Poison Deviny

Classic Miranda, 2005: If the journalists of Braddock’s day had been reporting, the story of New Orleans might have been uplifting, giving hope to people made ever more anxious by the fear industries. Excessive cynicism is corrosive, although in this case only the gullible would be so ready to believe guilt-evading local officials and blame bogyman George Bush.

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“Some 7,000 soldiers from the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard are stationed in Iraq. They include more than 3,000 members of the 256th Brigade Combat Team, a unit based in and around New Orleans. Those soldiers, who represent 40% of Mississippi’s and 35% of Louisiana’s regular Guard strength, were forced to watch helplessly from their barracks in Iraq the past few days as the hurricane swept through their neighborhoods and threatened their families. Quite simply, the two states hardest hit by this storm were handicapped from the start by not having enough Guard units and military equipment like trucks, Humvees and helicopters on the ground to handle the crisis.”

“The Times-Picayune of New Orleans published numerous articles during the past two years warning that the city and federal officials weren’t prepared. The newspaper’s articles also revealed that Bush was making huge cuts to an Army Corps of Engineers project meant to shore up the levees and pumping stations that protect Delta residents from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi. That project, known as the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, has been in effect since 1995. But spending on it has been reduced substantially since 2000.”

“Earlier this year, Bush, this President who is spending more than $1 billion a week on this mess in Iraq, proposed less than $11 million in new funding for Louisiana’s flood control project. The Army Corps of Engineers wanted at least $62 million. Among the items the White House cut from that flood control budget was money to study how New Orleans could cope with a Category 5 hurricane.”

Classic Miranda, 2004: At least New Yorkers managed to stop their project being hijacked by ideology before it was built. It’s back to the drawing board now for a memorial at Ground Zero that does not politicise the dead.

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—	I think 9/11 was “hijacked” politically a while before the memorial plans started to formalize.

Classic Miranda, 2004: He was the guy who pulled out his weapons inspectors in 1998, citing Iraqi non-compliance, before US President Bill Clinton’s four-day Operation Desert Fox bombings. He was the guy who produced a damning dossier about Iraq’s WMDs for the UN Security Council in 1999. He was the guy who wrote the definitive book in 2000: The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons Of Mass Destruction And The Crisis Of Global Security. He was the guy who told an American convention of utility and transportation contractors in Atlantic City last year: “Iraq certainly did have weapons of mass destruction. Trust me. I held some in my own hands.”So now that the Iraq Survey Group has released a report concluding Iraq’s WMD program had been “essentially destroyed” or discontinued after the 1991 Gulf War, what does the Butler have to say?

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—	Over 150,000 are dead because of the Iraq War, so what does Miranda have to say about the fact that her words helped sell it? It’s the UN’s fault, again. If Howard and Bush had actually abided by the UN, we probably wouldn’t of had the Iraq War.

Classic Miranda, 2004: Saddam Hussein was furious last week in his first court appearance in Baghdad after being charged with war crimes and genocide. “This is all theatre,” he shouted. “The real criminal is Bush.” Maybe he’s been reading Michael Moore.

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—	Or the United Nations Charter.

Classic Miranda, 2003: America has not been blameless in its past dealings with Iraq, as Four Corners pointed out. But if it was wrong to tolerate Saddam’s brutal regime in the 1980s, why is it OK now?

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—	By tolerate do you mean sell weapons to?

Classic Miranda, 2003: And yet without introspection we lose much of what makes us human, because we need to know ourselves in order to develop a conscience, a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong. Without the humility that comes from knowledge of yourself and your own failings, everyone else’s behaviour will seem intolerable. You will be consumed with blind self-righteousness. Hence the rise of the busybody, the dobber and the petty tyrant in Sydney and hair-trigger rage from strangers about trifles. Lack of introspection leads people to take on hatreds and dimly understood positions without thinking through what they mean, only that perhaps: “War is bad”, “Bush is stupid” and “Howard is Hitler”. It leads to the ascendance of meaningless street politics in which hordes of what Lenin called “useful idiots” protest against McDonald’s or globalisation or war.

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Classic Miranda, 2003: There were conspiracy theories, for instance that the images of a giant Saddam statue toppling to a euphoric crowd were staged for the media.

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—	Had a shred of truth to it; Iraqis were “motivated” and assisted in toppling the statue.

Classic Miranda, 2003: “The “humanitarian catastrophe” with “hundreds of thousands of refugees” predicted by sainted Office of National Assessments whistleblower Andrew Wilkie never eventuated.

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—	“The situation in Iraq continues to worsen,” the UNHCR announced, “with more than two million Iraqis now believed to be displaced inside the country and another 2.2 million sheltering in neighbouring states.”