Plastic sheeting and duct tape... and, oh, yes, let's not forget the tinfoil hats

by W. E. Gutman

Like many Americans, I am not convinced that war against Iraq is either essential or salutary at this time. So far, the elusive "smoking gun" is to be found north of the 38th Parallel, in Pyongyang, not Baghdad. This may explain why America is intent on attacking a puny adversary such as Iraq. Grenada and Panama are prime examples of military bravery...

No, I would prefer to see the US resume its classical dimorphic foreign policy --- speaking from both sides of its mouth while secretly kissing and making up with scum like Saddam (whose rise to power was engineered by the US) and wage a common war against global terrorism.

After all the US has a history of coddling other scum --- the Kaiser (until German U-boats threatened American commercial interests; Hitler (until it became politically incorrect to consort with a mass murderer); France's Vichy government (until the Japanese bombed Peal Harbor); the Shah of Iran (whom the US later dropped like a hot potato when it was no longer politically expedient to show the man compassion); Batista, Trujillo, Somoza, Pinochet, Noriega, Fujimori, Rios Montt, Banzer (so long as they obeyed their CIA puppeteers); the US-financed and orchestrated Contra death squads; the Taliban and al Qaida (both of which the US, in its infinite wisdom, armed, trained and financed during the Soviet-Afghan war); the Saudi royal family (oh, don't we love our SUVs); the right-wing Colombian paramilitary narcotrafficking thugs; and Panama's Mireya Moscoso, who has elevated corruption to new heights, just to name a few.

No, I am not at all comfortable with the idea of war with Iraq. It is a feeling reinforced by the bizarre --- idiotic is a better word --- exhortations by the Bush administration that Americans should now procure plastic sheeting, duct tape, drinking water, a radio and spare batteries to protect against weapons of mass destruction. Even an elementary knowledge of NBC defense protocols suggests that sealing a room hermetically, turning off the A/C and other sources of ventilation and exhaust will lead to suffocation in four to six hours. US "Homeland Security" chief Tom Ridge is a smart man but he seems to think that everyone else is an imbecile. Or maybe the Bush administration has already factored in a number of "expendable casualties" should the worst befall America.

What a sinister farce! Here's mighty America, displaying a bulimic appetite for war, bristling with space-age weapons and willing to trigger a worldwide catastrophe... while its citizens are urged to protect themselves against biochemical agents with plastic and duct tape. Shades of the Cold War when we were all urged to crouch under a table in the event of nuclear attack! What a morbid joke. Perhaps this is the evolution and ultimate fate alluded to by humorist Will Cuppy over 50 years ago in his thin but phenomenally astute, "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody." Cuppy's underlying message is that mankind boldly marches on toward its own annihilation, too proud --- and too stupid --- to prevent its self-generated onrush to doom.

After first suviving the Nazis in France and the Communists in Romania, I never thought that I'd fear anything in America. This speaks volumes about the nature of chimeras and the hollow pretense of presumed invincibility.

Axis of Evil? Hardly. Triumvirate of lunacy? Yes: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.


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Gutman, Gutman, Triumvirate of Lunacy
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HRW, Investigate murders of Venezuelan oppositionists
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