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De-constructing The State Of The Union Speech

As has been his custom over the past seven years, George W Bush has once again used the latest "State of the Union" to further a political agenda that by now has grown quite thin with the American people. In his speech, he uses much of the same language he did leading up to the war in March of 2003, while omitting several of his earlier claims and ignoring several facts while in the process recycling old lies. Part one of this series focused on why the Democrats let Bush get this far. Part two is a quick look at some key points.

George Bush started his speech by giving one last farewell to Lady Bird Johnson before he went into what he called the "four phases" of the US mission in Iraq. The first phase Bush called the "Liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein." What is telling here is that he makes no mention of WMD's (weapons of mass destruction) which he and the rest of the White House used to justify the invasion of Iraq in the first place. John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell went from network to network claiming that the White house knew that the Iraqi government had weapons of some supposed "great death". Condoleezza Rice actually referenced a radioactive cloud in the US skies. It is difficult to forget Powell's speech where he claimed that indistinct photos of trucks were mobile bio-weapons vehicles. They had no evidence for any of these claims and, true to form, the mainstream asked no questions. Finally, there was no discussion of the legality of Bush White House's actions, or the lack there of. A preemptive strike violates international law since it flies in the face of the Nuremberg tribunals. Nazi generals were hanged for similar violations but reporters paid no attention to this fact.

The next stage of the war in Iraq, Bush claimed, was to "return sovereignty" to Iraq. Such a statement seems odd considering it was Washington who chose the first post-Saddam government along with dismantling the country's military and police force. Ahmad Chalabi, one of the three early leaders of Iraq had not lived in Iraq for decades and was wanted in Jordan for fraud. He was a White House sweetheart which is why he was one of the first three overseers of Iraq. All construction jobs in the war-torn country were given to American contractors, most notably Halliburton. Early agreements within the first days of the new pre-election years of Iraq prohibited the Iraqi Government from kicking American troops from the country

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