Today's Stories

October 14, 2008

Robert Richter
McCain: War Hero or War Criminal?

October 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Farewell to Daniel Cassidy

Michael Hudson
Rescue for the Few, Debt Slavery for the Many

Patrick Cockburn
Pogrom Against Mosul's Christians

Chris Floyd
The God That Failed: the 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult

Fidel Castro
The Law of the Jungle: Racism, Obama and the Fall of the American Economy

Robert Weitzel
Olmert's Depths of Reality

Derek Wright
How Chrysler Killed My Uncle

Stephen Soldz
Guantánamo's SERE Standard Operating Procedures

David Michael Green
Greed is Not Good

Norman Solomon
Requiem for the Bailout: a Storyline

Charles R. Larson
Toni Morrison on Her Own Terms

Lisa Massaciuccoli
The Shoplifting Association of the Americas

Website of the Day
Arlo Guthrie: "I'm Changing My Name to Fannie Mae"

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambition

Douglas Valentine
Mission CREEP: From John Mitchell to John McCain

Noam Chomsky
Exposing the Un-Democratic Face of Capitalism

Ralph Nader
The Derivatives Game

Syed Saleem Shahzad
Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

Paul Craig Roberts
A Possible Solution to the Economic Crisis

Mike Whitney
Run on the System

Peter Morici
The Deficit and the Damage Done

Christopher Ketcham
The End of the Economy

Stephen Martin
Shock and Awe in Economic Warfare

Chellis Glendinning
Wireless Mind, Gullible Mind

Saul Landau
All Guns, No Butter

Ahmad Faruqui
21 Days to Baghdad

Adam Turl
Sheriff Tom Dart vs. the Banksters

Serge Halimi
The Battle for the West

Anthony DiMaggio
Making a Killing: the Business of Elections

John Ross
The Sky is Falling on Mexico, Too

José M. Tirado
Meltdown in Iceland

Paul Krassner
Beat the Crowd in Denver: Cops and T-Shirts

David Macaray
Adventures in Unionism

Robert Fantina
Bankrupt and Belligerent

David Yearsley
The Playlist for Election 2008

Julian Clec'h
The Soap Washing Through Saudi Arabia

Adam Engel
Sexual Healing ... for the Planet

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones Go Home, Again

Missy Beattie
Going North: the Coming Nation of Alaska

Poets' Basement
Landau, Moser and Henson

Website of the Day
Sarah as Esther? New Video From Inside Palin's Church

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 14, 2008

Escaping the Legacy Trap

The Fall of the Bush Dynasty Plan

By LAURA CARLSEN

One day not long ago—hypothetically—the head honchos of the Bush administration sat down in the Oval Office. Long faces prevailed around the room. The agenda: "Transitioning from Plan A to Plan B."

Plan A, someone explained to the uninitiated, was the Dynasty Plan. The plan posited a continuation of Bush policies, notably the radical conservative game plan laid out in the 2002 National Security Strategy, under a new Republican administration.

No matter that six years after the unveiling of the National Security Strategy the majority of the U.S public rejected nearly all the basic premises of the doctrine. Although most Americans now weighed in against the war in Iraq, for adherence to international law and institutions, and against the role of the United States as global cop, the dynasty plan assumed that what was needed was a deepening of the same policies that had been applied over the previous eight years. Given the concentration and expansion of executive powers achieved over the Bush administrations, this could be done without explicit agreement from the citizenry.

To put the Dynasty Plan in place simply meant passing the torch to Republican Party candidate John McCain. In the beginning, this plan seemed relatively simple. There were no major differences between the outgoing and incoming executives. The de facto powers of state—defense and oil companies, neoconservative global architects—would hardly be disturbed. There was even talk of putting Jeb Bush on the ticket in the number-two spot, but some worried about the overly obvious dynastic implications of having a Bush on the ballot seven out of the last eight national elections. In any case, McCain could keep the seat warm for Brother Jeb in 2012.

There is no clearer formulation of this plan than the 2008 Republican platform. Not only does it affirm the most controversial aspects of the Bush doctrine, it also insists on unchecked presidential powers to order the pre-emptive strikes and unilateral measures that characterize the security strategy.

The platform doesn't mince words: "The waging of war—and the achieving of peace—should never be micromanaged in a party platform, or on the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives for that matter. In dealing with present conflicts and future crises, our next president must preserve all options." Besides the citizenry and the Congress, the other bodies that should never be allowed to interfere with dynastic power are international institutions. The platform states, "The United States participates in various international organizations which can, at times, serve the cause of peace and prosperity, but those organizations must never serve as a substitute for principled American leadership. Nor should our participation in them prevent our joining with other democracies to protect our vital national interests."

The Fall of the Dynasty Plan

This multi-generational strategy depended on holding executive power. But since the Dynasty Plan was first developed, things had gotten a lot more complicated. Hence the long faces.

First, the relay team dropped the torch. The president, whose job it was to pass the torch, began to lag seriously behind in the race, and then bungled the pass. Then the candidate, whose job it was to receive the torch, fumbled the hand-off, complaining that the torch itself was defective. Confusion ensued.

By the time the Bush team realized just how bad things were, they were worse. The polls—including some of the ones designed to manipulate, rather than reflect, public opinion—were showing alarming signs that the African-American, liberal, upstart would actually win the race. That would blow Plan A out of the water.

Not only was it unclear whether power could be transferred successfully under the original Dynasty Plan, there was now another major monkey wrench in the works. The financial system was crashing. Not flailing, not foundering, but crashing. In a way that could no longer be hidden from the public. The most privileged group of people under the Bush administration had broken even the tenuous tethers that the financial system had to a real economy through devious and ingenious machinations in financial instruments and the speculative bubble had burst. The situation was embarrassing, costly, and potentially fatal to Plan A.

Add that history-making mess to the mess in Iraq, and it was no wonder that the next runner had doubts about grabbing the torch that was being handed him. Under these circumstances, one could get seriously burned.

In short, the Republican's Dynasty Plan was in crisis on multiple fronts. Although all possible attempts would be considered to save it, including Dick Cheney's personal favorite, the "attack-a-foreign-country" or "October Surprise" option, there seemed to be no choice but to prepare Plan B—the "Legacy Plan."

Locking In a Legacy

The Legacy Plan recognizes the possibility that the Republicans could not only lose the White House, but that they could also face a situation of such widespread backlash against their disastrous policies that any form of recuperation would be temporarily shut down. This means that timelines have to be stepped way up on many of the administration's fondest structural changes. The goal under Plan B is to lock in as many of those policies as possible before turning over the keys of the White House.

This is exactly what the Bush administration has begun to do. In the area of foreign policy, not only have the goals of its own national security strategy not been realized after two administrations, but many of them are actually receding. The invasion of Iraq was exceedingly costly, not only in military and financial terms but also in political terms. And yet that troubled nation can still not be counted as the controlled source of oil and containment in the Middle East that proponents of the bloody occupation envisioned. Pressures for withdrawal have come from all quarters, including the Iraqi government.

In addition to seeing the goal of establishing a strong U.S. foothold in the oil-rich region fade away, the administration is no doubt feeling the heat from the defense industry at the prospect of future contracts drying up.

To fill the potential gap, the legacy plan is expanding defense spending in other areas and preparing the ground for new conflicts. The Bush administration has pushed increased military spending in Afghanistan and Pakistan and begun to deliver defense contracts for the U.S.-Mexico border region. The $162 billion Iraq supplementary passed in June provides significant breathing room to defense contractors in the case of a transition, but concerns are mounting about what will happen to bloated defense companies when the Iraq feed line is cut.

To move from dynasty to legacy in foreign policy requires two things—funding and political will. The Bush administration seems to have no real problems on the funding front. Despite its complaints about the policies, the Democrats have been generous to the Defense Department and forked over billions of dollars worth of funds to support Bush polices throughout the world. Based on Obama's statements and Washington inertia, it is likely that major cuts are not forthcoming in the near future, although they certainly should be.

The Latin American Legacy Plan

One region where the Bush administration has been working hard on its Legacy Plan over the past few months is Latin America. According to the binary "with us or against us" view of the administration, Latin America had wandered so far from the fold that a full half its territory must now be transferred from the conversion to the containment category. Venezuela's leadership on issues of South-South integration and solidarity aid have combined with major incursions by Chinese and European investors to decrease U.S. influence in the region. Grassroots movements are rejecting the free trade model and consequent inequality and in many cases electing progressive governments. Instead of viewing this as an opportunity to cooperate in new ways to resolve age-old problems of poverty and democracy, the Bush administration has cast it as a major threat.

Without control of the White House to reward friends and punish enemies, the goal of restoring U.S. hegemony and guaranteeing access to precious natural resources in the hemisphere for transnational corporations could fall out of reach.

The administration has already taken several major steps in Latin America to lock in its legacy. The most important is the Merida Initiative, a multi-year military and police aid package that includes equipment and training to Mexico and, to a lesser degree, Central America, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Congress already passed the first $465 million installment in June of this year and the 2009 spending request will be coming up soon.

This plan, described as a regional security cooperation initiative, locks in three Bush policies that have resulted in demonstrable failure, major human rights violations, and death: the war on drugs, the counterterrorism paradigm, and border security. The Merida Initiative replicates the Plan Colombia model of the war on drugs by focusing exclusively on interdiction and confrontation—a model that did not work in Colombia and will not work in Mexico.

The inclusion of counterterrorism imposes the failings of the model applied in the United States on its southern neighbors, where international terrorism has not been a threat and the political costs could be much higher. A 2004 report on the counterterrorism model noted six failings of this Bush policy, that also apply to the Merida Initiative: an o veremphasis on military responses, an under-estimation of role of and problems with intelligence sharing, a clear tendency to undermining democracy and civil liberties, a lack of focus on Homeland Security measures at home, a w eakening of international institutions, and a failure to attack root causes .

Finally, the linking of immigration enforcement with national security in the initiative mimics the language found in the Republican platform and throughout the Bush years. Migrants are equivalent to terrorists and drug-traffickers. The militarization of borders—not just the U.S.-Mexico border, but the Mexico-Guatemala border, as Mexico must assume the task of intercepting migrants before they get close to the United States—provides juicy contracts to the defense industry and has led to hundreds of migrant deaths and abuses.

The militarization of international relations and ever-increasing defense spending embodied in this plan has been shored up by other developments. Experts warn that the Commands (Central, North, and South) have developed their own dynamic, outside the control of the State Department.

The Democratic Congress failed to recognize that the Merida Initiative was designed to tie the hands of a Democratic administration by imposing a classic Bushian script on relations with our southern neighbors. Following the feint that Mexico simply needed help with its drug war, Democrats approved the funding.

Free trade is another front where the administration seeks to lock in its legacy. Described as the second pillar of the Bush national security strategy, in Latin America the divide between nations that have Free Trade Agreements with the United States and those that don't has been deepened by the Bush administration to the point of dividing the continent itself in half.

Legacy-locking action on this front has been frantic over the past few weeks. The Bush administration has lobbied heavily for passage of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, both to cement the Pacific rim chain of nations tied to the United States through these agreements, and to reinforce its geopolitical presence in the region through tighter ties to Colombia—one its few real allies.

President Bush has already suffered innumerable setbacks to its free market agenda in Latin America. The announcement of the Andean countries (except Colombia) that they had no interest in an FTA with the United States, the failure of the Free Trade Area of the Americas effort, and advances in South-South integration have eroded the U.S. free trade agenda.

So on Sept. 24 the White House hastily gathered its allies into a new "coalition of the willing" on trade, under the auspices of the pro-business Council of the Americas in Washington, DC. The resulting Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas Initiative joins Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and the United States, "to take stock of the significant progress we have made in our hemisphere through shared commitments to trade and investment liberalization, social inclusion, development, rule of law, and democracy."

The new proposal is to form a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). This is a recognition of the failure of the FTAA, and yet another example of the contortions geography has been submitted to in the name of U.S. geopolitics. When the proposed hemispheric regional integration hit a major snag (most of the largest economies in Latin America rejected the U.S. government's intransigent terms for the NAFTA-style FTAA), the map was redrawn to include only the Western nations signed on and Southeast Asia. This remapping of the region seeks specifically to head off the "Bolivarian" Latin America integration promoted by Chavez.

By locking in free trade agreements that destabilize developing countries and go against the call of the U.S. public to re-evaluate these agreements, the administration hopes to prevent backtracking on free market orthodoxy, even as the model demonstrates its colossal failure in the United States.

Escaping the Legacy Trap

Every outgoing administration seeks to lock in its policies and control over the system before handing the reins to the opposing camp. Whether it's stacking the courts, pardoning powerful buddies, or issuing executive decrees, the practice is as old as the hills and pretty much inevitable.

But the radical policy dictums of Bush foreign policy must not be allowed to continue. In these last weeks of the current administration, the Democrats and the public must identify and reject all administration measures that could leave a Democratic president hamstrung to make significant changes in foreign policy.

At present, the financial crisis bail-out has understandably obscured all other issues. But watch carefully what happens in the next few weeks. The Bush legacy laws could undermine the change that so many millions of Americans will stake their vote on in November.

Laura Carlsen (lcarlsen(at)ciponline.org) is director of the Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org) in Mexico City, where she has been a writer and analyst for more than two decades.

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