Where's The Outrage?

On March 17th, 2003, G. W. Bush declared:

"Intelligence gathered by this government and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and to conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

A month before going to war, President Bush told Americans:

"Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct, and continuing ties to terrorist networks ... Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaida have met at least eight times since the early 1990s Iraq has also provided al-Qaida with chemical and biological weapons training."

Vice-president Dick Cheney and nearly every other member of the Bush administration continually repeated these false claims, even after the fall of Baghdad.

Now we know there never were WMDs, at least not since the first Gulf War. Now we know that there was never any significant link between Saddam and Al Quaeda. Investigators have even released documents in which Saddam clearly orders his supporters to avoid close contact with the "foreign jihadists". As the more intelligent in the intelligence community long suspected, Saddam saw the fundamentalists as a threat and wanted nothing to do with them.

There can no longer be any doubt that Bush lied repeatedly and has led the USA down a corrupt and dangerous path to corporate global empiricism.

What now needs to be understood now is HOW he keeps getting away with it. Where is the anger? Where is the outrage? Where are the mass demonstrations?

Even Teddy Kennedy, in his angry speech denouncing the whole sorry history of Bush lies, held back from the most obvious call to action. If he really believes Bush did all he says Bush did, why doesn't he call for impeachment, or at the very least resignation?

At least the hypocrisy of Bush honouring Martin Luther King has provoked some to action, although as usual Bush went through the protests with blinkers on and many media outlets chose to ignore the story of the protestors:

"As hundreds of protesters shouted objections, President Bush laid a wreath Thursday at the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr. on a visit to mark what would have been the 75th birthday of the slain civil rights leader.

"Bush, arriving from New Orleans on a day devoted to building support among black voters, was greeted by hundreds of demonstrators. They were beating drums, chanting "Go home, Bush" and waving signs saying, "War is not the answer" and "Bush no more in 2004."

"The president was joined at the gravesite by King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and other family members. The president appeared unfazed by the protest."

The Human Rights connection with MLK is interesting to explore.

When drumming up support for the war with fear stories of WMDs and terrorist connections, Bush said the USA is now prepared to unilaterally and pre-emptively attack any nation which he believes is a threat or potential threat to the US. As they now attempt to justify the Iraq war retrospectively by pointing to Saddam Hussein's manifold crimes, rather than his WMDs, the confused Bush & Co. logic would indicate that they now believe they can attack any nation on earth simply to advance US standards of human rights.

If so, perhaps we can expect a US invasion of Australia, where the rogue government has ignored the anti-war sentiments of 82% of the population but also regularly violated UN rules on the Human Rights of refugees. Or an invasion of Japan, whose government has just sent troops into a war zone in clear defiance of the people's wishes as well as the constitution.