© 2005 UrbisMedia
Don’t ever ask Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan “what time is it?” This guy is such an automatic prevaricator he is going to give you the wrong time, probably the wrong date for good measure, just out of reflex. When asked about the announcement that the fruitless search for WMD in Iraq is now over McClellan offered that the invasion of Iraq was not about the search for WMD, it was “about keeping the American people safe.” Obviously, McClellan must be drinking some brain rot with the lady who appeared on national television saying that her son died in Iraq so that she wouldn’t be forced to wear a burka .
So how come we’re not hearing a national cheer that “it’s over, it’s over” ? No, I don’t mean that Blockbuster has eliminated late fees; I mean the search for WMD in Iraq. That’s because everyone knew it , from Blix, to Duelfer, to Powell, to the guy in pee-stained camouflage on the street corner with a sign that says “I’ll tell you where the WMD are for some loose change.” And so, with the second election won/stolen, the national family can now admit that Aunt Tilly drinks a little. Just give Scott McClellan the script to change the rationale for an $8 billion per month war and a lot of dead and wounded Americans and Iraqis, and we’ll proceed under another monstrous self-deception. Never mind that Iraqi women will no longer be forced to go out in burkas to polish nuclear –tipped SCUDS that were never there. Never mind that it wasn’t Saddam who attacked us. Accept the lie; you should be used to it by now.
Feel safe. No American women will be forced to go to a same-sex wedding wearing a burka.
And to maintain the wall of lies and deceptions that the troika of Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney have erected they will soon be asking for another $100 billion to carry on the un-accomplished mission of flattening cities like Fallujah and then paying their cronies at Haliburton, Bechtel and the rest to rebuild. No wonder we only offered the change they scavenged from couches in the Pentagon for the tsunami-flattened cities and kampongs of S. E. Asia. This must be the kind of American largesse that is responsible for McClellan’s statement that “We have very good relationships with countries across the world because of the President’s efforts over the last few years.” What is this man inhaling?!!!
The new lie by Bush and his stooges is that democracy will flourish across the Middle East once it is installed in Iraq. This neon-conservative crackpot notion is the political equivalent of Bush’s voodoo trickle down economics. But then maybe it is not so far from the truth to say that Iraq will be “democratic” like us. After all, all the elements are there: no separation between church and state, torture in prisons, a deeply divided society, rigged elections, diminished civil liberties . . . yes, we’re beginning already to look more like each other. You just have to get used to the lies.
But somebody—not Scott McClellan—should tell that lady that they wear burkas in Afghanistan, not Iraq.
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©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 1.14.2005)
*Jack Nicholson as Col. Nathan R. Jessep in A Few Good Men (1992)