20 March 2006

Les Payne: Preventive war grasps at straws

Yesterday, on the three-year anniversary of the start of Bush's war of aggression in Iraq, editorial pages around the world were chock-full of war-related commentary.

One of the best was a piece by Les Payne in Newsday.

An excerpt:
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The preventive war strategy of President George W. Bush was entrenched last week with his doctrine of shoot first - don't worry about aiming - and ask questions later. Apropos of this president, the updated security plan is, alas, a cowboy doctrine drafted not by a fair-minded sheriff but by an hombre outside the law.

As the Iraq war moves into its fourth year this week, the 54-page White House plan reminds us that Bush is unrelenting in pursuit of this ill-advised strategy at the expense of American resources, tax dollars and blood. While the media gags itself with evenhandedness, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart are playing this reckless Bush doctrine for guffaws. Meanwhile, the eggheads debate themselves to a standstill as the White House handmaidens over at Fox News wade in with alibi Bush gibberish.

Those who truly care about the honor and reputation of this great country should take the time to read the National Security Strategy of the United States. It is a chilling document that cuts to the heart of Bush's execution of preventive war. The scenario gets even scarier when one considers that Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have forfeited all checks and balances on this self-proclaimed "war president" of the lone, unchallenged superpower with the technology to destroy the world.

This war started with the president of the United States ordering a direct, personal assassination of another head of state. What is more, the White House had concocted a false rationale for crossing this most deadly of all Rubicons. The false scare that the dictator had weapons of mass destruction had seriously dissipated, lest we forget, even before the U.S. invasion. Grasping at other straws, the Bush White House pointed with alarm at the danger posed to the continental United States by Iraq's drawing-board missiles with a range of 93 miles.

The section of the new security report on weapons of mass destruction lays out what can only be described as a policy of breast-beating one's way to an alibi.
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[Read more.]

To read the text of the National Security Strategy of the United States, click here.

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