloodstream of the global financial system. It is a member-owned cooperative comprising the most powerful financial institutions in the world, which allows more than 10,800 financial companies worldwide to communicate securely. It’s hard to find a bank that doesn’t use SWIFT to communicate with other banks — unless, of course, you’ve lived in Iran for the past few years.
SWIFT disconnected 15 Iranian banks from its system in 2012 after coming under pressure from both the United States and the European Union at the height of the effort to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It was a major blow to Tehran. Sure, it was how Iran sold oil, but it was also how Iranian banks moved money. According to SWIFT’s annual review, Iranian financial institutions used SWIFT more than 2 million times in 2010. These transactions, according to the Wall Street Journal, amounted to $35 billion in trade with Europe alone.
... To make matters worse, the agreement just reached in Vienna grants more than $100 billion in cash to Iran, which could flow to the coffers of terrorist groups and rogue actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus. At the president’s press conference on Wednesday, Obama dismissed this fear, claiming the money would not be a “game-changer” for Iran. It’s hard to understand his logic: This infusion of cash will relieve budgetary constraints for a country already spending at least $6 billion annually to support Assad. For a country with only $20 billion in fully accessible foreign exchange reserves prior to November 2013, this is hugely significant.
The U.S. and other global powers announced that they've set the "parameters" of a nuclear deal with Iran. But Americans don't trust Tehran, with a bipartisan majority saying that Congress should have to approve any agreement, according to the latest IBD/TIPP Poll. ... By a 62% to 30% margin in the IBD/TIPP Poll of 900 adults completed Wednesday, Americans don't believe Iran would keep its side of any nuclear bargain. Half of Democrats expect the Islamic regime to keep its word vs. just 12% of Republicans and 27% of independents.
"One thing is very clear: People are really skeptical of a deal with Iran," said Raghavan Mayur, president of Technometrica, IBD's polling partner.
Obama won't submit any nuclear deal to Congress, defying a majority of Americans from across the political spectrum. Overall, 58% say lawmakers should vote on the deal vs. 35% who do not. That includes 54% of both Democrats and Republicans, along with 67% of independents.
As Obama touted the "historic understanding," 46% of Americans say the president is focusing on his legacy while ignoring Iran's growing influence in the Mideast, vs. 44% who disagree. Not surprisingly, Americans are divided along partisan lines, with independents split too.
Meanwhile, U.S.-Israel relations have "significantly worsened" under President Obama, according to a 45% plurality. Some 40% say ties haven't changed, while 6% say they've "significantly improved."
Republicans and independents are far more likely to see a deterioration than Democrats.
By a nearly 2 to 1 margin, Americans support the notion of striking a deal with Iran that restricts the nation’s nuclear program in exchange for loosening sanctions, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.
But the survey — released hours before Tuesday’s negotiating deadline — also finds few Americans are hopeful that such an agreement will be effective. Nearly six in 10 say they are not confident that a deal will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, unchanged from 15 months ago, when the United States, France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia reached an interim agreement with Iran aimed at sealing a long-term deal.
Overall, the poll finds 59 percent support an agreement in which the United States and its negotiating partners lift major economic sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Thirty-one percent oppose a deal.
Ahead of a March 31 deadline for nuclear talks with Iran, more Americans approve (49%) than disapprove (40%) of the United States negotiating directly with Iran over its nuclear program. But the public remains skeptical of whether Iranian leaders are serious about addressing international concerns over their nuclear enrichment program.
If a nuclear agreement is reached, most Americans (62%) want Congress to have final authority over the deal. Just 29% say President Obama should have final authority over any nuclear agreement with Iran.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 25-29 among 1,500 adults, finds that just 27% have heard a lot about the nuclear talks between the United States and Iran in Lausanne, Switzerland. Another 49% have heard a little about the negotiations, while 24% have heard nothing at all.
In June 2000, when Biden was ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, President Bill Clinton set off for Moscow to negotiate a new arms control treaty with Vladimir Putin that would have limited the United States’ ability to build defenses against ballistic missile attack. The morning the talks were scheduled to begin, the president was greeted by on op-ed on the front page of Izvestia by committee chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). “After dragging his feet on missile defense for nearly eight years, Mr. Clinton now fervently hopes that he will be permitted, in his final months in office, to tie the hands of the next President,” Helms wrote. “Well I, for one, have a message for the President: Not on my watch. Let’s be clear, to avoid any misunderstandings: Any modified ABM treaty negotiated by this administration will be dead-on-arrival at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . . The Russian government should not be under any illusion whatsoever that any commitments made by this lame-duck Administration, will be binding on the next administration.”
The message was received in Moscow. There was no new arms control deal.
Biden also surely remembers how in 1998, when the Clinton administration was negotiating a U.N. treaty to create an International Criminal Court, Helms did more than send a letter expressing his opposition — he sent his aides to Rome to join the negotiations and make his opposition clear. I was a member of that team. Meeting with the United Nations delegates (with Biden’s aides present), we delivered a clear message from the chairman: Any treaty Clinton negotiated that did not give the U.S. a veto over the ICC in the Security Council was “dead on arrival” in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. However, unlike the Obama administration, the Clinton team smartly tried to use Helms’s opposition as leverage to negotiate more protections for Americans.
Helms did not simply write to foreign leaders explaining the Senate’s constitutional role in foreign policy. Together with Biden, he went to the U.N. headquarters in New York to deliver the message in person. On Jan. 20, 2000, Helms became the first U.S. senator ever to address the U.N. Security Council, where he warned of steep consequences if the U.N. failed to accept the U.N. reforms he and Biden had passed. And he explained to the gathered world leaders what a mistake it was to try to ignore the role of the Senate in foreign policy. Citing the example of Woodrow Wilson’s failure to secure congressional approval for the League of Nations, Helms declared, “Wilson probably could have achieved ratification of the League of Nations if he had worked with Congress.” Helms and Biden then invited the Security Council to Washington, where he gathered all the U.N. ambassadors in the old Senate chamber for a lecture from Senate historian Richard Baker on the Senate’s role in U.S. foreign policy. (Russia’s then-U.N. ambassador, and current foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov turned to Helms’s aide after the lecture and asked, “Where in the bastion of democracy can I have a smoke?”)
In a lengthy and harshly worded statement released late Monday, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Senate veteran of more than three decades and a former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he could recall no other instance in which senators had written to the leaders of another country, “much less a foreign adversary,” to say the president had no authority to strike a deal with them
As Mr. Obama arrived in Michigan for a campaign stop on the economy, he shared details of his morning telephone call with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. On Sunday, Mr. Zebari had a face-to-face meeting with Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Among the issues being discussed with the two presidential candidates is the long-term security accord between Iraq and the United States. While the Bush administration would like to see an agreement reached before the summer’s political conventions, Mr. Obama said today that he opposed such a timetable.
“My concern is that the Bush administration, in a weakened state politically, ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it’s my administration or Senator McCain’s administration,” Mr. Obama said. “The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that’s currently made.”
First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.
Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.
What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.
We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.
As a liberal Democrat who twice campaigned for President Barack Obama , I am appalled that some Democratic members of Congress are planning to boycott the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3 to a joint session of Congress. At bottom, this controversy is not mainly about protocol and politics—it is about the constitutional system of checks and balances and the separation of powers.
Under the Constitution, the executive and legislative branches share responsibility for making and implementing important foreign-policy decisions. Congress has a critical role to play in scrutinizing the decisions of the president when these decisions involve national security, relationships with allies and the threat of nuclear proliferation.
Congress has every right to invite, even over the president’s strong objection, any world leader or international expert who can assist its members in formulating appropriate responses to the current deal being considered with Iran regarding its nuclear-weapons program. Indeed, it is the responsibility of every member of Congress to listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who probably knows more about this issue than any world leader, because it threatens the very existence of the nation state of the Jewish people.
Even as relations between the leaders of Israel and the United States reportedly deteriorate over disagreement about how to handle Iran's nuclear program, Israel has retained its broadly favorable image in the U.S. over the past year. Seventy percent of Americans now view that country favorably, and 62% say they sympathize more with the Israelis than the Palestinians in the Mideast conflict. By contrast, 17% currently view the Palestinian Authority favorably, and 16% sympathize more with the Palestinians.
... A key reason Americans' sympathy for Israel has solidified at a sizable majority level is that Republicans' support for the Jewish state has increased considerably, rising from 53% in 2000 to more than 80% since 2014 -- with just 7% choosing the Palestinian Authority. A particularly large jump in GOP sympathy for Israel occurred in the first few years after 9/11 and at the start of the 2003 Iraq War.
Democrats' support for Israel has also risen since 2000, but not quite as sharply as Republicans'. Additionally, the percentage of Democrats sympathizing with Israel fell 10 points this year to 48%, possibly reflecting the tension between Obama and Netanyahu.
Americans show widely diverse attitudes toward a group of 22 countries around the world, ranging from a 91% favorable rating for Canada to a 9% favorable rating for Iran.
The broad ways in which Americans rate these countries follow predictable patterns. Americans are most positive about countries that are democracies and U.S. allies, and least positive about countries that are seen as threats to the U.S., those that are involved in major turmoil, and those that are not traditional democracies.
Americans are more favorable than unfavorable about only seven of the 22 countries tested, underscoring that there are a number of countries around the world that engender negative reactions from the American public.
A Gallup analysis shows that in Americans' minds, these countries are generally divided into three groups. Americans tend to view Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia in similar ways, such that those who rate one of these countries high or low tend to rate the others in the same direction. Likewise, Americans tend to rate a group of six democratic allies -- Canada, Germany, Great Britain, India, Israel, and Japan -- similarly.
Our chapter on national security and foreign policy contains an extensive discussion of the intelligence community, a topic that is doing fine box office right now.
Argo is a first-rate movie about the rescue of six US embassy employees during the Iranian hostage crisis that began in 1979. The amazing nub of the story is true: the CIA set up a dummy production company in Hollywood and disguised the six as a movie crew. Argo is not, however, completely accurate. At Slate, David Haglund points out ways in which the movie departs from history. SPOILER ALERT: the biggest departure involves the thrilling climax, so do not read the article until you've seen the movie.
This month the Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani marked his 1,000th day of incarceration in Lakan, a notorious prison in northern Iran. Charged with the crime of apostasy, Mr. Nadarkhani faces a death sentence for refusing to recant the Christian faith he embraced as a child. He embodies piety and represents millions more suffering from repression—but his story is barely known.
Mr. Nadarkhani's courage and the tenacity of his supporters, many of them ordinary churchgoers who have crowded Twitter and other social media to alert the world to his plight, bring to mind the great human-rights campaigns of recent years: the fight against apartheid in South Africa, or the movement to assist Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate from behind the Iron Curtain. As Nelson Mandela represented the opposition to South African racism, and Anatoly Sharansky exemplified the just demands of Soviet Jews, so Mr. Nadarkhani symbolizes the emergency that church leaders say is facing 100 million Christians around the world.
Yet Mr. Nadarkhani has almost none of the name recognition that Messrs. Mandela and Sharansky had. Despite the increasing ferocity with which Christians are targeted—church bombings in Nigeria, discrimination in Egypt (where Christians have been imprisoned for building or repairing churches), beheadings in Somalia—Americans remain largely unaware of how bad the situation has become, particularly in the Islamic world and in communist countries like China and North Korea.
The principal reason public opinion hasn't been galvanized around the persecution of Christians is that the various church leaderships either ignore or dance around the issue. If churches don't speak up forcefully, then it is unrealistic to expect the world's democratic governments to do the same.
As we note in our chapter on foreign policy, the American public has only a fitful interest in international affairs. The Pew Research Center reports:
As the G-8 leaders prepare to meet at Camp David on Friday, the dominant topic of conversation will be the European debt crisis. Yet it is a crisis that has attracted minimal interest or concern among the U.S. public, despite warnings from economists that Europe’s problems may threaten this country’s fragile recovery.
Last week was typical: In the Pew Research Center’s weekly News Interest Index, just 17% said they were following news about economic problems in Europe very closely. Just 3% cited this as their top story of the week. By comparison, 40% tracked U.S. economic news very closely and 20% said they followed it more closely than any other story.
A week earlier, nearly four times as many said the death of football player Junior Seau was their top story than cited Europe’s economic problems (11% vs. 3%).
In part, the public’s lack of interest Europe’s woes is part of a broader indifference to international news. Last year, there were a number of breakthrough foreign stories, from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to the “Arab spring.” Not this year.
Where Americans do have opinions on international relations, they often tend to differ from people in other countries. Pew finds that people in most nations oppose Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, but that Americans are particularly willing to use force:
Glenn Greenwald reports at Salon about retired General Barry McCaffrey:
On January 12, 2012, McCaffrey presented a seminar to roughly 20 NBC executives and producers — including NBC News President Steve Capus — entitled “Iran, Nukes & Oil: The Gulf Confrontation.” We’ve obtained the Power Point document McCaffrey prepared and distributed for his presentation, and in it, he all but predicts war with Iran within the next 90 days: one that is likely to be started by them. The first page of the breathlessly hawkish document is entitled “Iran & the Gulf: Creeping Toward War,” and the first sentence excitedly proclaims (click to enlarge): Most of the report emphasizes the likelihood that Iran — not the U.S. — will act aggressively and trigger a war: He adds: “We should not view the Iranian rhetoric as empty threats. They are likely to further escalate. There is great opportunity for miscalculation on their part. . . . They will not under any circumstances actually be deterred from going nuclear. They will achieve initial nuclear capability within 36 months.” About a war with Iran, he says: “Israel would welcome such a confrontation. They have an existential threat to their survival looming in their very near future.” Among his conclusions: The last page of his presentation pointedly notes what he called “The American People: A Crisis of Confidence in Institutions.” The accompanying chart showed that 78% of Americans have faith in the military — by far the most admired institution in America — but near the bottom was “television news,” with 28%.
While McCaffrey’s office failed to return several calls seeking comment — I was particularly interested to know whether any of his ample consulting clients would benefit from a war with Iran — Lauren Kapp, an NBC News spokeswoman, confirmed the existence of this meeting. She said: “We regularly host editorial board meetings with our editorial board staff,” and besides McCaffrey: “we have heard from top ranking current and former US Government officials” (she also says that they once heard from an Iranian ambassador to the U.N.). She added: We are exhaustive in our conversation with people from various perspectives and expertise when we over a story of this magnitude. And we are confident in the level and breadth of the conversations we are having with representatives from all viewpoints. Council for foreign relations, etc….
