Tell the Damn Truth Already

[babylonsister]

Tell the Damn Truth Already
by Joyce Marcel

snip//

Mostly, I’m thinking about the mess in Iraq. What if Bush and Cheney had leveled with us from the beginning?

“My fellow Americans,” they would have said, “Saddam Hussein hates our guts. He has tons and tons of oil. The world’s oil resources are dwindling and the competition is fierce. Our economy would collapse if oil went up to, say, $120 a barrel. Now, how many American lives would you spend to get our good American hands on that good Iraqi oil? Oh, and by the way, Saddam Hussein’s an evil man.”

Not only would industry get behind an immediate attack, but I’m guessing those patriots at NASCAR and almost everyone else in the country who drives a car would jump on that bandwagon. “One thousand lives, 10,000?” they would say. “How many lives did we give up in Vietnam for nothing? Fifty-five thousand? We could go 55, and I’ll see you 60.”

Those of us against war would still be howling in protest. But at least we’d know what we were really protesting against. And unless we’re driving horse-drawn buggies, it would have to give us pause.

It would be refreshing to hear the truth every now and then, instead of one lie after another - first it’s weapons of mass destruction, then we want to bring democracy to Iraq, then we have to stop a civil war, and now we’re afraid of the chaos we would leave behind. Who knows what half-assed rationale they’ll think of next?

Iran, too, would benefit from a good dose of honesty. How about something along the lines of, “Ahmadinejad has missiles, he’s a little bit loopy in the head, and he’s sitting on the Straits of Hormuz. He could stop two-thirds of the world’s oil supply just by blockading the straits. Let’s give him a little taste up front of what he might be in for if he screws with our supply chain.”

The American people would probably go, “Hell, yeah!” Not because we hate the Iranians. (Who doesn’t feel sorry for the Iranians? Their president is about as dumb, ill-informed and misspoken as ours is.) And not because of Israel, and certainly not because nine years down the road (according to the best estimates) Ahmadinejad might have nuclear weapons. But because we want to keep that oil flowing into our economic pipeline.

America has been swallowed by a tidal wave of lies, and it’s not just a Bush thing.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/11/4472/

[5X]

1. Would that scenario make the Iraqi lives more valuable?

Or would american lives still be worth more?

(nothing against the OP, but against some of the symapathies
showing up here lately).

[babylonsister]

2. Maybe we wouldn't even be occupying Iraq if the truth had been known.

Maybe Saddam would be alive, and the Iraqis would still have water and electricity. Obviously, that's a question that's unanswerable.