4 - Sunday, February 16, 1992 — North Shore News

American claim to glory

I WAS only able to stand the first two minutes of George
Bush’s state of the union address to the American Con-
gress before angrily changing the channel.

It was the most nauseating
piece of drivel { have ever heard
maybe in my entire life.

“*By the grace of God, America
won the Cold War.”’

Excuse me, I think I’m going to
throw up again, just remembering
those words.

Was he on those sleeping pills
when he was approving the
speechwriting committee’s work?
Probably. But that’s no excuse.

Boy, when those guys decide to
pander to the lowest common
denominator, they get right to it,
don’t they? Tell the yahoos wat-
ching TV in the bar over their
beer exactly what they want to
hear.

Rank, suffocating, xenophobic,
Orwellian, jingoistic garbage! I
was going to add hypocritical, but
this is beyond hypocrisy. This is
bare-faced mass lying.

I try to be open-minded about
the state of politics in the rusting
dinosaurian empire to the south.
But it generally remains so deeply
in the gutter of unfettered self-
interest, expressed clumsily and
brutally, that an open mind risks
contamination.

This is not to say that Canada
or any other country in the world
is any less Machiavellian in pur-
suit of its own geopolitical objec-
tives. Heavens no!

It is just that when guys like
Bush play politics they do it so
ham-handedly one is reminded of
Mike Tyson's idea of foreplay.

I'm sure Lech Walesa was just
thrilled to hear that America did
the whole thing. After all, what
are a few mass uprisings
throughout the East Bloc and later
in the heart of the Evil Empire
itself? The courage of Gorbachev
and Yeltsin, what matter?

I read the next day that Bush
had gone from bragging about
winning the Cold War straight to
the glory of the victory in the
Gulf, pounding his chest like a
9,000-pound gorilla.

It’s a good thing I was watching
something else by then, otherwise
I'd have been sick all over again.

Bob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

Ditto for the reported part
about America’s having become
the ‘‘sole and pre-eminent power’’
in the world.

This would be pretty absolute
stuff, if it were true.

Such absolute power, one imag-
ines, would quickly rid itself of
flea-sized nuisances like Saddam
Hussein, but one can hardly faii
to notice that a year after his
“*defeat”’ he is still very much in
command of almost all the ter-
ritory he started out with and is
poised to recover what little he
has lost.

His vaunted nuclear weapons
program may have been dismant!-
ed, but so what? The idea of go-
ing through all the agony of
building one’s own bombs has
been rendered obsolete by the col-
lapse of the Red Army.

Tactical nuclear warheads from
the Soviet stockpile are already
available on the international arms
market, I’m told, for as little as
$20 million.

It is just a matter of time before
Hussein, or somebody like him,
gets his hands on one, or a dozen.
Just add a Scud, and bingo,
you're in the nuko bz.

If the Yanks weve ceally the
“*sole and pre-eminent power”’ in
the world, why would they toler-

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ate such a situation?

Bush is, of course, facing a few
domestic problems that could hurt
his attempt to cling to power.

Onc is the so-called **October
Surprise’’ affair, which has led to
a congressional investigation into
whether or not the Republicans,
when Reagan and Bush were first
running, cut a deal with Iran not
to release the American hostages
until the day after the election
that saw the fall of Jimmy Carter.

This would be a far worse
sneaky trick than anything
Richard Nixon pulled off during
the Watergate coverup.

But the big disaster Bush might
face would be evidence emerging
that the Gulf War was faked and
staged as thoroughly as the World
Wrestling Federation champion:
ships.

Students of the WWF extrava-
ganzas will understand when | say
that, in an ironic reversal of roles,
Bush actually played Andre the
Giant to Hussein’s Hulk Hogan,
and threw the fight, letting the
smaller guy emerge intact after
pretending to have crushed him to
a pulp.

As somebody who was writing
that Desert Storm stunk from the
very moment Bush proposed it, |
have enjoyed watching the slow,
agonized shift in opinion in the
Western mass media from blind
acceptance of every spoonful of
American propaganda during the
war to a Sullen realization that
pack journalism had once again
prevailed and that the poor dumb
reporters had once again been
had.

Royally had.

The sharp boys at the Pentagon
led the media around by the nose.

The latest revelation comes
from syndicated military colum-
nist Eric Margolis, quoting
Mideast intelligence sources who
say Saddam Hussein remains in
power with most of his army in-
tact, because of a secret deal he
made with Bush.

Margolis writes that the French
and Soviets brokered the deal
shortly before the ground offen-
sive was launched. Hussein didn’t
really want to see his regular Iraqi
Army units and Revolutionary

beyond hypocrisy

Guard destroyed, since they con-
stituted his power base at home.

Bush, for his part, was afraid
that if cornered, the Iraqis would
actually fight, inflicting actual
American casualties, which would
be bad for the Bush re-election
campaign.

The deal cut between Baghdad
and Washington was for Hussein
to put up only token resistance,

leaving conscripted Shia Muslim
reservists to take the fire, while
Bush got to proclaim the biggest
victory in history, suffering only a
handful of mainly accidental ca-
sualties.

If this is true, it was a farce and
a hoax, folks. Just as } was saying
all along. And don’t forget,
Canada went along for the ride.

My name is Jane-Anne Henderson. | am an
adopted daughter of loving parents and am
now attending university. | thank my birth
mother, who at 19 relinquished me for
adoption and who recognized me as a
human being from the earliest weeks of my

life within her womb.

For information on biomedical! and ethical
issues like abortion and euthanasia call the
Resource Centre at 984-9094.

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