MEDIA SCARED OF BUSH

[Guest guest]

Media Scared of Bush

 

 

 

by Kurt Nimmo

 

published by Another Day in the Empire

 

Media Scared of Bush

 

" It doesn't matter that Bush scares the hell [out] of me, " journalist

Seymour Hersh told KQED (UC Berkeley) host Michael Krasny. " What

matters is that he scares the hell out of a lot of very important

people in Washington who can't speak out, in the military, in the

intelligence community. "

 

Is there a reason they can't speak out? Is it because they are afraid

they will ruin their careers?

 

Obviously, not only do we no longer have brave souls like Daniel

Ellsberg working for the government, we no longer have journalists

like Neil Sheehan, who managed to get the Pentagon Papers published

in the New York Times. It was easy for Bush and the Straussian

neocons to take over the government and launch their Crusade against

Islam because there are so many gutless people working for the

government and the corporate media. It's not the 60s anymore,

Dorothy.

 

That fragility clearly unnerves him. Hersh summarizes his mission

as " to hold the people in public office to the highest possible

standard of decency and of honesty to tolerate anything less, even in

the name of national security, is wrong. " He tries his best. More

than any other U.S. journalist alive today, he embodies the statement

that " a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against

his government, " a belief defined by the conservationist Edward

Abbey.

 

Hersh stands alone in a sea of quislings and back scratchers, more

worried about their condos and BMWs than what happens to this

country. As for Edward Abbey, if he were alive, he'd be on the no-fly

list and the FBI would be following him around. He'd be characterized

as a terrorist. Hersh's Abbey quote is certainly relevant, but here's

one even more relevant: " Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it

stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top. "

 

I've been doing an alternate history of the war, from inside, because

people, right after 9/11, because people inside—and there are a lot

of good people inside—are scared, as scared as anybody watching this

tonight I think should be, because [bush], if he's re-elected, has

only one thing to do, he's going to bomb the hell out of that place.

He's been bombing the hell of that place—and here's what really

irritates me again, about the press—since he set up this Potemkin

Village government with Allawi on June 28—the bombing, the daily

bombing rates inside Iraq, have gone up exponentially. There's no

public accounting of how many missions are flown, how much ordinance

is dropped, we have no accounting and no demand to know. The only

sense you get is we're basically in a full-scale air war against

invisible people that we can't find, that we have no intelligence

about, so we bomb what we can see.

 

It's called a dictatorship with a few remnants of democracy (for

instance, the First Amendment, for the moment, still stands, as

evidenced by the fact I am able to write and post this, but mostly

because I am a nobody blogger and absolutely no threat to the

dictatorship—not yet anyway). I'm reading William L. Shirer's

classic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi

Germany, and believe me the parallels between Hitler and the Bushcons

are staggering. " Perhaps America will one day go fascist

democratically, by popular vote, " Shirer told the New York Times in

1969. Consider that Kerry and Bush are supposedly neck-to-neck and

you get a sense of what Shirer is talking about. It's too bad Shirer

didn't live to see the Rise of the Bushcons. Here's another great

Shirer quote: " I don't understand what there is in the American

character… that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal

President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards

them. " Now we have a Christian Zionist reactionary president and the

American people are not only " tolerant " of fascism abroad, many of

them enthusiastically support it at home. Like the German people

under Hitler, the American people under Bush have no problem with

fascism—so long as they can drive their SUVs and watch CSI and Law

and Order. Maybe some day, after our cities are smoldering ruins and

the mindless TV watchers and plastic flag-wavers are scraping the

scorched earth in search of tubers for dinner, they will arrive at

the same conclusions the German people did after Hitler offed himself

in that bunker—then again, maybe not (consider the rise of fascist

ideas and political parties in the recent German elections).

 

Unfortunately, Bush will be " re-elected " in a few short weeks and

then all hell will break loose—not only in Iraq but here in America

as well. Bush and the Pentagon are waiting to get over the election

hump before they begin bombing countless innocent Iraqi citizens in

earnest. I believe the Bushcons know they cannot possibly hope

to " win " the " war " in Iraq so they will bomb `em back to the Stone

Age just like the Nazis bombed Stalingrad (although they will try not

to make the same mistakes the Nazis did, that is to say send

thousands of soldiers into Fallujah and Samarra—instead they will

simply pulverize " insurgents " from the air). Bush will also use tried

and tested Nazi tactics—disappearing thousands and killing innocent

relatives and neighbors of the " terrorists. " As Jonathan Gumz

writes, " German combat commanders were themselves exceptionally

brutal toward suspected Partisan sympathizers, killing civilians

almost indiscriminately, including women and children. Such

ruthlessness by both Ustasa [serbian] and German units stimulated

popular support for the Partisans, ironically undermining Nazi

efforts against them. … estimates of the number killed range from

700,000 to as many as 1.7 million. "

 

" I think it's real simple to say [bush] is a liar. But that would

also suggest there was a reality that he understood, " explained

Hersh. " I'm serious. It is funny in sort of a sick, black humor sort

of way, but the real serious problem is, he believes what he's

doing. " In effect, Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and the other

neocons are " idealists, you can call them utopians. " As Hersh

understands them, they really believe that the solution to global

terrorism began with invading Baghdad and will end only with the

transformation of the last unfriendly government in the Middle East

into a democracy

 

Here's The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

definition of the word utopian:

 

1. Excellent or ideal but impracticable; visionary: a utopian scheme

for equalizing wealth.

2. Proposing impracticably ideal schemes.

 

But a " visionary " for whom? Certainly not the people of the United

States or in defense of the Constitution, the primary document of the

United States Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, et al, are sworn to

uphold It's no secret the Bushcons are sworn to uphold one thing only—

the tiny and outlaw state of Israel and its interminable war against

Islam (see Philip Zelikow's comments), even if such a war kills

thousands of Americans (and countless Muslims), squanders this

nation's wealth, shreds the Constitution (a process well under way)

and reduces America to the same renegade status of Israel, a

consistent violator of international laws and United Nations

resolutions. I accept that what the Bushcons and the Likudites in

Israel are doing is " impracticable " because it is impossible to

effectively go to war against 1.3 billion Muslims and 300 million

Arabs (and more than 66 million Iranians). But then maybe that's what

the " New Triad " of Bush's Nuclear Posture Review Report is all about—

using nukes against millions of recalcitrant Muslims and Arabs.

 

" No amount of body bags is going to dissuade [bush], " said Hersh,

despite the fact that Hersh's sources say the war in Iraq is " not

winnable. It's over. " As for Kerry's war plans, Hersh said he wished

he could tell him to stop talking as if the senator's plan for Iraq

could somehow still eke out a victory there. " This is a disaster

that's been going on. It's a civil war, the insurgency. "

 

It appears some people in Washington are unable to grasp the

overriding concept here—the Iraq war is not about " winning, " it's

about fomenting chaos, about bombing Arabs and Muslims,

about " reshaping " the Middle East with bunker-busters and depleted

uranium so Israel will be the dominant force for the foreseeable

future. It's about breaking Arab nations into small mini-states based

on ethnicity and tribal affiliation, thus emasculating them. It has

nothing to do with " liberating " the Iraqi people or bestowing

democracy on benighted Arabs.

 

Hersh is right in one aspect though—no " amount of body bags is going

to dissuade " Bush or the Straussian neocons. For these " utopians " the

American people are nothing more or less than cannon fodder and meal

tickets to realize Greater Israel and the Zionist dream of ruling

over the Arabs, who they consider sub-human. Bush is a Christian

Zionist—or proclaims to be a Christian Zionist (in my estimation he

is not a Christian or anything but a destructive dry drunk nihilist)—

and for Christian Zionists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell

the only thing that matters is that Israel rebuilds the temple so

their fictional God can start a genocidal war and they can float up

to heaven and sit beside their lily-white, blue eyed, blond hair

Jesus. For some reason most Americans refuse to accept that this is

what Bush is all about—or says he is all about (his 20-30

million " evangelical " supporters certainly believe this nonsense and

that's why they will vote for him, even though he will eventually

send their kids to die in Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, and eventually

Mecca).

 

What is worse, he said impatiently, was that because U.S. forces

had " privatized " so many of Iraq's institutions, it had decimated the

job market in the country. " This is why Bush can talk about 100,000

people wanting to go work in the police or in the army. It's because

there's nothing else for them to do. They're willing to stand in line

to get bombed because they want to take care of their family, " he

said.

 

Once again, this is what the destruction of Iraq is all about—not so

much " privatizing " the country but rather destroying civil and

government institutions (as a mildly socialist state, most business

was either owned or sanctioned by the state—large business owners

were required to join Saddam's Ba'ath Party), as evidenced by the

unchecked looting and arson after the invasion. Unemployed Iraqis? No

problem. How many Palestinians are unemployed? The Palestinian

Central Bureau of Statistics reports that unemployment has reached

310,000 people, amounting to 34.3% of the labor force; the loss to

the Palestinian economy from Israeli military activity between

October 1, 2000 and December 31, 2002 stands at $494 billion,

amounting to an average of $182.9 million a month. Bush, however,

does a better job at impoverishing Arabs—a recent study carried out

by economists at Baghdad University indicates the unemployment rate

in Iraq is about 70%. Bush likes to claim he is providing jobs for

Iraqis, although the Iraq Weekly Status report indicates otherwise:

45,844 Iraqis were employed in projects funded by USAID, according to

15 September data (see previous link), compared with 88,436 recorded

in the previous week's report, amounting to a 48.2% decrease. Of

course, considering what Bush is doing to American workers—I can

testify to this—engineered unemployment should probably not come as a

surprise.

 

" Was it immoral to go in … [T]he idea that Saddam was a torturer

and a killer, doesn't that lend a patina of morality to going after

him? " The answer to that one, he said unsmilingly, " is of course,

Saddam tortured and killed his people. And now we're doing it. "

 

And who helped Saddam torture and kill his own people? It was the

United States government and the CIA. " There's no question, " Roger

Morris, a former State Department foreign service officer who was on

the National Security Council staff during the Johnson and Nixon

administrations, told Reuters last year. " It was there in Cairo that

(Saddam) and others were first contacted by the agency. … As in Iran

in `53, it was mostly American money and even American involvement on

the ground. … We climb into bed with these people without really

knowing anything about their politics. … It's not unusual, of course,

in American policy. We tire of these people, and we find reasons to

shed them. " Alfred Mendes ( " Blood for Oil, " Spectrezine).writes: " The

Ba'athist coup, resulted in the return to Iraq of young fellow-

Ba'athist Saddam Hussein, who had fled to Egypt after his earlier

abortive attempt to assassinate [then military dictator] Qasim.

Saddam was immediately assigned to head the Al-Jihaz al-Khas, the

clandestine Ba'athist Intelligence organization. As such, he was soon

involved in the killing of some 5,000 communists. Saddam's rise to

power had, ironically, begun on the back of a CIA-engineered coup! "

(see my Saddam Hussein: Taking Out the CIA's Trash). Morris, however,

is wrong—the CIA knew damn well what they were getting into. The

CIA's agenda is to stifle democratic movements not supported by

Washington, assassinate popular leaders, disappear and kill

dissidents. For as the war criminal Henry Kissinger once

quipped, " Foreign Policy is not missionary work. "

 

My government has a secret unit that since December of 2001 has been

disappearing people just like the Brazilians and the Argentineans

did. Rumsfeld decided after 9/11 that he could not wait. The

president signed a secret document…There's a team of people, they

fly in unmarked planes, they fly in Gulfstreams, they have their own

choppers, they don't carry American passports, and they just grab

people. And maybe in the beginning I can understand there was some

rationale. Right after 9/11 we were frightened, we didn't know what

to do …

 

Of course they knew what to do—the CIA has disappeared (and tortured

and killed directly and indirectly) people for decades—and 9/11 was a

perfect excuse (possibly even an engineered excuse) to escalate this

noxious behavior. " Now more clearly than ever, the CIA, with its

related institutions, is exposed as an agency of destabilization and

repression, " writes former CIA agent John Stockwell. " Throughout its

history, it has organized secret wars that killed millions of people

in the Third World who had no capability of doing physical harm to

the United States. " It is interesting Hersh would mention Brazil and

Argentina—the CIA engineered coup in Brazil in 1964 overthrew the

democratically elected government of Joao Goulart (Brazilian General

Castelo Branco, notes Steve Kangas, organized " Latin America's first

death squads, or bands of secret police who [hunted]

down `communists' for torture, interrogation and murder. Often

these `communists' [were no] more than Branco's political opponents.

Later it is revealed that the CIA [trained] the death squads) and the

U.S. routinely ignored Argentina's serious human rights violations

(even the " human rights " president, Jimmy Carter, had little problem

selling Argentina's Junta President Rafael Videla military hardware—

hardware he turned against his own people).

 

It is surprising, however, that Hersh would state that there

was " some rationale " to disappear people after 9/11, especially

considering it has never been definitively (or even circumstantially)

proven who is responsible for that terrorist event. Hersh, like far

too many journalists and Americans in general, simply accepts Bush's

explanation that it was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, minus even a

shred of evidence. If Hersh admits that Bush is a liar, why does he

unquestioningly accept his ready-made (within hours of the events)

explanation? For some reason even intelligent journalists have a

disconnect when it comes to blaming Osama bin Laden, lacking any

credible evidence.

 

Indeed, there is plenty of reason to be scared of the Bushcons.

However, this particular camarilla of " utopians " is but the latest in

a long line of presidents and their advisors who have waged war

against the people of the third world (and against their own people

as well) Bush simply represents a more transparent and somewhat more

noticeably vicious continuation of business as usual. John Kerry

represents the Clinton school of American imperialism—that is to say

he is more of a neoliberal, more of an " internationalist, " and less

of a neocon, although he is decidedly onboard with the Bushcon plan

to make the people of the Middle East suffer for the sake of Israel

and the Likudites who currently rule that tiny outlaw nation. Kerry

is outwardly more " likeable, " as was Clinton, even though Clinton

made the Bushcons look like pikers when it came to killing people

(Clinton's record includes murdering innocent civilians in

Yugoslavia, the Sudan (an incalculable number of people have died as

a result of his bombing of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant),

Afghanistan, and Iraq (as to the latter, Clinton is responsible, as

are Bush I and II, of bombing that country for over a decade and

imposing sanctions that have resulted in the death of upward to a

million people, 500,000 of them children)

 

I'm thankful for Hersh's comments, especially considering there are

precious few other journalists willing to step up and take the heat

for telling the truth. I consider it a badge of honor for Hersh that

the Prince of Darkness, Straussian neocon Richard Perle, called

Hersh " the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist. " If

Hersh is indeed a terrorist, America needs more such terrorists to

report and uncover the real terrorists such as Perle, Bush, Cheney,

Wolfowitz, and their Straussian neocon network determined to reduce

America to a fascist dictatorship in the name of Israel, Big Oil, the

multinational corporations, and the so-called " defense " industry.

 

 

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