I had to make the decision to destroy more life, so we continue to destroy life – George W. Bush during the second Presidential debate. – Washington University, St Louis, Missouri, Oct 8.
When you find both candidates concurring on the official 9/11 story, on almost any major issue, it doesn’t take much imagination to predict the course of the presidential debates. Senator John Kerry promised better international alliance in matters of security, unlike the situation now where the US bears “90 percent of the casualties in Iraq and 90 percent of the costs,” amounting to $200 billion. That money could have been used for healthcare, schools and prescription drugs for seniors. “I think that's wrong, and I think we can do better.”
Was Kerry suggesting more foreign casualties in place of Americans in any illegal future invasions, and for them to bear the costs as well? George W. Bush retorted this was “denigrating” the cannon fodder provided by Tony Blair – who promised more - and Poland’s Alexander Kwasniewski. He didn’t mention the others who pulled out. He didn’t mention that Aussie guy, and neither did Kerry.
Touching on his many “miscalculations,” forgetting that it was exactly that, and much more that made him president, Bush says, “It is hard work to go from a tyranny to a democracy. It's hard work to go from a place where people get their hands cut off, or executed, to a place where people are free.”
Cutting off of hands? Execution? Tyranny? Is he talking about Iraq or the great allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? The Prez learns poor rhetoric from Coach Rove. “… the hardest part of the job is to know that I committed the troops in harm's way and then do the best I can to provide comfort for the loved ones who lost a son or a daughter or a husband or wife.”
This was the man who was caught in harm’s way in Texas (or Bama) when Kerry was playing platoon for three purple hearts in Vietnam, something that generated a smear campaign from his Republican ex-comrades. And how many funerals of dead GIs has Bush attended? Photos of their returning bodies was a morale issue.
Oh, he met a Missy Johnson from North Carolina where they cried over her husband who died in Afghanistan (where Osama bin Laden was last seen, and whom every American and foreigner would like to garrote for very good reasons). The teary recollection meandered to the threat from Saddam Hussein.
“Missy understood that. That's what she told me her husband understood.”
That’s what many misunderstood, but Bush had plenty of political support from his allies the world over. Thousands of controlled second rate dailies repeated the official 9/11 legend, in a brilliant attempt to silence local dissidents, all disguised under the War on Terror. Some of the best counterpoints, as usual, came from within the United States, in books, online journals and the docudramas of Michael Moore. When the Iraq war began, it was too late. No leader anywhere could make a U-Turn. Saddam’s oil vouchers was a masterstroke.
There were fantastic claims from Bush. Did you know that 75 per cent of the Al Qaeda leadership have been “brought to justice”? The ones missing happen to be a certain Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. No big deal. Mullah Mohammad Omar has fallen into a memory hole.
Kerry counters that bin Laden, who should have been given priority over Iraq, escaped from Tora Bora because the White House “outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who only a week earlier had been on the other side fighting against us, neither of whom trusted each other.”
If true, why would Bush do that? The Iraq fiasco cost 10,000 lives and $200 billion. Factor in maimed US soldiers and Iraqis, and the figure shoots up. Was bin Laden really there in the first place? Unlike Bush, very few American soldiers will keep up this pantomime upon personally witnessing nothing more than a rag tag bunch of militants. For $2 billion, you could have had Bin Laden in no time.
Kerry reminded the audience that post-Taliban Afghanistan produced 75 per cent of the world’s opium, and it is virtually the country’s only export. Hamid Karzai’s election, while he has his US bodyguards, is pretty much an opiate for our souls. Now, ain’t it nice to corner a top opium exporter, and channel funds to wage war in an oil-rich region? Turbaned warlords would find it cumbersome to launder billions through their hawala network. No Karachi whorehouse can handle that sum. There are better channels for this, and I wonder where Oliver North is right now.
“Outsourcing” is a buzzword for Kerry and he doesn’t restrict it to anti-terror operations. Bush shied away from the topic. You know why? US prisoners are now providing stiff competition to those offshore Indians. Prisoners now “produce an estimated $1.5 billion in goods and services.” True to their crimes, they are also stealing jobs from Indian call centers and have ventured into making “car parts, circuit boards, furniture, limousines, waterbeds and even lingerie.” (Times of India , July 14)
The US prison industry is discovering the rewards of having the world’s highest incarceration rate. A large number of the estimated two million prisoners can work for a pittance, producing goods and services that even Chinese prison labor can’t match. In California, you can end up doing this under the Three Strikes law. That includes petty crimes like shoplifting. It makes sound economic sense. We have heard of Keynesian economics, Malthusian economics, but how about Jailhouse Rock economics? It’s humane and cheap. Those too dangerous can be executed. As the number of prisoners rise, they will inevitably choke the income of law-abiding Americans. There is another advantage to this economic model. Prisons have no use for unions. Extra hours of sunshine will do .
Both of them avoided this issue.
Predictably, Bush tried to make the WMD-Saddam-terrorist connection. He was, in retrospect, preventing Saddam from providing a “safe havens for terrorists.” There are real terrorists there now, one of whom is described as Bush’s man for the season—Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Al-Zarqawi is doing a marvelous re-election job for Bush. How many times has an “Al Qaeda” terrorist swaggered in at the right time to justify Bush’s pledge of bringing freedom to the Iraqis? See the parallel to Vietnam here, where another nationalist movement fought relentlessly against the same liberators? They gave up on democracy as soon the Americans invaded. When you harden a society, they prefer social order to chaos, and sacrifice personal freedom.
Al-Zarqawi’s outfit now has recently pledged allegiance to bin Laden, again from a Web site regularly used by militant groups.
Knock your heads on the walls and ask yourselves why the Patriot Act is not used to track down terrorists like al-Zarqawi. The United States is now empowered to track any threat anywhere through cyberspace. Citibank does better in tracking credit card activities, and there are millions of those plastics around. If you still can’t figure it out, then keep knocking that head harder as al-Zarqawi supposedly beheaded Nick Berg until that little issue of his missing limb was pointed out.
“Al-Zarqawi's declaration appeared two days after the U.S. government formally declared his Tawhid and Jihad a terrorist organization, and two weeks before the US elections. Convenient! The listing imposes several restrictions on the group, including a ban on travel to the United States (?) and a freeze on the group's assets in U.S. banks.” (AP, Oct 17). Executed at lightning speed, after all those beheadings spanning months and after their bank accounts were identified. A letter from al-Zarqawi to the al-Qaida leadership was intercepted in January, but the trail was lost.
Now, if you still haven’t figured it out, you have lost your head—a blessed state in this insane world.
Besides, this man is taking the limelight from bin Laden at a time when Bush should get hammered for not producing him. With the release of those Madrid videos a few days ago, the elections are going to be very tight as predicted.
As army deaths mount, Bush wants to bleed them till 2007, just before he steps down, and I am wondering who the Republican nominee will be then. The date makes sense if either Dick Cheney or Jeb Bush decides to run. US soldiers succumb to ambushes regularly because too many of them are guarding Iraqi oil installations and pipelines, and cannot engage insurgents in an offensive capacity. Recruiting Iraqis for this task runs the risk of $100 per barrel. Those pipelines run thousands of kilometers and an oil infrastructure includes ports, installations, and transportation hubs. The number of Americans guarding all these can be staggering. Are they the ones getting the better armor and protective gear? The casualties in this frontline seem to be lower.
Families of soldiers are sending protective gear to their embattled ones in Iraq. Soldiers could be committing a crime if they got them from eBay. The “government is trying to track down more than 150 people suspected of selling hundreds of pieces of stolen military body armor on the Internet… outer tactical vests, or OTVs, and protective inserts… were stolen from the military and sold on eBay for $200 to $1,000 apiece.” (AP, April 8, 2004) Kerry pointed out damning snafus during the first wave of the invasion. Iraqi nuclear facilities were left unguarded as American troops were tasked to protect the oil ministry and installations. Even ammo dumps were not secured, and now their contents are being used against US soldiers.
Bravo. Good point.
In future, if some loose fissile material turns up in a convenient place and time, imagine which country or “terrorist outfit” will get the blame. Non-weaponized items from such plants still command a premium. Soldiers are ordered to guard whatever their commanders deem fit. Letting off nuke facilities and ammo dumps are unpardonable. Either you have knuckleheaded generals, or smart ones who are enthusiastic about the end result of this bloodfest. The challenger still supports the war, but the “problem is that they didn't think these things through properly.”
Didn’t “think through properly” over nuke-related items and ammo?
Kerry couldn’t attack his fellow Skull and Bonehead beyond a point. That’s a lifelong bond as Bush obliquely testifies:
“I won't hold it against him that he went to Yale. There's nothing wrong with that.” Bush sneered at his rival’s proposal to join the International Criminal Court “where unaccountable judges and prosecutors can pull our troops or diplomats up for trial.”
True.
Were the US Supreme Court judges accountable for electing Bush fraudulently during the last elections? The result was the loss of thousands of lives and the infliction of untold miseries, many of which have yet to transpire. Sand dust is mixing with powdery depleted uranium. In the meantime, Private Lynddie England has just given birth to a baby boy after toying with those genitals at Abu Ghraib.
Unlike what he did in Iraq, Bush wants the IAEA protocols enforced on Iran, and insists on “six-party talks” over North Korea, with the Chinese acting as the main mediators.
“I'll never turn over America's national security needs to leaders of other countries, as we continue to build those alliances.”
Do you see a disconnect here?
Bush doesn’t. He had spent $30 billion on homeland security, and if this amount is correct, it came from the pockets of America’s middle class, who got their few hundreds in tax cuts while the top one percent got $87 billion, according to Kerry. How is this regime filling up its war chest? By scaling back the funding of schools, veterans' care, healthcare and welfare for the weakest in society, something called “compassionate conservatism”?
Or from the opium fields of Afghanistan, a la the Contra route?
Part of that $30 billion was spent on extra border patrols on the south, an expensive 1,000 of them.
Bush waxes lyrical about the Patriot Act. This pan-global anti-terrorism program is working well enough to increase American deaths in Iraq. Sept 11 enabled Bush and Co to pass laws that will pave way for the coming world order, a long awaited promise etched on US Green Bills. See it for yourselves. You can’t mix dissent with order, and that’s probably the only logic taught at the Skull and Bones. The Justice Department lists down the names of potential troublemakers all over the world, readying them as Bush goes “on the offence.”
The people like it, and freedom proliferates, when this cowboy goes “on the offence.” He claims the Iraqis want them there. He was given this assurance by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a “brave, brave man,” who had shot prisoners in cold blood at a prison complex in Al-Amariyah.
The way this man spins his canard is unbelievable.
Some grisly deaths are known to occur in this locality. During Gulf War 1, a US bomb had incinerated women, children and old folks huddled in a bunker here, a famous episode that landed Saddam a propaganda coup, and made its entry into our history books and TV.
According to Bush, a “free Iraq will help secure Israel.” That’s priority number one. Kerry agrees that the perils faced by Americans are “important to Israel, it's important to America, it's important to the world.” Correct order of merit, don’t you think? Those select Ashkenazi lobbies alluded to in Part 1 know the game. Told you they’d come back to the church gates, after weakening it on home terrain.
There were self-incriminating contradictions aplenty. “It's a fundamental misunderstanding to say that the war on terror is only Osama bin Laden… If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist." Does this apply to Pakistan with their Kashmiri terrorists and the A.Q. Khan network that was caught selling nuke secrets to North Korea, and possibly Iran? If Bush claims with a straight eye that the Saudis harbor none, he must be suffering from post-moonshine messianic delusions, and the damning 1,000 page report by chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer can be spun away with ease.
As for the generals privy to the war plan, Kerry singled out a few who dissented, including ex-Army Chief of Staff Gen Eric K. Shinseki, later retired for going easy with the holster.
Bush saw something else. “I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, 'Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?' And they looked me in the eye and said, 'Yes, sir, Mr. President.'" I wonder if Franks can remain calm and collected and confirm that assertion with a straight eye.
Top American military officials are planning “an all-out confrontation with militants in Fallujah,” and “they expect victory over a nationwide insurgency that they describe as fragmented, weakened, and losing popular support.” (Boston Globe, Oct 18). The ground reality is starkly different. The number of Americans killed have been steadily rising over the months, and if this is an electoral stunt for Bush, lives are going to be sacrificed under extreme conditions to boost this cowardly war-dodger's chances of re-election. How are you going to promise a final stand? Gee, there is that Mother of all Bombs (MOAB – a serendipitously sinister acronym) waiting to pulverize Iraqi cities. The use of new weapons, as hinted by President Bush, in the debates, cannot be discounted. Shock and awe is fine for the ballots, but the backlash is going to be ferocious, leaving John Kerry’s “plans” for Iraq—if elected—a bloodied, tangled mess. In that case, the same show will go on.
Kerry, who perched himself on the high ground of international alliances, UN procedures and multinational solidarity on security issues has this to say about Iran. “I don't think you can just rely on U.N. sanctions….It is a threat, it's a huge threat." Great. Bush takes on Iraq; he couldn’t trust the UN, while his fellow bonehead takes on Iran. Kerry promises to get tough with Iran.
Both have a plan to win the current war. Kerry wants it done differently. Having drunk from the same skull, he never mentions “oil” as the casus belli. The senator complains of the colossal sums spent on Iraqi security while there are massive cutbacks for the COPS program, firehouses, security for nuclear and chemical plants, education, healthcare, etc.
The US army will remain pinned in Iraq for the foreseeable future. To sustain the current campaign alone will be difficult. The US army is overextended, under-funded and under-equipped. High oil prices and a weakening global economy has transformed the American army into a “global oil-protection service.” They are serving in places as far-flung as Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes to deliver oil to the United States and its allies. (Michael T Klare, Asia Times, Oct 9). Read the full article here
They all guised under the war on terror. The missing bin Laden should have a stake in this oil booty for Bush’s cronies. Can’t send your troops to die for oil, can you, but terror, which can be replayed right before your eyes, tints the death toll with a different complexion altogether.
The high price of oil is already destabilizing the world economy. Sustained high production alongside sustained high prices would inflate the cost of commodities, inflicting an adverse impact on consumer spending and, in return, the demand for oil. Most of the oil consumed now has already been hedged, so we are still living in a world economy thriving on 40-odd dollars per barrel. Possibly a significant less depending on the oil basket used. Highly industrialized societies will not escape this coming scourge. Even the IMF admits that “tight oil supplies could leave the global economy worryingly vulnerable for years to come.” The “demand for oil” is “not very sensitive to price increases in the short term.” (Reuters, Oct 7).
In a global economic meltdown, nations will be economically, politically and militarily weakened. The US army, coincidentally, has barbwired most of the oil region and is well poised to dominate the world. With that kind of leverage, it may not matter if the White House has stretched its budget deficits, and its armies, across the equator and back.
The Russians may do a major rethink on how they are going to use that Yukos oil. Russia’s largest oil company has been slapped with $1.34 billion in fines for tax evasion. Not much, but there is more to come. How about an oil for fines barter that gets piped right through to the Russian Army. That recent butchery in Beslan isn’t going to be forgiven too easily. Yukos wants a bankruptcy-avoiding compromise, and here is one great solution.
This development didn’t happen overnight. The US army was in the region, alongside Israel long before Sept 11. “New oil finds are proving elusive. Oil companies found an average 6.8 billion barrels of new oil a year in 2001-2003, compared to 11.4 billion barrels a year in the previous five years. It can take three to 10 years from discovery to production… Hedge funds have made big bets that oil prices will continue to rise because of the supply/demand/stocks imbalance and continuing political uncertainty in the Middle East. It takes a tanker six weeks, in the absence of a hurricane, “to reach a US refinery.” (Forbes.com, 08/09/04).
At this rate, we are not talking about breaching another psychological barrier at $60 per barrel, but pandemonium.
The Bush Administration has been building up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve since November 2001. That’s just after Sept 11, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. You’d call that priority after those unfortunate souls perished with the Twin Towers. This administration has been stockpiling oil, and remember, they have a Kissinger-era pledge to supply Israel as well. This man wants the wars he personally never had the joy or guts to fight.
Kerry barely raised these issues, in any forum. Short of equipment, Bush is banking on more men and women to volunteer for the army. You should believe the oil stooge. “Now, forget all this talk about a draft. We're not going to have a draft so long as I am the president.”
Read my lips. 2007…
There are ways to add numbers into the army. A real bad economy can promise that. There is already a quasi draft in place with “stop loss policies.” Since the US army has subordinated its interests to oil and other private concerns, one can throw in thousands of mercenaries as well. They can come cheap from the southern bother with hopes of holding a US passport one day. Who needs international tribunals now? Private armies are not accountable.
In between, there was a macabre attempt at public blackmail. When asked if Kerry’s election would make the United States vulnerable to another 9/11 attack, Bush says: “No, I don't believe it's going to happen. I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead.” What if he doesn’t win? Pass the bone to Kerry for his own wars?
On cheaper drugs, Bush wasn’t oblique on what he thought of Canadians. “When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you. I've got an obligation to make sure our government does everything we can to protect you.” After all, the drugs might come from a Third World.”
Bravo!
Many “Canadian” drugs are manufactured by US-based companies that sell them for a lot less there. You can’t have a insurance-based healthcare system in any other Developed Nation. It would invite political suicide. The quality of life index perennially shows a gulf between Western Europe and America. For a little sense, Bush should keep popping some Brahmi from Third World India (60 tablets for $1. Cheap!) When the Prez takes that, he will really understand stuff like “sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury,” pollutants he pledges to cut by 70 percent. Nitrogen and oxygen can mix to form laughing gas, something badly needed in this presidential travesty.
If you think there isn’t a social system that sticks out and yet pretty much works, try the example of Third World India’s state of Kerala.
It has close to 100 per cent literacy, and a highly educated populace that is mobile, able to adapt and ready to migrate if necessary. All this was achieved at minimal cost. A bus conductor with a Masters degree has a better chance of working as a senior clerk or a bank officer in Dubai than his American counterpart who has nothing. That’s what the first elected communist government in the world, headed by E.M.S. Namboodiripad, started achieving from the '50s onwards.
They were no doubt helped by a populace attuned to the changing world and the information that came with it. The social revolution in this state, which the West (namely the Portuguese) once used as a springboard for its Eastern conquests, brought in immense wealth and knowledge. It leapfrogged the industrial phase because there was never an industry worth its name, till today. Not quite possible in an irrepressible and educated society that discarded its once rigid social strata. New wealth had to be generated from knowledge. How many bus conductors anywhere with an MA are ready to jump at new opportunities across the oceans while they bide their time peeling tickets?
The CIA panics when they see developments like this. Ho Chi Minh’s model was choked, and so was Fidel Castro’s. Hugo Chavez is living on borrowed time. It is fitting that John Kerry wanted John McCain as his running mate earlier. The Cains of this world are their brothers' keepers. They watch out for each other. Otherwise, Kerry would have demolished Bush’s distortions within the first debate. This is the story of the United States, and the nations of this world.
Evil is at your doorstep.
Enough of this crap for the time being. Off to Kerala where I learnt the merits of knowledge, dialecticism and mobility. So what if I have to wave that offer from the London School of Economics again? I’ll be in familiar terrain, among people with similar vicissitudes. Doors can be opened, shut and wrenched open. That’s the world I live in.
Mathew Maavak
Bombay, Oct 22, 2004
Copyright © Mathew Maavak 2004
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