- In a stunning development, the Bush Regime announced
its unconditional and abject surrender in Iraq this week. The humiliating
retreat was sounded by one of the chief architects of the war, deputy Pentagon
chief Paul Wolfowitz.
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- Well, perhaps it wasn't entirely unconditional. For the
Bushists didn't actually surrender any of the territory they conquered,
or the oil resources they are swiftly and ruthlessly exploiting through
a series of quiet sweetheart deals that are tying up Iraq's national wealth
for years to come, or the military forces they have thrust into the line
of vicious and unremitting fire from Iraqis who object to the presence
of foreign troops in their "Homeland." But what they did surrender,
at long last, was the pretense that their pre-invasion warmongering --
built on iron certainties and "smoking guns" and "bulletproof
evidence" (Don Rumsfeld's phrase) -- ever had the slightest connection
to reality.
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- The twin towers of the Bushist case for war -- "imminent
threat" and "connection to al-Qaida" -- have been crumbling
for weeks, even among the bovine intellects of the Bush-whipped U.S. media,
who had happily munched the thrice-chewed cud of the Regime's transparent
mendacity during the long build-up to the invasion. Wolfowitz provided
the final coup de grace on national television last Sunday, during an appearance
on Rupert Murdoch's propaganda mill, Fox News.
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- Wolfowitz admitted that the entire public case for war
was based on nothing but "murky intelligence." Of course, his
boss, Rumsfeld, had already confessed that the war brief relied on "evidence"
whose most credible tidbits were five years old at the latest -- a revelation
that in a normal democracy would have brought down the government and led
to criminal trials all around, but which passed virtually unnoticed by
the dribbling bovines as they dully regurgitated their "embedded"
cud.
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- But Wolfowitz went even further. Not only was the intelligence
way past its sell-by date, it was "murky" at best -- that is
to say, it was unclear, unsound, not entirely reliable, open to question,
subject to doubt, impossible to confirm, of indeterminate veracity, riddled
with falsities, marred by forgeries, unreliable. What's more, the White
House itself confirmed that the Bushist bigwigs knew the intelligence was
unreliable when they rolled out their war drums last fall.
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- In a maladroit attempt to extricate itself from the silly
sideshow over "16 words" in a Bush speech referring to a non-existent
attempt by Iraq to buy non-weaponized uranium ore from Niger, last week
the Bushists released a top-secret "National Intelligence Estimate"
from October 2002. The intent was to show that the Regime really did have
some raw -- if "murky" -- data about Iraq's alleged nuclear program.
But the NIE also revealed that intelligence services were actually telling
the White House that Saddam Hussein was not connected to al-Qaida and was
not a threat to the United States. In fact, according to the top spooks,
there was only one circumstance under which Saddam would be likely to join
forces with bin Laden and launch terrorist attacks against Americans: if
the Bush Regime invaded Iraq.
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- So Wolfowitz knew, Rumsfeld knew, Colin Powell knew,
Condi Rice knew, Dick Cheney knew, even President Can't-Chew-a-Pretzel
knew that launching a war of aggression against Iraq would increase the
terrorist danger to ordinary U.S. citizens. They knew this all along. They
know it now. They just don't care. For them, the game -- sweetheart deals
and he-man swagger -- is worth the candle. Unfortunately for the folks
at home and the soldiers abroad, the "candle" just happens to
be the lives of the American people.
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- Thus by their own admission -- their own intelligence
reports, their own butt-covering revisionism, their own natterings to Murdochian
moo-cows -- the Bushists have utterly abandoned every element of the public
case they made to "justify" the killing of 10,000 innocent people
during the invasion and the daily deaths of more Iraqis and Americans in
the brutalizing atmosphere of occupation.
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- So why did they go to war? If their public argument for
the invasion was a dungheap of known fabrications and confabulations from
the beginning, then what were the real motives? We've often dealt here
with the fantasies of global dominance openly propounded by Cheney, Rumsfeld
and Wolfowitz over the years, from their days in the first Bush Administration
to their tub-thumping in various extremist pressure groups during the Clinton
interregnum -- fantasies fixated on the violent death of demonized subhumans
in distant lands, although couched in the bureaucratic jargon of "geopolitical
considerations" and "national interests." Some of these
published plans, which included predatory designs on Iraq's territory and
resources, are now more than a decade old, long pre-dating the "war
on terrorism" -- despite Wolfowitz's ludicrous claim to Fox that the
recent aggression was "the central battle" in this conveniently
nebulous and profitably endless crusade.
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- But beyond these dark -- indeed, "murky" --
bloodlusts and grandiose stratagems, which no doubt played their part,
the "facts on the ground" in Iraq increasingly indicate that
the prime mover behind the invasion was simple, brutal, ugly, banal greed.
The Bushists are making money hand over iron fist from their conquest,
and preparing to turn Iraq into a playground for unfettered crony capitalism.
We'll be exploring the details here in coming weeks.
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- Meanwhile, we should all chew, like good bovines, on
Wolfowitz's other chilling revelation this week: that "murky intelligence"
(unsound, unreliable, marred by forgeries, etc.) is a perfectly acceptable
basis for launching aggressive wars -- and could be used again when it's
time for the next war.
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- "Out, out, brief candle!"
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- http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru
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