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"CNN breaking news -- Material found at paramilitary camp in Hindiyah, Iraq, tests positive for chemical-warfare agents in preliminary testing, Pentagon sources tell CNN. Samples being flown to U.S. for confirmation." DEMONS OF NECESSITY: Why Weapons of Mass Destruction WILL be Found by Lisa Walsh Thomas "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth." -- Sidney Schanberg (columnist) Under a large rock in the deserts of Iraq, lie the weapons of mass destruction that threaten "freedom." They are there somewhere, now or later, and they WILL be found. History authored the notion that necessity is the mother of invention. History is also the diary in which is recorded that necessity sometimes, or perhaps often, spawns the great demons of so-called civilization. Adolph Hitler gained a strong foothold in the control of Germany when he achieved the chancellorship in 1933. That wasn't enough to allow him to implement his grand plan, however, which required convincing the German people to give him control over the military. For such extreme trust from the people, there needed to be a threat beyond the danger of putting such power into the hands of one man. Such a threat was a NECESSITY for him to achieve full dictatorial powers. On the night of February 27th, just after Hitler became chancellor, the Reichstag caught fire and burned to the ground. Within the hour, Hitler's S.A. picked up a mentally ill (probably schizophrenic) man named Marinus van der Lubbe. Van der Lubbe, under "questioning," confessed to starting multiple fires using the underground tunnels beneath the Reichstag. He was accused of having done so as a representative of the German communists, whom Hitler feared and hated. The German people were incensed that the communists-turned-terrorists had attacked them right in the jugular. Der Lubbe was executed and few people asked why there were no police or other security people guarding the Reichstag that night. Communist (KPG) leaders were arrested and Hitler was granted the dictatorial powers he had sought. Most of us know what followed. This is not to suggest that a deranged lone man did not successfully burn the Reichstag to the ground on a night when no one was looking. It is to suggest only that necessity perhaps dictated what happened. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson desperately wished to send more troops to Vietnam, in a full-scale escalation of the non-declared war, but neither the people nor the congress felt any justification for such escalation. Then, on August 4, on nationwide television, Johnson declared that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had launched an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf. Further, Johnson and the Pentagon told the American public that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on a pair of U.S. ships. The accusations turned out to be fabrications. The U.S. destroyer Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers -- in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force. But the lies were NECESSARY in order to produce support for Johnson's plans. The now-famous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution - the closest thing there ever was to a declaration of war against North Vietnam -- sailed through Congress on August 7, with a vote of 88 to 2, the votes based on the now-accepted deception. The deception had been NECESSARY. In the end, it was costly, especially to the more than 50,000 American soldiers who died in the jungle and the millions of Vietnamese they killed. Nevertheless, it was at its inception, in the minds of some, necessary. In 1997 the rightwing thinktank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), dealing with permanent hegemony of the United States, was formed. Finding the U.S. as a sole superpower with financial surpluses unheard of since the 60s, there, just waiting to happen, was a pax americana, a U.S. imperialism to control the world. The vast cost of setting such imperialistic aims in motion necessitated a belief by the American people that they were in danger that could be averted by an even larger military machine, one which would by chance be financially beneficial to many prominent people in the U.S. government. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world's resources, the PNAC crowd said, was "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." This, according to John Pilger in The New Statesman, was written in advance of 9-11. A terrorist strike on American soil, the likes of which had never before been envisioned, was necessary. On September 11, 2001, that strike came when a handful of Saudi hijackers (according to accepted conclusions) with some boxcutters flew two planes into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon, opportunely for them, at a time when the U.S. Air Force trained to intercept such actions on any other day had fallen asleep at the wheel. Americans woke up, shocked, heartbroken, and ready for battle. The administration could have whatever it wanted. Congress gave Mr. Bush carte blanche, making him the most powerful chief executive in American history. To refuse him ANYTHING was considered almost treasonous. A former Honduran ambassador accused by the Honduran Human Rights Commission of aiding in death squad activity was able to slide right through as Mr. Bush's choice for U.N. ambassador. A heinous act had been perpetrated upon the American people, and no one could object to any demand made by the new Commander-in-Chief. To place our full trust in him, regarding military matters, tax cuts, and anything else imaginable, was NECESSARY. There were skeptics about the sudden jump to conclusions. The administration and hundreds of thousands of flagwavers blindly agreed to obliterate Afghanistan if it meant they might find the perpetrator of this act. All evidence pointed to Osama bin Laden, a man created by the CIA during the cold war. Mr. Bush, despite family and business ties between the Bush and the Saudi bin Laden families, vowed to find Osama, "dead or alive." Coincidentally, the previous May, Colin Powell had delivered 43 million dollars to the Taliban who controlled Afghanistan. It was an old story of their having something we wanted and our having something they wanted. The Caspian oil reserves at that time were projected to be one of the largest in the world, and western oil companies were working late into the night to decide who the oil belonged to and how it could be transferred from the former Soviet bloc countries to the sea. France already had a deal going to ship its share via a proposed pipeline in Iran. The U.S. had no place to put a pipeline. Afghanistan was the logical choice, and bartering began. During all this business-as-usual, many of us all over the world were trying to draw attention to the inhumane treatment of women by Afghanistan's Taliban. Our outrage was ignored. The pipeline was of greater importance, and relations couldn't be strained as long as the U.S. was dependent upon the Taliban to build this pipeline. Then the Taliban balked and wouldn't cooperate. As has happened so often in the past century, you cross Uncle Sam and you get to wear a black hat. The sequence of events is not that confusing. Attempts were made to buy off pipeline rights with the Taliban. The Taliban refused. The World Trade Center was attacked. The alleged ringleader, Osama bin Laden, was hiding out in Afghanistan. So, mostly from six miles up, the U.S. attacked and conquered Afghanistan, easy pickings in a destitute, war-ravaged third-world country. The lesson of Vietnam had been to attack only when certain of victory, i.e. a focus on weak or defenseless countries. The two most wanted men, Osama and his son-in-law, Mullah Omar, were not found. In an ironic twist, the Caspian oil reserves now appear to be less fertile than originally calculated. Still, it had been NECESSARY to send Afghanistan further into the Stone Age because Osama was probably hiding out there in a cave with his dialysis machine. Necessity justified the attack, the destruction of unborn lives through depleted uranium, and a civilian death toll we don't yet have straight. As for the failure to find Osama, the administration patiently explained to us that the issue wasn't "a single man." Osama is already in the process of being forgotten. It is not NECESSARY to find him. Afghanistan was practice. Since long before 9-ll, many eyes had been on Iraq. Not only does Iraq have the second largest oil reserves (and considering sulfur content, the richest) on earth but many consider it a perfect foothold for control of the entire mideast. We began to be told that the REAL danger to our nation and its allies lay in Iraq, with its weapons of mass destruction, which were to have been destroyed at the close of Gulf War I. Inspectors had searched for these weapons for several years before leaving the country to avoid Clinton's bombings in 1998. (Contrary to popular myth, they were never "thrown out" of Iraq.) The U.S. demanded retribution for Iraq's alleged failure to comply with the U.N.'s resolution calling for the destruction of the weapons, while Iraq insisted it no longer had such weapons. The U.N. insisted that the next step was to send the inspectors back. The inspectors returned, given full access to the entire country. While they sometimes found Iraqi officials difficult to work with, in the end chief weapons inspector Hans Blix stated unequivocally that the inspectors had found not one piece of evidence of weapons of mass destructions. There were some red herrings, but each was shot down by the International Atomic Energy Commission or the U.N. Over a hundred al-Samoud 2 missiles, all declared by Iraq, were found to overshoot their allowed distance by ninety kilometers. Despite Iraq's insistence that the extra range resulted from empty payloads, they began to be destroyed, unavailable for defense should the Anglo-American forces decide to unilaterally invade anyway. If WMD existed in Iraq, they were out of the reach of the inspectors. And the U.S. was eager to get the inspectors out so that the invasion could begin before the climate became too hot for soldiers unused to the desert. World opinion was growing against the Anglo-American position, and there was no time to be lost. The American people allowed the genocide now taking place in Iraq for two reasons: 1. In a bewildering show of ignorance, the people could not keep Osama and Saddam straight, believing that it was Saddam who attacked the world trade center. Not even Bush claimed this, but few at the top explained to the people that Saddam and Osama are mortal enemies. The people wanted revenge for the 3,000 deaths in New York City, and they went for the wrong man. 2. From sea to shining sea, the majority of the American people believed Saddam had/has weapons of mass destruction. A frenzy allowed people to pass on such untenable fears as, "If we don't take his nukes from him, he can wipe out New York City whenever he wants." The corporate press fed this fear daily. Most of the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Commission and millions and millions of people opposing this invasion knew that there probably WERE no weapons of mass destruction. The "evidence" was all paper-tiger quality, shot down as it was discovered to be fabrications, some of it embarrassingly so. The evidence that all former WMD (Saddam had in the past been provided some by Britain and the U.S., had even used some of their chemicals on the rebelling Kurds) no longer existed was much stronger. Most of the world concluded that however much a thug Saddam Hussein might be, it had no bearing on whether he posed a danger to anyone outside his own country. But the "coalition" (armed by three countries - the U.S., Britain, and Australia) has now invaded a sovereign country against the wishes of the U.N., the EU, NATO, the world's religious leaders, and the majority of the people on earth. American and British servicepeople have died. Iraqi civilians have died. More will die. Dozens of mothers in the United States are weeping. Thousands of mothers in Iraq are weeping. The only thing that will "justify" these deaths is the discovery of vast amounts of dangerous weapons of mass destruction. It is NECESSARY, vitally necessary, to those who orchestrated the current happenings, that these weapons be found and shown to the world as evidence of Bush/Blair rightness. It is essential in allowing the U.S. to save any face left to be saved. So they WILL be found. And millions of people, those with yard signs that say, "Iraq today, France tomorrow," those who still confuse Iran and Iraq, those who don't know the difference between Osama and Saddam, those who believe Bush has a serious connect with God, those who think the nineteen alleged hijackers on 9-11 were Iraqis (documentation shows them to be primarily Saudi), all these people will trust their leaders that these weapons were there all along. This is how it happens. This is what necessity does in the hands of ruthless men. This is how the fine fabric of goodness turns to frayed gossamer, then rotted remnants of dirty threads. This is how a land of compassion, integrity and courage can become the most hated nation on earth. It sleeps with Necessity. It snuggles close. It either blindly believes or it does whatever it has to do to win the prize. It lets its once-pure face be stroked by the seductive, gnarled hands of power and greed, complacency and ignorance. It joins either the Germans who turned their heads when the trains rolled by or it joins those who used cattle prods to pack dissidents into the cars. There is no in-between. Of all the spawn of this necessary seduction, Ignorance is the most unforgivable. The touted weapons of mass destruction WILL be found. They will be found because it is NECESSARY that they be found. ------------------------------- SOURCES: http://www.newamericancentury.org/ http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf "The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam," by Tom Wells "Uncensored War," by Daniel Hallin http://www.pvhs.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/germany/3rdreich/default.htm ------------- Lisa Walsh Thomas is a lifelong political activist, a poet, fiction writer, former teacher, gifted education specialist, and arts columnist. She currently writes political articles for several online liberal publications. A book of her essays is scheduled to be released by Pitchfork Publishing by mid-May. ------------- Copyright 2001-2003 AmericaHeldHostile.com. All rights reserved. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk