John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RAY MCGOVERN IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Clapper Admits Gross Intelligence Failure
on Iraq WMDs But Still Escapes Justice”
I am always glad to see confirmation in such matters, however, for people who work to inform themselves, there are no real surprises to be discovered about the invasion of Iraq. It was a dirty imperial project from the start, and the fact was knowable at the time.
It could clearly be seen as a fraud because there were a number of experts, experts not working for the American government, and people in other governments who, in effect, told us then that it was a fraud.
What the whole experience with Iraq reveals is a couple of profound truths about imperial America, truths that are quite unpleasant and yet seem to remain lost to the general public.
One, lying and manipulation are virtually work-a-day activities in Washington. They go on at all levels of the government, from the President through all of the various experts and agency heads who in theory hold their jobs to inform the President and others of the truth in making decisions.
Indeed, these experts and agency heads actually work more like party members from George Orwell’s Oceania in 1984, party members whose job it was to constantly rewrite history, making adjustments in the words and pictures of old periodicals and books to conform with Big Brother’s latest pronouncements and turns in policy.
America has an entire industry devoted to manufacturing truth, something the rather feeble term “fake news” tries to capture, although its accusations are often not accurately focused. Still, its use reflects the widespread and true impression of being lied to and often.
The public’s reaction to officials and agencies in Washington ought to be quite different than it generally is. Under the American imperial system with its elite power establishment, it should be a presumption that officials and agencies are not telling us the truth, that they usually have ulterior motives, and that they are tailoring a story to fit a policy.
It sounds extreme to say so, but it truly is not in view of recent history. There is almost not an important event in American foreign policy in recent decades where this assumption would not yield something closer to truth than its opposite. That is the dark nature of empire with its powerful and large, and largely unaccountable, agencies, and with its utter corruption for the benefit of a privileged few.
We are all watching actors in a costly play used to support already-determined destructive policies.
Two, the press lies, and it lies almost constantly in support of government’s decided policies. You simply cannot trust the American press on such matters, and the biggest names in the press – the New York Times or Washington Post or CBS or NBC – are the biggest liars because they put the weight of their general prestige into the balance to tip it.
Their fortunes and interests are far too closely bound to government to be in the least trusted for objective journalism. Journalism just does not exist in America on the big stuff.
This support by the press is not done just on special occasions, such as the run-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, but consistently in the major affairs of state. We see it today in everything from “Russia-gate” to the Western-induced horrors of Syria.
Russia-gate is almost laughable, although few Americans laugh, immersed as they are in a stream of non-stop propaganda. But a matter like Syria, with more than half a million dead and terrible privations, isn’t laughable, yet no effort is made to explain the truth and bring this monstrous project – the work equally of Republicans and Democrats - to an end.
Three, while virtually all informed people understand that Israel’s influence in Washington is inordinate and inappropriate, many still do not realize that the horror of Iraq, just like the horror today of Syria, reflects the interests of Israel.
When Ariel Sharon was lobbying George Bush to attack other Middle Eastern countries following the Iraq invasion, Bush made a rarely-noticed remark to associates along the lines of, “Geez, what does the guy want? I invaded Iraq for him, didn’t I?”
Well, today, pretty much all of the countries that Sharon thought should be attacked have indeed been attacked by the United States and its associates in one fashion or another – covertly, as in Syria, or overtly, as in Libya. And we are all witnessing the ground being prepared for Iran.
It has been a genuinely terrifying period, the last decade and a half or so. War after war with huge numbers of innocents killed, vast damages inflicted, and armies of unfortunate refugees created. All of it completely unnecessary. All of it devoid of ethics or principles beyond the principle of “might makes right.”
It simply cannot be distinguished, except by order of magnitude, from the grisly work of Europe’s fascist governments of the 1930s and ‘40s.
All the discussions we read or see from America about truth in journalism, about truth in government, and about founding principles are pretty much distraction and noise, meaningless noise. The realities of what America is doing in the world make it so.
