Wow. I missed the shocking news -- Saddam Hussein hated
the United States and tried to think of ways to hurt it. ABC news with
exclusive audio tape!
I saw that ABC News item. It wasn't "news". It was a tape they had
acquired which did not provide any new information that was not already out
there and widely known. In fact, the story largely substantiated the
position that Saddam was not a real threat, and had no connection with Al
Qaeda.
If you are watching the news, I presume you are also aware of the fact that
Iraq is now near full civil war, and that the occupation is generating more
new terrorists every day than Osama could have wished for in his wildest
dreams, and that large Republican-connected corporations have been gleefully
lining their own pockets while mismanaging the rebuilding of that pathetic
little country, and that whenever a competent official emerges from the U.S.
occupation administration, he says something truthful and is sacked.
I always find it strange that nobody seems to be demanding the simplest and
most obvious measure of accountability from the Bush administration: tell us
how long it will take and how much it will cost and how many people will die
before you have what you promised us: a peaceful democratic Arab state in
the Mid-east. So far, it is estimated to be over $20,000 per American
household. How much would you say is too much, and how long, and how many
lives, would you say is too many? $50,000? $100,000? And how long should
the bulk of the U.S. military be tied up in Iraq? 10 years? 20 years? 50
years? Any reasonable person would want to know those things before
committing to a course of action that will be almost impossible to extricate
ourselves from, with decency and integrity.
Well, we know why nobody from the Bush administration will give us any kind
of plan. If they did, it would immediately be apparent that the plan has
failed. By saying "nobody can say how long it would take" and "it
undermines the troops to insist that we have a clue about what we are doing
and how much progress we are making" Bush can hope that some miracle will
come along and save his ass from the embarrassment of having to admit, "we
had no real idea, when we went in, of how difficult it was going to be to
get out". It's a win-win proposition. If things go badly, it's because we
haven't waited long enough. If things eventually go well, we knew it would.
Will anyone admit that Bush doesn't know what he got into and has no clue
how to get out? We are now into what John Nash ("Beautiful Mind") called a
"dollar auction". You are bidding on a dollar under rules that require you
to pay out even if you lose the auction. So, when you reach and pass the
full "value" of the dollar, you have to keep bidding, because otherwise you
still pay but get nothing. Yes, Viet Nam exactly.
Doesn't matter to him, does it? He'll be out cashing in in a couple years.
He doesn't actually receive suitcases full of cash from all those
corporations and billionaires he has served so diligently the last six
years... until he gets out of office. And then watch the payback-- it
should be absolutely glorious! No individual in the history of the U.S. has
transferred so much wealth to so many investors, shareholders, and corporate
leaders. The oil industry alone should be falling over themselves to reward
him-- look at the deal they got in the Gulf of Mexico!-- but the
pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, credit institutions,--
they'll all be rushing forward to thank the man who did so incredibly much
for their profit margins (while doing virtually nothing for the economy as a
whole or people who actually work for a living).
Meanwhile, an adult will have to take over the presidency and sit there and
think: how long do we let this shit go on before we admit it was a huge
mistake? And stop bidding? And the same adult will have to do something
adult about paying bills around here. I don't think anything Bush has done
is quite as remarkably, shamelessly, outrageously childish as the handing
over of billions and billions of dollars in national debt to the next
generation. Some of his most fanatical devotees compare him to Jesus
Christ, and they have something there: I'm watching this man walk on water
right now. It's amazing.
It's hard to call an administration "corrupt" when it does, openly and
shamelessly, what other administrations would do only in secret. The
lobbiests now enter through the front door, proudly and glibly, and meetings
that used to be hidden are now simply "secret". The Bush administration
actually invites corporations to write legislation for themselves. The same
people who defend this government would be horrified at the idea of a labour
union writing it's own contract or a teenager making his own house rules or
an actor directing his own movie-- and perhaps should be. But that's the
way the Bush administration operates.
There are ideological differences, which can be argued endlessly, but then
there's simple competency issues, of which a clear vision eventually
emerges.