The Chris Moeller Archives

Operation Infinite Reach

Around the turn of the most recent century, a United States president took the initiative to drop bombs on innocents in far-away, underdeveloped, and otherwise-inconsequential countries. The readily available and relevant intelligence had been gathered and then alternately discarded or ginned up, as needed. A pretense to war was invented and promoted publicly. Inspections and solutions of diplomacy were omitted. The threat, we were told, demanded undelayed action as the target was a manifestation of pure evil on Earth-- Osama bin Laden. Now you might be surprised to find out that the president I’m referring to that tackled this opportunity to spill blood through a tale of dissimulation was not George W. Bush.

His name was William Jefferson Clinton, the year was 1998, and the civilian commander-in-chief of our military had just been accurately accused of engaging in a sexual affair with an office subordinate, an affair that had taken place in the West Wing. In its aftermath, Clinton had one of his fixers place the woman in a well-compensated corporate job (Revlon) to rid himself of her presence.

Clinton’s previous modus operandi-- after getting caught manipulating (Gennifer Flowers), harassing (Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones), and raping (Juanita Broaddrick) women in his employ or his immediate purview was to deny the accusations and defame the accusers. By '98, the year that the name of this White House subordinate, Monica Lewinsky, would become forever famous, the White House had an entire SWAT team dedicated to the bullying and character assassination of female nobodies. But silly Monica, whom Bill and Hillary Clinton both implied was a stalker (the pro-woman First Lady's phrase of choice was "narcissistic loony toon"), had done something that the White House team never counted on. She saved the dress that had the POTUS seed spilled on it as evidence, and in an act of self-defense, she had neglected to wash it. The failed state of Clinton’s personal character was finally going to lead to tragic political and legal repercussions and William Shakespeare wasn’t even alive to see it.

So on the day that Lewinsky testified before a grand jury, August 20th, Clinton's military bombed a pharmaceutical factory in the suburbs of Khartoum, Sudan, East Africa. Medicine produced at that factory, including anti-malaria chloroquine, provided more than 60% of the total human and veterinary medicines consumed in one of the poorest countries on the globe.

It was almost immediately conceded by the Defense Department that the plant had no link whatsoever to bin Laden, not financially or otherwise. A forensic investigation of the destroyed plant revealed no toxicity, no trace of any substance other than standard pharmaceutical materials. The government of Sudan enjoyed diplomatic status with the United States, but was not given any advance warning of the bombing. Time was too precious for such formalities as inspections or even formal demands. If bin Laden was being sheltered in Sudan, why couldn't his release be negotiated? The same government, earlier, had extradited the famous terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, upon negotiations with the French government.

One plant worker was killed in the bombing, 11 more were wounded, and many others lost their employment, their direct or interconnected livelihoods, and their access to medicine. Noam Chomsky has estimated the numbers of those indirectly killed to be, possibly, in the tens of thousands. They are only more men, women, and babies whose lives don’t matter to the megalomaniacal leaders of the United States whether Democrat or Republican. If you’re of age, you may remember that at this point in our military history, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk started referring to the incident as Clinton’s bombing of an “aspirin factory.”

Before 1998 was over, Clinton's military had dropped cruise missiles on Afghanistan and Iraq also. None succeeded in hitting suspects. The U.S. president didn't wait around here either for the support of the United Nations, Russia, China, or France so it won't surprise you to know that he didn't get it. But that wasn't the purpose. Unlike his successors, Bush and Obama, who bombed these same two countries later with intent to maximize human suffering, Clinton’s mission was simply to distract, to keep his poll numbers afloat during the his most trying year.

Despite the many admissions to the contrary, there has still been no apology to Sudan from the United States government. Clinton's Secretary of Defense at the time, William Cohen, still slipped-- I'm assuming-- when he referred to the Khartoum factory, Al-Shifa, as a "WMD-related facility" before the 9/11 Commission in 2004. By then, the allusion was to a different world, a pre-9/11 world. In those wonder years of the Bubba Clinton presidency, lesser crimes needed to be avenged, fewer corpses were needed, along with fewer justifications. What else about it can we surmise? It was a simpler time.

posted by CM @ 10:13 PM