New War’s Eve
Monday, January 2nd, 2006
The beginning of each new year often invokes feelings of anticipation in a human being, and occasionally warrants one to brace for changes to come. Remember six years ago when the Gregorian odometer lined up three big zeros in a row? Many of us in the city bought up canned goods and bottled water in fear of that dreaded Y2K bug. But thankfully the Giuliani administration welded up all the manhole covers in Midtown and everything turned out all right. Kinda like how the invasion of Iraq has prevented any further terrorist attacks here in New York. I guess it’s similar to burying pennies in the garden to get rid of warts. You don’t know exactly how it works, but somehow it does.
But seriously, as the dead pile up in Iraq and you might scratch your head here in 2006 wondering how we somehow attacked and occupied a defenseless country. And in less than three years our country has been responsible for the death, wounding and maiming of thousands of people AND has fired up a civil war over there with no end in sight– ALL based on false intelligence. It might be interesting to look at a different kind of eve– The EVE of the Iraq war as heard on right wing talk radio.
Almost three years ago on St. Patrick’s Day 2003, there was a different kind of celebration going in America. Instead of a yearning to gulp some bubbly and kiss somebody, a lot of Americans were all pumped up to kiss a regime goodbye. And they were thirsty for blood. Iraqi blood.
The Bush Administration convinced enough of us that Saddam Hussein had huge stockpiles of “weapons of mass destruction,” possibly nukes, and the time had come to go to war against him to save ourselves. There was an epidemic of war fever in the U.S. of A. By March 17, 2003 thousands of American and British troops were ready at the Iraq Border, and Bush was about to give a speech that evening that everybody knew was going to be a “final warning” for the Iraqi government. Thankfully, the evil French weren’t going to get in our way this time.
That day there was a blood lust in conservative talk radio that’s still shocking to me. Let’s listen to how it sounded that afternoon in New York City…
01 – WABC Rush Limbaugh – President Cowboy 03-17-03 14:30
Rush is confident and enthusiastic about the coming bloodshed. He doesn’t see the war lasting much longer than a few days. Certainly not weeks. After all, America NEVER loses. In reality, all those anti-war types are only hoping for defeat, right? What’s even more embarrassing is Limbaugh shamelessly making Bush into a matinee cowboy hero.
02 – WMCA Jay Sekulow – Modern Blitzkrieg 03-17-03 2:02
By the way, this is a "Christian" talk show relishing all the death to come. Get ready for the new blitzkrieg! And will weather get in the way of our glory?
03 – WOR Bill O’Reilly – Alright, It’s On 03-17-03 11:08
Bill O’Reilly, a cocky and powerful political pundit, and just the biggest and most ignorant asshole in American media today. Yet from what I understand, his boycott of France has put their economy into a devastating unending depression. Pretty impressive. Anyway, here you have O’Reilly beating the war drums awful hard. And once the war starts, YOU had better be in favor of all the mayhem or you’ll not only be a bad American but big bad Bill is going to come after you with his TV & radio guns ablazing. The funny part is when O’Reilly says if Bush invades Iraq and finds no WMD’s and the Iraqis resent our invasion he’ll never trust the Bush Administration again. Me neither.
04 – WABC Sean Hannity – Saddam Threatening Global War 03-17-03 10:39
The right wing’s ultimate talkbot, Sean Hannity is salivating pretty heavily on this day. The “moment of truth” is upon us. Within five minutes Hannity has made the case that Hussein will level the world with nuclear weapons– unless if we stop him!
05 – WOR Bob Grant – Some Things Come Before Peace 03-17-03 5:28
Congressman Vito Fossella of Staten Island is planning a big pro-war rally for the weekend. Here he talks to the throbbingly war-ready Bob Grant. After all, there’s some things that come before peace and security. And what are those things again?
05 – WOR Tom Marr – God Is On Our Side 03-17-03 1:30
Stan calls up to tell us how anti-war demonstrators are “abysmally ignorant of history.” Then, as Marr stares longingly at the TV set in the studio waiting on President Bush to step up and unleash the dogs of war, he reminds us all that the cloud being above is still America’s biggest fan.
(This post originally appeared in Beware of the Blog.)
