The Big Lie

History will record the Iraq War and the Bush administration in general under a single heading: "The Big Lie".

It began when the neocons teamed up with leftovers from the Bush Snr administration and chose Bush's idiot son as their presidential candidate. The first lie was to pretend he could ever be a serious contender for the job. Then came all the campaign trail lies about being a "uniter, not a divider", or about being a "caring Conservative" with a "humble vision" for the USA's role in the world. How disingenuous those claims sound today!

Next came all the lies and intimidation which stole the election in Florida. Then Bush headed out to pasture on his ranch while his officials rampantly pursued their own agendas. Kyoto was trashed, the International Criminal Court was abandoned, nukes were back on the table... the world began to awake to Bush's dangerously unilateral agenda, but the USA remained ignorant. Then came 9/11.

Thus began The Big Lie. Saddam was connected to 9/11, if not actually behind it. Saddam had nukes. Saddam had chemical weapons. Saddam had ties to Al Quaeda. Iraq could attack foreign countries within 45 minutes. All lies, multiplied time and again by other, smaller fabrications, misleading statements, innuendoes and falsifactions. Words like "mis-spoke" entered our vocabulary, so that press, people and politicians could pretend our leaders were not simply lying.

Even the term "War On Terror" is itself a lie: firstly because you cannot militarily defeat an idea, but moreso because - as is now abundantly clear - the money and energy being expended on this "war" has done nothing at all to defeat or even decrease terror. Instead, support for Islamic fundamentalists is on the rise, terrorist attacks are increasing and we are at even greater threat today than we were on 8/11/01.

Now, as evidence of The Big Lie mounts on all sides, the lies have gone into overdrive.

Reuters says the White House sent an e-mail to Jewish leaders on Friday with a headline reading, "9-11 Commission Staff Report Confirms Administration's Views of al Qaeda/Iraq Ties."

The New York Times comes very close to calling Bush and Cheney liars:

"Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were 'ties' between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong."

Members of the 9/11 Commission have challenged Cheney to provide any further evidence he has to back continued claims of a close relationship between Saddam and Al Quaeda.

Is this the great and valued DEMOCRACY we are so determined to spread around the world, where nobody is ever accountable, were lies go unpunished, where innocent foreigners are slaughtered to feed Fascist dreams of wealth and power, where truth itself is abandoned as a political, social and economic liability?