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To
enhance your
contemptible experience,
delve into the archives below.
toons
2004
toons
2002
toons
2001
toons
2000
Historical
Notes
2003: War for No Reason
At
the beginning of the year, the Bush administration was still
pushing for war with Iraq. UN weapons inspections, led by Hans
Blix, were scouring the country and coming up with nothing.
Iraq was surrounded, two-thirds of its air space controlled
by US and British air forces, crushing UN sanctions were in
place, the AIEA declared Iraqi nuclear programs completely destroyed....
And yet the Bush administration was still pushing for war.
And
war it got. Despite a "powerful performance" of disinformation
by Colin Powell before the UN Security Council, keys members—France,
Germany and Russia most (in)famously among them—balked
at supporting an unprovoked war based on flimsy evidence, regardless
of how odious the Hussein regime was. (There's this funny little
thing we call International Law, y'see, that matters even when
it's not convenient.) Britain and the US pushed on, corralling
a loose "coalition of the willing" through bribery
and intimidation, and misleading the public with fear-mongering
statements that dramatically overreached the support of credible
intelligence.
Not that there was much media scrutiny before or during the
invasion. Instead, the newsmedia sold what was left of its soul
for access, "embeds" picked by the war planners and
planted among the troops to give the viewer at home an unprecedented
look into the daily grind of war. It was riveting, like a train
wreck. Even if you were sensitive to the propaganda, the rawness
of the live broadcast experience drew your eyes like moths to
flame. The BushAdmin made the most of it, culminating the mediagenic
manipulations with a flight deck landing by President Bush,
who hopped out of a fighter jet duded up in a flight suit. Soon
thereafter came the action figure. Standing before a banner
that read "Mission Accomplished" Bush declared an
"end to major combat."
By
year's end more American soldiers were killed during the occupation
than in all the fighting. No one has yet counted the Iraqi casualties,
military or civilian, but the estimates are in the thousands.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found. The President
himself acknowledged that his administration's constant linkages
of Saddam Hussein with Al Qaed and 9/11 were unsubstantiated.
Throughout the summer and fall, intelligence used to support
claims of an Iraqi threat, imminent or even long-distant, were
discredited as bogus, falsified and grossly exaggerated. That
Bush has not yet been impeached nor even faces a special prosecutor
is perhaps a stroke of luck on his part. Or perhaps the American
people know that 2004 is an election year. We can take our time.
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