Dark Passage: PNAC's Blueprint for Empire

(Original version published Sept. 20, 2002 in the Moscow Times. This is the expanded version from the book, Empire Burlesque.)

Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow.

Adolf Hitler clearly spelled out his plans to destroy the Jews and launch wars of conquest to secure German domination of world affairs in his 1925 book, long before he ever assumed power. Despite the zig-zags of rhetoric he later employed, the various PR spins and temporary justifications offered for this or that particular policy, any attentive reader of his vile regurgitation could have divined his intentions as he drove his country – and the world – to murderous upheaval.

Similarly – in method, if not entirely in substance – the Bush Regime's foreign policy is also being carried out according to a strict blueprint first written ten years ago, then renewed a few months before the Regime was installed in power by the judicial coup of December 2000.

What does the plan call for? An attack on Iraq. Vast increases in military spending. Planting new American bases all over the world, from the jungles of South America to the steppes of Central Asia. Embracing the concept of "pre-emptive war" and unilateral action as cornerstones of national strategy.

These policies may seem like reactions to the "changed world" confronting America after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But in fact, each one of them – and many other policies now being advanced by the Bush Administration – was planned long before the first plane ever struck the doomed Twin Towers.

They are the handiwork of an obscure but influential conservative group called Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose members – including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – now sit in the highest reaches of power. The papers they produced during the 1990s are like a roadmap of the course that America is following – a course which PNAC hopes will lead to a "benign" but utterly dominant "American Empire."

The Unipolar Moment
Not surprisingly, the roots of PNAC go back to the first Bush Administration. In 1992, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney asked two of his top aides, Paul Wolfowitz (now assistant secretary of Defense) and Lewis Libby (now Cheney's chief of staff), to draw up a "Defense Guidance Plan" to shape American strategy in the post-Cold War world. They produced an aggressive, ambitious document calling for the unilateral use of American military might to "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." Military intervention would be "a constant fixture" of what Wolfowitz and Libby called a "new order" which the United States – not the United Nations – would "establish and protect."

The goal was to seize the opportunity offered by the collapse of the Soviet Union – which left the United States without a serious international rival – and extend this "unipolar moment" of American dominance for decades to come; indeed, into a "New American Century."

The report was leaked in the midst of the 1992 presidential campaign, sparking controversy over its "imperial ambitions," and was publicly disowned by President George H.W. Bush. After the Bush team was defeated by Bill Clinton, a lame-duck Cheney finally issued a watered-down version of the paper as official policy. The Clinton Administration then scrapped it upon taking office.

But the unipolar vision of American dominance was not forgotten. During the 1990s, it was refined and expanded in a number of conservative think tanks – the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Hudson Institute, the Center for Security Policy and others – whose memberships often overlapped. And now that they were out of office, the advocates of dominance could speak more freely.

One former member of Cheney's Defense Department team, Zalmay Khalilzad (now Bush's special emissary to Afghanistan), wrote openly that the U.S. must "be willing to use force" to express its "global leadership" and preclude the rise of potential rivals. Others, such as former Reagan official and AEI stalwart Richard Perle (now head of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board) and Douglas Feith (now assistant secretary of Defense), worked with Israel's Likud Party, drawing up plans calling for American-led "regime change" efforts in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Finally, in 1997, Project for the New American Century was formed as a focal point for disseminating the dominance ideal. It was a "big tent" of Great Power adherents: Beltway players like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, former Vice President Dan Quayle, and former Reagan education secretary turned public scold, William Bennett; Christian "social conservatives" like Gary Bauer; and the so-called "neoconservatives" (often former Democrats whose staunch anti-communism had led them to the Reagan Right), including Elliot Abrams, who'd been convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal but was pardoned by George Bush Sr. (and now serves on the White House director of Middle East policy). Other notable figures joining PNAC included the Afghan-born Khalilzad, publisher and presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and Jeb Bush, younger brother of the president-to-be.

"A New Pearl Harbor"
PNAC fired its first shot across the bow in 1998, with letters to President Clinton and Congressional leaders calling for "regime change" in Iraq, by force if necessary, and the establishment of a "strong U.S. military presence in the region." Then in September 2000, just months before the disputed election that brought George W. Bush to power, the group published a highly detailed, 90-page "blueprint" for transforming America's military – and the nation's role on the world stage.

The document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," acknowledged its adherence to the "basic tenets" of the controversial 1992 Wolfowitz-Libby report, and advocated a series of "transformations" in national defense and foreign affairs. These included:

--- Projecting American dominance with a "worldwide network of forward operating bases" – some permanent, others "temporary access arrangements" as needed for various military interventions – in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. These additions to America's already-extensive overseas deployments would act as "the cavalry on the new American frontier" – a frontier that PNAC declared now extended throughout the world.

--- Withdrawing from arms control treaties to allow for the development of a global missile shield, the deployment of space-based weapons and the production of a new generation of "battlefield nuclear weapons," especially "bunker-busters" for penetrating underground fortifications.

--- Raising the U.S. military budget to at least 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, with annual increases of tens of billions of dollars each year.

--- Developing sophisticated new technologies to "control the global commons of cyberspace" by closely monitoring communications and transactions on the Internet.

--- Pursuing the development of "new methods of attack – electronic, 'non-lethal, biological…in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace and perhaps the world of microbes." Just this month, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was complaining to Congress about long-standing international chemical weapons treaties which have "tangled us up so badly" and prevented the use of non-lethal chemical arms in subduing enemy armies – and enemy populations.

--- Developing the ability to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." This means moving beyond the "two-war standard" of preparedness which has guided U.S. strategy since World War II in order to account for "new realities and potential new conflicts." It lists countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya as targets for those potential new conflicts, and urges Pentagon warplanners to consider not merely containing them or defeating them in battle, but "changing their regimes."

Oddly enough, although "regime change" in Iraq was still clearly a priority for PNAC, it had little to do with Saddam Hussein and his brutal policies or his aggressive tendencies. Instead, removing Saddam was tied to the larger goal of establishing a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf in order to "secure energy supplies" and preclude any other power from dominating the vital oil regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The PNAC report puts it quite plainly:

"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

This is why the Bush Regime has offered a constantly shifting menu of rationales for the impending attack on Iraq: because the decision to remove Saddam was taken long ago, as part of a larger strategic plan, and has little to do with any imminent threat from the broken-backed Iraqi regime, which is constantly bombed, partially occupied (with U.S. forces already working in the autonomous Kurdish territories) and now swarming with UN inspectors. If the strategic need for the attack "transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein," then almost any rationale will do.

Perhaps due to the presence of Washington heavyweights like Cheney and Rumsfeld, the PNAC report recognized that thorny political difficulties could stand in the way of implementing the group's radical designs. Indeed, in one of the most striking and prescient passages in the entire 90-page document, PNAC acknowledged that the "revolutionary" changes it envisaged could take decades to bring about – unless, that is, the United States was struck by "some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

The Path of Action
That "new Pearl Harbor" did come, of course, in the thunderclap of September 11, 2001. And the PNAC alumni now in government were quick to capitalize on this "catalyzing event." All of the PNAC recommendations listed above were put into place, with almost no debate from a shellshocked Congress and a populace reeling from the unprecedented assault on American security. In the very first days following the attack, Rumsfeld urged the Bush cabinet to make "Iraq a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism," despite the lack of any proof connecting Baghdad to the terrorist atrocity, according to Bob Woodward's insider account, Bush at War.

But Rumsfeld was overruled by Colin Powell, who counseled that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible." So the "war on terrorism" was launched initially against Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime was harboring Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden and his band of international extremists. The attack on Afghanistan was accompanied by the construction of new American bases and "temporary access arrangements" throughout Central Asia, giving America a military "footprint" in the strategically vital region for the first time. At the same time, new U.S. forces were dispatched to East Asia, to the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere, and to South America, to help Colombia combat "narco-terrorists" and to protect that nation's vital oil pipelines.

Meanwhile, at home, military budgets skyrocketed to deal with the "new realities and potential new conflicts." The Bush Administration withdrew from the landmark ABM arms control treaty and began construction of missile defense facilities. There were new funds and more research for the militarization of outer space (dubbed "Full Spectrum Dominance"), and the development of "non-lethal" biochemical weapons. Pentagon technicians, led by another convicted Iran-Contra figure, John Poindexter, began the development of Internet "data-mining" and monitoring technology (which, despite some recent Congressional restrictions, continues today). And the U.S. announced a new "nuclear posture," including the willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons – a move supported by the Republican-led House of Representatives, which approved Pentagon plans to develop the "bunker-buster" nukes specifically recommended by PNAC.

"The Savage Wars of Peace"
The existence of PNAC and its influence on the Bush Administration is not some "conspiracy theory." It follows a pattern frequently seen in American history: a group of like-minded people band together in think tanks, foundations, universities and other institutions, where they lay out their vision for America's future. And when they at last have access to the levers of power, they try to make that vision a reality.

What is different now is that the September 11 attacks have given this particular group an unprecedented amount of political capital – not to mention cold, hard federal cash – to put their long-held dreams into practice, virtually without opposition. (In contrast, consider the bitterly partisan political struggles between Congress and Lincoln during the Civil War.) What is also different is the essential content of that vision: the establishment – by force – of an American Empire.

This Empire is to be different from the old Roman or British models, of course. It will not entail settlement or direct control of foreign lands, but will instead offer paternal "protection" and "guidance" – backed up with strategically placed military bases and "temporary access arrangements" for the inevitable "constabulatory duties" required to enforce PNAC's longed-for "Pax Americana." However, the intent is not outright conquest, but the chance to bring "the single sustainable model of national success" to all the world, to set people, and their markets, free – as long as no "regional or global challenges to America's leadership" arise, of course.

But there will be costs to taking up what Thomas Donnelly, the principal author of the PNAC blueprint, calls "the free man's burden." Donnelly, a former journalist and legislative aide, wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs last year that America should look to its "imperial past" as a guide to its future. Reviewing The Savage Wars of Peace, a pro-Empire book by journalist Max Boot, Donnelly cites approvingly the "pacification" of the Philippines by American forces in 1898-1900, in which at least 100,000 Filipinos were killed in a bid for independence. He also points to the U.S. Army's success in subduing the Native American tribes in a series of small wars, and, closer to our time, the efficient "constabulatory operation" in Panama, which was invaded by the first President Bush in 1989. Similar "savage wars of peace" – pacifications, counterinsurgencies, police actions, invasions – will be required to maintain the new American Empire, says Donnelly.

And here too, George W. Bush has clearly echoed the thinking of the PNAC members who now surround him in the White House. Speaking at a Republican fundraiser last August, the President seemed keenly aware of the heavy price in blood and treasure the nation will have to pay to maintain its imperium in the New American Century: "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland."

The Beautiful Song of War
These texts spring from the Dominators' quasi-religious cult of "American exceptionalism," the belief in the unique and utter goodness of the American soul – embodied chiefly by the nation's moneyed elite, of course – and the irredeemable, metaphysical evil of all those who would oppose or criticize the elite's righteous (and conveniently self-serving) policies.

Anyone still "puzzled" over the Bush Regime's behavior need only look to these documents for enlightenment. They have long been available to the media – which accepted Bush's transparent campaign lies about a "more humble foreign policy" at face value – but have only now started attracting wider notice, in the New Yorker this spring, and this week in the Glasgow Sunday Herald.

The documents explain America's relentless march across Afghanistan, Central Asia and soon into the Middle East. They explain the Bush Regime's otherwise unfathomable rejection of international law, its fanatical devotion to so-called "missile defense," its gargantuan increases in military spending – even its antediluvian energy policy, which mandates the continued primacy of oil and gas in the world economy. (They can't conquer the sun or monopolize the wind, so there's no profit, no leverage for personal gain and geopolitical power in pursuing viable alternatives to oil.) The Sept. 11 attacks gave the Regime a pretext for greatly accelerating this published program of global dominance, but they would have pursued it in any case.

So there will be war: either soon, after immediately the November mid-term elections, or – in the event that Iraq's new offer for inspections is accepted – then later, after some "provocation" or "obstruction," no doubt in good time before the 2004 presidential vote. The purse-lipped rhetoric about "evil" and "moral clarity" is just so much desert sand being thrown in our eyes. Backstage, the Bush Regime is playing Mafia-style hardball, warning reluctant allies to get on board now, or else miss out on their cut of the loot when America – not a "democratic Iraq" – divvies up Saddam's oilfields: a shakedown detailed last week by the Economist, among many others.

The Dominators dream of empire. Not only will it extend their temporal power, they believe it will also give them immortality. Indeed, one of their chief gurus, Reaganite firebreather Michael Ledeen, says that if the Dominators have the courage to reject "clever diplomacy" and "just wage total war" to subjugate the Middle East, "our children will sing great songs about us years from now."* This madness, this bin Laden-like megalomania is now driving the hijacked American republic – and the world – to murderous upheaval.

It's all there in the text, set down in black and white.

Read it and weep.

Chris Floyd

*This quote is widely attributed to Richard Perle, but the dubious honor belongs to Leeden alone.

To the Editor:
This Sunday, Bill Frist will – once again – heap shame on the people of Tennessee through his apparently unquenchable lust for power. Frist – he deserves no honorific – will lend the authority of his position as Senate Majority Leader to a conclave of radical extremists who have taken Christianity hostage for their own political purposes.

The so-called "Justice Sunday" telecast emanating from a Kentucky church on April 24, with Frist's eager participation, is part of a diabolical plan to foment religious conflict – perhaps even religious war – among the American people by perpetrating a twisted lie: that anyone who opposes a handful of George W. Bush's judicial nominees is in league with Satan against "people of faith and moral conviction." The claim is that Democrats are maliciously blocking upright judicial candidates "whose only offense is to say that abortion is wrong or that marriage should be between one man and one woman."

This is, of course, a monstrous and poisonous falsehood. Here are the facts. In the past three years, the U.S. Senate has confirmed 205 of Bush's nominees to the federal judiciary. As reporter Joe Conason points out, these include open abortion opponents like Mike Fisher and John Roberts, and staunch anti-gay activists like Timothy Tymkovich, who has also argued in court against Medicaid funding of abortion even in cases of rape and incest. These and many other Bush nominees hold very hardline views – yet they faced no blocking, no filibuster from the Democrats. Why? Because they are competent, experienced jurists who have demonstrated their commitment to the rule of law and objectivity on the bench. That is the real "litmus test" for judicial nominees – not the fantasies of religious persecution being whipped up by Frist and his extremist allies.

Only 10 of Bush's judicial nominees have been held up by Senate Democrats – that's 10 out of 215. In fact, 95 percent of all federal court seats are now filled – the lowest vacancy rate for 13 years. And why was the vacancy rate so high in the last decade? Because Senate Republicans – such as Bill Frist – blocked 50 of Bill Clinton's judicial nominations.

These few blocked Bush nominees are being held up not because of their "moral stands" but because of questions about their judicial competence and ethical standards. For example, one of Bush's sterling nominees for a lifelong seat on the federal bench is a lawyer who has never even taken part in a courtroom case. Another is a Texas judge who took wads of campaign cash from corporations – such as Enron – even when they had cases before her court. Other nominees from the lower courts have shown a marked predilection for judicial activism, overriding the law in order to advance their own political – not moral – views.

But there is something else going on here – beyond Bill Frist's pandering to extremists to advance his presidential ambitions, and James Dobson's fearmongering efforts to stuff his own fat coffers with donations and "love offerings." The "Justice Sunday" hatefest is part of a wider and very deliberate effort to destroy the independence of the American judiciary – one of our three co-equal branches of government. The Bush gang despises the rule of law because it puts a brake on their authoritarian ambitions. They want to rule the country by the arbitrary will of the divinely-blessed "Leader," free of any legal restraints. (Bush has often "joked" about his desire to be a dictator.) Meanwhile, the so-called Christian Right wants to break the Constitutional power of the courts in order to establish a theocratic government, ruled by their own skewed and ignorant understanding of "God's Law."

They are very clear about this goal. Frist has been keeping company with David Barton, the "Christian Reconstructionist," who states proudly: "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law." This so-called "Dominion Theology" includes public execution for a range of sins, slavery for debtors and the exclusion of non-believers from the rights of citizenship – plus the elimination of all taxes, regulations and legal restrictions on big business. (How convenient for those Bush-Frist country-club Republicans, eh?)

Frist's appearance at "Justice Sunday" thus represents the convergence of two very powerful – and very sinister – trends in American society: the rapacious appetite of Big Money, gobbling up small businesses, family farms, and the financial, social and civic security once enjoyed by American working people; and the rise of hardcore religious extremists who, like the Taliban, want to impose their sectarian views on "every area of life." Frist now stands with the liars and demagogues who are tearing down the Republic. In his slavering ambition, he has dishonored us all.

Yours,
Chris Floyd

Body Double: Terri Schiavo, Sun Hudson and the "Culture of Life"

From my column in the Moscow Times, March 25

Far from the hurly-burly in Florida, where the Bush brothers and their shameless minions have sought to milk maximum "political capital" from the ravaged body of a brain-dead woman, the true moral values of these gilded hypocrites were on stark display last week in a quiet corner of the Bushes' adopted homeland: Texas.

This week, George W. Bush melodramatically cut short one of his innumerable vacations and flew back to Washington to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, when a Florida court granted her husband's request to cut off her life support after 15 years in a vegetative state. But days before, even as Bush was supporting his brother, Florida governor Jeb, and congressional Republicans in "defending the culture of life" in the Schiavo case, doctors in Houston were pulling the breathing tube from the throat of an ailing infant. The boy suffocated within seconds, legally killed – against the wishes of his anguished mother – in accordance with a draconian law signed as a "cost-saving" measure by the state's former governor: George W. Bush.

There were no frenzied protests, no camera-friendly prayer vigils, no preening politicians at Texas Children's Hospital when five-month-old Sun Hudson took his last breath. There was only his mother, Wanda, holding him in her arms as he died, the Houston Chronicle reports. Sun suffered from an extreme form of dwarfism: incurable, usually fatal. Early on, doctors recommended cutting off the breathing tube that kept his undersized lungs working. He was inert, they said, unresponsive, essentially comatose.

Wanda Hudson disagreed. "I talked to him," she said, "he was conscious," moving, looking around, he responded to her. Although the odds were long, she wanted to give him more time to develop, not give up on him after just a few months. Wishful thinking, a despairing parent's denial? Perhaps. But the law signed by Bush in 1999 took the decision out of her hands and gave it to hospital bureaucrats, allowing them to shut down a patient's life support – even against the wishes of the patient's family or guardian – if the medical brass decide treatment is "nonbeneficial," the Chronicle notes.

Indeed, why throw away good money pumping air down the gullet of some defective infant, just to mollify his nobody of a mother? For unlike Terri Schiavo – a nice middle-class white woman, a political marketer's dream – Wanda Hudson was just another worthless black woman living in poverty, unable to afford any pre-natal care at all. Who would waste a dime on trash like that? It's much more beneficial to funnel that cash into the coffers of your political patrons – like George and Jeb, now wallowing happily in the swamp of campaign grease they get from giant medical corporations. In return, they push government policies designed to keep Big Medicine's profits sky-high while gutting public obligations to provide health care for the hoi polloi.

So the hospital invoked the Bush Law on Sun Hudson. Just as in Florida, a local judge ruled that life-support systems must be removed, and the patient allowed to die a natural death. But strangely enough, the Texas judge was not reviled in the halls of Congress as a would-be murder, as was the Florida jurist– even though the latter was carrying out the wishes of Terri Schiavo's husband, her legal guardian, while the Bush Law used state power to override a mother's choice. Nor was the Texas judge subjected to death threats like the ones the Florida judge received from Bush's "armies of compassion."

No, Sun's mother stood alone. Those compassionate armies and congressional kibitzers failed to materialize on her behalf. George W. Bush – usually so eager to wade in a with a few scripted words of pursed-lipped piety about "family values" and "defending life" – kept his big mouth shut. The hospital would not allow the media to see Sun or interview Wanda Jackson – again, against her wishes. "I wanted y'all to see him for yourselves," she told the press after Sun's death. But so what? When nobodies die, nobody cares.

Why the stark contrast between the two cases? Simple: there was no political hay to be made from Sun Hudson's plight. Spotlighting his situation might reflect badly on the Dear Leader – and on the religious extremists now banking millions in contributions from their slick campaign to "save" Terri Schiavo. For it turns out that the spearhead of Bush's Christian army in Florida, the "Right to Life" organization, actually helped Bush craft the 1999 law that took Sun Hudson's life, the Chronicle reports. The family-bashing measure was drawn up in backroom sessions between the Right-to-Lifers, Bush staffers and Big Medicine. It seems the "culture of life" ends where power politics and corporate money begin.

Bush doesn't care if Terri Schiavo lives or dies. Her body – like the bodies of the 100,000 Iraqis he has killed, like the bodies of the American soldiers being chewed up every day in his Babylonian conquest, like the bodies of the poor and working people whom he is methodically and remorselessly cutting off from medical care, financial protection against catastrophic illness and legal redress against corporate predators – is just a means to an end, the only end Bush cares about: increasing the power and wealth of his own rapacious circle of privileged elites.

There is nothing – absolutely nothing – he will not do to serve this end. He'll wage war on false pretenses, he'll pervert the democratic process, he'll spit on the Constitution – and he'll exploit the private suffering of families facing hideous dilemmas of life and death. There is no honor, no morality, no values in his "culture."

Filter Tips: Muzzling and Massaging the Message of War

Here's the latest Global Eye from The Moscow Times, March 18.

President George W. Bush often complains about the "media filter" that distorts the true picture of his Administration's accomplishments in Iraq. And he's right. For regardless of where you stand on Mr. Bush's policies in the region, it's undeniable that the political and commercial biases of the American press have consistently misrepresented the reality of the situation.

Here's an excellent example. Earlier this month, the American media completely ignored an important announcement from an official of the Iraqi government concerning the oft-maligned U.S. operation to clear insurgents from the city of Fallujah last November. Although the press conference of Health Ministry investigator Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli was attended by representatives from the Washington Post, Knight-Ridder and more than 20 other international news outlets, nary a word of his team's thorough investigation into the truth about the battle made it through the filter's dense mesh. Once again, the American public was denied the full story of one of President Bush's remarkable triumphs.

Dr. ash-Shaykhli's findings provided confirmation of earlier reports by many other Iraqis – reports that were also ignored by the arrogant filterers, who seem more interested in hearing from terrorists or anti-occupation extremists than ordinary Iraqis and those like Dr. ash-Shaykhli, who serve in the American-backed interim government vetted and approved by Mr. Bush. But while the media elite turn up their nose at such riff-raff, the testimony of these common folk and diligent public servants give ample evidence of Mr. Bush's innovative method of liberating innocent Iraqis from tyranny:

He burns them to death with chemical weapons.

The whole story here.

"Fairness is not rebutting truth with lies."

Wisdom from Steve Gilliard on C-SPAN's shameful attempt to "balance" an appearance by Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt with the vile, buffonish (but beloved by Christopher Hitchens) Holocaust denier, David Irving. Gilliard gives the background and his comments here.

Gitmo Fire Sale

It's a Gitmo Fire Sale! Render 'em all -- let God sort 'em out!

From the NYT:
The Pentagon is seeking to enlist help from the State Department and other agencies in a plan to cut by more than half the population at its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in part by transferring hundreds of suspected terrorists to prisons in [states that practice torture such as] Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to senior administration officials.

The Rendering: Drawing a Veil Over State Crime

The Moscow Times, March 11, 2005.

In the heady months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the chickenhawks of the Bush Regime were eager to flash their tough-guy cojones to the world. Led by the former prep-school cheerleader in the Oval Office, swaggering Bushists openly bragged of "kicking ass" with macho tactics like torture and "extraordinary rendition."

"We don't kick the [expletive] out of them," one top Bush official told the Washington Post on Dec. 26, 2002. "We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." In that same article, other Bush honchos boasted about withholding medical treatment from wounded prisoners; knowingly sending prisoners to be tortured in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan ("I do it with my eyes open," said one top agent); and breaking international law as a routine part of interrogations by U.S. operatives. "If you're not violating someone's human rights," said an interrogation supervisor, "you're probably not doing your job." These freely admitted violations included beatings, hooding, exposure, sexual humiliation and the medieval barbarism of strappado: chaining a prisoner with his arms twisted behind his back and suspending him from the ceiling, where the weight of his own body tears at his sockets and sinews.

Again, there was nothing secret about this. Indeed, the December 2002 story was part of a series of similar admissions Bush officials cheerfully made to the mainstream press. Beginning in October 2001, we were told – by Bush officials – that Bush had signed "secret" executive orders granting himself the power to assassinate anyone on earth whom he arbitrarily declared a "terrorist suspect;" that he had extended this unlimited license to kill to CIA agents in the field, who no longer needed to clear their secret murders with the White House; and that he had expanded his unrestricted, arbitrary powers of arrest without charge, indefinite detention and extra-judicial killing to cover American citizens, as well as designated foreign "enemies." Thus, long before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales officially declared to Congress this year that wartime presidential powers cannot be constrained in any way by U.S. or international law, the Bush Regime was unashamedly asserting its embrace of torture, lawlessness and arbitrary rule.

The invasion of Iraq – itself a war crime of staggering dimensions – simply extended this long-established and officially sanctioned system of brutality to a new arena. (And to thousands of new victims, the overwhelming majority of which were innocent of any crime, as the Red Cross reported.) While the investigative work of Seymour Hersh and others in exposing the horrors of Abu Ghraib is indeed laudable, it should not have come as any surprise. The atrocities detailed in the revelations were identical to those the Bush Regime openly acknowledged as standard practice just months before.

The only difference, of course, was the fact that pictures of the Abu Ghraib atrocities were also published and broadcast. Public sensibilities – untroubled by previous verbal admissions buried deep in slabs of newsprint – were suddenly shocked by the lurid visuals. A Republican-led Senate investigation declared that it had uncovered "even worse" pictures of torture: stomach-curdling photos and videos of bloody abuse that could stain America's name for generations. The Bush Regime braced for an election-year firestorm of scandal. Pentagon chief Don Rumsfeld offered his resignation to the president.

Then – nothing happened. The outraged Republican senators never released their damning pictures. Rumsfeld kept his job. A "few bad apples" in the lower ranks were put on trial; the top figures involved in the torture system, such as Gonzales and several generals, were promoted. And even though Pentagon and CIA investigators continue to document hundreds – hundreds – of cases of torture, abuse and outright murder in Bush's gulag, the storm has passed. Indeed, Bushists like John Yoo, one of the primary authors of the "torture memos" undergirding the gulag, see the 2004 election as a public affirmation of blood and brutality. The vote is "proof that the debate is over," Yoo told the New Yorker. "The issue is dying out."

Yet the Regime was shaken a bit by the brief tempest. Instead of macho swagger about "kicking ass" and "taking off the gloves," there are now prim assurances of legality. PR fig leaves are being artfully draped over once-bulging displays of butchness. This week, the New York Times was chosen for a high-profile leak, "revealing" that while Bush himself gave the order to "render" U.S. captives to nations that practice torture (supposedly as a cost-saving measure!), the CIA is scrupulously ensuring that no prisoners are ever actually tortured by foreign torturers in the torture chambers where Bush has consigned them. Such prissy hand-wringing is a far cry from the old braggadocio ("I did it with my eyes open") and cynical shoulder-shrugging of December 2002, when one rendition op dismissed the very notion of CIA supervision of its foreign torture partners: "If we're not there in the room with them," he smirked, "who is to say" what goes on in the outsourced interrogations?

But Bush is facing something far more dangerous than the occasional hiccup of bad PR or toothless probes by his Senate bagmen. There are now several lawsuits afoot filed by innocent survivors of the "rendition" system set up at Bush's direct order. These cases could not only expose the ugly guts of his gulag, but also produce direct evidence of criminal culpability on the part of Bush and his minions under U.S. and international law.

The Regime has responded with draconian ruthlessness to this genuine threat. In the main rendition case – and in an unrelated lawsuit concerning officially confirmed evidence of terrorist infiltration of the FBI before 9/11 – Bush is invoking the rarely-used, extraconstitutional "state secrets privilege." This nebulous maneuver, unanchored in law or legislation, allows the government to suppress any evidence against it merely by asserting, without proof, that disclosure of the truth might "harm national security." Evidence "protected" in this way cannot even be heard by a judge in secret – a well-established practice used successfully in numerous other national security cases over the years. It is simply buried forever, and the case collapses.

It is almost certain that Bush's invocation of this "night-and-fog" measure will be upheld. So let us be clear about the consequences. It will mean that any crime committed by a government official – torture, rendition, murder, state terrorism, even treason – can be sealed in permanent darkness. The justice system itself will be "rendered" into a black hole. The victims of state crime – American citizens as well as foreign captives – will be left without rights, without redress, without a voice. Bush's kingdom of strappado will reign supreme.

Kurt Andersen's Hobbesian Choice: the whole story

New York Magazine has published a letter -- or rather, a fragment of a letter -- I wrote in response to Kurt Andersen's insipid article about how even the anti-war left must hope for Bush's "vindication" in Iraq: a "Hobbesian choice" between Bush and Zarqawi, was how he framed it. The magazine whittled the letter down to the mildest, milkiest form of dissent -- while of course including the dollop of praise I gave to Andersen's past work. Anyway, here's the full text:

To the Editor:
Kurt Andersen writes: "Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush’s risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians." This is simply not true. It is a coarse and brutal reductionism, which despite its falsity captures very well the zeitgeist of our increasingly coarsened and brutalized political discourse. (Witness, for example, how an unprovoked war of aggression based on deception is now politely tidied up as a "very possibly reckless policy.") There is in fact a broad range of possible outcomes in Iraq beyond Andersen's blinkered Bush vs. Zarqawi scenario; non-violent resistance to the occupation, to take just one example – one which would actually match the opposition to the occupation that the vast majority of Iraqis feel, according to every poll. In any case, it is certainly possible to oppose Bush's violent imposition of his political will on Iraq and the insurgents' and Islamic terrorists' mirror-image attempt to impose their own will by violence.

Mr. Andersen might not know it, but Bush's inner circle – Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. – were publicly calling for the establishment of a U.S. military presence in Iraq many years ago. This was a matter of such strategic importance that it "transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein," they wrote, in September 2000. Mr. Andersen seems to think that Bush's "possibly reckless policy" is to establish a fine, fair secular democracy in Iraq. It is not, and never has been. The "vindication" of Bush's policy would be the establishment of permanent U.S military bases in Iraq and the installation of a government in Baghdad of any stripe – free, secular, authoritarian, sectarian – that will support or at least tolerate this presence. It is for this reason that Bush has launched a war that has killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis; it is for this reason that American soldiers are dying day after day. I for one can strongly oppose the "vindication" of such a murderous and criminal "policy" without any guilt, liberal or otherwise, while equally condemning the violent local resistance this policy has provoked – and the mindless foreign terrorism that it has set loose inside the conquered land.

As Bob Dylan reminds us: "Reality has always had too many heads." It's a pity that a fine writer like Mr. Andersen has narrowed his view of reality in Iraq to such a false and primitive dichotomy.

Yours,
Chris Floyd

Bedroom Farce and Global Tragedy

Here's the latest Global Eye from The Moscow Times.

Sex, sex, sex – how it haunts the damp and fervid dreams of the Bushist Party faithful. And nowhere moreso than in the deeps of Dixie, where stout Christian soldiers were singing hosannas last week after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their righteous warfare against the foulest form of evil in the modern world:

Genital stimulators.

After prayerful consideration, the Supremes refused to hear challenges to an Alabama law that forbids the sale or distribution of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs," Reuters reports. The law was aimed not only at public vendors of sexual enhancement but also the growing number of private "Tupperware-style parties," where suburbanites gather to peruse the latest marriage-goosing gadgets.

But do let's be fair. In their compassionate conservatism, the Bama Bushists did provide some exceptions to their iron grip on the state's genitals. For example, the law generously allows the sale of sexual devices "for a bona fide…legislative, judicial or law enforcement purpose." Here the mind reels (and the stomach turns): what on god's earth could possibly constitute, say, a bona fide "legislative" use of the "vibrators, dildos, anal beads" and other play-pretties covered by the law?

On second thought, don't ask. Instead, let's just rejoice in the knowledge that, thanks to the Supreme Court, politicians, judges and county sheriffs in Alabama can now diddle themselves to their heart's content with all manner of manipulators, while your ordinary desperate housewife will have to do without.

Yet as we all know – and as the state of Alabama itself acknowledged when confronted with statistics from the law's challengers – the vast majority of the now-banned Bama buzzers were sold to good ole gals, most of them in down-home, red-meat, church-blessed heterosexual marriages. The salt of the earth, in other words – the only kind of people worthy of full citizenship in Bushist philosophy. So why were these exemplary matrons targeted by the mullahs in Montgomery? That question leads us to another curious lacuna in the law – a gap mirrored in similar sex-toy restrictions in Georgia and Bush's own Texas.

The whole story.....

And some historical context here.

Empire Burlesque arriving soon

Empire Burlesque is a new blog chronicling the high crimes and low comedy of the powers-that-be in the Age of Bush. It will feature polished articles, rough cuts, quick takes, and nuggets of little-known truth sifted from the great sea of media sludge that surrounds us. It should be operational within a few days, so stop by again soon.

Invisible Republic: America's Owners Cash in Their Chips

Original version published in The Moscow Times, Dec. 5, 2000.

Invisible Republic
The secret government has shown its face at last. And what a strange, multi-headed beast it is. On one stout neck we see the snarling visage of an angry "protester" banging on the doors of election commission offices, his pockets stuffed with campaign cash from Austin, Texas. Another head displays the jowly eminence of a grave courtier, a loyal family retainer bowing to the aristocratic clan that enriches him.

Still another meaty gourd holds forth the squinting, scowling portrait of a pundit, wildly nodding, endlessly babbling in a panicky spiel about "closure," "stability," and "the mantle of legitimacy." Finally, there is the central head – small, walnutty, a bit lost and uncertain amid the furious activity of the other noggins – opening its pursed little lips to intone, tonelessly: "I am the president now."

Yes, it was yet another week through the looking glass for the American political system. But in the middle of much muddle, a few things became clear – even naked: The owners of the country want their presidency back, and they'll stop at nothing to get it.

Having been declared the winner of the election by one of his own campaign operatives, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris – a decision based on an incomplete vote count marred by the violence of his own hired mob – George W. Bush, the second-place candidate in the presidential race, tottered out to read a few scripted lines claiming the White House for his own.

But it was evident this week that another Texan is actually controlling the destiny of the American republic: Tom DeLay.

We know DeLay – if we've been paying attention – as the puppeteer behind the hard-right's impeachment carnival a couple of years back. Ostensibly the No. 3 man in the House hierarchy, the Texas congressman – bearing the apt nickname of "The Hammer" – has spearheaded the Owners' drive to turn Congress into a corporate welfare office, while waging their well-financed war on President Bill Clinton and all his works. DeLay ousted Newt Gingrich as House speaker when that sad sack of shinola failed to dislodge the Great Satan in the White House, and installed a new mouthpiece, Dennis Hastert, a genial suit of clothes who may actually end up as president if the electoral process goes completely off the rails.

The Wall Street Journal reports this week that it was DeLay who organized the riots in Miami, when Bush supporters stormed the election commission offices and scared commissioners into suddenly calling off their hand recount of votes. DeLay "took charge of the effort on Capitol Hill," offering staffers "free airfare, accommodation and food in the Sunshine State, all paid for by the Bush campaign." More than 200 GOP House aides signed up and headed South to bang on doors, toss bricks, and make so many death threats to the local Democratic congressman, Robert Wexler, that federal authorities warned him to stay in Washington rather than risk a trip to his home.

Meanwhile, DeLay and his other hand puppet, House Majority leader Dick Armey, made it known that even if Al Gore ultimately wins in Florida, they will not allow him to take office. Armey said the GOP-controlled House reserves the right to reject any election results they don't happen to like. "It is our duty," said Armey, to take that decision away from the voters – especially the 50 million who voted for Al Gore.

And so it goes. The beast keeps barking from its several heads, the little walnut recites his lines, Daddy Bush's old cronies set up shop again in Washington, the pundits yip and yipe and bite their own tails – and the Republic slowly sinks into the swamps of Florida.

Open to Question

Speaking of Texas, a revealing glimpse into the mindset behind some of George W.'s "heartland values" was offered by Harper's Magazine this week, when they published an "employee exam" used by Rent-A-Center, a Texas-based appliance rental firm, to plumb the soul of each worker at their 2,100 stores around the country. Made up of 500 true-false questions, these are the kinds of things that concern good old-fashioned "real Americans" (as opposed to them blacks and Jews and com-symp libruls in Miami who tried to steal the election by having their votes counted).

If Rent-A-Center noted 12 "deviations" from the norm, the worker could be tossed out on their pervy behinds. Anxious employees thus had to come up with the "right" answer to questions like these: "Everything is turning out just like the prophets of the Bible said it would." "I have had no difficulty in starting or holding my bowel movements." "I believe in the Second Coming of Christ." "Sometimes I am strongly attracted by the personal articles of others, such as shoes, gloves, etc., so that I want to handle or steal them though I have no use for them."

The earnest concerns go on (and on): "I have never vomited blood or coughed up blood." "I would like to be a florist." (We know the wrong answer to that one!) "I like poetry." (Ditto!) "I have diarrhea once a month.""Evil spirits possess me at times." (Aren't those last two the same thing?) "I have often wished I were a girl."

And then there is that deep, dark secret that every employer needs to know: "The top of my head sometimes feels tender."

This line of inquiry led to a class-action suit filed by 1,200 employees, and the company eventually had to pony up $2 million for its unbridled weirdness. There was at least one true-false question, however, that made perfect sense – one which, if answered in the affirmative, would go a long way toward explaining the politics of Texas, of Florida, and indeed of America as a whole:

"Sometimes in elections I vote for men about whom I know very little."

Chris Floyd

Heart of Darkness: The Bush Cult and American Madness

Originally published in The Moscow Times, Oct. 22, 2004.

Now we come at last to the heart of darkness. Now we know, from their own words, that the Bush Regime is a cult – a cult whose god is Power, whose adherents believe that they alone control reality, that indeed they create the world anew with each act of their iron will. And the goal of this will – undergirded by the cult's supreme virtues of war, fury and blind faith – is likewise openly declared: "Empire."

You think this is an exaggeration? A typical bout of "liberal paranoia"? Then heed the words of the White House itself: a "senior adviser" to the president, who, as the New York Times reports, explained the cult to author Ron Suskind in the heady pre-war days of 2002.

First, the top Bush insider mocked the journalist and all those "in what we call the reality-based community," i.e., people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." Suskind's attempt to defend the principles of reason and enlightenment cut no ice with the Bush-man. "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality," he said. "And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Anyone with any knowledge of 20th century history will know that this same megalomaniacal outburst could have been made by a "senior adviser" to Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or Mao. Indeed, as scholar Juan Cole points out, the dogma of the Bush Cult is identical with the "reality-creating" declaration of Mao's Little Red Book: "It is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever." For Bush, as for Mao in the all-devouring Great Leap Forward, "discernible reality" has no meaning: political, cultural, economic, scientific truth – even the fundamental processes of nature, even human nature itself – must give way to the faith-statements of ideology, ruthlessly applied by unbending zealots.

Thus the reality-twisting assertions of Bush's ideologues: The conquered will welcome their killers. The poor will be happy to slave for the rich. The earth can sustain any amount of damage without lasting harm. The loss of rights is essential to liberty. War without end is the only way to peace. Corruption and cronyism lead to universal prosperity. Dissent is evil; dissenters are "with the terrorists." But God is with the Leader; whatever he does is righteous, even if in the eyes of unbelievers – the "reality-based community" – his acts are criminal: aggressive war that kills thousands of innocent people, widespread torture, secret assassinations, imprisonment without charges or trial, electoral subversion.

Indeed, the doctrine "Gott mit Uns" is the linchpin of the Bush Cult. Tens of millions of Americans have now embraced the Cult's fusion of Bush's leadership with Divine Will. As a Bush volunteer in Missouri told Suskind: "I just believe God controls everything, and God uses the president to keep evil down…God gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation at this time." God appointed Bush; thus Bush's acts are Godly. It's a circular, self-confirming mindset that can't be penetrated by reason or facts, can't be shaken by crimes and scandals. That's why Bush's core support – comprising almost half of the electorate – stays rock-solid, despite the manifest failures of his administration. It's based on blind faith, on poisonous fantasy: simple, flattering ("We're uniquely good, we're God's special nation!"), comforting, complete – so unlike the harsh, bewildering, splintered shards of real life.

This closed mindset is constantly reinforced by the ubiquitous rightwing media – evoking the threat of demonic enemies on every side, relentlessly manufacturing righteous outrage with distortion and deceit – and by Bush's appearances (epiphanies?) at his carefully-screened rallies, where even the slightest hint of demurral from his Godly greatness is ruthlessly expunged. For example, three schoolteachers were ejected from a Bush rally under threat of arrest last week: not for protesting – they hadn't said a word – but merely for wearing t-shirts that read, "Protect Our Civil Liberties." Thus the faithful "create the new reality" of undivided loyalty to the Leader. And it's clear that the very idea of "civil liberties" is now a dangerous blasphemy in the divinvely-sanctioned Empire.

The dogma of Bush's godliness is no mere rhetorical flourish; it's being forged with blood and iron. Consider General Jerry Boykin, who, in uniform, toured churches across America, declaring openly that "George W. Bush was not elected by the majority of the American people; he was appointed by God" to lead his "Christian nation" against Satan and the "idol-worshippers" of Islam, as Salon.com reports. Bush then made Boykin the Pentagon's chief of military intelligence – the point man for wringing information out of Islamic captives in the "war on terror." The result – confirmed even by the Pentagon's own anemic investigations – was a military intelligence system gone berserk, systematically torturing and occasionally murdering prisoners who, as the Red Cross notes, were overwhelmingly innocent of any crime. Bush signed orders removing these prisoners from the protection of U.S. and international law; Boykin's boys then visited divine wrath upon the heathens. But these atrocities cannot be crimes, because Bush and Boykin are, in the general's own phraseology, "Kingdom warriors" in the "army of God."

This isn't "politics as usual" – not even an extreme version of it, not McCarthyism revisited, Reaganism times two, or Nixon in a Stetson hat. There's never been anything like it in American life before: a messianic cult backed by vast corporate power, a massive cadre of religious zealots, a highly disciplined party, an overwhelming media machine and the mammoth force of history's most powerful government – all led by men who "create new realities" out of lies, blood, theft and torment.

Their "empire" – their Death-Cult, their power-mania – is an old madness come again, an old heresy in new form, another outbreak of the fever, the deep soul-sickness that devoured so many nations in the last century. Now it's come to America. After decades of sliding toward the abyss – blithely, blindly, drunk with corruption, letting democracy and justice wither on the vine – now we are here at last, in the heart of darkness.

Chris Floyd

Suicide Bombers: Nihilism Enthroned

Originally published in The Moscow Times, April 23, 2004.

Homo sapiens is the only species that dreams of its own total demise. Our brief history of conscious thought is replete with vivid scenarios of the end of life on earth. The brain-fevers we call religions have produced most of these – giddy, voluptuous nightmares of universal extinction, usually by fire, at divine order. A favored remnant is always saved in such tales, of course, but only after being transformed into some different, higher order of being. The gross human body – that bleeding, fouling, endlessly replicating sack of earth – is gleefully consigned to eternal oblivion.

It seems that some ineradicable nihilism pervades us, like a virus, now dormant, now flaring: something in us that wants to die, to be done with the long, overhanging doom of mortality – and to take the world with us. Our grandiose visions of the future seem to hide, at their core, a secret, desperate anxiety about the profound meaninglessness of existence – an anxiety that often disguises itself in elaborate fantasies of the afterlife, in dreams of "dominance" for one's "own kind" (nation, tribe, faith, race, ideology, etc.), or in the eroticizing of death, war and destruction.

Instincts for preservation, sentiments of affection, the drive for pleasure – from the most basic bodily urges to the most sublime creations and apprehensions of the intellect – act as counterweights to this dark virus, of course. They provide for most of us, most of the time, enough fragments of meaning – or at least sufficient distraction – to get on with things, without too much resort to world-engulfing visions or the extremes of nihilistic anxiety.

On the individual level, the calibration of these competing impulses can be intricate, subtle, ever-shifting, because the individual mind is so complex and all-encompassing, yet so enclosed, so unlockably private as well: an infinitely supple tool for managing the conflicts and contradictions of reality. But on the broader level – species, nation, group – human consciousness is, of necessity, a far more blunt and brutal instrument.

There, our brain-fevers and anxieties rage more virulently, lacking the counterweights of individual feeling and the quick, intimate responsiveness of the private mind. In the group-mind, the fantasies that root in the muddy fear of meaninglessness can emerge full-blown. Thought and discourse are reduced to broad strokes, slogans, codes and incantations, with little correspondence to reality. Awareness of this tendency can mitigate some of its effects; but the group-mind's fundamental falsity and irreality almost invariably infects the thoughts and actions of group leaders – and eventually many of the group members as well.

Thus we can sometimes say, not entirely metaphorically, that nations "go mad," hurtling themselves toward ruin, embracing self-destruction, lusting for violence and death, sick with nihilism – although this sickness is always painted in the colors of patriotic fervor or religious zeal, or both. Thus we can say – again, with some accuracy – that humankind in general has suicidal tendencies, manifested most clearly in the development of world-killing, species-ending nuclear weapons.

Now draw these dangerous streams together, and you have a portrait of the blunt and brutal group-mind at work in the leadership of the world's most powerful nation. The folly, fantasy and death-fetish of the Bush Regime – long evident to anyone who cared to see – were finally "revealed" in the mainstream media recently by the quasi-official Establishment oracle, Bob Woodward. His latest insider portrait, Plan of Attack, offers – in the usual, easily-gummed pabulum form – a few tastes of the bitter truth behind the Regime's mad, ruinous war crime in Iraq.

The corrosive nihilism at the heart of the enterprise ate through the gaudily-painted surface most tellingly in a single anecdote. Woodward asks George W. Bush how he thinks history will regard his adventure in Iraq. Bush, gazing out the window, shrugs and waves the question away. "History, we don't know," he says. "We'll all be dead." No fine, faith-filled talk here about God and Jesus and the immortal soul responsible for its actions throughout all eternity – the kind of zealous patter Bush favors in public statements. This was just the cold, rotten, meaningless core of his grand vision – "we'll all be dead." So who cares? Après moi, le deluge.

Indeed, even as the world's attention remained fixed on the erotics of death in Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Bush's minions were quietly advancing his philosophy – "we'll all be dead" – with their geo-suicidal plans for more nuclear weapons. Last week, the Pentagon's influential Defense Science Board officially recommended the immediate development of a new generation of "tactical" nuclear weapons – along with a new, Nietzschean will to use them, UPI reports.

Yes, this is the same group that developed a plan in 2002 for "provoking terrorist groups into action." The DSB wanted the Pentagon to foment terrorist attacks in order to flush the terrorists out of hiding so they could then be "crushed." The Pentagon never publicly rejected this morally insane scheme, first uncovered by the Los Angeles Times; perhaps we've already seen it in action, in Madrid, Riyadh, Istanbul or Bali.

In any case, the DSB's nuclear dreams are fast becoming a reality. This year, Bush quadrupled funding for key nuclear weapons development programs; at $6.6 billion, total U.S. nuclear weapons spending is now 50 percent higher than the Cold War average, California's Tri-Valley Herald reports. And Bush officials told Congress last month that the Regime is officially gutting the 2002 "Moscow Treaty" on arms control, AP reports. Instead of reducing stockpiles to treaty levels, the Regime is exercising the agreement's "get-out" option (which made the pact meaningless in the first place), in order to retain "sufficient warheads" for a "robust" posture in the face of unspecified "world events," officials testified.

What "world events" are they secretly dreaming of, these death-fetishists, these unconscious nihilists, mired in their group-mind fog? What voluptuous nightmares will require their "robust" attention? How many world-devouring warheads will be "sufficient" to at last quell their anxiety, their all-too-human craving for oblivion?

Chris Floyd

Silent Partners: Bush, bin Laden and the 9/11 Commission

First published in The Moscow Times, Jan. 31, 2003

When George W. Bush's first choice to head an "independent" probe into the Sept. 11 attacks – suspected war criminal Henry Kissinger – went down like a bad pretzel, he quickly plucked another warm body from the stagnant pool of Establishment worthies who are periodically called upon to roll out the whitewash when the big boys screw up.

Kissinger's replacement, retired New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, was a "safe pair of hands," we were assured by the professional assurers in the mainstream media. The fact that he'd been out of public life for years – and that he hadn't collaborated in the deaths of tens of thousands of Cambodians, Chileans and East Timorese – certainly made him less controversial than his predecessor, although to be fair, Kissinger's expertise in mass murder surely would have given the panel some unique insights into the terrorist atrocity.

But now it seems that Kean might possess some unique insights of his own. Fortune Magazine reports this week that both Kean and Bush share an unusually well-placed business partner: one Khalid bin Mahfouz – a shadowy figure who looms large in the financial web that binds the Bushes, the bin Ladens and the Saudis.

Kean, like so many worthies, followed the revolving door out of public service into lucrative sweetheart deals and well-wadded sinecures on corporate boards. One of these, of course, is an oil company – pretty much a requirement for White House work these days. (Or as the sign says on the Oval Office door: "If your rigs ain't rockin', don't come a-knockin'!") Kean is a director of Amerada Hess, an oil giant married up to Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil in a venture to pump black gold in Azerbaijan. (The partnership is incorporated in a secretive offshore "tax haven," natch. You can't expect a worthy like Kean to pay taxes like some grubby wage slave.)

Among Delta's biggest backers are close associates of the aforesaid Mahfouz, a Saudi wheeler-dealer who has helped bankroll some of most dubious players on the world scene: Abu Nidal, Manuel Noreiga, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. Mahfouz was also a front for the bin Laden family, funneling their vast wealth through American cut-outs in a bid to gain power and influence in the United States, reports Wayne Madsen of In These Times.

One of those cut-outs was Mahfouz factotum James Bath, a partner in George W.'s early oil venture, Arbusto (and a comrade in suspension from Bush's glory-less days as an AWOL National Guardsman). Bath has admitted serving as a pass-through for secret Saudi money. Years later, when Bush's maladroit business skills were about to sink another of his companies, Harken Energy, the firm was saved by a $25 million investment from a Swiss bank – a subsidiary of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BBCI), partly owned by the beneficent Mahfouz.

What was BCCI? Only "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history," according to the United States Senate. What did BCCI do? "It engaged in pandemic bribery of officials in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas," says journalist Christopher Bryon, who first exposed the operation. "It laundered money on a global scale, intimidated witnesses and law officers, engaged in extortion and blackmail. It supplied the financing for illegal arms trafficking and global terrorism. It financed and facilitated income tax evasion, smuggling and prostitution." Sort of an early version of the Bush Regime, then.

BCCI's bipartisan corruption first permeated the Carter Administration, then came to full flower in the Reagan-Bush years. The CIA uncovered the bank's criminal activities in 1981 – no great feat, considering how many of its own foreign "associates" were involved, including the head of Saudi intelligence, Kamal Adham, brother-in-law of King Faisal. But instead of stopping the drug-runners and terrorists, the agency decided to join them, using BCCI's secret channels to finance "black ops" all over the world.

The Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary funnel used by the first Bush Administration to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD materials supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the United States like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill. (As always with the Busha Nostra, geopolitics – in this case, helping Saddam wage aggressive war against Iran – and crony profits go hand in hand. Once the war was over and Iran was left a shattered hulk, with millions dead and displaced, the useful idiot Saddam was expendable, swiftly morphing from good buddy into budding Hitler.)

As soon as the BNL case broke, President Bush I moved to throttle the investigation. He appointed lawyers from both Cardoen and Matrix to top Justice Department posts – where they supervised the officials investigating their old companies. The overall probe was directed by Justice Department investigator Robert Mueller. Meanwhile, White House aides applied heavy pressure on other prosecutors to restrict the range of the probe – especially the fact that Bush cabinet officials Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger had served as consultants for BNL during their pre-White House days as spear-carriers for yet another secretive international front that profits from war, weapons, and the avid greasing of highly-placed palms: Kissinger Associates.

The U.S. Senate later found that the probe had been unaccountably "botched" – witnesses went missing, CIA records got "lost," all sorts of bad luck. Most of the big BCCI players went unpunished or, like Mahfouz, got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions.

One of the White House aides who unlawfully intervened in the BNL prosecution was a certain factotum named Jay S. ByBee. Now said factotum has just been nominated by the current warmer of the Oval Office seat, George W. Bush, to a place on the federal appeals court – a lifetime sinecure of perks and power. Mueller, of course, wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post in July 2001 – by George W. Bush. Well done, thou good and faithful servants!

In the late 1990s, U.S. authorities charged that Mahfouz was a major financier of bin Laden's activities. He has strenuously denied it, just as he has denied persistent reports that the spooked Saudis put him under "house arrest" – or in his case, "palatial mansion arrest." In any event, he and his clan are still wheeling and dealing with Delta Oil and other worthies. Indeed, one of Mahfouz's hirelings – the director of a Pakistani bank he owns – sits on the advisory board of our old friend the Carlyle Group, cheek by jowl with the firm's most celebrated shill: George Herbert Walker Bush.

Somehow we doubt that worthy Kean – even though he's resigning from his Delta perch – will poke very hard at the nexus of intersections between his former business partners, and the bin Ladens, the Bushes, the Saudi royals, Saddam, the CIA and BCCI. We've only scratched the surface here, but even this cursory glance makes the current world crisis look less like some grand geopolitical "clash of civilizations" and more like a nasty falling out among thieves, with rival mafias – who sometimes collude, sometimes collide – now duking it out for turf, cloaking their murderous criminality with pious rhetoric about freedom, security, jihad and God.

Chris Floyd

Render Unto Caesar: The Rule of Law is Dead

Originally published in The Moscow Times on March 15, 2002.

The rule of law is dead.

Even as a fiction, a dream of human betterment – of "civilization," to use that word we hear so often on the lips of warlords and terrorists these days – the idea of law has been discarded, trashed: Just so much excess baggage thrown aside in the relentless, mindless pursuit of raw power.

And perhaps the most remarkable thing about this regression, this throwback to our most primitive and brutal instincts, is that it's being carried out in plain sight, openly, proudly. The defenders of "civilization" no longer even pretend to be bound by law, by moral codes designed to quell the raging beast inside us all and draw us on toward higher notions of justice, liberty, and the integrity of the individual. Instead, they exult in their desecration of these ideals – and are exalted for it.

This week, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush admitted it was snatching suspected terrorists in secret operations around the world and "rendering" them without due process or any legal hearing at all to repressive regimes where they can be beaten and tortured to extract information – then killed when their usefulness is over. Their families too can be threatened with imprisonment or death: another useful extraction tool for the CIA and its proxies.

"After Sept. 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the time," a U.S. diplomat told the Washington Post. "It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can't do on U.S. soil."

Note the usual neat elision there – from "suspected terrorist" to "terrorist." In fact, the CIA "rendering" operations take place outside all legal jurisdiction; there is no standard of evidence or level of proof required to brand someone – anyone – a "terrorist suspect" and put him on the next secret plane to Cairo or Amman. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have already "disappeared" in this way, without legal counsel, without extradition, on nothing more than the word of an ambitious junior operative or a local informer – or even a cranky neighbor.

It's not always done in secret, of course. In January, American forces openly seized five Arabs in Bosnia and sent them to the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for interrogation – the kind you "can't do on U.S. soil," no doubt. This despite the fact that the men had earlier been freed by the Bosnian Supreme Court for lack of evidence against them – and that the Bosnian Human Rights Chamber had issued an injunction protecting them from seizure pending further legal proceedings. That would be the same Human Rights Chamber set up by the United States after the Bosnian war to "protect human rights and due process." From everyone except the United States, obviously.

Nor are U.S. residents exempt from rendering. In January, just after the release of "Black Hawk Down," the story of kindly American soldiers being butchered by nasty, wild-eyed Somalis, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft grabbed three dozen Somali-Americans from their homes, classrooms and businesses and deported them – without charges, without hearings, "not shriving time allowed" – to Mogadishu, the London Times reports.

These were men, and one woman, who had been in the United States for many years, some of them from infancy. They had fled with their families from the murderous warlords who ravaged their country, and had found peace and prosperity in America. But now it was over. They were seized by Ashcroft's immigration officials, they were beaten, shackled, boarded onto planes and dumped in Somalia without papers, passports or any means of support. Most of them don't speak the language or even dare walk the streets, where foreigners – especially Americans – are viewed with hostility. They're now trapped in a fleabag hotel, broke, desperate, and besieged by local media screaming about "the terrorists."

Why were they taken? No one knows; or rather, no one will say. Ashcroft's minions claim they are "investigating" the situation, but will give no details. They never do. Perhaps some Somali warlord pointed to a rival clan, some past enemy – and their children – and whispered the magic words: "al-Qaeda." After all, the Somali gangleaders are now courting Bush's favor, hoping to get the kind of money and weapons the Americans are doling out to their favored drug-dealers and warlords in Afghanistan, where dozens of innocent civilians have been killed by U.S. air strikes called in by mercenary chieftains knocking off their rivals.

That's the world the "defenders of civilization" have given us. They strut out in their thousand-dollar suits and preach to us about "civilized values" and "enduring freedom" while they pay their murderers and wave their cattle prods and "expand their nuclear attack options," plotting the death of millions. They're teaching every budding terrorist, every aspiring dictator, every mafia goon that violence, death and dominance are the truest human values, the way to wealth and glory.

So forget law. Law is dead. There is no law. There is only the reality of power. They can take you tonight, anywhere in the world, beat you and drug you and ship you to a dungeon in Jakarta if they want to. They can ram their cattle prods up your rectum and slap their electrodes on your genitals and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. No one will hear you scream; no one will even know where you are. You don't exist anymore. You're not a person, you have no standing under the law.

There is no law.


Chris Floyd

Voices Carry: Platonic Myth and Modern Fundamentalism

Originally published on CounterPunch.com, June 6, 2003.

Crude religious fundamentalism is poisoning civic society throughout the globe. We see it in the Muslim world – where, with Osama bin Laden and his ilk, it perhaps finds its most virulent form. We see it in Israel, where fundamentalists have introduced wrenching divisions in society – and actually assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in a bid to thwart the peace process. And we see it in America, in the bellicose fundamentalism now riding herd on the American government and on increasingly large swathes of American society as well.

One example: the extremists favored by the Bush Administration with appointments to key international bodies have repeatedly killed or weakened efforts to provide basic health care and basic rights to the poorest and most vulnerable women on earth, because of misconstrued (or purposefully inflated) fears that such measures might lead to more abortions, or, in the latter case, "undermine the primacy of the family." These extremists have often lined up the United States on the side of such "allies" as Iran, pre-Saddam Iraq, Libya and Sudan in opposing rights and health care for women in repressive societies.

This worldwide rise in fundamentalism has led to an understandable backlash in many quarters against religion itself. This is unfortunate. For it is not really the fault of Islam or Judaism or Christianity that our modern-day extremists believe there is only one immutable Truth about reality, which they just happen to possess. It is, of course, the fault of Plato, whose poetic fantasy of a changeless Perfection behind the messiness of physical existence infected the Western mind with the germ of ideological intolerance. For if Perfect Truth exists, then it can be known, and once known, it must necessarily be acknowledged as the sole measure, explanation and arbiter of "all of life and all of history," as Mr. Bush likes to say when invoking the Christian God in his speeches.

Plato set in motion the slow death of the old "gods": those powerful evocations who in their conflicts and contradictions, their lusts and doubts, their recklessness, sorrows, tempers – and manifold imperfections – surely embodied the seething chaos of human reality far better than the degraded Platonic idealism adopted by the Pauline Christians. We leave aside here Jesus' ethical teachings, which despite millennia of lip service have never been adopted or even taken seriously by any society throughout history – although a few of the Apostle Paul's more cranky notions about sex and obedience (especially his ever-popular injunction, "Slaves, obey your masters!") have been enthusiastically embraced by Western rulers since the days of the murderous Constantine the Great down to our present age, presided over by leaders who loudly proclaim their Christianity as they order armies off to war.

Paul's simplified Platonism was wedded to a few particular strains of Jewish Messianism. The result, of course, was a complete travesty of ancient Jewish thought, which centered on the primacy of their God ("Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me" is not exactly the same thing as "There are no other Gods but Me"), and on cultivating correct behavior within the national group itself – but never on the universal application of their particular rites and customs. No, this was a "gift" of Platonic Christianity.

Thus began the break-up of a natural religious order that had held since prehistoric times, made up of communities of differing moralities. Each human grouping – nation, city-state, tribe, clan – had their different gods, different faiths (or none at all), different ideas of correct behavior; and this difference was accepted as a simple fact of nature. It was an order where, for example, homosexuality would be abhorred in Israel and celebrated in Sparta; where conflicting "gospels" of the Olympian gods would be told in Crete and Athens (or even within Crete and Athens); where religious war – or even the concept that any one belief-system could or should be imposed on all humankind – was virtually unknown. This order (which was often brutal in its own particular ways, of course) disintegrated under the pressure of a monomaniacal insistence on the universal application of a single belief-system: that of an unchanging Perfect Truth animating all of existence.

The Arab world preserved much of the heritage of Classical Antiquity after it had been lost in the West due to the twin ravages of state-sponsored Christian extremism and barbarian invasion. Naturally, the Platonic myth was part of that inheritance, and was incorporated into Islam from the start. Indeed, Islam "improved" on its borrowings from Judaism and Christianity in this regard. The basic Muslim tenet, "There is no God but God," did away with the ambiguity in ancient Judaism's formulations of deity, while the rigor with which Islam prosecuted the Christian idea of the exclusivity of a single belief-system nearly shattered the Christian West itself.

Many writers have noted that "secular" movements such as Marxism, National Socialism, and the harsh "market fundamentalism" that now dominates the global economy are all off-shoots of this principle: the universal application of a single, unassailable truth. (Mr. Bush, for example, calls his own rapacious brand of crony capitalism "the single sustainable model of national success" in the world.) The "war on terror" now engulfing the planet is not a "clash of civilizations"; it's more of a civil war within Platonism. Fellow believers in Perfect Truth are seeking to impose their particular interpretation of their common faith on each other, and the rest of us as well. And for possessors of Ultimate Truth, there is no price too high to pay – or to impose – in the service of their ideal.

So as these delusionaries shroud the world in blood and darkness, we would do well to remember the origin of their metaphysics. Much like the Apostle Paul, Plato refined and refashioned the earlier teachings of a more rough-hewn, contradictory figure: the philosopher Socrates. It was Socrates, so Plato says, who gave us the idea of a changeless, Perfect Truth that stands outside physical reality and transcends all other values. And where did Socrates obtain this wisdom, which has cost so many, many millions of lives down through the centuries?

From his daimon, as he called it: an unconscious "inner prompting" that acted as his guide.

He got it from a voice inside his head.

Chris Floyd

General Principles: Colin Powell, Bagman

This is a column originally published in The Moscow Times on May 17, 2002. Or as Hamlet would say: O my prophetic soul!

Quietly, without fanfare, in a bland statement issued by its most "moderate" front man, the Bush Regime crossed another moral Rubicon last week, carrying the once-great republic they have usurped deeper into the blood-soaked mire of international criminality.

The move – committing the United States of America to a policy of Hitlerian military aggression – was little noted at the time. A quick soundbite, maybe, on a couple of the more wonky TV news shows; a brief quote buried somewhere in the thick gray sludge of the "serious" papers. The Regime guaranteed its poison pill would go down sugarcoated by picking Secretary of State Colin Powell as its mouthpiece.

It was a masterstroke of propaganda, really. The former general has long been regarded by the "serious" media on both sides of the Atlantic as a "moderate" maverick on Bush's hard-right team. Liberal commentators praise Powell as a "restraining influence" on more bellicose insiders like Cheney and Rumsfeld, and a wise, guiding hand for a president unschooled in the subtleties of world diplomacy.

It's all a sham, of course. Powell is nothing more than a lifelong bagman for powerful interests. His willingness to play ball, to look the other way, has made him a convenient tool for the some of the most violent and undemocratic forces ever to pollute American society.

His first job on the Inside was an attempted whitewash of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam; it didn't quite work, but he won points for his obfuscatory efforts and went on to a plum job in the crime-ridden Nixon White House. Then came Iran-Contra, the criminal conspiracy of drug-running and terrorism operated directly out of the Reagan-Bush White House. Powell illicitly sent missiles to the terrorist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, then helped with the ensuing cover-up. For this service, he was made head of the entire U.S. military.

He then directed the illegal American aggression against Panama, when President George H.W. Bush killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent civilians in a hissy fit against his old CIA employee Manuel Noreiga. Powell, like Bush, had long known Noreiga was a murderous drug dealer, but they found him useful, and plied him with plaudits and cash – until Bush needed to prove his tough-guy cojones to Reaganite critics in the Republican Party.

Now Powell serves faithfully as a water-carrier for the rabid rightists in Bush Junior's crew. Powell breaks bread with John Ashcroft, who breaks bread with the avowed racists at Southern Partisan magazine, who break bread with extremists who call for concentration camps, expulsions and executions for, among many others, African-Americans. It doesn't bother Powell. He's never made a public moral stand against any hard-right lunacy advocated by his bosses and their cronies. He just follows orders. He's a General Jodl for the 21st century.

So what better man to announce George W. Bush's adoption of Adolf Hitler's moral code? Powell sat down with the media sycophants on ABC's "This Week" and calmly – moderately – laid out the new doctrine. The subject, of course, was Iraq. The UN was working on a deal that would allow international inspectors back into the country to verify that Saddam Hussein no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction.

These inspections were vital because, as George W. never ceases to remind us, Saddam Hussein is so evil that he "gassed his own people." And he most certainly did. But Junior always omits the inconvenient fact that one year after Hussein killed 100,000 Iraqi Kurds, Daddy Bush signed an executive order mandating closer U.S. ties to Saddam's regime. Daddy Bush showered Saddam with endless financial credits and mountains of "dual-use technology" – which the dictator duly used to develop his WMDs – right up until the day before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Needless to say, Powell, as head of Daddy's military, was complicit in this lunatic operation and raised no demur, "moderate" or otherwise.

Flash forward to the present day. Junior Bush is now in the White House. For months, he has threatened military action against Iraq if Hussein fails to verify the destruction of his WMD capacity. (At the same time, of course, Junior undercuts international treaties that would require monitoring of his own biochemical warfare facilities. There's a good reason for that: the Regime is now preparing to develop offensive biochemical weapons, in contravention of international and U.S. law, the Village Voice reports.)

The world braces for another conflagration in the Mesopotamian sands. But then Saddam blinks. He starts talking with the UN. He renounces aggression. He tries to make up with Kuwait. Sooner or later, the inspectors will go back in – no cause for war now, right?

Wrong, Powell told the sycophants last week. The "moderate" secretary said that even if UN inspectors go in and verify compliance, the Bush Regime still "reserves its options" to do anything necessary, including military invasion, to effect a "regime change." Bush himself has already acknowledged that nuclear force is among those "options."

So there it is. The United States now openly claims the right to launch an all-out attack on any nation in the world whose regime it doesn't like – even if that nation is not engaged in active military aggression or terrorism – and even if the mere threat of aggression has been defused by UN monitoring.

No provocation necessary. No legality required. Just a thuggish elite raining death on the world, for profit and power, sowing hatred for the once-great nation they have hijacked – and ensuring more death and terror for its people.

Moment by Moment: A Statement of Principles

Originally published in The Moscow Times, Dec. 7, 2001

Black milk of daybreak, we drink it at evening
– Paul Celan, "Deathfugue"

The children were walking to school. The young people were going out to a dance.

The children stepped on a booby trap planted by a soldier. The young people were shredded by the nails of a suicide bomb. They were all blown up, destroyed.

One moment, the force of life animated their biological matter, their brains seethed with billions of electrical impulses, the matrix of consciousness brought the entire universe into being within them, within each of them, each solitary vessel of knowing.

The next moment, only the matter remained: inert, coagulated, decaying. There was no more knowing, no more being; the universe had come to an end.

Why?

We drink it at midday and morning; we drink it at night

They would have us believe it is because Ishmael warred with Jacob. They would have us believe it is because this or that Divine Will requires it. They would have us believe it is because ethnicity or nationality or religion or some other arbitrary accretion of history and happenstance must override both the innumerable commonalities of all human beings and the radical, irreplaceable uniqueness of each individual.

They would have us believe anything other than the truth: that everyone and everything will die; that all nations, ethnicities, religions and structures will fall away into rubble, into nothingness, and be forgotten; and that even the planet itself will be reduced to atoms and melt away, like black milk, into the cold deeps of empty space. And in the face of this truth, nothing matters ultimately but each specific, fleeting instance of individual being, the shape we give to each momentary coalescence of atomic particles into a particular human situation.

That's all we have. That's all there is. That's what we kill when we murder someone. That's what we strangle when we keep them down with our boot on their throat.

We drink and we drink.

Is it not time to be done with lies at last? Especially the chief lie now running through the world like a plague, putrescent and vile: that we kill each other and hate each other and drive each other into desperation and fear for any other reason but that we are animals, forms of apes, driven by blind impulses to project our dominance, to strut and bellow and hoard the best goods for ourselves. Or else to lash back at the dominant beast in convulsions of humiliated rage. Or else cravenly to serve the dominant ones, to scurry about them like slaves, picking fleas from their fur, in hopes of procuring a few crumbs for ourselves.

That's the world of power – the "real world," as its flea-picking slaves and strutting dominants like to call it. It's the ape-world, driven by hormonal secretions and chemical mechanics, the endless replication of protein reactions, the unsifted agitations of nerve tissue, issuing their ignorant commands. There's no sense or reason or higher order of thought in it – except for that perversion of consciousness called justification, self-righteousness, which gussies up the breast-beating ape with fine words and grand abstractions.

And so the fine words and breast-beating goes on and on – prosperity, freedom, holiness, security, justice, glory, our people, our homeland, God's will be done, we will prevail.

We shovel a grave in the air where you won't lie too cramped

Beyond the thunder and spectacle of this ape-roaring world is another state of reality, emerging from the murk of our baser functions. There is power here, too, but not the heavy, blood-sodden bulk of dominance. Instead, it's a power of radiance, of awareness, connection, breaking through in snaps of heightened perception, moments of encounter and illumination that lift us from the slime.

It takes ten million forms, could be in anything – a rustle of leaves, the tang of salt, a bending blues note, the sweep of shadows across a tin roof, the catch in a voice, the touch of a hand, a line from Mandelshtam. Any particular, specific combination of ever-shifting elements, always unrepeatable in its exact effect and always momentary. Because that's all there is, that's all we have – the moments.

The moments, and their momentary power – a power without the power of resistance, defenseless, provisional, unarmed, imperfect, bold. The ape-world's cycle of war and retribution stands as the image of the world of power; but what can serve as the emblem of this other reality? A kiss, perhaps: given to a lover, offered to a friend, bestowed on an enemy – or pressed to the brow of a murdered child.

Both worlds are within us, of course, like two quantum states of reality, awaiting our choice to determine which will be actuated, which will define the very nature of being – individually and in the aggregate, moment by moment. This is our constant task, for as long as the universe exists in the electrics of our brains: to redeem each moment or let it fall. Some moments will be won, many more lost; there is no final victory. There is only the task.

We drink and we drink


Chris Floyd

Presidential Protocols: Graham Crackers in the White House

Original version published in The Moscow Times, March 8, 2002.

Picture this: the skulking ruler of a corrupt and vicious regime, hunkered down in his palace, besieged by the forces of good as he plots to unleash weapons of mass destruction on his "satanic" foes across the sea. Accused of war crimes and military aggression, he cynically turns to religion, often calling in the leader of the country's largest fundamentalist sect to lend "moral" support to the criminal regime. Together, the ruler and the holy man engage in frenzied diatribes against the enemies of the state, especially that sinister conspiratorial power lurking behind every eruption of evil in the world – the Jews.

A portrait of Saddam Hussein, raging desperately as he braces for the final reckoning at the hands of history's avenging angel, George W. Bush? No, it's just our ole pal Tricky Dick – Nixon, that is, not Cheney – back from the dead in White House tapes released this week: yet another star turn from the Founding Father of modern U.S. politics.

In the tapes, recorded in early 1972, we find Nixon hankering to hurl his nuclear thunderbolts at Vietnam – standard Cold War ranting for the apostate Quaker, who first suggested nuking 'Nam back in 1954. More relevant to the current scene is the Jew-bashing duet Nixon shares with the American elite's favorite fire-breathing evangelical, the Reverend (sic) Billy Graham.

Graham has – not to put too fine a point on it – sucked from the teat of U.S. power for more than 50 years, lending his "moral authority" to various presidents (usually when they're in political hot water) then leveraging the resultant publicity into boffo box office for his stadium harangues around the world. He is perhaps best known in recent years for a miracle that changed the course of human history – saving the soul of the aforementioned angel, G.W. Bush.

Bush credits Graham with "planting the seeds" of fundamentalist faith in his pre-presidential person during a family gathering in 1985. Graham was visiting the Bush clan's luxurious compound in Maine, mooching free meals and sucking up to the sitting vice president, Daddy Bush. (Well, what else should a disciple of Christ be doing? Breaking bread with the poor or something? Get real.)

At that time, of course, young George was in wastrel mode, boozing it up and losing millions of dollars of other people's money in the oil companies Daddy's friends gave him to play with. But the meeting with Graham struck a chord in the lost soul, as Bush himself (or rather his ghostwriter) tells it, in properly hagiographic tones: "[Graham] sat by the fire and talked. And what he said sparked a change in my heart. I don't remember the exact words. It was more the power of his example. The Lord was so clearly reflected in his gentle and loving demeanor."

That divine emanation was somewhat occluded in the Nixon meeting, where Graham heatedly denounced "satanic Jews" and warned Nixon that the "Jewish stranglehold" on the national media "has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain." The Lord-reflecting preacher then gently and lovingly described how he turned the Jews' two-faced perfidy against them with wily Christian deception of his own.

"A lot of Jews are great friends of mine," Graham begins with gentle, loving sarcasm. "They swarm around me and are friendly to me, because they know I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them."

Graham chortles heartily when Nixon's toady and enforcer, H.R. Haldeman (the Karl Rove of his day) tells him to "wear a Jewish beanie" at an upcoming meeting with Time Magazine editors. And he yearns for a Nixon re-election later in the year: "Then we might be able to do something" about those nefarious Hebrews, says Graham.

As with Bush, Graham's potent spiritual seed found fertile ground in Nixon. "It's good we got this point about the Jews across," the president says after the meeting. "The Jews are an irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards."

This week Graham issued a most Nixonian reply to the taped revelations, saying he had "no memory" of the occasion, but even so, he "deeply regretted" comments he "apparently made" during the meeting. "Apparently?" Perhaps those "satanic Jews" doctored the tape, eh, Billy? As it says in the Gospels: "When the sins of thy past confront thee, always use a weasel-word to squirm thy way out."

These days, the elderly Graham is too frail to whack the Bible leather on the road anymore. His place has been taken by his son, Franklin, who runs the racket along the same old lines: hell-fire for the common folk, political cover for the high and mighty. Indeed, Franklin was called upon by the skulking ruler of yet another corrupt and vicious regime in January 2001, when he showered the Lord's blessing on the illicit inauguration of the unelected wastrel whom Daddy Graham put on the road to glory all those years ago.

Meanwhile, Bush is still faithful to his Imam's teaching. He believes Jews are damned to eternal torment, unless they adopt his own pinched and primitive fundamentalist faith, an opinion that once landed him in hot water with his less jihadic mother. Alarmed at her son's ignorant intolerance, she called – who else? – Graham to set Junior straight. Graham's response? "I happen to agree with what George says."

Well, he would, wouldn't he?

Pack Men: A Tale of Bush Thuggery Foretold

Originally published in The Moscow Times, April 26, 2002.

This is how thugs operate. If you don't play ball, don't toe the line, if you give them any lip, they cut you off at the knees. Bare fists, brass knuckles, cold steel, hot lead – it doesn't matter, they'll get you sooner or later. It's all about power: brute, blustering, rapacious power. The way apes do it. The way dogs do it. The way hyenas sort out the pack.

Jose Bustani is an accomplished Brazilian diplomat, a man of learning and enlightenment, with extensive experience in international affairs, including postings in Vienna, Montreal, the United Nations and Moscow. For decades, he has served as a high-level negotiator on a number of international treaties, hammering out agreements on disarmament, pollution, scientific research and maritime law. In 1997, he became director general of the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which enforces the international Chemical Weapons Convention.

In that post, as The Guardian reports, Bustani engineered the destruction of 2 million chemical weapons and the dismantling of two-thirds of the world's production facilities for biological mass murder. He was so well regarded by his colleagues that he was re-elected to a five-year term – unanimously – in May 2000. Just a few months ago, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell publicly lauded him for his "very impressive work."

There was one thing wrong with Jose Bustani, however. He was negotiating to bring Iraq into the Chemical Weapons Convention. That was his job, after all: to get as many nations as possible under the treaty's umbrella. So he was trying to persuade Iraq to accept the Convention and its strictures – including the destruction of chemical weapons stores and facilities, and constant independent monitoring to ensure compliance. If he had succeeded, the Middle East – and the world – would have been an immeasurably safer place.

But there were sinister forces – thugs – who didn't want Bustani to succeed. These thugs have big plans for Iraq, you see. They're going to puff up their chests, beat their hairy bellies and rape Iraq, force it down into the dirt and have their way with it. But they can only do that if Iraq remains a threat – or at least can be credibly framed as a threat to the little ones back home.

And so George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and the rest of the pack started in on Bustani. First they softened him up with some bureaucratic brass knuckles: they illegally withheld U.S. funding for the Convention, leading to a cash crisis at the agency. Next came a boot in the groin: having themselves engineered the Convention's money troubles, they accused Bustani of "financial mismanagement" and demanded that Brazil recall him. The Brazilians refused.

Then the switchblades came out. Last month, the thugs called for a vote of "no confidence" in Bustani from the Convention's 145 member nations. This was foiled – like the gang's recent attempt to muscle in on Venezuela – by an unexpected show of nerve from the "little guys" who normally quake when the thugs start to bellow. The no-confidence vote failed.

Now the pack was in full cry. They called an unprecedented (and illegal) "special session" of the Convention to force Bustani's ouster. In good thug fashion, they put the squeeze on, threatening to bankrupt the agency or pull out of it altogether – a move that would have collapsed the treaty and set off a world-wide explosion in chemical weapons production. (Even as it is, the thugs have arbitrarily excluded themselves from most of the treaty's provisions – including the very same inspection programs that Iraq is condemned for rejecting.)

And this week, they finally unloaded with both barrels. At the "special session" in The Hague on Monday, the thugs strong-armed 47 of the little guys into voting against Bustani. Seven countries, including Russia, stood their ground for the man they had all unanimously elected less than two years before, while 43 other countries abstained. More than 50 countries boycotted the shameful spectacle altogether.

So the thugs had their way, as they always do in the end. The pack bared their teeth, threw back their heads and brayed their triumph through the marble halls of Washington. After all, it was their second bloody carcass in as many weeks – just a few days before, they had manipulated the ouster of Robert Watson, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Watson's crime? Taking a strong stand on global warming. In this case, the Thug-in-Chief acted on orders from on high – the oil companies that bought and paid for him. Exxon Mobil sent a memo to the Bush administration "suggesting" that Watson be removed from his post – and lo and behold, Watson is gone.

Watson was replaced by Indian scientist Rajendra Pachauri. And what was Pachauri's primary qualification? Well, last year he fought against a bid by the Indian government to investigate a gigantic financial boondoggle at the controversial Dabhol Power Plant, Rediff.com of India reports. And who built Dabhol? A little ole Texas company called Enron – the thugs' biggest paymaster.

That's how thugs operate. You play ball, you get perks. You step out of line, they bash your head in. That's power, kid. There's nothing subtle about it. How can you be subtle when you're pounding your belly and baring your teeth?

Chris Floyd

Death Wish: The Presidential Prerogative of Murder

First published in The Moscow Times on Nov. 2, 2001. Yes, that's how long Bush has claimed the absolute power of life and death over every single person on earth.

"Augurs and understood relations have...brought forth the secret'st man of blood."
– Shakespeare, Macbeth.

The president of the United States has now assumed the power to order the murder of anyone on earth.

It's no joke. The Washington Post reports this week that George W. Bush has signed an executive order giving himself the right to issue death warrants for any individual he deems a terrorist or terrorist supporter. These people will be killed in secret by the CIA, without any pretense of due process, without defense or appeal.

Such "targeted killings" – which have worked so well in making Israel the secure and peaceful place it is today – could also include the financial backers of terrorist activity. Good thing this executive order was not in effect during the 1930s, when Bush's grandfather, Prescott, was one of the biggest financial backers of a terrorist organization known as Nazi Germany. Indeed, Bush was in so deep with Hitler that he kept doing business with Nazis even after American soldiers were being ripped by German lead in North Africa.

Ordinarily, this kind of thing might be called treason – but as we all know, the niceties of law and morality don't apply to the Bushes of this world. Prescott's Nazi assets were finally seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act – but it was all hush-hush, on the QT. After all, he was a pillar of the Establishment, and had a good lawyer working the case for him: Allen Dulles, a founding father of the CIA.

Now the CIA – which operates out of a building named for Prescott's son, the "George H.W. Walker Center for Intelligence" – will be murdering the designated victims of Prescott's grandson. What lovely historical symmetry, eh?

Bush's license to kill leaves the meaning of "terrorist" and "terrorist supporter" deliberately vague. The definition is entirely up to the president: there is no legislative oversight, no judicial review, no public scrutiny. If he wants you dead, he can have you killed. It's as simple as that.

This official acceptance of the principle of extra-judicial murder degrades the American government to the level of moral savagery. It is the same "principle" underlying all terrorist activity: a threat to a group's interests is arbitrarily defined by its leaders, who then act arbitrarily, lawlessly, to eliminate the threat. It is the same principle invoked by bin Laden to defend Muslim lands from "infidels." It is the same principle invoked by the Taliban when they assassinated moderate Afghan leader Abdul Haq last week. It is the same principle invoked by Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian doppelgangers as they trade "targeted killings" and civilian murders. It is the same principle once invoked by Prescott's pal Hitler to defend Aryan "purity" by killing Jews.

It is the principle of evildoers, men of blood, murderers and beasts.

And it is now a guiding light of the "civilized" world.

Blood Kin: More Bang for Your Buck the Bush Family Way

Original version published in The Moscow Times, Dec. 5, 2003.

Imagine these banner headlines, circa, say, 1998: President's Brother in Biz With Red Chinese! President's Brother Beds Hookers as Corporate Perk! President's Brother Hip Deep in War Profiteering: White House Policies Fill Family Pockets!

There would've been a hot time in the old media town with all that, eh? Wall-to-wall coverage, 24/7, Fox News frothing, Washington Post pounding, tabloids screaming – "Oval Evil: Reds, Beds and Milking the Dead!" Earnest clucking in the halls of Congress: "We must get to the bottom of these unsavoury connections." Late-night comics cracking wise: "Hey, when the president's brother orders Chinese, he ain't just talking chow mein: 'Yeah, I'll have the rice, the won-ton, two blondes and a bag of unmarked bills, please.'"

But of course, that was another millennium. In our new, more enlightened, more chastened age, we humbly accept – even celebrate – the special privileges accorded to the great ones among us. And so, with a couple of honorable exceptions, the bigtime American media lay a nice soft comfy quilt of silence over last month's revelations about presidential brother Neil Bush – details which emerged from the nasty divorce suit Neil brought upon himself by his flagrant adultery with a close family friend.

While others quilted, the Los Angeles Times and Houston Chronicle detailed Brother Neil's fat "consulting" contract with Jiang Mianheng, son of recently retired Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Young Jiang and his well-connected Communist capitalists are paying Neil $2 million in stock for his "advice" on manufacturing hi-tech computer circuits – despite Neil's sworn oath that he had "absolutely no background" in the field. "But I've been working in Asia for a long time," he added.

He certainly has. Neil also admitted that he'd experienced carnal canoodling with several women during his many business jaunts to Asia over the years. He told the divorce court that these brazen hussies had simply knocked on his hotel door, came in and had sex with him. These encounters were not emollients offered by the businessmen courting his favor and royal name, Neil insisted. Why, he's not even sure these anonymous women offering themselves to him unbidden actually were prostitutes, because "they never asked for money and I didn't pay them." If it's true – as he swears under oath – that he didn't know why those women came to see him, then the best you can say about Brother Neil is that he is an idiot of the highest order. (A possibility not to be discounted, given his illustrious pedigree.)

But of course Neil is no idiot. He first entered the public eye for a sweet scam he pulled during the Reagan-Bush years. As a director of a Colorado savings-and-loan bank, he steered $100 million of homeowners' savings to his own business partners – without telling his fellow directors of the personal connection. The partners defaulted, and Bush, using his family links to Argentine strongman Carlos Menem, tried to hide the losses in some bait-and-switch deals south of the border, as the Austin Chronicle reports.

When the feds finally caught up with him in 1990, Bush had cost American taxpayers $1.3 billion in bailouts to cover his mismanagement. But as the son of the sitting president, Neil could not possibly go to jail for stealing $100 million; the high-born don't do hard time. No, he was merely fined $50,000 and banned from all banking activities. Naturally, Neil didn't pay his own fine; fatcat Republican fundraisers covered it for him.

We told you he was no idiot.

Now comes the sweetest deal of all – enriched by the blood sugar seeping out from the bodies of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Yes, Neil has dipped his silver spoon into the reconstruction gravy being ladled out by his brother George, the White House warlord. Neil is now being paid a fat annual fee to "help companies secure contracts in Iraq," the Financial Times reports.

Bush is co-chairman of a pork funnel called Crest Investment Corporation. His partner, Jamal Daniel, is wired into the chief private conduit of war profits, New Bridge Strategies, a lobbying firm packed with Bush family retainers, many of whom left government service this spring to leap into the Iraq money pit. And what does Neil do to earn his crust of bloodsoaked bread? He told the divorce court that he "answers the phone when Jamal Daniel calls to ask for advice."

And what does Jamal Daniel get out of this unusual arrangement? Why, he gets to say, "I was just talking to my partner, the president's brother" when he's negotiating with Bush administration officials to win "reconstruction" contracts for his clients. As long as Brother George keeps tossing cannon fodder into the Iraqi cauldron, Brother Neil will keep padding his fat Bush wallet.

Neil's sordid saga exemplifies the Bush clan's prime "family value": rake it in from all sides, blood and honor be damned. We've often noted here that Neil and George's grandpa, Prescott Bush, was a huge investor in the Nazi war machine, maintaining his profitable Hitlerian arrangements even after America was at war with Germany. Some of these assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. But last month, newly uncovered government documents showed that Prescott and his partners, including Democrat bigwig Averill Harriman, actually held onto to more than a dozen other Nazi assets throughout the war, the New Hampshire Gazette reports.

Did anyone go to jail for these crimes? Of course not! Instead, Prescott founded a political dynasty that has used aggressive war, insider trading, covert operations, government corruption and sweetheart deals with virulently anti-democratic patrons (the bin Ladens, Saudi Wahabbi extremists, the Chinese Communist Party, cult leader Sun Myung Moon, etc.) to enrich themselves and their cronies.

If you have no honor, no integrity, and don't care if people die to make you rich, why then, the world is just a nameless woman who shows up at your door unasked and lets you have your way with her.

Right, Neil?

Masked and Anonymous: The Age of Abu Ghraib

This is an excerpt from the e-book, Empire Burlesque. From the summer of 2004.

Chapter Six

MASKED AND ANONYMOUS
(January-June 2004)

Never could learn to drink that blood,
and call it wine.
– Bob Dylan,
Empire Burlesque

***


Abu Ghraib has long been the symbol of state terror in Iraq: not just a prison-fortress, but a zone of metaphysical perversion, where the principles of justice and law are turned inside out, converted into fiendish mockery. A place of torture and degradation, where human nature is stripped naked, reduced to Lear's "bare, fork'd animal," caked in blood and filth, whipped and tormented – all with the full warrant of the highest authorities, the approving imprimatur of honored leaders. Crime in the name of law, savagery in the name of civilization, destruction in the name of order – the transvaluation of all values.

This Nietzchean hell-hole was the epitome of the regime of Saddam Hussein – and George W. Bush made it his own. Even in an occupation characterized by an endless series of ignorant blunders and brutal stupidities, the adoption of Abu Ghraib as the chief concentration camp of the invading force boggles the mind – at first glance, at least. But it's only puzzling if viewed through the prism of reason, as if it were a decision of rational statecraft, designed to achieve a compelling national interest – in this case, a desire to avoid the unnecessary inflammation of Iraqi fears and anger, in order to reduce American casualties and speed the just and honorable resolution of a chaotic situation. (Leaving aside for a moment the monstrous crime of launching a war of aggression in the first place.)

If the true aim of the war was to eliminate the international threat allegedly posed by Saddam and liberate the Iraqi people from his onerous tyranny – as the Bush Regime and its liberal-hawk apologists repeatedly declared – then the last thing you would want to do is to associate yourself with the epicenter of the terror you ostensibly came to overthrow. You might tear it down and build a hospital on the site; you might turn into a memorial for the victims of Baathist torture; you might even, in good Bushist fashion, flog it off to a corporate crony for conversion into a shopping mall. But what you would not do, under any circumstances, is re-fill the fortress with thousands of fresh victims – the overwhelming majority of them innocent people rounded up randomly in violent home invasions and street-sweeping raids – and subject them to systematic torture and degradation.

Yet this is of course precisely what the Bush Regime did. Abu Ghraib, which had been emptied by Saddam in the final convulsions of his crumbling rule, was promptly reopened by Bush, ringed with American razor wire and filled to bursting with new prisoners. Whole families were tumbled into its maw, young children and old men, hundreds, thousands of the "disappeared," hooded, nameless, unrecorded, trashed. There – though not just in Abu Ghraib – they were stripped naked, caked in blood and filth, whipped and tormented, all with the full warrant of the highest authorities, the approving imprimatur of honored leaders. With a clean slate to build upon in the rubble of Iraq, with a hundred different strategies, methods and policies to choose from, with absolutely no compelling reason of statecraft or national interest to do so, Bush deliberately and consciously chose to recreate Saddam's system of state terror – in the very pit from whence it came.

Thus we can only conclude that it was never Bush's intention to alleviate the fear and anger of the Iraqi people, since he took such obvious steps to provoke them. We can only conclude that it was never his intention to liberate them from state terrorism, since he so pointedly imposed such a system himself. We can only include that he came to accomplish what he has indeed accomplished: the installation – through "a heavy dose of fear and violence," as one American commander so eloquently put it – of client state in Iraq, led by a strongman who will facilitate the Regime's long-term (and long-declared) strategic goal of establishing a permanent military "footprint" in the key Middle East oil state, along with its short-term goal of opening the country to ruthless exploitation by Bush cronies and contributors, and favored foreign interests.

By the middle of election year 2004, all of this had been accomplished. True, in its quest to install a Saddam Lite – more obedient, more presentable, less quirky – the Regime had to change horses in mid-stream, swapping its early favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted fraudster, suspected Iranian spy and proudly-confessed purveyor of false, warmongering intelligence ("We were heroes in error!") for a late-breaking dark horse: Chalabi's cousin and rival, Iyad Allawi, former Baathist enforcer, paid CIA tool, and leader of an anti-Saddam terrorist campaign that killed numerous Iraqi civilians, including a busload of schoolchildren. Obviously, this man of blood-and-iron action was much to be preferred over his windbag cousin, who could offer little more than lies and larceny.

Abu Ghraib was central to this successful operation – but its significance did not lie in Iraq alone. In April, with the release of a handful of pornographic pictures from its Bushist bowels, the fortress was transformed into an international symbol, the emblem of a worldwide system of state terror: The Pentagon Archipelago. There, in a global gulag of prisons and concentration camps, the Regime refined a thoroughgoing program of "interrogation" based on an array of coldly calculated physical and psychological torture techniques. Low-ranking cannon fodder – including part-time, undertrained, over-wrought reservists press-ganged into front-line service – were set loose to "prepare the ground for interrogations" through beatings, starvation, sleep-deprivation and ritual humiliations. Then the "experts" – CIA operatives, military intelligence officers and mysterious "private contractors" – would move in for the "information extraction." But if they didn't get "good stuff," the prisoners were subjected to more "preparation." Some prisoners were so well "prepared" they had to be packed in ice to keep their corpses from rotting while their killers decided how hide the results of this excessive liberation.

The release of the pictures – the now-famous Christ-figure wired on a box, the plucky mountain gal tugging a prisoner on a lease, the grinning "thumbs-up" over the face of a corpse, the digitally-blurred masturbation sessions, the scrum-pile of naked, hooded bodies – knocked the Regime temporarily off-stride. As their long-somnolent enablers in the media began to ask – timorously, tentatively – a few awkward questions, the Bushists were thrown into a PR panic.

They were not disturbed by the reality of the atrocities, of course; it was the pictures that were the offense. They disturbed the meticulously wrought fantasy world, the alternative reality that the Bushists had wrought for public consumption. And so Bush manfully stepped forward to offer a supreme sacrifice: he would, at last, tear down the hateful symbol of Abu Ghraib, and generously replace it, at American expense, with – a hospital? a memorial to Saddam's victims? a big ole shopping mall? No; Bush proposed, with all the pursed-lipped sincerity he could muster, to replace Abu Ghraib prison with – another prison.

Meanwhile a few bits of cannon fodder would be sacrificed on the altar of PR expediency: fall guys for big wheels, scapegoats of the empire. For the orders which they had carried out with such exemplary dispatch had issued from a system created at Bush's command. Long before, just weeks after the September 11 attacks, at Bush's request the Justice Department and Pentagon constructed a weasel-worded framework of legal perversions proclaiming that the president had the "inherent power" to set aside any law and order any crime whatsoever in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the "war on terror." Page after page of (forgive the pun) tortured reasoning and sinister ingenuity were devoted to producing novel "legal doctrines" that could "render specific conduct otherwise criminal not unlawful." The specific crimes Bush sought to indemnify were clearly spelled out in the documents: "cruelty, oppression and maltreatment; reckless endangerment; assault; maiming; involuntary manslaughter; unpremeditated murder."

(As noted here earlier, premeditated murder had already been taken care of, in a series of Executive Orders signed by Bush, beginning in November 2001, which gave lower-level CIA agents and "Special Forces" ops the authority to carry out "targeted assassinations," i.e., murder, of suspected terrorists, at their own discretion.)

Crime in the name of law, savagery in the name of civilization, destruction in the name of order – the transvaluation of all values. Never had the true nature of the Bushist beast been so nakedly exposed. It was now clear beyond the shadow of a doubt – to anyone who cared to see – that the United States was entering the final phase of its long mutation into a military autocracy, a "Commander-in-Chief State," where liberty is no longer the birthright of the people but the gift of an absolute ruler, whether "elected" or not. It is in fact a peculiarly American, 21st-century fascism – a bizarre amalgam of corporatism, militarism, religiosity and sentimentality, sustained by fear, by endless war, by the relentless construction of "enemies" at home and abroad, and, above all, by terror: the terror it delivers and the terror it receives.

As high summer began to burn in 2004, the year of decision, there could no longer be any mistake about the kind of America the Bush Regime was offering to the people. Millions seemed ready to embrace the new imperium; millions of others bristled in dissent. The die, as they say, was cast. Would Americans learn to drink that blood, and call it wine?

**Postscript, 2005: Well, we know the answer to that one, don't we?**

Chris Floyd

Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law

Original version published in The Moscow Times, August 15, 2003.

At long last, a "smoking gun" has been found to justify the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Investigators probing obscure government archives in the occupied capital city have uncovered a document signed by the unelected tyrant which provides a clear casus belli for the much-disputed conflict.

This remarkable directive was part of a series of moves undertaken by the dictator to strengthen his one-party stranglehold on the state by looting the wealth of the Iraqi people and placing himself and his cronies beyond the reach of the law. It was issued at the leader's autocratic whim, without public notice or any vote by the oppressed nation's ludicrous, rubber-stamp "legislature." It freed the dictator and his looter-barons from responsibility for a broad range of potential crimes: fraud, environmental devastation, slave labor, even murder – as long as those activities were related to filling the ruling clique's pockets with profits from Iraq's oil.

A more powerful instrument of repression can scarcely be imagined – yet the bleeding-heart apologists for tyranny, those craven bootlickers who so strenuously oppose "regime change" to remove a thugocracy choking the life from a long-suffering people, have not uttered a peep about this nefarious document, which lies at the heart of a criminal enterprise that has claimed thousands of innocent victims and fanned the flames of international terrorism.

We refer, of course, to Executive Order 13303, quietly promulgated by George W. Bush in May then buried deep in the verbiage of the Federal Register, where it was recently unearthed by Jim Vallette of the Institute for Policy Studies. Here, Bush's prettified public motives for war give way to the "bottom line" so beloved by the sordid corporate hacks and ideological extremists who seized Washington in the 2000 judicial coup.

In the order, Bush proclaims that any legal action taken for any reason against any American corporation dealing in "Iraqi petroleum products" at any point in the process – from well-head to gas-pump to boardroom – "constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security" of the United States. In fact, the very possibility that one of Bush's oil pets might be held accountable for its actions while gorging on Iraqi crude is so terrifying that the Looter-in-Chief has declared a "national emergency" to deal with the situation. (A "national emergency" that he forgot to mention to, er, the nation.)

The Bush edict grants a blanket immunity to all traffickers in Iraqi oil – as long as their moolah finds its way, by hook or crook, into the coffers of "United States persons or entities." Bush declares flatly that any "judicial process" launched against these protected entities "shall be deemed null and void." And how to guarantee that his partners and patrons won't be troubled by some rogue nation that still clings to the outmoded principle of law and order? Simple: one of the agencies authorized to "employ all powers" necessary "to carry out the purposes of this order" is our old friend, the Defense Department.

Ostensibly, Order 13303 is aimed at preventing sissy-baby war-shirkers like, say, Russia, from going to court to enforce their existing oil contracts with Iraq. Here, the Regime is merely recognizing "facts on the ground": Iraq's oil doesn't belong to Saddam anymore; it belongs to George Bush, and he could do what he likes with it. (Forget the shuck-and-jive about "preserving the resources of the Iraqi people" – that's just cornball for the yokels back home.)

But as Vallette points out, the rap sheet of American energy "entities" is crammed with ugly incident, including the aforesaid employment of forced labor, the hiring of murderous goons to put down protests by unruly natives, the subversion and corruption of national governments, and the despoiling of vast swathes of sea and coastline on a regular basis. There's little reason to believe these swaggering behemoths will be more circumspect in their fevered rush to exploit Iraq's captive treasures. Like many other of Bush's unconstitutional, unlegislated and undebated secret directives, Order 13303 is essentially a license to kill.

It's also part of a massive effort to turn Iraq into a Bushist theme park, where favored corporate cronies can run wild, unfettered by regulation and glutted by American taxpayer money that frees them from any financial risk. To that end, Bush sent his old college buddy Thomas Foley to Baghdad last week, the Financial Times reports, to "advance the privatization" of Iraqi state enterprises by ensuring that the sell-off of the nation's non-oil assets will be "open to foreign trade" – i.e., "United States persons or entities." Many of the latter have hired Bush's former campaign manger and political fixer, lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, to front for them at the occupation trough, the National Journal reports.

At the same time, a rigged bidding process last week forced rivals of Dick Cheney's paymaster, Halliburton (yes, he still gets fat checks from his old firm) out of the running for a new multibillion-dollar contract to administer Iraq's oil fields, the Washington Post reports. Those billions will now flow to the Vice Man's company – whose every action will be whitewashed by Bush's order of indemnity.

But there is no indemnity, no immunity, for the American soldiers dying daily in guerrilla ambushes, or the innocent Iraqis mown down daily by their panicky conquerors, or the innocent people around the world at increased risk as terrorists ape the Bushist way of enforcing ideology by violence. No, they all pay the full price – the blood price – for the Bush barons' free ride.

Damascus Road: The Next Deadly Diversion

Originally published in The Moscow Times, April 11, 2003.

As shovels scoop the shredded viscera of cold collaterals in Baghdad, and brisk hoses scour the blood from market stalls and children's bedrooms – festive preparations to make ready for the enthronement of the new lords of Babylon – we cast an anxious gaze beyond the barbed steel of the security perimeter, to a column of troops and ordnance rumbling toward the horizon. Whither are they bound? Who's next to feel the mailed fist of liberation?

At the moment, all signs point to Syria. Iran, of course, would be a more glittering prize – not to mention a more remunerative one for the unholy trinity of Oil, Arms and Construction whose mephitic spirits brood over the rising American Empire. But Iran is a big beast; first Iraq must be chewed, swallowed and digested before there is sufficient room in the imperial gut – and sufficient loot in the imperial treasury – for another sumptuous banquet.

Syria, however, would make a tasty snack – rough fare gulped down on the long, circuitous march to Persia and Cathay. What's more, a dose of shock and awe for Damascus would secure the rear for any eventual push on Teheran. And once recalcitrant Syria is brought to heel, the juicy olive of Lebanon would surely fall of its own ripe weight, without any need of brutal plucking. Then, with the equally cowed Jordan, it could serve as a – what should we call it? repository? refuge? – yes, a refuge for the troublesome hordes of Palestine, transferred – humanely and happily, of course – from the newly cleansed lands of Judea and Samaria.

Such are the utopian visions that allure the policymakers in the court of the imperator, George Augustus. But there are practical considerations that drive them on as well. Their leader excepted, these are not entirely stupid men. They can certainly see what the blind, bedazzled and bought-off media refuse to show the rest of the nation: that the American economy is in serious decay, that the infrastructure of American society – its ability to provide education, medicine, roads, justice, security, stability, opportunity, equality – is being severely fractured by the ever-growing, unconstrained imbalance between a small circle of powerful elites and the increasingly disempowered multitudes who serve them.

Of course, the imperial courtiers applaud this imbalance; they believe it's the best, most efficient ordering of society. (The fact that their own wealth and privilege are enhanced by this higher order is simply a happy accident.) That's why they're striving mightily to increase the imbalance through their radical domestic policies: their deliberate bankrupting of national and state governments through massive tax cuts for the wealthy, coupled with gargantuan military spending that siphons any remaining funds away from public services. The Imperator's own political mentor, Grover Norquist, put it well – long before that other happy accident on September 11: "We want to shrink government down so we can drown it in the bathwater."

But vestiges of America's democratic system remain. As in the dying days of the Roman Republic, the traditional structures of self-governance – though increasingly gutted – are still in place, and retain their old meaning for many Americans. (Many others, of course, are glad to see their liberties subsumed by the growing authoritarian cult of the Commander-in-Chief.) The Commander and his courtiers cannot yet rule solely by fiat – though they're almost there, as shown by Bush's still-unchallenged assertion of his right to order the extrajudicial killing of anyone on earth whom he deems – on secret evidence, or none at all – a "terrorist," or even just an undefined "supporter" of terrorism.

But as long as some semblance of democracy survives, there is a danger that the courtiers could be tumbled from power by the multitude. Therefore the true nature of America's societal rot must be kept hidden at all costs. The courtiers know they cannot govern a country at peace and hope to survive politically. Only war – with its upsurge of tribal feeling, its emotional floodtides sweeping away doubt, dissent and reason – can provide the necessary diversion from the Regime's fanatical policies of Imbalance.

So there must be more war, and soon. Syria is currently being sized up as a prospect. Unsubtle hints are being floated in the press: Damascus "aided and abetted" Saddam, Damascus is sheltering Saddam's minions, Damascus might be hiding Saddam's vast storehouses of weapons of mass destruction, which the cluster-bombing liberators so signally failed to find. Damascus has its own WMD, supports terrorism, has invaded neighboring countries, and might, conceivably, possibly, one day threaten the America in some hypothetical fashion – just like Saddam!

And last week, Bush courtiers suddenly began trumpeting the fact that the repressive Syrian regime – a Baathist Party state, just like Iraq! – sadistically tortures its prisoners, who are often snatched in secret arrests and held without charges or trial. This fact has hitherto been conveniently overlooked by the Bushist Party state, which has been sending some of its own Guantanamo zeks – often snatched in secret arrests and held without charges or trial – to Syria's torture chambers for "special interrogation."

But as Saddam has learned, doing America's dirty work – which he did for many years, bombing, brutalizing and gassing with the gushing support of Ronald Reagan, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George Bush Senior – cuts no ice when the courtiers change their plans. So keep looking for that light on the road to Damascus – not the blinding glory that converted Saul of Tarsus, but the flash of flesh-chewing MOABs launched by the Crawford Caligula, George Widowmaker Bush.

Chris Floyd

Pin Heads: The Bushist Push To Theocracy

Originally published in The Moscow Times, March 12, 2004

One of the sticking points in finalizing the "interim constitution" of the Pentagon cash cow formerly known as Iraq was the question of acknowledging Islam as the fundamental source of law in the puppet state. Secularists objected, moderates were uneasy, extremists insisted. In the end, a fudge was worked out that cites the Koran as a fundamental source of legal authority, with the proviso that no law can be passed that openly conflicts with Islam.

We in the enlightened West smile at such theocratic quibbling, of course: imagine, national leaders insisting that a modern state be governed solely by divine authority! Governments guaranteeing the right of religious extremists to impose their views on society! What next – televised debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Oh, those poor, ignorant barbarians in Babylon!

Well, wipe that smile off your face. For even as we speak, the ignorant barbarians in Washington are pushing a law through Congress that would "acknowledge God as the sovereign source of law, liberty [and] government" in the United States. What's more, it would forbid all legal challenges to government officials who use the power of the state to enforce their own view of "God's sovereign authority." Any judge who dared even hear such a challenge could be removed from office.

The "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004" is no joke, no rhetorical flourish by obscure fringe elements; it was introduced by some of the Bush Regime's most reliable – and powerful – Congressional sycophants, including the renegade Democrat, Bush-backing Senator Zell Miller of Georgia. If enacted, it will effectively transform the constitutional republic of the United States into a theocracy, where the abitrary dictates of a "higher power" – as personally interpreted by a judge, policeman, bureaucrat or president – can override the rule of law.

If you think this is an exaggeration – typical liberal paranoia – think again. Although the very little mainstream comment on the bill has described it merely as a sop to those who want to post the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and the like, the Religious Right knows full well what the true impact of the bill will be. That's why they've mobilized their forces to give all-out support to the measure, even at the expense of other high-profile battles against abortion and gay marriage. Indeed, some hardright commentators are calling the bill "the most important item on the conservative agenda this year – more important than the presidential election," as investigator Karen Yurica reports.

The Act – drafted by a former minion of TV evangelist Pat Robertson – is the fruit of decades of work by a group of extremists known broadly as "Dominionists." Their openly expressed aim is to establish "biblical rule" over every aspect of society – placing "the state, the school, the arts and sciences, law, economics, and every other sphere under Christ the King." Or as Attorney General John Ashcroft – the nation's chief law enforcement officer – likes to say: "America has no king but Jesus!"

According to Dominionist literature, "biblical rule" means execution – preferably by stoning – of homosexuals and other "revelers in licentiousness;" massive tax cuts for the rich (because "wealth is a mark of God's favor"); the elimination of government programs to allieviate poverty and sickness (because these depend on "confiscation of wealth"); and the re-institution of slavery, based not on race but on debt. No legal challenges to "God's rule" will be allowed. And since this order is divinely ordained, the "elect" can use any means necessary to establish it, including deception, subversion, even violence. As Robertson himself adjures the faithful: "Zealous men force their way in."

Again, this is no tiny band of cranks meeting in some basement in Alabama or a cabin in Utah, as a series of chilling reports by Yurica, David Niewert and other investigators make clear. The Dominionists are bankrolled and directed by deep-pocketed, well-connected business moguls and political operatives who have engineered a takeover of the Republican Party and are now at the heart of the U.S. government. They have made common cause with the "American Empire" faction – Cheney, Rumsfeld, the neo-conservatives – who seek "full spectrum dominance" over the globe.

In addition to the lust for controlling the earth, the two groups share a belief in the divinity of wealth, of course. And the Bushist Dominators know well that a religious herd under the cracking whip of approved clerics will be far more malleable to corporate predation than a bunch of secular citizens demanding their rights, questioning authority and reveling in licentiousness. (Which is why they approved the Islamic character of the Iraqi "constitution" – and why they're so fiercely opposed to such things as gay marriage.) Thus, the Dominionists provide money and domestic political muscle for the Dominators' geopolitical goals; in turn, the Dominators provide a practical vehicle – overwhelming military might and state power – for making the Dominionists' dreams a reality.

The Dominionist movement was founded by the late R.J. Rushdoony, a busy beaver who also co-founded the Council for National Policy. The CNP is the politburo of the American conservative movement, filled with top-rank political and business leaders who set the national agenda for the vast echo chamber of rightwing foundations, publishers, media networks and universities that have schooled a whole generation in obscurantist bile – just like the extremist Wahabbi religious schools funded by Saudi billionaires have poisoned the Islamic world with hatred and ignorance. Candidate George W. Bush humbly paid his ritual obesiance to the CNP Wahabbis in 1999, in a speech that has remained a fiercely guarded secret.

One of the chief moneybags behind the rise of Dominionism was tycoon Harold Ahmanson, Rushdoony's protégé and fellow CNP member. In addition to establishing theocracy in America, Ahmanson had another abiding interest: computerized voting machines. As reported here last year, Ahmanson, a fervent Bush backer, was instrumental in establishing two of the Republican-controlled companies now rushing to install their highly hackable machines – with untraceable, unrecountable electronic ballots – across the country in time for the November election. Whatever it takes, O Lord: "Zealous men force their way in."

The Dominionists also have strong backing on the Supreme Court, Yurica notes. Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the ludicrous and illegal ruling that appointed Bush to the presidency, declared in the theological journal First Things that the state derives its moral authority from God, not the "consent of the governed," as the Declaration of Independence would have it.

Rejecting that old reveler in licentiousness, Thomas Jefferson, Scalia proclaims that government "is the 'minister of God' with powers to 'revenge,' to 'execute wrath,' including even wrath by the sword." He rails against the "tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government" and "foster civil disobedience." Approvingly, he cites the Apostle Paul: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." (Unless, of course, the Dominators need a "regime change" somewhere. Then the "powers that be" suddenly lose their divine ordination.)

Meanwhile, the potential arsenal of dominion keep expanding. Just days after the Congressional Bushists fired their theocratic missile, General Ralph Eberhart, head of America's first domestic military command, declared that the Regime must now bring the experience learned on foreign battlefields to the "Homeland" itself, including the integration of police, military and intelligence forces, "wide-area surveillance of the United States" and "urban warfare tactics," GovExec.com reports. Since there has never been a terrorist cell uncovered in the United States larger than the mere 19 men who carried out the September 11 attacks, one wonders just who this "urban warfare" will be aimed at? Licentious Jeffersonians, perhaps?

Put this juggernaut at the service of democracy-hating extremists with no legal restraints on their enforcement of "God's sovereign authority" – plus a proven track record of subverting the law to gain political power – and what would you have? A mullah state? A military theocracy?

Or should we just call it "a second term"?

Chris Floyd

Vanishing Act: "Disappearing" the Republic at the Push of a Button

Original version published September 2003 in The Moscow Times.

It's a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buy-outs and bogus fronts. It's a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers – and presidential family members – lie down together in the slime. It's a hacker's dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly-programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically-partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny.

It's how America, the "world's greatest democracy," casts its votes. And it's why George W. Bush will almost certainly be the next president of the United States – no matter what the people of the United States might want.

The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players – Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia – with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), coming on strong. These companies – all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid – have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nation-wide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems – many using "touch-screen" technology that leaves no paper trail at all – are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, John Hopkins and other universities.

The technology had a trial run in the 2002 mid-term elections. In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called "amazing" upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls. In computerized Minnesota, former vice president Walter Mondale – a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash days before the vote – was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing. Convenient "glitches" in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb "L'il Brother" Bush. A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly "glitched" local election went to court to have the computers examined – but the case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the innards of America's voting machines are the "trade secrets" of the private companies who make them.

Who's behind these private companies? It's hard to tell: the corporate lines – even the bloodlines – of these "competitors" are so intricately mixed. For example, at Diebold – whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to "delivering" his home state's votes to Bush next year – the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing "steering group" stacked with Bushist faithful.

Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the "Christian Reconstructionist" movement, an extremist faction that openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, with the imposition of strict Christian dominion, placing "the state, the school, the arts and sciences, law, economics, and every other sphere under Christ the King." This "dominion" includes the death penalty for homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners and – we kid you not – slavery, "one of the most beneficent of Biblical laws." As the movement's leader – and Ahmanson's fellow CNP member – R.J. Rushdoony puts it: "The Christian should therefore not fear laws in support of Christian social goals just because they interfere with personal freedom."

Ahmanson also holds a major stake in ES&S, where he's joined by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. Before his ascension to high office, Hagel was CEO of an earlier ES&S incarnation. Thus, when he ran for the Senate, his own company counted the votes. Needless to say, his initial victory was reported as "an amazing upset." Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company of ES&S. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998 gubernatorial race was ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes.

Sequoia also has a colorful history, most recently in Louisiana, where it was the center of a massive corruption case that sent top state officials to jail for bribery, most of it funneled through Mob-connected front firms. Sequoia executives were also indicted, but escaped trial after giving immunized testimony against state officials. The company's corporate parent is the UK communications and printing firm De La Rue, which even as we speak is churning out the colonial currency notes for the new Iraq, courtesy of a hefty Coalition contract. De La Rue, in turn, is owned by the private equity firm Madison Dearborn – a partner of the Carlyle Group, where George Bush I makes millions trolling the world for war pork, privatizations and sweetheart deals with government insiders.

Investigations by Bev Harris, Thom Hartmann and many others have forced some of these concerns about computer voting into the edge of the mainstream. Maryland, for example, was so worried about its fat new contract with Diebold that it hired another company to vet the software: SAIC. On the surface, this seems a bit like asking Pepsi to certify the taste of Coke, as top SAIC executives have now spun off into the vote-counting game. These include former CEO Admiral Bill Owens – former military aide to Dick Cheney and Carlyle honcho Frank Carlucci – and ex-CIA director Robert Gates, of Iran-Contra fame. SAIC's long history of fraud charges and security lapses in its electronic systems hasn't prevented it from becoming one of the largest contractors for the Pentagon and the CIA – and it will doubtless pose little obstacle to its entrance into election engineering.

The mad rush to install unverifiable computer voting is driven by the Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush last year. The chief lobbying group pushing for HAVA was a consortium of arms dealers – those disinterested corporate citizens – including Northop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin. The bill also mandates that all states adopt the computerized "voter purge" system used by Florida's Jeb Bush to eliminate 91,000 eligible black voters from the rolls in November 2000. This was done by a private firm, the Republican-run ChoicePoint Inc., which delivered a list of supposedly "ineligible" voters – identified by race – to Florida officials. ChoicePoint was supposed to help local officials correct any mistakes, but despite taking several million dollars for this task, they somehow neglected to do it. Now Bush's HAVA requires that all states conduct similar operations – and no points for guessing which Republican-run private firm is gobbling up the lion's share of those contracts. (This gives a whole new meaning to the term "whitewash").

The unelected Bush Regime now controls the government, the military, the judiciary – and the machinery of democracy itself. Absent some unlikely great awakening by the co-opted dullards of the corporate media, next November the last shreds of a genuine American republic will disappear – at the push of a button.

Chris Floyd

Manufacturing Intent: The Army's Cult of Killing Leaves a Generation Gap

Original version published in The Moscow Times, July 30, 2004

America calls its soldiers who fought in World War II "the greatest generation." They are hymned by Hollywood, celebrated by publishers and politicians, hailed at every turn. And for their troubled descendants, whose military misadventures stretch from My Lai to Abu Ghraib, the clean-limbed victors of the "last good war" do indeed shine out like heroes from a lost golden age.

Yet despite the vast tonnage of celluloid and printer's ink devoted to their praise, what is perhaps the truest, highest measure of their worth has been almost universally neglected. And what is this hidden glory, which does more honor to the people of the United States than every single military action ordered by their corruption-riddled leaders during the past fifty years? It's the fact that in the midst of history's most vicious, all-devouring, inhuman war, only about 15 percent of American soldiers on the battlefield actually tried to kill anyone.

In-depth studies by the U.S. Army after WWII showed that between 80 to 85 percent of the greatest generation never fired their weapons at an exposed enemy in combat, as military psychologist Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman reports. Many times they had the chance, but could not bring themselves to do it. They either withheld their fire altogether or else shot into the air, to the side, anywhere but at the fellow human beings – their blood kin in biology, mind and mortality – facing them across the line. This reticence is even more remarkable given the incessant demonization of the enemy by the top brass, especially in the Pacific, where the Japanese – soldiers and civilians – were routinely portrayed by military propaganda as simian, sub-human creatures fit only for extermination.

Yet even with official license given to the most virulent prejudice, even with the sanction of a just cause (self-defense against aggression), even with the incitements of mortal fear, of grief and anger over slain comrades, even with all the moral chaos endemic to warfare, American soldiers, as a whole, killed only with the greatest reluctance, in the direst extremity. These were not "warriors," bloodthirsty automatons with stripped-down brains and cauterized souls, slavering in Pavlovian fury at the bell-clap of command. No, they were real men, willing, as Grossman notes, to stand up for a cause, even die for it, but not willing, in the end, to transgress the natural law (implanted by God or evolution, take your pick) that says: Do not kill your own kind – and every person of every race and nation is your own kind.

You would think that this apotheosis of human transcendence, this Emersonian ideal achieved, in the best democratic fashion, by ordinary conscripts – farmboys and dock workers, factory hands, bank clerks, guitar players, teachers, cab drivers, hobos, card sharks, college men – would have been inscribed on plates of gold and fixed to the walls of the Capitol for all time, a blazon of national greatness. Just think of it: soldiers who hated to kill, who went out of their way to avoid killing or even firing their weapons, who held on to their essential humanity in the face of the severest provocations – and yet still won battle after battle in history's greatest war.

But far from celebrating this example of genuine glory, the military brass were horrified at the low "firing rates" and anemic "kill ratios" of American soldiery. They immediately set about trying to break the next generation of recruits of their natural resistance to slaughtering their own kind. Incorporating the latest techniques for psychological manipulation, new training programs were designed to brutalize the mind and habituate soldiers to the idea of killing automatically, by reflex, "at the bell-clap of command," without the intervention of any of those inefficient scruples displayed by their illustrious predecessors.

And it worked. The dehumanization process led to a steady rise in firing rates for U.S. soldiers during subsequent conflicts. In the Korean War, 55 percent were ready to pump hot lead into enemy flesh. And by the time the greatest generation's own children took the field, in Vietnam, the willingness to slaughter was almost total: 95 percent of combat troops there fired with the intent to kill.

And today in occupied Iraq, the brutalizing beat goes on. "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, it's like it pounds in my brain," a U.S. soldier told the Los Angeles Times last week. Another shrugged at the sight of freshly slaughtered bodies. "It doesn't bother me at all," he said. "I'm a warrior. My soldiers, they are all warriors. They have no problems. There's no place in this Army for men who aren't warriors." Said a third: "We talk about killing all the time. I never used to be this way…but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I'll be like when I get home." A few military officials are beginning to worry too, noting the high rates of suicide, mental damage and emotional torment among combat veterans.

But the warlords of the White House – notorious battlefield shirkers who prefer to do their killing by remote control – have little regard for the cannon fodder they churn through in their quest for dominance and loot. "Training's intent is to re-create battle, to make it an automatic behavior among soldiers," says Colonel Thomas Burke, Pentagon director of – what else? – mental health policy. Any efforts to mitigate the moral schizophrenia induced by this training would undermine "effectiveness in battle," he adds.

Yet strangely enough, this new model army, imbued with eager "warrior spirit," has not produced the kind of lasting victories won by the reluctant fifteen-percenters of yore. It was stalemated in Korea, defeated in Vietnam, chased out of Lebanon and Somalia, balked in Afghanistan (where 40,000 Taliban troops slipped away to fight again and drug-dealing warlords rule the countryside), while its two excursions into Iraq have ended first in irresolution (with "worse-than-Hitler" Saddam still on his throne) and now in bloody quagmire.

Could it be that the systematic degradation of natural morality and common human feeling – especially in the service of dubious ends – is not actually the best way to achieve national greatness?

Chris Floyd

Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed

Original version published Aug. 27, 2004, in The Moscow Times.

If you would know the hell that awaits us – and not far off – there's no need to consult ancient prophecies, or the intricate coils of hidden conspiracies, or the tortured arcana of high-credentialed experts. You need only read the public words, sworn before God, of top public officials, the great lords of state, the defenders of civilization, as they explain – clearly, openly, with confidence and pride – their plans to foment terror, rape, war and repression across the face of the earth.

Last month, in little-noticed testimony before Congress, the Bush Regime unveiled its plans to raise a host of warlord armies in the most volatile areas in the world, Agence France-Presse reports. Bush wants $500 million in seed money to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" – i.e., bands of lawless freebooters – to serve as Washington's proxy killers in the so-called "arc of crisis" that just happens to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South America.

Flanked by a gaggle of military brass, Pentagon deputy honcho Paul Wolfowitz told a rapt panel of Congressional rubber-stamps that Bush wants big bucks to run "counter-insurgency" and "counter-terrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" of the world – and in the hinterlands of nations providing "sanctuary" for terrorists. Making copious citations from Bush's 2002 "National Security Strategy" of unprovoked aggressive war against "potential" enemies, Howlin' Wolf proposed expanding the definition of "terrorist sanctuary" to any nation that allows clerics and other rabble-rousers to offer even verbal encouragement to America's designated enemies du jour.

Any rogue state that countenances such freedom of speech within its borders will become a prime target for "the path of action," said Wolf, quoting Bush's most ringing Hitlerian phrase from the 2002 manifesto. To relieve the overstretched U.S. military, the "action" will be carried out largely by Bush's new hired guns: religious and ethnic militias, tribal forces, mercenaries, cultists, insurrectionists, druglords, pirates – basically anyone willing to slit throats and terrorize populations at the order of the Oval One.

A more sinister – not to mention stupid – policy can scarcely be imagined. One of the most spectacular miscalculations in modern history was the American decision to create an international army of Islamic extremists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Together with the repressive militarists of Pakistan and the head-chopping religious tyrants of Saudi Arabia, American leaders armed, funded, supplied and shaped the global jihad – beginning before the Soviet intervention, which the bloody religious insurgency successfully provoked, as Washington intended. The CIA ended up fighting cheek-by-jowl with the likes of Osama bin Laden, helpfully providing the holy warriors with extensive training in "asymmetrical warfare" – i.e., terrorism. These rabid chickens came home to roost with a vengeance on Sept. 11, 2001, and are now running wild all over the world.

Meanwhile, the Afghan warlords thus empowered by Washington proceeded to tear the country to shreds, killing more than 50,000 people in Kabul alone during their post-Soviet factional frenzy, creating a hell so dire that even the Taliban's vicious moralism seemed a welcome relief for a time. These same warlords are back in the saddle again, paid by Bush as they re-establish their petty fiefdoms of repression, religious obscurantism, rampant crime, factional violence – and dope-dealing on a record-breaking scale, the Independent reports.

The "victory" in Afghanistan has deteriorated so badly that last month the UN's own staff workers called on the organization to leave the country because it is too dangerous, the BBC reports. This follows the July pull-out of Medecins Sans Frontieres, the Nobel-winning medical aid group that managed to survive in Afghanistan for 24 years, through the anti-Soviet jihad, the murderous civil war and the depredations of the Taliban. But with Bush's paid proxies now in control, even the redoubtable doctors have had to quit the field.

There's nothing really new in Bush's murder-by-proxy scheme, of course; America has a long, bipartisan tradition of paying local thugs to do Washington's bloodwork. For example, late last month, Guatemala was forced to pay $420 million in extortion to veterans of the U.S.-backed "paramilitaries" who helped Ronald Reagan's favorite dictator, right-wing Christian coupster Efrain Rios Montt, kill 100,000 innocent people during his reign, the BBC reports. The paramilitaries, whose well-documented war crimes include rape, murder and torture, had threatened to shut down the country if they weren't given some belated booty for their yeoman service in the Reagan-Bush cause.

But Wolfowitz did reveal one original twist in Bush's plan: targeting the Homeland itself as a "terrorist sanctuary." In addition to loosing his own personal Janjaweed on global hotspots, Bush is also seeking new powers to prevent anyone he designates a "terrorist" from "abusing the freedom of democratic societies" or "exploiting the technologies of communication" – i.e., defending themselves in court or logging on to the Internet. As AFP notes, Wolfowitz tactfully refrained from detailing just how the Regime intends to curb the dangerous use of American freedom, but he did allow that "difficult decisions" would be required. (Perhaps a stateside version of those rigged "military tribunals" now serving up prime kangaroo meat down in Guantanamo Bay?)

No doubt the arrogant Bushists believe they can control the mercenary dogs of war they're now unleashing. But history shows that armed bands driven by religious, ideological or ethnic fervor – or just the ordinary lust for loot and power – rarely follow the script set for them by their elitist paymasters. Bush's morally depraved "path of action" is in fact a highway to hell.

Chris Floyd

"That Which Happened" (September 11)

Written Sept. 12, 2001; published in The Moscow Times, Sept. 14, 2001

Perhaps their knives were made of stone – chipped flints, sharpened to a deadly point: the earliest human technology. Stone knives would have baffled the sleek security machines, scanning for metal, for iron and steel. Perhaps that's how the guardians of the world's greatest power were defeated by a handful of men.

A handful of men, dedicated to God, willing to die for their cause – virtues celebrated throughout the civilized world. Old-fashioned men, too: this was not push-button war, there were no guided missiles streaking across vast oceans, no bomb bays opening somewhere above the clouds. This was the real thing, the raw thing, fierce and elemental. They came to kill and they came to die. They killed; they died.

And so the unimaginable has come, at last, to America. Unimaginable, that the innocent could lie dead in their thousands, buried beneath the ruins of ordinary life. Unimaginable, that the destruction that has swept back and forth across the world in great waves, leaving the innocent lying dead in their millions, should have at last spilled over the strong sea-walls that preserved the nation's wealth and tranquility. Unimaginable, that Americans should know what so many, too many, have known before: the sudden, gutting horror of mass-murdering injustice.

How did it happen? America spends $30 billion a year, year after year after year, on "intelligence." Untold trillions have been spent on "defense." The nation bristles with powerful ordnance, it "projects dominance" (as the strategists like to say) all over the globe. And yet its leaders are like blind men, raging like Oedipus, unable to see their attackers or defend their people or understand what is happening to them.

Struck and wounded, they fall back on empty rhetoric: "an attack on democracy" – as if the suspected plotters, who spent years in a war to the death with the Soviet Union, give a damn what America's political system might be. Then come the metaphysical explanations: "A new evil has come upon us." "This is a war between good and evil."

Well yes, it's evil – as the killing of every innocent person is – but it isn't new. It's as old as the hills, as old as any chipped flint dug up from the ground. It's religious arrogance, tribalism, lust for power and – let's be honest about it – a falling-out among former allies, old comrades in undercover war. Each one of these is a powerful engine of hatred – churning in the dirt of the real world, in the mixed matter of the human brain, in the murk and folly of human history.

Religious arrogance: the implacable, impenetrable conviction that absolute truth is in your sole possession. You are good, favored by God; your enemies are evil, demonic. Tribalism (or in "civilized" terms, nationalism, patriotism): the belief that your country, your people, your grievances, your interests are above all others, that your values are so important that innocent people must sometimes be sacrificed to them. Lust for power: the burning desire to impose your will on the whole world – or failing that, to bring the whole world crumbling down around you.

And a falling-out. The White House points the finger of blame at Osama Bin Laden – a demon made to order, right out of central casting, remorseless, demented, crafty, rich. Like Saddam Hussein – another sinister figure suspected of collusion in the attack – Bin Laden was once empowered by America itself. The same intelligence services that now stand blind, struck and wounded, cynically embraced these brutal renegades as pawns in the Great Game of geopolitics; embraced them, armed them, paid them, built them up into autonomous powers – then, like Dr. Frankenstein, lost control of their creatures. The used became the users, and in Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Afghanistan – and now, New York and Washington – they have killed their thousands, and their tens of thousands.

In the name of religion. In the service of patriotism. In the lust for power – to project their dominance.

This is not a new evil. It's as old as the hills, and is with us always.

But atrocity tends to raze the ground of history. In the aftermath, with the cries of lamentation rising over fresh graves, it is always Zero Hour. "That which happened" – to borrow the poet Paul Celan's phrase for the Nazis' unspeakable crimes – buries what came before, effaces the paths that led us to this place, strips away the cloak of reason (a thin rag in the best of times), and leaves nothing but the bare, anguished call for revenge.

So the leaders, the blind men, assemble. They call urgently for war – against someone, somewhere; they cannot say who, because they cannot see. The intelligence services are put to work – perhaps they will find a new pawn, someone to turn against the one who has turned against them; someone new to embrace, arm, pay, empower. Perhaps the missiles will streak and the bomb bays will open indiscriminately, as before. Or perhaps it will be left to assassins, surgeons of death who will use the terrorist's own weapons of treachery and surprise to destroy the culprits – and the inevitable "collaterals."

Blood will have blood; that's certain. But blood will not end it. For murder is fertile: it breeds more death, like a spider laden with a thousand eggs. And who now can break this cycle, which has been going on for generations? Past folly undoes us, but who, in the Zero Hour, can ignore the lamentations? Who can deny the ghosts, these loved ones gone, the red food demanded by the dead?

There is no answer. It will not stop. They say the world has now changed irreversibly, that nothing will ever be the same. But it will be the same. The same engines of hatred, the same murk, the same dirt, the same mixed matter in human brains.

This is not a new evil. It's as old as the hills, and it is with us always.

"Even unto the end of the world."

Chris Floyd

Some Direction Home: Following Bob Dylan Down the Old Plank Road

There's a legend in my family that we are kin to Uncle Dave Macon. We are for certain distant cousins to the Macons of Wilson County – and Uncle Dave lived in the next county over. My parents met him once, driving to his farm one afternoon when they were teenagers, not yet married. This was not too long before his death.

They found him sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch. He greeted the young strangers like the kinfolk one of them might well have been, invited them into the house, showed them his memorabilia, and gave my mother – one of "them pretty girls from Tennessee" he sang about so often – a small, delicate glass deer as a memento of the visit. Back out on the porch, he picked up his banjo and did a couple of comic numbers from the rocking chair, feet keeping time on the wooden boards. There looked to be some whisky in his friendly manner, they said; perhaps a noonday dram before they had arrived.

It was all over soon enough, but a photograph survives to record the event, a black-and-white print taken with my mother's camera. Uncle Dave is in the rocking chair, legs crossed, battered hat perched on his head, banjo in his lap. His face is puffy, pitted, cadaverous; the fire that had stoked him since his hot young days – in the still-churning wake of the Civil War – is finally going out. A dying man, from a dying world.

But he played for the young folks anyway, out of courtesy, for the hell of it, conjuring up another reality out of rhythm, strings and joyful noise, then letting it dissolve into the air. "Won't get drunk no more, won't get drunk no more, won't get drunk no more, way down the old plank road…"

***

Despite the reputed kinship and this ancestral encounter, the first Uncle Dave Macon song I ever actually heard was one recorded by Bob Dylan: "Sarah Jane." This was on the "revenge" album of out-takes and studio warm-ups that Columbia Records put out after Dylan temporarily left the fold in the early Seventies. When I first heard the song, I thought Dylan had written it himself; certainly the line, "I got a wife and five little children," sung with such full-throated exuberance, seemed like straight autobiography. I didn't realize then the kind of alchemy Dylan could work on other people's songs, how he could make them his own, right down to the marrow.

Like most people who get into Dylan, at first I was dazzled by the originality of his vision, his words, the brilliant fragments of his own kaleidoscopic personality as they were lit up in turn by each new style, each different take or tonal mood. His work seemed a perfect embodiment of the Romantic ideal: art as the vibrant expression of the self – defiant, heroic, fiercely personal. But while that stance is as valid as most of the other illusions that sustain us, it only takes you so far. What I've come to realize over the years is that Dylan's music is not primarily about expressing yourself – it's about losing yourself, escaping the self and all its confusions, corruptions, pettiness and decay. It's about getting to some place far beyond the self, "where nature neither honors nor forgives." Dylan gives himself up to the song, and to the deeper reality it creates in the few charged moments of its existence. We can step through the door he opens to that far place and see what happens.

Dylan's words – original, striking, piercing, apt – are marvelous, of course. Like Shakespeare's, they knit themselves into your consciousness, become part of the way you see and speak the world. But the true alchemy lies in the performance. The phrasing is more important than the phrases, no matter who happened to write them. The grain in his voice – the jagged edge that catches and tears at the weave of life as it flies past – is what moves us through that open door. Along with the music, obviously: the mathematical and emotional interplay among the musicians, shaped by Dylan's guiding will. When it all works, and it usually does, it's artistry of the highest order. As they say back home, you can't beat it with a stick.

***

You can follow Dylan through many doors, into many realms: the disordered sensuality of Symbolist poetry, the high bohemia and low comedy of the Beats and Brecht, the guilt-ridden, God-yearning psalms of King David, the Gospel road of Jesus Christ, the shiv-sharp romance of Bogart and Bacall. There's Emerson in there, too, Keats, Whitman, even Rilke if you look hard enough: fodder for a thousand footnotes, signposts to a hundred sources of further enlightenment.

But if you go far enough with Dylan, he'll always lead you back to the old music. This is the foundation, the deepest roots of his art, of his power. For me, as for so many people, he was the spirit guide to this other world, this vanished heritage. He has somehow – well, not just "somehow," but through hard work and endless absorption – managed to keep the tradition alive. Not as a museum piece, not like a zoo animal, but as a free, thriving, unpredictable beast, still on the prowl, still extending its range.

Early on, Dylan realized that the essence of the old music was not to be found in the particular styles of picking and singing rigorously classified by the ethnographers and carefully preserved by purists. Traditional music was idiosyncratic, created by thousands of unique individuals working their personal artistry on whatever musical materials came to hand, in cotton fields, coal mines, granges, churches, factories, ports, city streets and country roads. Who else in the world ever sounded like Roscoe Holcomb or Charley Patton? Their art was as distinctive as that of Beethoven and Chopin, who also drew on traditional elements to make their music.

No, what the old music held in common, what made it penetrating and great, was not some mythological collective origin or expression of sociocultural mores; it was a shared DNA of fundamental themes, fundamental truths – the double helix of joy and mortality, threaded like twine, tangled like snakes, inextricable, irresolvable. It was this genetic code that Dylan used to grow his own art, in its own unique forms.

Joy and mortality: the psychic pain of being alive, your mind and senses flooded with exquisite wonders, miraculous comprehensions – and the simultaneous knowledge of death, the relentless push of time, the fleeting nature of every single experience, every situation, every moment, dying even as it rises. There's pain waiting somewhere – from within or without – in every joy, a canker in every rose we pluck from the ground of being.

This awareness shadows the old music – deepens it, gives it the bite of eternal truth. It's there even in the joyful noise of Uncle Dave Macon, so happy that he whoops out "Kill yourself!" in manic glee as he gallops down the old plank road. Yet in the songs that deal directly with this shadow, such as the blues, full of hard knowledge, hard pain, the very act of singing that pain gives rise to a subtle joy, and a kind of solace. The old songs, and the ones Dylan has built upon them, create another reality, an impossible reconciliation, where time stands still, life and death embrace, decay is banished, and all our pettiness, our evil urges, our confusions are arrested and transcended. Until, of course, the song itself, being mortal, fades away as the music ends.

***

Dylan's music can provide a doorway out of yourself – "a pathway that leads up to the stars" – but it can also help bring you back to yourself, to what you should be doing with your life: attending to these eternal truths, trying to take that code and carry it forward, pass it along, using whatever materials – musical or otherwise – that your life and history and inclinations have given you. In this case, Dylan brought me back to my own heritage; it was decades after hearing his "Sarah Jane" that I first mentioned Uncle Dave Macon to my father and heard the story of that long-ago visit, and was given the photograph to keep, and pass on.

Perhaps the kind of transcendence I've talked about here only works if you're a certain kind of person, with your nerves aligned in a certain way, attuned to a certain signal. Perhaps it's all a happenstance of biochemistry. I don't know. In a world where every understanding, no matter how profound, is provisional, temporary, clouded and corrupted, I wouldn't make universal claims for any particular path. I do think that the experience of the heightened reality offered by Dylan's music – and by all the places he leads us to – holds out the promise of a rough-hewn wisdom, something that can make us feel more alive while we're living, while our brief moment is passing.

Anyway, it works for me.

Chris Floyd
This is an extended version of a column originally published in The Moscow Times, Dec. 24, 2004. It is excerpted from the upcoming book, Encounters With Bob Dylan, Vol. II, edited by Tracy Johnson. .

Tattoo Nation: America Pays the Cover Charge for Bush's War Crimes

Longer version of a Moscow Times column for the May 27, 2005 edition. Published on CounterPunch.org, May 25.

Seymour Hersh, chronicler of American madness from the My Lai Massacre to Abu Ghraib, tells a chilling story of the lingering aftermath of atrocity.

As the revelations of brutal torture by the victors were first spilling from conquered Iraq, Hersh was contacted by a family member of a young American woman who had served in a unit policing Abu Ghraib, the Guardian reports. The young soldier had "come back a different person," the relative said: distraught and angry, turning her back on her family.

The relative retrieved a computer she'd lent the soldier to use in Iraq ­ and found there a file crammed with torture porn: photo after photo of a naked Iraqi prisoner writhing before the onslaught of fierce police dogs. One of the pictures was later published worldwide and became an emblem of the dehumanizing brutality of the American occupation.

The young soldier thought she'd been sent to fight for democracy and freedom, the relative told Hersh, but it was a lie. Instead she found herself in Hell, committing crimes, violating her own nature, her sense of duty perverted by leaders who twisted it into a weapon to serve aggressive war. Since her return, said the relative, the young soldier keeps getting black tattoos, more and more of them, slowly covering her entire body -- trying literally to change her skin.

The fate of this soul-broken, tormented daughter of America embodies the nation itself under the malevolent reign of George W. Bush. The whole country is changing its skin, trying to cloak its shame and complicity by a wilful disfigurement. Who could look on the hideous form of Bush's America -- the snarling faces belching rancor on Fox News; the rabid partisans oozing bile through the halls of Congress; the money-glutting religious extremists relentlessly pushing ignorance, intolerance and theocratic dominion; the corporate beasts devouring the landscape, destroying communities, writing their own laws, gorging on unprecedented profits wrung from global sweatshops, corruption and war; the somnolent, silent, acquiescent public, blankly countenancing torture, deceit, elitist rule, military aggression and the open destruction of their Constitutional order ­-- and not see in all this a body politic in profound psychological crisis: traumatized, guilt-ridden, turning itself inside out in a frantic attempt to escape the truth?

And this desperation only grows as the truth piles up, fragment by fragment, dug out from Bush's slagheap of lies. In the past month, there have been a barrage of "smoking guns" outlining the Regime's criminality in such stark and blatant terms that even the American corporate media --­ those cringing enablers of atrocity ­-- have been forced to take some notice.

First came the final report of Bush's own inspection team, confirming, yet again, that there were no weapons of mass destruction or even any WMD programs in Iraq: they had all been destroyed 12 years before Bush's invasion. Then there was the leak of the 2002 "Downing Street Memo," where the UK's war council confirmed, once again, that Bush was determined to conquer Iraq no matter what, and was "fixing the facts and intelligence around the policy."

Of course, this was old news to anyone outside the American media's echo chamber. For example, we reported here in September 2002 that top Bushists like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had signed off on a plan in September 2000 calling for the military occupation of Iraq -- ­ even if Saddam Hussein's regime had already been overthrown. Thus the "liberation" of the Iraqi was just as much a phony casus belli as the non-existent WMD.

Even more fresh evidence of Bush's deliberate deception surfaced in the Washington Post last week, with a story detailing the mountain of doubts, caveats and outright debunking about Iraq WMD that U.S. intelligence services placed on Bush's desk before the war ­-- all of it wilfully ignored as Bush continued to deceive the nation about the "undoubted" WMD "threat."

Then last week, the New York Times highlighted Bush's murderous torture system in Afghanistan: American captors beating prisoners to death, pulpifying their limbs as part of a regimen of exquisite torments later exported to Iraq -- ­ including Abu Ghraib, where Hersh's tattooed soldier entered Hell.

We have reported here in great detail on the voluminous evidence establishing that the endemic, systematic torture in Bush's gulag was created by the White House, sanctioned by Bush's appointed "legal experts" who ruled that as Commander-in-Chief, he is not constrained by laws against torture ­-- or indeed, by any law whatsoever. Equally copious evidence establishes that Rumsfeld and selected Pentagon officials eagerly implemented the torture regimen ­-- then systematically worked to block or limit investigations once the truth began leaking out.

For example, one of the low-ranking "bad apples" finally convicted in the Afghan murders --­ after extended Pentagon coverups --­ was sentenced to just three months in jail by a military court this week, AP reports: three months for helping beat a chained, helpless man to death. The message Bush is sending to his shock troops in the gulag is clear: If by some freak chance your torture duties are uncovered, you will be gently removed from the scene with only nominal punishment --­ as long as you don't rat out your superiors, of course.

The evidence of the Regime's culpability --­ for torture, for mass murder --­ is overwhelming. The burden of proof is no longer on Bush's accusers, but on those who would defend his evil actions. Yes, evil is the word. The Nuremberg Tribunal called aggressive war "essentially an evil thing." To initiate such a war --­ under any circumstances -- "is not only an international crime," said the Tribunal, "it is the supreme international crime," because it carries all the others in its wake. It breaks down all barriers of law and morality, in states and in individuals, creating the necessary inner chaos ­-- and physical opportunity ­-- for the most abysmal perversions of human nature.

There are of course many other evils in the world, including the terrorism that Bush invokes, mendaciously, to justify an act of aggression that he planned long before the September 11 attacks. But the invasion of Iraq is the "supreme international crime" of our day. No tattoo, no new skin can blot it out.

Chris Floyd

ANNOTATIONS

Ring of Fire: The Fallujah Inferno

Originally published in The Moscow Times on November 19, 2004.

"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."
-- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.

There is of course no space, nowhere to move or breathe in the sealed chamber of the American Infoglomerate – the vast entanglement of corporate media and government propaganda that smothers the body politic with hysterical outpourings of diversion, drivel and deadening white noise. Here, events occur in a total vacuum: they have no history, no context, no consequences. Stripped of the heft and scope of reality, they can easily be molded and distorted to fit the prevailing political and business agendas. Amnesia, ignorance, confusion and fear are left to rule the day: excellent fuel for the stokers of the inferno, who use the heat to work their alchemical magic – transforming human blood into gold.

"There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable. Smoke is everywhere. It's hard to know how much people outside Fallujah are aware of what is going on here. There are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying are from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens."

This was a voice from the depths of the inferno: Fadhil Badrani, reporter for the BBC and Reuters, trapped in the iron encirclement along with tens of thousands of civilians. It was a rare breath of truth. The reality of a major city being ground into rubble was meant to be obscured by the Infoglomerate's wall of noise: murder trials, state visits, Cabinet shuffles, celebrity weddings – and, above all, the reports of "embedded" journalists shaping the "narrative" into its proper form: a magnificent feat of arms carried out with surgical precision against an enemy openly identified by American commanders as "Satan," the Associated Press reports.

One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.

So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.

What they saw instead were two loudly devout Christians, Bush and Tony Blair, clasping hands and proclaiming that Artica Salim had been torn to shreds in order to fight terrorism – specifically, the terrorism of Jordanian thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The city's alleged refusal to turn over Zarqawi was the ostensible reason for the attack; yet halfway through the assault, with dead civilian bodies already stinking in the streets, Coalition commanders finally admitted the truth: Zarqawi wasn't in Fallujah – and hadn't been there for weeks, perhaps months.

But then, Zarqawi leads a peculiarly charmed life. Three times before the war, U.S. forces were set to kill him and destroy his organization. It wasn't that difficult; after all, he was operating in Kurdish-held Iraqi territory, where the U.S. military had free rein. Yet each time, Bush called off the strike, the Wall Street Journal reports. He needed Zarqawi for his pre-war propaganda, so he could point to an "al Qaeda ally in Iraq" – even though Zarqawi was on Bush's Iraqi turf, not Saddam's. And Bush still needs Zarqawi, or someone like him – a killer whose lurid malefactions obscure the even larger crime that set all these atrocities in motion: an unprovoked aggressive war based on lies, whose only goal is the imposition of a regime that will enrich Bush's cronies while advancing American dominance of the world's resources.

Bush and Zarqawi are mirror-image enemies: foreign terrorists breaking into Iraq to spread indiscriminate death and ruin in pursuit of their brutal visions. Everywhere they go, everything they touch, everyone they draw to their cause becomes inferno.

ANNOTATIONS:
"Inside Fallujah: One Family’s Diary of Terror [Artica Salim],"
Scotland Sunday Herald, Nov. 14, 2004
http://www.sundayherald.com/46056

"Smoke and Corpses,"BBC, Nov. 11, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4004873.stm

"20 Doctors Killed in Strike on Clinic: Red Crescent,"
UN Integrated Regional Information Network, Nov. 10, 2004
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=44075&SelectRegion=Iraq_Crisis&SelectCountry=IRAQ

"US Strikes Raze Fallujah Hospital,"BBC, Nov. 6, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3988433.stm

"Civilians Killed While Crossing Euphrates,"
Associated Press, Nov. 14, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041114/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_escaping_fallujah_1

"Ghost City Calls for Help,"BBC, Nov. 13, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4008887.stm

"Questions Mount on Bush Failure to Hit Zarqawi Camp,"
Wall Streent Journal, Oct. 25, 2004
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB109866031609354178-IdjgYNhlaR3n52paIKIaKmGm4,00.html

"Civilian Cost of Battle for Fallujah Emerges,"The Observer, Nov. 14, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5062732-103550,00.html

"Fallujah a Sea of Rubble and Death After Offensive,"
Reuters, Nov. 14, 2004
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO446775.htm

"A City lies in Ruins, Along with the Lives of the Wretched Survivors,"
The Independent, Nov. 15, 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=582915

"The Enemy Has Got a Face: He's Called Satan,"
Associated Press, Nov. 6, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041106/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=716

"Marlboro Men Kick Butt in Fallujah,"New York Post, Nov. 10, 2004
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11102004/index.shtml

"Let Them Drink Sand: War Crimes in Fallujah,"CounterPunch, Nov. 13, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11132004.html

"American Heroes,"
Baghdad Burning, Nov. 16, 2004
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#110063119588554403

"Beyond Embattled City, Rebels Roam Free,"Los Angeles Times, Nov. 12, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes392.html

"Sy Hersh: The Relentless Bombing of Iraq,"
Editor and Publisher, Nov. 11, 2004
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000717958

"A City in Ruins, Sky Full of Smoke: 'Let's Kick Ass the American Way!"
The Guardian, Nov. 14, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5062701-103550,00.html

"I Got My Kills; I Just Love my Job,"Daily Telegraph, Nov. 9, 2004
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/09/wirq109.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/09/ixnewstop.html

"Marine Kills Injured Prisoner in Falluhah Mosque,"MSNBC, Nov. 15, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6496898/

"'This One's Faking He's Dead.' 'He's Dead Now,"
The Independent, Nov. 16, 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=583322

"Running Out of Patients: Fallujah Hospital Bombing,"The Village Voice, Nov. 7, 2004
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/000514.php

"Iraq Hospitals Could be Used as Propaganda Centers, says Pentagon,"New York Times, Nov. 8, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/08CND_IRAQ.html?ei=5094&en=8b32979d8c8d9235&hp=&ex=1099976400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=

"We're Not Focused on Zarqawi, General Says,"
Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49798-2004Nov14?language=printer

"A Wrecked Nation, a Desert, a Ghost Town. And This Will Be Called Victory,"
The Times, Nov. 17, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1059-1361818,00.html

"John Pilger: The Unthinkable Becomes Normal,"
New Statesman, Nov. 12, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=3965

"Few Foreign Fighters Among Insurgents,"Los Angeles Times, Nov. 16, 2004
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/la-fg-fighters16nov16,0,3409500,print.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

"US Suspects Many Insurgents Have Fled,"Washington Times, Nov. 12, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041112-120122-7344r

"Fallujah 101,"In These Times, Nov. 12, 2004
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/fallujah_101/