In February, I made this post (it's in my journal):




Now, looking at all the events going on now, I really do wonder if BushCo will attack Iran as a distraction to domestic politics.

Consider the 'exposivly formed penetrator' furor a couple-three weeks ago. The Iran/Hamas connection being trumpeted.

And at home, the devestating Libby trial, the US Attorney firing scandal, the fight by the Repubs to keep the right to attack Iran, the Walter Reed Building 18 scandal, the fact that Valarie Plame and Patrick Fitzgerald are due to testify before Congress soon, and the attempt to get Rove under oath...

Well, let's just say I'm looking for a Gulf of Tonkin incident.

<edit: typo>

Pay attention one and all, including lurkers and Freepers.

A common justification for allowing the US Government to torture people is the "Ticking Time Bomb Theory", which apparantly became popular from the Fox televison series "24". It goes something like this:

Terrorists have planted a nuclear, biological, chemical, or radiological weapon someplace in a city on a timer. I guess they couldn't get one of those Iraqi suicide bombers to just stand there and press a button. But whatever...

The Feds capture either one of the people who planted the bomb, or one of the people involved in the planning who presumebly know where the bomb was going to be planted. With time running out and the terrorist clamming up, presumebly under those pesky "Constitutional rights", the Feds grab pistols, clubs, knives, power tools, car batteries, jumper cables, rubber hoses, etc., to force the accused into revealing where the bomb is so the Fed can disarm it.

And the Feds need to have the power to both ignore Miranda AND civil rights in order to save lives. Because if they can't do that, they would just have to bring the accused in and call his lawyer. And while the lawyer is advising the accused to clam up....



All because those damn liberals, you know, made them follow the Constitution.

And this torture theory extends to a lot of people, because, after all, if you have a wiff of something that JUST MIGHT BE A TERROR PLOT, well, you have to find out, don't you?

Bullshit.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, the improbable timing of the situation above happens. We find out there's a bomb someplace in, say, Omaha, and we finally catch up to the terrorists in the hour between pressing 'start' on the timer and the mushroom cloud. We happen, of course, to know when the timer is going to go off.

So, do you really think that the federal agents, faced with KNOWING (somehow) they have x minutes before the bomb goes off, will simply treat the captured suspect like a normal criminal? Regardless of what the law is?

No, those agents will do whatever is necessary to get this critical piece of information and disarm the bomb, regardless of whether or not it is the law. These dedicated federal agents will, if necessary, throw their careers down the toilet and face going to jail if it means saving the city from an NBCR weapon. So they will not be stopped by the Constitution and the law in this case.

And let's say that, after this is all over and assuming the NBCR weapon was disabled (otherwise, it's just a bit moot), the agents that tortured the suspect turned in their badges and guns and plead guilty to, or were convicted by a jury of, violating civil and Miranda rights and were sentenced to a couple of decades in prison.

What does the President do?

HE PARDONS THEM IMMEDIATELY!!!!

As soon as the judge's gavel slams down on the bench, the President signs a pardon and messengers it over to the courthouse ASAP, and the agents are freed. Immediately. Not any of this 'last day in office' crap, either. Before the agents get back to the prison, they are freed.

Then he gives them a Medal of Freedom, to boot.

What we are doing is making sure that torture does not become a routine part of our interrogations and investigations, the way a just and moral country SHOULD BE.

It is my belief that Bush will attack Iran on or about the 15th of March, shortly after twilight falls.

Looking at a moonrise/moonset table for Tehran, I noticed that on the 15th of March, moonrise was at about 4am local time. The moon is waning at the time, so for the next two weeks there will be large periods of moonless night for our planes (and possibly troops) to fight in.

Our night vision gear is both more numerous and better than anything the Iranians have, so it makes perfect sense to attack when the advantages are most fully ours. And that means a lot of night attacks.

We will also have three carrier battle groups in the region, the John C. Stennis, the Dwight D. Eisenhowser, and the Ronald Reagan. That's 144 combat fighter aircraft, a dozen AWACS radar planes, and the better part of a thousand Tomahawk missiles potentially on the Ticonderoga-class and Arleigh Burke-class escort vessels. The Ticos and Burkes also have the Aegis combat-management system that is designed to defend against saturation attacks by planes and missiles.

The Eisenhowser is already there. The Stennis left Washington State on January 4th to join her, and the Reagan left San Diego on January 28th for the 'western Pacific'.

And the San Diego-based carrier Chester Nimitz is scheduled to deploy in March, probably to relieve Eisenhowser after the initial phase of combat.

Just a feeling, but it's there. I don't know if they are readying ground troops for an invasion, but maybe somebody more familar with the ground forces knows something.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/militar...
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/loca...

Basically, there will be fireworks for my birthday... again...

Nothing in the past 4 years has given me any hope in the competence of the Bush Administration to deal with the situation in Iraq.

What, therefore, would a troop escalation help?

I have played chess before, and had occasionally played with a new learner by giving him a distinct piece advantage. You know, playing without any queen, or no bishops or knights, that kind of thing.

And the first couple of games, I win, because I am competent even though I am at a technical disadvantage. Conversely, my opponent loses despite a considerable advantage in firepower because he is incompetent.

Something similar is happening here. Despite how important winning this conflict in Iraq is, how critical for the safety of the world, yadda yadda yadda, terrorist on our doorstep, yadda yadda, mushroom cloud, yadda, fighing them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, etc., the incompence is ongoing.

If it was so important, Mr. Bush should have done a better job in the first place. If he couldn't do a better job, he should have realized HE and HIS adminstration was the problem, and stepped aside. He should have said "For the sake of the security of America, I realize I have made a mistake I cannot fix, and indeed by me trying to fix, only makes it worse", and stepped aside. Ask Cheney to resign, appoint Gore to the Veep, then resign himself.

Not only is Bush dangerously incompetent, he is unable to realize he is the problem, not the solution.

If most other people had decided to do what he did (invade Iraq), it would have been a competent invasion, one with enough troops, a post-invasion plan, and legions of civil-service workers and military policemen. Iraqi hearts and minds would have been won with employment, basic and advanced public services and utilities, free elections and fair political politices and policies, and law and order in general. The Iraqis would feel empowered and free, not exploited and terrified. They would feel liberated, not occupied.

It could be argued whether invading Iraq in the first place was the act of a competent man, but regardless, it would have been an unwise decision carried out competently and effectively, with a good end result achieved at the end of a short and popular journey.

Mr. Bush, YOU are the problem. You are burdened with the wrong idealology, the wrong advisers, the wrong cabinet members, and the wrong temperment to pull a success out of this. You were burdened with this when you went in, and you remain burdened with this now. In fact, your burden only increases day by day as your credibility and popularity erodes.

Now this cannot be fixed without a massive committment of US troops.

We would need a half-million troops in Iraq for a decade. This means we would need to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to at least 1.5 million men under arms just do deal with occupying Iraq and the required troop rotation.

This would mean we would have to institute a draft. It would mean we would have to increase taxes to pay for the war. It would mean we would have to outlaw war profiteering. It would mean we have to strictly monitor the private contractors to ensure our vital resources are not being wasted. It would mean strict limits on the price of defense hardware to feed the beast in Iraq that consumes men and materiál at a fearful rate.

And it would mean that, after a decade, we would have tens of thousands of dead Americans. Maybe a hundred thousand. About eight million war veterans, a surprisingly large percentage of whom will have mental health problems. That is above and beyond the shattered, damaged, and missing limbs, organs, and minds that will require partial or full disability care, and in some cases, complete nursing home services.

The damage to the Iraqis would be far more immense. We would be fighting them to help them, and millions would die.

And what, by the year 2017, whould we have accomplished?

Why, pretty much exactly what was there March 19, 2003!

We can achieve the exact same result, sooner and cheaper, by withdrawing out of Iraq now, over the next 6-9 months, and letting the Iraqis come to their own system of governing. By the time they settle things down, it will be 2009 or 2010. A new, Democratic president will be in the White House, and the Democratic White House and Congress can work together to re-establish economic and political ties with the new Iraq. With a shiny new "Under New Mangement" sign waving gently in the breeze, and generous villinization of the Bush Adminstration (including orange jump suits and public trials), America can profusely and generously apologize to the Iraqi people. US aid can flood Iraq, funding the Iraqi economy to provide for it's own resurgence and revitalization.

And by 2017, Iraq and America would both be much richer, more populous, and stronger than after an enforced military occupation.

And then we un-accomplished it.

Everything we needed as a nation for national security was accomplished in Iraq before we invaded. Essentially, we had already won the War on Terror in Iraq.

Consider:

• The government of Iraq was stable.
  
  
• There was no sectarian strife.
  
  
• With Iraq effectively out of power in Kurdistan, there was no ethnic strife.
  
  
• There was no Al-Qaeda in Saddam's Iraq (which does not include Iraqi Kurdistan).
  
  
• The government of Iraq actively detested Al-Qaeda and the fundamentalist Islam that compromised it.
  
  
• Iraq's role in international terrorism was limited to the ubiquitous regional support for the various Palestinian causes.
  
  
• The government of Iraq was secular and reasonably effective in doing the everyday business of government.
  
  
• The government of Iraq was free from Iranian influence.
  
  
• There was no chemical weapons program in Iraq, nor were there stockpiles of chemical weapons.
  
  
• There was no biological weapons program in Iraq, nor were there stockpiles of biological weapons.
  
  
• There was no nuclear weapons program in Iraq, nor were there stockpiles of nuclear weapons or material.
  
  
• The country's infrastructure was, if not great, at least functioning adequately.
  

The only difference between the way things were and the way things were desired to be in Iraq is that Saddam Hussein was in charge, and because of that fact UN sanctions were kept on Iraq, denying them oil revenues and a variety of technology and consumer goods.

Saddam Hussein alone and by himself was not worth the lives of over 3,000 American soldiers, 650,000 Iraqis, and the $2.25 trillion this war, occupation and rebuilding will ultimately cost the US economy. And since that is all that this war has gotten us, it wasn't worth it.

It might have been worth it, or at the least necessary, to do the things that we have done if one or more of the reasons we were given for invading Iraq was, in fact, true.

But none of them, were true. Not only that, it was known that they weren't true. And in fact, the political and governmental processes that would make this fact come out were deliberately circumvented, short-circuited, or done by cronies.

On March 19th, 2003, we had accomplished in Iraq all the goals needed for our national security. Even the vast reserves of Iraqi oil that were not being pumped were irrelevant, because other oil-producing states around the world have been compensating for Iraq's loss of oil production since the 1980 Iran-Iraq war. The fact that Saddam still breathed fresh air was not really a good thing, but wasn't a threat to national security.

So, in fact, Bush's legacy will be "Mission Unaccomplished!".

These thoughts have been rattling around in my head for a while and I feel compelled to put them in a form that is both public and coherent.

Reason 1: To re-establish the American military presence in the Gulf

The most public reason was to appear competent and proactive. That is domestic politics at work. But with the Middle East relatively quiet and the Soviet Union, our presence there was fading as it was no longer needed. This left our leadership nervous about a crisis happening with us not being in a position to do anything about it.

Reason 2: Iraq is a great country to invade

We had been there once before, and had maintained constant surveillance and reconnaissance of the country since 1990. Weapons inspectors were all over the place. We had detailed maps and invasion routes and good intelligence of enemy capabilities and positions.

Iraq's military had been devastated in the 1991 war and not been rebuilt. There was no air force, and the equipment of the Iraqi Army was obsolete.

Iraq is also great for invasions geographically. It is mostly flat and open, great for fast-moving, hard-hitting armored vehicles, long-range artillery and rocket launchers, attack helicopters, and fighter jets providing front-line combat support.

And nobody liked Saddam. We all knew he was a murderous. sociopathic thug that nobody credible was going to stand up for. The constant sanctions on Iraq, along with the military overflights of the "no-fly zones" gives the public impression that it's only kinda sorta maybe a sovereign country.

Oh, and it turns out is a shitty country to occupy.

Reason #3: Iraq has a lot of oil

And not in the "It's an oil-rich MidEast country" sense, either. During the Iran-Iraq War, from 1980 to 1988, Iraqi oil production was down. Unlike Iran, which has a very long coastline, Iraq only has a little chunk of the Persian Gulf coastline and one major port city, Basra. Basra was easily in range of Iranian forces throughout the conflict, inhibiting oil exports. As a result, in that 8-year time span, the rest of the Middle East was pumping normally while Iraq's output was lowered.

Then during Operation Desert Shield to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq was under embargoes of one sort or another, again keeping the oil in the ground instead of in your gas tank. And after the invasion of 2003, insurgents and ongoing civil war has kept the oil in the ground. Neglected and outdated equipment is not replaces and barely running, repairs are being undone by sabotage, and new equipment is hard to come by as nobody wants to spend a lot of cash on stuff that's going to be blown up.

So, the rest of the Middle East has been pumping happily along while the Iraqi oil stays in the ground. Now there is a lot more left under Iraq than the other countries in the MidEast, and Iraq will probably be the last country in the region to run out of oil to pump.

Reason %4: Oil=National Security

In their single-mindedness they equate oil with national security. Anything that keeps America form getting the oil that it needs must be destroyed. America, (I mean the world, the world) must have free access to those oil markets. And they are not really happy about anybody but American oil companies doing the pumping, either.

Now, it is true that oil is vital to our nation's economy. A hell of a lot depends on it. Motor fuels, plastics, heating fuels, and lubricants are critical to our modern way of living. However, I think maybe they worry too much. Any country that has oil will sell it, regardless of who is in charge. And the global marketplace is flexible. Even if a hostile Iraq won't sell to us in particular, that fact will shift other sources of oil to us as Iraqi oil floods other countries. We get more Saudi oil, Europe gets more Iraqi oil. We already don't import Iranian oil, and it's not like we're suffering. That just means China sucks up Iranian oil instead of Kuwaiti oil, which then goes to us instead.

You see, it is apparently far more important to protect our (I mean, the world's, the world's) supply of crude than our manufacturing sector. It's okay to import a million tons of crap a day made in a repressive Communist nuclear-armed country aspiring to be the world's next superpower, by people in near-slave-labor conditions, but not okay to buy crude pumped and sold by a foreign oil company. A thousand shipping containers a day can come into our biggest cities from foreign countries with god-knows-what in them, they are only superficially checked by Port Security, and that's not a problem, but a French oil company pumping the crude? Never!

One day, we're going to be in another massive war for our survival, and we're going to do it with virtually zero manufacturing ability. All we'll be able to do is grow a lot of food for the war and market/advertise the war effectively, because everything else will be made in China. But don't worry, that's not a national security issue. Buying French or Russian-pumped oil is.

Reason #5: To keep the dollar alive

We all know that the dollar is backed by oil. Pretty much all oil bought and sold must be done in dollars, called 'petrodollars'. It is this fact that keeps the dollar solvent when we're 9 trillion dollars in debt. There is a much greater demand for dollars than there would be otherwise, and the entire world basically has a vested interest in keeping the dollar alive and healthy.

But the continued fiscal irresponsibility of the Republicans have made the world nervous about the future of the dollar. Increasingly, our economy is about playing financial games with money. Day trading, stocks and bonds, real estate, investments, and of course the fees for all this wonderful financial management. GM is now a lending company that makes cars as a hobby.

Adding value to natural resources with hard work? Turning raw materials into finish products? Pshaw! That's for wussies! Never mind that the US is following the same decline as other empires like the Spanish, Dutch, and British trading empires in the past few centuries. The rich are getting too wealthy and too numerous, unchecked consumerism, negative savings rates, and weak and incompetent national leadership is preventing decisive corrective action from being taken.

All of this makes worldwide investors nervous about the stability of the US dollar, and they are seeking to divest themselves of petrodollars to petroeuros. Without petrodollars, our currency and debt undergoes what can be politely called an 'adjustment'.

Iraq and Iran were making plans to go to petroeuros. With the specter of an 'adjustment' of the US dollar into fireplace fodder if the petroeuro spreads, the petrodollar had to be protected. And given the choice between invading Iran (mountainous, 90 million people, effective army and air force) or Iraq (see reason #2), you pick Iraq.

Reason #6: To keep Saudi Arabia solvent

This idea was floated by Randi Rhodes of Air America fame, and it stuck with me.

It seems that, back in the early part of this decade, the Saudi economy was in the shitter. In the prior 20 years, the annual average in come of a Saudi had fallen by something like 60%. Oil prices were fairly low for most of the 20 years, and the Saudi government was deep in debt. Of course they're not going to tax the royalty and their incomes much, so they borrowed money to stay solvent (sound familiar?)

Anyway, Saudi Arabia, as the center of Islam, also had more than its fair share of religious extremists. Fundamentalist Islamic schools, mosques, etc., and the sects that inhabit them. The fundamentalist were unhappy with the increasing Westernization of the Saudi royalty, who spends months on their multi-million-dollar yachts on the French Riviera, dressed in Western clothing, screwing underwear models, and guzzling wine and liquor. And the fundamentalists were increasingly finding poor, unhappy, angry Saudis to recruit.

With the Saudis increasingly facing the prospect of some sort of social or political revolution, they needed help. Not just because they were in bed with the Bush family, but because Saudi oil output is vital to the world economy. If the Saudis fall into chaos, NOBODY get the oil. The market does not simply adjust, as it would if the Saudis decided not to sell oil to a particular country, but it's simply off the market. <poof> Gone.

And a US invasion of Iraq would solve that problem.

The invasion would, first of all, destabilize the region and drive up oil prices, increasing the cash flow into the country. This would balance the budget, pay off the bonds, and boost the economy, helping to alleviate the social conditions. And it did, as well as making a lot of Republicans rich. According to Randi, the Saudis are now not only in the black, but have repaid their borrowed money as well.

Second, the destabilization of Iraq would, as informed experts knew, lead to Sunni-on-Shia violence as decades of grievances and centuries of religious differences (with a generous sprinkling of tribal conflicts) came to a head over the future government of Iraq. With religious violence afoot as the majority Shia in Iraq try to take assert themselves and Sunnis facing the possibility of some sort of genocide, the majority Sunnis in Saudi Arabia would naturally take up the cause of the minority Sunnis in Iraq. Saudi Sunnis would move north into Iraq to fight Iraqi Shia and relieving the Saudi royal family of the most fundamental of the religious nuts and thus the risk of a revolution.

Now, there are certain side benefits to the invasion. "See, see, we're tough on terror!" is one. Good PR is worth its weight in dead American soldiers.

Two, it makes the government spend a lot of money on the war, which is not collected through taxes but through the issue of Treasure bonds, i.e., borrowing. Now, who owns most the Treasury bonds, and thus the interest earned on them? Why rich people, of course! I think Jim Webb said that 53% of Treasure bonds are held by the top 1% of income earners. That means that 53% of the 400 billion dollars paid a year in interest goes to the top 1%, or about 200 billion dollars. 200 billion dollars spread out among 3 million people is $67,000 per rich person. And, conveniently, interest from Treasury bonds is only taxed at 15% thanks to Bush's tax cuts, so the rich gain an average of about $57,000 a year free and clear. The bottom 99%? Well, we get $673, on average, of which $573 is free and clear. Nice, huh?

Three, all that money spend on the invasions makes is just about impossible to justify non-Republican values, like the social safety net or alternative-energy research. Oh, darn.

Four, it helps keep that pesky peace dividend at bay as new equipment is purchased to replace that which is left smoldering on the battlefield and new projects to counter unforeseen problems have money thrown at them. The military-industrial complex loves that part.

I don't know if the last four reasons are why we went to war, but I do know that they are four reasons to not argue too much against it.

I wonder where the path paved with oil money would lead if we could follow it. From the blue-collar joe filling up at the station to the oil company, to the MidEast for the crude, to the oil sheiks that control the system, back to the US in the form of political favors and bond purchases to keap the Treasury afloat...

Now I find it awfully interesting that the Bush family is up to its eyeballs in oil money, they are close friends and buddies with a family of oil sheiks called "Bin Laden", and the oil sheiks are making money hand over fist because of the oil price spike due to the ongoing conflict in Iraq , which is financed by the sheiks loaning the money to the US government (with interest, of course), which justifies deficit spending because "we're fighing a global war on terror" AND allows tax cuts for the super-rich, who plow that money back into political favors and re-election campaigns to keep their pet legislators on a leash, who don't threaten the cash cow by actually investigating the Bush family.

Holy shit, I just reread what I wrote. No wonder Bush doesn't want to call attention to forensic accounting! The path leads back to him!

What we can do now that we have better battery technology is make an electric car with an auxillary engine tied to an alternator.

Make an electric car or SUV with a big battery pack. Make is so it can plug into either a standard 115v/15amp household plug or a 230v/30amp plug (like the kind that powers stoves and cloths dryers). This way you could charge up your car anyplace, like at a cabin in the woods or your grandma's place during the holidays.

Now, add a single-piston, 4-stroke, air-cooled auxillary engine of 10 to 15 horsepower tied to a matching 230-volt alternator. Of course, the auxillary would be a quiet, clean, efficient model, like a Honda engine or something.

Now you can charge up your car even when you're not on the power grid!

The car would have two modes: local and highway. In local mode, the auxillary engine would not kick in until the battery dropped to like 15% or so. The idea being to charge the car up at your house during the night. If the car had a 150-mile battery range, this would be adequete for most people on most days.

In highway mode, the auxillary would try to keep the battery at 100%. While it would not be able to competely make enough power to keep the car cruising on the highway, it might be able to cut battery consumption by 60% or so, turning a 150-mile range into about 350. Maybe more if attention was paid to the car's aerodynamics.

An added benefit of highway mode is that the car would charge itself while you were wandering through a tourist attraction, eating lunch at a highway stop, shopping at the mall, or sleeping at a motel bed.

This would cut down on foreign oil because the motive force for the car mostly from electricity, which can come from a variety of sources such as coal that we cannot readily convert to an automotive fuel.

And, if our electric grid was powered by wind, waves, dams, nuclear, and solar, the cars would not be directly or indirectly contributing to global warming.

The auxillary engine could run on high-octane gasoline. Let's face it, when regular costs $2.95 and premium $3.15, the extra 20 cents for better thermodynamic efficiency is worth it!

It could run on E85 ethanol, which would enable the engine to take advantage of ethanol's naturally high octane by using a high-compression engine for greater thermodynamic efficiency. That would make up somewhat for E85's inheirent lower energy density.

They could also run on diesel/biodiesel, propane, or natural gas. In fact, since many people already have natural gas lines going to their house, installing a simple meter (to collect fuel taxes) and some fittings would enable people to 'gas up' their cars in their home. And the propane engines could use standard barbeque cylinders, so you can just pull up to Wal-Mart and swap your empty for a full one.

Eventually we would go to fuel-cell cars powered by hyrdogen, but until then, what I outline should be possible.