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Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 8 March 23 - 29, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
The
twenty lies of George W. Bush By
Patrick Martin Back
to Alternative Reader Index
The
enormous scale of the lying suggests two political conclusions: the Bush
administration is going to war against Iraq with utter contempt for democracy
and public opinion, and its war propaganda counts heavily on the support of the
American media, which not only fails to challenge the lies, but repeats and
reinforces them endlessly. Without
attempting to be exhaustive, it is worthwhile listing some of the most important
lies and contrasting Bush’s assertions with the public record. All of the
false statements listed below are directly quoted from the verbatim transcript
of Bush’s remarks published on the Internet. Lie
No. 1: “My fellow citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of
decision.” The
decision for war with Iraq was made long ago, the intervening time having been
spent in an attempt to create the political climate in which US troops could be
deployed for an attack. According to press reports, most recently March 16 in
the Baltimore Sun, at one of the first National Security Council
meetings of his presidency, months before the terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon, Bush expressed his determination to overthrow Saddam
Hussein and his willingness to commit US ground troops to an attack on Iraq for
that purpose. All that was required was the appropriate pretext—supplied by
September 11, 2001. Lie
No. 2: “For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have
pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war.” The
US-led United Nations regime of sanctions against Iraq, combined with
“no-fly” zones and provocative weapons inspections, is one of brutal
oppression. The deliberate withholding of food, medical supplies and other vital
necessities is responsible for the death of more than a million Iraqis, half of
them children. Two UN officials who headed the oil-for-food program resigned in
protest over the conditions created in Iraq by the sanctions. The CIA used the
inspectors as a front, infiltrating agents into UNSCOM, the original inspections
program. The CIA’s aim was to spy on Iraq’s top officials and target Saddam
Hussein for assassination. Lie
No. 3: “The Iraqi regime has used diplomacy as a ploy to gain time and
advantage. It has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full
disarmament...” Iraq
has never “defied” a Security Council resolution since the end of the
Persian Gulf War in 1991. It has generally cooperated with the dictates of the
UN body, although frequently under protest or with reservations, because many of
the resolutions involve gross violations of Iraqi sovereignty. From 1991 to
1998, UN inspectors supervised the destruction of the vast bulk of the chemical
and biological weapons, as well as delivery systems, which Iraq accumulated
(with the assistance of the US) during the Iran-Iraq war, and they also
destroyed all of Iraq’s facilities for making new weapons. Lie
No. 4: “Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and
again because we are not dealing with peaceful men.” According
to the Washington Post of March 16, referring to the 1991-1998 inspection
period: “[U]nder UN supervision, Iraq destroyed 817 of 819 proscribed
medium-range missiles, 14 launchers, 9 trailers and 56 fixed missile-launch
sites. It also destroyed 73 of 75 chemical or biological warheads and 163
warheads for conventional explosives. UN inspectors also supervised destruction
of 88,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, more than 600 tons of
weaponized and bulk chemical weapons agents, 4,000 tons of precursor chemicals
and 980 pieces of equipment considered key to production of such weapons.” Lie
No. 5: “The Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most
lethal weapons ever devised.” The
Washington Post article cited above noted that CIA officials were
concerned “about whether administration officials have exaggerated
intelligence in a desire to convince the American public and foreign governments
that Iraq is violating United Nations prohibitions against chemical, biological,
or nuclear weapons and long-range missile systems.” The article quoted “a
senior intelligence analyst” who said the inspectors could not locate weapons
caches “because there may not be much of a stockpile.” Former
British Foreign Minister Robin Cook, who resigned from the Blair government
Monday in protest over the decision to go to war without UN authorization,
declared, “Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly
understood sense of the term.” Even if Iraq is concealing some remnants of its
1980s arsenal, these would hardly deserve Bush’s lurid description, since they
are primitive and relatively ineffective. “Some of the most lethal weapons
ever devised” are those being unleashed by the United States on Iraq: cruise
missiles, smart bombs, fuel-air explosives, the 10,000-pound “daisy-cutter”
bomb, the 20,000-pound MOAB just tested in Florida. In addition, the US has
explicitly refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. Lie
No. 6: “[Iraq] has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including
operatives of Al Qaeda.” No
one, not even US government, seriously believes there is a significant
connection between the Islamic fundamentalists and the secular nationalist
Ba’athist regime in Iraq, which have been mortal enemies for decades. The
continued assertion of an Al Qaeda-Iraq alliance is a desperate attempt to link
Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks. It
also serves to cover up the responsibility of American imperialism for
sponsoring Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. The forces that now comprise Al
Qaeda were largely recruited, trained, armed and set in motion by the CIA
itself, as part of a long-term policy of using Islamic fundamentalists as a
weapon against left-wing movements in the Muslim countries. This policy was
pursued from the 1950s and was escalated prior to and during the Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan, which ended in 1989. Osama bin Laden himself was
part of the CIA-backed mujaheddin forces in Afghanistan before he turned against
Washington in the 1990s. Lie
No. 7: “America tried to work with the United Nations to address this threat
because we wanted to resolve the issue peacefully.” The
Bush administration went to the United Nations because it wanted UN sanction for
military action and it wanted UN member states to cough up funds for postwar
operations, along the lines of its financial shakedown operation for the 1991
Persian Gulf War. Bush’s most hawkish advisors, such as Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney, initially opposed going to the UN
because they did not want diplomacy to slow down the drive to war. They only
agreed after Secretary of State Colin Powell argued that the pace of the US
military buildup in the Persian Gulf gave enough time to get the UN to
rubber-stamp the war. Lie
No. 8: “These governments [the Security Council majority] share our assessment
of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it.” This
is belied by virtually every statement on Iraq issued by the governments of
France, Russia, China, Germany and other countries opposed to military action,
which have repeatedly declared that they see no imminent threat from Iraq. Bush
brands his opponents on the Security Council as cowards, as though they were
afraid to take action against Saddam Hussein. These countries were, in fact,
increasingly alarmed—by the United States, not Iraq. Insofar as they summoned
up resolve, to the shock of the Bush administration, it was to deny UN support
for the war that Washington had already decided to wage. Lie
No. 9: “Many nations, however, do have the resolve and fortitude to act
against this threat to peace, and a broad coalition is now gathering to enforce
the just demands of the world.” Only
three nations are contributing military forces to the war: 250,000 from the US,
40,000 from Britain, and 2,000 from Australia. The other members of the “broad
coalition” are those which have been bribed or browbeaten to allow the US to
fly over their countries to bomb Iraq, to station troops, ships or warplanes on
their territory, or provide technical assistance or other material aid to the
war. None will do any fighting. All are acting against the expressed desire of
their own population. Lie
No. 10: “The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its
responsibilities, so we will rise to ours.” Bush
defines the UN body’s responsibility as serving as a rubber stamp for whatever
action the United States government demands. In relation to the UN, however, the
United States does have definite responsibilities, including refraining from
waging war without Security Council authorization, except in the case of
immediate self-defense. Under Article 42 of the UN Charter, it is for the
Security Council, not the US or Britain, to decide how Security Council
resolutions such as 1441 are to be enforced. The US decision to “enforce”
its interpretation of 1441 regardless of the will of the Security Council is a
violation of international law. Lie
No. 11: “If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the
lawless men who rule your country and not against you.” The
widely reported US military strategy is to conduct an aerial bombardment of Iraq
so devastating that it will “shock and awe” the Iraqi people and compel the
Iraqi armed forces to surrender en masse. According to one press preview, US and
British forces “plan to launch the deadliest first night of air strikes on a
single country in the history of air power. Hundreds of targets in every region
of Iraq will be hit simultaneously.” Estimates of likely Iraqi civilian
casualties from the immediate impact of bombs and missiles range from thousands
to hundreds of thousands, and even higher when the long-term effects are
included. Lie
No. 12: “As our coalition takes their power, we will deliver the food and
medicine you need.” This
is particularly cynical, since the immediate consequence of Bush’s 48-hour
ultimatum was the withdrawal of all UN humanitarian aid workers and the shutdown
of the oil-for-food program, which underwrites the feeding of 60 percent of
Iraq’s population. As for medicine, the US has systematically deprived the
Iraqi people of needed medicine for the past 12 years, insisting that even the
most basic medical supplies, like antibiotics and syringes, be banned as
“dual-use” items that could be used in a program of biological warfare. Lie
No. 13: “We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to
build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free.” The
goal of the Bush administration is to install a US puppet regime in Baghdad,
initially taking the form of an American military dictatorship. It is no
exaggeration to say that the US government has been the leading promoter of
dictatorships around from the world, from Pinochet of Chile to Suharto of
Indonesia to Saddam Hussein himself, who, according to one recent report, got
his political start as an anti-communist hit-man working in a CIA-backed plot to
assassinate Iraq’s left-nationalist President Qasem in 1959. A
classified State Department report described by the Los Angeles Times of
March 14 not only concluded that a democratic Iraq was unlikely to arise from
the devastation of war, it suggested that this was not even desirable from the
standpoint of American interests, because “anti-American sentiment is so
pervasive that elections in the short term could lead to the rise of
Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United States.” Lie
No. 14: “Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can
know that every measure has been taken to avoid war and every measure will be
taken to win it.” This
combines a lie and a brutal truth. The Bush administration has taken every
possible measure to insure that war takes place, viewing the resumption of UN
weapons inspections with barely disguised hostility and directing its venom
against those countries that have suggested a diplomatic settlement with Iraq is
achievable. In prosecuting the war, the Bush administration is indeed prepared
to use “every measure,” up to an including nuclear weapons, in order to win
it. Lie
No. 15: “War has no certainty except the certainty of sacrifice.” There
will be colossal sacrifices for the Iraqi people, and sacrifices in blood and
economic well-being for the American people as well. But for Bush’s real
constituency, the wealthiest layer at the top of American society, there will be
no sacrifices at all. Instead, the administration is seeking a tax cut package
of over $700 billion, including the abolition of taxation on corporate
dividends. Major US corporations are in line to reap hundreds of millions of
dollars in profits from the rebuilding of Iraqi infrastructure shattered by the
coming US assault. These include the oil construction firm Halliburton, which
Vice President Cheney headed prior to joining the Bush administration, and which
continues to include Cheney on its payroll. Lie
No. 16: “[T]he only way to reduce the harm and duration of war is to apply the
full force and might of our military, and we are prepared to do so.” Every
aggressor claims to deplore the suffering of war and seeks to blame the victim
for resisting, and thus prolonging the agony. Bush is no different. His
hypocritical statements of “concern” for the Iraqi people cannot disguise
the fact that, as many administration apologists freely admit, this is “a war
of choice”—deliberately sought by the US government to pursue its strategic
agenda in the Middle East. Lie
No. 17: “The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the
moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed.” No
one, even in the American military-intelligence complex, seriously believes
this. US counter-terrorism officials have repeatedly said that a US conquest and
occupation of Iraq, by killing untold thousands of Arabs and Muslims and
inflaming public opinion in the Arab world and beyond, will spark more
terrorism, not less. Lie
No. 18: “We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater.
In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free
nations would be multiplied many times over.” This
is belied by the record of the past twelve years, which has seen a steady
decline in Iraqi military power. Saddam Hussein has never been a threat to any
“free nation,” if that term has any meaning, only to the reactionary oil
sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and to neighboring Iran, all ruled by regimes that
are as repressive as his. Lie
No. 19: “As we enforce the just demands of the world, we will also honor the
deepest commitments of our country.” The
demands of the world were expressed by the millions who marched in cities
throughout the world on February 15 and March 15 to oppose a unilateral US
attack on Iraq. Bush seeks to have it both ways—claiming to enforce previous
Security Council resolutions against Iraq (“the just demands of the world”),
while flagrantly defying the will of the majority of the Security Council, the
majority of the world’s governments, and the vast majority of the world’s
people. Lie
No. 20: “Unlike Saddam Hussein, we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and
capable of human liberty... The United States with other countries will work to
advance liberty and peace in that region.” For
“the Iraqi people,” substitute “the Egyptian people,” “the people of
the Arabian peninsula,” “the Pakistani people” or those of other US-backed
dictatorships, not to mention the Palestinians who live under a brutal Israeli
occupation that is supported by Washington. Does the US government believe that
any of them are “deserving and capable of human liberty?” When the
parliament of Turkey, under the pressure of popular opposition, voted to bar the
US from using Turkish territory to invade Iraq, the Bush administration appealed
to the Turkish military to pressure the government into overturning this
democratic decision. March 20, 2003 Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
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