The University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes recently published a study called “Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War,” which found that 48 percent of Americans believe that U.S. troops found evidence of close pre-war links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
Twenty-two percent believe the lie that troops found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And 25 percent believe the lie that world public opinion favored Washington’s attack on Iraq.
These lies-lies told by liars in Bush’s unelected criminal gang and amplified by liars in the corporate media-forced this quagmire upon us. Only 23 percent who knew all the pretexts were false-a pathologically insane lunatic fringe-favored the attack.
It would have taken no act of heroism to stop Bush’s war crime; we only needed honest media.
On February 21st, 2001, Colin Powell said of Saddam Hussein: “He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”
One simply cannot offer a clearer demonstration that Powell and his allies lied America into an illegal and racist occupation than their own words.
Powell is not the administration “moderate,” as some claim. He is an integral part of this fundamentalist, militaristic, xenophobic, nationalistic regime whose foreign policy calls for endless war.
And because of this policy, the world is more dangerous. If we ignore this, or if we delude ourselves into thinking they’re not serious, they will get their wish and we will suffer mightily.
And we will deserve it.
So we have no choice but to denounce the murderous actions of this criminal regime.
Predictably, the Bush gang’s defenders will attack their critics: first, by calling them conspiracy theorists who use “rhetoric” rather than “evidence”; next, by distorting their claims and attacking invented straw-men; and finally, by asserting a contrary position as fact without a shred of proof.
For a textbook example, see Geoffrey Brooks’ defense of Bush’s quagmire last week.
In his column, Brooks sanctimoniously dismissed 90 percent of the world who opposed Bush’s barbaric lie. Without evidence, he asserted that his upside-down Alice and Wonderland world – where CNN and Fox reign – is prima facie true and that the quagmire’s opponents are deluded.
Brooks lied by asserting that I claimed the invasion was about oil, when I never offered this simplistic analysis.
After another lie – that Congress declared war on Iraq – Brooks moves on to call the truism that the occupation of Iraq is illegal “baseless.”
Since he didn’t do it last time, perhaps Brooks could explain to us what makes it legal.
One claim I did make in my column-ignored by Brooks-was that the occupation of Iraq was undertaken, in part, to privatize the nation for cronies of the Bush crime family.
The London Independent recently reported that the U.S.-chosen Iraqi Governing Council’s Finance Minister declared that all of Iraq’s assets (except the oil industry) will be sold off. Buyers get 100 percent ownership, full repatriation of profits, and negligible taxation.
Basically, the minister authorized the state-sanctioned gang rape of Iraq by foreign investors and marauders.
Unsurprisingly, the main benefactors are Bush henchmen like Joe Allbaugh, his former chief of staff and campaign manager. According to its Web site, Allbaugh’s New Bridge Strategies, LLC was “created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.”
Want more cronyism?
Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith’s old law firm, Feith & Zell, opened a new division specializing in offering clients sweet deals in Iraq.
Feith’s former partner, Mark Zell, is working as a “Marketing Consultant” for the Iraqi International Law Group, a new outfit to help secure contracts for rebuilding Iraq. The head of IILG, Salem Chalabi, is Ahmed Chalabi’s nephew. Chalabi was a New York Times source on several stories as well as being a Pentagon propagandist; he now serves as the U.S.-appointed Prime Minister in the Iraqi Governing Council.
Sadly, these disgraceful connections only scratch the surface of Bush’s criminality.
To “legally” plunder the smorgasbord of Iraqi resources, one needs access to American leadership. Brooks demonstrates a willful blindness when he dismisses as irrelevant the connections offered by Allbaugh, Zell, and Chalabi-connections that run straight to the Pentagon and the White House.
But his blindness is hardly unique: Anyone who refuses to challenge the Big Lies of this bloodthirsty administration does the same thing.