"The Point That Isn’t" - The NRO Eschews Criticism

The Boundary Bay Morning SteamerÓ
Boundary Bay, B.C. (bbmornsteamer@dccnet.com) Wednesday, March 29, 2006

“The Point That Isn’t”
by: 00Buck

IN RE: “The Markup
The British Memo, a.k.a. News That Isn't”

National Review Online
03/27 11:32 AM
Stephen Spruiell Reporting

As with other submissions I have made to the NRO, the following was deemed unaccecptable.

Although it would seem to violate the laws of physics and principles of applied medicine, I submit that if a 6” spike got driven through Mr. Spruiell’s head, by accident, it would fall out of it’s own and leave the man unmoved and unmarked.

Mr. “Spurious”, thesis in the NRO Blog proposes that bruiting the substance of, “The British Memo” is; “…just recycling old news.” Nice try Stephen, but Mrs. Lincoln has more important issues on her mind, despite the narrow and peculiar ‘focus’ of hacks writing entertainment columns. The issue is: how many times and in how many ways does the message have to be recycled before the US, before the co-opted media, before y’all, get the point?

Mr. Spruiell wrote:

“…we already knew at that point that Saddam would not cooperate with the UN…”

So what? There were dozens of countries around the world not “cooperating” with the UN. Human Rights issues in China, genocides in Rwanda, Sudan and Yugoslavia … there was and is a long list of valid targets for moral indignation and legal intervention.

But by far the most noteworthy and egregious violations were those being committed by the US directly, and indirectly by policies and regimes sponsored by the US in other countries. What logic is there that says the US can invade a foreign country, destroy it’s economy and domestic security, depreciate it’s cultural artifacts and surrender them to looters, violate the UN Charter and ignore The Security Council …and in so doing, imagine itself to be ”cooperating” with the UN,... or in some way advancing it’s interests? This is not a paradox; it is an absurdity; and a perverse one. If not cooperating with the UN is a damnable offense, then; by his own words, he be damned.

How is it the US (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al.) can ignore and despise the UN (e.g. John R. Bolton) with one insult and deprecation [1] after another, threaten to discredit legitimate UN inspectors [2] and, then presume to justify the destruction of another nation, inflict “Shock and Awe” on the pretext (barefaced lies) that the victim was failing to honour the UN?

The salient point of Mr. Blix’s meeting with Cheney and Bush in the Oval office (October 2002) wasn’t to complain about Saddam’s subterfuges; it was to inform the Administration that despite intensive and “invasive” [3] searching (including searches of sites specifically identified by the CIA) the UN Inspectors found nothing to substantiate the claim Saddam was hiding anything at all or had the wherewithal to manufacture anything which would qualify as WMD.

The point continues to be: the US continues to maintain that it was justified in its decision to invade Iraq because it wouldn’t turn over WMD. The fact that Iraq could not oblige because these ephemera only existed in, “Fantasy Land, DOC”, not in the real world is, according to Spruiell, just so much, “Old News”. The Memo clearly stated: “At their meeting, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair candidly expressed their doubts that chemical, biological or nuclear weapons would be found in Iraq in the coming weeks,…” Where is the precedent for despoiling, then occupying another man’s ranch on the basis there is no expectation of finding evidence of crime? This is a ‘case in point; an example of the mentality of cattle rustlers and (oil) claim jumpers and the ‘raison d’être’ for Bin Laden and the 9/11 statement of objection. The point of the memo is: it substantiates Osama’s claim that American Foreign Policy is intolerable and that the, “Shock and Awe”, of 9/11 was just a dose of it’s own pharmaceuticals.

If that wasn’t bad enough, integral to the schemes of these homicidal despoilers was the necessity of putting their own family (nation), their heirs and successors at ransom; obligating them to pay their cronies (Carlisle, Halliburton, KBR, et. al.) billions, even trillions [4], to repair the damage.

The Blair Memo is probative to the case that this Administration pre-determined, with malice aforethought, to make American citizens accessories to a monstrous crime, with full knowledge and understanding that this generation and probably the next would be on the hook for all the damage, while they personally will have retired from the scene having amassed an obscenity of wealth. The only beneficiaries of this extortion are the principals among the American Petroleum Giants (look at the profits since the War!) and corporate megaliths with government contracts for the reconstruction and repairs. Someone should disabuse Mr. Spruiell, and some other contributors to NRO, of the queer notion that, “hindsight”, is the view you get from looking up your own.

Not one of the criteria presented as justification for invading Iraq was true. No ‘Yellow Cake” solicited from Nigeria [5], no chemical, biological or radioactive predicates for WMD; not a single molecule or atom out of order. At best, the purported evidences had about as much substance as the 'wet-dream' idylls of a 12 year old 'pre-pube', the ‘wet-brained’ reveries of an alcoholic imagining he has a cellar full of Chivas, or the ergot induced hallucinations that drove the Salemites to incinerate housewives and maidens. At worst, they qualify as issuing false reports to police, perjury (lying under oath) and malicious prosecution.

France and the USSR had developed mutually satisfactory oil and economic relationship with Baghdad which it was, and is, their sovereign right to do. Just because these agreements did not suit the US oil cartel are not grounds to label them, “bribery”as Stephen has. If the Spruiell wants to cite examples of exploitive and abusive foreign and economic policies, for the 'Love of Peteroleum', he doesn’t need object lessons from Persians.

The US had no moral, ethical or legal basis for the Invasion, but Mr. ‘Spurious’ and the American ‘corpocracy’ that is the Media, although acting as conduits for the, “News”, still haven’t gotten the message. Perhaps Spruiell and his ilk have seen the text of the message enough times that the rehearsing of it has become tedious to the point of distraction. Mr. Spruiell and his readers should take note that the rest of the world does not subordinate the venality and criminality of unmitigated war to fears that Mr. Spruiell is subject to fits of 'the vapors' or ennui.

Stephen’s depreciation of the British Memo’s significance is just another way of saying he is not listening to a message he wasn’t qualified to comment upon in the first place, and that his powers haven’t improved perceptibly despite having had 2 years to repair the deficiency.

I suggest Mr. Spruiell devote some professional development time to watching Tyra Banks in the afternoon. If he possesses any powers of absorption, if he is able to derive tutelage from someone with vastly superior intellectual acuity, knowledge of the subject and powers of penetration (not to mention personal depth), Ms. Bank’s mentoring would afford Stephen an opportunity to add some depth to his insights into American foreign policy.

Edited: rws; Friday, March 31, 2006

[1]Meet the Press, March 16, 2003
Dick Cheney: I disagree, yes. And you'll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community disagree. ... [W]e know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong

[2] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/09/MNGIP5H2031.DTL

When it came to Iraq , Cheney made it clear that inspections could not go on forever if they did not produce results, Blix writes. In that case, the United States "was ready to discredit inspections in favor of disarmament," he quotes Cheney as saying.

Blix left Cheney believing the session "was not meant as a real exchange of views. Perhaps it was just to put us on notice."

[3] “After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq ”
Director General of IAEA, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, to the U.N. Security Council

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#Iraq_controversy
Despite statements that the company receives low profit margins from their Iraq contracts, their stock value has gone from $9 in mid-2002 all the way up to $69 as of late-2005.

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_Forgery

“by early 2002, investigations by both the CIA and the State Department had found the documents to be inaccurate. Days before the Iraq invasion…”