Vindication and Sorrow: Iraqi revelations too little, too late

Tonight I am faced with so many conflicting emotions. I am relieved and heartened that the Bushistas world is collapsing around them. The fact that the media is covering the Iraqi nuclear lie, the baseless 9-11/Saddam link and the fact they had no peace-keeping plan is going to have major ramifications in the week's ahead.

On the one hand, I feel an overwhelming sense of vindication. When we were out in the streets, marching, carrying signs and screaming at the top of our lungs, we were RIGHT! There was no justification for taking unilateral action. I had been voicing these concerns to friends and co-workers for months and they just stared at me blankly, shaking their heads as they walked away, probably wondering why I hated America. The nation will soon see that we were the true patriots, that we were speaking the truth all along.

Then I think about the afternoon I watched them launch the first volley in the "shock and awe" campaign and the balls of fire thundered through the skies of Baghdad. I can still close my eyes and see that old man carrying the little girl with what was left of her bloodied leg flapping lifelessly. It makes me so fucking sad and angry. None of this had to happen!

Then my rage turns to the news media. This information was there all along. It had to have been or otherwise how would we have known. But, it got little mainstream coverage. All we heard was complicity in gearing up the war machine. Now, they are finally covering it and acting like it's some sort of shocking revelation.

People are finally starting to open their eyes, and we have an amazing opportunity to shatter the neocons dream of empire, but if people would have been paying attention with an open mind and the media had done their job, thousands of people would not be dead right now.

Anyone else experiencing similar conflicting emotions?

All of those people killed just to put more money in the pockets of Bush and his cronies. I sometimes think our country is viewed as the devil compared to other countries. I really do believe that. And it's not only because of this recent fiasco with Bush.

I burned through sorrow and woe when I saw the fires. I wrote this:

--

Now, I Am the Terrorist
By William Rivers Pitt
T r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 21 March 2003

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=3&num=226

The city of Baghdad, founded in 762 A.D. under the name Madinat as-Salam – 'City of Peace' – is this day a lake of fire. The opening stage of the Bush administration's "Shock and Awe" attack plan began as night fell on Iraq, and lived terribly up to its terrible name. CBS news is reporting that great swaths of residential neighborhoods within Baghdad have been engulfed in flames. One can trust, perhaps, the ability of a cruise missile to hit a bullseye from many miles away. One cannot be so precise in predicting which way the resulting fires will blow.

In the great earthquake in San Francisco in 1906, people were not killed so much by the shaking. They were killed by the firestorm that sucked the air from their lungs and reduced them to ash before they could flee. So it seems to be today in Baghdad.

Baghdad is a city of 5 million people, half of whom are under the age of fifteen, most of whom are too poor to flee. Now, a great many of those people are dead, burned in their homes and on their streets.

The American television media provided all of us with a Dresden-eye view of the attack. Huge mushroom clouds bloomed from the streets as buildings blazed and fell. The thunder of the explosions was so loud that television speakers became distorted with the sound of the concussion. The sky lit up as though the sun was rising. It was a fitting image, for a new day in world history has dawned.

(snip)

On September 11th, I sat in numb horror as the images of carnage unfolded before me on the television. On that day, I was the victim of terrorism, along with every other American. Today, I sit in numbed horror as more carnage unfolds. Hundreds of massive missiles have rained down on a city far away, killing indiscriminately among the young, the infirm, the old and the innocent. My government did this. My nation did this. My leaders did this. Today, I am the terrorist.

So are you.

There is no justification for this attack. Saddam Hussein and his forces had been effectively disarmed by the first Gulf War, by the UNSCOM inspections, and by the more recent UNMOVIC inspections. According to Hussein Kamel, son-in-law to Saddam Hussein whose comments to the UN in 1991 were recently reported in a buried Newsweek story, Iraq was pretty much disarmed of mass destruction weapons even before the first war. The Bush administration, in pushing for this war, has foisted lie after lie after lie upon the American people and the world. The world didn't buy it, but they weren't dependent upon lapdog media sources like ours for their data.

We are the terrorists now, stupid underinformed terrorists who dance to the tune of a corporate media machine that will profit wildly from this attack. NBC, MSNBC and CNBC are owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors on earth. They will be paid handsomely in military contracts because of this, as they always have been. Yet GE gives us the news we need to understand what is happening.

Americans are not often afforded the opportunity to witness a war crime live on television. Today's actions bring to mind a war crime from a generation ago: The shooting of a prisoner by Vietnamese General and American ally Nguyen Ngoc Loan. General Loan put a pistol to the head of this bound prisoner and blew his brains into the street, an image that millions of Americans saw after it had taken place. We are here again today. The poverty of the Iraqi people leaves them bound, unable to escape the wave of steel. We have blown their brains out. We have incinerated them in place. We will continue to do so, and you can watch it from your couch. Today, you are the terrorist.

So am I.

--

Now, I am just furious. That's all. There will be a reckoning here. So help me God.

as always, Will. I remember reading it when you first published it. It's especially poignant when you read it now. Thanks for reposting it.

you said it all.

THe info is coming out, but it was there all along, and people had to die because the press played along.

The sad thing is, I think this is why the info is now coming out. It's hard to ignore when US & British soldiers are being attacked on a daily basis.

and we've all been raging, we've all been screaming at the TV.

I think the challenge now is turn that rage into resolve. We have to work together to impeach the president, bring out the truth, as long as it takes.

I'm there.

...and pick up the August copy of Harper's magazine. Lewis Lapham's column is a treasure. The way he describes the media's performance is classic:

"During the eight months prior to the invasion of Iraq, the American news media were content to believe the government's fairy tale about its reasons for sending the tanks eastward into Eden. The Bush Administration's buncombe artists could tell any story they pleased about Western civilization being held for ransom by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and even when the plotlines were shown to depend upon suborned testimony and counterfeit intelligence, the media vouched for the wisdom of Oz. Why not? What was to be gained by casting doubts? The fairy tale sold newspapers, boosted television ratings, curried favor at the White House and the FCC, drummed up invitations from the Pentagon to attend the military costume party in the Persian Gulf."

with congressional democrats who gave Bush a blank check for this war. I have no respect for any of them, particularly the ones who are backpedeling now. I can still see Gephardt with Bush, all smiles, giving him the authority to launch a pre-emptive illegitimate invasion of another country. I think Dean should use that picture as a campaign add in Iowa

for the children of Iraq. I feared that if we actually invaded, they would be the ones to suffer most . . . and time has proven that to be the case. Helen Thomas felt that way as well; I sent her an e-mail in February expressing just this concern, to which she responded: "Thanks; your fears for the kids are justified; he has prescribed war without end-helen thomas". That my country has killed and maimed so many innocent children is something I have great difficulty dealing with, and always will.

There were the drive-by "salutings" with middle fingers held high out of car windows as they whizzed past us on Wilshire Blvd. with our Not In Our Name and No War in Iraq signs.

There were the "up yours" arm pumpings that also occasionally sped by, and those who cat-called us and shouted at us to "get a job."

There was the friend of mine who pleaded with me on the day the shooting started to go fly the flag to support our troops - and I said that's why I was on my way out to the march, to support our troops by demanding they be brought home to safety and the arms of their loved ones. And how she just couldn't bring herself to accept the arguments I put forth - from the intelligence that was already known to debunk much of the "evidence" and the fact that the UN inspections were working, to the fact that Cheney never served (she was sure he had - her brother-in-law had said so), and that VA benefits were being cut, and that one out of three soldiers was going to battle nicely equipped with a faulty haz-mat suit.

There were the nasty emails I got slamming me for being a daughter of Neville Chamberlain, an America-hater, a commie, a human rights foe, and an unpatriotic, faithless, Godless appeaser who should move to some other country and defying me to fess up to where I was on 9/11.

There was the other woman I know who, back right after Selection 2000, gloated unmercifully about bush and how she thought he was going to unite the whole country and what a breath of fresh air and then bragging about having gone to a party where she knew a bunch of Gore supporters would be, and making sure she wore her cowboy hat and cowboy boots and pranced around and rubbed it in.

There was the fellow school mom who hissed and boo'ed, rather loudly, during our October, 2000 FRICKIN' SCHOOL HALLOWEEN COSTUME PARADE, FOR CHRISSAKES, when a couple of the sixth graders arrived dressed as Al and Tipper Gore, carried on about how she grew up in Connecticut and how wonderful Prescott Bush was and how my saying bush was stupid was like saying your mother is ugly, and then came to me at the end of the school Christmas pageant, that year, and gloated that the Supreme Court had just given the election to bush.

There's the right-winger dad of a friend of one of my kids, who, at the start of the recent Harry Potter party at a local bookstore, scowled at me when he heard me asking the cashier for Hillary Clinton's book so I could buy a copy, and he turned to me from the other side of the room and whined "oh, DON'T do THAT!"

Yeah. I am thinking HARD about ALL THOSE NICE FOLKS, RIGHT THIS MINUTE. I've had them all on my mind all week. I'm still mulling over what my conduct should be when/if I see these people again.

Sort of depends on how events transpire. If the snowball is really starting to barrel more rapidly and irrevocably down the hill, I know how tempted I'll be to return the gloat-fest and rub it in their noses. I don't know that I should, or will. It wasn't very nice when it was done to me. And I've always been taught to turn the other cheek and to rise above it all.

I will tell you this much, though. Two of the aforementioned people I know (not the drive-bys) happen to be artists - purportedly spreading love and beauty throughout their corners of the world (belying their nasty, mean-spirited "hearts"). And I know darned well that I shall NEVER, as long as I live, EVER waste a nickel buying any of their work.

on edit - corrected dates/punctuation

I agree that you're better than the boorish behavior that they exhibited. Booing children?!?! That's definitely over the line. Even if I saw a whole group of children dressed as Bush, I would never think of booing them.

I have a feeling many of those people are going to be strangely silent this next week. I'm sure there will be others who will be going through all sorts of strange logical contortions to justify the lies. I think a knowing smile and a gentle hand ushering them to the truth will be my strategy.

So much destruction. So many people dead. Surely we can take no joy in that as this administration crashes and burns.