Letter From Bahrain

Beth Henry, an American writer from the Texas Gulf Coast, raises some interesting points in the following article. She is an Axis of Logic Founding Member and Contributing Editor. Allegedly, Henry does not hate neo-conservatives; she just feels better when they’re not in charge. She may be contacted at: beth@axisoflogic.com

Here’s what Beth Henry has to say:


"Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone most accurately described the presidential elections as “…a bunch of rich people talking to each other in front of the help.”

For awhile, they had generally kept their napkins folded and their manners intact. Snippiness, yeah, and the usual casual mendacity, but nothing truly visceral or tasteless.

We knew it couldn’t last.

A food fight has broken out amongst them now, and the view from under the table is far more interesting than the fracas above it.

This week, a Vietnam veteran who served at the same time, and in the same capacity as Kerry, released a book about him that can only be described as character assassination. Not wanting to give the book or its author any more hits on Google than he has already, I won’t name them.

The media has been all abuzz with the story, and Kerry’s wannabe nemesis has been making the rounds pumping it up for fun and royalties, all in the name of standing up for the “truth”.

So now, it’s all about who was a good soldier and patriot, and who was not, in a war, a seemingly endless atrocity that claimed over a million lives, launched on a lie.

The spectacle surrounding this skirmish obscures its true uses, however. The very point of contention serves to reframe the real debate, and to divert attention from the increasingly obvious fact that we, the people, do not really have a dog in this fight.

Given the deep divide in opinion in our country concerning the invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. presence there, it seems that the debate before potential voters would be whether or not to continue our occupation of that country.

As the “war on terror” becomes the rationale for unprecedented attacks on our civil liberties and for an open raid on the Treasury to support it, it would seem appropriate to bring into question the very idea of such a costly, open-ended, and bloody future for our country.

In the media brouhaha over Vietnam veterans’ war stories, however, such questions concerning U.S. imperialist policies have been answered before they were asked.

Continued occupation of Iraq, as well as a strategy in the Middle East that includes continued support of Israel’s genocidal aggression, is espoused by both candidates.

Those policies, though deeply controversial among voters, are part of the “platforms” either formal or informal, of our only two political parties. In the cases of both candidates, those planks could easily have been lifted from the website of the Project for the New American Century.

The peoples’ consent has certainly been “manufactured” in the case of the “war on terror”. Terror alerts and evocations of mushroom clouds and biological attacks have been used to squeeze every drop of political leverage out of the horror and trauma of September 11, 2001. The rationale for ongoing, budget-breaking, murderous wars is never actually laid out, only the gut-level evocation of the true terror and confusion that gripped our country immediately following the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The continuation of endless war is a given, according to both presidential candidates. The price it exacts both domestically and abroad, paid only by the working people of this country and others, is assumed to be a fair one by those who will never receive the bill.

The debate, the contest, now, is not about whether the United States should build a global empire on the bodies of our children and of millions of other human beings all over the world.

The debate is now over which man will accomplish that task the best.

Which man can serve a lie with the most integrity?

Which man can best serve that lie even knowing his hands are awash with blood with each decision he makes sustaining it?

These are apparently our choices at the polls in November. All other debate, all other qualifications, are lost, and rendered moot in the din of diversionary food fights among our ruling oligarchs as they compete for our validation of their unique packaging of the same vile product."

Today in Bahrain, there are planned demonstrations for early afternoon which will likely culminate at – or near – the U.S. Embassy. It’s been a while since people have taken to the streets here to rant against the American government. The weather is hot these days, but this is also Friday, and during prayers various local imam will extol the significance of the ongoing Shi’a uprising in Najaf.

There are Arab media reports that Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Iraqi Shi’a cleric, has sustained three wounds from shelling, while holed up in Najaf’s sacred compound housing the Imam Ali shrine – named for the Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali, assassinated in 661.

Ashura, the great annual Shi’a passion play, commemorates the martyrdom of not only Ali, but his sons, Hasa and Husayn, who were also killed later. Allegedly, Husayn was the Prophet Muhammad's favorite grandson.

Needless to say, the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf is powerfully significant to Shi’as.

Meanwhile, the bellicose and imperious buffoon impersonating an elected U.S. president is still trying to sell the American public that Iraq is now a sovereign state governed by Iraqis. This is a grotesque fiction, just like much of Bush’s resume.

The former cocaine-sniffing, Texas National Guard deserter tells us the stench of the dead in Iraq is justified. We are, after all, liberators – introducing democracy to a country that we have gone to war against twice since 1991 – and tried to destroy by sanctions in between the two Gulf Wars.

Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the U.S. - Shi'a Muslim with military and CIA connections, is trying to crush the violence plaguing Iraq. At the same time, he’s trying to persuade everyone of the legitimacy of his unelected government. This is difficult when, in the days leading up to his appointment by the Americans, Dr. Allawi shot dead six handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners.

According to Australian correspondent Paul McGeough, former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Allawi did this in front of numerous witnesses at the al-Amariyah security center in Baghdad.

Yesterday thousands of demonstrators in Baghdad, Basra and Nassiriya protested against the American-led offensive to crush the Shi’a uprising in Najaf. The rag-tag Jaish al-Mahdi militia of Moqtada al-Sadr has been fighting the Americans for over a week in the holy city. Shi’a leaders in southern Iraq yesterday called for a breakaway movement from the central government in Baghdad to protest the crimes committed against Iraqis by Prime Minister Allawi’s unelected government and the American and British occupation forces.

Next up is a civil war in Iraq.

Americans should be sympathetic to the Shi’a leaders in the southern Iraqi governorates. We also have an unelected leader who perpetrates crimes against our country. In just one more fresh example, the Bush Administration made certain an appallingly expensive oil services contract was awarded to Halliburton without a single competitive bid.

According to the Guardian, Pentagon auditors have now concluded that Halliburton has failed to properly account for $1.8bn in charges billed to the U.S. government. That’s almost $2 bn in over charges at a time when the federal budget deficit, projected at $455 billion, is an emerging fiscal catastrophe, oil is at a record high and the dollar is steadily weaker against major world currencies.

The Pentagon findings, laid out in a 60-page report, threaten to put fresh political pressure on Halliburton's former chief, vice president Dick Cheney. The company has stumbled from one scandal to another, providing serious ammunition for Democrats in the run-up to November's presidential elections.

In Iraq’s case, the Allawi government has no legitimacy and will fall apart in 24 hours without the American masters. In the American case, citizens – swindled of significant votes in Florida, have had to endure a leader straight out of George Orwell's 1984. The irony is - Bush, who has a talent for mental hairballs when he meets the press – probably hasn’t read this book anymore than he’s read the 9/11 Commission Report.

Perhaps Bush is hopeful his father and the usual family cronies will help him make the bad news about Iraq go away, and disappear quickly. He needs to rig another election, and fast.

Just eight months ago, Ahmad Chalabi sat in a place of honor behind First Lady Laura Bush during the president’s State of the Union address to Congress. It was really a celebration speech; Bush was touting the success of America’s “pre-emptive” war against Iraq – a country that threatened our national security with weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. Chalabi, despite being a fugitive from Jordan for a conviction in absentia on bank fraud charges, had the neoconservative hard-liners in both the Pentagon and the White House eating out of his hands. Bush, more than anyone, cheerfully bought Chalabi’s advice.

The controversial Iraqi exile should earn a special Academy Award for his performance as a spectacular liar. As everyone knows, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or any ties to al-Qaeda. Oh, well .... there’s always the world’s second largest supply of oil.

Now the Bush administration's top Iraq advisor has been indicted for counterfeiting; his nephew, for murder. Chalabi is just the fall guy, but it hasn’t helped that as his star has fallen in Washington, D.C., it has risen substantially in Tehran. The CIA has suggested that Chalabi tipped off Tehran that the U.S. had broken its codes and was eavesdropping on communications.

To deflect the American media from Vietnam Redux [Iraq National Army – the South Vietnamese; the Shi'a insurgents - the Viet Cong], there is the sudden preoccupation with the Darfur crisis in Sudan – as if this genocide just started last month.

And, as New York Observer reporter Joe Conasan points out, exactly one week after the President accepts his party's nomination in New York on Sept. 2, two days before the anniversary of 9/11 and seven weeks before Election Day, the Secretary of Homeland Security plans to hold a Washington press conference to announce that September will be "National Preparedness Month."

The government's "partners" in this month-long, well-meaning public-awareness campaign will include many national groups, including the American Red Cross, the National Association of Broadcasters and the Advertising Council. Newspapers and airwaves will be saturated with messages urging worried citizens to learn how to cope with "emergencies."

Presumably the September campaign will improve considerably on Secretary Tom Ridge's earlier advice, such as wrapping windows in cellophane secured with masking tape to thwart poison gas. How could anyone criticize the idea of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts helping their neighbors prepare to escape a terror attack?

Unfortunately, the news that has emerged about the administration's bungling of its latest orange alert suggests otherwise. Their first mistake came when Mr. Ridge misled the press about the information that prompted him to elevate the threat level on the Sunday after the Democratic convention. The alert was based on information that was at least three years old. His remarks obfuscated that truth.

Administration officials quickly explained they had acted on the basis of current intelligence that amplified the alarm raised by the old computer files. But Mr. Ridge's British counterpart, Home Secretary David Blunkett, soon denounced the entire exercise.

Writing in a London newspaper on Aug. 7, the British counterterror chief asked acidly: "Is that really the job of a senior cabinet minister in charge of counter-terrorism? To feed the media? To increase concern? Of course not. This is arrant nonsense."

People just don’t understand George Bush. He is altruistic. This Homeland Security focus on terrorists poised to strike America has nothing to do with Bush trying to provoke fear in voters just seven weeks before the November election.