-submited 12/15 by Larry Everest, author of Oil, Power, & Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda
What’s the Bush regime’s response to
being caught lying? Simple ( keep repeating different versions of the
same lies and make up some new ones along the way.
That was the scene yesterday in Washington, DC when Bush, in the last
of four recent speeches, was once again trying to justify the U.S.’s
illegal, imperialist invasion of Iraq in the face of ongoing Iraqi resistance, the exposure of the lies that Saddam had WMD and
supported al Qaeda, growing anti-war opposition, and tactical
differences among the rulers over how to deal with the situation.
Every sentence Bush uttered about America’s history in Iraq, why it
invaded in 2003, U.S. war aims, and current realities in Iraq was
untrue. (By the way, a useful method for getting at the truth is begin
with the working hypothesis that U.S. intentions are exactly the
opposite of what the rulers claim, and that everything they say about
their enemies ( whether true or false ( applies a thousand-fold to
themselves).
The message that came through loud and clear was that the Bush regime
is determined to push ahead with its illegal, immoral and unjust
conquest of Iraq and global war for greater empire no matter how many
lies are exposed, no matter how many thousands are tortured or slaughtered, and no matter how many war crimes and crimes against
humanity are committed ( unless an unprecedented resistance of millions
drives them from power.
One could write whole books detailing Bush’s fabrications from this speech alone. Here are a few key examples:
PHONEY ‘INTELLIGENCE FAILURES’
Bush: “When we made the decision to go into Iraq, many intelligence
agencies around the world judged that Saddam possessed weapons of mass
destruction….And it is true that much of the intelligence turned out
to be wrong.’
Reality: The intelligence wasn’t ‘wrong,’ it was fabricated. The U.S.
and other imperialist powers (and countries like France and Germany did
not, for their own reasons,
make the same claims Bush did) knew that Iraq had essentially been
disarmed, probably by the mid-1990s. (See, for instance, Scott Ritter’s
recent talk at http://traprockpeace.org/podcasts_transcripts/.)
The ‘evidence’ that Iraq had WMD was spun from whole cloth, and
focusing on ‘intelligence failures’ is an attempt to cover this up.
Bush: ‘Saddam Hussein could have avoided war by complying with the just
demands of the international community. The United States did not
choose war — the choice was Saddam Hussein’s.’
Reality. The Hussein regime did comply with UN disarmament demands
(even though those demands were imperialist and unjust) ( that’s why no
weapons were found in Iraq. (Has any government official of either
party or anyone in the mainstream media drawn this obvious connection?
) So by having no weapons, Saddam chose war? Pleeeease!
Bush: ‘September the 11th also changed the way I viewed threats like
Saddam Hussein. We saw the destruction terrorists could cause with
airplanes loaded with jet fuel
— and we imagined the destruction they could cause with even more
powerful weapons.’
Reality: Another version of the same lie ( and linkage ( that was the
Bush regime mantra before the war: that Saddam had WMD, was tied to al
Qaeda, and involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bush: ‘Given Saddam’s history and the lessons of September the 11th, my
decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a
threat.’
Reality: Iraq was never a military threat to
the U.S. and under current international law the U.S. invasion was a
war crime. The ‘threat’ the U.S. rulers talk about is their concern
that Hussein’s continued rule could undermine their imperialist
dominance of the oil-rich Persian Gulf, in part because Hussein had
signed oil deals with other powers like Russia and France. This is why
the U.S. had been trying to overthrow Hussein for a decade before the
2003 invasion.
THE SO-CALLED ‘WAR ON TERROR’
Bush: ‘September the 11th changed our country; it changed the policy of
our government. We adopted a new strategy to protect the American
people: We would hunt down the terrorists wherever they hide…and we
would advance our security at home by advancing freedom in the Middle
East.’
Reality: the Bush administration did adopt a new global strategy after
Sept. 11, but it had nothing to do with protecting Americans (or anyone
else), combating ‘terror,’ or ‘advancing freedom in the Middle East.’
It’s a strategy of unending war to deepen and extend U.S. imperial
dominance. People like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Lewis Libby,
who would become top
Bush officials, had been fighting for this strategy since the Soviet
collapse in 1991, and they saw Sept. 11 as a golden opportunity to
implement their nightmare agenda.
Bush: ‘In the war on terror, Iraq is now the central front.’
Reality: There is no ‘war on terror.’ Iraq is a ‘central front’ ( in
multi-faceted U.S. efforts to seize deeper control of the energy heart
of the planet ( the Middle East and Central Asia ( and leverage this
control against potential rivals. (Some of these dynamics were depicted
in the new movie ‘Syriana’.)
Bush: ‘Most of the debate [on Iraq] has been a credit to our democracy,
but some have launched irresponsible charges. They say that we act
because of oil, that we act in Iraq because of Israel, or because we
misled the American people.’
Reality: Not surprisingly, Bush wants to rule discussion of his
regime’s conscious lies and actual motives for invading Iraq out of
order ( but this is precisely what’s needed ( urgently.
‘LIBERATING’ IRAQ
Bush: ‘We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than
the removal of a brutal dictator; it is to leave a free and democratic
Iraq in its place.’
Reality: The US did not come to liberate Iraq, it came to colonize Iraq
and it’s committing war crimes and crimes against humanity ( including
murdering and torturing civilians and destroying whole cities, to do
so. (Bush recently admitted that 30,000 Iraqis had lost their lives (
but blamed the insurgency. In reality, according to Iraq Body Count,
US-led forces caused over four times as many civilian deaths as the
insurgents ( 37% vs. 9%.)
Bush: ‘We are living through a watershed moment in the story of
freedom…The stakes in Iraq are high, and we will not leave until
victory has been achieved.’
Reality: The stakes ARE high for the imperialists ( which is why
they’re so ruthlessly determined to ‘stay the course’ in Iraq. It’s is
a ‘watershed moment,’ not in the story of ‘freedom’ ( but in the
struggle against the towering crimes and grave injustices being
committed by the Bush regime. The stakes for humanity are ‘enormous’ –
which is why it is so urgent to drive this criminal regime from power.