One thing I’ve learned while researching columns is that oftentimes, the smaller the item, the louder it speaks.
Check this thirty-six worder from page A3 of the September 29 San Francisco Chronicle:
“Petroleum for Pyongyang: President Bush Friday authorized the first U.S. shipment of heavy fuel oil to North Korea in five years, a reward to Pyongyang for moving forward with its agreement to end its nuclear programs.”
That’s it, in its entirety. Its brevity, however, belies its true voluminous content. ‘Cause:
Isn’t North Korea, like Iraq and Iran, a charter member of Bush’s “Axis of Evil”?
And isn’t North Korea, unlike Iraq and Iran, the only one of the three to possess nuclear weapons?
Well, gosh, that’s odd. Because why, then, did Bushco engage in (successful) diplomacy with North Korea while Iraq lay in ruin and Iran sits next in the crosshairs?
What on earth could be the difference? (The more accurate query would be: “What in the earth could be the difference?”)
For Bush supporters in the audience, the ones who still insist Iraq’s obliteration is about spreading freedom n’ democracy and killing anyone who resists such beneficence, let me spell it out for you (don’t panic, it’s only three letters): o-i-l.
Come on, even Alan Greenspan said as much. Uh, until he didn’t, that is. (It’s not nice to fool with motherf*****s.)
But, just as transpired before we plundered oil-rich Iraq, we’re now told we must pummel oil-rich Iran, even as lip service is paid to giving peace a chance.
And right on cue, bellicosity rises to muffle such phony calls for diplomacy as Dick Cheney and his pinheaded PNAC pals paint Iran as a grave danger, salivating over the day they can bust its chops and loot its resources.
Calculatingly chiming in with a blustery salvo is the revoltin’ John Bolton, long-time pit bull of the American far right (so far right, in fact, he’s disdainful of those damn feel-good neocons and their “excessively Wilsonian views about the benefits of democracy.” Ouch.)
Bolton declared recently in Great Britain (as reported by Ros Taylor of The Guardian UK) that talking with Iran was useless and “he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.”
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