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Do you remember your President Nixon?

Do you remember the bills you have to pay?

Or even yesterday?

 

- David Bowie, Young Americans

 

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Frequently, while catching up on my progressive news, I read editorials from a variety of local and regional newspapers that admit to initially supporting BushCo’s Iraq Crusade, but since have abandoned the war wagon as the odious lies underlying it have become an international embarrassment.  One listen to the Liar-in-Chief’s recent SOTU address should cure Americans of the notion that BushCo is capable of feeling remorse, taking responsibility for or telling the truth about anything, or putting the public interest and national security above short-term political expediency and power consolidation.

 

It’s no wonder a nation so besotted with right-wing corporate media sound-bites, distortions, misrepresentations, distractions, and prime-time BushCo cheerleaders marches in lockstep behind the CEO, but what’s truly amazing is how easily traditional skeptics were fooled into supporting their unconstitutional actions – skeptics that have been around long enough to know better.

 

It’s usually OK to trust the President, but to do so blindly when even madly popular ones lie to get what they want, shows our ignorance of history.  In recent memory, there are tragically excellent examples of Presidents using violent and controversial events (or non-events) to jumpstart otherwise illegal interventions in some war, coup, revolution, or whatever.

 

Remember the Maine ?  Cuba didn’t do it.  Fought a war anyway.

 

Pearl Harbor ?  We knew it was coming.  Fought hugely destructive world war (lucky for us, it was a morally good one).

 

Tonkin Gulf ?  Never even happened.  Longest, bloodiest war followed.  Tore country apart.  58,000 dead Americans.

 

9/11?  Buncha Saudis did it.  Blew up Afghanistan .  Pinned it all on Saddam.

 

Iraq ?  No WMDs, just a bedraggled and dirty ex-dictator.  Conquered ‘em anyway; we’ll be there for years; more and more soldiers die every day and the price of gas still goes up.

 

In perspective, BushCo’s Preemptive Iraq Mess is one of the most egregious entries.  In every case save Vietnam , there was actually something more than a perceived or manufactured threat to America ’s well-being, national security, or military installations.

 

Cuba ’s only 90 miles from Florida ; wouldn’t want the Russians setting up shop.

 

The Japanese bombed a US military installation.  Silly Japanese.

 

Southeast Asian Communism was a threat, but only in the minds of warmongering Vietnam hawks (sound familiar?).

 

9/11 speaks for itself.

 

But Iraq ?  No evidence whatsoever of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons or the equipment to manufacture, test, or deploy them.  The extent of their WMD was the intent to obtain the materials necessary to begin to implement plans to think about building a warehouse to store a filing cabinet with some papers in it addressing the possibility of thinking about beginning weapons-related program activity.

 

Oh, there were real, live WMD there alright, but they were all destroyed years ago, shortly after Gulf War I and BushCo knew it.  Their dismissal of these well-documented facts exposes an Administration frighteningly obsessed with Saddam/Iraq and determined to invade, conquer, and exploit its oil and strategic location whatever the cost (thanks Paul O’Neill).  Now they’re belatedly calling for an investigation into the bogus Iraq intelligence that they themselves cherry-picked, distorted, and knew was fake all along.

 

What should we think of the newspapers, outlets, pundits, and politicians who never criticized as they gleefully supported or voted to give BushCo carte blanche in dealing with world affairs, rogue nations, the proliferation of WMD, and the Evil Axis?  What to think about the single biggest abrogation of moral, legal, and political responsibility by Congress and the press in American history?

 

The instrument has yet to be built that can measure the shame they should all feel for betraying us.  Of course, now that BushCo’s been exposed, they’re tripping over each other rationalizing why they supported a war that’s made mincemeat out of the American economy, our international credibility, thousands of Iraqi civilians, and well over 500 US soldiers.

 

Remember, an Administration’s propensity to lie is directly proportional to the stakes involved.  That is, the more there is riding on the outcome, the more likely an Administration will lie.  Higher stakes mean bigger lies.  There can hardly be higher stakes than preemptive war, imperialism, conquest, oil, death and destruction, and a permanent military presence in the heart of the Middle East .  And there can hardly be bigger lies than the fetid whoppers continually emanating from the White House.

 

The fact is, past history dictated that BushCo should never have been trusted in the first place.  Those who, from the beginning, thought the BushCo fish stunk from the head down are now vindicated, but at what price?

 

Read your history; its déjà vu all over again.

 

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Allen Snyder is an instructor of Philosophy and Ethics. He can be reached at asnyder111@hotmail.com This article is copyright by Allen Snyder and originally published by www.opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.