.....the stench in the room can be unbearable.
So, although no doubt it's a journalistic default, I declined to watch online the beheading of US civilian Nicholas Berg by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and his associates. After two weeks of watching those infamous photos of the degradation of mostly innocent Iraqi civilians in Abu Ghraib prison by American goons - direct descendants of the nigger-lynching enthusiasts of the good ol' American South - I'd had enough. Whatever Zarqawi's 'cause', what he did was an obscenity, a 'crime against humanity'; and if all you can do by way of protest is not to watch its re-enactment, don't. If there's any moral distinction to be made at all in the war between militant Islam and the West, it's that we in the West - yes, we in the west - draw the line at the murder of innocents.

But - do we?
The good folk of Berg's hometown were understandably traumatised.
Asked one town official, of Berg's beheading: 'What could be more shocking?'

Well. Would you consider, sir, the two dead Iraqi infants who, at time of writing, are still buried beneath the rubble of their Karbala home, destroyed by a rocket from a US gunship? They're not white, of course, sir; but - what d'you say?
Or, if it could be proved to you that their fate has been replicated thousands of times since your government's unprovoked and murderous attack on that country, would that realisation be 'more shocking'?
How about if we went back a bit - to My Lai, the Vietnamese village whose 100-plus inhabitants, comprising exclusively women, children and old men, were rounded up by US forces and summarily murdered? I know: they weren't white, either; but what d'you say? Was the murder of an entire village of peasants by your country's goons 'more shocking' than Zarqawi's obscene little revenge skit last week?

If I could, sir, I would show you the photo of a little Iraqi girl from Najaf that appeared in last Thursday's Gleaner. Such a beautiful child - or once-beautiful, I should say, since her face has been ruined by shrapnel from an American airstrike. I would show you that photo, sir, and ask you how you would feel if you were her father. Except that in that case you'd not be able to answer, being dead yourself: that little girl's father, and her mother, too, were killed by the same airstrike that ruined her face. Isn't it shocking how, in the twinkling of an eye, a lovely eight-year-old child in the happiness of her parents' home can be
transformed into a deformed orphan in a war zone, by a single strike by your country's - certainly very impressive - military?
Well, enough of this. Who wants to adjudicate a hit parade of obscenities?
But Berg was at least a big man who, knowing the risks, went to Iraq to try and make some good money; while this little girl was just at home, sir; just at home. Where else could she be? She was eight years old.
See what I mean?
But enough of this. Here's some comic relief.
Asked by the European media what had gone wrong with the Bush Administration's plans for Iraq, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week that 'nothing has gone wrong'.

And you, reader, thought Belafonte's 'house nigger', in his dismal reverse-Golgotha ('The Passion of the Colin'), trekking downhill from the sunny peak of the world's admiration to the abysmal gloaming of the world's contempt, had reached bottom! Think again, bro'. 'Nothing has gone wrong' in Iraq, huh? Good ol' Cole.
So, here's another question. Will Colin Powell Kill Himself One Day?
Who knows. And, more to the point: Who cares, anymore?
One of those who last week disagreed with the ol' Cole was French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, who compared the situation in Iraq to 'a black hole which is sucking in the Middle East and, beyond that, the world'.

That, I submit, was not hyperbole. And the rejoicing, indeed, the jubilation, which this columnist has been hearing of late from every level of Jamaican society, from Cabinet ministers to swimming pool caretakers, over Mr Bush's Iraq Armageddon, is, I would submit, quite misplaced.
There is now no feasible future scenario for Iraq which doesn't avoid at best the break-up of that country into three ethnically homogenous small states, or at worst the unmitigated destruction of civil war; while, from its huge new 3,000-man embassy in Baghdad - really, a Control-and-Command Centre for future US military invasions of Middle Eastern countries, beginning, but not ending, with Syria - the Pentagon directs its armed forces' protection of the Iraqi oilfields, for the benefit of Cheney-Bush and the Texan oilmen. The chaos that that is going to unleash upon the region, and ultimately upon the world, is nothing to be jubilant about, friends. Guess you saw the price of oil last week.

But Mr Barnier wasn't the only one disagreeing with the ol' Cole. So too, astoundingly, were three of the US's most rabid right-wing Republican hawks: Robert Kagan, co-author of the infamous Project for the New American Century (a blueprint for the US's imposition, through military conquest, of what Fidel Castro called last week 'world tyranny'); The Washington Post's George Will; and The New York Times's Tom Friedman.
Wrote Kagan: 'All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush Administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now.'

Mused George Will sonorously - the same George Will who, 15 months ago, in a column devoted to railroading his readers into supporting the neo-cons' coming attack upon Iraq (and devoted, therefore, to excoriating the UN's attempts to uphold international law) wrote one of the most
blisteringly racist denunciations of Kofi Annan you can imagine: 'Are the nation's efforts in the deepening global war - the world is more menacing than it was a year ago - helped or hindered by Rumsfeld's continuation as the appointed American most conspicuously identified with the conduct of the war?' Translation: Given the abysmal failure of the Bush Administration's adventuring in Iraq, Rumsfeld - the darling of Mr Will's neo-cons - should resign.
(But let the reader not scant Will's parenthesis. Notice its neo-con psychosis: it isn't Al-Qaeda or 'Islamic extremists' who are 'more menacing' than a year ago; it's 'the world'. The world is more menacing, to George Will and his ilk, than it was. 'The world' means you and me, too, dear, law-abiding Jamaican. And notice also the implicit admission, by this long-time Iraq hawk: the invasion of Iraq has made America less safe. Well! You should have been reading In Our Time, Mr Will. You'd have known that from the git-go, sir!).

Lastly, there was Friedman ('Dancing Alone', NYT, May 13).
Now, Tom Friedman is actually the cleverest - I want to say, the nastiest - of the three. The voice of the Israeli lobby in the New York Times, Friedman has unerringly come down in favour of the big, pro-Israeli Bush policies in the Middle East - up to a fortnight ago, eg, he was still staunchly averring the US invasion of Iraq had been The Right Thing To Do - while, in less important matters, taking pains to assume the positions of a pragmatic, even a liberal, thinker: 'Good ol' independent, fair-minded Tom Friedman.'

Yet here was Tom Friedman in the NYT last week, demanding: 'Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?' And issuing a string of 'Don't blame me, I was deceived!' self-exculpations.
'I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq. But I was wrong. It has always been more important for the Bush folks to defeat liberals at home than Baathists abroad. I admit, I'm a little slow. Because I tried to think about something as deadly serious as Iraq in a nonpartisan fashion [and] assumed the Bush officials were doing the same. I was wrong.'

As for the rest of Friedman's column, I swear I could have written it myself!
'Why, in the face of rampant looting in the war's aftermath, wouldn't Mr Rumsfeld put more troops into Iraq? Politics. First of all, Rummy wanted to crush once and for all the Powell doctrine. The Pentagon crew hated Colin Powell, and wanted to see him humiliated 10 times more than Saddam.
Second, Rummy wanted to prove to all those US generals whose Army he was intent on downsizing that a small, mobile, high-tech force was all you needed today to take over a country. [Note that 'take over': WB.]

Third, the White House always knew this was a war of choice - its choice - so it made sure that average Americans never had to pay any price. Why didn't the administration ever use 9/11 as a spur to launch a Manhattan project for energy independence and conservation, so we could break out of our addiction to crude oil? Because that might have required a confrontation with the Administration's oil moneymen. Why did the Administration never lift a finger to stop Ariel Sharon's massive building of illegal settlements in the West Bank? Because it might have cost the Bush campaign Jewish votes in Florida. And why did the president praise Mr Rumsfeld rather than fire him?

Because it is more important that the president appear to be true to his team than that America appear to be true to its principles.
'...Add it all up, and you see how we got so off track in Iraq, why we are dancing alone in the world - and why our president... has no moral influence.'
Astonishing. Absolutely astonishing.
But that's the way with these neo-cons when the excrement hits the fan. The rats of empire start digging themselves ratholes to hunker down in.

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