BLUM: So please tell me again: What's the war about?

The Anti-Empire Report

When facts are inconvenient, when international law, human rights and history get in the way, when war crimes can’t easily be justified or explained away, when logic doesn’t help much, the current crop of American political leaders turns to what is now the old reliable: 9/11. We have to fight in Afghanistan because … somehow … it’s tied into what happened on September 11, 2001. Here’s Vice-President Joe Biden: “We know that it was from the space that joins Afghanistan and Pakistan that the attacks of 9/11 occurred.” 1

William Blum August 4th, 2010  // www.killinghope.org [print_link]

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Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.

USrael and Iran

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There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials telling the world that the WMD were non-existent. PHOTO: (Right) CBS dimwit Scott Pelley doing what he does best: pretend to be a serious journalist.

PELLEY: And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?

PELLEY: He had ordered them destroyed?

PIRO: Yes.

PELLEY: So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk? Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade? 11

Would it have mattered if the Bush administration had fully believed Iraq when it said it had no WMD? Probably not. There is ample evidence that Bush knew this to be the case, as did Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate just how psychopathic his two adversaries were. Bush was determined to vanquish Iraq, for the sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for expanding the empire, though it hasn’t all worked out as the empire expected; for some odd reason, it seems that the Iraqi people resented being bombed, invaded, occupied, and tortured. PHOTO: (Left) Kelley conducting a fluff interview with fellow texan George Bush.

14), coming from a man foolish enough to publicly claim that there are no gays in Iran.

But more significantly, the resolution offers no reason why Iran actually would attack Israel or the United States. What reason would Iran have to use nuclear weapons against either country other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? Indeed, the very same question could have — and should have — been asked before the invasion of Iraq. Of the many lies surrounding that invasion, the biggest one of all was that if, in fact, Saddam Hussein had had those weapons of mass destruction the invasion would have been justified.

15 This was the very last sentence in the article and, according to an extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any other English-language media in the world.

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She played Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor.

And accompanied the one and only Aretha Franklin.

A gala benefit performance in Philadelphia.

At the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Before 8,000 people.

And they loved it.

How many of them knew that the pianist was a genuine, unindicted war criminal?

Guilty of crimes against humanity.

Defender of torture.

With much blood on her pianist hands.

Whose style in office for years could be characterized as hypocrisy, disinformation, and outright lying.

But what did the audience care?

This is America.

Home of the Good Guys.

She was fighting against the Bad Guys.

And we all know that the show must go on.

Notes

  1. State Department Documents and Publications, March 10, 2009 ↩
  2. Face the Nation, CBS, July 4, 2010 ↩
  3. Washington Post, July 27, 2010 ↩
  4. Talk given by the president at Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August 17, 2009 ↩
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  6. Associated Press, July 28, 2010 ↩
  7. CBS Evening News, August 20, 2002 ↩
  8. ABC Nightline, December 4, 2002 ↩
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  10. Washington Post, March 1, 2003 ↩
  11. ↩
  12. Associated Press, December 12, 2006 ↩
  13. Letter to the Washington Post from M.A. Mohammadi, Press Officer, Iranian Mission to the United Nations, June 12, 2006 ↩
  14. See Anti-Empire Report, October 1, 2008, second part ↩
  15. Washington Post, March 5, 2009 ↩
  16. Sunday Times (London), January 10, 2010 ↩
  17. ↩

Senior Special Editor for US Foreign Policy William Blum is the author of:

  • Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
  • West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
  • Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.