[Peace-discuss] Yet more connections

Thu Oct 20 17:32:12 CDT 2005

[The remarkable Chris Floyd, who sits in Moscow and writes for
the English-language Moscow Times, frequently sees what's
going on in the US more clearly than those of us in the belly
of the beast.  --CGE]

   The Fix Is In
   By Chris Floyd

10/20/05 "Moscow Times" -- -- Having railed at the wanton
criminality of the Bush faction for so long, this column
naturally partakes of the general glee arising from the
looming possibility of genuine, grade-A grand jury indictments
for some of the gang's top thugs.

Of course, we all know that the fix is in: If anyone in the
White House is actually indicted and convicted for the high
crime of exposing the identity of an undercover agent -- in
wartime, no less -- they will certainly be pardoned when
George W. Bush finally limps away from the steaming, stinking,
blood-soaked ruin of his presidency. Nobody will do any hard
time; in the end, the whole sick crew will simply pass through
the golden revolving door into the lifetime gravy train of
corporate grease and right-wing lecture-circuit glory.

Still, it is heartening to see the fever-sweat of fear popping
out on the brows of these swaggering world-shakers, these
third-rate goons and half-wit cranks posing as great
statesmen, if only for a little while. Fear has always been
their weapon of choice: They've used it to foment aggressive
war, to crush political opposition, to manipulate the
electorate and to mask their own incompetence, corruption and
greed. Now they're getting a taste of it themselves -- and
they can't take it.

You can see it in their darting eyes, the twitches and
fidgets: the fear, the nagging worry that perhaps, just
perhaps, they haven't got it all nailed down this time; that
perhaps, just perhaps, the law is something more than a fancy
cane to beat the poor with; that it might, just might, apply
to them as well. The sight of Bush's porky puppetmaster, Karl
Rove, tottering out of his fourth grand jury appearance last
week, with the shadow of manacles dangling before his pinched,
bloated face, was an image to warm the cockles of every
American patriot's heart.

But this schadenfruede, however tasty and effervescent, is no
substitute for the strong meat of justice. And even in the
unlikely -- not to say inconceivable -- event that the entire
pack of jackals gets herded into the hoosegow for the
agent-outing conspiracy, it will not bring back the innocent
dead murdered at their command. It will not restore the
shattered families writhing in the pits of grief and loss,
from Baghdad to Burbank. It will not be recompense for the
pointless sacrifice of soldiers and reservists sent on a
criminal errand, plunged into a brutal and brutalizing hell --
for nothing, for a chimera, for ideological lunacy, for the
enrichment of cats already so fat they can barely stand up and
waddle to the dish for another slurp of cream.

Not unless every one of the war conspirators and their chief
minions -- Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin
Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, Scooter Libby, Andrew
Card, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Karen Hughes, John Yoo,
Zalmay Khalilzad, George Tenet, Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee,
Stephen Hadley, Jerry Bremer, Nicholas Calio, Richard Perle,
Tony Blair and all the rest -- were lined up in the public
square with the entrails of their victims draped around their
necks would anything approaching justice be done. But as
Shakespeare told us long ago, "in the corrupted currents of
this world, offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, and
oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself buys out the law."

For while official Washington strains to read the special
prosecutor's tea leaves, Bush's war crime grinds on. Last
weekend saw the "passage" of the much-ballyhooed Iraqi
constitution -- a desperately thrown-together rigamarole that
quietly preserves the special privileges for Bush's business
cronies imposed by the former satrap, Bremer, while
exacerbating the violent ethnic rivalries that Bush has
unleashed across the tortured land.

This "victory for democracy" -- achieved, in typical Bushist
fashion, through outrageously rigged vote counts, as The New
York Times reports -- is in fact a blueprint for disaster. The
Kurds will accelerate their U.S.-backed "ethnic cleansing" of
the oil-rich north, while the Iranian-backed Shiite militias
in the oil-rich south will accelerate their already murderous
imposition of Talibanic religious rule. The once-dominant
Sunni Arab minority, now marginalized and impoverished, will
swell the ranks of the growing insurgency, as Baghdad and the
nation's central provinces plunge further into Somali-style
anarchy. Terrorist freebooters, set loose in the one of the
world's most strategic locations by Bush's destruction of the
Iraqi state, will thrive in the chaos.

With no chance for the deliberately enfeebled central Iraqi
government to take responsibility for the nation's security,
U.S. forces will remain knee-deep in the quagmire, killing and
being killed without rhyme or reason -- or hope of escape.
Indeed, Bush is already signaling "a longer, broader conflict"
in his speeches on the war, The New York Times reports. There
is no "exit strategy" because Bush has never intended to
leave. The installation of a permanent U.S. military presence
in Iraq has been the war conspirators' loudly proclaimed goal
for many years, long before Bush was shoehorned into power --
as we have noted here incessantly since 2002, citing chapter
and verse from their own publications.

This is why they lied their way into war, this is why they
outed a CIA agent whose husband exposed one of their lies: to
pursue their dream of "global dominance," of endless war
profiteering and oil baksheesh. The prosecutor might give them
a pinch, but the damage is already done: The dead will stay
dead, the maimed will stay maimed, the tortured will never
escape their nightmares. And the killing, the wounding and
torment will go on.

Annotations

Monitors in Iraq Review Votes Where 'Yes' Ballots Hit 90%
The New York Times, Oct. 17, 2005

Iraq's Final Referendum Results Delayed
The Guardian, Oct. 18, 2005

The Plame Affair
Wikipedia, Oct. 20, 2005

Civilians Killed as US Targets Insurgents
Associated Press, Oct. 17, 2005

Basra Militias Put Their Firepower Above the Law
New York Times, Oct. 9, 2005

Shia Militants Gaining Strength in Basra
BBC, Oct. 16, 2005

Dark Passage: PNAC's Blueprint for Empire
Empire Burlesque, March 27, 2005

Administration's Tone Signals a Longer, Broader Iraq Conflict
New York Times, Oct. 17, 2005

US Airstrike Kills Dozens After Vote
MSNBC, Oct. 17, 2005

Sectarian Resentment Extends to Iraqi Army
Knight-Ridder, Oct. 12, 2005

Experts See Grim Times Ahead, a Torn Iraq, Even if
Constitution is Approved
San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 11, 2005

Colin Powell: The Most Honest Man on Earth
A Tiny Revolution, Oct. 11, 2005

Judy Miller and the Neo-Cons
Salon.com, Oct. 14, 2005

2000 Dead? Who Cares?
Salon.com, Oct. 10, 2005

Death Squads and Diplomacy
TomPaine.com, Oct. 5, 2005

Undeclared Civil War in Iraq
CBS, Sept. 26, 2005

The Economic Invasion of Iraq
Independent Media Institute, Aug. 22, 2005

Cheney May Be Target of Probe
New York Daily News, Oct. 18, 2005