01 April 2005
Rewarding deceit, dishonour and disingenuity
What a surprise it is for us to learn that Iraq did not possess NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) weapons which posed a clear and present danger to the US. We didn't need two inquiries (Congress and now Robb-Silberman) to know this. To use a colloquial term, it was bloody obvious before the war.
Of course, the neo-cons have been running the line that the invasion freed the oppressed Iraqis etc. But that wasn't the reason Dubya spouted for going to war. It was the NBC weapons, stupid. And oh, by the way, tell the dead Iraqi civilians that they are free to vote now. Surely, they'll fall on bended knee to worship Dubya!
Following release of the inquiry's findings, no less than the head of the Bush regime, Dubya, himself intoned the US knows "disturbingly little" about enemy weapons programs! Enemy weapons programs aren't the only things Bush and his neo-cons know little about. Try integrity and accountability.
In a masterful act of disingenuity, Dubya also claims that intelligence needs to be "timely and accurate" in order for the US to "adjust to those threats and adjust our capabilities to those threats." Then this whopping great disingenuous line,
"The cost of underestimating a threat could be tens of thousands of lives."
What does he mean could? It did cost tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths. But since the Bush regime deliberately chose to count only US casualties, there is no "official" death tally of unimportant non-American civilian casualties. Yet we have the strange spectacle of the Pentagon rubbishing the estimate of 100,000 deaths reported in the British medical journal The Lancet.
Wait a minute, these guys are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they claim not to know what the Iraqi casualties are because they haven't bothered to count it; and on the other hand, when Western medical agencies in Iraq estimate 100,000 deaths, the Pentagon rubbishes the claim!
Meanwhile, back to the source of truth, justice and the neo-con way. Dubya rewards his principal hench men and woman (who helped prosecute an illegal war based on lies) with reappointment of one as Secretary of Defence, appointment of another as Secretary of State, and yet another as Head of the World Bank. It looks like there won't be a war crimes trial for anyone, anytime soon!
Now, is it any wonder why so many not-important-enough-to-be-counted-when-dead non-Americans absolutely despise the US? The great shame of it all, is that the nearly half of Americans who also oppose the neo-cons, are also tarred with the same brush.
Unfortunately, they will continue to suffer for Dubya's sins long after he leaves office because memories die long and hard when others lose loved ones for a lie.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, the neo-cons forgot or didn't heed some wise words of warning from an honoured soldier who served his country in war and as a president in peace time.
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
Do we think Dwight D. Eisenhower would have ordered the invasion of Iraq using a pack of lies?
Or would he have thought it was just a bad April's Fool Day joke with Dubya as the Fool?
Of course, the neo-cons have been running the line that the invasion freed the oppressed Iraqis etc. But that wasn't the reason Dubya spouted for going to war. It was the NBC weapons, stupid. And oh, by the way, tell the dead Iraqi civilians that they are free to vote now. Surely, they'll fall on bended knee to worship Dubya!
Following release of the inquiry's findings, no less than the head of the Bush regime, Dubya, himself intoned the US knows "disturbingly little" about enemy weapons programs! Enemy weapons programs aren't the only things Bush and his neo-cons know little about. Try integrity and accountability.
In a masterful act of disingenuity, Dubya also claims that intelligence needs to be "timely and accurate" in order for the US to "adjust to those threats and adjust our capabilities to those threats." Then this whopping great disingenuous line,
"The cost of underestimating a threat could be tens of thousands of lives."
What does he mean could? It did cost tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths. But since the Bush regime deliberately chose to count only US casualties, there is no "official" death tally of unimportant non-American civilian casualties. Yet we have the strange spectacle of the Pentagon rubbishing the estimate of 100,000 deaths reported in the British medical journal The Lancet.
Wait a minute, these guys are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they claim not to know what the Iraqi casualties are because they haven't bothered to count it; and on the other hand, when Western medical agencies in Iraq estimate 100,000 deaths, the Pentagon rubbishes the claim!
Meanwhile, back to the source of truth, justice and the neo-con way. Dubya rewards his principal hench men and woman (who helped prosecute an illegal war based on lies) with reappointment of one as Secretary of Defence, appointment of another as Secretary of State, and yet another as Head of the World Bank. It looks like there won't be a war crimes trial for anyone, anytime soon!
Now, is it any wonder why so many not-important-enough-to-be-counted-when-dead non-Americans absolutely despise the US? The great shame of it all, is that the nearly half of Americans who also oppose the neo-cons, are also tarred with the same brush.
Unfortunately, they will continue to suffer for Dubya's sins long after he leaves office because memories die long and hard when others lose loved ones for a lie.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, the neo-cons forgot or didn't heed some wise words of warning from an honoured soldier who served his country in war and as a president in peace time.
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
Do we think Dwight D. Eisenhower would have ordered the invasion of Iraq using a pack of lies?
Or would he have thought it was just a bad April's Fool Day joke with Dubya as the Fool?
