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CounterPunch
February
28, 2003
Paying Through the
Nose to Kill Iraqi Kids
War Tax: $320
Per American Citizen
By KURT NIMMO
According to some estimates, Bush's Iraq attack
will cost each and every American $320. Now, for the Waltons
and Gates and Buffetts, this isn't a whole lot of scratch, but
for most of us it's a decent chunk of change. For instance, I
need a new computer for writing these articles and $320 would
be a nice start. Instead, that money will go toward killing innocent
children, pregnant women, grandmas, grandpas, and a whole lot
of other people in Iraq. The money is siphoned off before my
employer cuts me a check. Most of it goes right to Donald Rumsfeld.
Now I don't have a problem with taxes,
not like a whole lot of libertarian types who think giving one
red cent to the government is theft. I realize we need bridges,
highways, park rangers, schools, etc. I'd like to see more go
toward helping people out -- especially in these tough economic
times -- but that's another ball of wax. Most of our taxes go
to the military and the likes of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon,
etc., who pocket the money and deliver (usually over budget and
late) questionable weapons systems. Apache helicopters, Abrams
tanks, Stealth bombers, etc., all of this stuff is great if you
intend to fight big wars in far away places like Afghanistan
and Iraq (or Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea).
Once upon a time, the military was supposed
to protect America from attack. Now the military is used to attack
other countries. Not because they threaten you or me. Because
it's profitable. And because a certain dinky nation has figured
out how to make the US military a proxy for its own selfish interests.
In fact, the government mostly invents
"threats" so it can justify all this spending. Do you
remember Reagan warning that the Nicaraguans would invade Texas
if we didn't support the contras? The Cold War was mostly a scam.
We had the so-called missile gap, the bomber gap, and most of
it was hype. As Kennedy noted, these "gaps" were mostly
mythical, they were created by the Pentagon and the Eisenhower
administration, which "distorted the facts and created a
myth of the gap that didn't exist." Eisenhower eventually
warned us about the "military-industrial complex" and
its "unwarranted influence" on the "very structure
of our society." He said this after he let the Pentagon
have its way.
Bush has 32 former arms industry executives,
consultants, and major stockholders in his administration (according
to Michelle Ciarrocca, of the Arms Trade Resource Center). Lockheed
Martin VP Bruce Jackson was the finance chair of the Bush for
President campaign. He was heard to brag at a conference that
he would be in a position to "write the Republican platform"
on defense if Bush was nominated. Dick Cheney spent years running
Halliburton, which ranked 18th on the Pentagon's top contractors
list in FY 1999. Cheney's wife, Lynne, served on Lockheed Martin's
board. Secretary of the Air Force James Roche is a former Northrop
Grumman vice president. Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz also worked
for Northrop Grumman as consultants. Richard Armitage was a Boeing
consultant and Karl Rove a Boeing shareholder (Armitage was also
a consultant for Raytheon). And, of course, daddy Bush sits on
the board of directors of the Carlyle Group (as does James Baker,
the former secretary of state), an investment consortium contracting
for United Defense. "None of these links is illegal,"
writes investigative reporter Andrew Gumbel for The Independent
UK, "but that does not mean there is no conflict of interest."
No kidding.
Really, it doesn't matter anymore. These
guys don't even bother to hide what they're doing, maybe because
so few people seem to care and, besides, who's going to argue
now that we're faced with global terrorism and Saddam's arsenal
of bio and chem weapons? Both these "threats" are grossly
overstated but, hey, don't expect the corporate media -- who
also own and profit handsomely from death merchant stock -- to
report this on the evening news. As Boeing Vice Chairman Harry
Stonecipher told the Wall Street Journal, "the purse is
now open" so the sky is the limit. Don Rumsfeld and his
boys over at the Pentagon never saw a weapons system they didn't
love. Never mind that the so-called national missile defense
system -- that scientists say will not work -- will not stop
a single terrorist.
Actually, Bush and his neocon chickenhawks
aren't focused on preventing terrorism or even rounding up the
terrorists -- beyond a few lowly errand boys -- they keep telling
us are out there gunning for us. These guys are far more interested
in large wars, the kind that deplete expensive JDAMs and cruise
missiles and DU munitions in large numbers. Not wars against
puny and ragtag bands of terrorists, but rather big state players
such as Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and maybe down the road
China. Now that's some serious war making, enough to keep Lockheed
Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northup Grumman, et al, busy for decades
-- since Bush's "war on terrorism" is promised to last
for the rest of our lives, maybe for more than a hundred years
if Iranophobe and chickenhawk Michael Ledeen has his way.
Say au revoir to the "peace dividend"
forever.
Americans, it seems, just don't give
a whit. Sure, hundreds of thousands of them turned out recently
to voice their opposition to Bush's Iraq attack, but that's small
potatoes considering there are nearly 300 million people in the
United States. It's not even one percent of the population, so
our unelected leader can safely ignore them.
"You know, size of protest, it's
like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a
focus group. The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon
the security -- in this case, the security of the people,"
Bush said with customary articulacy.
I bet millions buy into this "security
of the people," even as Bush makes us less secure by threatening
other nations with everything from cluster bombs to nukes --
that is if they refuse to grovel at his feet like good "vassals"
(as Zbigniew Brzezinski calls most people in the third world).
If 20 or 30 million Americans went in
the street and told Bush what they think of his plan to mass
murder tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, well, chances
are Bush may pay attention, especially if the protesters were
a bit rambunctious. Even Nixon fretted over demonstrations, although
he never let on. Of course, Bush may pay attention in a negative
way, as in making sure the Son of the Patriot Act is rushed through
Congress and the FBI does to the current antiwar movement what
it did to its ancestor 30 years ago.
No, I have no confidence in the American
people. They will not put this madness to bed. $320? Big deal.
Most Americans are resigned to paying through the nose for everything
from corporate welfare to propping up Israel and paying for the
slaughter of Palestinians.
Israel is about the only excuse Bush
has to attack Iraq. Naturally, he won't say this, he will talk
about terrorists instead. But the real deal is Israel needs a
war declared on Islam. Such a war will directly benefit Israel.
A war on Islam will be good for business,
too.
Americans like Israelis, or at least
Christian Americans like them. Some folks are calling Bush a
"Christian Zionist," which is to say he believes all
kinds of farcical biblical stuff about the Jews and God and the
Land of Israel as it relates to the so-called Rapture and the
End Days. Out of 98 million Christian evangelicals in America,
something like 40 million buy into this fairy tale as popularized
by Hal Lindsey, the father of Christian Zionism. "The center
of the entire prophetic forecast is the State of Israel,"
writes Lindsey.
So, naturally, with a Christian Zionist
in the White House Israeli Zionists will get their way. It works
out well for the death merchants and oil transnationals, too.
These Christian Zionists have teamed
up with powerful Jewish lobbyists to push the Israel First agenda
in Washington. "AIPAC (the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee) has a lot of influence on foreign policy," says
J.J. Goldberg, editor of the Jewish newspaper The Forward. "They
work hard to ensure that America endorses pretty much Israel's
view of the world and the Middle East."
But AIPAC isn't the only pro-Israel pressure
group in Washington -- there are well over 100 Israel First PACs
operating in Congress, by far the most active of all PACs. AIPAC
was instrumental in helping Dubya's daddy get the first war against
the Iraqi people rolling in 1991, as the Wall Street Journal
reported at the time. Naturally, AIPAC and other pro-Israel PACS
are behind the current effort. They're pretty much writing the
script along with the Likudites in Israel.
If not for the fleecing of average tax-paying
Americans, Israel wouldn't be the serial murderer it is today.
Not only does Sharon tell the US how much it will fork over to
the tiny country in aid, but he also gives the US military its
marching orders. As Hebrew radio Kol Yisrael reported in October,
2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yelled at foreign Minister
Shimon Peres during a cabinet meeting, "Don't worry about
American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America,
and the Americans know it."
That control is exercised by the "Wolfowitz
cabal," led by Paul Wolfowitz (No. 2 man at the Defense
Department and key Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld confidant) and the 18-member
Defense Policy Board. Fellow travelers include Richard Perle
(chairman of the Defense Policy Board), Douglas J. Feith (Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy), Elliott Abrams (director of
the National Security Council's office for democracy), Josh Bolten
(Deputy Chief of Staff), and Lewis Libby (Chief of Staff to the
Vice President). All of these guys are Israel-centric Jews. They're
the shock troops of the Israel First federation.
As Lawrence F. Kaplan, Washington Post
columnist, put it recently "the problem here is the implication
that some of the Bush team have been doing Israel's bidding and,
by extension, harbor dual loyalties." So obvious is this
dual loyalty that when Josh Bolten went to Israel recently Sharon
told him Israel wants Iran taken out. Bolten said "he had
no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary
thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea,"
reported Ha'aretz.
"Iraq is the most dangerous threat,"
Sharon told a Knesset committee recently. Not only is Israel
within striking distance of Saddam's clunky Scuds (which he may
or may not have), but Saddam also pays a lot of lip service to
Palestinian resistance to Israel's illegal occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza. If Bush's Iraq attack benefits anybody directly,
it's the Israelis.
Think about that when you do your taxes
this year.
I bet you'd love to keep that $320 you'll
be donating to a war that mostly serves the interests of Israel,
maybe give it to your kid's school, or have the local municipality
use it to fix that pothole at the end of your street. Fat chance.
So long as Americans sit on their duffs and let Bush and his
"dual loyalty" Zionist minions run this country, things
will only get worse. Christian Zionists will not only destroy
America in their selfish zeal to embrace Armageddon and the Rapture
-- essentially a merit club of eternal life for good Christians
-- but they will also force hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to
pay with their lives.
I can't think of anything more self-indulgent
and criminal.
In the end, the only people who will
benefit from all of this are the Zionists in Israel. Bush is
ignoring our economic problems as he obsesses over the removal
of Saddam Hussein. He's raiding your social security and jacking
up the debt in order to do what Sharon and the Likudites demand.
The Christian Zionist hallucination is
about to reach cataclysmic proportions.
Is it worth losing your job so the Israelis
can feel safe and impose their political will on the Arab world?
Eventually, Bush may demand your 20 year old son fight wars of
conquest (in Iran, Syria, Libya) so the Zionists can have their
precious holy land -- which their bible tells them runs from
the River of Egypt to the River Euphrates. Oh, and so oil transnationals
and death merchants can make a whole lot more money, too. It's
no mistake so many Bushites are up to their necks in these businesses.
It's about time a whole lot more people
say enough is enough.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent online
gallery. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
We highly recommend regular visits to
Nimmo's website, Another
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February 22
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