-Caveat Lector- http://www.jbs.org/reviewonline/020922_transcript.htm
Skakespere wrote it down in a line from "King Lear" "Be it thy policy to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels" As one parrot said to another: :"Stop worrying about the atomic bomb and keep your eye on that cat" War for the Sake of War? William Grigg Near the climax of George Orwell's incomparable novel 1984, the hapless Winston Smith undergoes torture and interrogation at the hands of O'Brien, an agent of Big Brother's Police State. In order to break Smith's will, O'Brien describes the one-party state he serves as a pitiless leviathan not subject to law or reason. "We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power," O'Brien explains. "Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." And, Orwell might have added, the object of war is war. In order to keep its subjects in control, Big Brother's regime was perpetually involved in a three-sided war with Eastasia and Eurasia - a war in which last week's "eternal ally" was this week's "mortal enemy." It is tempting to think that the Bush administration is consciously following this Orwellian blueprint in its so-called war on terrorism. Tempting, that is, because otherwise its conduct would make absolutely no sense - but perhaps not making sense is the entire point of this exercise. One year ago, George W. Bush decreed that our highest priority was to capture and "bring to justice" Osama bin Laden - designated "The Evil One" -- dead or alive. But by last March, Osama was all but forgotten. During a March 13th press conference, a reporter inquired: "Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that?" Replied Mr. Bush: "Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. I truly am not that concerned about him." The name Osama bin Laden was conspicuously absent from the president's September 12th address to the UN General Assembly; instead, the president focused entirely on the supposed need to stage a military invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq - who seems to have captured from Osama the title "The Evil One." Defenders of the administration might insist that Saddam's designs to acquire weapons of mass destruction pose a larger long-term threat to our country than Osama bin Laden. This may be true - which is why it is puzzling that the Bush administration is helping to enrich Saddam's regime in the name of fighting bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. NBC News reported on September 5th: "The United States is quietly allowing Syria, which it has declared a state sponsor of terrorism, to illegally import 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude oil a day in exchange for information about al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.." Despite a UN-imposed embargo, Syria is paying $14 a barrel - half the market price - for Iraqi oil, creating what one senior U.S. official described as a $3 billion a year personal slush fund for Saddam Hussein. The Syrian regime, which presently occupies a seat on the UN Security Council, is probably a bigger terrorist threat than Saddam's Iraq. The regime in Damascus still occupies neighboring Lebanon and sponsors the murderous Hezbollah terrorist group. A report by the House Republican Research Committee's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare documented that since 1993, "high quality counterfeit $100 bills, as well as illegal drugs, originating from Iran, Syria and Lebanon and distributed by organized crime, have become the primary currency for the expanding international system that sustains the growing nuclear trade of the radical states of the Middle East.... This flow of drugs and counterfeit dollars also serves to sustain and finance the build-up of Islamist terrorist networks in Mexico as well as in the northern states of South America for operations in the U.S." Syria sustains terrorist networks that directly threaten our own country, yet the Bush administration is working with Damascus as a "partner" in the war on terrorism. In addition to facilitating the oil deal with Iraq, the Bush administration recently intervened with Congress on behalf of Syria. According to a September 20th AFP wire service report, the administration "has asked Congress to shelve proposed new sanctions against Syria, taking the unusual step of protecting the nation it calls [a] `sponsor of terrorism' from fellow congressional Republicans." The sanctions measure, sponsored by retiring House Minority Leader Richard Armey, would prohibit the sale to Syria of munitions and technology that can be used for military applications. State Department official David Satterfield told a House subcommittee on September 18th that the sanctions would "complicate or even undermine our efforts.. The imposition of new sanctions on Syria would severely limit our ability to address a range of important issues directly with the highest levels of the Syrian government." Satterfield insisted that Syria's cooperation in the "war on terror" had "been substantial and has helped save American lives." However, Armey pointed out - citing Iraqi opposition sources - that Syria recently shipped Scud-class missiles to Iraq. Those missiles would be used against American troops in the all-but-inevitable war. So the Bush administration's policy toward Syria is to designate it a terrorist state, while cooperating with Damascus and sheltering it from sanctions - even as it helps build the arsenal of this week's chief enemy, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Bush administration undertakes similar Orwellian contortions in its policy toward Iran, officially designated part of the "Axis of Evil." During his September 12th UN speech, President Bush described Iran as a victim of Iraqi aggression and terrorism: "Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel, and Western governments.. Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. He's fired ballistic missiles at Iran and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Israel." While not disputing this litany of Saddam's crimes, we must recognize one important fact omitted by the president: During the 1980s, when Saddam was using chemical and biological weapons as part of his aggressive war against Iran, he was doing so as an ally of Washington, D.C. Beginning with a December 1983 Baghdad visit by then-presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. lavished billions of dollars on Saddam's regime and helped broker international arms deals - including components for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The September 23rd Buffalo News recounts: "American research companies, with the approval of two previous presidential administrations [those of Ronald Reagan and George Bush the elder], provided Iraq biological cultures that could be used for biological weapons, according to testimony to a U.S. Senate committee eight years ago." Between 1985 and 1989, the U.S. Commerce Department issued licenses to export to Iraq cultures for potentially lethal diseases such as anthrax, e. coli, West Nile virus, and botulism. Those cultures were shipped to Baghdad after Saddam - with Soviet help - began using biological and chemical weapons against Iran in late 1983. At the time, according to the Washington party line, it was necessary to support Saddam in order to contain both Iran and Syria. But it must also be remembered that, beginning in 1985, Washington began covertly selling weapons to Iran as well - meaning that we were actually helping the same enemy we had supposedly allied with Saddam to contain. The cost of the "alliance" with Iraq became clear in May 1987, when an Exocet missile fired by an Iraqi fighter plane hit the U.S.S. Stark while on patrol in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 Americans. The same month, then-Vice President Bush personally intervened with the Export-Import Bank to secure approval for $200 million in revolving loan guarantees to Iraq. Does any of this make sense? Of course not - and that may be the entire point. Those of us who have to pay the costs of war understand that sometimes war is necessary to protect what we cherish. Those who seek to rule the world apparently consider war - like revolution, persecution, and torture - to be worthwhile in and of itself. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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