Midnight Oil

[Powderworks] Re: anti-Americanism

Miron Mizrahi mironmizrahi@yahoo.com
Fri, 11 Apr 2003 17:07:33 -0700 (PDT)


Hi Virgil,

your argument is well put. you do however implicitly assume that it
all boils down to Bush and that he makes all the decisions without
being influenced by those that surround him. I agree with you that
he appears to be genuinely sincere in his intentions (and I will get
back to sincerity) but can we really assume that his decisions are
driven solely by him? even if we agree that he has no ulterior
motives, many around him surely do and they all got to where they
are by being able to influence others, presidents included.

back to sincerity.... you seem to be legally minded so when one is
about to testify before a court they swear to tell "the truth, the
WHOLE truth and nothing but the truth". so when Bush appears sincere
about what he says, I am more concerned about what he does not say.
has he told us the WHOLE truth?

it might be the skeptic in me, but leaders who are truly honest and
truly care about the people they are supposed to represent are far a
few in between. Only Gandhi comes to mind at the moment. most are
there to serve themselves and the powers that put them there. I am
yet to see substantial evidence that Bush is one of the rare kind. I
do however see substantial evidence to the contrary:

the US govt. awarded $900M worth of Iraq reconstruction contracts to
companies before the war even started. could be forward planning but
considering how long it takes the govt. to usually award contracts
could also be something else .... at the very least it is evidence
that he never really cared whether the UN security council would or
would not approve. yet the public statement the govt. put forward
stated otherwise.

Bush mentioned the environment in his state of the union. I will
admit that I do not know what he said since it is the moment I
turned the TV off. I am surprised he even mentioned it considering
one of the very first things his govt. did was to try and reverse
the ban on oil drilling in Alaska.

Bush said many times how much he cares for the "average American",
yet his old buddy, ClearChannel CEO Lowry Mays and Colin Powell's
son who now heads the FCC are lobbying for further deregulation of
the broadcasting and telecom markets where the last deregulation
(enacted by Clinton) brought nothing but shit radio and inflated
ticket prices for live shows. oh, lots of profit to ClearChannel as
well.

I agree with you that he believes this war will benefit the security
of his nation. where I disagree is that "what you see is what you
get".





=====
Miron

   How could people get so unkind?

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