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CounterPunch
October
25, 2002
Lantos' Big Lie:
The Pro-War Congressman Calls for Replacing
Saddam with a Pro-West "Dictator"
by BEN TERRALL
California Congressman Tom Lantos has never been
accused of understatement. But he may have set a new personal
record for bombast when, as quoted in the September 30, 2002
edition of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, he told Minister of
Knesset Colette Avital, "My dear Colette, you won't have
any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough.
And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will
be good for us and for you."
After U.S. activists publicized the story,
Lantos called it a "total fabrication". He added, "I
am amused by the comments Ha'aretz attributes to me, because
they fly in the face of my lifetime of work. I am a firm supporter
of democracy."
Since I have been working with Lantos'
anti-war/pro-civil liberties challenger Maad Abu-Ghazalah, I
e-mailed MK Colette Avital for clarification. I received the
following response:
" I can confirm that the story is
accurate. In fact, I myself was surprised and pained by Congressman
Lantos' comments. Since he is a friend of Israel and I have had
a long friendship with him, I did not want to react to his denial,
or to further embarrass him. Sincerely, Colette Avital, M.K."
For readers of John MacArthur's excellent
"Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War,"
this latest duplicity comes as no surprise. MacArthur details
how, as Chairman of the Human Rights Caucus in 1990, Lantos helped
organize hearings at which the infamous "baby incubator"
invention was peddled to the U.S. congress and public. Lantos
introduced a Kuwaiti woman who claimed to have witnessed Iraqi
soldiers killing babies by ripping them from incubators in a
Kuwait hospital. He neglected to mention that the young woman
was the Kuwaiti Ambassador'S daughter and her testimony had been
manufactured by public relations firm Hill and Knowlton, under
contract to the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Hill and Knowlton thoughtfully
provided rent-free office space and financial support to Congressman
Lantos' Human Rights Foundation.
As point man among the Democrats for
Bush II'S war plans, Lantos worked equally hard in recent hearings
to sell the younger Bush'S insane "pre-emptive" war,
seeming physically unable to stop making overheated references
to Nazi Germany and World War II on a daily basis. He outlined
his vision by saying, "I foresee the total crushing of extremist
Islamists and their allies," adding Bush's campaign should
go on as long as it takes "to destroy all terrorist groups"
and to create "regime changes in countries that harbor them."
This enthusiastic cheerleading for global
carnage has generated a backlash of support for Abu-Ghazalah,
a Palestinian-American running in protest of post-September 11
warmongering and crackdowns on civil liberties. As an American
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) activist, Abu-Ghazalah
also opposes Lantos' lock step support for IDF attacks on Palestinian
civilians (during the bloody siege of Jenin last April, Lantos
said that the U.S. should 3let Israel finish the job2). But Lantos
has ignored Abu-Ghazalah'S challenge to debate the merits of
war on Iraq; when a reporter asked him what he thought of Maad's
characterization of him as a "war hawk," Lantos huffed,
"I won't dignify that with a response."
Given the advantages in name recognition
and fund raising machinery accorded an 11-term congressman, Lantos
also won't dignify his constituents with many home district appearances.
His time not taken up with pro-war blustering in Congress has
largely been spent helping his daughter Katrina Swett's campaign
in New Hampshire's 2nd district. As reported in Roll Call, Lantos
registered his own re-election campaign as a political action
committee in New Hampshire, and since June has given more than
$34,000 to New Hampshire politicians, some of whom have then
sung Swett'S praises. Democratic colleagues in Congress who received
money from Lantos have also contributed thousands to the Swett
campaign.
Like his commitment to installing a new
dictator in Iraq, none of this shows much evidence that Lantos
is "a firm supporter of democracy." Indeed, he is one
of only two Northern California Representatives (with Ellen Tauscher)
to buck the overwhelmingly anti-war sentiment of the voting public.
Activists in the Bay Area's 12th District have held bi-weekly
demonstrations outside the armchair warrior'S San Mateo base,
noisy, spirited affairs that have included a sit-in where 9 people
were arrested and a visit from an official UN B.S. inspector,
whose detector found alarmingly high levels of B.S. emanating
from the direction of Lantos' office. The most recent protest
involved a contest for potential Saddam replacements in which
participants got their pictures taken on a mattress with a Lantos
lookalike (these and other visual manifestations of Citizens
for Regime Change in San Mateo / San Francisco can be viewed
at <www.insanereagan.com>).
As with the broader U.S. public, people
in the 12th district are beginning to catch on that regime change
starts at home. But the day when we don't have Tom Lantos to
kick around anymore cannot come soon enough.
Ben Terrall
can be reached at: bterrall@igc.org
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October 14,
2002
Harry Browne
Ireland:
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