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10/16/2002 Entry: "Woody Harrelson"



I'm an American tired of American lies

by Woody Harrelson


Woody Harrelson

The fact is that Saddam Hussein was our boy.

The CIA helped him to power, as they did the Shah of Iran and Noriega and Marcos and the Taliban and countless other brutal tyrants. The fact is that George Bush Sr continued to supply nerve gas and technology to Saddam even after he used it on Iran and then the Kurds in Iraq.

While the Amnesty International report listing countless Saddam atrocities, including gassing and torturing Kurds, was sitting on his desk, Bush Sr pushed through a $2bn "agricultural" loan and Thatcher gave hundreds of millions in export credit to Saddam. The elder Bush then had the audacity to quote the Amnesty reports to garner support for his oil war.


A decade later, Shrub follows the same line: "We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people." I'm sure half a million Iraqi parents are scratching their heads over that. I'm an American tired of lies. And with our government, it's mostly lies.


The man who drives me to and from work is named Woody too. A relief to me, as it minimises the chance of my forgetting his name. I call him Woodman and he calls me Wood. He has become my best friend here, even though he's upset that I have quit drinking beer. He's smart, funny, and there's nothing he hasn't seen in 33 years behind the wheel of his black cab. He drove me for a while before I felt confident he liked me; he doesn't like people easily, especially if they have a rap for busting up black cabs.
Woodman and I agree about a lot of things, but one thing we can never agree about is Iraq. He thinks the only language Saddam understands is brute force. I don't believe we should be bombing cities in our quest for one man. We've killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war - mostly by blocking humanitarian aid. Let's stop now. Thankfully, most of the Brits I talk to about the war are closer to me than to Woodman. Only your prime minister doesn't seem to have noticed.

I have been here three months doing a play in the West End. I am having the time of my life. I love England, the people, the parks, the theatre. The play is great and the audiences have been a dream. Probably I should just relax, be happy and talk about the weather, but this war is under my skin - it affects my sleep.

I remember playing basketball with an Iraqi in the late 80s while Iran and Iraq were at war. I didn't know at the time that the US and Britain were supplying weapons to both sides. I asked why they were always at war with each other and he said something that stayed with me: "If it were up to the people, there would be peace. It's the governments that create war." And now my government is creating its second war in less than a year. No; war requires two combatants, so I should say "its second bombing campaign".

I went to the White House when Harvey Weinstein was showing Clinton the movie Welcome to Sarejevo, which I was in. I got a few moments alone with Clinton. Saddam throwing out the weapons inspectors was all over the news and I asked what he was going to do. His answer was very revealing. He said: "Everybody is telling me to bomb him. All the military are saying, 'You gotta bomb him.' But if even one innocent person died, I couldn't bear it." And I looked in his eyes and I believed him. Little did I know he was blocking humanitarian aid at the time, allowing the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

I am a father, and no amount of propaganda can convince me that half a million dead children is acceptable "collateral damage". The fact is that Saddam Hussein was our boy. The CIA helped him to power, as they did the Shah of Iran and Noriega and Marcos and the Taliban and countless other brutal tyrants. The fact is that George Bush Sr continued to supply nerve gas and technology to Saddam even after he used it on Iran and then the Kurds in Iraq. While the Amnesty International report listing countless Saddam atrocities, including gassing and torturing Kurds, was sitting on his desk, Bush Sr pushed through a $2bn "agricultural" loan and Thatcher gave hundreds of millions in export credit to Saddam. The elder Bush then had the audacity to quote the Amnesty reports to garner support for his oil war.

A decade later, Shrub follows the same line: "We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people." I'm sure half a million Iraqi parents are scratching their heads over that. I'm an American tired of lies. And with our government, it's mostly lies.

The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing that Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus was after one thing only - gold. As the natives were showering him with gifts and kindness, he wrote in his diary, "They do not bear arms ... They have no iron ... With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." Columbus is the perfect symbol of US foreign policy to this day.

This is a racist and imperialist war. The warmongers who stole the White House (you call them "hawks", but I would never disparage such a fine bird) have hijacked a nation's grief and turned it into a perpetual war on any non-white country they choose to describe as terrorist.

To the men in Washington, the world is just a giant Monopoly board. Oddly enough, Americans generally know how the government works. The politicians do everything they can for the people - the people who put them in power. The giant industries that are polluting our planet as well as violating human rights worldwide are the ones nearest and dearest to the hearts of American politicians.

But in wartime people lose their senses. There are flags and yellow ribbons and posters and every media outlet is beating the war drum and even sensible people can hear nothing else. In the US, God forbid you should suggest the war is unjust or that dropping cluster bombs from 30,000ft on a city is a cowardly act. When TV satirist Bill Maher made some dissenting remarks about the bombing of Afghanistan, Disney pulled the plug on him. In a country that lauds its freedom of speech, a word of dissent can cost you your job.

I read in a paper here about a woman who held out the part of her taxes that would go to the war effort. Something like 17%. I like that idea, though in the US it would have to be more like 50%. If you consider money as a form of energy, then we see half our taxes and half the US government's energy focused on war and weapons of mass destruction. Over the past 30 years, this amounts to more than ten trillion dollars. Imagine that money going to preserving rainforest or contributing to a sustainable economy (as opposed to the dinosaur tit we are currently in the process of sucking dry).

I give in to Woodman, and we stop for a few beers. He asks me what I'd do in Bush's shoes. Easy: I'd honour Kyoto. Join the world court. I'd stop subsidising earth rapers like Monsanto, Dupont and Exxon. I'd shut down the nuclear power plants. So I already have $200bn saved from corporate welfare. I'd save another $100bn by stopping the war on non-corporate drugs. And I'd cut the defence budget in half so they'd have to get by on a measly $200bn a year. I've already saved half a billion bucks by saying no to polluters and warmongers.

Then I'd give $300bn back to the taxpayers. I'd take the rest and pay the people teaching our children what they deserve. I'd put $100bn into alternative fuels and renewable energy. I'd revive the Chemurgy movement, which made the farmer the root of the economy, and make paper and fuel from wheat straw, rice straw and hemp. Not only would I attend, I'd sponsor the next Earth Summit. And, of course, I'd give myself a fat raise.

Woodman drops me at home and I ask if he likes my ideas. He offers a reluctant "yes". As he pulls away he yells out, "But I'd never vote for a man who can't handle a few pints at the end of the day!"

Viewer Commentary: 12 comments


I love Woody, because he loves this good and rare planet and the critters that are warmed, fed and sheltered from UV from the Sun.
Woody says the same things I have been saying to my Senators and Congressman and anybody who will listen. Yet, his so very human, unpretentious way of phrasing these awful facts makes the spiel of rattling off facts about the evil empire known as "US" into a compelling story. I just want to add that some of the "agricultural loans" from the US were used to purchase tractors. Tractors that fly!

Posted by robbie @ 10/17/2002 01:44 PM EST


Excellent comments, Woody!

I'm not a Trekie, but it's like that one episode in the original TV series of Star Trek where a malevolent life form (in the form of a negative ball of energy) invades the Starship, allow Klingon enemies to infiltrate onboard through the transporter, and manipulate them all into an endless battle, so that the negative energy ball life form can feed off the hatred that it creates.

Likewise, we, the ordinary people of the world are all being *SET UP* and *MANIPULATED* into hating each other in endless wars, here and there, killing millions of other ordinary people, by malevolent governments/leaders (like the U.S. govt, the Israeli govt and its program of Jewish-white-supremacy--called Zionism--in Palestine, by Tony Blair in the British govt, etc) against other people we usually know little or nothing about--except for govt-&-media-manufactured demonized stereotypes.

These govts/politicians feed off of setting us up (often through the Frankensteins *they* created), and our resultant manipulated hatred of others, by our willingness to feed our leaders more and more political power, and by feeding them huge immoral sums of our collective money and national wealth into their and their friends' corporate pockets in the military-industrial-oil-media complex. As MLK said, "Oh what lives we could transform at home!" In short, we're being majorly chumped.

Posted by Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, CA @ 10/18/2002 11:22 AM EST


I like Woody’s comments for their home-spun Americanisms. He talks as any American father would if we had a free press and those dads knew what we were doing to innocent children around the world.

He is outraged. About our war budget (and he’s right that it is about 50% of the money extracted from American working people). About the phony war on drugs (how come we were getting warnings of a new influx of heroin to the US from Afghanistan AFTER we took over the country?). About criminal conspiracies to rape the citizens of California using Republican owned and operated mob-fronts called “energy traders”. These same people want to buy up all the publicly owned water utilities to hold our very lives hostage…

I’ll stop there. The list is too big (but, sadly, growing) to tell in this one letter. If they knew the truth, most American fathers would be outraged.

Posted by Derek @ 10/19/2002 06:33 AM EST


Our world is divided between those that "get it" (Woody for one) and those who don't (Dubya etc). How is it that those in power in this country and others are the ones that "don't get it"?

Posted by Marilyn Ladig @ 10/19/2002 09:22 AM EST


Woody definetly has a knack for putting the sane perspective into words. Is woody posturing politically... if so, this is the kind of mind i could support.

Posted by heath honesty @ 10/19/2002 04:14 PM EST


Thanks Woody.It would be nice if some more public figures (Like Lenno or Letterman ect..) would take the same stance knowing that
even though thier bread is buttered on one side they had the power to say which side that may be.Too bad a lot of the shows are taped instead of being live.Keep Pushing.Thanks

Posted by Will K. @ 10/19/2002 07:59 PM EST


I usually cringe when actors and celebs talk politics and use their positions to soapbox their opins, but I have to say I've pretty much agreed with everything I've heard Woody say. This article is no exception. I suppose those who believe Bush will now see through his lies with how he is dealing with N.Korea as opposed to how he plans to deal with Iraq. If only N.K. had oil fields we could secure ...

Posted by J-X @ 10/20/2002 12:13 PM EST


UNDENIABLE PROOF OF US GOVERNMENT SPONSORED TERRORISM
INSIDE USA

http://www.unabombers.com

Please take a moment to review this site. You can
easily verify its claims independently by simply looking up the sketches in Jeanne Boylans Book "Portraits of Guilt".
Dan Pride

Posted by Dan Pride @ 10/20/2002 01:51 PM EST


Too bad in this real world, if anyone tried to do what woody described, he would be dead in less than a week. John F Kennedy had alot less on the table.

Posted by mor4us @ 10/20/2002 05:46 PM EST


"I'm an American tired of American lies."

Try these for a little truth.

http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/wtc-demolition.htm The World Trade Center Demolition. 740 KB
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/WTC_ch1.htm Chapters One of the FEMA WTC collapse report (with comment). 850 KB
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/WTC_ch2.htm Chapters Two of the FEMA WTC collapse report (with comment). 1.9 MB
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/SeptemberEleventh/WhatHitThePentagon The Pentagon Crash Hoax. 1.4 MB
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/STF/stranger-than-fiction.htm Stranger Than Fiction. 600 KB
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc7big.rm Video of the demolition of WTC7.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/7collapse.avi Another video of the demolition of WTC7.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/SMALL_wtc-7_1_.gif Small animated-gif of the demolition of WTC7.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc-7_1_.gif Large version of the animated-gif. Large 3.3 MB file.
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/SeptemberEleventh/Schmid/WhoBlewUpWTC.html Who Blew Up the World Trade Center.
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/SeptemberEleventh/Schmid/CloudsOfConcrete_2.html The Pentagon Plane Crash.
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/SeptemberEleventh/Schmid/index.html Full listing of Eric Hufschmid's early web articles.
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian/SeptemberEleventh/arabs-not-to-blame.htm Arabs Not To Blame For 9-11.
http://nerdcities.com/guardian/SeptemberEleventh/ang-mission.htm The Treasonous Air National Guard's Mission And Vision Statements.
http://serendipity.magnet.ch/wtc.html The World Trade Center Demolition from serendipity.magnet.ch
http://serendipity.magnet.ch/wot/mslp_ii.htm McMichael's Analysis Of The World Trade Center Demolition.
http://serendipity.magnet.ch/wot/insurers.htm The World Trade Center Demolition As An Insurance Scam?
http://www.mujahideen.fsnet.co.uk/wtc/wtc-hijackers.htm Many Hijackers Still Alive.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1559000/1559151.stm Hijackers Still Alive From the BBC.
http://www.nerdcities.com/guardian Full list of articles from www.nerdcities.com/guardian

Posted by what is the truth @ 10/22/2002 05:23 AM EST


Atleast Woody is not afraid to attach his real person to his beliefs, instead of being an anonymous person so willing to through insults.

He doens;t use fake names and the such.

We should all realize that the comments made by the local WASP religous freak stereo types are nothing more then a hurt child lashing out, because there wrong, because in order to believe what is "REALL(IT)Y" going on, one would have to admit that the Christians are still at it, i.e. manifest destiny, the murdering of millions, and the destruction of cultures that date further back then their own, all in the name of capiltalist greed.

And your unethical persicution of natural medicine is what allows you to "morally", and Globally police the world.

You see the apocolpyse has already happened, but no one $paid$, any attention to it.

Apocolypse means "To reveal", in other words the big joke of the bible already happened and the rest of the world found out that religion is just a group to join to recieve better capitalistic benifits, and everyone knows, but instead of refussing to participate in this fucked up system we continue to pay our money and convince ourselfs that the majority are like the inbredd morons that think their bible has all the answeres when it was put together by a roman pagan in the first place, i.e. Constatine.

When in fact the majority of TRUE Americans, like some founding fathers, are looking out for our basic liberties, and have problems with this country.

Look at Mr. Moore and "stupid white men", have any of you patriotic fools been to another country?

THEY ALL THINK WE ARE IDIOTS!!!

Even the other "white" cultures hate us.

Everyone in the world veiws our culture as rascist and ethnocentric.

One of the major news worthy stories talked about around the world is America's news media complete in-ablility to cover what is really happeneing around the world, and how CENSORED our media is.

Thank CNN, after all there hiring ex-psychological warfare specialists to do the news.

Could that be why the news media here in the states looks more movie-ish then our own hollywood productions?

But that's cool mr. under cover quintelpro fed, we can put up with your propaganda, come back and pretend to be another christian american, be anything you want, but your guises are easily seen through by people like oursleves, after all that is why we are here spreading truth and you are here trying to stop it.

As far as woody, how many times has anyone been brave enough to believe in what is "TRULY" right and get arrested for your beliefs?

I bet none of you nay sayers have, but tonight when your lonley and at home by yourself reading internet matrix garbble, REMEBER when you go to smoke that bowl of herbal medicine you give thanks, because woody is someone who has everything, money, houses, all material possesions, as well as a way of life that affords him more freedom then the average joe, and WOODY is willing to through it all away to support the causes he beleives in, AND THAT MY FRIEND IS THE TRUE DEFINITION OF AN AMERCAN.

Andy~

Posted by Andy @ 10/23/2002 08:39 AM EST


all for the woody article, all for what andy wrote

Posted by jeremy @ 10/23/2002 09:47 AM EST

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