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Hurry
Up and War Already!
September 10, 2002
By Prodigal Son
 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. (By the way, under Cheney, Halliburton did $23.8
million in business with Saddam Hussein, allowing Saddam the
equipment to get his oil fields up and running so he could
rearm).
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."
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.
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.
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.
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 he would like to see fighting in the
Iraqi desert so the company his dad works for can get make
even more money. This, however requires a conscience. When
it comes to enemies, real or imagined, Bush and the Republicans
have none.
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