Get smart!

IF the title brings back memories, then your age is showing. For younger readers who may have missed that very popular American sitcom, dating back to the 1960s, let me explain what the series was all about. (My information on the series comes from the Internet... okay, okay, so I did get to watch some of the later episodes, and was very, very young then.)

"Get Smart" was a spoof on the James Bond craze. In the series, two spy agencies were pitted against each other, one called KONTROL and the other KAOS, the letters not standing for anything in particular. The good guys were from KONTROL, with Agent 86 as the lead character. Agent 86's "real" name was Maxwell Smart, the name itself being a spoof because this secret agent wasn't very smart, bungling from one episode to another and yet managing to overcome his enemies, mainly out of sheer luck.

The TV series was so popular that it spun off two movies. One of them, "The Nude Bomb," has been showing on HBO and I was able to catch about half an hour of the film. (These days there are limits to the inanities one can take, what with our politicians' real-life horrendous gaffes.)

Watching Agent Smart, I kept getting a sense of deja vu, and certainly not about the 1960s (remember, I was very, very...). It was the look on Agent Smart's face that seemed so familiar. After a few minutes it all fell together: I realized it was the same look you find on George Bush's face whenever he gives his speeches.

Let me try to describe that look. It's an almost arrogant smugness that comes with an attempt to look smart. Of course, the eyes always give away the fact that they (Bush and Smart) don't know what they're talking about. It's the look of gullibility: Agent Smart keeps getting into trouble because he believes everything people say.

At the same time, it's an attempt to look unfazed even after getting into trouble, still trying to outsmart the enemy. Get Smart was subtitled "Would You Believe?" because each episode was marked by Agent 86 falling into the hands of the enemy and trying to work his way out. For example, he would claim that his associates were on the way to rescue him and would arrive in five minutes. The enemy agents would stare back, totally unconvinced, and Smart would go, "Would you believe, eight minutes?" and then go on to "bargain" with 10 minutes, 12 minutes.

It's corny humor, and yet when you think about it, Bush has been pulling the same trick on US citizens, and on the world. Bush argued the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was working directly with al-Qaeda, a claim that was vital toward convincing Americans, still mourning the 9-11 attacks, that Iraq had to be invaded, as an act of retribution.

For world consumption, Bush had an accomplice, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who I'm tempted to say, has the Austin Powers look but no, it's a far cry. Anyway, with Bush citing British intelligence and Blair citing US intelligence, we were treated to an amazing mélange of claims of Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD), one feeding into another. In October last year, Bush claimed Iraq was "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon. A few months later, Blair was claiming Iraq could launch a WMD attack "within 45 minutes."

It turns out that these claims were just as about as credible as Agent Maxwell Smart's threats to KAOS agents. Just last week, Bush admitted, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11" -- only a few days after his own vice president had said such a link exists.

That admission is only the latest in the unraveling of the Bush administration's justifications for an invasion of Iraq. A few weeks back, there was furor in the United States as the mass media pinned Bush down on a claim he made in a January speech that the "British government had learned that Saddam Hussein recently bought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." It turned out that this claim was based on forged documents and that no less than the former US ambassador to Niger, the African country referred to, did tell US government officials, a long time back, that the story was not true. Despite the ambassador's report, Bush used that fabricated claim in his State of the Union Address, the equivalent of our State of the Nation Address.

As for the WMD, it's become tedious listening to the latest news reports of new "evidence." Last May for example, following the discovery of two trailers in Iraq, Bush boasted: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories... They're illegal. They're against the UN resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes by. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."

It turned out that the trailers weren't for producing WMD, another one of many false leads. Imagine Bush's voice droning on and on about the biological labs and banned weapons and you can picture him with that Smart look, complete with the "Would you believe?" lines. I'm being kind here, comparing Bush to Smart, because we can still give him the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps he's just gullible, easily duped by the warmongering advisers around him.

By and large, the world has been smarter than Smart Bush. If you go back and check the news files, you'll find that many countries' leaders and their citizens were always cynical about Bush and Blair's claims. There were even massive anti-war protests even before the invasion.

In contrast, our own President and her subalterns provided the few voices of support for Bush and Blair, all too eager to send Filipino troops to Iraq as cannon fodder, and shamelessly asking if Filipinos could be given preference for jobs to reconstruct Iraq after it had been bombed out.

In a few days, Bush will come to visit, to thank the President and the Philippines for being part of his Coalition of the Willing. It's time we speak up. It's time we get smart.

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