The Jedi Mind Trick
/
oppressed Iraqi people, not to
remove the WMD threat.
Oh, and these are NOT the droids
you're looking for..."
I alluded to it in my post yesterday concerning the right-wing troll who stopped by... There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Let's face it, the Bush Administration has used the Jedi Mind Trick on us. Liberation of the oppressed Iraqi people emerged as a justification for war only after it became evident that no WMDs were likely to be found. That's still being used as the main justification for the war, even as polls show more than 90 percent of Iraqis view the American presence as an occupation rather than a liberation.
But there are those of us who are not so easily fooled, and remember when Bush took us to war, leveraging that wonderful culture of fear his administration is so good at cultivating. We remember Colin Powell showing satellite photos of alleged mobile chemical weapons factories. We remember the "disarm or else" rhetoric. We remember the skeptical among us who were shouted down when they merely suggested that perhaps Saddam Hussein had disarmed and was reasonably contained. And we remember the early insistence that WMDs would be found and Bush would be proven right.
Is this formal announcement that the WMDs were an illusion going to get the press coverage it deserves? I doubt it. As of a few minutes ago, when I did a Google News search for a cite, it took a bit more effort than I would have expected to find an American newspaper website with a story. The international press seems to be going off about it, and while the American press isn't exactly silent, it's not exactly giving the story its due.
Why? Because of the Jedi Mind Trick, that's why.
Yesterday, my troll friend accused me of being a drone. But who are the drones, people like me or the seemingly countless right-wing Bush fans who constantly parrot this line about liberating the Iraqi people as justification for the U.S. pre-emptive strike and subsequent occupation? Who is the one refusing to think here?
I still can't understand how people believe this war and occupation were justified, especially since the original justification has proven to be bullshit. Add to that the evidence we've seen that an attack on Iraq was pre-ordained as of 9/11, that there are many other oppressive regimes around the world that the Bush Administration tolerates or supports, and that the "revised" justification for the war also happens to be bullshit.
