KEPT IN THE DARK

 

"White House Warns Public to Prepare for Loss of Life" reads a headline in the International Herald Tribune (March 19, 2003).  White House spokesman Ari Fleisher is reported to have said that "a war with Iraq would be as short as possible, but Americans should be prepared for casualties."

 

How stupid does Ari Fleisher think the American public is?  Does he believe that they didn't know that there would be casualties when they supported a Bush league foreign policy that insisted on invading Iraq?

 

Furthermore, Fleisher refers to the invasion as a war.  When did a pre-emptive strike by a bully against a pip-squeak with little more than a big mouth become a war?

 

Has it been presented to the US Congress as "a war"?  Has the American public supported going to war?  All along Ari Fleisher and his bosses have been telling the public that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man, not that he had attacked the US and provoked a war.

 

Now Fleisher says, "Americans ought to be prepared for loss of  life."  Whoa!  Where was this neat little risk assessment when the US administration was hawking the strike?

 

To add insult to injury, Fleisher tells his fellow Americans that they "ought to be prepared for the importance of disarming Saddam Hussein to protect the peace."

 

He might as well have started off his address by saying, "My fellow dumb yokels..."  Of course that would have given him away.  But any White House press secretary who utters something as inane as that comment and expects people to buy it, has to be convinced of  their utter stupidity.

 

On the other hand, he may know what he's doing.  He may be right about America's intelligence level.  The general public may just be stupid enough to believe that you wage an undeclared war to protect the peace.

 

The Tribune article goes on to say that "Mr. Fleischer's comments were among the most direct from the White House so far on the costs and risks of a war." 

 

Why haven't the costs and risks been taken up before?  Shouldn't these have been part of the decision making process in a democratic society of an informed public? 

Or should the decisions all have been made by an exclusive inner sanctum representing only the interests of a segment of corporate America (Bush, Cheney, Rice and oil) and Israel (Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Wurmser and Fleisher)?

 

For that matter, why hasn't Fleisher told his stupid American audience that in 1996, according to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Perle, Feith and David Wurmser, now an assistant to Bolton, wrote a policy proposal for Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel's prime minister?

 

Included in their advice were tips on how to manipulate the American government and advice to drop the peace plan, drop the idea of land for peace and concentrate on toppling Saddam Hussein and eventually replacing other Middle Eastern governments in order to create a safe environment for Israel.

 

Either the American public is as stupid as Mr. Fleisher gives them credit for being or the Press Secretary is echoing the patronizing derogation of his masters toward a public it has religiously kept in the dark.