<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/">Common Dreams</a> is reporting in <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0604-10.htm">Wolfowitz: Iraq War Was About Oil</a> that <iq>at an Asian security summit in Singapore</iq>, Paul Wolfowitz said: <bq>Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.</bq> This is the same guy who was also quoted earlier this week as saying that, in the recent Iraq war, <iq>for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction.</iq> That's as good as saying that we needed to lie to get done what we needed because Congress might have gotten in the way otherwise. No member of Congress will vote against us if their constituency is terrified because they might lose their seat in the next election (which is why you see so much Democratic support --- they're already terrified of losing the seats they have without giving the Republicans a big 'peacenik' stick to swing). It's like the admission of a Mafioso who has just made you complicit in a murder. You're all the way in now, it doesn't matter if you know the truth of how you got there; there's no going back. Wolfowitz is basically saying: you might as well relax and jump on board as we rape the rest of the world with your tax support; maybe we'll throw you a crumb. These admissions follow several different little song and dance acts, all intended to distract the public with shiny baubles and delivered in mega-dosages by a completed compromised media. Jessica Lynch, for example. <a href="http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1051643375850&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154">The real 'Saving Pte. Lynch'</a> on the <a href="http://www.thestar.com/">Toronto Star</a> (Canada), broke the story of how the 'rescue' of Private Lynch occurred. She was never shot or stabbed; her wounds were likely suffered from a traffic accident or fall. The doctors performed surgeries on her and used precious medical equipment for her. They tried to deliver her the night before she was rescued but were shot at by the US troops. There were no Iraq troops in the hospital and the Americans knew it. They attacked and destroyed part of the building anyway to stage a convincing rescue for the two cameramen that accompanied them. Ms. Lynch is still being held incommunicado by the military. The whole affair was just as fake as the toppling of statue, which was attended by about 200 people, but was compared to the toppling of the Berlin Wall by Donald Rumsfeld, which was attended by 200,000 people. Since these lies are starting to congeal as well, they have turned to the truth, which the public is perhaps now too distracted to get really mad over (the war's over, remember?). Apparently Karl Rove has decided that the mood of the country is right to come clean about the war in Iraq. It's probably a safe bet that most Americans won't be overly troubled. It's become such a confusing issue anyway. At least the Iraqis or whatever are liberated now, right? The lack of WMDs (the US search team has officially gone home, so any more quotes about looking for weapons or imminently finding them is purely disengenuous, to say the least. See <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A40212-2003May10¬Found=true">Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq</a>) is certainly presenting a problem with members of the administration, who don't realize they don't need to cover their asses to a public that seems to care very little. I have to qualify that last statement with a quote from Noam Chomsky in <a href="http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=36&ItemID=3712" title="Does The USA Intend To Dominate The Whole World By Force? Chomsky interviewed on the Amesterdam Forum">Does The USA Intend To Dominate The Whole World By Force?</a> on <a href="http://www.zmag.org/">ZMag</a>, where he notes that he will: <bq>... probably spend an hour a night just very reluctantly writing letters turning down invitations to talk all over the country - huge audiences, tremendous interest. The United States is not different from other countries in the world in this respect. There is great fear and concern about the policies that the Bush administration is pursuing. If you eliminate the element of panic, which was induced by the propaganda, which is unique to the United States, then opposition to the war and to the security strategy here are approximately the same as elsewhere. I and in fact other people who are willing to speak publicly are simply overwhelmed by requests and demands to discuss these issues.</bq> I just wonder where all those people are when it comes time to vote or take a poll. I believe they're out there, but are they representative of the majority? I hope so. Then we can all sit back and laugh when Bush totally washes out of the 2004 election, just like his dad. I think the admissions are just part of campaign strategy; it was doubtful this type of admission could remain hidden forever, so it's best to get it out now, before the Republican Convention, strategically placed on 9/11 and the actual kickoff of the Bush re-election campaign. If the media do their job correctly, Americans in the Midwest will be in sheer horror of imminent shark attack by then. By the way, this article characterizes Wolfowitz as <iq>... one of the most hawkish members of the Bush administration</iq>, which is like saying that Jeffrey Dahmer was one of the hungrier kinds of serial killers. With the media playing mouthpiece exclusively for the increasingly fascist (yes, I mean fascist --- <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel05312003.html" title="Wake Up, America: Or Is It Already Too Late?">Wake up America</a> makes a good case for comparison to Hitler's rise to power, with Rumsfeld wanting exclusive control over all DOD employees, including soldiers, which is 700,000 people. This, on top of the fact that <iq>Bush [already] has control over another 300,000 employees of the Homeland Security Department</iq>) US government, you can expect to get even less variety in your news with recent changes to media ownership laws. With the recent vote in the FCC, documented in <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/02/news/companies/fcc_rules/index.htm">FCC adopts media ownership rules</a> on <a href="http://money.cnn.com">CNN Money</a>, Colin Powell's son, Michael, led the 3 Republicans 3-2 against the Democrats to loosen media ownership rules in the US. Whereas the rules aren't entirely stripped, it paves the way for even more media consolidation that there is now. In a country where almost every news and media outlet is owned by one of seven companies, more consolidation means fewer or no independent and varying views. The same corporation is now allowed to own competing stations in the same city. They can own newspapers too. There is no benefit to the public with this vote, although the FCC was founded to protect the public interest. <a href="http://www.democracymeansyou.com/hershfield/war-over-5-24-03.htm" title="Five Stupid Things I've Heard Now That The " Wa=" Is " Ove="... ">Five Stupid Things...</a> on <a href="http://www.democracymeansyou.com/">Democracy means you</a> has a good list of refutations for common rationalizations for recent US behavior. In response to saying the 'War is over': <bq>... I certainly don't see how the largest most powerful military system in the world bombing the hell out of some messed up third world country we've already been bombing for twelve years anyway really warrants the word 'war.'</bq> It's interesting to see that the war is over in the same newspaper that tells me that <iq>[the] US just sent 20,000 more troops</iq> to Iraq. In response to 'Yay, we've liberated the Iraqi people.', he aims this concise answer to all the pundits wielding this message: <bq> I don't think you actually give a flying fuck about the Iraqi people. You probably couldn't pick Iraq out on a map. You don't even know an Iraqi person. You probably don't even know anyone who knows an Iraqi person.</bq> The war was over as soon as Bush landed on the aircraft carrier, no? Now we get cheap oil, right? More or less, yeah. Now that everyone knows the war is over, the Bush administration can start acting like it isn't over, but making sure not a lot of people find out. Arundhati Roy, in <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16051">The Day of the Jackals</a> on <a href="http://www.alternet.org/">Alternet</a> points out that: <bq>On May 17, the New York Times said, "In an abrupt reversal, the United States and Britain have indefinitely put off their plan to allow Iraqi opposition forces to form a national assembly and an interim government by the end of the month. Instead, top American and British diplomats leading reconstruction efforts here told exile leaders in a meeting tonight that allied officials would remain in charge of Iraq for an indefinite period.</bq> That doesn't sound right. I thought we were liberating the oil for the people of Iraq in a wildly socialist-sounding strategy? That's not going to happen? No way. Get out. I'm stunned. Floored. This article is a great followup to a speech she gave, found on <a href="http://www.zmag.org/">ZMag</a>, called <a href="http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=3637" title="Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy: Buy One, Get One Free ">Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy</a>. It's an amazing tour-de-force which neatly encapsulates and touches on many subjects, nicely tying together the myriad forces at work in the world. Since I felt required to justify my fascist comment earlier, I'll note that she also dredged up a quote from an old Nazi, Herman Goering, which is absolutely eerie in its aptness: <bq>People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.</bq> If that doesn't sound like it's written in on every page of every daybook of every person in the Bush administration... She also notes the most appalling aspect, at least for an American, is the absolute lack of fair play: <bq>After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million children dead, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons had been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the "Coalition of the Willing" (better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army!</bq> Americans should revolt just becausetheir leaders make them look like such scumbags; it's like getting a cop to disarm a guy and beat him senseless, then moving in, kicking him some more and stealing his wallet. Total scumbag move --- not the picture of a conquering hero at all. Just a two-bit criminal using every advantage available, regardless of morals or rectitude. The speech is extremely long, but a very good read; it ties in Clear Channel's efforts to fabricate pro-war support (as the owner of supposedly independent media outlets), documents the realities of another wonderful experiment in democracy: South Africa, where <iq>10 million South Africans, almost a quarter of the population, have been disconnected from water and electricity [and] 2 million have been evicted from their homes.</iq> and covers the massive disparities evident in the US's own version of apartheid: <bq>Federal statistics show that African Americans make up 21 percent of the total armed forces and 29 percent of the U.S. army. They count for only 12 percent of the general population. It's ironic, isn't it - the disproportionately high representation of African Americans in the army and prison? Perhaps we should take a positive view, and look at this as affirmative action at its most effective. Nearly 4 million Americans (2 percent of the population) have lost the right to vote because of felony convictions. Of that number, 1.4 million are African Americans, which means that 13 percent of all voting-age Black people have been disenfranchised.</bq> She ends by, basically, exhorting people to resist the regime in America; especially from within. (For more about the last election in which <iq>Katherine Harris, ordered local elections supervisors to purge 64,000 voters from voter lists on the grounds that they were felons who were not entitled to vote in Florida</iq>, read <a href="http://www.mediachannel.org/views/whistleblower/palast.shtml" title=" Silence Of The Lambs: The Election Story Never Told">The Election Story Never Told</a> by Greg Palast. Incidentally, he, like Chomsky, is hopeful that Americans actually desire this kind of news, since <iq>Americans by the thousands flooded our Internet site</iq> when the story was posted. The common epithet that <iq> no one gives a shit!</iq> is a convenient myth and an excuse to do nothing.) None other than Kurt Vonnegut, speaking at the Mark Twain house, agrees. He draws from a richer past, when America still produced Presidents that could read and write amazingly well, when the most popular writers in America (Mark Twain), were staunch anti-imperialists. In <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15939">Strange Weather Lately</a> on <a href="http://www.alternet.org/">AlterNet</a>, he writes that, with the Iraq war, <iq>... they have turned loose a myriad of our high-tech weapons, each one costing more than a hundred high schools, on a Third World country</iq>. That is really the only way to look at it. Imagine what $80 Billion could do to ailing schools and health programs around the country. Instead it was spent invading a country simply to take its oil and blow up its buildings, so the contracts to rebuild and the oil and other resources could be bestowed upon friends and campaign contributors.. This oil will then be sold back to the American people, who already paid to steal it with their taxes, at slightly lower prices, to make them feel like they got a good deal. The slight to the American people is, of course, negligible compared to that proferred upon the Iraqis. <bq>What did Abraham Lincoln have to say about such American imperialist wars? Those are wars which, on one noble pretext or another, actually aim to increase the natural resources and pools of tame labor available to the richest Americans who have the best political connections.</bq> Just to show up Shrub's complete illiteracy, I will include another Lincoln quote from the article --- <iq>Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood ? that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy, he plunged into war.</iq> Try to figure that out in less than two reads. Shrub's infantile exhortations to take care of evil-doers is insulting in comparison. It's insulting at any rate. It's truly long past time for a revolution. The corporate, two-party stranglehold on every aspect of America life must be loosed; slow reform is an unlikely solution, since slow reform can be stymied at every turn by the almost absolute powers-that-be. Perhaps the current economic trauma should be seen as an opportunity; whereas now the corporations and the rich are the only ones still benefitting from the economy, that can't last long. The brazenness required to continue passing tax breaks and sweetheart deals directly to campaign contributors is necessarily a short-range one until the sleeping beast of America awakens and shakes loose the ticks and parasites that inhabit it.