Author: John McCarthy

Paul Wolfowitz is now saying that fighting the war in Iraq is key to fighting the war against terror. In fact , he is now saying, that’s why the American army invaded Iraq- our intelligence was “murky” but surely everyone can see that without invading Iraq, America would face yet another World Trade Center massacre. Apparently what the new intellectual counteroffensive to justify the war consists of is this thought along with the notion that the deaths of the Hussein brothers have cleared the stage for the growth of democracy in Iraq. I remember listening to Sean Hannity last week announcing on his radio show that he was tired of being on the defensive about the Iraqi war and that the White House was coordinating this new attack to change the intellectual battlefield beginning that day. But the death of the Hussein brothers is underscoring the fact that the guerilla war has other sources besides the remnants of the Baathist regime and of course the relationship between that regime and the revolutionary Muslims is and has always been either non-existent or inconsequential. Nor have we heard much from the intellectual bodyguard of the War Party, with the exception of the Fox News crowd.

Over the last month, the justifications for war offered by the Bush administration have been examined and found wanting. It turns out that the evidence for the military threat posed by Saddam Hussein to the United States was quite weak. But last week there was a revelation made by US Air Force Lieutenant General T. Michael Moseley to the effect that the Air Force began bombing Iraq in June, 2002 under the guise of patrolling the “no fly” zone in the south of Iraq. Some 391 targets were bombed in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. Any proposed mission likely to kill more than 30 civilians had to be personally approved by Don Rumsfeld. The Air Force submitted some 50 requests and the Secretary of Defense approved each one. Furthermore, according to Moseley, the White House had given orders to the Air Force in late 2001 to draw up plans for a war on Iraq.
The existence of these operations exposes the acts of the Bush administration in the fall of 2002 as one sustained con game played upon the American people. Even when Little Bush was strutting before the United Nations that fall, the war against Iraq was under way. The intellectual bodyguard of the Bush administration has spent the last month repeating its mantra about Bush being a man of his word and a courageous leader. This revelation reveals the entire administration as a group of dedicated and ingenious liars. Just as the true facts regarding this war have taken some time to be absorbed by the American medica, so to will this latest bombshell come to be accepted by the American public and its media.

This afternoon on Fox News, John Gibson was interviewing country singer Merle Haggard about his new song, “And that’s the news”. After listening to the lyrics Gibson asked Haggard if he was questioning the legitimacy of the Iraqi war, Merle denied the charge,saying that he was wanting to speak up for the common American soldier serving in Iraq. But then Haggard admitted that after listening to Tony Blair explain why he took Britian to war, he was convinced that Blair was lying. Furthermore he wondered why American boys were still dying when the war had been declared over. An off balance Gibson then explained that the Iraqi invasion was undertaken because “America had been attacked.” and Iraq had been involved in that attack. The slow-talking Haggard replied that there was no evidence linking Iraq to the World Trade Center massacre, and anyway wasn’t it Afghanistan that was supposed to be responsible for the attack. Gibson then stated that both Iraq and Afghanistan had been involved in the World Trade Center massacre and we had to go after them, one after the other.
When we wonder how the American people acquired the belief that Iraq was involved in that attack, a belief unsupported by the facts, perhaps they heard it on Fox News with John Gibson.

With the American taxpayer money burning a hole in their pocket, the Israeli government is building a two hundred mile , twenty-four foot high concrete wall replete with gun towers, that will isolate the hapless Palestinians into three large prison camps. Surely this construction project, begun last summer, represents one of the most despicably evil acts ever undertaken by a government noted for its cruelty. An impassioned Ran HaCohen examines this grim development in his most recent two posts on Antiwar.com, http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h-col.html and http://www.antiwar.com/hacohen/h052103.html

One positive outcome for the Israeli government of the wall has been the free acquisition of thousands of acres of prime Palestinian farmland.