America's Fate Depends Upon Whether Gen. Petraeus is an Honest Man

Having swept both houses in the mid-terms, the party of donkeys may be about to fall off a cliff into the trap set for them by the GOP. Some background: even though, it was Richard Nixon who escalated the Viet Nam war beyond anything previous administrations had dared think about, it was Democrats who paid the price. The GOP convinced the nation that Democrats were weak on defense. The strategy worked to set up Reagan's historic victory. An era of trickle down economics followed and the trend continues to this day: the rich get richer and everyone else falls into an economic black hole.

The GOP had help along the way. Iran undoubtedly cut a deal to delay the release of US hostages until Ronald Reagan was sworn in, It reinforced the "weakness" that stuck on Carter like taffy.

As Eleanor Clift points out, the GOP has pulled out and dusted off a typical GOP strategem, a tired tactic that has, nevertheless, worked miracles for them in the past. Bush, says Clift, will keep just enough troops in Iraq "...to provide a surface illusion of progress." Bush will leave it to the Democrats to pull out and cut off support for whatever regime is in place. It will not matter to the GOP that it will fall because it will never have been legitimate. The GOP will blame "weak-kneed, weak on defense" Democrats for the inevitable fall of an illegitimate puppet regime.

Viet Nam redux! Democrats paid dearly for having "...pulled funding from the South Vietnamese government." Wouldn't it be interesting, however, if Gen. Petraeus should be the one to explode the GOP strategy in their faces, in "full view of the world"?

This scenario was suggested to me by Ernest Evans, a professor of political science at the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Several hundred of his former students are currently serving in Iraq. In a recent e-mail outlining his views, he wrote, “I do not believe a single serious student of unconventional war believes that the surge will help the US win in Iraq. The purpose of the surge is not to provide ‘space’ for Iraq’s politicians but rather to provide ‘cover’ for DC’s politicians.”

There is one other thing to keep in mind, he wrote, and that is the extent to which Petraeus, a serious scholar and student of history, might be influenced by Vietnam. Nobody knows what he will say or how Gillespie and the White House will massage the message. The expectation is that he will fall into line, but he could surprise everyone by giving an unvarnished assessment of how truly bleak the US options are in Iraq. The argument for why he may be the one to drop the horse’s head on Bush’s bed: the late Gen. William Westmoreland will always be remembered for the optimistic report he gave to Congress in late 1967, only to have the Tet Offensive occur shortly after, destroying the public’s confidence that the war was winnable. In Iraq, the holy Muslim holiday Ramadan could bring heightened violence reminiscent of Tet. Petraeus has his reputation to protect, and being remembered as the William Westmoreland of the Iraq War is something no Army officer wants.

Eleanor Clift, Marketing the War

Finger-pointing is always to be expected near the ends of lost wars. And Iraq, make no mistake, is a lost war. Too many writers have blamed Bush for not defining victory. In fact, victory could not be defined and there was never any way to win.

Much has already been written about a growing rift between Bush and the uniformed military command. Much of the blame has leveled at Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Other deserving targets are Vice President Dick Cheney, General Tommy Franks, the former commander of US Central Command, Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense, and L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. All but two are already out office. Bush is now on a second defense secretary, a third CIA director and the third commanding general in Iraq. None of the suffling has changed a thing. A lost war got even worse over time. This suggests that "personalities" had nothing to do with the very source of the problem back at the White House.

Was Petraeus put into his position to be a yes man? The future of the US comes down to whether or not Gen. Petraeus is an honest man or Bush's man, a real patriot or compromised GOP puppet.

In an internal assessment given to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, a senior intelligence analyst and a military planner for the US command in Baghdad call for shifting US strategy in Iraq away from counterinsurgency and toward peace enforcement, and they suggest that the Shiite-led ruling coalition is involved in the country's "low-grade civil war."

The Aug. 15 briefing, titled "Resolving the Conflict in Iraq: An Alternative Peacemaking Strategy," offers an unusual glimpse into the intellectual debate within the US military over the way forward in Iraq, and it comes just days before Petraeus, the top US commander there, is scheduled to testify before Congress on the progress of President Bush's war strategy.

--Washington Post, New Strategy Urged in Briefing to Petraeus

Much has been written on this blog and others about long term reforms that might make this a better country in Bush's wake. All are dreams until Bush and the GOP leadership that conspired with him is brought to justice.

They deceived the country into the Iraq War by abusing the intelligence gathering process and telling us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, leading us to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks and was a direct threat to the United States. We now know that none of that was true and we continue to learn more about the ugly and dishonest process that took this Nation to War. I cannot conceive of a more significant reason to impeach a President and Vice President than brazenly misusing the capabilities of this government to start a War. That War has cost the entire world dearly. The price we are paying continues to grow. The country of Iraq has been destroyed along with over half a million Iraqi people dead. Our Nation has lost the lives of thousands of young men and women, seen many more come back wounded or disabled and disrupted the careers and family lives of our National Guard troops - the suffering and damage is beyond comprehension, and yet it goes on and grows. And beyond that, we have spent billions upon billions of dollars that have mostly been borrowed from future generations. Consider for a moment what those billions could have accomplished if they had not been wasted. And all of this for what? I am outraged by every part of the decision to start this war and the way that they have carried it out. And I ask you, are you outraged? I ask you, given this picture must Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

I am outraged that here in this country, they listened to phone conversations, intercepted emails and spied electronically on Americans with a program that was so clearly a violation of the law that even Bush’s own attorney general, John Ashcroft, refused to certify it as in compliance with law. I ask you, must Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

In this country, at Guantanamo and around the world, they illegally captured and detained people without appropriate hearings and safeguards in a way that was determined by the Supreme Court to be a violation of the Constitution. Just Friday, the Supreme Court took the very unusual step of re-opening its consideration of an appeal from Guantanamo. I ask you, must Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

They used torture and sent prisoners to other countries where they would be tortured even more severely -and the Vice President was one of the chief architects of the torture program. I ask you, must Bush and Cheney be held accountable?

And we see even more reasons to impeach - the blatant disregard for the rule of law is rampant in this Administration. President Bush uses signing statements to announce which portions of laws passed by Congress he will not obey or enforce. The Administration refuses to cooperate with legitimate Congressional inquiries or to comply with subpoenas. And then there is the secrecy and the covering up - the refusal to comply with Federal law about preserving secret information, setting up a separate secret email system and then deleting thousands of emails, the order to the Secret Service to destroy all logs of visitors to the President and Vice President. I can only imagine how many more grounds for impeachment there would be if we knew all they are hiding.

But, outrage and anger are not enough. We have a job to do and that job is to hold this Administration accountable and take this country back. The power to change history is on our hands. We share a positive vision that we can help our Nation change for the better. We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for. There in no one else who will do our job. But our job is not easy. As we’ve called for impeachment, we’ve heard many objections - even from those who believe that there has been serious wrongdoing.

--Impeachment: We’ve Got a Job to Do, John Kaminski, Chair of the Maine Lawyers for Democracy, at the Citizens Summit for Impeachment

Why Bush Must be Stopped!

Why Bush Must Be Stopped Before He Nukes Iran!

Additional Resources

• Meet Jerome Hauer, 9/11 Suspect Awaiting Indictment
• Why did the World Trade Centers create so much powdered concrete?
• America at War
• Global Executions on Rise

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Bush Deliberately Creates "Constructive Chaos" in Iraq

Two phrases --"new world order" and "constructive chaos" have in common Yale's not so secret "Skull and Bones" society which nurtures both concepts. Neither phrase is peculiar to the Bushes, though the elder and the lesser Bush pimp both ideas. New world order, itself a mushy half-baked soupcon of ill-considered ideologies, has been associated with a certain Yale Fraternity known less for its scholarship than its lame-brained kookiness. Constructive chaos is associated, though not accurately, with Iraq. Iraq is in chaos but its hardly productive. Both Bushes fail their own standard.

The idea of a "New World Order" was not merely reinforced or even acquired in the lesser Bush's Yale days. The lesser Bush grew up with the idea, if "idea" it be. As president, George H.W. Bush espoused a "New World Order" in 1991, 10 years prior to the events now called "911". As far as I can tell, the phrase was first used by Adolf Hitler, though there is a very good possibility that it's origins may be traced to the various, nefarious and multifarious threads called "Illuminati".

For the record, Bush Sr, of course, did not make his State of the Union address on September 11, 1991. It was made on January 29, 1991.

While nothing said by Bush about Iraq is or has been true at any time, every dire prediction has come true. Iraq is a scene of endless insurgency, sectarian bloodletting, and urban warfare never planned for by the US military. If the war was intended to end world terrorism, it has, in fact, made it worse. If the attack and invasion was intended to bring Democracy to Iraq, it has, in fact, made of Democracy an unrealizable dream. If Bush had intended merely to up-end an evil dictatorship, he merely replaced it with his own. If Bush seeks simple revenge against terrorists, he need only give himself up to international authorities. It may have been, as I recall, Le Monde Diplomatique, which wrote: Les Etats-Unis sont le plus grand terroriste au monde.

According to Watching America, the US occupation has made of Iraq, an Iraqi barrel.

A barrel is a cylindrical metal or wooden container that is now more a part of the lives of Iraqis than ever before, and strikingly so, since the American-British occupation of Iraq. Many observers calculate that the humble barrel is a prerequisite for the kind of democracy exported by Uncle Sam's country, since this greater-ubiquity of the barrel has coincided with Iraqi democracy as we know it today. The barrel has become an indispensable commodity that no Iraqi building, office, or installation, official or unofficial, can do without.

...

American strategic planners have benefited from this idea, for they have made a barrel out of Iraq: the Americans have put terrorist and criminal gangs from around the world inside it, and thrown its borders open to create a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and crime. After letting nature take its course, what's inside the Iraqi barrel can then be distributed elsewhere in the region to implement America's plan for democracy. This is being done under the strange, contradictory rubric of "constructive chaos," a phrase used in the Western press to justify the massacres and blood baths that have characterized Iraq during the American-British occupation.

--Washington's 'Iraqi Barrel Plan'

But in fact, "constructive chaos" most certainly had it's origins inside the Skull and Bones.

...the Order was first established on the Yale campus in 1832. It was officially incorporated only in 1856 under the name Russell Trust Association. According to virtually all the available biographical data on its early members, the money required to sustain the secret order's campus affairs and its broader role in placing its members into key positions of influence upon their graduation from Yale, derived from the opium trade in the Far East. That trade was set up by the British East India Company and was flourishing by the time the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 ending the American War for Independence.

--George Bush, Skull & Bones and the New World Order: A New American View International Edition White Paper, Paul Goldstein and Jeffrey Steinberg, April 1991

"Constructive chaos" is a strategy by which bonesmen and pnacks (for PNAC) seek to impose a new world order. The plan is inherently undemocratic, repugnant to every principle upon which the US was founded. For a start, the establishment of a "new world order" defines any opposition as "terrorist" in nature. Thus, otherwise peaceful civilians are criminalized and waged war upon. War becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy, a logic loop, an infinite regress from which there is no escape save violence. The facts bear this out. Bush, like Ronald Reagan before him, has made terrorism much, much worse. The verifiable facts support me and I renew my challenge to my critics at the Heritage Foundation to debate me on this issue. [See:The Heritage Foundation Picks a Fight with the Cowboy]

Secondly, even if the people of the US were prepared to wink and nod at Bush's various atrocities, perversions and war crimes, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the so-called "constructive" chaos in Iraq has been beneficial in any way --even by Bush's utterly depraved moral standards.

The world has not benefited from the fall of the Soviet Union for several reasons. Foremost, the GOP, having rallied a base around a banner of anti-communism, found itself without a demon to exploit. At the time, I celebrated the destruction of the Berlin Wall and dared hope for a new era of peace. Neocons, however, were already at work on ways to bring about a "catalyzing event" not unlike Pearl Harbor that would unite Americans behind a new crusade for Middle East oil.

Secondly, in the absence of a "Soviet threat", the nation had to find new justification for the trillions spent arming the nation to the teeth. Ronald Reagan, after all, had crushed the labor movement, doubled the Federal Bureaucracy, and paid off his base with historically high tax cuts that benefited only the very, very wealthy, making them more so. The industrial base was hallowed out. Highly paid skilled labor had to find work at Wal-Mart. Mired in debt, the GOP plan was to create a new and bigger Military/Industrial complex and thus mire the nation in perpetual oil wars.

How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply

As these documents illustrate, the United States knew sanctions had the capacity to devastate the water treatment system of Iraq. It knew what the consequences would be: increased outbreaks of disease and high rates of child mortality. And it was more concerned about the public relations nightmare for Washington than the actual nightmare that the sanctions created for innocent Iraqis.

The Geneva Convention is absolutely clear. In a 1979 protocol relating to the "protection of victims of international armed conflicts," Article 54, it states: "It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive." ...

Additional resources

• Address Before a Joint Session of Congress (September 11, 1990)
• For Bush the State is Absolute
• Buzzflash: Senate Dems Enable Bushco Domestic Spying
• Former Federal Prosecutor John Loftus confirms the Bush-Nazi scandal
• What is New World Order?
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
• The Heritage Foundation Picks a Fight with the Cowboy
• The Neo Conservatives and the Policies of Constructive Chaos
• The Guardian: How the Bush Family Helped Hitler's Rise to Power
• A Fresh Look at Nazis and the Republican Party
• A transcript of former President George Herbert Walker Bush's address to a joint session of Congress and the nation
• Bush Family Traditions 1

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Bush lost the war on terrorism because he dare not win it

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush lost the war on terrorism by waging and losing the war against the people of Iraq. The people of Baghdad have suffered most. It is doubtful that Bush has ever killed, captured, or brought to justice a single bona fide terrorist. It is enough for Bush to produce a body and term it a "terrorist" after the fact. Bush, of course, has assumed for himself the power to define terrorist; therefore, a terrorist now may not have been a terrorist earlier and vice versa. You just have to take Bush's word for it from day to day.

Bush's Orwellian use of the word "insurgent" clouds the issue; it deceives the American people and the world. What Bush calls an "insurgency" is most often a "guerrilla" resistance to the US occupation. It was Dick Cheney who claimed -perhaps falsely -that Zarqawi was in Baghdad after we took Afghanistan and before we went into Iraq." Sadly, Tim Russert did not press Cheney on this point despite the fact that there is good reason to doubt Cheney who also told us that we would be greeted as liberators.

Casting doubt on Cheney's assertion is the fact that the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Zagawai was a hostile one. At last, Bush has never made a convincing case that either Iraq or Zarqawi had anything at all to do with the events of 911 which he cites as the catch rationale for an endless war. Clearly -this is absurd and especially so when you consider the fact that 911 was never properly or thoroughly investigated.

It was Colin Powell who blamed Al Qaeda for 911. Has anyone seen any convincing evidence that Al Qaeda ever operated out of Iraq? The Washington Post reported that Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda had been disputed even before the US attack and invasion.

Iraq's Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War

Links Were Cited to Justify U.S. Invasion, Report Says

By Jonathan Weisman

Washington Post Staff Writer, September 9, 2006; Page A01

A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein "only expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden." ...

The fact of the matter is bluntly this: we don't know who planned or executed 911. Various "official conspiracy theories" are full of holes. And we have George W. Bush to thank for forever for obscuring the truth of it.

The war between Shi'ite and Sunni is something else altogether and the US should never have gotten in the cross fire, though we are definitely the catalyst.

Even George W. Bush recently admitted that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 911 but not before he allowed a terminally gullible American public and a sycophantic corporate media to indulge the delusion and spread the lie for years. In normal times, that would have gotten a President impeached. These are not normal times.

These are times that demonstrate a second very important reason Bush has lost the war on terrorism. These are Orwellian times and terrorism is a perpetual war. Bush has lost this war because he dare not win it and cannot afford to win it. It's the only issue he polls well on; without it, he's finished. It is tragically ironic that the future of humankind may very well depend upon the infamously short American attention span inuring a jaded public to a demagogue who is rapidly approaching the limit to which he can ratchet up a rhetoric that millions have already tuned out.

Bush lost the war on terrorism in many others ways. Prominently, Bush never had an enemy, and, most certainly failed to identify one. Terrorism is not a philosophy or an ideology. Terrorism is a tactic that may be exploited by numerous enemies of US imperialism. Terrorism may be employed against US imperialism from a number of opponents at every end of the political spectrum. How does one wage war against a tactic? Enemies of US imperialism are found everywhere in the world. Are we to invade every country and kill every critic? Absurd!

In this case, a war of arms, tanks, and solders is impotent and absurd. The catastrophe in Iraq proves that. Consider the case of World War II, often cited nostalgically by militarists who find in that chapter redemption for our short but bloody history. Americans cling to the myth that we defeated Nazism -but we did not. What we and our allies defeated was the German army. We did not defeat Nazism itself.

Even the Nuremberg Trials -which US prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson hoped would set a precedent for world justice -did not defeat the Nazi ideology which is still alive and well and less underground than is comfortable. That Bush repudiates the Nuremberg Principles, and, in fact, may be in violation of those principles himself, is evidence enough that Nazism is not dead.

Bush's failure demonstrates a basic, common sense principle apparently lost on American liberals who were initially fooled by Bush. That principle is simply: terrorism cannot be defeated with terrorism; a tactic cannot be defeated by employing that tactic. We are what we do. If we employ terrorism, we are terrorists.

If 911 was an act of terrorism because it targeted the civilian population, then the US attack and invasion of Iraq is, likewise, an act of bloody terrorism. The civilian population of Iraq has suffered from American terrorism, blood lust and vengeance.

There is NO evidence that anyone having had anything to do with 911 was, in any way, and at any time since 911, harmed in any way by the bloody, disproportionate and barbaric Blitzkrieg on Baghdad, a Blitzkrieg, lately called "Shock and Awe", that most certainly murdered some 140,000 civilians in the bombing campaign alone.

This is one of a multitude of compelling reasons Bush must not renounce the Geneva convention. It is absurd that he be allowed to try "detainees" and possibly convict them upon "evidence" kept secret from defendants as well as the American public. Bush -a known and practiced liar -simply cannot be trusted. Such an unprecedented overturn of every principle established by Geneva and Nuremberg would guarantee the executions of a limitless number of innocent civilians. There is no justice without accountability. The alternative is tyranny.

The US is not killing terrorists in Iraq; rather, a guerrilla resistance to the illegal US occupation of that nation are killing Americans. If you think the US is killing bona fide terrorists in Iraq, show me one and prove it. Some very astute writers have charged that George w. Bush took the bait. If terrorists there are in Iraq, they were not there before the US attacked and invaded. Terrorists would not have been tolerated by Saddam Hussein. Hussein is credibly reported to have loathed Bin Laden who is at once Bush's whipping boy but absolutely essential to Bush's perpetual, unwinnable war.

The Bush administration never foresaw nor planned for the eruption of three civil wars now raging in Iraq. The separate wars are waged by Kurds in the Northwest, Sunnis and Shi'ites against one another as well as against the so-called "government" in Baghdad. Confusing the issue for a man who cannot no nuance and most certainly lied about reading "...three Shakespeare's" and a Albert Camus, is the fact that the army that he placed in harm's way is in the cross hairs. More importantly, Soldiers are sent into war zones to shoot people. Who is the enemy? Is the enemy Sunni? Shi'ite? Kurd? Who do we shoot? If none of those groups turn out to be the mortal enemy of the US, then what the hell are we doing in Iraq? [See: Terrorist Network Disconnect, Gareth Porter, September 13, 2006]

Americans have begun to see through transparent lies. Bush, therefore, has found it necessary to obscure truth with yet another: we are war with Islamo-fascism. This is not an enemy! Islamo-fascism is a GOP invention, a phony word made up by the right wing blogosphere and GOP consultants desperate for yet another boogie man. Moreover, Islamo-fascism is racist, on a level with rag head, camel jockey, and sand nigger. Bush might as well have said: we are at war with sand niggers. His policies most certainly wage war on everyone but wasps back home.

Bush plays the race card, knowing full well that his base is mostly bigots and extremists for whom any one of any color is the object of condescension or disgust. These are people who would have taken picnic baskets to lynchings. These are people who call Mexican-Americans spicks and pepper bellies. These are people who called the citizens of Viet Nam -whom we were supposed to be defending against the Viet Cong -gooks! Is anyone surprised that Texas Governor Rick Perry would try to link terrorism with immigration from Mexico -never mind that the suggestion is ludicrous on its face. Perry, nevertheless, appears in a Marlboro man jacket with the Rio Grande behind him and tells the people of Texas that to be secure against terrorism, we must secure our borders against immigrants from Mexico. Last time, I checked none of the 911 terrorists came from Mexico. Perry, like Bush, before him exploits fear, suspicion and bigotry. But Kinky Friedman would not be outdone. He recently called New Orleans evacuees "crackheads and thugs". Earlier, he said that " ...sexual predators should be imprisoned and forced to 'listen to a Negro talking to himself."'

Why should we be surprised that millions more now hate America than at any other time in our history? Is every country in the world, then, peopled with potential enemies of the United States? If so, we have only ourselves to blame; our only enemies are the enemies of our creation, the monster from our collective id; they are the blowback of our stupid bigotry, racism, and ruthless yankee imperialism.

Bush dare not win his war on terrorism because it just might turn out to be as fraudulent as everything else about his failed and miserable administration.

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: September 24, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe. ...

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes...

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