UPDATED - ColdType

NEW YORK,MARCH 19,2003
RIGHT WING LIBERATION
THEOLOGY DRIVES SPEECH
Liberation by devastation is Bush’s ultimatum to Iraq
BEGIN writing with nearly twelve hours left on President’s Bush’s arbitrary deadline to war. A
higher force may be speaking even if no one is listening. The desert storms in Kuwait are gumming
up the helicopters and cutting visibility to near zero. As Saddam expresses hopes that Baghdad
will resist the Americans as Stalingrad did the Nazis, one must be reminded that it was the
weather, oft named “General Winter,” which slowed Hitler’s blitzkrieg. Today, sandstorms represent
the first threat facing the coalition of the willing. For a cautionary note, read today’s Wall Street
Journal on the obstacles that colonial armies faced in subjugating Arab nations. In physical form, they
signal the fog of war is swirling. In electronic
form, you can see that every hour on TV.
Journalism of death
IN the “official media,” led by the New York Post,
Saddam poses in uniform under a headline that
screams “DEAD MAN.” Under the photo, the
wags of war add this never-subtle thought:
“Butcher tells US come and get me.” It works as
agit prop, not journalism and reminds me of a
headline in Boston back on the day U.S. bombers
brought a Christmas present to the citizens of
Hanoi. That one had another point of view:
“ENEMY BOMBS HANOI.” (I thought of that
after visiting shows by Vietnamese artists in
New York, a completely normal affair that would
have been unthinkable back then, when their
country was demonized.)
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The fatal mistake
WAR is the news these days. Our TV screens are
filled with images from the front and bluster
from Ari Fleischer in the White House. He said
yesterday that Saddam Hussein made his “final
mistake” by rejecting the Bush ultimatum ordering
him to leave Iraq. Meanwhile, The New York
Times’s Judith Miller reports: “The plan is to
rapidly find, secure and ultimately destroy the
caches of chemical, biological and other unconventional
weapons.”
I have heard many suspicions raised about the
possibility that U.S. troops might plant such
weapons and then dramatically “discover them”
in the manner of so many drug busts in America.
Let’s hope that the military has outsiders with