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Sept. 21, 2006 In his article, “Peeping Through The Keyeshole Of Distortion,” Tom Pain, one of this website’s contributors, challenges my statement of the fact that George W. Bush lied about the reasons for his invasion of Iraq . I don’t know why Pain would take such a ludicrous position, but I do know, that despite his protestations to the contrary, he has shown himself to be a partisan apologist at every turn, being a thoroughgoing Republican. That could be the answer. Pain seems to think that anyone critical of the invasion of Iraq is a Democrat looking around for pretexts that will help in the next election. I don’t know what Pain has been smoking, but if it’s what I think it is, he should be campaigning for George Soros! In my chronology of the events leading up to the invasion, I did mention the infamous sixteen words of the State of the Union (SOTU) address, but it is not because those words proved false that I call Bush a liar. Pain says that the SOTU’s have always been “fluff”, so Bush is not to be faulted for fluffing it up on January 28, 2003. Bush was to be allowed an emotional appeal, which, though technically a “lie”, we should not begrudge him. And I don’t begrudge Bush his rhetorical lying on SOTU day. At that time the revelations of the fraudulency of the British dossier and the Niger forgeries hadn’t been made public, and it is in the realm of the possible that Bush didn’t know that anything was rotten. However, on March 20, 2003, when he insisted on prosecuting the invasion, in spite of the fact that at that time, he did know something was rotten, he made himself the perpetrator of a fraudulent invasion. Pain creates paragraphs of explanations about the definition of “lying”, with some very prosaic and pedestrian examples, as if he is trying to get up enough words to have an article without saying anything. I assure you I know all the elements of the meaning of the word “lying”. But one subject Pain touched upon that may have some relevance was the question of how Bush could have had a motive for lying. Bush did in fact have a motive, and that was serving the interests of Israel . Since Pain is willing to resort to all sorts of irrelevant analogies without batting an eye, let me resort to one that is rather conclusive. And that is Iran . At the URL next below, it will be seen that influential American Jews are saying that “Bush’s repeated, sometimes exclusive, focus on Israel ” could draw in its wake a backlash against the American Jewish community. http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=12350 The same pro-Israel, anti-Islamic monomania that motivates Bush’s hysterical rhetoric against Iran is merely a reenactment of the monomania that he displayed against Iraq three and a half years ago. At this late date, though, it would be bothersome to try to assemble all the evidence again. I don’t see how a grown man in the US could fail to understand this bias. Pain also linked to an article concerning Joseph Wilson IV. Joseph Wilson IV’s investigation has no bearing on the facts that I have stated. Pain can contradict or disparage Wilson all day long, but it doesn’t change my arguments a jot. The Wilson controversy served only to underscore the facts. Wilson ’s now-famous article appeared months after the invasion. Challenging Wilson is like challenging the Downing Street Memo. Cute but irrelevant! Pain also alludes to some mysterious other information, mentioning, “the very plausible possibility of additional evidence, secret evidence, beyond our access even though Bush has alluded to the existence of such evidence.” Let me go over the history of the rumor of additional, secret evidence. When UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was confronted with the fact of the Niger forgeries, he maintained that he had not relied on those forgeries, but that there was other evidence that he had relied upon, evidence which, however, he was not at liberty to disclose because disclosure would compromise his sources. This is what is generally called a “likely story”. Let’s not forget that it was on Blair’s authority that the Niger forgeries and the plagiarized transcript were in the dossier in the first place. This dossier also contained the 45-minute claim, that is, the claim that Saddam Hussein could get WMD in the air on 45 minutes’ notice. So how is it that we can ascribe any credibility to anything that Blair says? Truly enough, Blair appointed a judge, Lord Hutton, to review his actions, and Hutton gave Blair high marks. Surprise! Surprise! Then Blair appointed another, Lord Butler, who found that Blair had not lied about the uranium. Surprise! Surprise! We all know that Hutton and Butler are honorable men. However, the “other evidence” remains undisclosed until this very day. Another curious circumstance was that Andrew Gilligan, a BBC journalist, reported that Dr. David Kelly, a weapons inspector in Iraq , had told him that the dossier had been specifically ordered by Downing Street to be “sexed up”. Kelly was haled into Parliament and given the third degree until he backed down a little. And shortly thereafter, he “committed suicide” by slashing his own wrists. Several eminent British physicians believe, with me, that it is impossible, or nearly so, to commit suicide by slashing your wrists. There were a lot of other curious details surrounding the “suicide”. The Guardian reported, later in the year, “Tony Blair faced fresh allegations yesterday that he had ‘sexed up’ an official report into Saddam Hussein's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction after the US official running Iraq dismissed out of hand his latest controversial claim…The Conservatives said Mr. Blair's assertion, made to British troops in mid-December, that there was ‘massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories’ was a piece of ‘sexed-up information’ uttered ‘to save his skin’…The renewed attacks came after Paul Bremer, the head of the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, dismissed Mr. Blair's claim as a ‘red herring.’” http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1113536,00.htm Tony Blair, the red-herring vendor, is the ultimate source of George W. Bush’s secret evidence. Here are comments by US Representative Henry Waxman on the subject: “In addition to denying that senior officials were aware that the President was citing forged evidence, you also claimed (1) ‘there were also other sources that said that there were, the Iraqis were seeking yellowcake - uranium oxide - from Africa’ and (2) ‘there were other attempts to get yellowcake from Africa.’ “This answer does not explain the President's statement in the State of the Union address. In his State of the Union address, the President referred specifically to the evidence from the British. He stated: ‘The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .’ Presumably, the President would use the best available evidence in his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation. It would make no sense for him to cite forged evidence obtained from the British if, in fact, the United States had other reliable evidence that he could have cited. “Moreover, contrary to your assertion, there does not appear to be any other specific and credible evidence that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from an African country. The Administration has not provided any such evidence to me or my staff despite our repeated requests. To the contrary, the State Department wrote me that the ‘other source’ of this claim was another Western European ally. But as the State Department acknowledged in its letter, ‘the second Western European government had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the U.S. that was subsequently discredited.’ “The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also found no other evidence indicating that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Niger . The evidence in U.S. possession that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Niger was transmitted to the IAEA. After reviewing all the evidence provided by the United States , the IAEA reported: ‘we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq .’ Ultimately, the IAEA concluded: ‘these specific allegations are unfounded.’” http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/061303B.shtml ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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