Tue. Oct 15th, 2024

Riverbend points out on her Baghdad Burning blog an interesting shift in the rhetoric of George Bush and his armchair junta.

The invasion of Iraq was justified by the country’s alleged possession of WMD and its alleged readiness to use them on the West.

More than two years later, without any evidence of WMD in Iraq, the war is now about fighting terrorism. Iraq is the new front line, Bush likes to tell us.

Bush’s sad aphasia has struck again. The war was about WMD not terrorism. Terrorism had nothing to do with the rationale for the invasion, but now, without WMD, terrorism has become the sole reason for the war.

Listening to Bush’s rhetoric we might like to reflect that before the invasion there was no connection between Iraq and terrorism.

Poor Mr. Bush doesn’t seem to know why he went to war.

Bush and his crew tell us that they are fighting terrorism in Iraq so it doesn’t come to New York or London — as pointed out in the current Harper’s review.

Then how do they explain the London bombs?

The simple fact is that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention all the other crap policies that have alienated much of the world) has radicalised a large number of people.

The London bombers were British, not Iraqi.

So what now? Does the War on Terror make Leeds the next Fallujah?

July 13, 2005

By chris page

Magazine editor, writer of fiction and non-fiction; exile; cat person; red wine for blood and cheese in his soul. Chris Page is the author of the novels Weed, Sanctioned, Another Perfect Day in ****ing Paradise, King of the Undies World, and The Underpants Tree. He is also a freelance journalist, copywriter, editor, cartoonist, illustrator, graphic designer, and consultant in the use and abuse of false moustaches (don’t wear them — you’re welcome — the invoice is in the mail).

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