Monday, July 14, 2003
The Best Enemies Money Can Buy
From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden – Insider Connections and the Bush Family’s Partnership with Killers of Americans
Brown Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle Group
By Michael C. Ruppert [© Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun to focus attention on Bush family connections and a long history of arming and financing America’s attackers in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from so-called alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on the Bush family’s profit-making role in creating and arming our enemies.
The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the press, Congress and the American people.
In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries with reasons to oppose the United States -- the Bush Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both the Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover – and I am not the first to say this – if a national security priority is to seize the financial assets of those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home.
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research, including U.S. government records from the era, along with contemporaneous news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the 1992 book entitled, “George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography” by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions reached by the Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single flaw in any of their factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history is essential to understanding our era.]
George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans and the Fords who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler’s rise to power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the Nazis and to manage their American interests. The profits from those investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is universally regarded as having been Hitler’s private banker and ultimate owner of the Union Bank Corporation.
Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line -- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitler’s storm troopers in the 1920s.
According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, “In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The Harriman International Company… was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States.”
Furthermore, a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an “interlocking concern” with the German Steel Trust that had produced:
50.8% of Nazi Germany’s pig iron
41.4% of Nazi Germany’s universal plate
36% of Nazi Germany’s heavy plate
38.5% of Nazi Germany’s galvanized sheet
45.5% of Nazi Germany’s pipes and tubes
22.1% of Nazi Germany’s wire
35% of Nazi Germany’s explosives
The business relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war started until they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.
In 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.’s stock shares.
“… all of which shares are held for the benefit of… members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals… of a designated enemy country.”
“On October 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.”
“Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942…”
These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Prescott Bush went on to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went on to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under Eisenhower.
Saddam Hussein
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush’s son, George Herbert Walker Bush – father of our current President – authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nacional del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Colombia Journalism Review (CJR), provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.
“ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop ‘It is becoming increasingly clear,’ said a grave Ted Koppel, ‘that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam’s Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy…
“Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?” Baker poignantly asks.
“ The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nacional del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam’s arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
“Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don’t appear to be getting any better at telling them…
“Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We’ve learned that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
“And we’ve learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy’s largest bank, Banca Nacional del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
“… In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case…
“… As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, ‘Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator.”
While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period, stood as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bush’s obvious corruption, the rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales’ voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in what passed for a drive-by shooting.
The CJR continues: “Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue… “That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq,’ Waas wrote, “is the most serious consequence of a U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public…”
The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times’ series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, “buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece – that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq.”
Baker’s CJR report also noted, “On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL official Christopher] Drogoul’s assertion that the director general of Iraq’s Ministry of Industry and Military Production had told him, ‘We are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S. government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government.’ Three weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales ‘produced a phone-book-sized packet of documents’ showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms… The documents mentioned one… which designed parts for Iraq’s howitzers and was financed through BNL…”
In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles from where several of the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home" author William Thomas writes, “ Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company, located near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare labs.”
The Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden
The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nation’s 11th largest defense contractor, and the Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Little is known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party operative.
On March 3, 2001, just weeks after George W Bush’s inauguration, the conservative Washington lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It said:
“(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an "ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.
“The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.
"This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.
"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.”
Judicial Watch noted that “even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham brothers to stop their business dealings in [The former Soviet Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started to destabilize that country.”
Since the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001) that, “George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm.” The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice in the last three years – 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families, which some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration.
The Nation, on March 27, 2000 – in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul Lashmar – wrote, “In January former President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major paid a social call on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah…” This story confirms at least one meeting between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That the bin Ladens attended this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story. The January 2000 meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elder’s) Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank you note sent by Bush to the bin Ladens after that meeting.
James Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci.
The WSJ story went on to note, “A Carlyle executive said that the bin Laden family committed $2 million through a London investment arm in 1995 in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3 billion overall. The fund has purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive said.
“But a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the family’s overall investment with Carlyle is considerably larger…”
In other words, Osama bin Laden’s attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive increase in the U.S. defense budget have just made his family a great big pile of money.
More Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens. The WSJ story also notes that, “During the past several years, the [bin Laden] family’s close ties to the Saudi royal family prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two trips to the family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. ‘We would call on them to get their view of the country and what would be of interest to investors.’”
President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1989.
Our current President, George W. Bush has also had -- at minimum -- indirect dealings with Carlyle and the bin Ladens. In 1976 his firm Arbusto Energy was funded with $50,000 from Texas investment banker James R. Bath who was also the U.S. investment counselor for the bin Laden family. In his watershed 1992 book, “The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush,” award winning Texas investigative journalist Pete Brewton dug deeply into Bath’s background, revealing connections with the CIA and major fraudulent activities connected with the Savings & Loan scandal that took $500 billion out of the pockets of American taxpayers. A long-time friend of George W. Bush, Bath was connected to a number of covert financing operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. One of the richest men in the world, Khashoggi was the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi, whose connections to the bin Ladens is more than superficial, got his first business break by acting as middle-man for a large truck purchase by Osama bin Laden’s older brother, Salem.
Another key player in the Bush Administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, left his post as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration after a series of scandals connected to CIA operatives Ed Wilson, Ted Shackley, Richard Secord and Tom Clines placed him at the brink of criminal indictment and jail. Shackley and Secord are veterans of Vietnam operations and have long been linked to opium/heroin smuggling. The Armitage scandals all focused on the illegal provision of weapons and war materiel to potential or actual enemies of the U.S. and to the Contras in Central America.
Armitage, a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and killing during covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been far from the Bush family’s side. Throughout his career, both in and out of government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA drug smuggling operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post story, called Armitage, “my white son.” In 1990, then President Bush dispatched Armitage to Russia to aid in its “transition” to capitalism. Armitage’s Russian work for Bush has been frequently connected to the explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became virtual rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had extensive involvement in Albania at the same time that the Albanian ally, Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and consolidating its grip, according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering western Europe. [See FTW Vol. II, No 2 – April 24, 1999]
Armitage and Carlucci are both Board Members of the influential Washington think tank, the Middle East Policy Council.
The connections continue with Vice President Dick Cheney. Amongst the multitude of oil pipeline construction running through the new war zone is one project – according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall Street Journal story – a joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction firm H.C. Price. A researcher named “Phoenix,” writing for the Internet news site Rumor Mills News Agency located at www.rumormillnews.com, reported that Price subsequently changed its name to Bredero Shaw, Inc. and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first post war job in 1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has confirmed this.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm, directing the campaign against Saddam Hussein, was Halliburton’s CEO until last year’s election.
And, according to a 2000 story from Harper’s Magazine, in 1990 our current President, through a position as a corporate director of Caterair, owned by the Carlyle Group – at a time when the bin Laden’s were invested in Carlyle – had additional connections to the bin Laden family. In addition, on March 1, 1995, when George W. Bush was Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the university, the University of Texas Endowment voted to place $10 million in investments with the Carlyle Group. As to how much of that money went to the bin Ladens we can only guess. But we do know that there is a long tradition in the Bush family of giving money to those who kill Americans.
Now, as the people of America are beginning to awaken to what is really being unleashed upon them, as a few brave souls are asking who’s going to get all the money the Bush Administration is “borrowing” from government coffers and who’s going to pay for it - the above history is more than ominous.
Considering that during the 1980s, under the pretext of fighting a Sandinista regime in Nicaragua that never once launched an attack on the U.S., these same people oversaw an explosion in U.S. cocaine consumption that went from 80 metric tons in 1979 to 600 metric tons in 1989 - considering that the CIA trained and equipped death squads that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of people from Guatemala to Panama – considering that these same people have brutalized Iraq, leaving portions of it radioactively contaminated by depleted uranium for the next 4 billion years and causing a fivefold increase in the number of childhood leukemia cases amidst a starving population, one can only wonder what they will produce for the world now given the context of the World Trade Center attacks.
From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden – Insider Connections and the Bush Family’s Partnership with Killers of Americans
Brown Brothers, Harriman - BNL- and the Carlyle Group
By Michael C. Ruppert [© Copyright 2001. All Rights Reserved, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun to focus attention on Bush family connections and a long history of arming and financing America’s attackers in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from so-called alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on the Bush family’s profit-making role in creating and arming our enemies.
The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the press, Congress and the American people.
In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries with reasons to oppose the United States -- the Bush Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both the Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover – and I am not the first to say this – if a national security priority is to seize the financial assets of those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home.
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research, including U.S. government records from the era, along with contemporaneous news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the 1992 book entitled, “George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography” by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions reached by the Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single flaw in any of their factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history is essential to understanding our era.]
George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans and the Fords who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler’s rise to power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the Nazis and to manage their American interests. The profits from those investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is universally regarded as having been Hitler’s private banker and ultimate owner of the Union Bank Corporation.
Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line -- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitler’s storm troopers in the 1920s.
According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, “In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The Harriman International Company… was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States.”
Furthermore, a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an “interlocking concern” with the German Steel Trust that had produced:
50.8% of Nazi Germany’s pig iron
41.4% of Nazi Germany’s universal plate
36% of Nazi Germany’s heavy plate
38.5% of Nazi Germany’s galvanized sheet
45.5% of Nazi Germany’s pipes and tubes
22.1% of Nazi Germany’s wire
35% of Nazi Germany’s explosives
The business relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war started until they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.
In 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.’s stock shares.
“… all of which shares are held for the benefit of… members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals… of a designated enemy country.”
“On October 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation.”
“Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942…”
These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Prescott Bush went on to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went on to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under Eisenhower.
Saddam Hussein
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush’s son, George Herbert Walker Bush – father of our current President – authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nacional del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Colombia Journalism Review (CJR), provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.
“ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop ‘It is becoming increasingly clear,’ said a grave Ted Koppel, ‘that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam’s Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy…
“Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?” Baker poignantly asks.
“ The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nacional del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam’s arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
“Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don’t appear to be getting any better at telling them…
“Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We’ve learned that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
“And we’ve learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy’s largest bank, Banca Nacional del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
“… In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case…
“… As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, ‘Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator.”
While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period, stood as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bush’s obvious corruption, the rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales’ voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in what passed for a drive-by shooting.
The CJR continues: “Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue… “That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq,’ Waas wrote, “is the most serious consequence of a U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public…”
The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times’ series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, “buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece – that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq.”
Baker’s CJR report also noted, “On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL official Christopher] Drogoul’s assertion that the director general of Iraq’s Ministry of Industry and Military Production had told him, ‘We are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S. government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government.’ Three weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales ‘produced a phone-book-sized packet of documents’ showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms… The documents mentioned one… which designed parts for Iraq’s howitzers and was financed through BNL…”
In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles from where several of the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home" author William Thomas writes, “ Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company, located near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare labs.”
The Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden
The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nation’s 11th largest defense contractor, and the Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Little is known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party operative.
On March 3, 2001, just weeks after George W Bush’s inauguration, the conservative Washington lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It said:
“(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an "ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.
“The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.
"This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.
"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.”
Judicial Watch noted that “even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham brothers to stop their business dealings in [The former Soviet Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started to destabilize that country.”
Since the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001) that, “George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm.” The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice in the last three years – 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families, which some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration.
The Nation, on March 27, 2000 – in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul Lashmar – wrote, “In January former President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major paid a social call on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah…” This story confirms at least one meeting between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That the bin Ladens attended this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story. The January 2000 meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elder’s) Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank you note sent by Bush to the bin Ladens after that meeting.
James Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci.
The WSJ story went on to note, “A Carlyle executive said that the bin Laden family committed $2 million through a London investment arm in 1995 in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3 billion overall. The fund has purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive said.
“But a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the family’s overall investment with Carlyle is considerably larger…”
In other words, Osama bin Laden’s attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive increase in the U.S. defense budget have just made his family a great big pile of money.
More Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens. The WSJ story also notes that, “During the past several years, the [bin Laden] family’s close ties to the Saudi royal family prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two trips to the family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. ‘We would call on them to get their view of the country and what would be of interest to investors.’”
President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1989.
Our current President, George W. Bush has also had -- at minimum -- indirect dealings with Carlyle and the bin Ladens. In 1976 his firm Arbusto Energy was funded with $50,000 from Texas investment banker James R. Bath who was also the U.S. investment counselor for the bin Laden family. In his watershed 1992 book, “The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush,” award winning Texas investigative journalist Pete Brewton dug deeply into Bath’s background, revealing connections with the CIA and major fraudulent activities connected with the Savings & Loan scandal that took $500 billion out of the pockets of American taxpayers. A long-time friend of George W. Bush, Bath was connected to a number of covert financing operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. One of the richest men in the world, Khashoggi was the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi, whose connections to the bin Ladens is more than superficial, got his first business break by acting as middle-man for a large truck purchase by Osama bin Laden’s older brother, Salem.
Another key player in the Bush Administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, left his post as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration after a series of scandals connected to CIA operatives Ed Wilson, Ted Shackley, Richard Secord and Tom Clines placed him at the brink of criminal indictment and jail. Shackley and Secord are veterans of Vietnam operations and have long been linked to opium/heroin smuggling. The Armitage scandals all focused on the illegal provision of weapons and war materiel to potential or actual enemies of the U.S. and to the Contras in Central America.
Armitage, a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and killing during covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been far from the Bush family’s side. Throughout his career, both in and out of government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA drug smuggling operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post story, called Armitage, “my white son.” In 1990, then President Bush dispatched Armitage to Russia to aid in its “transition” to capitalism. Armitage’s Russian work for Bush has been frequently connected to the explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became virtual rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had extensive involvement in Albania at the same time that the Albanian ally, Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and consolidating its grip, according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering western Europe. [See FTW Vol. II, No 2 – April 24, 1999]
Armitage and Carlucci are both Board Members of the influential Washington think tank, the Middle East Policy Council.
The connections continue with Vice President Dick Cheney. Amongst the multitude of oil pipeline construction running through the new war zone is one project – according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall Street Journal story – a joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction firm H.C. Price. A researcher named “Phoenix,” writing for the Internet news site Rumor Mills News Agency located at www.rumormillnews.com, reported that Price subsequently changed its name to Bredero Shaw, Inc. and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first post war job in 1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has confirmed this.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm, directing the campaign against Saddam Hussein, was Halliburton’s CEO until last year’s election.
And, according to a 2000 story from Harper’s Magazine, in 1990 our current President, through a position as a corporate director of Caterair, owned by the Carlyle Group – at a time when the bin Laden’s were invested in Carlyle – had additional connections to the bin Laden family. In addition, on March 1, 1995, when George W. Bush was Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the university, the University of Texas Endowment voted to place $10 million in investments with the Carlyle Group. As to how much of that money went to the bin Ladens we can only guess. But we do know that there is a long tradition in the Bush family of giving money to those who kill Americans.
Now, as the people of America are beginning to awaken to what is really being unleashed upon them, as a few brave souls are asking who’s going to get all the money the Bush Administration is “borrowing” from government coffers and who’s going to pay for it - the above history is more than ominous.
Considering that during the 1980s, under the pretext of fighting a Sandinista regime in Nicaragua that never once launched an attack on the U.S., these same people oversaw an explosion in U.S. cocaine consumption that went from 80 metric tons in 1979 to 600 metric tons in 1989 - considering that the CIA trained and equipped death squads that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of people from Guatemala to Panama – considering that these same people have brutalized Iraq, leaving portions of it radioactively contaminated by depleted uranium for the next 4 billion years and causing a fivefold increase in the number of childhood leukemia cases amidst a starving population, one can only wonder what they will produce for the world now given the context of the World Trade Center attacks.
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Bush: 'The wrong man?''
Posted on Wednesday, July 09 @ 10:03:58 EDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
George W. Bush's combative exhortation to Iraqi resistance fighters to "bring 'em on" by launching more attacks against U.S. troops reminded his supporters why they see him as a war-hero president, what former aide and author David Frum dubbed "The Right Man" to lead the nation through post-Sept. 11 hostilities.
But Bush's tough-guy rhetoric may instead be leading the nation into a maze of dark alleys from which many Americans, especially young soldiers dispatched to a string of conflicts, will never emerge. There is a growing sense that Bush's life experience of underachieving privilege might make him entirely the wrong man for addressing the complex challenges the nation now faces.
Because of his family connections, Bush has never confronted the physical dangers that come with war, nor even the consequences of personal failure as an executive who's made bad decisions. His father's powerful friends have always been there to help, whether keeping Bush out of Vietnam or bailing out his sinking businesses or sparing him from a full vote count in Florida.
Even as a young man, Bush could say one thing and do another. He said he was for the Vietnam War, but accepted a home-side slot in the Texas Air National Guard arranged by his father's friends. He then appears to have shirked even that duty with still-unanswered questions about why he failed a flight physical and whether he went AWOL for a year.
According to the Boston Globe, "In his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And ... for a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen." [Boston Globe, May, 23, 2000]
In his early-to-mid adulthood, Bush continued to live a kind of risk-free life, benefiting from the generosity of his fathers' friends who bankrolled his failed business ventures and then set him up with sinecure positions on corporate boards. While other businessmen faced genuine risks of failure, Bush lived the charmed life of a n'er-do-well who could only fail up.
When it came to democracy and the fundamental right of American citizens to have their votes count - and be counted - Bush again didn't dare take any risks. He preferred the sure thing of a fix by his father's friends than winning or losing based on the actual ballots cast by voters.
After Election 2000, when the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount, Bush sent his lawyers to the U.S. Supreme Court to get five Republican justices to stop the counting of votes and hand him the White House. Though the U.S. news media largely spared Bush any political damage for this unprecedented act, many world leaders now roll their eyes when Bush proclaims his commitment to democracy around the globe.
Avoiding Risk
This pattern of avoiding personal risk has carried into his presidency. On Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center in New York and another into the Pentagon outside Washington, Bush was on a political trip to northern Florida. With administration officials claiming that Air Force One might be another target, Bush and his entourage fled west, first to Louisiana and then to Nebraska.
Meanwhile, other Americans held their ground in Washington, showing almost no panic even with the knowledge that a fourth hijacked plane was headed toward the capital. That plane never reached its destination because Americans onboard battled the hijackers for control and the plane crashed in Pennsylvania. Hours after the danger had passed, Bush returned to Washington.
Bush didn't take chances either on his victory lap through the Middle East in June. Instead of following the example of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who visited British troops in the Iraqi city of Basra, Bush didn't make even a brief stop inside Iraq, as some political observers believed he would.
Instead Bush chose the much safer environs of a U.S. military base in Qatar, where he spoke in front of cheering U.S. soldiers far from the front lines. "I'm happy to see you and so are the long-suffering people of Iraq," Bush told the soldiers, who were about 500 miles out of eye-shot from Iraq.
After leaving Qatar on June 5, Air Force One flew over Iraq, tilting at 31,000 feet so Bush could look down on the sweltering city of Baghdad. Though far out of range of Iraqi weapons, Bush was surrounded by four F-18 fighter jets.
While Bush's decision to stay out of Iraq may have been justified by the continuing violence, there was an unsettling contrast between Bush taking a peak at Baghdad from 31,000 feet and American soldiers stuck patrolling its baking-hot streets day and night, possibly for the next several years.
Necessary Prudence
Bush's supporters naturally bristle at the suggestion that Bush is anything but a hero. In his defense, they argue that it makes no sense for Bush to put himself in harm's way when he has the larger responsibility as the U.S. head of state and when his Secret Service protectors are demanding that he avoid danger.
In a somewhat contradictory vein, Bush backers also cite his derring-do jet flight in full pilot gear onto the aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, as a sign of his personal bravery. The White House has since acknowledged that the carrier was within range of the presidential helicopter, but that Bush wanted to do the jet landing and even took water survival classes in case the jet crashed in the Pacific Ocean.
When judging personal courage, it's also true that no one knows what thoughts go through another person's head or how a person draws that hazy line between prudence and fear. It's clear, too, that no one serving as president is ever out of danger from assassination.
Even as conservatives mocked President Bill Clinton as a cowardly draft dodger and some right-wing extremists fantasized about killing him, Clinton dove into crowds, giving his Secret Service detail fits. Living daily with the knowledge that dangerous people - whether the likes of Tim McVeigh or Osama bin Laden - want you dead is not the choice of a coward.
Right Man?
The larger question is whether Bush's life experiences do make him "the right man" for this moment in American history. Does a lifetime of avoiding consequences for one's decisions and actions make a person better qualified for the complex judgments of war and peace?
There is an argument to be made for that position. One could say that a person who has been insulated from the everyday experiences of the common man is less burdened with second thoughts. Also, lacking a personal sense of the human costs of war may make a leader less hesitant to commit troops to battle than someone who has been in war and has seen friends die.
But the counter-argument is that an incurious individual who has had limited contact with the world may well make judgments that are artificial and dangerous, perhaps driven more by ideology or wishful thinking than by practical assessments of what power can achieve and what reality looks like.
It is increasingly clear, for example, that Bush grossly miscalculated the situation in Iraq. Not only did Bush overstate the dangers from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but he underestimated the task of pacifying Iraq after the initial assault by U.S. forces.
Bush appears to have bought into his administration's own propaganda about how easy the war would be. Initially, the thought was that the "shock and awe" bombing of some government buildings in Baghdad would lead to Saddam Hussein's ouster followed by a rose-petal welcome for U.S. troops and a cooperative transition to a pro-U.S. government in Iraq. Next would come the neo-conservative dream of remaking the Arab world.
Looming Dangers
But the facts soon got in the way of a good story. "Shock and awe" failed to dislodge dictator Hussein. There was no popular uprising even in southern Iraq where the Shiite majority was considered hostile to Hussein's brutal regime. As U.S. troops advanced into Iraq, they encountered no WMD but found the Iraqi resistance stiffer than expected.
Some military analysts saw these developments as warning signs that the United States was heading toward a bloody debacle in Iraq. I cited some of these analysts in an article "Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down," which observed that Bush seemed to be mixing Bay of Pigs-style wishful thinking about popular uprisings with a Black Hawk Down risk of putting U.S. forces in cultures that are both hostile and foreign.
Instead of reconsidering his course for the war, however, Bush ordered the invasion to proceed with greater ferocity and less concern about civilian casualties.
Desperate to kill Hussein, Bush ordered the bombing of an Iraqi residential restaurant on the faulty intelligence that Hussein might be eating there. Diners, including children, were ripped apart by the bombs. One mother found her daughter's torso and then her severed head. But U.S. intelligence now believes that Hussein wasn't there. All told, at least several thousand Iraqi civilians died in the U.S.-led invasion.
But victory supposedly cleansed all sins. When U.S. forces toppled Hussein's statue in Baghdad on April 9, triumphant Bush supporters lashed out at the skeptics for questioning his wisdom. Some war critics were accused of treason and became the targets of blacklists aimed at denying them work. This Web site received e-mail demands for retractions and apologies for articles that had contained warnings about the looming dangers.
New Scrutiny
Yet in the weeks that have followed - with first the failure to find any trigger-ready WMD and then the expanding Iraqi attacks on isolated U.S. forces - Bush's Iraq policy has come under greater scrutiny. It is now clear that the war didn't end with the toppled statue or with Bush's May 1 declaration of "Mission Accomplished." The war was just entering a new guerrilla phase.
Some war skeptics, such as former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, had predicted as much. Before Baghdad fell, Wilson wrote that Hussein "is preparing to go underground to fight a guerrilla campaign. ....If our presence is seen as an occupation, rather than a liberation, it is entirely possible that Saddam thinks he can rebound."
Wilson, who served in posts in Africa and Iraq, earlier had played a role in debunking claims - in February 2002 - that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger to build nuclear weapons. Wilson said U.S. and British officials ignored his information as they chose to make the bogus Niger uranium claim a centerpiece in their warnings about Iraq's WMD.
"It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war," Wilson said. "It begs the question, what else are they lying about?" [Washington Post, July 6, 2003]
But Bush continues to show no doubt about his course of action. Rather than rethink the premises of the war in Iraq, Bush says he is determined to prevail. Indeed, that was the context of his "bring 'em on" remark. He was drawing new lines in the sand for American troops to defend.
"There are some who feel like that if they attack us that we may decide to leave prematurely," Bush said on July 2 in Washington. "They don't understand what they're talking about, if that's the case. ...There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring 'em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
To Bush's defenders, this determination is another sign that he is "the right man" to destroy America's enemies. He's not someone who will cut and run.
But to his critics, and increasingly to the U.S. soldiers in Iraq calling for the Pentagon to "get our sorry asses out of here," a different conclusion is emerging. As conditions in Iraq degenerate into violent chaos, this critical view holds that Bush's mix of arrogance about his "gut" judgments and his lack of experience with real-world conditions is elevating - not lowering - the danger that the United States faces.
In this view, the continuing dangers to U.S. troops in Iraq have highlighted that George W. Bush may be "the wrong man" in the wrong place at a very wrong time.
Reprinted from Consortium News:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/
2003/070903a.html
Posted on Wednesday, July 09 @ 10:03:58 EDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
George W. Bush's combative exhortation to Iraqi resistance fighters to "bring 'em on" by launching more attacks against U.S. troops reminded his supporters why they see him as a war-hero president, what former aide and author David Frum dubbed "The Right Man" to lead the nation through post-Sept. 11 hostilities.
But Bush's tough-guy rhetoric may instead be leading the nation into a maze of dark alleys from which many Americans, especially young soldiers dispatched to a string of conflicts, will never emerge. There is a growing sense that Bush's life experience of underachieving privilege might make him entirely the wrong man for addressing the complex challenges the nation now faces.
Because of his family connections, Bush has never confronted the physical dangers that come with war, nor even the consequences of personal failure as an executive who's made bad decisions. His father's powerful friends have always been there to help, whether keeping Bush out of Vietnam or bailing out his sinking businesses or sparing him from a full vote count in Florida.
Even as a young man, Bush could say one thing and do another. He said he was for the Vietnam War, but accepted a home-side slot in the Texas Air National Guard arranged by his father's friends. He then appears to have shirked even that duty with still-unanswered questions about why he failed a flight physical and whether he went AWOL for a year.
According to the Boston Globe, "In his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And ... for a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen." [Boston Globe, May, 23, 2000]
In his early-to-mid adulthood, Bush continued to live a kind of risk-free life, benefiting from the generosity of his fathers' friends who bankrolled his failed business ventures and then set him up with sinecure positions on corporate boards. While other businessmen faced genuine risks of failure, Bush lived the charmed life of a n'er-do-well who could only fail up.
When it came to democracy and the fundamental right of American citizens to have their votes count - and be counted - Bush again didn't dare take any risks. He preferred the sure thing of a fix by his father's friends than winning or losing based on the actual ballots cast by voters.
After Election 2000, when the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount, Bush sent his lawyers to the U.S. Supreme Court to get five Republican justices to stop the counting of votes and hand him the White House. Though the U.S. news media largely spared Bush any political damage for this unprecedented act, many world leaders now roll their eyes when Bush proclaims his commitment to democracy around the globe.
Avoiding Risk
This pattern of avoiding personal risk has carried into his presidency. On Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center in New York and another into the Pentagon outside Washington, Bush was on a political trip to northern Florida. With administration officials claiming that Air Force One might be another target, Bush and his entourage fled west, first to Louisiana and then to Nebraska.
Meanwhile, other Americans held their ground in Washington, showing almost no panic even with the knowledge that a fourth hijacked plane was headed toward the capital. That plane never reached its destination because Americans onboard battled the hijackers for control and the plane crashed in Pennsylvania. Hours after the danger had passed, Bush returned to Washington.
Bush didn't take chances either on his victory lap through the Middle East in June. Instead of following the example of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who visited British troops in the Iraqi city of Basra, Bush didn't make even a brief stop inside Iraq, as some political observers believed he would.
Instead Bush chose the much safer environs of a U.S. military base in Qatar, where he spoke in front of cheering U.S. soldiers far from the front lines. "I'm happy to see you and so are the long-suffering people of Iraq," Bush told the soldiers, who were about 500 miles out of eye-shot from Iraq.
After leaving Qatar on June 5, Air Force One flew over Iraq, tilting at 31,000 feet so Bush could look down on the sweltering city of Baghdad. Though far out of range of Iraqi weapons, Bush was surrounded by four F-18 fighter jets.
While Bush's decision to stay out of Iraq may have been justified by the continuing violence, there was an unsettling contrast between Bush taking a peak at Baghdad from 31,000 feet and American soldiers stuck patrolling its baking-hot streets day and night, possibly for the next several years.
Necessary Prudence
Bush's supporters naturally bristle at the suggestion that Bush is anything but a hero. In his defense, they argue that it makes no sense for Bush to put himself in harm's way when he has the larger responsibility as the U.S. head of state and when his Secret Service protectors are demanding that he avoid danger.
In a somewhat contradictory vein, Bush backers also cite his derring-do jet flight in full pilot gear onto the aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, as a sign of his personal bravery. The White House has since acknowledged that the carrier was within range of the presidential helicopter, but that Bush wanted to do the jet landing and even took water survival classes in case the jet crashed in the Pacific Ocean.
When judging personal courage, it's also true that no one knows what thoughts go through another person's head or how a person draws that hazy line between prudence and fear. It's clear, too, that no one serving as president is ever out of danger from assassination.
Even as conservatives mocked President Bill Clinton as a cowardly draft dodger and some right-wing extremists fantasized about killing him, Clinton dove into crowds, giving his Secret Service detail fits. Living daily with the knowledge that dangerous people - whether the likes of Tim McVeigh or Osama bin Laden - want you dead is not the choice of a coward.
Right Man?
The larger question is whether Bush's life experiences do make him "the right man" for this moment in American history. Does a lifetime of avoiding consequences for one's decisions and actions make a person better qualified for the complex judgments of war and peace?
There is an argument to be made for that position. One could say that a person who has been insulated from the everyday experiences of the common man is less burdened with second thoughts. Also, lacking a personal sense of the human costs of war may make a leader less hesitant to commit troops to battle than someone who has been in war and has seen friends die.
But the counter-argument is that an incurious individual who has had limited contact with the world may well make judgments that are artificial and dangerous, perhaps driven more by ideology or wishful thinking than by practical assessments of what power can achieve and what reality looks like.
It is increasingly clear, for example, that Bush grossly miscalculated the situation in Iraq. Not only did Bush overstate the dangers from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, but he underestimated the task of pacifying Iraq after the initial assault by U.S. forces.
Bush appears to have bought into his administration's own propaganda about how easy the war would be. Initially, the thought was that the "shock and awe" bombing of some government buildings in Baghdad would lead to Saddam Hussein's ouster followed by a rose-petal welcome for U.S. troops and a cooperative transition to a pro-U.S. government in Iraq. Next would come the neo-conservative dream of remaking the Arab world.
Looming Dangers
But the facts soon got in the way of a good story. "Shock and awe" failed to dislodge dictator Hussein. There was no popular uprising even in southern Iraq where the Shiite majority was considered hostile to Hussein's brutal regime. As U.S. troops advanced into Iraq, they encountered no WMD but found the Iraqi resistance stiffer than expected.
Some military analysts saw these developments as warning signs that the United States was heading toward a bloody debacle in Iraq. I cited some of these analysts in an article "Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down," which observed that Bush seemed to be mixing Bay of Pigs-style wishful thinking about popular uprisings with a Black Hawk Down risk of putting U.S. forces in cultures that are both hostile and foreign.
Instead of reconsidering his course for the war, however, Bush ordered the invasion to proceed with greater ferocity and less concern about civilian casualties.
Desperate to kill Hussein, Bush ordered the bombing of an Iraqi residential restaurant on the faulty intelligence that Hussein might be eating there. Diners, including children, were ripped apart by the bombs. One mother found her daughter's torso and then her severed head. But U.S. intelligence now believes that Hussein wasn't there. All told, at least several thousand Iraqi civilians died in the U.S.-led invasion.
But victory supposedly cleansed all sins. When U.S. forces toppled Hussein's statue in Baghdad on April 9, triumphant Bush supporters lashed out at the skeptics for questioning his wisdom. Some war critics were accused of treason and became the targets of blacklists aimed at denying them work. This Web site received e-mail demands for retractions and apologies for articles that had contained warnings about the looming dangers.
New Scrutiny
Yet in the weeks that have followed - with first the failure to find any trigger-ready WMD and then the expanding Iraqi attacks on isolated U.S. forces - Bush's Iraq policy has come under greater scrutiny. It is now clear that the war didn't end with the toppled statue or with Bush's May 1 declaration of "Mission Accomplished." The war was just entering a new guerrilla phase.
Some war skeptics, such as former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, had predicted as much. Before Baghdad fell, Wilson wrote that Hussein "is preparing to go underground to fight a guerrilla campaign. ....If our presence is seen as an occupation, rather than a liberation, it is entirely possible that Saddam thinks he can rebound."
Wilson, who served in posts in Africa and Iraq, earlier had played a role in debunking claims - in February 2002 - that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger to build nuclear weapons. Wilson said U.S. and British officials ignored his information as they chose to make the bogus Niger uranium claim a centerpiece in their warnings about Iraq's WMD.
"It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war," Wilson said. "It begs the question, what else are they lying about?" [Washington Post, July 6, 2003]
But Bush continues to show no doubt about his course of action. Rather than rethink the premises of the war in Iraq, Bush says he is determined to prevail. Indeed, that was the context of his "bring 'em on" remark. He was drawing new lines in the sand for American troops to defend.
"There are some who feel like that if they attack us that we may decide to leave prematurely," Bush said on July 2 in Washington. "They don't understand what they're talking about, if that's the case. ...There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring 'em on. We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
To Bush's defenders, this determination is another sign that he is "the right man" to destroy America's enemies. He's not someone who will cut and run.
But to his critics, and increasingly to the U.S. soldiers in Iraq calling for the Pentagon to "get our sorry asses out of here," a different conclusion is emerging. As conditions in Iraq degenerate into violent chaos, this critical view holds that Bush's mix of arrogance about his "gut" judgments and his lack of experience with real-world conditions is elevating - not lowering - the danger that the United States faces.
In this view, the continuing dangers to U.S. troops in Iraq have highlighted that George W. Bush may be "the wrong man" in the wrong place at a very wrong time.
Reprinted from Consortium News:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/
2003/070903a.html
Saturday, July 05, 2003
W. David Jenkins III: 'George, would you PLEASE shut up!'
Contributed by americaheldhostile on Friday, July 04 @ 08:32:50 EDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By W. David Jenkins III, America Held Hostile
All right already, that is more than enough! What the hell were you thinking? Were you thinking? Have you completely lost your mind? Is there anybody out there keeping an eye on you, kid? I really hate to rant but I just can't let this go.
July 2 - "There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush told reporters at the White House. "My answer is bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation." - Reuters
July 3 - A day after President Bush asserted that coalition forces in Iraq were prepared to deal with any security threat; American troops came under attack again today, with 10 soldiers wounded in three separate incidents. - New York Times
George, the macho routine - and I do mean "routine" - has got to go. The fact that we have kids getting killed because you lied is a travesty in and of itself. Now, once again, you start up the he-man schtick and people start getting hurt - and worse. Haven't you or any of your people learned a damned thing?
"Bring them on?"
Exactly what is your problem?
Are you bothered by the fact that you were not man enough to actually serve when it was your turn? Are you making up for the fact that you couldn't even fulfill your cushy assignment back in the early '70s because you were a blooming mess and couldn't pass a urine test? What, now you feel the need to talk tough so nobody will question what an actual coward you are? You are a coward, George. We saw that long before 9/11.
Your cowardice is the reason for what we now know as "First Amendment Zones." You know those heavily policed, barricaded, way-out-of-the-way places for people who voice their accurate opinions of you. They're usually placed so far away from where you appear that you can be assured you'll never see or hear any dissent.
And we all know why.
Because you're afraid of confrontation in any form. You've been a scaredy-cat since you stole office! Hiding under canopies and limiting access by the press as well as those who abhor you and know you for the fake that you are. George W. Bush, you have given birth to a new phrase!
"He-Man in Hiding!"
We all learned - well, most of us did - what a pathetic excuse for a "president" you are when you did the old "dead or alive" nonsense when it came to Osama bin Laden. "Smoke 'em out," you said. Mister big man.
Well, President Bounty Hunter, where the hell is he?
Hasn't it ever dawned on you that if you hadn't instructed people like John O'Neill to lay off investigating bin Laden prior to the attack, none of that 9/11 stuff would have happened? Is that why you're hiding over 800 pages of the investigative report by the Senate?
So, Mister Dead-or-Alive…where the hell is Osama?
Oh, you thought we forgot?
Y'know, George, it takes more than just talk to make you a man. It takes more than just talk to make you a leader. Sure, you have the ever-obedient sheep in the liberal media who are stretching things to the max to make you look good. Lucky for you, most of the people who rely on American media for their information are idiots who actually think that that aircraft carrier landing was something to be admired. You need to remember one thing, George.
The world is not your Congress.
Just because most of the representatives in both Houses believed every lie you told doesn't make everybody else just as compliant. Just because the lap dogs at Fox "News" wet themselves every time they mention your name doesn't mean the rest of the world community - including many of us here at home - buy your carefully manufactured machismo. Your testosterone complex is trying our patience and - worst of all - killing people who have ten times more cajones than you could ever hope to have.
For Chrissakes, George, you didn't even have the balls (excuse me) to land in Iraq a few weeks ago. No, you did a fly-over. At least your puppy, Tony Blair, had it in him to walk among the people in Basra. But you? You pathetic chicken. You ran and hid like you did on 9/11, Mr. Tough Guy. You are an embarrassment - and worst of all - you're a dangerous embarrassment. Your bravado is killing people.
"Bring them on!"
You pompous S.O.B. - you spoiled little chicken "stuff" brat. Please, please, please, shut your stupid mouth! Your cowardice is killing Americans. And Iraqis. Your big, stupid mouth is not helping the huge mess your lies have created! The world is not Old West Texas. You're not even Texas! Every time you open your big mouth either somebody gets killed or wounded or the stock market falls. Your big mouth just got ten people wounded! There's no telling what your oral nonsense will produce tomorrow.
Shut up, George! You're killing people, you coward!
*******
Hey guys, I don't know about you but I feel a heck of a lot better now - at least I can breathe. And breathing always allows me to be a little creative.
A few months ago, Americans were told to buy mass quantities of duct tape to protect themselves from those who would do them harm. I know there just have to be many, many rolls of duct tape out there that have gone un-used. And…
I have a great idea.
The next time George W. Bush decides it's time to get macho, somebody - please - oh please, grab a roll of that duct tape and wrap it around his whole head. You'll save a life and protect our national security.
It's the patriotic thing to do, the only thing to do.
Reprinted from America Held Hostile:
http://www.americaheldhostile.com/ed070403-1.shtml
Contributed by americaheldhostile on Friday, July 04 @ 08:32:50 EDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By W. David Jenkins III, America Held Hostile
All right already, that is more than enough! What the hell were you thinking? Were you thinking? Have you completely lost your mind? Is there anybody out there keeping an eye on you, kid? I really hate to rant but I just can't let this go.
July 2 - "There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush told reporters at the White House. "My answer is bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation." - Reuters
July 3 - A day after President Bush asserted that coalition forces in Iraq were prepared to deal with any security threat; American troops came under attack again today, with 10 soldiers wounded in three separate incidents. - New York Times
George, the macho routine - and I do mean "routine" - has got to go. The fact that we have kids getting killed because you lied is a travesty in and of itself. Now, once again, you start up the he-man schtick and people start getting hurt - and worse. Haven't you or any of your people learned a damned thing?
"Bring them on?"
Exactly what is your problem?
Are you bothered by the fact that you were not man enough to actually serve when it was your turn? Are you making up for the fact that you couldn't even fulfill your cushy assignment back in the early '70s because you were a blooming mess and couldn't pass a urine test? What, now you feel the need to talk tough so nobody will question what an actual coward you are? You are a coward, George. We saw that long before 9/11.
Your cowardice is the reason for what we now know as "First Amendment Zones." You know those heavily policed, barricaded, way-out-of-the-way places for people who voice their accurate opinions of you. They're usually placed so far away from where you appear that you can be assured you'll never see or hear any dissent.
And we all know why.
Because you're afraid of confrontation in any form. You've been a scaredy-cat since you stole office! Hiding under canopies and limiting access by the press as well as those who abhor you and know you for the fake that you are. George W. Bush, you have given birth to a new phrase!
"He-Man in Hiding!"
We all learned - well, most of us did - what a pathetic excuse for a "president" you are when you did the old "dead or alive" nonsense when it came to Osama bin Laden. "Smoke 'em out," you said. Mister big man.
Well, President Bounty Hunter, where the hell is he?
Hasn't it ever dawned on you that if you hadn't instructed people like John O'Neill to lay off investigating bin Laden prior to the attack, none of that 9/11 stuff would have happened? Is that why you're hiding over 800 pages of the investigative report by the Senate?
So, Mister Dead-or-Alive…where the hell is Osama?
Oh, you thought we forgot?
Y'know, George, it takes more than just talk to make you a man. It takes more than just talk to make you a leader. Sure, you have the ever-obedient sheep in the liberal media who are stretching things to the max to make you look good. Lucky for you, most of the people who rely on American media for their information are idiots who actually think that that aircraft carrier landing was something to be admired. You need to remember one thing, George.
The world is not your Congress.
Just because most of the representatives in both Houses believed every lie you told doesn't make everybody else just as compliant. Just because the lap dogs at Fox "News" wet themselves every time they mention your name doesn't mean the rest of the world community - including many of us here at home - buy your carefully manufactured machismo. Your testosterone complex is trying our patience and - worst of all - killing people who have ten times more cajones than you could ever hope to have.
For Chrissakes, George, you didn't even have the balls (excuse me) to land in Iraq a few weeks ago. No, you did a fly-over. At least your puppy, Tony Blair, had it in him to walk among the people in Basra. But you? You pathetic chicken. You ran and hid like you did on 9/11, Mr. Tough Guy. You are an embarrassment - and worst of all - you're a dangerous embarrassment. Your bravado is killing people.
"Bring them on!"
You pompous S.O.B. - you spoiled little chicken "stuff" brat. Please, please, please, shut your stupid mouth! Your cowardice is killing Americans. And Iraqis. Your big, stupid mouth is not helping the huge mess your lies have created! The world is not Old West Texas. You're not even Texas! Every time you open your big mouth either somebody gets killed or wounded or the stock market falls. Your big mouth just got ten people wounded! There's no telling what your oral nonsense will produce tomorrow.
Shut up, George! You're killing people, you coward!
*******
Hey guys, I don't know about you but I feel a heck of a lot better now - at least I can breathe. And breathing always allows me to be a little creative.
A few months ago, Americans were told to buy mass quantities of duct tape to protect themselves from those who would do them harm. I know there just have to be many, many rolls of duct tape out there that have gone un-used. And…
I have a great idea.
The next time George W. Bush decides it's time to get macho, somebody - please - oh please, grab a roll of that duct tape and wrap it around his whole head. You'll save a life and protect our national security.
It's the patriotic thing to do, the only thing to do.
Reprinted from America Held Hostile:
http://www.americaheldhostile.com/ed070403-1.shtml
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Robert Scheer: 'Blame Bush in California's fiscal crisis'
Posted on Tuesday, July 01 @ 10:46:38 EDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
The other day a woman asked me to sign a petition calling for the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. Why, I asked. Because he bankrupted the state, she said. When I begged to differ that it was the Bush administration and its buddies at companies like Enron that had put the state into an economic tailspin, she said she was being paid according to the number of petitions signed and didn't really care. But voters should care because Davis is being used as a fall guy for problems that are beyond his control.
Remember Enron and those other scandals that cost folks their jobs and their 401(k) savings? They were a result of deregulation, the mantra of the Republicans. Deregulation was most disastrous for California's energy market, in which a crisis cost jobs and threw the world's fifth-largest economy into long-term disruption. This was not the normal workings of the market but the result of market manipulation by officials of Enron and other energy companies, some of whom are on their way to trial.
Still out cruising the boulevards is our president's once close friend, Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay. A major contributor to Bush family political campaigns and former Enron chief executive, Lay invented the energy trading game. It was made possible by his successful lobbying for the 1992 Energy Policy Act, signed into law by the elder Bush. That law allowed a minor Texas company to mushroom into the world's largest energy titan before it went poof.
Daddy Bush also tended to Enron's rise by appointing Wendy L. Gramm to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which promptly exempted electricity trading from the regulatory oversight covering other commodities. Gramm went on to serve on Enron's board of directors and its so-called auditing committee. Her husband, Phil Gramm, then a GOP senator from Texas, later pushed through legislation further deregulating the industry.
When the younger Bush ran for president, he turned to Lay, who became the single biggest contributor to Bush's campaign. George W. returned the favor big-time by appointing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission members who looked the other way when Enron and its fellow swindler companies were fleecing California. These appointees insisted that California's problems were of its own making and would have to be solved without the imposition of the wholesale energy price caps that would have saved taxpayers from a crushing burden.
Vice President Dick Cheney emerged from secret meetings with Enron executives and stated that the administration considered wholesale price caps a "mistake" because "there isn't anything that can be done short-term to produce more kilowatts this summer." Either Cheney was lying or his Enron buddies were lying to him because, at the time, Enron was routing electricity from California to sell at a higher price in Oregon. Federal price controls would have prevented Enron and the other companies from playing one state against another.
It is disingenuous for California Republicans to now blame Davis rather than their man Bush for the state's economic problems. Only last week, the Republican-dominated FERC banned Enron from selling electricity as punishment for having severely distorted Western energy markets. Enron and 60 other companies were ordered to show why they should not be forced to return their illegally gained profits.
FERC at the same time said California must honor $12 billion in long-term contracts written under duress with the same companies that were gaming the market. The contradiction was acknowledged by commission Chairman Patrick H. Wood III: "I guess people could go, 'Gosh, these are the same parties that show up in those other [market-gaming] cases.' "
Duh! No kidding. They are being rewarded for scamming the state, which contributed to the budget crisis, and schoolchildren will have to pay the price.
Californians provide much more to the federal government in taxes than they get back in services. The feds should bail out the states, which cannot indulge in the red-ink financing that has become a specialty of the Bush administration.
It is absurd to blame current difficulties on any state's governor, Republican or Democrat. It is the Bush administration that has mismanaged a successful economy inherited from Bill Clinton. It is the Bush administration that should bear responsibility for the difficulties being experienced by state governments — and it should at least help California as much as it is helping our newest state, Iraq.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/
commentary/la-oe-scheer1jul01,1,1035145.column
Posted on Tuesday, July 01 @ 10:46:38 EDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
The other day a woman asked me to sign a petition calling for the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. Why, I asked. Because he bankrupted the state, she said. When I begged to differ that it was the Bush administration and its buddies at companies like Enron that had put the state into an economic tailspin, she said she was being paid according to the number of petitions signed and didn't really care. But voters should care because Davis is being used as a fall guy for problems that are beyond his control.
Remember Enron and those other scandals that cost folks their jobs and their 401(k) savings? They were a result of deregulation, the mantra of the Republicans. Deregulation was most disastrous for California's energy market, in which a crisis cost jobs and threw the world's fifth-largest economy into long-term disruption. This was not the normal workings of the market but the result of market manipulation by officials of Enron and other energy companies, some of whom are on their way to trial.
Still out cruising the boulevards is our president's once close friend, Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay. A major contributor to Bush family political campaigns and former Enron chief executive, Lay invented the energy trading game. It was made possible by his successful lobbying for the 1992 Energy Policy Act, signed into law by the elder Bush. That law allowed a minor Texas company to mushroom into the world's largest energy titan before it went poof.
Daddy Bush also tended to Enron's rise by appointing Wendy L. Gramm to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which promptly exempted electricity trading from the regulatory oversight covering other commodities. Gramm went on to serve on Enron's board of directors and its so-called auditing committee. Her husband, Phil Gramm, then a GOP senator from Texas, later pushed through legislation further deregulating the industry.
When the younger Bush ran for president, he turned to Lay, who became the single biggest contributor to Bush's campaign. George W. returned the favor big-time by appointing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission members who looked the other way when Enron and its fellow swindler companies were fleecing California. These appointees insisted that California's problems were of its own making and would have to be solved without the imposition of the wholesale energy price caps that would have saved taxpayers from a crushing burden.
Vice President Dick Cheney emerged from secret meetings with Enron executives and stated that the administration considered wholesale price caps a "mistake" because "there isn't anything that can be done short-term to produce more kilowatts this summer." Either Cheney was lying or his Enron buddies were lying to him because, at the time, Enron was routing electricity from California to sell at a higher price in Oregon. Federal price controls would have prevented Enron and the other companies from playing one state against another.
It is disingenuous for California Republicans to now blame Davis rather than their man Bush for the state's economic problems. Only last week, the Republican-dominated FERC banned Enron from selling electricity as punishment for having severely distorted Western energy markets. Enron and 60 other companies were ordered to show why they should not be forced to return their illegally gained profits.
FERC at the same time said California must honor $12 billion in long-term contracts written under duress with the same companies that were gaming the market. The contradiction was acknowledged by commission Chairman Patrick H. Wood III: "I guess people could go, 'Gosh, these are the same parties that show up in those other [market-gaming] cases.' "
Duh! No kidding. They are being rewarded for scamming the state, which contributed to the budget crisis, and schoolchildren will have to pay the price.
Californians provide much more to the federal government in taxes than they get back in services. The feds should bail out the states, which cannot indulge in the red-ink financing that has become a specialty of the Bush administration.
It is absurd to blame current difficulties on any state's governor, Republican or Democrat. It is the Bush administration that has mismanaged a successful economy inherited from Bill Clinton. It is the Bush administration that should bear responsibility for the difficulties being experienced by state governments — and it should at least help California as much as it is helping our newest state, Iraq.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/
commentary/la-oe-scheer1jul01,1,1035145.column
