re Re: "But the world isn't like that."

[pynchonoid]

> But the facts are that
> Bush is waging war not
> peace on Iraq.


Le Monde reported yesterday a fact that I haven't seen
presented quite so plainly anywhere in the US media: 
the US currently has 58,000 military personally in the
Middle East, more or less circling Iraq, preparing for
the attack and invasion:


http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3210--293992-,00.html


58 000 soldats américains ont été déployés dans la
région du Golfe


Quelque 58 000 militaires américains, selon le
Pentagone, sont aujourd'hui positionnés dans la région
du Golfe, avec comme objectif de se préparer à
d'éventuelles opérations contre l'Irak. Ils reçoivent
des équipements supplémentaires afin, selon un
porte-parole du commandement central de Tampa
(Floride), chargé des actions au Moyen-Orient,
"d'appuyer la campagne du président des Etats-Unis
contre le terrorisme". [...] 



Read http://www.accuracy.org/bush/ for a "Detailed
Analysis of October 7 Speech by Bush on Iraq"


Meanwhile, the business of war, ignoring boundaries
and allegiences, goes on:


http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,811109,00.html


"A British Minister will lead a major sales drive by
UK weapons and military technology firms at an
exhibition attended by high-ranking Iraqi military
officials this week. The news has sparked outrage
among arms control campaigners and groups opposed to
military action against Iraq. 'It is absurd that we
are gearing up to fight a war against these people and
simultaneously rubbing shoulders with them at an arms
bazaar,' said Martin Hogbin of the Campaign Against
Arms Trade. 

Around a dozen British firms will be displaying
equipment such as tanks, thermal imaging night sights
and state-of-the-art air defence missiles at the
exhibition in Amman, Jordan. Machine tools that could
be used to produce weapons will also be on show. The
government-run Defence Export Services Organisation
will also have a stall. 

Promotional material for the Sofex military fair
boasts that Saddam Hussein is sending an official
delegation. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, the Iraqi Defence
Minister, attended the last Sofex. Sudan, Syria, Libya
and Iran - all listed as sponsors of terrorism by the
US State Department - are also expected to attend. 

'It's an appalling example of double standards. Where
there is a buck to be made, we're there,' said Andrew
Bergen, spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition,
which campaigns against military action against Iraq. 

In the Eighties the UK and US supplied Iraq with
millions of pounds' worth of military equipment.
Baghdad used British companies to procure 'dual-use'
machine tools to make ammunition. Even though the UK
had imposed an embargo on 'lethal equipment', the
Conservative Government let the sales proceed. 

The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week that Lord
Bach, the Defence Procurement Minister, would be
attending the fair. 'Sofex allows the UK defence
industry to demonstrate its product range to a number
of potential overseas customers very effectively,'
said an MoD spokesman. 

There is no suggestion that the British firms are
doing anything wrong. 'We exhibit there. The
Government decides what we can sell to whom,' said a
spokesman for the American military aviation giant
Lockheed Martin, whose British arm is attending the
fair. Lockheed Martin makes the Longbow
'fire-and-forget' and the Hellfire 2 anti-tank
missiles. Both would be expected to play a key role in
any attack on Iraq. [...] "


"Don't forget the real business of the War is buying
and selling. The murdering and the violence are
self-policing, and can be entrusted to
non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is
useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as
diversion from the real movements of the War. It
provides raw material to be recorded into History, so
that children may be taught History as sequences of
violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared
for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a
stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to
try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still
here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of
markets."
Gravity's Rainbow p. 105



Appeaser is an ugly word, what do you Netiquette
experts think about it's use here in Pynchon-L?


"This crowd has the gall to sneer at people trying to
keep the United States out of war as being
"appeasers," if not traitors. They act as if it were
brave for a fat, pale-skinned journalist or
commentator to advocate war that will be fought by
other people's sons and daughters. It is the worst
kind of moral cowardice to be for war if you yourself
are not going to participate in the fighting. [...] "
continues at:
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020927/index.php


Chickenhawks, some people are calling these
warmongers, those folks sitting safe and sound and
urging on a war in which they won't participate but
which they will watch and enjoy on the Tube.  Feed the
children to the War that never ends, laugh all the way
to the bank -- re the war planners (especially those
spreadsheet jockeys visualizng profit scenarios at
weapon systems manufacturers and arms merchant firms,
plus their government puppets) as Herb Caen once wrote
about McGeorge Bundy, if they slit their wrists in the
bathtub they'd freeze to death before they could bleed
to death --  war cheerleaders and facilitators and
profiteers, familiar enough in Pynchon's work,
deluded, but dangerous.











=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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