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DANCES WITH BEARS
Perfidious Albion and the lying
American
By John Helmer
MOSCOW - Wars usually start
with one large lie. Throwing more troops into the breach
requires a great many little lies. Wars usually end when
the lying can't staunch the bleeding, and the stench.
According to the wife of the David Kelly, the
British Defense Ministry expert on Iraqi weapons who
committed suicide last Friday by cutting his left wrist,
and bleeding to death while on painkillers, "this was
not really the kind of world he wanted to live in". But
the kind of world prime ministers of England and
presidents of the United States hatch, when they go to
war together, should have been familiar to Kelly, as he
was old enough to remember the Vietnam War.
The
big lie for which Kelly killed himself was no different
from the one that created the Tonkin Gulf incident, the
invented Vietnamese attack on US warships which
purported to justify the first landings of US troops 40
years ago. The little lies which Tony Blair and George W
Bush go on telling, as they, too, try to land more
troops, and fight a guerrilla war, soon to expand into a
national liberation struggle - these lies are no
different. Not even the methods for feeding them to the
press have changed.
I remember the day in
1972, when I was poking around the archives of Time
newsmagazine in New York - I was a consultant to one of Time
Inc's senior executives at the time - and I came across
a file of telexes from the Time war correspondent in
Saigon. His New York editor had begun by asking him to
write a story on the effectiveness of the US bombing in
Vietnam, especially the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through which
Vietnamese forces were being replenished and resupplied.
The editor was being told by officials in Washington
that the bombing was crippling the Vietnamese effort,
and the war would soon be over. The officials wanted
congressional backing for more money and more troops on
the ground. They needed the press to put the
justification in print.
At the same time, the Saigon
journalist reported back, someone had dropped an unusual
package on his doorstep. It was a report on the impact
of the US bombing campaign. From the stamps on the
document, and the packaging, it appeared to have been
drafted by British intelligence. But the Time man was
suspicious, he wrote New York. He wasn't sure about the
facts, he said, because the capabilities of the Viet Cong
and North Vietnamese Army looked much better on the ground.
The timing suggested to the reporter either that the
British were working secretly with their American counterparts
to fabricate information; or else US intelligence
was forging British intelligence in order to
make their own claims look more credible. The Time reporter
told his editor that while he was prepared to report
US military claims for what they were worth, he wasn't
going to report that a secret British intelligence
source had corroborated and confirmed them. A
great many little lies were to follow, and not all of them
Time's editors and reporters were able to resist. The
outcome is well known.
A great many people,
in editorial offices of newspapers, as well as
government offices in Washington and London, know very
well that the intelligence for which David Kelly killed
himself was fabricated. They already know that the
stream of little lies has begun. They know that it isn't
worth their career prospects, let alone their lives, to
expose them. In time, those who remember Vietnam realize
that Blair and Bush won't be able to staunch the
investigations of the family, business and other links
they, their advisors and supporters have with the war
machine they have set in motion in Iraq. In time, those
who remember Vietnam understand that the fighting men of
the US Army will fear every Arab they see, and will lose
the will to risk their lives for a cause they don't
believe is worth it.
As the gap grows between
the facts on the ground in Iraq and the facts in the
air of Washington and London, even the media proprietors
who have willingly retold the lies, and fashioned many
of their own - men such as Conrad Black and Rupert
Murdoch - will recognize the noses on their faces, and
smell the way the wind is blowing. By themselves, Time's
Saigon correspondent in 1972, and his New York editor,
couldn't stop the bombing campaign in Vietnam. By
himself, David Kelly couldn't stop the Iraq war. That is
going to require a great deal more transfer of treasure,
and loss of blood. Perfidious Blair and lying Bush
aren't the kind of people who ask themselves whether
this is really the kind of world in which they want to
live.
John Helmer , since 1989
the longest-serving Western correspondent in Russia, was an
official of the Carter administration in Washington
between 1977 and 1981. In 1975 he published Bringing
the War Home: The American Army in Vietnam and After,
a celebrated analysis of disintegration in the US Army.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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