http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/10/19/107.html
War & Terrorism Chris Floyd: 'Idiot wind' Posted on Saturday, October 20 @ 09:43:45 EDT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By Chris Floyd, Moscow Times
Anthrax is riding the autumn winds in America. Where does it come from?
Some say from bin Laden's terrorists - although for people who can murder 7,000 victims in a matter of minutes, this piecemeal parceling out of spores seems a bit on the retail side. Then again, why expect consistency from such disordered minds? Others say it's homegrown cranks - some of those right-wing "Heartland" militants who dabble in toxins and have been celebrating Sept. 11 as a blow against the cities they hate most, or the "Army of God" anti-abortion terrorists who have used similar postal tactics to spread the Lord's word in the form of deadly chemicals.
But savvy White House hardliners increasingly point the finger at Saddam Hussein. "There's no question that the leader of Iraq is an evil man," one hardliner said last week. "After all, he gassed his own people. We know he's been developing weapons of mass destruction."
Thus George W. Bush fires his first shot across Baghdad's bow, warming up the homefolks for the big grudge match ahead - "Gulf War II: The Empire Strikes Back." Of course, there is no denying the accuracy of Bush's declaration - but even here, right-wing white man speak with forked tongue.
For it's certainly true that the Iraqi despot gassed his own people. And it's equally true that for 20 years he's been developing weapons of mass destruction. But what Bush's statement deftly elides is the fact that Hussein's development and use of these weapons was enthusiastically abetted and countenanced by a previous occupant of the Oval Office named - George Bush.
For years, Pa Bush and the affable corporate pitchman Ronald Reagan shoveled money, weapons and "dual-use" technology at Hussein - ignoring direct warnings from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and others that the dictator was using this technology to develop ballistic missile capabilities and augment his arsenal of unconventional weapons. Some of the versatile materials sent to Iraq with the OK of the Reagan and Bush administrations include the chemical agents for botulism, tetanus, West Nile Fever and - surprise, surprise! - anthrax.
The atrocity that Bush Junior mentioned last week occurred in March 1988, when Hussein murdered an estimated 4,000 Iraqi Kurds with poison gas. This was carried out with helicopters purchased from the United States - another example of "dual-use technology" in action. The next year, with Pa firmly in the Oval cockpit, the CIA informed the White House that Iraq was greatly accelerating its secret nuclear program - and had become the world's leading producer of chemical weapons.
So what did Pa do? Why, he signed a National Security Directive ordering even closer ties to the poisoner. He also overrode his own Cabinet to force through $1 billion in agricultural credits to Hussein - a godsend for the cash-strapped tyrant, after international banks had stopped giving him loans. Once again, Bush was shown evidence that the aid was being diverted to military uses - but Pa had faith in his old ally. There was too much oil and backdoor money binding the two leaders together: an alliance sealed with the blood of Hussein's many victims. No need to worry. By the summer of 1990, Hussein was clearly gunning for Kuwait, and openly threatening to "burn half of Israel" with his biochemical weapons. But Pa was indulgent with his frisky protege: in the two weeks before the invasion of Kuwait, Bush approved the sale of an additional $4.8 million in "dual-use" technology to factories identified by the CIA as linchpins of Hussein's illicit nuclear and biochemical programs. The day before Saddam sent his tanks across the border, Pa obligingly sold him more than $600 million worth of advanced communication technology.
Then came the war - and the messy divorce of the Bush-Hussein union.
Nowadays, apologists for Bush's prolonged appeasement of the bloodthirsty megalomaniac like to say that he was simply practicing realpolitik: supporting Hussein in order to thwart Iran - who was America's designated "Great Satan" at the time. Hussein, say the apologists, was a bulwark against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism; by wooing him, Bush could prevent Islamic extremists from becoming powerful enough to attack the United States.
That certainly was an effective strategy, wasn't it?
Now another George Bush has launched another war against former allies in the volatile region, with the same kind of secret deals and wink-wink mollycoddling of despotisms and kleptocracies from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf. Is he, like his father before him, also sending dangerous chemicals and missile components to budding maniacs he finds useful? What form will the inevitable blowback take next time? How many more rough beasts are even now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind - along with all those anthrax spores.
Negative Capability
In recent weeks, many readers have taken this column to task for its "negativity," for "tearing down our leaders" without offering any "positive" alternatives. "What would you do?" is the steady refrain.
We've always believed that our readers are intelligent enough to perceive the moral assumptions driving the column without being hit over the head with them. But perhaps in these murky times, one must be clearer about such things. So, just this once, we will indulge the scolders by setting out, briefly, some personal parameters.
In Jerusalem, in the generation before Jesus of Nazareth, the greatest teacher of the age was Rabbi Hillel, the renowned Pharisee. One day, a mocker came to him and sneered: "If you can teach me the whole of the Law while standing on one leg, then I will follow your Way." Rabbi Hillel answered and said: "Do not do to others what you don't want them to do to you. That is the whole of the Law; the rest is commentary. Go, and study."
Many years later, in Russia, a man named Solzhenitsyn harrowed the hell we make on earth and distilled a harsh wisdom into these stern lines: "The wolfhound is right; the cannibal is wrong."
That just about covers it.
ANNOTATIONS
"Reaping the Whirlwind," Intelligence Report, Winter 2001
"The Terror At Home," Salon.com, Feb. 20,1998
"Abortion Rights Group Gets Suspicious Letters," Reuters, Oct. 15, 2001-10-17
"Bush Secret Effort Helped Iraq Build Its War Machine," (Archives) Los Angeles Times, Feb. 23 1992
"Bush Had Long History of Support for Iraq Aid," (Archives) Los Angeles Times, Feb. 24, 1992
"US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq," United States Senate Report, May 25, 1994
"The Making of Mr. Bush's War," Presidential Studies Quarterly, Summer 1996
"In Uzbekistan, Brutal Rule Suppresses Muslims," Boston Globe, October 16, 2001
Reprinted from The Moscow Times: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/10/19/107.html