January 2004

January 26, 2004

Page One

A few weeks ago, a New York Times story revealing that the Bush Administration had "quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment," was relegated to Page Six in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- while the Seattle Times had not deemed it newsworthy at all.

The story, now, has gained prominence in both papers. The P-I again carries the New York Times' coverage of the evolving story ("Kay says he concluded [that] at start of war no stockpile existed") -- this time on Page One, above the fold. The Seattle Times, meanwhile, is now on board, on Page Five, with the Los Angeles Times' reporting of David Kay's resignation. The NYT itself places the story above the fold as well.

So, good for them. Maybe the dawning realisation that the Administration lied out its arse ten ways from Sunday when making its case for war even has something to do with the results of a new Newsweek poll indicating that 52% of voters don't want The Superbrain to be re-elected, while only 44% do want him to be.

A shame the mainstream media could not be bothered to make an independent attempt to ascertain the status of Iraq's banned weapons programmes before the bombs began falling... Also a shame that the mainstream media does not choose to notice the serendipitous timing of Kay's admission that Iraq was not in possession of any banned weapons, coupled with Colin Powell's shameful climb-down from last year's histrionical performance at the United Nations: "The answer to that question is, we don't know yet." (You sure as hell "knew" then, numb-nuts.)

The Kay-Powell double-whammy comes just a few days after George Dubya's open-faced State-Of-The-Union lies regarding the Kay's findings: "Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictatator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day." Even if we, charitably, choose to look past Bush's striking rhetorical about-face from his 2003 State Of the Union address (wherein he claimed as established fact, on repeated occasions, the existence of huge quantities of banned weapons), The October 2003 Kay Report, in fact, asserted precisely the opposite: that there were no banned weapons to be found, and that there were no active programmes -- thus more less corroborating the claims of high-level defectors and current and former inspectors (claims initiated long before the war, indeed, long before Dubya even arrived on the scene). Moreover, what was Dubya doing referencing a three-month-old interim report, knowing full well that Kay would, in just a few days' time, issue his conclusion that Saddam had "got rid of" his banned weapons following the 1991 Gulf War?

"America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country," sez George Bush. So why is not the mainstream media lowering the hammer upon him when it's acknowledged, once and for all, by Bush's own appointees, three days later, that Iraq posed absolutely zero threat to "the security of our country"?

And, for the record, the mainstream media has not even once (to this blogger's knowlege) questioned the sacrosanctity of the United States' right to obliterate Iraq had banned weapons been found -- an issue this blogger discussed just over a year ago.

January 20, 2004

"They Should Kill Americans"

Two articles concerning the most recent bomb-blast in Iraq -- both coincidentally distributed by the Associated Press -- illustrate the widening gulf in the embattled nation.

In the first, we are treated to the Bush Administration's reaction.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities were quick to point out that the victims of the Baghdad bombing were mostly Iraqi civilians rather than American occupation troops.

"Once again, it is innocent Iraqis who have been murdered by these terrorists in a senseless act of violence," Bremer said in a statement. "Our determination to work for a stable and democratic future for this country is undiminished."

It's convenient to point fingers, but those "quick to point out" are, apparently, blissfully oblivious to the Geneva Conventions, which mandate the occupying powers to provide for the safety and security of the civilian population in an occupied country. U.S. and Iraqi authorities, in other words, were "quick to point out" the derelection of their own obligations.

Further hanging itself with its own rope, the "provisional authority", this time in the form of Col. Ralph Baker

said the fact that the bomber was unable to penetrate the security cordon "speaks highly of the level of security that we maintain" but that "anamolies like car bombs" are likely to continue.

Translation: to the extent that terrorist attacks upon civilians and civilian institutions (as opposed to attacks against military targets which, however tragic for the soldiers who are simply pawns in the Administration's "Great Game", are entirely legal) only kill and maim niggers (20 people killed and 60 wounded in this case, a handful of Americans among the wounded) it "speaks highly of the level of security we maintain".

This is perhaps the Administration's most telling quote to-date regarding the nature of the occupation.

We are told that, "No group claimed responsibility, but anti-U.S. insurgents that the military links to Saddam supporters have targeted Americans and Iraqis who cooperate with the U.S.-led coalition in previous bombings."

In the second piece, we hear the opinions of those who cooperate with the U.S.-led "coalition", those that the "U.S. and Iraqi authorities were quick to point out" are the victims of the terrorist attacks. They're not happy with the suicide bombers either -- they feel that they're being wrongly labeled as collaborators:

• "When they strike, only Iraqis die. Why do you think we work with them? There are no other jobs."

• "What kind of holy war is this? Is it holy war to kill innocent Iraqi people? They should kill Americans. These workers have harmed no one. They were waiting in line to go and make a living. We are living in such a bad time that we can only depend on God."

• "It's all the Americans' fault. They should take care of this country. ... They should help us as they promised they would."

• "Please tell me exactly what the Americans are doing here. They ruined everything, and now they are just standing here, unable to do anything. All these civilians are dying, and young people have no support -- that's why they work at these jobs. If the Americans can't do anything, let them leave this country."

Maybe there's a helpful truism in here: you know your imperial occupation has gone to shit when even the "collaborators" want you dead and/or gone.

January 16, 2004

Necessary Reading

They ain't pretty. They'll make you sick to your stomach. They'll make you wish you could go live on another planet. But you gotta read 'em -- it's a necessary requirement if we wish to retain our status as an "informed democracy". Think of 'em as "cough syrup for the soul", or something like that.

• Chalmers Johnson, "America's Empire Of Bases". Select disturbing passage:

One reason why the Pentagon is considering moving out of rich democracies like Germany and South Korea and looks covetously at military dictatorships and poverty-stricken dependencies is to take advantage of what the Pentagon calls their "more permissive environmental regulations." The Pentagon always imposes on countries in which it deploys our forces so-called Status of Forces Agreements, which usually exempt the United States from cleaning up or paying for the environmental damage it causes. This is a standing grievance in Okinawa, where the American environmental record has been nothing short of abominable. Part of this attitude is simply the desire of the Pentagon to put itself beyond any of the restraints that govern civilian life, an attitude increasingly at play in the "homeland" as well. For example, the 2004 defense authorization bill of $401.3 billion that President Bush signed into law in November 2003 exempts the military from abiding by the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

• Istvan Meszaros, "Cuba: The Next Forty-Five Years?". Select disturbing passage:

Yesterday’s "Star Wars Project" could still pretend to be a "defensive shield", even if in reality it was nothing of the kind. However, its heavily updated successor, codenamed "Falcon" (Force Application and Launch from the Continental U.S.), by no stretch of the imagination could be considered anything other than a blatantly offensive system of weaponry, to be deployed against the entire world. The first operational phase of this system will be completed by mid-2006, and the initial tests will take place already in 2004. The fully developed unmanned delivery vehicles will be able to "strike targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than two hours." Moreover, they will "carry a payload of up to 12,000 pounds and could ultimately fly at speeds of up to 10 times the speed of sound." ... As John Pike, head of the Washington think tank, GlobalSecurity.org, commented on the new weapons system: "It is about blowing people up on the other side of the planet even if no country on earth will allow us to use their territory."

So, to it then: go take your medicine, then plan your activism accordingly.

January 12, 2004

Earth To Tony

Somebody really needs to put a pie in Tony Blair's face. Hard on the heels of the Carnegie Report's finding that Bush "administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programs," and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's charging the Administration (with the documents to prove it) with planning to invade Iraq from its very first NSC meetings -- months before September 11; Tony Blair insists that "it would have been 'irresponsible not to have acted upon' pre-war intelligence that Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction."

Even though it was known, long before the war that that intelligence had been "stovepiped", cherry-picked, and coerced from the intelligence agencies, by Dick Cheney et al., to fit the pre-determined conclusion. Even though it was known that key elements of that intelligence were based on forgeries. Even though the UNMOVIC inspectors strongly claimed to need a few more months to definitively determine the status of Iraq's WMD programmes, and harshly denounced the "coalition"'s having cut short their work. Even though former inspectors and high-level defectors emphatically stated that Iraq had been "qualitatively disarmed" by 1995.

In other words, the "intelligence" was bogus, and Blair knew it. In other words, Blair is lying. No surprise there. But let's dig a little deeper.

Blair further ponders that, "You can only imagine what would have happened if I'd ignored the intelligence and then something terrible had happened."

Guess what, Tony? Something terrible did happen: you murdered tens of thousands of Iraqis. You irradiated the country with your "depleted" uranium weapons. You destroyed, for the second time in a decade, the country's infrastructure. You allowed thousands of years of history to be ripped to shreds in a matter of days. You sold off the country's resources to Dick Cheney's former employer (from whom he still draws compensation) and other close friends of the Bush Administration. You undertook a military occupation explicitly modeled on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. If that's not "terrible", then what the fuck would have been?

Oh, yeah. Saddam was going to sell or give his weapons -- that you knew he didn't have -- to Uncle Osama -- with whom you knew he had zero affiliation -- who was then going to light up New York City with a "dirty bomb" -- though you surely know that Osama already has his own weapons (or so it's been reported), and is trying to figure out a way to deliver them.

But, yeah, let's assume that Saddam had the weapons, that he was in cahoots with bin Laden, and that the "civilised" world was in imminent danger of being "mushroom cloud"-ed therefrom -- all within, as you've claimed, 45 minutes' time. Using your own logic, then (sorry for that), it would have been "irresponsible" in the extreme not to have invaded Iraq much earlier that you actually did. Why the fuck did you wait for months on end when Saddam/Osama were poised to strike? As this blogger has pointed up before now, the "coalition" should have launched its attack no later than September 24, 2002 -- the date on which the Blair Administration released its infamous dossier "proving" that Saddam's

chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programme is not an historic leftover from 1998. The inspectors aren't needed to clean up the old remains. His WMD programme is active, detailed, and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The WMD programme is not shut down. It is up and running.

And

that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes...

Why did you irresponsibly wait six more months before "disarming" Saddam, Tony, knowing all the while that you were 45 short minutes away from immolation? After all, you can only imagine what would have happened if something terrible had happened.

Tony's next trick was to try to revive the "double-deception" line of argument: "There is something bizarre about the idea that Saddam had these weapons, got rid of them and then never disclosed the fact that he got rid of them."

"Never disclosed"? What the fuck was the 12,000 page accounting turned over by Iraq in December of 2002 -- chopped ham? Why the fuck did he allow weapons inspectors back in? What the fuck was Saddam supposed to have meant when he said that, "This is an opportunity to reach the British people and the forces of peace in the world. There is only one truth and therefore I tell you Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever"? (Sure, he could, theoretically, have been lying. But that's an entirely different animal from never having "disclosed" that he'd gotten rid of the weapons.)

There's something "bizarre", all right. It's that Tony Blair hasn't been mercilessly spanked upside his bare ass with a deftly wielded hairbrush.