Freedom and the Hormuz hoax

When I was in grammar school, polls showed that the vast majority of Americans trusted the government, but how far we have come when the first reaction to reports of a few Iranian speed boats harassing a US Navy fleet is that the President is telling another lie to start yet another disastrous war. Do we really know where those little boats came from or who was in them other than that there were some distorted recordings of someone grumbling in Farsi?

We do know that Bush continues to press for further and more substantial confrontation even though his insistence that there is an active nuclear bomb producing facility in Iran has been severely weakened. Bush said today in Abu Dhabi, according to the New York Times, that Iran is threatening the security of the world and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger ''before it's too late.'' Can we presume that too late means after Bush has lost the ability to open another front in his battle for Middle East dominance? Too late for what? Too late for whom? ''Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror,'' says Bush without any attempt to define terror. I'm not terrified of Iran, are you? I'm not inclined to credit his latest apocalyptic warnings, are you?

It seems as though Bush is now taking his crapulous argument to the world, now that he has three quarters of us pressing for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and an end to his "freedom agenda." It's nice to see that he finally realizes the fact, but I'm sure he's unaware of the irony wafting through the high priced atmosphere of The Emirates Palace, a three billion dollar playground for the ultra rich aristocracy, as he says to the Iraqi people ''You have made your choice for democracy and have stood firm'' as though the Iraqi people now living in ruins or forced into exile hadn't had their current plight violently forced upon them.

''Democracy is the only form of government that treats individuals with the dignity and equality that is their right''

said he to the silk robed absolute monarchs he calls friends and allies; said he about an environment in which the few elections that have occurred tend to reflect a widespread support of militant theocracy and Sharia Law with its beheadings and stonings.

''We know from experience that democracy is the only system of government that yields lasting peace and stability,''

said he in ignorance of experience and as though democracy were a system of government and not a broad concept impossible to implement without the institutions that have been inimical to him and his party for decades.

There may be a few of us who buy into the current script of Bush's Opera Buffo wherein the last 7 years have been about advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in places where the oil lies thick and deep under the hot sand. The rest of us are waiting and watching his hands as our future shuttles like a dried pea across the polished mahogany table, from one walnut shell to the next.