by mim3@mim.org
July 17 2003 Expanded July 18 2003
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An unscientific poll by CNN shows that over 80% no longer believe Bush's story
about weapons of mass destruction and that most now think there were no weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq just before the Amerikan invasion. However, at the
same
time Bush's approval rating remains around 60%, which shows that Amerikans would
support "regime change" in Iraq over oil, but they do not like the idea that
Bush
misled them. Even bourgeois business partners want the correct business information from
each other, so
there's nothing too radical or surprising about the Amerikan public's interest
in this question.
What is new is that polls show for the first time that weapons of mass destruction matter to a majority of Amerikkkans. "Less than a majority said the war would be worth its costs if such weapons were not found, down from 56 percent in May."(1) This clearly reveals that before the issue of lying intelligence and explanations aimed at Amerikkkans came up, oil for the SUV and pick-up truck was good enough a reason for Amerikkkans twisted by their parasitic system, but now that the issue of lies by imperialists to labor aristocracy partners has come up, a majority wants to see those weapons of mass destruction. It's not that Amerikkkans cared what the WMD issue meant for Iraqis or even U.$. troops in Iraq. But add in the issue of imperialists misleading the labor aristocracy, and suddenly it all comes apart. As the Bush story on Iraq unravels, MIM would like to point to further areas of interest, some of which are bound to come up in the upcoming weeks. Timothy Noah answers why the U.$. press has taken some notice of uraniumgate. His Slate article cuts through the naivete and focuses on the question of under what conditions a deception becomes serious news. It boils down to that bourgeois reporters are too lazy to do their own work and take only the officials' own words as gospel unless the officials themselves say their words are not gospel. We at MIM would only add that in many cases, journalists are too poorly educated to know how to do original journalistic work if they tried. Both Bush and Blair now say that Saddam Hussein has "programs" of weapons of mass destruction and they leave out the word for the actual "weapons." It's important to notice a change of spin like that, but increasingly, even newspapers in Amerika's hinterlands are noticing. The fact that the 3rd Infantry has not returned home yet and a soldier dies in an attack every day assures that Amerikans from the boonies where soldiers come from are paying attention. This again proves the nature of military power's relationship to the truth. Had U.$. troops wrapped up and all come home by now, the Amerikkkan public would be hearing a lot less truth. More and more, with their own lies falling apart, Bush and Blair rely on Clinton's lies. They fall back on arguing that Saddam Hussein had kicked out the weapons inspectors, when the weapons inspectors such as Scott Ritter themselves have pointed out that in reality Clinton kicked out the inspectors and blamed it on Iraq in order to have an excuse for "regime change." When Blair and Bush refer to past violations of UN resolutions, the intelligent reader should ask why China, Russia and France did not agree since they were on the same committees. The reason is that the United $tates had an active role in forging Iraq's non-compliance and other countries noticed. With the Iraq lies falling apart, we do not mean to say there are no Amerikkkans still buying the bologna. FOX News is noticeably emphasizing that Bush's statement in the "State of the Union" was technically correct, because he cited a source, the British government. For these sorts of spin-masters, it no longer matters if the source cited is wrong. Rather than make it their job to get to the bottom of this, FOX publishes a few sentences and then lets FOX readers respond with their Pavlovian monarchism.(2) Their words boil down to "we love our king: leave it to him," which would be fine and good if we lived in a monarchist system advancing beyond even more backward systems, but instead supposedly we live in a "democracy" founded against monarchist ideas of national security, and so we have hypocrisy and the twisted morality of "pre-emptive" strikes, which should really be called "re-emptive" strikes, because the united $tates has never stopped attacking its colony Iraq since 1991, whether through missile strikes, no fly zones or embargoes enforced by sea, land and air. We are only waiting for someone to take a picture of tea imported into Iraq with the accompanying paper work for Amerikan taxes. Thus while the mainstream media focuses on this one question of attribution of sources, because it feels it must pander to the monarchist Right of Amerikkka, the rest of the world is wondering just how many lies the Amerikkkans can swallow and why. England signed onto international resolutions and treaties which require it to turn over its intelligence on Iraq's nuclear programs to the UN;(3) yet England continues to say it has evidence of uranium purchases in Africa that it won't share, because it does not have permission from the party that gave England the intelligence. Apparently England is preserving its spy-first protocols, because the issue of nuclear weapons in Iraq is less important than other things that England wants to obtain from relations with other countries' spies. Of course, that just leaves the question of why England signed on to international obligations regarding nukes and Iraq in the first place, and why anyone should care if England itself believes the possibility of nuclear weapons in Iraq is so unimportant that it won't divulge sources and information. This is one of those have-your-cake-and-eat-it-toos. Either the information is important from their own perspective (worth having a war over) and should be released or it's unimportant and does not sustain the case Bush and Blair are making, in which case, again they should shut up and take their lumps. In the past two weeks, the most popular article in all our website agitation has been our review of Bush's "State of the Union" address in January. That review has proved to stand the test of time and has put some of the data being spun by politicians in perspective. It also puts in relief that major news media with the professional resources did not put in the time to do the research on any of the WMD questions and in effect, one was better off reading a few books from different sources than counting on the press to come up with important information. We will point out the obvious: Bush Jr.'s cabinet is composed of those who wanted an invasion of Iraq under Bush Sr. and did not get one because of others in Bush Sr.'s cabinet, such as Brent Scowcraft and Howard Baker. Some have pointed also to Vice President Cheney's business ties to those who benefit from an Iraq occupation. Certainly his sector of business benefits even if his company stays out. However, beyond economic self-interests and old arguments and associated egos, the Amerikkkan public should know that Bush Jr. is a politician. It was always foolish since 911 to extend the government the kind of trust that the U.$. population has. Politicians are still masters of spin, focusing on some subjects only so the rest will be ignored. 911 did not improve politicians: in fact it gave them more covers to carry out more opportunistic misdeeds. Among their many misdeeds is to cover up the sources of the 911 problem to divert attention from their own previous actions and policies. In contrast, MIM knows it is not coming to power by Amerikan votes or other method any time soon. Compared with Bush who has friends in the oil business, a father to vindicate in history, officials to defend and a re-election campaign requiring votes, we at MIM have no reason to lie or mislead. We at MIM can only err, which is why our coverage has been much more accurate and less misleading than that of anything ranging from FOXNEWS to CNN to CBS to the New York Times. Our critics have said in the past we would err because Bush should know better with all his access to intelligence, but that is a monarchist argument. Bush claims to be president in a democratic system in which voters are supposed to be informed well enough to choose politicians. Hence, there was never a good reason to leave a question of war "up to Bush." That's to leave aside that we at MIM may have less intelligence than the CIA but do a better job of interpreting what we do have. Now we see that even having all the intelligence does not guarantee anything. There is no way that politician Bush desired to be in the present spot he is in now of explaining cloak-and-dagger type things and diplomacy. U.$. politicians need to premise their own credibility on explanations of why someone would forge uranium export documents like they need a hole in the head. Bush knows this instinctively which is why he would usually rather appear stupid than explain anything overly complicated. Yet complicated is what this has become--not in the facts regarding weapons of mass destruction--but the diplomatic relations involved. The Washington Post admitted as follows: "Since World War II, U.S. and British intelligence agencies have had an image of intimate collaboration with each other. But the portrait that emerges from the British version of events concerning the investigation of the reported uranium deal is of agencies at times working at cross-purposes and reluctant to trust the other with sensitive information."(4) A critical British official Jack Straw says the CIA and State Dept. had not informed him of their conclusion that the whole story of uranium in Africa was phony. Thus far England has covered Bush's back by saying it stands by its uranium story, so Bush would appear to have the right idea for the wrong specific reasons. Nonetheless, England can back off at any moment--especially after the public stops paying attention. Now there are even better new twists that call for even more complicated decisions. In the first place, the whole accusation of Niger points toward France. However, just as the united $tates is asking France to send troops to Iraq to assist with occupation government, the united $tates is threatening to make the press notice that France is in control of all uranium production in Niger. In addition, France is on the hook for refusing to show the united $tates its evidence on these claims or so at least some in England seem to hint. France's role in this again leaves room for interpretation. Has the fact that the press has yet to focus on France's role in officially running Niger's uranium business through proper international bureaucratic procedures (5) meant that someone would like U.$-French relations to stabilize? Was the uranium info part of France's warnings to Uncle $am before the war not to take the risk of war? Were these warnings politically motivated? Let's recall that just before the war, Cheney said, and Bush confirmed that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons." MIM reported these statements from Cheney and Bush. Now a Washington Post editorialist has remembered Cheney's words as well: "'We believe he [Saddam Hussein--MIM ed.] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. [Mohamed] ElBaradei [the IAEA director], frankly, is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency [on] this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing.'" Harold Meyerson then added: "The point is not that an apology is in order, though it plainly is. The point is that even after the IAEA's revelation that the forged agreement had been 'signed' by a Niger government official who in fact had been out of office for the better part of a decade, the vice president dismissed this information out of hand and disparaged its source. He did not, however, refute it."(6) Meyerson and many other unlikely people have noticed that this pretty much defeats the purpose of having government officials in charge of collecting intelligence and reporting it accurately to the public. Immature relativists in charge of intelligence think it is "all opinion anyway" and clear the way for whatever politician-spin-doctors might want to do. Another possibility, will a country like South Africa be dragged into this and what political risks does this entail for the u.$. imperialists? Blacks always opposed this war and constitute a large part of the army. How much does it hurt with Black public opinion to be making up stories about Africa giving uranium to Iraq? Would France try to mislead England about something that France itself would get the blame for in the case of Niger's uranium? Will it turn out that I$rael had an interest in forging documents? Supposedly the U.S. Congress and FBI are already looking for answers concerning who forged the documents. Finally, one last twist, since Italy is the one that seems to have started handling the forged documents with the uranium deceptions how does Italy fit in? Is Italy's stance on Iraq spying to please the United $tates? Are Italian leaders in a controversy over insulting Germans purposefully trying to get Italian people to dislike the Germans? Do they wish to lean toward the united $tates instead and is that why the Italians seem willing to sacrifice German tourism in order to make insults against the German parasites? One last thing we would like to point out is that MIM is talking about a real world solution to big problems. The media is talking about the credibility of one politician concerning one war in one country. In reality, the u$a did not just give Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein weapons, money and military training in the 1980s under Reagan and Bush Sr.; although certainly that is important. The united $tates gives out weapons, money and military training to hundreds of "allies" around the world at any given time, including $50 million to the Taliban just before 911. Often the justification is that if the united $tates does not give out the weapons and other "aid," someone else will ally with X, Y or Z. Hence, the real problem is to reduce geo-political competition of all sorts, eliminate arms races and secure world peace. Otherwise, with all the allies receiving u.$. weapons alone, there is a guarantee that new enemies will arise--Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein being just the enemies of the week. A real solution would take into account U.$. military aid practices around the world. That is something that only socialism can do. If the species stays on this course of slowly figuring out the politics of weapons proliferation under capitalism, one politician at a time, the species will surely doom itself in short order.
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