The Betrayal of the American Public
Hi Scott,
Like you, I was someone who supported the 1991 Gulf War at the time. During that period, I was deeply involved in running my own business and was not getting beyond the shallowest of news sources regarding the events leading up to the "War".
Today, I see things significantly differently. I have been making a substantial study of U.S. foreign policy during the Reagan and Bush I administrations and I feel that America has been betrayed by the GOP leadership. Why do I say this?
1) Throughout the 1980's, the U.S. government supported the Saddam Hussein regime in a cynical "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" realpolitick approach to creating regional chaos and attempting to bleed both the Iranian and Iraqi regimes.
2) The U.S. government permitted the sale of chemical and biological weapon precursors and process equipment to the Iraqis before and after our government was fully aware that these materials were being used in war crimes. We were willing accomplices to crimes against humanity.
3) Just as with the phony Tonkin Gulf Resolution, among other historical deceits by war mongering Administrations, the Bush I team engaged in a policy of propaganda, deceit and disinformation via a cuckolded corporate media to sell the War to Americans and to Congress. By now, everyone who is paying the least bit of attention is aware that the baby incubator story, so poignantly played out by a well-coached liar, was a complete and total fraud. The PR firm, Hill & Knowlton deliberately engaged in a fraud in order to sway the Congressional vote to go to War. And they won the vote by deceit. Cf. John MacArthur's "The Second Front".
amazon.com
4) Americans were further deceived by the secrecy of the Bush Administration. Saddam's anger at the Kuwaiti regime was based on a sensible response to Kuwait's cavalier decision to slant-drill into the the Rumaila oil field.
lib.utexas.edu
Kuwait was actively engaged in the theft of Iraqi resources. When confronted with these facts in Baghdad by Iraqi authorities, April Glaspie, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in April, 1990 gave the Iraqis an equivocal and ambiguous response to what the U.S. would do, should the Iraqis invade Kuwait and stop the theft of Iraqi oil.
Of course, none of this adequately disclosed in the corporate press in the U.S. We did not learn of the Kuwaiti theft, we did not learn about the ambiguous diplomatic response and we did not learn that there was just cause for Saddam Hussein's invasion which was portrayed, deceitfully, as a naked and unprovoked aggression against a friendly neighbor.
The American public was lied to in order to seduce us into a war that should have never occurred. Is it happening again?
There's more. But that's enough for now.....
Salaams, Ray |
