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May
29, 2003
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May
31, 2003
Point/Counterpoint
Does
It Matter that the Bush Administration Lied About the Reasons
for Going to War in Iraq?
By TOM STEPHENS
"I don't believe anyone that I know
in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons."
- Donald Rumsfeld, May 14,
2003
"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted
nuclear weapons."
- Dick Cheney, March 16,
2003
"Simply stated, there is no doubt
that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
- Dick Cheney, August 26,
2002
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and
improving facilities that were used for the production of biological
weapons."
-- George W. Bush, September
12, 2002
"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled
on one issue, weapons of mass destruction [as the justification
for invading Iraq] because it was the one reason everyone could
agree on."
- Paul Wolfowitz, May 28,
2003
It's crystal clear now that the US government
lied about its "intelligence" information regarding
Saddam's mythical, useless and totally unused WMD. Nothing.
Nichts. Nada. How do you say "nothing" in French?
From the above quotes, it appears that Rumsfeld is still lying.
(What do you expect?) Wolfowitz of Arabia is a little more frank
now that the damage is done. Bush is busy raising money and
strutting his tax cut and military man stuff for now. He'll
start making big speeches about it again, come September 2004
and the election campaign. Does it really matter that the US
Government lied about its reasons for going to war in Iraq?
On the one hand, you might think that
a national issue as important as the reason for war would require
official honesty, and that lying about it would be the kind of
high crime identified as grounds for impeachment in the US Constitution.
So based on those considerations you'd think it should matter
that the US Government lied about its reasons for going
to war in Iraq.
On the other hand, the ratings of the
embedded and censored TV "coverage" of the war ("promotion"
is more like it--the crucial means by which the lies were believed
when it counted) were pretty good. The US casualties are still
fairly low compared to past world & imperial wars. Bechtel
and Halliburton, Raytheon and Lockheed are happy. Worldcom isn't
exactly happy with its $500 million fine for its $150
billion accounting fraud, but its new government contract to
repair Iraq's wireless network, and its $300 million tax rebate
will all help it get thru. Reality TV helps the American People
get thru America's ugly economic reality--rapidly rising unemployment,
institutionalized racism, stagnant wages, massive inequality,
bloated corporate welfare disguised as "free trade,"
bankrupt state and local governments, a monstrous health care
crisis and a virtual civil war over public education and the
separation of church and state. The American Empire reigns supreme
for now thru unrivaled military power. And under Bush &
Cheney might makes right. The Democratic Party
is completely useless. The American People are primarily consumers,
and ads lie to consumers all the time. The American
People are only incidentally citizens, so based on the
basic facts of daily reality and politics--"the art of the
possible" - in the 21st century, maybe it doesn't matter
much that the US Government lied about its reasons for going
to war in Iraq.
But the basic reality of the Big Lie here is the "twoness"
of the war. It's supposedly a war against terrorism.
But that's really secondary. It's even incidental to
the real war when push comes to shove (as it increasingly
does in America's ugly economic reality today). The real war
is the one against workers. This real war is on the
verge of utterly destroying or at least severely damaging
all of the following things: American Democracy, the Rule
of Law, as well as multinational global governance under evolving
principles of customarily accepted international law; minimum
socioeconomic welfare and wage structures; civilian control over
the US military; many of the American People's most fundamental
constitutional liberties; the ability of the American People
to participate fairly and meaningfully in corporate-dominated
elections; the separation of powers--both government and corporate
- upon which all legitimate US governing authority is theoretically
based; the rights of workers to bargain collectively; the national
treasury; the civil rights revolution of the 20th century; and
the planet's resources, climate and natural environment. All
in significant part because the US Government lied about its
reasons for going to war in Iraq.
The suffering of the victims of US Empire
is (or should be) the real issue. The collateral damage in Afghanistan
and Iraq, the millions of prisoners of the vast American white
supremacist prison-industrial gulag, the millions of children
born into "a world that's been raped and defiled,"
where everybody knows that "Governments lie." The
working families cheated out of the American Dream by warmed-over
Reaganomics and chickenhawk neoconservative fanatics. Given
the enormous human and historical stakes, producing immense cynicism,
perhaps People of conscience should be much more concerned with
minimizing the widespread human suffering than about how the
US Government lied about its reasons for going to war in Iraq.
Leading Peace Movement spokespersons
will point out that the massive suffering is caused in large
part by the Big Lie. This is indisputably true. And it is also
true--and great reason for hope--that in time the passive consent
of many People may eventually be withheld if they come to understand
how and why the US Government lied about its reasons for going
to war in Iraq.
But the potential to expose and
use the Bush administration's boldfaced lies to slow and
eventually stop their deadly crimes is much more important than
the fact of the lies themselves. What seems to be indisputably
important in theory to history, morality, society and culture
may matter much less in terms of practical reality. If the masses
of People focus most of their energies for the vast majority
of their time on private, family, and leisure
time consumer activities; if politics is an alienating and
sick joke; if the fundamental(ist) driving force of contemporary
history is a spiritual crisis & crusade of Judeo-Christian
Coalition "rapture," in mutually reinforcing reaction
to violent Islamic fundamentalism; if it's totally obvious to
those paying any reasonable amount of attention that the US government's
"war on terrorism" is really about economic, energy
and environmental resources, US corporate/military power
projection and control over those resources; if the Bush
administration can get away with exploiting the pain and horror
of the September 11 attacks this blatantly and shamefully, then
maybe on any really existing levels of human and historical significance,
it just doesn't matter that the US Government lied about its
reasons for going to war in Iraq.
As a consumer, an imperial subject, a
worker governed by laws of the market, and a passive object of
history, it doesn't matter. Or it shouldn't, by the disgustingly
cramped criteria applicable to such degraded human states. As
a citizen, a parent, a human being, and an active moral agent
choosing my life's essential meaning and content, it certainly
does matter a whole lot. Whether or not it matters that the
US Government lied about its reasons for going to war in Iraq
depends on me. And us. We the People.
The current form of government - the
Bush administration corporate fascist model--has become destructive
of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, the
ends for which Governments are instituted among Women and Men.
Therefore it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it. The fact that the US Government lied about its
reasons for going to war in Iraq may well provide a basis for
indictments, impeachment, even political revolution. But that
fact matters much less than the fact that the American People
now face a choice. A choice about who we are, how we
will get thru the consequences of this Big Lie, and why we do
what we do to shape, define, create, and rationalize the world
we will leave for our children. A choice between war and justice,
shame and responsibility, freedom and the power of money. A
choice between a culture of life and one of death. Their lies
ultimately matter much less than our will and our ability to
make the right choices.
Wolfowitz's creepy phrase "bureaucratic
reasons" evokes the infamous Wahnsee Conference, when top
Nazi officials attended a high level meeting in a big old house
in Berlin, facilitated by Himmler's deputy SS man Reinhard Heydrich,
to plan the administrative nuts and bolts of the "Final
Solution."
Tom Stephens
is a lawyer in Detroit, Michigan. He can be reached at lebensbaum4@earthlink.
Today's
Features
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
America: Pay More to Die Sooner
Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
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