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The Bagman Cometh:
Obama Embraces War Criminal's Endorsement
by Chris Floyd
Come, let's away to
prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost
ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll
live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded
butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with
them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's
the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In
a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the
moon.
I.
Democratic Party circles
are in raptures over Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. One can see the
heavily-blinkered logic behind their elation; now that our national politics has
been reduced to a petty squabble over spoils among shifting factions in the
imperial court, a nod from a consummate courtier like Powell is indeed a
glittering prize for an ambitious prince.
But out in the real world,
where the operations of imperial power have left smoking trails of murder and
ruin across the globe, the "endorsement" of a man who played an indispensable
role in the slaughter of more than a million innocent people in a war of
Hitlerian aggression should be regarded as a thing of shame, and vociferously
rejected by anyone with a scintilla of honor or morality.
In fact, it is not too much
of a stretch to say that Colin Powell is more responsible for the mass murder
spree in Iraq than any other person except George W. Bush, who gave the actual
order for the hit. For it was Powell who "made the sale" for the Bush Faction's
deceitful warmongering campaign, with his infamous February 2003 presentation to
the UN, laying out the false evidence about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass
destruction. After that farrago of artfully delivered lies, the American
Establishment – urged on by the fawning, bloodthirsty commentariat – lined up
solidly behind the war. After all, if Colin Powell – so "reasonable," so
"honorable," so "honest" and "bipartisan" – stood foursquare behind the Bush
case for war, then it must be ironclad.
This was, again, the logic
of courtiers, with little connection to reality. Powell's reputation as a wise,
moderate, impartial statesman – the very thing that made him the most effective
shill for the war crime in Iraq – was itself almost entirely a fiction. By the
time he made his shameless UN appearance, Powell had already spent almost four
decades as a bagman – and frontman – for some of the most vicious and ugly
elements in American politics and government. From the My Lai massacre to
Iran-Contra, from Washington's long and murderous collusion with Saddam to its
long and murderous campaigns to remove him, Powell has been instrumental in
perpetrating or covering up atrocities and abominations on a gigantic scale.
[For details, see Robert Parry's investigation, "The Truth
About Colin Powell."]
Since his departure from
the Administration – after staying on long enough to see Bush reconfirmed in
power – Powell and his legion of apologists have peddled the myth that he was
"stabbed in the back" in his UN presentation: given a false bill of goods with
assurances they were true, misled and manipulated by incompetent intelligence
analysts and Machiavellian White House insiders, etc., etc. Such stories may
help Powell sleep better at night, and they have certainly helped rehabilitate
his fictional reputation to the extent that his endorsement is once more
considered a worthy prize. But they suffer from one small defect: they are
blatantly false.
Powell knew – knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt – that he was offering rank lies, cooked intelligence
and dubious assertion to the world at his UN presentation before the war.
Earlier this year, Jonathan Schwarz provided a devastating demolition of Powell's UN testimony,
showing how it was belied at almost every point by the actual intelligence
reports – which Powell had read before the presentation. Powell knew
the case for war against Iraq was riddled with holes – holes patched with
outright fabrications and the knowing manipulation of data. He presented it
anyway; he made the sale. And a million innocent human beings have die for it.
II.
But Powell was selling
aggression against Iraq long before his UN fan-dance in February 2003. In fact,
he was the mouthpiece that the Administration used in May 2002 – even before the White House began to "roll out the product" of a concentrated
warmongering campaign – to signal Washington's firm intent to invade Iraq even
if UN inspectors went into the country and found no weapons of mass destruction.
The cat of war crime was out of the bag – and out in open – in the spring of
2002, and it was Powell who untied the strings.
Here's what I wrote on May
17, 2002, in The Moscow Times:
Quietly, without
fanfare, in a bland statement issued by its most "moderate" front man, the
Bush Regime crossed another moral Rubicon last week, carrying the once-great
republic they have usurped deeper into the blood-soaked mire of international
criminality.
The move – committing the
United States of America to a policy of Hitlerian military aggression – was
little noted at the time. A quick soundbite, maybe, on a couple of the more
wonky TV news shows; a brief quote buried somewhere in the thick gray sludge
of the "serious" papers. The Regime guaranteed its poison pill would go down
sugarcoated by picking Secretary of State Colin Powell as its mouthpiece.
It was a masterstroke of
propaganda, really. The former general has long been regarded by the "serious"
media on both sides of the Atlantic as a "moderate" maverick on Bush's
hard-right team. Liberal commentators praise Powell as a "restraining
influence" on more bellicose insiders like Cheney and Rumsfeld, and a wise,
guiding hand for a president unschooled in the subtleties of world diplomacy.
It's all a sham, of
course. Powell is nothing more than a lifelong bagman for powerful interests.
His willingness to play ball, to look the other way, has made him a convenient
tool for the some of the most violent and undemocratic forces ever to pollute
American society.
His first job on the
Inside was an attempted whitewash of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam; it didn't
quite work, but he won points for his obfuscatory efforts and went on to a
plum job in the crime-ridden Nixon White House. Then came Iran-Contra, the
criminal conspiracy of drug-running and terrorism operated directly out of the
Reagan-Bush White House. Powell illicitly sent missiles to the terrorist
regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, then helped with the ensuing cover-up. For this
service, he was made head of the entire U.S. military.
He then directed the
illegal American aggression against Panama, when President George H.W. Bush killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent civilians in a hissy fit
against his old CIA employee Manuel Noriega. Powell, like Bush, had long known
Noriega was a murderous drug dealer, but they found him useful, and plied him
with plaudits and cash – until Bush needed to prove his tough-guy cojones to Reaganite critics in the Republican Party....
So what better man to
announce George W. Bush's adoption of Adolf Hitler's moral code? Powell sat
down with the media sycophants on ABC's "This Week" and calmly – moderately –
laid out the new doctrine. The subject, of course, was Iraq. The UN was
working on a deal that would allow international inspectors back into the
country to verify that Saddam Hussein no longer possessed weapons of mass
destruction.
These inspections were
vital because, as George W. never ceases to remind us, Saddam Hussein is so
evil that he "gassed his own people." ...But Junior always omits the
inconvenient fact that one year [the attack], Daddy Bush signed an executive
order mandating closer U.S. ties to Saddam's regime. Daddy Bush showered
Saddam with endless financial credits and mountains of "dual-use technology" –
which the dictator duly used to develop his WMDs – right up until the day
before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Needless to say, Powell, as head of Daddy's
military, was complicit in this lunatic operation and raised no demur,
"moderate" or otherwise.
Flash forward to the
present day. Junior Bush is now in the White House. For months, he has
threatened military action against Iraq if Hussein fails to verify the
destruction of his WMD capacity. (At the same time, of course, Junior
undercuts international treaties that would require monitoring of his own
biochemical warfare facilities. There's a good reason for that: the Regime is
now preparing to develop offensive biochemical weapons, in contravention of
international and U.S. law, the Village Voice reports.)
The world braces for
another conflagration in the Mesopotamian sands. But then Saddam blinks. He
starts talking with the UN. He renounces aggression. He tries to make up with
Kuwait. Sooner or later, the inspectors will go back in – no cause for war
now, right?
Wrong, Powell told the
sycophants last week. The "moderate" secretary said that even if UN
inspectors go in and verify compliance, the Bush Regime still "reserves
its options" to do anything necessary, including military invasion, to effect
a "regime change." Bush himself has already acknowledged that nuclear force is
among those "options."
So there it is. The
United States now openly claims the right to launch an all-out attack on any
nation in the world whose regime it doesn't like – even if that nation is not
engaged in active military aggression or terrorism – and even if the mere
threat of aggression has been defused by UN monitoring.
No provocation necessary.
No legality required. Just a thuggish elite raining death on the world, for
profit and power, sowing hatred for the once-great nation they have hijacked –
and ensuring more death and terror for its people.
This then is the
bloodstained hand that Barack Obama has clasped so warmly, so triumphantly, on his march to power. As for Powell, he has proven himself
once more the ultimate courtier. In the latest intramural tussle in the imperial
court, his keen and practiced eye has picked out the coming man – and so he has
jettisoned the faction he has served for so long, and latched on to the winning
side yet again. (As he did previously for a while with Bill Clinton.) And why
not? Powell has always been a faithful servant of America's militarist empire –
no matter who its temporary manager might be.
October 20,
2008
Chris Floyd [send him mail] is the author
of Empire
Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime.
Powell is all about Powell. Always has been. He sucked his way up the chain of command in the military and did the same in politics. What he sees in his future by tagging on to Obama's coat tails is anyone's guess. And no one should give a crap either. He's only important because the media needs black men to endorse their own political correctness and reassure them that they are not racist like the rest of white America.