Le Monde: odd things about Osama tape

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Tue Feb 18 05:51:54 PST 2003


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.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list