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<A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V2.44/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times
- Volume 2 Issue 44</A>
The Laissez Faire City Times
December 28, 1998 - Volume 2, Issue 44
Editor & Chief: Emile Zola
-----
Weapons of Mass Deception
by Dave Pascoe
If Saddam had an ounce of political sense, operation Free Willy would
have become a disaster for Bill Clinton. Alas, as with all tyrants, the
man has no political savvy whatever. Which is fortuitous for that other
tyrant-in-the-making, William Jefferson Clinton, the Madman of
Washington, who shows every sign of rivaling the Madman of Baghdad in
the sheer audacity of his behavior.
Yes, if Saddam had any sense at all, he would hire a liberal American
political consultant on the order of a Dick Morris, Peter Fenn or any of
that host of liars, half-wits and criminal defense attorneys that have
been gracing U.S. television for the last two years or so in defense of
the indefensible. And, of course, he would need a topnotch Hollywood
film crew.
Its not hard to imagine what child-play of a job it would be to turn the
tables on our president's lastest use of the military to deflect efforts
to impeach him. If I were Saddam, I would send my lackeys out to the
slaughter house for a few gallons of chicken blood, round up the women
and children, wrap them in blood-soaked bandages, and liberally sprinkle
them through the rubble, and let the cameras roll. Fakery works
wonderfully well on television.
Bill Clinton murders the women and children. Imagine what a time this
pacifist-turned- hawk, military-hating president would have defending
against that one! Alas, Saddam remains one of the most witless enemies
this nation has ever had, despite all the crowing about the man's
"staying power." For the fact was, and remains, that Iraq is a tinhorn
dictatorship overstocked with obsolete and castoff weapons. For all the
endless talk of "weapons of mass destruction," since 1991 we are still
waiting for the slightest shred of proof that Saddam ever had any. No
one can even prove he used them in Desert Storm.
Weapons of mass destruction. How many times, and for how long has that
phrase been pounded into the heads of the public? Talk about repetitive
conditioning. It proves the point that if only something is repeated
often enough, by enough people, the thing said will ultimately become
"common knowledge." Even though there isn't a bit of proof that any such
weapons exist. Orwell's 1984 is here and now.
So what are these weapons? Nuclear bombs, guided missiles, warplanes,
tanks, artillery, chemical and biological munitions? Which of these are
Mr. Clinton and his cohort Mr. Blair talking about? According to
turncoat UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter, Saddam is nowhere close to
developing nuclear weapons. Three to five years, he said. Meanwhile, the
North Koreans have them now. His development sites have all been
destroyed, and it's not as if nuclear bombs can be made in an abandoned
warehouse or garage. Of these things there is not a trace, after six
years of looking.
Tanks, aircraft, artillery? Those could all be taken out in no time, but
our dubious "coalition" has not at anytime chosen to deprive Saddam of
his conventional weapons. If the man is so dangerous, we have to ask why
he has been allowed to keep them. He still has whatever aircraft, tanks,
artillery and army that wasn't destroyed in Desert Storm. Why? Which
leaves us with chemical/biological weapons, the weapons that can be made
in a garage or basement, and could be used to horrific effect in
retaliation should Saddam so wish. But how? Even if Saddam has a huge
stockpile of chemical or biological weapons, how could he use them? The
most feared means is to mount them on long-range missiles that can be
lobbed in any direction, at any time, for these weapons kill i
ndiscriminately, in large numbers.
The only problem with this fear is that so far as anyone knows, Saddam
hasn't any significant numbers of his ancient and pathetic SCUD missiles
left. And we've managed to prevent the Koreans and Chinese from selling
him more. Nor would it matter if he did. The far simpler and cheaper
means of chemical weapons delivery, which has infinitely greater
accuracy than missiles, is by means of the terrorist bomber. The man
could, if he wished, simply rig up any number of radio- controlled,
human-delivered chemical/biological bombs, to be delivered to strategic
locations (like the U.S. capitol) all timed or radio-activated to go off
at once, thereby wreaking chaos on his enemies. This scenario is
absolutely unpreventable.
The problem is, Saddam knows very well that U.S. retaliation would be
massive and final. Pull a stunt like that, or even do an embassy or
military installation, and he would sign his own death warrant. Despite
the political propaganda, the United States is the world's foremost
warrior nation, and has never hesitated to utilize its instruments of
war when persuasive efforts fail. And the dangers of such an act could
not have been brought home more dramatically than the spectacle of a
wounded president, not once, but twice, utilizing military power for his
own personal objectives. Both against basically defenseless enemies.
Has anyone seen any kind of response from Iraq in this latest "war?"
Bill Clinton has bombed a tyrannical, but basically defenseless nation.
If the U.S. really wanted to get rid of Saddam, all it would have to do
is go in and take him. The Iraqi military wouldn't raise a finger to
stop the U.S. Army. They'd run today, just like they ran in 1991. Sure,
there would probably be a few military casualties. But no, Clinton is
not about to take a political risk.
Saddam Hussein is a threat to "his neighbors and the world?" Hardly.
Scott Ritter is correct, and Saddam was not lying, when both stated that
UNSCOM inspection regimes were ruses, both to provoke, and to serve as
intelligence gathering missions. The real threat is Saddam himself. Even
when completely disarmed, the fear is always for the future, that time
when sanctions must inevitably be ended -- or they just wither away for
lack of interest. At which time the oil revenues begin flowing and Iraq
once again begins to build up its military. Even if Saddam had a couple
of nuclear missiles, to use them would assure his own end. It must be
kept in mind that unconventional weapons serve no purpose unless backed
by strong conventional forces. What we are dealing with here is the
principle of MAD, mutually assured destruction. Saddam has not, and will
not, utilize weapons of mass death, for he knows he would be repaid in
kind.
In the meantime, throughout his six-year tenure, Clinton has shown no
interest in containing Saddam. In fact, quite the opposite. Scott Ritter
resigned from UNSCOM in disgust and in protest over policies he claimed
were aiding and abetting Saddam. The administration eagerly backed Kofi
Aman's absurd last minute deal with Saddam last summer, which the entire
world knew was a charade. It was largely taken as granted that the U.N
resolutions had run their course, what with the totalitarian world
clamoring for lifting of the sanctions, and the coalition diminished to
the U.S. and U.K. alone. It became increasingly doubtful that the
Clinton administration would continue to support the resolutions much
longer.
Indeed, less than three months ago our illustrious Secretary of State
was personally involved in thwarting the inspections. After all, the
courtship of China has long since taken precedence, what with all that
campaign money our president raked in from his Sino supporters. China
supports Saddam (currently his largest trading partner) and Bill
supports China. Bill supports Boris, and Boris supports Iraq; Russia is
Iraq's second largest trading partner. So we are to believe that 1 + 1 =
3?
Now the administration is attempting, probably successfully, to cover
those tracks by floating the notion that the subversion of the U.N.
resolutions was all part of the strategy to get Saddam to comply. In the
meantime, the president's primary and only foreign policy interest has
been on filling the party coffers with Chinese money, and helping Yasir
Arafat carve out a Palestinian state in the middle of Israel; a
brainless policy that can only insure the inevitability of the next
Arab-Israeli war.
Yet none of this constitutes the real danger, that which has been
exemplified by a pacifist president suddenly turned warlock-warmonger.
The real danger is what is happening in U.S. politics, what with a
wounded president who twice in four months has resorted to bombing and
killing to save his own skin; a president who through his minions the
likes of James Carville does not hesitate to openly declare war on his
enemies, a president who will sacrifice anyone and anything to further
his own interests. But worse, the greatest danger of all, a populist
president who is backed by a majority of people; a president who draws
his strength on the basis of polls. Polls which no one questions the
veracity of.
The history of tyranny is that its onset comes unnoticed, unrecognized
by the majority. As in Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, France, and many
others that have fallen to despotic regimes, only a few are
clear-sighted enough to foresee the danger, only to be silenced by the
power of the majority voice dare they speak out. It always happens this
way.
As it was then, so it is now. Supported by polls commissioned by the
liberal media, a shameless president caught abusing his powers resorts
to desperate acts. So desperate, in fact, that he is willing to resort
to indiscriminate killing of foreigners. First comes the demagoguery to
silence the critics, supported by a media which their own polls reveal
votes 89 percent for Democrats. An administration that resorts to waging
war on a legally constituted Independent Counsel, followed by smear
campaigns and intimidation of witnesses and political opponents. Anyone
notice that all succeeding sex scandal revelations are on Republicans?
Initiated, it is said, by the likes of Hustler Magazine.
Next lawyers Bill and Hillary engage their trial lawyer buddies to flood
the media with a carefully scripted propaganda campaign. Suddenly,
criminal defense lawyers, those pillars of society, are assigned the
task of political punditry. The great unwashed, the bourgeois
proletariat, are to take their political advice from the O.J. gang.
Brookings and Harvard are out, the Trial Lawyers Association is in. That
is, after all, the political base of Bill Clinton. And the lawyers are
everywhere, on every channel, every day, all day. We get to witness the
specatacle of Allan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, publicly call
conservatives "evil," along with a host of other vile names. Other
liberals publicly claim conservatives should be stoned. It's the O.J.
defense again, though any conservative or libertarian would be hanged as
a racist for saying so.
No, the real danger is not Saddam's bombs, missiles and chemical
weapons; he doesn't have any. The real danger is, as it has always been,
a populist president who possesses the same moral values as Saddam, and
who will stop at nothing to maintain his power. There is no lie Clinton
won't tell, no corruption in which he will not engage. If he will look
the nation in the eye and say he didn't have sex with Monica (but Monica
had sex with him), he will indiscriminately kill people with missiles to
protect himself. There's nothing he won't do. Nor the demagogues and the
self-interested who support him.
Many wonder how it is that so many can support this rogue, when the
character of the man has so clearly been revealed. The answer is so
basic, so fundamental to human nature that we miss it. It is simply
self-interest of the unenlightened kind. We underestimate the maxim that
"people vote with their wallets." Unfortunately, that is the truth of
how people usually vote. Bill Clinton won his elections by promising to
take care of the children of the soccer moms and the underclass, and
expand Social Security. He plays the populist card with Clinton Care,
the very same formula used by FDR, dressed up in different language. The
most frequently uttered word by the president is "children," with
"weapons of mass destruction" now running a close second.
The Democrats and the liberal media go on with the drumbeat of
"constitutional crisis" over the impeachment process, albeit not in the
same sense that it really is a crisis. The framers of the constitution
were acutely aware that tyranny of the majority was a greater danger
than that of a single despot, for the later is more easily gotten rid of
than a tyrant that is supported by a majority. Therein lies the real
danger.
But let us look at this from another standpoint. The founders also
recognized the vital role a "free and independent press" would play on
the balance of power. Do we have a free and independent press? Would any
independent minded person adjudge the handful of media outlets, owned
and operated by an even smaller handful of megacorporations,
(Westinghouse, General Electric and Time-Warner) as independent and
objective? Hasn't media objectivity so long gone by the wayside that
that they no longer even put on the pretense of being politically
unaffiliated?
It is not possible for any objective person to conclude that the media
is unbiased. Not when we are subjected to the unmitigated hypocrisy of
"objective" news reporters claiming a lack of bias, who then turn right
around and appear on political commentary programs to express their 89
percent liberal Democratic political opinions. Not when what passes for
news are a bunch of "journalists" sitting around their television sets
watching political propaganda shows, and reporting what they hear on TV
as "news." As has the president, they've lied and deceived so often and
so long that they are no longer even able to perceive the truth; they
actually believe their own lies. They actually believe that watching
television is news. They believe that the expression of their political
opinions is news.
The truth is that the news media as such has been dead for many years
now. The real constitutional crisis we face is the consolidation of the
means of communication into the hands of a few very powerful entities.
What passes for news is nothing more than politically manipulated
information dedicated to serve poltical/commercial interests. Dwight
Eisenhower warned of the military/industrial complex. But so far no one
of stature has warned of the political/ media complex that is currently
the most serious threat our nation has ever faced. But the nation's
intellectual elite of any political stripe, seem oblivious. As the power
of the media consolidates into the hands of the few, even as the likes
of Bill Gates and Microsoft attempt to control the internet, precious
few are aware of what is happening.
How, we might ask, would the Clinton scandals have played out if the
media had only stuck to reporting to the facts, and not engaged in
full-time political propaganda programming? Is it likely that this
otherwise disgraceful and disgraced president would have a 68 percent
positive poll support?
Hardly. No one who is a close observer of Bill Clinton could honestly
say that the man is a good politician; he's a shameless, transparent
hack. His speeches are mostly lackluster, wind-baggy diatribes which
very few bother to listen to. The great president is so by virtue of his
media supporters saying so over and over again. They say it, so it must
be true. Yet the man's moods are writ large on his face with every
public appearance; he cannot control his own feelings even as well as
Nixon could. Were I a psychiatrist, I'd probably judge him
manic-depressive.
The point here is that this president is a creature of the liberal
media, of Hollywood, of CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post.
That is what made him, and that is what maintains him. Throughout the
scandals, we have witnessed the media cashing in on the sex scandal
because that earns megabucks for them. Once they've raked in the dough,
they turn right around and build him up again. Like a straw dog, they
build him up and knock him down, ad nauseum. Of course, they will not
let him go. The media has that much power that they can bring their own
man to his knees, and still sell him as "a great president." Anyone is
hard pressed to find even a newspaper (all television outlets support
him) that is not an apologist for the man. He's human, he feels our
pain, but he's flawed just like all great men. After all, Thomas
Jefferson was boffing his slaves. If Tom can do it, so can Bill. Hillary
and NOW can just go pound salt. George Washington was a chump.
The peril to the nation is less a matter of Clinton himself than the
precedent he sets. My fear is not of Bill Clinton, president for life;
it is a fear of what he has taught some future despot. The O.J. defense
of political offense is now ingrained into the system. What Ronald
Reagan or any other past president, not even Nixon, wouldn't dream of
doing, future presidents will take for granted. Allying themselves with
the media, they can defend themselves from all transgression; loose
media favor and they are toast. How do we escape from the fact that
media is now the most powerful force in the land? A media that has lost
all sense of even the pretense of objectivity; a media that conceives of
"equal time" as a debate between three liberals, a rabid left-wing host,
and one conservative selected on the basis that the conservative isn't
very articulate. Robert Novak as the voice of conservatism. The man
stutters more than he speaks.
In the Case of Bill Clinton, the constitution so far has worked. That
Articles of Impeachment have been passed by a narrow majority of the
House may be nothing short of a miracle; a Republican congress sickened
and angered by six years of demagoguery and shameless lying by the
political opposition, which is allied with the media, rose to the
occasion. How this all works out remains to be seen. So far, it looks
like a timid Republican majority in the senate will nullify this act of
courage.
The clear and present danger is not a matter of a rogue president, for
our system of government has proven over and over again capable of
dealing with rogues and crisis of all sorts. That which it cannot endure
is a powerful and systemic effort to manipulate public opinion by a
government, indeed an entire political party, that is allied with the
media. It cannot survive a system that operates on the basis of
political polls taken by the very same overwhelmingly liberal media.
That was the danger the founders warned against. True democracys are
defacto tyrannies in all but appearance.
Should Clinton be convicted in the Senate, the constitution will clearly
emerge the winner, for that would serve as conviction of the media as
well. The true history of this sorry episode will survive the efforts of
liberals to rewrite it in their favor, for the Clinton Scandals will
eclipse even the civil war as the most serious threat to constitutional
government this nation has ever faced. After all, there was no mass
media in 1860.
Should Clinton emerge still in office, unscathed, with his continued
high poll ratings (however those polls numbers are achieved), the road
to tyranny will have been clearly marked for all future rogues to
follow. Rogues like Al Gore who said recently that his boss is one of
the greatest presidents this nation has ever had. This from the man who
held a fund-raiser at a Chinese Buddhist temple and claimed it was a
"political outreach." He merely declined to mention that the reach was
for dollars.
Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians have much in common. From
the events of the Clinton presidency we have been given much to think
about -- about the nature of political organization, the nature of
mankind as it currently is, and the nature of governmental organization
designed to keep the baser motives of greedy men in check. From Plato's
Republic, on up to this current day, the world posesses a rich library
of political and philosophical thought, spanning well over 2,000 years.
And for over 200 years, the extraordinary and clumsey form of government
worked out by a handful of enlighten men in Philadelphia has weathered
numerous onslaughts, from civil war to political war. It has produced
the most freedom-loving, if not the most enlightened nation, in history.
As the historical clock is about to click off the nice round but
meaningless number of 2,000, we'd all do well to think a bit about the
responsibilities and duties of the citizen to the nation. After all,
mankind and its society is not so enlightened that it can function
without succumbing to the urge to control and suppress by those with the
power to do so. Without a form of government that works, most of us
would now reside in the gulags, concentration camps or mass graves of
the world.
It should only take a brief glance back at history to perceive that the
baser motives of man are not merely a threat to liberty, but to life
itself. Twice in this century the Europeans ignored this truth, and
twice the end result was uncountable millions of useless deaths.
-30-
from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 2, No 44, December 28, 1998
-----
The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is
published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of
Laissez Faire City, it is not an "official organ" of the city or its
founding trust. Just as the New York Times is unaffiliated with the city
of New York, the City Times is only one of what may be several news
publications located in, or domiciled at, Laissez Faire City proper. For
information about LFC, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published by
Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc.
Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar
All Rights Reserved
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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