In September 2002, United States President George W Bush began a speech in Nashville with some typically eloquent charm: “There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again”.
This was exactly six months before the launch of the war on Iraq in all of its carnage, which the US endeavoured to fool the world into thinking was justified by Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda. In reality, there were no weapons, and al-Qaeda only came to flourish in Iraq as a result of – what else? – the US invasion.
Fast forward nearly two decades, and the current US administration appears determined to debunk Bush’s dictum that “you can’t get fooled again”.
Now, of course, the target is Iran – but the argument is exactly the same.
While we’ve already spent the past four years of the Donald Trump presidency hearing about Iran’s diabolical nuclear ambitions, Trump & Co have, on the eve of their departure from power, decided to gift us one last hallucination – which they undoubtedly hope will swiftly contaminate the public mind and thereby convert itself into accepted fact.
Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo presented this final hallucination in a speech on Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, DC: “Al-Qaeda has a new home base. It is the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
Never mind that al-Qaeda and Iran are, you know, mortal enemies. The truth matters not in matters of national security. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.