[Mb-civic] The lies never stop

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0214-29.htm

Published on Monday, February 14, 2005 by the San Francisco 
Chronicle

Lies, Damned Lies And Rice
by Harley Sorensen
 

The lies never stop. They lie not only to you and me, but also to their 
friends and colleagues, Republicans as well as Democrats.

I speak (as you might guess) of those masters of deceit in the Bush 
administration. A few months ago they told our senators and 
representatives that their bogus Medicare prescription drug bill 
would cost $400 billion over the next 10 years. Now that the bill has 
become law, they've revised their estimate: Now it's $724 billion.

Two questions: Why is the difference in estimates important, and 
why do I call the drug bill "bogus"?

The bill barely squeaked through Congress. The biggest objection 
to it was its cost. In the end, it passed only because it was deemed, 
at $400 billion, affordable. Had its cost been higher, it almost 
certainly would have failed.

What is bogus about the law? Three things: It prohibits the 
importation of drugs from Canada and other countries; it prohibits 
the government from negotiating with drug companies for lower 
prices; and it provides benefits for everyone, regardless of income 
or financial status. Do the heirs of Sam Walton really need our help 
buying their prescription drugs?

That drug law should be repealed immediately. It's not an effort to 
help seniors at all. In fact, it's nothing more than a scam designed to 
enrich pharmaceutical companies. Sen. John McCain, the one 
Republican who acts like a Republican, calls it "outrageous." He's 
right.

By the way, almost immediately after the drug benefit bill became 
law, the price of prescription drugs went up. These people have no 
shame.

In vaguely related news, the Queen of Chutzpah, our lovely 
secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has just completed a 
whirlwind tour of the known world in which she tried to convince 
everyone she met to fear and loathe the nation of Iran.

>From all appearances, the Bushies are developing plans to take 
over Iran and kill a lot of beautiful Persian women and handsome 
Persian men in the process. The reason (which has nothing to do 
with oil, wink-wink) is that Iran has a nuclear energy program that 
could evolve into weapons production, making Iran as much as a 
threat to the United States as other nations with nuclear weapons, 
say, like Pakistan or Israel.

The Bush propaganda campaign against Iran is under way. At the 
moment, it lacks one Iranian leader who we can learn to hate, but 
you can be assured one will be identified soon. Already we're being 
told that Iran is stubbornly pursuing its nuclear energy program, in 
spite of our wishes to the contrary.

The American press, compliant to the end, will dutifully spread the 
Bushies' propaganda. The liberals in the media, fearful of being 
called unpatriotic, or worse, liberal, will give the Bushies the slant 
they crave. The conservatives in the media will cheerfully continue 
on their flag-waving, apple-polishing way. They'll parade their red, 
white and blue "patriotism" much like a hooker with a cross around 
her neck parades her virtue.

To prove to the world how virtuous they are, the Bushies will soon 
go to the United Nations and ask for its cooperation in letting us 
throttle Iran. Their request will be couched in terms making it 
impossible for the U.N. to comply. When the U.N. rejects the 
insincere entreaty, the Bushies will badmouth it, and then declare 
that circumstances have become so dire that America must once 
again go it alone.

And then the bombs will burst in air, and the rockets will red glare.

I dearly hope I am wrong in my predictions, but it seems that history, 
and the pathological predilections of the Bush administration, make 
an attack on Iran inevitable.

But we were talking about Condoleezza Rice.

The thing I admire most about her, I think, is her brazenness. When 
Sen. Barbara Boxer pointed out Rice's dishonesty at a committee 
confirmation hearing, Rice stiffened and, with as much self-
righteousness as I've ever seen in a person, attacked Boxer for 
questioning her integrity.

(Bill Clinton tried to affect the same kind of self-righteousness when 
he told us he did not have sex with "that woman," but Clinton is an 
amateur compared with Rice when it comes to righteous 
indignation.)

Rice is as brazen and as cagey as her boss. She put her 
brazenness to work again over the past fortnight by urging our 
former allies in Europe and elsewhere to put the past behind us. It's 
time to move on, she said.

You gotta love it! For four years the Bushies been sticking it to the 
rest of the world, and now that they want some help they're asking 
the people they dissed to "get over it."

The image this brings to my mind is a cartoon image of a bank 
robber pleading his case before a judge. The robber is saying 
something like, "We can't wallow in the past, Your Honor. It's time 
for us to put the past behind us. I recommend you dismiss the 
charges, so we can all start over with a clean slate."

Why is it that only the guilty want the past forgotten?

Rice displayed her caginess when a reporter asked about the 
possibility of a pre-emptive U.S. strike against Iran. Her response: 
"The question is simply not on the agenda at this point in time."

"Point in time"? In other words, we're not going to attack Iran at this 
moment, but circumstances change ... and perhaps at a future 
"point in time," like maybe 10 minutes from now, we'll have a new 
agenda and be forced to go to war again.

The lies never stop.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears 
Mondays in the San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail him at 
harleysorensen at yahoo.com.

© 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

###

-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option 
D - up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone 
forwarded you this email and you want to be on our list, send an 
email to ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.


"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050214/6e0b620b/attachment.htm