During these trying times, for any of us with even an ounce of rationality, please go out and get the 1997 Barry Levinson film Wag the Dog. This satire (is it really?) was originally based on the sexual scandals around our president at the time, Bill ‘Ignore my smirks’ Clinton. In reality, this film is really a testament to many of our presidents and how they use phony foreign threats to raise their poll numbers.
We can go back to Bush Jr.’s father, who in early 1990 had terrible poll numbers or what the media likes to call ‘approval ratings.’ So, according to the transcripts of her interview with Saddam Hussein in ’90, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie was told by Saddam Hussein about his disagreement with Kuwait over certain oil deposits bordering their two countries. Hussein was pissed off and issued veiled threats. Glaspie’s response to Hussein, which many feel more or less gave him the green light to move with military actions: “We have no opinion on your Arab—Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.” (Saddam smiles.) Then, BOOM! THIS MEANS WAR!!! Remember those
Fast forward a mere eleven years later and another Bush (Lord protect us!) sat in the White House with low approval ratings. So, they ‘wagged the dog’ and pulled Hussein out again for some of the same. This time it was WMD that the UN weapons inspectors said most likely no longer existed . . . of course they meant in Iraq and not in the U.S., the UK and Israel, France, Pakistan, etc. Too bad guys, said the Bush/Cheney cabal . . . THIS MEANS WAR!! To anyone with even half a brain, that so called war really was an illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. That action has resonated and will resonate as the most heinous action by our empire since the totally unnecessary dropping of two atomic bombs in August of 1945. Please read Mark Weber’s Was Hiroshima necessary? in the 1997 Journal of Historical Review. As generations of Japanese civilians have been genetically destroyed by the A-bomb radiation, so too have millions of Iraqis been physically and culturally destroyed by our ‘Shock and Awe’ carpet bombings and use of depleted uranium on them and their infrastructure.
Ten years after the Iraq disgrace, we had a ‘Hope and Change’ president in office. Well, after having his own doubts (proof as to who really runs our ‘Deep State’), Mr. Obama gave in to the war mongering Mrs. Clinton and her neocon allies in the Pentagon and Dept. of State. We got NATO, our puppet organization, to agree to join us in the carpet bombing of one of the most progressive nations in Africa, Libya. However much of a demagogue Mr. Gaddafi was, his people lived much better than most of the nations on the entire planet! Well, Gaddafi planned to go off the use of our dollars in his oil transactions, replacing them with a new African currency called the Gold Dinar, and of course he wanted no part of the United States Africa Command. So, in 2011 NATO. . oh sorry, the U.S. ,attacked and destroyed Libya using another ‘Wag the Dog’ excuse of aiding civilians caught up in its civil war. Once we conquered that country, and of course brutally killed Gaddafi (Mrs. Clinton: “We came, we saw, he died”) that nation, as with Iraq and Afghanistan, is in ruins.
Now, we have The Donald using another ‘Wag the Dog’ on North Korea. Why not? It has always worked, and sadly, for MoronAmerika, it will again. Pogo was correct: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Philip A Farruggio is a semi-retired baby boomer born and bred in blue collar Brooklyn, NY. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn longshoremen, and educated at ‘free tuition’ Brooklyn College, class of ’74. Philip has written over 300 columns since 2001 and his work is found on many fine progressive sites like World News Trust, Nation of Change, Information Clearinghouse, Intrepid Report, Sleuth Journal, Dandelion Salad, Counterpunch and Dissident Voice. He can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.
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Wag the morons!!
Posted on August 29, 2017 by Philip A Farruggio
During these trying times, for any of us with even an ounce of rationality, please go out and get the 1997 Barry Levinson film Wag the Dog. This satire (is it really?) was originally based on the sexual scandals around our president at the time, Bill ‘Ignore my smirks’ Clinton. In reality, this film is really a testament to many of our presidents and how they use phony foreign threats to raise their poll numbers.
We can go back to Bush Jr.’s father, who in early 1990 had terrible poll numbers or what the media likes to call ‘approval ratings.’ So, according to the transcripts of her interview with Saddam Hussein in ’90, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie was told by Saddam Hussein about his disagreement with Kuwait over certain oil deposits bordering their two countries. Hussein was pissed off and issued veiled threats. Glaspie’s response to Hussein, which many feel more or less gave him the green light to move with military actions: “We have no opinion on your Arab—Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.” (Saddam smiles.) Then, BOOM! THIS MEANS WAR!!! Remember those
Fast forward a mere eleven years later and another Bush (Lord protect us!) sat in the White House with low approval ratings. So, they ‘wagged the dog’ and pulled Hussein out again for some of the same. This time it was WMD that the UN weapons inspectors said most likely no longer existed . . . of course they meant in Iraq and not in the U.S., the UK and Israel, France, Pakistan, etc. Too bad guys, said the Bush/Cheney cabal . . . THIS MEANS WAR!! To anyone with even half a brain, that so called war really was an illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. That action has resonated and will resonate as the most heinous action by our empire since the totally unnecessary dropping of two atomic bombs in August of 1945. Please read Mark Weber’s Was Hiroshima necessary? in the 1997 Journal of Historical Review. As generations of Japanese civilians have been genetically destroyed by the A-bomb radiation, so too have millions of Iraqis been physically and culturally destroyed by our ‘Shock and Awe’ carpet bombings and use of depleted uranium on them and their infrastructure.
Ten years after the Iraq disgrace, we had a ‘Hope and Change’ president in office. Well, after having his own doubts (proof as to who really runs our ‘Deep State’), Mr. Obama gave in to the war mongering Mrs. Clinton and her neocon allies in the Pentagon and Dept. of State. We got NATO, our puppet organization, to agree to join us in the carpet bombing of one of the most progressive nations in Africa, Libya. However much of a demagogue Mr. Gaddafi was, his people lived much better than most of the nations on the entire planet! Well, Gaddafi planned to go off the use of our dollars in his oil transactions, replacing them with a new African currency called the Gold Dinar, and of course he wanted no part of the United States Africa Command. So, in 2011 NATO. . oh sorry, the U.S. ,attacked and destroyed Libya using another ‘Wag the Dog’ excuse of aiding civilians caught up in its civil war. Once we conquered that country, and of course brutally killed Gaddafi (Mrs. Clinton: “We came, we saw, he died”) that nation, as with Iraq and Afghanistan, is in ruins.
Now, we have The Donald using another ‘Wag the Dog’ on North Korea. Why not? It has always worked, and sadly, for MoronAmerika, it will again. Pogo was correct: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Philip A Farruggio is a semi-retired baby boomer born and bred in blue collar Brooklyn, NY. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn longshoremen, and educated at ‘free tuition’ Brooklyn College, class of ’74. Philip has written over 300 columns since 2001 and his work is found on many fine progressive sites like World News Trust, Nation of Change, Information Clearinghouse, Intrepid Report, Sleuth Journal, Dandelion Salad, Counterpunch and Dissident Voice. He can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.