Reply #36: Two points come to mind...

[warren pease]

One, it seems to me as though you assume the key objective of the whole Iraq adventure was taking Saddam out. So the choices in that case would have included any number of options, as you say above.

However, imo this whole disaster had very little, if anything, to do with removing Saddam, who was well-contained and relatively harmless to the rest of the Middle East, and certainly to the US. And while I agree that Bushie himself is both stupid and crazy enough to commit an entire country to a unilateral, "preemptive" invasion and subsequent occupation of a sovereign nation that happened to be led by a relatively toothless thug who just happened to be linked to a plot to kill Poppy Bush, the "realpolitik" assholes like Cheney and his PNAC cohorts would never have allowed such a move for such an idiotic reason.

The original acronym for the invasion said it all: OIL, or Operation Iraqi Liberation. It was quickly renamed to some other psy ops happy talk gibberish lest the obvious connection register on our narcotized but hyper-patriotic citizenry -- and after the administration and its functionaries had enough time to roll in the aisles laughing until the tears flowed.

Oil and "full-spectrum dominance" were and remain the reasons for the US presence in Iraq. They're not building an embassy the size of Shea Stadium, as well as a bunch of new "permanent" army and air force bases, just so they can leave any time soon. As the PNAC advised in "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the 2000 neocon manifesto that also wished for "a new Pearl Harbor" to galvanize public support for a massive military buildup, diplomacy has been replaced with militarism and its targets include anywhere on earth that the US deems a "threat to national security," which is to say, if "our oil is under their sand."

And as to Hitler, I think in retrospect anyone who fought in or lived through the European war, complete with the radical switch from only attacking military targets to focusing significant bombing capabilities on civilian populations, would have loved to see a billion dollars materialize just after the 1933 Reichstag fire to bribe Hitler to go away and live in peace, harmony and untold splendor until he died from natural causes at an advanced age.

Perhaps another billion or so to spread among the Goerings and Himmlers and Bormans and Heydens, along with a few thousand US dollars each for the brownshirt enforcers, would have been a good investment as well.

In fact, I'm beginning to see the next wave of diplomacy looming just ahead: the use of bribery to get rid of emerging tyrants who future constitute threats to peace and justice and sanity before they can accomplish their twisted objectives. Can you imagine how much better off the world would be today if, instead of forcing BushCo to connive and steal and invade its way to vast fortunes, the UN or some other international entity would have just slipped a couple of extra billion into Bush and Cheney's pay envelopes right before the first Patriot act was introduced and then sent them off to Bushie's 99,000 acre tropical paradise in Paraguay?

The "punishment" hardly fits the crimes, but they get their wish and I get my reward, which would be not having to endure and subsidize these filthy sociopaths for the past six years.

So... a couple of billion to keep the vampires away; or a trillion and counting to let them feed on the corpses they've created. That's a pretty easy choice from where I'm sitting. Talk about cost/benefits and risk/reward ratios.

I think international bribery is going to be the happenin' thang, as we used to say when we were busily mangling the language back in the '60s.

What do you think?


wp