THE smoking gun for President Bush's State of the Union plug for the invasion of Iraq was the now famous, saccharine-sweetened sixteen words: "The British government
has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantity of uranium from Africa." Let us not be swayed by the White House line that the President is not a "factchecker," because prior to his address to the nation, the White House website had displayed a photograph of the bespectacled President going over his State of the Union address "line by line!" Let us analyze the words instead.
First of all why cite the "British Government" as the source of intelligence when the President has the world's most sophisticated intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the FBI, at his disposal? Secondly, what does "significant quantity of uranium" signify? Students of statistics know that "significant" means that one can vouch that the information is not random noise or an outlier, with a certain degree of confidence. Finally, the use of the telltale verb "learned" makes the sentence not hype, not exaggeration or misconstrued intelligence, but a flat-out lie!
Here's why attributions are
important. There are the repetitives such as "police said," "according to," "claimed," "stated" and "commented," which are boring and neutral. Then there are cleverly disguised attributions such as, "Police said Mr. Smith claimed to have an alibi," which casts some doubt on Mr. Smith's innocence. Rephrased to "Police learned that Mr. Smith had an alibi," suddenly Mr. Smith is completely innocent! Similarly, in the President's State of the Union address a claim was transformed into a fact. The President could not cite any of American intelligence agencies because the CIA did not believe it was true. That is why the British became the stars of the Presidential speech. It would have been lame to say, "The British say they have heard that Saddam has been shopping for uranium from Africa." That is not the kind of language that whips up war frenzy. Insert the word "learned" then the sentence becomes alarming -- and a lie! Because, when we learn something, we learn a fact. A "learned" person is loaded with factual knowledge. Leave it up to a comedian to explain things succinctly. Joked Tonight Show host Jay Leno: "President Bush lied
about invading Arab territory. President Clinton lied about invading Jewish territory! (Monica Lewinski is Jewish.) Jay Leno also has some advice for Saddam Hussein: If he manages to hide
where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are, the US will never find him!
President Harry Truman had coined the term, "The Buck stops here," meaning that the ultimate responsibility lies with the President. President Bush tried his hardest to shirk responsibility for the Niger-uranium fiasco. First, National Security chief Condy Rice forced CIA chief George Tenet to take responsibility. Next she forced one of her subordinates to do the same. It was only after the President's conservative supporters began clamouring for the President to be a man and own up, that he did so in a very general way, "I take responsibility for everything I say and do." The President's detractors say that he only took responsibility after running out of people to blame! They point out that while the President is very reluctant to take responsibility for his own mistakes, the
White House viciously smears the credibility of the President's critics. Last month, when an irate American soldier in Iraq told ABC television's news correspondent Jeffrey Kofman, "If Donald Rumsfeld was here, I'd ask him for his resignation," in a perfect example of "kill the messenger" the White House leaked to the Press that Mr. Kofman is gay, and more damning, a Canadian! As though Mr. Kofman's sexual orientation and nationality made the American soldier's outburst invalid!
Doubts about President Bush's intellectual capacity to handle the Presidency that had surfaced after his election, but was submerged after September 11, are beginning to resurface. Is he really in charge, or have his intellectual superiors such as Deputy Defence Secretary Paul "Wolfowitz of Arabia" hijacked American foreign policy? It is common knowledge that suffering an inferiority complex a C student
(Bush) has a tendency to show off his intelligence to an Ivy League Professor (Wolfowitz) by obeying him. According to his critics, Dr. Wolfowitz, who has family ties with Israel, constantly checks with the Israeli government what is good for America! In the White House meeting the day after September 11, Wolfowitz alone urged the President to attack Iraq, something he had been advocating since 1992, while everyone else was preoccupied with attacking Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. Afghanistan posed no
threat to Israel; according to the Israelis, Iraq did.
After September 11 there was a possibility that America would take a cold hard look at why America is hated by so many in the Muslim and non-Muslim world. Moderate Jewish journalists like The Washington Post's Richard Cohen began pointing the finger at Israel. The Zionists in America and the ones
imported from Israel took charge immediately and went on the offensive. They fed America lies such as, "they hate us for our democracy, our affluence, our culture, because we exist, and nothing we can do will change the minds of these barbarous murderers." The Jewish American journalists run the gamut from the blatant such as The New York Times' William Safire to the subtle Tom Friedman, who says pretty much the same things as Safire does, but with enough sugarcoating to give one diabetes! (Isn't it strange that all the living Nobel Peace Prize winners including former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela opposed the Iraqi war; only the two Israeli citizens, Shimon Peres and Elie Wiesel supported it!) The latest lie that the Zionists are feeding America is that democracy in Iraq will change the Arab and the Muslim world. Isn't it remotely possible that the forcible establishment of an
alien, western Jewish entity in the midst of the Arabs is the reason for turmoil in the Arab world in the first place? And is it not a tad hypocritical for the western world to label Israeli terrorism as "self-defence," and Palestinian resistance as "terrorism"? America should realise that it is not the Muslims, but the Israelis who are siphoning off America's economic and military resources, moral and political capital, and are primarily responsible for America's declining standing in the world.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has found out (his soul-mate President Bush may find out the same later), that it is much easier to lie to the world than to one's own citizens. Opinion polls now show that most Britons believe the BBC more than they believe the Prime Minister. The Tories, too, are hypocritical. After all, more Tory MPs voted for the Iraq war than did Labour MPs. If the Tories were in power, they would have done exactly as the Labour Government did, for no British government will dare to go against the advice of the most famous Tory, Winston Churchill: "Never go against the wishes of the United States." What is left unsaid is, if they did go against the wishes of the US, in world affairs Britain would the relegated to be status of a Portugal!
President Bush sometimes does strange things. For instance, last month after the British Open Golf
Championship he invited the unexpected winner, Ben Curtis, to the White House. Curtis, ranked number 396th in the world before the British Open, had never finished within top ten in any tournament. Curtis's victory in the British Open, a tournament that specialises in neutralising the talents of the likes of Tiger Woods, was a fluke. Everyone, except Bush seemed to have realised that! It is one thing to invite established superstars like Woods, or this year's US Open Champion Jim Furyk, or Master's Champion Mike Weir (Of course, Weir would never be invited to the Bush White House, because he is a representative of the Iraqi waropposing, dreaded Canadian!), quite another to honour a blimp on the sports radar screen, like Ben Curtis. In their next tournament after the British Open, which concluded on August 3, while Furyk and Woods finished first and second respectively, Curtis finished a more familiar 61st! Talking of strange things, last month there was a shake up in The New York Times, because one of its reporters was found to have been making up stories and publishing those lies in America's most prestigious newspaper. His name? Jayson BLAIR! Eric Blair ("George Orwell"), Jayson Blair, and Tony
Blair. Could it be in the name?