How Soon the Suckers Forget!
by PA Farruggio
George W. Bush with Ellen Degeneres, backstage after the former President appeared on “Ellen” and was hailed by her as a good friend.
How many lies and how many innocent lives have been sent out into the ethers by men like Junior Bush and his Bush/Cheney Cabal? Too many is the answer. Yet, as with the case with the Irish singing star ( and humanitarian ) Bono, Junior Bush has been ‘ Born Again Philanthropist’. Well, good for him, but… that should not and DOES not absolve him from his war crimes. The real shame of all of this is just how short a memory do Ms. Degeneres and Mr. Bono have?
I mean, come on you two Media stars, have you both forgotten what transpired beginning in October of 2002? Does this writer need to once again review the horrific damage we, and our whatever in the hell we named this NATO led coalition did to the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan? Bono, you the humanitarian, have you seen the photos of the myriad of little children with no limbs or eyes or birth defects from our depleted uranium shells? Ellen, you who call yourself such a ‘ liberated feminist’, how many women in those two countries are either dead or widowed or parentless/childless due to those actions signed off by Junior Bush? Utterly disgusting!
Let us not forget Mr. Obama, who has his dirty hands in all of this ‘Empire on Steroids’. It was he, influenced stringently by Mrs. Clinton and the other Neo Cons surrounding him, that ‘signed off’ on the illegal and immoral carpet bombing of Libya in 2011. All that accomplished was to open up that nation to the chaos it still is engulfed in. Another Middle Eastern nation that, for all of Kaddafi’s flaws, had the greatest standard of living and a better safety net that we have here. All destroyed for the sake of empire. You see, Kaddafi was going to take Libya OFF of the petrodollar and onto a new African currency. And, he would not participate in our empire’s Africa Command or better known as Africom.
For Junior Bush and his Bush/Cheney Cabal, Saddam Hussein, for decades our gangster running Iraq, was conned by Bush Sr. in 1990-91 into our infamous Desert Storm. Years later he decided to begin selling his oil away from the petrodollar and via the Euro, so…. Bye Bye Saddam. The sad joke many of us in the Anti War community share is that if Iraq had Coconut Oil under the ground instead of Crude Oil… no more ‘ Saddam the Hitler’ and no War on Iraq 1 or 2. One surmises that Ms. Degeneres and Mr. Bono most likely don’t care about all these facts. Do you?
Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research ,Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected]
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
A final word on Clare Short: Just look up the crucial 2003-2004 years concerning Hans Blix and his role in proving/disproving the existence of WMD in Iraq.
If she toed the official government line in 1999, it is only because we all did, acting, and voting, on information which we now know to have been falsified in fake Blair/Bush (Blush) interests.
Most of that government did NOT express outrage at having been lied to, but Short did.
Hindsight has its benefits, but it can also be used as an excuse for conveniently forgetting facts.
So being a Government Minister who cheered for bombing civilian targets in Belgrade is acceptable.. because, errr, why? ‘Because we all did’?
‘Ve voss only obeying ze orders’ ceased to be a credible position after the Nuremburg Trials.
Nothing can repair the credibility of a warmongering hag who spoke up for murdering random civilians. Nothing.
People like Ellen are rich parasites who totally support the system. She praised Obama upon his exit for improving gay rights. Liberal rich now revolve around identity politics only and are conformists. Ellen has no moral issue with terrorism like 911, provided it is only targeting brown poor people like Muslims. She is a contemptible cunt.
Ellen DeGeneres should take a selfie with George W. Bush in the “naked pyramid” pose used by the American military on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib torture prison.
God Bless Amurica!!!!!!!
I wonder if Ellen has that picture hanging in front of her bed, head , face on, every night before going to sleep with ..
Such a smile on her face, worshipping Mother Bush R.i.P. !?
We are surrounded by sycophants, leeches and greedy monster egos with little intelligence to back it up. Hence the idiotic Bono and Degeneres whose prime goal in this incarnation is [whilst running to the bank with their fat cheques,] to ensure that as they live lives beyond luxury the rest of the world must know they care. So heartfelt is their compassion that some of their best friends are the very people inflicting atrocities on innocents worldwide.
So heartfelt is Bono’s compassion that he uses illegal offshore tax loopholes to salt away his cash. I never was a fan, indeed I knew one of the band members once in my far distant youth, a bunch of prize wankers.
My patience is exhausted by hypocrites, by greed, by corruption. No respect.
Personally I have always suspected U2 were selected(maybe unbeknownst to them) to be a useful idiot within the music industry. I.e their ‘success’ was given a helping hand by other influential movers and shakers. The appeal of an Irish rock star, seemingly holding to account the establishment definitely resonates with the plebs. Geldof was getting old so a new younger ballbag was required.
If you viewed U2’s first appearance on prime time irish t.v you would be forgiven for asking two questions:1- how the sweet fuck did that crap get on the most popular t.v show in Ireland? And 2- who wrote their songs thereafter? Somebody was pulling a lot of strings for these clowns that’s for sure. Ireland is full of various musicians and singers and they’ll never get as much as a sniff to get on these type of shows cos they tend to be outspoken about politicians etc.
U2 gimps first appearance: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=U2+first+appearance+on+irish+t.v&PC=APPD&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dU2%2bfirst%2bappearance%2bon%2birish%2bt.v%26form%3dAPIPA1%26PC%3dAPPD&view=detail&mmscn=vwrc&mid=96D57A8C97605A9311B396D57A8C97605A9311B3&FORM=WRVORC
video is no longer available …
Video still available in the UK, but you are probably at an advantage if you can’t see it; as it is nauseating in the extreme and that’s only taking the bassists green sweater into account!
Chucklin’ 😉 (& chokin’) ..
“How about joining the Clintons in New York. I have more exciting news to share with you – Sting and Shaggy are now joining ‘us’ and will perform at our gala on May 24. And you could be there, too!
When you donate today, you and a guest will automatically enter for a chance to win round-trip airfare to New York, hotel accommodations, tickets to join us at our gala and a chance to meet President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton. As well as a special performance by Grammy winners Sting and Shaggy – you’re not going to want to miss!
Don’t miss out! Donate now – and you could win a chance to join us at the Clinton Foundation gala!”
How to get Shaggy & Stingy with Clinton Superstylin’ ?
Howlin’ Wolfe Tones, totally tuned in .. 😉
You may consider it a conspiracy theory too far but there’s a fascinating book called “Weird Dreams Inside The Canyon” by one Dave MacGowan which has the thesis that much of the 60s flower power “subversive” rock was a con created to distract and divert protest.
Sorry – that should be “Weird SCENES Inside the Canyon”.
I’ve not read the book but much of it has been published on the web by McGowan, then disappeared, some fragments of it remaining on archive.org. Much of it rings true. It’s Laurel Canyon in SF where much psy-op/military stuff verifiably took place, and a huge facility including a military secured film-studio used for unknown purposes is located.
The music biz is full of such anomalies which McGowan details and that bend credulity. One is Jimi Hendrix being released from service in special-forces in Vietnam, during conscription, in order to audition for synthetic pop band The Monkees. Another is Jim Morrison whose father a US Admiral was central to the Gulf of Tonkin incident that provided the false flag incident given for starting that war. Apparently The Doors were signed and upon arriving at a recording studio, complete with several albums worth of material, lyrics and score, it was found not one knew the first thing about music, nor could play a single instrument. Even the music the masses were to listen was controlled to a considerable extent.
This is just the tip of a very large iceberg, a quite extraordinary number of the flower-power and beat-generation artistes have/had military/intelligence family connections and may not have been what they seemed.
I’d say though that nothing much conclusive comes from all of it other than a deep sense of disconnect and a smattering of film and music industry sleb trivia and pecadilloes from the 1930s to the mid-1970s and the history of some of the properties in the region, as desirable properties in the Canyon changed hands from one high-profile figure to another and out of the ordinary events from strange deaths, murders, insanity and unending parties with eclectic and surprising guests, not all Americans, present all took place within them.
McGowan who I believe is now dead from cancer – or is he – began documenting this on the early web in the late ’90s and the site became widely known, but he might have saved the best for the book, as hints were given in places that there was more than he dared disclose, but nothing I think that would shake the core of the system.
At least some of Dave McGowan’s stuff can be found here:
http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/
And it seems to be McGowan and not MacGowan. My fault.
U2 were kind of stuffed into the void left by the demise of the Clash. Quite who stuffed them there is a mystery but the derailment of youth protest during the 80s was sad to behold. The music press at the time did their very best to exert quite manipulative pressure, hyping bands that were essentially tame and vaccuous which helped to make the 80s culturally such a disappointing decade.
How did Bono and Geldof get to be so rich? Does humanitarianism pay that well these days?
I recall a Bono speech in front of Blair and his minions when the great rock rebel said “I became the worst thing of all: a rock star with a cause”. At which point the Blairites laughed – but respectfully you understand. You wonder at how Bono could have failed to notice the absurdity of his position: telling the big knobs he was there to scare them at a conference they invited him to.
Bono’s naivety does often seem stunning, when seeing “RED” ..
or just “ONE” superficial / oberflächlich version of “ZOO Station” & Christiane F.
FFS, can he be so “Blinded by the Light” (Springsteen would say) to the “Crime of the Century”, behaving like a Super-Tramp, trumpeting his own naive agenda & goals in harmony with corrupted “Spirit in the Night” , to keep the “Silver Machine” of the Hawkwind(ed) instrumental marketing techniques on the boil, with the Edge of constantly re-focussing short attention spans, utilising Steve’s Lilly White engineering & techno assistance for a long singular ballad of Salomé, a remix of Oscar Wilde’s play ending with the “Dance of the Seven Veils” ? 😉
Somehow I get the feeling he simply fails comprehension .. ! ?
The beautify of identity politics as the only defining difference between our two war parties in the U.S. is that supposedly “liberal” or “progressive” democrats can look into the mirror and think to themselves that they are “a good person” because they “support immigrant rights,” or “LGBTQ rights,” or identify as “feminist” – differentiating themselves from the dreaded racist republicans. Of course the only reason they are able to engage in this self-deceptive feel good uncritical thinking is by totally ignoring, for example, that Obama spent 8 years creating a massive “refugee crisis” of millions through his illegal immoral wars in the Middle East, wars which also of course slaughtered many members of said LGBTQ communities in those war zones (our smart bombs aren’t quite smart enough yet to identify and spare lives based on identity politics – but won’t that be a step forward for imperial identity politics and humanitarian warfare?). These wars also resulted of course in the slaughtering of “women and children” en masse, though again, the identity politics self-talk is – “I so respect and love women and children – even immigrant women and children illegally here in America” – while somehow failing to see that such people also exist in the war zones our “liberal” president happens to be bombing into oblivion on our behalf. In other words identity politics allowed the same people who were morally opposed to Bush’s wars to convince themselves that they somehow could not see that Obama was simply continuing the same imperial war policies they opposed under Bush.
The level of self-decit and hypocrisy needed to maintain this corrupt mutant very “American” moral conscience is quite stunning actually. It is also quite apparent and on display each and everyday here in America where we consume the vast majority of the world’s psychotropic medications (because we’re so “free” and “happy”) and spend our time eagerly awaiting the next blockbuster “superhero” movie based of course not on the real world, but on a bunch of comic book characters – the real world being just a bit too much for most of us to deal with apparently.
Perhaps if Ellen could stop dancing with war criminals for just a moment she could find time to take a trip into one of the Middle East war zones (or hey, Colombia is even closer to home if you can stomach death squad atrocities) to see the impact her particularly American brand of progressive imperial humanitarian feminism and identity politics has on the world and on the bodies of innocents. Sorry, for the rant, but I’ve been back in the U.S. for less than 3 months after several years abroad and I simply have no patience for this nonsense anymore.
Ra Ra Ra >>
(RazPutin)
Razzmatazz/Jazzmattaz n’ all that ..
says it all ..
Like the article 😉
In the interests of sharing other good music which speaks candidly…
Link to Lowkey Obama nation.
I would have liked to put this video up properly but have not worked out how to this yet. Any instruction on this would be gratefully received. My other thought is how all these clebs act as decoy ducks for the state with their right on faux {liberalism}. Keeping the masses enthralled and bathed in hollow feel good shallowness.
Please ignore my video posting request as it now seems to post anyway thanks.
Its simple really: the music and showbiz industry is controlled and run by the spooks. If I was a spook I would make a bee line for those industries as well as the media because they are very influential in steering the thoughts of the plebs, very influential indeed.
With enough promotion and special effects these industries can make anybody a ‘star’. Ffs for decades these combined industries made Jimmy savile ‘a national treasure’; go figure.
It used to be a favourite witicism of History, or Social Science academics that ‘next time they have a Revolution, they will take the TV station first”.
Then in the US-sponsored ‘coiour revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine, the did take the TV station first.
Sorry I hit the wrong button- voted your comment down instead of up.
No prob 🙂
Eugeez Fugees & Ms. Franklin – Killing me softly / Say a lil’ prayer for you 😉
So-called ‘depleted’ uranium is not pure, while mainly uranium-238, never occuring in nature in such purity, it contains a mix other radioisotopes and decay products including uranium-235, uranium-234, uranium-236, thorium-234, protactinium-234m, protactinium-234, neptunium-237, plutonium-238, plutonium-239, plutonium-240, americium-241, technicium-99. These have all been found and are spreading far and wide with every wind that stirs this witches-brew.
The greater tragedy is undoubtedly where these were deployed with cynical calculating abandon, which is a war-crime in addition to but also above and beyond the ordinary sort committed. The whole chain from the manufacture of these weapons, to soldiers handling and firing them who went off to fight not for country but for racial-religious-supremacist fascists and their bedfellows the elite bankers and shareholders of mega-corporations, to the scrapyard workers cutting up the tanks, launchers, barrels and guns that fired it, and their offspring, are also chronically affected. DU will be killing in the most unexpected places and for as near as dammit for all of time.
Fine comment, of tragic ‘reality bites’.. :(should we forget) ??
The destruction of the Moslem world, in the War of Terrorism against Islam, is driven by the Israeli regime and the Zionist International of Diaspora sayanim, who, through direct money power, control Western politics and fakestream media hate propaganda apparatuses. Primarily this genocidal project is to carry out the Oded Yinon Plan to destroy all Israel’s neighbours, to shore up Israel, and to protect the USA’s allies, the Evil genocidal Wahhabist regimes of Sordid Arabia and its murderous and despotic underlings, and to ensure the continuance of US control of the region’s hydrocarbon riches and the role of the US petrodollar in ensuring US global hegemony. It is a project of truly Hitlerite proportions.
My parents (diplomats) knew the middle Bush-they came to our place once: NYC. I asked him about them once, he said Barbara was the intellect in the family. Years later when watching the news concerning the horrors of Iraq he said as an aside something like “the way to stop this is for these leaders to be quietly executed one after another in their post authority lives”. I agree.
Not quietly, publicly and with great acclaim and on all TV channels with close-ups of them grimacing and writhing on the noose. In Britain Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, after the fairest of show-trials. It’s the only way to prevent any repeat performances by their successors in whatever democratic system of governance replaces this flawed twisted and broken one that bedevils and destroys us from within.
I’m no royalist, far from it we should put them out of our misery too, but Charles II had the right idea putting his father’s executioners heads on spikes for all to see and the birds to devour. All too late as Cromwell in his brief dictatorship had already put the country on the fast and one-way road to utter ruin.
I don’t understand why people keep on blaming Obama for the bombing of Libya. Quite clearly, the driving forces behind that were Cameron and Sarkozy. Sure, they probably had Obama’s blessing, but he largely kept the US out. Being the president of the US comes with certain obligations. No president could simply abolish the empire. As such, Obama has to assume his part of the blame, in particular for extra-judicial drone killings; however, within the limits of his margin of maneuver, he did what he could. I blame him most for gratuitously humiliating Putin and Russia. There simply was no need for that, and it defies all diplomatic protocol. It shows his inexperience in international relations and/or his inability to see through the machinations of the anti-Russian Anglo-American deep state.
Obama did NOTHING good, and his eight years of treachery to the Hopey Dopeys paved the way for the Trump final fiasco. He was a Trojan horse from the time he was recruited in college. If you wish to know who controlled him, I suggest reading the article ‘Obama and the Jews’, by Pauline Yearwood. in the ‘Chicago Jewish News’ of October 24, 2008. As Abner Mikva, Zionist, US judge, Congressman and Clinton apparatchik declared, Obama was ‘. not the first black President-he was the first Jewish one’.
Pauline Dubkin Yearwood — Obama and the Jews
Well if we follow your reasoning, then the issue becomes: why didn’t Obama try to stop David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy from taking control of the project or narrative as to what to do with Libya and opting to bomb the country? Keeping the US out was not enough if the US is stronger than either France or the UK or even both together (as we now know from their weak performance in the recent bombing of Syria when none of their missiles hit any Syrian targets after the supposed CW attack in Douma).
Hello everyone: there is an elephant in the room if you are discussing Libya …it was Hillary’s war.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/07/hillary-clintons-libyan-fingerprints/
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/hillary-libya-nato-qaddafi-obama/
Her, ‘We came, we saw-he died’, cackle, cackle, was the mark of an Evil monster, particularly given the method of Gaddaffi’s murder, which, I would not be surprised, she thought up herself.
Chuckle > pretty slick mixing & editing ..
A refined piece for breakfast edification 🙂
Start the day with a smile.
Thankfully , she lost ..
I am speaking as a woman (little surprise there) but this video just got me thinking that she is one of those irritating women who are all for women’s equality but that, in fact, is the last thing they want in reality because they constantly go on about what they have managed or aspire to achieve ‘as a woman’ – that is their main self-promotional tool and without it she would just come across as any other (male) demonic psychopath.
PS. Glad you posted it this morning because if I’d watched it tonight it would have given me nightmares!
I was trying to make things easy for Humbaba.
Elephant, Hillary? … please don’t insult elephants or any other large pachyderm mammals.
Humbug !
Have you researched Benghazi ?
And how many times the Ambassador asked for extra back up .. including for weapons.
Once you have, you will understand why not many US citizens wanna’ work as a US Ambassador, anywhere TODAY! When you darn well know for sure that back home , nobody has got yer’ back, or is even interested in listening to your opinion on the frontline of diplomatic relations !!!
As US Ambassador you can no longer rely upon the Official Agenda ..
Watching yer’ back, looking over yer’ shoulder, Way2go HOME & stay home ..
Benghazi was a CIA torture centre and the HQ for the transfer of Libya arms to the takfiri butchers attacking Syria, but them some of Thanatopia’s thug stooges turned on them, probably over money-the American Way.
HQ for the transfer of Libya arms to the takfiri butchers attacking Syria
dead men tell no tales.
Cameron and Sarkozy, while obviously not willing to appear in any way subservient to Obama, were, nevertheless perfectly willing to be totally subservient to Washington in general.
They would never have achieved their political prominence without knowing in advance that their character was suitable for Washington’s purposes, just as Merkel, May and Macron are suitable right now.
In today’s world, any sane human being, with the actual welfare of their fellow human beings at heart, would never even want political office unless they were the only person left standing when all the others had cancelled each other out.
Well THAT is an easy question to answer reinertorheit …….. You see Obomber told us, “We don’t look backwards, we look forward.”
And Tubularsock figures that HE WON the Nobel Peace Prize so HE MUST be right!
Oh, did Tubularsock forget to tell you that the world as we know it is upside down.
Well, just stand on your head and it will all become clear.
Cheers.
That’ll add a new alternative reality dimension to & a more precise perspective on ..
Obama going high , when others go low >> i get you 🙂
Could someone remind me…. where were Dubya and Tony’s WMD eventually found. and displayed as evidence for the whole world to see?
What?
None? No, surely that can’t be true. If they never found any at all, then Tony Blair, and George W Bush, and Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney, and Scooter Libby, and Gordon Brown, and Claire Short, and Des Browne, and Peter Mandelson, and Paul Wolfowitz, and… and… would all be in jail now, charged with crimes against humanity.
No, really? There’s a reason they’re not? Do please tell us that reason?
GW Bush is still looking……
A slide showed Mr Bush in the Oval office, leaning to look under a piece of furniture. “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere,” he told the audience, drawing applause.
Another slide showed him peering into another part of the office, “Nope, no weapons over there,” he said, laughing. “Maybe under here,” he said, as a third slide was shown. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/26/usa.iraq
Yeah, those “jokes” were about as funny as Third Stage Syphilis.
The silly son-of-a-bitch did convince many of us to leave his dysfunctional country, however, and re-discover how to live like a human being.
Blair is the one who really sickens me. I understand that, after “public relations failure” (i.e. tragedy) of Iraq, there was no way that Blair would be imprisoned since that would amount to the powers that be admitting they were “wrong” (i.e. liars). But you’d think that TB (apt initials) would have had the decency to just disappear. But no – the little weasel continues to pop up and the MSM are always eager to give him maximum publicity.
He is paid to continually pop up. His £50-100m blood money came with a lifetime requirement to promote neoliberalism, a Jewish superstate and US hegemony.
You said it ! THE most sickening sycophant with sociopathic tendencies walking the face of this earth today, freely ..
Can’t decide who is worse & more irritating , sometimes:
Mad’dog Murderous Mullah Murdoch & his MSM or T.B. ??
Either way, you have to be a prostitute of any principle & a presstitute & destitute to even associate with either of them, let alone work with them or for them ..
E.i. the pair of them, which explains why the Guardian periodically drags Tony out of the rubbish bin of recycled cesspool contaminated components to assist in >>
history repeating ..
Also, TB’s NOT turning up at regular intervals would undermine his appearance of innocence.
Hysterical, isn’t it?
Saddam’s WMD were hidden in Iran, silly. Bibi says so.
Bibi says a lot of things. Not all of them are true…..
You mean he’s slipped an uttered something Truthful !?
I must have missed that, do fill me in ..
Sorry, but there is a terrible mistake here: Surely Clare Short is remarkable for her constant criticism of Tony Blair and her very blunt accusations against him for lying her, and other MPs into a war? She received a written reprimand, and resigned!
Condi Rice, on the other hand, ought to be on that list, up there with the greatest of them.
Clare Short was a major instigator of the New Labour bombing of Belgrade. She crowed about the destruction of civilian housing blocks, and of the train on the bridge. I hope she dies of inoperable cancer.
the train on the bridge
Wardropper is right about Claire Short – and we have some very arrogant self-righteous commentators who don’t know their ass from a whole in the ground posing as ‘political pundits’ here
Yourself included, it would seem!
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10540/clare_short/birmingham%2C_ladywood/divisions?policy=1049
Clare Short’s voting record on the Iraq War – consistently voted FOR the war
Learn to spell hole before you open your ignorant trap again, please.
@’WHOLIER THAN EVERYONE
Pig-ignorant Bliaite scum don’t give a damn who they’ve murdered. It’s not like anyone has tried bombing the New Labour heartlands of Muswell Hill Broadway or Crouch End, is it? For you, those murdered in the attacks for which Clare Short (whose name you can’t even spell) are just nameless statistics in distant lands that aren’t even on the Northern Line at all.
For you and your kind, the only important thing is excusing your Bliarite FILTH like Clare Short from blame, isn’t it? Even thought she voted for the Iraq War at every stage, and then lied about doing so
SO WHO IS THE IGNORANT ONE NOW, YOU ASSHOLE?????
Relax.
Agreeing with you 100% about Bliarite scum doesn’t mean ignoring the people who stood up to him. Like any fairly seasoned politician, Short tried to use politically correct language to express the strength of her feelings, but her natural bluntness caused her to fail in this, and her actions ultimately show what she thought of him.
She is a sack of shit. She bombed innocent people. She ought to be hung from her filthy neck.
At a heated press briefing at the Ministry of Defence, Clare Short, the international development secretary, said: ‘This is a war, this is a serious conflict, untold horrors are being done. The propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it’s a legitimate target.’
From The Guardian 1999: https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/24/balkans3
Even more so, then, the BBC, its propaganda officers safely ensconced in their air-conditioned studios while engineering mass mayhem with their lying tongues.
This is all before 2003, when it became quite clear to people who paid attention that we had been lied to.
Did you suspect you had been lied to in 1999?
In 1999, Saddam was the unquestioned bad guy, and most people saw no need to dig deeper.
Then, in 2003, Hans Blix was prevented from completing his job while on the brink of proving that there were no WMD in Iraq, and G.W.’s obvious desperation to have war there was the trigger for the alarm bells which then started ringing in the brains of those of us who have a functioning conscience.
That was when people started to ask questions, and that was when Clare Short paid attention to her conscience too.
Jack Straw, for example, did the opposite.
I was absolutely certain we had been lied to about Kosovo – but I have friends in Serbia who provided me with better information than that lying witch Short or the eunuch Jamie Shea were selling.
You think Short has a conscience? I doubt it. Someone whispered the words ‘War Crimes Tribunal’ into her ear, and she began blaming Tony Bliar instead. Note that she never, on any occasion, apologised for what she had said or done, or expressed the slightest regret for it. She was only interested in leading the blame trail away from her door. Of course, as the Minister responsibe for giving press conferences about the success of the attacks on Serbia, this required mental origami on an extensive scale.
We’re talking about the Middle East here, though, not Kosovo, way back when most people didn’t have friends in Serbia and had not yet learned the full extent to which our “representatives” were prepared to lie to us.
Colin Powell’s forced admission was quite a shock to the masses, but of course now we DO know.
Short is the sort of person who arouses animosity because she is blunt, but the fuss she made when she realized her government was on an unashamed lying spree was not the action of an opportunist. Unlike many others, I think she is also quite capable of admitting mistakes.
Even CNN admitted this at the time of the “dodgy dossier” : ” … and former UK International Development Secretary Clare Short, who resigned from the cabinet after the war [sic] (= decision to invade), has also told the inquiry that Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush had made the decision to go to war last summer.
Short said this was the reason why U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was not allowed any more time to search for evidence in Iraq.”
This is not opportunism, but career-risking frankness.
Fine, you support the war-mongering whore Short. I don’t.
This discussion is over.