THE LIES & DECEPTIONS
Well, as you've probably figured out, I'm talking about the way the
CheneyBush Administration sold the Iraq War/Occupation to us citizens.
We've known for a long time about the various lies and deceptions that took
America to war the supposed "weapons of mass distruction" that Saddam was
supposed to possess but didn't, his alleged ties to al-Qaida that didn't really
exist, his supposed but non-existent complicity in the 9/11 attacks, and so
on. Eventually, even the Administration was forced to concede there were no WMD,
no ties to 9/11, no relationship to Al Qaida, though it vowed never to let
those inconvenient facts get in the way of continuing its occupation of Iraq.
(And Cheney and his minions still continue to this day to hint at the old
deceptions.)
Also revealed some years back was that the Administration secretly put
various conservative TV/radio/print journalists on the payroll to write/speak
favorably about various programs and policies emanating from the Executive Branch.
THOSE PENTAGON "EXPERTS"
What we didn't know about until the
New York Times broke the story a few weeks ago was that the
CheneyBush Administration, to help sell the pending Iraq war to members of
Congress and the citizenry at large, marshalled a huge phalanx of retired military
officers and sent them out disguised as private, independent "experts" and
"consultants" to deliver the pro-war spin the Administration wanted. The author
of the story, David Barstow, used the term "media Trojan horse" to describe
the impact of this deception.
Because the media, always eager to curry favor with the Administration, did
not vet the bona fides of these "private consultants," the public had no
knowledge of the retired officers' deep and abiding connection to the Pentagon.
These ex-military officers received special briefings, including by Rumsfeld
himself, on the Administration's daily spin points, and they either had or would
soon be receiving high-paying jobs with various defense contractors.
What the public now knows is that the daily commentary and advice by the
"military experts" supposedly independent analysts, free of any conflicts of
interest helped "catapult the propaganda" (to borrow Bush's own term) in
favor of war with Iraq.
And it worked: CheneyBush and their neo-con ideologues inside the
Administration got U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq, controlled the oil flowing out of
that country, created chaos and catastrophe from which their huge
private-corporation sponsors could make huge pots of money, built the world's largest new
embassy in Baghdad, and constructed permanent military bases inside that country
from where the U.S. will help control the geopolitics of the greater Middle
East for generations to come, etc. etc. All this presents a perfect
illustration of
Naomi Klein's thesis of "shock doctrine" and "disaster capitalism."
This use of hired guns all those prestigious, smart-looking ex-generals
and such to do their propaganda work for them is further confirmation of the
mendacity,
duplicity and illegality Bush&Co. employ to get their way.
LITTLE OR NO COVERAGE
True
to form, of course, the corporate mainstream media have paid scant, if
any, attention to this story of how dozens of retired officers helped
shape American military policy while secretly still attached to the
Administration teat. See here,
(http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/09/cnn_abc/index.html )
here, (
http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/04/25/notes042508.DTL
) and here
(http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/9/134810/7431/904/512691 ).
In this instance, and many more that could be named, the mainstream press, by
not mentioning or following up on such CheneyBush scandals, does democracy a
dangerous disservice.
Our political system depends on citizens receiving accurate information about
what's being done in their names so that they can make intelligent decisions
when voting for those who represent them.
LIES & DECEPTIONS
If they respond at all, Busheviks tend to say that even if these stories are
true, how we wound up in Iraq is "old news," it's history, we're there, let's
just make the best of it, "finish the job" and then go home.
However, if your original reasons for invading a sovereign country were based
on lies and deceptions, and a lot of incorrect assumptions and ignorance,
then your occupation policies will never work and you will have alienated and
angered the local population to the point of violent resistance against you. The
result: You will be stuck in a quagmire of your own devising, where the most
you can hope for is endless stalemate. This was the case of the U.S. screwup in
Vietnam in the 1960s and '70s, and it's the case today with the its
five-years-and-counting occupation of Iraq.
Now, it can be argued that endless stalemate is of no great concern to the
shock-doctrine practitioners of Bush&Co.; indeed, it may be the desired result
as it guarantees prolonged chaos and thus more need for companies like
Blackwater, Bechtel, Halliburton, KRB, et al. to help keep the broken society
together. The U.S. and Iraqi dead and maimed are but the inevitable "collateral
damage."
But, as CheneyBush have learned, domestically you can push the U.S. military,
and American citizens, only so far before both begin to push back and call
for a new, more rational approach to political and foreign-policy adventuring.
Key military officers within the Joint Chiefs of Staff (even, to some extent,
Defense Secretary Gates) are watching their armed forces stretched much too
thin around the globe. Because there is no military draft, the Pentagon is
forced to use and abuse its existing troops to the point of near-rebellion,
resulting in lower morale and increased psychological damage, including 300,000 Iraq
veterans returning home with mental problems (
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/82912) and a rising rate of suicides. (
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3208.shtml ).
'08 VOTE A REFERENDUM ON WAR
This abuse includes overuse of the stop-loss policy of refusing to let
soldiers go home after they've completed their Iraq rotation, constantly recalling
troops who have been sent home after completing their exended service, lowering
the army's physical, intellectual, pyschological and moral standards in order
to fill the recruiting gap when the services can't meet their enlistment
quotas, returning physically or psychologically wounded soldiers to battle despite
their doctors' recommendations, etc. etc.
Moreover, the citizens appear to have had enough. Since two-thirds of polled
Americans believe the Iraq invasion and occupation are outrageously expensive
follies and it's time to start bringing the troops back home, the opposition
party is about to nominate as its presidential candidate someone who aims to
get the troops out within 16 months. The Republican Party is set to nominate
someone who wants to continue the CheneyBush war even if it means keeping U.S.
troops in Iraq for a hundred years or more, and probably starting more
conflagrations in the Greater Middle East.
In a fair and open election, the Democratic candidate should win that contest
easily. However, there is compelling evidence (
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0804/S00368.htm ) that in the past eight years, U.S. elections have been
corrupted through the use of hackable, unverifiable, paperless "touch-screen"
machines, and vote-tabulating computers, which utilize secret software, manufactured
and programmed by companies with Republican affiliations.
BOMB, BOMB, BOMB IRAN
All this isn't just "old history." CheneyBush are itching to bomb Iran's
military installations and scientific laboratories while they are still in control
of the Executive Branch, and are "capapulting the propaganda" for such an
attack in ways eerily similar to how they deceived Congress and the American
people into bombing and invading Iraq.
There are reports that Secretary Gates has been trying to stop such
attack-Iran moves, or at least to greatly reduce the scale of the operation. But other
reports suggest that the decision to bomb already has been made, and the
appointment of Gen. David Petraeus to take over at Central Command is a key sign
that all the ducks are just about lined up in a row.
(The former head of Central Command, Admiral William Fallon, said there would
be no attack on Iran on his watch; he was forced out, and CheneyBush lackey
Petraeus was moved over from Iraq.)
BURMESE MILITARY'S "OPPORTUNITY"
"The shock doctrine" is not employed solely by American governments and
multi-national corporations. In Burma (Myanmar), the military junta ruling that
country, having just put down a potential revolt led by Buddhist monks, clearly
is terrified that a coup might be organized by individuals or organizations who
want to bring aid into the country to help the residents in the wake of the
cylone disaster. And so they're keeping those aid workers out of the country,
thus putting at risk the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of refugees
pouring into Rangoon and elsewhere in search of medical care, food, shelter.
The effect of the disaster and the Burmese government's insufficient response
to it means that a good share of the junta's political opposition is now dead
or dealing with the aftermath of the huge, rampaging storm. In other words,
the disaster offers a great "opportunity" for the ruling elite to settle old
scores by continuing to repress the opposition and to remake the affected areas
as they wish. (There have been reports, unconfirmed, of bodies of monks being
found in the cyclone rubble burned in a suspicious manner mixed in with
the tens of thousands of other corpses found floating in the rice fields and
ditches and rivers.)
The long time-delay in getting food, water and shelter to the hundreds of
thousands of displaced survivors of the cyclone is reminiscent of the way the
Bush Administration dilly-dallied with regard to the post-Katrina period in New
Orleans and Mississippi. In her book, Klein used the Katrina experience as a
perfect example of "disaster capitalism" in the U.S.: A government watches a
natural catastrophe wipe out an entire population sector, and lets the
catastrophe play out over days and weeks and months with large numbers of citizens
abandoning their homes, forced to go elsewhere for adequate assistance and
then giving no-bid contracts to Blackwater and Halliburton and KRB for the
reconstruction phase, in accord with social planning as laid out by the ideologues
in the White House.
In Burma, the government may not be operating out of an exactly similar
motivation, but the result appears to be much the same: using a natural calamity to
reshape the economic, political and social future of the affected region for
their own political and economic aims.
NATURAL RESOURCE SHORTAGES
As for the huge worldwide "run" on commodities especially important
staples such as wheat, rice, oil already local greed-merchants and multi-national
companies are salivating at the prospect of selling, at exhorbitant rates,
food and shelter and clothing and oil and the like. They will be literally
"making a killing" on the backs of the starving, the poor, the dispossessed.
In so doing, in line with Klein's "shock doctrine" and "disaster capitalism"
theses, these elite forces will be re-shaping the politics, economies and
social arrangements of these countries for generations, both to consolidate and
expand their reigns of power and to benefit themselves and their rapacious,
greedy supporters.
In short, when catastrophes are being dealt with, it doesn't seem to matter
what the operating governmental system is, be it fascist, communist,
dictatorial, democratic, etc. By and large, the power/economic/political elites see the
unfolding tragedies of their citizens as "opportunities" for expansion of
control, for ways to eliminate or dilute their opposition, for fattening the bank
accounts of their large-corporation supporters in rebuilding and
reconstructing these devasted societies, in line with their own greed agendas.
This is the world that only will change when these elites and systems are
systematically confronted, changed, or overthrown by citizens operating under a
different moral system, who decide they've finally had enough.
It would be more effective, of course, if a strong progressive movement were
to develop overnight in America to affect such wide-sweeping reforms in this
country. However, removing Republicans from the White House in 2008 at least
would be a significant sign of the beginnings of the public's strong desire for
significant changes.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught
at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor at the
San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently serves as co-editor of
The Crisis Papers. To comment:
crisispapers@comcast.net .
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