One has to go back to the lesser Roman emperors of the second century to
find an imperial suzerain as dismal as Bush. Tuesday's was surely the worst
State of the Union address to Congress in the past thirty years, as the
commander-in-chief stumbled through a thicket of brazen fictions towards
the proposed rendez-vous with destiny of February 5, the day Secretary of
State Colin Powell is scheduled to make his way to the United Nations to
present the administration's latest "intelligence" confection on the topic
of Saddam's deceits.
If you want to get a taste of how these ramshackle "intelligence" reports
are assembled, take a look at "Apparatus of Lies: Saddam's Disinformation
and Propaganda, 1990-2003", recently issued by the White House and invoked
Tuesday night by the 43rd President.
By a way of illustrating the all-round deviousness of Saddam's propaganda
machine, the White House document cites on page 23 the Pakistani news
outlet Inqilab as having reported on January 27, 1991, that "The American
pop star Madonna was in Saudi Arabia, entertaining US troops." The White
House comments triumphantly: "Madonna never went to Saudi Arabia." Moral:
if Saddam can lie about Madonna, he can certainly bring the Big One out of
some bunker in Tikrit and drop it on Jerusalem.
Bush's speech, if one can dignify same with a word intended to designate
ordered rhetoric, was a backhanded compliment to David Frum, the former
White House speech writer who was fired last year after his wife proudly
disclosed that he had invented the phrase "Axis of Evil". No such exciting
phrases adorned Bush's second State of the Union address. In the first half
of the address Bush stumbled through his prescriptions to make the rich
richer with the timbre of an inexperienced waiter reciting the Daily
Specials. He even blew the opening and most outrageous lie of all, that "We
will not pass along problems" to future generations, a pledge launched amid
a vista of red ink as far as the eye can see, as those future generations
pick up the tab for Bush's hand-outs to the super-rich today, to the arms
companies, the drug industry and other prime contributors.
The assembled hacks and pundits of the Fourth Estate made haste to praise
Bush for his impassioned resolve, but across the country and around the
world the speech was a bust. Next morning CNN went searching for Hails to
the Chief in a diner somewhere along the Atlantic seaboard, but the
increasingly frayed reporter could only elicit grumbles about Bush's
unconvincing performance on the economy and on why exactly the US had to go
to war with Iraq. In Tokyo the Nikkei sank abruptly, followed by falls on
exchanges as they came on line in every time zone.
On the likelihood of a US attack on Iraq I've tended to be a maybe-not type
of guy. But now, after all the hoopla and the build-up, how can G. Bush not
launch his attack in Baghdad? He's got no Exit strategy, even as he and the
mad Rumsfeld shove their feet ever deeper into their mouths. Suppose the
troops all come home with not a missile or a bullet fired? Won't there be
pressing questions to the effect of: What was all that about? Then people
will look around and start noticing the mess the homeland is getting itself
into on the economic front.
But is it really feasible to imagine the War Party flouting the opinions of
the UN, of NATO, of much of the Congress and the huge slice of the American
public opposed to unilateral action without clear evidence that Iraq is a
clear and present threat? Only 29 per cent support the What-the-Hell,
Let's-Go-It-Alone path.
The coverage of anti-war protests round the world on January 18 has been
scandalously bad. Many reporters and editors opted for demure phrases such
as "tens of thousands", which scarcely does justice to turn-outs in excess
of quarter of a million. Friends of mine at the demonstration in Washington
DC said the one last October was double that of the first, in the spring of
2002, and that the January 18 demo had doubled the crowd in October, giving
a rough Jan 18 total of 300,000 (the estimate of a cop who'd been at all
three). There were anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 people in San Francisco,
and 20,000 in downtown Portland. There were big demonstrations in Montreal,
Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax and others in France, Japan,
Pakistan, Britain, Sweden, Syria, Belgium, Egypt, Lebanon, New Zealand.
Footnote: At the December meeting in London of Iraqi exiles one Iraqi
opponent of the war listened in amazement as some Iraqis deeply involved in
Washington's plans calmly agreed that a casualty rate of around 250,000 to
500,000 Iraqis was acceptable.
Patton: Fury Mounts
Spending last weekend with friends in Landrum, right on the North/South
Carolina line, I found the death of the Smoaks' dog was still very much on
folks' minds, and not just because Saluda, where the Smoaks live, was just
up Interstate 25 from Landrum, north towards Asheville. You'll recall that
the Smoaks family was stopped on Jan 1 on I-40 by a posse of four police
cruisers. Then while handcuffed, prostrate and imploring the berserk cops
to shut their car's doors so the dogs wouldn't jump out, the Smoaks endured
the sight of their dog Patton having its head blown off by a shotgun blast.
Patton's killing is becoming as big an issue among the Live Free or Die
crowd as the killing of Randy Weaver's wife by an FBI sniper, one of the
demonstrations of cop clout that sent the late Timothy McVeigh burrowing
into his recipe book for fertiliser explosives.
Sitting with friends in Bo's Fish Camp in Inman, S.C. eating broiled
flounder and hush puppies, I listened to expert dissection of why the cops'
version didn't stand up. For example, the bulldog mixed breed had jumped
from the car and gone past the first deputy. It seems that if Patton had
been harboring aggressive intentions, he'd have gone for the first cop in
his path.
A few days later The Tennessean ran a story on computer enhancement of the
video of the episode recorded by one of the police cruisers. The Cookeville
cop who killed Patton didn't shout "get back!" before firing, as he and
another officer wrote in police reports. Instead, Officer Eric Hall yelled
as he fired the shotgun. Nor was there barking on the audio track. Two
officers said in their reports that the dog barked before advancing on
Hall. Pamela Smoaks can be heard warning the police that Patton was not
dangerous, saying, "That bulldog is not mean. He won't hurt you," about 20
seconds before Hall fired. The audio portion of the video was analyzed by
Doug Mitchell, an associate professor in the department of recording
industry at Middle Tennessee State University, at The Tennessean's request.
Airstreaming Across America
I was in South Carolina to haul a 1968 22-foot Airstream back to California
behind my Ford 350 one-ton. Interstate 40 would have been a logical route
west but out of respect for the late Patton, the bulldog martyr to cop
violence, I headed north from Knoxville into Kentucky. Rolling out of
Lexington towards St Louis at dusk I could see graceful horses nibbling at
the snow covered pastures as the sunset turned the western sky red.
All the way across the Great Plains I listened to radio reports of the cold
about to roll down out of Canada. There's nothing between you and the North
Pole out there on the prairie. "Not even a tree to hide behind," as one
19th century pioneer homemaker plaintively wrote home to her European
mother as she and her family cowered in their sod cabin amid the terrible
blizzards of 1886 and 1887 that finished off the cattle boom and sent Teddy
Roosevelt scuttling east from his ranch on the Little Missouri.
The snow and ice finally caught up with me 100 miles east of Denver where I
sat in the lobby of a Comfort Inn listening to a Cherokee Christian
denounce the mean-spirited arrogance of the millionaires of Jackson Hole,
whence he had just driven as he headed home to Atlanta. His main business
was the mass production of diapers, but as an expert die maker he was also
producing high end western chandeliers, the metal cut with water jet and
ruby dust and selling at $45,000 a pop.
I ground my way up into the Rockies in low gear and burst into sunshine
somewhere just short of the Eisenhower tunnel, at 10,000 feet. A few miles
further on I caught sight of a dejected human settlement south of the
interstate that at first glance resembled miners' houses in some old photo
of coal country in Appalachia. Then I realized that these were the
condominia of Vail where huddled but well-fed masses of ski people and
snow-boarders were praying for snow.
Downtown Salt Lake City reminds me of Moscow: big, fifties- style
buildings, wide boulevards (as stipulated by Brigham Young, who said a
waggon should be able to turn round on one), and at the heart SLC's answer
to the Kremlin in the form of the Mormons' Temple. SLC's substantial gay
and lesbian population was up in arms about legal threats to the status of
their civil marriages. The next day, amid the bare expanses of the great
salt lake, a taxi with a For Hire sign bowled by, followed shortly
thereafter by a white stretch limo. The answer to the puzzle came a few
miles later at the Nevada line and the gambling town of Wendover, with the
first slots and blackjack tables available for gamblers since they left
Colorado.
The weather gods stayed kind. I left Winnemucca at 5am, and five hours
later went over the Donner Pass in 60 degree weather. I stopped at the
summit and was gazing down on Donner Lake wondering whether the cannibals
had seasoned their ribeyes, when a woman climbed out of her pick-up, said
she was a hippy, liked Airstreams and asked Would I care to share "a bowl"
with her. She didn't look like a narc and anyway, why would a narc bother
with a Airstream type? But it seemed early in the day for marijuana which I
don't greatly care for anyway. Besides, I still had a couple of hundred
miles of northern California mountains to get across.
The bowl-offerer pointed out the Blue Star memorial put up at the Donner
summit by some California garden clubs in honor of America's fallen
warriors. She added a few uncomplimentary words about G. Bush. I was home
by midnight, a week after leaving South Carolina. Along the way, two people
offered to buy the Airstream. No one I met was keen on war with Iraq. The
mayor of Salt Lake City said publicly it's a lousy idea, as did the entire
city council of Chicago, with one dissenting voice. Mostly the local papers
were filled with stories about state budget crises. After all, only two
states are solvent: New Mexico and Wyoming, courtesy of their natural gas.
Texas has a deficit of around $9 billion this year, $11 billion next, in
part the long shadow of Bush's favors to the rich down there when he was
governor.
The night after I got home my friend and neighbor Joe Paff strongly
recommended an amazing poem by Walt Whitman, written just after the Civil
War, titled "Respondez!". It makes Ginsberg's Howl sound like some
uplifting jingle on the back of a corn flakes packet:
Respondez! Respondez! /
(The war is completed the price is paid the title is settled byond
recall;) /
Let there be money, business, imports, exports, custom, /
authority, precedents, pallor, dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief! /
Let judges and criminals be transposed! /
Let the slaves be masters! Let the masters be slaves! /
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers! /
Let the few seize on what they choose! /
Let the rest, gawk, giggle, starve, obey! /
Let shadows be furnished with genitals! /
Let substances be deprived of their genitals! /
Jeffrey put it up on this site a couple of days ago.
Also in the poem is the line, "Let him who is without my poems be
assassinated!" Lucky for Whitman he didn't live in the dawn of the 21st
century. Most likely the feds would lock him up as an Enemy Combatant. The
First Lady certainly wouldn't ask Walt to that jamboree of loyal poets
she's currently organizing.
I used to think W's better half, Laura, would save the day and command her
dismal partner to knock off the war talk. But she looked wan and defeated
on Tuesday night, even she looked adorable in those hot photos with the
Scotty, featured in every checkout counter in every supermarket in America,
next to the Star's story about Joe Millionaire who maybe has a gay page in
his resume.
Now that's news!
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01292003.html
