Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

What do I have to add?

Nothing original, I'm afraid, but I feel I ought to say something.

The corporate media and the "opposition" party have long had definitive, fully public evidence of a horrific crime. A small group of top administration officials -- the president, vice-president, secretary of defense, and some of their confidants -- decided to make war on Iraq, probably even before the Bush administration took office. Acting in secret, they set out to manufacture a casus belli, conspiring with a convicted embezzler who they intended to install as president of "liberated" Iraq, and, among other "journalists," a New York Times reporter. Oh yeah, British Prime Minster Tony Blair and some of his cabinet ministers were in on the conspiracy. Meanwhile, they allowed the foreign policy apparatus to go through the motions of normal functioning, as a distraction to the press and public, although the conclusion was fixed long ago. They even chose to ignore the extensive planning done by the state department for the contingency of a post-war Iraq, simply because it wasn't a part of their conspiracy.

As for the devastating consequences of this crime -- the cost to Iraq, to the United States, to the world -- I won't belabor the obvious. How very disturbing it is that there was no prospect of bringing any of the conspirators to account until a prosecutor was appointed to investigate a relatively minor, certainly peripheral action in furtherance of the conspiracy. The Democratic Party has largely supported the conspiracy, including its most prominent prospective presidential candidates; the corporate media have criticized it mildly but have certainly not chosen to regard it as a crime of any sort, let alone treason and mass murder. The majority of commentators given access to the mass media regard the specific crime under official investigation as a trivial technicality, and disparage the prosecutor as overzealous.

Fortunately, a good portion of the citizenry feels otherwise. We have been betrayed by our leaders. Perhaps they will finally feel our anger.

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