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Today's
Stories
December 4,
2006
Alexander Cockburn
Gaza
and Darfur
December 2
/ 3, 2006
Barucha Calamity
Peller
The
Dirty War of Oaxaca
Paul Craig
Roberts
Is Bush Sane?: When Denial Goes Pathological
Ralph Nader
The Big Boys of Financial Crime
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Committee of Enablers: Is Gates Fit to Serve? Are the Senators?
Amira Hass
The Checkpoint Generation
Maymanah Farhat
Depoliticizing Arab Art: Christie's and the Rush to "Discover"
the Arab World
Dave Lindorff
Fighting the Iraq War--At Home
Fred Gardner
Dr. Jimenez Defends His Practice Methods
Col. Dan Smith
The Semantics of Civil War
Raed Jarrar
Maliki's Monopoly of Power
Seth Sandronsky
US Prison Nation: Locking Up Surplus Labor
K.-Y. Taylor
The Bride Wore Black: the Shooting of Sean Bell and the Resurgence
of American Racism
Yifat Susskind
Greed, Dogma and AIDS
David Rosen
Made in China: the Global Trade in Sex Toys
Ron Jacobs
All Hands on Deck!: the New Pirates of the Caribbean
Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Prepares to Vote
Talli Nauman
Fighting La Choya: the Secret Toxic Dump on the Border
Alan Gregory
Shadow Trout: Why Hatchery Fish Aren't Real
Joe Allen
RFK and Hollywood Mythmaking: Emilio Estevez's Beatification
of Bobby Kennedy
St. Clair /
D'Antoni
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Davies, Engel, Ford and Orloski
Website of
the Day
Demo for Oaxaca
December 1,
2006
Greg Grandin
Midnight
in Mexico: Calderón's Inauguration Behind Closed Doors
Linn Washington,
Jr.
The
Mumia Case After 25 Years: Still More Keystone Kops Antics
George Ciccariello-Maher
Sleeping with the Enemy: At Home with the Anti-Chavistas
Brian J. Foley
Taking Responsibility for Iraq
Dave Zirin
Rebel Athletes: Organizing the Jocks for Justice
Joshua Frank
The Montana Formula: Jon Tester's Neopopulism
Chris Floyd
Hideous Kinky: Thomas Friedman Comes Undone
Ingmar Lee
Atomic Porker Strikes Indian Point Nuke Plant
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
Dark Fire: the Fall of WTC 7
Website of the Day
No Gun Ri Revisited
Video of the
Day
Drunken Hack Goes Ape at Aussie "Pulitzers"
November 30, 2006
Jonathan Cook
Palestinians
Are Being Denied the Right of Non-Violent Resistance
Tariq Ali
Axis of Hope: Venezuela and the Bolivarian Dream
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Confirmation
Hearings as Kabuki Dance
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
Heat and Steel: the Thermodynamics of 9/11
William S. Lind
More Troops Into a Lost War?
Ray McGovern
Gates is Rumsfeld Lite
Fidel Castro
"It is Our Duty to Save Our Species"
Agustin Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: So Close to the West, So Far From Democracy
CP News Service
The Arrest of Gerardo Bonilla: Muralist Among Oaxaca's Disappeared
Website of
the Day
The Life and Times of H-Bomb Ferguson
November 29, 2006
Glen Ford
Barack
Obama and the Winds of War
Chris Sands
Blood, Snow and NATO: the Latvian Summit Viewed from Afghanistan
Rochelle Gause
Dispatch from Oaxaca: Where Murderers Still Stalk the Streets,
Protected by Police
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
The Physics of 9/11
Norman Finkelstein
HRW's Shameful Press Release on Palestine
Peter Rost,
MD
Pfizer's Shell Game: the Contraction Begins
Gary Leupp
CIA Report: No Evidence of Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program
Joe DeRaymond
From Norman Morrison to Malachai Ritscher: Self-Immolation as
Anti-War Protest
Christopher Fons
Prostituting Democracy: History, Latvia and Bush's Night on the
Town in Riga
Sibel Edmonds
Auctioning Off Former Statesmen and Dime-a-Dozen Generals
Website of the Day
Bombing a Mosque
November 28,
2006
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq
Nears the "Saigon Moment"
Winslow T.
Wheeler
SASC-ing Robert Gates
Michael Ratner
The War Crimes Case Against Rumsfeld: a Q&A
John Ross
The War on Rebel Journalists
Molly Secours
Racism Kills: From Michael Richards to the NYPD
Peter Rost,
MD
Big Pharma and "the Pill": Profits, Branding and Experimentation
on Women
Lucinda Marshall
War Chic
Website of
the Day
"Action" in Iraq
November 27,
2006
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Genocide
or Erasure of Palestinians: Does It Matter What You Call It?
Uri Avnery
An Evening in Jounieh
Nikolas Kozloff
The Rise of Rafael Correa: Ecuador and the Contradictions of
Chavismo
Michael Donnelly
Freedom Air: Keeping the Skies Safe from Nipples and Muslims
Ben Terrall / John Miller
Bush's Big Indonesian Photo-Op
Robert Jensen
Digging In and Digging Deep
Sol Littman
Missing Canada's Health Care System in Tucson
Website of
the Day
State Minimum Wages: a Policy That Works
November 25
/ 26, 2006
Gabriel Kolko
Factors
in Our Colossal Mess
Saul Landau
Republic
of the Repressed
William Blum
New Congress, Same Quagmire
Ralph Nader
The Trouble with the Bubble
Fred Gardner
The War on Us: Another 1.9 Million Victims
Daniel Wolff
Return to District 8, New Orleans
M. Shahid Alam
Pitting the West Against Islam
James J. Brittain
Censorship in Colombia: the Arrest of Freddie Muñoz
George Ciccariello-Maher Contingency and Counter-Contingency
in Venezuela
Aseem Shrivastava
India on 20 Cents a Day
Seth Sandronsky
The Washington Post's War on Social Security
Julian Assange
The Curious Origins of Political Hacktivism
Christopher Brauchli
The Rout and the Honeymoon: In and Out of Bed with Bush
Michele Naar-Obed
A Letter to the Judge Who Sentenced My Husband to Federal Prison
for Protesting Nuclear Weapons
Ramzy Baroud
Reclaiming America
Christiane
Passevant /
Larry Portis
Women in the Israeli Army: Two New Films
Adam Engel
Striving of His Day-Days: a Prose Poem
Jeffrey St.
Clair /
David Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Davies, Gibbons, Louise, Buknatski, Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
The Black Agenda
November 24,
2006
Charles Glass
How
to Let Lebanon Live
Gideon Levy
A Prayer in Paradise
Jonathan Cook
Syria as Fallguy
Ron Jacobs
Build a Fire on Main Street: Stop the War, Now!
Brian McKenna
Native Resurgence Spurs Hope: Giving Thanks to America's Indians
Kim Ives
The UN Fails Haiti, Again
November 23,
2006
Alexander Cockburn
The
Democrats and the Slaughterhouse
November 22, 2006
Kathleen Christison
The
Massacre at Beit Hanoun
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's Lone Victory: Defeating the Bill of Rights
Mike Roselle
Green Muscle on Election Day: Now is the Time for Boldness
Dave Lindorff
The First Task of the New Congress
Greg Moses
Up From Chiapas: Giving Thanks to Women's Revolution
Dave Zirin
Born Under Punches: the Pimping of Mike Tyson
Nadia Martinez
Dealing with Ortega
Sherwood Ross
Why the World Needs Trade Unions Now More Than Ever
David Kalbfeisch
I Am A Navy Veteran Against Wars
Gilad Atzmon
Palestinian Solidarity in a Time of Massacres
Website of the Day
Sorry, Charlie: No Draft
November 21,
2006
Robert Bryce
The
Ongoing Myth of Energy Independence
John V. Walsh
Spoilers of the World Unite!
Luis Hernandez Navarro
Lessons from the Teachers of Oaxaca
Kevin Zeese
An Interview with Michael Isikoff on Iraq
Peter Rost, MD
Rules of the Game: How Big Corporations Avoid Paying Their Taxes
Evelyn Pringle
Drug Your Fetus: How Big Pharma Hits on Pregnant Women
Roger Morris
Reason in an Age of Folly (and Felony)
Don Monkerud
Here Come the Democrats ... So?
Website of the Day
The Grind
November 20,
2006
David H. Price
American
Anthropologists Stand Up Against Torture and the Occupation of
Iraq
Col. Dan Smith
Usurpation of Power
Katherine Hughes
Compassion on Trial in War on Terror: Muslim Charities and the
Case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir
Dave Himmelstein
Ziodammerung: Netanyahu and the End Times
Robert Jensen
Opportunities Lost
Joe Mowrey
America's Progressive Nightmare: Here Come the Armani Democrats
Mike Whitney
Housing Bubble Smack Down: Alan Greenspan, Homewrecker
Carl N. McDaniel
Living Within Limits
Robert Fisk
Shia Walk
Ramzy Baroud
Killing Hope in Beit Hanoun
Website of the Day
Iraq:
the Hidden Story
November 18
/ 19, 2006
Weekend Edition
Alexander Cockburn
Top
Dems to Voters: "Shut Up! We've Got a War to Run!"
Ralph Nader
The Hole in Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Lost the Senate
Barucha Calamity Peller
Who Will Live on in the Oaxaca Uprising?
John Ross
Halliburton Wrecks Mexico
Dave Lindorff
The Albatross: Why the Democrats Should Cut Loose Joe Lieberman
Fred Gardner
The Adverse Effects of Marijuana: California Medical Survey
Ron Jacobs
Back in the Aether Again: Thomas Pynchon's Stunning Return
Larry Portis
The Songs of Basilio Martin Patino: Father of the New Spanish
Cinema
Frida Berrigan
The Weapons Bonanza: a Perfect Storm of Profit
Wes Enzinna
Ghosts of Dictatorships Past: the School of the America's and
Memory in Latin America
Elizabeth Schulte
The Fall of Donald Rumsfeld: Architect of a Disaster
Peter Rost,
MD
The Credit Card Trap
Martha Rosenberg
We're Drinking What? Milk, rBST and Monsanto's Rats
Seth Sandronsky
University Unity: California's Professors and Students Unite
Missy Beattie
Explore This!
Adam Engel
Data Days
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Newberry and Curtis
Website of the Weekend
A Modest Proposal for the Art World
November 17,
2006
Greg Grandin
The
Road from Serfdom: Milton Friedman and the Economics of Empire
Joseph Massad
Pinochet in Palestine: Fateh's Unholy Alliance
Kevin Zeese
George McGovern's Return to Capitol Hill: "A Down-to-Earth
Disengagement Plan"
Gideon Levy
After the Rain of Death
Bill Quigley
WMDs Protected!: Blood-Pouring Anti-Nuke Clowns Sent to Prison
David Swanson
Last Chance for the Democrats?: a Tale of Two Conyers
Sherry Wolf
Gay Rights: When Will the US Catch Up with Africa?
Jerry Beisler
What James Webb Knows
Website of the Day
Thanks for the False Memories!
November 16,
2006
Kathy Kelly
Sources
of Violence
Col. Douglas
MacGregor
Was It Only Rumsfeld?
Norman Solomon
Operation Last Resort: the Media Offensive to Prolong the Iraq
War
Nikki Thanos
From Oaxaca to Portland
Cindy Sheehan
Impeachment Proceedings
Lena Khalaf
Tuffaha
Jimmy
Carter and the "A" Word: Will the Democrats Listen
to Carter on Palestine?
Gloria La Riva
Where is the Justice? Anti-Castro Terrorist Gets Only 4 Years
Pat Williams
How the Democrats Won the West
Kerry Joyce
From Rummy to Rahmmy: Bob Novak's New Source
CP News Service
Wal-Mart Charged with Selling Non-Organic Food as "Organic"
David Letterman
Top 10 Slogans for Wal-Mart Wine
James Ridgeway
Did Robert Gates' Planning Help Bring Black Hawk Down?
Website of
the Day
A Conversation with West Point Grads Against the War
November 15,
2006
Jennifer Loewenstein
Alice
in Erez: the Gaza Crossing
David Rosen
Rev. Ted Haggard and the Eclipse of Evangelical Fury
Ashley Smith
A Socialist in the Senate?
Landau / Hassen
Talking Tough on Iraq Isn't Courageous
Walden Bello
Iraq After November 7: New Challenges for the AntiWar Movement
Sibel Edmonds
The Highjacking of a Nation
Austin / Bernstein
Why Bill Cosby is Wrong to Link Black Culture to Economic Decline
Yitzhak Laor
This Merchandise, Security
James Rothenberg
Unimpeachable: a Brief Argument Why
Gail Dines
"Borat": It's a Guy Thing
Website of the Day
Kakistocracy
November 14, 2006
Werther
Beltway
Bromo-Seltzer: a Sneak Peak at the Baker Report
Ray McGovern
Benching Scowcroft
John Walsh
Korea, Vietnam and Iraq Syndrome: Alive, Well and Gaining Strength
David MacMichael
Gates to the Pentagon
William S.
Lind
Lose a War, Lose an Election
Sharon Smith
Democrats, Born to Compromise
Laura Carlsen
Oaxaca Fights Back
Ron Jacobs
The Perishing Republic
Peter Rost,
MD
Whistleblowers: Who Are They?
Carol Norris
Post-Campaign Ad Stress Disorder?
Website of
the Day
A Map of the US Nuclear Arsenal
November 13,
2006
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Screw
the Palestinians, Full Steam Ahead
Bill Quigley
Robin Hood in Reverse: the Corporate Looting of the Gulf Coast
Paul Craig Roberts
The Democrats and Civil Liberties: Will They Turn a Blind Eye?
Uri Avnery
Call It What It Is: a Massacre!
Joe DeRaymond
The Strange Return of Daniel Ortega
Norman Finkelstein
Jimmy Carter's Roadmap
Col. Dan Smith
The Pentagon's Revolving Gates: Out with the Old, In with the
Old
Shepherd Bliss
After the Party
Dave Lindorff
What Vote-Theft Conspiracy?
Missy Beattie
For Better / For Worse: Will Laura Stay the Course?
Trenticosta / Fleming
Vindication for the Angola 3
Weekend Edition
November 11 / 12, 2006
John Walsh
Rahm's
Losers
Barucha Calamity
Peller
Oaxaca at Any Cost
Al Krebs
Be Careful What You Wish For
Niall Meehan
Ireland's Freedom Struggle and the Foster School of Historical
Falsification
Conn Hallinan
The Ills of War: Shafting the Vets
Patrick Cockburn
"We
Worry About Staying Alive, Not the U.S. Elections"
Gary Leupp
Democrats Can Be NeoCons, Too
P. Sainath
India High and Low: the Anatomy of a Tiger
Nikolas Kozloff
The Return of Tom Lantos: Beware Venezuela, Here Come the Democratic
Hawks
Lawrence R.
Velvel
Throwing
Rumsfeld Under the Bus
Fred Gardner
Marijuana, the Anti-Drug
Ralph Nader
Taking on the Boss: Claybrook vs. the Chamber
Ben Terrall / John Miller
East Timor: 15 Years After the Massacre
Mike Whitney
Cheney in a Box
Joshua Frank
Post-Electoral Deliriums
Mukul Dube
The Death Penalty Case of Mohd. Afzal
Jason Hribal
Jesse: Eulogy for a Working Dog
Daniel Wolff
The Unseen Springsteen
Michael Donnelly
Red Rock Blues: the Moab Folk Festival
Lord Montague
A Dissenting Note on the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Buknatski and Orloski
November 10,
2006
Alexander Cockburn
Lame
Duck
Marjorie Cohn
The War Crimes Case Against Rumsfeld
Jorge Mariscal
What Veterans See
Gregory Elich
The Trial of Saddam: Who Will Pass Judgment on the Judges?
Joshua Frank
Blue Dog Group: Bye-Bye Coke, Hello Pepsi
Megan Boler
The Joke is On Us: How "Borat" Lowers the Bar of Political
Satire
Ramzy Baroud
The Treacherous Road to Oslo Begins Here
Farzana Versey
An Iraqi in India
Roberto Rodriguez
A Thumpin' or a Whippin'?
Cartoon of
the Day
Splat!
November 9,
2006
Jennifer Loewenstein
How
Gaza Offends Us All
Patrick Cockburn
War of the Snipers
Paul Craig Roberts
Will Democrats Become Part of the Problem?
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
The Roots of Corruption
Mike Whitney
Bush's Chernobyl Economy
Alan Maass
The Repudiation of One-Party Rule
Robert Jensen
Blood on the Tracks: the Elections and the Coming Train Wreck
Nicola Nasser
Saddam's Trial in Context
John Chuckman
As I Lay Dying: Watching the US Elections from Canada
Jamal Juma
Between Resistance and Deception in Palestine
Felice Pace
Can the Klamath be Restored?
Website of
the Day
The Robert Gates Files
November 8,
2006
Alexander Cockburn
/ Jeffrey St. Clair
Count
Your Blessings: NeoCons and NeoLibs Take Big Hit as Voters Say
No to Bush, War and Free Trade
Lawrence E.
Walsh
Robert Gates and Iran/Contra: Lies, Cover Ups and Slanted Intelligence
Bruce K. Gagnon
What's Next for the Peace Movement?: Confront the Democrats,
Now!
Neve Gordon
Anti-Semitism?
Mr. Dershowitz, You Just Don't Like What I Say
Dave Lindorff
Election Post-Mortem: What's Next?
Arthur Neslen
Another Tragic Day in Palestine
Joshua Frank
An Election Hangover: Thank God It's Over
James Goodman
The Corporate Food System is Broken
Charles Sullivan
Voting in the Absence of Choice
David Swanson
Subpoena Envy: The Dems Have the Power, But Will They Use It?
Missy Beattie
The Electorate Speaks and Barney Barks!
Dr. Susan Block
American Voters Say, "Bush Sucks!"
Website of the Day
Stealing Olive Groves from Palestinians
November 7,
2006
Michael Neumann
Cut
and Run from Iraq: Sooner Rather Than Later
Paul Wolf
Saddam Must Die: A Pre-Ordained Verdict
Nikolas Kozloff
In Nicaragua, a Chavez Wave?
Eliza Ernshire
The Women of Beit Hanoun
William S. Lind
The Smile on Saddam's Face: He's Tan, Rested and Ready
Mike Ferner
Pick a Number: Greater Than 47,615
Felice Pace
Pumping the Klamath Dry
Chris Genovali
The Problem with PBDEs: Why Canada's Proposed Ban Won't Protect
People or Wildlife
Gilad Atzmon
Watching Borat
Dick J. Reavis
Going to Class War with the Proletariat We Got ...
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Lives (and Votes) Lost: the Ordeal of Larry Peterson
Website of
the Day
Magic Sam: a Sure Cure for the Election Day Blues
Question of the Day
Is Bush Gay?
November 6,
2006
Alexander Cockburn
The
Message of Campaign 2006
Norman Solomon
Saddam's
Unindicted Co-Conspirator: Donald Rumsfeld
Robert Fisk
A Guilty Verdict on America, as Well
Marjorie Cohn
The Banana Election: From Hanging Chads to Hanging Saddam
Paul Craig Roberts
The Goose and the Gander: Is Bush Next?
Nikolas Kozloff
Election Eve Jitters: the Chavez Factor
Newton Garver
The Progress in Bolivia: Morales' Stunning Victory Over Big Oil
Mike Whitney
Bush's Carnival of Blood
Jesse Hagopian
From the Black Panthers to the Green Party: an Interview with
Aaron Dixon
Dr. Peter Rost,
MD
The Genocide Election: When a Life Saving Industry Cheats, People
Die
Website of
the Day
Robert Pollin vs. Rick Wolff: Is Pomo Marxism Marxism?
November 4
/ 5, 2006
Dave Zirin
Political
Players: Where Athletes Give Their Money
Patrick Cockburn
When
Does Incompetence Become a Crime?
Sanho Tree
War
Timing and Opportunism
Ralph Nader
Failure
Across All Fronts
Lee Sustar
The Obama Myth
Dr. Shepherd Bliss
Torture Memories
Adam Elkus
Babies and Banks: Celebrity Colonialism in Africa
Seth Sandronsky
Is Another Recession Looming?
Fred Gardner
10 Years of Medical Pot in California: Dr. Mikuriya's Observations
Joshua Sperber
How the US Lost Latin America
Evelyn Pringle
Ohio Redux: Mr. Blackwell and the Henhouse
Mitchel Cohen
The Left and the Environment: Notes on the Ecological Dimension
Missy Beattie
The Medium is the Massage
Michael Dickinson
Watching the Guards: a Prison Diary
John Holt
The Silk Road to Ruin
Dr. Susan Block
The Beastly Bombing
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Engel, Orloski and Davies
November 3, 2006
Laura Carlsen
Day
of the Dead in Oaxaca
Stephan Said
Honoring Bradley Will
John Stauber
"Victory in Iraq:" The PR Machine Behind Bush's Favorite
Slogan
Mike Whitney
Baghdad is Surrounded
Joshua Frank
DNC Deja Vu
Victoria Furio
More Than Timetables
Tammara~85,441
They Say He is Coming Home
Stuart Croswaithe
Beatings and Sugar Plums: New Labor's War on the Kurds
Missy Beattie
Bush Shock
Website of
the Day
Howlin' Wolf
November 2, 2006
Winslow T.
Wheeler
The
US Body Count in Iraq: an Analysis of Who is Dying and How
Paul Craig
Roberts
Evil
is as Evil Does
Dave Lindorff
Kerry Out: the Joke's Still on Us
Uri Avnery
The
Lovable Man? Lieberman and the Decline of Israeli Democracy
Jeff Birkenstein
Smearing Harold Ford in Black Face
John Ross
Slave Labor in Private Prisons
Zoltan Grossman
Recharging the Anti-War Movement
Eveyln Pringle
The SEC's Probe of Halliburton: Is Cheney Being Fitted for a
Striped Jumpsuit?
Christopher
Brauchli
Drug Profits and PACs: Why Big Pharma Pushes the GOP
November 1,
2006
Alan Dershowitz
v. Bruce Jackson
On
Torture
Brian Tokar
Running
on Hype: the Real Scoop on Biofuels
Fred Leonhardt
Democrats,
Sex Crimes and the Press: the Goldschmidt Affair
Richard W.
Behan
Triumph
of the Petropublicans: Bush's Other Civil War
Brenda Norrell
Indigenous Opposition to the Border Wall
Charles Sullivan
Spoils of Corruption: Who Will Stand Up When America Goes Wrong?
Ron Jacobs
Hell is Rising in Oaxaca: interview with a Oaxacan Rebel
Mike Knapp
Green Stench in Minnesota: the Commissioner and the Hog Lot
Moshe Adler
The Temptations of a Union Boss: the Case of Brian McLaughlin
Walden Bello
Chain Gang Economics
Lee Ballinger
The Collapse of Hip Capitalism: How Tower Records Committed Suicide
Joshua Frank
Party in a Cage: Snake Oil and the Midterm Elections
Carl Gelderloos
Cheerleading the Massacre in Oaxaca: an Open Letter to the Washington
Post
Peter Rost,
MD
Panic
in Big Pharma
Saul Landau
Bush's
Anti-Terrorism Record: Don't Look Too Close
Website of the Day
The Meatrix
|
December
4, 2006
The Price of Imperial Overreach
The
Withering of the Bush Dynasty
By STEPHEN LENDMAN
The Bush family has been characterized
in various ways including the Bush dynasty, crime family or
syndicate. George Bush is just the latest in a line of unsavory
characters but clearly the bad or worst seed and, in the eyes
of most honest observers, the least worthy of an unworthy lot.
He was supposed to be the latest in the Bush family line chosen
to lay another golden egg for the dynasty but turned out instead
to be an ugly duckling who's just been an embarrassment and much
worse because of the course he chose and his rigid ideological
obstinacy to change even in the face of failure.
The Bush family considers itself
among the special chosen ones if based only on its royal heritage.
The family is connected by blood to every European monarch on
and off the throne including every member of the British House
of Windsor. That relationship is more than familial and extends
to the president's father having close business dealings with
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip who themselves are connected
to the notorious Carlyle Group that also employs GHW Bush as
a "senior consultant" and master-rainmaker/fixer-arranger
at a very high price for his services.
George W. Bush, of course,
is in the bloodline and is a distant cousin of the Queen and
Prince Charles. This American "royal" family traces
its heritage back to 15th century Britain at the time of Henry
VIII or earlier, but its royal connection is not unique to Washington
politicos as both Al Gore and John Kerry also have familial ties
to the British crown, and ironically Gore is a distant cousin
of his former presidential rival from having been a direct descendant
of Charlemagne when he was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
Truth is indeed stranger or at least more ironic than fiction.
The modern-era Bush family
dynasty goes back four generations and was connected to the military-industrial
complex of its day during and after WW I much like the most recent
two Bush generations are to the present one. It began with George
H. Walker and Samuel Prescott acting as duel founding fathers
of what turned out to be a criminal enterprise run under the
family name much like it is under a local Godfather except for
much bigger stakes and with the government of the United States
acting as protector, benefactor and enforcer.
Walker was a St. Louis financier
who later went to work for Averell Harriman as president of WA
Harriman & Company, a banking business that invested in railroads,
shipping, aviation and commodities like oil. Samuel Prescott
Bush, the current president's other great grandfather, was a
major Ohio industrialist and ran the Buckeye Steel Castings Co.
that produced armaments. He later went to Washington to run the
small arms, ammunition and ordnance section of the War Industries
Board and became a close advisor to Herbert Hoover.
The president's grandfather
Prescott Bush, Sam's son, had a varied career as a US Senator,
Wall Street investment banker with Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH
and same Harriman) and as a director of various companies involved
in war production including Dresser Industries where his son,
the president's father, later worked for a time. A hundred years
ago, the Bush family was also connected to John D. Rockefeller
and Standard Oil and later with a number of Wall Street firms
as well as with the US intelligence community since WWI.
Above all, this is a family
that formed strong ties to the institutions of power that began
in industry and Wall Street and was parlayed to become a powerful
political dynasty that included a US senator, two governors,
a congressman, vice-president, CIA director and two presidents
(the current president's father, of course, having been a congressman,
CIA director and vice-president before being elected president
in 1988).
Prescott, the president's grandfather,
had a particularly unsavory connection as recently declassified
documents show. He was a director of New York based Union Banking
Corporation (UBC) that was a holding company for the Nazis and
represented the German steel industrialist Fritz Thyssen who
was intimately involved with the Nazi regime. He was also a
director and shareholder of various other companies involved
with Thyssen. UBC bought and shipped millions of dollars of
gold, oil, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany that
helped build and support the Nazi war machine. Prescott was
also with Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) when the firm did business
with the Nazis during the 1930s that continued during the early
years of WW II until the company's assets were seized in 1942
under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
What BBH did and paid a price
for, many other US corporations did as well, prospered from and
were never held to account for their lawlessness. Charles Higham
documented much of it in his 1983 book called Trading with the
Enemy in which he showed evidence of how major companies in America
like the Rockefellers' Chase Bank and Standard Oil, Ford, General
Motors and other corporate giants had no political or ideological
problem doing business routinely with Nazi Germany during the
war. It was just business with another good customer, no matter
what the customer's business was.
Particularly heinous was the
role of IBM Headquarters System Engineering, Design Automation
and Management (not covered in the Highman book) when it was
run by Thomas Watson. The company used IBM tabulation equipment
to set up a system for the Nazis to locate all the Jews of Europe
and then sort, file and categorize them for extermination in
the death camps using the company's equipment and whose camp
personnel IBM employees trained. All the while this went on,
IBM managed to fend off US War Department probes into its illicit
activities so it could continue to profit handsomely from the
Nazi genocide the company knew was taking place and was facilitating
- all for the big "blood money" profits involved.
Current shareholders of the company's stock might wish to take
note of this and reconsider their investment choice.
BBH had no problem cashing
in either, and by the late 1930s claimed to be the world's largest
investment banking firm in business like all others to make money,
and like most others, as willing to do it with regimes like the
Nazis as with any other customer. George Herbert Walker and
Averell Harriman, who later became a prominent politician and
diplomat serving under four US presidents, have been characterized
by some as two evil geniuses who saw no difference in dealing
with the Bolsheviks in Russia as with Hitler and the Nazis.
For them, business was business just the way it is today and
in the 1980s when GHW Bush as vice-president and president was
willing and eager to be part of the scheme to arm Saddam Hussein
who then became public enemy number one to be demonized for using
the weapons supplied him by US and other western corporations
when he was an ally.
Before his son succeeded him
in the Oval Office (8 years removed), GHW Bush was involved in
a long laundry list of criminal activities he never could have
gotten away with under a system of law and order with those
violating it held to account. He never was. As CIA chief in
1976 under Gerald Ford, the elder Bush was in charge of covering
up the Agency's involvement in coup d'etats and assassinations
of foreign leaders including its connection to an earlier September
11 - the one in 1973 ousting and murdering democratically elected
President Salvador Allende in Chile that established the 17 year
fascist dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet who, despite
his despotism, became a close US ally.
The president's father was
also deeply involved in the secret, illegal negotiations with
Iran in the 1980s, when he was vice-president, that led to the
Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal that broke in 1986. With
the help of friends in the Congress, including Dick Cheney who
served then in the House and the corporate media that always
looks the other way, he was able to escape investigation and
scrutiny. They helped him get away with a strategy of lies and
aggressive cover-ups to stay untarnished. It freed him to pursue
and secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 and
the highest office in the land he always wanted to hold, maybe
because he felt his royal blood entitled him to it.
In 1992, Iran-Contra special
prosecutor Lawrence Walsh (who took his job seriously unlike
his successors) uncovered evidence linking the president to the
illegal operation and lying to the public about it, but "trickier-than-Nixon"
Bush pardoned six indicted Iran-Contra figures shortly before
he left office to bury the evidence against himself and slither
away unscathed again. He's now seen as an esteemed elder statesman,
his past buried, forgotten and above rebuke. No matter the truth
is quite another matter that went down "the memory hole"
and is no longer part of the "official" historical
record. That judgmental error paved the way for a member of
the next Bush generation to ascend to the nation's highest office,
a move not turning out as planned.
A Dynastic
Success Story Now on Shaky Footing
A Bush family tradition of
lying with impunity, operating freely outside the law and getting
away with it was no obstacle for the next family member in line,
George W. Bush, to be chosen by his party to enter the presidential
race in 2000. He got the nomination after serving six years
as Texas governor distinguished only by a record of indifference
to the public and a total dedication to the business interests
in the state. It meant giant corporations were salivating at
the thought of having a man like this in the White House serving
them in that capacity the same way he did it for the business
community in Texas. Thanks to a fraud-laden election, he got
the job the old-fashioned way - his influential friends and family
stole it for him as arranged by family consigliere and master-fixer
Jim Baker securing the necessary 25 Florida electoral votes helped
along by the complicity of five friendly Supreme Court justices
who had to be in on the scheme.
The corporate interests got
their main man in Washington, and for a short time seemed to
be in "good hands" with him. But lying and getting
away with it only works when the schemes lied about go according
to plan. Bumps aside, the rise of the Bush dynasty to prominence
and power, went well through the ascendency and tenure of George
Herbert Walker Bush, the president's father, which included the
election and reelection George W. Bush's younger brother Jeb
as governor of Florida after an initial failed bid for the office
in 1994 and George W's time as Texas governor.
Nothing lasts forever though,
and as best laid as the plans were, they went awry with the misguided
selection of the younger George to carry the family banner as
the rightful successor to assume the position of supreme leader
of the free world and lord and master of the universe. He wasn't
the family's first choice and only got bumped up to that spot
in line after brother Jeb's initial gubernatorial defeat - one
the family must now look back on as a major turning point in
the family's political fortunes that going forward may be irreversible.
It should have been an omen
of things to come when if it hadn't been for the intervention
of Jim Baker and those five arrogant High Court justices, in
an election Al Gore clearly won, George Bush would have had to
have found another line of work. The justices chose to rewrite
the law giving themselves the power to annul the vote of the
electorate to install their preferred candidate in the office
they gifted to him the same way he's gotten everything else in
his privileged life he never deserved and never had to work for.
It's the way it's always been for a man of questionable ability
and dubious character going back to his days as a youth when
at best his behavior could only be charitably described as mischievous
and without significant achievement. This is a man who rose to
the top the way former Texas governor Ann Richards described
it - as "someone born on third base (thinking) he hit a
triple."
Six disastrous years later,
this man now must not only choose a new career path in two more
years, he must also employ a good legal defense team at the ready
for the inevitable law suits sure to be filed against him once
he leaves office in January, 2009 - a time that can't come soon
enough for most and that many wanting him impeached and ousted
aren't willing to wait for and may press their demands he go
a lot sooner and face the music for his high crimes of war, against
humanity and against the people of the United States.
As the current holder of the
nation's highest office, George Bush is not unique. As Noam
Chomsky rightfully observes: "If the Nuremberg laws were
applied, then every post-(WW II) American president would have
to be hanged (like the worst of the Nazi war criminals found
guilty)." Other than the Vietnam era (that family influence
let him bypass in a comfortable Texas National Guard slot he
rarely showed up for), and arguably the Korean war one as well,
the only difference about George Bush as president is the immensity
of his crimes and his hard line arrogance and indifference about
them and toward the people he's harmed at home and abroad. He's
undeterred and committed to press on with what he sees as a messianic
mission, or even royal prerogative, and that makes him stand
out as a special rogue who's already surpassed all others before
him holding the nation's highest office.
Plans to
Save the Bush Administration and Its Disastrous Misadventure
in Iraq
With a lot of help from the
Congress and complicit corporate media that continues to shield
him, George Bush not only took the nation to war against two
countries that never threatened us based on lies, deceit and
cover-up, he's determined to push on to a victory that can't
be won and is listening to sinister advice from the wrong people
telling him to do it. Proposals of what happens going forward
are showing up in a number of reports (related to the work of
the Iraq Study Group - ISG) including one on November 16 in the
London Guardian and a later one on November 30 discussed below.
They follow a meeting George Bush, the vice-president and key
administration officials had with the ISG, or Baker Commission,
that was formed in March to draft a new course in Iraq because
the current one isn't working, and it's led many high level business
and political figures to believe it's leading the country to
an inevitable disastrous train wreck unless redirected. It's
also trying to rescue the family's reputation and presidency
of the current incumbent, but it will be hard-pressed to do either.
The Guardian reported that
the president told his senior advisors (or more likely Dick Cheney
and other hard liners told him) the US military (with any help
it can get) must make "a last big push" to win the
war in Iraq and instead of beginning a drawdown in force strength,
he may send an additional 20,000 more soldiers into this cauldron
even against the advice of his Central Command (CENTCOM) commander-in-chief
on the ground General John Abizaid who testified before Congress
the same day the president was ignoring his advice that now may
be changing after hearing what his boss had to say.
Whatever is said publicly or
is released in the ISG report, all that matters is what, in fact,
will happen going forward and that may be a clear example of
a clinical definition of insanity - continuing to do the same
things (more or less) that have failed, expecting a different
result. It may also be more evidence that was first reported
in Capitol Hill Blue on September 5 that Bush has gone over the
edge and that Republican and Bush family insiders, including
the president's father, are worried George Bush may be heading
for a "full-fledged mental breakdown" judging by his
bizarre or irrational behavior.
Jeffrey Steinberg writing in
Executive Intelligence Review said GHW Bush fears his son is
obsessed with his messianic mission and is "unreachable"
even by some of his closest advisors like Secretary Rice. That
view was also stated by prominent psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank,
who wrote Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.
He said: "With every passing week, President Bush marches
deeper and deeper into a world of his own making. Central to
Bush's world is an iron will which demands that external reality
be changed to conform to his personal view of how things are."
Dr. Frank added that George Bush needs psychiatric help.
The US military and the public
along with all Iraqis better hope it comes soon before he inflames
the entire Middle East and a lot more with it. That's what the
Baker Commission and president's father are determined to avoid
even though the plan they draft, or what we're told about it,
will likely have no better solution in the end than the one Bush
and his hard liners are now pursuing.
According to the Guardian report,
the ISG is circulating its recommendations in a four-point "victory
strategy" developed with help from Pentagon officials advising
them. It's also getting lots of advice from a number of influential
conservative think tanks whose members are part of "working
groups" dealing with issues of the military and security,
the economy and reconstruction, the political structure, and
fine-tuning geostrategy that includes no change in the country's
imperial agenda meaning the US military is in Iraq to stay whatever
the final ISG report says.
Point One - calls for an initial
increase in force size that may be the 20,000 George Bush is
calling for to "secure Baghdad" where along with most
all of al-Anbar province is where most of the country's violence
is.
Point Two - stresses the importance
of regional cooperation that will have to include Iran and Syria
along with Iraq's other immediate neighbors. It could involve
convening an international conference requesting diplomatic,
political and financial help - the latter mostly from the Saudis
and Kuwaitis.
Jim Baker knows without Iranian
and Syrian cooperation, any hope for conflict resolution in Iraq
is impossible, and even with it it's doubtful at best. Unspoken
in the report and commentary is the one player with all the trump
cards that's left out of the high-level consultations - the Iraqi
resistance and great majority of Iraqi people who'll settle for
nothing less than what the Baker Commission will never propose
and George Bush and the neocons will never agree to - a full
and unconditional withdrawal, no strings attached with reparations
for the damage done that's almost incalculable. That reality
is what all the high-level thinkers and planners are up against.
Jim Baker surely knows this whatever his final proposal is.
In another article on the ISG, this writer characterized Baker's
efforts as a job for Superman and then some, and any hope for
success is even more than the redoubtable Jim Baker and his high-level
insider team are likely to achieve. Making it even harder will
be the influence of the powerful Israeli Lobby that wants the
US to press on at least with an attack against Iran and surely
not engage the Iranians or Syrians in constructive dialogue about
Iraq or anything else.
Point Three - focuses on an
effort toward reconciliation among the sectarian ethnic and religious
groups to win over consensus among them. The report cited the
belief that doing this is crucial to convincing neighboring countries
that Iraq can again become a fully functioning state, but conflicting
reports about this idea are now surfacing days ahead of the ISG
report's release.
If these ideas end up being
adopted, they'll violate everything the Bush administration did
since March, 2003 when the strategy was, and still is, to destroy
all the institutions of a modern secular society in the country
along with its historical treasures to transform this once modern
and prosperous nation into an impotent desert kingdom populated
by easily controlled serfs. It will take more than just a major
effort, if one is even intended, to put that "Humpty Dumpty"
back together again.
Oddly, or maybe in just a momentary
case of bad judgment, the Guardian writer said neocon ideas about
"imposing" western-style democracy will have to be
set aside. It's hard to imagine the writer doesn't understand
that's the one thing US imperial strategy never tolerates and
was never part of the plan for "the new Iraq." A nation
of serfs is not one of democracy, and predatory capitalism and
democracy go no better together than fire and water.
The report goes on to say that
partitioning Iraq into a tripartite loose federation won't be
recommended as it would only lead to a large-scale humanitarian
crisis. It's hard to imagine anything worse than the US-created
one now on the ground that's out-of-control by any measure.
Point Four - calls for increased
resources to be allocated for additional troop deployments and
to train and equip an expanded Iraqi army and police. It will
also call for efforts to stem corruption that reportedly has
involved the theft of billions, most of which has been pilfered
by US contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel Corporation (closely
tied to the White House) that either did shoddy work they were
assigned (other than for US installations) or little or none
at all but still pocketed many billions of US taxpayer dollars
with nary a wink or nod of disapproval from the Bush administration
that effectively gave them and others a license to steal.
This point also will call for
improving local government and curtailing the power of religious
courts and mentions that Bush may be mesmerized by the "Svengali"
or "Rasputin" advice of fellow war-criminal Henry Kissinger
who believes winning in Iraq is just a matter of "political
will" - just the way it worked for Henry in Vietnam. Bush
echoed that advice ironically while visiting the capital of the
country's last "Waterloo." When arriving in Vietnam
for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, he was
asked about comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam and said: "We'll
succeed unless we quit. We tend to want there to be instant
success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a
while."
It's taking quite a long while
as the US has now been at war in Iraq against a guerrilla resistance
longer than it took the country to defeat the Nazis and Japanese
in WW II, and those countries had a lot more going for them than
car and roadside bombs to fight us. That reality and Bush's
remarks show how in denial this man is just like the country's
leadership was in the 1960s and 70s believing (in their public
statements at least) staying the course would achieve the victory
beyond their reach.
But hold on - Bush's "Svengali"
seems to be advising him one way and commenting another in a
BBC November 19 interview where away from the US media spotlight
he said he now believes military victory in Iraq is no longer
possible, the administration's policy failed and is headed for
"disastrous consequences (to haunt the world) for many years....we
have to redefine the course ("stay" is now "redefine")....I
don't think the alternative is between military victory....or
total withdrawal," and there should be a regional conference
of the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Iraq's
regional neighbors including Iran to work out a way forward -
meaning the Bush administration got us into this mess so will
Iraq's regional neighbors and other world powers please help
get us out of it. Now which way is it Henry - will the real
Henry Kissinger please stand up and show us who the real one
is.
He may or may not be helped
by a November 30 report in the New York Times, Washington Post,
online in Capitol Hill Blue and elsewhere. It cites a well-placed
source saying the ISG decided to recommend a major withdrawal
of US forces from Iraq in a process of transitioning from a combat
to a support role over the next year or so but with no specific
timetable recommended. It all depends "on a series of conditions
and qualifications" governing the drawdown in language suggesting
as much smoke and mirrors backside-covering fudging as any real
substantive change of policy.
That's apparently the message
from national security advisor Stephen Hadley in a November memo
to George Bush saying (the ISG report) "is neither 'cut
and run' nor 'stay the course.' " It's also what an unnamed
senior Pentagon military officer involved in crafting Iraq policy
likely meant when he said: "The question is whether it doesn't
look like a timeline to Bush, and does to (Iraq prime minister)
al-Maliki." It's another example of what the New York Times
calls "a classic Washington compromise" - meaning "now
you see a change of policy, and now you don't."
In harsher terms, it's what
Newsweek magazine writer Michael Hirsh calls "A Bust in
Bakerville" in his November 29 article subtitled "Iraq
can no longer be won or lost. Why the study group won't solve
anything." But Hirsh spoils his article toward its end
by suggesting Iraq is "manageable" and what's needed,
instead of consensus, is a "no-nonsense negotiator who can
grapple with the reality of the American failure....and seek
the most honorable way out (like a) Richard Holbrooke or Henry
Kissinger....(or) the best hope for....an adult solution (from
Defense Secretary-designate) Robert Gates."
It all seems surreal at this
point, but what it comes down to is an attempt to pacify the
US public and critics of the war. It's to buy more time for
a failed Bush presidency looking more all the time like a house
of cards nearing collapse, hoping to save it along with the family's
name and reputation. By couching recommendations in terms of
possibilities to be decided later depending on conditions in
the country, the ISG report apparently will be "much ado
about nothing" signaling no real change at all and a faint
hope at best to rescue George Bush from the fate he deserves.
There's no hiding from the
fact that conditions in Iraq are deplorable and out-of-the-control
of the US military looking pathetic against an opponent it can't
even see and impossible to subdue. It's not likely to fare much
better going forward than it has up to now in the face of a determined
resistance and mass Iraqi opposition to an occupation they want
to end and will keep fighting against it until it does whether
the US military stays in the streets or is hunkered down in its
self-contained permanent super-bases.
Still, with a brave face, the
report apparently will recommend that US forces redeploy to its
key bases inside the country and elsewhere in the region and
turn over more responsibility to Iraqi security forces for frontline
operations when and if they can handle them. So far they can't
and aren't likely to do much better ahead as many recruited into
them are from the very resistance forces the US military is fighting
and most others joined up for a paycheck with no ideological
commitment to the occupying power offered in return for it -
not the best set of circumstances for building an effective satrap
security force.
The report will also call for
convening a regional conference of Iraq's neighbors that will
have to include Iran and Syria which the Israeli Lobby is fighting
to prevent and so far the Bush administration has preconditions
for unacceptable at least to the Iranians.
Further, the report mentions
recommendations being considered by the Pentagon Joint Chiefs
who seem to be leaning toward a brief increase in force size
followed by a partial drawdown and a shift, like the ISG plan,
from a combat role to one involving training, advising and backup.
The Pentagon option is called "go long" and apparently
calls for a large US military presence in Iraq for five to ten
years which sounds very much like cover saying there will be
no exit strategy just the way it turned out in South Korea still
occupied by about 30,000 US forces a half century after the war
there ended, and there are no hostilities or threats unless the
US provokes one. The Times and Post said the ISG report (said
to be about 100 pages) will be released on December 6, at least
whatever portion of it the public gets to see.
One other supposedly "classified
memorandum" on the war showed up on pages of the New York
Times on December 3. It's from former Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld sent to the White House on November 6, two days before
he was sacked from the job he showed he couldn't handle long
ago. On the one hand, it's a rather surprising admission of
personal failure and need for a change of course, but on the
other it may more of a thinly-veiled, late-in-the-game attempt
to burnish an image too tarnished for any public relations makeover
at this stage. But you can't blame the guy for trying, and he'll
probably get some media-directed help ahead for what little good
it may do.
In language trying to convey
an image of elder statesman but dripping with mea culpas, Rumsfeld
acknowledges "In my view it is time for a major adjustment....Clearly,
what US forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well
enough or fast enough." Of course, they're doing what he
ordered them to do, and he, more than anyone else, bears the
most responsibility for all that's happened in Iraq since the
war began - but you won't hear that in the media-directed attempted
makeover.
The former secretary then lays
out the policy changes he recommends in a set of attractive "Above
the Line Illustrative Options" and less attractive "Below
the Line" ones. Some of it sounds much like what the ISG
will propose and the "new" direction the Pentagon seems
to be leaning to in its planning. But Rumsfeld can't resist
suggesting a lot of the blame goes to the Iraqi puppet government
that must "pull up (its) socks" and change its "bad
behavior." This kind of talk is now coming out of the White
House and echoed in the corporate media - a shameless attempt
to shift blame for what US forces have done and bear full responsibility
for to an installed Iraqi government with no authority and no
power to do anything more in the country than clear away the
daily carnage on the streets caused by the US presence there.
Mr. Rumsfeld and his administration allies planned, directed
and lied their way into this mess, and now he and they are trying
to lie their way out of it by shifting the blame to the Iraqis
that had nothing to do with it with a lot of help from their
corporate media allies. It's a classic example of Washington-spin
dutifully picked up and echoed in the mainstream hoping to make
the victim look like the responsible party.
Cheerleading
101 - It's What the Dominant Corporate-Controlled Media Does
Best, and They're At It Again
When in trouble, as the Bush
administration clearly is, it can count on its corporate media
allies to step up and help out just as they did it during the
Johnson-Nixon years when they backed their "stay the course"
and "Vietnamization" agendas. They're always out in
front delivering the "proper message" and leading the
cheerleading as they are now for what's highlighted above and
the new Bush rhetoric of "success" however Henry Kissinger
and others define it. It's highlighted in a November 16 article
by media critic and columnist Norman Solomon titled The New Media
Offensive to Prolong the Iraq War posted on Counterpunch. In
it, he says the pro-war cheerleading is being featured on the
front page of the New York Times (as it always is) by columnist
Michael Gordon just like it was in the run-up to March, 2003
by the now-disgraced Judith Miller in her daily hawkish screeds
practically pleading for hostilities and echoing the propaganda
handed her by the White House and Pentagon.
This is the same Michael Gordon
today who was the lead reporter on the Times front page in the
lead-up to the Iraq war who wrote the false and discredited story
(he never apologized for) about the threat of Saddam's aluminum
tubes. Michael's back now and again doing what's expected of
him as a paid propagandist for "the newspaper of record"
that never met an act of US aggression it didn't support even
when it turned out to be a hopeless debacle as is true now.
The Gordon piece on November
15 is certain to be followed by more. It's another in a long
line of thinly-veiled NYT empire-supportive kinds of "journalism"
leading the media pack with its cheerleading even when war crimes
are committed or the public interest is being ignored or harmed.
The Times, as always, knows what it's role is, and no journalist
need apply for work there without being willing to be part of
the same dirty business that includes supporting all imperial
wars the nation pursues. So it is now. And Solomon goes on
to say many other journalists are joining the chorus against
the pullout option in Iraq the same way they did during the Vietnam
era. They go even further warning Democrats that, despite strong
public opinion to the contrary, not to go that far "if they
know what's good for them," and, right or wrong, it's the
president's call in all cases whether to go to war or continue
one, and the Congress should stay out of it - even if they have
lie to the public to do it the way the New York Times does.
These journalists need a lesson
in constitutional law as that view is fraudulent on it face and
contradicts what the founders stood for and put in the Constitution
for those who care to read it. It's a further reckless endangerment
of a democratic republic scarcely able to draw breathe anymore.
It's the result of corrupted government officials and complicit
corporate media journalists ignoring what Thomas Jefferson helped
codify, teach us, believed in passionately and said: "The
most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into
tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of
the people....Light and liberty go together.....Enlighten the
people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind
will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
Jefferson added no nation can
ever be free if it's kept ignorant, and no part of the corporate-controlled
media is more guilty of that sin than the "paper of record"
that's the closest thing in the country to an official ministry
of information and propaganda that's leading the way for all
the others. It functions to serve the interests of wealth and
power violating the Jeffersonian spirit and the constitutional
law of the land he helped draft in 1787.
It allows George Bush to sell
his war agenda knowing it'll be supported in the echo chambers
of major front page dailies and headlined on TV newscasts. It
may be his last gasp, but he's at it again calling for a "last
push" strategy for victory in Iraq in a futile attempt to
refurbish his image and give Republicans time to regroup from
their drubbing in the mid-term elections and prepare for the
2008 presidential campaign. It's hard to imagine how continuing
what hasn't worked up to now and won't will accomplish anything
more than raise the level of public anger wanting change and
not getting it.
The Real
State of Things in Iraq the Corporate Media Won't Report
To learn what's really happening
in Iraq just read unembedded independent journalist Patrick Cockburn's
November 28 column in the London Independent (and all his others
there) called Slaughter House Iraq. In it he says "Iraq
is rending itself apart. The signs of collapse are everywhere.
In Baghdad, the police often pick up more than 100 tortured
and mutilated bodies in a single day. Government ministries
make war on each other." He goes on to explain the country
is in an "ominous stage of disintegration" and may
be approaching what the Americans call "the Saigon moment"
when it's plain as day "the government is expiring."
Covering the region, freelance
journalist and author Nir Rosen is just as ominous in his latest
article in the Boston Review on November 27, 2006 called Anatomy
of a Civil War - Iraq's descent into chaos. Rosen says: "Shia
religious parties such as the Iran-supported Supreme Council
for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) controlled the country,
and Shia militias had become the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army,
running their own secret prisons, arresting, torturing, and executing
Sunnis in what was clearly a civil war. And the Americans were
merely one more militia among the many, watching, occasionally
intervening, and in the end only making things worse."
Almost everyone in Washington
and Whitehall know all this except Bush and Blair and their most
loyal acolytes who've lost all touch with reality and are in
a state of denial that the longer the occupation continues the
worse things will get. The human toll, according to Cockburn,
is 1000 Iraqis killed each week and 1000 US forces killed or
wounded every month, and these may be low estimates of even greater
numbers unknown or carefully concealed preventing people at home
from knowing how desperate things really are, what the human
cost is, that the war in Iraq is lost, and the longer US forces
stay in the country the worse things will get.
And consider what publisher
and editor Bob Chapman writes in his November 29 edition of his
long-running, well-respected online publication The International
Forecaster. He says "the insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining
financially, raising millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling,
kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities
and other crimes the occupation has been unable to prevent."
He believes they raise $70 - $200 million a year from these
activities and concludes with the dramatic observation that the
resistance groups can hold off the most powerful military in
the world with that amount of money compared to $100 billion
or more spent by the Pentagon with all their super-weapons trying
and failing to defeat them. It can't and won't no matter how
many more billions are spend or for how long.
That's the dilemma mandarins
like Jim Baker and the heavyweights on his Commission have to
deal with. The spillage of six disastrous years under the younger
Bush is so immense, and the fallout from it so beyond repair,
that two years from now or sooner the rule and influence of a
family dynasty will end and whatever succeeds it will inherit
less power than any US administration since WW II as the American
empire heads into an irreversible decline that didn't begin under
George Bush but was measurably accelerated under his discredited
leadership that turned out to be none at all.
The Price
of Imperial Overreach
After a mediocre start to his
presidency, fate, or more likely a sinister master-plan, handed
George Bush and his allies their chance to be untethered from
any restraint and be able to go for the big prize they wanted
all along but needed public support to do it. It was the gift
of the 9/11 tragedy his administration ruthlessly exploited as
a launching platform to pursue an imperial agenda of permanent
war against enemies invented for the enterprise including former
CIA asset against the Soviets in Afghanistan Osama bin Laden
in the lead role.
With the help and complicity
of round-the-clock daily corporate media fed invented terror
threat warnings, color-coded on television for added impact,
it scared the public enough and made the Congress willing enough
to go along with the scheme the administration had in mind all
along and had envisioned from the work of the right wing Project
for the New American Century think tank (PNAC) document called
Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources
for a New Century. Conceived by future key Bush administration
officials, it was a grand imperial plan for US global dominance
to extend well into the future to be enforced with unchallengeable
military power - a blueprint for the current "war on terror"
now rebranded as a "long war" against "Islamic
fascism" with goals spelled out in the May, 2000 Department
of Defense (DOD) Joint Vision 2020 calling for "full spectrum
(world) dominance" that was code language meaning total
control over all land, sea, air, outer space and information
with enough overwhelming power to defeat any potential challenger
or adversary with no restraint on the use of any weapons, including
nuclear ones.
This "Vision" was
one of several imperial documents looking ahead that included
the Nuclear Policy Review of 2001, the FY 2004 Air Force Space
Command Strategic Master Plan, the Pentagon's 2006 Quadrennial
Defense Review and the National Security Strategy of 2002, updated
in 2006. Together they laid out a "grand imperial strategy"
that included the notion of "preventive war" updated
to a "long war" against "Islamofascists"
that was set in motion by the trigger of the 9/11 tragedy to
target those parts of the world of greatest strategic value like
the oil-rich Greater Middle East including Central Asia and its
Caspian Basin riches.
These plans were embellished
on October 6, 2006 when George Bush quietly signed the National
Space Policy superceding a September, 1996 version of the same
directive. The plan lays out US space policy goals that include
implementing an "innovative human and robotic exploration
program" to extend the presence of humans in space. It
calls on NASA to "execute a sustained and affordable human
and robotic program of space exploration and develop, acquire,
and use civil space systems to advance fundamental scientific
knowledge of our Earth system, solar system, and universe."
It supports the use of nuclear power systems and implies without
so stating that includes nuclear weapons that will be deployed
there to use when and if necessary. That's very much the message
from the language that this policy is designed "to ensure
space capabilities....to further US national security, homeland
security, and foreign policy objectives (that include defending)
our interests there....(and having The Director of National Intelligence)
provide a robust foreign space intelligence collection and analysis
capability....to support national and homeland security."
With all the pieces of its
grand imperial scheme in place, the best-laid plans, nonetheless,
don't always go as designed especially when they encompass more
than can be digested and the forces against them are determined
enough to resist and do it effectively. What began with world
support for a global "war on terror" began to unravel
in the wake of the Bush administration's notion of endless wars
and its unilateral intent to invade and occupy Iraq in spite
of growing opposition to it that was ridiculed, spurned and arrogantly
defied. Even the world's only superpower should have known no
nation, no matter how powerful, can challenge the rest of the
world and get away with it without enough support, especially
when the two adventures it undertook in Iraq and Afghanistan
unravelled so fast and the economic and political costs incurred
from them are so enormous and increasing they've made visible
fissures in the hegemon's superstructure making it vulnerable.
The cost of Bush administration
go-it-alone adventurism accelerated a decline of US imperial
power that began, according to some astute observers, with its
futile losing gambit in Vietnam. It's now repeating it and
then some in the Greater Middle East and as a result lost its
stature as a failed model of a once democratic state flaunting
the rule of law and ignoring the values it claims to stand for
while doing just the opposite in reckless pursuit of its own
interests. It's now seen for what it is - an out-of-control
rogue state threatening all others wanting no part of it and
a growing number of them willing to challenge its supremacy in
the process.
This behavior fits the definition
of what Noam Chomsky calls a "failed state" in his
2006 book titled Failed States while explaining the notion of
what this means, in fact, is imprecise at best. It may be a
nation unable to protect its citizens from violence or destruction
but could also be one that flaunts the rule of international
law and acts as an aggressor. The US uses this term for nations
seen as potential threats to our security we feel justified intervening
against in self-defense. Chomsky says if we evaluate our own
agenda by that definition "we should have little difficulty
in finding the characteristics of 'failed states' right at home."
Blame much of it on how noted
historian and author Gabriel Kolko characterizes the Bush administration
- "the worst set of incompetents ever to hold power in Washington.
It 'shocked and awed'....itself." Winston Churchill called
himself an optimist and once remarked that "the United States
invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every
other alternative." Not a chance as long as George Bush
is president and neocons are in charge. That's a hurdle even
Churchill's optimism couldn't have cleared.
It shows how a once proud country
lost its legitimacy and with it the power to face down a growing
number of nations willing to confront its authority and get away
with it, even small players that once wouldn't have dared. In
the hemisphere, Cuba has been joined by Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua
on November 7 with the reelection of Sandinista FSLN leader and
former US nemesis Daniel Ortega, and now in Ecuador on November
26 with the impressive election of populist candidate Rafeal
Correa in the run-off presidential election against the Washington-backed
billionaire oligarch.
Elsewhere in Asia, China and
North Korea have defied US authority as has Russia in Eurasia
and Iran and Syria in the Middle East. Resistance groups everywhere
have now learned the lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan and Hezbollah
in Lebanon. These groups have asymmetrical guerrilla-tactic
power that when used effectively can hold their own against the
most powerful nation on earth beating it at its own game by outlasting
it or rendering its super-weapons useless against an opponent
that can't be seen until its bombs go off and bullets start flying
and often not even then. They've also inspired the courageous
people of Mexico and their epicenter of resistance in Oaxaca
taking to the streets in their courageous fight against electoral
fraud and an end to decades of abuse and injustice and doing
it with little more than their bodies and a redoubtable spirit
that won't quit.
Add to this the growing unease
and discontent of an aroused and angered public at home. It
sent a powerful message of disgust and contempt for six failed
years of imperial madness and corrupted right wing neocon Republican
rule by drubbing its candidates in the mid-term elections. It
wants change in Washington even though there's little chance
to get it when the new leadership takes control of the Congress
in January. Beyond the usual post-election continuation of campaign-style
rhetoric, already it's clear the Democrat party mission is to
move the ship of state forward with its agenda largely intact
but with them in charge including in the White House if they
can prevail in the 2008 election. It's the way things always
work in the nation's Capitol where those holding power owe their
allegiance to the interests of wealth and power that put them
there, and, in the end, the people be damned and "let 'em
eat cake" but the language is more subtle.
It won't work for the new congressional
leadership any more than it did for the president who brought
down the house of Bush ending the family dynasty's reign while
turning the nation's imperial dreams into its death throes by
his arrogance and ineptness. He'll now live in infamy as the
man who accelerated the American empire's decline. His imperial
madness buried it in the caves and rubble of Afghanistan and
the burning sands of the Middle East financing it with an unrepayable
mountain of Federal Reserve-created debt in an age of aberrant
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