Screw Pravda

Pravda.ru, the old Soviet mouthpiece, is running an online story titled Exposing Bush the Liar, the Mass Murderer, the War Criminal. There, Timothy Barncoft-Hinchey (a Brit) writes that in Iraq, George Bush "hijacked [his] country, democracy and the world on a murderous ecstasy of assassination and destruction, just because of corporate greed."

What a fertile imagination. While it is true that the Bush Administration has given many Iraqi reconstruction contracts to supportive companies like Haliburton, there's no evidence at all that America started the War in Iraq as a commercial enterprise. Indeed, note that the old Islamist complaint that the West really wants to nationalize arabic oil wealth has proven totally false! And as far as a "mass murderer," come on, whatever the level of civilian casualties, not even the Iraqis are saying that the U.S. has intentionally targeted large civilian populations or committed genocide.

The American political right labels Democrats all the time as soft on defense and not willing to "stand up for America." Well, on these scurrilous Pravda charges, all Americans should agree that we all hang together. The United States may sometimes do bad things internationally, but it does not and has not engaged in anything like the crimes against humanity that Saddam Hussein launched against his own people. Pravda's complaints sound like Adolph Hitler charging that America ran the concentration camps. Something only psychopaths could seriously believe.

 Posted by glenn