Woody Harrelson é um ator que ficou famoso no papel do simplório Woody no mega-sucesso televisivo dos anos 80 Cheers. Woody era ingênuo, vindo do interior, acreditava nas pessoas e sabia valorizar uma amizade. Terminada a série Harrelson foi se voltando para papéis mais radicais, como o Mickey de Natural Born Killers e como o controverso Larry Flynt no filme-biografia sobre o dono da Hustler.

Ontem o ator, que está em Londres encenando a peça On an Average Day publicou um artigo e tanto no The Guardian dizendo algumas verdades sobre a política externa americana, mostrando que o Woody de carne-e-osso é bem diferente do Woody fictício. Infelizmente, como sempre, esse tipo de opinião dificilmente chegará ao público americano em geral, que assiste ABC e NBC.

The fact is that Saddam Hussein was our boy. The CIA helped him to power, as they did the Shah of Iran and Noriega and Marcos and the Taliban and countless other brutal tyrants. The fact is that George Bush Sr continued to supply nerve gas and technology to Saddam even after he used it on Iran and then the Kurds in Iraq. While the Amnesty International report listing countless Saddam atrocities, including gassing and torturing Kurds, was sitting on his desk, Bush Sr pushed through a $2bn “agricultural” loan and Thatcher gave hundreds of millions in export credit to Saddam. The elder Bush then had the audacity to quote the Amnesty reports to garner support for his oil war.

A decade later, Shrub follows the same line: “We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people.” I’m sure half a million Iraqi parents are scratching their heads over that. I’m an American tired of lies. And with our government, it’s mostly lies.