Subject:  Bush Pushes the Big Lie Toward the Brink
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 14:01:49 +0100 
> 
> Published on Tuesday, March 4, 2003 by the Los Angeles Times  
> Bush Pushes the Big Lie Toward the Brink
> Even some in government can no longer be silent in the face of falsehood.
>  
> by Robert Scheer 
>   
> So the truth is out: George W. Bush lied when he claimed to be worried
> about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise, Iraq's
> stepped-up cooperation with the U.N. on disarmament would be stunningly
> good news, obviating the need to rush to war.
> 
> Instead, the U.N. weapons inspectors' verification of Iraq's destruction
> of missiles, private meetings with Iraqi weapons scientists, visits to
> locations where biological and chemical weapons were destroyed in 1991
> and a series of unfettered flights by U2 spy plans have been met with a
> shrug and sneer in Washington. The White House line is that even if the
> Iraqis destroy all their slingshots, Goliath is still bringing his tanks
> and instituting "regime change." The arrogance is breathtaking. We have
> demanded that a country disarm -- and even as it is doing so, we say it
> doesn't matter: it's too late; we're coming in. Put down your guns and
> await the slaughter.
> 
> Abraham Lincoln once observed that even a free people can be fooled for a
> time -- and this, mind you, was long before Fox News existed -- and in
> his chaotic two-year presidency, Bush has pushed the Big Lie approach so
> far that we are seeing dramatic signs of its cracking: an international
> backlash, a domestic peace movement and whistle-blowing from inside our
> own intelligence and diplomatic corps.
> 
> "We have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such
> systematic manipulation of the American people, since the war in
> Vietnam," wrote John Brady Kiesling, a 20-year veteran of the U.S.
> Foreign Service in his letter of resignation last week to Secretary of
> State Colin Powell. Kiesling, who was political counselor in U.S.
> embassies throughout the Mideast, added that "until this administration,
> it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my
> president, I was also upholding the interests of the American people and
> the world. I believe it no longer."
> 
> And this brave man is not the only one who has caught on. The entire
> world is astonished that our president is lying not about a personal
> indiscretion but about the most sacred duty of the leader of the most
> powerful nation in human history not to recklessly endanger the lives of
> his own or the world's people. Yet lie he has.
> 
> The first lie, claimed outright, was that Iraq aided and abetted the
> Sept. 11 terrorists. There is no evidence at all for this claim. It is
> also interesting to note that not a single leading Al Qaeda operative has
> turned out to be Iraqi. The latest to be nabbed, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,
> was living in Pakistan, was raised in Kuwait and studied engineering --
> and presumably the physics of explosives -- at a college in North
> Carolina.
> 
> The second lie was that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction
> represent an imminent threat to U.S. security. Despite the most hugely
> expensive but secret high-tech spy operation in human history --
> estimated by most at well over $100 billion a year -- and a vast network
> of defectors and spies, we have not been able to find their supposed
> weapons.
> 
> The third and most dangerous lie is that our mission now is to bring
> lasting peace to the Mideast by a devastating invasion of Iraq, which
> will end, as the president outlined last week, in U.S. dominance over the
> structure of government and politics throughout the region. After
> abandoning promising efforts by the previous administration to create
> peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the Bush team now claims that
> changing Muslim governments around the world will end the downward spiral
> of violence there. Which leads us to another lie: that this is all good
> for our ally, Israel -- the claim of the cabal of neoconservative
> ideologues running our Mideast policy. In fact, however, Israel will be
> placed in a terribly dangerous position, serving as a fig leaf for U.S.
> ambitions, further ensuring that it remain forever an isolated military
> garrison.
> 
> This construction of a new world order comes from a naive and untraveled
> president, emboldened in his ignorance by advisors who have been plotting
> an aggressive Pax Americana ever since the Soviet bloc's collapse. Bush
> insiders Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and
> Donald Rumsfeld are all members of something called the Project for a New
> American Century that has been pushing for a U.S. redesign of the Mideast
> since 1997. After Sept. 11, they seized on our national tragedy as a way
> to enlist George W. in support of their grand design. Not only was this
> reckless scheme never mentioned by Bush during the election campaign, it
> was the sort of thing renounced as "nation-building," something he would
> never support. Yet another lie.
> 
>  
> *****************
> Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can
> change 
> the world, indeed it's the only thing that ever has. 
>  ----- Margaret Mead