[Vision2020] Re: Bush not the only one misled by faulty intelligence...

[Joan Opyr]

On 17 Mar 2006, at 06:31, joekc at adelphia.net wrote:

> No one that I knew thought that the threat was real.
>
> --
> Joe Campbell
>
> ---- ToeKneeTime at aol.com wrote:
>
> =============
> B.L.,
>
> Before we condemn Bush for proceeding with an invasion based on faulty
> intelligence, wouldn't it be fair to remember that the consensus at 
> the time was
> that the threat was real?  Democrats and republicans alike supported 
> the
> resolution to use force.  Can we put it all on Geo. W?  It seems to me 
>  that second
> guessing those who have to make the hard decisions is an activity to  
> be
> undertaken very thoughtfully.
>
> Best,  Tony

As I recall, just before we commenced operations in Iraq, 1.5 million 
people in this country marched against the war on a single day.  The 
invasion of Iraq was not a popular move by any stretch of the 
imagination, unless we define popular not as "the will of the people" 
but as "Democrats in Congress being craven and spineless."  Our armed 
forces don't have the necessary troop strength to fight simultaneous, 
successful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Osama bin Laden still roams 
free.  So how, exactly, do we plan to fight a war in Iran?  Will we 
turn it over to the private sector (mercenaries from Halliburton?) or 
will we outsource it to China?  We do not have the upper hand here.  
Soon, Iran will begin pricing its oil in Euros rather than dollars; 49% 
of our national debt is owned by foreign governments who might divest 
at any time; Congress has once again raised the U.S. debt ceiling.  We 
are well and truly screwed, and it's going to take another Rubin or 
Reisch to pull us out of this hole.

In two years' time, Dick Cheney and our MBA President will ride off 
into the sunset on Bankrupt Mountain having racked up the most 
astonishing debt in U. S. history.  They will have saddled us with a 
Medicare prescription plan that we cannot possibly afford while 
whacking taxes for themselves and their rich cronies through at least 
2010, though Bush is working hammer and tongs to make his noblesse 
largesse permanent.  We will still be in Iraq in 2008 as zero -- count 
'em, zero -- Iraqi units are ready or able to provide security without 
U. S. military assistance, and we cannot/will not pull out of the 
country because it has 30% of the world's proven oil reserves.

Interest rates are rising.  We're facing a bubble in the housing 
market.  Credit card and DiTech spending cannot forever prop up this 
economy.  We've got to actually make something; we've got to be a 
producer of goods, not just a consumer, if we're to survive the intense 
competition with China and India.  To paraphrase Churchill, never in 
the course of human history have so few destroyed so much in so short a 
time.  It was a different world when Clinton left office six years ago, 
and I'm not talking about the changes wrought on the national psyche by 
the "War on Terror."  The rest of the world was already coping with 
terrorism, and we ourselves were not unfamiliar with Al Qaeda.  Bush 
and Cheney used the 9/11 attack's to push a radical and insupportable 
political and economic agenda that has made the goddamnedest mess of 
the U. S. economy since Richard Nixon or, no, make that Herbert Hoover. 
  Bush and Cheney's political successors will be forced to enact some 
kind of tax increase (perhaps a value-added tax, like they have in 
Britain) just to keep us from going tits up.

And still, I believe that we will go tits up.  It will take us decades 
to recover from the Bush/Cheney years, just as it took us until Bill 
Clinton's second term to recover from Nixon's grotesque pandering.  I'm 
not just talking through my leftist (ass) hat.  You want to understand 
what's happening from an economic (Reaganite) conservative's 
perspective?  Then I suggest you pick up a book called 'Impostor: How 
George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,' by 
Bruce Bartlett.  Bartlett worked for Reagan and is a true-believing 
conservative; he was once a Bush supporter but is now thoroughly 
disillusioned.  I don't agree with all he has to say, and we certainly 
approach the world from different foundational economic perspectives, 
but he's worth a read -- especially if you believe yourself to be an 
economic conservative.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.joanopyr.com

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