Letter Never Sent

I’ve been reading Studs Terkel’s “The Good War”. It has a wealth of anecdotes and information from people who lived through World War 2. Here’s a tiny piece from John Houseman who worked for the Office of War Information (OWI) which was the United States’ propaganda apparatus during the war. I just found it interesting and wanted to test the OCR on my scanner:

I remember a naval officer sitting in my office for six hours, waiting for the word before we could put this on the air. I remember him saying — as clearly as if it were yesterday — “This is a beginning. This is only a skirmish. You know where the real war is, don’t you? It’s against the Russians.” This was in 1942. These were our allies who were being killed by the millions. Already there were elements thinking about the next war, the war against the Russians.

The Bush gang was handed a little setback in their hit against Iraq. Iraq has agreed to let in the inspectors without conditions. Even the conditions that no other government would except, namely that the US still calls for the ouster of Hussein even if he agrees to let inspectors back in. Looks like ‘Operation Take The Oilfields’ will have to be changed a little. The troops have been built up, the weapons have been ordered. Let there be no doubt that Bush still intends to carry out this criminal enterprise. It will be done, maybe not until after the mid-term elections, but it will happen. With that said, I came across this interesting article today. It’s not something you will read about in the corporate American media which has no interest in providing real information.

Let’s make one thing clear, the Bush administration has absolutely no evidence of anything linking Iraq to September 11th., but that’s not stopping them. Some flimsy justification will be made, and with the members of the UN Security Council paid off this so-called war will go forward.

America plans PR blitz on Saddam:

THE Bush Administration is to launch a multimillion-dollar PR blitz against Saddam Hussein, using advertising techniques to persuade crucial target groups that the Iraqi leader must be ousted.
The campaign will consist of dossiers of evidence detailing Saddam’s breaches of UN resolutions, and will be launched this week at American and foreign audiences, particularly in Arab nations sceptical of US policy in the region.



The White House is aware that it lacks substantial new intelligence on Saddam’s nuclear programme or evidence directly linking Baghdad to the September 11 attacks. But it will build on the contents of President’s Bush’s speech made to the UN General Assembly last week, in which he listed Saddam’s violations of UN resolutions.

The campaign, which will initially receive over $200 million (£130 million), will be overseen by the Office of Global Communications, whose existence will not be formally announced until next month.

This is what we’ve become. A corruption of American ideals. The bully of the world.

Related:

From the Washington Post: Iraq May Allow Inspectors In:

“I feel the Iraqis want to give peace a chance, and I’m convinced the majority of Americans want the same,” Rahall said.

“But when Bush talks of regime change, they [the Iraqis] don’t want to hear my message,” Rahall said. “They say, ‘What’s the point of letting the inspectors in?’ They feel that whatever they do, they’re going to get hit.”

Rahall, who voted for a resolution in support of the 1991 war against Iraq, said he does not agree with the administration’s arguments this time around. “It’s a continuation of a vendetta of 12 years ago,” he said. “It appears strange to me that a year ago this was not an imminent threat to the United States, but now, six weeks before an election, it is.”

Of course, the Bush administration has no intention of doing what’s right or what’s in everyone’s best interest.

Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
– Mark Twain “Chronicle of Young Satan”

In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. – Winston Churchill

We are bred up to feel it a disgrace ever to succeed by falsehood . . . we will keep hammering along with the conviction that honesty is the best policy, and that truth always wins in the long run. These pretty little sentiments do well for a child’s copy book, but a man who acts on them had better sheathe his sword forever. – Sir Garnet Wolsely — Former Commander-in-Chief of the British Army

When war enters a country it produces lies like sand. – Anonymous

All warfare is based on deception. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The warring state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual man. It practices not only the accepted strategies, but also deliberate lying and deception against the enemy… [It maintains] an excess of secrecy, and a censorship of news and expressions of opinion… It absolves itself from the guarantees and contracts it had formed with other states, and makes unabashed confession of its rapacity and lust for power, which the private individual is then called upon to sanction in the name of patriotism. – Richard Barnett

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election. – Otto von Bismarck

The great mass of the people…will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one. – Adolph Hitler

By way of deception, thou shalt do war – Motto of the Mossad (Israel’s secret police)

…over Iraq’s weapons program. It’s important to bear in mind that most nations develop so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction’. In fact, only one nation has used them to great effect and that was the use of nukes against Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the humanitarian U.S. It is the height of arrogance and hypocrisy for the U.S. to attempt to justify an invasion of Iraq with such nonsense.

Israel’s nuclear weapons program: no angry west, no inspectors, no sanctions, just more aid:

Justifying the US’s double standards, according to Mr. al-Baz, is irrational, although Egypt has all the right in the world to protest such an injustice. If saying that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a convincing argument for Israel to have 300 warheads, then the same argument can be used by any country in military conflict with its neighbors. If Iran, Iraq and Libya are demonized for mere allegations of attempting to manufacture such weapons, shouldn’t Israel be forced to destroy its arsenal, which is suspected to have already manufactured these weapons? And because the US’s perception of Israel’s nuclear arms is evidently not based on Israel’s power of rational persuasion, there are no guarantees that the US position will change even after final ‘peace’ accords are signed between Arabs states and Israel. …

Iraq is now lacking not only weapons to defend itself from daily aggression, but is also failing to feed its children and to care for its sick. However the US, Britain and others have vowed to continue their genocide against the people of Iraq. In the Israeli case, nothing is mentioned, save an occasional cry for justice from an Arab state, an activist or a sincere politician, although Israel is suspected of having a fully operational nuclear stockpile.

According to this article at the BBC, the Taleban warned the United States that Osama bin Laden was planning an attack on the US. Of course, these warnings and others weren’t heeded and the US answered their own failure by raining death on thousands of innocent people and by seizing Afghanistan for their own machiavellian purposes. And now, one year later, we’re about to engage in an orgy of snot-blowing and self-serving, made-for-tv, faux grief-wallowing. Disgusting. Prepare for more mass emotionalism and chest-thumping as we prepare to martyr young American and Iraqi men and women in the streets of Baghdad.

US stepping up the corporate takeover of Iraq. Looks like Bush wants to hit Iraq before anyone can say no. He’ll probably get a rubber stamp from our spineless Congress once everything starts.Telegraph:

The raid seemed designed to destroy air defences to allow easy access for special forces helicopters to fly into Iraq via Jordan or Saudi Arabia to hunt down Scud missiles before a possible war within the next few months.

Related:

Back when Saddam Hussein was ‘our guy’ we backed his use of chemical weapons against Iran. Isn’t this hypocritical in light of the way the US Government is trying to portray Hussein as a menace?

And now, the more sedate, calculating, war-mongering Republicans, people like Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger are coming out against the Bush Jr. invasion of Iraq. Scowcroft and Kissinger are advising a containment policy towards Iraq rather than a war. This will avoid the messy subjects of Kurdish independence and the discovery of US weapons sold to Hussein while justifying a continued American presence in the region. These are the same reasons Bush Sr. left Hussein during the last charade. With Hussein gone they would have had to find a new justification for the American buildup in the Mideast.

War in Afghanistan: A $28 Billion Racket. Old story, but nice mention of Smedley Butler among other things:

In 1919 Joseph Schumpteter described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the United States in 2002.

“There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest — why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours…The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.”

Ring any bells?

“There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack.” Is there any known corner of the world the United States does not claim to have a vital strategic interest in, which it must aggressively safeguard?

“Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours.” And the United States, Washington assures us, is always under threat from evil-minded countries. Today, the threat is said to come from “the axis of evil.”