"Are you coming on the journey with us this year?" asked Abdu tex Abdu.

"I'm not sure I can afford it," I replied.

"Look, my friend," said Abdu, with a very serious look on his face. "We got a great deal on airfare. This is the third holiest city in Islam. I've gone twice, and you haven't even gone once. You know you're supposed to take the trip at least once in your life, so you might as well come now."

"Yes, but Crawford, Texas is a long way from here. Maybe, I'll go next year."

"Well, take care," said Abdu as he bowed and said the usual statement of faith, "There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is his Prophet, and Dubya is his useful idiot."

As Abdu walked away, I reflected upon how it had come to pass that the entire earth had become Muslim and how Allah works in very strange ways indeed. What a twist on history that Allah selected Dubya to do his bidding by ridding Iraq of that secularist Saddam Hussein. This allowed the Shiites to finally take over and turn it into a Muslim nation that sent forth missionaries to all four corners of the globe. What a miracle that Dubya, the unexpected and unknowing dolt, was to become a Muslim saint while he thought he was doing something else. What a tremendous cosmic joke that almost rivals the twists and turns that were visited upon Muhammad as he did Allah's work centuries before. Dubya has taught us that even those who are incapable of thinking through their actions, and even those who hate Muslims, can be used by Allah. What incredible stupidity and arrogance Dubya had to have had to think that Iraqis wanted Iraq to be like America, but with more sand.

I was sure that Allah was laughing at the twist he had wrought. I often look at events in the world almost as though they're multi-faceted chess games where one must think many moves ahead in order to win. So, when I think about what Allah did, I too laughed. In my mind, I imagined that Allah had planned all the events back then in order to clear the way for the victory of Islam. I sometimes tried to think of Allah planning everything thousands of years before with various matings and so-called accidents of history, but that was such a long period of time that it was too complicated to really grasp. So, I often amused myself by imagining Allah's moves closer to the main events that we all know about from our history books. First, Allah needed to remove Saddam Hussein who was keeping Shiites from practicing their religion and was, so to speak, keeping the genie bottled up.

Allah first set it up so that the Kuwaitis would slant drill Saddam's oil. This caused Saddam to invade Kuwait. This caused the first president Bush to attack Saddam. Unfortunately, George the First didn't do the complete job and didn't destroy Saddam. Then, Allah made sure that Bush would not win reelection and that the presidency would be in Bill Clinton's hands for eight years while president Bush's son, Dubya, matured. Allah then caused the Republicans to pick Dubya as their presidential candidate. Then when Dubya lost the popular vote, Allah devised it so that voting machines in Florida and the court system in America would overturn the election of Al Gore and make Dubya, president. This was necessary in order for an attack on Iraq. Then, just as Allah had planned, Dubya did attack Iraq and destroy Saddam. Anyway, I'm sure it's much more complicated than that, but I marvel at the infinite beauty and the complexity that my human mind can only pretend to comprehend.

Suddenly I woke up. It had all been a dream. I had fallen asleep in front of the TV while one of the Faux News Network's vapid, knee jerk, jingoistic, big mouth, low I.Q., styled hair, neoconzi, nincompoop, never-been- in-the-military, punk, wine-tasting shills was twisting logic to support his fellow dope, Dubya, and an unjust attack on another nation.

Meanwhile, now that the actual invasion is pretty much over, the Bushies want to start using the oil from Iraq to pay for the war and there are even reports that they want to open an old pipeline so the Israelis can get their cut by siphoning off some of this oil. That'll be popular in the Arab world. Of course, it appears that the Bushies, ever the louts that they are, have now been caught in a Catch 22 of their own making.

Here's what happened. The Bushies once demanded that the U.N. put sanctions on Iraq until Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq said it complied. The Bushies said there were still weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and, using that as their major pretext, invaded to get rid of those WMDs.

Now that the Bushies are in Iraq, they can't find any WMDs but say they're still there, someplace. They have to say this, in order to blunt criticism of their attack on a nation that was pretty much minding its own business and which didn't pose a threat to the U.S. Meanwhile, the Bushies are now asking that the sanctions be lifted, so they can get at the oil. Dubya is, of course, an oil man. The U.N., however, is saying that the sanctions should not be lifted until all the WMDs are found and destroyed. In other words, the U.N is saying to the Bushies that the U.N. is simply upholding what the Bushies wanted, and now the Bushies must either admit they were "wrong" (a nice term for "lying," in this context) and say there are no WMDs in Iraq, or they must find and destroy what they claim is there. Ooops. Catch 22.

Remember the propaganda from the Bushies that their invading soldiers would be greeted by the Iraqi people as liberators? Remember the photo ops of friendly "Iraqis"? Well, some soldiers were welcomed by some "Iraqis"--the Kurds, for example--who, in fact, aren't Arabs and who don't consider themselves Iraqis even though many of them lived within the borders of Iraq. The Kurds have been fighting to carve out their own land from Iraq for many years, so of course they welcomed the Bushies who defeated their enemy the Iraqis. The Kurds had previously been kept in check by Saddam the way the North kept the South from seceding in the U.S. Some soldiers were also welcomed by Shiites who weren't allowed to practice their religion under Saddam. Saddam kept the Shiites under his thumb because he knew that the Shiites would want a non-secular theocratic government. To stop that, he had to use heavy handed measures to keep them in check the way the U.S. government once kept the Mormons in check.

Unlike the Shiites, however, who wouldn't bend to the rule of the state imposed on them by Saddam and who probably won't bend to the rule of the state that the U.S. wants to impose on them, the Mormons always had convenient and timely revelations to make their beliefs conform to what the oppressive central government wanted. "God says we should have plural marriage," said the Mormons when they founded their church. Then later, when the government put pressure on them, they said: "Oh, the government doesn't want that? Say, we just had a revelation from God that says we shouldn't do that anymore. What a coincidence." "God says that blacks can't hold the priesthood," said the Mormons when they founded their church. Then later, when the government put pressure on them, they said:. "Oh, the government doesn't want that? Say, we just had a revelation from God that says we should change that and now blacks can hold the priesthood. What a coincidence."

The reality of Iraq is that Saddam's alleged brutality was not much different than the brutality of any leader in the U.S., or in any other nation, who tries to stop people from following their ideas of freedom, justice, religion, and identity if these ideas are outside the norm of what the leaders dictate is appropriate. Saddam had to keep the Shiites and the Kurds under his thumb in order to not have Iraq broken up into different nations and in order to have a Western style secular government. The U.S. got rid of Saddam, and said that we wanted to free the Iraqis. We accomplished that, and now the majority Shiites in Iraq are using that freedom to demand a non-secular Islamic government, similar to the one in Iran. OOPS. Catch 22, again.

Does "Be careful what you ask for," come to mind? Does "We let the genie out of the bottle, and now we can't get him back in," have a certain ring to it?

#  #  #

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• References: (Note: links may expire and content not necessary endorsed by H. Millard
  or New Nation News but presented for further study for those interested in the topic by the NNN editor.)
• Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies
  Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war
  by Raymond Whitaker
  The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
• The War Nobody Won Part 1: Chaos, crime and incredulity - by Henry C K Liu
• The War Nobody Won: Part 2: The new Agincourt: - by By Henry C K Liu
  
  
• Reports of weapons 'greatly exaggerated'  - (Alex Jones)
• Ex-CIA Analysts on the Pretext for War WMD: Where? Find? Plant? - (J. Orlin Grabbe)
• Blix: 'US undermined inspectors' - (Jeff Rense)
• What happened to Iraq’s "weapons of mass destruction"? - (Jeff Rense)
  
  
• President Bush with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Crawford, Texas in April, 2002 (AP)
• More pictures of Crawford, Texas