a history 080228

The most heinous crime of the new millennium
5/25/2003
By Lisa Walsh Thomas
Online Journal Contributing Writer

"We have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more."
—Colin Powell on February 6, speaking to the UN Security Council, demanding their support for the invasion of Iraq


May 23, 2003—The greatest crime? Tall order, even if the millenium isn't three years old yet, because the new leaders of this country have had a running start since before the new millenium bells started ringing.

The long line at the rear is ready to give the honor to George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and others on the payroll to paralyze American hearts with fear of being nuked by Iraq (or whomever) so that Johnny could go marching off to war and see that dollars instead of euros triumph when the US takes over the slushy oilfields. But if you think the administration's imperialism is the greatest crime, remember what Bob Dylan sang to us a generation ago, recalling the murder of Hattie Carroll: "Now ain't the time for your tears." Because it gets worse.

The prize for most heinous crime doesn't go to George or Colin or any of the oily-fingered bunch, not even those who now face charges of war crimes (if we don't knock off Belgium first). It goes to the people of this country, those who are checking the Dow today, those out laughing over dinner as if all's right with the world, those signing new contracts for "better" lives, those with 14 tattered flags bedecking their SUVs, those who sleep well, truly believing that God's on our side even when we fib a little, those who, in blunt terms, simply don't give a damn that thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of innocent Iraqis lie dead, that more than a thousand Iraqi kids will never see summer. Never. Our kids will go to summer camp; a thousand Iraqi kids will rot underground. Therein lies a difference to be noted.

Enough of us marched in the streets and wrote into the late hours, begging the world to make the inexperienced but oil-hungry, power-seeking cowboy who stole our White House stop and take note of what the weapons inspectors were saying: no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. We begged; the pope begged; the leaders of every major Christian church in America except for the Baptists begged; Nobel laureates begged; the Dalai Lama begged; millions of people who care gathered in the streets all over the world and begged: please don't blow off little Ahmed's legs or make him watch his mother die screaming, when you don't have one shred of evidence that his country is any kind of threat to anyone. Please don't blind his little sister just because her father's hut sits on oil. Please don't wipe out those 19-year old Iraqi boys who are going to fight to the death to defend their homeland against foreign invaders and their impressive "shock and awe." Please, for God's sake, let the inspectors find out if there is any danger in Iraq.

We begged until we were blue in the face. We were called commies, traitors, and ignorant fools, but worst of all, we were ignored. I personally received more hate mail than I can count asking me who I thought I was to question the wisdom of our president [sic]. Because I cried for the children whose days were numbered, I—and other writers and activists—were wished horrible deaths ourselves. One evil-wisher expressed the desire that I die in Saddam's arms.

Because somewhere, somehow, someone convinced the people of this country that George W. Bush is a man of God and has a hotline straight to Jesus. And the Jesus of these people was saying, "Kill, kill, kill."

In January George W. Bush put on his "sincere" look (the one reporters describe having seen him practice in the mirror) and faced 83 million people for the 2003 State of the Union, assuring them that Iraq had the materials "to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax—enough doses to kill several million people . . . more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin—enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure . . . as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." That's surely enough to make a loyal patriot choke on his KFC chicken leg.

And they had the evidence. Both he and Colin Powell made that assurance at every opportunity. And the people (of this country) believed him. Terrified of being victims of Iraq, having their faces melted by Iraqi nukes, having their wives raped by the invading Iraqi army, they ran to Wal-Mart and bought flags by the dozens, frantically waved them, and demanded that the entire country "support our troops."

The quotes on the administration's certainty of Iraq's threat to the world could go on and on and on but do not deserve to be dignified by repetition. Worse, some of the things Bush told the 83 million people who watched that night were things that had already been unequivocably refuted by the International Atomic Energy Commission. He knew at the time he read them from his teleprompter that they were lies. The unelected leader of this country, whom we are told to respect come hell or high water, brazenly lied to 83 million people. Without blinking.

We must surely ask whether lies of this magnitude, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents, fall in the same category as a lie about a sexual liason with an intern. If the latter deserved impeachment, does it follow that the former deserves perhaps a hard, uncomfortable chair in a corner of eternal hell?

But never mind George W. Bush. People who have taken the time to study his record already know that he has never shied away from a lie that resulted in any kind of personal gain. Look at his military record and wonder at the gall of his showing up in flight gear on an aircraft carrier to talk as the "warrior king," just as if he had honorably served himself. Unless we were living in caves, or unless we fell into the group who couldn't keep Saddam and Osama (Osama bin Forgotten?) straight and still think the 9–11 hijackers were from Iraq, we knew that Bush habitually runs short on anything even vaguely resembling honesty. Even then, we allowed rings to be placed in our noses and didn't squeak when they were jerked.

And now the lies are out there for everyone to see. So what are we to do? News of Laci Peterson's murder is old hat now, leaving us pacing around for new adventure, new reality TV, a new sex scandal. We can get miffed about the 10 Americans killed in the suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia, but we have to be careful not to conclude that the slaughter of innocent Iraqis led to the bombings.

What won't go away, no matter how many sensational stories network television tries to seduce us with, are facts that growing numbers of Americans are having to swallow: knowledge of the forged documents purporting to show Iraq had bought uranium ore from Niger, bugging the UN offices of countries that didn't jump when Bush snapped his fingers, claims that intelligence analysts were forced to stretch facts to fit the theories of superiors at the White House, Pentagon and vice president's office. They're just sitting there, sticking out like a gross blemish on the face as you head out the door to your senior prom.

It's serious. We have this pile of lies now, and there are these piles of bodies in Iraq, and there are these non-piles of chemical and biological weapons that must have zoomed up to heaven in a sneak preview of rapture, and we have to do something if we ever hope to take the family to Europe again and tell the people we meet where we're from. What on earth do we do about the whole mess? Something better than blaming the French and pouring $40 bottles of wine in the streets because France told us to stop the damned jingoism.

We can shop! That's what we can do. We have a leader who tells us to shop until we drop and the economy will improve, as corporate bottom lines improve and make the CEOs more receptive to hiring a few more minimum-wage employees. If we shop hard enough we can perhaps forget that we murdered tens of thousands of innocent people because we were so apathetic that we simply believed the lies that were spoon-fed to us without checking them out. How many "true believing patriots" know anything about the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) and the intentions of the far right in this country to control the globe. One suggestion for coming out of the coma is to try looking at that one, in their own words, at: www.newamericancentury.org/

But 56 percent of the people in this country, even after admitting that the stories of weapons of mass destruction were false, still insist it was a good idea to go kill Iraq, because Saddam was a bad guy (Of course he was a bad guy; he was originally our guy, just like Noriega, Osama bin Laden, Pinochet, Somoza, Batista and almost all members of the bad-guy club)—more than half the people in this country. These are the people, of course, who fell for the business about there being a "coalition of the willing," those unwilling to dig in and find out that the "coalition" was made up of the U.S., UK and those we could threaten or buy off.

These people polled may legitimately feel good that we've rid the world of one dictator even if his people do starve this summer and spawn a thousand future terrorists to go after our grandchildren, even if the depleted uranium has yielded a million-year wasteland, even if kids are still dying every day from the human-rights-condemned cluster bombs that leave little bomblets that look like toys. These people may think it's our right to kill a country if its leader is repressive and a general thug, as was Saddam. But I wonder about the families of the 130 American soldiers who died in Iraq. Do they perhaps wish our president [sic] had told the truth? I wonder if the mothers of those thousand kids we killed are rejoicing in their "liberation." What about our soldiers over there now, fearing for their lives as they see the hate in the eyes of those they "liberated."

What fools we have all been. And what bigger fools we are not to now admit that we were snookered and that possibly George W. Bush may not be the Messiah after all. Who came out happy? We must ask ourselves who came out happy? Defense contractors, the oil oligarchy and companies like Dick Cheney's Halliburton, who are making millions on contracts to rebuild Iraq—contracts not up for public bidding. Cheney is still, by the way, on the Halliburton payroll, a cool million a year. Maybe that didn't have anything to do with Halliburton getting such juicy contracts; maybe being good-looking didn't have anything to do with Brad Pitt breaking into movies; maybe a high IQ didn't have anything to do with Einstein's preoccupation with relativity.

There are fortunes being made on the results of these phantom weapons of mass destruction that whushed off into a black hole as soon as U.S. soldiers got control of the oilfields. And the fortunes are not being made in the smallest way by the families who sent their sons to die in the desert, either.

But who gets the prize? Most Heinous Crime of the New Millenium. In a pool of a thousand atrocities, who, in the end, is the guiltiest, the lowest, the slimiest and truest representatives of heinous crimes? Perhaps those who sit back and, even knowing that we allowed our country to massacre thousands on the basis of lies, just let it go while they focus on their Big Macs. Those who won't take to the streets when Bush goes after the next country on his list (probably after the election). The guy down in Texas with the huge yard sign that says, "Iraq today, France tomorrow."

This was just the beginning, a testing of waters. If you doubt the oracle, go back and read the papers issued by the PNAC. Bush showed the world just how big his guns were, and those questioning him have taken a silent step backward. The U.S. power to financially cripple a country is staggering. Its power to blow them out of existence is now well demonstrated as well. And we let it happen, some with immense pride.

Are we feeling bad yet? Does a triple thick milkshake curdle in our throats yet?

The inimitable Mark Morford answers it best (SF Gate, May 14, 2003):

"Because now it's all done. Like a bad trip to the dentist where your routine cleaning turned out to be a bloody excruciating root canal and 50 hours of high-pitched drilling and $100 billion in god-awful cosmetic surgery, now the bandages come off. Smile, sucker. We're at peace once again. Sort of. But not really. Don't you feel better now? No? Too bad. No one cares what you think."