Time for change's Journal - The Purpose of the U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

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Time for change's Journal

The Purpose of the U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

Posted by Time for change in General Discussion
Sat Sep 01st 2007, 07:00 PM

Contrary to popular opinion, George Bush had extensive plans for post-invasion Iraq, and those plans have been a resounding success -- for the Bush administration's corporate friends and supporters.

We hope Iraq will be the first domino and that Libya and Iran will follow. We don’t like being kept out of markets because it gives our competitors an unfair advantage – John Gibson, chief executive, Halliburton Energy Service Group, 2003.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was not preemption; it was – like our war on Mexico in 1846 – an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages – Michael Scheuer, former senior CIA al-Qaeda expert.

There are many Americans who believe that our invasion of Iraq was a big mistake, or even a crime, but still believe we are obligated to stay there until we stabilize the country. Many who believe this have the best of motivations.

But in order to fully evaluate the justification for continued U.S. occupation of Iraq, it is essential to understand the purpose of the invasion. Specifically, it is important to realize that the purpose of the invasion and the purpose of the occupation are one and the same. Once this is understood, it becomes crystal clear that continued U.S. occupation will continue to produce the same catastrophic results for the American people and, more importantly, for the Iraqis to whom George Bush claims to wish to bring democracy. Antonia Juhasz, in her book, “The Bush Agenda – Invading the World, One Economy at a Time”, provides the clearest explanation and documentation for George Bush’s agenda in Iraq that I have yet seen:

Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force

One big clue to the Bush administration’s intentions for Iraq can be seen in the National Energy Policy Development Group (usually referred to as the Energy Task Force), which was convened by Dick Cheney in January 2001, ten days following his inauguration – several months prior to the September 11 attacks that supposedly provided the motivation for the war. Juhasz describes the results of the Energy Task Force meetings:

The first recommendation… followed by a graph showing Iraq oil output to the United States in 2000 – was to “make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy.” The second recommendation was for the United States to “support initiatives by Mid-East suppliers to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.”

Two years after they were drawn up, legal proceedings forced the Bush White House to reveal a series of lists and maps prepared by the Task Force that outlined Iraq’s entire oil productive capacity and the foreign countries and companies lined up for contracts… the companies within the Task Force had been closed out of Iraq’s oil market and were watching from the sidelines (because of U.S. sanctions against Iraq) as the country’s oil was divvied up to everyone but them. With the tragedy of September 11, 2001, a series of paths that had been in development for at least a decade would finally join and find an open door for a march into Iraq.

The Bush economic plan for Iraq

But it wasn’t just oil. War with Iraq provided a bonanza of opportunities for Bush and Cheney’s already wealthy corporate friends and supporters. Juhasz explodes the myth that George Bush didn’t have a well thought out plan for post-conflict Iraq:

There was at least one clear plan – an economic plan – the blueprint for which was ready and in Bush administration hands at least two months prior to the invasion. The 107-page three-year contract between the Bush administration and Bearing Point, Inc. of McLean, Virginia, lays out the president’s economic agenda in Iraq. In return for $250 million, Bearing Point provided “technical assistance” to the U.S. Agency for International Development on the restructuring of the Iraqi economy to meet Bush administration goals…

Bearing Point wrote the framework to restructure Iraq from a state-controlled economy to one that guarantees “free markets, free trade and private property” – among other goals… to recommend changes to laws “that impede private sector development, trade and investment”… undertaking a “mass privatization” of Iraq’s state-owned industries.”

Bearing Point’s Draft Statement of Work, “Stimulating Economic Recovery, Reform and Sustained Growth in Iraq”, was completed on February 21, 2003. While it was not available to the public, I was made aware of the document…

The extent to which the Bearing Point contract sets out to transform the Iraqi economy is astonishing. The company specifies changes in every sector of the Iraqi economy… It even specifies propaganda tools to sell these policies to the Iraqi public.

The Bremer Orders

Upon completion of the successful invasion of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III was appointed by George W. Bush as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) starting on May 6, 2003. For a little over a year, Bremer had essentially dictatorial authority in Iraq. He used that authority to write one hundred Orders, the great majority of which still today provide the basics of Iraqi law under the U.S. occupation. The content of those orders says volumes about the motivation for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

De-Ba’athification and disbanding of the Iraqi military
The de-Ba’athification order removed all Ba’ath party members from government, resulting in the firing of 120,000 of Iraq’s most experienced civil servants. Bremer’s second order dissolved the Iraqi army, thus putting a half a million men out of work when unemployment in the country was already approximately 60%. Thus, with Bremer’s first two orders, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who could have been of great use in preserving order and rebuilding their country, were instead cast into desperate conditions. It is widely believed that many or most of these men became part of the insurgency. Juhasz explains the futility of the two orders:

Retired Colonel Scott Feil told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002 that the rank-and-file soldiers would be “essential to preserving order” in post-invasion Iraq… Instead, Bremer disbanded the military and refused to continue to pay their salaries. He handed security and reconstruction work to private U.S. contractors and the U.S. military. He even eliminated benefits to war widows and disabled veterans…

But these two orders did serve a useful purpose for George Bush: The loss of so many skilled Iraqis from the work force helped to pave the way for U.S. corporations, and the lack of a viable Iraqi army provided the primary justification for the continued U.S. military occupation.

“Trade liberalization”
Bremer’s “Trade Liberalization Policy” immediately suspended tariffs, subsidies, and other measures designed to protect the Iraqi economy and people, thus devastating local industries and businesses. The measures were very similar to those that the IMF, World Bank, and WTO have been hoisting on poor countries for many years now, with devastating effects for local populations. Bremer was in fact well aware of the devastating effects of these policies on local populations because he had spent many years counseling corporations about them:

In a November 2001 paper entitled “New Risks in International Business,” Bremer outlined the risks to multinational corporations associated with the implementation of corporate globalization policies. Every policy Bremer describes in this paper was among those he himself implemented in Iraq a year and a half later. Bremer walks through the devastating impacts of each policy on the local population – the same impacts that his policies would inflict on Iraq. Bremer warns companies that “the painful consequences of globalization are felt long before its benefits are clear” (translation: long before the corporate profits have time to trickle down to the local population). Bremer cites several specific globalization policies, such as privatization of state enterprises, deregulation of controlled industries, and reductions of tariffs and nontariff barriers to open up trade in goods and services. In the paper, Bremer explains that “privatization of basic services, for example, almost always leads to price increases for those services, which in turn often lead to protests or even physical violence against the operator.” As for economic equality, Bremer says, “the process of globalization has a disparate impact on incomes,”
which in turn causes “political and social tensions.” The harmful impact… on local producers causes “enormous pressure on… trade monopolies” when “opening markets to foreign trade…

Bremer was therefore well aware that his policies would, at a minimum, reduce access to basic services and support for local businesses in favor of foreign businesses. He also knew the policies would increase inequality and political and social tension. However, he believed that he knew how to protect U.S. multinationals from the impact of these policies and therefore the policies went forward, ever clear on who the intended beneficiaries were…

Suppression of news media
Order # 14 defined “prohibited media activity”, which essentially meant any activity that produced news contrary to the purposes of the American occupation. Don North, a CPA contractor, describes some of the effects:

They visited the offices of offending newspapers and often left them padlocked and in ruins. There was no mediation, no appeal.

Foreign investment
The Foreign Investment Order provided the legal framework for the invasion of U.S. corporations into Iraq. It provided for the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises, foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, tax-free remittance of all profits, immunity of foreign businesses from Iraqi courts, and much else. As with everything else about the U.S. occupation, these provisions did great damage to the Iraqi people, for the benefit of U.S. corporations. Juhasz describes the effects of privatization of Iraqi industries:

In Bremer’s own words, “Restructuring inefficient state enterprises requires laying off workers.”… Even those workers who still had jobs in Iraq at the time only received… about half of what they made before the war. At the same time, prices skyrocketed.

And with respect to the lack of any constraints on foreign corporations:

U.S. corporations are therefore invited to enter the Iraqi economy, exploit a nation at its most vulnerable point, with no obligation to reinvest in the country at a time when rebuilding Iraq is professed to be the Bush administration’s most vital assignment. U.S. corporations have reaped staggering revenues from their Iraqi operations… Chevron, Bechtel, and Halliburton have each experienced skyrocketing returns to their Iraqi endeavors.

Some other oppressive orders
All foreign contractors and military personnel were given full immunity from the pre-existing laws of Iraq, both criminal and civil – even for crimes like rape, torture and murder; Iraq’s progressive income tax was replaced by a flat tax, so that the wealthy paid the same percentage tax as everyone else; bank laws opened the banking sector to foreign banks; Americans were placed in numerous key government positions; and patent laws were strengthened so that even some traditional medicines that Iraqis had used for free for generations were priced out of their affordable range.

The effect on the effort to rebuild Iraq

In the hands of U.S. corporations, the effort to rebuild Iraq was a miserable failure:

The Bush administration … failed in this mission because it did not focus its efforts on the immediate provision of needs, but rather on the opening of Iraq to private foreign corporations… Iraqis have continually pointed to the lack of electricity as a primary source of unrest… electricity has remained far below prewar levels and significantly below U.S. stated goals…

The result was frequent blackouts and the availability of electricity for only a few hours a day, with air conditioning unavailable much of the time in the face of outside temperatures of 130 degrees.

Lack of potable water and sewage treatment has been another continuing and major problem:

The full failure of the reconstruction was revealed in a January 2006 U.S. government audit. Although more than 93% of the U.S. appropriation has been spent or committed to specific companies and projects, as much as much as 60% of all water and sewer projects will not be completed…

On the exclusion of Iraqis from the rebuilding effort

The Bechtel Corporation is the largest engineering firm in the world and has been a major Republican donor for many decades. On April 17, 2003, it was awarded a $680 million contract for work in Iraq. Juhasz describes how the focus on corporate profit and the exclusion of nations who didn’t support Bush’s war effort led to disaster:

What Bechtel employees discovered after five long months was that … the systems were in far greater need and more difficult to repair than they had assumed… a problem greatly exaggerated when the Bush administration banned countries that had not supported the invasion from profiting from the occupation. Thus, Iraq’s electricity and water systems… were unable to receive replacement parts… This was all information that expert Iraqis could have easily conveyed to Bechtel from the start, had Bremer not fired the vast majority of them and had Bechtel asked…

These factors all combined to reduce Bechtel’s ability to fulfill its contracts with the U.S. government and its obligations to the Iraqi people. They did not, however, reduce Bechtel’s financial rewards. In April 2004, the Bush administration reduced the expectations for Bechtel’s contract, but not its dollar figure…

The exclusion of Iraqis from the rebuilding effort caused a great deal of resentment, greatly hampered the reconstruction effort, and made the project much more expensive for the American taxpayer and future generations of Americans:

A young college-educated Iraqi woman… captured the sentiments of millions of Iraqis when she wrote, “Instead of bringing in thousands of foreign companies that are going to want billions of dollars, why aren’t the Iraqi engineers, electricians, and laborers being taken advantage of? Thousands of people who have no work would love to be able to rebuild Iraq… No one is being given a chance…

Hiring Iraqi companies in the place of American companies would mean not only more money for Iraq but also increased savings for the American taxpayer… The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) estimated that the costs to American taxpayers of many reconstruction projects could be reduced by 90 percent if the projects were awarded to local Iraqi companies…

The scapegoating of the Iraqis for failures caused by U.S. corporate greed

Of course nobody would expect the Bush administration or his corporate supporters to accept any blame for the numerous failures of the reconstruction effort (or anything else in Iraq):

Nobody at Bechtel or in the U.S. government denies that the water and electricity reconstruction has failed… However, Bechtel and some Bush administration officials point the finger at the Iraqis… They blame a poor Iraqi work ethic and a lack of knowledge and skill…

Iraqis may be unable to run the systems built by Bechtel in Iraq, but a poor work ethic and lack of knowledge are not to blame. Recall that Bremer fired the upper echelons of Iraqi management, sidestepped skilled engineers and workers, hired Bechtel to build state-of-the-art facilities foreign to these workers, and then handed the systems over as a fait accompli, whether or not they were even connected to the homes they were intended to serve…

The other problem is money. Iraqis simply do not have enough of it to run the expensive new facilities that they have been handed. The money has gone to U.S. contractors to (largely fail to) build Iraq’s systems, rather than to the Iraqis to run the systems after they have been rebuilt… Lack of money and skill in running public sectors has always been used as a reason for privatization. Bechtel may well position itself as the only company with the ability to run the facilities that it has built, opening the door for its entrance as a privatizer.

Iraq prior to the first Gulf War

In considering the effects of the U.S. invasion and occupation on Iraq, it is worth while to acknowledge the state of the Iraq nation prior to the first Gulf War. Juhasz describes that:

Prior to 1990, Iraq had the highest percentage of college-educated citizens in the Middle East… Health care reached approximately 97% of the urban population and 78% of rural residents, while the infant mortality rate was well below average for developing countries. Before 1991, the southern and central regions of Iraq had well-developed water and sanitation systems, and… 90% of the population had access to an abundant quantity of safe drinking water. In fact, after the first Gulf War, when the U.S. military specifically targeted electricity and water systems for attack, Iraqi engineers rebuilt the electricity system in just three months.

In other words, while Iraq was a nation ravaged by a brutal dictator, war, and twelve years of economic sanctions, it was also a country of law, public services, education, and health care that was able to succeed in spite of its ruler because of a government and economic structure made functional by a knowledgeable and dedicated citizenry. It is difficult to overstate how far the Bremer Orders go to overturn the existing Iraqi economic structure. The Orders cover virtually every aspect of Iraqi life.

Missing billions

Many who criticize the U.S. war effort in Iraq describe that effort as “incompetent” and “misguided”, etcetera, but few use harsher words than that. But when billions of dollars go missing and there is little or no effort to account for them, I think that speaks volumes about the motivation for everything that the U.S. has done in Iraq. Juhasz describes circumstances which can best be described as extremely suspicious:

Billions of dollars of U.S. money committed to reconstruction have gone unspent in Iraq, been wasted, or are simply unaccounted for. The U.S. government’s General Accounting Office reported in June 2004 that the CPA had spent virtually all of Iraq’s money during the occupation but relatively little of its own. There were significantly more stringent reporting requirements (although, I would argue not stringent enough) on the U.S. appropriation than on the Development Fund for Iraq, for which there was virtually no accounting. To this day, a full $8.8 billion from the Fund remains completely unaccounted for while audits of U.S. taxpayer funds have found contract files “unavailable, incomplete, inconsistent and unreliable.”… Halliburton has been found guilty and is under investigation for over $1.5 billion in overcharges for its Iraq services… Halliburton was also found to have colluded with the U.S. Defense Department to keep these charges out of public purview…

The fake transition of power

If the Bush administration was to actually hand power over to the Iraqis, that would defeat the whole purpose of the invasion. Juhasz describes how the Bush administration handed over the reigns of power in form but not in substance:

On June 28, 2004, in a secret ceremony in Baghdad, the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States was officially brought to an end… The pomp far exceeded the substance of the event. It was a handover in name only, not in deed. For, not only did 149,000 troops remain on the streets of Iraq under U.S. control, but virtually all of Bremer’s 100 Orders remained in effect…

Not only did the Allawi government leave the Bremer Orders in place, it dutifully enforced them as aggressively as Bremer himself…

On the new constitution:

A handpicked group of Iraqi government officials made changes to the constitution even after the public document had been printed and distributed. Iraqis voted on a constitution which they had not even read.

The Bush administration claimed that it was heavily involved in the constitutional drafting process in order to ensure a separation of “mosque and state” and greater protections for women. If these were the administration’s actual goals, then it failed miserably…. The administration succeeded, however, in ensuring that the constitution locked in the Bremer Orders, continued the economic transformation, allowed for the continued military occupation, and increased U.S. access to Iraq’s oil.

Attempts by Iraqi parliamentarians to include strong language on economic and social rights similar to those included in the 1970 Iraq constitution did not survive the drafting process. Whereas the 1970 constitution guaranteed free health care, education, and child and maternal care, the only parallel guarantee in the 2005 constitution is for free education…

Oil

Juhasz notes that increased access to Iraq’s oil has always been the major motivation behind the Iraq war. She notes that prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. oil companies had little or no access to Iraqi oil:

Since the 2003 invasion, however, imports have been far more steady and at consistently sizeable levels….Iraq’s oil has therefore already contributed to skyrocketing oil company profits. So, too, it seems, has the myth of a dramatically reduced oil supply from the Middle East due to the Iraq War….

The model that won out was the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA)… PSAs turn the entire exploration, drilling, and infrastructure building process over to private companies… that lock in the laws in effect at the time the contract was signed…

Before new oil contracts could be signed, the existing contracts had to be erased. This all-important step was taken back in May 2003… The U.S.-appointed senior advisor to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, Thamer al-Ghadban, announced that few, if any, of the dozens of contracts signed with foreign oil companies under the Hussein regime would be honored…

The constitution does nothing to contradict the petroleum law, but rather reinforces its core provisions. Thus… it appears that expanded private foreign corporate access to Iraq’s oil wealth is all but guaranteed….

Overview of Bush accomplishments in Iraq

Thus, when people argue about whether the Iraq War and occupation has been a success or a failure they should specify who they are talking about. It certainly hasn’t been a success for the Iraqis, who have suffered nearly a million deaths, four million refugees, and a devastated country. It certainly hasn’t been a success for the American people, with nearly four thousand dead soldiers and a debt that our country will be paying off for several generations. But in terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney’s agenda it has been a resounding success. Juhasz discusses the situation:

While violence increases daily in Iraq and the resistance grows, the Bush administration can be confident about a few things. First, the economic restructuring is well in place and moving forward… Second, U.S. corporations continue to earn billions of dollars for work in Iraq and have the potential to earn far more. Third, a government is in place that, while not ideal, is certainly preferable to the previous regime in terms of its willingness to advance Bush administration goals. Fourth, and most important to many, the oil sector has been opened to U.S. corporate access and control… all things considered, Bush’s key political and corporate allies have much to be optimistic about.

The U.S. military will likely remain in Iraq until U.S. access to oil is solidly and securely in place. For U.S. corporations, this has meant ensuring the installment of a new, legal, and permanent Iraqi government with which they can sign permanent contracts. It also means security for corporate operations… With the support of Iraq’s laws and its constitution, the U.S. military will be the key to securing continued access to oil.

As President Bush has repeatedly said, Iraq is only the beginning. In the name of spreading peace and democracy, he has revealed plans to take his administration’s model of imperial-style corporate globalization from Iraq to the rest of the Middle East… Having begun in Iraq, U.S. corporations are once again in the lead, eager to expand their own interests elsewhere…

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A summary of my DU posts

Time for change

The good majority of my DU posts consist of one of six general subjects: The need to remove from office the current cancer upon our nation; election fraud; the tragedy of the Bush administration; my ideas on the liberal values that we all hope will some day replace the values that our current government runs on; historical events that I believe cast light upon our current situation; and other political ideas.

The need to remove Bush and Cheney from office

In 2006, John Conyers wrote a 198 page report, documented with 1,401 references, titled “The Constitution in Crisis – The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Cover-ups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance”. The title of his report reflected the primary reasons why George Bush and Dick Cheney must be removed from office: They have made a mockery of our Constitution – the foundation for the rule of law in our nation – by consistently violating it. Our Constitution, if we can keep it in fact and not just in name, makes our nation much more than just a democracy. By providing protections for minorities and the powerless, our Constitution adds civility, humanity, and decency to what could otherwise be a barbaric nation – democratic or not.

Aside from the continuing damage that Bush and Cheney can do to our country in their remaining time in office, including their potential to involve us in ever expanding new wars, failing to remove from office the most lawless presidential administration in our history will set an awful precedent in our nation – a precedent for doing away with our Constitution. Providing in our Constitution a mechanism for impeachment and removal from office was of utmost priority to our Founding Fathers. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “When once a republic is corrupted there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles…”

Many arguments have been put forward against impeachment. This post answers those arguments. Some opponents of impeachment mistakenly advocate the view that the impeachment of public officials requires evidence of the commitment of an actual crime – and would not be justified by such things as gross violation of the public trust, corruption, negligence, or incompetence. Leaving aside the fact that such an interpretation would leave our nation subject to rule by people who would do great and possibly irreparable harm to it, the preponderance of evidence flatly contradicts that interpretation.

Others claim that we don’t have enough evidence to proceed with impeachment. I argue here that the current evidence for impeachment is so abundant, arguing that we need more sets the impeachment bar at an absurdly high level.

Others argue we don’t have the votes for impeachment – which implies that we must not bring individuals to trial until we have counted the votes, rather the using the trial to get the votes. Such an argument ignores the likelihood that votes will accumulate as Americans watch the impeachment trial and become intensely exposed for the first time to the many outrageous crimes of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And it also ignores the fact that Senators who refuse to vote for conviction will probably be putting their seats in jeopardy.

But perhaps the most urgent reason for moving to impeach Bush and Cheney as soon as possible is that their continuing refusal to be bound by the laws and the Constitution of our nation raises the spectacle that they may be planning a coup d’etat. Why else would they go to such lengths to destroy our Constitution and the rule of law in our nation? We must preempt them by moving as quickly as possible on this.

Election fraud

The DU apparently was born as a result of the 2000 November-December election fraud that began the long nightmare that is the George W. Bush administration.

I went to bed on Election Day 2000, shortly after Bush was announced as our new President, feeling as if the end of world civilization was near at hand. My wife woke me up a couple hours later to tell me the good news that the announcement of Bush’s Presidency had been temporarily cancelled. Thus began a period of 36 days that I followed more intensely than any other news event of my life – ending in the infamous and disastrous Supreme Court decision that marked the beginning of our long road to dictatorship.

My son (EOTE) joined DU in January 2001, a few days after it began, but I did not, for reasons that now escape me. I did, however, do a lot of writing about the 2000 election, including a desperate plea to my Maryland Senators, to please demand a real recount of the 2000 Florida vote. And I also contributed an article to DU on that subject, in my son’s name (I did not use my own name because I was a federal employee and I was afraid that I could get into trouble for writing such an article), in the spring of 2001.

The fraudulent 2004 Presidential election is what brought me into DU. I had worked as a volunteer in the Kerry/Edwards campaign, I had followed the presidential polls obsessively, and by Election Day 2004 I was about as confident as I could be that John Kerry would be our next President. Thus, the reported results of that election were both profoundly disappointing and difficult for me to believe, as they were for the great majority of DUers.

I immediately began an effort to acquire as many election statistics as I could, in a feverish and desperate attempt to prove that the election was a fraud, which I hoped would aid in its overturning. In late November I had my son post an analysis that I did of the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official election results (Note: My son supplied the title, which I feel is too strong, which you can see if you read the article). And finding that it was awkward to have my son post my articles, I joined DU a few days later.

Since then I have posted dozens of election fraud related threads, a small number of the most important of which I have included in my journal.

In particular, I have come to believe that the main mechanism by which the 2004 election was stolen was the massive and illegal targeted purging of Democratic voters in Ohio, especially in Cleveland. This thread contains a great amount of evidence to support that contention.

In addition, I believe that there is good evidence that says that large numbers of votes in Cuyahoga County were deleted by its central tabulator, as explained in this thread, which also discusses an early 2006 partial audit of Cuyahoga County. And, I think that the death of Raymond Lemme, who while investigating Clint Curtis’ sworn allegations of vote switching computer programs, was found dead in a Georgia hotel room, just a couple weeks after telling Curtis that he had traced the corruption “all the way to the top”, is extremely suspicious to say the least. Here is my explanation of the controversy over the discrepancy between the 2004 exit polls and the official 2004 vote count. And here is a summary of several reasons I have written about for believing that the 2004 election was stolen.

Finally, here are my ideas for preventing another stolen election in 2006 and 2008.

The tragedy of the Bush administration

The fake war on terrorism

I believe that a crucial requirement for a good understanding of the Bush administration’s actions since September 11, 2001, is the realization that its “War on Terrorism” is nothing but a colossal fake. Only with that realization do numerous Bush administration characteristics and actions make sense, including: Its disinterest in Osama bin Laden; its great urge to rush into a war with Iraq at any cost; its utter contempt for international law and the rest of the world; its succession of no-bid contracts for its wealthy friends; its lavish tax cuts for the wealthiest of our citizens and corporations during ‘time of war’; the Dubai port deals; and, its attempt to turn our democracy into a dictatorship.

With that in mind, I wrote in this post about the main reasons why I believe that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9-11 attacks. There are many reasons why I believe that now, but the initial and still most important reason is the utter failure of our military, the mightiest military that the world has ever known, despite repeated warnings and more than ample time on 9-11 itself, to protect its own capital city.

Abuse of the human rights of prisoners for no apparent purpose

To me, the most sickening and disgraceful aspect of the Bush administration’s “War on Terrorism” is its complete lack of concern for human rights, demonstrated among other ways by the indefinite confinement, without trial or even bringing of charges, of thousands of prisoners of war, and its frequent use of torture. I have discussed this issue in several OPs, starting with this one. Here I describe the issue as seen through the eyes of a U.S. Army Muslim Chaplain who had ministerial responsibilities for hundreds of our prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, who witnessed the severe and daily abuse of his charges over a period of several months, and who eventually was imprisoned himself when it was felt that he was making too many waves over what he had seen. Here is my summary of what the great journalist Seymour Hersh had to say on this subject, based on his numerous high level sources. Jimmy Carter felt so strongly about this issue that he broke the unwritten rule against ex-Presidents criticizing sitting Presidents, with one of the most scathing attacks on this policy that I have ever seen. And Senator Richard Durbin was the victim of continued public verbal abuse from the right for daring to make public how our government was treating its prisoners.

Lying us into war

It is evident to most informed people that one of the biggest motivations for Bush's "War on Terror" was to provide a justification for the invasion of Iraq. Seymour Hersh’s excellent account of how the Bush administration manipulated and twisted intelligence in order justify a preemptive war against Iraq is a must read for anyone who still supports this administration and thinks that the Iraq war was necessary. And as for Bush's excuse that we are now fighting that war for the benefit of the Iraqi people, Democrats should start talking about how the Iraqi people actually feel about us being in their country.

Just how bad are Bush and his cronies and how much danger do they pose to American democracy?

George w. Bush and his administration and fellow travellers in today's Republican Party are about as bad as they come. They are anti-science ignoramuses. They are chicken hawks. They have no consciences. They are torturers. They are cowards. They are evil. And I doubt that there are any moral boundaries beyond which they will not go to get their way.

I think that in the interest of preserving our democracy, we should be aware of the similarities between the Bush administration and Hitler’s Nazis (which I wrote about even before the revelations about Bush’s warantless wiretapping), and understand that if we aren’t vigilant, yes it CAN happen here too.

Moral values that separate us from today’s Republicans

It makes me so mad to hear people ridicule what they consider to be “liberal values” and compare them unfavorably to the wonderful moral values of George W. Bush and his Republicans friends. In the vast majority of cases these people don’t even have a vague idea about what liberal values really are. They have simply been conditioned by our corporate media over several years or decades to believe that liberals encourage irresponsibility, are ‘soft’ on national defense and ‘law and order’, and are wild spenders. These ridiculous myths about liberals have in turn encouraged the Democratic Party to disavow the liberal label and in some cases to veer way to the right. I submit that, rather than running away from the liberal label we should be proud of it, and we should challenge those that seek to disparage it. And to further make this point I posted a tribute to several historical and current political leaders who have been unafraid to speak out loudly for what they believe in, and I suggested an answer to those Republican morons who accuse liberals of hating America.

Let's take a look at some of the specific moral values that separate Democrats from Republicans:

Republicans like to pretend that they're more moral than us because they're more "religious"

Many of those who disparage liberals are fundamentalist Christians who repeatedly invoke the name of Jesus Christ, and who believe that the superiority of their moral values to those of liberals and Democrats is proven by their repeated references to Jesus. Don’t these people understand that Jesus was a liberal, whose moral values were much closer to those of the Democratic Party than to those of the Republican Party, with whom they align themselves and vote for? Isn't it an astounding paradox that the Republican Party has usurped for their own purposes one of the most liberal religious leaders in world history, while at the same time showing nothing but contempt for liberals and liberal principles?

The movement for privatization of government functions

One of the biggest threats to our democracy is the privatization movement. In the name of “freedom” and “self-reliance”, the leaders of this movement advocate the freedom of powerful corporations to destroy our environment and to run our elections, our schools, our social safety net programs, and our prison system, as well as every other program which has long been considered a legitimate function of government. The fact that government is elected by the people to serve public functions, whereas the purpose of private corporations is to make profits for their investors, is either totally lost on these people, or else they simply feel that the above mentioned programs should be run for profit rather than for service.

Al Gore alluded to this issue in his great film, "An Inconvenient Truth", where he discussed the unholy alliance between government, private industry, and the press, whereby a corrupt government, in exchange for legal bribes from the industries they are supposed to control, propagates false information and policies that are favorable to those industries instead of the public that they are elected to serve. I discuss my own personal experience with that unholy alliance, where the FDA withdrew an about to be published scientific article I had written, under pressure from a manufacturer who stood to be economically hurt by the information in that article.

The need for a free and independent press

Another great threat to our democracy is the ownership of our country’s news media by a very small group of wealthy individuals who have strong ties to the Republican Party, and whose motivation in providing “news” is to maintain satisfaction with the status quo, rather than to report what is important and true. Two prime examples of corporate media shills and pseudo-journalists who pretend to be real journalists are Chris Matthews and Tim Russert. Bill Moyers explains how this situation threatens to destroy our democracy, and how this came about through the dismantling of rules and regulations which were meant to prevent the monopolization of our news. And Robert Parry explains why he started his web site to help combat the misinformation we get from our corporate media.

Health care

Liberals, and most other decent people, believe that people should be entitled to decent health care. That is why, prior to the "pro-life" administration of George W. Bush, infant mortality rate in the United States had been steadily declining for several decades. But shortly into the Bush administration, due to the starving of women and infant health programs for federal funds, infant mortality rate began a steady rise. Nor do Republicans care much about veterans' health, as indicated by the rejecting of this much needed veteran's health bill in the U.S. Senate by virtually a strict party line vote.

An enquiring mind

One of the many tricks that our corporate media uses to squelch alternative viewpoints is to label anyone who substantially disagrees with their “correct” version of the news as “conspiracy theorists”. Well, I have news for them. The views of us “conspiracy theorists” are usually much more closely aligned with reality than is most of the trash that we hear from the corporate news media these days, such as the stories about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which were used to justify our illegal preemptive invasion of that country. We “conspiracy theorists” believe that it is not only the right of American citizens to challenge the corporate news media story lines, but it is our responsibility as well, as good citizens who care about our country.

The dignity of all human beings

Perhaps the most important value held by liberals is a belief in the dignity of all human beings – hence the 19th century movement by liberals to abolish slavery. Here is one of my favorite stories on that subject.

A summary

And here is a post where I talk about all the major values that separate Democrats from Republicans.

Historical events that help us understand our present

Though there is little doubt that George W. Bush is by far the worst president we’ve ever had, our past history is at least partly responsible for preparing the way for this tragedy. The history of our nation is full of examples of failures to live up to our ideals. In addition to our long history of slavery and our near extermination of the Native American population of our present day country, we began a long history of overseas imperialism beginning in the late 19th Century. The long standing history of extreme hostility to socialism by the elites of our country has been responsible for much of this imperialism, as well as domestic repression against labor unions and others who would speak out against the status quo. The usurpation by our Executive Branch of the war making powers given to Congress by our Founding Fathers did not originate with George W. Bush. And the attitudes fostered by our long history of slavery are still with us today, especially in the areas of our country where slavery thrived for so long.

Today, as the transgressions of George Bush and Dick Cheney threaten the existence of our nation as we know it, we would do well to recall how the German nation was led into tyranny more than six decades ago. The parallels between Hitler’s war on terror and George Bush’s war on terror are extraordinarily striking in my opinion. And the better able we are to recognize the danger, the more likely we are to take steps to prevent a similar fate.

Political ideas

Republicans have 3 great advantages in elections against Democrats, whereas the only advantage that the Democratic Party has is that its policies are meant to serve all Americans, rather than just the select few. In addition to electoral fraud and huge sums of money donated to the GOP by their corporate masters as legalized bribery, Democrats have to contend with a multitude of news media whores.

But those advantages are not sufficient for a Party that has nothing of value to offer to our country. So, when we suggest investigation of their corrupt deeds they call us conspiracy theorists. When we suggest policies such as making basic affordable health care available to all Americans they accuse us of class warfare. And when we criticize the rampant corruption at the highest levels of government they accuse us of "hating America". And when none of that works they try to scare us by telling us that if we don't give them unlimited power over us we risk being killed by terrorists.

If there was ever a presidential administration that needed to be impeached, this is it. Grass roots efforts are under way to accomplish this, and we can all help. Our Democratic leaders need to seriously consider and talk about this. And they must be united and avoid inter-party warfare.

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Time for change

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