Lies, Coverups, Broken Promises and Dirty Tricks

Linda S. Heard, Arab News

CAIRO, 7 September 2004 — It never ceases to amaze just how willing people are to forgive and forget the deliberate political machinations of their leaders involving the distortion of the truth and backstabbing the opposition. Why on earth do we put up with it? We surely wouldn’t tolerate a friend who constantly sought to pull the wool over our eyes. Yet for some, weird reason politicians are allowed to get away with it and are even held up as role models for our children.

Take the lies surrounding the invasion of Iraq, for example. Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction or have links to Al-Qaeda. Furthermore, the country is far from enjoying the promised “freedom” or “security”. Yet, those leaders who led the charge with their skewed “evidence” before the UN Security Council, their dodgy dossiers, their Jessica Lynch-type propaganda videos, and their hollow promises are not only still in place, they are leading in the polls!!

George W. Bush, who complains of John Kerry’s flip-flopping, has variously insisted the war on terror is succeeding; it can’t ever be won and, lo and behold — just a few days later — that it is being won. Confused? You should be.

Unlike the Democrats, who studiously avoided personal criticism of the incumbent during their national convention, the Republicans took off the gloves at their GOP and tore Kerry to pieces. This followed a slew of negative “Swift Boat” ads attacking Kerry’s Vietnam service record, organized by people suspiciously linked to the Bush administration and guess what? The public falls for the below-the-belt tactics and Bush ends up with a double-digit lead in the polls.

California governor, macho movie star and “girlie men” hater Arnold Schwarzenegger easily swept in to office although an admirer of Nazi Germany in his goose-stepping youth. Known as “the Groper” for obvious reasons, the Austria-born star of “The Terminator” and “Junior” in which he played the world’s first pregnant man (no girlie-man here) was rolled out as a star of the Republican National Convention.

His acting background no doubt came in handy, as he waxed lyrical on how he had quit a “Socialist” country in 1968 for the shining beacon of American democracy and could finally say goodbye to images of Soviet tanks, which rumbled through the streets of his hometown as a child. Isn’t that sweet! Hang on, though.

When the muscle-bound Kennedy spouse left Austria that country’s leadership was conservative, and there were no Soviet tanks in Arnie’s part of Austria during his lifetime. Oops! Is he hanging his head in shame? Not likely.

Despite his flagrant re-writing of history, many Republican delegates consider him hot enough to run for president and would support an amendment of the constitution, which currently specifies that presidents must be American-born.

After all, Arnie’s loyalty is, surely, beyond question, although Austrians — many of whom are seething at his unflattering portrayal of their country and his — might beg to differ.

Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t lag behind in the cover-up and disinformation stakes either. According to James Reed of Britain’s Yorkshire Post, “Putin is keen to put the atrocity (at the Beslan school) down to “international terrorism” and link it to Al-Qaeda. But so far, all the signs point to Chechnya and a problem much closer to home. Hostages have apparently identified two of the hostage takers as field commanders close to Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev...”

Reed points out that while Russian security officials “claim several of the dead terrorists are from Arab backgrounds” survivors insist they saw none. If this is true, what could the Russian government’s motive be? Even if it isn’t, Putin was strangely anxious to depict an Arab connection from day one.

The truth is Putin wants his cake and wants to eat it too. In other words, he wants Chechnya to remain an internal issue, kept far away from the spotlight of the international media and from the meddling of foreign governments, while, at the same time, internationalizing the conflict in conformity with the ‘War on Terror’.

In this way, the disappearances, razing of homes, tortures, rapes, and summary executions in Chechnya can continue unabated and unreported. At the same time, the world’s leaders — and, in particular, George W. Bush — stay mum on Russia’s human rights abuses in the breakaway province while sympathizing with Russia over its terrorist scourge.

We are, naturally, expected to forget the words of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who on June 20, 2001, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in respect to Chechnya that his administration had “been pressuring the Russians to find a political solution. We have made it a priority item in all of our discussions. We have told them it will have an effect on our overall relationship with the Russians. It represents human rights abuses that are unacceptable, and we will speak out about it constantly and continuously.” That same month, Bush met with Putin to discuss the annulment of the ABM Treaty — which, Russia was initially reluctant to do — and, hey presto, thereafter the lips of Bush and Co. on Chechnya were ever sealed.

As Russia, the US and Israel — which has proposed “a landmark security cooperation with Russia in the wake of the Beslan tragedy” — cozy up in the face of a common enemy, the Russian people are asking awkward questions. They want to know why government spokespersons deliberately kept down the official numbers of hostages in the school. They want to know the truth about their security forces’ decision to take on the hostage takers, and they want to know why their president snuck into Beslan’s hospitals in the dead of night, unable to face the agonized eyes of victims’ families.

On Sunday came an historic moment for Russia and the world.

The Russian government actually admitted on the Kremlin-controlled Rossiya network that it lied about the number of hostages (354) it initially claimed were being held. It refrained from apologizing or explaining why it did so. But following the fog of deception around the Kursk submarine tragedy and the state’s gassing of hostages and terrorists alike in a Moscow theater, this move is still a refreshing first.

The most racist anti-Islamic claptrap I have ever had the misfortune of reading appeared in last Saturday’s Pravda. Someone called Michael Berglin wrote: “Muslims will kill Muslims for sport”. The bigot then goes on to defame the Palestinian president and suggest: “for every terrorist act, we (should) reduce one of their cities to rubble”. Someone should have told him many of them, including Kabul, Najaf, Fallujah, Rafah, Beirut and the Chechen capital Grozny, already have been.

In the final analysis, ruthless terrorists and those states, whose bombs and bullets spawned them, are jointly responsible for the metastasis of our once beautiful world into a cruel place where not even toddlers and babies are sacrosanct. Bah to the lot of them!

And Bah to those who allow such obvious lies and hypocrisy to go unchallenged! As long as liars are rewarded, where does that leave hope?

— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at solitairemedia@yahoo.co.uk