The never-ending Occupation: an imperial conspiracy?

A few weeks after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, writer Joshua Micah Marshall published a telling essay in the Washington Monthly: Practice to Deceive. Subtitled "Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario–it's their plan," It remains one of the most cogent exposes of Neocon origins, methods and madness. And it has proven eerily prophetic. Some excerpts:

"Every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits...

Its (the Bush administration's) preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue...Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con...

But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind."

That agenda is permanent American military presence in the Middle East, engineered with this formula:

Invasion and "incompetent" occupation creates chaos.
Extended occupation is necessary to tame the chaos.
The occupation creates more chaos and never ends.

Which must be the goal if you’re investing in the world’s largest “embassy”—a Xanadu of air conditioned luxury larger than the Vatican, defended by 14 “enduring” military bases from Nasiriyah to Mosul. A unified and functioning sovereign government, representing the 70+% of Iraqis who want the U.S. gone, would never countenance the permanent squatting of foreign troops on native soil—the bete noir of genuine sovereignty.

The construction of these colonial fortresses has been effectively blacked out by our Pravda brothel of trick-turning pundits, who lament the supposed bungling responsible for the quagmire—ideological rigidity about laissez faire capitalism and democracy mistransplanted on hostile shores. "The Quiet American" sojourns in the Middle East with noble intentions, dashed by the fractious realities of tribal culture. The learning curve is steep, but with a few more tweaks, benchmarks and surges, our indefatigable “can-do” spirit will finally get it right and we’ll leave a friendly, grateful democracy in our wake. The litany of supposed blunders runs like this:

1. An occupation force of 450,000, recommended by Gen. Shinsheki as necessary to pacify the devastated country, is rejected for Rumsfeld's bargain basement force. CIA warnings about post-invasion anarchy are ignored. Only the oil ministry is defended by American troops—the rest of the government infrastructure is allowed to be completely destroyed by looting and vandalism.
2. The American army fails to secure Iraq's widespread munitions depots, the looting of which has supplied the insurgency's arsenal of IEDs, RPGs and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
3. Against the advice of the occupation's first viceroy, Gen. Jay Garner, the Iraq army is disbanded and all Baath party officials cashiered, creating a legion of disgruntled desperadoes. How will they fight? See #2 above, and:
4. In August 07, the GAO reports that 190,000 weapons supplied to the Iraqi security forces have gone missing—more arms to fuel the militias’ internecine bloodletting.

Sorry, but I’m no longer buying the Keystone Cops’ rubric. Bush may be crazy, but like his mother told us, “Crazy like a fox.” The whole crusade was kicked off with what many believe to a false-flag operation on 9-11, and it’s likely that manufactured terror attacks have stoked the civil war. Referring to the bombing of the Shiite al-Askari mosque in Samarra in Feb. ‘06 that ignited it, former CIA official Ray McGovern speculated:

"The main question is Qui Bono? Who benefits from this kind of thing? You don't have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not only the Sunnis. You know, the British officers were arrested, dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes on."

MCGovern is referring to three British SAS soldiers arrested by Iraqi policeman in Basra in Sept. ‘05—dressed in Arab garb and wigs, with a car load of weapons and bombs. To prevent any further interrogation and publicity of this compromising disaster, regular British forces broke them out by bulldozing the jail with a tank.

It may very well have been such a covert op team that blew up the Samarra mosque, and continues to foment strife. Because if the civil war ever ends, a strong Iraqi government will almost certainly send American troops packing. Many Americans, conditioned like Pavlovian dogs to growl and spit at anything labeled a “conspiracy theory,” will dismiss this possibility out of hand. America has a Constitution, after all, and it’s supposed to work just like we learned in grade school—everything by the book, on the up and up—none of that decadent skullduggery in God’s country!

But change the terminology, and it becomes more understandable—Machiavelli is alive and well in Iraq, simply practicing that most venerable and effective of imperial strategies: divide and conquer. And all the ineffectual, half-hearted opposition by Democrats and rogue Republicans (no defunding the war, no impeachment proceedings or even censure) is so much noise and thunder to pacify the public. There is no exit strategy, because there is no commitment to exit on either side of the aisle.

How To Get Your War On

Remember the Maine!

In 1898, the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana harbor, igniting the Spanish-American war. Hearst newspapers—the godfather of Fox News—declared it an act of war by Cuban saboteurs, but it may have been a drifting mine, a coal bunker explosion (common in those days), or even self-sabotage—yes, a conspiracy theory. Or false-flag theory. After 4 investigations, the evidence is inconclusive.

WWII

Hitler kicked it off with a pre-emptive strike against Poland, reacting to a border incursion of Polish soldiers—actually the bodies of executed German prisoners in Polish uniforms, planted for Goebbels’ megaphone. A false-flag op.

Pearl Harbor

Roosevelt, or members of his inner War Department circle, failed to dispatch decoded Japanese signal intelligence of an impending attack to the army and navy commanders on Pearl Harbor. The prize American carriers were all safely at sea. By negligence or design, the anti-war majority evaporated overnight.

Operation Northwoods

Desperate for a pretext to invade Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Pentagon hawks hatched a plan to fake Cuban terrorist attacks on American soil, including the shooting down of an American airliner. A false-flag op that never got off the ground—JFK shot it down. He would be the last president to stymie the war hawks.

Gulf of Tonkin

Progress has been made: you don’t have to actually sink a ship—just a few salvos at dolphins, repelling a Vietnamese attack that never happened, will work now to get the war fever going. Yes, it was a “conspiracy”—not a false-flag op, just a big lie requiring the complicity of Johnson, some naval officers, and a chorus of willing drumbeaters in the press and Congress.

Gulf War I

After a stern rebuke from Maggie Thatcher—envoy of Her Imperial Majesty, the Queen—George Bush, Sr. triggered the war with a classic British imperial strategem: Secretary of State James Baker instructed April Glaspie, the ambassador to Iraq, to relay the message to Sadam that the U.S. has "no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait." It was a green light—Sadam took the bait, and the very grave threat that the Iraqi military posed to control of its own fields was annihilated.

The "New Pearl Harbor"

Few people know that the latest WOT (War on Terror) upgrade is the 2005 release of GSAVE, (Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism), which completely replaces WOT. The merger was necessary to accommodate the vast new vision of the President—beyond merely extirpating the ancient tactic of terrorism, now we’re taking on the scourge of rebels, bread rioters, and soccer hooligans in every last frontier on Earth that might have some oil. The crusade was kicked off on 9/11, the “new Pearl Harbor” that Neocon manifestos had virtually prayed for. The prayers finally produced a miracle—the single most anomalous day in human history since the Resurrection, requiring even greater leaps of faith. The old standards of physics, precedent, probability, and gullibility were all broken that day—any absurdity could be retailed while the vast ignorati was in shock, fed a whole opus of Magic Bullet theories, stunning in their impossibility or sheer implausibility:

A gopher hole that swallows an entire 757, then belches out a debris field covering 15 sq. miles; the Pentagon plane completely vaporized and the Pentagon videos that recorded it still classified. All but 2 black boxes from 4 aircraft vaporized;, the Air Force that intercepted 67 off-course or incommunicative planes that year never even saw one of the 4 attack planes, even with an hour warning before the strike on the Pentagon; the precedent of no steel-framed skyscrapers ever collapsing due to fire is shattered—3 in one day! All pancake perfect, at free-fall speed.

In Florida, GWB sits reading nonchalantly in a vulnerable schoolhouse for 30 minutes with a major airport 5 miles away and his schedule publicized days beforehand. “Didn’t want to frighten the children,” was his excuse. Bless you, George—you did everything you could not to frighten the adults with a 9/11 investigation, too.

WWIII

Most likely scapegoat—Iran. Either a Persian Gulf “incident” or a false-flag op against “coalition forces” or the Homeland. Other false flags likely to fly on this day: Patriotism and Christianity. Could go nuclear. Likely actors: the fundamentalist zealots of all faiths eager to make it happen. It’s Foretold—might as get the upper hand with another, bigger,and better pre-emptive strike against the Axis of Evil. Raytheon, Lockheed and Halliburton stock will soar like the winged bulls of Assyria! As long there's no business like war business, we can look forward, at long last, to the war to end all wars—Armageddon.

George the Blackhearted

Retrieved from the deep memory hole engineered by our Media Masters, a startling fact that focuses a stark beam of illumination on George Bush's character:

While presiding over a record number of executions as Guv of Texas (140), GWB granted clemency to only one death row inmate, commuting his sentence to life imprisonment. It wasn't Gary Graham, the candidate most likely to have been innocent. Nor any of the estimated 20% of death row inmates who may have been or are innocent, according to some statistical estimates based on post-conviction DNA exonerations (between 1976 and 2000, 87 wrongfully condemned prisoners had been freed from the nation's death rows, prompting the governor of Illinois to impose a moratorium on executions in his state, while GWB accelerated the pace).

George Bush's single act of mercy was reserved for one of the most prolific and horrific of serial killers—Henry Lee Lucas, whose confession to over 600 murders is controversial and surely exaggerated, but who was definitely guilty of multiple homicides, rape, torture, necrophilia and cannibalism.

This curious, little-known fact has been circulating on the web lately—news to a lot of people, including myself, who resided in Texas under both terms of Dubya's governorship (don't bother me with your suffering!). And no, Bubba, this is not a "conspiracy theory," or an urban legend—Texas newspapers reported it, briefly. Lucas was scheduled for execution on June 30th, 1998. Bush appealed for clemency on June 18, and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles uncharacteristically granted it. Lucas enjoyed his new lease on life until a heart attack claimed him in 2001.

Stranger still, the parallel fate of Lucas' accomplice in many grisly crimes, Otis Toole, who also resided on death row in a capital-punishment loving state, Florida. His sentence was also commuted to life imprisonment—by George's brother, Governor Jeb Bush.

What accounts for these singular anomalies? The answer may lie in an incredibly sordid tale of satanic death cults, supposedly involving more than your wayward Goth teenager or psychotic drifter. Journalist Dave McGown has explored it in depth: There's Something About Henry. Warning: do not go here if you're afraid of the dark.

For now, I'll focus on more verifiable evidence of the dark, sinister core of GWB's soul, prefaced with a Biblical adage modifed for the political sphere: "Not by their words, but by their vetoes, ye shall know them." Whether exercised or merely brandished, Bush vetoes are notable for their relative scarcity:

1. In 2002,he threatened to veto a defense bill, opposed to new pension benefits for disabled military veterans.

2. He threatened to veto Congress' bipartisan torture ban. When both the House and Senate approved the bill with veto-proof margins, Bush issued a signing statement stating that, as "unitary executive," he would be free to ignore it. Torture, it seems, is dear to GWB's heart.

3. He vetoed the bill for increased embryonic stem-cell research that could help cure many intractable diseases, such as the Alzheimer's that afflicted conservative idol Ronald Reagan.

4. He vetoed a defense spending bill that included a troop withdrawal mandate, after his de facto veto of the Iraq Study Commission's recommendations for solving the Iraq imbroglio. His "surge" strategy has resulted in the highest monthly casualties for the U.S. military since the war started.

5. He now threatens to veto a bill that would ban mercury in flu vaccines for children, despite it's proven links to autism and other neurological disorders.

6. He plans to veto a bill to increase funding for S-CHIP (State’s Children Health Insurance Program), which subsidizes health care for children whose families are too poor to buy private insurance, yet do not qualify for Medicaid.

There is a pattern here: in every case, the veto would increase the sum of human suffering.

As the bloodshed in Iraq continues unabated and his approval ratings continue to plummet, reports from the inner circle describe Bush as "serene." When warned of the dire problems of post-war reconstruction in Iraq, he casually signed off on the catastrophic decisions of Paul Bremer in near total "detachment," according to aides.

He knows that many innocent men have been unjustly imprisoned in Guantanamo and the rendition gulags, yet he fought the Supreme Court's ruling and pushed through the Military Commissions Act to deny them any redress. Undoubtedly, as the new science of DNA analysis was coming to the fore in the '90s, he knew that many innocent men were probably being executed in the Texas death chamber, yet he remained "serenely confident" that all deserved their fate—except one.

Nurturing a genuine sympathy for the devil, George Bush is a cruel, callous, narcissistic sociopath, and only the tattered remnants of the Constitution restrain him from unleashing a greater whirlwind of misery upon the world. Before it's too late, we must pressure Congress to do their sworn duty and impeach the blackhearted sonofabitch.