| Guest | | Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2002 4:10 am Post subject: THE BUSH GANG'S PLAN TO RULE |
| THE BUSH GANG'S PLAN TO RULE
THE WORLD
The LowDown October 2002
Oh boy, look out world, herer comes King George the W, all saddled up in his
war pony, decked out in his Commander-in-Chief outfit, and hollering about going to
war in Iraq to kick ol' Saddam's butt!! Wait a minute, I thought it was the September
11 terrorists we were after - Osama bin Laden and his horrific al Qaeda network. Just
a while ago, Bush was beating on his chest, promising to "smoke 'em out", and dec
laring that he would not rest until those who had attacked America were brought to
justice "dead or alive" remember?
A year later, George still doesn't hae a scalp on his political belt - Osama can't be
found, and al Qaeda reportedly is already regrouping in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
who knows where else. They're still out there, and still a threat to our national sec-
urity. So George has turned from chasing the hard one to try and bag an easier one,
one that he knows where to find: the Beast of Baghdad.
In September, full of his characteristic frat-boy bravado, Bush suddenly shifted
our nation's military and media focus from stopping the crash-bombing terrorists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on a single day to mounting an invasion on Iraq for the
purpose of "regime change". We've gotta go to war and take out Saddam, he began
bellowing.
"We"?, white boy? George has always been a war-monger, not a warrior. During
Vietnam, he enthusiastically supported the war - but alas- couldn't personally go
off to do battle. Getting student deferments, he was busy being a cheerleader at
Yale, after which he got the helping hand of an oilman neighbor who intervened pol-
itically in Texas to keep the Bush buy on the home front, defending Houston from
the dreaded Viet Cong.
Bush's own family is not at risk from his pounding on the war drum. Nor are the
families of the other war-whooping politicos, pundits, political consultants, media ex-
ecutives, or think tank theorists. None of their sons, daughters, or other loved ones
will be shipped off to Mr. Bush's vicarious war adventure. Others will pay the price.
The British general who commanded the renowned "Desert rats" in the 1991 Gulf
War forecasts a casualty rate of 15% among our troops invading Iraq.
If we deploy a force of 250,000, that would mean more than 35,000 soldiers killed,
shattered, maimed, or disabled - not to mention those who will die later from battle-
field-poisoning syndromes, as happened in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. Nor does
it count the hundreds of thousands of Ifaq's 23 million civilians who'll die. Nor does
it contemplate all sorts of nasty scenarios involving chemical and biological weap-
ons, nukes, an Israeli offensive, a Muslim world explosion, and ..well, war is Hell.
Why Saddam? Why now? Let us count the assortment of absurdities that the
Bushites have trotted out in the past few weeks to ratonalize George's Iraq attack.
* Saddam is a terrible man. Golly, yes he is, but what else is new? He was terr-
ible last year, five years ago, and long before that. He was known to be a murderous
thug way back in 1983, when Ronald Reagan and Poppa George Bush officially coz-
ied up to Saddam, dispatching none other than Donald (Duck) Rumsfeld as a spec-
ial envoy to woo the savage beast. At the time, the Reagan-Bush White House wan-
ted to use Hussein against the rising theocracy in Iran, which they perceived as a
threat to U.S. oil interests.
So they spent billions of of our tax payer dollars to build up Saddam's army,
providing cash, weapons, and military intelligence to support him in his bloody, five
year war. Nor did Hussein's terribleness prevent Poppa Bush's administration from
trying to set him up as a regional pillar of U.S. foreign policy, with congressional del-
egations led by the likes of Bob Dole visiting "our Strongman" to promote business
deals, and with American corporations vying to win Iraqi military contracts.
Bush the Elder danced with this devil right up to the moment Saddam invaded Ku-
wait in 1990 - and even then, a Bush diplomat, April Glaspie, had winked at Huss-
ein, indicating that the State Department did not oppose his taking some Kuwaiti
territory he laid claim to. After the 1991 war that devastated Iraq's military and ec-
onomic might, who rushed in to hlep this terrible thug rebuild? Dick Cheney!! As
CEO of Haliburton Inc, he oversaw $23.8 million in deals to rebuild Iraq's oil-field in-
frastructure - more than any other U.S. corporation.
When it comes to being a partner with the US of A, the standard is not whether
you are "terrible", but whether you are convenient. If Bush is looking for terrible, he
need look no further than the gaggle he presently calls "partners" in his global terr-
orism campaign, including the tyrant Musharraf of Pakistan, the despotic Saudi fam-
ily of Saudi Arabia, and the jail wardens who rule China.
* Okay, but what about his Weapons of Mass Destruction? The excited claim
here is that the Beast is now a direct threat to the U.S. because he has developed
"Weapons of Mass Destruction". Bush himself recently said flatly that Iraq "six
months away from having a nuclear bomb, citing a 1998 report from the International
Atomic Energy Agency. "I don't know what more evidence is needed," an impatient
Bush whined. However, the agency has responded that no such report exists. In-
deed, the IAEA has reported that Hussein's nuclear program was completely dis-
mantled by 1998, as was his missile capacity to hurl any WMDs at his neighbors,
much less at 6,000 miles away.
Saddam personally remains full of piss and vinegar, and no doubt wants to ass-'
emble a nuke, but his war machine is a shadow of its former self. Middle East mili-
tary experts report that, contrary to Bush's Chicken Little alarms, Iraq's ability to dev
elop, build and launch a WMD program is minimal. Saddam's navy is kaput, his air
force is a fraction of what it was a decade ago, his overall armed forces are down by
two thirds, and he's cut his annual military spending by 90%. His defensive capabil-
ities are still strong, especially around Baghdad where he's dug in, but his offensive
punch is shriveled.
Yet Rumsfeld, when asked to produce real evidence that Iraq suddenly is a nuclear
threat, got in a snit and blathered, "The absence of evidence does not mean the evi-
dence of absence." Perhaps Rummy needs a vacation.
* Well, did you know that Saddam is directly linked to Osama?
This is supposed to be Bush's clincher argument for offing Hussein, and he's
had Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Condi Rice out on the pundit circuit furrowing their
brows and making embarassingly wild and vague claims of skulduggery between the two demonic leaders. Bush himself recently screeched, " You can't distinguish be-
tween Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the War on Terror." Actually, you
can. Far from being allies, they are sworn enemies. In 1990, Osama even offered
to lead an Islamic force to liberate Kuwait from Saddam, whom he views as a vain-
glorious heathen, an enemy of the true Islam.
Al Qaeda even put Hussein on its list of targets. For his part, the last thing Saddam
wants is to allow a mess of Osama-style Shite fundamentalism in his home region.
He, of course, is Muslim, but it's power, not religion, that motivates him. While Iraq
is a Muslim nation and 60% of its people are Shiites, Hussein brutally suppresses
them and routinely murders all Shiite clerics who could pose a threat to his secular
reign.
* Hey, its about bringing peace and democracy to the region. Here's where the
Bushite hardliners go all squishy, claiming that the forced ouster of Saddam will, like
the 1944 liberation of Paris, make Americans heroes, leading to a flowering of Free-
dom. As Condi Rice mistily describes it, the Arab world will undergo a spontaneous
"march of democracy" once we oust Saddam.
"Is she dreaming?" asked one incredulous Egyptian official. As Amr Moussa,
head of the Arab of the Arab League, starkly puts it, a Bush invasion of Iraq "would
open the Gates of Hell."
Gate One is in the Al Qaeda network, which drools at the prospect of another Yan-
kee imperialist attack on a Muslim nation. In one blow, they get rid of the infidel
Saddam and gain a huge recruiting victory among the world's enraged Muslims.
Gate Two is in the slums of Baghdad and southern Iraq, where the impoverished
Shiite majority will go on a blood-thirsty rampage against Saddam's ruling Sunni
minority (only 16% of the population). But while the Shiites despise Hussein, they
won't welcome Americans as conquering heroes because (1) They reject Western
Materialism and Imperialism, and (2) the Bushites have refused to reach out to
them, instead working with a handful of dissidents within the Sunni elite to take
power appres Hussein.
Hells Gate Three is in neighboring Iran, where the mullahs dream of extending their
repressive theocracy into Iraq, imposing a puppet state through their fellow Shiites.
While the Iranian and Iraqi Shiites are different, they could forge an alliance of con-
venience that would expand the war on Saddam into a gruesome war with Iran,
which is actually closer to having nuclear capability.
Gate Four is in northern Iraq, where the Kurds are eager to create an independent
state. These Kurds are Pro-American, but one of our most reliable allies, Turkey,
is vehemenently anti-Kurd and says will not allow a Kurdish state. So, George,
in this looming war, do we support our Kurdish allies, our our Turkish allies? It's
the Kurds, by the way, whom the Bushites mis-label when they refer to Saddam
gassing "his own people" - they are an occupied people, NOT Iraqi citizens.
Gate Five is in Saudi Arabis, Kuwait, Egypt and other autocracies we count as our
allies and oil partners. They, too, rule by repressing their impoverished and funda-mentalist Islamic majority, which will be inflamed by Bush's attack and will pose
a newly energized threat to the reign of Bush's monarchial oil buddies.
Gate Six is us, who'll face an even stronger wave of anti-Islamic outrage if Bush dev-
iates from chasing terrorists to chasing Saddam.
WHAT IS THE REALLY ALL ABOUT?
The Bushites can't even stay consistent with any one of their incredible ration-
ales, flitting from one excuse to another. George has even declared that we should
hit Hussein for Oedipal reasons, saying, "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad."
But behind all this flim flamming, there are three forces propelling them to rush us
pell mell into this war:
1. November Elections. As we learned from their heist of Florida's electoral
votes after the 2000 elections, these guys are all about grabbing power and using
it to shove through their corporate agenda. This summer, Bush and the GOP were
in a heap of political trouble with CEO crooks on the front page, investigators sniff-
ing into both George's and Cheney's business scams, rising unemployment, diving
stock prices, swelling deficits, drug-price gouging, September 11 intelligence bun-
gling, John Ashcroft's loopiness, favoritism to polluters, giveaways to the rich - and
many other REAL issues too numerous to list.
With the control of Congress at stake in November, they had to change the political
focus FAST, and there sat big, fat Saddam - the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Distract-
ion. The always dangerous Karl Rove, Bush's long-term Michavelli, began telling all
Republican campaigns to "focus on war" for the rest of the political year, and Bush's
chief of staff Andrew Card, confided that the reason they waited until September to
beat the Drums of War against Iraq is because "from a marketing point of view you
don't introduce new products in August."
2. One word: Oil. Larry Lindsey, Bush's top economic advisor, gloats that there's
a very oily reason to invade: "When there is regime change in Iraq, you could add three million to five million barrels per day of production to world supply." , adding
that "the successful prosecution of the ward would be good for the economy." Gra-
bbing Iraqi oil has been a goal of the big companies and the Bush White House from
day 1. The infamous "Cheney Report" on energy policy, written early in 2001 by
industry lobbyists, declares trhat the top priority must be increasing U.S. access
to Persian Gulf oil because, (1) our consumption of imported crude is going to in-'crease dramatically, and (2) Saudi Arabia, our chief supplier, is politically shaky,
and (3) Iraq has massive reserves the U.S. oil companies want control
"Theres not an oil company out there that wouldn't be interested in Iraq," con-
ceded an industry analyst, and our hand-picked Sunni allies inside Iraq say that
once Saddam is out, they'll cancel all h is deals and cut new ones, with the U.S.
taking the lead in re-allocation. James Woolsey, former CIA director and a big-
boot Saddam proponent, unabashedly says that wavering nations like France and
Russia should be told that if "they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward dec-
ent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and
American companies will work closely with them."
3. Arrogance and Empire. W's family laughs that, as a boy, he used to light fire
crackers and shove them down the throats of frogs just to watch them explode.
Boys will be boys, of course, but now the Bush boy is determined to shove Amer-
ica's military firepower down the throats of the world, beginning with Iraq. George
has propounded an astonishingly arrogant new policy of imposing an American
Empire over the world. Issued last month as a 33 page document, it was dubbed
the "Bush Doctrine", but it's really the Bush Dictate. It combatively asserts that
his administration will,
(1) Seek to maintain a permanent military might so overwhelming that no other
nation, friend or foe, can ever rival - thus putting a smile on the faces of lobbyists
for evry U.S. military contractor, (2) act alone, to intervene anywhere they want in
order to advance what they decide are American interests, (3) feel free to make
pre-emptive strikes against any nation they perceive even as a threat or to be a po-
tential threat to these undefined U.S. interests, including pre-emptive strikes with
nuclear weapons, and (4) aggressively use U.S. economic clout and the power of
the IMF and World Bank to demand that all nations adopt "pro growth legal and
regulatory policies to encourage business investment, tax policies, particularly
lower marginal tax rates that improve incentives" for wealthy corporate investors.
Like their lunge for Iraqi oil, the Bushites pugnacious assertion of a New American
Empire has long been in the works among the plotters who form the continuum
from Bush I to Bush II. As revealed in Harpers Magazine by investigative reporter
David Armstrong, it goes back to an internal Pentagon document called "Defense
Planning Guidance," initiated in late 1989, when then Defense Secretary Cheney
worried about declining public support for the ever-expanding military establishment.
The DPG, developed under the supervision of the superhawkish Paul Wolfowitz
and with the backing of superstar military man Powell, amounted to a plan for the
U.S. to rule the world. "The overt theme is unilateralism", writes Armstrong, "but
it is ultimately a story of domination". In the last year of Bush I's presidency, Po-
well pitched the plan to a house committee, candidly saying the U.S. should be-
come the world's baddest street thug, "I want to be the bully on the block", Powell
blared. And he's the dove!!
And then, just before the 2000 election, a right wing think tank called Project for
the New American Century prepared a policy paper for Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfo-
witz, and other Bushites updating the DPG. This paper called for Bush II to take
military control of the Gulf region, calling our armed forces "the cavalry of a new
American Frontier." It declared that the U.S. must "discourage advanced indust-
rial nations from challenging our leadership, or even aspiring to a larger regional
or global role."
The Bushites are beyond dangerous - they are kooky laissez -faire Empire
Builders, zealots seeking to compel a rowdy and rebellious world to accet their
corporate ideology, imposing their will by military force. This is not about Iraq -
it's about perverting 227 years of our people's democratic aspirations into a far-
fetched reach for global corporate dominance. It is a wrenching perversion of who
we are.
It's our country, not theirs, and it's our values and ultimately our National Security
that they are putting at risk. These people must be stopped, yet there's only weak
ling opposition in Congress. No one is going to stop them, but us. Remember
Patti Smith's song:
PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER TO
DREAM, TO RULE, TO WRESTLE
THE WORLD FROM FOOLS. | |
