For Those Who Remember

“And the tragedy that you referenced of tens of thousands of children who have dysentery and cholera, a million displaced, 10,000 dead, it seems that here we are sitting in Washington and listeners sitting around the country, it's hard to imagine.” -Yochi Dreazen of Foreign Policy magazine, speaking of Syria, on the Diane Rehm show, 3/14/14. [1]

Well pal, it shouldn't be so "hard" for you to "imagine." You guys killed 500,000 Iraqi children during the Clinton regime's sanctions on Iraq in a failed attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein by starving the populace there. That wasn't so long ago that you should have forgotten it already,

This isn't even disputed by Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who didn't deny it, didn't flinch, didn't apologize, when asked about it by Leslie Stahl during a 60 Minutes interview (CBS). Albright said “we think it was worth it.” What the “it'” was that was worth half a million children's lives, that is, what was accomplished, Albright didn't say, and Stahl didn't ask.

Here's iceberg-hearted Albright unperturbed by helping kill half a million children. And it won't do it blame it on Saddam Hussein. The U.S. can't wash its hands of the crime by putting all the blame on that cruel tyrant. Bill Richardson, another Clinton regime apparatchik and governor, also endorses this deliberate mass murder. We all know what the reaction would be to the sight of a Soviet or Nazi official coolly brushing aside the deliberate killing of half a million children in the alleged pursuit of some policy goal. (The fatuous Richardson defends the policy by saying "it was the policy," and claiming it "contained" Saddam Hussein. As if that was necessary to "contain" him. 

                                                                  
                                                                    

                                                                                           
But Albright got the usual reward for apparatchiks of her rank- made members of the U.S. nomenklatura. She's rich, she got paid far more for her book than its market value, she's paid handsomely to give talks on such topics as “The Art of Leadership,” and Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the U.S. equivalent of the Soviet Order of Lenin and the highest U.S. civilian medal). [2]

By the way, this is a good opportunity to recall that the U.S. and its Eurolackeys supported the murderous tyrant Hussein wholeheartedly for all the years of his career UNTIL he invaded Kuwait. They supported his war of aggression against Iran, supplying him with location information on Iranian troops so he could GAS them. They covered for his gassing of the Iraqi Kurds during the war, even putting out a false “intelligence report” by the Pentagon's “Defense” “Intelligence” Agency asserting that IRAN had gassed those villages. (Notice they never mention that these days. Down the memory hole!)

The West sold Hussein the precursor chemicals used to make the gas. Earlier in his career, the CIA helpfully provided him with names of communists so he could round them up and exterminate them. (The CIA's attitude towards communists is exactly the same as the Nazis attitudes towards Jews: they are subhuman vermin to be exterminated wherever they can be found. And the fascist CIA has a very loose definition of who is a “communist.” Could be a Jesuit priest, a left-wing activist, a labor organizer, a Marxist intellectual, a human rights lawyer- anyone interfering with a reactionary social order backed by U.S. power, covertly or overtly.)

And why did the corporate media refer to him as “Saddam”? That was his first name, and they hated him by then. Perhaps to avoid confusing him with U.S. lapdog “King” Hussein of Jordan? (Now deceased and succeeded by his spawn, “King” Abdullah, who like his daddy took an American woman as a bride- to show his loyalty to his masters, I suppose- who is now a “Queen,” as is his mother.)

1] The Diane Rehm show comes out of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the empire. It's carried on the government radio propaganda network NPR five days a week. Guests are typically from “elite” U.S. and European media. The thought processes of the hosts and guests are enclosed inside the ideological bubble of the media and political elite of that city, referred to by themselves as “inside the Beltway,” with only vague self-awareness.

Here's a typical example of the ideological mind-bubble in which these people operate. When now and then, someone on the show refers to U.S. torture, they never say “torture.” It's always the euphemism “harsh interrogation tactics.”

And there's all the other standard euphemisms and ideological and political assumptions. U.S. aggression is “defense.” U.S. power is “national security.” U.S. repression is “security” or “law enforcement.” Secret police agencies like the FBI and CIA are “law enforcement” or “intelligence” agencies. The U.S. is always good, everything it does has virtuous aims, and its opponents are malign or evil. Any doubt about official cover stories are crackpot “conspiracy theories.” Any political options outside the two-party dictatorship of the Democrats and Republicans is literally unthinkable. All economic analysis stays within the mystified realm of doctrinal economic dogma.

2]  FAIR made some pertinent observations at the time of Albright's interview. See 'We Think the Price Is Worth It'