The Helen and George Show

Occasionally you find a text that cries out for deconstruction. Such a text was the recent press conference held by President Bush, in which he and Helen Thomas, doyenne of the Washington press corps, went at it over the Iraq War.

I'll quote their entire colloquy, explicating as I go:

Helen Thomas: Mr. President, you started this war, a war of your choosing, and you can end it alone, today, at this point -- bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don't you understand, you brought the al Qaeda into Iraq.

I have to admit I felt really patriotic when I heard Helen Thomas say those words. She spoke truth to power, and acted in the best tradition of a free press. The fact is that George W. Bush and no one else is responsible for this war, and all the deaths that have ensued are on his head. And his conscience, if he has one, which I sincerely doubt.

The president, however, was slinging the same old bullshit. Pointedly ignoring Thomas' remarks on the tragic consequences of his decision to invade Iraq, he goes straight into the Big Lie:

President Bush: Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That's why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course.

Does anybody believe this? Anybody? Does anyone really believe that Bush went to the UN as anything but a sop to Tony Blair and the Brits, and as a way of giving a figleaf of legality to what was a clear invasion of a sovereign state?

When I hear Bush talk like this, I have to wonder whether he's either delusional or a sociopath. Does he even believe what he's saying? Saddam Hussein did everything he could to avoid being invaded by the US -- including giving up his weapons of mass destruction, none of which, almost four-and-a-half years after we invaded, have ever been found.

Bush then takes the opportunity to go off on a rant:

Helen Thomas Didn't we go into Iraq --
President Bush: It was his decision to make. Obviously, it was a difficult decision for me to make, to send our brave troops, along with coalition troops, into Iraq. I firmly believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

Oh, really? I don't know about the world, which is a pretty big place, but I can think of about 700,000 corpses that would not be corpses if Saddam Hussein were not in power. Are they better off? I can think of several dozen if not hundred Iraqis who, in a grisly irony, would not have been tortured if Saddam Hussein were still in power. Are they better off? No one is denying that Hussein was a disgusting dictator. But anyone with eyes in their head can see that the chaos that is currently Iraq is not better than what the Iraqis had when Hussein was in power.

President Bush: Now the fundamental question facing America is will we stand with this young democracy, will we help them achieve stability, will we help them become an ally in this war against extremists and radicals that is not only evident in Iraq, but it's evident in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan.

Actually, this is not the fundamental question. That question is: how long will American troops be made to referee in the middle of a civil war between Sunni and Shia? The "young democracy" in Iraq is a joke and everyone knows it -- except the Bush Administration, of course.

President Bush: We're at the beginning stages of a great ideological conflict between those who yearn for peace and those who want their children to grow up in a normal, decent society, and radicals and extremists who want to impose their dark vision on people throughout the world. Iraq is obviously -- Helen, it's got the attention of the American people, as it should; this is a difficult war and it's a tough war. But as I have consistently stated throughout this presidency, it is a necessary war to secure our peace.

Perpetual war for perpetual peace, as Charles Beard would say -- a war that will keep Halliburton and the armaments industry in business and making fat profits for a generation.

This was not in any sense a necessary war. That is just one of the many lies that this administration propagates in order to advance their bloodthirsty agenda. This was a war that Bush and his stooges wanted from the minute they got into power, and they exploited the deaths of 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001 to make it happen.

President Bush: I find it interesting that as this young democracy has taken hold, radicals and extremists kill innocent people to stop its advance. And that ought to be a clear signal to the American people that these are dangerous people and their ambition is not just contained to Iraq. Their ambition is to continue to hurt the American people. My attitude is we ought to defeat them there so we don't have to face them here, and that we ought to defeat their ideology with a more hopeful form of government.

Another big lie, arguably the biggest, and easily the most all-encompassing, which they always pull out when they get desperate: we have to fight them there to keep from fighting them here.
In fact, if we left there the Iraqis would kill, not us, but each other -- and in record numbers. Saddam Hussein was remarkably successful in stifling that sort of internecine bloodshed, but now that there's a vacuum in power, each side is willing to slaughter each other in order to gain the upper hand. And if we leave and there is a bloodbath in Iraq, as there surely would be, that would be oue responsibility as well.

It's like I've said for as long as I've been writing this blog. We're screwed if we leave, and we're screwed if we stay.

Tom Moran