Rosa Brooks accuses Bush of being clinically insane

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The article below is by far the roughest thing I've ever read about Bush in a mainstream publication. In this article Rosa Brooks actually accuses Bush and Cheney of being clinically insane. Dynamite!

Rosa Brooks is not only a columnist, she is a a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center whose scholarly work focuses on international law, human rights, law of war, state failure, terrorism and rule of law issues. So this is not the rant of some blogger in pajamas (heh, heh).

Breaking with News Links traditions, I'm quoting the article in full, because a column this rough about the chief of state could get a journalist thrown in jail is some countries that are widely considered democracies.

In fact any country where you can write something this hard about a sitting chief of state and not be "disappeared" can be considered a democracy. In American jurisdiction it turns out that Bush is having people disappeared, so the more places the article can be found the better. DS


Straitjacket Bush - Los Angeles Times
Forget impeachment.

By Roda Brooks
25 October 2007

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Because they've clearly gone mad. Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.

That would be with Iran, and you'd have to be deaf not to hear the war drums. Last week, Bush remarked that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." On Sunday, Cheney warned of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power . . . [we] cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions." On Tuesday, Bush insisted on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat."

Huh? Iran is now a major threat to Europe? The Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile (that they don't yet possess) against Europe (for reasons unknown because, as far as we know, they're not mad at anyone in Europe)? This is lunacy in action.

Writing in Newsweek on Oct. 20, Fareed Zakaria, a solid centrist and former editor of Foreign Affairs, put it best. Citing Bush's invocation of "the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon," ZZakaria concluded that "the American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. . . . Iran has an economy the size of Finland's. . . . It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are . . . allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"

Planet Cheney.

Zakaria may be misinterpreting the president's remark about World War III though. He saw it as a dangerously loopy Bush prediction about the future behavior of a nuclear Iran -- the idea being, presumably, that possessing "the knowledge" to make a nuclear weapon would so empower Iran's repressive leaders that they'll giddily rush out and start World War III.

But you could read Bush's remark as a madman's threat rather than a madman's prediction -- as a warning to recalcitrant states, from Germany to Russia, that don't seem to share his crazed obsession with Iran. The message: Fall into line with administration policy toward Iran or you can count on the U.S.A. to try to start World War III on its own. And when it comes to sparking global conflagration, a U.S. attack on Iran might be just the thing. Yee haw!

You'd better believe these guys would do it too. Why not? They have nothing to lose -- they're out of office in 15 months anyway. Après Bush-Cheney, le déluge! (Have fun, Hillary.)

But all this creates a conundrum. What's a constitutional democracy to do when the president and vice president lose their marbles?

The U.S. is full of ordinary people with serious forms of mental illness -- delusional people with violent fantasies who think they're the president, or who think they get instructions from the CIA through their dental fillings.

The problem with Bush is that he is the president -- and he gives instructions to the CIA and military, without having to go through his dental fillings.

Impeachment's not the solution to psychosis, no matter how flagrant. But despite their impressive foresight in other areas, the framers unaccountably neglected to include an involuntary civil commitment procedure in the Constitution.

Still, don't lose hope. By enlisting the aid of mental health professionals and the court system, Congress can act to remedy that constitutional oversight. The goal: Get Bush and Cheney committed to an appropriate inpatient facility, where they can get the treatment they so desperately need. In Washington, the appropriate statutory law is already in place: If a "court or jury finds that [a] person is mentally ill and is likely to injure himself or other persons if allowed to remain at liberty, the court may order his hospitalization."

I'll even serve on the jury. When it comes to averting World War III, it's really the least I can do.

Where we stand... or are stood on

A much bigger story is unfolding: the epic collapse of the Bush Administration.(...) When Bush came to office--installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore--I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead. Joe Klein - Time Magazine

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I was hunting around for an image to express the situation the United States finds itself in today, and I pulled up this surrealistic still from an ancient Laurel and Hardy masterwork. I think is speaks much more clearly than the Joe Klein clipping I've tacked underneath it.

America's situation, like the one Laurel and Hardy find themselves, is impossible. There is no way out. A gag writing genius came up with theirs, but one of the biggest jerks in the history of the United States has come up with ours. Truly a nightmare! Impeachment is out of the question... President Cheney? President Rice? President Pelosi? Who's on first? Like a mule in a hail storm we just have to stand here and take it till its over.

Perhaps the most painful part is that this wound is self inflicted. Knowing full well who they had as president the American people re-elected him.

I lived through the Spanish "transition" from Franco's dictatorial, fascist regime to a democracy. Most Spanish people were voting for the first time in their lives. It was beautiful... They were very careful with their votes. Franco had taken control by way of a coup d'etat followed by a bloody civil war. Franco was supported by a powerful minority: Church, army, landowners. A Spanish version of Bush's "base". The majority of Spaniards opposed Franco and fought him tooth and nail until they were overpowered. They gave it their best shot, lost and then they were put in front of firing squads, imprisoned, tortured, humiliated and oppressed for nearly forty years... But at least they had the satisfaction of knowing that they had never actually voted for Franco. DS

The essential Iraq

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The important things to keep in mind while following the political battle over Iraq in Washington is:

• The way the United States entered Iraq stinks

• The way the United States has acted in Iraq stinks

• The way the United States leaves Iraq, for sure, will... stink too. We've been through this before... The US always deserts its allies and leaves them holding the bag and then worries about its "syndrome". And Hollywood makes a lot of films about how we actually won... And people ask, "what would Jesus do?" as if Jesus would have ever gotten himself into such a mess.
  

The United States has destroyed its "brand" in Iraq. Nobody can take Americans seriously anymore except as shoppers.

What does that mean?

Imagine if Coca Cola had mysteriously poisoned several thousand people. "Great", you say, they go out of business.

Not so fast. What about all the jobs and the families that depend on them... Mortgages, health plans, pensions, children's education, etc, etc. As we saw with the Soviet Union, (and Enron) when a great structure collapses it is no joke. What would Coca Cola have to do to regain its lost prestige?

First, it would have to discover how the hypothetical poisoning happened, who and what was responsible. If there was criminal negligence or malice aforethought... people would have to go to jail, right up to the chairman and if the chairman's policies were responsible, especially the chairman. And then they would have to pay heavy reparations to all the victims and their families. Maybe then, only just maybe, people all over the world could hear again about how "things go better" or "the real thing" or about 'pauses that refresh' with out vomiting or running for the exits.

That is more or less where things are now. The world system ("really-existing-capitalism") depends to a great extent on America's credibility... even if we aren't in agreement with the system; like it or not we are all stakeholders and if it collapses we will suffer...

That credibility will not be restored by further martyrizing of the people of Iraq... There is no credibility to be gained in Iraq now if there ever was any to begin with. Credibility can only be restored by the USA, in the USA itself. How?

By holding public hearings, Nuremberg-type "show trials" if you will, publicly investigating how this war happened, punishing the offenders, especially Bush and Cheney... (Impeachment isn't good enough). And finally formal apologies to the people of Iraq and payments to the victims (not contracts for Halliburton to "reconstruct"). Cash they can spend any way they want, visas, scholarships, green cards, you name it. People everywhere would respect that and if they didn't respect it they could kiss our ass, because it would be the right thing to do. At least we could respect ourselves and that's a good place to start.

Is this possible? Well, America is a place where impossible things happen all the time and have been happening for hundreds of years... So, why not? The capacity to pleasantly surprise itself and others may be the only national characteristic that can save the USA now. DS

"The Wizard of Ooze" - Steve Bell - Guardian

"If a President can be impeached for lying about a blow job then by God a Vice President should be impeached for setting in motion the forces that destroyed an intelligence network during a time of war." Larry Johnson - TPM Cafe

Picking through Hersh

It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”

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I'm sure you've already read Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker piece about the lead up to war with Iran, so I'll just point up a fragment that especially grabbed my attention. John Negroponte of Central American, death squad fame, lately US ambassador (viceroy) to Iraq and intelligence czar, someone you wouldn't take for having exactly a delicate stomach, is putting all the distance he can between himself and what a former National Security Council aide described to Hersh as "amateur hour".

I find this similar to Tony Blair's draw down of British troops in Iraq. Neither Blair or Negroponte could be described as being over weighed down with scruples, but they know what's coming and they don't want their fingerprints on what may be a major disaster that will break many careers and maybe even land some VIPs in jail before it has run its course. DS

Abstract: Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said. I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.) The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the government in a positive way.” The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.” The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general. “This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.” READ IT ALL

Murdoch appears to pull up his poodle(s) short

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This is a very special and dangerous moment. Many very powerful people are afraid that Bush is about to execute what Professor Immanuel Wallerstein calls a "fuite en avant", in Iran, which could be translated as a desperate action, a mixture of a "hail Mary pass" and Samson in the temple. A disastrous attack that could set off a chain of unforeseeable consequences comparable to Gavrilo Pricip's fine adventure on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. The article I'm including from The Times of London, illustrates this consensus.

The Times, where the article quoted below appears, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, of whom Tony Blair is said to be in awe. I don't think Tony Blair would have dared to draw down British troops from Iraq without running it in front of Murdoch first. BTW, Murdoch also owns the neocon bible, "The Weekly Standard". Some observers have been wondering why the neocon commentators who led the charge into Iraq are so quiet about Iran at this very moment. Murdoch also owns Fox, which I don't receive over here (¡gracias a Díos!) so I would be grateful if my American readers would compare the tone of Fox with the Standard and The Times. Nobody I've read yet seems to draw any connection between the silence of the Standard and the criticism of the Times. But it appears that Murdoch is not really "on board" for "The End of Days". However, as the mentor of my youth, Neddy Seagoon used to say, "if only I knew how little I know, I'd know a little." DS

Fears grow over Iran - The Times

Abstract: Tony Blair has declared himself at odds with hawks in the US Administration by saying publicly for the first time that it would be wrong to take military action against Iran. The Prime Minister’s comments came hours before the UN’s nuclear watchdog raised the stakes in the West’s showdown with Tehran.(...) Senior British government sources have told The Times that they fear President Bush will seek to “settle the Iranian question through military means” next year, before the end of his second term if he concludes that diplomacy has failed. “He will not want to leave it unresolved for his successor,” said one. But there are deep fissures within the US Administration. Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, who has previously called for direct talks with Tehran, is said to be totally opposed to military action.(...) One senior adviser to Mr Gates has even stated privately that military action could lead to Congress impeaching Mr Bush.(...) Mr Blair, in a BBC interview yesterday, said: “I can’t think that it would be right to take military action against Iran"(...) It was notable that Mr Blair’s remarks yesterday closely resembled those of Jack Straw last year, who said that an attack on Iran was “inconceivable”, angering Washington and perhaps contributing to his removal as Foreign Secretary. The Prime Minister’s comments reflect what British officials have been saying privately for some time, but also show a growing streak of independence from Mr Bush. The White House was unhappy with the timing of Mr Blair’s announcement this week on withdrawing 1,600 British troops, concerned that it undercut Mr Bush’s efforts to shore up support for his troop surge on Capitol Hill while sending out “mixed messages” to the Iranians. READ IT ALL

The Manchurian candidate and the silicon dis-aliyah

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It is very tempting to think that there is ideology or some doctrine involved in Bush's approach to Iran... Or even insanity.

H.D.S. Greenway in the article below thinks Bush has "renounced reality". I only agree partially. I think Bush long ago renounced a lot of people's versions of reality, but has never renounced for a minute his own.

Here is an idea that fits what facts we know and also fulfills the conditions of Ockham's Razor, (basically, keep it simple). What if the Israeli right wing though their legendary intelligence resources simply "had the goods" on Bush? I don't mean drunken driving or sniffing coke, I mean something that would affect the family's business interests or land some of them (Poppy?) in jail... some real skeleton in the closet. Something a lot worse than having a lot of absurd poor people think you were a lousy president.

As I pointed out in a previous post, the Israeli high tech economy depends on people who could get a job anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. Even if Iran had only one or two atomic bombs to Israel's one or two hundred it might make a third of Israel's scientists and engineers nervous enough to leave for San Francisco in the event of a rise in tensions in the Middle East. If Saudi Arabia and Egypt decide they need the bomb too, there could be a rush for the door... a silicon dis-aliyah and economic collapse.

In this scenario, Bush would have as little choice in the matter as Laurence Harvey did in "The Manchurian Candidate": they pull his string and watch him do his thing.

If he does trash Iran he will have guaranteed the undying support of the neocons and their publicists for all time. He lost the rest of us, irretrievably, long ago. This way he will keep his "legacy" safe and his linen won't get washed. An easy decision.

I have no idea at all if this is really the case, but following Ockham I find it easier to believe this little theory of mine than thinking that Bush is getting messages from God or of imagining him actually having any belief system at all, outside of selfishness. DS

H.D.S. Greenway: Renunciation of reality - Boston Globe

Abstract: With carrier battle groups crowding the Persian Gulf, and with the Bush administration beating the battle drum to a degree not heard since the buildup to the Iraq war, one can only conclude that either this is a demonstration of coercive diplomacy par excellence, or that the United States is going to attack Iran.(...) Optimists argue that Bush will not bomb Iran's nuclear facilities because they are so spread out that an air strike would only temporarily delay an Iranian bomb, and that we do not have the troops to contemplate a ground invasion. Still others point out that although Iran's theocracy is becoming increasingly unpopular -- especially among the young -- military strike would instantly harden public opinion against the United States and delay the day when mullah influence begins to dissipate. Realists who know the Middle East argue that an attack on Iran would have untold consequences that would damage the United States even more than the occupation of Iraq has done. I heard one of America's foremost experts on Iran, Columbia's Gary Sick, say on National Public Radio that he didn't think war was on the way because he didn't believe that the White House had completely "renounced reality." And there you have the nub of the question. Pessimists argue that the hallmark of the Bush presidency is the renunciation of reality.(...) Pessimists will also remember that when the Iranians offered the administration an olive branch, saying they would curtail their activities with Hezbollah and Hamas and cooperate in Iraq, the White House was unprepared even to discuss it. Colin Powell told Newsweek that he favored restarting talks with Iran, which had been very helpful to the US in Afghanistan, but that "there was reluctance on the part of the president to do that." Powell thought Bush wasn't prepared to talk to a regime he didn't think should be in power. The administration's position has been: We don't talk to evil, and to do so would be a betrayal of the Iran's huddled masses longing to be free. Perhaps the Bush administration still thinks regime change is the answer, that a military strike would topple the rotten Tehran regime like the proverbial house of cards. Pessimists can just hear Cheney arguing that he and Bush have only two years left to do the Lord's work before they are followed by weaklings and cowards, whether they be Republican or Democrat. READ IT ALL

Persian conundrum

At a farewell reception at Blair House for the retiring chief of protocol, Don Ensenat, who was President Bush's Yale roommate, the president shook hands with Washington Life Magazine's Soroush Shehabi. A grandson of one of the late Shah's ministers, Soroush said, "Mr. President, I simply want to say one U.S. bomb on Iran and the regime will remain in power for another 20 or 30 years and 70 million Iranians will become radicalized."

"I know," President Bush answered.

"But does Vice President Cheney know?" asked Soroush.

The president chuckled and walked away.
Arnaud De Borchgrave - UPI

David Seaton's News Links
Bush's interchange with the grandson of one of the former Shah of Iran's ministers, quoted above, is one of the weirdest little historical, "slices of life" I have ever read. If the disaster finally is consummated, someday historians, will read much into it.

I roll it around and around in my head, but I don't know what to make of it. My first reaction is that Bush is just practicing frat-boy flippancy on Soroush, but the "I know" doesn't really ring like that. There is something mysterious about it. Tom Engelhardt thinks Bush and Cheney are suicidal, like Thelma and Louise. I respectfully disagree, I don't think they much want to die or much care who does have to die in order to save their bacon. But that "I know", just doesn't ring right.

Anyway, keep it filed away in your mind, just in case. DS

Make big bucks in Iraqi oil

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This article from the Independent reminds me of the famous recipe for rabbit stew that begins, "First catch your rabbit". DS

Future of Iraq: The spoils of war - Independent

Abstract: Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days. The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.(...) The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said. Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled. Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.(...) Several major oil companies are said to have sent teams into the country in recent months to lobby for deals ahead of the law, though the big names are considered unlikely to invest until the violence in Iraq abates. James Paul, executive director at the Global Policy Forum, the international government watchdog, said: "It is not an exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of the population would be opposed to this. To do it anyway, with minimal discussion within the [Iraqi] parliament is really just pouring more oil on the fire." READ IT ALL

Bush, the anti-Midas

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Midas, mythical king of Phrygia was known for turning everything he touched into gold. George W. Bush seems to have the opposite faculty of turning everything he touches into "excrément" (that's French for shit). Bush and his Straussian friends, with their curious celebration of "manliness" have taken America's image of its own masculinity (think: Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart) and trashed it beyond recognition. For his latest trick Bush has managed to convert a genocidal dictator, Saddam Hussein, into the hero of a Hemingway short story; a lion surrounded by jackals. "Grace under pressure" was the Hemingway obsession. In the presence of death, pretense evaporates and what remains is truth. The truth is that Saddam died very well. Bush, poor fool, gave him that opportunity and Saddam had the chops to make the most of it. Are we permitted to doubt that Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney... and yes, even the boy emperor himself, would ever go to the gallows with such stoic dignity, would ever die so bravely and so well as Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti? DS
Hijacking Eid and Hanging Saddam - IraqSlogger
Abstract: Saddam's hanging at the hands of chubby Iraqi men wearing ski masks is likely to be perceived by many as an American execution and as part of a trend of American missteps contributing to sectarian tensions in Iraq and the region. The trial of Saddam was viewed by detractors as an event stage-managed by the Americans. According to Human Rights Watch, the Iraqi judges and lawyers involved in prosecuting Saddam were ill prepared and relied on their American advisers. American minders shut off the microphones and ordered the translators to halt whenever they disapproved of what was being said by the defendants. The important Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha was due to begin over the weekend. For Sunnis it began on Saturday the 30th of December. For Shias it begins on Sunday the 31st. According to tradition in Mecca, battles are suspended during the Hajj period so that pilgrims can safely march to Mecca. This practice even predated Islam and Muslims preserved this tradition, calling this period 'Al Ashur al Hurm,' or the months of truce. By hanging Saddam on the Sunni Eid the Americans and the Iraqi government were in effect saying that only the Shia Eid had legitimacy. Sunnis were irate that Shia traditions were given primacy (as they are more and more in Iraq these days) and that Shias disrespected the tradition and killed Saddam on this day. Because the Iraqi constitution itself prohibits executions from being carried out on Eid, the Iraqi government had to officially declare that Eid did not begin until Sunday the 31st. It was a striking decision, virtually declaring that Iraq is now a Shia state. Eid al Adha is the festival of the sacrifice of the sheep. Some may perceive it as the day Saddam was sacrificed.(...) One thing that is clear, is that the death of Saddam did not bring closure or peace to Iraq. Sunnis are now gathering at Saddam's grave, demonstrators are now showing his iconic image and revenge has been threatened. President George Bush declared his nemesis' death "a milestone" and it may just be the clearest message that is there will be no mercy for Sunnis in a Shia and Kurdish dominated Iraq. READ IT ALL (hat to Juan Cole)

Saddam Hussein: hanged by the neck until dead

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Juan Cole has a masterful piece about the hanging of Saddam Hussein in today's Salon, which contextualizes the execution from a very detailed and coherent Iraqi perspective. What is the American context? It seems to me, that as Juan points out, everything about the way Saddam was tried and executed is counterproductive to bringing peace and stability to Iraq. Therefore the rush to hang him appears to have had more to do with silencing Saddam than bringing him to "justice". Saddam and the USA go a long way back and during the Reagan administration, the relationship became especially intense. Certainly it is about time to examine the United State's policies in the Middle East ... (a fat understatement!) and a lengthy, detailed, "Milosevic in the Hague", type trial of Saddam Hussein, could have really peeled back the carpet under which many a creepy, crawly has been hiding all these years. So although he was hanged, in truth Saddam was metaphorically "gunned down from a moving car". A key witness has been silenced. DS

Laundry list of failure, with no benchmark to measure it

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In the clip below, Robert Scheer compiles a laundry list of failure in Iraq. We are looking at a disaster that dwarfs Vietnam by a magnitude. The Vietnam war was a terrible thing for the USA and especially for South East Asia, but it went no farther than that. The possible knock on effects of the collapse into anarchy of the Middle East are impossible to calculate. I don't think there is any precedent of such a complete disaster in US history which would give people some perspective. If you say to a German or a Russian, even if they are young, "WWII"... They know what that means from Grandma's table talk. If you talk to an American about "civil war" it conjures up visions of blues and grays, Matthew Brady and "Gone with the Wind"... If you say "civil war" to a Spanish kid it means grandpa buried in a mass grave in a ditch outside the village. Americans just don't have any benchmark to realize how deep in the shit they are. The Baker Commission is said to be recommending a withdrawal, but Bush still talks about "finishing the job". Amazing days are ahead. We may yet see Nancy Pelosi as president... Cheney has a heart attack and Bush is led off drunk in a strait jacket. DS
Robert Scheer - Abstract: Having idiotically dug ourselves a terribly deep hole in Iraq -- remember when protesters against the war were mocked for using the word "quagmire"? -- Bush is now forced to beg Syria and Iran to throw us a rope. As the Bush-appointed and James Baker-led Iraq Study Group has telegraphed, the cooperation of these two pariah states is essential to an effective exit strategy. In reality, this is not so much a change in policy as it is an acknowledgement of a truth-on-the-ground that has been clear since the invasion 44 months ago: Our sworn enemies were the biggest beneficiaries of our overthrow of Iraq's secular dictatorship.(...) And don't expect Tehran's theocrats to be magnanimous in victory. The key message from Ayatollah Khamenei on Tuesday was, as the BBC headline put it, "U.S. troops must leave Iraq if security is to be restored."(...) So it is that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was so desperate in his pleas to the ayatollah, admitting that, "We are in dire need of Iran's help in establishing security and stability in Iraq." Of course he is, because six years of Bush's foreign policy has had the presumably unintended consequences of elevating radicals and theocrats into positions of dominance throughout the region, from Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and even, this past week, to the oil emirate Bahrain, where Shiite and Sunni radical Islamists split elections in an upset. "It looks like our parliament will be dominated by people who see themselves only as Sunnis or Shiites," said Fowad Shihab, a political science professor at Bahrain University. "These are the same Islamists that are gaining control across the Arab world." Simply put, the neoconservative geniuses who believed invading Iraq would bolster both U.S. and Israeli interests in fact have accomplished the exact opposite -- handing both military and public-relations victories to their sworn enemies. Similarly, the international movement to restrain the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been struck a possible death blow as a desperate United States may be forced to accommodate Iran's nuclear ambitions, just as it did those of Pakistan. READ IT ALL

Mark Danner on the Third Act in Iraq - Tom Dispatch

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What has happened in Iraq cannot be explained as simple ignorance or ideology, incompetence or even plain stupidity. This is criminal. I have thought for some time that Iraq must have been destroyed deliberately. Certainly it could not have been done more thoroughly if it had. Why and to whose benefit are the questions we must ask and answer in order to find the guilty and demand accountability. For we are talking about the most serious war crimes since 1945. A country destroyed? Hundreds of thousands of people killed and mutilated, tortured and humiliated? A region on whose resources the health of the entire world economy depends. The prosperity and future of millions and millions of human beings has been and will continue to be put in jeopardy. Why, for what, for whom? There has to an international investigation and those responsible have to be put on trial... Just like at Nuremberg!!! DS

If for some reason you have never heard of Tom Engelhardt's"TomDispatch" it time you did!!

Excerpts: (...) One can make arguments for a "deep de-Baathification" of Iraq. One can make arguments also for dismantling the Iraqi army. It is hard, though, to make an argument that such steps did not stand in dramatic and irresolvable contradiction to the Pentagon's plan to withdraw all but 30,000 American troops from Iraq within a few months. With no Iraqi army, with all Baath Party members thrown out of the ministries and the agencies of government, with all of Saddam's formidable security forces summarily sacked -- and with all of these forces transformed into sworn enemies of the American occupation -- who precisely was going to keep order in Iraq? And who was going to build that "new and fresh army" that Bremer was talking about?(...) Nearly four years into the Iraq war, as we enter the Time of Proposed Solutions, the consequences of those early decisions define the bloody landscape. By dismissing and humiliating the soldiers and officers of the Iraqi army our leaders, in effect, did much to recruit the insurgency. By bringing far too few troops to secure Saddam's enormous arms depots they armed it. By bringing too few to keep order they presided over the looting and overwhelming violence and social disintegration that provided the insurgency such fertile soil. By blithely purging tens of thousands of the country's Baathist elite, whatever their deeds, and by establishing a muscle-bound and inept American occupation without an "Iraqi face," they created an increasing resentment among Iraqis that fostered the insurgency and encouraged people to shelter it. And by providing too few troops to secure Iraq's borders they helped supply its forces with an unending number of Sunni Islamic extremists from neighboring states. It was the foreign Islamists' strategy above all to promote their jihadist cause by provoking a sectarian civil war in Iraq; by failing to prevent their attacks and to protect the Shia who became their targets, the U.S. leaders have allowed them to succeed. LINK TO TOMDISPATCH

Cheney's epitaph - Maureen Dowd

David Seaton's News Links

Maureen proves that is possible to be simultaneously the beauty AND the beast. DS

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"Dick Cheney and his wormy aides, of course, are still babbling about total victory and completing the mission by raising the stakes and knocking off the mullahs in Tehran. His tombstone will probably say,
'Here lies Dick Cheney, still winning.' ”
Maureen Dowd - NYT - Link to bootleg version

Seymour Hersh: The Next Act - New Yorker

David Seaton's News Links
The idea that a Democratic congress lessens the chance of a war with Iran may be totally wrong. It may mean the exact opposite, because the last thing any of the major Democratic presidential candidates want to do in the run-up to the 2008 elections is to offend Israel. The Israelis are absolutely desperate to avoid losing their military superiority. A nuclear armed Iran does not mean the physical end of Israel, Iran wants to be "numero uno" in the Middle East, not to be turned into an ash heap, but it would probably mean the end of the Zionist project, as no one could ever say anymore that Eretz Israel constituted a safe refuge for the Jewish people, quite the contrary. If war is finally avoided the world will have a lot of reasons to thank Seymour Hersh. He is fast becoming a historical figure. He has been the substitute for an entire intellectual class that the United States no longer possesses. DS

Abstract: A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, (...) In an interview this month with the Jerusalem Post, (Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, Ephraim ) Sneh expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of diplomacy or international sanctions in curbing Iran: The danger isn’t as much Ahmadinejad’s deciding to launch an attack but Israel’s living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction. . . . Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That’s why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs.(...) The Bush Administration, if it does take military action against Iran, would have support from Democrats as well as Republicans. Senators Hillary Clinton, of New York, and Evan Bayh, of Indiana, who are potential Democratic Presidential candidates, have warned that Iran cannot be permitted to build a bomb and that—as Clinton said earlier this year—“we cannot take any option off the table.” Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has also endorsed this view. Last May, Olmert was given a rousing reception when he addressed a joint session of Congress and declared, “A nuclear Iran means a terrorist state could achieve the primary mission for which terrorists live and die—the mass destruction of innocent human life. This challenge, which I believe is the test of our time, is one the West cannot afford to fail.”(...) “Iran is emerging as a dominant power in the Middle East,” I was told by a Middle East expert and former senior Administration official. “With a nuclear program, and an ability to interfere throughout the region, it’s basically calling the shots. Why should they coöperate with us over Iraq?” READ ALL