Why doesn't Bush just admit it? Why doesn't the corporate media just say it? Bush is hell-bent to invade Iraq to topple his father's former close pal Saddam from power, no matter what Iraq does or does not do, no matter what Europe, or anyone else does or does not do or say.
Never mind that Bush and company created Saddam, while those of us in the peace movement opposed Washington's support for Saddam and weapons sales (and like so many of us, I was called "soft on the Ayatollah" for speaking out against US support for Saddam back when the militarists told us this was the right thing to do. The hypocrisy!)
What kind of cowardly lie is it to pretend that "The use of force is not my first choice, it's my last" as Bush said? What kind of cowardly lie is it for the media to report such things with a straight face?
But wait a minute! There are some moments of honesty. The open policy of Bush's administration is "regime change" in Iraq.
It is as plain to the eye as the naked Emperor, that Bush, hell-bend on invading Iraq, WILL, with 100% absolute predictable certainty, WILL make the "finding" in that an invasion is necessary.
How could a wolf guard a lamb then? How could Bush ask for resolutions allowing him to attack Iraq if in his "judgment" it's necessary, when he openly admits he wants a regime change in the country his father and fellow militarists formerly sold weapons to and economically supported?
Is Saddam a lamb? Of course not. The Iraqi people, Iraq's children, and large amounts of their blood, are the lambs Bush's war would devour -- along with oil and regional domination.
So the question is not whether Saddam can be trusted. That's a red herring, since those of us who oppose a military assault on Iraq and its people, have never proposed anything based on "trust". Rather, based on inspections and verifications -- controlled by the legal entities having such authority, namely the United Nations, not controlled by the Regime in Washington.
The real question is: Can Bush be Trusted? How can Congress or the UN allow any resolutions which open the door for Bush to later make the oh-so-very-surprising-and-unexpected "finding" that a military assault is necessary, when we know in advance that "regime change" is Bush's policy? What's wrong with this picture?
'Representative Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to William H. Herndon, stated: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - - AND YOU ALLOW HIM TO MAKE WAR AT PLEASURE. Study to see if you can fix ANY LIMIT TO HIS POWER in this respect, AFTER YOU HAVE GIVEN HIM SO MUCH AS YOU PROPOSE. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.'"'<./i>
- U.S. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia to his distinguished colleagues of the U.S. Senate, 2002 0ct 3.
[This three-level quote was first discovered at
http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/archive/2002_09_29_bloggera.html#82557793.
Full remarks available at:
http://byrd.senate.gov/byrd_newsroom/byrd_news_oct2002/rls_oct2002/rls_oct2002_2.html]
Actually we know more.
A leaked document revealed last month in England's Sunday Herald revealed that Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure "regime change" even before Bush to power in January of 2001. The document, a frightening "blueprint for US global domination" of the whole planet, reveals even more: the truth is finally out in the open that, although Bush certainly resents his father's ex-pal Saddam, in fact Saddam is just an excuse for a power grab in the oil-rich region. The document frankly admits that Saddam provides the "justification" for a military penetration of and control of the region that they were planning even if Saddam were not in power in Iraq:
"While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification", their desire "for a substantial American [military] presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Adding that "even should Saddam pass from the scene", military bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently. [Ref: http://www.sundayherald.com/27735]
Yet Congress's "milder" resolution would allow Bush to wage wage against Iraq with Congress declaring war first, and without UN authorization. What would we think if any other country allowed itself to attack, without UN authorization, another country? The mildest terms would allow Bush to "enforce UN resolutions" but read carefully: to "enforce" them as he "deems" in his royal highness, "even if such action was not endorsed by the UN Security Council.
Meanwhile Bush's draft resolution for the UN would allow "a UN member state" can use "all necessary means" if it is deemed that Iraq is not cooperating "not co-operating with inspectors". One can try to imagine Bush calling for military assault on Israel should it not comply completely and utterly with every letter of every UN resolution -- a consistent man, Bush is, right?
"All necessary means" is a euphemism for all military means, and for unnecessary and completely unrelated acts (like, grabbing control of Iraq and installing your favorite puppet leader -- precisely what Bush's daddy did in Panama, replacing one thug with another, while replacing Bush Sr's ex-pal Noriega, formerly on the CIA's payroll with a 6-figure salary Bush's CIA was providing. Bush senior was happy to have our tax-dollar support Noriega the thug when he was cooperating with the CIA's terrorist attack on Nicaragua; not so when Noriega, for his own reasons, stopped cooperating). [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/americas/2301209.stm]
How cowardly then for Congress to let Bush do this? Or the UN?
Does Bush have any credibility what so ever? Just how much credibility do Bush and company have? Who are these Pentagon, CIA, militarist folks anyway? Answer: the ones who are now telling us that Saddam is more dangerous than all other countries combined in the known universe, THEY were the same people who TOLD US BACK THEN to look the other way (secret funding of Iraq in the 1980s), or when we found out, that it's OK to support Saddam right thought 1990.
THEY funded Iraq secretly during the Iran-Iraq war (back when anti-war folks like me and so many others were called "soft on the Ayatollah" for 'daring' to question the funding and arms THEY sent to Saddam, when we said we should not send aid and arms to ANY dictator.
THEY were in bed with Saddam until the last minute right before the invasion of Kuwait.
THEY were the ones who continued to support Saddam even AFTER Saddam's use of chemical "weapons of mass destruction against his own people" was found out. When the militarists recite on TV yet again "he used weapons of mass destruction against his own people" we should look at the TV and say, "yeah, with YOUR knowing support -- before and, even after [as is now documented] you found out about it, you supported him!" [See documentation in http://www.fair.org/extra/0209/iraq-gas.html and by Chomsky who elaborates on "All of those charges are correct. But they're just missing three words, namely: 'with our support'" in http://www.zmag.org/content/TerrorWar/agr_chomsky.cfm ]
THESE are the folks now telling us that Saddam is the most dangerous man in the known (and unknown) universe, when, apparently, it was ok to support Saddam when he had 10 to 20 times more military might So they have no credibility whatsoever. Bush and company have less than zero credibility.
Back then, when Saddam had much more military power, had a strong country rather than a devastated one, had many more weapons than after 10 years of inspections -- back then -- when Saddam was at his MOST powerful level -- that's exactly when THEY told us it was in "US interests" to support Saddam. Now, former head UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter (who as BBC reported, angered Iraq for being so thorough), reports Iraq is 90-95% disarmed...and NOW the militarists whose leaked document admits they want to grab power there -- Saddam or no Saddam -- NOW the militarists who were in bed with Saddam and supported him when he was strong -- NOW they want to tell us fairy tails about Saddam being the most dangerous person in the world and Galaxy, so they can invade, killing thousands more, perhaps devastating the region, destabilizing it, devastating the environment, and have many thousand more US GIs with Gulf War Syndrome again?
So Bush SR, Bush Jr, the militarists, they have absolutely NO credibility. They have less than zero credibility. They have NEGATIVE credibility since they were the most enthusiastic supporters of Saddam, if their ACTIONS (selling him weapons etc) is what we listen to. What hypocrisy! What an outrage! And, with few exceptions, what moral cowardice by our political "establishment" of both Parties.
Most Democrats care not about lives or the law or real security. Most went along with the last war that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and children, devastated the region, led to Gulf War Syndrome in veterans who get more help from the peace movement than these "hawks", and left Saddam in power -- only enjoying more support from his people as virtually anyone -- no matter how odious -- would enjoy, in a country under external attack.
While we're being honest, let's not forget Bush's Plan B.
We now know that the inspections were used to manufacture crises which would serve as an excuse for more attacks. Not only Scott Ritter, but Europeans and others who ere there first hand, have by now testified to this. No matter how we find Saddam repugnant, basic common sense means that if you want cooperation should don't deliberately do something (spying to gather information to assassinate Saddam or give his enemies in the region his state secrets) -- that you KNOW in advance will cause lack of cooperation by any leader: good, bad, or in-between; no one will agree to help you asssassinate him. That's just elementary logic.
In fact, it's not just Scott Ritter and others with integrity who have spoken out -- the mainstream media itself has openly admitted only a couple of years ago, that Washington was manipulating the inspections and using them as a cover to spy..even though the corporate media has given itself a case of amnesia and "forgets" this today [http://www.fair.org/activism/usat-iraq.html ; With the Washington Post revealing in 1999 how Washington "infiltrated agents and espionage equipment for three years into United Nations arms control teams in Iraq" without the UN's knowledge and "carried out an ambitious spying operation" -- earlier revelations which are magically transformed to "allegations" or even better, ignored outright by the very papers whose exposes first revealed these facts; see http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0209/S00272.htm and see also Posts's deal with Washington to "keep mum" on what it knew at http://www.fair.org/extra/9903/unscom.html ]
Lacking even that elemetnary logic, we know more. The spying is used also to gather information on how to totally devastate Iraq in a future attack, not just murdering thousands of Iraqi conscripts, but also to commit what are war crimes: deliberate destruction of life-preserving system the civilian men, women, and children of Iraq depend on. We know that this kind of information was being gathered.
We know more: we not know that this kind of information was used before the inspections, indeed, during the Gulf War itself, based on careful military planning, to deliberately commit war crimes in Iraq by deliberately destroying water systems in what amounts to massive biological warfare which was known in advance would cause massive deaths of Iraq's civilians:
Working carefully with revealed military planning documents, Professor Thomas Nagy of the School f Business and Public Management at George Washington University has documented well in "The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Internationally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply" If you have a strong stomach for reading the documentation of cold-blooded planning of war crimes (all spoken about by military planners in delicate (albeit quite frank) terms of course): [http://www.progressive.org/0801issue/nagy0901.html]
So Plan B is, if a fig leaf from Congress,a nd if possible, the UN can't be obtained, then "inspections" will resume with spying to ensure that the later invasion. A later invasion that would come after a cooked up "incident" which, as Scott Ritter and others have revealed is the game Bush and co are playing -- and to accomplish the "regime change" that Bush and company openly admit is their goal anyway, no matter what transpires. And in compliance with the previously undisclosed planning document that,
"While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification", their desire "for a substantial American [military] presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." and that "even should Saddam pass from the scene", military bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently. [Ref: http://www.sundayherald.com/27735]
But it now appears that "Plan B" may not be necessary with Daschle and others who do not care more than Bush about what's right, but do care about their elections, ready to give Bush the "green light" Bush lusts after, the fig leaf of Congressional (pre) "approval" for his launching an attack on Iraq and her people, as soon as he can manage to instigate an incident, or just momentary excuse.
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On what we can do to prevent it -- and what we can do that will be helpful no matter -- win or loose -- no matter if we success or don't succeed in stopping this war -- actions that have positive potential no matter what happens, I will write in an upcoming email.
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In the meantime, you can sign the major petition for alums, students, grads, faculty, and staff at http://noiraqattack.org and the one at http://www.peacepledge.org/resist/default.htm
And tell Congress you will vote against anyone who votes for war: http://www.michaelmoore.com/petitions/peacepledge/index.php
Keep updated on Iraq: http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/IraqCrisis.htm
And daily news: http://www.democracynow.org
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http://EconomicDemocracy.org/wtc/ See "Winning people over: Talking points part II against the war" and other resources.
Sorry, we cannot read all UseNet messages, but can be reached by email.
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"And so we're told that this is the golden age.. ..And gold is the reason for the wars we wage" -U2