[news] T r u t h o u t: Into the Darkness

[Gordon Flett]

http://truthout.org/docs_03/031903A.shtml

 Into the Darkness
 By William Rivers Pitt
 T r u t h o u t | Perspective
 Tuesday 18 March 2003

  An associate of mine, a former political appointee, recently spoke to
a Republican friend of his who serves in a senior position in what has
become the Office of Homeland Security. He reports that this official,
along with many of his colleagues across the political spectrum within
the apparatus of government, are absolutely terrified of George W. Bush.
According to this official, the consensus is that Bush has completely
lost touch with reality, and is bringing us to a place where politics
will no longer matter.

  A London newspaper, the Guardian, has quoted a source close to the
administration as saying, "This has been the worst diplomatic debacle of
our lifetime." A senior White House official is also quoted as saying,
in a voice reportedly awash with sarcasm, "There's a recognition that
this has not been our finest diplomatic hour."

  There is no calculating the understatement here. There was never any
diplomacy involved here to begin with. This has been a disaster, and it
is about to get worse by orders of magnitude.

  The weapons inspectors, empowered by UN resolution 1441 to ferret out
the weapons everyone is so concerned about, have packed their bags and
fled Iraq. They have been betrayed by the Bush administration, by Tony
Blair and by Spain, as they worked to protect us from both these weapons
and from the dreadful effects of a war in the Middle East.  

  The inspections were working – weapons were being dismantled, Hussein
was under control, and no mass destruction materials were found. The
fact that the hammer has come down before these inspectors were even
half done with their work means, simply, that those pushing for war
never wanted the inspections to work in the first place.

  Welcome to the timeline.

  Very soon now, perhaps within the next 72 hours, the Pentagon's
"Shock and Awe" battle plan will be put into effect. 3,000 munitions,
including some 800 cruise missiles, will rain down on Baghdad, a city
inhabited by some 5 million civilians. This will be done in the hope
that the Iraqi army will surrender, thus avoiding the need to send U.S.
troops in to fight a ruinous house-to-house battle.

  The Arab news service Al Jazeera, operating out of Qatar, will capture
images of thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians sprawled and
shattered and bloody in the Baghdad streets, in a manner quite like the
bodies we saw in New York on September 11. The resulting explosion of
rage within the moderate and extremist Muslim world will be immediate
and ferocious.

  The terrorism alert status in America will rise to red. Troops will
appear in the streets.

  Saddam Hussein will not flee, and his forces will stand in Baghdad. 
American troops will be forced to fight downtown.  

  The oilheads in Iraq will be fired, and the pipeheads will be opened.
Israel will be attacked, much to the dismay of Bush administration
officials who have pushed this war in the erroneous assumption that such
action will serve to protect that nation. Unlike the first Gulf War,
this time Israel will strike back.

  American homeland security forces – police, fire fighters and
emergency rescue personnel – will watch their radios nervously, waiting
for the inevitable call. They know, better than anyone, that this
country is not ready to defend itself against an attack. Their budgets
have been gutted, the promised funding to augment their preparedness has
not come. They are not ready, but they stand and wait regardless,
because that is what they have pledged to do.

  Somewhere in America – perhaps in New York, perhaps in Washington DC,
Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Miami,
Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Detroit, San Francisco, Cleveland, Atlanta,
perhaps in all of them simultaneously – there will be an explosion. A
group that cares nothing for the well being of Saddam Hussein will take
responsibility, in the name of those thousands of Iraqi Muslims
slaughtered in the initial aerial bombardment of Baghdad.

  The body bags will come out, here at home and across the sea in Iraq,
as Americans begin to die in terrible numbers.

  Martial law will be declared, habeas corpus will be suspended, posse
comitatus will be left aside, and the strictures outlined by both
Patriot Acts will come to full bloom. 227 years of constitutional law in
America will draw to a close.

  An oil shock will roll across the global community, ripping through an
already precarious economic situation. Here at home, the financial cost
of this war will hurl us further into deficit.

  More explosions will echo across the streets of America. They could be
nuclear or biological or chemical in nature, because in the effort to
overthrow Hussein we have ignored completely the fact that al Qaeda
certainly possesses the capabilities to attack us with these weapons,
having needed no help whatsoever from Hussein. These explosions could
come from simple fertilizer, as well. Remember that two men with a
sniper rifle and a car held Maryland hostage for a month. It does not
take much, considering the shoddy state of affairs in the homeland
security realm.

  In all likelihood, America will score a decisive military victory.
U.S. forces will invest Iraq. The Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root
will begin construction on any number of permanent military bases. 
Administration officials will begin to formulate plans for the removal
of other governments in the Middle East, both friendly and unfriendly,
by any means necessary.

  Civil war will break out in Iraq as the Shia majority, the Kurdish and
Sunni minorities, go for each other's throats. American constabulary
work there will become infinitely complicated.

  The United States of America has concluded an incredible, perhaps
unstoppable, race to the bottom since January of 2001. The disputed
election brought to power a mob of men – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
Perle, Bolton – who have been planning this war since at least 1997.
 
  The attacks of September 11, allowed in no small part by purposeful
blinders placed over the eyes of our intelligence services lest they
offend petroleum principalities like Saudi Arabia with their prickly
questions, gave these men the excuse they needed for war.

  The Bush administration's reaction to 9/11 – placing blame on
"evildoers" instead of starting an honest dialogue, blocking an
independent investigation of the attack for over a year, nominating
master secret-keeper Henry Kissinger to chair that investigative panel
in what was perhaps the most disgusting insult possible to the families
of the lost, ignoring the real terrorist threats in order to focus on
the politically expedient annihilation of Iraq, instituting the most
ham-fisted diplomatic push ever seen in the history of this nation by
utterly ignoring the eleven Security Council members who said no to this
war, disrupting international relations vital to the pursuit of true
terrorist threats, and all the while underfunding the homeland defenses
necessary to protect the American people – has led us to this dismal
place.

  The destruction of Saddam Hussein will do nothing, zero, zip, zilch,
nada, to protect America. It will place America and her citizens in
further peril. We stand alone and naked today. We will reap the
whirlwind.

  Take to the streets. Scream until your throat bleeds. Call whatever
congressional leaders you know, full in the knowledge that you will be
contacting a mob of failures, appeasers and political cowards. Make sure
you can look at yourself in the mirror as this darkness falls. Above
all else, do not succumb to despair.

  You owe that much to yourself, your children and your nation as we
fade to black.