by Don Hynes
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| Vantage Point | Culture and Politics by Don Hynes |
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"No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong.
He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so,
the prejudice will be gone." - Tom Paine
July 21, 2003 Say it isn't so, Mr. President Back in an era of supposed innocence when Shoeless Joe Jackson was suspected of throwing the 1919 World Series, myth has it that a young lad cried out to the ballplayer, say it isn't so, Joe. The boy's faith, like many other citizens, was challenged if not broken by the realization that a guy who could hit a ball with a stick might be capable of moral wrong. A similar clueless naiveté seems to be ruling the hallowed halls of Washington DC. The big question is whether or not the President knowingly deceived the American people about intelligence matters concerning Iraq. I say this is one foolish question. Of course the President knew the facts about Iraq and if he didn't, he, his staff and the entire intelligence community have dumbed down to a reality show level of intellect. The Administration's arguments for invading Iraq were challenged prior to the war by Congressman Waxman, by a carefully constructed British counter-dossier, and thoroughly refuted by former senior weapons inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter. Ritter's character was later smeared in the press in the all too familiar Karl Rove pay back style, but Ritter didn't hesitate to continue to shred the complete lack in veracity of the Administration arguments that led to the invasion of Iraq. These links to key information and thousands of others were available to me at my computer and a thank God DSL hookup, and hey, I'm one middle aged guy with an old box. The President has a national security staff, a well paid and well hidden Vice President, the Department of State and CIA for crying out loud, and no one was aware of the facts behind the trumped up rationale for war! If you buy that one, as the old saw goes, you'll soon be purchasing a garden spot in the Everglades. The President had the best information available to him at a moment's notice and to think otherwise is to allow whatever ability we have for rationale thought to evaporate. The question is not whether the President deceived the nation, the answer to that is as obvious as the Pete Rose story. The real unanswered question is WHY? Why did the President, his Administration and their few bungling allies want to invade Iraq so badly that they were willing to trump a case in order to abjectly defeat a weaker nation and involve the United States Army in an un-winnable ground war that is leading inevitably to a tragedy of gross proportion for the people of Iraq and the United States. This is the question that needs answering, and somewhere in the billions of dollars of support for President Bush and profit from his policies lies the answer. Classic Guerrilla War American soldiers and US sponsored Iraqi governors are under attack every day, the US commander is calling for one year tours in Iraq in what he now describes as a classic guerrilla war, GIs on the ground are threatened and disgruntled, the Administration attacks the messenger, openly gay reporter Jeffrey Kofman, and may have blown an important intelligence cover in seeking to punish Ambassador Joseph Wilson's revelations concerning the bogus Iraq Niger yellow cake uranium charges. The President put out a lame defense of his actions in which he described intelligence as "darn good" while blaming his mistakes on the CIA as source. A release of classified pre-war documents that was intended to help the President's argument only raised more questions. US media is focusing on the details of hypocrisy while the twenty and counting Presidential lies that led to the invasion of Iraq headline the international press. The Fedayeen militia in Iraq promise an unending war of attrition in what even conservative columnists are now describing as America betrayed, while one lonely GI writes poignantly of his military experience and speaks for many in an honest evaluation of the war at the most personal level. Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest US Special Forces are apparently behind a heating up of violence on the Iraq Syria border furthering conflict in the mid East. Apparently we haven't started enough trouble that we can't finish. North Korea, as Tom Engelhardt writes for the Nation, is a more problematic and explosive problem than Iraq, and the President is failing to develop a congruent and effective foreign policy. Israel has come up with a novel approach to peace in their land and the border they claim with Palestine counter to international law and treaty, a wall that the Israeli government euphemistically refers to as a fence, in reality "a concrete wall eight meters high, wire fences and electronic sensors, ditches four meters deep on either side, a dirt path to reveal footprints, an area into which entry is forbidden, a two-lane road for army patrols, and watchtowers and firing posts every 200 meters along the entire length." I wonder where our ally for mid East peace got this idea? Beach Reading While Joe Sixpack continues to buzz your beach chair with his jet ski and/or motorized toy de jour, here are a few articles that will keep you thinking. Lisa Walsh Thomas writes about the popular support for the President in rural America in the Adulation and Venom of Ignorance. Truthout.org's C.D. Sludge provides an expose and analysis of the electronic rigging of the electoral process. Paul Krugman reminds the President of his State of the Union promise "We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents and other generations" in Passing It Along about the enormous rise in federal deficit. Esquire's Tom Junod offers a bio of presidential dark horse Wesley Clark while political blogger Aimy Sullivan gives odds for the retired general. Lastly, in the spirit of summer, here's a fine piece on the practicality of solar energy from David Hochschild of the San Francisco Chronicle. Ways to Help It's July and the temperature has reached 95 in the Willamette Valley. Time to chill and check your stress level with this easy to use self help tool. Peace. *** |
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