Bush's new morally bankrupt PR campaign on terrorism and Iraq

This commentary was published on the Libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation web site. It is a scathing indictment of the Bush foreign policy, and has related links (including the U.S. supplying WMD to Saddam Hussein).

by Jacob G. Hornberger

The Bush administration is at it once again — engaging in a new
public-relations campaign to scare the American people half to death with the possibility of terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction and to garner support for its invasion and continued occupation of Iraq, which has not only cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans but which now has also become an economic black hole that threatens the economic security of our nation by sucking hundreds of billions of dollars out of the pockets of the American people.

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Never mind that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and never mind that Bush has now publicly admitted that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks. There’s a much more fundamental problem that the American people ignore at their peril: It is the U.S. government's morally bankrupt foreign policy, including its unprovoked and illegal war of aggression against Iraq, that has produced (and continues to produce) the anger and hatred that motivates Arabs to commit terrorist acts against the United States.

<<snip>>

Let’s also not forget the anger and hatred that has been engendered by the U.S. government’s financial and military aid to cruel and tyrannical regimes, which have brutalized, tortured, and killed their own people. Does the shah of Iran come to mind? But it’s also important that we never forget what the Iraqi people will never forget — that during the 1980s the U.S. government was an ardent supporter of their cruel and tyrannical dictator, Saddam Hussein, even furnishing him with weapons of mass destruction, which, as we all know, U.S. officials are still looking for.

So, Bush’s and Cheney’s use of their so-called war on terrorism to justify their invasion and continued occupation of Iraq is patently ludicrous and manifestly deceptive. It was the U.S. government’s interventionist policies in the Middle East that engendered the terrorism in the first place. And Bush’s and Cheney’s invasion and occupation of Iraq are certain to produce even more of it.

read more:
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0310e.asp