<< "A former State Department diplomat summed up Bush's rule in one sentence: ‘Bush is acting like a dictator who is ready to sacrifice his country, just so long as he can remain in the White House. He defies the will of his own people and has assumed powers of surveillance and secrecy that used to found in the Kremlin.’"
"The American people are forced to consume a daily diet of triumphalist slogans doled out by the media and fattened by fawning praise of the president from a chorus of highly paid commentators."
"He is portrayed as a pious crusader leading Christians into battle against the infidels. Evoking the glory of God and divine guidance, Bush claims to be leading his people to new glory."
"The reality looks very different. The U.S. is nearly bankrupt, saddled with an unprecedented debt. It is bogged down in an unwinnable Civil War that Bush continues to throw lives and billions of dollars into."
"George W. Bush remains largely isolated from his people, keeping the company of a diminishing circle of trusted advisers." >>
OOPS! The above isn't an actual "news story" - but ironically, it is THE NEWS STORY of the past 6 years, the past 15 years if you look at the right-wing agenda from 1991 (when the Soviet Union collapsed, robbing the Radical, reactionary Right of their half-century communist enemy), the willingness to DISCARD THE PEACE AND PROGRESS of America's Cold War "victory" for constant and incessant MILITARISM in the name of god, profit, and "free market capitalism", of course.
========================================================
Bush in the Bunker
Submitted by Mark on Mon, 01/08/2007 - 7:29am. Editorials
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/115
In reading a BBC News Profile of Saddam Hussein from 2001, we couldn’t help but be struck by some eerie points of nexuses with George W. Bush:
"A former Iraqi diplomat living in exile summed up Saddam's rule in one sentence: ‘Saddam is a dictator who is ready to sacrifice his country, just so long as he can remain on his throne in Baghdad.’"
"The Iraqi people are forced to consume a daily diet of triumphalist slogans, fattened by fawning praise of the president."
"He is portrayed as a valiant knight leading the Arabs into battle against the infidel, or as an eighth-century caliph who founded the city of Baghdad. Evoking the glory of Arab history, Saddam claims to be leading his people to new glory.
The reality looks very different. Iraq is bankrupt."
"Saddam Hussein remains largely isolated from his people, keeping the company of a diminishing circle of trusted advisers."
Okay, Bush hasn’t been as tyrannical and murderous to Americans as Saddam Hussein was (with the complicity of the Reagan/Bush administrations in the ‘80s), but consider just a slight rewording of the above excerpted description of Hussein:
"A former State Department diplomat summed up Bush's rule in one sentence: ‘Bush is acting like a dictator who is ready to sacrifice his country, just so long as he can remain in the White House. He defies the will of his own people and has assumed powers of surveillance and secrecy that used to found in the Kremlin.’"
"The American people are forced to consume a daily diet of triumphalist slogans doled out by the media and fattened by fawning praise of the president from a chorus of highly paid commentators."
"He is portrayed as a pious crusader leading Christians into battle against the infidels. Evoking the glory of God and divine guidance, Bush claims to be leading his people to new glory."
"The reality looks very different. The U.S. is nearly bankrupt, saddled with an unprecedented debt. It is bogged down in an unwinnable Civil War that Bush continues to throw lives and billions of dollars into."
"George W. Bush remains largely isolated from his people, keeping the company of a diminishing circle of trusted advisers."
Uh, the similarities are kind of creepy aren’t the? And both men appear to get a thrill out of death and the macabre. (Uh, make that the past tense for Saddam.)
We recently ran across of an account of a meeting that Bush had with a Democratic senate leader before the Iraq War. In essence, Bush justified the Iraq War because Saddam won’t "F**kin" dance to the tune of the U.S.
Only 11% of Americans reportedly support an escalation of troops. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously opposed the idea. The list of even Republican honchos opposing an increase in the number of troops far outnumbers the scattering of remaining Bushevik loyalists. A "study group" engineered by Bush’s father came up with recommendations that would lead to a decrease in U.S. GIs, but Bush rejected the "centrist" findings with a dismissive disdain.
It is Bush and Cheney against the world.
They are in the bunker now, surrounded by enemy forces – not the Iraqis, but the overwhelming majority of Americans.
We have a runaway Executive Branch that is operating in its own self-interest against the wishes and needs of its citizens.
The increase in troops in Iraq will be a death warrant for many of the additional GIs sent to Baghdad. This is not a political decision; it is murder.
The sociopath, reportedly, sleeps soundly every night.
It’s all quiet in the bunker as the world is further set aflame.
Monday, January 8, 2007
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Rumsfeld participated in the consortium that SOLD NUCLEAR REACTORS to NORTH KOREA
Rumsfeld Filled His Pockets with Pyongyang's Nuclear Loot
By CHRIS FLOYD
March 4, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd03042003.html
It's a well-known fact--oft detailed in this column--that the boys in the Bush Regime swing both ways. We speak, of course, of their proclivity--their apparently uncontrollable craving--for stuffing their trousers with loot from both sides of whatever war or military crisis is going at the moment.
That's why it came as no surprise to read last week that just before he joined the Regime's crusade against evildoers everywhere (especially rogue states that pursue the development of terrorist-ready weapons of mass destruction), Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld was trousering the proceeds from a $200 million deal to send the latest nuclear technology--including plenty of terrorist-ready "dirty bomb" material--to the rogue state of North Korea, Neue Zurcher Zeitung reports.
In 1998, Rumsfeld was citizen chairman of the Congressional Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, charged with reducing nuclear proliferation. Rumsfeld and the Republican-heavy commission came down hard on the deal Bill Clinton had brokered with North Korea to avert a war in 1994: Pyongyang would give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for normalized relations with the United States, plus the construction of two non-weaponized nuclear plants to generate electricity. The plants were to be built by an international consortium of government-backed business interests called KEDO.
Rum deal, said Rummy: those nasty Northies would surely turn the peaceful nukes to nefarious ends. What's more, even the most innocuous nuclear plant generates mounds of radioactive waste that could be made into "dirty bombs"--hand-carried weapons capable of killing thousands of people. The agreement was big bad juju that threatened the whole world, Rumsfeld declared.
Of course, that didn't prevent him from trying to profit from it. Even while he chairing commission meetings on the "dire threat" posed by the Korean program, Rumsfeld was junketing to Zurich for board meetings of the Swiss-based energy technology giant, ABB, where he was a top director. And what was ABB doing at the time? Why, negotiating that $200 million deal with North Korea to provide equipment and services for the KEDO nuclear reactors, of course!
Yes, nuclear proliferation is ugly stuff--but you might as well squeeze a few dollars from it, right? A smart guy always plays the angles--and, as the hero-worshiping American media never stop telling us, Rumsfeld is one smart guy.
In fact, he's so smart that he's now playing dumb. A Pentagon spokesman says Rumsfeld "can't recall" discussing the Korean deal at ABB board meetings. And his erstwhile ABB corporate colleagues say that it's possible the subject never came up. Of course it didn't; going into the nuclear business with a Communist tyranny that very nearly launched a nuclear war against the West just four years before, in a deal that involved high-level negotiations with the governments of the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union--that's certainly the kind of thing that would be handled by a couple of junior executives in a branch office somewhere. Nothing for the bigwigs--especially hard-wired government players like Rumsfeld--to trouble their pretty heads about. A perfectly reasonable explanation.
And so Rumsfeld joins the roster of Bush Regime multimillionaires who once trumpeted their "business savvy" as selling points for their right to national leadership but now claim to have been "hands-off" figureheads who had no idea what their companies were up to. Bush, in his sinkhole of insider trading and stockholder scamming at Harken; Cheney, making fat deals with Saddam Hussein (yes, after the Gulf War) and muddying up the corporate books at Halliburton; Army Secretary Thomas White, gaming the power grid and stealing millions for Enron in the manufactured California "energy crisis"--all of them went from mighty moguls to mere "front men" the instant their corruption was brought to light. None of it was their fault; nothing ever is.
Whatever happened to Bush's much-trumpeted "era of responsibility?" These guys are not only chiselers, hustlers, hypocrites and war profiteers--they're a bunch of gutless wonders as well. So you'll pardon us if we are just the tiniest bit cynical about the "moral arguments for war" and other such buckets of warm spit this gang is now forcing down the world's throat.
Postscript 1: Losing the Plot And what became of that 1994 pact with North Korea? UN inspectors entered the country to make sure the weapons program was put on ice. Pyongyang signed a number of lucrative deals with various politically-connected Western firms, like ABB, to build the promised energy plants, while waiting for the normalization of relations with the United States to begin--a move which most observers thought would set North Korea on a course toward China-style "moderation" of its monolithic regime.
But normalization never came. Clinton, pressured by rightwing forces (such as Rumsfeld's commission) who opposed any truck whatsoever with godless commies, did his usual folding number, with much windy suspiration of forced breath--and no action. The KEDO companies pocketed Pyongyang's cash but dithered about the actual construction. Pyongyang--while not exactly a font of smiling cooperation itself--concluded that the pact was being deep-sixed. This suspicion was confirmed when Bush took office, calling Korean leader Kim Jong Il a "pygmy" and declaring the county part of the "Axis of Evil."
Pyongyang then accelerated its weapons program, kicked out the UN inspectors, and is now threatening to unleash a nuclear war if Bush, a la Iraq, makes a "pre-emptive strike."
A dicey situation, sure--but at least Don Rumsfeld made some money out of it.
Postscript 2: Red Don Rising The Korean caper was not the first time Rummy signed up for both teams, of course. There is the little matter of his former financial tryst with the leaders of Communist China -a most Bushian affair, featuring ruling family members profiting from Daddy's government power.
It happened on this wise. A few months after Rumsfeld joined the Bush Regime stable, the American master of war bagged an estimated $500,000 by cashing in his joint investment with Jiang Mianheng, son of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. The pair had been partnered in Shanghai's Red Flag Software, which is used by the godless Chinese commies to, er, block attempts by American spies to penetrate Beijing's computer networks. Naturally, Red Rum was not bothered by these national security considerations--not when there was easy money to be had.
Politically-Connected Insiders of the World, Unite!
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
By CHRIS FLOYD
March 4, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd03042003.html
It's a well-known fact--oft detailed in this column--that the boys in the Bush Regime swing both ways. We speak, of course, of their proclivity--their apparently uncontrollable craving--for stuffing their trousers with loot from both sides of whatever war or military crisis is going at the moment.
That's why it came as no surprise to read last week that just before he joined the Regime's crusade against evildoers everywhere (especially rogue states that pursue the development of terrorist-ready weapons of mass destruction), Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld was trousering the proceeds from a $200 million deal to send the latest nuclear technology--including plenty of terrorist-ready "dirty bomb" material--to the rogue state of North Korea, Neue Zurcher Zeitung reports.
In 1998, Rumsfeld was citizen chairman of the Congressional Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, charged with reducing nuclear proliferation. Rumsfeld and the Republican-heavy commission came down hard on the deal Bill Clinton had brokered with North Korea to avert a war in 1994: Pyongyang would give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for normalized relations with the United States, plus the construction of two non-weaponized nuclear plants to generate electricity. The plants were to be built by an international consortium of government-backed business interests called KEDO.
Rum deal, said Rummy: those nasty Northies would surely turn the peaceful nukes to nefarious ends. What's more, even the most innocuous nuclear plant generates mounds of radioactive waste that could be made into "dirty bombs"--hand-carried weapons capable of killing thousands of people. The agreement was big bad juju that threatened the whole world, Rumsfeld declared.
Of course, that didn't prevent him from trying to profit from it. Even while he chairing commission meetings on the "dire threat" posed by the Korean program, Rumsfeld was junketing to Zurich for board meetings of the Swiss-based energy technology giant, ABB, where he was a top director. And what was ABB doing at the time? Why, negotiating that $200 million deal with North Korea to provide equipment and services for the KEDO nuclear reactors, of course!
Yes, nuclear proliferation is ugly stuff--but you might as well squeeze a few dollars from it, right? A smart guy always plays the angles--and, as the hero-worshiping American media never stop telling us, Rumsfeld is one smart guy.
In fact, he's so smart that he's now playing dumb. A Pentagon spokesman says Rumsfeld "can't recall" discussing the Korean deal at ABB board meetings. And his erstwhile ABB corporate colleagues say that it's possible the subject never came up. Of course it didn't; going into the nuclear business with a Communist tyranny that very nearly launched a nuclear war against the West just four years before, in a deal that involved high-level negotiations with the governments of the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union--that's certainly the kind of thing that would be handled by a couple of junior executives in a branch office somewhere. Nothing for the bigwigs--especially hard-wired government players like Rumsfeld--to trouble their pretty heads about. A perfectly reasonable explanation.
And so Rumsfeld joins the roster of Bush Regime multimillionaires who once trumpeted their "business savvy" as selling points for their right to national leadership but now claim to have been "hands-off" figureheads who had no idea what their companies were up to. Bush, in his sinkhole of insider trading and stockholder scamming at Harken; Cheney, making fat deals with Saddam Hussein (yes, after the Gulf War) and muddying up the corporate books at Halliburton; Army Secretary Thomas White, gaming the power grid and stealing millions for Enron in the manufactured California "energy crisis"--all of them went from mighty moguls to mere "front men" the instant their corruption was brought to light. None of it was their fault; nothing ever is.
Whatever happened to Bush's much-trumpeted "era of responsibility?" These guys are not only chiselers, hustlers, hypocrites and war profiteers--they're a bunch of gutless wonders as well. So you'll pardon us if we are just the tiniest bit cynical about the "moral arguments for war" and other such buckets of warm spit this gang is now forcing down the world's throat.
Postscript 1: Losing the Plot And what became of that 1994 pact with North Korea? UN inspectors entered the country to make sure the weapons program was put on ice. Pyongyang signed a number of lucrative deals with various politically-connected Western firms, like ABB, to build the promised energy plants, while waiting for the normalization of relations with the United States to begin--a move which most observers thought would set North Korea on a course toward China-style "moderation" of its monolithic regime.
But normalization never came. Clinton, pressured by rightwing forces (such as Rumsfeld's commission) who opposed any truck whatsoever with godless commies, did his usual folding number, with much windy suspiration of forced breath--and no action. The KEDO companies pocketed Pyongyang's cash but dithered about the actual construction. Pyongyang--while not exactly a font of smiling cooperation itself--concluded that the pact was being deep-sixed. This suspicion was confirmed when Bush took office, calling Korean leader Kim Jong Il a "pygmy" and declaring the county part of the "Axis of Evil."
Pyongyang then accelerated its weapons program, kicked out the UN inspectors, and is now threatening to unleash a nuclear war if Bush, a la Iraq, makes a "pre-emptive strike."
A dicey situation, sure--but at least Don Rumsfeld made some money out of it.
Postscript 2: Red Don Rising The Korean caper was not the first time Rummy signed up for both teams, of course. There is the little matter of his former financial tryst with the leaders of Communist China -a most Bushian affair, featuring ruling family members profiting from Daddy's government power.
It happened on this wise. A few months after Rumsfeld joined the Bush Regime stable, the American master of war bagged an estimated $500,000 by cashing in his joint investment with Jiang Mianheng, son of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. The pair had been partnered in Shanghai's Red Flag Software, which is used by the godless Chinese commies to, er, block attempts by American spies to penetrate Beijing's computer networks. Naturally, Red Rum was not bothered by these national security considerations--not when there was easy money to be had.
Politically-Connected Insiders of the World, Unite!
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He can be reached at: cfloyd72@hotmail.com
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