The controversy the Bush administration attracted for its detention policies, the Obama administration has gathered for its use of extrajudicial drone killings.
Filmmaker and veteran, Oliver Stone describes a post-9/11 world as one in which the powerful obsess over war, and deny privilege to the powerless.
Stone accuses the administration of George W. Bush of being craven opportunists who used 9/11 to carry out an Iraq invasion which the White House had planned even before taking power.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report the hijackers were Saudi, Egyptian, Lebanese and Emiratee.
In combating terrorism, normal rules of engagement went out the window; the White House would implement a continuing standard of capturing terror suspects as “detainees,” not “prisoners” that the Geneva Conventions would protect.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democratic national security adviser to the Carter and Johnson Administrations, was among critics who said a War on Terrorism was foolhardy. “Terrorism is a tactic, he said, not an ideology.”
Stone addresses the new euphemisms of war: “Doublepeak,” Stone calls them, “evoking Orwell” that have entered the household lexicon, such as “preventive war”, “extraordinary rendition” and “simulated drowning.”
In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, CNN would bring on military contractors to beat the war drums without acknowledging conflicts of interest.
After France opposed invading Iraq, Congress changed the name of their cafeteria french fries to “freedom fries.” By 2005, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who had led the charge for the renaming, would regret having done so, saying that there had been little reason to invade the Middle Eastern nation.
Today most House Republicans share Jones’ view.
In their quest for the White House, Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry had to run against an anti-war tide in their own party. Both lost support due to their votes authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq.
Bush Administration Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the U.N. Security Council to present evidence of Iraq’s hunger for weapons productions – a presentation Powell would come to regret. The Washington Post pronounced the evidence [Powell presented] on WMD ‘powerful and irrefutable,’ narrates Stone. But the Post was in fact quoting Delaware Democratic Senator Joe Biden.
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