Replies to post #44024 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

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A Look Back and Ahead In An Age of Neocon Rule

By Stephen Lendman
Information Clearing House
12/27/06

Borrowing the opening line from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." He referred to the French Revolution promising "Liberte, egalite and fraternite" that began in 1789, inspired by ours from 1775 - 1783. It ended a 1000 years of monarchal rule in France benefitting those of privilege and established the nation as a republic the way ours did for us here a few years earlier.

That was the good news. The bad was the wrong people came to power. They were the Jacobins who at first were revolutionary moderates and patriots until they lost control to extremists like Maximilien Robespierre who ushered in a "reign of terror" (The Great Terror sounding a lot like today's "war on terror") characterized by brutal repression against perceived enemies from within the Revolution who didn't get a chance to prove they weren't. In the name of defending it, individual rights were denied and civil liberties suspended. Laws were passed that allowed charging those designated counter-revolutionaries or enemies of the state with undefined crimes against liberty.

It resulted in justice being meted out to thousands for what Orwell called "thoughtcrimes" or for their freely expressed opinions and actions judged hostile to the state under a system of near-vigilante justice by the Paris Revolutionary (kangaroo) Tribunal with no right of appeal. It led to the public spectacle of an inglorious trip to and quick ending from the death penalty method of choice of the times - the guillotine that was barbaric but quick, and a much easier, less painful way to die for its victims than the use of state-inflicted torture-murder in the commonly drawn out lethal injection process used in 37 of the 38 death penalty states and by the federal government making the condemned endure a slow agonizing death unable to cry out while they're being made to suffer during their last moments of life. Instances of this barbarity aren't exceptions. They're the rule, the exception being this time a report or two of what really happens slipped out and made news.

Fast forward to the past year and the previous five under George Bush and ask: sound familiar? French Revolutionary laws during the "reign of terror," like the Law of Suspects, were earlier versions of our Patriot I and II and Military Commission Acts today. The Revolutionary Tribunal, with no chance for justice or right of appeal, was no different than our military courts today, and too many civil ones, in which any US citizen may now be tried anywhere in the world, with no habeas right of appeal or hope for due process and from which those sent there won't fare any better than the French did, doomed to meet their unjust fate - even though much in these laws today is unconstitutional and one day will be reversed by a High Court upholding the law instead of the extremist rogue one now empowered that scorns it.

What May Lie Ahead As the New Year Approaches

At the end of the sixth horrific year under the reign of the Bush modern-day extremist Jacobin-neocons, we can now look ahead, but to what. We have an administration in charge for another two years one longtime analyst characterizes as "a bunch of crooks, incompetents and perverts" with the president's approval rating plunging as low as 28% in some independent polls and a growing number of people in the country demanding his impeachment and removal from office.

It's not likely from the new Democrat-led Congress arriving in January, as their DLC leadership took it off the table and so far only promises more of the same failed policy other than some minor tinkering around the edges to create an illusion of change no different than the deceptive kind of course correction proposed by the Baker "Gang of Ten" Iraq Study Group (ISG) that guarantees none at all. It doesn't leave members of the body politic with much hope for the new year that will likely just deliver more of the same rogue leadership and policy engendering growing public discontent and anger but not at a level so far to scare the those in power enough to want to address it.

The heart of the problem is the unpopular illegal war of aggression in Iraq, the cesspool of corruption and scorn for the law in Washington, and the assault on human rights and civil liberties in the country justified by the so-called "war on terror" now rebranded a "long war" against "Islamofascism" and "radicals and extremists" (who happen to be Muslims.) It's the same failed policy using the kind of deliberately provocative language intended to deceive the public to think a threat great enough exists to justify any state action in the name of national security including waging wars of aggression and all the horrors associated with them at home and abroad.

After the Baker "bob and weave,'' the now you see a change of course and now you don't, disingenuously suggesting a drawdown and exit strategy, the New York Times on December 16 reports "Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq by 20,000 or more."

The article goes on to say one option is to boost the force level by up to 50,000 even though any increase greater than 20 - 30,000 would be "prohibitive" - but it won't deter the Pentagon, on administration orders, from extending tours of duty even longer for forces now there and calling up thousands of reservists and greatly extended National Guard units to get into this quagmire even though it's recognized their presence will only make things worse as well as place an unfair burden on those called up, who've served before, and their families.

As of December 27, it's somewhat less clear what Iraq troop strength policy will emerge in January following comments by incoming Democrat chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, who just stated "I totally oppose this surging of additional American troops into Baghdad. It's contrary to the overwhelming body of informed opinion, both inside and outside the administration." Senator Biden will hold hearings on Iraq on January 9, and at that time things may heat up a bit at least in rhetoric if not in final policy.

Additional heat may be created in January after George Bush admitted for the first time on December 19 that the US isn't winning the war even though two weeks before the November mid-term elections he said emphatically "absolutely, we're winning in Iraq." He wouldn't acknowledge what most every honest observer knows including the Pentagon Joint Chiefs - that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are lost. They can't be won and won't be. No military solution is possible now or any time ahead.

The president is living in a state of denial, obsessed with his messianic mission fed him by the vice-president and hardest of his hard line neocon allies, and it shows in the outlandish solutions he proposes to an insoluble problem - send in more troops (that will only make things worse) and increase the overall size of the military (that guarantees a permanent state of war).

It also clearly sounds a lot like the first official hint from the chief executive that a draft is needed and will come at some unspecified time ahead - likely following another "made in Washington" 9/11 calamity severe enough to get the public to go along with something now thought intolerable. The president's sentiment was echoed on December 21 by administration Veterans Affairs secretary Jim Nicholson who (incredibly) said that "society would benefit" if the US reinstated the military draft. He didn't say for whom. He did go further when asked in a press conference whether it should include women saying: "I think if we bring back the draft, there should be no loopholes for anybody who happens to be drafted." Maybe, to his thinking, it should include pregnant mothers as well and single ones with small children.

Such openness by the VA secretary apparently was too much, too soon, and too clear for the White House that quickly got the Department of Veterans Affairs to issue a separate follow-up statement from Nicholson saying: "Let me be clear, I strongly support the all-volunteer military and do not support returning to a draft." Let the reader choose which message to believe, but, with the nation in a permanent state of war, it looks like the trial balloon and hint of a draft now being floated is the opening round to instituting one at some designated time ahead. That likelihood looms even greater as the Selective Service System announced it's planning a comprehensive test of the military draft machinery, which it hasn't done since 1998 while, at the same time, saying the agency isn't gearing up for a draft. But what else would they say as they make plans to do this on orders from the administration.

It all amounts to an increasing level of insanity from a power-crazed administration as well as sounding much like Benjamin Franklin's wisdom who said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." In the case of Iraq, doing it with more troops on the ground is even more insane as a greater occupying force there only guarantees a stronger resistance to it presenting more targets to aim at with virtually no chance for a peaceful resolution of the conflict short of a full unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces, no strings attached, that won't happen. In the case of a future draft, now seeming more likely, it only guarantees this nation plans to stay in a permanent state of war against future enemies to be chosen with those in or to be included in the "axis of evil" heading the target list at some point ahead.

George Bush and others floating these lunatic schemes have no regard for the lives of those affected, and why should they. For now, their aim is to buy time, and as long as they can get away with it, they and their well-connected cronies and corporate friends stand to gain from the price everyone else has to pay - a huge one including the thousands of lives lost each week and the many more thousands of survivors whose lives will never be the same again.

Think what it means as the new year approaches. The nation is at war on two fronts, it's likely more ahead are contemplated by some in the administration, no substantive effort is being made to change course, and the condition at home is a relentless march toward becoming a full-blown national security police state we're already perilously close to. It's because the neocon-dominated Bush administration is reckless in ambition, out-of-control in policy, and the embodiment of a relentless and ruthless "weapon of mass destruction" unleashed on all humanity in its way.

It's underpinned by an extremist ideology based on rule by savage capitalism that's frighteningly close to and borders on the tipping edge of the classic definition of fascism combining corporatism with strong elements of patriotism and nationalism, a claimed messianic Almighty-directed and blessed mission, and characterized by authoritarian rule backed by the iron fist of militarism and 'homeland security" enforcers, illegally spying on everyone, and intolerant of dissent and opposition in an age where the law is what the chief executive says it is and all semblance of checks and balances no longer exist. In a word - despotism, but cloaked in the deceptive rhetoric of a modern democracy falsely claiming to serve the needs of all its people.

It's also an age of extreme greed and corruption infesting government and corporate boardrooms with the gap between rich and poor at levels greater than since the 19th-century "Gilded Age" of the "robber barons." It's something economist Paul Krugman calls "entirely unprecedented" under George Bush that "For the first time in our history, so much (of the nation's economic growth has gone) to a small, wealthy minority" while the great majority can't stay even as inflation-adjusted wages fail to keep up with rising prices and poverty is growing in an age of affluence affecting tens of millions in the richest country ever in the world.

The grossness of this disparity was on the online business pages of the New York Times on Christmas Day in a story titled "Wall St. Bonuses" So Much Money, Too Few ($250,000) Ferraris [at http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=15790168 - also see preceding]. The article highlights that "The 2006 bonus gold rush has re-energized some luxury markets" like Manhattan real estate that had softened earlier in the year and echoed the lament of a real estate broker about a "dearth of listings for two clients trying to spend $20 million on Manhattan properties" while mentioning some of the Wall Street wealthy already in their luxury nests are buying $5 million apartments for their children and private resort vacation homes to boot.

The same ugly data is there overall worldwide in a newly released study by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University that shows the richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of its wealth compared, on the other end, with the assets of about half the world's population accounting for barely 1% of global wealth - lumps of coal only for them and a "Ba Humbug" dismissal for their plight by those with everything wanting still more.

The Cost to a Society Based on Predatory Capitalism and Out-of-Control Greed, Corruption and Militarism

The societal breakdown in the US is a national disgrace and affects many millions. A sampling of some of it is listed below:

-- 47 million Americans can't afford basic health insurance.

-- Over 80 million in total have no health coverage during some portion of each year and most of them are employed.

-- The Bush administration just proposed sweeping cuts in payments to pharmacies to reduce the Medicaid benefits 50 million poor in the country rely on, can't afford to make up the difference for on their own, and may have to forego medications they vitally need if pharmacies won't fill prescriptions at lower prices.

-- The US ranks 41st in infant mortality, and the World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the country 37th in the world in "overall health performance" and 54th in the fairness of health care despite spending at a current level overall of around $2 trillion a year or about double the amount per capita of the OECD countries that deliver superior health care overall to their citizens as a national priority.

-- Well over 12 millions Americans struggle daily to feed themselves, and many thousands across the country can't afford housing and are forced to sleep on the streets including in winter cold.

-- A just released December 14 US Conference of Mayors report said these conditions continue to worsen based on a survey of 23 cities showing 7% more requests for food aid in 2006 following a 12% jump in 2005 during a period of economic growth.

-- The same report showed requests for shelter rose 9% in 2006 with requests from families with children rising 5%.

-- Public education is deliberately being eroded with illiteracy in basic reading, math and computer skills shamefully high and rising.

-- The US prison population is the highest in the world at 2.2 million and increasing by 1000 a week, half of those in it are black, and half of the total prison population is there for non-violent offenses half of which are drug-related. The US prison system is a shameful Gulag and an affront to humanity. The appalling conviction and sentencing of first-time drug offender Weldon Angelos is but one of countless examples. He was convicted of three sales of marijuana in 2004 while in possession of a gun unrelated to the sale. Under the insane federal mandatory sentencing laws, he was sentenced to five years for the first offense and 25 years each for the other two totaling 55 years in federal prison or a likely life sentence if he's forced to serve it all because he possessed and sold a few "joints" of a substance less harmful than legal cigarettes that kill millions yearly while it's not known marijuana ever killed anyone using it. Only in America.

-- The true state of things overall is suppressed by the dominant corporate-controlled media (including the NPR and PBS parts of it) functioning as a national thought-control police controlling all mass communication and depriving the public of any real information vital to a healthy democracy and their welfare.

-- Racial segregation is as great as in the 1960s, and the national sport almost is demonizing Muslims as "terrorists, radicals, extremists and Islamofascists" and impoverished "people the color of the earth" Mexicans and Latin Americans as "illegal immigrant invaders polluting" our white western European society and culture, mindless that they only come el norte in desperate search of work because of the devastating effects of NAFTA on their lives that destroyed their ability to support their families. Data from the Oakland Institute think tank specializing in social, economic and environmental issues shows that heavily subsidized US corn exports to Mexico have tripled since NAFTA came into force forcing two million Mexican corn farmers out of business, something that was predicted in advance but allowed to happen anyway. It also led to suicides but at a rate nowhere near the level globalized trade US-style had on farmers in India where as many as 100,000 of them have taken their own lives because "New World Order" indebtedness caused them to lose their farms and then everything else.

-- Childhood poverty in the US ranks 22nd and next to last among developed nations when there should be virtually none tolerated in the richest country in the world or toleration of any of the other listed abuses.

-- An alarming number of high-paying and other jobs have been exported abroad in a process that's gone on for decades but picked up in momentum since the 1980s and especially in recent years. Mckinsey Global Institute estimates the volume will grow 30 - 40% a year for the next five years. Forrester Research estimates 3.3 million white-collar jobs will be lost by 2015 with most affected areas in financial services and information technology, and University of California researchers estimate that "up to 14 million American jobs are at risk to outsourcing."

It adds up to a nation in decline, losing its industrial base and becoming primarily a service-oriented economy mainly offering low-skill, low-pay jobs with the better, higher-paying ones growing scarcer, making a college degree in areas outside of critical skills almost worthless. Exporting jobs to low-wage countries is a boon for corporate bottom lines in an age of "globalized free trade" never characterized as fair for the harm it does to millions of wage earners at home or in the developing countries on the receiving end being exploited by capital that sucks out their wealth and impoverishes their people, many of whom work for near-slave-rate wages in a modern era of serfdom in countries around the world in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin and Central America.

-- Worker outrage around the world in protest is growing in response to these abuses (unreported in the US) because most governments are doing little or nothing to ameliorate them. It showed up on November 22 in South Korea when over 200,000 workers belonging to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) staged a general strike protesting in 17 cities against the bilateral US-Korea Free Trade Agreement currently being negotiated that will do to their members and farmers what NAFTA did to Mexicans and India's agricultural trade policies did to their small farmers. It continued on the streets in the days following and spilled over to the Big Sky Ski Resort in Big Sky, Montana where negotiations are being held in seclusion but are still unable to escape the daily protests held against them there.

-- It happened as well in Cebu City, Philippines where President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (closely allied to the failed Bush agenda and elected through fraud) had to cancel two Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings in December attended by 19 countries including the US and Canada. It was an abrupt ending to the meeting held to ratify trade and security agreements because of the mass protests by workers, farmers and others against their harmful effects forcing thousands in the country to leave daily to go abroad for work paying enough to support their families at home.

-- Workers almost everywhere have been harmed, including in the US, as union clout and worker rights here have declined in an age where the social contract government once had with its working people has been dismantled with less than 13% of the work force (the lowest in the industrialized world) unionized today compared to one-third of it in 1958. In an age of modern-day "robber barons," the middle class bedrock of a democratic state is slowly disappearing as the nation moves closer to becoming a banana republic at a time when 51 of the world's largest economies are corporate giants, most of them US-based.

It all goes on with no redress or sign of change in an age of out-of-control militarism and outlandish budgets supporting it that began ratcheting up under Ronald Reagan, along with big budget deficits to pay for it, and have gone wild under George Bush. The White House just approved a fiscal year 2008 near $470 billion Pentagon budget on top of an additional $100+ billion off-the-books amount minimum more that will boost this year's war budget for Iraq and Afghanistan to a yearly record of about $170 billion. It also needs tens of billions annually for "Homeland Security" and tens of billions more for the "spy agencies" totaling numbers in the range of well over $700 billion a year and rising - while social spending continues to be slashed to pay for it all in a heartless society scorning its people and their essential needs as long as the interests of capital are served along with the militarists in it profiting from its blood money.

Since WW II, when the US emerged as the only dominant nation left standing, Washington, instead of disarming and fostering peace, embarked on a now long-running program of militarization to maintain the country's political, economic and military preeminence over all others. It takes a lot of military spending to do it, that could have been used far more productively investing in human capital (like health and education) and physical capital (like essential infrastructure) as well as promoting non-military related business and industry that over time pay back far greater dividends than the short-term gains from building weapons and having large standing armies, navies and air forces that only exist to kill and destroy.

Productive spending also pays off in creating a society free from a dominant military culture like now exists out-of-control and hard to contain in the Pentagon that scorns civil liberties and democratic principles and values that have nearly vanished. The course this nation chose 60 years ago led to today's corrupted society armed to the teeth for endless wars with the most destructive weapons in human history deployed on over 800 known military bases in about 155 of the 192 countries of the world. It cost an unimaginable amount creating this monster as documented by the Center for Defense Information. It reported this country spent an estimated $21 trillion in constant dollars since 1945 on defense, the numbers continue to rise sharply, and the mindset of most of the nation's leaders, especially George Bush, is when you've got the might, you have to throw it around to prove it as well as scare off potential challengers.

Shamefully the US stands as a modern-day Sparta glorifying war and those put in charge to wage it. Witness the retirement ceremony for Army Major General Geoffrey Miller last summer when Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody awarded the man who supervised the infamous US Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib torture-prisons with the Distinguished Service Medal (DDSM). This award was established by Richard Nixon in 1970 so the Secretary of Defense could reward officers of the US Armed Forces "whose exceptional performance of duty and contributions to national security or defense have been at the highest levels."

Witness also the December 16 retirement ceremony at the Pentagon for unindicted war criminal and torture-authorizer Donald Rumsfeld complete with pomp and circumstance, George Bush and Dick Cheney in attendance for the spectacle, and a 19 round cannon salute that might have been better aimed. In open defiance of growing public anger over the war, speakers, including the president, shamelessly lauded Rumsfeld for the war of aggression he directed and his leadership in doing it. The galling scene showed Bush hugging Rumsfeld saying: "This man knows how to lead, and he did. And the country is better off for it." He failed to say for whom, but it got worse with Dick Cheney saying: "I believe the record speaks for itself - Don Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense this nation ever had."

Contrast those spectacles with the fate of extraordinary people like Lynne Stewart prosecuted for her crime of courage, honor and resisting tyranny. She was unjustly charged under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act with four counts of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and violating Special Administration Measures (SAMS) imposed by the US Bureau of Prisons, which included a gag order on Sheik Abdel Rahman whom she represented as counsel for the defense in his 1995 trial because former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark asked her to take the case.

Lynne took it in the same spirit she spent her entire 30 year professional life as a courageous champion for the rights of the poor, underprivileged and those in society never afforded due process unless they're lucky enough to have an advocate like her. She broke no law, and her trial was a gross miscarriage of justice. Still, the Justice Department asked for a harsh 30 year sentence. It wasn't for any crime committed. It was to send a clear message to all in the legal community not to represent "unpopular clients" and not to afford them their legal right of due process with competent counsel when the government wants them put away.

Lynne for the present had the last word being vindicated in court on October 17 when Judge John G. Koeltl rejected the prosecution's case in the 28 month sentence he handed down allowing Lynne to remain free pending her appeal to a higher court, acknowledging it might overturn her conviction and effectively rebuking the Justice Department for their prosecution of a courageous woman who spent a lifetime fighting for justice.

The outcome was painfully different in an age of Muslim demonization and persecution shown in the prosecution of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, a Muslim American of Iraqi descent and practicing oncologist until his license was unjustly revoked as a prelude to the greater outrage committed against him. Dr. Dhafir was charged and tried in another US "kangaroo court" for what Katherine Hughes called and wrote his "crime of compassion." Katherine followed the trial daily in court for 17 weeks and remains his champion, continuing to work tirelessly for his vindication and release.

Dr. Dhafir was convicted and is now serving a 22 year sentence in federal prison for violating the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations (the IEEPA) having used his own funds and what he could raise from others to bring desperately needed humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, to Iraqi people unable to get them because of the punitive, harsh and unjust sanctions imposed prior to the 2003 war. He did it through his Help the Needy charity, and for it was convicted of violating the sanctions, tax fraud, money laundering, and mail and wire fraud - a total of 60 counts and found guilty on 59 of them.

The verdict sent another chill through the Muslim community, and as Katherine explained on her web site - dhafirtrial.net - "If we can get Rafil Dhafir, we can get anyone." Not quite, as Lynne Stewart's vindication proves. But it proves something else too. In the age of George Bush, the chance of prevailing against injustice as a white American is a lot better than for a "not-as-white" Arab Muslim, even an American one, especially one courageous enough to take on a mission of mercy in defiance of state policy unjustly prohibiting it.

Dr. Dhafir was confined at the federal prison in Fairton, NJ until December when he was transfered further away from his family, who weren't told. He's now at what's been described as the hellhole in Terre Haute, IN, in an area of right wing extremism and KKK influence, in a deliberate act of further barbaric vengeance to break his spirit, restrict his access to legal help and his family, and cause him undue pain and suffering in an age of US-sanctioned and authorized torture as a method of social control and inhumanity and because no dissenting authority has the courage to challenge Washington's willingness to go against the most basic principles of equity and justice.

A Look Back to Find Direction Ahead

A look back to an important anniversary just reached should have been duly noted and reflected on in the major media, but it passed nearly unnoticed. It was the December 15 anniversary of the Bill of Rights of 1791 to the Constitution framed in 1787. It gave us unimaginable freedoms up to that time written into the law of the land that overall was a great democratic experiment never tried before outside of ancient Athens for a few decades before it ended. It gave people the rights of free expression, religion and peaceable assembly; protection from illegal searches and seizure; the right of due process, against double jeopardy and to remain silent if accused; to a speedy trial by jury if charged with the right to counsel and to be able to call witnesses; protection from any cruel and unusual punishment and more.

Most of the credit for this historic achievement goes to James Madison who drafted the first 10 amendments and with his perseverance got the other Framers to go along. He then managed to get the needed two-thirds vote from both Houses of Congress and ratification by the required three-fourths of the states in 1791 to have them become the law of the land - a major landmark achievement today being defiled by those in power who have contempt for the freedoms the Founders gave us.

Madison is thought of by some to be the "Father of the Constitution," but it's more accurate to call him its Godfather as he had a lot of help from the other 54 Founders who met in the Philadelphia State House, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 11 years earlier, to frame this historic document for the new republic they hoped would last into "remote futurity" - if we could keep it as Ben Franklin warned at the time and would shudder now at how things turned out and condemn those in power responsible.

Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were serving abroad as envoys to France and Britain and weren't in Philadelphia for this historic gathering. When they were back later on, Jefferson and Madison wanted twelve initial amendments to the Constitution instead of the original 10 that were adopted. Federalists John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, however, opposed the Bill of Rights entirely and managed to exclude from them the other two that included "freedom from monopolies in commerce," or what are now giant corporate predators, and "freedom from a permanent military," or today's standing armies waging wars of illegal aggression.

Imagine what might have been, what was lost, and how the country might be governed today had Jefferson and Madison prevailed. Still they deserve our gratitude for what they accomplished, and it's disconcerting at the least to wonder how much worse off we'd be now if they hadn't gotten any of the Bill of Rights freedoms in our founding law that although lost under neocon rule may one day be restored if we can survive in the meantime.

A Look Ahead In An Age of State-Sponsored Terror Under Neocon Rule

It's time to pause at year's end to give thanks for our blessings but reflect that the spirit of the season demands that the madness of Bush neocon rule be stopped and ended before it's too late. Six years is more than enough to know the administration's agenda at home and abroad is roguish, corrupted by greed and contempt for the law, ruthless in its pursuit of world dominance through the barrel of a gun, and arrogant enough to think it can get away with it because who'll challenge those in charge.

Internally, there no longer are checks and balances as the three branches of government under Republicans and Democrats are united for a common purpose, and their agenda to carry it out is hostile to the public interest. It's the ultimate expression of Lord Acton's dictum that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Positively it does in the age of George Bush and a culture obsessed with power, the lust for more of it, and the worship of the wealth and privilege that comes with it. It wreaks of the Vince Lombardi philosophy that "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing," and the only rules are the ones those now in power make up as they go along justifying whatever they choose to do, regardless of its consequences always harmful to the great majority.

It's also based on might making right but not the way Abe Lincoln meant it when he said in his February, 1860 Cooper Union speech prior to his July presidential nomination that year: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." He later expressed a spirit of reconciliation with the South and kind of humanity George Bush has contempt for in his second inaugural address in March, 1865 when he spoke of "malice toward none (and) charity for all" only weeks before his life was taken by an assassin's bullet. Imagining that language from George Bush, and meaning it, would be to imagine the unimaginable from a man who likely doesn't even understand it.

What is imaginable in the year ahead and thenceforth is a world without George Bush and his neocon extremist administration leading the nation on a path to hell. Those wanting justice demand the Congress act to impeach him and the vice-president and then remove them from office allowing for the chance charges will be brought against them both and others in their administration so they'll be held to account in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague or another judicial venue where officials may be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. They committed them all and more against the people of Iraq, at least two of the three in Afghanistan, and a legion of others against the people of the United States and its Constitution.

It'll only happen if it comes from the bottom up, from enough public outrage bubbling to the surface vocally demanding justice be served and the rule of law restored and again respected. No one at any level in public or private life should ever be allowed to get away with the kind of reckless and gross criminality that's been rampant and out-of-control in Washington for the past six years under Republican neocon rule.

It's long past time to put an end to this criminal class of rogues in charge, running the country like their private fiefdom in a culture of galling corruption and scorn for the law that exceeds anything here ever preceding their tenure. Already there's a groundswell of growing outrage slowly building in size and intensity. As the new year approaches, it remains to be seen if a combination of those people of conscience can unite with enough others in the body politic to give us all what everyone should want and demand - an end to wars, a renewed respect for the law, accountability for those in government who violated it, and a commitment to serve the public interest with equity and equal justice for all in the true spirit of a real democracy restored from the grave and once again respected and cherished.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [e-mail]. Also visit his blog site at http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com .

Copyright © 2006 Stephen Lendman

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Ship of fools: Johann Hari sets sail with America's swashbuckling neocons

The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth – and as for Guantanamo Bay, it's practically a holiday camp... The annual cruise organised by the 'National Review', mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans.

By Johann Hari
Published: 13 July 2007

I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, both chilling and burning, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."

I am getting used to these moments – when gentle holiday geniality bleeds into... what? I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

I am travelling on a bright white cruise ship with two restaurants, five bars, a casino – and 500 readers of the National Review. Here, the Iraq war has been "an amazing success". Global warming is not happening. The solitary black person claims, "If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights, then God bless them." And I have nowhere to run.

From time to time, National Review – the bible of American conservatism – organises a cruise for its readers. I paid $1,200 to join them. The rules I imposed on myself were simple: If any of the conservative cruisers asked who I was, I answered honestly, telling them I was a journalist. Mostly, I just tried to blend in – and find out what American conservatives say when they think the rest of us aren't listening.

I. From sweet to suicide bomber

I arrive at the dockside in San Diego on Saturday afternoon and stare up at the Oosterdam, our home for the next seven days. Filipino boat hands are loading trunks into the hull and wealthy white folk are gliding onto its polished boards with pale sun parasols dangling off their arms.

The Reviewers have been told to gather for a cocktail reception on the Lido, near the very top of the ship. I arrive to find a tableau from Gone With the Wind, washed in a thousand shades of grey. Southern belles – aged and pinched – are flirting with old conservative warriors. The etiquette here is different from anything I have ever seen. It takes me 15 minutes to realise what is wrong with this scene. There are no big hugs, no warm kisses. This is a place of starchy handshakes. Men approach each other with stiffened spines, puffed-out chests and crunching handshakes. Women are greeted with a single kiss on the cheek. Anything more would be French.

I adjust and stiffly greet the first man I see. He is a judge, with the craggy self-important charm that slowly consumes any judge. He is from Canada, he declares (a little more apologetically), and is the founding president of "Canadians Against Suicide Bombing". Would there be many members of "Canadians for Suicide Bombing?" I ask. Dismayed, he suggests that yes, there would.

A bell rings somewhere, and we are all beckoned to dinner. We have been assigned random seats, which will change each night. We will, the publicity pack promises, each dine with at least one National Review speaker during our trip.

To my left, I find a middle-aged Floridian with a neat beard. To my right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently. How did that happen? How do you go from sweet to suicide-bomb in six seconds?

The conversation ebbs back to friendly chit-chat. So, you're a European, one of the Park Avenue ladies says, before offering witty commentaries on the cities she's visited. Her companion adds, "I went to Paris, and it was so lovely." Her face darkens: "But then you think – it's surrounded by Muslims." The first lady nods: "They're out there, and they're coming." Emboldened, the bearded Floridian wags a finger and says, "Down the line, we're not going to bail out the French again." He mimes picking up a phone and shouts into it, "I can't hear you, Jacques! What's that? The Muslims are doing what to you? I can't hear you!"

Now that this barrier has been broken – everyone agrees the Muslims are devouring the French, and everyone agrees it's funny – the usual suspects are quickly rounded up. Jimmy Carter is "almost a traitor". John McCain is "crazy" because of "all that torture". One of the Park Avenue ladies declares that she gets on her knees every day to " thank God for Fox News". As the wine reaches the Floridian, he announces, "This cruise is the best money I ever spent."

They rush through the Rush-list of liberals who hate America, who want her to fail, and I ask them – why are liberals like this? What's their motivation? They stutter to a halt and there is a long, puzzled silence. " It's a good question," one of them, Martha, says finally. I have asked them to peer into the minds of cartoons and they are suddenly, reluctantly confronted with the hollowness of their creation. "There have always been intellectuals who want to tell people how to live," Martha adds, to an almost visible sense of relief. That's it – the intellectuals! They are not like us. Dave changes the subject, to wash away this moment of cognitive dissonance. "The liberals don't believe in the constitution. They don't believe in what the founders wanted – a strong executive," he announces, to nods. A Filipino waiter offers him a top-up of his wine, and he mock-whispers to me, "They all look the same! Can you tell them apart?" I stare out to sea. How long would it take me to drown?

II. "We're doing an excellent job killing them."

The Vista Lounge is a Vegas-style showroom, with glistening gold edges and the desperate optimism of an ageing Cha-Cha girl. Today, the scenery has been cleared away – "I always sit at the front in these shows to see if the girls are really pretty and on this ship they are ug-lee," I hear a Reviewer mutter – and our performers are the assorted purveyors of conservative show tunes, from Podhoretz to Steyn. The first of the trip's seminars is a discussion intended to exhume the conservative corpse and discover its cause of death on the black, black night of 7 November, 2006, when the treacherous Democrats took control of the US Congress.

There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few moments to realise exactly what it is. All the tropes that conservatives usually deny in public – that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is fighting a class war on behalf of the rich – are embraced on this shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed liberals lose it. "It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but who's 'we'?" the writer Dinesh D'Souza asks angrily. "The left won by demanding America's humiliation." On this ship, there are no Viet Cong, no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers."

The panel nods, but it doesn't want to stray from Iraq. Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbles from beneath low-hanging jowls: "The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You'd think we're the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren't covered. We're doing an excellent job killing them."

Then, with a judder, the panel runs momentarily aground. Rich Lowry, the preppy, handsome 38-year-old editor of National Review, says, "The American public isn't concluding we're losing in Iraq for any irrational reason. They're looking at the cold, hard facts." The Vista Lounge is, as one, perplexed. Lowry continues, "I wish it was true that, because we're a superpower, we can't lose. But it's not."

No one argues with him. They just look away, in the same manner that people avoid glancing at a crazy person yelling at a bus stop. Then they return to hyperbole and accusations of treachery against people like their editor. The ageing historian Bernard Lewis – who was deputed to stiffen Dick Cheney's spine in the run-up to the war – declares, "The election in the US is being seen by [the bin Ladenists] as a victory on a par with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We should be prepared for whatever comes next." This is why the guests paid up to $6,000. This is what they came for. They give him a wheezing, stooping ovation and break for coffee.

A fracture-line in the lumbering certainty of American conservatism is opening right before my eyes. Following the break, Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley – two of the grand old men of the Grand Old Party – begin to feud. Podhoretz will not stop speaking – "I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends on the right, too," he rants –and Buckley says to the chair, " Just take the mike, there's no other way." He says it with a smile, but with heavy eyes.

Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism, and they stare at wholly different Iraqs. Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who travelled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America's power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims: "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and " thank God" for that.

Buckley is an urbane old reactionary, drunk on doubts. He founded the National Review in 1955 – when conservatism was viewed in polite society as a mental affliction – and he has always been sceptical of appeals to " the people," preferring the eternal top-down certainties of Catholicism. He united with Podhoretz in mutual hatred of Godless Communism, but, slouching into his eighties, he possesses a world view that is ill-suited for the fight to bring democracy to the Muslim world. He was a ghostly presence on the cruise at first, appearing only briefly to shake a few hands. But now he has emerged, and he is fighting.

"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies. "As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran." He says he is "heartbroken" by this " rise of defeatism on the right." He adds, apropos of nothing, "There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're winning." The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn't he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley "a coward". His wife nods and says, " Buckley's an old man," tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

I decide to track down Buckley and Podhoretz separately and ask them for interviews. Buckley is sitting forlornly in his cabin, scribbling in a notebook. In 2005, at an event celebrating National Review's 50th birthday, President Bush described today's American conservatives as "Bill's children". I ask him if he feels like a parent whose kids grew up to be serial killers. He smiles slightly, and his blue eyes appear to twinkle. Then he sighs, "The answer is no. Because what animated the conservative core for 40 years was the Soviet menace, plus the rise of dogmatic socialism. That's pretty well gone."

This does not feel like an optimistic defence of his brood, but it's a theme he returns to repeatedly: the great battles of his life are already won. Still, he ruminates over what his old friend Ronald Reagan would have made of Iraq. "I think the prudent Reagan would have figured here, and the prudent Reagan would have shunned a commitment of the kind that we are now engaged in... I think he would have attempted to find some sort of assurance that any exposure by the United States would be exposure to a challenge the dimensions of which we could predict." Lest liberals be too eager to adopt the Gipper as one of their own, Buckley agrees approvingly that Reagan's approach would have been to "find a local strongman" to rule Iraq.

A few floors away, Podhoretz tells me he is losing his voice, "which will make some people very happy". Then he croaks out the standard-issue Wolfowitz line about how, after September 11, the United States had to introduce democracy to the Middle East in order to change the political culture that produced the mass murderers. For somebody who declares democracy to be his goal, he is remarkably blasé about the fact that 80 per cent of Iraqis want US troops to leave their country, according to the latest polls. "I don't much care," he says, batting the question away. He goes on to insist that "nobody was tortured in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo" and that Bush is "a hero". He is, like most people on this cruise, certain the administration will attack Iran.

Podhoretz excitedly talks himself into a beautiful web of words, vindicating his every position. He fumes at Buckley, George Will and the other apostate conservatives who refuse to see sense. He announces victory. And for a moment, here in the Mexican breeze, it is as though a thousand miles away Baghdad is not bleeding. He starts hacking and coughing painfully. I offer to go to the ship infirmary and get him some throat sweets, and – locked in eternal fighter-mode – he looks thrown, as though this is an especially cunning punch. Is this random act of kindness designed to imbalance him? " I'm fine," he says, glancing contemptuously at the Bill Buckley book I am carrying. "I'll keep on shouting through the soreness."

III. The Ghosts of Conservatism Past

The ghosts of Conservatism past are wandering this ship. From the pool, I see John O'Sullivan, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher. And one morning on the deck I discover Kenneth Starr, looking like he has stepped out of a long-forgotten 1990s news bulletin waving Monica's stained blue dress. His face is round and unlined, like an immense, contented baby. As I stare at him, all my repressed bewilderment rises, and I ask – Mr Starr, do you feel ashamed that, as Osama bin Laden plotted to murder American citizens, you brought the American government to a stand-still over a few consensual blow jobs? Do you ever lie awake at night wondering if a few more memos on national security would have reached the President's desk if he wasn't spending half his time dealing with your sexual McCarthyism?

He smiles through his teeth and – in his soft somnambulant voice – says in perfect legalese, "I am entirely at rest with the process. The House of Representatives worked its will, the Senate worked its will, the Chief Justice of the United States presided. The constitutional process worked admirably."

It's an oddly meek defence, and the more I challenge him, the more legalistic he becomes. Every answer is a variant on "it's not my fault" . First, he says Clinton should have settled early on in Jones vs Clinton. Then he blames Jimmy Carter. "This critique really should be addressed to the now-departed, moribund independent counsel provisions. The Ethics and Government [provisions] ushered in during President Carter's administration has an extraordinarily low threshold for launching a special prosecutor..."

Enough – I see another, more intriguing ghost. Ward Connerly is the only black person in the National Review posse, a 67-year-old Louisiana-born businessman, best known for leading conservative campaigns against affirmative action for black people. Earlier, I heard him saying the Republican Party has been "too preoccupied with... not ticking off the blacks", and a cooing white couple wandered away smiling, "If he can say it, we can say it." What must it be like to be a black man shilling for a magazine that declared at the height of the civil rights movement that black people "tend to revert to savagery", and should be given the vote only "when they stop eating each other"?

I drag him into the bar, where he declines alcohol. He tells me plainly about his childhood – his mother died when he was four, and he was raised by his grandparents – but he never really becomes animated until I ask him if it is true he once said, "If the KKK supports equal rights, then God bless them." He leans forward, his palms open. There are, he says, " those who condemn the Klan based on their past without seeing the human side of it, because they don't want to be in the wrong, politically correct camp, you know... Members of the Ku Klux Klan are human beings, American citizens – they go to a place to eat, nobody asks them 'Are you a Klansmember?', before we serve you here. They go to buy groceries, nobody asks, 'Are you a Klansmember?' They go to vote for Governor, nobody asks 'Do you know that that person is a Klansmember?' Only in the context of race do they ask that. And I'm supposed to instantly say, 'Oh my God, they are Klansmen? Geez, I don't want their support.'"

This empathy for Klansmen first bubbled into the public domain this year when Connerly was leading an anti-affirmative action campaign in Michigan. The KKK came out in support of him – and he didn't decline it. I ask if he really thinks it is possible the KKK made this move because they have become converted to the cause of racial equality. "I think that the reasoning that a Klan member goes through is – blacks are getting benefits that I'm not getting. It's reverse discrimination. To me it's all discrimination. But the Klansmen is going through the reasoning that this is benefiting blacks, they are getting things that I don't get... A white man doesn't have a chance in this country."

He becomes incredibly impassioned imagining how they feel, ventriloquising them with a shaking fist – "The Mexicans are getting these benefits, the coloureds or niggers, whatever they are saying, are getting these benefits, and I as a white man am losing my country."

But when I ask him to empathise with the black victims of Hurricane Katrina, he offers none of this vim. No, all Katrina showed was "the dysfunctionality that is evident in many black neighbourhoods," he says flatly, and that has to be "tackled by black people, not the government. " Ward, do you ever worry you are siding with people who would have denied you a vote – or would hang you by a rope from a tree?

"I don't gather strength from what others think – no at all," he says. "Whether they are in favour or opposed. I can walk down these halls and, say, a hundred people say, 'Oh we just adore you', and I'll be polite and I'll say 'thank you', but it doesn't register or have any effect on me." There is a gaggle of Reviewers waiting to tell him how refreshing it is to "finally" hear a black person "speaking like this". I leave him to their white, white garlands.

IV. "You're going to get fascists rising up, aren't you? Why hasn't that happened already?"

The nautical counter-revolution has docked in the perfectly-yellow sands of Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, and the Reviewers are clambering overboard into the Latino world they want to wall off behind a thousand-mile fence. They carry notebooks from the scribblings they made during the seminar teaching them "How To Shop in Mexico". Over breakfast, I forgot myself and said I was considering setting out to find a local street kid who would show me round the barrios – the real Mexico. They gaped. "Do you want to die?" one asked.

The Reviewers confine their Mexican jaunt to covered markets and walled-off private fortresses like the private Nikki Beach. Here, as ever, they want Mexico to be a dispenser of cheap consumer goods and lush sands – not a place populated by (uck) Mexicans. Dinesh D'Souza announced as we entered Mexican seas what he calls "D'Souza's law of immigration": " The quality of an immigrant is inversely proportional to the distance travelled to get to the United States."

In other words: Latinos suck.

I return for dinner with my special National Review guest: Kate O'Beirne. She's an impossibly tall blonde with the voice of a 1930s screwball star and the arguments of a 1890s Victorian patriarch. She inveighs against feminism and "women who make the world worse" in quick quips.

As I enter the onboard restaurant she is sitting among adoring Reviewers with her husband Jim, who announces that he is Donald Rumsfeld's personnel director. "People keep asking what I'm doing here, with him being fired and all," he says. "But the cruise has been arranged for a long time."

The familiar routine of the dinners – first the getting-to-know-you chit-chat, then some light conversational fascism – is accelerating. Tonight there is explicit praise for a fascist dictator before the entree has arrived. I drop into the conversation the news that there are moves in Germany to have Donald Rumsfeld extradited to face torture charges.

A red-faced man who looks like an egg with a moustache glued on grumbles, " If the Germans think they can take responsibility for the world, I don't care about German courts. Bomb them." I begin to witter on about the Pinochet precedent, and Kate snaps, "Treating Don Rumsfeld like Pinochet is disgusting." Egg Man pounds his fist on the table: " Treating Pinochet like that is disgusting. Pinochet is a hero. He saved Chile."

"Exactly," adds Jim. "And he privatised social security."

The table nods solemnly and then they march into the conversation – the billion-strong swarm of swarthy Muslims who are poised to take over the world. Jim leans forward and says, "When I see these football supporters from England, I think – these guys aren't going to be told by PC elites to be nice to Muslims. You're going to get fascists rising up, aren't you? Why isn't that happening already?" Before I can answer, he is conquering the Middle East from his table, from behind a crème brûlée.

"The civilised countries should invade all the oil-owning places in the Middle East and run them properly. We won't take the money ourselves, but we'll manage it so the money isn't going to terrorists."

The idea that Europe is being "taken over" by Muslims is the unifying theme of this cruise. Some people go on singles cruises. Some go on ballroom dancing cruises. This is the "The Muslims Are Coming" cruise – drinks included. Because everyone thinks it. Everyone knows it. Everyone dreams it. And the man responsible is sitting only a few tables down: Mark Steyn.

He is wearing sunglasses on top of his head and a bright, bright shirt that fits the image of the disk jockey he once was. Sitting in this sea of grey, it has an odd effect – he looks like a pimp inexplicably hanging out with the apostles of colostomy conservatism.

Steyn's thesis in his new book, America Alone, is simple: The "European races" i.e., white people – "are too self-absorbed to breed," but the Muslims are multiplying quickly. The inevitable result will be " large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015" as Europe is ceded to al Qaeda and "Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia."

He offers a light smearing of dubious demographic figures – he needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 150 million in nine years, which is a lot of humping.

But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise. With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss "the Muslims" as a homogenous, sharia-seeking block – already with near-total control of Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times – I counted – when I am fleeing Europe's encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the United States of America.

At one of the seminars, a panelist says anti-Americanism comes from both directions in a grasping pincer movement – "The Muslims condemn us for being decadent; the Europeans condemn us for not being decadent enough." Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz's wife, yells, "The Muslims are right, the Europeans are wrong!" And, instantly, Jay Nordlinger, National Review's managing editor and the panel's chair, says, " I'm afraid a lot of the Europeans are Muslim, Midge."

The audience cheers. Somebody shouts, "You tell 'em, Jay!" He tells 'em. Decter tells 'em. Steyn tells 'em.

On this cruise, everyone tells 'em – and, thanks to my European passport, tells me.

V. From cruise to cruise missiles?

I am back in the docks of San Diego watching these tireless champions of the overdog filter past and say their starchy, formal goodbyes. As Bernard Lewis disappears onto the horizon, I wonder about the connections between this cruise and the cruise missiles fired half a world away.

I spot the old lady from the sea looking for her suitcase, and stop to tell her I may have found a solution to her political worries about both Muslims and stem-cells.

"Couldn't they just do experiments on Muslim stem-cells?" I ask. " Hey – that's a great idea!" she laughs, and vanishes. Hillary-Ann stops to say she is definitely going on the next National Review cruise, to Alaska. "Perfect!" I yell, finally losing my mind.

"You can drill it as you go!" She puts her arms around me and says very sweetly, "We need you on every cruise."

As I turn my back on the ship for the last time, the Judge I met on my first night places his arm affectionately on my shoulder. "We have written off Britain to the Muslims," he says. "Come to America."

A version of this article has appeared in 'The New Republic' (www.tnr.org) [at https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20070702&s=hari070207 ]

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2766040.ece

[F6 note -- in addition to (items linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (items linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=21332240 and preceding;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=21331256 and preceding;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=21293679 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=19795227 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=13899299 and preceding;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12945055 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12186213 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=10602939 and preceding and following; and
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=7091132 and preceding and following]

[fuagf]

F6, unbelievable .. must reproduce these bits .. this this this .. gross incompetence .. this sheer, unadulterated stupidity and waste ..

Meanwhile, waste, corruption, and grotesque mismanagement were rife. Perle tells me a story he heard from an Iraqi cabinet minister, about a friend who was asked to lease a warehouse in Baghdad to a contractor for the Americans in the Green Zone. It turned out they were looking for someplace to store ice for their drinks. But, the man asked, wouldn't storing ice in Iraq's hot climate be expensive? Weren't the Americans making ice as and when they needed it? Thus he learned the extraordinary truth: that the ice was trucked in from Kuwait, 300 miles away, in regular convoys. The convoys, says Perle, "came under fire all the time. So we were sending American forces in harm's way, with full combat capability to support them, helicopters overhead, to move goddamn ice from Kuwait to Baghdad."

Perle cites another example: the mishandling of a contract to build 20 health clinics. While it is certainly "a good thing for the U.S. to be building clinics, and paying for it," Perle says, "the prime contractor never left the Green Zone. So there were subcontractors, and the way in which the prime contractor superintended the project was by asking the subcontractors to take videos of their progress and send them into the Green Zone. Now, you've got to expect projects to go wrong if that's the way you manage them, and indeed they did go wrong, and they ran out of money, and the contract was canceled. A complete fiasco." He knows, he says, "dozens" of similar stories. At their root, he adds, is America's misguided policy of awarding contracts to U.S. multi-nationals instead of Iraqi companies.

To former C.I.A. director Woolsey, one of this saga's most baffling features has been the persistent use of military tactics that were discredited in Vietnam. Since 2003, U.S. forces have "fought 'search-and-destroy' instead of 'clear-and-hold,'" he says, contrasting the ineffective strategy of hunting down insurgents to the proven one of taking territory and defending it. "There's never been a successful anti-insurgency campaign that operated according to search-and-destroy, because bad guys just come back in after you've passed through and kill the people that supported you," Woolsey explains. "How the U.S. government's post-fall-of-Baghdad planning could have ignored that history of Vietnam is stunning to me." But Rumsfeld and Bush were never willing to provide the high troop levels that Woolsey says are necessary for clear-and-hold.

GODFERFLABBERGASME .. THE BUSH TEAM ..

Thanks, F6 .. no thanks to ALL those &*&^%#^**^%-$$$$$$$$$$s ..