Recipe for armageddon

Let's talk about the end of the world. A year from now, one of two things is likely to have happened.

If you believe the chickenhawk neocons, such as the Pentagon's maximum insider-adviser, Richard Perle, we'll have dropped a relative handful of troops, 40,000 or so, into the middle of Baghdad. Saddam Hussein will quickly be toppled. His weapons of mass destruction will be found and neutralized. (You must, of course, believe he has such an arsenal and delivery capability, since any proof is as vaporish and ephemeral as the claims that he's in league with al-Qaeda.)

Our forces will move out into the country, and the Iraqi people will wave little American flags as they welcome the GIs in scenes reminiscent of the WWII liberation of Paris. Other despotic Arab leaders will rejoice at Hussein's demise, and will be so smitten by the beneficence of pax Americana that they'll renounce their evil ways and embrace democracy.

That's called the "inside-out attack."

It's pretty much what is portrayed on the major media. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for example, gushed the underlying (and lying) philosophy in its Sept. 5 jingoistic, cowboys-and-Indians Page 1 banner headline, "Ready to roll on Iraq."

It's not likely citizens will easily find much alternative opinion. CNN International Executive Vice President Rena Golden admitted Aug. 15 that the network self-censors news the Bushies wouldn't like because of "a reluctance to criticize anything in a war that was obviously supported by the vast majority of the people."

Not to be argumentative, but polls show support for war is rapidly evaporating. The only way the increasingly uneasy masses tilt toward war is if we have strong international backing, which we don't, and if the Bush war machine can guarantee few American boys will come home in bags, which the government can't do.

More important -- a fact that escapes the doltish CNN exec -- is that in a democracy, the people must be fully informed, not propagandized, in order to make decisions.

Still, Americans aren't much given to deep studying, and the popular sound bite-driven view is that a war with Iraq will be far less exciting than the weekly "WWF Smackdown." There won't even be the pretense of a fight; we'll just whup Hussein's ass.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, is in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

-- Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953