[ Saturday, February 01, 2003 ]
[ Wednesday, January 29, 2003 ]
State of the Union - subtext (excerpted).
"As we fight this war, we will remember where it began - here in our own country. This government is taking unprecedented measures to protect our people and defend our homeland." (Read: These unprecedented measures include gutting your constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and dissent, enlisting the military in domestic surveillance of dissidents and activists, rounding up and detaining thousands of immigrants because of their skin color, making a mockery of the Geneva Convention, violating numerous international covenants and treaties, pissing off all of our allies through our sheer ignorance and arrogance, and in general doing whatever the fuck we want to because we're a bunch of right wing nutjobs who think that America and American corporations have a God-given entitlement to rule the world).
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?" (Read: That's why I've announced my doctrine of preemptive strikes against our enemies or possible enemies, using America's vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to enforce our will everywhere in the world without regard to international treaties or the UN, and thereby making America just another violent rogue state among violent rogue states)
"This dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured."(Read: Just don't ask me how he got those weapons or whether the U.S. government and U.S. corporations supplied and aided Saddam's military when it was convenient for us, back in the days when punishing Iran was the main goal, when we didn't give a shit about what he did to his own people).
"And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country. Your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation."(Read: And I say to the people of Iraq, just to show you how much we care about you, we're going to bomb the fuck out of you just like we did in 1991, intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure, killing thousands of you and creating a public health disaster, which we will then aggravate with another decade of sanctions, or maybe this time we'll finish the job and install a puppet regime, and you better be grateful for it - and all of this because you were unlucky enough to be born living on top of OUR oil. And by the way - how did our oil get under Iraq's sand?).
"Sending Americans into battle is the most profound decision a president can make. The technologies of war have changed. The risks and suffering of war have not."(Read: Thank god the technologies of war have changed so much that during my daddy's Gulf War we suffered only 148 combat deaths and 0 civilian deaths, and the miserable Iraqi's suffered 50,000+ combat deaths and thousands of (maybe 10,000+) civilian deaths. Bet you didn't see that on CNN! So the risks and suffering of war haven't changed for some people, but they sure as hell have for us!).
"And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military and we will prevail. And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies and freedom."(Read: Of course we'll prevail, in fact, it would be a joke to even call it "war." It will actually be another scripted-for-CNN push button aerial fucking massacre which will be censored from start to finish and simultaneously spoon-fed to the media in suitably patriotic soundbites, and the closest any reporter will ever get to the battlefield will be some hotel bar in Saudia Arabia. But maybe this time we won't callously and self-servingly sell-out the Kurdish people, whom my daddy encouraged to rise up against Saddam in 1991, and then more or less abandoned when his advisors changed their minds and told him not to topple Saddam after all. Sorry suckers!).
"America is a strong nation and honorable in the use of our strength."(Read: And I can say something as patently false and outrageous as this and get away with it because I know that most of you neither remember nor give a shit about all the dishonorable dirty wars and fascist dictators and other terrorists America has funded and otherwise supported over the past century or so throughout Latin America, and elsewhere [e.g., Pinochet, Duarte, Noriega, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, etc., etc.]).
"Americans are a free people who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation." (Read: Americans are a free people, except for you commies who dare speak out against the war on Iraq. That's why we passed the Patriot Act and started the Total Information Awareness program and CARNIVORE, so we could start using the military [and continue using the FBI] to spy on and harass Americans who dare to actually exercise their First Amendment right to speak their minds and say things that are critical of the government).
[1/29/2003]
PAY ATTENTION BLACK ROCK CITY
