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Inside: Cultural Sausage. ~ Ludic Lists. ~ Skullbucket. Outside: Thanks
to Scott Bateman, from whom I
lifted these quotes.
"Edward Gorey and children's bedding" "male crotch shots" "mermaid madness" "WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE SECRET IDENTITIES?" "see Snow White fuck dwarfs" "female gut punch" "everyobdy's a moron" "I don't understand where you're going with this idea" |
01.13.2005
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." (VP Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002) As General George S. Patton, or his fictionalized doppelganger, pointed out, Americans love to fight. There's nothing we enjoy more than a good solid dust-up, and when it comes right down to it, any excuse to go to war will do, whether it's protecting a southeast Asian country that no one has ever heard of from communism or making sure no one goes off and forms their own country so they can keep having slaves. But despite our glorious history of bogus justifications for war -- a history including such golden classics as the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine (Wm. R. Hearst, executive producer) -- you really have to look outside the bounds of the continental U.S. to find an excuse for foreign adventurism as transparent as those offered for our current escapade in Iraq. Yes, not since a cheery day in August of 1939, when a handful of SS men dressed up as Polish regulars staged a bogus "attack" on the radio station at Gleiwitz has war been justified at such high levels by such obvious chicanery. "There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction." (Gen. Tommy Franks, March 22, 2003) And now, it's all over. Quietly and without fanfare this week, the White House confirmed that it has stopped looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that a report claiming there are no such weapons to find will likely stand. In fact, White House spokesman Scott McClellan admitted as sheepishly as someone without shame is capable of being, the search (such as it was) has been over since Christmas. Even the Bush administration, it seems, isn't heartless enough to make its minions keep searching for fairies over the holidays. The Democrats (with the predictable exception of neoquisling Zell Miller and the deeply misguided Joe Lieberman, who displayed an even greater disconnect with reality than the GOP by saying "The fact that we didn't discover large stocks of weapons of mass destruction doesn't mean that Saddam Hussein didn't have them") predictably jumped all over this news, telling an audience of reporters who couldn't care less and liberals who already know that the president's primary justification for war is self-admittedly bogus. You could hear the yawns of 51% of the public all the way from Capitol Hill, as the nation's collective rage focused instead on reporters who unknowingly accepted a conceivably false document spreading further doubt on the president's lack of a war record, or on a football player who may have pretended to take his pants off. "I am confident that we will find evidence that makes it clear that (Saddam Hussein) had weapons of mass destruction." (Sec. Colin Powell, May 4, 2003) Of course, even now, when it's clear that neither the public nor, in following them, the press, could give two wet farts about whether or not the weapons of mass destruction ever existed, there will continue to be a show. The focus-group running of various rationalizations for war showed that WMDs were something of a dud from the start, after all; not only did people openly doubt the stories of nerve gas and biotoxins, but they couldn't help wondering why we weren't taking a similarly belligerent attitude towards, say, North Korea. The White House started to drop the WMD talk after the first thousand or so raised eyebrows, and by the end, only real true believers still peddled that angle. The apologists for this disaster of an occupation have moved on to other, more nebulous justifications: the elimination of a murderous dictator (who managed to kill fewer people in ten years or reigning than we did in one year of removing him); the freedom of the Iraqi people (so long as they don't try and unionize, force out an occupying army, run their own economy, or vote for politically inexpedient religious radicals); and the ever-popular link to terrorism and 9/11 (although no link has ever been forged that would hold the weight of a toothbrush, all you have to do in America these days to justify anything is use the t-word). Even the alleged 'intelligence failures' which are being blamed for the WMD cockup (instead of the rightful villain, ideology) will be pushed: "If there are any leads," McClelland promised anent the purported bad intelligence, "these leads will be pursued." You must admit, that's stern, convincing stuff, every bit as compelling as O.J. Simpson's ongoing quest to find the "real killers". "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." (President George W. Bush, March 18, 2003) But you know what? It really doesn't matter. None of this matters. There will be no major public outcry over this latest revelation, because the majority of the public doesn't care, and the minority of the Congress doesn't have the power to force the issue. The reason the WMD and terror-link arguments were used in the first place is because Karl Rove and his PNAC cronies correctly figured that no one would care very much that they were hooey. Like Alfred Naujocks' bosses who ordered him to stage his little action-drama at Gleiwitz, they knew that people are always willing to accept a big lie over a small one, and that people believe what they want to believe. There's no need to conduct a plausible story when an implausible one will do just as well. And the answer to the surprise found in some liberal quarters that the government didn't bother to plant evidence of weapons of mass destruction is this: why pile on another lie, especially one with actual consequences, when people will believe your first lie without a shred of evidence? Why would the Chicago cops have bothered to plant bombs on the Haymarket anarchists, when the jury was all too willing to hang them without any evidence, bogus or otherwise? No, the Bush cabinet wanted this war, and with very little convincing, the American public wanted it too. And telling them now that the reasons for going to war were flagrant falsehoods won't accomplish anything for the simple reason that they didn't need a reason for going to war in the first place. After September 11th, 2001, America wanted someone to hit, and George W. Bush was all too willing to stand an easy target right in front of America's fist. "We know for a fact that there are weapons of mass destruction there." (White House spokesman Ari Fliescher, January 8, 2003) And now, after over a thousand dead Americans, over a hundred thousand dead Iraqis, a financially ruinous increase in the national dept, our military stretched dangerously thin, and global terrorism at an all-time high, how does George W. Bush (who, of course, will never fight in Iraq, and will never have a child fight in Iraq, and will never have to suffer the financial, emotional and physical costs of his war) respond to the question of whether or not it was worth invading Iraq now that it's clear that no weapons of mass destruction existed to be found? "Oh, absolutely." (President George W. Bush, January 12, 2005) |
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| TODAY'S DRIFTWOOD: "Decide exactly what you have to achieve. Do you want to help people, or do you want to be powerful?" (Mario Cuomo) |