Home of the Whopper

excerpted from the book

Dude, where's my country?

by Michael Moore

Warner Books, 2003, hardcover

p48
Here is the list from a 1994 U.S. Senate Report of the chemical agents we allowed U.S. corporations to sell to Saddam Hussein between 1985 and 1990. We gave Saddam:

* Bacillus Anthracis: Anthrax is an often fatal infectious disease due to ingestion of spores. It begins abruptly with high fever, difficulty in breathing, and chest pain. The disease eventually results in septicemia (blood poisoning), and the mortality rate is high. Once septicemia is advanced, antibiotic therapy may prove useless, probably because the exotoxins remain, despite the death of the bacteria.

* Clostridium Botulinum: A bacterial source of botulinum toxin, which causes vomiting, constipation, thirst, general weakness, headache, fever, dizziness, double vision, dilation of the pupils, and paralysis of the muscles involving swallowing. It is often fatal.

* Histoplasma Capsulatum: Causes a disease superficially resembling tuberculosis that may cause pneumonia, enlargement of the liver and spleen, anemia, an influenza-like illness, and an acute inflammatory skin disease marked by tender red nodules, usually on the shins. Reactivated infection usually involves the lungs, the brain, spinal membranes, heart, peritoneum, and the adrenals.

* Brucella Melitensis: A bacteria that can cause chronic fatigue, loss of appetite, profuse sweating when at rest, pain in joints and muscles, insomnia, nausea, and damage to major organs.

* Clostridium Perfringens: A highly toxic bacteria that causes gas gangrene. The bacteria produce toxins that move along muscle bundles in the body, killing cells and producing necrotic tissue that is then favorable for further growth of the bacteria itself. Eventually, these toxins and bacteria enter the bloodstream and cause a systemic illness.

p50
As L.A. Weekly reported in 2003, Senate hearings and government records reveal that these companies included:

* Hewlett-Packard-Worked with Iraq from 1985 to 1990, supplying computers for an arm of the Iraqi government working on the scud and nuclear programs. HP also sent computers to two government agencies that oversaw the nuclear and chemical weapons programs. Other sales included radar components and cryptographic equipment.

* AT&T-In 2000 was paid to optimize the products of another company, Huawei. Between 2000 and 2001, Iraq was paying Huawei to spiff up their air defense systems.

* Bechtel-From 1988 to 1990, it was helping the Iraqis build a giant petrochemical plant, hand in hand with an Iraqi company known for its military ties.

* Caterpillar-Helped Iraq with construction of their nuclear program in the 1980s through the sale of $10 million worth of tractors.

* DuPont-In 1989, sold $30,000 worth of specially engineered oil to Iraq which was used in their nuclear program.

* Kodak-Also in 1989, sold $172,000 in equipment that was used in Iraq's missile programs.

* Hughes Helicopter-Sold sixty helicopters to Iraq in 1983, which the Iraqis modified for military use.

p51
In a 1995 sworn affidavit, the directive's co-author and a member of Reagan's National Security Council, Howard Teicher, revealed even more about America's involvement:

CIA Director Casey personally spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war. Pursuant to the secured [National Security Directive], the United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third-country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required.

One of those "third-country arms sales" was of particular interest. Imagine our shock when it was discovered that our good despotic friends the Saudis had "accidentally" transferred 300 American-made MK-84 2,000-pound bombs to Iraq. For the most part, though, Reagan's handlers were smart enough to funnel weapons untraceably through other countries.

It wasn't just his handlers who were getting involved. Reagan and Bush I decided to personally get their hands dirty. According to Teicher's affidavit:

[I]n 1986, President Reagan sent a secret message to Saddam Hussein telling him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran. This message was delivered by Vice President Bush who communicated it to Egyptian President Mubarak, who in turn passed the message to Saddam Hussein.

Even after Saddam used his weapons of mass destruction to gas his own people-an event Bush and his buddies are so totally offended by now, a decade and a half too late-the Reagan administration was unfazed. The United States Congress tried to put economic sanctions on Hussein's country, but the White House quashed the idea. Their reasons? According to declassified State Department documents, economic sanctions might hurt America's chances at contracts for "massive postwar reconstruction" once Iran-Iraq war finally came to a close.

p56
... in the months leading up to the war in Iraq, polls showed that up to half of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein had ties to Osama bin Laden's network. Even before Bush had served up his 2003 State of the Union address, and Powell had presented the Saddam-Osama "evidence" to the U.N., a Knight-Ridder poll found that half of those questioned already incorrectly thought that one or more of the 9/11 hijackers held Iraqi citizenship. Bush didn't even have to say it.

The Bush administration had succeeded in perpetrating one of the biggest lies of all time, confusing Saddam with Osama in the minds of the American public. Once you sell the people on the notion that Saddam had a hand in the mass murder of nearly 3,000 people on American soil, well, even if the bogus weapons of mass destruction whopper didn't hold up, this would be enough to get the flags waving and the troops a-packin'.

Of course the problem with this whopper-other than it is a cynical, premeditated fabrication-is that Osama bin Laden considers Saddam to be an infidel. Hussein committed the sin of creating a secular Iraq instead of a Muslim state run by fanatical Muslim clerics. Under Saddam, Baghdad had churches, mosques and, yes, even a synagogue. Hussein had persecuted and killed thousands and thousands of Shiites in Iraq because of the threat they posed to his secular government.

In fact, the biggest reason Saddam and Osama don't like each other is the same reason the Bushes stopped liking Saddam: the invasion of Kuwait. Bush & Co. was pissed because Saddam was threatening the security of our oil in the Gulf, and Osama was pissed because it brought American troops to Saudi Arabia and the Muslim holy lands. That's bin Laden's biggest problem with us-and it's all because of Saddam!

Saddam and Osama were mortal enemies and they could not put their mutual hatred aside, even to join together to defeat the USA. Man, to not team up when it meant destroying the Great Satan Bush-THAT is a lot of hate!

p58
... the United States never gave a rat's ass about how badly Saddam the Dictator treated his own people. We never care about that stuff. In fact, we like dictators! They help us get what we want and they do a great job of keeping their nations subservient to our galloping global corporate interests.

We have a long and proud history of propping up madmen and their regimes as long as it helps us rule the world. Obviously, there are our old pals the Saudis, and there's Saddam, and then there's these places where we proudly sowed our oats:

* Cambodia
After secretly extending the Vietnam War into Cambodia in the late sixties and then watching the already decimated country slip under the control of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, the United States chose to support this madman for the simple reason that he offered opposition to the Vietnamese communists, who had just fought mighty America to total defeat. Then he took control and wiped out millions of his own people.

* The Congo/Zaire
The CIA got in bed with Mobutu Sese Seku early, setting off years of horrific violence that continues today. Afraid of the nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba, America helped Mobutu to power, oversaw the assassination of Lumumba and then helped crush the resulting uprisings. Mobutu took dictatorial control, outlawed political activity, had people killed, and ruled the country until 1990, with the continued help of the United States (and, yes, also the dastardly French). With the approval of successive American governments he spread his fingers through the crises of his neighboring African countries.

* Brazil
Left-leaning, democratically elected President Joao Goulart wasn't what Washington had in mind for South America's largest country. Despite pledging his solidarity to the United States during the Cuban missile crisis, Goulart's days were numbered. Preferring friendly authoritarian rule to democracy, the United States pushed a coup on Brazil, which resulted in 15 years of terror, torture and killing.

* Indonesia
The Southeast Asian archipelago state is one of America's favorite allies, and also happens to be home to yet another repressive regime. It is also the world's most populous Muslim country. In 1965, yet another democratically elected president was overthrown with the help of the United States government, which installed in his place yet another military dictatorship. General Suharto headed a hard-line government that ruled the country for three decades. Around half a million people were killed in the years after Suharto took power, but that didn't stop the U.S. from approving, in advance, Indonesia's illegal annexation of East Timor in the seventies. About 200,000 more people died there.

Of course, there are many, many more examples, from dictators we supported to democratically elected governments we simply threw into chaos or got rid of altogether (Guatemala and Iran in the fifties and Chile in the seventies are further examples of how much we love freedom by helping to overthrow heads of state who were chosen by their own citizens).

These days, China .. is our favorite dictatorship. The government imposes severe limits on media outlets, the Internet, workers' rights, religious freedom, and any attempts at independent thinking. Combined with a judicial system that totally ignores any rule of law and is festering with corruption, China is a perfect place for American companies to do business. There are more than 800 Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in China, around 400 McDonald's and another 100 Pizza Huts. Kodak is quickly approaching a monopoly on film sales.

The many companies who have set up shop there are not only hawking their wares to the Chinese. The $103 billion trade imbalance between China and the United States is the largest deficit between two countries the world has ever seen. We import six times as much as we export, with Wal-Mart alone accounting for $12 billion worth of Chinese imports, making the All Sino-American company one of China's biggest trading partners-ahead of Russia and Great Britain.

p61
Obviously those who choose our wars don't care much about liberating people from oppressive regimes-if they did, we'd be kicking the shit out of half the world. No, they talk about "our security" and, even more important to them, "our interests." And we all know that "our interests" have never included the good life for anyone but us. We don't share the wealth-be it monetary or ideological-we just cover our own asses and enhance our own well-being. It's plain to see, and it's everywhere- from "welfare to work" to our exploitation of cheap labor to our historical love of dictators to our refusal to forgive Third World debt. Liberation sounds nice, but it ain't worth dying for, and it sure as hell isn't I worth a dime of our money. Cheap gas, cheap clothes, cheap TVs? Yeah . . . that's more like it!

p63
When you need a scapegoat, when you need a worthy whipping boy, you really can't do better than the country of France. And that's who the Bush pundits went after, accusing the French of being an "Axis of Weasels." All this was done to distract the American public from the real rats who were in Washington.

France had decided not to support any rush to war in Iraq. It tried to convince the United States to let the weapons inspectors do their job. The French minister of foreign affairs, Dominique de Villepin, spoke eloquently at the United Nations as the war began:

Make no mistake about it: the choice is indeed between two visions of the world. To those who choose to use force and think they can resolve the world's complexity through swift and preventive action, we offer in contrast determined action over time. (or today, to ensure our security, all the dimensions of the problem must be taken into account: both the manifold crises and their many facets, including cultural and religious.)Nothing lasting in international relations can be built, therefore, without dialogue and respect for the other, without exigency and abiding by principles, especially for the democracies that must set the example. To ignore this is to run the risk of misunderstanding, radicalization and spiraling violence.

p65
Donald Rumsfeld took a different approach-a more insulting one-in responding to a question about Europe's view of the war, "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe."

p65
Representative Jim Saxton, R-New Jersey, proposed legislation in the House to keep French companies from getting U.S. financing for the reconstruction of Iraq. His colleague, Representative Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Florida, cooked up an even better way to really give the French the old "what for"-she introduced a bill to bring the bodies of World War II soldiers who had died and been buried in France back to the United States. "The remains of our brave heroes should be buried in patriotic soil," she explained, "not in a country that has turned its back on us."

An anti-tax group ran ads against two Republican U.S. senators who opposed Bush's tax cut. The ads pictured each senator standing next to a waving French flag with the message: "President Bush courageously led the forces of freedom but some so-called allies like France stood in the way. At home, President Bush has proposed bold job-creating tax cuts to boost the economy. But some so-called Republicans . . . stand in the way."

Fox News commentator Sean Hannity told his viewers, "If I had a trip planned to France this summer, I would have cancelled it. I'm going to tell you why. What Jacques Chirac did in our moment of need and how he undermined us and to the extent that he did it for his own selfish reasons, his duplicity is beyond forgiveness at this point. I'm sorry, I just-I would tell every American to stay away from France, go to Great Britain."

It wasn't long after being fed these French Whoppers that the American people took the bait. French wine was poured onto the street, and, at one New Jersey restaurant, down the toilet. French restaurants were shunned. Vacationers cancelled their plans to travel

France-with bookings down 30 percent. The Congressional dining room substituted "freedom" fries for french fries on its menu, following the lead of a North Carolina restaurant owner who was following the lead of a WWI-era effort to rename sauerkraut "liberty cabbage." Restaurants across the country followed suit, and as the president of the Fuddruckers restaurant chain put it, "Every guest who steps up to a counter at their local Fuddruckers and says, 'Give me freedom fries!' shows their true support for those who guard our most important freedoms, especially freedom from fear."

p66
A Lebanese-owned chain of stores in California's San Joaquin Valley, French Cleaners, had one of its stores tagged with anti-French graffiti and another burned to the ground. The French-owned Sofitel Hotel in Manhattan replaced the French flag flying outside with Old Glory. Fromage.com, a French cheese distributor, received hundreds of hostile e-mails.

In Las Vegas, an armored fighting vehicle, complete with two machine guns and a 76-millimeter cannon, was used to crush French yogurt, French bread, bottles of French wine, Perrier, Grey Goose vodka, photos of Chirac, a guide to Paris, and, best of all, photocopies of the French flag. The makers of British-owned French's Mustard didn't wait for a backlash; they put out a press release explaining that "the only thing French about French's Mustard is the name!"

Throughout the U.S., programs that matched visiting French students with American families were unable to find enough U.S. hosts for the first time in years.

p67
Most Americans know the French are more sophisticated, more intelligent, more well-read than the average American. We don't like to admit that it was the French who invented the movies, the automobile, the stethoscope, Braille, photography, and most important of all, the Etch A Sketch. They've brought us the Enlightenment, and The Enlightenment paved the way for the widespread acceptance of all the ideas and principles that America was founded on. Then when we find out that the French have to work only thirty-five hours a week and everyone gets at least four weeks paid vacation, all we can do is make snide remarks about their unions and how they're always shutting their country down.

So, France was the perfect country to pick on.

p69
In fact, France has always been the best friend to the United States. Almost a third of France's direct foreign investment is in the United States. They are our fifth largest investor, and the French employ 650,000 people in the United States. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written by a committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt with Rene Cassin of France as the vice-chair. And, much like in Vietnam, we share a joint sordid history in Iraq where the Iraqi Petroleum Company-owned by U.S., British, Dutch and French oil giants---exploited Iraq's oil.

Still, Americans accused the French of all kinds of treachery when it came to Iraq. There were claims that the French were only opposing war to get economic benefits out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In fact, it was the Americans who were making a killing. In 2001, the U.S. was Iraq's leading trading partner, consuming more than 40 percent of Iraq's oil exports. That's $6 billion in trade with the Iraqi dictator. By contrast, 8 percent of Iraq's oil exports went to France in 2001.

Fox News led the charge of pinning Chirac to Saddam Hussein, showing old footage of the two men together. It didn't matter that the meeting had taken place in the 1970s. The media didn't bother to run (over and over again) the footage from when Saddam was presented with a key to the city of Detroit, or the film in the early 1980s, when Donald Rumsfeld went to visit Saddam in Baghdad to discuss the progress of the Iran-Iraq War. Those videos of Rumsfeld embracing Saddam apparently weren't worth running on a continuous loop. Or even once. Okay, maybe once. On Oprah. And when she showed Rumsfeld all lovey with Saddam, there was an audible gasp in her studio audience. Everyday, average Americans were shocked to see that the devil was actually our devil. Thank you, Oprah.

How soon we forgot that it was the French who led the United Nations Security Council on the day after September 11 to condemn the attacks and demand justice for the victims. Jacques Chirac was the first foreign leader to travel to America after the attacks to offer his support and condolences.

One of the signs of true friendship is when your friend feels comfortable enough to let you know when you're screwing up. That is the kind of friend you should hope for. That is the kind of friend France was being-until we took a piss on our best friend ...

p71
... the polls in Australia leading up to the [Iraq] war showed that its citizens, by a margin of 70 percent, opposed the war. So how did they get on the [coalition] list. George W. Bush dangled the prospect of a free-trade agreement in front of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. If you can't join 'em, or they won't join you, bribe 'em.

Meanwhile Aussie neighbor New Zealand, who refused to join I the coalition, was then-surprise!-shut out of trade talks.

p73
In the United Kingdom, only 9 percent supported military action against Iraq if it meant the U.S. and the U.K. going it alone. The Brits were split evenly on who the "greatest threat to world peace" was, with Bush and Hussein each getting 45 percent of the vote.

p73
For the record, here are a few of the many countries that wanted nothing to do with this fiasco, the "Coalition of the Unwilling":

Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe-and 103 other countries.

p74
... between these two bombing campaigns, according to some estimates, 9,000 civilians were murdered three times as many civilians as died on September 11.|

p75
A British-American research group in London announced estimates of civilian deaths due to the war at between 6,806 and 7,797. That's a lot of accidents when you are talking about "precision-guided" weapons. Of course, the Pentagon doesn't like to talk about the search-and-destroy missions, or the cluster bombs.

Each 1,000-pound cluster bomb delivers 200 to 300 "bomblets," which in turn can spread hundreds of fragments over an area equivalent to several football fields. The bomblets, which can look like little toys to children, by the Pentagon's own estimates, fail to explode upon impact 5-20 percent of the time, and so they sit on the ground until some unsuspecting child picks one up.

p76
... the supposedly "liberal media" joined forces with the White House field office at Fox News to create a well-oiled, pro-war propaganda offensive that was almost impossible to avoid.

... Accompanied by round-the-clock patriotic, march-to-war music and flag-inspired graphics on the sorry-excuses-for news channels, the images were relentless: Tearful farewells from proud families as brave soldiers headed overseas; heroic American girls rescued by daring American guys; smart bombs doing their brilliantly destructive work; grateful Iraqis toppling the Saddam statue; a united America standing by Our Resolute and Determined Leader.

Then there was the footage beamed directly to us from the harsh Iraqi desert, where reporters "embedded" with the ground troops were given great leeway to report without interference from the Pentagon as we were supposed to believe). The result? Lots of up-close-and-personal stories about the hardships and dangers faced by our military-and virtually nothing examining why we had sent these fine young people into harm's way. And there was even less said about what was happening to the people of Iraq.

So unless you ignored U.S. news entirely and only watched the BBC or CBC or Le Journal from France ... you could pretty quickly find yourself believing that all the sacrifice was for a valid cause.

And just what exactly was the reason for the war with Iraq? We were so thoroughly whopperized that polls showed that half of all Americans wrongly thought that Iraqis were on the September 11 planes, and, at one point, nearly half believed that the U.S. had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, when no such discovery had been made. One-quarter of those surveyed thought that Saddam had unleashed a chemical or biological attack against "coalition" forces, which also hadn't happened.

The widespread misconceptions were understandable. It was almost impossible to hear the perspective of anyone who questioned or opposed the Bush administration's rationale for rushing to war on American television.

The media watchdog group FAIR studied the evening newscasts of six U.S. television networks and news channels for three weeks, starting on March 20, 2003-the day after the U.S. bombing of Iraq began. The study examined the affiliations and views of more than 1,600 sources who appeared on-camera in stories about Iraq. The results were hardly a surprise:

* Viewers were 25 times more likely to see a pro-war U.S. source than someone with an anti-war point of view.

* Military sources were featured twice as frequently as civilians.

* Only 4 percent of sources appearing during the three weeks were affiliated with universities, think tanks or non-governmental organizations.

* Of a total of 840 U.S. sources who were current or former government or military officials, only four were identified as opposing the war.

* The few appearances by people with anti-war viewpoints were consistently limited to one-sentence sound bites, usually from unidentified participants in on-the-street interviews. Not a single one of the six telecasts studied conducted a sit-down interview with anyone who opposed the war.

In some cases, journalists freely confessed to a startling lack of objectivity. The FAIR study quoted CBS News anchor Dan Rather during an appearance with Larry King on CNN: "Look, I'm an American. I never tried to kid anybody that I'm some internationalist or something. And when my country is at war, I want my country to win, whatever the definition of 'win' may be. Now, I can't and don't argue that that is coverage without a prejudice. About that I am prejudiced." During the three-week study period, FAIR found only one "anti-war" sound bite on Rather's CBS Evening News. It was made by ... me, at the Academy Awards, talking about the "fictitious war" waged by our "fictitious president."

p80
The Washington Post brought us the riveting story of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the young soldier who was rescued from an Iraqi hospital after being seriously injured during a battle in the Iraqi desert:

Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers . . . Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said.... "She was fighting to the death," the official said. "She did not want to be taken alive."

The New York Times provided more dramatic details of the heroic rescue:

Navy Special Operations forces, called Seals, extracted Private Lynch while being fired upon going in and coming back out.... Lynch [was] the first U.S. prisoner of war extracted from enemy hands since World War II and [it was] the first time a woman has ever been rescued . .

It took some time, but the story soon became more complicated, as The New York Times reported two months later:

It seems the plucky young private may not have fought like Rambo when her supply unit took a wrong turn into an Iraqi ambush. She may not have been shot and stabbed in that firefight, which may or may not have happened, and it seems likely now that she was not mistreated at an Iraqi hospital. Her heroic rescuers did not fight their way up the hospital halls; indeed the hospital staff may have been eager to hand her over.

Lynch was in fact given special medical care by the Iraqi hospital staff for her wounds, none of which was battle-related. An Iraqi nurse sang her to sleep at night, and she was given extra juice and cookies. The hospital staff had already tried to turn her over to U.S. authorities and were, in fact, waiting for them to arrive. Iraqi forces had already vacated the area.

While Lynch recovered in a U.S. hospital, television networks were tripping over themselves to get her exclusive story. CBS even offered her a package deal, with book, concert and TV movie prospects through CBS News, CBS Entertainment, MTV and Simon & Schuster-all under the corporate umbrella of the huge Viacom Corp.

No matter where the Jessica Lynch tale ends up being told, it's sure to be more Survivor than The Real World. I feel sorry for her, a young woman who volunteered to risk her life to defend the United States, and she ends up being used like this ...

p82
... last February when Collin Powell proclaimed, "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

Just days earlier, Powell apparently was not so sure. During a gathering of CIA officials reviewing the evidence against Saddam Hussein, Powell tossed the papers in the air and declared: "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."

And he had good reason to distrust the "intelligence." A large chunk of Powell's background information had been lifted directly from sources easily located on the Internet, including a graduate student's paper based on twelve-year-old documents. Some sections had been outright plagiarized, to the extent that typos hadn't even been fixed. But Powell called all these whoppers "solid."

Dude, where's my country?

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