On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Brian O. Sheppard wrote:
> Now, with the release of this newest tape, some analysts say the Bush
> Admin's eagerness to attribute it to OBL is because of the propaganda
> function the tape could serve.
Yep.
Here's a good column by Maureen Dowd of people on the contradictions this line of propaganda involves. It basically admits we lost the war the Afghanistan in terms of our limited objectives. It says bin Laden is alive and in charge and we don't know where he is.
But the administration's thinking is so tendentious and deceitful that even they don't understand their arguments anymore.
New York Times February 12, 2003
Pass the Duct Tape
By MAUREEN DOWD
W ASHINGTON
Osama bin Laden came to the rescue of George W. Bush yesterday.
The president and his secretary of state had been huffing and puffing
to prove a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. George Tenet, who
presides over a C.I.A. full of skepticism about the tie, did his best
for the boss, playing up the link to the Senate.
Ignoring all the blatant Qaeda hooks to Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and
Pakistan; ignoring the fact that Osama has never had any use for the
drinking, smoking, womanizing, secular Saddam; ignoring the fact that
Saddam has no proven record of sharing weapons with Al Qaeda, the
Bushies have been hellbent on making the 9/11 connection.
The world wasn't entirely buying that rationale for war.
And then who but Osama himself should pop up on an audio tape, calling
on Muslims to fight the U.S. if the "infidels" attack "our brothers in
Iraq."
Osama's disdain for Saddam still gleamed through. He barely mentioned
the Iraqi leader and seemed to be holding his nose when he gave
permission to his Qaeda brethren to fight "the Crusaders" alongside
Saddam's Baath Party, "even if we believe and declare that the
socialists are apostates," and whether Saddam remains in power or not.
Still, the administration pounced on the tape, hoping it would prove
to those epicene Old Europeans, with their poufy blue-helmeted U.N.
force, that Al Qaeda and Iraq were "bound by a common hatred," as the
State Department's Richard Boucher said.
Mr. Powell was so eager to publicize Osama's statements that he broke
the news himself at a Senate Budget Committee hearing, hours before Al
Jazeera even acknowledged it had the tape.
He said the tape showed that Osama was "in partnership with Iraq," and
proved that the U.S. could not count simply on a beefed-up inspection
force in Iraq.
In the past, Condi Rice has implored the networks not to broadcast the
tapes outright, fearing he might be activating sleeper cells in code.
But this time the administration flacked the tape. And Fox, the
official Bush news agency, rushed the entire tape onto the air.
So the Bushies no longer care if Osama sends a coded message to his
thugs as long as he stays on message for the White House?
To get Saddam, the Bush administration is even willing to remind the
American public that it failed to get bin Laden. Its fixation on
Saddam seems to have blinded it to the possibility that Osama might be
perversely encouraging America in this war.
The administration and Al Qaeda both have a purpose for invading Iraq,
and both want a regime change.
Both talk about "liberating" the Arab people, but Osama's vision is
apocalyptic. He wants the Middle East Israel and the Arab monarchies
to go up in flames. By Zionizing our battle with Iraq and promising an
anti-American theocracy, he hopes to radicalize recruits for a jihad
against an American occupation of Arab land.
Osama's own fanaticism was forged by foreign occupations the Soviet
Union's invasion of Afghanistan and American forces stationed in Saudi
Arabia.
The Bush hawks want to go to war in a non-apocalyptic way, to
stabilize the Middle East, not to inflame it. They have a grandiose if
risky plan to transform Iraq into a model kitchen of democracy, a
buffer for Israel that the Palestinians and other Arab autocracies
would be pressured to emulate.
Senators quizzed Bush officials yesterday, asking whether Gen. Tommy
Franks, the future mukhtar of Baghdad, would be choosing new Iraqi
leaders. They pressed about the time and cost of an American
occupation.
Chris Dodd suggested that there could be unforeseen explosions in the
model kitchen, citing an alliance between the Iraqi exiles who might
run a post-Saddam government and conservative Iranian clerics who
think we're the Great Satan.
"You have to level with the American public," he lectured the Bush
officials. "It could be very costly and take a long, long time."
But it is the Bushies' dream of a model kitchen in Iraq, rather than a
Saddam-Qaeda link, that makes this war seem noble to them. That's why
they were so busy hawking the Osama tape, rather than coming up with
ways we can protect ourselves from the coming Osama attacks other than
with plastic and duct tape.
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