It's All in the Family

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: MISFEASANCE, MALFEASANCE, EXPOSED, DISGRACED, FIRED . . . . HIRED!

And he has been through that sequence not once but twice – first when he was kicked upstairs from his disastrous fraudulent performance as Deputy Secretary of Defense and was immediately hired as President of the World Bank, and most recently when he was kicked out as President of the World Bank and instantly hired by the American Enterprise Institute, a so-called “think tank”, as a visiting “scholar”. (A “think tank” is Washingtonese for a propaganda-generating organization in scholarly guise, and a place to go when you’ve lost your job.)

Wolfowitz is the person primarily responsible for lying the US into the catastrophic holocaust of Iraq – predicting the invasion would be a "cake walk", that the Iraqis would welcome the aggressors with singing and dancing, and that Iraq was a "brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily”. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell initially blocked Wolfowitz’ war schemes, but Wolfowitz, along with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, held secret meetings about invading Iraq from which Powell was excluded.

During Wolfowitz' pre-war testimony before Congress, he ridiculed General Eric K. Shinseki's estimates of the size of the post war occupation force and estimated that fewer than 100,000 troops would be necessary in the war. General Shinseki had testified that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for post-war Iraq.

Wolfowitz testified:
‘There has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark.’
In 2006, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid testified to Congress that General Shinseki's estimate had proved correct. In July 2007 the US has at least 154,000 troops in Iraq, with 30,000 sent over as the “surge”. That’s about twice what Wolfowitz said would be needed, and events show that it is still insufficient.

Eventually Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz left the Bush administration as total failures, and Wolfowitz was punished by Bush & Co. with a nomination to be president of the World Bank. Criticism was widespread in European media. The former chief economist for the World Bank said that if Wolfowitz became its president, "'The World Bank will once again become a hate figure.” But the nomination was, of course, praised by the US press.

Wolfowitz’ presidency brought not only protests, but also a gigantic salary for Wolfowitz’ girlfriend, and loudly protested appointments of two of his Bush administration buddies, Robin Cleveland and Kevin Kellems, as his close advisors with $250,000 tax-free contracts. Basically, Wolfowitz stole from the World Bank to enrich his friends and was properly fired . . . although he called it a resignation.

End of the line for Wolfowitz, right? Shouldn’t he be looking at the “Help Wanted” ads or considering a career in Burger King management? Oh, no. As soon as he walks out the door of the World Bank he walks into the American Enterprise Institute -- which just happens to be home to other leading advocates of the Iraq war, including omnipresent Richard Perle (ex chairman of the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon, who has at least as many reasons to be jobless as Paul Wolfowitz has), former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, and Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Cheney.

It’s like a family reunion.

Religious Fanaticism and Middle Eastern Wars

I was checking for new stories about Paul Wolfowitz as he prepares to walk the plank from his presidency of the World Bank, and I came across this article by Christopher Vasillopulos, a professor of international relations at Eastern Connecticut State University. I especially admire the article because it says so many things I’ve written here on VIEW FROM THE MOON.

I quote parts of the article. My comments are in [brackets].


‘WOLFOWITZ AND PODHORETZ: JEWISH NEOCONS AND THE IDEA OF ENTITLEMENT

‘Two Jewish neocons have been in the news . . . Paul Wolfowitz, soon to be the ex-president of the World Bank, and Norman Podhoretz, the long-time editor of “Commentary”.

‘Wolfowitz has been forced to resign due to corruption and Podhoretz has made headlines by saying that he is praying that the US bombs Iran. I see these stories as pieces of a larger whole, united by the Jewish idea of entitlement, which in its neocon version has a violent expression.

[So, Podhoretz asks Jehovah to make US bombs rain on Iran while Senator Joe Lieberman takes the low road and calls on television for the US to bomb Iran (see my “a Joe Lieberman note”, June 10) -- a religious and a political double whammy designed to get Americans to kill and die once more for Israel.]

‘A series of recent books which describe the inner workings of the Bush administration agree that Paul Wolfowitz was one of the most important, if not the most important advocate of the Iraq war. As undersecretary for defense, he was the highest ranking of the Jewish neocons, who were unrelenting in their efforts to reshape the Middle East.

‘Long before 9/11, Wolfowitz and other neocons [including I. Lewis Libby and Richard Perle] authored the doctrine of pre-emptive war. As is well known, the fundamental purpose of the doctrine was to create regimes friendly to Israel. Failing that, regimes hostile to Israel would be weakened. What is not so well-known is how Jewish neocons convinced non-Jewish neocons that eliminating Saddam Hussein was essential. Their assertion was simply that Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi Hitler and that failure to remove him would lead to another Holocaust.

[I started to say, “Who would be stupid enough to believe that?”. Then I remembered G.W. Bush.]

‘One would expect the neoconservatives, who almost always default to military rather than diplomatic activity, to use the word, “appeasement” regularly. Instead, they use the word “Holocaust.” This equivalency is based on the implicit allegation that appeasement implies Holocaust. When the Holocaust model is invoked to justify war against the Middle Eastern enemies of Israel, it amounts to a Jewish jihad. An analysis of Wolfowitz’s zeal to invade Iraq, no less than Podhoretz’s obsession with Iran, however, will demonstrate [this claim’s] truth.

‘One need not be Jewish to employ the Old Testament’s perspective that the world is divided between good and evil, an idea that is, in fact, the premise of Christian fundamentalism. Jewish jihadism is a state of mind, one which takes its cue from the Old Testament’s penchant for Armageddon. . . . Paul Wolfowitz and other Jews in the Bush administration, including among others, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, have most often played the Holocaust card to shame those who were reluctant to confront Saddam.

[I am soon going to post on FLIGHTS OF PEGASUS more of my own thoughts on the Old Testament and its pernicious influence, “The Impeachment of Jehovah: Introduction” and “The Impeachment of Jehovah.”]

‘To place morality or idealism or any other absolute value in the forefront of foreign policy is to make policy formation an offshoot of a religious commitment. . . All absolutes are religious, for they make a direct appeal to authority that is not tested by reason or evidence. There are countless references by associates of Wolfowitz and other Jewish jihadists that they were dedicated zealots impervious to reason and evidence which tended to erode their absolute conviction that they and only they were right. Realists, like Halper and Clarke and I, believe that international politics are largely determined by national self-interest and that its chief instrument is military power. Realists also believe that this state of affairs, as awful as its can sometimes be, is preferable to international politics driven by any absolute, moral or religious value. Such values are the breeding grounds of fanatics, of those who believe that their actions, regardless how horrific, are ordained by God or some other form of the Absolute. Jewish jihadists, like other jihadists, are ready to destroy the world rather than let it persist in sin.

‘This is how the Iraq war was summed up by Gen. Zinni: “I don’t think the neocons really give a shit what happened in Iraq and the aftermath. … They said: Look if it works out, let’s say we get Chalabi in, he’s our boy, great. We don’t and maybe there is some half-ass government out there, maybe a strong man emerges, it fractures, and there’s basically a loose federation and there’s really a Kurdish state. Who cares? There’s some bloodshed and it’s messy. Who cares? I mean, we’ve taken out Saddam. We’ve asserted our strength in the Middle East. We’re changing the dynamic. We’re off the peace process as the centerpiece and we’re not putting pressure on Israel.”’

[I have previously written that the Israel-first Jews who are responsible for the Iraq war did not and do not care what happens to Iraq now that it is reduced to bloody chaos and rendered incapable of challenging Israel. While American politicians pretend that their war aim was and is “democracy and freedom” for a stable and peaceful Iraq, the neocons will rejoice all the more if Iraq remains in anarchy and American soldiers fight there forever.]

Interlude?

I’ve been mulling over a post for VIEW FROM THE MOON for several days, unsure why I haven’t written anything. For awhile I was asking, “What’s the use?” Maybe I’ll take Cindy Sheehan’s cue. Maybe I’ll just say, “The show is cancelled because of lack of interest.”

I picture those who look at this blog as falling into three groups: 1. A small group who agree with me on Zionism and other things, and who probably know more about them than I do, and who can read the same opinions a thousandfold on other websites. 2. A small group who regularly scan the Internet for anti-Zionist and “anti-Semitic” opinions and leave canned comments lifted from “talking points” distributed by the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center – lifted verbatim, spelling mistakes and all. 3. A very large proportion, a huge proportion, who have no idea what I’m talking about and couldn’t care less. To the latter crowd belong those who think that Iraq attacked the United States in New York, who believe that some nations are “evil” and some “good”, who have absorbed two generations of teachings that Arabs are sinister and cruel while Jews are noble victims, and who have no idea where Palestine and Israel and Iraq and Iran are, much less what Zionism is or how Israel came into being. If I could believe that VIEW FROM THE MOON had influenced even one of this latter group to become informed and to escape the conventional thinking about American foreign policy, I would feel successful and would never consider quitting. . . but I have no reason to be that optimistic.

Viewed from the Moon, the Earth still looks beautiful. . . silent, blue, seductively veiled in swirls of white clouds. But then it always looks that way. From the Moon you can’t see the explosions in Iraq or Palestine. You can’t hear the tortured screams of prisoners of the Americans and Israelis. If you had just arrived on the Moon, in fact, you would have the impression that you were looking across black space at a luminous cosmic paradise.

Paradise lost, perhaps, but not because of a heavenly Old Testament disciplinarian. Paradise lost, rather, because of the nature of humankind and its inability to organize itself so that its most wise, kind, generous and peaceful members are in charge of its nations. When the Earth is viewed from the Earth, where for the most part the greedy and selfish and brutal rule, the peaceful lunar view seems a sad mockery.

And yet lately Americans (those few paying any attention) could get the impression that we are going through a slight lull in the steady rise of violence and insanity. Here are some of the positive events that have created this intermezzo:

1. Neocon Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief Iraq war criminals, booted out by the World Bank because of brazen misconduct and incompetence as President of the bank.

2. I. Lewis Libby, Wolfowitz’ protégé and co-planner of wars in the Middle East, given a reasonably hefty prison sentence for his crimes, although for some reason still walking around a free man.

3. Representatives of the United States sitting down and talking with Iranian representatives in the first public diplomatic discussions between the two nations in many years. This accompanied by a decrease in American anti-Iranian oratory and in what were almost daily Israeli threats to bomb Iran.

4. Some signs that even Republicans are finally starting to join in pressuring Bush to do something about ending (or at least altering) the American military presence in Iraq.

5. An increase in lip service to curbing global warming.

6. An upset tummy for G.W. Bush which kept him from embarrassing the United States overseas for at least a few hours.

7. That great American national icon (who may replace the Statue of Liberty as the symbol of American ideals and aspirations), Paris Hilton, put into jail for a series of flagrant violations of law, then let out by a strangely compassionate sheriff, and then put back again. Which of that is positive news and which is negative news depends on whether you are Paris Hilton or almost everybody else, but in general it gives the impression that justice is being done, or at least attempted, in a country where there is a blatant double system of incarceration for the rich and famous on the one hand everybody else on the other hand.


Of course I know that there have been negative as well as soothing developments in the past couple of weeks, and that the sewer of horrors gushes unabated in occupied Palestine and Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that those who scheme for war have not stopped their scheming, and that any apparent improvements in U.S. policies will probably prove illusory and shortlived. Nevertheless, being able to write a few positive things has provided a pleasant interlude.

Wolfowitz Track Record

We can see from this May 4 AP report on Paul Wolfowitz that the man chiefly responsible for lying the United States into war with Iraq, and for cheating the World Bank by grossly inflating his girlfriend's salary, is only running true to form.



'JAKARTA, Indonesia - The controversy surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz spotlights a lack of ethics that was apparent two decades ago when he was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia.

Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political economy at Northwestern University, said that Wolfowitz's past career already showed he was ill fit to run the World Bank.

'"From the very beginning, I felt this was the wrong person for the job," said Winters. He pointed to the radical deregulation of Indonesia's banking sector in 1988, promoted by Wolfowitz's economic team and international lenders. It "opened the floodgates for local crony conglomerates to set up private banks and take in deposits from a trusting public."

'With no rule of law, there was no oversight and no supervision, he said.
"The foxes were running wild in the financial chicken coop and no one, including Wolfowitz, pressured the Indonesians to design safeguards to protect the public's deposits," he said. One result was the 1997-98 financial crisis "that plunged tens of millions into abject poverty."

'Wolfowitz has been arguing that corruption is crippling the world's poorest nations. But that was "the very thing he closed his eyes to" when he served as ambassador from 1986 to 1989 during the regime of the dictator Suharto, said pro-democracy activist Binny Buchori.

'"He's a hypocrite," she said. "He should quit."'

Back Again to More of the Same

After an unplanned and unintended leave of absence from VIEW FROM THE MOON, I find that nothing has really changed in the Wonderland of U.S. news except that, since my last report, Paul Wolfowitz has attained a few headlines on wire services and has even been mentioned on at least one evening television report. Of course he is still a great guy as far as the United States government is concerned, in spite of his having engineered a disastrous U.S. war, for which he was rewarded with promotion to the presidency of the World Bank. I get the impression that although his popularity with the Zionists and the mass of Israel supporters (and therefore most of the American press) is undiluted, the great reservoir of enmity toward him has reached the overflow point. Along with case histories of Jewish malefactors who have been supported by influential Jews, it would be interesting to analyze the rare cases in which someone like Wolfowitz begins to be abandoned by his tribe and the communications media. Has something made Paul Wolfowitz less immune to public criticism than other Jewish men in comparable cases? Whatever the answer, I predict that if Wolfowitz is forced to leave the World Bank he will be provided with a well-feathered nest in another place.


The question of Paul Finkelstein’s tenure is still up in the air as far as I can tell. As I reported, the fanatically Zionist showboater Alan Dershowitz has made every effort to interfere in the affairs of a university with which he has no connection by opposing Professor Finkelstein’s tenure in the most outrageous and inappropriate ways. The reason, of course, is that Finkelstein, even though Jewish, has written books criticizing Israel. If he is refused tenure, he faces – because of his defiance of Jewish causes – the possibility of being fired . . . an avenue down which Dershowitz is sure to lead a loud parade. Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz himself, far from suffering job insecurity, will in addition to his Harvard law professorship be rewarded with a job at an Israeli educational institution. Dershowitz will be joining The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya during the 2007-2008) academic year. (Herzliya is a town in Israel near Tel Aviv.) Dershowitz will teach a special class entitled "Law & Terrorism" at IDC Herzliya's Radzyner School of Law. He will, according to an Israeli newspaper, join some of “the greatest legal minds in Israel”, while the U.S., I venture to add, will lose one of its more feeble legal minds.

I will try to attune myself again to world events and write something interesting for this blog, but meanwhile it does seem that we are in a slow period in which the U.S. news simply repeats the same predictable tales every day: Democrats too cowardly to stop Iraq war funding; Republican administration too dastardly to allow a law which might end the war next year. Court Jester and titular Attorney General Alberto Gonzales still clowning, taking his act to the Senate Judiciary Committee where laughter at his performance could be heard even in the corridors outside the hearing room. Israel continuing to murder, kidnap, and torture Palestinians every day without American publicity or protest. An Iranian diplomat released after being kidnapped by American force in Iraq bearing clear marks of torture, including holes drilled into his feet, but dropping from the U.S. news in about twenty minutes. Iran for some reason being allowed a quiet period, but the Wolfowitz/Bush war in Iraq unfailingly killing large numbers of people every day – including more and more of those American troops we are supposed to “support” by keeping them there to be killed.

Speaking of stopping funding of the Iraq war, which the American voters have said they want ended immediately, how much money can it take to carry out the order, “Turn around the tanks and trucks and head for the nearest border”?

More Missing from the News

Jolly Paul Wolfowitz


For me the biggest news in recent days was the death of Kurt Vonnegut, but for U.S. television's prime time news and commentary shows, the big news was the firing of a particularly repulsive “talk show host”, Don Imus, because of his insulting racial comments about a women’s basketball team. Imus deserved to be fired and exiled to an especially small, cold island in the Atlantic, but did his idiocy deserve more than half of hour-long news programs for several nights?

The rest of the evening TV “news” centered on the stale tale of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who oversaw the mass firing of U.S. Attorneys seen as unsupportive of the Bush-Republican political machine.

A more important story about a more important person was never mentioned at all. There was not a hint that Paul Wolfowitz, “the architect of the Iraq war” who was kicked upstairs by Bush to the presidency of the World Bank when criticism of the war became hot, was in trouble for having engineered the transfer of his girlfriend from the World Bank to the U.S. State Department with a huge salary rise to a bloated salary of almost $200,000 a year. There was no justification for the pay raise. Wolfowitz tried to cover his tracks and at first denied the charges, but recently “apologized” for poor judgment.

World Bank personnel are literally shouting for Wolfowitz to resign. Last Thursday, World Bank staffers heckled Wolfowitz by shouting "resign" as he spoke about the issue. Wolfowitz has “declined to address any details of the controversy.” He has been very unpopular at the World Bank not only for his rude manner but for trying to engineer special privileges for himself.

President Bush, of course, of course, “has confidence” in Wolfowitz. The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury has made public expressions of support.

The “New York Times” wire service mentioned the Wolfowitz scandal online a few days ago, and later I found the story on Google news. Today the wire service headlines are to the effect that Wolfowitz intends to “weather the storm” and remain president of the World Bank in spite of demands for his resignation.

My point, of course, is that the U.S. news media are protecting Wolfowitz by not featuring his story – and generally not mentioning it at all on television -- for the same reason that the media screamed for I. Lewis Libby to be pardoned after his conviction for perjury. ”Let’s Hear it for Libby, Folks!”


In the case of Wolfowitz’ s misdeeds, still being debated, silence is the best protection while support is being organized (and paid for) behind the scenes. In Libby’s case, the object is to keep him out of jail after he was convicted, and so the best course was a loud public outcry about “injustice”.

Those two men are being supported and protected in one way or another because they are Jewish. (The publicly whipped Alberto Gonzales, by the way, is Catholic.) I’ve discussed this phenomenon and will discuss it in future posts. Again and again we’ve seen Jews receiving news media support in situations where gentiles have not. In financial scandals and frauds where several guilty parties are involved, it is mostly the non-Jewish miscreants whose names appear in the headlines, while the Jewish participants are hardly mentioned even if they had the leading roles. At the least, the volume is turned down when Jews are mentioned. There is a history in financial and corporate crime of gentile “front men” going down amid loud publicity while the Jewish co-criminals somehow fade away with no or little punishment.

Wolfowitz earned notoriety and condemnation long before he committed misdeeds as head of the World Bank. He is more responsible than any other single individual for engineering the invasion of Iraq. It was he who jumped in front of a camera shortly after 9/11 and said that it would be necessary to "end states that support terrorism." I was shocked at the ominous words “end states”, which were soon translated into, “Attack Iraq.” Wolfowitz and his fellow “neocons” such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, and Lewis Libby did everything possible to boost arguments and manufacture false evidence to justify a United States war on Iraq. Of course Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were also involved. Interesting, is it not, that Rumsfeld was forced to resign in disgrace, while Wolfowitz – who bears much more responsibility for the Iraq debacle than Rumsfeld – escaped to a plush job as head of the World Bank.

We Fight for Israel. Why?

A premise of this blog is that pro-Israel influence on the U.S. government is the most important story missing from American news coverage.

It’s very rare to hear something like this in the U.S.:

“Jordan’s King Abdullah said Sunday [on ABC, November 26, 2006], the problems in the Middle East go beyond the war in Iraq and that much of the region soon could become engulfed in violence unless the central issues are addressed quickly. King Abdullah said it is natural that Americans, with troops fighting in Iraq, view that war as the major problem in the Middle East. “But, for the majority of us living in this part of the world, it has always been the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab problem."

(I have to comment that Americans wouldn’t have the war problem if they hadn’t started the war.)

A few courageous souls have spoken out.

Pat Buchanan, in the March 24, 2003 issue of the "American Conservative”, wrote under the title “Whose War?”:

“We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.
“They charge us with anti-Semitism—i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a ‘passionate attachment’ to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America.”

An elected official who speaks out against pro-Israel pressure is rarest of all.

Under the title ”Bush wanted to invade Iraq to help Israel” , U.S. Senator Ernest Hollings wrote, more than two years ago, in May 2004,

“The president’s war has backfired, and we’re creating more terrorism than we’re stopping. . . . Even President Bush acknowledges that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11. . . . Of course there were no weapons of mass destruction. Israel's intelligence, Mossad, knows what's going on in Iraq. . . . They have to know. . . . Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction if there were any or if they had been removed. . . .
“With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel. . . . Bush felt . . . spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats. You don't come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq. But George W. Bush, as stated by former Secretary Paul O'Neill and others, started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq days after inauguration. And, without any Iraq connection to 9-11, within weeks he had the Pentagon outlining a plan to invade Iraq.”
Hollings named columnist Charles Krauthammer; Richard Perle, the former chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board; and Paul Wolfowitz, a deputy secretary of defense, as leaders of the push for U.S. wars which would benefit Israel.
“With President Bush's domino policy in the Mideast gone awry, he keeps shouting ‘Terrorism War.’ Terrorism is a method, not a war. We don't call the Crimean War with the Charge of the Light Brigade the Cavalry War. Or World War II the Blitzkrieg War. There is terrorism in Ireland against the Brits. There is terrorism in India and in Pakistan. In the Mideast terrorism is a separate problem to be defeated by diplomacy and negotiation, not militarily.”
Various Jewish organizations attacked Senator Hollings. The ADL (Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith) sent him a letter:

"This is reminiscent of age-old, anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government. We urge you . . . to reconsider these comments and reject public debate that invokes stereotypes or intolerance of any kind."

(You can always spot the ADL by its use of the word “canard”. It’s almost a trademark, like calling any criticism of the Israel Lobby the equivalent of some insanely inflated theory of a Jewish conspiracy. See, Reductio ad absurdum.)

In response to the charges of anti-Semitism, Senator Hollings spoke in the Senate on May 20, 2004. I haven’t yet been able to find a transcript of that speech, but a report in the ”JTA Global News Service of the Jewish People” offered some excerpts:

“I don’t apologize for this column,” Hollings said. “I want them to apologize to me for talking about anti-Semitism.” And he reiterated his view that the Iraq war was fought for Israel. “That is not a conspiracy. That is the policy, Everybody knows it . . . You can’t have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) gives you around here,”
The JTA article went on to report that some Democrats on Capitol Hill said Hollings was on the mark about AIPAC.
“Sen. Hollings eloquently stated what many members of Congress believe but are too afraid to say,” said one senior Democratic Hill staffer. . . The staffer said lawmakers fear they’ll lose elections if they don’t support AIPAC. “More likely, they’ll lose key fund-raising support or be deluged with calls and appearances from pro-Israel lobbyists and constituents. Sometimes it’s just easier to sign the letter.”

And sometimes it’s just easier to start the war.

We're Losing Patience!

One of the most grotesque features of the current attitude of the Bush maladministration toward its Iraq war – as the situation tumbles deeper and deeper into chaos and carnage -- is to bluster to the Iraqi puppet government, ludicrously cooped up in the American “Green Zone”: “It’s your mess. Fix it, and hurry up about it. President Bush is losing patience!”

The great missing piece in this nonsense is that Bush & Co., including Paul Wolfowitz (who has been kicked upstairs), and Richard Perle (who has lately turned to blaming the U.S. government for botching the lovely war he planned and promoted with lies), refuse to recognize their responsibility for the hideous mess.

Until George II invaded, Iraq was a remarkably stable, prosperous, and orderly country, considering its underlying religious and ethnic tensions and the murderous effects of years of U.S. “sanctions” begun under the reign of George I. One might say that Saddam Hussein demonstrated great leadership in preventing just the kind of civil war which has now broken out.

After invading Iraq and waffling, clueless, over the barbaric rape of Iraq’s antiquities, unique remnants of the first great civilization on Earth, the Bush gang has presided over ever-accelerating violence against both Americans and Iraqis.

Surprise, Mr. Bush! When you attack a country for no reason after starving thousands of its children, bomb its cities, shoot people indiscriminately, render most of population unemployed, make torture national policy, arrest and humiliate the country’s president and murder him via a kangaroo court, how can it be that the people don’t want the Americans in Iraq? It must come as a terrible shock that instead of dancing and singing for the invaders, the Iraqis want to kill them.

To be fair, how could even Bush’s brilliant Brains Trust have predicted that these ungrateful Iraqis, deprived of their leaders, their economy, their jobs, their accustomed supplies of gas and electricity, and their army and police forces, would become increasingly violent not only toward Americans but also toward traditionally conflicting factions. (On the subject of brilliant brains, Richard Perle has been associated with several of those propaganda generators which the press calls “Think Tanks”; a more appropriate name in this case would be “Dumb Tanks”, or more flatteringly, “Fib Vats”.) After all, says Mr. Bush, we’ve done all we can to bring the blessings of democracy to your benighted land, and our marines and army are blasting away at you day and night. What else do you expect from us? Start doing your part! I’m losing patience!

So, says Bush, let’s set some deadlines – er, milestones – for you so you can take the blame for what we’ve caused and we can high-tail it out of here.

However the U.S. gets out, what Israel wanted when it said to Bush through such people as Perle and Wolfowitz, “Let’s you and him fight”, was a helpless, impotent Iraq, and that’s what the Israel got. Democracy and freedom had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq.

The Israeli goals of eliminating competition in its region are obviously more important to President Bush than the interests of his own country, and he may bask in
AIPAC's
approval as long as Iraq remains one less Middle Eastern rival of the Jewish state. . . unless he balks at attacking Iran on Israel’s behalf.

THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS

I just saw this quotation, attributed to Jon Stewart: “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.“

At least the Pilgrims invited the Indians to share a feast, unlike the Zionists before they began killing the Palestinians and taking their land. Mr. Stewart is a very bright man, and he mentions on almost every “Daily Show” that he is a Jew -- Leibowitz. With those attributes, could he have missed the irony in his mockery of the first Thanksgiving (after which, incidentally, the Pilgrims did not kill their guests)? One of those conspicuous absences of the kind I mentioned yesterday is the absence of Israel as a butt of Jon Stewart’s biting wit.

Come to think of it, how many comedians on American TV have you heard making jokes about Israel in the past month? The past six months? The past six years? “Hmmm” as Jon Stewart would say, stroking his chin . . . something else is conspicuously missing.

Israelis on land privately owned by Palestinians

Let’s conclude with thoughts of some things to be thankful for:

The Sun.

The Earth.

Pets.

That Donald Rumsfeld is gone.

Flowers.

That Paul Wolfowitz may possibly do less damage to America as President of the World Bank than he did as Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Pizza.

The oceans.

The Richard Perle is no longer on television almost every night explaining why the U.S. has to invade Iraq.

Trees.

That Google News has finally stopped featuring Sacha Baron Cohen on its website every day.

Horses.

That Madonna can't adopt a new child every week.

Pecan pie.

Curries.

Clouds.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!