Maine Owl

Bush January 28, 2003 State of the Union; obsequious response from NPR; Saddam as "evil"

Going back to this and listening again to the Iraq section, I have found it absolutely chilling. It was an open declaration of war against Iraq, and included the biggest of all the implicitly-stated weapons of mass destruction big lies, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

For those of you who believed at some time in your lives that America was a righteous nation founded on the rule of law and are willing to subject yourselves to what now sounds like horror beyond belief, please listen to President Bush on January 28, 2003 in this 13-minute State of the Union excerpt in an AUDIO FILE, HERE:



These are the big applause lines that, to the cheers of the assembled Chambers, tear down the post-World-War-II edifice of international behavior embodied in the U.N. Charter:

President Bush: Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained.

Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.

We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes. (massive applause)

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?

If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option. (massive applause)

The supporting material Bush delivered contained a litany of WMD threats. I have dealt with them in other postings in this series and will continue to do so, especially in discussion of Powell's February 5 fiasco. Already, however, the January 28, 2003 discourse portends Powell's actions that will firmly establish in the media mind the validity of the Iraq WMD "case."

After the speech, in the sound file I recorded, was some of the "analysis" presented by National Public Radio (NPR). This is very indicative of how all mainstream media carried the ball for the Administration and utterly failed to include critical analysis that I have been showing time and time again with these postings was available at the time. HERE is an excerpt of NPR coverage in a 2-1/2 minute AUDIO FILE:


Republican operative Mara Liasson, masquerading as an NPR analyst, fawns over Bush while she transmits a sanguine Administration outlook on war, as if the issue of an attack on Iraq is a "buried lead" in a "domestic speech," almost an afterthought that will never turn out to be that big a deal.

Mara Liasson: ... In other words Why war now? That was the big question tonight for the president. ... Clearly he feels that the time to act against Iraq is now. And I think he went a long way tonight in starting to explain that case in great detail to the American people. ...

Liasson: [The speech was] more on the economy than the war on Iraq, which they [the Administration] think will be relatively short, um, and successful when, ah, and if it does happen.

You'll hear NPR's Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr in there too. He is slightly better, but not much. There is a hint of skepticism, maybe even sarcasm in his voice. My gut is that he knew that what he had seen was a fraud. Still, he calls the "case" the president made "eloquent" exactly as Liasson described it.

He then correctly describes what Bush said as a "statement of American unilateralism," but without the tiniest suggestion that such unilateral war against a country that had taken no action against any U.S. interest and by that time, as Bush said explicitly in the speech, was faced with an array of military forces "surrounding" it, would be a black-letter violation of the U.N. Charter. If there is validity to the notion of preemptive war, surely Iraq would have had a good "case" to make about an imminent threat to its national security due to U.S. forces ready to attack it.

Finally, Schorr's remarks portend the Powell U.N. speech, Bush's speech was "preparation for Secretary Powell to spell it out in yet more enormous detail." More on that later.

Saddam Hussein as "evil"
Proof? He tortured children while their parents are made to watch. So is Bush evil too?

I'll comment on just one more small section of the speech that concerned the notion of Saddam Hussein as "evil." The U.S. going into Iraq to stamp out evil was the deal-closer for a lot of people on support for the war. They may have been skeptical that war was a good idea, but, they concluded, we just couldn't let this "evil" continue, as the president played up to the hilt. To this day the typical rightist response to suggestions that the war was wrong despite the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is that well, Saddam just couldn't be allowed to remain, he was too evil.

Here is how the president put it on January 28, 2003:

Bush: Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained: by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape.

If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.

Of course, the depth of Bush hypocrisy on this point is beyond belief. The U.S. and its semi-quisling, so-called Iraqi government has picked up right where Saddam left off. In a remarkable Democracy Now! interview just last Friday, here is how Sam Provance, the most important U.S. military whistle blower on the U.S. version of the torture chamber at Abu Ghraib described U.S. methods:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the mistreatment of General Zabar and his son?

SAMUEL PROVANCE: Originally, the general was supposed to be interrogated, and this was the one interrogation I was actually a part of, and the only reason I agreed to be a part of it was because the interrogator, who really wasn’t an interrogator, was a former soldier of mine who was an analyst, and I knew I could trust him not to be an animal or to try to talk me into doing something I know I wouldn’t want to do. And so he came to Abu Ghraib from Camp Victory as a subject matter expert on the general, because he had been spending weeks and months studying this man in particular.

And when he finally arrived and we were supposed to go interrogate him, they said we couldn’t interrogate him because the general had already been broken from several hours of interrogation. But as a consolation, they said, “We have his son, and you can interrogate him.” You know, and I’m thinking, you know, wow, this is kind of crazy. You know, why do we have his son? But then I’m thinking, you know, just because he’s younger doesn’t mean he can’t be a part of some kind of criminal activity, you know, himself. So we went out to the general population, which is where he was located, and, you know, saw just how young he was. And, you know, he was very, very frail, very scared, and it was obvious he was coming from a rich family. And, you know, he was just petrified.

And, you know, we brought him in to interrogate him, which was really more of an interview, because, like I said, my friend is—he’s a pretty mild-mannered person. And it was just matter-of-fact questions that—and it became quite apparent that he didn’t know anything and that he was just guilty of being this general’s son. And then, he even told me about his brother also being there, wanting to know where he was.

And it was really kind of heartbreaking when he said that he was glad that we were there, but that he didn’t understand what we were doing now that we were there, you know? And he cited things that were happening to him, as well as, you know, how his family was—all their property was being seized by the Kurds because we were turning a blind eye to what the Kurds were doing. You know, and I was just like, wow! And then we took him back, and I come to find out, you know, what they had done to break his father, which was, you know, abusing him.

AMY GOODMAN: How had they abused him?

SAMUEL PROVANCE: They had covered him in mud, or they had doused him in cold water and drove him around in a truck, which at that time was freezing cold at night, and covered him in mud and then, I guess, gave his father the impression that, “OK, we’re going to take a break from the interrogation, and you can see your son, who’s also here.” And then, you know, he’s thinking he’s going to see his son and have some kind of a reunion with him, but instead they just allowed him to see his son in this shivering, muddy state. And, you know, who knows what else they might have told him they had done to him or they were going to do to him unless he started talking? And then, supposedly, that’s what broke him down, and he told them whatever it is they wanted to know, but kind of find out later through—I guess they had done some investigation—but this guy was just some air defense general and he didn’t know anything himself. So the entire thing was just one big useless fiasco.

But you have this boy getting abused and his father getting abused, and it was all for nothing. And that really typifies the whole operation, because, as you know, what was found out later, you know, nothing really productive ever came out of Abu Ghraib. And I could have told you that when I was there, because I would talk to several of the soldiers, the MI soldiers that were there, and they were continuously coming up with, you know, poppycock reports from all sorts of information that they were getting from these detainees....

There you have it, Bush's State-of-the-Union. Souless, hypocritical by it's own definition of "evil." The self-defined evil acts returned only "poppycock."

I wish I could see today's State of the Union in better light. But after five years, it's all pretty much still under the rug.