by Eric Margolis
It's very difficult keeping up with Mideast news due to the Orwellian newspeak coming from Washington.
So here's a handy list of key terms, translated into simple English.
Liberation - Invasion.
Coalition - The U.S. and British invaders, plus some troops from rent-a-nations like Romania and Poland. In the past, "the coalition" would have been called imperial forces and mercenary auxiliaries.
Dictator - A ruler you don't like, or who does not cooperate.
Statesman - A cooperative dictator.
Stability - when things go the way Uncle Sam likes, ie., the status quo.
Instability - when things don't go the way Unc Sam wants, ie., when trouble-makers try to change the status quo.
Iraq reconstruction - a process whereby big firms that contribute to the president's re-election campaign obtain contracts to rebuild the damage caused by U.S. bombing.
Freeing Iraq's oil assets - Washington's seizure and sale of Iraqi oil, which in no way can be compared to Cuba's seizure and sale of U.S.-owned property, a dastardly crime.
Mideast democracy - regimes that hold rigged elections and obey Washington's orders.
Free trade - pouring goods and services into the newly "liberated" country, and buying up its key industrial assets at fire-sale prices.
Terrorism - violent acts by dangerous fanatics and malcontents who refuse to accept the downtrodden status assigned to them by Washington.
Anti-terrorism - State terrorism.
Uranium - a yellowish mineral from Niger that causes red faces in the White House.
Iraq Administrator - A pro-consul or gaulieter, disguised as a minor suburban bureaucrat.
Drones of death - Iraqi remotely piloted aircraft that the White House claimed were poised to fly off Iraqi ships lurking in the North Atlantic and shower fiendish germs on a sleeping America - which turn out to be two model airplanes, only one of which could fly. See "vans of death."
Vans of death - Claimed by Washington to be Iraqi mobile germ warfare laboratories, but turn out, on inspection, to be British-supplied trucks for inflating weather balloons.
Weapons of Mass Destruction - Nasty weapons, existing or non-existing, that the other side has. When your side has them, they become invisible.
Torture - a foul act committed by your enemies. When your side does it, it's called intensive interrogation in Guantanamo.
Homeland security - bolting the barn door after the horse has escaped by rounding up Muslims and denying them due process of law.
French - Insubordinate ingrates and depraved chain-smokers who had the nerve to try to block the jolly little war in Iraq, and now sneer, "we told you so."
Germans - Untrustworthy. Just when you order them to be warlike again, they go soft. Wait until they see the next dozen WWII epics from Hollywood.
Canadians - A bunch of pot-smoking, pinko, wimp nancy boys who marry their best friends and refuse to obey orders from the Great White Father in Washington.
Islam - An evil faith that promotes violence and hatred, as proven by the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who learned about the agents of the devil while encountering them in motel rooms.
Full story...
It is right that we should continue to argue over the route to war in Iraq. But it is more urgent that we address the continuing chaos, suffering and loss of life. The British military was very clear that the conflict would take no more than a few weeks. In my briefings, they talked of the need to prepare for very rapid success. And - despite claims to the contrary - the UN was well prepared to return to Iraq as soon as order was restored to take charge of emergency humanitarian needs.
If you spent the middle-range of childhood during a particular decade (the 1980s), having been born into a particular kind of family (old Labour broadly covers it, but mung beans were probably involved), you will be inclined to find a conspiracy theory wherever a conspiracy theory could conceivably be found.
Britain ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq.
A first draft of memoirs by anti-war MP George Galloway have been stolen from his Portuguese cottage.
David Kelly spoke openly to fellow members of a religious sect about his concerns over the 'interpretation' of intelligence material in the Government's September dossier on whether Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Ministers threatened revenge on the BBC in the feud that led to the death of the government scientist David Kelly, according to senior sources within the corporation. One said: "There have been phone calls from within government saying 'we are going to get you', talking about 'vengeance'. There's a war going on against the BBC of some kind."
When it was first announced that two British citizens, Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg, were to stand trial before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay, it appeared that at long last Tony Blair would do something to stand up for their human rights. The government came under parliamentary pressure, with 200 MPs of all political parties, including senior Tories and Labour loyalists, signing a motion calling for the men's repatriation to this country. Government ministers Chris Mullin and Baroness Symons were authorised to say that vigorous representations would be made and the government dispatched its most senior law officer, Lord Peter Goldsmith, the attorney general to the US for talks.
I have read it twenty times and I still don't believe it. The latest PIPA Knowledge Networks poll shows that a third of the American public believes US forces have actually found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A further 22 per cent think Iraqi troops used banned chemical or biological weapons against US soldiers in Iraq.
Prosecutors investigating the apparent 1982 suicide of Roberto Calvi, the Vatican-connected financier implicated in Italy's biggest postwar banking scandal, have concluded he was murdered, reports said Wednesday.
A concerted campaign by News International newspapers to castigate the BBC in its row with No 10 sparked accusations yesterday that Rupert Murdoch's titles were being used to damage his biggest broadcasting rival.
After recently moving out of Washington after more than 22 years there, I realize now more than ever how divorced from reality (and the ethics of the rest of the country) the nation’s capital has become. What is regarded as deception and even lying everywhere else is just good clean fun on the banks of the Potomac. A case in point is the administration’s admission that President Bush’s State of the Union reference to Iraq’s alleged quest to buy uranium from Africa should not have been inserted in the speech.
An MI5 expert in terrorism has admitted that the security service would use information extracted from tortured prisoners as evidence in court.
A report claiming genetically modified crops pose little risk to health was dubbed a scandal last night.
The name of a key guilty party can be given today to the judicial inquiry into Dr David Kelly's death.
The UK supermarket chain Tesco has admitted testing controversial technology that tracks customers buying certain products through its stores. Anyone picking up Gillette Mach3 razor blades at its store in Cambridge, in the east of England will have his or her picture taken.
And the lies, the flagrant GOP bitch slappings of the American public, the maniacal jabs straight in eye of truth with the icepick of utter BS, have just reached some sort of critical mass, some sort of saturation point of absurdity and pain and ridiculousness and you just have to stand up and applaud.