Journalist includes Camarillo in book tour

Robert Scheer Robert Scheer, political commentator and former columnist for the Los Angeles Times, spoke last week to about 150 people at the Camarillo Library about "excessive" and "wasteful" government military spending and the relationships between legislators and the defense industry.

Scheer made the Aug. 7 stop while on a six-month national tour promoting his recently released book, "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America."

The book is the seventh for Scheer, 72, the editor of the award-winning website Truthdig .com and a contributing editor for The Nation. He is the host of "Left, Right and Center," a talk show on National Public Radio, and writes a syndicated column based at the San Francisco Chronicle. Scheer spent nearly 30 years as a Los Angeles Times reporter, columnist and contributing editor.

Scheer criticized politicians who are enamored of billiondollar weapons systems for the jobs they bring to their states despite the fact that the armament is useless in the current war. A case in point, he said, is Sen. Joseph Lieberman's push for an $81-billion submarine to fight an al-Qaida navy.

"It's sucking up our lives; it's increasing the debt enormously," Scheer said.

"The real danger is you don't build these weapons without wanting to use them."

When someone in the audience suggested the country could employ weapons that are useless now in a future war, Scheer said, "You can make the same argument about aliens coming."

The country has very good intelligencegathering organizations, so no country could build a weapon without us knowing it and having time to protect ourselves, he said.

Scheer, who's interviewed six presidents, Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, called the amount of money the government spends on the military "the elephant in the room" that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama will take on.

He criticized the current administration for adopting a "culture of the military," which former president Dwight Eisenhower warned about, instead of pursuing diplomacy.

Scheer said he dedicated his new book to Eisenhower, because the late president contributed to ending the Cold War and opposed dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to former senator George McGovern.

When the two met several years ago, Scheer asked McGovern why he never retaliated when Richard Nixon painted him as unpatriotic; McGovern said it would have been "unseemly."

Asked if he thinks media giants will disappear, Scheer said he didn't think so. The Los Angeles Times became a better newspaper after weathering challenges from cable TV and other news sources, he said.

The public will demand more responsibility from the media, however, he said.

After Scheer's presentation, Tim Garrison, 58, of Camarillo said he appreciates the columnist's insight.

For the most part, the public is oblivious to the connections between legislators, the defense industry and the military, Garrison said, "like an underlayer in government . . . that we're unaware of."

He said it takes an independent columnist such as Scheer to help "peel back" that layer.

Robert Scheer teaches at the University of Southern California. Michelle Knight is one of his former students.