The thing is, an allegation doesn't become any more 'true' for having been endlessly repeated. I think you have to look more closely at who is peddling the lie, and why... It's the warhawks, with their hands in the pockets of certain industries, their minds closed to anything bar Neocon dogma as restrictive as any cult, and their souls engrossed with vengeance for surrendering to Vietnam when they were last in power...
It's an unfortunate fact that about the only unpleasantness Saddam appears not to have committed is supplying terrorists. That role has been amply filled by the CIA (and of course your noble British allies), who kept the Taliban well-stocked... Mainly it's Syria, Saudis, Iran, Korea, Pakistan: but not Iraq. Islamic fundies hate Saddam, because he runs a relatively secular fascism. Oh, some of his spy services might be working with some splinter groups somewhere, but that's true of everyone (and if there was any actual accusation, still less evidence, we'd have heard it by now).
He's providing generous compensation to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers - this is surely inflammatory, but can't really be said to be aiding terrorism since by definition the terrorist never sees or gets any help. It's certainly more justifiable than NORAID, collecting money in NY St Patrick's Day parade for actual, live terrorist bombers, cop-killers and general drug-dealers and murderers (AKA the IRA). Hey, perhaps NY should be bombed for aiding terrorists, think that would go down well?? Yeah.
As for Saddam's atrocities, those were fine 15 years ago. Or did you think he made his own poison gas then? Whoops, no, that was the West... us, US, France, Germany... using that superb war industry excuse that "if we didn't sell him weapons, someone else would" [an actual quote on the subject from former British Defence Minister Alan Clark].
As for the wonderful pretext of "regime change because he 'might' sell stuff to terrorists" - this makes Nazi Germany look ethical, at least their U-boats only sank ships that *were* being sent to their enemies. Face it, in future any country *might* supply anything to anyone. On this pretext, you should kill everyone now because anyone *might* be a terrorist one day - or aid one, or give birth to one... it's the exact same logic and it just isn't an excuse.
Don't worry how often they repeat the big lie, it still isn't true. He's vile, and surely deserves to be removed from power and indeed life... but so do most other ME leaders including those in Israel, Palestine and Egypt. And especially those in China. There's the real enemy.--so what's the problem...?
BTW, did you know in 1984 there is a continual on-going war against a shadowy, ill-defined enemy? this war is used as a pretext for spying on the citizenry, indefinite detention without trial, legal advice or indeed justice, and the removal of civil liberties for the duration. Anyone speaking against this is branded a traitor.
Now, why is this sounding so familiar??
Of course, Orwell thought that this tyranny would come from the left, not the right... |
