Monthly Archives ⇒ May 2003

War in the Congo

May 31, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Almost total­ly unre­port­ed in the U.S. media, the wars in Cen­tral Africa are get­ting even more bloody. Reports of the most bru­tal mas­sacres are com­ing out of the Con­go’s Ituri province. Make sure to read Sarah Left­’s fact­sheet explain­ing the war. From the UK Guardian, once again one of the few sources of good infor­ma­tion on inter­na­tion­al affairs. There’s also a good intro in June 18th’s Coun­ter­punch What’s Behind the Killing in Cen­tral Africa?.

Who Lied About Weapons of Mass Destruction?

May 31, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It’s time to state the obvi­ous: there weren’t any “weapons of mass destruc­tion” in Iraq. The stat­ed ratio­nale for this war was “sim­ply wrong” (see below). Either U.S. Intel­li­gence agen­cies made the biggest mis­take of the new cen­tu­ry or there’s been sys­tem­at­ic, pre­med­i­tat­ed lying at the high­est lev­els of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Mid-level intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary com­man­ders are start­ing to duck and weave to avoid the fall­out: U.S. Insid­ers Say Iraq Intel Delib­er­ate­ly Skewed and Did Iraq real­ly have weapons of mass destruc­tion? and Was the Intel­li­gence Cooked?

Pres­i­dent Bush and his insid­ers will sure­ly con­tin­ue to deny the obvi­ous and bul­ly on with more lies and mis­for­ma­tion. Will the Amer­i­can pub­lic stop believ­ing? Or have we entered a phase in Amer­i­can his­to­ry in which the Big Lie can jus­ti­fy out­right impe­ri­al­ism and per­pet­u­al war? Post­ed 5/31/2003