Summing Up: An Opinion

The "revelation" by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan that the Bush administration relied on propaganda to sell the invasion of Iraq is not really news to anyone who was paying attention at the time. McClellan's book, What Happened (to which I will not link because of its ubiquity and its stench of greed) confirms what Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay of then-Knight Ridder news had been reporting all along.

In terms of our recent Canettian blog theme: a powerful crowd crystal manipulated intelligence and covered up the facts in a propaganda campaign to bully the media and silence its critics for the purpose of inflaming the primitive emotions of post-9/11 grief, fear of brown-skinned terrorists, and blood-lust for revenge of the American people so they could mobilize a baiting crowd for an unnecessary invasion against a non-aggressor country with whom they had a history of bad faith dealing.

Despite millions of anti-war protestors world-wide, the American people allowed themselves to be manipulated by this powerful cabal—one that had mobilized unsuccessfully earlier to bring down a sitting President because of anger over his sexual indiscretions among other things. [Millions and millions of taxpayer dollars were spent investigating every aspect of President Bill Clinton's business, political, and person life. In fact, an Office of Independent Counsel hounded the Clintons for years only to be abolished in 1999, just in time for the ascendancy of the current administration. It was replaced by a so-called Office of Special Counsel which is a part of the Bush Department of Justice—which we are learning has been corrupted by political influence).

I believe that due to the mainstream news media's failure to puncture the administration's hard-sell spin, the American people (including any number of the so-called loyal opposition) succumbed to what Hannah Arendt termed 'the banality of evil.'  My prediction is that the White House press corps will rediscover their investigative moxy if a Democratic president is elected—just in time.

The natural response to being duped by a con artist or fraudulent salesman, of course, is anger. In this case, one reaction would be to form a counter-crowd crystal for the purpose of achieving justice for these gross wrongs—not one we are in any position to advocate. However, one former prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, has just published a book arguing that George W. Bush should be prosecuted for murder in these actions. The enormity of the evil perpetrated by this crowd crystal may not be so easily encompassed in the U.S. judicial system (which is weak in its ability to address such conspiracies), especially when judge-allies and legislator-conspirators with the evildoers still hold the reins of power and the perpetrators control the flow of information (they are able to classify those things they don't want anyone to find out about and de-classify those things they feel exonerate them). What is clear, however, is that if the perpetrators of this crime against humanity (and we haven't even begun to address their use and justification of torture, extra-juridical prisons, extraordinary renditions, etc.) are allowed to avoid responsibility for their actions, to evade justice for this grotesque atrocity, they will re-form again at some point in the future at which point they will believe confidently they can further harm this country with impunity.