The CIA Is Our Friend, or The Enemy of Mine Enemy Is My Friend
It's a
little bit unusual, but there is an old article making the rounds
amongst the online Dean community these days. It's being sent out on
Dean list after Dean list, so I was finally tempted to read it.
This article from CityPages.com up in the Twin Cities is dated July 30,
2003, and brings up some points that complement that other, more recent
and equally-widely circulated article, the one about the CIA and their
retaliation against the Bush junta. It's very long, but very well
done. Take a look.
ALL THE pRESIDENT'S LIES
by Steve Perry
July 30, 2003
In recent weeks, the press and some Democrats have finally taken up a critical White House deception about Iraq and uranium.
What took them so long?
And what about all the other lies?
It seems
a long time ago now, but May 1 [2003] was a big day for the
pResident–Victory in Iraq Day, even though he could not say so
officially without putting U.S. occupation forces on the wrong side of
still more international laws. But the occasion was designed with all
the martial preening of a victory celebration and then some. The White
House announced that Bush would close the day by delivering an address
to the world from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln just off the
coast of San Diego. And he would arrive on board in a Navy Viking jet.
This bit
of gaudy theatrics was attributed to the pResident's desire to avoid a
post-docking ceremony that would delay the sailors' homecoming.
Afterward, when someone pointed out to Ari Fleischer that the carrier
was within helicopter range of shore when W made his fighter-jet
entrance, Fleischer essentially shrugged and said, The pResident really
wanted to ride in that plane. According to the Washington Post, Bush
also took a course of “underwater survival training” in the White House
swimming pool to prepare for his odyssey. [Playing G.I. Joe, I imagine.]
That
afternoon the pResident's plane broke through the clouds and glided to
a tailhook landing with the whole country watching on television. Bush,
grinning like a kid who got a real F-18 for Christmas, emerged in a
camouflage flight suit and gave a thumbs-up to the cameras. But if it
looked at first like the sequel to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, there was
also more than a whiff of Triumph of the Will in that Flight of the
Valkyries entrance, especially with Karl Rove's own film crew on hand
to shoot the opening scenes of the Campaign 2004 biopic.
Then
Bush swapped the jumpsuit for a business suit and ran an exultant
rhetorical victory lap, during the course of which he proffered boast
after boast that happened to be untrue. The shooting war is over and we
won… We've defeated an ally of al Qaeda… The Iraqi people are
liberated… We are rebuilding Iraq… We are in control of events in
Iraq… Iraqis are celebrating the U.S. presence… We don't do
business with countries that harbor terrorists…
Not only
were these contentions false; they were already known to be so by
anyone who had made a point of keeping up with the international
English-language press, including a growing though still small number
of internet-prowling Americans. The administration's May Day pageant
was strictly for the undifferentiated mass of folks at home, that
majority of Americans who had gotten their news from TV and later told
pollsters that Saddam was behind 9/11 (70 percent), or we'd already
found WMDs in Iraq (33 percent). Needless to say, misapprehensions like
these were not failures of the Bush information plan, but successes.
But now the extent and gravity of the White House's lies are beginning to look manifest even on television.
(much, much more)
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