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July
31, 2003
Sheldon
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True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
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July
30, 2003
David
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Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
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Bring Them Home Now!
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to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
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Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July 26 / 27, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
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Robert
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The Power of Death
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Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
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Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
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Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
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Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
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Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
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25, 2003
Francis
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Impeaching Bush
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Krieger
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Harvey
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Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
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Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
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Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
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Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
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Stop the Wall!
July
24, 2003
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Cassel
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Robert
Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The
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Dumb and Dumber in Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in
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David
Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops
Douglas
Valentine
A Nation of Assassins
Stew Albert
Contract Killing
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Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
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Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
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John Stanton
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Patrick
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Georgie Porgie
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July
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Diane
Christian
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James
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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July
31, 2003
Forget
Everything Else We've Told You
Wolfowitz's
Operative Statement
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
Last Sunday US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz
appeared on television networks to peddle the Bush administration's
new line about why it invaded Iraq. It is now asserted by every
Washington mouthpiece, loudly and persistently, that Bush went
to war on Iraq to combat terrorism. The strident and terrifying
pronouncements by Cheney, Rice, Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld about
vast quantities of Iraqi nuclear, biological and chemical weapons,
and ballistic missiles to deliver them, are now, well, perhaps
not quite as accurate as they were when they were made. I'm waiting
for someone to regale us with the wonderful phrase of the Nixon
years, when another president told the American people lie after
lie after lie. It was : "This is the operative statement.
The others are inoperative".
A massive number of Americans--most of
them ordinary people like you and me--believe sincerely that
the former Iraqi government committed the atrocities in September
2001 when 3000 people were killed in New York and Washington
by (mainly) Saudi Arabian terrorists. There is no evidence that
Iraq was in the slightest way connected with these horrific attacks,
yet US soldiers in Iraq told reporters that the war was "payback
time for 9-11". They still display slogans to that effect
on their helmets. They believe it because they were encouraged
to do so by an effective propaganda campaign initiated in the
White House.
It is on this idealistic acceptance of
well-presented manipulation of truth, combined with the fervent
and genuine patriotism of average American citizens, that slime
like Wolfowitz are capitalising. Mind you, perhaps Wolfowitz
actually does believe what he is saying. If so, he is an even
worse case of dementia than hitherto I had thought possible.
The killing of US soldiers in Iraq, announced
Wolfowitz, "is a sacrifice that is going to make our children
and our grandchildren safer, because the battle to win the peace
in Iraq now is the central battle in the war on terrorism."
It would be difficult to identify a more specious piece of nauseating
tripe uttered by a Washington figure in recent years. This was
a contemptible bid to manipulate the patriotic hearts and minds
of the American people who stand on the verge of questioning
the lies they have been told for so long. The US military occupation
of Iraq has nothing--nothing whatever--to do with combating al
Qaeda and international terrorism. The deaths of occupation troops
have not made anyone safer, never mind American children and
grandchildren--the children and grandchildren that these dead
youngsters will never have. Some of the older soldiers who have
been killed--those over the age of twenty or so--had fathered
children. But they will never be seen again by their sons and
daughters.
Soldiers are dying, Wolfowitz, you latter-day
McNamara, because Iraq was invaded, and because Iraqis object
to humiliation by occupation forces. It is as simple as that.
Every time there is an incident of houses being burst into by
US troops in the dead of night, and terrified, innocent residents
being hooded and handcuffed, there is enormous reaction against
America throughout the country. Every time the women of a household
are subjected to indignity there is revulsion everywhere in Iraq.
(And far beyond, of course, throughout the Islamic world--and
elsewhere.)
Washington continues to claim that attacks
on US troops are caused only by anti-American extremists. Well,
they may be extremists, and, obviously, they are anti-American.
But let us reflect for a moment on the feelings of a young Iraqi
man whose country has been invaded. Whether or not he was a member
of the Ba'ath party, whether or not he was in the army, he is
an Iraqi citizen. As we keep being told by such as Wolfowitz,
Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld, one should be proud of one's nation.
Just so. And although these young men most probably loathe Saddam
Hussein, they are still Iraqis, born and bred, and proud of their
heritage. Wolfowitz and the rest of the Bush extremists cannot
understand that an ordinary Iraqi could and can be proud to the
extent that he actually objects to invasion and occupation of
his country and can be furious about the bombing and gross mistreatment
of peaceful citizens. It is vital that this sort of person be
brought on side, but every random killing by the apparently unaccountable
and out-of-control 'Task Force 20' drives them further away.
I have a September 1945 edition of the
Illustrated London News in which there are photographs of US
soldiers in a German vault examining the records of eight million
members of the Nazi Party. (A tenth of the population of Germany
--including Sudetenland and Austria--joined the party between
1933 and 1945.) Naturally the occupation forces did not instantly
alienate and condemn 8 million people to poverty by forbidding
them to continue in government appointments. The allies had more
common-sense than that. It was obvious that by far the majority
had joined the Party because their livelihoods depended on it.
So during the occupation most former Party members were employed
to re-establish democracy and restore the economy, in which endeavours
they assisted most effectively.
Just as in Nazi Germany it was beneficial
to be a Nazi, in Ba'athist Iraq it was economically advantageous
to join the Ba'ath. But the US viceroy sacked every Ba'ath official
and disbanded the army, thereby setting back the administration
and security of the country by about a decade, and, of more importance,
creating a large group of suddenly poor and thus instantly disaffected
young and middle-aged Iraqis who hate America. This was the single
most stupid action taken by the occupying power. In the main
it is these young Iraqis, with access to weapons, and with despair
and hatred in their hearts, who are ambushing and killing occupation
troops.
A Reuters' despatch records that "Lieutenant
General Ricardo Sanchez, whose troops usually blame the attacks
on die-hard Saddam loyalists, said the sophistication of the
raids had increased over the last 30 days. "This is what
I would call a terrorist magnet where America, being present
here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity if you will,"
Sanchez [said]."
A terrorist magnet? What does he mean?
Apparently what he thinks he means--or what he has been told
to say by the Pentagon--is "The key that we must not lose
sight of is that we must win this battle here in Iraq. Otherwise
America will find itself taking on these terrorists at home."
Selling the contrived message about terrorism just as brazenly
as Wolfowitz, he declared "We have to understand that we
have a multiple-faceted conflict going on here in Iraq. We've
got terrorist activity, we've got former regime leadership, we
have criminals, and we have some hired assassins that are attacking
our soldiers on a daily basis." "Hired assassins"?
Who are they? Who hires them? There is no public evidence that
any such element is operating in Iraq. As for "terrorist
activity", the recently-appointed commander Central Command,
General Abizaid, has said that the war in Iraq is "now a
classical guerrilla-type campaign". Whom do we believe?
General Sanchez, who is following the line of the Vietnam draft-dodger
defense academic Wolfowitz, or General Abizaid?
Where is the link between guerrilla strikes
and the warning by Wolfowitz that if the US does not "win"
in Iraq, it will "find itself taking on these terrorists
at home"? His contention is contradictory and confusing,
to put it mildly.
But in the classic propaganda ploy, intended
to convince the American public that the deaths of US soldiers
are necessary, the threat has to be presented as personal. Just
as Bush and Rice tried to frighten the American people (and largely
succeeded) by making emotional and dramatic declarations that
there would be "mushroom clouds" from Iraqi nuclear
weapons, so the false Iraq-to-terrorism link is intended to make
their flesh creep.
In striving to sell the new rationale
for occupying Iraq as the "central battle" in a valiant
anti-terrorist campaign, Wolfowitz declared that the attacks
on the USS Cole at Aden in 2000 and the US army barracks in Saudi
Arabia in 1996 were the fault of Iraq because "Americans
killed in these attacks were in the region as part of efforts
to contain Iraq." This bizarre allegation is the product
of an overtaxed mind. No doubt there are terrorists plotting
hideous mayhem in and against America. But Wolfowitz's claims
that the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq are "a sacrifice
. . . you'd have to expect" in order to free America of
the threat of terrorism is unbelievable bunkum.
Is this your operative statement, Wolfowitz?
Or perhaps your personal sacrifice?
Brian Cloughley
writes about defense issues for CounterPunch, Dawn and other
international publications. He can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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