Letters to the Editor
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Why Rumsfeld Is Out
Lets be clear, the reason Rumsfeld is out, and out so quickly after the Dem's took control is that is inconceivable that Rummy would sit for Dem controlled congressional committee hearings without MAJOR damage to the presidency. I'm sure as sure can be, had the Dem's not taken the house or the Senate, he'd still be Sec. of Def.
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OK, Randall, just for us dummies here...
...what would Rummy tell a congressional enquiry that would be so damaging to the presidency?
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I have a question...
Now that the Dems control the Hill... is there a way to pin the whole Iraq thing squarely on the Current Occupant and Cheney? That is, can the dems come right out and say, bluntly, that this war was a misbegotten disaster from the start, should never have been fought at all, and that anything we do now is going to be messy because the entire affair was a horrible mistake? And make that mess stick to GW's shirt-front for the next two years?
Because, make no mistake, if the Dems DON'T do this, they will get blamed for whatever happens next. So, it seems to me, the first order of business, is to make sure the Teeming Millions are very clear on just WHO is responsible for this debacle.
The fix--whatever it ends up being--is gonna be very, very messy. Any time you do something really stupid, fixing it is messy, in terms of losing face, status, and maybe spending time in a jail-cell, yes? The Dems should not accept blame for any of this shit. Voting for the war? Yeah, they should eat crow for that. But voting to let Bush "have war powers" was NOT the same as telling him "sure, go to war for no reason, lie to us about why, and then fuck it up as badly as humanly possible without actually using nukes too."
I'm telling you, if the Dems don't make sure Bush is tarred with this mess now and forever, including whatever splatter there is when we try to clean it up--and there will be splatter, lots of it--THEY will get tarred with it.
(there is a part of me, the idiot-part, who would like to see us pull out right now, or, back to our big bases, just leave the field completely. There is no earthly reason why one more American should die over there, for GW's fucking vanity. We should start now. Right. Now. How much worse would that be than what's going on now? Until we get out of the way, the people of Iraq cannot coalesce around genuine leadership..probably some strongman, eventually, much like Saddam. The sooner we just pack up and go sit in our big fortified bases (after all this, you don't think we're just going to leave all that oil, now do you?), the better. But, GW and the dems will delay, and more will die, until everyone can find a way that allows for a minimum of crow-eating. Although, gee-ZUS, what way that would be, I have no idea. It's all bad)
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Well Chas, it's about the oil
Bush finally let slip the final and most honest rationale for the war in Iraq: The United States cannot afford to have 26 percent of the entire world supply of light sweet crude oil fall into the hands of our enemies.
Who are our enemies? Oh, Bush will lie and tell you it's those terrorists who belong to no sovereign nation. He's lying of course. He explained that the American people should be worried that these terrorists might just cut off our oil supply, withhold it from us, to drive up the price and ruin our economy.
He didn't want to tell us who he perceives our real enemy to be. He says it's terrorists. But the truth is, the military/industrial "think tanks" like the Rand Corporation, know that our most fearsome enemy is not any terror organization, it's the rising economic competition we will face from China and India over the next 50 years.
China and India must never get their hands on that Iraqi or Saudi oil. It doesn't matter if the United States gets the oil because we still have lots. It's offshore California, offshore Gulf Coast, and all over the North Slope of Alaska. But it would be worse than a nuclear war for the United States if we ever let China and India's currency and industrial production turn us into a second-rate world power.
The hidden rationale of America's corporatist leaders is this: If we can't have the oil in Iraq, then nobody is going to get it!
So now that the Dems have pulled off a coup, Bush 41 has called in his old C.I.A. hand along with family consigliari James Baker to come up with an exit strategy from Iraq with only one real, but unspoken, goal: End this thing in such a way that we wind up with that oil flowing out through Basra into the Persian Gulf, and over land from Kurdistan to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
The hell with our soldiers who died for "Iraqi Freedom," the hell with the people of Iraq, the hell with everything, every rationale, but save that goddamned oil at all costs!
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Error
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According to Wikipedia, Robert Gates has served in uniform.
"Before joining the CIA full-time as an intelligence analyst, he spent two years in the Air Force."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gates
Either way, I am hopeful this nomination signals a shift away from the neo-con 'war' paradigm, back towards one of 'intelligence/law enforcement'.
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Cut and run
Hasn't Rumsfeld effectively cut and run from the war now?
Just gloating.
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A better strategy?
It's great that Bush (and the Democrats) now feel they have a bit more political wiggle room to come up with new solutions in Iraq, but I have to wonder if any solutions even exist at this point. My fear is that Iraq has passed a sort of event horizon where things have degenerated past any hope of redemption, no matter how ingenious or motivated our new plans might be.
It seems that the invasion of Iraq was like opening Pandora's box, and now the demons are loose and can perhaps never be put back in.