HyperNormalisation Page #11

used in chemical munitions..."

...seizes your nervous system... Do not move that!

"..And the informant had obviously seen

"a popular movie known as The Rock

"that had inaccurately depicted

nerve agents being carried

"in glass beads or spheres."

...that's after your skin melts off.

My God.

That there is a threat from Saddam Hussein

and the weapons of mass

destruction that he has acquired,

is not in doubt at all.

Hafez al-Assad had died in 2000.

His son, Bashar, became the

new president of Syria.

But he couldn't escape the inexorable logic

of what his father had started.

20 years before, his father had

sent Shi'ite suicide bombers

to attack the Americans in Lebanon.

Now, as America and Britain invaded Iraq,

Bashar decided that he would copy his father.

But what he was about to let loose

would tear the Arab world apart -

and then come back to try to destroy him.

STATELY FANFARE PLAYS

Bashar Assad had was never

supposed to have been president.

It was always going to have

been his elder brother, Bassel.

But then, Bassel had died in a car crash.

So now, Bashar took over the giant palace

that his father had built above Damascus.

Up to this point, Bashar had not

been interested in politics.

He was fascinated by computers.

He founded the Syrian Computer Society

and brought the internet to the country.

His favourite band was the

Electric Light Orchestra.

But now, he was president.

And he set out to attack America.

Bashar Assad was convinced

that the invasion of Iraq

was just the first step of a

plot by the Western powers

to take over the whole of the Middle East.

He knew that the invasion had outraged

many of the radical Islamists in Syria

and what they most wanted to do was

to go to Iraq and kill Americans.

So, Bashar instructed the

Syrian Intelligence Services

to help them do this.

Syrian agents set up a pipeline

that began to feed thousands

of militants across the border

and into the heart of the insurgency.

And it grew.

Within a year, almost all of the foreign fighters

from across the world were coming through Syria...

...and they brought suicide bombing with them.

The Americans estimated that 90%

of the suicide bombers in Iraq

were foreign fighters.

But it began to run out of control.

Most of the jihadists had joined

the group al-Qaeda in Iraq

that then turned to killing Shi'ites

in an attempt to create a civil war.

And the force that had originally

been invented by the Shi'ites,

suicide bombing, now returned

and started to kill them.

Then, this.

EXPLOSION:

STUNNED SILENCE:

A moment of silence before people

realised what was happening.

SCREAMING:

A few seconds ago, we just had repeated explosions

in the street below me.

People are now fleeing in terror

from the central square around the mosque.

- This is what everybody feared...

- DISTANT EXPLOSION

We just heard another explosion in the distance.

...that somebody would try to

target this religious festival

to try to bring about a

sectarian conflict in Iraq.

SCREAMING:

There was panic.

A terrified stampede.

But some of these people were

running into the next bombs.

EXPLOSIONS:

We counted at least six separate explosions.

MUSIC DROWNS AUDIO

Tony Blair and George Bush were faced by disaster.

Iraq was imploding.

While, at home, they were being

accused of lying to their own people

to justify the invasion.

What they desperately needed

was something that would show

that the invasion was having a

good effect in the Arab world.

So, they made an extraordinary decision.

They turned for help to the man

who they had always insisted

was one of the world's most dangerous tyrants.

Colonel Gaddafi.

And, instead, they set out to

make him their new best friend.

It was going to be the highest achievement

of Perception Management.

A man who had been created by the West

as a fake global supervillain

was now going to be turned

into a fake hero of democracy.

And everyone, not just politicians,

would become involved.

Public relations, academics,

television presenters, spies, and even musicians

were all going to help reinvent Colonel Gaddafi.

It would show just how many people

in the Western Establishment

had, by now, become the

engineers of this fake world.

Ever since he had been accused

of the Lockerbie bombing,

Colonel Gaddafi had been a complete outcast.

The West had imposed sanctions on Libya

and the economy was falling apart.

But then, suddenly, Tony Blair broke

live into the BBC evening news.

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair,

is about to make a statement,

the BBC understands, from Downing Street.

It's of international significance.

He'll be making his statement at any moment now.

We can see pictures of him in Durham...

- This evening...

- Here he is.

...Colonel Gaddafi has confirmed

that Libya has, in the past,

sought to develop weapons-of-mass-destruction

capabilities.

Libya has now declared its intention to dismantle

its weapons of mass destruction completely.

This decision by Colonel

Gaddafi is a historic one,

and a courageous one, and I applaud it.

Today, in Tripoli,

the leader of Libya,

Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi...

...publically confirmed his

commitment to disclose and dismantle

all weapons-of-mass-destruction

programmes in his country.

Colonel Gaddafi now became,

for Western politicians, a heroic figure.

His decision to give up his

weapons of mass destruction

seemed to prove that the invasion of Iraq

could transform the Middle East.

And Tony Blair travelled to meet

Gaddafi in his desert tent.

To welcome him back into

what one journalist called,

"The community of civilised nations."

But, as in the past,

nothing was what it seemed with Colonel Gaddafi.

In reality, Gaddafi did not really have

the terrifying weapons of mass destruction

that he was promising to destroy.

His nuclear programme had

stuttered to a halt long ago

and never produced anything dangerous.

He had managed to buy some

equipment on the black market,

but his technicians had

been unable to assemble it.

His biological weapons were non-existent.

All he had was some old mustard

gas in leaking barrels.

But now, he had to pretend to have

a terrifying arsenal of weapons.

And the West had to pretend

that they had avoided another global threat.

And then the made-up stories

became even more complicated.

As part of the deal, the West

said that if Gaddafi admitted

that Libya had done the Lockerbie bombing,

then they would lift the sanctions.

But many of those who had investigated Lockerbie

were still convinced that Libya hadn't done it.

That, really, it had been Syria.

But Colonel Gaddafi confessed.

His son, Saif, was interviewed

about this confession.

He said that his father was simply pretending

that he had been behind the Lockerbie bombing

to get the sanctions lifted.

That new lies were being built on top of old lies

to construct a completely make-believe world.

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