Gen. Wesley Clark: Bush Plans to "Take out seven countries in five years!"

Iran is next on the hit list. In a speech in Reno, NV, Bush issued Iran an ultimatum amid charges by British Scholars that Bush will launch a "massive, surprise" attack on Iran. In his speech, Bush warned Iran to stop supporting the militants fighting against the US in Iraq. [See: BBC] In rhetoric reminiscent of his run up to the war of naked aggression against Iraq, Bush charged that Tehran provides training and weapons, excuse enough for Bush who will not require proof. Bush, a known liar, claims Iran's weapons are used by "extremists", a word Bush uses to describe anyone who opposes his own extremist, radical, imperial agenda and policies.

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark

Bush claims that Iran's actions "threaten the security of nations everywhere." That's not fair. I said the same of Bush first! Bush is a clear and present danger to Western Civilization, the greatest such danger since Adolf Hitler. Face up to it. Truly civilized folk must surely desire an end to the absurdities of both radical Islam and radical Christianity. A plague o' both their houses.

I am sick and tired of hearing Democrats debate Bush's "conduct" of what is, in fact, a war crime, a crime against humanity. Democrats, get a clue! You cannot debate the "conduct" of an immoral war. You are either for Bush's campaign of world conquest or you are for freedom and civilization. You cannot be both.

Especially worrisome are exclusive reports from Raw Story: Bush may launch surprise attack on Iran.

The paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East" – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to Raw Story late Friday under embargo.

...

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicizing the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

• Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact.


• US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.


• US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.


• Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.


• Nuclear weapons are ready, but most unlikely, to be used by the US, the UK and Israel. The human, political and environmental effects would be devastating, while their military value is limited.


• Israel is determined to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons yet has the conventional military capability only to wound Iran’s WMD programmes.


• The attitude of the UK is uncertain, with the Brown government and public opinion opposed psychologically to more war, yet, were Brown to support an attack he would probably carry a vote in Parliament. The UK is adamant that Iran must not acquire the bomb.
  


• The US is not publicizing the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

When asked why the paper seems to indicate a certainty of Iranian WMD, Plesch made clear that "our paper is not, repeat not, about what Iran actually has or not."

--Raw Story, Study: US preparing 'massive' military attack against Iran

Bush is insane, unaccountable and out of control. A rogue. Unless he is impeached, charged, tried and sentenced for the capital crimes that should be charged him now, Bush will, indeed, wage war on Iran. Bush needs desperately to pump new life into his moribund, failed "war on terror", now bogged down in quagmire in Iraq. Bush plans are simple and simple minded. He hopes to provoke Iran to retaliate against both Israel and the US, nothing less than a neocon pre text for a wider oil war to encompass the entire Middle East. There will be a term for this: World War III.

The timing of Bush's latest bellicose campaign comes at a time his numbers are at their lowest. It was in May that Bush fell into the twenties poll-wise.

President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 US adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. Approval ratings for Congress overall also sank, and now stand at 18%.

Wall Street Journal

Bush is motivated to stir up the middle east. If what Bush says about Iran is a lie, then Bush will have simply committed another act of naked aggression, another count in the growing indictment against him.

If what Bush says is true, then Bush will have provided Iran the motivation it needs to arm. Bush will have done it with years of bellicose rhetoric, reckless allegations intended to incite, bullying that has, in fact, had the effect of making terrorism worse and tarnishing America's deteriorating reputation. If what is said about Iran is true, Iran will strike back, giving Bush the pretext he seeks to wage a wider war, a world war, throughout the Middle East.

Two things are at stake: the world's richest oil fields and Bush's position of power. Why does a "lame duck" consider committing this nation to a wider, longer war that may last indefinitely? What are Bush's plans? Habeas Corpus has been shelved already. What is left but such a declaration of national emergency? Bush will simply declare his dictatorship and call off the elections.

Bush may envision sicking around past the date of his enforced retirement to supervise a new and perpetual, never-ending war in hopes that it spread beyond the borders the Middle East. Anyone who has bothered to read the Project for the New American Century will understand the mindset, the modus operandi of what are more properly called neo-Nazis.

I am not disappointed in Bush, the GOP, or the rabid neocons. I had no better expectations of them. It is, rather, the Democrats who have become a source of never ending disappointment and despair. Certainly, the Anthrax attacks on Daschle and Leahy had the desired effects. Opposition to Bush is anemic, almost apologetic, gutless. Alas, there are no white knights, no Jim Dandys, no firm-jawed heroes waiting in the wings. We are fucked!

• Bush warns Iran over insurgents
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• 47 million Americans are uninsured
• Iran's Very Bad N-Word
• Last Days of the American Republic

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US Census Bureau Data: Bush Policies Victimize Children and Working Families

Low and middle income families have lost ground in what the Census Bureau called an uneven economic recovery. Only persons of retirement age or those in the very highest income brackets made gains. Everyone else lost ground during Bush's so-called "recovery". The Census Bureau called "unprecedented" the increase in poverty for working American households.

The new Census figures are disappointing for the fifth year of an economic recovery -- showing a significant decline in poverty for people over 65 but no significant decline in poverty for children or adults aged 18 to 64, and only a modest improvement in median income. In 2006, the poverty rate remained higher, and median income for non-elderly households remained $1,300 lower, than in 2001, when the last recession hit bottom. It is virtually unprecedented for poverty to be higher and the income of working-age households lower in the fifth year of a recovery than in the last year of the previous recession.

--New Census Bureau Data on Income and Health Insurance, Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In the same report: "...the number of Americans without health insurance increased 2.2 million in 2006". The number of uninsured children now exceeds 600,000. Recent progress in this area stalled in 2005, reversed in 2006 --the year Bush cut funding for State Children’s Health Insurance Program. This is an ongoing story and the worst is yet to come.

This is particularly noteworthy because the President has vowed to veto legislation that the House and Senate passed (in different versions) that would resume progress in this area and shrink the number of uninsured children by 3 to 4 million. In addition, on August 17, the Administration unveiled a controversial new policy that would force many states to cut back their SCHIP programs, forcing up to several hundred thousand more children into the ranks of the uninsured. Today’s sobering data on the rising number of uninsured children should prompt the President to rethink his positions on children’s health insurance.

--New Census Bureau Data on Income and Health Insurance, Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In a related development, it must be noted that some two years on, tens of thousands are still homeless in Katrina's wake. You remember Katrina! Katrina dramatized the fact that George W. Bush cares nothing for the people of the US. His primary concern is how best to make $billions$ for his crooked cronies by exporting what the US exports best: death, human misery, destruction.

Tomorrow marks the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and still there are tens of thousands of families without homes. 30,000 families are scattered across the country in FEMA apartments, 13,000 are in trailers, and hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt. To share some of these people's stories, we have put together a short film, "When the Saints Go Marching In."

Katrina: Two Years On, Robert Greenwald

During the making of this video, we heard the heartbreaking stories of good people unable to return home. We have heard the story of the Aguilar family who lost their home to the storm and only received $4,000 in payments from their insurance company. We have met Mr. Washington, an 87-year-old man and former carpenter, who owned three homes prior to the storm. He is still living in a FEMA trailer today. And we?ve met Julie, who could have returned to her job and normal life, if the government had opened up the public housing units that she had lived in prior to the storm.

--Brave New Foundation

The numbers had been predicted. They are just what we might have expected from a man like Bush, so utterly lacking empathy, humanity, compassion. Bush is no cowboy. He's a carpet bagger, a spoiled frat boy who never grew up, never had to, never did an honest day's work for an honest dime.

Allen Spinney sings a Merle Haggard Classic

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Restoring American Democracy: A Proposal

It may come as a shock to most Americans to learn that they do not have a right to cast a vote for "President". Under the US Constitution and amendment 17, the people may vote for US Representatives and US Senators --but not the "President" or the Vice-President.

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….

--The Constitution, Article II, section 1, clause 2

As the US Supreme Court observed in the 1892 case of McPherson v. Blacker:

“The constitution does not provide that the appointment of electors shall be by popular vote, nor that the electors shall be voted for upon a general ticket, nor that the majority of those who exercise the elective franchise can alone choose the electors.” …

“In short, the appointment and mode of appointment of electors belong exclusively to the states under the constitution of the United States.”

In 2000, the US Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore reiterated the principle that the people have no federal constitutional right to vote for President or Vice President or for their state’s members of the Electoral College..

“The ... citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College.”

The right of the people to vote, to express their preferences, does not itself make a government legitimate. In my view, a government is legitimate only if it represents what is commonly called the "will of the people". The history of western struggles for Democracy are best understood in terms of how best to determine and to achieve the "will of the people".

Traditionally, the will of the people is associated with the right of the people to vote and have it counted. It only sounds simple. It is the implementation that is complicated. In the US, for example, the campaigns are too long and too expensive. The primary system is designed to exclude candidates and works against popular participation and consensus. Absurdly long and boring, it turns voters off. It makes the cost of seeking the presidency the preserve of the very, very rich and well-connected. It's time for a change.

How is the "will of the people" to be accurately identified or assessed? At a time when Europe was ruled by Monarchs, France became the first country to examine the issue in depth. Pragmatic, utilitarian England and America, for example, favored "the greater good for the greater number", in effect, majority rule. As they are inclined to do, French thinkers complicated the issue with nuance and they were right to do so. They denied, for example, that the "will of Parliament" always reflected the "will of the people". They denied that a "collective will" is always known with a simple majority vote. Thus, a mathematical quest began for a voting scheme that would accurately reflect the wishes of a given electorate.

The quest is not consigned to the salons of 18th Century France. On election day in modern America, an increasingly smaller percentage of American voters show up to cast their vote for President. The shrinking turnout is due to the fact that an increasingly larger percentage of American voters have lost faith in the system. There is the growing belief that at the end of obscenely expensive campaigns, smears, and red, white and blue ballyhoo, your vote doesn't really count. It was a feeling often expressed long before the GOP brazenly stole at least two presidential elections. A centuries old French quest is more relevant than ever.

Aside from technical problems, ballot design, voter intimidation, or GOP interference with recounts, the US election of 2000 pointed up basic problems perhaps inherent in the system itself. In the end, Bush cannot be accurately said to have been elected. A court-mandated recount had not been completed when the US Supreme Court returned the infamous, legally untenable Bush v Gore, the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott. In another system, say, an "instant runoff" the Nader vote would have gone to Gore. Other problems are associated with other elections. Is there a single system that will address every problem in every scenario. Nobel prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow thinks not!

Even before the infamous 2000 "election", it was said: "The plurality vote is the only procedure that will elect someone who’s despised by almost two-thirds of the voters." Tragically for American Democracy, the "election" of 2000 didn't even put that statement to the test, let alone, to rest. Everyone talks about reform. That nothing is ever done proves talk is cheap. American elections are expensive and getting more so.

Assuming the American people had both the means and the will to effect reforms --what kind of reform? And how? Optimistically, there are several alternatives to the present system and all require abolishing the much despised electoral college. There are several systems by which the people may elect their President directly. The top two alternatives to the plurality or one-person, one-vote system, are approval voting and a preference system called the Borda count.

In the US various methods of "approval voting" are termed an "instant runoff". The term "ranked choice" is also used to denote a Borda count specifically. In the UK, the term AV, or "Alternative Vote" is used. In Canada, the term is "preferential ballot".

Approval voting differs from the current plurality voting method in which voters pick a single candidate that they feel is the best for the job. Thirteenth century Venetians used approval voting to elect their judges. Simply, a voter casts a vote for every candidate that they like or think most qualified. For example, you could pick a favorite mainstream candidate as well as a dark horse like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul. But, you are not limited to any number. In a field of ten, for example, you might check all ten. Under such a system, the winning candidate is simply the one who gets most votes.

Approval voting has several compelling advantages over other voting procedures:

• It reduces negative campaigning
  
• It increases voter turnout
  
• It helps elect the strongest candidate
  
• It gives voters flexible and simple options
  
• It gives minority candidates equal visibility
  

--Approval Voting Home Page

There is yet another method by which the "will of the people" may be gauged more accurately. Again, the source is France. It was in 1770 that Jean-Charles de Borda proposed to the members of the Paris-based Academy of Sciences what is now known as a Borda count, a "preference" voting system. It is an approval" method in which the voter does not merely select all his/her favorite candidates but ranks them in order of preference. If there are ten candidates, for example, a first choice gets ten points, second choice nine points, and so on. In the end, the points are totaled and the winner is the candidate getting the highest score.

The leaderships of both major parties will oppose this and other reforms. Approval and/or preference voting systems strike at the strangle-hold major party leaderships exercise over the election process. Secondly, approval voting enables moderately publicized candidates to amass popular support. At last, any truly democratic system interfere with the ability of entrenched political parties to raise millions for campaigns.

It is my hope that the benefits to society will outweigh the objections. Our democracy, perhaps democracy itself, is at stake. There are tangible benefits to reform. Under the current system, the GOP has all but perfected the art of political assassination by "negative campaigning". Approval systems mitigate against the "swift boat" hit job and against the same tactic by any other party. Disgusted voters would simply withhold their votes from the offending candidates and parties.

If change is in the wind, we may have Bush's criminality, his incompetence, and his habitual problems with truth to thank. A recent Gallup poll indicates more Americans now identify themselves as Democrats than Republicans —a shift that may give Democrats a long term edge. But will Democrats use that edge to make of the US a better, more democratic nation? Or will the Democrats become as bloated, as arrogant, as ideological, as crooked as the GOP?

Elsewhere there is evidence that the GOP is running scared while GOP positions are often conflicting and hypocritical. Overriding everything else, however, is Bush's catastrophic war on Iraq, supported by almost every American member of the GOP. Bush's tar baby is their tar baby and rightly so. A top-down party should be held to account for goose stepping into quagmire! The war against the people of Iraq is a war crime of unimaginable proportions and, by law, those supporting it materially and from leadership positions are just a culpable for Bush's crimes as were the Nuremberg defendants after World War II. I say: let's have that trial now!

It has been some time now since Bush lead Democrats on the issue of "terrorism". It is clear to all but a few diehards, like the Heritage Foundation who attacked me recently, that the war against Iraq has made terrorism worse, just as GOP regimes since 1980 have always made terrorism worse.

It been about a year since a TIME Magazine poll headlined: 3 in 5 Americans now say the nation is headed in the wrong direction. Certainly, nothing has changed for the better since that time. Certainly, if anything, things are made worse by Bush's perpetual war crime in Iraq. The time has come for a fundamental change. The question is: will the American people seize perhaps the last opportunity they will have as a nation to bring about a "rebirth of freedom".

An update:

Direct Election with Instant Runoff Voting:

Instant runoff voting (IRV) could be used for Presidential elections with or without the Electoral College. With a direct vote, voters would rank their preferences rather than marking only one candidate. Then, when the votes are counted, if no single candidate has a majority, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. The ballots are then counted again, this time tallying the second choice votes from those ballots indicating the eliminated candidate as the first choice. The process is repeated until a candidate receives a majority, reducing time and money wasted in a normal runoff election.

Instant runoff voting on a national scale has the potential to solve many of the current dilemmas introduced by the Electoral College as well as the problems introduced by some of the other alternatives. It would end the spoiler dynamic of third party and independent candidates and consistently produce a majority, nationwide winner. It also allows voters to select their favorite candidate without ensuring a vote for their least favorite (as often happens when the spoiler dynamic is a factor and a voter prefers a third candidate the most).

Individual states can also adopt instant runoffs without a Constitutional amendment. Unlike proportional allocation, which could be unfair if only used in some states, IRV would not have negative consequences if only adopted by a few states. Each state’s electors would still be appointed through a winner-take-all method, but the IRV states would now be guaranteed to have a winner with majority approval. IRV would be best instituted without the Electoral College though, so that the winner would not just enjoy a majority within any state, but within the entire country.

FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy strongly supports abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with direct elections and instant runoff voting. See our web page on Instant Runoff Voting for more descriptions and visual examples and our page refuting arguments against direct election with IRV.

Bush Sr: No Clue! Like Father, Like Son!

Additional resources

• A National Popular Vote
• Approval Voting

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