War Is Peace, Says Bush

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Am I the only one who thinks there is something very wrong when the President of the United States tells us that war is peace, that night is day, that black is white? “It’s time for us to secure the peace,” President Bush urged last week. “The United Nations must act. It’s time to determine if they will be a force for peace or an ineffective debating society.”

Where does Bush get off telling us that an unprovoked attack on Iraq is somehow an act of “peace?” President Bush, your planned war of aggression against Iraq is a Crime Against Peace, the most serious violation of international law. It has nothing to do with peace, other than utterly trampling it.

This kind of subversion of the truth is absolutely stunning-in what is supposed to be a democratic society. In truth, we have not seen this kind of upside down rhetoric since the Third Reich, when Hitler was whitewashing his aggression on neighboring countries by insisting that the attacks on Poland, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, were to ensure the “peace” in those countries, and to “protect” the ethnic German minorities living there. In fact, Hitler’s whitewash had at least a grain of truth behind it (there were sizable German minorities in those countries), while Bush’s war agitation has not one scrap of truth behind it whatsoever.

The attack on Iraq that Bush is pushing for is an act of naked aggression, pure and simple. The whole idea that Iraq is a threat, and that it plans to unleash weapons of mass destruction, is as fantastical as Hitler’s claims that Germans were in some kind of danger from the Poles and Czechs.

Let us delve into the nuts and bolts of the question of weapons of mass destruction-and see who is telling the truth. Vice President Dick Cheney has been making a lot of hay lately about supposed Iraqi defectors who have given evidence that Iraq is still secretly hatching illegal weapons. The prime exhibit in Cheney’s defector file is one Hussein Kamal, Saddam’s own son in law. Last month, for example, Cheney told a group of veterans in Nashville how Kamal, in 1995, led UN weapons inspectors to a chicken farm where they discovered much evidence of a continuing, secret program. And this after the UN was about to certify that Iraq’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs were fully shut down.

Clearly Cheney’s little story is meant to underline the administration claim that weapons inspectors cannot be relied on to ensure Iraqi disarmament. The only problem is, Cheney’s story is completely bogus, says Scott Ritter, former head of the UN weapons inspections team, who is intimately familiar with the case of Kamal, who, incidentally, was assassinated not long after jumping to the US side. “Contrary to the myth propagated by Cheney, there were no ‘smoking gun’ revelations made by Hussein Kamal regarding hidden Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,” Ritter wrote recently in The Chicago Tribune. In fact, what Kamal told UN and CIA debriefers was the exact opposite of what Cheney now claims. “All chemical weapons were destroyed,” Kamal reportedly told the UN team, according to transcripts of interviews which Ritter has personally reviewed. Addressing the UN inspectors, Kamal, added: “You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq.”

So Cheney is lying. Plain and simple. The truth about the most prominent Iraqi defector is 180 degrees opposite to what Cheney says. It’s all a bunch of bunk. The weapons inspectors were effective, and there are no known weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Which begs the question: Just why then, if not to ensure Iraqi disarmament, does the US want to invade Iraq?

It turns out there are some very sinister ulterior motives indeed. Pat Buchanan, twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and the Reform Party’s candidate in the 2000 election, has shed some light on what this Iraq attack is all about. “Iraq is the key to the Middle East. As long as we occupy Iraq, we are the hegemonic power in the region. And after we occupy it, a window of opportunity will open é to attack Syria and Iran before they acquire weapons of mass destruction,” Buchanan wrote recently in a column in WorldNet Daily, an Internet media outlet. “This is the vision that enthralls the War Party é ‘World War IV,’ as they call it é a series of ‘cakewalks,’ short sharp wars on Iraq, Syria and Iran to eliminate the Islamic terrorist threat to us and Israel for generations.”

So the aggression on Iraq will just be the first of several such wars of aggression in the Middle East. And excuse me for noting the obvious, but this sounds like a maniacal plan, something only a madman could love. Again, the most fitting analog is that of Hitler’s wars of aggression in Europe. In both cases the attacks are unprovoked, unjustified aggression that is motivated by a desire for hegemony and conquered territory.

This is the bottom line. All this talk about weapons of mass destruction and the “threat” that Iraq poses is clearly meant to deceive the people into supporting this madness. Look at the simple logic of the situation: Iraq didn’t resort to its chemical weapons even when it was getting creamed in the Persian Gulf War, because it feared the consequences. That’s what deterrence is all about. So how can any sane person believe that Saddam will use them now, even if he did have them?

Bush’s calls for “securing the peace” in Iraq are as believable as Hitler’s desire for “peace” in Europe. Yes, they both want peace, but only after they have rolled over their victims with their war machines, and only after they have seized control with an iron grip. Then there will be “peace.”

Mr. Gordon Arnaut contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN) from Canada. He is an independent journalist who is currently making a documentary film on the breathtaking dishonesty of the Western media.