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No
Evidence is Evidence: Rumsfeld’s Paradigm Shift
January 18, 2003
By Carol Norris
Up is down, red is green, yes means no, and no evidence is
evidence. Rumsfeld, that loveable lug, is at it again. When
Saddam Hussein agreed to weapons inspectors, the Bush Cartel
found it almost impossible to take yes for an answer. Holy
cow, they said amongst themselves, he’s going to let them
in. What are we going to do now? We are readying our troops
as we speak. We promised our friends at the Carlyle group
and Halliburton (among others) big contracts and big bucks
from this one.
What they decided to do was discredit the weapons inspectors.
That way, if the inspectors never find anything, people will
think it is because Blix and his team are incompetent, not
that there aren’t weapons. And the possibility of war remains
a go.
But, despite their best public relations efforts, the discrediting
didn’t play as well as they hoped. So they searched and searched,
trying to find a scrap of something they could pass off as
plausible evidence. But, nothing appeared. We’ve got to come
up with another plan, they said.
So, Rumsfeld, the master mind of the Pentagon’s now defunct
“Office of Strategic Influence,” whose stated mission was
to generate disinformation and propaganda, was quoted as saying
Iraq is “skilled at denial and deception” and “the fact that
the inspectors have not yet come up with new evidence of Iraq’s
WMD program could be evidence, in and of itself, of Iraq’s
noncooperation. “ And, by the way, now the burden of proof
of innocence is on Iraq.
The entire world ought to have stood up and shouted a collective:
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
But he wasn’t. With these proclamations and statements of
conjecture, Rumsfeld, no doubt, hoped to create a subtle,
yet major paradigm shift, an alteration of perceived reality:
no evidence is evidence. The hope was that a little seed would
be planted in the minds of Americans and the media that will
grow and blossom into unquestioned reality. “Yeah,” they hope
the average citizen will say, “Saddam is really, really sneaky.
And bad. So, he’s definitely got weapons, even if we can’t
find one of ‘em. Let’s go get him. Let’s go get all of ‘em.”
Rumsfeld & Co. very cleverly set it up so that the inspectors
don’t ever have to find a thing, because now no evidence is
really evidence. So, no matter what, they have their evidence
and Hussein will never be exonerated, which means he’s still
a potential threat, which means the possibility of war remains
alive. (Confusing? Of course it is. That’s what they’re counting
on.)
Another paradigm shift is that the Bush team and the UN don’t
have to provide any evidence of Iraq’s continuing efforts
to build WMD. Iraq has to prove it isn’t. (The U.S. is charging
Hussein is involved in criminal activity. But, in the U.S.,
in criminal cases, the burden of proving a case against a
person is on the party bringing the charges. A person does
not have to prove his or her innocence; the prosecutor must
prove that the defendant is guilty. I wonder why they think
this is moral and just here in the U.S., but not elsewhere?
[Come to think of it, for some here, that’s going by the wayside,
too. But, they don’t talk about that much.] Hasn’t Bush professed
one of his goals is to export the decent standards of Democracy
to the world? I guess maybe he only uses democratic principles
when it furthers his objectives.)
In any event, Iraq need not worry about trying to prove anything,
because the Bush crew is never going to believe any proof
they offer. Never. Rumsfeld made sure of that when he said
Hussein is known for his “denial” and “deception.” So, not
Hussein’s full cooperation with the inspectors, certainly
not his word, not the reports from the biological, chemical
and nuclear teams that are scouring his country; the most
definitive proof will never be proof enough.
It’s a total set up; a no win situation; the window to war
the Bush Cartel hopes to point its missiles out of, if they
don’t happen to find any evidence to shoot their arsenal at.
They could find evidence today. No matter. Who needs evidence,
says the Bush administration. Our trap is set.
Unlikely, but just maybe Rumsfeld actually believes what
he is saying when he says no evidence is evidence. And it
isn’t just simply a page of Doublespeak from Orwell’s 1984.
When one is engaged in a lot of covert actions, one starts
seeing that same behavior in everyone, everywhere. One becomes
indiscriminately disbelieving and suspicious. It’s classic.
Perhaps Rumsfeld so readily sees current “noncooperation”
in Hussein because that very phenomenon is happening in the
Bush administration’s many games of Do As I Say, Not As I
Do. For instance, our government is demanding total and full
disclosure from Iraq. Yet, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle
stated that the Bush administration has failed to provide
disclosure to Congress about the prospect for a war on Iraq,
as is its legal requirement as part of a resolution passed
last October.
[Lest we forget: the Bush team does not have the legal right
to declare war. Only Congress has that right. This Congressional
declaration of war was put in place specifically so a president
would not have the exclusive power to decide such a momentous
thing. It was meant to keep this awesome power from being
abused. No, September 11th does not change that. In fact,
it argues more for checks and balances to ensure measured
decisions are made in such emotional times. Remember, too,
for all he’s done and as despicable as he is, Hussein had
nothing to do with September 11th.]
Another example: Rumsfeld accuses Iraq of being skilled at
deception. Yet, after his disinformation Office of Strategic
Influence was closed due to public outcry, Rumsfeld was not
one to be defeated. So, he created a new position - Deputy
Undersecretary for Special Plans. The job’s responsibility
is to continue the same deception operations as the Office
of Strategic Influence was to perform, just under a different
name. (You also might want to take a look at the toned down
website of John Poindexter’s brainchild - Total Information
Awareness office - it states some of its purpose is “storytelling”
and “truth maintenance.”)
This “noncooperation” and games playing also translates into
withholding information or preventing any serious dialogue
about anything the Bush Cartel wants to keep hush-hush. The
current administration is one of the most secretive in history.
It is removing information from the public domain at an alarming
rate. The FOIA is being eviscerated; thousands of very important
governmental documents are being shredded; Bush’s military
record (or lack thereof) has disappeared; Ashcroft has given
orders to agencies not to cooperate with people looking for
“sensitive” information – information that the public has
a legal right to know about; 8,000 pages from the Iraqi Declaration
were removed by the U.S. before it was released to the UN
(those pages presumably named corporations that aided Iraq
in its biological and weapons proliferation); chunks of government
and industry websites have been deleted and what remains has
been sanitized, minimizing embarrassing facts about industry
ties and the like; Cheney’s Halliburton case miraculously
got dismissed from the courts right along with the truth;
the fact that language protecting Eli Lilly against certain
law suits was somehow buried in an unrelated security bill
with nobody taking responsibility has long been swept under
the rug. The list goes on and on and on.
The Bush administration is setting dangerous precedents,
opening a Pandora’s box of issues. In the National Security
Strategy that the White House issued last September, the US
claimed it has a "right" of military preemption anywhere around
the world. Yet, the U.S. keeps watch over other countries,
believing none have this same right and none have claimed
it.
But that won’t last long. We have just as much of a right
to do it as they do, other countries will say. And they’ll
be correct. The Bush administration doesn’t have the right
to do things other countries can’t, as much as they try to
pretend otherwise.
Similarly, the U.S. is playing the game of Two New Weapons
of Mass Destruction for Me, and None For You. This is a dangerous
game as any kid on the playground can tell you, because the
kid who isn’t allowed to have any toys won’t play for long
– at least not the game you’re playing. He sees the inequity
and the injustice and soon something’s gotta give.
Thus, Bush is creating a world of preemptive strikes, nuclear
weapons proliferation; a world that can ignore environmental
treaties and erode citizens’ rights, only naming a few.
And now, the administration via the voice of Donald Rumsfeld
may very well be creating a precedent for the use of theoretical
possibility and conjecture – no evidence is evidence – as
a rationale for war. At the rate we’re going war, the world
over, may soon be founded on mere hunches.
Perhaps Rumsfeld’s logic will filter into situations that
have nothing to do with war. Perhaps one day we’ll see the
same reasoning in our courtrooms: If the jurors find no evidence
whatsoever that a defendant has, say, murdered his wife, then
perhaps they’ll conclude the lack of evidence is, in and of
itself, really proof that he did do it.
If a police officer gives a driver suspected of driving under
the influence, a breathalyzer test that comes up negative,
perhaps that is evidence, in and of itself, that she is actually
driving drunk. A whole new system of law, justice and ethics
could be born.
Iraq, in fact, may not be cooperating in ways we haven’t
discovered. But we need real proof, not theoretical possibilities.
What are they going to call this war: Operation Because There
Was a Theoretical Possibility? (Even if they found proof,
war will only make us less safe. But, that’s another issue.)
It seems to me when Rumsfeld made his dubious comments, it
provided evidence, in and of itself, of an administration
that will shamelessly stop at nothing to get what it wants
– making embarrassingly transparent leaps into the treacherous
waters of unsubstantiated conjecture, knowing the media will
leap right in with them as much of America, cued by their
TV sets, hurry to put on their swim suits of credulity, ready
to follow along side by side with Tony Blair who stands at
attention in his uniform of mask and snorkel.
It is evidence, in and of itself, of a brazen administration
run amok.
It is evidence, in and of itself, of a president who is in
actuality, simply an all-too human, failed businessman with
major family connections, who feels the need to compensate
for his long list of failings, hoping to make his daddy proud.
It is evidence, in and of itself, that this administration
is desperately scrambling for something – anything - any excuse
to deploy the poor and disenfranchised Americans that mostly
make up our military, asking them to risk their lives so the
Bush adminstration can flex its world-wide muscles as it secures
strategic positioning, hoping we Americans will hold up our
giant foam fingers and chant, “We’re Number One.”
It is evidence, in and of itself, that to our current administration,
the potential of gallons and gallons of spilled innocent Iraqi
“collateral” blood is less of a concern than the promise of
a cheap gallon of oil.
Let’s shift the paradigm so that the burden is on the Bush
administration to prove to the American people and the world
otherwise.
Carol Norris is a freelance writer and psychotherapist. She
can be contacted at writing4justice@planet-save.com.
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