by charles amsellem July 23, 2003 for indymedia
Without even mentioning the Gulf of Tonkin, America has mislead its people onto the warpath throughout it's history. With all of the hoopla about pResident Bush's State of the Union speech blunder, in which he stated that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger, the press has neglected to portray how history is repeating itself. In the last high level meeting between the USA and Iraq before both countries would descend into a major conflagration, US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein to virtually give him the green light to invade Kuwait: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts," said Glasbie in the transcript of this meeting, "such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America." It should be noted that the revlelation of this dialogue occured months before American troops were unleashed over the Kuwait border.
Another deliberate deception to urge Americans to accept the first Iraqi war under the first Bush administration was in the guise of a tearful fifteen year old girl. According to her now known to be false testimony before a Congressional hearing, Iraqi invaders were murdering infants in Kuwaiti nursuries by flinging them out of their incubators. Reporting for PR Watch, John Stauber, author of the newly released Weapons of Mass Deception writes "..that this testimony, which helped precipitate the first U.S. decision to go to war against Iraq, was the creation of the Hill & Knowlton PR firm, and the American people were duped into thinking that Saddam was a baby killer."
Aside from the lies about the purchase of Niger uranium, a host of other mendaciousness from the Bush administration has also gotten some press lately. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld consistently insisted that he had "bulletproof evidence" that Iraq was connected to Al Quaeda in direct contradiction to all intelligence agency claims.(NY Times, Schmitt, Eric, 9/28/2002, NY Times, Krugman, Paul, 7/15/2003) Secretary Rumsfeld also highlighted the unfounded claim that Iraq has a weapons of mass destruction program in a March 30th speech: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat?" (The Guardian, Whitaker, Brian and Rory McCarthy, 5/30/2003) Vice President Cheney echoed these prevarications with his statements up to the eve of war that Hussein had rebuilt his nuclear weapons program. (AP, 9/20/2002, NBC 3/16/2003) National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, asserted that intercepted aluminum tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." Government experts have rejected those statements as untrue. (CNN, 9/08/2002, Knight Ridder News Service, 10/04/2002) Bush himself made a claim trasfixed between the ludicrous and the arrogant (on May 1, 2003) that the war in Iraq was over. Since then soldiers have died every day and top military officails have been kind enough to confirm the obvious; we are currently engaged in a guerrilla war of occupation with Iraq.(Abizaid, Gen. John, 7/16/2003) There is much more deciet by the Bush administration coming to light so I will stop here for the sake of brevity. The media watch dog group, Fairness and accuracy In Reporting has issuedthis media advisory on the subject.
The green party has issued a statment calling for Bush's impeachment and the return of our soldiers by the winter holidays.
Vote To Impeach has been calling for the ousting or censure of the pResident since long before the press and pundits have begun officailly recognizing george's duplicities.