America's Fate Depends Upon Whether Gen. Petraeus is an Honest Man

Having swept both houses in the mid-terms, the party of donkeys may be about to fall off a cliff into the trap set for them by the GOP. Some background: even though, it was Richard Nixon who escalated the Viet Nam war beyond anything previous administrations had dared think about, it was Democrats who paid the price. The GOP convinced the nation that Democrats were weak on defense. The strategy worked to set up Reagan's historic victory. An era of trickle down economics followed and the trend continues to this day: the rich get richer and everyone else falls into an economic black hole.

The GOP had help along the way. Iran undoubtedly cut a deal to delay the release of US hostages until Ronald Reagan was sworn in, It reinforced the "weakness" that stuck on Carter like taffy.

As Eleanor Clift points out, the GOP has pulled out and dusted off a typical GOP strategem, a tired tactic that has, nevertheless, worked miracles for them in the past. Bush, says Clift, will keep just enough troops in Iraq "...to provide a surface illusion of progress." Bush will leave it to the Democrats to pull out and cut off support for whatever regime is in place. It will not matter to the GOP that it will fall because it will never have been legitimate. The GOP will blame "weak-kneed, weak on defense" Democrats for the inevitable fall of an illegitimate puppet regime.

Viet Nam redux! Democrats paid dearly for having "...pulled funding from the South Vietnamese government." Wouldn't it be interesting, however, if Gen. Petraeus should be the one to explode the GOP strategy in their faces, in "full view of the world"?

This scenario was suggested to me by Ernest Evans, a professor of political science at the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Several hundred of his former students are currently serving in Iraq. In a recent e-mail outlining his views, he wrote, “I do not believe a single serious student of unconventional war believes that the surge will help the US win in Iraq. The purpose of the surge is not to provide ‘space’ for Iraq’s politicians but rather to provide ‘cover’ for DC’s politicians.”

There is one other thing to keep in mind, he wrote, and that is the extent to which Petraeus, a serious scholar and student of history, might be influenced by Vietnam. Nobody knows what he will say or how Gillespie and the White House will massage the message. The expectation is that he will fall into line, but he could surprise everyone by giving an unvarnished assessment of how truly bleak the US options are in Iraq. The argument for why he may be the one to drop the horse’s head on Bush’s bed: the late Gen. William Westmoreland will always be remembered for the optimistic report he gave to Congress in late 1967, only to have the Tet Offensive occur shortly after, destroying the public’s confidence that the war was winnable. In Iraq, the holy Muslim holiday Ramadan could bring heightened violence reminiscent of Tet. Petraeus has his reputation to protect, and being remembered as the William Westmoreland of the Iraq War is something no Army officer wants.

Eleanor Clift, Marketing the War

Finger-pointing is always to be expected near the ends of lost wars. And Iraq, make no mistake, is a lost war. Too many writers have blamed Bush for not defining victory. In fact, victory could not be defined and there was never any way to win.

Much has already been written about a growing rift between Bush and the uniformed military command. Much of the blame has leveled at Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Other deserving targets are Vice President Dick Cheney, General Tommy Franks, the former commander of US Central Command, Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense, and L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. All but two are already out office. Bush is now on a second defense secretary, a third CIA director and the third commanding general in Iraq. None of the suffling has changed a thing. A lost war got even worse over time. This suggests that "personalities" had nothing to do with the very source of the problem back at the White House.

Was Petraeus put into his position to be a yes man? The future of the US comes down to whether or not Gen. Petraeus is an honest man or Bush's man, a real patriot or compromised GOP puppet.

In an internal assessment given to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, a senior intelligence analyst and a military planner for the US command in Baghdad call for shifting US strategy in Iraq away from counterinsurgency and toward peace enforcement, and they suggest that the Shiite-led ruling coalition is involved in the country's "low-grade civil war."

The Aug. 15 briefing, titled "Resolving the Conflict in Iraq: An Alternative Peacemaking Strategy," offers an unusual glimpse into the intellectual debate within the US military over the way forward in Iraq, and it comes just days before Petraeus, the top US commander there, is scheduled to testify before Congress on the progress of President Bush's war strategy.

--Washington Post, New Strategy Urged in Briefing to Petraeus

Much has been written on this blog and others about long term reforms that might make this a better country in Bush's wake. All are dreams until Bush and the GOP leadership that conspired with him is brought to justice.

They deceived the country into the Iraq War by abusing the intelligence gathering process and telling us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, leading us to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks and was a direct threat to the United States. We now know that none of that was true and we continue to learn more about the ugly and dishonest process that took this Nation to War. I cannot conceive of a more significant reason to impeach a President and Vice President than brazenly misusing the capabilities of this government to start a War. That War has cost the entire world dearly. The price we are paying continues to grow. The country of Iraq has been destroyed along with over half a million Iraqi people dead. Our Nation has lost the lives of thousands of young men and women, seen many more come back wounded or disabled and disrupted the careers and family lives of our National Guard troops - the suffering and damage is beyond comprehension, and yet it goes on and grows. And beyond that, we have spent billions upon billions of dollars that have mostly been borrowed from future generations. Consider for a moment what those billions could have accomplished if they had not been wasted. And all of this for what? I am outraged by every part of the decision to start this war and the way that they have carried it out. And I ask you, are you outraged? I ask you, given this picture must Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

I am outraged that here in this country, they listened to phone conversations, intercepted emails and spied electronically on Americans with a program that was so clearly a violation of the law that even Bush’s own attorney general, John Ashcroft, refused to certify it as in compliance with law. I ask you, must Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

In this country, at Guantanamo and around the world, they illegally captured and detained people without appropriate hearings and safeguards in a way that was determined by the Supreme Court to be a violation of the Constitution. Just Friday, the Supreme Court took the very unusual step of re-opening its consideration of an appeal from Guantanamo. I ask you, must Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

They used torture and sent prisoners to other countries where they would be tortured even more severely -and the Vice President was one of the chief architects of the torture program. I ask you, must Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

And we see even more reasons to impeach - the blatant disregard for the rule of law is rampant in this Administration. President Bush uses signing statements to announce which portions of laws passed by Congress he will not obey or enforce. The Administration refuses to cooperate with legitimate Congressional inquiries or to comply with subpoenas. And then there is the secrecy and the covering up - the refusal to comply with Federal law about preserving secret information, setting up a separate secret email system and then deleting thousands of emails, the order to the Secret Service to destroy all logs of visitors to the President and Vice President. I can only imagine how many more grounds for impeachment there would be if we knew all they are hiding.

But, outrage and anger are not enough. We have a job to do and that job is to hold this Administration accountable and take this country back. The power to change history is on our hands. We share a positive vision that we can help our Nation change for the better. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for. There in no one else who will do our job. But our job is not easy. As we’ve called for impeachment, we’ve heard many objections - even from those who believe that there has been serious wrongdoing.

--Impeachment: We’ve Got a Job to Do, John Kaminski, Chair of the Maine Lawyers for Democracy, at the Citizens Summit for Impeachment

Why Bush Must be Stopped!

Why Bush Must Be Stopped Before He Nukes Iran!

Additional Resources

• Meet Jerome Hauer, 9/11 Suspect Awaiting Indictment
• Why did the World Trade Centers create so much powdered concrete?
• America at War
• Global Executions on Rise

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Iran/Contra Redux: How Bush May be Financing al Qaeda and Other Terrorist Organizations

As Bush seems determined to attack Iran, it is important to remember how Iran obtained American arms in the first place. We should recall how the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran when it was on the State Department's list of "terrorist states". We should also ask the tough question that Reagan successfully dodged.

It is apparent that as Carter was still President, someone on Ronald Reagan's behalf, "cut a deal" with Iran to delay the release of American hostages until Reagan had been safely sworn in as President. Was that person George W. Bush Sr?

Recently, Seymour Hersch charges that the Bush administration may be financing al Qaeda. He compares a vast money funneling network to the infamous Iran/Contra scandal of the Ronald Reagan administration.

Seymour Hersh: The Legacy of Reagan's Iran/Contra

Hersh says the U.S. has been “pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight” for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to “stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.” Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of “three Sunni jihadist groups” who are “connected to al Qaeda” but “want to take on Hezbollah.”

Hersh summed up his scoop in stark terms: “We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11.”

--Hersh’s New Yorker Article.

An American policy shift is behind Bush's renewed Anti-Iran rhetoric. The US now backs "hardline Sunni jihadists". Bush is in the business of financing "terrorists".

At the heart of this betrayal of American trust is the round up of the usual suspects --Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser. Bush's Faustian Pact is nothing less than Iran/Contra redux, another right wing scheme to finance global terrorism and stiff the American people with it.

If Iran is an armed threat now, we have the Reagan administration to thank for it. Briefly, the Ronald Reagan regime sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy of the US. It was an elaborate scheme in which monies were diverted to right wing terrorists, the so-called "Contras" who decimated Nicaragua in the 1980s. The word for that is high treason. Here's the brief summation of the activities of Ronald Reagan's criminal conspiracy to arm an avowed enemy of the US.

The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President's willful activities.

--Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Lawrence Walsh

The US has a history of financing and encouraging terrorism though Bush, meanwhile, claims to be pursuing a peaceful resolution with regard to Iran. Hitler made similar statements about Poland before his own SS staged a "Polish attack" on a radio tower inside German territory. The Reichstag Fire was most certainly not Hitler's last and only "false flag" operation, nor 911 Bush's.

The Iran/Contra scandal is only one reason Ronald Reagan should never make a list of American greatest presidents. In fact, I doubt we've had enough great Presidents to make a top ten list. Perhaps a "top three" list of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt --but even those have serious strikes against them. Such a list made in more innocent times might include Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson. But it is doubtful they would survive a first edit now. Wilson, for example, may have delayed America's entry into WWI for cynical, political reasons. Roosevelt may have too fondly embraced imperialism. Andrew Jackson committed genocide when he stole Native American lands and dispatched the rightful owners to Oklahoma, a tragic "trail of tears" which few survived.

Numerous surveys have tried to rank American presidents. Infoplease claims that the effort began in 1948 when the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr., asked 55 historians to rate the presidents in each of five categories: great, near great, average, below average, or failure. No one was surprised when Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt made a list of "great" presidents, while Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding were tagged "failures".

Obvious excludes from a "Great Presidents" list must include Richard Nixon, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover and the current occupant, George W. Bush. Despite, a well-organized GOP campaign of PR and political kiss-ups, Ronald Reagan should be included in a list of utter failures. I would include in that list George H.W. Bush who ran interference for Reagan during the Iran/Contra scandal.

Wikipedia claims that Ronald Reagan often makes a ten best Presidents list. That fact inspires me to create a list of President who should never make anyone's ten best list and on such a list, Ronald Reagan goes straight to the top.

Republicans, having taken the rap for a Great Depression that followed closely on the heals of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and, of course, Herbert Hoover, were eager to shed their scales with a man who, if he was not of the people, did the Hollywood version of it: he faked it.

To be expected, nothing said by the GOP about Ronald Reagan is true. One of his adoring partisans was overheard telling reporters --"But he made us feel good about ourselves"! Thus, Reagan inspired and encouraged among his adoring partisans the very worst motives. Truth is, Reaganites ought not feel good about themselves. They ought not be comfortable inside their gated "communities". They ought to have nightmares and night terrors! They ought to lose sleep at night! They ought to be troubled, neurotic and insecure. Stanford Studies say that, indeed, they are!

Because Reagan would not be bothered to think deeply about issues, it was, to be fair, his adoring multitudes who told most of the lies about him. The lingering myth, the one that is most firmly embraced, defended and spread far and wide is that the Reagan presided over a great economic boom. To drive home the point, Reagan partisans contrast what is called "Reagan's Prosperity" with Carter's "Stagflation".

In fact, Reagan never presided over what the GOP would have you believe was a modern golden age. Rather, a depression of some 18 months or more, the longest since the Great Depression, followed promptly on the heels of his tax cut of 1982. It is not co-incidental that his tax cut, benefiting primarily the upper 10 percent of the population, would precede a recession. Sold with a slogan --supply-side economics or, derisively, trickle down theory --it proved conclusively that wealth did not "trickle down". The rich, indeed, get richer and the poor, poorer. But for a brief period in Clinton's second term, the trend begun in 1982 continues unabated to this day. We have the GOP to thank for it. See: The L-curve.

Reagan also promised to balance the federal budget. But, by the target date in 1984, federal deficits were already out of control, the worst the nation had ever seen. Almost a trillion dollars was added to the federal debt. It was not the GOP's favorite whipping boy --a Democratic congress --that was to blame. Republicans, in fact, controlled the Senate from 1981 to 1987. Moreover, the debt might have been even higher had Congress merely rubber stamped Reagan's profligacy.

While Reagan was President, the US federal deficit tripled even as the Reagan government shifted the burden for repaying those deficits to America's hard-pressed working class, already victimized by the Reagan "depression" of some two years. Edward Wolff, in his article, "How the Pie is Sliced: America's Growing Concentration of Wealth" (American Prospect, Summer '95), estimated that in a brief time period known as 'the seven fat years' only the nation's upper quintile, the richest 20 percent, benefited, receiving as much as ninety-nine percent of the "new wealth".

In Britain, where the richest 1 per cent of the population owns 18 per cent of the nation's wealth, fully half the population now lives in households that receive means-tested benefits And in the United States, where wages have been falling steadily, especially for the less skilled, and real poverty is increasing sharply, the richest 1 per cent now owns nearly 40 per cent of
wealth.

--Is It Global Economics or Neo- Laissez-Faire?

Like latter day aristocrats, Reagan devotees tried to justify their having grown richer at everyone else's expense. Their new riches were the result of merit, they said. Facts do not support them. Numerous studies of Fortune 500 companies reveal that there is no correlation between exploding pay to high ranking executives and company productivity or profitability. In fact, the reverse may be true. Companies exhibiting the greatest pay inequalities also suffer the worst product quality. Other studies have found that more egalitarian societies enjoy the fastest rates of economic growth. May we now lay to rest the corpse of Reaganomics, trickle-down theory, and supply side economics?

The Reagan 80s are remembered for a flurry of deregulation and bankruptcies amid reckless stock speculation, junk bonds and corporate mergers. It was an era of corporate takeovers and corporate raiders typified by a real T. Boone Pickens and a fictional, Gordon Gekko. The 80s are now remembered in a single phrase --Greed is Good!

It is a disservice to Darwin to call the age, as some have, an "age of corporate Darwinism". It was, however, an age of "kill or be killed", a law of the economic jungle called politely laissez-faire, less politely trickle-down theory. The late Steve Kangas reminded, "the Federal Register is where all of America's proposed and adopted regulations are found, and in 1980 it ran 87,012 pages. By 1986, this was cut almost in half -- to 47,418 pages." It was a return to the jungle. The poor were either trampled and cheated or, in other ways, forgotten and left behind. Among slogans and platitudes, the individual conscience fell victim to lies told to make the greedy and corrupt "feel good about themselves".

Nor did Ronald Reagan distinguish himself in foreign affairs. I will leave to another article, if not a book, details about how Ronald Reagan may have blown a chance to reach an accord with Mikhail Gorbachev who had put complete nuclear disarmament on the table at Rekjavik. There are also books to be written about the foolhardy attack on Grenada, a tiny island that posed absolutely no threat to US security at all. Other books might be written about how terrorism against US interests very nearly tripled during Reagan's administration, how terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes, and how the same increases in terrorism can be witnessed now under the misrule of George W. Bush who presumes to wage a Reaganesque "war on terror". Books have been written about Reagan's war on terrorism, in which he promised "you can run but you can't hide". In fact, Reagan sent troops to Lebanon only to make matters worse, only to withdraw them when the Marine Barracks was blown up. Nothing was accomplished but much was paid for with American lives.

Reagan's policies ushered in the present era characterized by obscene disparities of income, effects associated with a continuing, measurable deteriorations of education, news coverage, and various qualities of life. In the regimes of both Reagan and Bush, reason and science are openly attacked. Enlightenment itself is under attack by the cult-like alliance of fascism and fundamentalist Christianity.

Ronald Reagan's was the first "voodoo" administration, characterized by meaningless, feel-good platitudes, nonsense, lies, religious ideology and perhaps real voodoo for all the good done by the twin towers of GOP stupidity: supply-side economics and corporate welfare. It is fitting that his economic policy was called "voodoo economics" even by his own partisans. Later, of course, his Budget Director, David Stockman, would recant, blaming a "noisy faction of Republicans" for the disastrous Reagan tax cut.

About thirty percent of the population didn't care if Reagan was telling the truth or not. Jung believe that about 30 percent of any population is crazy anyway. What mattered for them was that whatever Reagan puked up made them feel good about themselves.

Ronald Reagan elevated stupidity and inarticulateness as he marginalized academia, critical thought, freedom of speech, and dissent. But it was not only Democrats who suffered in this new dark age. It was also articulate Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller and John Anderson. There was no place for them in the new GOP. There was no place for intelligence in medieval America. There was no place for enlightenment amid American Gothic.

George W. Bush took up where Reagan left off - elevating the cult of the stupid, blazing new trails for ignorance in the massed attack on science and learning. Yet --Reagan lives on in the person of a "commander guy", a "decider" a reader of "three Shakespeare" and a Camus over pretzels and beer. On numerous occasions, this standard bearer for Reagan's legacy has asked the media:

"... who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear -- I'm a commander guy."

--George W. Bush, who apparently is no longer "The Decider," Washington, DC, May 2, 2007 (Watch video clip)

Evelyn Pringle, writing for Buzzflash, counters:

This country is now paying a heavy price for Bush's lack of military experience, and his taunting invitation of "bring it on," that has resulted in a never ending stream of challengers traveling to Iraq to teach our loudmouth president a lesson.

- Evelyn Pringle, What Military Service Qualifies Bush To Lead Iraq War? Buzzflash

Additional Resources

• The Trail of Tears
• Andrew Jackson & Indian Removal

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• The Twilight Zone -The Eye Of The Beholder
  
• Concerto pour trompette en mi bémol majeur, de Joseph Haydn
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Bush Loses War on Terrorism; Begins War on Iran

Bush pimps a possible nuclear strike on Iran, though a panel of experts claim his "war on terrorism" is all but lost. Meanwhile, Col. Sam Gardiner tells CNN that the US military is already operating inside Iran.

What Bush will not tell you is that the world has become a much more dangerous place because of his administration's incompetent and boneheaded policies.

Foreign-policy experts deem US national-security strategy in disrepair, the war in Iraq alarmingly off course, and the world increasingly more dangerous for Americans. In the third Terrorism Index, more than 100 of America’s most respected foreign-policy experts see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course.

Six years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, just 29 percent of Americans believe the United States is winning the war on terror—the lowest percentage at any point since 9/11. But Americans also consider themselves safe. Six in 10 say that they do not believe another terrorist attack is imminent. Likewise, more than 60 percent of Americans now say that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake.

US Losing War on Terror, Experts Say in Survey

The fact that world terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes is not a coincidence. It is by design that GOP regimes cause, inspire and aggravate world terrorism. The Iran/Contra scandal is a notable instance in which the GOP terrorists were very nearly brought to justice.

Bush's threats have given nations cause to arm. Secondly, the US has a record of arming nations only to turn on them later for having armed. As nonsensical at that would seem on its face, it has nevertheless been the case, most notably with both Iran and Iraq. Saddam Hussein, for example, was a US puppet, armed and protected by the US until he lowered the price of oil.

If Iran is an armed threat, we have the incompetent, criminal GOP to blame. Sadly, the Iran/Contra "affair" seems all but forgotten. Briefly, the regime of Ronald Reagan sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy of the US. The proceeds were then funneled to a terrorist organization that decimated Nicaragua in the 1980s. The word for that is high treason. Here's the brief summation of the activities of Ronald Reagan's criminal conspiracy to arm an avowed enemy of the US.

The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President's willful activities.

--Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Lawrence Walsh

The US has a history of financing and encouraging terrorism. Bush, meanwhile, claims to pursue a peaceful resolution with regard to Iran. Hitler made similar statements about Poland before his own SS staged a "Polish attack" on a radio tower inside German territory. The Reichstag Fire was most certainly not Hitler's last and only "false flag" operation, nor 911 Bush's.

Statements by Bush that he prefers to avoid war with Iran are not in character. Bush's thinking reflects that of the radical, right wing ideologues that surround him. Among them --the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

I admire AEI a lot. After all, I have been consistently borrowing some of your best people. More than 20 AEI scholars have worked in my administration.

--George W. Bush, Speech to AEI

One of those scholars wrote an op-ed for the L.A. Times entitled "We Must Bomb Iran, in which he made the absurd case that diplomacy has done nothing to stop the Iranian nuclear threat. What diplomacy? Only a "show of force", says AEI, is the answer.

We can prepare to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or we can use force to prevent it. Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel argues for the former, saying that "if Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it." We should rely, he says, on the threat of retaliation to keep Iran from using its bomb. Similarly, Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria points out that we have succeeded in deterring other hostile nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and China.

And in these pages, William Langewiesche summed up the what-me-worry attitude when he wrote that "the spread of nuclear weapons is, and always has been, inevitable," and that the important thing is "learning how to live with it after it occurs."

But that's whistling past the graveyard. The reality is that we cannot live safely with a nuclear-armed Iran. One reason is terrorism, of which Iran has long been the world's premier state sponsor, through groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Now, according to a report last week in London's Daily Telegraph, Iran is trying to take over Al Qaeda by positioning its own man, Saif Adel, to become the successor to the ailing Osama bin Laden. How could we possibly trust Iran not to slip nuclear material to terrorists?

--Joshua Muravchik, American Enterprise Institute, November 19, 2006

The same, sorry cast of characters said the same thing about Saddam Hussein. The spectre of a huge mushroom cloud was summoned. But, of course, there were no WMD in Iraq. There was no nuclear threat. Bush is the puppet who cried Wolfowitz!

Saddam's main strength - his ability to control his people through extreme terror - is also his greatest vulnerability. The overwhelming majority of his people, including some of his closest associates, would like to be free of his grasp if only they could safely do so. As the recent account of a defector from Saddam's nuclear program makes clear, even Iraqis who help Saddam build nuclear weapons can't escape from the constant threat of torture and death, for their families as well as themselves.

A strategy for supporting this enormous latent opposition to Saddam requires political and economic as well as military components. It is admittedly more complicated than launching a few cruise missile attacks. Perhaps it is more complicated than this Administration can manage, but it is eminently possible for a country that possesses the overwhelming power that the United States has in the Gulf.

--Paul Wolfowitz, Statement to the House National Security Committee Hearings on Iraq, September 16, 1998

Wolfowitz was wrong! History will prove Bush and company to have been wrong about everything of which they were most certain.

Therein lies the problem. When a real threat presents itself, Bush will not, should not be believed. Bush has squandered his credibility on a gambit, the purpose of which was the seizure of Iraqi oil fields. Oil is central to administration policy with regard to Iraq. Over the years, there have been many dictators throughout the world that were not attacked by the US. But when was the last time the US invaded a nation that did not have vast oil fields?

If Bush never attains credibility, it would make no differences to me. I never believed a word he said anyway. I didn't have any money riding on Bush's "credibility". Rather, the danger is to the American people and the world, where survival depends upon the ability of a people to make intelligent assessments. In an ideological world, the only moral dictum that makes sense goes like this: behave in such a way that what is true can be verified to be so. By contrast, the Bush administration believes truth to be whatever you can sell.

A student of the Reagan regime might have predicted the many failures of the Bush administration. Reagan's "presidency" was very nearly as disastrous but the former movie star had better "press agents". Certainly, "terrorism" grew worse over the course of Reagan's occupation of Lebanon. Indeed, like Iraq today under Bush, Lebanon became a magnet for "terrorists who grew more active during the US occupation. They eventually won. Like Bush today, Reagan's definition of victory was defined with meaningless slogans -- "you can run but you can't hide".

Reagan, in fact, lost his war against "terrorism". He was literally forced to withdraw when the marine barracks was attacked. Terrorism grew worse until the ascension of Bill Clinton. Bush, however, hopes to recoup his losses by playing yet another hand in which the stakes are raised to cover his losses. I don't care how Bush otherwise gambles --but NOT with my future, not with country, NOT with my life, not with the very future of the world. Yes, I do take it personally. Yes, I am personally threatened by Bush and so, too, every other freedom loving American. And, yes I am not objective about proven liars, mass murderers and war criminals. And, yes, I am working to bring his sorry ass to trial for capital crimes in America, war crimes and crimes against humanity abroad.

At some point, those who exploit terrorism will try to have it both ways. These demagogues will say that terrorists are succeeding. They will exploit the "threat" to maintain themselves in power. At last, however, the liars must be held to account. Either the war on terrorism is working or it is not. In Bush's case the war was phony but now threatens to inspire real terrorism, real resistance to an illegitimate American hegemony. In the early days, we are always inclined to believe official accounts. But when no progress is made, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe two conflicting stories that attacks still constitute a threat to national security but, don't worry, we are making progress! Both are lies.

An update

Americans Have Lost Their Country

By Paul Craig Roberts

03/01/07 "ICH" -- -- The Bush-Cheney regime is America’s first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America’s moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues--principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by “scholars” in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie. ...

And, on another front, it would appear that all of Bush's lies and all the various cover stories are falling apart. I urge everyone to support efforts to re-open the official investigation of 911 and give it teeth, specifically, the power to subpoena Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld et al.

According to Independent Scientist Leuren Moret and Alfred Webre, 9/11 was a False Flag Operation to provide a pretext to engage in Genocidal & Ecocidal Depleted Uranium (DU) bombing of Central Asia (Afghanistan and Iraq) in order to secure vast oil and uranium reserves; to roll out a Terror-based National Security state-system world-wide; to implement the final stages of a world Depopulation policy; and to trigger a World War III conflagration.

Since 1945, under the Nuremberg Principles, causing aggressive war constitutes the most serious of War Crimes. The International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal would be convened under the jurisdiction of the Kuala Lumpur International War Crimes Tribunal, established in February 2007 as a permanent citizen’s Tribunal by The Perdana Global Peace Organization, chaired by Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, who is the first prominent world leader to take up the depleted uranium (DU) radiation issue as an instrumentality of the Depopulation policy.

--International Citizens 911 War Crimes Tribunal, Peace in Space

Olbermann: Bush Paying Al Qaeda to Attack Iran

CNN: War with Iran has already begun

Additional resources

• Enough 9/11 evidence exists to hang Bush, imprison thousands [Let's get on with the trials]
• 911 Evidence that May Hang George W. Bush
• Time For A Firing Squad
• Don't Bully Nicaragua
• How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury
  
• Bush warns of 'holocaust' if Iran gets nukes, warns Tehran off Iraq
• Bomb Iran
• The Terrorism Index

Discoveries

• Liberty Bound
• The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror - Narrated by Ed Asner
• The Death Squads - Iraqi Ethnic Cleansing
• Fats Waller - Honeysuckle Rose
• Gypsy Guitar Masters: Stochelo Rosenberg, Mozes Rosenberg, Romane, etc.u

The Cowboy's Shared News Items

The Existentialist Cowboy

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Why Conservatives Hate America
GOP Crime Syndicate
Iraq

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