DETROIT -- Director David Lean's masterpiece "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is one of the finest films ever made and offers valuable insights into our own torn times.
The war (or in many ways antiwar) film is based on Pierre Boulle's novel about a British battalion held as prisoners by the Japanese in World War II Burma. Their task, in the sweltering jungle and disease-heavy atmosphere, is to build a bridge for a new rail line between Malaysia and Rangoon. Building that bridge, and the quest to destroy it, becomes the focus of the film's extraordinary development of the characters and how they cope with their fates.
Especially moving is the final scene, as Major Clipton, an Army doctor, surveys the destruction and death after a commando team blows up the bridge with several unintended consequences.
"Madness! Madness! Madness!" Clipton utters, and you are left confused and numbed. But that poignant scene in a powerful film can't approach the real absurdity of the war to begin within weeks or even days.
Secretary of State Colin Powell's made the Bush's administration's best case before the United Nations that a preemptive war against Iraq is imperative for our national survival. He failed, in spite of his masterful delivery of some not-so-new information.
First of all, Powell can be forgiven for failing to remind us he actually opposed military intervention in Gulf War One when he was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
The argument for attacking Iraq then was far more compelling than it is today, but Powell, the good soldier he is, doesn't want to further muddle the Bush administration's reasoning.
Yes, we all know Saddam is a murderer and a dangerous and threatening man who can cause trouble, especially for his neighbors. He probably has chemical and biological weapons, but there's certainly no evidence of nuclear weapon capabilities.
Does Saddam lie and cheat, and attempt to deceive UN weapons inspectors? Sure he does. Powell argued that Iraq is using its intelligence capabilities "to hide its illicit activities."
To buttress his argument, Powell pointed to a British intelligence report. "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities," Powell said solemnly.
It turns out, however, that the "fine paper" was plagiarized from an American graduate student's report, based on materials the Iraqis left in Kuwait more than a dozen years ago and other nonsecret information published in magazine articles on the Internet.
I hope most of you are asking yourselves why you have heard so little, or anything, about this in the American media?
That's because now, as war is imminent, most of the major U.S. news outlets are indistinguishable from "Pravda," the official government news agency in the old Soviet Union. If the government doesn't tell us, we don't report it. Let's not upset the company line. Simple as that.
The governments of the United States and Great Britain are so hell-bent for war, so desperate to create a pretext to attack Iraq, that they are willing to say just about anything.
The document, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation," which Powell used to support his case, was billed as a new assessment based on the work of British intelligence services.
In fact, much of it was taken, sometimes verbatim, from sources anyone could find. It was cobbled together, a cut-and-paste job sold to the world as dramatic new information.
Britain's ITN TV network exposed the dossier for what it is when they found the "smoking gun for plagiarism" -- spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors from the original articles were reproduced.
The British government, caught red-handed, admits pirating the information. But what does this incident say about our own State Department?
An American graduate student working in Monterey, Calif. writes a term paper using old documents, lazy British spies steal the work wholesale, and the American Secretary of State uses the material as part of his argument to convince the world we need a preemptive war with Iraq.
The FBI reminds us this week that al-Qaeda, not Iraq, continues to pose the greatest danger to our national security. Based on a new, non-plagiarized assessment, the bureau presents the main conclusion that "al-Qaeda led by Osama bid Laden remains, for the foreseeable future, the most serious threat against the United States."
Would someone please pass that information on to the White House, State Department and Pentagon?
While Powell tried to make a circumstantial and tenuous link between al-Qaeda and Saddam, he fell way short. The New York Times reports CIA analysts are complaining that the Bush administration is pressuring them to exaggerate any remote links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The FBI is caught in the same political squeeze, and one agent told the Times, "We've been looking at this hard for more that a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there."
But when the FBI does find a real and important link with al-Qaeda, and they want to ask some questions of a key witness, she slips out of the United States with the aid of the Saudi Embassy.
The Washington Post uncovered this incredible, but predictably underreported, story. Ali Marri, a Saudi citizen, was arrested in Los Angeles after the terrorist attacks. He is accused of lying to the FBI about his contacts and phone conversations with a suspected al-Qaeda operative, Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi.
Hawsawi is the man federal investigators believe handled the bank accounts and was the paymaster for the Sept. 11 hijackers.
A federal grand jury subpoenaed Ali Marri's wife Maha to testify about what she knows about her husband's suspected al-Qaeda links. The FBI yanked her passport.
While waiting to testify, the Saudi Embassy spent $180,000 for her lawyers, gave her an apartment, limousines, drivers and a $3000 monthly stipend.
The Post learned Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States and a Bush family intimate, tried to get Secretary of State Powell to return Maha Marri's passport. The State Department refused. But that didn't stop our "friends," the arrogant Saudis. They issued her a new passport and Prince Bandar arranged for her to be slipped out of the United States, probably on one of his private jets.
The FBI is outraged that a vital witness in a case with direct links to al-Qaeda leaves the country with impunity. The Bush administration says nothing.
So there you have it. We use plagiarized term papers to justify war. Osama bin Laden smokes his hookah in the mountains of Pakistan and plans more violence. The treacherous Saudis help a witness escape. And our military prepares to bomb Baghdad and invade Iraq.
"Madness! Madness! Madness!"
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | February 11 2003 |