http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101204A.shtmlBearing Bloody Witness By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 12 October 2004
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter - bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
- Stephen Crane, 'In the Desert'The release of the report by Charles Duelfer and the Iraq Survey Group, which involved 1,625 U.N. and U.S. inspectors searching 1,700 sites in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction over two years at a cost of more than $1 billion, told me what I have known for more than two years.
More than two years ago, in August of 2002, I wrote a book titled 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know.' The book was published in September of 2002, six months before the Iraq invasion was undertaken, and took a simple stand:
"The case for war against Iraq has not been made. This is a fact. It is doubtful in the extreme that Saddam Hussein has retained any aspect of the chemical, nuclear and biological weapons programs so thoroughly dismantled by the United Nations weapons inspectors who worked tirelessly in Iraq for seven years. This is also a fact. The idea that Hussein has connections to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists is laughable - he is a secular leader who has worked for years to crush fundamentalist Islam within Iraq, and if he were to give weapons of any kind to Qaeda, they would use those weapons on him first." - p. 9
I wrote it after hearing former U.N weapons inspector Scott Ritter speak at Suffolk University in Boston on July 23, 2002. I stayed up all night after his talk to write about his dire predictions in an article for this publication that, I believe, helped in a small way to begin the unprecedented surge of activism against the invasion which eventually swept across the world.
"The Third Marine Expeditionary Force in California is preparing to have 20,000 Marines deployed in the Iraq region for ground combat operations by mid-October," Ritter told that Suffolk crowd in July of 2002. "The Air Force used the vast majority of its precision-guided munitions blowing up caves in Afghanistan. Congress just passed emergency appropriations money and told Boeing company to accelerate their production of the GPS satellite kits, that go on bombs that allow them to hit targets while the planes fly away, by September 30, 2002."
"The clock is ticking," continued Ritter to the Suffolk gathering, "and it's ticking towards war. And it's going to be a real war. It's going to be a war that will result in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It's a war that is going to devastate Iraq. It's a war that's going to destroy the credibility of the United States of America."
A publisher, after reading this article, asked me to write a book about it. The book was to be short - about 30,000 words - and would serve to cut through the propaganda bombardment for war that had only just begun. I reached out to Ritter, who was kind enough to give me a dozen hours of his time for an extended interview on the matter of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Thanks to Mr. Ritter, and to a broad swath of research and investigation I performed after our interview, I wrote in 'War on Iraq' the following: "The coalition that came together for the Gulf War is nonexistent today, and a vast majority of the international community stands furiously against another war on Iraq. If Bush decides unilaterally to attack, he will be in violation of international law. If Bush does attack Iraq, he will precipitate the exact conflict of cultures between the West and Islam that Osama bin Laden was hoping for when his agents flew three planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. An attack on Iraq could bring about a wider world war America cannot afford, and that a vast majority of Americans do not desire. These are facts."
(snip)
Almost 40,000 human beings in total are either dead or damaged, sacrificed on the altar of George W. Bush's lies. How many new names, words and phrases have entered the American lexicon since this began? Shock and Awe. Valerie Plame. Abu Ghraib. Yellowcake. PNAC.
There is an old word which applies to the whole situation: Shame.
Shame on this administration for exploiting our fears after September 11 in order to get this war. Shame on them for lying to us all, day after day, for all this time. Shame on them for refusing to admit, even today, that we have embarked upon a disastrous course. Shame on every company who barnstormed to profit from this war by way of our tax dollars. Shame on our 'journalists,' who failed completely to report the truth that has been lying fallow since July of 2002 and before.
Shame on any American who continues to support this administration and its policies. Shame on us all if these policies are allowed to continue after November. No administration, in the history of the nation, has been less deserving of support or approval than the one which currently fouls the corridors of power in Washington D.C.
As for myself, I am almost bereft of words. I have spent every day of the last two years working against the invasion, the occupation, and the lies that rode shotgun . I have met the soldiers forced to fight it, now returned home with their trust in the commander-in-chief gutted. I have met the mothers and fathers, the sons and daughters, the brothers and sisters, the wives and husbands of the dead and wounded. I have felt their tears on my shoulder, and I have read their anguished words in letters and emails beyond counting. I have borne bloody witness to this horror, and it has left me scarred.
Hunter S. Thompson, when confronting the now-quaint scandal of Watergate, wrote about, "a compulsion to do something like drive down to the White House and throw a bag of live rats over the fence." I know how he felt, and yet my emotions range far beyond a desire for actions of mere symbolism. Cassandra, I am sure, wanted to tear her hair and scream, wanted to lash out, wanted to do anything that would re-make the world into a place where the truths she described were believed before the blood began to flow. I know how she feels, as well.
...more...
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