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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (June 5, 2003)
BY U.S. SENATOR ROBERT BYRD The Truth Will Emerge W e believe this recent speech by Sen. Robert Byrd is so important that we offer it in full to our readers. Senior member of the U.S. Senate, Byrd is the 85-year-old Democrat from West Virginia who continues to speak with passion against the poli- cies of the Bush admin- istration. His remarks are rarely covered in the mainstream media. This speech was given on the Senate floor May 21, 2003. “Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among his worshippers.” Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually. But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it — more than I would ever have believed — right on this Senate Floor. Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unpro- voked invasion of a sovereign nation, in vio- lation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evi- dence that the horrific events of Sept. 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the president and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mush- room clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein’s direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to pro- voke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 9/11. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger. Since the war’s end, every subsequent rev- elation which has seemed to refute the previ- ous dire claims of the Bush administration has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House come up missing. The administration assured the U.S. pub- lic and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden until they virtually became one. What has become painfully clear in the af- termath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanc- tions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq’s threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well trained troops. Presently our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swim- ming pool. They are misused on such a mis- sion and they continue to be at grave risk. But, the Bush team’s extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemp- tive invasion has become more than embar- the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of “liberation,” we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years. Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treas- ures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply. Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure and refurbish its oil in- dustry are awarded to administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. as- sistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust? And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq’s clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and com- pany so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacer- bate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and dis- ease. “Regime change” in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative pres- ence that is evasive about if and when it in- tends to depart. Democracy and freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier’s gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and pon- der. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a rassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world? What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are “liberators.” The facts don’t seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but “liberation” implies the follow-up of free- dom, self-determination and a better life for Summer Registration S TARTS T 10:00 ODAY ! http://craftcenter.uoregon.edu 14 JUNE 5, 2003 AM EMU Craft Center 346-4361
