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George W Bush had many advantages in Florida from the outset. On election night, Bush cousin John Ellis manned the Fox election desk and spoke with his cousin six times that night. Ellis prematurely called the election for Bush. NBC, possibly prodded by GE CEO Jack Welch, quickly followed, which began the chain reaction of declaring George W. Bush the next president of the United States. His brother JEB was governor of the Sunshine State and his state campaign chairman Katherine Harris was responsible for seeing that the votes were counted fairly. The decision to purge illegal voters from the voter rolls were made before Katherine Harris became Secretary of State. Her predecessor, another Republican, hired a firm to do the job for $5,700. That operator was later fired, and an initial contract was given to a Georgia firm for a fee of $2,317,800. 
Running for president as part of a family dynasty is presenting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush with inevitable comparisons to his father and brother that he must address as he moves closer to a campaign for the White House. Today he will attempt to separate his views from theirs during a Chicago speech 
In his brother's shadow: Jeb, right, will say in his speech today that he loves his older brother George, center, 'but I am my own man' Secretary of State Harris and her assistants said a “fire wall” had been built between her office and that of Governor Jeb Bush. The governor publicly recused himself from the matter. Harris brought in Dan Schnut, an out-of-state Republican operative, to help her manage the vote count. However, telephone records revealed constant contact between Bush and Harris. Frank Jiminez, quickly resigned as the governor’s acting counsel, so he could be in constant touch with Harris and direct the partisan operations of her office. Five other top Bush operatives temporarily resigned so they could assist Jimenes. Allied intelligence communities, including George John Tenet, former Director of the CIA, presented this plan to members of a secret society, which is an extremely powerful International group, and has bragged that 11 of the last 12 United States Presidents have been its members. Additionally, several modern monarchs have also been inducted into this secret society, recently. President Bush’s cabinet which included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and defense officials Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and brother Jeb Bush, were all neo-cons and founding members of the PNAC. With Bush as president, his neo-con advisers now set out to implement this 
Landing on an aircraft carrier, Bush prematurely declares mission accomplished in Iraq. imperialistic PNAC plan for world domination. They created a list of enemies which they named the “Axis of Evil” that was comprised of North Korea, Iran and Iraq, and a second tier of enemies consisting of Syria, Afghanistan, Cuba and Libya. The neo-cons viewed these countries as military targets to be attacked and their governments overthrown. Once this was accomplished, new and obedient leaders were to be installed. The attack on the Twin Towers in 2001 facilitated this aggressive and imperialistic policy. George Bush’s advisers went to great lengths to distort the facts in order to tie the Saudi Arabian attackers of 9-11, to the Taliban in Afghanistan who had been created, organized and paid by the U.S., and to the ex-American employee Saddam. Government propaganda and disinformation were fabricated to falsely link Saddam to Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, and to his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction. According to the neo-con script used by Bush’s officials for public consumption, these deadly weapons were ready to be unleashed upon the U.S. by Saddam at any moment. The American media machine enthusiastically supported this disinformation and promoted it widely to the public. In reality, Saddam hated Bin Laden and had killed off most of the followers of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and had nothing to do with the attacks of 9-11. Aware that they were on the “Axis of Evil” hit-list, North Korea and Iran moved quickly to strengthen their military forces and develop a nuclear weapons program. Therefore, Afghanistan and Iraq were then chosen for attack by the neo-cons as their military situation was much weaker. In addition, Iraq’s immense government-run oil resources were to be privatized and handed over to “friendly” U.S. and British oil companies as had been done in Iran during the Shah’s regime. United Nations representatives and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors publicly declared to the whole world that after 18 months of systematic inspections that there was no evidence in Iraq of any chemical or weapons of mass destruction. These findings were substantiated by U.S. allies such as France and Germany who warned the U.S. to stop its impending and illogical invasion that was being 
The once "useful" Saddam Hussein was quickly tried in a closed trial and hanged. prepared against Iraq. President Obama, who was a fierce opponent of the war at the time called it “dumb” and “rash”. By 2003, President Bush and his neo-con cabinet now believed that the majority of the U.S. public had been won over to his widespread lie of existing WMD and gave the military the green light to invade despite this being a violation of international law. The swift attack and invasion of Iraq and the subsequent military occupation and fighting, would continue for over 8 years. Soon after his capture, a now discarded Saddam was quickly tried and found guilty by U.S. selected judges in a closed trial and hanged. An open and prolonged trial of Hussein would have brought out all of his sordid relationships with the U.S. and his role as a paid thug who had been on the CIA payroll since the 1950’s. Since he was no longer a useful tool and knew too much, Saddam had to be quickly silenced and eliminated. Neither weapons of mass destruction nor any Saddam connection to Bin Laden, who was also an ex-U.S. employee in Afghanistan during the 1980’s, were ever found. These members of a secret society formed the New World Order, and then planned and carried out the 9/11 Attacks and the Global War on Terror. These men include: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and JEB Bush, and these five men, including George John Tenet, used the CIA and its resources illegally, (thus committing treason, espionage, conspiracy and mass-murder). Also resources, including agents and funding, were used from foreign powers, including the intelligence communities of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel and the United Kingdom. The CIA resources which were mis-used by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and JEB Bush, include a series of famous CIA Think-Tanks, established and managed from 1996-2009, to plan and carry-out the two hoaxes - - the 9/11 Attacks and the Global War on Terror. These Think-Tanks assisted George W. Bush in preparing for the Presidency of the United States, and helped him to manage the Office of the President, after Bush came to power. The CIA, together with other members of a secret society rigged the elections in the year 2000, allowing Bush to ascend to the Presidency, without winning the election. The CIA and its vast resources was also involved, illegally, in the 9/11 Attacks, and the subsequent acquisition of most of the planet's wealth, mineral and energy resources, during the Global War on Terror. They were also used to plan a secret agenda, including classism, racism and genocide, against the people of the United States, which has been implemented into the various departments, agencies and offices of the United States government, from 2000-present. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has no interest in "re-litigating" the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which began under his brother's administration. "I won't talk about the past," Bush said at a Friday press conference when asked how he would have handled the conflicts differently, according to The Washington Post. "I'll talk about the future. If I'm in the process of considering the possibility of running, it's not about re-litigating anything in the past. It's about trying to create a set of ideas and principles that will help us move forward." The governor, who is almost certain to jump into the 2016 race, said that instead he would focus on a positive vision for the country that revolved around the future. He will elaborate on that vision when he delivers what his aides are describing as a major foreign policy address in Chicago next week. It's unlikely Bush will be able to avoid the subject for long. Democrats are already pointing to his brother's legacy, which has left U.S. forces in the Middle East more than a decade after their initial deployment. Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars remain unpopular -- with a 2013 poll finding majorities that said the campaigns were not worth the tremendous sacrifice. Some Republicans, too, are likely to criticize Bush over the matter. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another would-be presidential candidate with libertarian leanings, has spoken out against false pretenses used to justify the war. At his Friday press conference, Bush suggested that he would address current threats to America, such as the rise of the Islamic State, during his speech next week. “We have some big, hairy, complicated things we need to fix and one of those is what the role of America is in the world to protect our safety and security, but also to promote security and peace around the world, and I think we can be a force for good," he said. The cost of the second Iraq war in terms of lives, money and morality. This eight-year long war and occupation that was waged on false pretenses by this small group of neo-cons who had taken control of the Pentagon and military produced horrific results. Close to one trillion dollars of taxpayers’ funds has been spent on Iraq through 2011, while $9 billion of this amount has been supposedly “lost” or unaccounted for. Another $6.6 billion designated for Iraqi reconstruction has also been “lost” or reported stolen which constitutes the largest outright theft of funds in U.S. history. Close to $2 billion was paid for services in Iraq to Halliburton or its KBR division. These are corporations tied to neo-con Dick Cheney who as Vice-president profited handsomely from this orchestrated violence against the Iraqi people. This amount also included overcharges and other questionable charges paid to these Dick Cheney “favored” companies. Another disastrous loss to taxpayers, but which profited U.S. contractors and others, was close to $2 billion 
Our economy and human resources have suffered from this neo-con sponsored trillion dollar war. worth of “lost and missing” tractors, vehicles, spare parts and 190,000 guns which included 110,000 AK-47 rifles. An additional cost to taxpayers for air-conditioning was close to $20 billion. A recent report from the group, Iraq Body Count, listed a total of 162,000 Iraqi deaths from this military misadventure of which 114,00 were civilians and children. U.S. deaths totaled 4,486 with 32,226 being seriously wounded and who will require medical attention for years to come due to the loss of limbs, psychological problems and unemployment. These long-term benefits connected to the deaths and injuries of U.S. soldiers and the traumatic and disruptive effects on their families could raise the cost of this war by an additional trillion dollars over time. The dismal lack of schools, housing, healthcare, drinking water and electricity in Iraq is now at a much lower level than before the U.S. invasion and has been worsened by the corrupt and failed U.S. reconstruction program. Meanwhile, much of the money used to finance this long and expensive war was borrowed from China and is now part of the almost $2 trillion and accrued interest owed by U.S. taxpayers to that country who use these funds to peacefully develop their booming economy. To keep this in context, this trillion dollars that was wasted in this Iraqi debacle was money drained away from our much-needed schools, health care, housing and other needed social services. If we add the recent real estate bubble and banking scandal and bailout, the working people of our country have been squeezed economically and had their standard of living drastically lowered.
For former President Bush and his neo-con clique who profited handsomely from this consciously planned violence in Iraq, we only hear silence and denial in regard to their immoral and deadly role in this tragic event that destroyed and transformed so many lives.
A glorious sacrifice or a historical, moral and human rights disaster?
The U.S. involvement in the Korean war which is called the “forgotten war”, along with the 21-year long military intervention in Vietnam and the rest of Indo-China, have been enveloped in a long-standing moral and historical denial that has resulted in leaving these events vague, confusing and devoid of facts. This results in intentionally avoiding any factual discussion and objective evaluation of the causes and effects of these conflicts whose outcomes generally turned out badly for the U.S. Added to this list of past debacles are: the military intervention and deaths of close to 300 Marines in Lebanon during the 1980’s, the invasions of Grenada and Panama, and the deadly mishap encountered by U.S. troops in Somalia and now Iraq. These events continue to be covered over as this cloak of denial glosses over the historical lessons that need to be learned from these 
An Iraqi teenager in U.S. military custody is tortured with electric shocks. military disasters and loss of lives. Politicians need to be held accountable such as Secretary of State Colin Powell who stood before the United Nations in 2002 and stated untruthfully that there was clear evidence that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, while Vice-President Dick Cheney publicly stated that there was”no doubt” that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons that were ready to be used against the U.S. All of this dishonest role-playing was not a mistake, but rather a consciously organized and blatant set of lies to mislead the public and wage a war of aggression that turned into a human rights disaster. Morally, this was a criminal act that was perpetuated on both Americans and Iraqis by these neo-cons who are now living comfortably from the profits gained from this destructive event. This war was not a glorious crusade for freedom and democracy as declared by the spin doctors of patriotic fairy tales. Rather, it will be judged and condemned by historians and the world as a tragic and immoral chapter in U.S. history. There are just and unjust wars, and the Iraqi war was definitely an unjust one. While not everyone was taken in by these lies in 2003, we must not allow the cause of this war and the harm that it inflicted on people’s lives to once again be side-stepped and glossed over with a cover of nationalist denial. For an objective evaluation of this war, we need to analyze the facts and have a national dialogue where people honestly ask the hard and necessary questions such as how did the majority of the public become so easily deceived by these opportunists; also, was this destructive war worth the effort, and how do we prevent this from happening again? Also, what is the attitude of the Iraqi people after all of these years of American interference in their affairs? Today, the neo-cons and majority of Republicans still believe that this war was just and have publicly demanded that U.S. troops stay in Iraq! With the end of the war, Iran is now being lined up as the next supposed enemy to be attacked. The level of fear and warmongering by government officials and the media about supposed Iranian nuclear weapons and the need to “take action” is already accelerating. U.S. policy toward Iran has been antagonistic and militarily hostile since the 1950’s and it is time to decrease the aggressive rhetoric and sit down and negotiate differences in a civilized manner. We cannot allow concepts such as freedom and democracy to be used dishonestly by politicians along with their boogeyman threats that are veiled in an opportunistic use of patriotism to once again lead us into the next war. Someone said that the best way to fight terrorism, win friends and establish peace, is by promoting justice. The country should heed this advice. 
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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 capitalism gone wild and transformed into a fiscal weapon
of mass-destruction that may end up throttling the US and world economies.
It's what out-of-control greed and delusions of grandeur always lead to -
self-aggrandizing excess that eventually undermines the "irrationally
exuberant" dreams of fools and despots that go well beyond the limits of
reason or any hope for success.
If George Bush lasts another two years, it'll be thanks to the kindness of
his dwindling number of hard core friends and strangers who still think they
can pick something from the bones of his tenure before payment for his
imperial overreach comes due. When it does, it'll be high, painful and
inevitable just like it always is the way it was for that French queen of
"let em eat cake" fame who along with her husband, King Louis XVI, lost
their heads for their misdeeds. "King" George may keep his, but the family
dynasty has been undone and defrocked by the sins of the unworthy scion
ill-chosen to carry its reign forward to pass on to the next in line after
him. It wasn't to be as the dominance of another powerful family passes into
history, never to be trusted again with the seat of power in a nation
accelerating in decline in the new century that was planned to be an
American one but already is not six years into it.
Whereto from here with a disgraced head of state and unindicted war criminal
already an artifact or relic of an era past, his power ebbing and marking
time going through the motions despite the same bravado, smirk and all, that
resonates less with each public appearance. It's intended to keep his
weakened presidency from collapsing that may just take one more good shove
to do it. Despite desperate efforts to save it, in the end who but the
family will care if it does and who will ever again believe a serial liar
once exposed and disgraced making him unwelcome in the halls of power that
once embraced him. Success, as they say, has many parents and friends, but
failure is an unwanted orphan, and it's showing up as some of the hard core
faithful voice their displeasure openly and walk away.
It now remains for his final exit that can't come soon enough for most who
want him out now and may act to force it if the Congress won't act as a
majority of the public demands. Whatever happens from here, the king is dead
(even with his head in place), and with it the power and influence of a
family dynasty brought down by the poisoned chalice of its ill-chosen
successor, unworthy and unable to wear the crown and pass it to the next in
line. Henceforth, all will know what should have been clear all along.
Behind every "Bush," there's a crime, and some of them are too great to
hide, make up for or overcome. So it is with the lesson of George Bush, a
very bad seed and a president only a mother can love. And even that's in
doubt in a family that doesn't take defeat very well. Give them time,
they'll acclimate. |
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