- ...And when it does, this house of cards,
built of deceit, will fall.'
-
-
- By US Senator Robert Byrd
- Senate Floor Remarks - May 21, 2003
- CommonDreams.org
-
- "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, - -
- The eternal years of God are hers;
- But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
- And dies among his worshippers."
-
- Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts
to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter
to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows,
truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.
-
- But the danger is that at some point it may no longer
matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized.
The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts
and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a
lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it -- more than I would
ever have believed -- right on this Senate Floor.
-
- Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator
that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked
invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International
law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events
of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus
from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks,
to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured
the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image
they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare,
to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were
treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct
threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction
from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress
and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation
of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.
-
- Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which
has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush Administration
has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence,
the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction
have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they
yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq
seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were
told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present,
verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which
President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time
will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile
Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing.
-
- The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world,
over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people
and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public
and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually
became one.
-
- What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war
is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions,
Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing
fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one
prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated
and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology
and our well trained troops.
-
- Presently our loyal military personnel continue their
mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only
fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried
swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to
be at grave risk. But, the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as
justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing.
It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use
of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi
civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the
American public deliberately misled? Was the world?
-
- What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim
that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support the
label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have
unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies
the follow up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the
common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of "liberation,"
we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.
-
- Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the
Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a sometime
thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded
and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have
been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven
knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil
supply.
-
- Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure
and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without
benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers
of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives
of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?
-
- And in what may be the most damaging development, the
U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay
Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that
the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl
of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning
hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S.
soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease.
"Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only
by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that
is evasive about if and when it intends to depart.
-
- Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point
of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and
ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect
to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country
so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious
of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives
the western-style economies?
-
- As so many warned this Administration before it launched
its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crack down in Iraq
is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the
type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists,
we have given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete our mission
in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears
that Al Queda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert
in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region
we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe
with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends
who may not see things quite our way.
-
- The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window
to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions.
I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our
longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government
is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance
with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions.
-
- Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms
race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to
ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which
claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain
this President. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most
unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable
future and empowered this President to wage war at will.
-
- As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are
reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will
we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops
which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will
the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer.
How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism
at home, address a serious crisis in domestic healthcare, afford behemoth
military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which
has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? If the President's
tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We cower in the shadows while
false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations
because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically
costly.
-
- But, I contend that, through it all, the people know.
The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin,
and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently
tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn
in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors,
tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood - - when it
comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children,
callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie
- - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream
of a democratic domino theory.
-
- And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which
we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep
the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like
it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of
cards, built of deceit, will fall.
-
- <http://commondreams.org/views03/0521-10.htm>
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