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The Words of the Prophets

by Maureen Farrell

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. . . ." -- Thomas Jefferson, on eventual divine retribution for slavery

"Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond -- men's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'" -- Abraham Lincoln, on the Civil War as divine retribution for slavery

Though zealots might use the above quotes to prove that America is a Christian nation (and argue that God's wrath's will be visited upon us shall we not erect 10 Commandment monuments in state judiciary buildings), they refer, first and foremost, to the karmic repercussions of man's inhumanity to man. While Jefferson worried that retribution for slavery would eventually be exacted, Lincoln surmised that the Civil War was God's instrument for that reckoning. In other words, though obviously devout, they weren't advocating a Jerry Falwellian vision of America as Christian nation, but rather a quasi-John Lennonian notion of not-so-instant karma.

The more secular among us might refer to this as "cause and effect" or "what goes around comes around" or even employ the CIA term, "blowback." But whatever you call it, Jefferson and Lincoln's musings on the subject prove that some lessons are eternal. Because these days, it seems, whenever you take an oil rich country, stage a coup to overthrow its government, install a brutal dictator, arm both it and its opponent in a protracted war, condone or condemn atrocities (depending upon convenience), ruin the country's infrastructure, impose sanctions that kill up to a million, litter the land with depleted uranium and turn a thriving nation into a third world county, it may rile the Powers that Be -- especially if, after shocking and awing the country once more for old time's sake, you kill 37,000 of its civilians, co-opt its natural resources and reap obscene profits for Halliburton, while patting yourself on the back for ousting the brutal dictator you installed in the first place.

Of course, the wrath we're now experiencing -- and will experience as long as we stay in Iraq -- was widely foreseen by a cast of politicians, activists, generals and journalists. Deeming the Iraq war policy "a crock," Newsweek's senior editor Michael Hirsh said it was a "hugely risky operation," while career State Department diplomat John Brady Kiesling admitted much the same. "We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known," he wrote in his resignation letter to Colin Powell. "Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security."

General Wesley Clark also urged caution, while admitting, back in Aug. 2002, that hawks in high places privately acknowledged that Iraq wasn't a threat to the United States. [LINK] Scott Ritter repeatedly tried to address weapons of mass deception and in a blunt op-ed entitled "Don't Attack Saddam," former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft flat-out said that a unilateral war would be a major mistake.

Journalist Jay Bookman outlined the war's actual agenda -- and told us once we arrived in Iraq, we'd not be leaving. Gen. Eric Shinseki correctly predicted that we'd need "several hundred thousand troops" to occupy Iraq. And in February, an Army War College strategic study on "Reconstructing Iraq" predicted that "Without an overwhelming effort to prepare for occupation, the US may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America's own making." [LINK]

In Feb. 2002, the Sydney Morning Herald predicted that the U.S. would ride roughshod over the U.N. and wage war regardless what Saddam and/or the international community said or did [LINK] and eight months later, reiterated its stance -- saying that the U.S. planned a military attack on Iraq five months before Sept. 11 in order to "secure control of its oil." [LINK] Sure enough, by the time some of Cheney's Energy Task Force's information was released in the summer of 2003 (those sections that weren't "stifled" by the Vice President, that is) two things were clear: 1) That task force documents contained maps of Iraq's oil wells and a list of "foreign suitors for Iraqi oilfield contracts" and 2) That the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy had recommended that Cheney's task force consider "a 'military' option in dealing with Iraq," months before the Sept. 11 attacks. [LINK]

Though vilified as traitors or anti-American gadflies, many also tapped into a B.S.- detecting sixth sense. "I feel like the American people are being lied to and manipulated. [President Bush] is trying to force 9/11 and Saddam together," Janeane Garafolo explained. "Bush's arguments strain the limits of plausibility to justify war on Iraq, the Guardian's Simon Tisdall opined. And who can forget Sen. Robert Byrd prophetic vision? [LINK]

So, yes, while it's doubtful we'll ever again see the likes of Jefferson or Lincoln, we had more than our share of post-9/11 prophets. With worldwide protests numbering in the millions and calls to Senate and House members running 2-1 against giving George Bush a "blank check" on Iraq, a chorus of modern-day Cassandras sang out against impending disaster. Amidst all this, however, some voices stood out. Here are but a few:

The Christian Science Monitor

Prediction: This administration, like the last Bush administration, will distort intelligence and lie its way to war.
Source: "In war, some facts less factual," Sept. 2002.
Highlights:

* "This administration is capable of any lie ... in order to advance its war goal in Iraq. It is one of the reasons it doesn't want to have UN weapons inspectors go back in, because they might actually show that the probability of Iraq having [threatening illicit weapons] is much lower than they want us to believe." -- A seasoned but unidentified U.S. government official

* "Considering the number of senior officials shared by both Bush administrations, the American public should bear in mind the lessons of Gulf War propaganda. 'These are all the same people who were running it more than 10 years ago. They'll make up just about anything ... to get their way.'" -- Harper's publisher John MacArthur

* "My concern in these situations, always, is that the intelligence that you get is driven by the policy, rather than the policy being driven by the intelligence. [The Bush team] will look for any kind of evidence to support their premise. I think we have to be skeptical about it." -- Former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton [LINK]

Robert Fisk

Prediction: President Bush will go to war (and snub the UN) no matter what.
Source: "President Bush wants war, not justice - and he'll soon find another excuse for it." - Sept., 2002
Highlights:

* "Here was the American president last week, playing the role of multilateralist, warning the world that Iraq had one last chance - through the UN - to avoid Armageddon. "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace," he told us all in the General Assembly, "it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material." And that, of course, is the point. Saddam would do everything he could to avoid war. President Bush was doing everything he could to avoid peace." [LINK]

Denis Halliday

Prediction: "An American invasion would be an international crime -- and would make the U.S. even less safe." - March, 2002
Source: The Salon Interview: Denis Halliday
Highlights:

* [What's missing is] respect for international law and an awareness that this is not an empire -- that "might" is no longer "right" in the year 2002. . . There is no legitimate way for the U.S. to wage war again on the people of Iraq."

* "American foreign policy is not understood by the vast majority of American people. And that this is due to a media that in this country is suppressed by Washington and by the owners of this media, who often tend to be corporate entities close to the [White House] and very often are arms manufacturers with a vested interest in chaos [in] the Middle East. And as a result Americans do not actually get both sides of the story."

* "I believe that Americans are basically decent people. If they understood that Iraq is not made up of 22 million Saddam Husseins but made up of 22 million people -- of families, of children, of elderly parents, families with dreams and hopes and expectations for their children and themselves -- they would be horrified to realize that the current killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by the U.S. Air Force, or what happened in the Gulf War, is being done in their name."

* "The whole weapons inspection issue is really just a ruse. The real agenda of the Bush administration is a regime change -- which is just a polite word for assassination. It has nothing to do with the U.N. or weapons inspectors or even human rights."

* "[The link between Al Qaida and Iraq is] a fiction. It's a very large fiction, which has failed, certainly outside of the U.S., because clearly there is no linkage to Mr. bin Laden or his fundamentalist thinking nor to the al-Qaida network. It just isn't there."
[LINK]

Hunter S. Thompson

Prediction: The U.S. will engage in forever war, feed its citizens a steady diet of disinformation and thrust us into darkness.
Source: Fear & Loathing in America, Sept.12, 2001 (written in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks)
Highlights:

* "The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives."

* "It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. . . . We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows"?

* "This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now." [LINK]

Reactions to Thompson's observations were less than warm and his credibility was questioned. But given that we now know TV was brimming with propaganda and disinformation and that the mainstream media consistently got it wrong, it's important to remember that while Thompson told us to brace for forever war, Newsweek predicted we were facing "the largest criminal investigation in the history of the nation." And in the immediate aftermath of September 11, when George Bush's approval rating hit 91% and the press corps was cowed into submission, Thompson warned that we were entering a new era of disinformation and distortion. [LINK]

Though subsequent articles proved each prophet's prescience [LINK] [LINK] [LINK], Thompson's follow-ups have been hardest hitting of all. In a radio interview in Sept. 2002, he warned that "the gang of thieving, lobbyists for the military industrial complex" in the White House was hell-bent on attacking Iraq and added, "if to be against them is to be patriotic, then hell, call me a traitor." He also addressed "Wag the Dog" tactics and Sept. 11 mysteries. "I have spent enough time on the inside of, well in the White House and you know, campaigns, and I've known enough people who do these things, think this way, to know that the public version of the news or whatever event, is never really what happened. And these people, I think, are willing to take that even further. So I don't assume that I know the truth about what went on that day [Sept. 11]." He added, however, that the White House certainly had a lot to gain. [LINK]

"Oh look, that's just another conspiracy theory from a drug-addled Gonzo journalist like Hunter S. Thompson," the interviewer said, of probable reactions to Thompson's musings. And that's probably so. But given his track record thus far, the Good Doctor's most recent predictions bear repeating:

Source: Big Darkness, July 22, 2003

* "The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. . . Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world. The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be No. 1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives. The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it."

Source: The Nation's Capital, July 29, 2003

* In truth, I could be a lot happier about the collapse of Bush and his people and his whole house of cards and everything he stands for, if it didn't also mean the certain collapse of the U.S. economy, and the vital infrastructure, and, indeed, the whole "American way of life". . . The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me, or it may already be too late. The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport -- we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be -- the end of the world as we knew it."

Source: Nightmare in La-La-Land, August 17, 2003

* "I had a truly horrible dream last night. . . [Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Tyson and I] were on our way to a TV studio for a debate about his long-time working friendship with the powerful Bush family from Texas and how it might affect the next Bush presidency when The Terminator seizes power in Sacramento and tries to hand over the state's 54 electoral votes by election day in 2004. That is the basic plan behind Schwarzenegger running. He doesn't want to be Governor, he just wants the electoral votes to go to Bush this time."
[LINK]

Though nobody knows what the future holds, questions remain. Will Iraq determine its own government? Will it control its own oil? Will democracy and peace flourish throughout the Middle East? So far, smart money isn't riding on the neoconservative's rosy forecast.

Which brings us back to power of prophecy. Else you think it's all "Elvis Meets Bigfoot" type hype, well, there is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio. After all, Thomas Jefferson was right to "tremble for his country" and did so until he died on July 4, 1826, on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, just hours before fellow founding father John Adams passed on. And who can forget Lincoln's premonition of his own death, just days before his assassination? [LINK]

We've had countless modern prophets warning us about Bush and Iraq, who were all pooh-poohed until now. Perhaps it's time to stop marginalizing and vilifying our Cassandras and start paying attention? Because if we don't, it will take but a wee while before prophecy becomes fact -- and you can bet your bottom dollar that "Big Darkness, soon come."