Eric Zuesse

As will be shown here, the U.S. federal government, under President Donald Trump, is repeating the very same deception of the public, in regard to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, that it had perpetrated back in 2002, against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, under U.S. President George W. Bush. (By contrast, and for secret reasons, the U.S. federal government does everything possible to downplay the barbarisms, such as are occurring in Yemen, that are perpetrated by the fundamentalist Sunni Kings of Saudi Arabia, and Emirs of Qatar, even while exaggerating the barbarisms by the fundamentalist Shiite clerics who control Iran — a key ally of the secular and non-fundamentalist Shiite leader of Syria. The U.S. ‘news’ media display no curiosity, at all, to understand, much less to explain to their public, why that partiality of the U.S. government, in favor of fundamentalist Sunni governments, against any Shiite governments, exists; but, all of the 9/11 jihadists were fundamentalist Sunnis, and Al Qaeda itself is a fundamentalist Sunni operation, as is ISIS; and these facts have something to do with that ‘mystery’, of why the U.S. ‘news’ media and government are so partial in favor of fundamentalist Sunnis, against Shiites. America’s soldiers are actually fighting foreign wars for foreign powers who are claimed to be ‘allies’, but who are actually the ones that invade America and slaughter Americans.)

Here will be documented that Donald Trump is now clearly following in George W. Bush’s (and Barack Obama’s) footsteps, being advised by liars, who deceive the public into invading, on false pretexts — the chief crime for which the Nazi military leaders at Nuremberg were tried and executed. Now it’s America’s leaders, who should be in the docks. This is an ugly reality, in which America’s press is complicit by refusing to report it. Indeed, America’s press is essential to the success of the government’s fraud, which certainly succeeded against Saddam Hussein in 2003, and which is again succeeding against Bashar al-Assad now.

There is a debate as to whether George W. Bush himself was a liar (which he certainly was), but there is no debate about whether his advisors were liars (which they also were). For example, regarding “Saddam’s WMDs,” Bush’s Vice-President Dick Cheney said, on Aug. 26, 2002:

"Simply stated, there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.”

There certainly WAS “doubt” (and there was, in fact, no evidence at all that any active WMD program still existed in Iraq at the time when the United States invaded in 2003 and destroyed Iraq by our invasion). Dick Cheney was, quite simply, lying, there. People who deny it are of only two types: arrogant in their ignorance of the facts, or else outright liars themselves. (Indeed, the infamous neoconservative Bill Kristol, and other neocons at that time, were citing Cheney’s allegation prominently as providing ‘a compelling case’ that we should invade. It was no such thing, and the fascist — euphemistically called “neoconservative” — Kristol subsequently campaigned to get James Mattis elected as the next President after Barack Obama, but succeeded ultimately only in getting President-elect Donald Trump to appoint Mattis to run U.S. foreign policy instead, from the post of Mattis’s being Trump's Pentagon chief and actual top foreign-affairs advisor.) In today’s America, such fascists aren’t embarrassed and shunned (much less executed, or otherwise dealt with as war-criminals) — they remain influential and powerful, in today’s Amerika.

Cheney was declared by the ‘news’media to have been the nation’s “Chief Operating Officer” in G.W. Bush’s Presidency, but that appellation was valid primarily for Bush’s foreign policies (including all military matters). So, that’s what we’re talking about here, the policies that have international significance, these being the policies regarding which any nation’s aristocracy tends to be the most unified, and are therefore the most important to America’s oligarchs — though often ignored by the general public, and left by them simply to trust the President on, and so we invade, again. And again. Very profitable, for the chief stockholders in the weapons-making firms.

The reliance that Bush had placed upon his Vice President, big Dick Cheney, to make determinations about whether or not to invade, is now the reliance that Trump places upon his Secretary of ‘Defense’, today’s equally soft-spoken big stick, James Mattis, to decide whether or not to invade. Although Mattis is unlike Cheney in regards to torture, both of these two key Presidential advisors, Cheney and Mattis, share a lot in common, and Trump’s placing military decisions in Mattis’s hands is, as Kristol knew, very much like a second G.W. Bush Presidency, just combined with a bit of the more ‘proper’ neoconservatism of Barack Obama's Presidency. (Obama was actually even worse than Bush was in some important respects — but a much more skillful liar than Bush was.)

On Friday April 21st, Mattis said at a press conference, “There can be no doubt in the international community’s mind that Syria has retained chemical weapons in violation of its agreement and its statement that it had removed them all. There is no longer any doubt,” just as there wasn’t any doubt according to Cheney back in 2002 — “no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.”

But, just as Cheney lied then about Saddam Hussein, in order to invade, Mattis lies now about Bashar al-Assad, in order to invade. (And here was that very same authority disproving the allegation against Assad, back on 14 January 2014: disproving then Barack Obama’s Administration's continuing lies alleging at that time, that Assad instead of the U.S. and its allies were behind the 2013 “red line” sarin gas attack in Syria — and Seymour Hersh’s similar finding, in confirmation of that Obama-lie, via Britain’s MI6.)

So, just like with George W. Bush, U.S. President Donald Trump is relying upon not only the advice, but also the military judgment, of clear-cut liars. They lie their way into invasions, just like Hitler did. And, just like happened with President George W. Bush, the debate among historians will be as to whether President Donald Trump is merely a fool who demands to be encircled by yes-men, or is, himself, instead, a knowing liar, who can be distinguished from President Barack Obama solely by the latter’s having been a far slicker liar than Bush or Trump (such as Obama displayed himself to be, here, and here).

Meanwhile, Trump helps his new-found friends, the fundamentalist-Sunni royal owners of Saudi Arabia, to create a famine and slaughter Shiites in their neighboring country of Yemen, after the U.S. had sold $130 billion in weapons to those Saudi royals and their fellow fundamentalist-Sunni royals (and other Sunnis) assisting in this slaughter of Yemenis.

Instead of Trump’s doing war against “radical Islamic terrorists”, they turn out to be his friends.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
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