So the mighty Niagara of whitewash flows on...

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Sun, 05 Jun 2005 12:18:36 -0700

So the mighty Niagara of whitewash flows on...

 

 

ERIC MARGOLIS

So the mighty Niagara of whitewash flows on....

Sun Jun 5, 2005 15:52

 

So the mighty Niagara of whitewash flows on...

 

Bush rewards his failures

U.S. commission on Iraq just the latest surge in a Niagara of

whitewash, Eric Margolis says

By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

 

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2005/04/09/989932\

..html

 

U.S. intelligence was " dead wrong " in its pre-war beliefs about

Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, a U.S. presidential

commission reported 10 days ago.

 

And just as wrong about nearly every other charge levelled at

Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

 

This column also used " dead wrong " over the past decade when

attacking all the lies being manufactured about Iraq.

 

Interestingly, the many journalists and pundits who heaped abuse

on my head and accused me of treason for daring to challenge the

pro-war propaganda they so greedily lapped up have fallen strangely

silent as the truth about Iraq emerges.

 

Still, let's recall that the prime mission of presidential and

parliamentary commissions tends to be not fact-finding but sweeping

scandal under the rug and deflecting blame from politicians.

 

After mouthing pious verities about needing better intelligence,

the commission, appointed by President George W. Bush, amazingly

found: (a) No one was really guilty of the Iraq intelligence fiasco;

and (b) there was no White House political pressure on the

intelligence community to justify the war.

 

So the mighty Niagara of whitewash flows on. The report made no

mention of Bush's claims about Iraqi drones of death, Vice-President

Dick Cheney's pressure on the CIA to declare Iraq a nuclear menace, or

Condoleezza Rice's terrorizing Americans with talk of nuclear mushroom

clouds.

 

It ignored evidence from senior Bush aides Paul O'Neill and

Richard Clarke that the president obsessively pushed for war with Iraq

soon after taking office.

 

There was no mention of Doug Feith's Office for Special Plans, a

covert Pentagon intelligence shop set up to funnel claims about Iraq

to the White House and U.S. media produced by a cabal of pro-war

neo-conservatives -- which was investigated for giving Israel

classified material. No mention of patriotic CIA officers reportedly

fired or demoted for refusing to participate in such activities.

 

No mention of how national security was corrupted, manipulated and

distorted for partisan political gain.

 

The report called Iraq " one of the most damaging intelligence

failures in recent American history. "

 

But, amazingly, the whitewash committee found no one responsible

for this disaster. Victory has a hundred fathers; defeat is an orphan.

 

Iraq just happened. Bad mogambo. A no-fault war.

 

This is the third preposterous whitewash foisted on credulous

Americans.

 

Whitewash One was the 9/11 investigation.

 

That commission found no one responsible for allowing the worst

attack on the U.S. since Pearl Harbor, though Bush and Rice were

bombarded with warnings that an assault was imminent.

 

The awkward fact that then-attorney general John Ashcroft actually

cut spending on terrorism right before 9/11 was conveniently ignored.

 

Whitewash Two: Torture scandals at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.

detention camps. Seven senior military investigations found only a few

cases of " minor misconduct " and " isolated abuse " by low-ranking personnel.

 

The torture of prisoners by electricity, freezing, drowning, sleep

and sensory deprivation, beatings, dog attacks, and sexual humiliation

were, claimed the Pentagon, all the fault of a few trailer trash

sadists, though the chain of responsibility for these war crimes

clearly ran right up to the secretary of defence.

 

Three whitewashes later, many Bush administration officials

arguably guilty of monumental blundering or even possible criminal

acts have instead been richly rewarded.

 

Donald Rumsfeld, accused Geneva Conventions violater, was renamed

Pentagon chief. National Security Adviser Rice, asleep on guard duty

on 9/11, became secretary of state.

 

Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz was forced on the World Bank as

its new chief.

 

Loudmouth neocon buffoon John Bolton was nominated UN ambassador;

faithful apparatchik John Negroponte was made intelligence czar. Only

the CIA's hand-kissing chief, George Tenet, lost his job, albeit with

a Medal of Freedom.

 

White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote briefs justifying

torture, was named attorney general. Poor bumbling Colin Powell went

from secretary of state to deserved obscurity.

 

And the commander-in-chief of the whole fiasco, George W. Bush,

was triumphantly re-elected by grateful Americans, proving that

nothing succeeds like failure -- provided you wave the flag hard

enough and keep the whitewash coming.

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