The death of the 100-year-old right-wing, egotistical, blood-stained, unprincipled fraud masquerading as foreign policy genius, Henry Kissinger, has prompted all sorts of commentators to emerge from the woodwork to pen all sorts of assessments of his life and achievements.
Most have long ago drunk the Kool-Aid and have been mourning the loss of a great statesman, great negotiator, great …. yadda, yadda, yadda.
Most of them overlook the fact that white men representing imperial powers who meddle in foreign lands to replace regimes or redraw maps have usually bequeathed questionable legacies. Cast your eyes to the Middle East if in doubt.
Our Media Glass House researchers were taken with one of many hagiographic post-mortem rimmings, this one dished out by The Australian’s resident foreign affairs columnist Greg Sheridan. (below)
In it Sheridan drops into the conversation the fact that he’d met UWCHK* on a few occasions.
Our MGH researchers especially noted that Sheridan related one such occasion, just prior to the invasion of Iraq when he “had lunch in a small group” with the great man, although just how small was not defined.
Readers of The Bug will recall that the 2003 Iraq invasion in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan which in turn occurred in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the USA was the brainchild of then US President George W Bush who enlisted several other world leaders to back his folly.
The image below pretty much sums up events at the time.
The Iraq invasion was based on false intelligence claiming its dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
By the way, our MGH teams remind us that one person missing from the picture above is Greg Sheridan’s boss, the nearly 100-year-old right-wing, egotistical, unprincipled Rupert Murdoch, who swung his global media empire behind Bush’s folly and was incessantly and loudly braying for an invasion of Iraq.
It must be so easy telling others to send their sons and daughters off to war when yours can be safely squirrelled away in highly paid jobs in the family business out of harm’s way, regardless of their actual talents.
In his glowing tribute to UWCHK Sheridan makes a lot of something the old fraud muttered at the “small” lunch.
He wrote that UWCHK backed the Iraq invasion (of course, that’s taken as read) but also said: “The United States should avoid becoming an occupying power in Iraq. I don’t think it’s realistic for the United States to occupy one of the central Arab nations for any length of time.”
Our MGH teams marvel at how this obviousism was presented by Sheridan as some stroke of insightful genius on UWCHK’s part.
As they recall, the general mood around the globe at the time was pretty much as represented in our main graphic above.
The only other view that seemed to have stronger support was that the US simply shouldn’t invade Iraq at all as old Saddam Hussein, although a grubby textbook murderous dictator, had fuckall to do with the 9/11 attacks.
For UWCHK to hold the view he expressed simply underlines the staring-everyone-in-the-fucking-face error Bush and Co made in launching the invasion – backed to the hilt by Sheridan’s boss Rupert.
Still, George W “Mission Accomplished” Bush forged ahead and reaped what he had sown – becoming in the eyes of most of the world the worst ever US President, until a certain orange apparition bumped him to second-worst a few years later.
Our MGH teams wish Sheridan would have expanded on his intimate lunchtime encounter with UWCHK and possibly just a few dozen, maybe a few hundred others from the foreign policy elite.
They wished he had explained whether he had asked UWCHK if his view in 2003 had been shaped by his disastrous policies in Vietnam, or if he favoured a more surgical “regime change” (something George W professed to oppose until he invaded Iraq) such as occurred in Chile in 1973 when a democratically elected leader was overthrown and killed after US intervention on UWCHK’s watch.
So many questions left unasked and unanswered.
Our MGH teams suggest a Ouija board might be in order if Sheridan wants to embellish his coit cleaning contribution.
Although they do admit that perhaps UWCHK may not have access to one in the eternal firepit of Hell.
* Unconvicted War Criminal Henry Kissinger
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