[Peace-discuss] On the State of the Union

[C. G. Estabrook]

Yes, That Really Was the President of the United States...

by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

One has to go back to the lesser Roman emperors of the second century to
find an imperial suzerain as dismal as Bush. Tuesday's was surely the
worst State of the Union address to Congress in the past thirty years, as
the commander-in-chief stumbled through a thicket of brazen fictions
towards the proposed rendez-vous with destiny of February 5, the day
Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled to make his way to the United
Nations to present the administration's latest "intelligence" confection
on the topic of Saddam's deceits.

If you want to get a taste of how these ramshackle "intelligence" reports
are assembled, take a look at "Apparatus of Lies: Saddam's Disinformation
and Propaganda, 1990-2003", recently issued by the White House and invoked
Tuesday night by the 43rd President.

By a way of illustrating the all-round deviousness of Saddam's propaganda
machine, the White House document cites on page 23 the Pakistani news
outlet Inqilab as having reported on January 27, 1991, that "The American
pop star Madonna was in Saudi Arabia, entertaining US troops." The White
House comments triumphantly: "Madonna never went to Saudi Arabia." Moral:
if Saddam can lie about Madonna, he can certainly bring the Big One out of
some bunker in Tikrit and drop it on Jerusalem.

Bush's speech, if one can dignify same with a word intended to designate
ordered rhetoric, was a backhanded compliment to David Frum, the former
White House speech writer who was fired last year after his wife proudly
disclosed that he had invented the phrase "Axis of Evil". No such exciting
phrases adorned Bush's second State of the Union address. In the first
half of the address Bush stumbled through his prescriptions to make the
rich richer with the timbre of an inexperienced waiter reciting the Daily
Specials. He even blew the opening and most outrageous lie of all, that
"We will not pass along problems" to future generations, a pledge launched
amid a vista of red ink as far as the eye can see, as those future
generations pick up the tab for Bush's hand-outs to the super-rich today,
to the arms companies, the drug industry and other prime contributors.

The assembled hacks and pundits of the Fourth Estate made haste to praise
Bush for his impassioned resolve, but across the country and around the
world the speech was a bust. Next morning CNN went searching for Hails to
the Chief in a diner somewhere along the Atlantic seaboard, but the
increasingly frayed reporter could only elicit grumbles about Bush's
unconvincing performance on the economy and on why exactly the US had to
go to war with Iraq. In Tokyo the Nikkei sank abruptly, followed by falls
on exchanges as they came on line in every time zone.

On the likelihood of a US attack on Iraq I've tended to be a maybe-not
type of guy. But now, after all the hoopla and the build-up, how can G.
Bush not launch his attack in Baghdad? He's got no Exit strategy, even as
he and the mad Rumsfeld shove their feet ever deeper into their mouths.
Suppose the troops all come home with not a missile or a bullet fired?
Won't there be pressing questions to the effect of: What was all that
about? Then people will look around and start noticing the mess the
homeland is getting itself into on the economic front.

But is it really feasible to imagine the War Party flouting the opinions
of the UN, of NATO, of much of the Congress and the huge slice of the
American public opposed to unilateral action without clear evidence that
Iraq is a clear and present threat? Only 29 per cent support the
What-the-Hell, Let's-Go-It-Alone path.

The coverage of anti-war protests round the world on January 18 has been
scandalously bad. Many reporters and editors opted for demure phrases such
as "tens of thousands", which scarcely does justice to turn-outs in excess
of quarter of a million. Friends of mine at the demonstration in
Washington DC said the one last October was double that of the first, in
the spring of 2002, and that the January 18 demo had doubled the crowd in
October, giving a rough Jan 18 total of 300,000 (the estimate of a cop
who'd been at all three). There were anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000
people in San Francisco, and 20,000 in downtown Portland. There were big
demonstrations in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax and
others in France, Japan, Pakistan, Britain, Sweden, Syria, Belgium, Egypt,
Lebanon, New Zealand.

Footnote: At the December meeting in London of Iraqi exiles one Iraqi
opponent of the war listened in amazement as some Iraqis deeply involved
in Washington's plans calmly agreed that a casualty rate of around 250,000
to 500,000 Iraqis was acceptable.

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