The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf
Note: I wrote this in January 2003 and sent it to friends and family. Many found it too scathing. Three years later, I have to say that the characters in the story have only become more frightening as their roles in government continue to escalate.
The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf
Old Version
A shepherd-boy, who watched a flock of sheep near a village, brought out the villagers three or four times by crying out, "Wolf! Wolf!" and when his neighbors came to help him, laughed at them for their pains. The Wolf, however, did truly come at last. The Shepherd-boy, now really alarmed, shouted in an agony of terror: "Pray, do come and help me; the Wolf is killing the sheep"; but no one paid any heed to his cries, nor rendered any assistance. The Wolf, having no cause of fear, at his leisure lacerated or destroyed the whole flock.
New Version
A former head of the CIA became vice president of the most powerful country in the world. He later ran for president on the promise of, "Read my lips, no new taxes." His administration believed that at all costs, even if it meant breaking the country whom they represented's constitution and laws, that the evil empire of the Soviet Union needed to be destroyed.
And so, they used words like evil and monstrous to villify their chosen opponent, and the world listened. Weapons were given to allies of dubious and weak allegiance so long as they promised to fight against the evil empire, or through their actions, weaken it.
When war first broke out between Iran and Iraq, the Soviet Union turned back its arms ships en route to Iraq, and for the next year and a half, while Iraq was on the offensive, Moscow did not provide weapons to Baghdad. In March 1981, the Iraqi Communist Party, repressed by Saddam Hussein, beamed broadcasts from the Soviet Union calling for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Iraqi troops. That same month U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he saw the possibility of improved ties with Baghdad and approvingly noted that Iraq was concerned by "the behavior of Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern area." The U.S. then approved the sale to Iraq of five Boeing jetliners, and sent a deputy assistant secretary of state to Baghdad for talks. The U.S. removed Iraq from its notoriously selective list of nations supporting international terrorism (despite the fact that terrorist Abu Nidal was based in the country) and Washington extended a $400 million credit guarantee for U.S. exports to Iraq. In November 1984, the U.S. and Iraq restored diplomatic relations, which had been ruptured in 1967.
Meanwhile, our president and vice president were concerned about having lost its diplomatic ties to Iran, worrying that the Soviet Union would become a strong backer of the Khomeini regime, thus maintaining a foothold in the middle east. A CIA position paper in 1985 noted that whichever superpower got to Iran first would be "in a strong position to work towards the exclusion of the other. In 1984, because of Iranian battlefield victories and the growing U.S.-Iraqi ties, Washington launched "Operation Staunch," an effort to dry up Iran's sources of arms by pressuring U.S. allies to stop supplying Teheran. U.S. secret arms sales to Iran in 1985 and 1986 thus not only violated U.S. neutrality, but undercut as well what the U.S. was trying to get everyone else to do. The cynical would note that Operation Staunch made the U.S. arms transfers to Iran that much more valuable.
When this arms dealing became known, the Reagan administration was faced with a major scandal on several counts. Proceeds from the arms sales had been diverted to the Nicaraguan contras in violation of the Boland Amendment. And though the administration's professed uncompromising stand on terrorism was always hypocritical, given its sponsorship of terrorism in Nicaragua and elsewhere, being caught trading "arms-for-hostages" was particularly embarrassing.
During this war, the administration also enabled the development of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A 1994 report by the Senate Banking Committee concluded that "the United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual-use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs." This assistance, according to the report, included "chemical warfare-agent precursors; chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings; chemical warfare filling equipment; biological warfare-related materials; missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment." Although the U.S. publicly stated (and states) abhorrence for the use of such weapons, it provided them happily to Hussein, who used them both on his enemies within and out of his country.
The U.S.-Iraqi relationship flourished from February 1986, when then-Vice President George Bush met with Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Nizar Hamdoon, and assured him that Baghdad would be permitted to receive more sophisticated U.S. technology, until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Over that four-year period, the Reagan and Bush administrations approved licenses for the export of more than $600 million worth of advanced American technology to Iraq, according to congressional reports.
With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations.
That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.
And so the world had its first helping of the administration crying wolf, only to find that it was operating purely out of selfish desires, performing whatever underhanded tricks were necessary to achieve its goals.
But certainly this wasn't the only area in which the administration misbehaved.
In early 1981, then ambassador Jack Binns, Carter-appointed to Honduras, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military. Reagan then replaced Carter, and in response to Jack Binns' complaints and concerns about murders and disappearances, called him home and replaced him with John Negroponte.
Negroponte served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, a period during which U.S. military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million. Accusations abounded against the U.S.-backed military regime for violations against human rights in Honduras. Reports suggest more than 100 people disappeared, with a special intelligence unit called Battalion 316 at the center of the controversy. The question senators have for Negroponte is why he didn't raise concerns. Negroponte denies having knowledge of any wrongdoing. It has been suggested that the vast amount of evidence and testimony supporting the human rights violations would have required that Mr. Negroponte live in total isolation not to have noticed the crimes that had so disturbed Jack Binns. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Mr. Negroponte himself of human rights violations.
South America proved to be a hot bed of improper activity for the administration. In October and November 1986, two secret U.S. Government operations were publicly exposed, potentially implicating Reagan Administration officials in illegal activities. These operations were the provision of assistance to the military activities of the Nicaraguan contra rebels during an October 1984 to October 1986 prohibition on such aid, and the sale of U.S. arms to Iran in contravention of stated U.S. policy and in possible violation of arms-export controls. In late November 1986, Reagan Administration officials announced that some of the proceeds from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran had been diverted to the contras.
the Iran operations were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George Bush, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, and national security advisers Robert C. McFarlane and John M. Poindexter; of these officials, only Weinberger and Shultz dissented from the policy decision, and Weinberger eventually acquiesced by ordering the Department of Defense to provide the necessary arms; and large volumes of highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration officials.
following the revelation of these operations in October and November 1986, Reagan Administration officials deliberately deceived the Congress and the public about the level and extent of official knowledge of and support for these operations. In addition, Independent Counsel concluded that the off-the-books nature of the Iran and contra operations gave line-level personnel the opportunity to commit money crimes.
Independent Counsel's investigation did not develop evidence that proved that Vice President Bush violated any criminal statute. Contrary to his public pronouncements, however, he was fully aware of the Iran arms sales. Bush was regularly briefed, along with the President, on the Iran arms sales, and he participated in discussions to obtain third-country support for the contras. The OIC obtained no evidence that Bush was aware of the diversion. The OIC learned in December 1992 that Bush had failed to produce a diary containing contemporaneous notes relevant to Iran/contra, despite requests made in 1987 and again in early 1992 for the production of such material. Bush refused to be interviewed for a final time in light of evidence developed in the latter stages of OIC's investigation, leaving unresolved a clear picture of his Iran/contra involvement. Bush's pardon of Weinberger on December 24, 1992 pre-empted a trial in which defense counsel indicated that they intended to call Bush as a witness.
Then came dark days. The elder Bush lost his second bid for president, perhaps allowing the world at large some hope that the American people could recognize a liar and a rat when they saw one. But, alas, for two terms, another smooth liar ruled the nation, until the American people again railed against misbehavior, voting strongly for another Bush to take the helm. OK, not strongly. Bush garnered 50,456,169 votes, against his opponent's 50,996,116 votes. The Florida recount fiasco ended with a president select Bush chosen by the U.S. supreme court's decision.
With all the rhetoric spouted by Bush against the detestable actions of his predecessor, one might have hoped that misbehavior by the presidential administration would be a thing of the past, that U.S. citizens could travel the world and be proud to state their origin. Any such hopes were dashed, however, as W's new cabinet took shape, and some had to wonder if the previous Bush office-holders had simply been cryogenically frozen, waiting and now surprised that they should be returned to power so soon after their previous misbehaviors.
For instance:
John Negroponte is now the amabassador to the United Nations. More than willing to cry foul at the misbehaviors of countries the U.S.--actually the U.S. administration--now considers it's enemy, this man still claims he knew nothing of the human rights abuses taking place around him in a previous high ranking ambassador's post.
Donald Rumsfeld is currently the secretary of defense. His greatest efforts are focused on preparing to go to war with and villify the actions of Sadam Hussein, the very man he worked to deliver the necessary ingredients to for his weapons of mass destruction.
And now W stands before the American people and the world using the same catch phrases his father used to describe an enemy entrenched in power by the very people W has put back into key positions. But the world is wary of George Bushes crying wolf. With his father working for the Carlyle group, and nefarious and direct links to the Bin Laden family (see web links), the people of the world have no belief that there can be anything but personal interest fueling the efforts towards war of the U.S. administration.
The moral of the story: If you think that voting republican makes you any more honorable than those voting for any other political group in the U.S., you'll have to find a new crop of listeners--we've all heard it before.
References:
I stole much of the information in this story directly from the following web sites. If any of the authors feel I have lifted their material, please contact me via comments left at this blog.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm
http://www.bushwatch.net/bushmoney.htm
The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf
Old Version
A shepherd-boy, who watched a flock of sheep near a village, brought out the villagers three or four times by crying out, "Wolf! Wolf!" and when his neighbors came to help him, laughed at them for their pains. The Wolf, however, did truly come at last. The Shepherd-boy, now really alarmed, shouted in an agony of terror: "Pray, do come and help me; the Wolf is killing the sheep"; but no one paid any heed to his cries, nor rendered any assistance. The Wolf, having no cause of fear, at his leisure lacerated or destroyed the whole flock.
New Version
A former head of the CIA became vice president of the most powerful country in the world. He later ran for president on the promise of, "Read my lips, no new taxes." His administration believed that at all costs, even if it meant breaking the country whom they represented's constitution and laws, that the evil empire of the Soviet Union needed to be destroyed.
And so, they used words like evil and monstrous to villify their chosen opponent, and the world listened. Weapons were given to allies of dubious and weak allegiance so long as they promised to fight against the evil empire, or through their actions, weaken it.
When war first broke out between Iran and Iraq, the Soviet Union turned back its arms ships en route to Iraq, and for the next year and a half, while Iraq was on the offensive, Moscow did not provide weapons to Baghdad. In March 1981, the Iraqi Communist Party, repressed by Saddam Hussein, beamed broadcasts from the Soviet Union calling for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Iraqi troops. That same month U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he saw the possibility of improved ties with Baghdad and approvingly noted that Iraq was concerned by "the behavior of Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern area." The U.S. then approved the sale to Iraq of five Boeing jetliners, and sent a deputy assistant secretary of state to Baghdad for talks. The U.S. removed Iraq from its notoriously selective list of nations supporting international terrorism (despite the fact that terrorist Abu Nidal was based in the country) and Washington extended a $400 million credit guarantee for U.S. exports to Iraq. In November 1984, the U.S. and Iraq restored diplomatic relations, which had been ruptured in 1967.
Meanwhile, our president and vice president were concerned about having lost its diplomatic ties to Iran, worrying that the Soviet Union would become a strong backer of the Khomeini regime, thus maintaining a foothold in the middle east. A CIA position paper in 1985 noted that whichever superpower got to Iran first would be "in a strong position to work towards the exclusion of the other. In 1984, because of Iranian battlefield victories and the growing U.S.-Iraqi ties, Washington launched "Operation Staunch," an effort to dry up Iran's sources of arms by pressuring U.S. allies to stop supplying Teheran. U.S. secret arms sales to Iran in 1985 and 1986 thus not only violated U.S. neutrality, but undercut as well what the U.S. was trying to get everyone else to do. The cynical would note that Operation Staunch made the U.S. arms transfers to Iran that much more valuable.
When this arms dealing became known, the Reagan administration was faced with a major scandal on several counts. Proceeds from the arms sales had been diverted to the Nicaraguan contras in violation of the Boland Amendment. And though the administration's professed uncompromising stand on terrorism was always hypocritical, given its sponsorship of terrorism in Nicaragua and elsewhere, being caught trading "arms-for-hostages" was particularly embarrassing.
During this war, the administration also enabled the development of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A 1994 report by the Senate Banking Committee concluded that "the United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual-use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs." This assistance, according to the report, included "chemical warfare-agent precursors; chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings; chemical warfare filling equipment; biological warfare-related materials; missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment." Although the U.S. publicly stated (and states) abhorrence for the use of such weapons, it provided them happily to Hussein, who used them both on his enemies within and out of his country.
The U.S.-Iraqi relationship flourished from February 1986, when then-Vice President George Bush met with Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Nizar Hamdoon, and assured him that Baghdad would be permitted to receive more sophisticated U.S. technology, until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Over that four-year period, the Reagan and Bush administrations approved licenses for the export of more than $600 million worth of advanced American technology to Iraq, according to congressional reports.
With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations.
That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.
And so the world had its first helping of the administration crying wolf, only to find that it was operating purely out of selfish desires, performing whatever underhanded tricks were necessary to achieve its goals.
But certainly this wasn't the only area in which the administration misbehaved.
In early 1981, then ambassador Jack Binns, Carter-appointed to Honduras, made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military. Reagan then replaced Carter, and in response to Jack Binns' complaints and concerns about murders and disappearances, called him home and replaced him with John Negroponte.
Negroponte served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, a period during which U.S. military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million. Accusations abounded against the U.S.-backed military regime for violations against human rights in Honduras. Reports suggest more than 100 people disappeared, with a special intelligence unit called Battalion 316 at the center of the controversy. The question senators have for Negroponte is why he didn't raise concerns. Negroponte denies having knowledge of any wrongdoing. It has been suggested that the vast amount of evidence and testimony supporting the human rights violations would have required that Mr. Negroponte live in total isolation not to have noticed the crimes that had so disturbed Jack Binns. Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Mr. Negroponte himself of human rights violations.
South America proved to be a hot bed of improper activity for the administration. In October and November 1986, two secret U.S. Government operations were publicly exposed, potentially implicating Reagan Administration officials in illegal activities. These operations were the provision of assistance to the military activities of the Nicaraguan contra rebels during an October 1984 to October 1986 prohibition on such aid, and the sale of U.S. arms to Iran in contravention of stated U.S. policy and in possible violation of arms-export controls. In late November 1986, Reagan Administration officials announced that some of the proceeds from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran had been diverted to the contras.
the Iran operations were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George Bush, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, and national security advisers Robert C. McFarlane and John M. Poindexter; of these officials, only Weinberger and Shultz dissented from the policy decision, and Weinberger eventually acquiesced by ordering the Department of Defense to provide the necessary arms; and large volumes of highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration officials.
following the revelation of these operations in October and November 1986, Reagan Administration officials deliberately deceived the Congress and the public about the level and extent of official knowledge of and support for these operations. In addition, Independent Counsel concluded that the off-the-books nature of the Iran and contra operations gave line-level personnel the opportunity to commit money crimes.
Independent Counsel's investigation did not develop evidence that proved that Vice President Bush violated any criminal statute. Contrary to his public pronouncements, however, he was fully aware of the Iran arms sales. Bush was regularly briefed, along with the President, on the Iran arms sales, and he participated in discussions to obtain third-country support for the contras. The OIC obtained no evidence that Bush was aware of the diversion. The OIC learned in December 1992 that Bush had failed to produce a diary containing contemporaneous notes relevant to Iran/contra, despite requests made in 1987 and again in early 1992 for the production of such material. Bush refused to be interviewed for a final time in light of evidence developed in the latter stages of OIC's investigation, leaving unresolved a clear picture of his Iran/contra involvement. Bush's pardon of Weinberger on December 24, 1992 pre-empted a trial in which defense counsel indicated that they intended to call Bush as a witness.
Then came dark days. The elder Bush lost his second bid for president, perhaps allowing the world at large some hope that the American people could recognize a liar and a rat when they saw one. But, alas, for two terms, another smooth liar ruled the nation, until the American people again railed against misbehavior, voting strongly for another Bush to take the helm. OK, not strongly. Bush garnered 50,456,169 votes, against his opponent's 50,996,116 votes. The Florida recount fiasco ended with a president select Bush chosen by the U.S. supreme court's decision.
With all the rhetoric spouted by Bush against the detestable actions of his predecessor, one might have hoped that misbehavior by the presidential administration would be a thing of the past, that U.S. citizens could travel the world and be proud to state their origin. Any such hopes were dashed, however, as W's new cabinet took shape, and some had to wonder if the previous Bush office-holders had simply been cryogenically frozen, waiting and now surprised that they should be returned to power so soon after their previous misbehaviors.
For instance:
John Negroponte is now the amabassador to the United Nations. More than willing to cry foul at the misbehaviors of countries the U.S.--actually the U.S. administration--now considers it's enemy, this man still claims he knew nothing of the human rights abuses taking place around him in a previous high ranking ambassador's post.
Donald Rumsfeld is currently the secretary of defense. His greatest efforts are focused on preparing to go to war with and villify the actions of Sadam Hussein, the very man he worked to deliver the necessary ingredients to for his weapons of mass destruction.
And now W stands before the American people and the world using the same catch phrases his father used to describe an enemy entrenched in power by the very people W has put back into key positions. But the world is wary of George Bushes crying wolf. With his father working for the Carlyle group, and nefarious and direct links to the Bin Laden family (see web links), the people of the world have no belief that there can be anything but personal interest fueling the efforts towards war of the U.S. administration.
The moral of the story: If you think that voting republican makes you any more honorable than those voting for any other political group in the U.S., you'll have to find a new crop of listeners--we've all heard it before.
References:
I stole much of the information in this story directly from the following web sites. If any of the authors feel I have lifted their material, please contact me via comments left at this blog.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm
http://www.bushwatch.net/bushmoney.htm
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