BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
& JULES GREEN
HOBART
— “George Bush” led a “treasure hunt” for weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) through Hobart's Parliament House Lawns on July 5, ably assisted by
“John Deputy Dawg Howard”. Organised by Resistance and the Peace Coalition,
the street-theatre action protested the US-led occupation of Iraq.
The hunting party looked particularly for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. “CIA operatives” had previously confirmed that weapons would be found — which indeed turned out to be the case. However all of the “weapons” found were part of US WMD programs.
Agent Orange — the chemical weapon found in the lawns — pointed out that he had been used by the US army against Vietnamese people. His damage continues to this day.
The
“nuclear weapons' program” offered the assembled treasure hunters yellow
cake, and argued with Bush that it was quite hypocritical of the US to demand
Iraq disarm, when the US was the only country to have used nuclear weapons in
war.
The “biological weapon”, sitting in the outback dunny, brought out samples of the US use of biological weapons. This included the dengue fever used in Cuba and the anthrax Bush's “white knight” Donald Rumsfeld, now US defence secretary, sold to Iraq in the 1980s.
Not satisfied with the outcome of the hunt, Bush demanded from his hunting party that they find him Iraq's WMDs. Rumsfeld answered the call and began to scrub out “USA” signs from a series of missiles and replace this with “Iraq” to be strategically located near Baghdad.
From Green Left Weekly, July 9, 2003.
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