voxpopgirl
This Girl's Voice


Friday, May 30, 2003  

•• Secrets and Lies (Part 2)••



Today's NYTimes OpEd by Paul Krugman titled "Waggy Dog Stories" reminds us of the diversionary tactics and "cooked intelligence" manufactured and brought to us by Bush Inc. in order to fulfill their neocon fantasy of re-shaping the geopolitical/economical map and cementing U.S. supremacy in the 21st century -- or in the New American Century as the neocons prefer to refer to it, globally, universally (literal outer space) and virtually (cyberspace).

Krugman exposes the Bush Inc. tactics for what they are, by reminding us of the premise to the screenplay for the film "Wag the Dog":

An administration hypes the threat posed by a foreign power. It talks of links to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism; it warns about a nuclear weapons program. The news media play along, and the country is swept up in war fever. The war drives everything else — including scandals involving administration officials — from the public's consciousness.

The 1997 movie "Wag the Dog" had quite a plot.

Although the movie's title has entered the language, I don't know how many people have watched it lately. Read the screenplay. If you don't think it bears a resemblance to recent events, you're in denial.

[snip]

The war was justified to the public by links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. No evidence of the Qaeda link has ever surfaced, and no W.M.D.'s that could have posed any threat to the U.S. or its allies have been found.



Krugman pulls back the curtain further, to remind us about the Bush Inc. cooking-of-the-facts as well as the "brand new" stance they've taken of blaming and backpedalling to cover their calloussed asses and velvet-gloved lies:

The failure to find W.M.D.'s has been described as an "intelligence failure," but this ignores the fact that intense pressure was placed on intelligence agencies to tell the Bush and Blair administrations what they wanted to hear.

Even before the war began we learned of such pratfalls as the presentation of a plagiarized, decade-old report about Iraqi capabilities as hot new intelligence, and the use of crudely forged documents as evidence of a nuclear program.

Last fall the former head of the C.I.A.'s counterterrorism efforts warned that "cooked intelligence" was finding its way into official pronouncements.

This week a senior British intelligence official told the BBC that under pressure from Downing Street, a dossier on Iraqi weapons had been "transformed" to make it "sexier" — uncorroborated material from a suspect source was added to make the threat appear imminent.

It's now also clear that George W. Bush had no intention of reaching a diplomatic solution. According to The Financial Times, White House sources confirm that the decision to go to war was reached in December: "A tin-pot dictator was mocking the president. It provoked a sense of anger inside the White House," a source told the newspaper.


The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder


The Bush Inc. Beginners' "ABC's": Ass-kicking, Back-pedalling, Blacklisting, Bullshitting, Corporate-kissing, Dog-wagging, Election-stealing, Flag-waving, Fear-mongering ...


posted by voxpopgirl | 5/30/2003


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