People converting to the winning side...

[Tim May]

I'm not surprised to see some of my friends and associates (not 
necessarily on this list...I actually do interact with people off-list) 
switching sides from being "anti-war" to the other side. They natter 
about how Saddam was a tyrant (true enough, and there are a hundred 
other such tyrants), to how he must have had the magical word WMD (no 
evidence so far, and he certainly didn't use them when he should have), 
and how this will prove to the A-rabs that America stands tall 
(debatable).

I think of this as warporn. Seeing the tanks blowing up stuff, seeing 
the "embedded" reporters riding atop the Bradley fighting vehicles like 
Lawrence of Arabia, seeing what a trillion dollars of defense spending 
can put into the skies over Iraq...all a kind of warporn.

I was and am against the war for a very straightforward and principled 
reason: it is not a valid function of United States government to be 
the world's policemen, to be going around removing national figures we 
have decided we don't like. Whether it results in cheaper oil for 
Chevron (at the expense of one hundred billion dollars for the rest of 
us) is not a basis for starting a war.

(Oh, I forgot...Congress shall have the power to declare war....but 
they didn't. This is one of those "police actions" that are not actual 
legal wars. Maybe the vets should be denied the special pay and death 
benefits accruing in actual wars.)

The U.S. claimed Saddam was a monstrous threat, with a powerful army, 
with huge caches of "WMD." (Sounds like Israel. Sounds like India. 
Sounds like Pakistan. Sounds like us, the U.S.)

The U.N. inspectors were unable to find the supposed WMD. (The 
Al-Samoud missile being a pathetic example where the missile met the 
allowable range with a warhead mounted, but failed the allowable range 
without a warhead...so the U.S. decided the missile without a warhead 
was a "WMD" because it exceeded the b.s. allowable range by a handful 
of miles. Something out of a Saturday Night Live sketch.)

The U.N. was unable to find the supposed huge caches...and so far the 
swarming U.S. troops have failed to do so. Rummy keeps saying "We know 
they're there...we'll find them soon."

(This is about time for Rummy to tell the CIA to throw down the throw 
down gun.)

The Iraqi army was what it has always appeared to be: a Turd World 
primitive army based on graft and corruption and intimidation of 
non-officers by officer toadies. In other words, not a serious fighting 
force. And yet they were portrayed as threatening the world.

As Chomsky notes, the Big Lie has been hinted at in such a way that 
more than half the sheeple in the U.S. are now convinced that Saddam 
Hussein was behind 9/11.

(This whole episode ought to be a major new chapter in "Manufacturing 
Consent.")

I am ashamed of this once liberty-seeking nation and I am ashamed of my 
friends and associates who have fallen for the warporn and embraced the 
current imperialism.

--Tim May

"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, 
and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for 
then it costs nothing to be a patriot." -- Mark Twain