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How to Destroy a Country and Get Off Scot-Free
By
Linda Heard
sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
18/03/08 "Arab
News" Someone once told me if you're going to
tell a lie make it a whopper based on the premise the more
outrageous the lie the more likely it is to be believed. At the
time, I wrote off his advice as hogwash but as we see from the
Iraq debacle, he was right. Five years later, the deceit
continues undiminished and nobody has been held to account.
Britain's Gordon Brown yesterday promised to hold an enquiry
into the "mistakes" made in Iraq. Sounds good, but don't hold
your breath. All previous inquiries have been labeled
"whitewashes". They can't afford the truth to come out else they
might get a one-way ticket to The Hague.
Ambassador David Satterfield, and adviser to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, is doing the rounds of talk shows lauding
America's victories over Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
On one occasion the host interjected to mention the unpalatable
fact that Al-Qaeda members only flocked to Iraq once the
Americans were in place leaving Satterfield momentarily
nonplussed.
It's obvious that Satterfield is so saturated in the party line
he forgot the Pentagon's recently published study that found
with certainty that Saddam Hussein had absolutely no links to
Al-Qaeda. And lest we forget Saddam didn't have WMD either,
which means not only was the war immoral the prewar sanctions on
that country that contributed to the deaths of over
half-a-million Iraqi children were too.
Think about it for a moment. The warmongers invaded, crushed and
occupied a country that was no threat to anyone. They stood by
as it was looted, exacerbated sectarianism, flattened entire
towns, tortured untold numbers of innocents, brought in
gum-chewing, tattooed foreign mercenaries and paid crony
companies billions of dollars for mythical reconstruction
projects.
They then pretended to hand over sovereignty to that country
while at the same time constructing permanent bases and the
biggest US Embassy in history resembling a small town. They said
they had no interest in Iraq's oil, yet they are putting immense
pressure on the Iraqi government (sic) to sign into law a bill
that permits foreign (read American) oil companies to lock up
decades-long deals. Let's be frank. Iraq wasn't a blunder, it
was a crime. So how did they manage to get away with implanting
their long-conceived plot to do away with Israel's No. 1 foe,
ensure their competitors couldn't get their hands on Iraq's
resources and entrench their military might in the region?
Future historians will no doubt be scratching their heads over
this one. You had to live through it to believe it.
First, they cleverly used the politics of fear to sway public
opinion. As noted in the Project for the New American Century's
document "Rebuilding America's Defenses", the warmonger
signatories - who later became senior members of the Bush
administration - needed "a new Pearl Harbor". On Sept. 1l 2001
they got it. Americans and their allies were in shock. Almost
every country in the world was sympathetic and willing to do
anything to help. And, boy, did they capitalize on that empathy
even managing to persuade Russia to stay silent as they made
deals with Caspian states to allow US bases.
Step one was a country where a giant bogeyman was supposed to be
hiding out in a cave presumably equipped with a dialysis machine
and a production studio and whose black-turbaned government
forced women to wear a burqa and disallowed nail polish. But
then Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld was disappointed because
there weren't enough targets for his bombs. It was no fun
bombing a country into the Stone Age when it was already there.
Step two was the insidious demonizing of Muslims, thousands of
whom were arrested and held for months without charge or access
to lawyers. In that climate of fear, it was relatively simple to
persuade the American people that Saddam Hussein was conniving
with the people who brought down the World Trade Center. US
officials warned of mushroom clouds; Prime Minister Tony Blair
said British interests could be attacked within 45 minutes of
Saddam giving the order. Then Secretary of State Colin Powell
allowed himself to be used as their fall guy. He spouted the
most unbelievable scripted codswallop the UN had ever
heard...yet, bullied and bribed nation after nation pretended to
believe him as IAEA chief Mohammed El-Baradei and UN weapons
inspector Hans Blix did little to discredit the hoax.
Step three entailed replacing Osama in people's minds with
Saddam, who overnight morphed into a hydra-headed monster whose
idea of a pleasant weekend was gassing and torturing his own
people.
Step four was 'Shock and Awe' which illuminated the Baghdad
skyline on March 19, 2003. As their bombs and missiles rained
down on crowded market places scattering limbs, they told us
those bombs and missiles were Saddam's even though the
Independent's Middle East correspondent inconveniently dug up
their Made in the USA shards.
As the months went on, we began to wonder what happened to the
WMD. They told us it was only a matter of time before it would
be unearthed from under the sands or discovered in a tunnel
under one of Saddam's palaces. They even suggested it may have
been shipped off to a neighboring country for safekeeping!!
Step five was an orchestrated administration campaign to inject
us with mass amnesia. Never mind about the weapons, they said.
We are here to liberate the poor Iraqi people from their evil
dictator and deliver freedom and democracy. Look, look, they
said. The Iraqis have purple fingers! With up to one million
dead, Iraqis are lucky they have any fingers at all.
To be fair, they couldn't have done it without the aid of a
compliant, supine media, which embedded its reporters with US
battalions and agreed not to show captured US soldiers,
flag-draped coffins, military funerals or scenes of blood-soaked
Iraqi civilians. Independent reporters who neglected to abide by
the script were discredited, refused access to information and
even shelled.
I still recall a live report from David Chater of Sky News, who
saw the barrel of a US tank slowly turn toward the Palestine
hotel - known to be a journalist's hang-out - before firing its
shell killing three reporters. The Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera
and Al-Arabiya were also hit.
With so much information on tap I'm flabbergasted that so many
people still believe the Iraq fairytale. I wish they'd get in
touch with me. I've got a few pyramids and a sphinx going cheap.
Sad, isn't it!
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