It seems the order in which the decision to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely has been met with confusion in the press. I don’t understand why they ever gave the notion the U.S. would pull out serious consideration at all.
Wasn’t it first George who claimed we’d be pulling out in the spring, followed by a Rumsfeld statement that we would not be leaving? Now George’s most recent position that we would not be leaving is being billed as a surprise to the Pentagon?
Note how the decerebrate resident’s flunky links Saddam to the peace activist group Voices in the Wilderness.
President Bush has said he regards the latest recording as “propaganda” whether or not it is authentic. In a television interview broadcast in the United States on Monday, L. Paul Bremer III, the top American official in Iraq, dismissed Mr. Hussein as nothing more than a “voice in the wilderness.”
There’s this great book review program on Newsworld International called Hot Type. On it, Toni Morrison was interviewed about her new book ‘Love‘. During this fascinating exchange they got to talking about love and hate. Morrison made a point of saying one must never give in to it [hate] while recognising it’s a delicious feeling. When George/Rove cheapen the global discourse by infecting our language and consciousness with these smears, I am so drawn to absolutely hating him, them, but I must resist. Nothing productive could possibly come from it just as nothing productive can come from George answering tough questions with empty jargon, like he did in the UK where he repeatedly brushed off the meaning of the demonstrations by saying how wonderful it is the Iraqis now have the freedom to protest.
Tell that to the crowds in Fallujah and elsewhere who were fired upon for doing so.
Who are these men to decide the difference between demonstrators and rioters?…men who have never met a law they didn’t hesitate to break if it got in the way of their ambitions.
Tell it to Voices in the Wilderness who are still facing a $20k fine for bringing humanitarian relief to Iraqis whilst the Bush administration brought it death and destruction.
You see when Bush and Blair keep going on and on about needing to remove the evil Saddam they overlook an entirely relevant point. There were other ways to go about it that didn’t include murdering thousands of innocents in the process. Vacating international law in order to profit from your pre-emptive striking of oil rich countries does not a free democracy make.
Naomi Klein has a very important piece antiwar activists should familiarise themselves with as time is indeed running out for those who truly believe Iraqis should be free.
Any movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end to Iraq’s military occupation, but to its economic colonization as well. That means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation chief Paul Bremer has fraudulently passed off as “reconstruction” and canceling all privatization contracts flowing from these reforms.
How can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer’s reforms were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international convention governing the behavior of occupying forces, the Hague Regulations of 1907 (the companion to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, both ratified by the United States), as well as the US Army’s own code of war.