Well, rather than avoid any discussion of the statements, let's look at a few:
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck
True.
Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
Certainly true. Criticisms were beginning to snowball prior to 9/11, as everyone knows, causing polls to decline, as they are now.
88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?
Good, if inconvenient, questions. The reference to new nukes in the pipeline is a startling comment -- is that sophistry or worth discussion? What about Ari Fleischer's refusal to answer Thomas' question about the value of the lives of foreign people such as Iraqis? She asked Ari if Bush were willing to sacrifice innocent Iraqi lives. It's a question he could not answer.
deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.
This is a shocking fact, that deserves discussion, hypothesis, and answers. These kinds of things are important to understanding the truth of all kinds of things like the media, and especially, the polls.
What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives.
A critical claim worthy of debate, supported by the facts in the opinion of many.
Bush wants it [war and Iraqi oilfields], and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.
The payoffs to US allies in the Iraqi war involve oil contracts, both the current $40 billion Russian one and $1+ trillion in future contracts. Definitely worthy of debate.
If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
History has shown this to be certainly true. Rumsfeld visited prior to the vaunted gas attacks, and if there is any real doubt of support, a Congressional investigation should proceed.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth
Many agree with this assessment.
Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired.
A brit's view of their situation is relevant, since if he fails to join in with Bush's war, it's worse for Bush, and for the US.
Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.
There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.
Many issues of controversy and concern here, long-term world relationships, democracy and lack of same here and in Britain. |
