One of the favorite tactics used by corporations to distract the public from the damage being done by said corporations is to launch a PR campaign that focuses in the exact opposite direction. Thus, for example, as ExxonMobile was vigorously trashing the jungle habitat of Indonesia and other former natural paradises, the company mounted a huge “Save the Tiger” campaign, pumping hundreds of thousands into the conservation of tigers – whilst driving who knows how many other species to the brink of extinction (or over). Probably the most outrageous example of this strategy was perpetrated by GE, which, during a period when it was the world’s foremost producer of nuclear weapons and other tools of death and destruction, launched its “GE, We Bring Good Things to Life” campaign.

Now Bush, Mr. Evil Corporation himself, is using this exact same strategy on a grand scale. In a flagrant parallel to “Save the Tiger,” Bush has launched the “Renewal in Iraq” PR campaign. You can now find a whole gallery of stock news photos of Bush standing beneath the “RENEWAL IN IRAQ” banner with his cloying sanctimonious smirk. The whole idea behind the campaign, just as with ExxonMobile and GE, is to hide what he is REALLY doing back home. Keep the media trumpeting the White House Press copy from Iraq – while making sure that domestic issue stories stay swept onto page 25 or so (if they make the papers at all) or as a 30-second segment tacked onto the end of the evening news shows on a slow day.

The most glaring examples:

Church and State

While Bush’s rightwing fundamentalist religious zealots here in the US (including the dozens who have successfully infected Congress) continue to tear at the wall between church and state, Bush vociferously denounces the idea of Iraq having a government dominated by fundamentalist religious zealots. At this very moment, while preaching Iraqi secularism, Bush is, here at home, making moves to revive and more aggressively shove forward his “church charity instead of real social programs” agenda.

Environmental Issues

Where environmental issues are concerned, it is hard to know where to begin with this administration. It is like the monster Hydra: every time one head is lopped off, another, even uglier than the first, grows instantly back to take its place. But the most glaring environmental travesty Bush is trying to camouflage with Iraq is the trashing of US wetlands. So, as he makes a big show of restoring the drained marshes of Iraq, back at home, he is knocking down the remaining barriers that stand between the last of America’s irreplaceable and fragile wetlands and destruction by developers. The headline in the Washington Post on April 28 proclaimed: “BACK TO EDEN: RESTORING THE MARSHES OF IRAQ.” The article gushes about how the Madan native people used marsh reeds to construct their dwellings, living on fish and water buffalo that lived in the marshes and how horrible it was that Saddam wrecked all this through draining the marshes. It goes on to boast how the success of the restoration will require competing interests such as farmers, oil execs and dam operators to work together, facilitated, of course, by the good folks at the Bush administration.”(the truth is that a pitiful $200,000 is all that has been earmarked for the project - barely a PR gesture).

Meanwhile, back in the states and unreported by the Post and the other little Mockingbirds that now pass as America’s newspapers, is the latest in the Klamath Lake story as well as the highly underreported unfolding tragedy of the methodical destruction of America’s “isolated wetlands” by Bush’s pals in the development industry. In Oregon, Klamath Lake and its surrounding wetlands are – despite all environmental wisdom and regulations to the contrary - about to be drained to a destructively low water level, thereby hanging the native people there who depend on the region’s fish out to dry (literally and figuratively). Guess if they had been Iraqi Madan people things might have turned out differently, eh? In any case, there were no competing interests considered here! The farmers were more likely to have voted for Bush than the fishermen and Native Americans so the farmers get the water.

How could they do this in defiance of mountains of evidence contraindicating such a move? Simple. Bush’s henchwoman Gale “The Only Think Green About Me Are My Dollars” Norton has succeeded in having decades of firsthand observations by local wildlife biologists and Native Americans overturned by commissioning an “additional study” (the favorite Bush scheme – keep shopping for “scientific results” until you find the ones you want). by a team of handpicked armchair academics headed by a guy named William M Lewis based hundreds of miles away in Colorado. Lewis’s biggest claim to fame is a book called Wetlands: Science, Policy and Politics in America which focuses much more attentively and extensively on the politics, rather than environmental aspects, of wetlands (it’s little wonder the book is listed as a “Power tool for land professionals [i.e., developers]” on the realtor.org page. But the hastily slapped-together, vague as hell report by Lewis is, of course being touted by the Freepers as “real science,” while the painstaking work of all those researchers studying the Lake up close for the past three decades or so is just “junk science.” (Definition: for Bush and his Freepers, “junk science” is anything hinders corporations or, in this case, corporate farmers, from doing precisely whatever they feel like doing.).

Even more devastating than what’s happening to Klamath Lake is what is being done to more than half of all America’s remaining wetlands. For years now, developers and corporate farmers (who aren’t real farmers, but are instead a species of developer) have been colluding to try to get the regulations protecting wetlands removed. Because salt marshes, and river or lake fed swamps are so high profile, they are always on the public’s protective radar. However, these creeps found a loophole to exploit: “isolated wetlands.” This is a completely made up term – the REAL junk science, which is perpetrated by the corporatazis and their rightwing freemarket pals like the folks at the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and other hubs of fake science. An “isolated wetland” is any wetland not directly connected to a river, lake or ocean. Trouble is, this definition encompasses more than half of all wetlands left in the United States. Once Bush stole the election, the farmer/developer locusts saw their opportunity and pushed through their bogus case straight to the Supreme Court, where, stacked with five SOBs (servants of Bush) they received the ruling they wanted (without, of course, a single one of the justices knowing the difference between a wetland or a wet brain, aside from being able to identify more closely with the latter).

Under the SOB ruling, every bog, every small meadow pond, every small swamp, became a developer's commodity. In anticipation of this opportunity, many of the thousands of acres isolated wetlands had already been bought up with "malice aforethought" by many "farmers" using federally-underwritten dollars. Some of them even made money off the acreage in the meantime by entering into tax-exempting conservation deals - all the while waiting for the right "climate" in Washington to blow in that would allow them to make a final killing by selling off these formerly "unuseful" wetlands at inflated prices to developers. The developers could then merrily fill in and pave over these former cornucopias of biodversity, then sell the "improved" real estate back to the public for a killing (in every sense of the word).

The ink had barely dried on the SOB decision before the greedy bastards sprang into action. In just 14 months or so since the SOB ruling, thousands of America's last wetlands have been wiped from the map forever, replaced with strip malls and condos and big box stores.

To see the story and enjoy a good piece of meaningful journalism please see

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-12-05-wetlands_x.htm

So, TODAY, as Bush and his PR team point self-righteously to the US efforts to preserve the Iraqi marshes, thousands of acres of remaining US wetlands – often the last remaining oases of biodiversity in a mutilated landscape – are being bulldozed and filled to make way for big box stores, strip malls, parking lots and condos.

Iraq’s Freedom, America’s Subjugation

While Bush and his occupation government in Iraq tout the glorious freedom that allows the Iraqis to protest in the streets (protesting the occupation government, of course) and be free from the relentless scrutiny of Saddam and his secret police, Bush and his occupation government back here in the states are trying to ram through Patriot Act II, which would make protesting in the streets all but an act of terrorism, while insuring Americans are never again free from the relentless scrutiny of Tom Ridge and his secret police. The Iraq occupation government also makes a big show of wanting to include as many different segments of the Iraqi people as possible in shaping the government. Yet back in the US occupation government, increasingly aggressive steps are being taken to remove or block the appointment and hiring of government officials in all areas who are not rightwing conservatives.

The list of offenses goes on and on. In fact, everything you see Bush bragging about as an accomplishment in Iraq, you can rest assured its evil twin is wreaking havoc back here in the good ole USA. Alas, the press and thus the public continue to stare only at the “magician’s” right hand as it pulls a rabbit out of a turban, oblivious to the left hand picking their pocket.