- U.S. intelligence was "dead wrong" in its pre-war
beliefs about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, a U.S. presidential
commission reported 10 days ago.
-
- And just as wrong about nearly every other charge levelled
at Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
-
- This column also used "dead wrong" over the
past decade when attacking all the lies being manufactured about Iraq.
-
- Interestingly, the many journalists and pundits who heaped
abuse on my head and accused me of treason for daring to challenge the
pro-war propaganda they so greedily lapped up have fallen strangely silent
as the truth about Iraq emerges.
-
- Still, let's recall that the prime mission of presidential
and parliamentary commissions tends to be not fact-finding but sweeping
scandal under the rug and deflecting blame from politicians.
-
- After mouthing pious verities about needing better intelligence,
the commission, appointed by President George W. Bush, amazingly found:
(a) No one was really guilty of the Iraq intelligence fiasco; and (b) there
was no White House political pressure on the intelligence community to
justify the war.
-
- So the mighty Niagara of whitewash flows on. The report
made no mention of Bush's claims about Iraqi drones of death, Vice-President
Dick Cheney's pressure on the CIA to declare Iraq a nuclear menace, or
Condoleezza Rice's terrorizing Americans with talk of nuclear mushroom
clouds.
-
- It ignored evidence from senior Bush aides Paul O'Neill
and Richard Clarke that the president obsessively pushed for war with Iraq
soon after taking office.
-
- There was no mention of Doug Feith's Office for Special
Plans, a covert Pentagon intelligence shop set up to funnel claims about
Iraq to the White House and U.S. media produced by a cabal of pro-war neo-conservatives
-- which was investigated for giving Israel classified material. No mention
of patriotic CIA officers reportedly fired or demoted for refusing to participate
in such activities.
-
- No mention of how national security was corrupted, manipulated
and distorted for partisan political gain.
-
- The report called Iraq "one of the most damaging
intelligence failures in recent American history."
-
- But, amazingly, the whitewash committee found no one
responsible for this disaster. Victory has a hundred fathers; defeat is
an orphan.
-
- Iraq just happened. Bad mogambo. A no-fault war.
-
- This is the third preposterous whitewash foisted on credulous
Americans.
-
- Whitewash One was the 9/11 investigation.
-
- That commission found no one responsible for allowing
the worst attack on the U.S. since Pearl Harbor, though Bush and Rice were
bombarded with warnings that an assault was imminent.
-
- The awkward fact that then-attorney general John Ashcroft
actually cut spending on terrorism right before 9/11 was conveniently ignored.
-
- Whitewash Two: Torture scandals at Abu Ghraib and other
U.S. detention camps. Seven senior military investigations found only a
few cases of "minor misconduct" and "isolated abuse"
by low-ranking personnel.
-
- The torture of prisoners by electricity, freezing, drowning,
sleep and sensory deprivation, beatings, dog attacks, and sexual humiliation
were, claimed the Pentagon, all the fault of a few trailer trash sadists,
though the chain of responsibility for these war crimes clearly ran right
up to the secretary of defence.
-
- Three whitewashes later, many Bush administration officials
arguably guilty of monumental blundering or even possible criminal acts
have instead been richly rewarded.
-
- Donald Rumsfeld, accused Geneva Conventions violater,
was renamed Pentagon chief. National Security Adviser Rice, asleep on guard
duty on 9/11, became secretary of state.
-
- Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz was forced on the World
Bank as its new chief.
-
- Loudmouth neocon buffoon John Bolton was nominated UN
ambassador; faithful apparatchik John Negroponte was made intelligence
czar. Only the CIA's hand-kissing chief, George Tenet, lost his job, albeit
with a Medal of Freedom.
-
- White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote briefs
justifying torture, was named attorney general. Poor bumbling Colin Powell
went from secretary of state to deserved obscurity.
-
- And the commander-in-chief of the whole fiasco, George
W. Bush, was triumphantly re-elected by grateful Americans, proving that
nothing succeeds like failure -- provided you wave the flag hard enough
and keep the whitewash coming.
-
-
- http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/
-
-
- Comment
- From Kieth Norman
- 6-13-5
-
- Jeff
-
- Truth and reality is never an op-ed or a continuum of
a journalists essay...It must be sought in arrogant fashion if need be.
As you are aware, the vast majority of people work hard all day and are
starved of the rested hours necessary to search and research truth,thereby
they have little option but to trust that meal that is placed in front
of them (CNN ..Fox..et al). In truth, an optimist is lazy..a pessimist
is a Cassandra...a terrorist is confused ..a policist is an enigma.. a
pacifist is irenic... BUT the conspiritualist knows that the three hypotheses
he has in the palm of his hand...one is the truth.
- The reality of today's problems is shared by all...it
is only the argument for truth that is different.
-
- Eric Margolis's classification 'could be' that of the
"conspiritualist"..and for that we should be deeply grateful.
-
- I have been following(with intense interest) the writings
of Eric Margolis for some years now and can verify the solitary uphill
battle he undertook when disagreeing with the perjured/procured publishing
pundits and their head hitting editors...Even SOME of his own Toronto Star
'colleagues and editors..
-
- At times his research and observations were/are totally
the flip side of the daily 'Editorial Article', yet they did/do not fire/sack
him(many will pick him up) because they know that his fan base is composed
of not only highly educated professional people but that the 'lay-people'
understands what he is saying and favours his manner of expression..a kind
of textual Gallowayian. Very few writers today have this natural ability.(Kaminski
and Makov are some of the exceptions)
-
- It takes immense courage and fortitude to put your reputation
and nagging thoughts daily into type, for the sole purpose of asking people
to challenge their 'ordered' information that spins fear and hatred in
everything that really matters in their life....their family..their faith...their
honesty...their humanity. And as the diligent and proud Prof. Makov says,
'their love of other peoples'.
-
- Margolis is a Vet and an American....(I think) that his
heart is breaking up a little further each time he sits down before the
keyboard and punches out verbs and adjectives that he knowingly wants to
modify so that the strength of sentence and paragraph does not insult the
American/Canadian public....Maybe one day he will resurrect the article
he published on his encounters with the Neocon "Leeden"...Worth
its weight in gold it is.
-
- kieth norman (WelshBrit)
- canada
|
