If you're ridin' ahead of the herd,
take a look back
every now and then to make sure it's
still there.
-Will Rogers
Bush, Inc. the current administration full of
ex-Enron executives and Ford/Bush the Elder/Reagan retreads is
feverishly beating the blood-chilling drum of
war. Or not. Ok, maybe a little. Nope haven’t made up their
minds.
Some points here . . .
Point 1: On Sunday’s (9-8-02) Meet the
Press, Dick Cheney stated, “We are in a place now that, I think .
. .some of our European friends, for example,
have difficult adjusting to, because, in the case of the
Europeans, they haven’t the experience we have
of 3,000 dead Americans last September 11th. They are not
as vulnerable as we are, because they’re not
targeted.”
This is a damnable lie.
In Europe, in the '70s and '80s, Palestinian groups
terrorized in the name of international attention.
We have all heard of the Irish Republican Army’s
bloody bombing war. Italy was terrorized by gangs of
murdering fascists, which ended up in the 1978
kidnapping and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
West Germany battled for 10 years against the
fanatical Baader Meinhof gang, and the Red Army Faction.
Spain is still hit by bombings and assassinations
by the Basque ETA separatists. In Paris there was a massacre
on the rue de Rennes, where shoppers were shredded
by flying plate glass, after Lebanese terrorists
detonated a bomb there. Europe’s press
set the standard for fair reporting under these conditions.
Sorry Mr. Cheney, the Europeans know quite well.
(BTW good Americans, under Cheney, Halliburton
did $23.8 million in business with Saddam Hussein,
allowing him the equipment to get his oil fields
up and running so he could rearm).
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_sep1.html
Point 2: Whenever Don Rumsfield says
he knows that Iraq has terrorist capability, we should believe he
believes that. He is apparently convinced
himself of any justification for attack. CBS news just reported
this week that barely five hours after American
Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld was
telling his aides to come up with plans for striking
Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking
Saddam Hussein. If these notes are accurate,
that didn't matter. 'Go massive,' the notes quote Rumsfield
as saying. 'Sweep it all up. Things related and
not.'"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml
Point 3: Americans should believe that
Iraq has chemical weapons because the Reagan administration gave them
to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war, and you and
I, the average Joe and Jane taxpayer, paid for it with our taxes.
Washington approved
the export to Iraq of virus cultures and a $1 billion contract to design
and build a
petrochemical plant the Iraqis planned to use
to produce mustard gas. Under the Reagan administration US officers
were secretly supplying Iraqi generals with bomb
assessments and details on Iranian troop deployments as well.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=hiro20020828
Point 4: The Christian Science Monitor
reported this week that Bush the elder’s administration lied about
justifications for the first Gulf War.
Part of the administration case for war was that Iraqi forces were
threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
Using satellite images as proof, Pentagon officials estimated that
250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks were on
the border. But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida
acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images
of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops
were visible near the Saudi border just
empty desert.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html
Point 5: Bush lied to Tony Blair
to get his support for war in Iraq on the basis of a phony reading
of
intelligence photographs and of an old report
from U.N. atomic energy agency. "I don't know what more
evidence we need," Bush said, flourishing the
photos in front of the Blair, as they both claimed that the 1998
U.N. report said that Saddam Hussein was six
months away from building nuclear weapons. As NBC reports,
and the Washington Post confirms, the U.N. report
in question emphatically DID NOT say what Bush claims.
In a summary of its 1998 report, the IAEA said
that “based on all credible information available to date ...
the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having
achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or
of Iraq having retained a physical capability
for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having
clandestinely obtained such material.”
A senior White House official acknowledged Saturday night that the
1998 report did not say what Bush claimed. “What
happened was, we formed our own conclusions based
on the report,” the official told NBC News’ Norah
O’Donnell.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/802167.asp
Not a very auspicious start, is it?
Before we jump into war, I would wish for the
miraculous. That, in a bit of quiet introspection,
Bush wonders which of his daughters would HE
like to see fighting in the Iraqi desert so the
company his dad works for can get rich.
This, however requires a conscience.
When it comes to enemies, real or imagined, Bush
and the Republicans have none.
-Prodigal Son