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Charles Kenneth Williams is an American poet who started writing poetry at 19, after taking only his required English classes at University of Pennsylvania.  He began his career as a[…]

The media squashed voices of opposition, says Williams, and those voices are still attempting to be heard.

C. K. Williams: We’ll never really know what drove them to have that war. All the reasons that were given we know are lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no terrorist connection between Hussein and terrorism. I think in some ways it was sheer arrogance. It was a sheer belief that if you have power you have to express it where you can express it and I think that that came out pretty clearly. We are the most powerful, we can do whatever we want, this is the next thing we’re going to do, and if Iraq had worked out there would have been a next thing, probably Iran, which they still might try to get away with. So I think there have been everything from psychoanalyzing Bush and his relationship with his father, which, sure, that may have had something to do with it, to Cheney’s-- Cheney obviously just had a sheer thirst, a ravishing-- ravous-- ravenous thirst for the expression of power. He still does. His great illuminating moment a few weeks ago was when someone said, “What about the fact that the American people are so against the war now?” And he said, “So?” That’s really the expression of power. It means I have so much power I don’t have to listen to even the American people. So I think that’s where the war started.

 


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