- Yes folks, we are now all bit players in a real-life
version of the movie "Wag the Dog." President Bush and his GOP
advisers are ecstatic that the president made a secret trip to Baghdad
to be with U.S. troops for a "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner.
His polling numbers -- which I contend are as fixed as a Florida election
-- will undoubtedly receive a huge boost.
-
- I may be a bit naive, and it has been a while since I
served on active duty, but I can't recall ever sitting down to Thanksgiving
dinner at 6:00 AM. Air Force One touched down at Baghdad International
Airport, under cover of darkness, at 5:20 AM Baghdad time. Bush was on
the ground for two and a half hours, his plane departing Baghdad at around
7:50 AM. Considering that it likely took some 30 minutes for Bush to disembark
from Air Force One and travel by a heavily secured motorcade to the hangar
where the troops were assembled, that means our military men and women
were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic
beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home
fries, and toast.
-
- But there on national television, when most Americans
were preparing to sit down to their own traditional Thanksgiving dinners,
we saw a tape of President Bush serving mashed potatoes and corn to American
troops at a "traditional" Thanksgiving meal in the early hours
of the morning. What's more, when a clearly exhausted Bush strode around
a curtain -- after a "What's My Line" mystery guest routine by
Iraq proconsul L. Paul Bremer -- 600 American troops were said to be "shocked
and awed" by Bush's surprise appearance. I would have thought most
of the troops, many of whom are support personnel who work relatively normal
working hours, would have been more surprised when they were ordered to
get up before sunrise to eat Thanksgiving dinner between 6:00 and 7:30
A.M.
-
- And the abysmal and sycophantic Washington and New York
press corps seems to have completely missed the Thanksgiving "breakfast
dinner." Chalk that up to the fact that most people in the media never
saw a military chow line or experienced reveille in their lives. So it
would certainly go over their heads that troops would be ordered out of
bed to eat turkey and stuffing before the crack of dawn.
-
- Democratic presidential candidates will be scurrying
to regain ground from Bush's surprise trip and previous indicators that
the economy is on a rebound. Of course, economic indicators emanate from
public and private institutions controlled by GOP political operatives.
With an all time high of 4000 people in Washington, DC having their Thanksgiving
dinners courtesy of DC's Central Kitchen for the homeless, those economic
indicators seem as phony as Florida's vote totals. And you will never see
Bush serving meals to the homeless. What would Bush's handlers do? Have
the homeless applaud him? Bush's handlers could have propaganda signs in
the background that proclaim: "Fighting homelessness through tax cuts
for billionaires."
-
- We should not be surprised or even "shocked and
awed" that the Bush administration would resort to yet another manipulation
of the media to craft public opinion. We all remember Bush's landing on
the USS Abraham Lincoln with the banner "Mission Accomplished."
We were told Bush had to fly to the carrier because the ship was too far
off shore for a helicopter trip. Yes, the Lincoln was so far off shore
that if the camera angles were different, viewers could have seen the San
Diego skyline and the top of the Coronado Bridge.
-
- Then there was Bush's State of the Union address in which
he cited Iraq's desire to purchase uranium from Africa. We now know that
allegation was based on bogus documents laundered by the intelligence service
of the Italian proto-fascist prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
-
- As political handlers like Karl Rove continue to remold
Bush like a lump of Playdough, first from a Texas rancher, then to a Navy
fighter pilot complete with a corresponding action figure, and now to a
globe hopping "James Bond," let us not forget that the war against
Iraq was a violation of international law. Even arch-neoconservative war
hawk Richard Perle has conceded that point. Rove and company will be pulling
more tricks out of their bags as the 2004 presidential campaign approaches.
Intelligent Americans everywhere -- and there are many of them -- should
pause and think about what they are hearing and seeing on television.
-
- Meanwhile, anyone care for eggs and bacon with their
turkey?
-
- Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative
journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.
He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's Nightmare: The
Presidency of George Bush II."
-
- Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
-
-
- http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen11282003.html
-
-
- Comment
From JB Campbell
11-30-3
-
- That's a great and funny piece on Bush. The tag line
about McCarthy bothered me, however. McCarthy was destroyed by the Bush-types
of his day - the Rockefeller Republicans led by Eisenhower and Nixon -
and the US Army. And for what? What did McCarthy do to deserve his unprecedented
betrayal and the attack by the same media dogs that you decry in your piece?
-
- Did he lie? Did he kill anyone? Did he destroy the
career of any innocent person? Did he destroy the career of any guilty
person?
-
- Wasn't he in fact absolutely correct in every one of
his points, such as the betrayal of the Chinese to Mao Tse-tung, the betrayal
of US troops in the Korean fiasco, the betrayal of the East Europeans at
Yalta and Potsdam, the deliberate transfer of nuclear weapons to Stalin
by Stalin's agents in our government? And he was unaware then that the
Number Two man in the US government during World War II was a Stalinist
agent (Harry Hopkins).
-
- He wrote a whole book on Hopkins' subordinate, General
George C. Marshall, detailing his devotion to the Communist cause during
and after the war, especially his jamming Mao Tse-tung into power and disarming
Chiang Kai-shek. And wondering how Marshall could not remember what he
was doing while Pearl Harbor was being attacked, then deliberately refusing
to accept Japan's surrender terms for over two years, opting instead to
drop two nuclear bombs on civilians, once Stalin was ready to occupy Manchuria.
The communization of China was the great goal of the Pacific campaign,
vital to her later exploitation by the US multinationals that we see today.
Mao's assignment was to wipe out the upper and middle classes of China
and convert the masses into brainwashed slaves through terror.
-
- Was Marshall harmed in any way by the Senator? Was anyone?
-
- Really, to quote the ham actor Joe Welch's sob-sister
ploy to divert attention from the fact that one of his lawyers (for the
US Army) was in a registered Communist Party front, is unworthy and out
of place in an otherwise good essay on the hopelessly inept Bush gang.
To compare McCarthy with the Rockefeller Republicans is not only wrong,
it is obscene in its wrongness.
-
- McCarthy would today be attacking the gangsters even
harder than you are doing. All by himself, probably.
-
- JBC
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