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Polly Mann, W A M M
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They are so really fighting, they are,” my eight-year-old grandson said to my husband as the two were watching a wrestling match on television. He was a serious little boy—seriously angry. “You’re all wrong, Grandpa.”
My husband didn’t give in. “It’s all pretend—a game,” he said. “Nobody really gets hurt. The wrestlers are well paid and the audience enjoys the make-believe.” The arrival of cake and ice cream ended the argument, but for many months the two were quite cool to one another.
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Protesters at the Minnesota State Capitol joined millions of anti-war activists in a global day of action on March 20, 2004.
–Photo by Lisa Ann Pierce
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I thought about entering the fray and pointing out that TV ads were filled with actors who represented others—that the men and women in white coats with stethoscopes around their necks were actors playing doctors, that the little boy and the unshaven man having cereal together were not father and son but actors, and that the farmer talking about how many bushels to the acre his corn was producing probably couldn’t tell a corn field from a bean field. Of course, the viewing public knows about the deceptions. Most would not even call them deceptions. Should you bring up the subject, many would give you a quizzical look as if to say, “What kind of kook are you anyhow?”
We live with so many overt deceptions that we scarcely think about them. An actor made famous by playing the role of a powerful avenger was elected governor of California, despite his complete lack of political experience. But California is known for actors who have made such a leap.
Advertising is responsible for blurring a great deal of truth. “Infomercials”—30-minute programs which appear to be news programs but are, in reality, advertisements—are an excellent example. Mainstream newspapers have, over the years, given more and more space to entertainment, advertisements, sports, and business news. The front page is seldom more than one-half real news—that is, accounts of important events. One would think that this discounting of reality would make Americans, in general, more suspicious and more skeptical. But the contrary is true. As a society, we have become more gullible, less discerning, and less demanding of truth. And when it comes to truth in politics, we shrug our shoulders as if to say, “What can you expect of a politician?”
During my lifetime, every U.S. president has been discovered to have told at least one important lie. For years I believed that Franklin Delano Roosevelt never told a major lie while serving as president. I still remember the radio address in which he said that the Japanese, with no provocation whatsoever, bombed Pearl Harbor. But several years ago a wrecked Japanese vessel was found in the Pacific Ocean and researchers determined that it had been attacked by the U.S. Navy hours before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Dwight Eisenhower lied about Gary Power and the U-2 reconnaissance plane that was shot down. Some political spin doctors say that for a president to be caught in a lie is not too disastrous. He simply says it was a mistake and a retraction is offered. After all, only a small percentage of people will read the retraction as compared to the original lie. So, a lie may be indicated policy.
The nation is very much aware of the lies of Bill Clinton, but Clinton’s headline lies were mostly of a personal nature. The lies of George W. Bush are something else. In his 1999 campaign material he claims that after learning to fly the F-102 fighter jet, he was turned down for Vietnam duty because he “had not logged enough flight hours” to qualify for a combat assignment. The truth is that after having been given a commission as a second lieutenant, he patrolled the coastal waters of the U.S. But in May 1972, only 22 months after he completed pilot training, he stopped flying. He never flew a military aircraft again. Instead, he left his Guard unit in Houston and went to Alabama to work in a Republican Senate campaign. According to Joe Conason of the New York Observer and Salon.com: “Mr. Bush’s claim that he ‘continued flying with [his] unit for the next several years’ is an unabashed falsehood.”
Even before September 11, 2001, George W. Bush lied when he said he would protect social security and the social security trust fund. He lied when he said he would balance the budget. He lied when he said he would reduce the national debt. He lied when he said he would increase federal funding to states. He lied when he said he would expand our economy and add thousands of new jobs. He lied when he said he would not use the military to rebuild nations. And he lied big when he said Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction threatened this nation.
The former chief U.S. weapons inspector, David Kay, recently said that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction or the means to create them at the time of the U.S. invasion. The office of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Dem., CA) has documented 237 “specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq” made by senior members of the Bush Administration. Even in his 2004 State of the Union message, Bush said, “had we failed to act, the dictator’s weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day.”
The corporate media has never accused the president of lying. Not so with the organizations MoveOn and Win Without War. They sponsored a full-page ad in the New York Times listing five lies, noting, “It would be a tragedy if young men and women were sent to die for a lie.” But MoveOn was unable to get CBS to carry an anti-Bush television ad during the recent Super Bowl game.
Often, however, it’s not the big lies that the public fixates on. It’s like the turkey. You know—the one that Bush shared with the troops in Iraq. It turns out the troops didn’t have turkey. And the turkey we saw on the big platter that the president was carrying? The first reports were that it was a plastic turkey. But that was a canard. It was a real turkey that once gobbled just like the rest of the turkeys. But once butchered, it became a “trophy turkey,” prepared to look great but not to taste good.
More important, of course, was the truth about the capture of Saddam Hussein. Saddam was captured and held by the Kurdish troops belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and then turned over to U.S. troops. Saddam’s place of hiding was revealed to the Kurds by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam’s son, Uday. This news was reported by the Agence-France Press (AFP), the Sydney Morning Herald, and British media. This was also carried on the Internet, so the mainstream media surely know it but choose to ignore it. In the scheme of things, this contrived lie is not important, but is somehow akin to the show put on by television wrestlers.
Dr. Rosemary Radford Reuther, the noted theologian, has written a book in which she claims that George W. Bush not only had detailed information that the 9/11 attacks were going to occur, but also obstructed standard procedures to intervene and continues to obstruct efforts to investigate what happened. Reuther links the 9/11 attacks and the “New Pearl Harbor” imagined by the neo-conservative authors of the “Project for the New American Century: Rebuilding America’s Defenses” as necessary for the worldwide military expansion of U.S. imperialism.
The conflict in Haiti has provided another situation where lies abound. President Aristide (he’s still legally president) has said unequivocally that he was forced to accompany a contingent, including armed U.S. personnel, that was flown to the Central African Republic. Both Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney have said that Aristide left of his own free will. Whom are we to believe? The circumstances should provide the answer. Is it even plausible that Aristide would have picked up a bunch of U.S. soldiers and said to them, “Let’s fly to the Central African Republic, boys,” where Aristide would have no connections and no freedom of movement?
None of the Bush Administration’s lies, however, are as egregious as the ones that led us to war against Iraq, costing hundreds of U.S. lives and thousands upon thousands of Iraqi lives—mainly civilians. This is not counting the cost of the needed services that have been cancelled or eliminated due to the military’s priority for funds. Equally frightening is the Administration’s warning about the necessity for future wars. How can Bush and his cabal be stopped?
It is a good time to reread George Orwell’s 1984. In that novel, the country supported peace through war (sound familiar?). The government kept the populace on high alert against terrorists and constantly prepared for and engaged in war. In 1984, war is peace, ignorance is strength and freedom is slavery. The population had to be convinced that this was the truth. Through the medium of television and large telescreens they were constantly numbed and reminded this was so.
I am going to read Reuther’s The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 and buy a copy of 1984 and give it to my now 14-year-old grandson. |
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Activist Resources
Win Without War is leading an effort to censure George W. Bush for deliberately misleading the American people on reasons to invade Iraq. For more information and to take action, see www.winwithoutwarus.org.
Iraq Lies Resource
The “Iraq on the Record Report” was prepared at the behest of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Dem., CA). The report details “237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq” made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. All of the statements “were drawn from speeches, press conferences and briefings, interviews, written statements, and testimony by the five officials.”
The report and an associated, searchable database contain “statements made by the five officials that were misleading at the time they were made. The database does not include statements that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made.”
For more information, see www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/.
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete April 2004 Index - click here
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