"It
is clear that both O’Reilly and Fund want us to pay absolutely no
attention to that man behind the green curtain. And never mind
that there was no reason to attack Iraq other than for oil and to
advance the military posture of another nation not vital to our national
interest” |
|
The O’Neill
Factor THE REAL NO-SPIN ZONE!
Posted January 15, 2004 thepeoplesvoice.org
By: Ted Lang
The truth stands alone and is founded in fact. It is unemotional and
vital in securing justice. It would indeed be comforting if truth
could always be found in an aura fostered by good intentions, compassion,
understanding and tolerance. But more often than we care to admit, the
truth is usually exposed via jealousy, recrimination or base retaliation.
To the intellectually mature, the politically astute, and the worldly among
us, this should never come as a surprise. We should always prefer the
truth over the manner and mode in which it is delivered to our doorstep.
As we have now been assured by an element
of the normally unreliable mainstream media, certain facts have come to
light confirming irrevocably that President George W. Bush lied us into an
unnecessary, unjust and unconstitutional war. At this point in time,
500 of our finest citizens, our military, have lost their lives.
Thousands more are casualties. And the loss of civilian life in Iraq
is too horrible to contemplate.
Evidence continues to mount that the Bush
administration had advance knowledge of the imminent terrorist attacks of
9-11, yet planned no modicum of preventive measures to save American lies.
Even the simple precaution of the long-standing FAA-sanctioned prior
practice of arming cockpit crews with sidearms wasn’t neither suggested
nor reinstated.
Any and all avenues available to the Bush
administration to absolve themselves of any and all suspicion of complicity,
incompetence, unconscionable plotting, and even cover-up, have been
arrogantly dismissed, and no attempt has ever been made to address any of
the many concerns of the people. To make matters worse, the mainstream
establishment media remained complicit by their silence. And Bush
administration apologists, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill
O’Reilly, continue to ridicule and lambaste anyone who disagrees with the
readily evident tyranny of the Bush administration. And now, the Wall
Street Journal can be added to this list of Bush protectors.
The CBS “60 Minutes” expose was a
breath of fresh air. The Bush administration and its protectors in the
media are initiating full damage control tactics to discredit the
revelations of former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill.
Of course, administration flacks attacked O’Neill as being incompetent,
rather than merely pointing out his disagreement with Bush’s insane, huge
deficit-generating programs while advancing tax reductions. And to be
clear, wasn’t that O’Neill’s function, to be an advisor? If Bush
disagreed with his advice, how does this translate to incompetence? As
to the asset value of loyalty, that can manifest itself also within such
organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, the mafia, and the Nazi Party.
On the O’Reilly factor in the evening
of the very next day, know-it-all Bill O’Reilly, the neoconservative
talking head of FOXNews that always educates those of lesser nobility by the
battle cry “the rich and powerful always protect the rich and powerful,”
stated that O’Neill’s charges were invalid, regurgitating the line fed
to him by the Bush administration that O’Neill made the charges to get
back at President Bush for having fired him. O’Reilly belittled and
relegated as insignificant O’Neill’s revelation that there was now
evidence that Bush II had intended to take out Saddam right from the
beginning.
Then O’Reilly shares with us his
towering intellectual assessment: “Of course Bush was upset at Saddam –
he tried to kill his father!” Good point, but how does this justify
the death of 500 of our military, the maiming and wounding of thousands
more, and the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis? It is O’Reilly
who is naïve here, and expects us to accept as Gospel his narrow,
intellectually challenged assessment and Bush-protecting views. Saddam
was adjudicated a bad guy by this administration, and whether or not we had
a right to invade his country doesn’t seem to faze O’Reilly one bit.
And now, the Wall Street Journal has
sided with the illogical and vacuous right wing neocon conspiracy in
pointing out Secretary O’Neill’s wrong-headed emotions. In his
cheap shot column of January 12th, WSJ’s John Fund attacks O’Neill’s
revelations as the “Rage of a Relic.” He begins, “Paul O’Neill
is angry that the world has passed him by.” Fund provides absolutely
no proof of this – it was something he snatched out of thin air to set the
tone of his piece without offering any evidence. Anyone who believes
O’Neill is, of course, a fool as far as Fund is concerned, never ever
addressing the validity of the charges, their impact relative to wrongfully
getting us into an unnecessary war and the resultant loss of life. Nor does
he address the 19,000 documents O’Neill and former WSJ reporter Ron
Suskind have in their possession, other than merely mentioning this in
passing.
All of a sudden, Bush and his secret
cabal-controlled government have religion. They are launching an
investigation into O’Neill’s possible wrongdoing in obtaining classified
documents. Frankly, I see nothing wrong in that, even if they were
obtained illegally. What law is being advanced as having been
violated? Shouldn’t a similar investigation be launched concerning
Bush’s constitutionally required State of the Union Speech where he lied
and conned us into an unconstitutional war? When will that
investigation, hopefully leading to Bush’s impeachment, begin?
Fund’s shallowness is easy to
disassemble. He asserts, “Bush critics will hail Mr. O’Neill as a
truth-teller, White House aides are already calling him a back-stabber.”
What else would they call him? “In fact,” Fund goes on, “Mr.
O’Neill is a relic.” Notice how cleverly he weaves this back to
the title of his piece? “Mr. O’Neill came into the Bush
administration on the recommendation of three old friends from the Ford
years: Dick Cheney, Alan Greenspan and Donald Rumsfeld,” he writes.
But aren’t these guys relics too? He precedes this gem with,
“[O’Neill] …was clearly a product of the Nixon and Ford
administrations, in which he had served, and simply hadn’t adapted to the
post-Reagan Republican Party.” Now what party would that be, the
Leon Trotsky-originated neoconservative PNAC war party?
Undeniably, O’Neill had exhibited some
bizarre behavior after breaking publicly with Bush on economic issues.
Fund proclaims O’Neill economically naïve for wanting to reform Social
Security and our atrocious income tax code. But even if he did flip out
somewhat, what about the accusation itself? Does Fund address that?
Of course not!
Fund also writes: “In [a] conversation
he told me things about his disagreements with the administration that I was
surprised a cabinet officer would reveal. I was impressed with his
candor but not by his wisdom. He was saved from my publishing them
only by his offhand request … that they be off the record.”
Now let me see if I have this right: Fund
was impressed by “his candor;” does that mean Fund was impressed by
O’Neill’s truthfulness? And Fund refrained from publishing
O’Neill’s remarks because O’Neill requested that they be “off the
record?” Then, why are they now on the record? Isn’t Mr.
Fund confirming Mr. O’Neill’s indiscretion at revealing things yet
confirming his truthfulness?
It is clear that both O’Reilly and Fund
want us to pay absolutely no attention to that man behind the green curtain.
And never mind that there was no reason to attack Iraq other than for oil
and to advance the military posture of another nation not vital to our
national interest. And of course, world domination also has its
benefits. Never mind that we have virtually alienated every nation on
the planet in the pursuit of this madness. And if anyone believes
loony Paul O’Neill, well then, they’re crazy. They are asking us
to focus on the wrongful emotions that delivered the truth to us, and not to
focus on the facts learned. But if you are used to doing that, then
why are you reading this?
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© Copyright
THEODORE E. LANG 1/11/04 All rights reserved. Ted Lang is a political
analyst and a freelance writer.