“Mugsy’s Rap Sheet”

This week, due to the coming Labor Day holiday, I’m posting a “video” blog entry here on MRS:

If things are improving in Iraq, why the hyper-vigilant threatening talk about possibly using military force against Iran? Is it because Iran is “destabilizing” the region… which by President Bush’s own admission is not the case? Or maybe this is why:

Is George Bush SO out of touch with reality that he’s willing to expand his war in the Middle East, further extending a military already stretched to its breaking point, to attack a country four times the size Iraq with a well-rested million-man army, just because Iraq and Iran are becoming too chummy, which could lead to an anti-US alliance between the two nations, making Bush’s colossal mistake to invade Iraq into an F-up so ginormous it can be seen from space?

I had wanted to write about President Bush’s chutzpah in invoking the subject of Vietnam in a speech last week before the VFW. While a lot was both said and written on the subject, nothing so far had quite the reaction I’ve been looking for. A line from a favorite pinball game keeps ringing in my ears:

But something even more important has come up. We all had to see this coming.

Reports have been flying fast & furious lately… despite half-hearted denials… that the Bush White House would like to see the current Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, replaced with a “more effective” leader that will help them out of Iraq. And that dream leader to replace him is Iyad Allawi, the former interim PM of Iraq before the first Iraqi elections in 2005.

What makes Iyad Allawi such an attractive replacement for Maliki? Allawi, a former Ba’athist (the Arab Socialist Party - you know, the guys Paul Bremer and Donald Rumsfeld were so hot to “de-Bathify” from the Iraqi government?), and one of the founding members of the Socialist “Iraqi National Accord” while in exile (now an active political party in the Iraqi Parliament) came to prominence as MI6’s (the British CIA) lead source on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, feeding them fabricated intel in order to trick other countries into taking out Saddam, doing the dirty work for him. Essentially, Allawi was to MI6 what Ahmed Chalabi was to the CIA (the former Bush darling, whom all evidence suggests Bush intended to install as President of Iraq after the invasion so we could get out quick, just as they did with Karzai in Afghanistan. But when no WMD’s were found like he promised, the Bush Administration realized too late they had been duped, sticking them in Iraq without a Plan-B).

Maybe it should come as no surprise that Allawi and Chalabi are so much alike. They were boyhood friends after all. In 1992, the CIA under the George H.W. Bush Administration, recruited Allawi to provide intel on Saddam Hussein, whom they had just kicked out of Kuwait.

It was Allawi who was responsible for Tony Blair’s September, 2002 pronouncement that Saddam Hussein possessed missiles “capable of striking London in under 45 minutes“… a complete and total fabrication with the clear intent to ratchet-up the fear of Saddam Hussein and spur on an invasion of Iraq.

In early 2004 while still the interim unelected Prime Minster of Iraq, Iyad Allawi visited an Iraq police station where some Iraqi men had been arrested as suspected insurgents. Still handcuffed and blindfolded, Allawi lined six of them up against the courtyard wall and shot them in the head with his own gun. Though Allawi’s office denied the report in its entirety, a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from his personal security team say they watched the event in stunned silence.

Allawi is now actively campaigning for the job as Maliki’s successor, even paying an American political PR firm… run by a bunch of Bush-loving former Republican Congressmen… $300,000 to advise his campaign.

An “update” to the “National Intelligence Estimate” released last week predicted that the violence in Iraq was expected to “remain high” for the next “six to 12 months”, increasing concerns that Iraqi PM Maliki is incapable of bringing his country under control so that we can leave Iraq before Bush leaves Washington.

I’ve often argued… as have others… that Saddam Hussein’s brutality is likely the only thing that held Iraq together for all those years. The civil war we see happening now in Iraq is the result of his removal. A violent “power-struggle” between different factions all fighting for control of Iraq. And now, the Bush Administration is looking for another “U.S. friendly” brutal dictator like Saddam to take control of Iraq so they can finally get out.

Apparently, all that rhetoric about “freeing the Iraqi people from the oppression of a brutal dictator” was just that: rhetoric.

(A nod of recognition to “Digby” for the basis of this report)

You’ve probably never heard of them, but that’s not because they are laying low. A Conservative group called “Family Security Matters” is suddenly running around the Internet trying to wipe clean all traces of comments made by them on their own website after a slew of negative publicity.

FSM’s Board of Directors includes some well recognized Conservative voices, such as Laura Ingraham, Barbara Comstock, Monica Crowley, Frank Gaffney and James Woolsey among others. These people… seriously… believe that the Islamic world wants to conquer the United States and convert us all to Islam. And why not? After all, wasn’t it Ann Coulter who said “We should bomb them and convert them to Christianity”? Conservatives believe that the rest of the world wants to do to us what they want to do to everyone else. Theses people hate Democracy, ADORE George W. Bush, and would like to see him seize power and declare himself “President for Life”. You think I’m kidding?

Here is some of what once appeared… now disappeared… on the “Family Security Matters” website (some of which can still be pulled out of Google’s cache - I’ve highlighted a few key lines for you):

(Click to enlarge)

Some of those quotes I’ve highlighted:

“The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead.” The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide.

And just below the highlighted sections:

“If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results:…”

As insane as it all sounds, these people aren’t joking. This isn’t a parody website and the comments are not being said “tongue-in-cheek”. If you’ve taken a moment to click some of the links above, you’ve seen that these are the same thoughts they are expresing acrossing the mainstream media and even on their own shows (if they happen to host one). If these were Democrats saying this… what do you think the media’s reaction would be?

And these views, though obviously outrageous to the sane among us, are NOT rare among the Neocons now running the Republican Party. In fact, it is quickly becoming the mainstream. The U.S. is at war. Christianity is “under attack”.

Be afraid, folks. Be very afraid.

The past few weeks have been particularly bad for President Bush:

o The “resurgent stock market” they praised two months ago as “proof” that Bush’s economic policies were “working” has plunged nearly 1200 POINTS since breaking the “14,000 mark” just one month ago. o His best friend and key political adviser Karl Rove announced that he would be leaving Washington “to spend more time with his family”… the death cry of the endangered NeoCon… at the end of this month. o More than 400 Iraqi’s are killed in a series of four truck bombs across the country just as the Bush Administration is working extra hard to assure us that “the surge is working”. o Hurricane Dean is making a beeline for the Gulf Coast (maybe heading for his Crawford Ranch?) As I type this, the rains of Tropical Storm Erin is dumping another few inches of rain on our already water-logged lawns/streets. o A resurgent Taliban refuses to release 19 South Korean hostages in exchange for the release of eight Taliban prisoners being held by the Afghan government. o The Federal Reserves had to pump $38 Billion dollars into the Home Equity Market to bail out Mortgage brokers due to a record number of people defaulting on their high interest home loans. The Fed would rather incur all that debt buying up abandoned real estate rather than cut interest rates. Why? Because it needs those high rates to attract foreign investment to fund the Iraq war and Bush’s tax cuts (an “emergency rate cut” has been discussed… but would only be short term, raising it right back up first chance they get). o In the “You can’t put lipstick on a pig” Department, the White House crowed about a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that found that only 92,000 new jobs were created in July and a mere “8.3 Million new jobs since August, 2003″ four years ago… roughly 2 million new jobs a year. By comparison, the Clinton Administration created 22.7 Million new jobs in his two term (averaging just under 473,000 new jobs a month).

There is now NOTHING Republicans can point to as “proof” that Conservative policies are superior to those of Democrats. The very fundamentals of Conservative politics are all proving to themselves the complete and utter fantasy they are:

Republican misconceptions being debunked by Reality:

o Tax cuts for the rich create job growth and a strong economy. o Proactive use of military forces can bring peace and security. o Privatization allows you to do the same job quicker and cheaper than the Federal Government. o Putting Republicans in charge would return ethics and fiscal responsibility to Washington.

Gasoline prices doubling under President Bush to as much as $3.00 a gallon wasn’t enough to convince the average Republican that the Bush Administration’s policies were a complete disaster so long as they could blame the increase on the war. But they can’t blame the war in Iraq for the poor performance of the Bush “Bear Market”. They see their monthly mortgage payments going up, the stock market going down, and the Bush Administration helpless to do anything about it.

(ThinkProgress has compiled a list of key White House resignations in wake of the annoncement that Press Secretary Snow is now to resign as well.)

“Reality” is crashing in around the Republican Party and there’s no Conservative Principle left for them to turn to for a way out. Question is, will it wake them up in time?

A “race to be first” is emerging in the Presidential Primary race. In 2004, fourth place John Kerry shocked the longtime front-runner Howard Dean by winning the Iowa Caucus. The upset rolled over into the New Hampshire primary nine days later, handing John Kerry another upset victory. From there, reports of each Kerry victory made his winning the DNC nomination seem more and more inevitable. By the time the Primaries were held months later in states like Oregon (May) and South Dakota (June), there wasn’t any point in even voting because no other Democratic candidate could win enough states to defeat Kerry. The “vote” of people in those later states was essentially stolen from them. Their right to choose their own candidate taken away by states that held their primaries earlier.

It wasn’t always this way. When Senator John F. Kennedy found out he had won the Democratic Party’s nomination AT the 1960 Democratic National Convention, he didn’t even know who his Vice President would be. And except for the educated guesses of polls, no one knew “for sure” Kennedy had even won the Democratic nomination for president UNTIL the votes were counted AT the convention.

1960 Democratic National Convention

Over the past few elections, the Broadcast Television Networks (ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox) argue they they shouldn’t be forced to even broadcast the RNC/DNC conventions at all because “They aren’t news. They’re free three hour infomercials for the candidates without commercial interruption“. Broadcast TV is given the right to use the airwaves “for free” by the government. In return, the government requires that they use at least part of that time to “inform the public” by broadcasting the news. But now that there is no longer any mystery who each Party’s candidate will be by the time each holds its national convention, what happens at these conventions is arguably no longer “news”.

In 2004, the three major networks only broadcast one hours’ worth of convention coverage each of the four nights it was on. Fox only broadcast ONE hour on the final night of each convention, the hours of the candidate’s acceptance speeches. And the conventions themselves bombed in the ratings. No one watched because everyone already knew who had won.

Is it any wonder the states are fighting to move their primaries earlier and earlier (see video above), moving their elections up before other states make the decision for them? And is it any wonder the networks don’t want to broadcast the conventions, and no one watches when they do?

The solution to all this is simple: DO NOT ALLOW STATES TO REVEAL THE RESULTS OF THEIR PRIMARIES UNTIL THE CONVENTION. just as they did before television started broadcasting the result of primaries from coast-to-coast.

On election night every November of a National election, the media is prohibited from announcing the poll results of each state until ALL the polls have closed in the United States (I’m not sure whether Hawaii is included in that) to prevent the results of earlier East Coast states influencing the voting of states in the West. So does it make any sense to reveal the results of the PRIMARIES before later states have voted?

Had this rule of been in place back in 2004, the election almost certainly would of turned out differently. Former Governor Howard Dean had been the defacto front-runner for months. And had the results of the early primaries of not been announced, that perception certainly would of continued. And the announcement of the results at the DNC Convention would unarguably of been “news” and much more widely watched by the public at large.

It only makes sense. It’s time to stop announcing state primary results early. Wait until the Convention and there will be no need for every state to try and move their primaries earlier and earlier.

Nominating Conventions served an important political function for almost 200 years in this country. It’s time to make them relevant again.

Why does reality keep intruding on my weekly blog? Another completed column will be put on hold due to breaking news on the Bush economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (”Dow” for short) has been bouncing around like a “Happy Fun Ball” ever since it struggled to break the 14,000 point threshold last month. I’ve never liked using “daily” fluctuations of the DOW as any reliable indicator of how the economy is doing. It’s not unlike those who dismiss “global warming” after a cool day in August. You have to look at “trends” going back months or even years.

I’ve been reporting on this recent string of market plunges for several weeks now, and analyzing the Dow in terms of “economic progress” for nearly a year (March, October). The Bush economy has been a complete and utter disaster, mostly for the American middle-class, but for stockholders as well… which includes anyone with a 401k or profit-sharing plan at work.

The reason for the “recent string of steep plunges followed by moderate climbs that then get wiped out by the next plunge” is the housing market… the same housing market Republicans pointed to for YEARS as PROOF of just how GREAT the Bush economy is. In 2004, President Bush cited “record home ownership” as proof that his economic policies were working. The GOP touted “Hispanic Home Ownership” in 2005. “Home Ownership” was again a Bush talking point when addressing the NAACP in 2006. But the problem was, all these new home buyers didn’t actually “own” their homes, they took advantage of unprecedented low interest rates that followed after 9/11 in order to jumpstart the economy, but fell victim to unscrupulous lenders offering huge home loans with low adjustable-rate mortgages. These people then bought homes they otherwise could not afford if it weren’t for the low interest rates. Then, when rates went up (as they HAD to do), their payments became so high they could no longer afford their homes. They started defaulting on loans at a record rate.

A funny video started making the rounds on YouTube this past week when Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Stop Trading” went into full meltdown mode over the looming disaster in the market:

When mortgage-holders start defaulting on their loans, Mortgage lenders get stuck holding the bag. Enough customers default, and you go bankrupt. The impetus for last weeks 735 point plunge (over the course of 6 days) was one of the country’s largest lenders, “American Home Mortgage”, filing Chapter-11 bankruptcy. The home mortgage market has gotten SO bad, it has started to affect the EUROPEAN BANKING industry. Once thought of as being able to shrug off any downturn in the U.S. mortgage lending industry, the U.S. market gave European banks a nasty jolt when French bank “BNP Paribas” announced it was suspending three investment funds worth 2bn euros ($2.7Billion US) because of “problems with the US sub-prime mortgage sector.” This move by the French forced the European Central Bank to pump $130 Billion into Europe’s money markets as banks scrambled for cash. But don’t go looking for these stories on your local network TV. I only heard about it listening to the BBC.

So when people are losing their homes due to the high interest rate, mortgage lenders are going belly up, European banks are pumping Billions into their own markets to make up for loses overseas, and the Dow threatens to push the economy into a recession, what do you do? Well, the obvious answer would be that you’d “cut interest rates”. Not if you’re head of the Federal Reserve under George Bush. When the Federal Reserve met last Tuesday, they decided to keep interest rates pat at 5.25%.

Why? Because as I’ve detailed here numerous times, the Bush Administration is borrowing money like a drunken sailor to pay for a war that is costing us $12 Billion dollars a month while refusing to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. It can’t lower interest rates because then foreign countries wouldn’t loan us all that lovely money to pay for our war.

You can imagine my surprise then, when I read this morning that Presidential non-candidate Fred Thompson called the Bush economy “The Greatest Story Never Told“… better than even the Clinton economy. The basis for this claim?

Since the spring of 2003, the economy has had average growth of over 3%, 8.2 million jobs have been created, and the inflation rate has stayed low. The current unemployment rate, 4.6%, is a full percentage point below what it averaged during the 1990s, and there have been 47 consecutive months (almost four years) of job growth. In the last three years, workers’ salaries have risen by $1.2 trillion, or $8,000 per worker, and consumer confidence recently reached its highest level in almost six years.

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering where YOUR $8,000 is. Of course, between me and Bill Gates, we have AVERAGE net worth of $20 Billion each. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I recommend reading the analysis over at “The Carperbagger Report“.

So then, what does it mean when, after 6 years in office, the New York Stock exchange is lower now than it was when George Bush started criticizing the Clinton economy at the start of his 2000 campaign? (when adjusted for inflation, the January 2000 DOW high of 11722.98 translates to 13,726.10 today. The market closed Thursday at 13,270.68).

Back during the 1992 Presidential campaign, former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas proposed a $0.50 cent per gallon tax on gasoline as an alternative to raising income taxes, earning him the nickname Paul “Tax-on-gas”. Republicans savaged his plan, claiming that such high gas prices would plunge the economy into a recession. People would have less money to spend on other things. The cost of shipping everything would go up as a result. The effect it would have on the economy “would be devastating” we were told. Flash forward to today. The price of gas has nearly DOUBLED since Bush took office. The predicted inflation that would result from high gas prices has crept into every little thing we buy. The economy is stagnant and the DOW is dead in the water. But since it’s happening under a Republican President, this economy is “The Greatest Story Never Told”.

Maybe tomorrow “Hollywood Fred” will tell us about our imminent victory in Iraq?

(Check back tomorrow for Friday’s preempted blog entry.)

(It was tough deciding on whether or not to follow up on last weeks reports on the continuing decline of the stock market after last Friday’s plunge of 281 points, but since most of what there is to say on that subject has been said… for now… I decided to finish the report that I was working on when the DOW so rudely interrupted.)

Last week, President Bush announced a plan to sell $20 Billion in “military equipment” to Saudi Arabia. The week prior to that, Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama refocused attention back to the fact that President Bush’s ineptitude allowed Osama bin Laden to escape capture at Tora Bora into neighboring Pakistan in late 2001. He also announced (to much criticism) his willingness to enter the country with or without approval if we had actionable intelligence that OBL was hiding in the “No-mans’ Land between Pakistan and Afghanistan. This/Sunday morning at the GOP Debate in Iowa, Gov. Mitt Romney said Senator Obama “seems confused as to who are our friends and who are our enemies.” A number of events have made one fact of the Bush Presidency startlingly clear: the countries Bush calls our “allies” are in fact our greatest threats, and enemies of the U.S. have been the greatest benefactors of a Bush Presidency. Fifteen of the Nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Two were from Yemen, one from Lebanon and one from Egypt… all four countries, U.S. allies. They weren’t from Iraq. They weren’t from Iran. They weren’t Palestinian. Neither were they poor and they didn’t cross over the border into the U.S. illegally from Mexico. Let’s start with the countries President Bush calls our “friends” first because it’s a much shorter list:

Friends:

Pakistan - A nuclear power (thanks to Reagan) that has teetered on the brink of nuclear war with our ally India over the disputed region of Cashmere since near-simultaneous nuclear bomb tests in May of 1998. On the evening of 9/11, President Bush haughtily proclaimed “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” In October of 2001, the U.S. sought “fly-over” permission from Pakistan to attack neighboring Afghanistan, which was granted. But when Osama bin Laden eluded capture at Tora Bora by fleeing into the Taliban-controlled region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf (a military dictator immensely unpopular in his own country) denied the U.S. permission to enter his country and pursue the man that orchestrated the mass murder of nearly 3,000 Americans. Then, adding insult to injury, Musharraf declared a truce with the Taliban in that same region, essentially creating a sanctuary for al Qaeda in Northern Pakistan (see link above) by promising that no security forces… neither American nor Pakistani… would be allowed to enter the region.

Just last month (July 21st), Musharraf again denied the U.S. permission to enter the region of Northern Pakistan to pursue bin Laden (So much for making “no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them“), which prompted Senator Obama’s controversial statement.

Afghanistan - Now run by the Bush Administrations’ hand-picked oil company executive Hamid Karzai, the Taliban controls as much as 30% of the country and growing as Karzai sees his power slipping away. And just this past week The Washington Post reported that Afghanistan now supplies “90% of the world’s heroin”… an activity once banned under the Taliban now ENCOURAGED by them… and is their largest cash crop.

Saudi Arabia - It bears repeating that 15 of the 19 hijackers that attacked us on 9/11 were Saudi’s and financed by Saudi multi-millionaire Osama bin Laden. A few weeks ago (July 15th), a report in the Los Angeles Times found that the largest source of foreign fighters in Iraq is Saudi Arabia (at 45%) vs. “15% from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.“

President Bush with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah

George HW Bush with Saudi Prince “Bandar Bush”

(does this really need a caption?)

Some other former “allies” of the Bush Administration that have turned to bite us in the ass:

Sudan (purveyors of the genocide in Darfur) - Now this is an odd one. Sudan? our “friend“? This one is complicated… if you don’t have a conscience that is. Before 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s primary home was not in Afghanistan, but in fact, the African nation of Sudan. If you’re a Right Wing neoconservative hack that believes everything Rush Limbaugh and the Weekly Standard tells you, you probably know that “Sudan offered President Clinton Osama bin Laden back in 1996“. It’s not true of course, but that doesn’t stop the Neocons from repeating it. The Sudanese government has managed to avoid U.S. involvement, U.S. peacekeepers, even keep harsh criticism from President Bush regarding the genocide in Darfur at bay, because after 9/11, the Sudanese government started providing us with intel on bin Laden’s activities while he lived in Sudan, and ongoing intel on al Qaeda activities still taking place there. Many on the Right have actually tried to defend Sudanese President al-Bashir, claiming that the “supposed genocide in Darfur” is actually “media hype”.

But of course the Sudanese government can give us intel on al Qaeda… they used to work WITH them! A few weeks ago, a U.S. court ordered Sudan to pay 17 families of victims of the U.S.S. Cole bombing in 2000 $8 million dollars because evidence shows that Sudan HELPED al Qaeda bomb the Cole while it was docked in Yemen.

President Bush’s “Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan”, Andrew Natsios (yes, THAT Andrew Natsios) was criticized last April for telling a group of Georgetown University students that the “term genocide is counter to the facts of what is really occurring in Darfur.”

“But… but… I’ve heard President Bush criticize the genocide in Darfur!” Indeed he has. But what has he done about it? You know the old adage, “actions speak louder than words”? Well, the same goes for INaction.

Ahmed Chalabi… an Iraqi exile and convicted embezzler (tried and convicted in absentia in Jordan). Bush’s Pentagon paid Chalabi $340,000 a month (over $40 MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR) to head a group they called the “Iraqi National Congress” whose job it was… apparently… to spoon feed them totally made up “intelligence” regarding Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction”.

Whether he’s friend or foe this week depends on who’s giving the speech at the White House. Beginning in the Clinton Administration with the “Iraqi Liberation Act” of 1998 (”HR4685″), Chalabi was the self-appointed head of the INC (”Iraqi National Congress”), a group of Iraqi exiles seeking support for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Starting in March of 2000, the U.S. started paying Chalabi the funds he supposedly needed to make this happen. Despite Chalabi’s desire for U.S. military intervention to forcibly invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam, it was the policy of the Clinton Administration to foster a rebellion from within, for the people to rise up and overthrow the brutal dictator that ruled over his country using fear, intimidation, even torture and assassination of his political enemies.

But Chalabi found a willing ear in the Neocons of the Bush Administration that wanted Saddam gone as much as he did. Chalabi had been feeding the Clinton White House and Republicans stories of “vast stockpiles of WMD’s” and “a developing nuclear weapons program” trying to provoke a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Clinton Administration knew he was untrustworthy. The Republicans, hearing exactly what they wanted to believe, swallowed his claims hook, line & sinker. They started making plans for the invasion and military overthrow of Saddam almost from their first day in office. The plan was simple: go in, “remove” Saddam, replace him with Ahmed Chalabi, and get out. Quick & Easy. Hey, it worked in Afghanistan. We went in, deposed the Taliban, installed our own hand-picked replacement as President, and… and… well… never mind.

So we invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam. Time to hand their government over to Chalabi. But wait! Where are all those WMD’s you said we’d find here? Where’s the nuclear program? Suddenly, feeling snookered, the Bush Administration turned on Chalabi. And with no “Plan B”, here we were, stuck in Iraq with no way out. The only option was to create an entirely new government from scratch to do the job Chalabi would of done had he of turned out not to be a fraud that tricked a willing Neoconservative White House into invading Iraq.

As time went on and the search for WMD’s was starting to look more and more like a fools errand, to save face, the Bush Administration declared that Chalabi was in fact “an Iranian spy” that had duped the Bush Administration. Chalabi has gone from friend to foe.

Then he was appointed “Oil Minister” by the new Iraqi government. Before you could say “Black Gold”, Chalabi was back to being our “friend” again.

And let’s not overlook Think-Tanks like “The Project for the New American Century” (PNAC) without whose tireless work, we wouldn’t be in this mess today. PNAC’s leadership (scroll to the bottom) reads like a “who’s who” of every “reality challenged” Bush appointee ever to serve in his Administration: Paul Wolfowitz (former Deputy Defense Secretary), Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad (former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, then Iraq, now the U.N.), I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby (Cheney’s former Chief of Staff), Dan Quayle (former Vice President to Bush Sr.), and Donald Rumsfeld… along with a plethora of prominent Right-Wing pundits, ideologues, and consultants.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Yet through all this, the Bush Administration has worked hard to advance the idea that “Iran“… a majority Shia nation… is our greatest threat today, accusing them of being the primary source of training and arming the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Last February, the Bush Administration released yet another questionable slideshow purportedly showing evidence of Iranian weapons either found in… or intercepted on their way to… Iraq. Which brings us to Bush’s “Enemies” list:

Enemies:

Iran - From 1980 to 1988, Sunni President Saddam Hussein waged war against his Shia neighbor, Iran. Iran is roughly four times the size of Iraq, not only in raw acreage but in the size of its military. Saddam would never of been able to fight to a stalemate had it not of been for the support of the U.S.. When Saddam used those chemical weapons against his own people (the Kurds), it was a trial run before using them against Iranian soldiers in his war with them. In both instances, he was our ally. When he ordered the wholesale slaughter of 149 Shi’ite Muslims in the town of DuJail (the crime for which he was executed), 16 months later Donald Rumsfeld was shaking his hand. The Bush Administration did the Iranian government the biggest favor ever by taking out Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a primarily Shia led, Iranian-friendly, government.

The Iranian economy has been in bad shape for years now. While they are the fourth largest exporter of oil on the planet, they have little or no refineries and therefor must import almost all of their gasoline. Skyrocketing oil prices due to the war in Iraq helps take the edge off skyrocketing gasoline prices to keep the Iranian economy afloat and the anti-American Mullah’s controlling the government in charge. (And the Bush Administration actually facilitates that recovery by giving up to $100,000 tax cuts to people that buy 5,000 pound vehicles that get less than 5mpg… actually ENCOURAGING more oil consumption at a time when those dollars are finding they way into the hands of our greatest enemies.)

In Bush’s war in Iraq, the biggest winner has definitely been Iran, as the removal of their greatest threat eases the stress on their enormous and money-hungry military. Iran has never attacked the United States (going back to the 1978 siege of the American embassy in Tehran in retaliation for our giving safe harbor to their “Saddam”… a ruthless violent dictator backed by the U.S. government, the Shah of Iran. The capture and execution of Saddam Hussein gives Iran influence within the new Shia dominated Iraqi government, a combined area greater than that of Saudi Arabia.

Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda & The Taliban - (see Pakistan above). There can be no question that the war in Iraq has turned into one giant recruiting poster for al Qaeda. In addition to allowing OBL to escape into Pakistan where he is likely planning new attacks against the U.S. according to a report released by the White House last week, an investigation by the FBI last June found that bin Laden himself may have been the person that arranged those flights that spirited his family out of the U.S. two days after 9/11, a fact we might of figured out had the Bush Administration not kowtowed to their good friends, the Saudi Royal Family, and allowed members of the bin Laden family to depart the U.S. after only a cursory 30-minute debriefing.

Thanks to their safe-haven in Northern Pakistan, the Taliban and al Qaeda are back to their pre-9/11 Summer 2001 strength according to a CIA Report released early last month.

North Korea - In 2005, the Bush Administration considered it a victory when it managed to freeze $25 Million dollars in drug/gun money the North Korean government had hidden in a Macau, China bank. The money was the proceeds of N.K.’s growing Mafia-style criminal enterprise that made the millions selling drugs to our kids, and guns & rocket-launchers to our enemies (to name just a FEW.)

Last month, the Bush Administration again declared “victory” when it convinced desperately poor North Korea to shut down its one and only working nuclear reactor, stop testing its non-working missile program, and allow inspectors back in to monitor the disarmament of their nuclear energy program. Broke to the point of people dying of starvation, all the Bush Administration had to do to achieve this great victory was to give NK back its $25 million in drug/gun money.

Chalk up another victory for the people Bush calls “our enemies”. Enough to make one wonder “just whose side is the President on?”