[kj] The Evils of the West

[Darth E. Vader]

In the endlessly repetitive mass debate at The
Gathering, Greg Lawson was pondering with Peter "Bull
Shit Crack" West upon the reasons why Bush used the US
army to invade Iraq. Here are the reasons that Jack
Huberman gives in his book "BuShit!" 

!. "If I have a chance to invade..." To build Bush's
image as a war leader - in the public's eye and in his
own. According to his ghostwriter for a planned
autobiography, Mickey Herskowitz, Bush was thinking
about invading Iraq in 1999 when he told Herskowitz,
"One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to
be seen as a commander-in-chief," and, "My father had
all this political capital built up when he drove the
Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it... If I have a
chance to invade... If I had that much capital, I'm
not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything
passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have
a successful presidency. Herskowitz said that Bush
expressed frustration at a lifetime as an
underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father.
In aggressive military action he saw the opportunity
to emerge from his father's shadow. (And to avenge
him? "After all, Saddam is the guy who tired to kill
my dad," said Junior in 2002.)

2. The Baboon Motive. To appear after 9/11 to be
waging the "war on terror" aggressively, and to
satisfy the public's supposed desire for vengeance, by
attacking an enemy he could find - a target more
suited than Al Qaeda to the mindset of US leaders and
military capabilities.

3. Weapons of Mass Distraction. To ensure that the
"war on terrorism" or indeed anything but Bush's
domestic policies remained the issue going into the
2002 mid-term elections. "There's a big question
hanging over Bush's Iraq policy," said CNN's Bill
Schneider that September, "Why now? Why more than 11
years after the Gulf War, is it suddenly so urgent to
go after Saddam Hussein?" Whitehouse chief of staff
Andrew Card told the New York Times, "From a marketing
point of view, you don't introduce new products in
August."

4. You're either with us or...To present the Democrats
with the dilemma of either standing behind Bush on
Iraq - further elevating his stature - or appearing
weak on defense in the wake of 9/11.

5. To give Bush a triumphant victory on which to ride
into the 2004 election.

6. The neocons' agenda. To expand US global military
supremacy and its position in the Middle East in
particular, whether to secure oil sources, buttress
Israel (the road to peace in Jerusalem lay through
Baghdad, said Paul Wolfowitz). or reduce strategic and
oil dependence on Saudi Arabia. An "almost unnoticed
but huge" reason, Wolfowitz said, was that occupation
of Iraq would allow a withdrawal of US troops from
Saudi Arabia where their presence inspired many
Muslims' fury. Interesting assumptions: US forces
presence in Iraq (a) would not infuriate Muslims and
(b) was to be more or less permanent.

7. Vietnam. To turn back the clock in foreign (as in
domestic) affairs and eradicate the "Vietnam
syndrome," America's post-Nam wariness of military
adventures, to re-establish America's right and
appetite to go to war, to remilitarise America in
armaments, policy, and spirit - if only because this
was the opposite of what liberals wanted and the hated
1960s represented.

8. Power Grab. To reclaim executive branch powers,
particularly war-mongering powers, lost to (or rather
recovered by) Congress after Vietnam. "When they talk
about reversing the impact of Vietnam, which Rumsfeld
has alluded to on a number of occasions," said James
Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations, "they are
not simply talking about re-establishing American
power abroad. They are talking about re-establishing
presidential power at home.

9. Fun. To fully exercise and enjoy the power a
president and his crew are entitled to, which in their
case, could only mean moving great armies, kicking
some ass, and marking their territory (the world), 

Cracked Machine irregular cyberzine
http://www.webinfo.co.uk/crackedmachine

Look at grafitti scrawled on the wall:
Dubya can't catch family friend Bin Liner...
But what the HELL?
They talk to God!

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