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IRAQ BOMBING "AND THEIR LIE,
The IRAQ BOMBING "AND THEIR LIE," SAYS HISTORIAN ZINN [Immediately after
President Clinton announced the bombing of Iraq today, Mother Jones
President Clinton has just told another lie, this time not about the relatively trivial
matter of his sexual activities, but about matters of life and death. In explaining his
decision to bomb Baghdad, he said that other nations besides Iraq have weapons of mass
destruction, but Iraq alone has used them. He could only say this to a population deprived
of history. The United States has supplied Turkey, Israel, and Indonesia with such weapons
and they have used them against civilian populations. But the nation most guilty is our
own. No nation in the world possesses greater weapons of mass destruction than we do, and
none has used them more often, or with greater loss of civilian life. In Hiroshima
hundreds of thousands died, in Korea and Vietnam millions died as a result of our use of
such weapons. Our economic sanctions are also weapons of mass destruction, having resulted
in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Saddam Hussein may well have
weapons of mass destruction, he may indeed be inclined to use them, but only the United
States is actually using them, and at this very moment, people are dying in Iraq as a
result. However evil Saddam Hussein is, whatever potential danger he may represent, he is
not, as the president said tonight (telling another lie) a "clear and present
danger" to the peace of the world. We are. And, as the president said, if there is a
clear and present danger we must act against it. It is a time for protest. We are living
in times of madness, when men in suits and ties, and yes, a woman secretary of state, can
solemnly defend the use, in the present, of indiscriminate violence-they do not know what
they are bombing!-against a tyrant who may use violence, in the future. The phrase
"clear and present danger" has therefore lost its meaning. The phrase
"weapons of mass destruction" too has lost its meaning when a nation which
possesses more such weapons, and has used them more often, than any other, uses those
words to justify the killing of civilians "to send a message." We who are
offended by this should send our own message to our demented leaders. Howard Zinn is
professor emeritus of history at Boston University, and author of _A People's History of
the United States