Words, words, words.  There's nothing like words for those who are completely unashamed of lying and bullshitting.  As long as the citizen audience are ignorant, indifferent, apathetic, and supine, falsehood becomes truth.  Anything goes -- such has been the surreal state of the five years of the Koizumi government.

Having only three more months to go, Prime Minister Koizumi lately has been letting loose one whopper after another, unstoppably -- the last cries of a lame duck who is about to lose power but cannot bring himself to let go of it easily.

Fleeing from his responsibility to face a mountain of problems and refusing to extend the Diet session, Prime Minister Koizumi breezily says, "There's a lot to do during the recess, too."  The decisions to withdraw from Samawa and to begin importing American beef again, made at the last minute before his departure for the United States, are explained away: "The Ground Self-Defense Force has already accomplished its duty"; and "More than enough safety checks have been performed."  What chutzpah!

The last and biggest lie of the Prime Minister is the "Japan-US Alliance in World Affairs," to be trumpeted by his US visit that begins on the 28th.  "The first Japanese Prime Minister to be truly lionized as a state guest."  "Personal friendship with President Bush reaffirmed during the visit."  The media are inundated with sycophant journalists' plaudits for Koizumi's visit, but the truth is that the visit is meant to firmly lock the next leader, as well as good and obedient citizens, of this country into subservience to the United States.  The day will come when this visit will be damned by history.

Come to think of it, there is no lie more ridiculous than the "shared values of Japan and the United States."  What value do the United States, the world's most violent and arrogant warfare state that wants to solve everything by force, and Japan, which did not go to any war for nearly sixty years after WW2 under the Peace Constitution, actually share?

The Prime Minister's US visit this time -- having the Undersecretary of the Defense Agency accompany him, an unusual twist, is symbolic of its essence -- is designed to make Japan a collaborator in American wars for a long time to come.  Get burdened with more than three trillion yen to pay for the "transformation plan" of the US military, ordered to expand the Air Self-Defense Force's transport activities to help the US military slaughter Iraqis in exchange for troop withdrawal from Samawa, pressured to impose economic sanctions on Iran, which will mean the loss of Japan's oil concessions, and sent a bill for economic aid to North Korea as a hidden clause in any backroom US-NK normalization deal -- and all we get in return is Kozisumi's tour of Graceland?

As a recently declassified document containing former National Security Advisor Kissinger's remark -- "Of all the treacherous sons of bitches, the Japs take the cake" -- eloquently testifies, Japan is no more than a sidekick to America that it has never learned to like -- it is there to be taken advantage of . . . till it becomes useless and abandoned.