Magellan's Log: Just 16 Words

Just 16 Words???

                                     "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
                                       recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
                                                            --George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, 2003.

Prez got in some trouble when the old WMD's didn't turn up in Iraq, and people went back and took another look at the arguments he'd used to convince the country a pre-emptive war was just the tonic that the we--and of course--the Middle East needed.

Prominent among those arguments, made my him and others in the administration, was the contention that Iraq either had or very soon would have atomic bombs. Biological and chemical weapons are bad enough, but as soon as you play the atomic card rhetorically, you've really got everybody's attention. Who knows how much we've learned from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the photographs are part of the terrifying cultural baggage that all humanity carries around now.

When it turned out that the information he cited in the state of the union speech was a hoax that had been discounted months before by the CIA, a hue and cry began about how Dubya had, if not exactly lied, misled us by warning of the threat of nuclear attack when in fact there was not such threat.

Karl Rove and his propagandists quickly came up with a double spin in order to defuse the critics' arguments:

1. The president didn't say Iraq had got uranium from Africa. He said the British had learned that he tried to get uranium from Africa.

2. Anyway, the atomic threat argument was "only 16 words" in a long speech in which many other reasons for a pre-emptive war were put forth.

Can you imagine a malefactor in junior high, when caught, getting away with those kinds of excuses to the vice principal? Whatever their source, Bush's arguments along with those of his cohorts leading up to the war clearly were intended to evoke fear in the citizens of the United States. And the tactic worked. His ratings, even for all the continuing problems in Iraq, remain high.

Once again it seems that Rove et al. have triumphed, have got away with blatant lies. Until the next election, it seems there's not much to be done about this dangerous state of affairs.

Except perhaps to try to remember what has actually been said, what has been claimed, and what has it fact turned out to be the case.

To that end, we have constructed a public service bumpersticker, which you will find here. Print and glue to your vehicle. Cleverly repressed and oppressed as we are under this regime, it's hard to imagine an act of greater patriotism.

Go to the "Just 16 Words" Bumpersticker >>

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