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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (283095)	8/2/2002 3:47:18 AM
From: asenna1	Respond to of 769667

Shawcross's sideshow Friday August 2, 2002 The Guardian In 1979 William Shawcross published an excellent and terrifying book, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia, showing how a superpower could destroy a poor third world state as part of its projection of global power. Is this the William Shawcross who wrote the apologia for George Bush's imminent military adventurism against Iraq (Let's take him out, G2, August 1)? Shawcross rightly says: "weapons of mass destruction are the greatest threat to life on earth". He then argues as if Saddam Hussein's autocratic and murderous regime in Iraq is the sole possessor of (or aspirant for) such weapons. August 6 is the 57th anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons in war, by the US against Hiroshima, Japan. August 9 is the anniversary of the second nuclear weapons' use, also by the US, against Nagasaki. Over 200,000 civilians died. Shawcross documented the large-scale carpet bombing, including the use of chemical weapons by the US in its war against Vietnam, a conflict of a global superpower against a third world country which had a leadership - in that case communist - that the US was determined to remove. Shawcross wrote in Sideshow: "The law was not relevant ... Nixon justified his action in terms of his responsibility as commander in chief to protect American troops, and he explained his refusal to consult Congress by citing Kennedy's secret moves at the time of the Cuban missile crisis." As appalling as Saddam's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988 was, killing 5,000, the US defoliation of Vietnam and its neighbours killed tens of thousands more. And both the US administration and UK Conservative government sold chemicals and other weapon components to Iraq after the Halabja massacre, as the Scott inquiry made clear. The war against terror and the targeting of Saddam reeks of hypocrisy guardian.co.uk