UPDATE III: The Daily Detritus (“You Lie… Lots, W”)

Bush, Iraq, War

Today it’s “W.” I knew George Bush was one sick son of … Mommy Dearest. Barbara Bush, made Genghis B., then a teenage boy, drive her to the hospital after she had miscarried. On her lap this awful woman carried the remains of the expelled fetus, which she showed to boy George.

Did we really need to know this? And why oh why has this dreadful man come out of hiding!

I have no wish to re-litigate his murderous reign. But the idea that Bush was justified in waging war on Iraq is preposterous. The fact that “W” has come out with His Truth to loud applause reflects very badly on his base, which includes very many American historians.

“BUSH’S 16 WORDS MISS THE BIG PICTURE”:

Reducing this administration’s single-minded will to war to an erroneous 16 words ignores the big picture. First came the decision to go to war. The misbegotten illegality that was this administration’s case for war followed once the decision to go to war had already been made. The administration’s war wasn’t about a few pieces that did not gel in an otherwise coherent framework; it wasn’t about an Iraq that was poised to attack the U.S. with germs and chemicals rather than with nukes; it was about a resigned, hungry, economic pariah that was a sitting duck for the power-hungry American colossus.

By all means, dissect and analyze what, in September 2002, I called the “lattice of lies” leveled at Iraq: the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes from Timbuktu, the invisible “meetings” with al-Qaida in Prague, an al-Qaida training camp that existed under Kurdish—not Iraqi—control, as well as the alleged weaponized chemical and biological stockpiles and their attendant delivery systems that inspectors doubted were there and which never materialized.

But then assemble the pieces and synthesize the information, will you? Do what the critical mind must do. The rational individual, wedded to reality, reason, and objective, non-partisan truth saw Bush’s sub-intelligent case for war for what it was. He saw Bush as the poster boy for “the degeneracy of manner and morals” which James Madison warned war would bring—the same “bring ’em on” grin one can also observe on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis. The rational individual saw all this, and understood that when Madison spoke of “war as the true nurse of executive aggrandizement,” he was speaking of the disposition of this dictator.

Hold the CIA responsible for giving in to the War Party’s pressure, if you will. But recognize that the CIA was only obeying the wishes of its masters. The CIA had attempted to resist. Witness the early statements by Vince Cannistraro, former counterterrorism chief, who scoffed at the concoction of an al-Qaida-Iraq connection. Having come under fire after September 11, the agency gave in to White House pressure to politicize and shape the lackluster information.

Unforgivable? Yes. But consider who the intelligence community takes its corrupt cues from. Perhaps New Jersey’s poet laureate Amiri Baraka had a point when he wondered, “Who know [sic] what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleezza.” The National Security Adviser has since September 11 been rocking the intelligence community with her antipathy to the truth. As if her Saddam-seeded nuclear-winter forecasts were not bad enough, on September 8, 2002, she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs.” “That’s just a lie,” an appalled David Albright of the Institution for Science and International Security told The New Republic.

In her latest damage control interview with Blitzer, Rice continued to insist that Saddam Hussein was threatening his neighbors when the president pounced, and, as justification for the war, she still makes reference to Saddam’s effort to pursue a nuclear program in … 1991, and to the burying of old centrifuge parts prior to the first Gulf War. Rice, of course, continues to deny the Niger forgery.

Clearly, Whitehall and Washington will not willingly give up their dark secrets. With few exceptions, such as U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd; Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich; John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee; and Bob Graham of Florida, the utterly disposable and detestable Democrats have been only too pleased to aid and abet this (heritable) executive dictatorship.

And the media will continue to do what their collective intelligence permits: focus only on the one lie, thus making the lattice more impenetrable.

UPDATE I (Nov. 9): LOOTER. Genghis Bush is now openly exhibiting the pistol his invading army looted off Saddam Hussein. At the very least, this is tacky. Primitive.

UPDATE II (Nov. 10): YOU LIE, W. SPIEGEL ONLINE: “Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has said that ex-US President George W. Bush is not telling the truth in his memoirs, released on Tuesday. Schröder said he never offered his unconditional support for Bush’s aggressive policy against Iraq.

In his memoirs, called “Decision Points” and released on Tuesday, Bush writes that Schröder told him in January 2002 that the US president had his full support when it came to his aggressive Iraq policy. Bush wrote that Schröder indicated he would even stand behind Bush should the US go to war against the country.
On Tuesday evening in Berlin, Schröder denied that he ever made such a promise. “The former American president is not telling the truth,” he said. He said the meeting in question focused on the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and whether those responsible were supported by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
“Just as I did during my subsequent meetings with the American president, I made it clear that, should Iraq … prove to have provided protection and hospitality to al-Qaida fighters, Germany would reliably stand beside the US,” Shröder said. “This connection, however, as it became clear during 2002, was false and constructed.”

UPDATE III: LOTS OF LYING. SPIEGEL ONLINE: “With its invasion of Iraq, the United States rid the Iraqi people of a tyrant. But it also broke the law and destroyed tens of thousands of lives. With the release of close to 400,000 Iraq logs by WikiLeaks and the coming publication of George W. Bush’s memoir, it is time to take stock of a war that was catastrophic for Iraq and America’s standing in the world.”

“In early October, there were 500 unidentified bodies in the Baghdad city morgues. According to one doctor, just as many bodies are being delivered to morgues today as in 2007. At least 630 people were shot to death with silenced pistols in the last three months alone. Although most were guards at checkpoints, the victims also included politicians and their relatives, as well as a television reporter who suddenly collapsed in the middle of a broadcast, in broad daylight. The source of the fatal shot could not be located. The atmosphere is eerie.”

“‘I have friends who returned from their self-imposed exile in Damascus last year. Now they’re packing their bags again,’ says Ahmed, a young attorney who is sitting under a ceiling fan in the Shah Bandar Café in downtown Baghdad”

UPDATE V: The World Against Our Fed (Stock Market High On Fed Smack)

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation

This is remarkable. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke thought that he could float another flotilla of fiat currency, QE2, without consequence. How buoyed am I that the world, or countries that matter, is up in arms about the US’s attempt to flood money markets with counterfeit currency. So as to get rid of the public debt, our government, via the Fed (which is an arm of the state), is debauching the dollar and all private savings. If Americans don’t kick back at this tax by stealth, let the world do so for us. This is the not-so-invisible hand of fiduciary self-interest in action.

The WSJ’s assertion that the Fed is “independent” is bellied by at least one fact: it inflates in perfect unison with the administrations it served:

Global controversy mounted over the Federal Reserve’s decision to pump billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, with President Barack Obama defending the move as China, Russia and the euro zone added to a chorus of criticism.

Mr. Obama returned fire in the growing confrontation over trade and currencies Monday in a joint news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, taking the unusual step of publicly backing the Fed’s decision to buy $600 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—a move that has come under withering international criticism for weakening the U.S. dollar.

The Fed is independent, and the White House by longstanding tradition has strained to avoid any appearance of collusion or conflict. Mr. Obama said the administration doesn’t comment on particular actions of the U.S. central bank, before adding: “I will say that the Fed’s mandate, my mandate, is to grow our economy. And that’s not just good for the United States, that’s good for the world as a whole.”

The prospects of the Fed flooding the financial system with money helped drive gold above $1,400 an ounce on Monday. The precious metal, which investors often buy as protection against inflation, settled at a record $1,402.80 per troy ounce. Other assets, such as U.S. stocks and oil, drifted back slightly on Monday after getting a big boost from the Fed’s announcement last week. The dollar fell against the yen, while rising against the euro as worries about Europe’s debt problems returned.

UPDATE I (Nov. 9): SEN. JIM DEMINT, R-S.C.: “Well, I don’t — can’t say I’m glad to hear bad things about our country from the rest of the world, Neil, but it’s clear that we are monetizing our debt. It’s something we have said we wouldn’t do. We know it is a precursor — at least it has been in history — to a lot of bad things that happens to currencies and economies.

What I don’t understand in the middle of all this is, why don’t we just follow good, basic economic rules? Let taxes stay lower, so that more money stays in the economy, rather than trying all this micromanagement that the president and the Federal Reserve have been trying to do.”

UPDATE II: “Is the Federal Reserve violating the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers in its new purchases of $600 billion worth of U.S. Treasuries?,” asks Fox Businesses’ Elizabeth MacDonald. “Is the Fed engaging in an unconstitutional monetization of the U.S. Congress’ out of control spending spree that is really a bridge loan to fiscal insanity?”

“At minimum, should the Fed be avoiding these purchases until the fiscally debauched U.S. Congress, packed to the ceiling with fiscal dipsomaniacs, follows Great Britain’s lead in its fiscal abstinence that may ‘out Thatcher’ even Margaret Thatcher?”

[SNIP]

I’m just so grateful that at last someone in mainstream media is discussing economics sensibly and quite knowledgeably. Of course—and more fundamentally—it is the federal reserve banking scheme that should be probed. The Fed has been doing its dastardly deeds—manipulate interest rates and siphon wealth away by stealth—for quite some time and under Bush as much as under Fox News’ nemesis, Obama.

UPDATE III: I called her “Bush in a Bra,” but it seems that Palin, unlike Bush, has a learning curve. Is she learning from Ron Paul via Michelle Bachmann? Who cares. She’s tweeting QE (“Quantitative Easing”):

“What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?”

UPDATE IV: STOCK MARKET HIGH ON FED SMACK, writes Charles Hugh Smith of the Business Insider. (via Vox Day):

The U.S. stock market is increasingly dependent on the Federal Reserve’s constant interventions to maintain the illusion of an organic demand for equities. The market’s impressive climb since September 1 is only a simulacrum of a healthy market; actual organic demand from individual investors is falling. The Fed’s destruction of the U.S. dollar, its relentless pumping of cash into banks’ trading desks via POMO (Permanent Open Market Operations) and its destruction of any yield on cash with zero interest rates has driven money into risk assets–emerging markets, commodities and the U.S. stock market.

The more the market comes to depend on Fed “smack” (credit and intervention) for its “animal spirits,” the more inevitable the crash becomes.

A healthy market is built by rising demand from millions of investors–a broad foundation. It is built on rising revenues, not just on heavily gamed “pro forma” earnings goosed by the dollar’s decline (all those sales in euros look fat indeed when converted into dollars).

The present market is more like an inverted pyramid: a single source of “demand,” the Fed, and months of declining volume.

As dependency on the sole source rises, then the addict (in this case, the stock market) clings ever tighter to the pusher; the addict becomes increasingly volatile, demanding and resentful

UPDATE V (Nov. 10): The “World”—or at least the working world; countries that shake-and-move markets—is accusing “the United States [of] deliberately weakening the dollar while trying to swing the G20 spotlight back onto global imbalances as world leaders gathered in Seoul on Wednesday.”

The “World” is right.

UPDATED: Poignant Crime-&-Punishment Comments From Dr. Petit

Crime, Criminal Injustice, GUNS, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Private Property

“Closure is a term invented by imbeciles” was one. I offered a precis of this particularly heinous case of home invasion (“all burglars are home invaders”) in the post, “You’re The First Line Of Defense For Your Family.” Even better were the biblical, ten-commandments comments of Dr. Petit’s father-in-law, which are not yet online (please send them along if you find them).

UPDATE: “Jennifer Hawke-Petit’s father, Reverend Richard Hawke, told reporters, ‘There are just some people who do not deserve to live in God’s world,’ in reaction to the death penalty sentencing.” Via Inside Edition.

It would be a great blessing if one of the Petit relatives or friends took up self-defense and Second-Amendment activism. Someone very close to me in South Africa watched two men enter his home on a Sunday afternoon, when the family was beside the pool, relaxing. He saw his wife flee, as in slow-motion. He rushed to the safe, where the gun had been kept. Then aimed at the invaders and yelled, “Get the hell out of my home.” They fled like the cowards they were. From then on, this man has carried his piece on his ankle. (The family also needed therapy.)

The sadistic letter the Connecticut killer and rapist Joshua Komisarjevsky wrote from prison makes clear that this is just what he and his accomplice, Steven Hayes (placed on death row today), needed.

UPDATED: Poignant Crime-&-Punishment Comments From Dr. Petit

Crime, Criminal Injustice, GUNS, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Private Property

“Closure is a term invented by imbeciles” was one. I offered a precis of this particularly heinous case of home invasion (“all burglars are home invaders”) in the post, “You’re The First Line Of Defense For Your Family.” Even better were the biblical, ten-commandments comments of Dr. Petit’s father-in-law, which are not yet online (please send them along if you find them).

UPDATE: “Jennifer Hawke-Petit’s father, Reverend Richard Hawke, told reporters, ‘There are just some people who do not deserve to live in God’s world,’ in reaction to the death penalty sentencing.” Via Inside Edition.

It would be a great blessing if one of the Petit relatives or friends took up self-defense and Second-Amendment activism. Someone very close to me in South Africa watched two men enter his home on a Sunday afternoon, when the family was beside the pool, relaxing. He saw his wife flee, as in slow-motion. He rushed to the safe, where the gun had been kept. Then aimed at the invaders and yelled, “Get the hell out of my home.” They fled like the cowards they were. From then on, this man has carried his piece on his ankle. (The family also needed therapy.)

The sadistic letter the Connecticut killer and rapist Joshua Komisarjevsky wrote from prison makes clear that this is just what he and his accomplice, Steven Hayes (placed on death row today), needed.