"They always let the ring leaders go..." Don't bite the hands that feed you.....
George W Bush and the liars of the White House Murder Enterprises INC,
And now, the end is near; the final curtain drops in a cold, paranoid Fortress DC under maximum red alert. In a contrived Oscar night-style mood, with thanks aplenty, George W Bush delivered his farewell address from the East Room of the White House on January 15.
Bottom lines: he turned Afghanistan into "a young democracy fighting terror"; he turned Iraq into "a young democracy in the heart of the Middle East"; he brags "America is promoting human rights"; and more than anything, America under his watch got seven years without another 9/11. But "the terrorists" will be back.
There may have been things he would have done differently - no specifics given. But certainly there's no Nietzschean "Beyond Good and Evil" for him; this is a world where "oppressive ideologies" in the Muslim world "condemn women to subservience" compared to those who seek "liberty and justice as a path to peace" (America and her allies, of course). And "they" hate us because they hate us: "America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict"..... http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/06/letter-to-palestinian-intellectuals.html
A few days earlier, holding hands with his wife Laura on Larry King Live, he looked like a discombobulated wax doll. And then there was the final presser at the White House - including the drab anticlimax of an abrupt thanks to the few assembled hacks and a hasty exit to the tune of general perplexity....
The performance also boasted White House interns who had to be conscripted to fill the empty seats. Regrets? He had a few (Katrina, the Mission Accomplished banner), but then again, too few to mention. He was all wired up defending his "good, strong record" - a man incapable of introspection or even a hint of self-doubt. Once again he would never acknowledge mistakes: everything from Abu Ghraib to not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they were just "disappointments".
The Lone Ranger...?
And now, the end is near; the final curtain drops in a cold, paranoid Fortress DC under maximum red alert. In a contrived Oscar night-style mood, with thanks aplenty, George W Bush delivered his farewell address from the East Room of the White House on January 15.
Bottom lines: he turned Afghanistan into "a young democracy fighting terror"; he turned Iraq into "a young democracy in the heart of the Middle East"; he brags "America is promoting human rights"; and more than anything, America under his watch got seven years without another 9/11. But "the terrorists" will be back.
There may have been things he would have done differently - no specifics given. But certainly there's no Nietzschean "Beyond Good and Evil" for him; this is a world where "oppressive ideologies" in the Muslim world "condemn women to subservience" compared to those who seek "liberty and justice as a path to peace" (America and her allies, of course). And "they" hate us because they hate us: "America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict"..... http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/06/letter-to-palestinian-intellectuals.html
A few days earlier, holding hands with his wife Laura on Larry King Live, he looked like a discombobulated wax doll. And then there was the final presser at the White House - including the drab anticlimax of an abrupt thanks to the few assembled hacks and a hasty exit to the tune of general perplexity....
In addition to the administrative, economic and political means, the US has always employed her secret terrorist arm, the CIA, in foreign lands. The CIA is known for adopting various covert and overt means to undermine the integrity of other countries for achieving their own objectives and furthering their 'nefarious' designs. It is equipped with colossal material resources and its men are canny and ruthless in executing their assignments. Their methods in madness include:
a) Espionage and penetration in all areas of interest like defense, foreign affairs, science/technology, developmental programmes, economy, education, and politics. b) Propaganda, disinformation campaigns, subversion, terrorism, psy warfare, assassinations, blackmail, bribes, coercion and intimidation. ...
j) Install CIA agents as presidents, prime ministers, ministers, generals and senior advisors, etc.”
The performance also boasted White House interns who had to be conscripted to fill the empty seats. Regrets? He had a few (Katrina, the Mission Accomplished banner), but then again, too few to mention. He was all wired up defending his "good, strong record" - a man incapable of introspection or even a hint of self-doubt. Once again he would never acknowledge mistakes: everything from Abu Ghraib to not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they were just "disappointments".
The Lone Ranger...?
It's been a long and winding road since that "I think the United States must be humble" he uttered in a 2000 debate with Al Gore, since the "compassionate conservative" rhetoric, and since the "uniter, not a divider" motto. So let's go through some of this "good, strong record".
When Bush came into office the US had a US$237 billion surplus. Three days after 9/11, on September 14, 2001, his approval rate was 86%. By mid-2004, the budget deficit was in excess of $400 billion - and growing. (Thanks in large part to a big bipartisan majority in Congress having happily passed his $1.35 trillion package of tax cuts to the rich in May 2001.)
By mid-December 2008, his popularity ratings had plunged to 23% - only one point from an all-time low in every poll taken since 1938. Still, at 30% this month, this means that almost one in three Americans still approve of his job. H L Mencken must be wallowing in horror in his grave.
Coming close to destroying a superpower and the global economy virtually single-handedly is not bad for someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth who never held a steady job until the age of 45 - until "turd blossom" Karl Rove, the little, fat, bald Machiavelli, engineered him as the ultimate, corporate-pleasing, Southern Strategy lethal weapon, and Bush family consigliere James Baker turned a massive electoral fraud, mostly in Florida and Ohio, into a hijacked mandate via the Supreme Court. (American corporate media, by the way, loved it.)
As for the 2004 re-election - when his approval rate was at most 40% - it was a mix of low-tech - absentee ballots that were never mailed, rejected "provisional ballots", "spoiled ballots" - and high-tech - via scores of dodgy Diebold machines - corruption.
Bush was the dream Project for a New American Century (PNAC) president. The PNAC's bible was the 2000-penned "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century", which unabashedly advocated "American hegemony" and "full-spectrum dominance", and which was itself based on the 1991-penned "Defense Planning Guidance", also known as the Wolfowitz doctrine.
The PNAC - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz - migrated in full force to the Bush administration and could not have been readier after 9/11 to engage in the nonsensical, global "war on terror". An endeavor those wily Brits, via Foreign Secretary David Milliband, took the opportunity to formally bury in style a few hours before Bush's farewell...
The "war on terror" catalogue included launching pre-emptive wars disguised as wars of liberation; torture as official US state policy; and a war against Islam, "suspicious" Muslims in particular and Latino immigrants in the homeland. The "war on terror" framework facilitated something that was already planned and had been discussed at the G-8 meeting in Genoa in July 2001. Namely, an October 2001 attack on Afghanistan to get rid of those pesky, turbaned former darlings of Unocal, the Taliban. Washington wanted its pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, and was determined to get it.
Dates with destiny ...
The "good, strong record" is peppered with unforgettable dates.
"I think that most of the time history is about a presidency, and a president. And the vice president is almost always a footnote in that story. But I believe that in this case the history is going to treat both the president and vice president unkindly almost in equal part."especially considering their reincarnation of the infamous White House Murder Inc, with Assef Shawkat ( آصف شوكت ) (born 1950) is a Syrian assassin, and head of the Syrian Military Intelligence apparatus since 2005, rewarding him for the successful assassinations of Mr. Elie HOBEIKA and Rafic Hariri. Assef Shawkat ( آصف شوكت ) is the head of the local Damascus branch of the infamous White House Murder Inc, an extra-judicial assassinations matrix, created by the PNAC killers since 1995, and the evil axis of CIA2/MOSSAD which ensued..... Again and again, a prime criminal in murder/assassinations , starting from the CIA2/MOSSAD assassination of Mr. Elie Hobeika in Beirut/Hazmieh January 24th 2002, and the infamous : "White House Murder Inc." , headed by Asef Shawkat in Syria.
The Bush years were a nightmarish maze of violations of the rule of law and the smashing of constitutional liberties - from the 300-page-long USA Patriot Act to the Homeland Security Act and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that now terrorizes not only illegal but also legal Muslim and Latino immigrants.
And then there is masterpiece - the Iraq War and the militarization of the energy security for the USA and Israel
http://airforcetimes.com/news/2009/01/airforce_b52_squadrons_012009/
Baghdadis today compare Bush's oeuvre in honor of democracy and the free market in Iraq to Genghis Khan's in the 14th century. Khan's pyramid of skulls left by the Tigris find echo in Bush's benchmarks: at least 1 million deaths caused directly or indirectly by the war and occupation, more than 4 million internally and externally displaced, mass poverty, 70% unemployment, and the virtual nonexistence of fresh drinking water, sanitation, electricity, medical care, education, and security....
The GBU-39 guided bomb is perhaps the most egregious case point illustrating how our aid directly helps Israel to wage aggressive war regardless of American interests. After the disastrous Israeli attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, the Pentagon pushed for and Congress approved the transfer of thousands of precision bombs to replenish Israel's stocks in August and September 2007. The GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb was not included in this gift. But then, more recently, and for no apparent reason, four months before its assault on Gaza, the Pentagon first notified Congress of the GBU-39 transfer in August 2008. Congress was in recess during August, but transfer of GBU-39s to Israel was one of the first items it disposed of in after reconvening in September, in dutiful obedience to the demands of the Israel Lobby and its wholly owned subsidiaries in the Pentagon. These weapons and their delivery racks were then rushed to Israel, and in less that 3 months from the time of Congressional approval, 1000 GBU-39s were cleared aerodynamically for release from Israel's planes and placed in the operational inventory, just in time for Israel's attack on the Gaza Ghetto. The GBU-39 is one of the most modern weapons in the American inventory.
Last September, the GBU-39s were trumpeted by the Israeli press as bunker busters of choice for an attack on Iran. But that claim was preposterous and most likely deliberate misinformation, given that we now know the Israelis had been planning the assault on the Gaza Ghetto for at least three months. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGVPhMo_YE0
The waste land Bush was the champion of corporation, speculation, wild privatization and the end of public education. Bush's systematic war on the American middle and working classes - his "ownership society" - signified non-stop wealth redistribution towards the top. Ninety-percent of American families are now reduced to little or no net worth, they've been plunged into debt hell.
Bush was not only the scourge of a dying middle class; he was the champion of the underclass - at least in terms of assuring its overwhelming expansion. The Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) has assessed that one in three jobs in the US - concerning at least 47 million people - pays ridiculously low wages with few or no benefits. According to the CEPR, one in every four US workers - about 35 million people - earn poverty level wages.
Under his watch, a mega-bubble economy based on speculative greed and massive fraud went bonkers - disaster capitalism at home. At his final presser Bush had the gall - of course not contested - to say it was not his fault the financial crisis happened during his tenure. Of course, he forgot to say this was a crisis by design - guaranteeing an even greater concentration of financial and economic power, in global terms, for a minimum elite comprising Masters of the Universe JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Citigroup.
It's a "good, strong record" pile up; from the neglect of poor blacks in post-Katrina New Orleans to rejecting the Kyoto Protocol; from hiring hacks to spill White House propaganda to vetoing stem cell research legislation twice; from building a multi-billion dollar wall across the Mexico border to stop Latino immigration to exempting Big Chemical from monitoring lead emissions.
The Center for Public Integrity's "Broken Government By the Numbers" report adds an extra X-ray of the Bush wasteland. From 935 "demonstrably false statements" in the run-up to the Iraq war to 45 million people with no health care (and tens of millions in some very precarious scheme); from 60% of Environmental Protection Agency scientists reporting political interference in their work to 760,800 disability claims awaiting hearings by the Social Security Administration as of October 2008; from 190,000 missing weapons in Iraq to $212.3 million in Halliburton "extras" for construction work in Iraq; from less than 3% of US electricity needs provided by alternative energy to $60 billion in annual Medicare fraud.
Some people actually loved his methods. Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former ambassador to the US, told Vanity Fair that "the Chinese have been brilliant in playing the Bush years. Asia is one part of the world where many will see George Bush in a positive light, although not necessarily for the reason he may have wished".
Another character who has been brilliant in playing the Bush game has been no other than Osama "dead or alive" bin Laden, who, dead or alive, could not miss the opportunity to salute Bush via an audiotape released this week. Bin Laden said, "The question is, can America continue the war against us for several more decades? The reports and signs show us otherwise." Osama seemed to be quite amused by the "inheritance" Bush left to Obama: "If he withdraws from the war, it is a military defeat. If he continues, he drowns in economic crisis."
And this when the war in Iraq - as Paul Krugman has noted - is costing about as much each year as the insurance subsidies Obama would need to implement universal health care in the US.
Anyway, none of this is his business anymore. Bush will fade into retirement in a commute between a sleepy Dallas suburb and the Crawford ranch where he spent more than 450 days of the presidency. Whatever he does, he won't be disappointed with history’s judgment.
What a record: stolen elections, corporate greed, fraud and corruption, unlimited spending, wealth redistribution (to the top), no checks and balances, rampant militarization, especially militarization of energy security for the USA and Israel, the destruction of Iraq, permanent war, and unquantifiable, unrepayable national debt. Not many world emperors are able to create a vast wasteland of tribes with flags everywhere they set foot...., call it a government, and then retire....a stop over at the ICC in the Hague is definitely in order for his PNAC KILLERS and himself and Dick CHENEY...
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