DETROIT -- George W. Bush has made a mess of America's role in the world, and it will take decades to undo the harm his "big bully" and "my way or the highway" foreign policy has created.
The lies and deception about the purposes for invading Iraq will not go away, and the president's repeated assertion that Iraq is the "central front" in the war on terrorism is more fabricated nonsense used to justify the difficult and costly occupation of the nation doomed to be an American puppet and base for U.S. military operations in the Middle East.
Last Friday, Bush made a campaign speech to the troops from the Army's Third Infantry Division on their return to their home base at Fort Stewart, Ga. Unlike his speech the Sunday night before, when George W. was shaky and somber with that "just goosed" look as he told the taxpayers they'd have to cough up another $87 billion for the war, the president was all smirk and confidence, beaming in the Georgia sun.
He loves speaking on military bases -- no demonstrators and guaranteed adulation and applause. He refused to bring his case for war with Iraq to the European Parliament because he couldn't be guaranteed a standing ovation. Differences and dissension unsettle our fearless leader.
His strident, bellicose speech at Fort Stewart set the pace for the style and themes we'll hear for the next 13 months. "We're bringing the guilty to justice, taking the fight to the enemy. ... We're striking our enemies before they strike us again," the president screeched in that insufferable twang. The rhetoric George W.'s "Brain," top political adviser Karl Rove, chose was right out of the Book of Deuteronomy.
This is not just the commander in chief and leader of the free world. The great liberator is speaking. Behold the mighty hand of God promising righteous wrath: "We will bring justice to those who plot against America." That's much more biblical than "Bring 'em on."
The president praised the Third Infantry Division for rolling into Baghdad as Saddam's army headed for the hills. Twice in the speech, he mentioned Saddam's toppled statue, but never spoke of the flesh-and-blood Saddam himself. Gee, I wonder why?
Bush spoke of every kind of terrorism festering in the world and vowed, "We're rolling back the terrorist influence at the heart of its power," meaning, of course, Iraq.
But as usual, the president did not use the forbidden words in reference to international terrorism -- Osama bin Laden and Saudi Arabia.
Osama, the "unspoken," is still on the lam, and the CIA says new audio and video tapes released to Al Jazeera probably are the real words and visage of the murderous man who plotted the Sept. 11 attacks. Sorry to disappoint the dittoheads and spoil Karl Rove's rhetoric, but Saddam had nothing to do with the carnage.
Bin Laden's rage is the product of the wacko aberration of Islam known as Wahhabism, a toxic faith that provides the theological basis for terrorism. Wahhabism is another forbidden word for the president. He can't use it, because it would offend his and his father's dear friends in the Saudi royal family, Wahhabis all.
They don't like the term because it underlines the distinction between their militant intolerance and the civilized people of Islam. The Wahhabis despise Shi'ism, the majority faith in Iraq, and Sufism, Islam's mystical and peaceful tradition.
They hate Christians and Jews and, for that matter, anyone who doesn't embrace Wahhabism. They use Saudi oil money to finance schools around the world that preach hate for the West and recruit terrorists.
The Saudi government gives lip service to fighting terrorism, but allows the preaching of hate to ensure the political support of the Wahhabi clerics. That compact with the devil gave rise to bin Laden, who then promised the Saudi royals a deal they couldn't refuse.
Author Gerald Posner, in his book "Why America Slept," provides a revealing look at Saudi treachery. He quotes U.S. officials who interrogated Abu Zubaydah, a captured al-Qaeda leader who told them the terrorist group had an explicit deal with the Saudi royal family to refrain from violence in the kingdom in exchange for Saudi financial backing.
Posner writes that bin Laden cut the deal with longtime Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal bin Abdul Aziz. As always, the Saudis deny everything, hide the truth and keep up the lies to comfort themselves and their Bush family allies.
Saudi royals are always eager to kick in for Bush family projects. One prince forked over $1 million for former first lady Barbara Bush's project against illiteracy, another wrote a check for $1 million for the George Bush Presidential Library, and yet another donated $500,000 to the George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship fund for Phillips, the blueblood prep school the president and his daddy attended.
Bush the Elder runs interference with the Saudis for the Carlyle Group, an international investment bank with big stakes in the Middle East and military industries.
The Bush administration's devotion to the Saudis has no bounds. We now know what was long suspected. The decision to allow 140 members of the Saudi royal family and their hangers-on, including bin Laden's relatives, to flee the United States just days after Sept. 11 came right from the White House.
The no-fly order was lifted (while tens of thousands of Americans were stranded around the world) just for their comfort and convenience. I dare speculate that President Bush, his father and the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar, hatched the quick exit plan. Would some brave reporter please ask the president about that at his next biannual news conference?
George W. is now joining Attorney General John Ashcroft on the campaign trail, insisting that the way to fight terrorism is by creating a police state under the guise of an expanded and more far-reaching USA Patriot Act. This blueprint for fascism is a serious threat to fundamental American liberties and will do nothing to thwart the likes of bin Laden. Bush and Ashcroft demand more powers, when they failed to use constitutional and conventional criminal investigation techniques with the mother of all terrorism intelligence opportunities.
The FBI says none of the 140 Saudis that were spirited away had anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks or terrorism. We don't know that for sure, but this is certain: They were not properly interrogated. They were given perfunctory interviews in a lounge at Boston's Logan Airport as they prepared to board the courtesy jet flights.
The FBI's own standard procedures were violated. The Saudis should have been interrogated individually at the bureau's offices, not at their convenience and in order to hasten their departure.
We would have learned far more about bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Sept. 11 attacks and the Saudi financing of terrorism if we locked them all up indefinitely and conducted a careful, unhurried investigation.
A few nights in the Suffolk County jail and those oil-rich, pampered bastards would be singing away. We missed that great opportunity to learn the truth and we can never recover it.
George W. Bush wants us to believe the "central front" in the war on terrorism is Iraq, when it should be Saudi Arabia.
That's where the money and radical beliefs that underpin terror come from and those forces are still at work while our attention is turned the wrong way.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | September 16 2003 |