Ravings Of A Rational Mind

The Spook Has Moved!

2008-05-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

my new address is:
http://www.althespook.com/ravings/
please drop by! And did I mention you can finally comment? Really!

He's Baaaaaaaack! (Mimicking Poltergeist Scene Voice)

2007-10-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Halloween, He's Baaaaaaaaack!

Who?

Ahmed Chalabi, of course! The future Saddam Hussein replacement who was picked before the first shot was fired in the Second Iraq Invasion. I've mentioned him a time or two before here, and have been pooh-poohed for it. Detractors have said, "He's out of power. Bush and Gates hate him. He's dead meat, Iraqi Roadkill."

Sure.

From McClatchy Newspapers' Washington Bureau we read:

Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial, ubiquitous Iraqi politician and one-time Bush administration favorite, has re-emerged as a central figure in the latest U.S. strategy for Iraq.
His latest job: To press Iraq's central government to use early security gains from the surge to deliver better electricity, health, education and local security services to Baghdad neighborhoods. That's the next phase of the surge plan. Until now, the U.S. military, various militias, insurgents and some U.S. backed groups have provided those services without great success.
That the U.S. and Iraqi officials are again turning to Chalabi, this time to restore life to Baghdad neighborhoods, speaks to his resiliency in this nascent government. It's also, some say, his latest effort to promote himself as a true national advocate for everyday Iraqis.

Chalabi, in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, provided White House and Pentagon officials and journalists with a stream of bogus or exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorism. He also suggested that he'd lead Iraq to make peace with Israel and welcome permanent U.S. military bases, which could apply pressure to Iran and Syria.
But Chalabi's proven a resilient politician since then and Iraqis yearn for someone who can make the government help them. In sermons in the holy Shiite city of Najaf and in Sunni newspapers alike, Iraqis here often reject their central government, saying it has done nothing for them since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Instead, the government's critics say, local tribal leaders and residents rejuvenated neighborhoods by pushing fighters out and securing the streets.

I'm starting a pool here and now on when he seizes power; the winner gets an all-expense-paid trip to the Green Zone courtesy of Chalabi's Curries, the new catering service there; a New Dictatorship in every order! (Images courtesy of Wikipedia and The Iraqi National Congress.)

Are The PKK And The KRG Attempting To Destabilize Turkey?

2007-10-26T05:04:00.000-07:00

I've been bothered recently by the string of seemingly-pointless PKK attributed attacks against Turkish troops along the border with the Kurdish Region of Iraq. It seemed to me to be verging on insane to invite a massive Turkish military incursion into the KRG's territory just when it was starting to finalize some very lucrative deals with western oil companies. I wondered if this was part of a larger strategy to block the KRG from those oil deals being masterminded by Big Oil through the ICG (phui!), perhaps using "false flag" attacks by mercenaries or splinter PKK cells.

I also noted that the Turkish military isn't really eager to become enemies with the United States, as they are part of NATO and want to be part of the EU. They certainly don't want to become bogged down in a war in very difficult mountain terrain during winter, either. Some Turkish lawmakers favor an economic retaliation, and the U.S. has hinted it might share intelligence data to help take out PKK strongholds without a full scale invasion. And leaders in the US Congress derailed an ill-advised attempt to pass a genocide resolution aimed at embarrassing Turkey internationally. So the whole thing made no sense.

Now accounts have emerged making it very likely that the main PKK organization is indeed behind these attacks and that they are being carried out systematically and effectively. This has a number of important ramifications. On the surface, it might mean that the KRG has decided that Turkey cannot effectively invade them this winter, despite the rhetoric and threatening troop movements. It is one thing to bomb and strafe isolated villages near the Turkish border, but is quite another to move many miles deep into KRG territory and occupy territory for the long term. One major issue that such an invasion and occupation would face is logistics; supply lines for the Turkish troops would have to cross many miles of mountain roads and be easily subject to attacks by PKK forces hiding in the rugged terrain. (The Russians found this out the hard way in Afghanistan.) Another is that it would very likely result in civilian unrest inside Turkey itself, as its ignored and under-classed Kurdish population would likely use the situation to press for greater freedoms in exchange for not supporting the PKK in their districts; failure to grant such autonomy would likely result in passive or even active PKK support in the affected areas. And finally, the Turkish military would discover just how entertaining attempting to control an insurgency-intense area can be, just like the US has done in Iraq proper. IED's for fun and profit, something for everyone!

As I've noted before in earlier posts, Turkey is currently in a bit of a standoff politically between an Islamist secularist movement which wants more religious influence in the daily lives of Turkey's peoples and less ties to the western economy and less power for the military and the economic elites, and the military and economic elites who want to continue Turkey's tradition of secular life with religious freedom and tolerance and a robust western-style economic system. Right now the Islamists have the upper hand; they succeeded in preventing the U.S. from using its Incirlik air base for attacks into Iraq in 2003, for example. The military/elite elements in Turkey want to portray the Islamists as tolerant of terrorism and extremism, and for them the attacks by the PKK are an excuse to do that even though the issues driving the PKK aren't even vaguely related to those of the "global jihad." By seeming to make a harsh and effective response to the PKK's attacks, the M/E faction can gain ground in future political contests and generally maintain the Turkish public's acceptance of its controlling role in the country's affairs.

But there is a hidden danger in the confrontation strategy that the M/E may be currently using, known as the "Red Lines" issue. Most westerners, even educated ones, don't know that modern Turkey was not a result of the "red-lining" on the map done by British and French politicians after World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It came about because of a popular rebellion by Kamal Attaturk that managed to stave off the carving of Turkey into several balkanized mini-states (one of which would have been Kurdistan) and maintain it as a regional power through the interval between World War I and the Cold War. The Cold War was a blessing to Turkey because of its proximity to the Russian southern regions; its acceptance into NATO was clearly due in large part to its ability to provide an intelligence gathering capability and to serve as a base for launching operations into southern USSR regions if the Cold War became hot suddenly. (Click the map at right for a larger and more readable version.)

Why does this matter today? Because even though its role in NATO and now the EU are pretty much guaranteed, Turkey still harbors deep fears of being "partitioned" like Yugoslavia has been, leading to its marginalization in the region and even the possibility of being annexed by a resurgent Iraq or Russia. And to the Turks the main danger of this happening is the removal of the Kurdish regions of Turkey into their own state, merged with similar regions in Iraq, Syria, and Iran. This is the "red flag" that is currently being waved in front of the Turkish bull, and may cause it to actually attempt to invade and occupy a significant chunk of the KRG.

And this may be exactly what the KRG wants, long term. Crazy, you say? Maybe, but crazy like a Kurdish fox. If the PKK and the KRG can get the Turks to actually invade and occupy some of the KRG's territory, they may think that the eventual outcome of the matter would be a de-facto Kurdish homeland. Here is how the strategy might work. (Click the map at left to see a larger version showing which regions will be affected by this strategy.)

Step one is to get the Turks to commit about 100,000 of their troops and armor to the occupation. This will tie up most of their ability to act, militarily. It will also serve to greatly strain their ties with NATO and the EU.

Step two is based on the assumption that the US is about to go to war with Iran. This will allow the Kurdish portions of Iran to rebel against the Iranian government with some hope of success.

Step three is to have the Syrian Kurds rebel likewise, perhaps with Israeli aid. Note that neither of these uprisings stand any chance unless the Turkish military is unable to act against them as it did in the 1990 uprising after the end of the first Oil (Gulf) War. This is why having the bulk of the Turkish expeditionary military tied down in occupying the KRG is essential to this strategy.

Step four is to launch terrorist strikes inside Turkey proper, to the point where the Turkish people demand an end to the Kurdish occupation. The EU and NATO will heartily agree with this, and the formation of a UN-protected Kurdish homeland to put an end to the PKK terrorist activity will seem a reasonable price at that point. It will also serve to further marginalize both Iran and Syria, which is good from the standpoint of the US and perhaps EU as well.

Step five is to move from a UN trust territory into a full fledged nation state, based on the oil money from the KRG's oil fields. (This money and the long term availability of the oil would logically be what the KRG is hoping to use as leverage with the US and the EU against Turkey, especially since the ICG (phui!) is starting to be very uncooperative about the Oil Law the US oil companies want passed so desperately and indeed the whole US occupation itself.)

Would such a strategy work? I can't say. But it seems to me to be the only viable reason for the otherwise-suicidal attacks by the PKK against Turkey at this point.

Stay tuned to this feed for further updates. No Kurdish foxes were harmed in the posting of this blog, they were only seriously inconvenienced. (Images courtesy of GlobalSecurity.org.)

The Winter Of Our Discontent

2007-10-19T01:35:00.000-07:00

Once again, the forces of common sense appear to be finding a foothold in the Middle East and the United States House Of Representatives. In the Middle East, under pressure from suspect PKK attacks (which may have been "false flag" operations from mercenaries or even disguised ICG (snarl) forces) the Turkish military has asked for and gotten approval to "cross the border" and raid Iraqi Kurdistan. Again.

But Oh Gollee Gee, it suddenly seems it's winter over there. Those mountains are bad enough in the summer; in the winter they are downright impassible. So, well, I guess that huge massive invasion somebody wants to happen to screw up the Kurdish Oil Deals may not happen after all. Shucky Darns.

And in the United States Congress, specifically the House of Representatives, wisdom has crept out of its customary little nest in the boiler room and managed to permeate the skulls of several key democratic and republican lawmakers. They have suddenly decided passing the Armenian Genocide bill isn't a good thought right now. The good thought right now is to keep Turkey friends with America and NATO while the U.S. military in the region gently and quietly steps on the idiots doing the attacks into Turkey.

So for the Big Oil folks, this indeed may be the Winter of Their Discontent. Poor babies. (Images courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Yanlış Bayrak!

2007-10-15T04:19:00.000-07:00

Something wicked is going on near the Kurdish Iraq border with Turkey. Supposed PKK guerillas are killing Turkish soldiers and civilians indiscriminately, deliberately provoking a Turkish military incursion that threatens to degenerate into a full-scale insurgency against Turkey by all the Kurdish guerilla groups. Also, the idiocy of the Congress in its infinite stupidity to publicly insult the Turks with the Armenian Genocide Resolution is beyond the sublime, and rapidly reaching WTF proportions.

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action." Ian Fleming used this line in a James Bond novel, and it is a good rule of thumb. First we had the ICG (snarl, I'm no longer laughing at those murdering bastards) attempting to get Turkey to invade Kurdish Iraq on the cheap. The Turks said no. That was happenstance. Even the "warning bite" minor PKK attack on a bus (which my sources tell me was actually to kill a double agent who was about to take down a dozen major PKK cells) wasn't followed up. Turkish businesses were happily getting started in the Iraqi Kurdistan cities. The U.S. was making friendly noises.

Then came more PKK attacks, against Turkish troops. This provocation forced Turkey to move additional forces into the region and the military to grudgingly ask the Turkish civilian authorities (whom they loathe for the most part) for permission to move against the PKK's bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. That was coincidence.

And now we have this insane Genocide Resolution. It already passed the Senate (proving that idiocy by committee is still the finest kind) but the Turks swallowed that. They gave us an out by saying "just don't pass it in the House". Did we listen? Hell no; Nancy Pelosi has "lots of wealthy Armenian constituents" and must listen to them.

Horse Puckey. This is Enemy Action. The question is who?

Forget the ICG (howl-SPIT!); they don't have this kind of clout with Teh Congress, and wouldn't use it this way if they did. Somebody else wants the Turks to effectively dismantle Iraq Kurdistan. Cui Bono? To Whom The Good?

The answer lies in the PSA's signed with the minor and middle players by the Iraqi Kurdistan government; those PSA's give only about 50% of the profits to the foreign companies. The PSA's proposed in Teh Oil Law give 80% of the revenue to the foreign entities. And when you are talking about 200 billion barrels of oil, 30% is not a trivial number. Also, Teh Kurds want their formula to be written in to Teh Oil Law when it finally gets passed. That's insult to injury.

So who benefits if suddenly Iraqi Kurdistan is dismembered and unable to fulfill its PSA's. Answer, Big Oil. And they have the money, the clout, and the utter lack of scruples to do this little stunt.

But.....

....they're Fucking With The Turks. Big Time. The Turks are not stupid, they know exactly what is going on here. And they don't appreciate it! Being forced to shut down Incirlik even for a short time would be a step the Turkish military does not want to take, because it would give the anti-Turkish forces in the US military (and there are plenty) reason to suggest setting up shop in say, Azerbijan, cutting them off from much needed foreign exchange and subsidized purchases of US military hardware. And the Turks deal with Russia for oil to Israel and other Middle East nations; they know that Big Oil doesn't care for that one bit. So they aren't operating in a information vacuum here, rather the reverse.

Rule One applies to Big Oil just like everyone else in the Middle East. But they may be too stupidly arrogant to realize it until it is too late.

NB: The title of this post is "false flag" in Turkish. The "supposed" PKK guerillas could very easily be Blackwater mercs in disguise. And we know far too much about how eager Blackwater is to please its clients, with performance bonuses written in innocent blood.

By The Pricking Of My Thumbs....

2007-10-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

...Something Waxman This Way Comes!

It may not be strict Shakespeare, but it is definitely what's on the mind of a number of people at the White House these days. And it's not a good feeling at all, because it indicates that the most deadly antagonist of George W. Bush may in fact have been overlooked in all the media hype and blog comment-storms. From U S News and World Report, we learn in this article that:

Rep. Henry Waxman, considered the meanest dog in town by the GOP, is still sniffing around the White House for proof the president lied when making the case for going to war in Iraq. We hear that he's been quietly summoning former Bush aides, especially speechwriters, to testify behind closed doors about what they knew and how they phrased his words on the issue. Whispers hears that one called in was John Gibson, a former National Security Council speechwriter. He wouldn't spill to us. The committee had no comment either... (Italics mine.)

There are two things that literally leap off this page to my somewhat-trained eye. First, the "quietly" part. Having something like this go on without publicity means that it is a real deal, not a photo-op oversight sham. Second, the "wouldn't spill to us" part. This is like going to a brothel and being told "not until we're married!" after you have paid. Leaks are what drive Washington, and to have something juicy like this kept under wraps means that Waxman is effectively invoking the Congressional equivalent of Grand Jury Secrecy rules (except those don't apply to witnesses of course...) And it is worth remembering that William J. Clinton was impeached for lying.

I love the smell of oversight in the morning. (Images courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Mr. Spock, Can You Lend Me Ten QUID Till We Reach Delta Vega?

2007-10-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

To which your first reply should be, "Is Star Trek using British currency now?". The answer is, no, they are using the new Space Money developed by Travelex, a European equivalent to American Express.

QUID stands for "Quasi-Universal Intergalactic Denomination". Just so you know. From the company's press release:

Professor George Fraser from the University of Leicester commented: “None of the existing payment systems we use on earth – like cash, credit or debit cards – could be used in space for a variety of different reasons. Anything with sharp edges, like coins, would be a risk to astronauts while the chips and magnetic strips used in our cards on Earth would be damaged beyond repair by cosmic radiation. What’s more, because of the distances involved, it is more than 230,000 miles from the Earth to the moon, chip and pin technology is also out of the question.”

Professor Fraser continued: “We have had to completely rethink the design of the currency from the materials used to the payment mechanisms and aesthetics. The currency cannot contain any chemicals that might contaminate the astronauts’ life support systems and must be able to survive the extreme environment of space. We also had in mind that the currency should be meaningful for any intelligent life we might encounter in other planetary systems.”

Obviously, this is a cute promotional stunt leveraging off the nascent space tourism industry. As such it is a minor ripple of no particular consequence. But it does bring up something that we must now begin to seriously ponder, namely the exporting of our civilization's framework into outer space.

Up until now, everyone off the surface of the Earth for any length of time has been a government employee of some sort, military or civilian. But now we are reaching the point where within one generation (25 years) perhaps several hundred people will be in orbit at any given time, many of them ordinary (if not impoverished) citizens. What laws govern them? What method of exchange will they use for goods and services? What rights do they have? These are not trivial questions, and they are collectively called the Space Law Problem.

One of the leaders of the emerging Space Law movement is, of all people, the arch conservative United States politician Newt Gingrich. He has been working on this issue since the early 1970's, and has authored some significant papers on it which unfortunately seem to only be available to subscribers of legal journals. Other scholars have played with the notion as well but largely in the "ivory tower" sense. (The United Nations has a Space Law site!) Now is perhaps the time to descend from that yellowed edifice and get our collective mental and legislative hands dirty on this issue, before Corporatists (like Gingrich!) decide it for us, and not in our favor. (Images courtesy of Mr. Spock and Travelex. And Vulcans charge interest by the picosecond, in case you were wondering.)

It Was R2D2 All The Time...

2007-10-04T03:03:00.000-07:00

There is a theory in the Star Wars geek community (I am an associate member) that the entire Rebel Alliance shown in Episodes IV to VI was run by R2D2 as programmed by Obi Wan Kenobi before he went into exile at the end of Episode III. Regardless of whether it is what Lucas envisioned, the whole scheme makes fantastic sense and is a perfect example of misdirection at the realpolitik level. (For those not into Star Wars geekdom, the reason this is relevant is that each of my posts on the current Kurdish Oil situation are titled based on lines or modified titles from the Star Wars saga.)

The flurry of oil deals announced recently by the Kurdish Regional Government may have a similar functionality. A note was included in one of today's dispatches from Iraq Updates that highlighted a key (and very under-reported) aspect of the Iraq Oil situation, as follows:

A Western executive involved in negotiations with the Kurds said the regional government appeared to be trying to "create a fait accompli" by signing so many deals with foreign companies that the central government has to eventually accept the provisions sought by the Kurds.

"They are trying to increase the pressure to get the draft oil bill out of" the Iraqi Parliament, said the executive, who agreed to speak without his name being used because he was not authorized to discuss negotiations. "Some of these are relatively marginal deals in the sense that they are not huge deals with major international oil companies. But if they get enough of them they feel they can put more pressure on the federal government to get the law unstuck." (Boldface mine.)

What this report doesn't mention is that a huge conference is taking place in Kuwait (where things are nice and safe and Blackwater doesn't provide security) near the end of this month sponsored by almost every major player in the international Oil Industry. While it is billed as a huge Oil Industry trade show, in fact as any number of industry insiders have pointed out, its real purpose is to put major pressure on the Iraqi Central Government (giggle) to finish the dayam Oil Law or risk having the majors refuse to deal at all. The major oil companies have indicated that if the Oil Law is not passed by the time the new President (whoever it is) takes office, they won't be able to negotiate any new PSA's until another Republican administration takes over (which is rather unlikely before say, 2017 at the earliest.)

Why would Teh Kurds' strategy put pressure on the ICG (chortle)? Because Teh Oil Industry sticketh togethereth, otherwise they all hangeth separatelyeth. So if enough mid-range players make deals with Teh Kurds and then the ICG (guffaw) reneges on them, the major players will very likely refuse to do business with the ICG (hiccup) either. So it goes in the wonderful, ethics-free world of Big Oil. (Images courtesy of USA Today and Middle East Online.)

Now if Lucas would just annoint Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis, Stephen Spielberg, and Peter Jacobs to produce the remaining six Star Wars films, life might be worth living again...

Stay On Target...Stay On Target!

2007-10-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

The hits just keep on coming! Not to be outdone by the de facto announcement of PSA's with Chevron and Total by the Iraqi Central Government (snicker), the government of Iraqi Kurdistan today announced its own PSA's, although with somewhat lesser players. From Iraq Updates:

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry for Natural Resources today announced that the KRG Regional Oil and Gas Council has approved four new production sharing contracts (PSCs) and sanctioned two new refinery projects in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. The announcement came a day after the Council unanimously decided to award the contracts at its second formal meeting.

The combined initial exploration investments on the upstream projects will be approximately US$500 million. Estimated investment on the two new refinery projects will be around $300 million.

The Ministry for Natural Resources today executed two of the approved production sharing contracts (PSCs) for oil and gas exploration and development in the Kurdistan Region:

# Award of the Miran Block (1,015 square kilometres) in Suleimaniah Governorate to Heritage Energy Middle East Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian listed oil company Heritage Oil and Gas. The Miran Block is a low to medium exploration risk area.

# Award of the Sindi/Amedi Block (2,358 square kilometres) along the Iraq/Turkish border to Perenco Kurdistan Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Perenco S.A., the privately held French oil exploration and production company. The Sindi/Amedi Block is a high exploration risk area.

The signing of the other two PSCs with experienced international companies will follow shortly. (Boldface mine.)

Heritage is a Canadian company, and Perenco is a French company. Both are mid-sized players in the oil and gas world, and both have extensive worldwide operations (see the links below for their well-done web sites.) Bottom line, Teh Kurds are getting into the game big time and are bulking up their war chest and their overseas allies against possible problems with Turkey, the United States, and of course the Iraqi Central Government (chortle). (There is a separate press release from Iraq Update on the Heritage deal.)

Let's have a look at the Heritage PSA's region: (click on the graphic to see the full size version)

This is a serious bit of crumpet, oil wise. From the company's web site on the project we learn:

The license area covers some 1,015 square kilometres. The Miran structure itself is in excess of 500 square kilometres in area and the possibility exists for multiple reservoir targets. It is estimated by management that the structure could contain in excess of 1 billion barrels of oil. The Miran structure lies only 55 Kilometres from the giant Kirkuk oilfield with remaining reserves thought to be in excess of 10 billion barrels and 30 kilometres from the Taq Taq Field on which recent wells have tested 44-500API oil at flow rates of almost 30,000 barrels/day. (Boldface mine.)

Remember Everett Dirksen's Law Of Large Numbers: "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real [anything!]" A billion barrels of oil is real oil. And since they are also building their own refinery, they can export gasoline, diesel, and other products directly to Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan and whatever becomes of the rest of "Iraq".

A map of Perenco's field is currently not available; the press release indicates it is near the "Turkish border" and is a "high risk exploration region". (Doh!) One can assume that it has as good or greater potential as the Heritage one. Here is a graphic giving some idea of the currently proven oil reserves of Iraqi Kurdistan (image courtesy of the United States Department of Energy): (Click on the image for a larger version.)

That's fairly impressive too. Yep. Teh Kurds are Teh Real Deal when it comes to oil now. No pussyfooting around with revenue sharing, none of this "no PSA's until after we're (have Teh Oil Law) married", just sign on the dotted line and Stay On Target! (Logos and oil field map images courtesy of Heritage Oil and Perenco, respectively.)

NB: The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) who kindly supplied the oilfield image has its own web site!

You May Fire (PSA's) When Ready, Commander!

2007-10-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

Anything you can do I can do better!

That's the old nursery song, and it seems to carry a lot of weight in the al-Maliki government these days. Now that the Kurds have effectively started their own Oil Industry despite there being no Iraqi Central Government (giggle) Oil Law in place (and the Turks aren't willing to invade them to stop it, the Fun Spoilers), the ICG apparently doesn't want to get left out in the rain! First, let's hit the Dow Jones Newswire courtesy of afterdowningstreet.org:

Oil giants Total SA (TOT) and Chevron Corp. (CVX) have signed a services agreement that would lead to the two jointly exploring and developing hydrocarbons from one of Iraq's biggest oil fields once the country gets an oil law in place and security on the ground improves, people familiar with the deal say.

The two companies signed an agreement last year and are currently assessing above-ground conditions around Majnoon, Iraq's fourth biggest oil field, which sits near the border with Iran, and at least one other field in the south of Iraq, to see what development work is required, the people told Dow Jones Newswires.

The Iraqi government is aware of the services deal, said the people, who are close to both companies.
Total, Chevron and Iraqi officials met in June to discuss the implementation of the agreement. The deal, however, doesn't yet involve the Iraqi government.

"There is no deal for a production-sharing agreement" on Majnoon since the country's long-delayed hydrocarbons law has yet to be ratified, the person said.

"But the services contract gives (Total and Chevron) a large advance," on other companies, the person added.
The Total-Chevron deal underscores that even as Iraq's oil law languishes in Baghdad, foreign oil companies are maneuvering to prepare development plans that will serve as a basis for contract negotiations with the Iraqi government once the draft law is passed.
Another person close to Total said the companies were starting to study local operating conditions, including security. (Boldface mine.)

Now this takes a little parsing. First, and in some ways foremost, is the fact that this deal was leaked at all. (DJNW is the favorite leak target of executives who want to get a business story out the back door as it were.) The leakage indicates that the ICG (snort) wants this to be out in the media; as further proof, you can note in the article that there have been similar agreements in place for two years that got zero publicity in practical terms. And the only possible reason this is of use to the ICG (herk!) is that it allows it to "one up" the Kurds.

Also, notice how the article itself carefully makes it clear that the Oil Agreement and Security concerns must be addressed before real work can begin. This is the "fig leaf" required by the ICG (hiccup) to maintain legitimacy; notice also, however, that "local operating conditions including security" are now being studied actively. I doubt that the Total and Chevron would be spending this money unless they felt very certain the issues with "Teh Oil Law" were either about to be solved, or (more likely) vanish once Saddam Chalabi takes control (slated for about this time next year I would imagine, just before the Iran War.)

Take home message: Total and Chevron have sewed up a PSA on Majnoon. It is only the fourth largest field, so the ICG (chortle) have much bigger plums to dangle before other eager buyers. So, take that, you evil oil-selling Kurds, you! We can sell oil to real Oil companies like Chevron and Total, not little exploration companies like Hunt Oil. So There! Nanny Nanny Boo Boo! (Images courtesy of Carl Maples Oilfield Photography.)

Oh yes, and of course the al-Maliki government denies the whole thing. Quod Erad Demonstrandum.

I'm Setting Up For My Attack Run Now....

2007-09-30T23:25:00.000-07:00

From Iraqi Update:

Iraq's Kurdish regional government (KRG) said on Friday that oil and gas deals it has signed since February are legal, rejecting Baghdad's claim that the deals breach the country's law.

As noted in the previously twice-updated post here at Ravings, the Iraqi central government (giggle, hiccup, guffaw ... sorry, I have a hard time writing that with a straight keyboard) tried to get the Turks to muscle in on the new Iraqi Kurdistan oil deals, and the Turks said, "No, THANK you!". The PKK was allowed one "warning bite" to remind the Turks that even PR junkets can be expensive.

Now the Kurds are rubbing it in. From Iraqi Update again:

Salih said that companies with an interest in the Kurdish oil and gas industry were no longer discouraged by Shahristani's statements. Oil majors have to date shown little interest in the Kurdish region, as they fear by alienating Baghdad they may miss out on potentially more lucrative contracts elsewhere in Iraq.
"In the early days people took the statements seriously," Salih said. "Several oil companies informed us about the discouragement and implied threats of doing business in Kurdistan. However, as time passed... it seems to us that people are no longer deterred by such statements from Dr Shahristani." (Boldface mine.)

Ouch! That's going to leave a mark! It wasn't from fear that the ICG (snicker) would attack the Kurds or get some sort of legally-functional injunction that deterred the big boys from swarming all over the Kurdish oil, it was pure and simple greed. And now, given that the ICG is almost certainly going to be replaced by a Saddam Chalabi Dictatorship, they aren't worried about that anymore.

It isn't often you see one government bitch-slap another around the room and get away with it. Pass the popcorn! (Images courtesy of UAE Danagas and The Ahmed Chalabi Photo Gallery.)

Coming To A Polling Location Near You! The All New Improved October Surprise, Now With Hezbollah!

2007-09-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

The "October Surprise" is a Term Of Art in politics for a major policy initiative, governmental action, or news release happening right at the end of October of a Federal election year, often a Presidential election. It is usually attributed in its modern form as starting with Lyndon Johnson in 1968, and has continued to the present day.

Despite many other political and governmental actions that some deem suspicious, the George W. Bush administration hasn't actually produced an October surprise which meets previous standards. Until now.

I have blogged at Rationcinations Of A Savage Heart about the strange "vanishing war with Iran" that has been happening for several years. Recently news has surfaced which may provide a reason for the otherwise bellicose neoconservative "chicken hawks" willingness to delay such attacks: the need to influence the 2008 Federal elections on all three major levels, namely the House, the Senate, and of course the Presidency itself. Let us examine why this need requires such a stringent surprise as the one they are planning.

Any reader of my blog(s) knows that the Republican Party in the United States is in dire straits indeed. The RNCCC is dead broke, a sitting Republican Senator is being hauled before the Senate Ethics Committee to force him to resign (over a minor matter of attempted gay sex in a public restroom which led to charges and a guilty plea...but we digress), and even Newt Gingrich refuses to jump in and try to help. And that's just this week!

Any "normal" October surprise (like say, a videotape from Osama Bin Laden informing everyone he is now a registered Democrat) won't overcome this sort of deficit at the polls. Something more powerful is needed! What can it be?

How about widespread Hezbollah terrorist attacks inside the United States? Suicide bombers at shopping malls? Truck bombs at major airports? A radiological "dirty" bomb on Wall Street? Smallpox carriers at Las Vegas? The list is literally endless. And in the past, the American public has rallied round the Republican Party in times of such crisis (Rudy "9-11" Guilianni, anyone?) And if things look bad enough, why we might have to just postpone that old election for say, a year, or two, or maybe forever. Gotta protect the public, y'know!

The problem is, Hezbollah has been very uncooperative in the past about doing such things. It is as if they feared that their nation state sponsor, Iran, might be attacked if they did that. Well, guess what? It turns out the Bush Administration knows this very well and just may be exploiting it! Here is the money quote from a nice piece from Seymour Hersh at The New Yorker magazine called Shifting Targets:

A senior European diplomat, who works closely with American intelligence, told me that there is evidence that Iran has been making extensive preparation for an American bombing attack. “We know that the Iranians are strengthening their air-defense capabilities,” he said, “and we believe they will react asymmetrically—hitting targets in Europe and in Latin America.” There is also specific intelligence suggesting that Iran will be aided in these attacks by Hezbollah. “Hezbollah is capable, and they can do it,” the diplomat said. (Boldface mine.)

And of course, if they can hit targets in Europe and Latin American, Hezbollah can certainly hit the good old U.S.A. (especially since our Cheez-Whiz Department Of Homeland Security is too busy obsessing over bottled shampoo instead of say, knives and guns...) Gee, wouldn't that be a shame? The one thing that might save the G.O.P. from an election disaster of unprecedented magnitude is an "unfortunate side effect" of any decision to attack Iran in a major way. Can you say "October Surprise"? I thought you could. (Images courtesy of Wikipedia, The Guardian Online, and Iran Defense.)

...Just Impacted On The Surface....

2007-09-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

One of the sadder aspects of life is that some people only learn through pain. When those people are part of governments that have influence over many people, that pain may be experienced by their citizens rather than them personally.

Sadly, this is the case in Turkey right now. Even though the Turkish government wasn't willing to play stooge for the al-Maliki government and agree to a deal "allowing" them to invade Iraqi Kurdistan, they still allowed Jawad Bolani to trumpet the agreement on the world media and generally make the Kurds look weak, or at least incompetent. And "talks are continuing" to shoehorn the invasion provision into a future agreement.

And so the PKK's masters in the Iraqi Kurdistan government have now let their "temperature" (the current Term Of Art for the degree of control a nation state exerts over its "terrorist" proxies) go up a bit. From the BBC:

Twelve people have been killed after Kurdish separatists ordered them off a bus in south-east Turkey and opened fire, Turkish officials say.
Civilians and armed guards were said to be among the victims of the ambush, and just two passengers survived.

Those deaths are directly at the feet of Jawad Bolani and his greedy al-Maliki stooge associates. (The spin that they are revenge for death of a PKK leader is horse puckey; PKK has leaders like cats have hair, and they grow back just as quickly.) Turkey at this point is essentially a hostage to the situation, since its government is weak at the moment due to attempts by radical politicians to undo the Attaturk Secular State and restore some idiotic form of pseudo-Islamic government. The military isn't going to allow this and everyone knows it. However, they cannot risk being seen as oppressors, and one of the major areas the radical politicians there like to use to claim the military is out of touch is its inability to put a stop to PKK (and related groups, there are several smaller ones) terrorist attacks. So whenever Iraq dangles the opportunity to "go after" PKK targets, Turkey pretty much has to jump at the bait.

The question is, was this a one off or will it lead to further reactions and tit for tat retaliations? Please note that the al-Maliki thugs are happily encouraging Iran to shell the Kurds too, with increasing range and effect. Nothing is so much fun as tossing hand grenades into already troubled waters. Wheeee! (Images courtesy of BBC news.)

Oh, I Feel So Very Much Safer Now, Sir! (UPDATED!)

2007-09-29T04:47:00.000-07:00

Yeah, right. Remember "heckuva job, Brownie!" FEMA? Well, those clowns have now taken over ALL Federal emergency management duties. They call the abortion they've produced The National Response Framework. [warning: PDF link.] This is one of the rare instances where pictures are far more useful at conveying the situation than words. For example:

(Click here for a larger version.) That's just for getting some sort of Federal response started. Ghod help anyone who actually wants to do anything about a disaster using this system. My take is that by the time a request has managed to penetrate this maze, Global Warming will have been replaced the Teh Next Ice Age and it won't matter anyways. And that's an optimistic estimate. (Why yes, I once did work for the Federal bureaucracy, why do you ask?)

It gets better! Try this specific response behavior to any sort of pandemic disease outbreak:

(Again, click here for a larger version, if you dare!) Wowsers! At first I thought this was the flowchart for Windows Vista, then realized that even Vista at its worst isn't this bad. SusanC at Flu Wiki Forum sums it up best at DKos:

And if it isn't crystal clear yet, there's a reason you should do your own preparations independent of whatever the feds are up to.

Good luck with that (he says, flipping through the appropriate regulations for moving to the south of France....) (Images discourtesy of FEMA.)

UPDATE: Part two of the NERP (we think it is very appropriate that "erp" is part of the name...) is covered by SusanC here. More fun-filled Federal Dysfunction for the whole family!

Set X-Foils To Attack Position! (UPDATED TWICE!)

2007-09-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

Well, that didn't take long. From Iraq Updates (apparently the official blog of the al-Maliki government of Iraq in Baghdad), we learn the following about Kurdish reaction to the Turkish-Iraqi Anti-PKK Invasion Permission Protocol about to be signed:

"The signing of such an agreement will override the sovereignty of Iraq," MP Mahmoud Othman said in statements to the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

"The Iraqi constitution does not permit such agreements…This will influence Iraq's stability and the Kurdistan region," he added.

Calling for the prior approval of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) before launching any military operation in the region, Othman indicated that his coalition rejects any military solution and will adopt a tough stance if the agreement is signed.

Refusing to categorize them as "terrorists," Othman said that the PKK is a Kurdish party that defends Kurds' rights in Turkey.

Othman is no lightweight; aside from being one of the most successful supporters of Kurdish independence in Iraq, he is a leading member of the Iraqi Parliament and also apparently the de facto political spokesperson for the PKK.

Shorter Othman: Invade us and we'll turn the temperature on the PKK terror network to "vaporize". To quote my favorite Chinese Emperor of the Dim Sum Dynasty, Jeff Wong: "Dis is not good!"

Stay linked to this feed. Film at eleven. If your popcorn smells funny, don't eat it! (Images courtesy of wikipedia.)

UPDATE: The Turks aren't willing to be sock puppets for the al-Maliki regime either. Rule One in the Middle East applies!

UPDATE THE SECOND: The Turks won't play. They also sent Bolani to bed without any supper!

The Empire Gums Back!

2007-09-27T00:07:00.000-07:00

NB: This post has been re-released to fix a really nasty formatting bug. Apologies.

If you have been keeping up here at Ravings, you will remember that I have blogged twice about the oil exploration agreement signed between Hunt Oil and Kurdish Iraq. The Oil Minister of Iraq said the agreement was invalid and threatened to send a letter to Hunt Oil saying so; he also threatened to hold his breath until he turned blue if the Kurds didn't behave.

Seeing as how that did little or nothing to stop the Kurds from their continuation of an independent oil policy, the toothless Iraqi government today decided to bring in some muscle, namely the Turks. From the BBC news feed:

Turkey and Iraq have agreed on a deal to allow Turkish forces to cross into Iraq to pursue Kurdish rebels, media reports say.

A deal was hammered out in talks between Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Bolani and his Turkish counterpart Besir Atalay in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

Local Turkish television station NTV reported that under the accord, Turkish forces could cross into Iraq for small-scale "hot-pursuit" operations to chase the armed rebels after seeking permission from Iraqi authorities.

Now the reason this is interesting is that Jawad Bolani has absolutely no authority to do this in practice. The autonomy of the Kurdish region is spelled out in the Iraqi Constitution which he helped draft. So Mr. Bolani knows this whole charade is a legal fiction; why do it?

The answer can only be to put pressure on Hunt Oil to hold off on implementing their Kurdish exploration agreement. By "authorizing" a Turkish invasion (you can discount the "small scale hot pursuit" bit), Bolani and the toothless Iraqi central government are essentially telling Hunt and his fellow oilmen, "If you set up shop in Kurdish Iraq without our permission, we'll have the Turks invade and destroy the infrastructure. Nanny nanny boo boo!"

Of course this is Horse Puckey. Turkey isn't about to invade Iraqi Kurdistan unless (a) the United States says it can, or (b) there is such a provocative terrorist attack by the PKK that the Turkish government has no choice but to retaliate. And given that the Kurdish Iraqi government keeps the PKK on a fairly short leash these days, that isn't likely to happen.

I'm afraid the Iraqi central government is effectively threatening to gum the Kurds to death, being as the U.S. has pulled their teeth all out. The Kurds are politely ignoring them, which is probably for the best everything considered. (Images courtesy of BBC news.)

NB: Keep an eye on Ratiocinations for a detailed workup on the whole Iraqi oil business. It turns out the endgame was preplanned even before the first shot was fired. Your realpolitik euros at work (hey, the dollar is so twentieth century!)

Paleo-Past: The Past We Wish Hadn't Happened!

2007-09-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

There is a new term in use: paleo-future. It represents an envisioned future that never took place but which even today we find alluring. An example is the Jetsons future; another would be the visualizations of science fiction authors like Arthur C. Clarke. There is even a very nice blog devoted to the idea, and some nifty art sites.

Today, however, I would like to introduced a slightly different version of this term: paleo-past. The paleo-past is the past we wish had never happened, but did anyway. I'm not talking about ugly things like wars or diseases or natural disasters, I'm talking polyester pants. I'm talking bell bottoms. I'm talking hats that are bigger than the person wearing them (well , almost). I'm talking bodily hair in both excessive quantities and excessive locations.

Why do I bring this subject up? Well, first I lived through this era, and while I never succumbed to it, I came close. I actually owned and wore a leisure suit. But I never did the hair thing. I also never did bell bottoms. So I count myself a scarred survivor. Secondly, a very nice writer named Jancee Dunn has posted images from the J.C. Pennys catalog of 1975, which qualifies as paleo-past for me. It has reminded me of things I'd rather forget, but cannot. (These images are from her site, courtesy of Boing Boing.)

For far more frightening images of the paleo-past, please check out her excellent blog. Given this lady's obsession with J.C. Pennys catalogs, I suspect more such cringe-worthy images will appear shortly.

I repeat, We Were Not These People. That's our story and we're sticking to it. (Honey, where's the number to Goodwill? I have some things I want to donate....)

NB: In the interest of full disclosure, my daughter has produced a photo of me in bell bottom Levis. (Fortunately I had Valium nearby.) She does agree I never did the hair bit though, mainly because I already had a Fu-Manchu beard and didn't want to change it.

A Brief Note About Comments

2007-09-21T16:11:00.000-07:00

After some discussion it appears that the Kelgarries Blogswarm won't be able to support comments at this time due to sheer volume of material we need to work with to achieve our goals. Once we migrate to our own servers (scheduled for early 2009) we'll be able to support a full comments implementation.

Thanks for your interest, and enjoy the blog!

How To Subscribe To Ravings As An RSS Feed In Internet Explorer 7

2007-09-19T23:10:00.001-07:00

It has come to our attention that many readers of Ravings would like to have the ability to know when new posts are available automatically. Fortunately, the internet and IE7 provide this feature very nicely.

Rather than duplicate postings and eat up space here at Blogspot, we have posted a very simple but quite effective Tutorial on the matter at our sister blog, Tutorials On Using Voltaic Difference Engines. Enjoy!

بيت الحكمة

2007-09-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

"In other news, the Department Of Justice has confirmed that the new re-education facility for recently detained atheist GSOGJ (Godless Supporters Of Global Jihad) has opened in the old Supermax facility in southern Utah.

"The U.S. DOJ has introduced "religious enlightenment" and other education programs for atheist detainees, some of whom are as young as 11, Assistant USA Douglas M. Stone, the DOJ official responsible for all U.S. atheist detention facilities, said yesterday.

"Stone said such efforts, aimed mainly at atheists who have been held for more than a year, are intended to "bend them back to our will" and are part of waging war in what he called "the battlefield of the mind." Most of the younger detainees are held in a facility that the DOJ calls the "House of Wisdom."

"The religious courses are led by non-denominational clerics who "teach out of a moderate doctrine," Stone said, according to the transcript of a conference call he held from Salt Lake City with a group of atheist-rights bloggers. Such schooling "tears apart" the arguments of Americans For Separation of Church and State, such as "We have the right to not believe in a supreme being," and helps to "bring some of the edge off" the detainees, he said.

"Stone said his staff conducts polygraph tests for detainees who promise to change after undergoing the religious training program. "We were trying to figure out if they're messing with us. . . . You're not talking about radicals going to choirboys." But he also added that they're succeeding in countering extremists in the facilities. "We're busting them down, we're making whole moderate believer compounds that didn't exist before."

"Stone described a sort of religious insurgency that occurred at one detention facility on Sept. 2. "We had a compound of believer moderates for the first time overtake . . . atheist extremists. It's never happened before. Found them, identified them, threw them up against the fence and made them wear crosses. . . . I mean, that is historic.""

Fiction? Blogger Foolishness? Yes, but only just. Read this US Army press release from Talking Points Memo (via The Washington Post) and try to spot the words I changed.

We get closer and closer to Oceania every day. (Images courtesy of Wikipedia.)

NB: The title of this post is "The House Of Wisdom" in Arabic.

Mr. Hunt DIDN'T Forget Rule One In The Middle East!

2007-09-16T19:55:00.000-07:00

Something has been bothering me ever since my last Ravings post, namely that a person as dialed-in to the overall United States strategy in Iraqi and the Middle East (and make no mistake, the apparent blunders and missteps are not accidents but careful parts of an unholy plan which dares not be seen in the light of day until it is accomplished) would screw up and forget Rule One (Don't Fuck With The Turks.)

Well, we can all breathe a sigh of relief now, because it turns out he didn't. Mr. Hunt applied for the Exemption to Rule One, which goes like this: "Don't Fuck With The Turks Unless You Are Working For Israel." Remember, Turkey doesn't give a rat's ass about Israel, and in fact does a considerable amount of trading with them. Turkey does give a rat's ass about the Kurds and Syria however. In this case, getting Syria effectively out of the current game of Middle East Hold 'Em is worth putting up with a bit of chaff from Teh Kurds. (And since there is growing evidence that Teh Kurds are going to be running Iraq as the de facto Iraqi Army in the coming dictatorship, they'll be too busy killing Sunnis and Shias to bother with the Turks for the time being.)

How do we know all this? It just so happens a little-noticed bit of legislation guaranteeing Israel's energy supply has come up for renewal in the the United States Congress, and somebody leaked it and its accompanying realpolitik underpinnings to The Guardian. Oopsie. Oh, and Haaretz had a nice piece on it too.

Things get even better! It turns out that plans are now underway to build a long-proposed pipeline from the Kurdish Oil Center at Kirkuk to the border with Jordan and thus across to the port of Haifa, which will be set up to accommodate oil supertankers. Once the Kirkuk fields are connected, then the ones around Basra can also be brought online and many new fields can be explored and drilled in both the Kirkuk and Basra regions (and gee whiz whillikers, that's just what good old boy Mr. Hunt does for a livin'! Gollee Gee!) (Baghdad has a killer post on this if a bit anti-Israeli.)

This has several neat side effects!

It cuts out Syria from its only guaranteed source of hard currency.
It removes Russia from the energy market in Israel (which currently totally depends on Russia for said oil), and it potentially removes the huge economic danger zone of the Straits of Hormuz (since if the oil of Iraq can go to the Mediterranean Sea instead, and it can be merged with the Saudi oil at some later point by an appropriate pipeline, the Hormuz systempunkt goes away for good.) The Turkish government isn't happy about losing that revenue but can be offered other carrots to make up for it.
It also cuts Iran out completely since no evil icky poo poo Iranian oil would be allowed in to this holy tube of black goodness. Iran just has to ship by tanker, poor thing. (Unless some evil person with far too many aircraft carriers and far too little sense were to say, blow up the Iranian Oil Terminals...)

And if the Wah On Terrah should happen to spill over to say, Pakistan and then up into the Trans-Caucasus, well then old Russia might not have that much oil to sell after all. What a shame!

And as the cherry on the sundae, guess whose name is being floated to run this shebang, according to The Guardian's report?

Wait for it....

You know you want to...

Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen!

Ahmed Chalabi.

Told you.

(Images courtesy of www.militaryphotos.net and Baghdad.)

NB. This whole subject will be an extended post on Ratiocinations as fast as I can make it happen. This is the endgame to the Iraq Invasion.

NB2. This may also explain the Israeli Raid on a suspected weapons depot in Syria just beyond the Turkish border a few days ago. It was a substantial raid with eight fighter bombers and an AWACS air defense plane which flew through Turkish airspace with permission to take out the target. Nacht und nebel reports have surfaced that this was a "suspected nuclear weapon storage facility" set up with contraband stuff for North Korea. I suspect that it was actually a storage depot and launching facility under construction for using North Korean Hwasong 6 or Nodong 1 missiles which Assad may have bought in a desperate bid to stop the pipeline project, perhaps by firing them on the Kurdish oil fields with persistent chemical agents like VX nerve gas. And it is worth noting that the Israeli raid could have made it to Iran and back with a nuclear strike of say, six W-80 nuclear warheads retrofitted to work as gravity bombs...

NB3. Guess which Iraqi Governorate this proposed pipeline will inhabit? Al-Anbar! What a surprise!

Doppelter Moralkodex (a.k.a. Vienna Sausage)

2007-09-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

From Main And Central:

In a fast-paced, high-key military strike yesterday, infantry elements from a Jäger battalion of the Austrian Army, supported by armed Blackhawk and Tiger helicopters, went after suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Vienna. Three apartment buildings were destroyed in the initial assault and it is estimated that there are more than 150 casualties, although reports are incomplete at this time.

Administration spokespersons at various hospitals report their emergency rooms are overwhelmed at this time. The Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Spital has reported more than 14 corpses have been brought in, as well as “over” 32 severely wounded victims, some of whom it is thought will die within the next several hours.

The Gottfried von Preyer'sches Kinderspital, a children’s hospital, has acknowledged that a number of the casualties are children, many with grievous wounds.

A spokesman for the Federal Government has been reported to have expressed sorrow over the loss of life, adding that the Austrian Army has performed admirably and heroically, and that Islamic terrorism must be repressed “at all costs” in order to “protect the land.”

An officer with the public contact office of the Viennese Feueramt (fire department) has said that, after consultation with officers on the scene, it is believed the fires resulting from the attack can be limited to only the one city block. Of the 47 buildings on that block, three were destroyed in the initial Army assault and fires caused by the explosions of aerial rockets fired by the helicopters have spread to the block, causing the collapse of eight other buildings. Many of the other buildings on the block have been swept with flames, but are expected to be saved.

Shocking, isn't it? Would anyone in their even vaguely right mind put up with this? I don't think so! The European Union would be meeting in emergency session and protests would be happening all over Europe from every walk of life and every socioeconomic group! Barbarity like this cannot be tolerated! Terrorism-fighting is police work, not military conflict!

Fortunately, the above scenario never happened in Vienna, as noted in the posting. It happens all too frequently in Iraq.

Can you say "Double Standard"? I thought you could.

Mr. Hunt Has Forgotten Rule One In The Middle East

2007-09-09T17:11:00.000-07:00

Rule One in the Middle East goes as follows:

"Don't fuck with the Turks."

That's it. Short, sweet, and simple. Those who ignore Rule One often end up dead or worse.

Well, Mr. Hunt of Hunt Oil has forgotten Rule One. He has signed a long term exploration agreement with the Kurds. That's right, not with the dysfunctional Iraqi central government, but with the Kurds directly, based on their de facto independence due to the opt-out clause in the current Constitution of Iraq.

Emptywheel, as usual, is right on the case, pointing out how that this indicates that Mr. Hunt, who is connected into the current Administration in ways that make pancreatic cancer look apathetic, is of the opinion that Kurdistan will remain independent for the next twenty to thirty years or so, possibly guaranteed by U.S. troops at the "undiscussed" bases in the region.

What Ms. Wheeler has forgotten, with deep respect, is that Turkey is having its own problems right now with the rise in islamist political parties challenging the secular state of Attaturk and his successors. The military has made two things clear in the current situation. First, they will not tolerate any form of religious intervention in modern Turkish life based on politics (like trying to make parts of Sharia law enforced by the police). Second, they are willing to allow the Kurdish members of Turkish society to return to public life and even have some power there, provided the militants are kept in check.

The problem with militants is very simple: they need money because they don't work and they use up expensive resources like explosives, guns, ammunition, people, goats, you name it at a ferocious rate. Until now the relative poverty of the Kurdish people has kept their militants on an austerity budget, relatively speaking.

If those militants get access to even a few percent of the oil revenues that can potentially flow through the Kurds provided they can take and hold the Kirkuk fields (they currently don't have them and there concern they might not be able to hold them without U.S. help) their drought will be over big time. They could start using truck bombs and suicide bombers against the Turkish non-Kurd population in the same way Sunni's have in Iraqi.

The Turks know this. They are not about to allow the Kurds to get any significant oil money as things now stand. That is one of several reasons there are an unknown number (but a sizeable one) of Turkish troops just across the border from Kurdish Iraq.

In order for Hunt's deal to make any sense, the Iraqi Kurds have to gain control of Kirkuk and the associated oil fields. Unless there is a massive U.S. military presence there at that point to prevent it, look for Turkey to invade and create an "Autonomous Turkish Kurdish Republic" there, whose net effect will be to take control over the oil revenues and crush the various Kurdish guerilla factions operating from there.

And Mr. Hunt will be out in the cold. The Turks have long memories.

Never Forget Rule One.

Mandarin Kong Lunzi Has Discovered A Frightening Possibility About The Poisoning of Shen Nanhai!

2007-08-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

Mandarins of the Court of Emperor Tai-Shrub are buzzing about the discovery by the archivist and word-parser extraordinaire Kong Lunzi of a striking difference between the Edicts Of Regret issued by The Emperor Who Only Listens To Sweet Noises for the departure of Shen Nanhai last month as a result of sudden, shocking poisoning, and today carefully scripted departure of the Mandarin Chun Chóuchúmǎnzhì Miànkǒng Shuōhuǎng Nanhai.*

Despite being choked with emotion at the loss of his dear friend Shen Nanhai, The Emperor of Endless Friedmans made no protestation about his departure. expressed no regret, offered no further Imperial positions, only "friendship", did not list Shen Nanhai's many publicly known accomplishments for the Emperor Who Listens To No One. And in fact, subtly in the text of the decree, is hidden the fact that The Emperor wanted Shen to leave.

Compared with His Most Imperial Appointer Of Recesses's florid prose and clear anger at the decision of Chun Chóuchúmǎnzhì Miànkǒng Shuōhuǎng Nanhai to leave to spend more time with his goldfish shown in the Edict of Regret for his departure, it is clear that Shen Nanhai was ordered poisoned by Teh Emperor his own bad self.

This can mean only one thing. The Shadow Emperor of Anquán Wèi Dìfāng** is going at last to be turned over to the Imperial Censors for punishment for his many public misdeeds. As we civilized Eunuchs say, about bloody time.

*For you Ing-lish gwai loh, this means "idiot smug faced liar boy". Emperor Tai-shrub loves to give his mandarins cute names.

** This means "safe unknown place". Where he hides a lot.

Bedtime For Gonzo Watch: August 27, 2007

2007-08-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

I have only one thing to say, in all humility.

NAILED IT!

Now all we need is the recess appointment to make it complete. And Josh Marshal over at TPM thinks that's happening next.

It's good to be right once in a while.

Spooky Happy Dance.....

UPDATE: Washington Whispers (Paul Bedard's Blog at USN) now says Chertoff's own people are confirming he is the new AG. Apparently all that remains is to decide whether it is a Recess Appointment, as TPM notes above.

UPDATE II: The Carpetbagger Report has links to CNN's flogging of Chertoff. Hear those lovely drums beating.. and the swings are still available for Recess!

Stay tuned...

Iraqi Dictatorship Watch August 27, 2007

2007-08-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

Now that we've finally figured out what the Bush Crime Family has been up to all along in Iraq, we can begin to see the footprints of their real agenda in the cacophany of Iraq related news that wafts through our RSS readers every day. These posts will help highlight the more meaningful ones for your dining and dancing pleasure.

"The Allawi Insurgency"

As many have noted, I have continually highlighted the idea that Ahmed Chalabi will end up replacing Saddam Hussein in the coming New And Improved Iraqi Dictatorship (now with US know how!). But the current push seems running in the direction of Ayad Allawi. So why do I continue to suggest that Ahmed will be the Big Googly Moogly?

Allawi and Chalabi are closely related, that's why. They are related through Allawi's sister (per Wikipedia.) Despite rumors of a falling out, they continue to work closely together behind the scenes. And in the Middle East, blood and family are thicker than water, oil, or even depleted Uranium. Trust me on this.

FRW: The Homosexual Holocaust Watch: August 25, 2007

2007-08-25T18:20:00.000-07:00

For reasons which utterly elude me, the Fourth Reich's Xtianist members absolutely abhor any type of alternative sexuality, especially gay male sexuality. Regardless of the reasons (and there are clearly many), the net effect is a desire to not only turn back the clock from our current gay-friendly, open and welcoming environment to one where homosexuality is effectively a death sentence. I call this agenda The Homosexual Holocaust (and it is good to remember Hitler sent open homosexuals to the death camps right along with the Jews). These posts are intended to help keep those of us who don't live in the Xtianist Social Sewer aware of what these genocidal whack jobs are up to now.

Today's bit of HH goodness comes from the lovely Jim Naugle, mayor (for now) of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, who is continuing his maniacal anti-male-homosexuality crusade despite resounding rejection from every other elected official in the community. (This is the guy who tried and failed to get the city to set up robo-potties to prevent male homosexual sex in the current simple portapotty restrooms currently used at the beach. I'm not making this up.)

Well, Teh Mayor recently held a press conference where he handed out copies of discredited pseudo-scientific paper that blames every sexually transmitted disease on gay male sex (going into truly disgusting details which I will not inflict on my gentle readers eyes and libidos.) So what and who cares?

Flanking Mr. Homo-hating Mayor at his press conference were a phalanx of representatives from the Xtianist community, that's what. They are a who's who of the Xtianist "Values" think tanks and political action fronts. (Read Pam Spaulding's excellent writeup on it here at AmericaBLOG.) In fact, when you explore the front group for these clowns a bit farther, you find that it includes the usual suspects, namely Americans for Truth, Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, Christian Interactive Network, Concerned Women for America, Coral Ridge Ministries, Faith2Action, Stephen Bennett Ministries, and the Worldwide Christian Center. Why are we not surprised?

This bozo knows full well he's damaging the Ft. Lauderdale community (the surrounding Broward county takes in close to a Billion (with a B!) Dollars in tourism money every year) and doesn't care. The reason is, he's concerned about two things: keeping up the drumbeat that male homosexuality is the root of all STD's, and making sure his Xtianist friends provide him a nice sinecure when the disgusted voters of Ft. Lauderdale give him the well deserved boot.

Remember Karl Rove's First Law of Truth: Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes believed to be true, and thus is effectively true. The Fourth Reichers are not stupid, they know this can work in the long run. That's why we Progressives have to fight this tooth and nail.

FRW: The War On Privacy Watch: August 25, 2007

2007-08-25T18:05:00.000-07:00

Another keystone in the desired Fourth Reich being attempted by the Republican party and its Xtianist pseudo-religious allies as well as its SVAUA wing is the total destruction of any effective type of personal privacy in the United States. I call this the War On Privacy, and these posts are intended to focus attention on news elements that are connected to that war which may not seem so at first glance.

Today the El Paso Times published the full version of its interview with Mike McConnell about the current suits against major telephone companies (telcos) due to their cooperation with the government in carrying out surveillance actions not authorized by the FISA system, which was then the only legal way to do such things.

It turns out McConnell didn't just spill the beans, he made burritos out of them. He openly admits the suits could "bankrupt the telcos", and informs us all with gay abandon that the secret FISA court effectively forbade tapping any phone call that went through a U.S. carrier (and an amazing number do which neither end nor begin in the the US due to our "robust telecommunications infrastructure" (high bandwidth and lots of capacity)) without an explicit warrant. Badda Boom. Read all the gory details here (thanks again to the Wizards of Crooks and Liars!).

Why does this matter? Well, because the defense of the telcos and their government friends is that "this program is so secret that even to discuss it at trial could result in the loss of many American lives", so we can't do it, now shut up and leave us alone (or we'll tell everyone about all those calls you made to you-know-who...). And Mike actually provided that on-message splop to the paper. He just spilled way too many details in the process.

5RW: Manacling The Middle Class Watch: August 25, 2007

2007-08-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

A leading component of the desired and steadily developing Fifth Reich of World Corporate Capitalistic Governance (also called the New World Order and The Supranationalist Agenda) is the effective destruction of the middle class in its current form in all countries which have one. Reasons for this are given in the intialization post for this topic, which in fine Spookly form I'm go to write later. Nanny nanny boo boo. It's my blog so I can cry if I want to.

In the current American financial structure, the major store of wealth for the middle class is in their homes, acquired with Federal assistance (to the huge scream of rage from the embryonic 5R crowd then) over the last half century. In the last decade, the 5R banking quislings have come up with a dandy way to do away with that, namely Home Equity Loans and No Principal Mortgages, often with teaser and even flat out loss-leader rates. This "paper" has been cut up into slices of debt and sold off in packages of better and worse credit values to many financial institutions. They in turn have become more and more dependent on the value of these instruments staying steady so they can cash them out if they need money. This is called "liquidity" in the money biz.

Once the 5R group had the big banks and lending institutions on the phunny mortgage hook, they upped the ante with NINJA loans (the ones you see on late night reruns of Farscape) meaning loans to people with No Income No Job or Assets (the money biz-speak for homeless). This run of paper was also farmed out to the eager lending industry.

But like the cooked books of Enron, these NINJA mortgages are radioactive and biotoxic in every financial sense. And now the financial community is having to throw them up, taking huge losses in the process. More importantly, many large financial institutions are literally unable to sell their mortgage paper at any discount, there are literally no buyers. Oopsie! Another depression?

Nope, because the current scenario would have really really rich people losing most or all their money. We can't have that, we're capitalists, remember? How to fix it? Turn to the Federal Reserve, of course! Ben Bernanke never met a mortgage company he didn't love!

Today, we are treated to the news that the Fed has, very quietly, allowed apparently all major banks to borrow up to a billion dollars from the "discount window" of the Fed (meaning money essentially created out of nothingness, financially speaking) and use it to keep their troubled mortgage units afloat. But it gets better! In order to prevent financial meltdown of the type seen during the 1929 crash, the Fed has required banks and mortgage companies not to share assets at all. Well, they used to, until Ray-Gun and Boosh One and Chimpy got through with them.

And today the last vestiges of the Old Republic have been swept away. The Fed has allowed all major banks to quietly send money to their mortgage units to preserve liquidity. Peter Eavis of Fortune magazine has the scoop, via Truthout. Why does this matter? Because the Fed is in crisis management mode, and intends to force the banks to essentially zero out their toxic loans and cover the huge losses with phantom money from the Fed.

On the surface this is a good plan. If nothing else goes wrong, the whole thing will fade away and eventually be absorbed into the growing economy, perhaps resulting in a modest inflationary uptick. But, it also tells the markets, there is no safety net now. Even the Fed can only go so far. If something else were to hammer the markets (like say $300 a barrel oil prices due to the shudown of the Straits of Hormuz by Iranian mines after an abortive U.S. air strike...) who knows what could happen?

Well, we do know one thing. The Fed is not bailing out homeowners. In fact, they get hit with a nice tax bill for their mortgage forgiveness. Have a nice day here in the Fifth Reich!

Bedtime For Gonzo Watch: August 25, 2007

2007-08-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

In my previous post on the matter, I suggested that the Long Hot August Recess was a great time to ditch Gonzo The Ghodawful and replace him with a pliable stooge who at least has the ability to lie convincingly, using a Recess Appointment to avoid congressional fury.

Then chimpy, probably under pressure from Fred Fielding, grudgingly made a deal with Harry Reid not to do any recess appointments this time. Shucks, I said, we're stuck with Gonzo till 2009.

And then lo and behold, along comes Washington Whispers (USN's Paul Bedard blog) with the claim that "top bushies say Gonzo to go, replaced by Chertoff."

What makes this interesting is that it indicates that Chertoff a) has friends on Capitol Hill (news to me) and b) has experience as something other than a real estate lawyer (also news, I wasn't aware we were so hard up for Federal Prosecutors and Federal Judges that we were hiring Teh Undead). Die and learn, I guess.

But apparently it is not to be a Recess Appointment. Shucky darns. That would have been so much more fun....

Iraqi Dictatorship Watch: August 24, 2007

2007-08-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

"The Allawi Insurgency"

Although I continue to say Ahmed Chalabi will end up with all the Iraq marbles, for now the apparent chosen Dictator For Life of Iraq by BushCo appears to be Ayad Allawi. Here are some cogent links supporting this possibility:

Allawi has his own internal security and spying agency, funded and supported by the CIA in open defiance of Maliki. It gets a billion a year openly and ghod knows how much covertly. TPM Muckraker has all the details.

Allawi has an associate with about 1 Billion (yes that's with a B folks!) in stolen U.S. aid that was supposed to be for the Iraqi armed forces to procure them tanks, helos, and so on. This associate, Hazem Shaalan, was Defense Minister when Allawi was Prime Minister and an audit after he was forced out by Maliki showed almost all the money was "missing". Yeah, right. The Carpetbagger Report is continuing to investigate this juicy story.

Allawi has hired a K-Street lobbying powerhouse (Barbour Griffith and Rogers) to bring over the Inside The Beltway set to his side (from CNN's Political Ticker blog). This are no lightweights; they immediately got him a Wolfie Love-Blitzer interview on CNN (h/t TPM). He paid them $300,000.00 Yankee Dollars (Iraqi Dinars regretfully not accepted, so sorry) for six months of "counseling". (see the previous Carpetbagger Report story for all the other juicy details on that little transaction.)

Late Breaking Update, courtesy of TPM: The three remaining Allawi Party members in Maliki's cabinet will formally resign Saturday according to the Washington Post, putting much greater pressure on al-Maliki to try and maintain the illusion of a functioning government. These are secularists, who have tried to stay above the sectarian politics and strife. Perfect stooges for the coming dictatorship with Allawi at the head (and in fact they'll undoubtedly do a good job for the Iraqi people, once the Bush Crime Family lets them....)

"Operation Strongman"

CNN is positively schizophrenic on its Iraq war coverage. Despite carrying water for the Bush Crime Family as bad or worse than Faux News, they also keep reporting going from people like Michael Ware, who seems to be the only reporter getting on the MSM who doesn't drink the Iraq kool-aid.

Ware reports that the CIA from the beginning has advocated replacing Saddam with a "friendly dictator" and getting the hell out. They called it Operation Strongman. He says it still has lots of support and not just from Teh Spooks. (h/t Crooks and Liars for finding this incredible segment.

"We Don't Need No Steenking Political Reconciliation!"

What fascinates me is that either the Bushies think we all have Alzheimer's Syndrome and can't form long term memories from short term ones, or that we're all so obsessed which which whore-celebrity will show us some vulgar part of her body next that we aren't paying attention. Unfortunately, they're wrong on both counts. And the mistakes add up!

Bush has dropped all references to Iraqi political reconciliation as goals for Teh Surge. In Tony Snow's swan song briefings on Iraq, he now only calls for "security." Period. But that's not what Bush said repeatedly back in January when he was "selling" Teh Surge. (h/t Think Progress). And we all know which kind of government is best at maintaining "security", don't we?

Bush and Company ousted the first democratically-elected Prime Minister back in 2006 because he wouldn't pass the Oil Law and put up with their other demands, as noted by the NYT Editorial Board today, those troop-hating foul-mouthed grey-lady print-bloggers that they are. The fiction of "elections" that put al-Maliki in charge was just that, fiction in practical terms. Next time, they probably won't bother with it, preferring to save all that money on purple/blue ink. (h/t The Blue State)

The Coming War With Iran got a step closer today, according to McClatchy newspapers. Iranian soldiers actually entered Iraqi territory and attacked small villages, killing an unknown number of locals who may or may not have been PKK guerillas. The Kurds have called for US help in securing the border with Iran. The US is officially ignoring them, for now...(h/t Juan Cole, who is THE source for sound Iraq strategic analysis right now...)

"Fifth Reich Watch: Noriega"

On the whole, I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories. Oh I agree that JFK, RFK and MLK were almost certainly not killed the way that the public versions relate, but so what? That does not prove that your brain is being controlled by somebody at Langely with a microwave beam or something (trust me, the people at Langely have far, far better things to do. And so do you, if you'd stop all the conspiracy crap and make something of your life.) However, I do firmly believe that the major multinational and totalnational corporations are pursuing a long term agenda I call the Fifth Reich, because it is very fascist and rather dangerous in the long run. I will try to provide a sensible post sometime in the next decade, but don't hold your breath or anyone else's either.

What is interesting is that on the heels of the rather badly-done hot dog summit with French Prime Minister Sarkozy and Appointed President Chimpy, Manuel Noriega is being sent over to France to spend another decade or two in Teh Slammer. Seems his attempt to avoid extradition just wasn't approved. It does seem rather odd, as if someone just doesn't want that old CIA asset to get out from under the thumb of the Penile System. Like he might, say, have secrets to sell (or write a nice book about). (h/t Teh Beeb (BBC) for this fascinating tidbit. The Brits give me hope, they really do...)

That's all for today's edition of Iraqi Dictatorship Watch. Tune in tomorrow for another exciting roundup of links and tidbits, same bat blog, same bat toobz.

We've Been Stupid

2007-08-22T23:50:00.000-07:00

It was always about the oil. How could we have let ourselves forget that?

I managed to, until this article by uber-blogger and major foreign policy and Iraq wonk Juan Cole brought me back to my senses. The minute I read it, everything fell into place. And my first thought is now the title of this post.

Come, my friends, and I shall lead you through the wilderness to the simple, terrible truth.

It's always been about the oil. And Ahmed Chalabi. And restoring a dictator to run Iraq who would cooperate with the U.S. oil companies as well as support U.S. foreign policy in the region (specifically regime change in Syria and Iran).

So here's how it is going to go down. Once we've described that, I will then show you how every action taken by the Bush Administration's appointees both civilian and military has feed perfectly into this strategy tree. Whoever is running this (my guess is Brent Scowcroft and whomever he has trained up as his replacement) has managed a perfect storm of realpolitik and we all missed it.

Okay, let's start with the way things are going to unfold between now and November 2008.

A) In about two to three months, there will be a really horrific insurgent attack in Iraq. Lots of dead, infrastructure damage, the whole shebang. Leading clerics will demand the ouster of Maliki as he cannot do anything to stop the carnage.

B) A group of military leaders, sunni and shia together, will overthow maliki and set up a regime similar to the one described in Mr. Cole's article. There is one addendum, however; Ahmed Chalabi will be on the governing council. Not the leader, but on it. If not, there will be a subsequent coup to put him there.

C) The new "council" will order the us out of iraqi cities and towns into laager positions to protect against "external threats", namely iran and syria. The US will happily comply. minor troop reductions will occur at this point, especially the more exhausted units.

D) The new Iraq government will then shut down the death squads and destroy everyone that doesn't toe the line fast, just like saddam did. The US will wring its hands but will have to allow it. By mid 2009, the Iraq situation will be stabilized, security wise.

E) Suddenly all those reconstruction projects that haven't been done or have been done poorly, will just blossom into place. Iraq will suddenly have power, water, schools, universities, air travel, functioning oil pipelines, refineries, pumping stations and deep water ports to export oil from. The U.S. oil industry will fall all over itself helping (and the Production Sharing Agreements will be signed in secret by the rubber stamp body as needed.)

F) The Iraqi military will suddenly have tanks and planes and helicopters and radios and all the needed things to keep order and preserve the country's integrity. Not enough to challenge the American laagered (an old tank warfare term meaning drawn up into a defensive position for a short while, usually in unfriendly terrain) forces, but enough to keep Iran from getting frisky just in case (and Syria and Turkey as well).

G) The Kurds will not like any of this, but will behave for two reasons. One, the massed Iranian and Turkish armed forces on their borders. Two, the massed laager of US forces. There will not be Kurds on the "council" but they will be allowed autonomy PROVIDED they leave Kirkuk alone. If not, the Turks will invade and crush them and the US and Iraq will wring their hands.

H) By election time, Iraq "won't be a problem" just like Karl Rove said. (Scrowcroft must have finally briefed him in...)

I) About May or June of 2009 there will be an "incident" involving Iraqi and Iranian armed forces. It will rapidly escalate and result in the U.S. bombing Iran's military and economic infrastructure heavily. Iran will retaliate with terrorist attacks on the EU, the Continental United States, and of course in Iraq. Also, Hezbollah will restart its war with Israel. Syria will try to remain uninvolved but will probably fail.

J) The U.S. will of course insist that it has no plans for sending troops into Iran. It does, however, reinforce selected border areas and eventually (right around election time) does become involved in a limited ground war in border regions with Iranian forces.

K) The election will focus on the terror threat (if there have been successful attacks inside the US) and/or on the need to "stay the course", "liberate Iran", etc. War hysteria will be kept at a high level but managed to avoid the negative casualty feedback.

L) Regardless of who wins the election, the US troops will stay in Iraq, and the US oil companies will get what they wanted from chimpy. Have a nice day.

Now let's examine the actions that were taken that, on the surface, seem so foolhardy, when in fact they were in response to conditions on the ground which we never considered, for what reason I cannot imagine since they were just as obvious then as now.

A) The complete destruction of the Iraqi army. This was needed to create the security mess that will lead to the demand for a new dictatorship. If we had left the Iraqi army intact it would have long since dealt with the death squads and the local insurgents, and we could then have finished off the AQ guys.

B) The allowing of the looting of the weapons caches. The security mess we need to have the demand for dictatorship will require weapons. So use what's there.

C) The denying of all Baath Party members any posts (even that of school teacher) in the current govt. Setting it up to fail big time and create a huge sunni pool ready to get back in the good life by supporting the desired dictatorship.

D) The refusing to rebuild any significant part of the infrastructure, or even maintain it. Again, we want people good and ready to surrender their "freedom" for the desired dictatorship. And as soon as it gets going, we suddenly fix everything and wow! Isn't dictatorship grand?

E) The continuing putting up of the oil law to the parliaments even when they refuse it. Needed to keep reminding the coming dictatorship's power players what we want, and what we'll do to get it.

F) The total lack of interest in forcing the political parties in Iraq to work together. We want them to fail, that's why. That is another pavestone in the road to the compliant dictatorship.

G) The careful maintenance of the Kurds as pseudo-independent but without real power because they can't have Kirkuk, and the encouragement of Turkey to mass all those troops on the border. The Kurds are a nuisance but it would look bad if WE or the Iraqis killed them. If they'll accept second class poverty in exchange for being let live, fine. Otherwise let the Turks slaughter them, they're good at that sort of thing.

H) The militant (proactive) indifference to repairing oil exporting facilities and pipeline and well head infrastructure. We don't want THIS government getting any serious oil money, that comes later when OUR dictatorship has taken over.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. No, they weren't stupid at all. Just amoral beyond belief.

Now of course, the final question is, why start all this five years ago? Answer: the Iraqis didn't fight correctly. It was assumed that they would fight hard and well and the war itself take until 2005 or even 2006 to complete. The destruction would have been so complete that we could pick the new ruler (Chalabi) sign the oil deals and go into laager by the end of 2006. All nice and neat. But the Iraqis simply fell apart, with little or no damage to the country's infrastructure and next to no american casualties and relatively few Iraqi ones. The country was left with lots of perfectly healthy soldiers, a fully functional civilian society and a great belief in the arrival of democracy. So they had to be given "democracy". Just not one that would work, or in the long run impede the American oil companies de fact seizure of the oil fields.

Everything flowed from that.

It has always been about the oil.

Who Put The Huche Ha Duwu In Shen Nanhai's Soup?

2007-08-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

The Court of Emperor Tai-Shrub is aghast tonight!

Shen Nanhai lies in his palace on Dragon Island moaning in agony. Not even his wife and son can comfort him. The Emperor himself was moved to tears upon learning of the matter.

Someone, who is as yet unknown, slipped Huche Ha Duwu, a dreaded chaumurky from Tibet, into Shen Nanhai's soup course at last night's banquet. By morning he was in agony and it was decided by Eunuchs and Mandarins alike that he must leave the Imperial Presence lest the Dark Essences released by the action of the lethal additive contaminate the Emperor himself and perhaps result in the dreaded Dynastic Change.

But in secret alcoves and hidden corridors of the Forbidden City On The Potomac, Eunuchs and Mandarins alike whisper to one another in guarded tones. Who has done this?

Some say it was the Older Emperor's (Tai-Tai Bush) mandarins, fearing that Shen Nanhai's name is on the list of individuals who frequented a recently exposed Jinu who is being prosecuted by the Imperial Censors.

Some say it was done at Tai-Shrub's own request, because his dear friend and intimate companion Shen Hanhai had become vulnerable to the attacks of the Tai-Peng-Lu rebellion due to some lower level eunuch or mandarian changing sides.

And a few murmur that perhaps it was done by Faithful Eunuch Cheney himself, to rid himself of a competitor for the ear of Emperor Tai-Shrub.

Only time will tell.

For you Ing-lish gwai loh out there, please to use a Pinyin converter to render any phrases you may not understand into simplified chinese characters, and then send those characters through the BabelFish. I believe you will find the translations enlightening.

PS. "God Boy" is a male prostitute. Just so you know.

Blame Sponge: (n) Individual Used By Genuinely Guilty Party To Accept Blame In Their Place

2007-08-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

Well, now we know why Emperor Tai-Shrub wanted a "war czar".

Silly wabbits, you thought he meant "the Iraq War Czar". Wrong-O, Liberal-Lou!

He meant the Czar of All Wars!

I sense the fine hand of Brent Scowcroft on this one. It's way beyond The Pet Goat Emperor or any of his palace Eunuchs, even Gwai-Loh Cheney.

The "whupping" sound you hear are the bureaucratic, political, and public relations bombshells this guy will happily deflect from the rest of the Administrations (Over, Covert, and Family).

Sure hope he got the money up front, cause if not, he may just join "Brownie" in the loss column of the Compassionate, Restore Honor To The White House, Ethics-focussed Bush Presidency.

Protocol Soap On The Potomac

2007-08-10T14:29:00.001-07:00

A peculiarity of some of the later Chinese Dynasties was the requirement that all who entered the actual Imperial Presence cover their faces and hands with a soap made from goose fat, that filled in the pores and made the skin look somewhat shiny or glowing; this concoction was sometimes referred to in the ancient texts as "protocol soap". The supply was tightly guarded and anyone who attempted to encroach upon the Emperor's demesne who didn't wear it was to be killed instantly by the guards.

In some previous posts to this blog, I've chronicled the appearance of the unbelievable Angler article series in the Washington Post which all but provided detailed legal grounds for the Impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney. I suggested at the time that perhaps this was a struggle between the Overt Administration of George W. Bush and the Covert Administration of Richard M. Cheney. I wondered if the specific elements of the struggle were the pardon of "Scooter" Libby and the unleashing of a new war with Iran, both of which were being pushed heavily at the time by Mr. Cheney.

Subsequent events did not support my initial theories. Mr. Libby had his sentence commuted, and the Overt Administration continues making threatening noises toward Iran. Also, other indications arose that Mr. Cheney was very much still the power behind the Throne, as it were. I gave up trying to track all the various maneauverings in the struggle and waiting for better data.

I now think I have that data.

At this point I must make clear that I personally view George W. Bush and Richard M. Cheney as the flatulation and turd, respectively, of the end of the post-Richard Nixon Republican Party. (If anyone doesn't think the end has arrived, I suggest they read this.) They are the anal eruction and voiding of the decision by the Kingmakers of the post-Nixon era (one of whom was George H.W. Bush himself) to gain power again not by returning to the conservative principles of Eisenhower and Goldwater, but by pandering to the worst aspects of the American political landscape with the Southern Strategy and Demonizing The Opposition. When combined with the disastrous decline in the fortunes of the Black community through a combination of economic and legal actions involving media-sold anti-progressive memes and metaphors (Gangsta et al) leading to the rise of the "drug culture" in black communities whose young men work for the drug ganglords because they see no better way to live (while their fellows who attempt to follow legal paths to success are often viciously imprisoned in a false and despicably unworkable "war on drugs" for minor infractions while white customers get slaps on the wrist due to the disparities between punishments for marijuana, crack cocaine, and powder cocaine), and the de facto destruction of the white lower and lower middle working classes via exporting of jobs overseas and union busting as well as the near-total breakdown of the lower and lower middle class public school system, this strategy, on the surface, has worked quite well. Reagan speeded things up by selling the ideological soul of the Republican Party to the Reactionary Religious Right, and George H.W. Bush, upon finding his own disastrous policies weren't going to be able to depend on the "Reagan Democrats", sold the heart and body of the Republicans to the RRR Hell Machine as well.

Unfortunately for him, it didn't work. William Jefferson Clinton was elected President despite being the "picked candidate" by the then nascent Mainstream Media Ministry Of Truth who would be guaranteed to loose, just as McGovern was. This is the principal reason behind the almost insane insistence of the Republicans and particularly the RRRHM that Clinton was the very Devil Himself. His success jeapordized their entire scheme for controlling American politics in perpetuity as it were. Worse yet, President Clinton won a landslide reelection in 1996 and Newt Gingrich was starting to compromise with him to be able to show some results (reform of Federal Welfare, for example.) The Kingmakers and RRRHM went berserk and with the help of the already-compliant Federal Judiciary including SCOTUS, obtained a prima facie unconstitutional ruling allowing the civil suit to proceed against a sitting President even though Federal Law prohibits such suits completely, a law which has passed SCOTUS constitutionality review. This led to the Monica Lewinsky "scandal", a reprise of the "Andrew Johnson" Impeachment for Political Purposes debacle, and the de facto termination of the Clinton Administration's political functionality.

But another factor had made itself available that the Kingmakers and the RRRHM hadn't anticipated, namely Rupert Murdoch and the Fox News networks. RM apparently liked the success of the Limbaugh Radio Network including all his various clones, and offered the managers of the Republican Party his full support in the completion of the "one party state" system they had been working on since the days of Nixon. Of course, they used it to the hilt. And this allowed them to put the utterly dysfunctional person George W. Bush into "power" as the President to succeed William Clinton. (They of course expected the ballot shenanigans in Florida to put him over the top, and were clearly not pleased the have the entire election's result come down to one vote, namely that of SCOTUS Judge Anthony Kennedy. And his disgust at their exploitation of his actions may have played some part, possibly a large part, in the SCOTUS cases that later effectively legalized the Gay and Lesbian lifestyles, two anathemas of the RRRHM.)

But there was a fly in the ointment, named Richard M. Cheney. Cheney was initially recruited to serve as a placeholder for Jeb Bush. He has a weak heart, he is already in place in terms of his personal power and fortune (as one of his payoffs, he is literally one of the rulers of Kuwait) and thus was not likely to seek his own terms of office when George W. Bush was forced to leave office by the two term rule. And if Jeb got tired of attempted to govern Florida by 2004, Mr. Cheney could be persuaded to step aside for him due to his heart problems. A perfect pick.

Except for the fact that, like most who drink the wine of power, Mr. Cheney wanted more of it. And he quickly saw that George W. Bush was a weak and vacillating person with a huge hatred of his father's success, a cruel awareness of his own failures (although not of the blame for them), and a determination to "be his own man". Cheney exploited this, promising to be a "good and faithful eunuch" in the finest Ming China Tradition. And George W. Bush swallowed it hook line and sinker. More importantly, initially, so did the Bush family and its retainers. They were all too well aware of Mr. Bush's inadequacies and knew he needed someone to effectively tell him what to do. They believed, and were clearly led to that belief, that Mr. Cheney would allow them to dictate the policies he then arranged to have carried out in the name of their son.

And so the Overt and Covert Administrations were born. Initially, the Bush Family was pleased, George Bush was pleased, and Cheney was pleased. He was getting a lot of things down that everybody wanted. It looked rosy into 2004, although the busting of the dot com bubble didn't help, but it could be worked around and the economy and world politics were essentially stable. George's fixation to attack Iraq the minute there was an opportunity was harmless, because there would never be an opportunity, Collin Powell would see to that. All was well in Bushland.

And then My Pet Goat happened. (I won't dignify the losses of September 11, 2001 by associating them with the fart or the turd. I prefer to focus on the My Pet Goat part of the story, because it is far more indicative of the real situation. Stark naked terror.) And the whole plan started to go off the rails "big time" (George's pet name at that time for Mr. Cheney. One can only imagine what it is now.)

Mr. Cheney saw an opportunity for a power grab never before possible in American history, even during the Second World War of the 20th Century. He used the terrorist attacks to justify and ramrod through Congress and the Courts a series of laws and actions that have virtually turned the United States into a police state run by the Unitary Executive. And the heroin he sold George W. Bush to get away with this is the ability to outdo his Father, GHW Bush, in not only invading but destroying Iraq, for the temerity to attempt to kill one of the Holy Bushes. (And yes, in the end, that is exactly what he has clearly wanted. Why do I say this? Because neither he nor his advisers are as stupid as they appear to be in their Iraq behaviors. They are viciously competent in every other area in which they operate, so why the incompetence in Iraq? There can be only one answer, it must be deliberate. And such deliberate incompetence must be authorized and even mandated from the top, namely GW Bush.)

And so from that date to the day after the 2006 elections, GW Bush was high on the "Wah On Terrah" heroin while Dick Cheney raped and pillaged the American Body Politic. They both had a very nice time. Even the Katrina disaster didn't slow them down; they tossed "Brownie" under the bus, made a lot of showy promises, and waited for it to go away. And it did. And they tightened the screws on the MSM, thinking that with their carefully managed help (not the garish yellow dog garbage of Faux News, but rather a sublty administered media poison of "balanced viewpoints" that weren't, "experts" that were actually Republican hacks, and deliberate avoidance of covering anything positive about the Democrats while only covering positive new about the Republicans. Even CNN was forced to this journalistic abnegation!) they could pull off a squeaker and keep control.

They didn't.

And George W. Bush went cold turkey on the WOT heroin.

He tossed Rumsfeld at once, and I suspect he also almost tossed Rove, but was talked out of it. But he still kept his alliance with Cheney because it wasn't his fault. And Cheney continued to be the "wise and faithful eunuch".

Until a jury had the unmitigated gall to convict "Scooter" Libby of Perjury and Obstruction Of Justice against the Federal Government. And a Judge, a mere Judge, had the audacity to sentence Mr. Libby to jail time and insist he start serving immediately.

And suddenly the illusions that had bound the Overt and Covert Governments together and also the ties that kept both of them connected to the Bush Family began to unravel very quickly. Because while the fine upstanding gentlemen who serve in the Overt and Covert Governments are very big on sacrifice for others, they don't tolerate a single bit of it for themselves. Not an iota. And Mr. Libby obviously made that plain to Mr. Cheney. It was initially done via the threats in the trial to call Mr. Cheney as a witness, to be followed by the testimony of Mr. Libby himself. At that point, it is apparent that sufficient assurances were given that no danger would affect Mr. Libby, the fix was in. He then gave a totally insane and useless defense and got himself convicted.

At that point, the agreed upon arrangement with the Overt Government and, more importantly, the Bush Family, kicked in. The Punditocracy rose as one to demand he be pardoned immediately; the Federalist Society rose as one to insist the sentence be home detention and community service, no more. They even convinced the internal sentencing board to go more or less along with this. And as a final fail safe, they brought in a heavy hitter lawyer to cajole and threaten the judge as needed during the sentencing hearings.

None of it worked. The Judge sentenced Libby to prison and insisted he start serving immediately.

And suddenly, for reasons known only to the alcohol and cocaine damaged neurons of George W. Bush, he snapped. Instead of bowing to Cheney as he usually did, he apparently said something on the order of "I won't pardon someone who is really guilty." Then he ordered his legal team to find out of there was anything wrong with the conviction, the jury deliberations, the Judge's behavior, anything. They found nothing. Bush at this point apparently told Cheney, "I can't help you. Mr. Libby will have to serve his sentence while the appeal goes forward. If the appeal is not successful, then I'll consider a pardon as I leave office."

And Libby lost it. We can only speculate what kind of conversations were held at this point, but it is fairly clear that Mr. Libby indicated to Mr. Cheney who then indicated to Mr. G.W. Bush that Mr. Libby had Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald's private number on speed dial on his cell phone, and the minute he was actually going to have to report to the prison, Mr. Fitzgerald was getting a call, and both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rove could at that point kiss their tushes goodbye.

And in all likelihood G.W. Bush stonewalled them. Mr. Cheney almost certainly presented this information with the deepest regret and his own personal willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of the team, but with serious concerns about both the loss of Karl Rove and the inevitable Impeachment hearings which might spread to affect the Oval Office itself. Cheney was and is far too smooth an operator to confront G.W. Bush in any way, because he has far better options.

But for some reason G.W. Bush didn't listen. Who did listen was Fred Fielding and James W. Baker III and Brent Scowcroft, the Holy Trinity of Bush Family advisers in such matters. Apparently Barbara Bush gave her son a call and laid down the law. Fielding showed up with a carefully crafted "commutation" that would leave Libby free and safe but not open him up to Congressional interrogation nor give him reason to call Mr. Fitzgerald. Grudgingly, G.W. Bush accepted this arrangement.

But there was an interesting codicil. It is no secret that the Bush Family has been unhappy with the conduct of Richard M. Cheney for some time. Aside from forcing unnecessary confrontations with Congress once it returned to Democratic control, he has also been trying to force a war with Iran, for reasons that are still somewhat unclear. And his mismanagement of the Iraq war has cost the Bush Family a whole generation of potential political officeholders, simply because their "brand" is now as tarnished as Enron's. And so, apparently with permission of the various members of the Overt Administration and disgruntled players from the Covert Administration, the Angler series was prepared in secret.

Once G.W. Bush had to "knuckle under" to Cheney, it seems likely that someone, possibly Scowcroft or maybe JW Baker III, offered this series of articles as a way of "putting Cheney in his place, and all his people with him." And G.W. Bush, whose reaction to anyone telling him what to do has actually been videotaped, apparently gleefully went along with it. (Another overt sign of the rupture may have been the "lurking Cheney" which was also captured on video.)

Needless to say, the Angler series shocked the halls of power (both overt and covert) in the Potomac Court. No one knew what to do with it. Some MSM outlets initially took it at face value and began a small drumbeat to remove Mr. Cheney (even Faux News did a small toe-tip in the water piece.) But most simply stared with a "WTF" expression.

And apparently Mr. Cheney got the message, sort of. He behaved himself, stopped giving speeches on aircraft carriers just off Iran's territorial waters, and in general acted appropriately contritely. However, through his remaining Covert Government players he struck back. It is now clear that some of the documents provided to the Democratic Senators and Representatives involving the misdeeds of Alberto Gonzales came from Cheney associates, covertly. Mr. Cheney himself, on national television, took pains to simultaneously praise Mr. Gonzales and confirm that Mr. Gonzales had perjured himself before Congress. And Cheney leaked the attempt to close Guantanamo Prison and so prevented it. So while Mr. Cheney may be on a leash, he and his friends are definitely biting the hands that hold it.

And those Bush Family and Overt Administration hands have struck back, releasing more articles with insider information similar to the Angler series, such as the long-secret memos of the pre-pet-goat Energy Task Force, or the fact that Mr. Cheney is apparently the one who ordered the midnight signature mugging of John Ashcroft to get a document that would prevent the major telephone companies from stopping cooperation with the NSA internal surveillance program due to the exposure to huge potential damages from litigation about it.

I have watched these attack and counter-attacks carefully over the weeks and months since the release of the Angler series. My intuitions have been informed and enlightened by much more data than before. With all the above in mind, here is my current take on the whole Overt/Covert/Family Administration struggle currently going on along the Potomac.

It is the war of the Protocol Soap Eunuchs. Whoever can get to Mr. G.W. Bush as the most obedient, most self-effacing, most Emperor-praising official gets their policy implemented....until another Eunuch outdoes them. And this will continue until G.W. Bush loses it and throws Mr. Cheney or his Family to the winds, or until some outside event (like a disastrous stock market crash, a new cold war with Russia, an economic war with China, or the total collapse of the American presence in Iraq) forces G.W. Bush to face reality, and in all likelihood destroys him instead.

We face three alternatives. We can continue with an idiot-boy-emperor being pulled all ways at the same time and thus doing nothing but occassional collateral damage, until the end of his term in 2009. We may face the Impeachment of both Cheney and Bush (and they will have to go together, everyone has figured that out) and a possible rupture of the Constitutional System (if Bush or Cheney refuse to accept their convictions and the now corrupted SCOTUS backs them). And we may face the first removal of a sitting President due to mental incompetency that prevents him from discharging the duties of his office, and of a sitting Vice President due to health issues that have the same effect.

Any way you look at it, as the ancient Chinese curse, goes, we are going to live in Interesting Times.

Let's Run It Up The False Flagpole And See Who Salutes

2007-08-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

After much expenditure of Protocol Soap, the Mandarin Cheney has apparently won the ear of Emperor Tai-Shrub, and has proposed a wise and humble test of his wisdom concerning the gwai-loh of Iran.

These uncouth barbarians are accused of demeaning the holy presence of the August Emperor of Pet Goats by smuggling crude, unaesthetic weapons to the heathen heretics of Iraq who ignobly resist the enlightenment of the Lord Deciderer of the Five Forgotten Friedmans and Ten Ignored Scandals.

Most Excessively Humble Mandarin Of The Burton Of Hali Cheney has suggested, in his most miniscule of wisdoms, that if one or more ox-carts loaded with such obscene weapons were to be found by Imperial Censors patrolling the border between Enlightened and De-Electrifiec Iraq and benighted and Nukular Iran to be attempting to cross between the two lands, this would be sufficient proof, indeed rigid proof, that Iran must receive a full portion of the Wrath of Tai-Shrub, son of Tai-Tai-Bush (whose portraits and busts have all been removed from the Forbidden city by Tai-Shrub, ostensibly for cleaning and restoration...).

The Imperial Court waits with baited breath for the next revelation...(and those worms taste really awful, probably because they got them on the cheap from the vendors at the Lake Of Heavenly Repose...)

(Translation for the Barbarians who gabble in Ing-lish: Cheney is apparently winning the bidding war for control of idiot-child-emperor Bush and has set up a "test" involving one or more trucks smuggling IED's from Iran to Iraq with provable Iranian agents on board. If there was a better setup for a false flag op in that end of the world, I can't imagine it...stay tuned for further developments. Film at Eleven. If your popcorn tastes funny, don't eat it.)

Police Report Dirt Fountain In Alabama, Discovered To Be Coming From George Wallace's Grave

2007-07-29T08:29:00.000-07:00

There are times when the news in the current insane atmosphere in Washington D. C. just seems so Rod Serling it hurts. Even so, this next bit is literally beyond imagination, but here it is, and from the Respected Scott Horton of Harper's Magazine.

To provide a very brief context, we all now know excruciatingly well that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is a serial perjurer, in all likelihood has obstructed justice many times, and in fact is probably guilty of enabling and protecting the commission of war crimes.

The problem Congress, marginally under Democratic control, has with Mr. Gonzales is simple: he won't resign and Appointed President Bush won't fire him. Additionally, things are going from bad to worse as Mr. Gonzales himself has smirkingly informed us.

So how desperate are the leaders of the Congress on this matter? Let's read a small snippet from today's article by Mr. Horton:

What options does Congress have before it now? Dissolve the Department of Justice and transfer law enforcement responsibilities to the states? That’s actually been raised a few times now, but it’s hardly a reasonable approach to the problem. In fact the Department of Justice was once a highly respected institution. It was viewed as nonpartisan and professional. Congressional priorities should rather be to restore that reputation and set the Justice Department upright once more. (Boldface and italics are mine.)

This idea is the ultimate triumph of State's Rights. Done to protect the citizens of America from a Justice Department that is now, in effect, an organized crime ring (think RICO). Just like George Wallace and other State's Rights supporters suggested would one day happen. The only difference is that it has happened under a Republican Administration rather that a Democratic one.

The fact that this is even being considered indicates how bad things are. As we watch the unfolding spectacle with appropriate background music, the Twilight Zone is surely upon us, for we have passed the ridiculous and the sublime.

Who Will Rid Me Of This Meddlesome Priest?

2007-07-27T15:26:00.001-07:00

Henry the II had a problem. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, was refusing to allow him to do as he wished in terms of Church lands, property, tithes and so forth. Beckett even refused orders from the Pope to accede to Henry's wishes. Finally, in desperation, Henry made the famous statement that is the title of this post. Four members of his court (the Middle Ages equivalent of a Cabinet) took this as a direct order and killed the Archbishop. Henry disavowed them, but it was of little use. He ended up losing all public confidence, and had to humiliate himself to the Pope, effectively emasculating the power of the throne to that of the miter.

George W. Bush had a problem also. Pat Tillman, leading NFL star who had turned down lucrative contracts and endorsements to sign up as a Special Forces soldier and serve in Afghanistan, was turning against the war. He was critical of it in the media, often quoting the noted anti-war activist Noam Chomsky. It was endangering the whole "War on Terror" plan to attack Iraq that was even then being designed and built at the White House and the Pentagon. So, what to do? In our modern, enlightened, egalitarian world, no one could turn to the Henry the II solution, could they? John Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org and a veteran of the second Iraq War, made these comments today as a guest blogger at Think Progress:

After an investigation, the government changed the story — that Tillman was a victim of friendly fire, an honest mistake, because he was mistaken for the enemy. The recent revelations now cast this conclusion into serious doubt. You don’t mistake someone from 10 yards away. But, was it murder or negligence? Was this a deliberate homicide?

President Bush is not helping at all. With these new details, and his decision to invoke executive privilege in the Tillman investigation, the President is certainly sending the signal that he has something to hide.

It is inevitable, then, that unless the President comes clean, rumors about Tillman’s death will take hold. By stonewalling, there is no way to stop people from wondering, “Was the man the White House used to promote the war ordered to be killed because he was becoming increasingly critical of the war in Iraq?” It was well known that Tillman was critical of the decision to go to war, and had often read and quoted Noam Chomsky. I don’t personally believe such a conspiracy to be the case, but until the President comes clean, rumors like that will continue to grow. Every officer knows that if a soldier in their command is killed they must write the family and tell them the truth, for exactly that reason. Why can’t the man who sent Pat Tillman to war, and used his death for political gain, have the courage to tell a family what happened to their son?

Now let's look at how this could have happened: Bush loses his temper at Donald Rumsfeld and says "We don't need this kind of backsliding when we're spooling up for Iraq. Find a way to shut this guy up." Rumsfeld turns to one of the chickenhawks in his shop and says "The Commander In Chief says "Shut this guy Tillman up any way you have to and get it done now." The chickenhawk calls one of his one-star SOF buddies and says "We have evidence Tillman is about to desert to lead antiwar protests back in America. See that this doesn't happen or it's your ass!" Said one-star sends in a crack team whose job it is to take Tillman out. Things get a little dicey but the job gets done. Everyone reports job well done, and to make the death useful it is turned into a propaganda victory, such as happened with Audie Murphy. (Note: there is no indication of any fabrication in Murphy's citations for valor, but he himself often felt that his accomplishments were overemphasized to support the war effort.) The rest, they say, is history.

The question is, how could this have happened? How could the President of the United States effectively and practically condone murder? The answer is the dreaded slippery slope.

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

Thomas De Quincey, Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts -1827

Shorter Raving: If you're willing to break one law, you're usually willing to break two. Once you've broken two laws, why stop there?

Maybe the Middle Ages are the new 21st Century. Who knew?

It's Too Early For Bedtime, Gonzo, But You Can Go Outside And Play During Recess

2007-07-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

NB: The title of this post was written by my evil twin Derfla. I take no responsibility for it.

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, is about to take a month long recess during August. There is no evidence that Majority Leader Reid has activated his Recess Appointment Defense Team, so there is now the possibility that Appointed President George W. Bush can allow someone to resign and then use the Recess Appointment power to replace them without approval from the Senate.

Let's see, who can we think of that might do this for the good of the Appointed President? Hmmmmm.....

Vice President Richard Cheney? Naw, they're planning on throwing him and his staff under the Impeachment bus to keep Congress busy while the Appointed President and the Overt Administration make off with the loot.

Who else can we think of? Let's see, who on the current roster of Cabinet level Secretaries has a real serious risk of being impeached and or cited for Contempt of Congress or even having a Special Counsel created to investigate them, perhaps leading to a Special Prosecutor and even one or more indictments for say, perjury? Which such stalwart of the Overt Administration is so high on his or her relationship with Appointed President George W. Bush that he's willing to flat out lie on camera to the Senate Judiciary Committee, or to stonewall their questions which the basis for a Contempt Of Congress charge?

Who can it be now?

Why it's Gonzo!

More formally, it is Attorney General Alberto "Gonzo" Gonzales (known to the Appointed President as "Fredo")!

I don't need to go into the increasing firestorm of protest raging in Washington D.C. as it slowly and excruciatingly parses the abominable farce that was Mr. Gonzales' testimony to the Senate yesterday. What I wish to point out is an easy out for all involved, or so they will think. Let's lay it out as a series of steps:

Step 1: Alberto Gonzales resigns to remove an "unneeded distraction" from Appointed President Bush's focus on the Wah On Terrah. Or if he's uncooperative Mr. Bush simply fires him.

Step 2: Mr. Bush appoints a new Attorney General through the Recess Appointment power. This appointment will last until the end of Mr. Bush's term in office, by the way.

Step 3: Said new Attorney General announces a sweeping investigation of all sorts of stuff by the Bush Administration, which will unfortunately not be done until after the 2008 elections, but oh well, you gotta investigate with the Justice Department you have, not the Justice Department you want. It subpoenas everyone and everything in sight; those subjected to said investigations regretfully tell Congress, "I can't talk about that, I'm currently under investigation by the DOJ on that matter." Neat, right. Wrong! The mob is howling for blood! So let's give them some!

Step 4: About March of 2008, the new AG announces that there is sufficient evidence to try and convict Vice President Richard Cheney of obstruction of justice, perjury, war crimes, and being Dick Cheney. Regretfully as a sitting Vice President, he cannot be indicted; however, the new AG tearfully asks Congress to rid us of this terrible man.

Step 5: The Impeachment and Trial of Vice President Richard Cheney are used during the election season to serve as a blame sponge for the Appointed Overt Administration's misdeeds. Cheney accepts his Impeachment and Conviction stoically. He is then pardoned by the Appointed President, and flies off to Dubai to run Kuwait. There isn't time to submit a new Vice President's name for consideration in the Senate, and anyway new elections are almost here so they'll provide the replacement. And of course it would be pointless to Impeach President Bush at that point, since it would leave Nanci Pelosi to become President for a few months.

Step 6: Hillary Clinton and [insert VP choice name here] win the general election by a landslide. The House and Senate are firmly in Democratic hands. Mr. Bush pardons himself and virtually every member of his Overt and Covert Administrations as he leaves "to end our national tragedy caused by Richard Cheney". He and his daughters skip to Paraguay, while his wife divorces him and returns to her roots with the appropriate monetary settlement (and First Lady benefits).

Look how those swings sparkle in the sunlight! Time for Recess.....

A Senatorial Mortar Round Has Just Landed In The Administration's Green Zone (Updated!)

2007-07-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

The Green Zone in Baghdad is the part of the city that is exclusively for American and Coalition personnel, a completely safe haven from the horrors of the external city. But as we know from published reports, more and more mortar bombs and rockets are landing inside the Green Zone, so much so that military officials won't even allow congressmen or senators to spend the night there.

For the Bush Administration, the Supreme Court has been, since their successful appointment of Judge Roberts and Judge Alito, a political Green Zone. They could be counted on in most cases to side with the Administration. Chief Justice Roberts, for example, is an on-the-record champion of exactly the sort of abuse of executive privilege that is currently being claimed by the Bush Administration in its fight with Congress over the subpoenas to former White House employees to testify in the investigation into the firings of United States Attorneys as an attempt to interfere in ongoing prosecutions of individuals with strong political ties to the Republican Party and the Bush-Cheney election campaigns.

Most legal observers feel that Chief Justice Roberts would not recuse himself on the executive privilege matter should it come before the High Court, resulting in the de facto emasculation of Congress' investigative powers. And there seems little that can be done about the matter at present.

Except perhaps, for Senator Arlen Specter.

As noted in The Politico, Senator Specter is announcing he will review the promises made to the Senators in the confirmation hearings of both Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts to see if they have been kept. He isn't doing this review yet and won't say what it means or what it might motivate him to do. He isn't being cagey, he is simply making a point, a very large and stunning point.

Justices on the Supreme Court serve for life, unless they are impeached.

That's right, gentle readers. Supreme Court Justices can be impeached, for high crimes and misdemeanors, just like the President and Vice President. And it almost happened, back in the heady days of LBJ, to Justice Abe Fortas. And one of the best high crimes and misdemeanors I can personally think of would be to emasculate the ability of Congress to investigate the Executive Branch. That on its face might be enough, and if not, it is highly likely that both Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts have enough skeletons in their personal closets to fill in the gaps.

And here comes the beauty part: The Executive And Judicial Branches have no say in the matter.

That's right, fellow Americans, the wisdom of the Founders has just popped a failsafe canopy on the Constitutional bus that went over the cliff about two weeks ago. If President Bush and Chief Justice Roberts decide to throw a little de facto coup de etat, well then perhaps the House and Senate can remove Chief Justice Roberts, and perhaps Justices Alito and even Justices Thomas and Scalia as well (Justice Scalia has done considerably more in the open than was necessary to force Justice Fortas to resign, and it is now clear that Justice Thomas perjured himself in his testimony on the Anita Hill matter.) That would leave five Supreme Court Justices in place, and perhaps they could revisit the whole Executive Privilege matter.

And neither President G.W. Bush nor Chief Justice John Roberts can do a thing about this process. It is entirely political, and immune to court review or executive veto. Thus is the wisdom of the Founders revealed.

And Chief Justice John Roberts knows all this.

That is the message that Senator Arlen Specter sent him today. Cloaked in Specter's usual deceptive mildness, intended to cause no panic on Wall Street or K Street, it nonetheless was a 500 pound mortar bomb right in the Bush Administration's Green Zone.

I suspect Fred Fielding is having a really bad day today. Let us extend him all the sympathy he deserves.

Update: In his confrontation with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Senator Specter also noted that "My suggestion to you is you review your testimony to find out if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable".

Specter later wryly (and incorrectly) pointed out to reporters that the Capital Building has a jail cell in the basement that could be used to imprison Gonzales. (It actually is only authorized to confine persons who have been convicted by Congress of Contempt Of Congress and is currently unused.)

I do believe the Scottish Lawyer is ticked off. As Emperor Jeff "Tai Shan" Wong of the Han Dynasty put it, "Dis is not good!".

The World Turned Upside Down

2007-07-25T04:44:00.000-07:00

The World Turned Upside Down is a military musical piece from as far back as the First American Revolutionary War; it was played by the surrendering British forces at Yorktown. The reason they played it is simple: an upstart colonial force had defeated, with some help from a lesser world power (France), the massed armed forces of the superpower of the day, England. The English even had a "coalition of the willing" helping them, namely the Hessian mercenaries.

There were no war crimes trials then, the concept really hadn't been invented yet. But it certainly has now, and the attempts by President Clinton And President G.W. Bush to shield American officials from war crimes prosecution may in the end be ineffective.

When the nations of the world are outraged enough, they will no longer be denied by legalistic fictions. It may rapidly get to the point that no United States official involved in the current Administration will be able to leave the territory of the U.S. for fear of being arrested and hauled before the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

Why do I say this? Let me quote from the just released summary by the inestimable Scott Horton at Harper's Magazine of the excruciating testimony by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

And then the old Tomas de Torquemada came out, that character deep in the innermost recesses of the Gonzales ego. President Bush recently issued an Executive Order which appears to be geared to authorizing torture by the CIA. Its language is a careful case-study in ambiguity. So what about specific techniques, such as waterboarding? Long-time standing? Hypothermia? Aren’t they torture and unlawful? Well, for Alberto Gonzales, mock executions and waterboarding aren’t torture, and aren’t proscribed by the president’s Executive Order. Indeed, it would now appear that in the attorney general’s opinion, they have been authorized. And that means that the over one hundred deaths that have occurred in detention, very many of them connected directly to the use of these highly abusive techniques, are in Gonzales’s view privileged homicides.
So let’s just step in a time machine for a second and go traveling back to 1946-47, at the end of World War II, and to the positions jointly adopted by the allies—led by the United States—with respect to techniques including waterboarding, long-time standing, the cold cell and sleep deprivation in excess of two days. Are these techniques torture? Yes. What punishment is available against those convicted of having used them? Up to and including the death penalty. What punishment is available against high government officials who create the legal basis for the use of these techniques? At least ten years at hard labor, but up to and including the death sentence. Did Alberto Gonzales, who famously said—using (whether consciously or not) the words that sped Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel to his appointment with the hangman—that the Geneva Conventions were “quaint” and “obsolete,” commit a capital crime? I don’t think the assumption of the singular is correct here. More likely we’re talking a series of them.

And now you know why Gonzales, during a visit to Argentina recently, was told that he could not be received by the president of the republic in the Casa rosada. Outside of the United States he is viewed as an “enemy of all mankind,” hostis humani generis, someone who will, when he looses the protection of his official immunity, certainly be prosecuted. He can find repose in the fact that the majority view in the international community no longer accepts the death penalty, though for severe war crimes, like these, they may make an exception.

Let's be clear here. This is Argentina, home to the terrible Dirty War in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century. And they are so outraged by the conduct of the United States and the enabling behavior of its putative Attorney General that their President won't receive him. Just let that sink in for a moment. The leader of one of the worst nations in the world in terms of abuse of the human rights of its citizens won't receive an American Cabinet Secretary because said American is viewed as guilty of war crimes. This is not the pot calling the kettle black, this is the pot running frantically from a kettle so covered in blood, pain, horror and suffering that the stench is literally lethal.

And I agree with Mr. Horton. No matter who obtains control of Congress and the White House in 2009, the rest of the world is not going to sit still for what the current Administration has done. And that means America may have to threaten economic or even military action against nations trying to carry out the spirit if not the letter of the War Crimes Tribunal treaties by arresting various figures from the current Administration such as Gonzales, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, even George W. Bush.

Just like, say, Serbia in refusing to give up Milosevich for trial for his atrocities in the Croatian and Bosnian wars of succession from Yugoslavia. Shorter Raving: We have become Serbia.

The World Turned Upside Down, indeed.

Polonium On The Potomac: Wheeeee! Edition

2007-07-20T04:19:00.000-07:00

Isn't free fall fun? Air rushing past your face, the world unfolding below you, floating like you were in the womb, free from all cares......

.......except for that hard, flat ground-y thing getting closer and closer.....

Late yesterday, or early today depending on your time zone, Appointed President Bush with the help of the Bush Crime Family's stable of lawyers and legal sophists took the United States Of America off the Constitutional cliff. We are now in free fall, and no one knows whether the Founders packed any emergency parachutes or balloons or anything.

There is coverage of the event in the MSM, so I'll let the Washington Post explain it far better than I can. The blogporters are sinking their teeth into it but need to wait for the experts to get their morning coffee and brain booting done. Expect a tidal wave of blog coverage by noon eastern time. I'll leave that to the professionals and move along with how this fits into the bigger scheme of things instead.

I now have a working theory as to the goals and methodologies of the Bush Crime Family in the current crisis. It is fairly complicated (anyone who knows me is not surprised) but can be distilled into a simple sentence: The Bush Crime Family will do anything necessary to protect George W. Bush and get him out of office safely (not impeached or at worst not convicted) so they can keep the gains they have made from his two terms in office. They are not interested in setting up a dictatorship, they are not directly trying to take over the world, nor are they even slightly interested in the agenda of the Christianist Right. The reason George W. Bush must stay in office is twofold: a) so he can pardon himself and his retainers on the way out the door, and b) so he can create a mess in the Middle East that will force continued warfare in the region in accord with what I am now calling the 2030 Agenda (the long term plan of a number of people including the Bush Crime Family to reshape the world to their liking and prevent the inevitable end of the Oil Economy from being a disruption to their income and control.)

This action is simply the next step in achieving that agenda. I will attempt to cover why it is now needed and how this maneuver inter-relates to the struggle with the Democratic Congress and the Covert Cheney Administration in a post soon (had planned that for today but events are still overtaking me.)

Oh, and the weird executive order aimed at seizing assets of people supposedly helping insurgents in Iraq? While scary, in practice it is probably aimed at things like this. So let's keep our tin foil hats safely folded in the wall safe along with the 40 megawatt phased plasma rifle and the Kalocin; i don't think we need them just yet.

blogporter : A blogger who is directly or indirectly responsible for investigating news events. Identical to a reporter except that the medium of output is not a newspaper or magazine, but a blog.

Kalocin : fictional antibiotic from Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain capable of killing all microbial life in the human body, almost certainly derived from the military version of the drug which is known in civilian medicine as Vancomycin. The military version of the drug (significantly enhanced in some way not currently declassified) was stockpiled at the Denver Federal Center to treat military and civilian government employees in the event of a Soviet Biological Warfare attack as part of a Nuclear Warfare attack. The catch for that drug is, you can never stop taking it or you die, nastily. Fortunately we never needed it and all stocks have been destroyed. (Some researchers have suggested that the real version of Kalocin was derived from cancer chemotherapy research instead of from the Eli Lilly work.)

Polonium On The Potomac Redux Edition: Have Some More Tea, Mr. Cheney?

2007-07-19T04:37:00.001-07:00

The Angler piece in the Washington Post has been a thorn in my side from the day it started. I deconstructed parts of it here on my blog as an example of a) how to do that sort of thing, and b) to prove my claim to some skeptics who doubted it was a "hit" piece.

I even came up with a reason for it, a struggle between Cheney's "covert government" and George W. Bush's "overt government". I also suggested it was an indication that a) Libby would receive neither a pardon nor a commutation and b) Cheney and his minions were being warned not to start a war with Iran on their own.

Then reality caught up with me.

George W. Bush did commute Scooter Libby's sentence in terms of jail time only. And it is increasingly obvious that George W. Bush does intend to go to war with Iran sometime next year.

So was I totally wrong? I worked every contact I have left in the Potomac Potboiler and got many interesting tidbits, including the idea that Cheney arranged for the Angler series as a weird form of self-congratulation. (It has since come out that a major book is being written on Cheney with his permission and it seems to largely contradict the Angler series, so it now seems unlikely Cheney arranged for it to be written.)

In desperation, I began setting up a timeline for odd behavior by the Vice President. And immediately I ran into the Lurking Cheney. This gave me pause, because it was the first indication that something might be wrong in the Bush-Cheney relationship.

I then factored in the Libby trial and sentencing timelines. I also considered the timing of the pundit extortion scheme which tried to buffalo George W. Bush into fully pardoning Libby. I considered the point that the commutation prevents any number of legal issues from arising in regards to Mr. Libby's testimony to Congress, both due to the Fifth Amendment and the ongoing appeal issues. And finally, I paid attention to the continuing dissonance between Cheney and George W. Bush over North Korea and Syria, as well as the closing of Guantanamo (although this in fact is a deception, Cheney appears to oppose it simply because he is never willing to back down on anything where the Unitary Executive is involved.) Then I added in known behaviors by George W. Bush when "people try to tell him what to do", and the information about his attempt to find a flaw in the Libby jury verdict.

So I thought I had finally figured it out, sort of. I titled the prospective blog post "The Perils Of Pinocchio" and was about to publish it when one the most critical Energy Task Force documents that Cheney had gone to court to protect was suddenly leaked to the Washington Post by a "former administration official". Which promptly upset my applecart again, but only partially.

As I picked up the pieces of my analysis, I noticed the sudden defensiveness of George W. Bush and his administration on the testimony of Sara Taylor, and more importantly, Harriet Miers. And then I factored in the sudden problems in Pakistan coupled with the resurgence of Cold War rhetoric and behaviors in the Eastern European former Warsaw Pact nations, combined with the sudden decision by Turkey to move 150,000 ground forces to the border with Iraqi Kurdistan. And finally I noticed that India, American, Japan, Australia and Singapore are all participating in a major naval exercise shortly, hosted by India, which centers on joint operations by such forces if a regional threat should occur. As as the final piece of the puzzle, I took note of the decision by the North Koreans (with a little unpublicized U.S. help) to not only shut down all their nuclear plants and open them to U.N. inspection, but even to consider reuniting with South Korea and ending the Korean War (which is currently under Armistice rather than a full Peace Treaty.)

And at last, many if not all of the pieces fit into place. Everything makes a weird but realistic kind of sense. And so I'm going to bring together all my posts on Angler and possible plans by the Bush family to start a world war over oil, and several other nascent posts and put them into a series of continuing posts with much more detail including pictures, maps, charts, and lots of links to follow to support (or oppose) my conclusions.

Also, I've discovered I like blogging, a lot. So I'm also going to establish several new topics that are of personal interest to me and add them to the blog as well. This should be available by the end of the weekend if all goes well.

Now on the Angler series, and it latest extension involving the Energy Task Force, I no longer have any doubts about what is happening or why. I want to go into full details on this matter, so I won't cover it here, but I would like to point out a small but potentially very significant post here. The leak of the ETF documents was only part of the next Angler piece, the Truthout article has more of it. Bottom line, Cheney obstructed justice by suppressing FERC evidence of criminal wrongdoing involving a multi-billion-dollar extortion of the California power industry. Those people he was cozying up with in the ETF were at that very time involving in a criminal enterprise which he aided and abetted. This is highly explosive and is definitely an impeachable offense.

The Bush Family is getting ready to throw Dick Cheney and his Covert Government under the Congressional and Judicial buses. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Hell, Why Stop At Three Wars? Go For The Whole Enchillada!

2007-07-15T08:54:00.001-07:00

There has always been something about the way the NATO force's mission in Afghanistan has been conducted that has bothered me. Given that Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two principal strongholds of Al Queda, it would seem reasonable to assume that serious prosecution of the NATO mission would effectively crush the Al Queda leadership and remaining bases. But this has not happened. The mission continues in a placeholder mode, not just because of the war in Iraq. One reason is the tenuous hold on power President Musharraf of Pakistan holds on power. Another is the problematic nature of combat in the lawless tribal regions where Bin Laden and the Taliban leadership are based. But still, it has always seemed odd.

Today Marcy T. Wheeler (EmptyWheel) has posted a lovely blog entry at The Next Hurrah that suggests the destabilization of Pakistan has been Dick Cheney's endgame from day one. It is a fascinating theory and may hold much truth.

But old warhorse that I am, I immediately realized this is not so simple. With all respect to Marcy, there are global ramifications here big time, for two reasons. One, Pakistan is a nuclear power with both warheads and delivery systems. Two, Pakistan sits right in the middle of the region between China and India, along with Tibet. Those of us who pay attention to world affairs realize how touchy China is about Tibet (not as bad as they are about Taiwan, but touchy). I suspect they won't be pleased to have a nuclear state fall into the hands of terrorists on their border. And to say India will go ballistic is a frighteningly accurate metaphor, because they have ballistic missiles that can reach all major urban areas of Pakistan in minutes. And the Russians recently sold them some very good anti-short range missile technology that might help them deal with a retaliatory launch or two.

And Russia is not going to tolerate Pakistan becoming controlled by militant islamic extremists either. They are depending on the oil revenue from the Caspian Sea area for much of their planned revitalization in the next decade; they aren't about to risk it.

So if Pakistan goes under, expect a Coalition of The Scared Shitless to form real fast. India will be the lead member, followed by Russia and China. The US and Europe can essentially become onlookers while this happens, if they choose.

And then it hit me.

What if Dick Cheney and his allies' strategy is based on a truly breathtaking (and seriously demented) grand vision? What vision? The complete destruction 9f the Islamic Middle East and the occupation of the Caspian Sea Basin by US and NATO forces.

Get out Google Earth or your favorite mapping program and study how the process will work. It is as horrible as anything the Nazi's pulled, but terrifyingly easy to pull off. And everything that has been done in Iraq makes perfect sense if this is the grand plan. Especially the complete destruction of the Iraqi military, the engendering of a full scale civil war, and the empowerment of the Kurds. From this standpoint, it is not incompetence, it is strategy.

Here's how it works:

Step One: get massive US military forces into the Middle East. (Done.)
Step Two: destroy Iraq's ability to function for the next twenty years (at which point oil won't matter due to global warming forcing use of alternative energy technologies). (Done.)
Step Three: remove US military forces from Iraq, use reason of convenience. (In work.)
Step Four: create a reason to utterly destroy the infrastructure of Iran using air and missile power only. (In preparatory stage.) This also leads to the destruction of Syria's economy and ability to project force (via Israeli air and US naval blockade)
Step Five: destabilize Pakistan, allow Taliban to take control. (Easily accomplished, just give the word.)
Step Six: Move US troops into Pakistan via Afghanistan and occupy. Set up long term bases and use ruthless tactics against local insurgents. (Doable but will require commitment of most of available us military resources).
Step Seven: Get China and India to fight a limited war. (Not that hard to do but will take a bit of prep work.)
Step Eight: Get one or more of the -stan republics taken over by islamic fundamentalists, along with refugees from Pakistan (WITH AT LEAST TWO NUKES). (Far too easily done, the Russians are having this problem now and barely containing it.)
Step Nine: Blow the nuke in either US or Europe. Can be false flag or just monitored and controlled incompetence (like Katrina in US). (Demented but doable.)
Step Ten: US declares war on -stan republic. due to massive commitment of forces in Pakistan/Afghanistan, MILITARY DRAFT is started again. (The Pentagon has started practicing for this already.) (In this scenario's climate, doable, particularly if there is a recession due to the china/india war with lots of young people needing work...)
Step Eleven: Invade -stan republic. Spread war to all -stan's around Caspian Sea. (Why not? We've passed ridiculous and are heading for sublime...)
Step Twelve: Detonate other Pakistan Nuke In Saudi Arabia. Make it dirty so oil fields are useless. Make sure kuwait stays out of the fallout pattern.

Now step back and see what all this leads to:

1) The Middle East Oil Producing Islamic Nations are gone. Iraq and Iran are in rubble and Saudi Arabia is nuked and contaminated. No more oil from there for the next 20 years, as desired.
2) As an elegant side effect, Afghanistan and Pakistan are crushed and occupied either by the U.S. or by troops of one or more powers wanting to get in on the spoils. And Syria is emasculated. The only surviving Islamic Nation in the Middle East is Turkey, which will be guided to annex Kurdistan (both in Iraq and Iran) and make it an autonomous region. Gritting their teeth but well aware of the cost of refusing, the Turks will agree.
3) Both China and India are not longer able to provide cheap goods for american consumers. Those jobs return to the U.S. as hi tech robotic manufacturing systems. China and India will instead turn to providing various goods in which they have real market potential instead, just like Korea and Japan and Taiwan do. (Oh and China is tricked into buying lots of US companies and they has their investment confiscated. Oops. What trade deficit?)
4) Russia suddenly has no source of major hard currency for the next decade and will fragment into three to five smaller republics when the Putin Kleptocracy collapses. The Europeans will happily add them to the EU and civilize them.
5) With no more money available from Saudi Arabia and Iran, islamic terrorism dies on the vine. Tough Shit.
6) Dick Cheney and The Bush Crime Family end up controlling the world's oil supply for the next twenty years. they cut the DINO's and Rethugs who swap in and out of the US presidency in on the action provided they behave. If they don't, the crisis is ratcheted up and either the uncooperative Pres is impeached or just flat out killed. We are dicing for effective control of the world here, no prisoners will be taken.
7) Big Oil will frantically try to shift into the alternative technologies as the changeover happens. BCF and IPC will take a cut but let them.
8) By 2050 the world will be oil free and happily starting to colonize the solar system. We finally made the breakthrough we needed to do this in Germany at Max Planck Physics institute recently.

The Religious Right and The Conservative Right and All The Rest can go screw themselves. BCF and ICP don't give a crap about them. They'll be too busy figuring out how to get control of the solar system.

This is all theoretical and probably nonsense. But maybe not....

Polonium On The Potomac: Edge Of The Cliff Edition

2007-07-12T02:16:00.001-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I was wrong.

The entire Angler series was not a warning to the Covert Government not to start a war with Iran. It was both less than that and much more than that. That will be covered in detail in my upcoming posts "Polonium On The Potomac: Perils Of Pinocchio Edition" and "Why Have Only One War When You Can Have Three Wars For The Price Of Three?".

The whole thing hinges on the fact that we (the progressive and independent elements of the blogosphere) have been looking through the telescope from the wrong end.

We have been assuming that Appointed President Bush is virtually all-powerful, that he laughs and mocks our futile efforts to interfere with his plans. And certainly he strives to give that effect every time he addresses the news media or arranges a photo op or other event. However, this is all for show, and to keep up troop morale.

The fact of the matter is that Appointed President Bush is terrified not only of Impeachment and trial and conviction and eviction (please see my coming blog entries "What If They Gave An Impeachment And Nobody Left?" and "What If They Gave An Impeachment and Everybody Came?") but perhaps of his life and even his family's fortune.

The proof can be obtained directly from Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo; here is a precis.

"Invoking a privilege is one thing, but telling a person not to show up in response to a subpoena -- if only to actually invoke the privilege -- is quite another. It's not just worse, it's a felony under federal criminal law. See for yourself.

18 U.S.C. Sec. 1505 : ... Whoever corruptly ... influences, obstructs, or impedes ... the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress ... [s]hall be fined under this title, [or] imprisoned not more than 5 years ... or both.

18 U.S.C. Sec. 1515(b): As used in section 1505, the term "corruptly" means acting with an improper purpose, personally or by influencing another, including ... withholding, [or] concealing ... information."

Appointed President Bush was so scared that Sara Taylor would crack if arrested in the hearing chamber by the sergeant at arms for her contempt of congress behavior, that he forbade Helen Miers to even show up!

And that puts the left side wheels of the Constitutional Bus right off the edge of the cliff!

Lurch!

This is not the cool, calculated action of a scheming mind like that of Covert President Cheney or Zampolit Karlosivitch Roveski; this is the panic of a man who thinks he has his enemies at bay and can escape them suddenly finding he's forgotten the tiger behind the door. Terrified by its sudden roar, he has literally thrown his entire administration off the edge of a precipice in panicked overreaction.

The reason is that while you might under some circumstances direct a private citizen to not testify before congress (i.e. to assert executive privilege by proxy), you really can't order them not to show up. That crosses the line clearly set out in the Constitution about Congress' powers versus the Executive.

Now what will happen is fairly clear; Conyers will hold a "mock" hearing with an empty chair and all the Democrats will make lovely speeches for C-Span. (UPDATE 7-12-07: this is exactly what happened. And sure enough, the legal groundwork for the contempt citation was begun.) Then, he will probably issue a contempt citation for Ms. Miers. The whole thing will end up getting dumped in the lap of the courts and run out the clock before anything is decided. So on the surface there is no problem.

But what happens the next time?

Will Appointed President Bush allow Patrick Fitzgerald to testify? Or will he order him not to? And if Fitzgerald indicates he will testify anyway, will Appointed President Bush attempt to physically restrain him? Arrest him for "contempt of the President"? Spirit him away to a secure undisclosed location?

And what happens if something really bad goes down, like suddenly Gonzales is in so much hot water that Congress attempts to impeach him? Will Appointed President Bush decide to ignore the Impeachment and keep Gonzales in office while appealing it to the Supreme Court?

Breaking the Constitutional Separation of Powers is like eating one peanut. It's just too easy to eat the next one. And the next one.

And there is a flaw in this plan. Appointed President Bush has counted on his fellow travelers in the Judiciary Branch to follow his lead and protect him. But, as indicated in the Scooter Libby matter, they are showing startling tendencies not to do so. It is entirely possible that a writ of certio rari will be issued on the contempt citation and immediately litigated before SCOTUS. And if Kennedy decides he's had enough, then suddenly we have another ball game entirely.

Consider this: suppose SCOTUS a month from now announces that Harriet Miers is in contempt and must be put in custody. Gonzales refuses. Bush refuses to fire him. He decides that since we are in a time of war, SCOTUS isn't in fact allowed to make the final decision after all. Only the Deciderer is allowed to make decisions in time of war.

At this point, the Executive Branch is at open break with both Judicial and Legislative Branches. Then what? Executive Branch controls the entire machinery of Federal Law Enforcement. How will the two denied Branches enforce their will?

How about cutting off all funding for the White House until compliance? Appointed President Bush will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to keep on issuing checks, based on his authority as a wartime President (there are some weird First Civil War laws about that still on the books to provide a teeny tiny fig leaf of legality to the idea). He also orders the Treasury to cut off payments to Congress until it stops usurping his authority.

Ladies and Gentlemen, these absurd ideas were the stuff of tinfoil hat wingnuts 24 hours ago.

Not any more.

Toto, we're not only not in Kansas anymore, we're not even in America. We are now in Bushland. Good luck with that.

UPDATE 7-12-07: Wheels Back On The Road, Barely...

It seems that someone (probably Fred Fielding) at the White House realized that the decision to flat out forbid even appearing might be necessary; so they had one of the worker drones over at DOJ cook up a nice Legal Opinion on the matter. (TPM has more details.) Bottom Line: Congress has, in fact, no oversight authority over the White House at all. Period. So There. Neener Neener Nanny Nanny Boo Boo. Boy, am I relieved! For a moment I thought our nation was being led by a man who would risk committing a felony to protect his sorry ass, but now I feel all better.

Not.

Wacht Am Potomac

2007-06-28T00:39:00.000-07:00

The title of this post comes from a very popular novel about World War II called Wacht Am Rhine, which translated into English is "Watch On The Rhine". The book was a meticulously researched study of how the Nazi army tried to prevent the Allied forces from crossing the Rhine, and failed.

Today's post is a distillation of news from various sources reacting to the journalistic "horse's head on the pillow" which The Washington Post delivered to Vice President Richard Cheney Sunday through Wednesday of this week.

Before we go any further, it is important to remind you, the readers, that I lost my Omniscience with the rest of my luggage at the wormhole transfer nexus in the Sculptor Galaxy Cluster. Most of the Universal Wormhole Transportation Network (UWTN) is run by the hyper-efficient Vogons. But some less-fashionable areas have been outsourced the those lovely little creatures who worship Noses and spend a lot of time speculating about the Coming Of The Great White Hanky. Sculptor is one of those unlucky areas. Fortunately, Zaphod Beeblebrox is due for re-election as Galactic President soon, and he'll make the Wormholes Run On Thyme.

Bottom line: I may be totally wrong on all of this. It's a hazard in my area of expertise.

So, with this sobering warning in mind, let's scan over today's interesting Cheney tidbits.

First on the list is Seymour Hersch's post at The New Yorker. It is a marvelous read, but in the end is like cotton candy, that when you actually consume it, there's nothing left. All we are really told is the same message Mr. Hersch has been repeated for nearly a year, which is "the military is planning to attack Iran" and "this is Cheney's and Bush's wet dream" (disgusting metaphor.) And that is definitely a possibility, particularly if as noted in my previous post on this blog, Bibi the Barbarian manages to provoke Iran into shooting first. But the thundering war drums which lead to the assault on Iraq are curiously muted at present. This does not, to me at least, indicate that a full-scale aerial attack on Iran is imminent. (It is worth noting that Mr. Hersch's information is coming from the planning department. Why? Because we not only plan for attacks on Iran, but for attacks against China, Russian, France and even Canada. World War II taught the world military community that nothing is impossible, just varying degrees of unlikely.) We will again just have to wait and see. (And let me close by pointing out my unbounded respect for Mr. Hersch; he is one of our top journalists and when his sources are able to get reliable data, he is spot on. I think his problem this time is that his sources can't figure out what is going on.)

Next we turn our attention to Rahm Emanuel's rather far-fetched but still noteworthy attempt to remove funding for the Fourth Branch from the upcoming Federal Budget. Here is a link to the final roll call. It's an interesting read as to who voted to keep funding the Co-President.

Breaking News from the Executive Privilege Department: the old rascal Fred Fielding has done another deal with the Democrat Devil (aka Henry Waxman) and reluctantly allowed three lower level Bush-Administration officials to testify before Congress, with transcripts, behind closed doors. This is about the failure of both the OP and OVP to maintain even the most minimal, thong-like protection over classified materials. TPMuckraker has the details. Why is this important to Wacht Am Potomac? Because this precise problem is actually at the root of the "I'm A Fourth Branch of Government" weirdness coming out of Cheney's office. And by allowing a transcript, Fielding is setting up the Cheney-Administration officials (whoever they may be) to be hauled in to what is, in effect, a perjury trap. Ah, how sad for them. (cue the Mahler, softly please...) And the reason that this is a big deal is that if someone at the top in say, the FBI, loses it over this garbage, well, this particular infraction is as good as it gets, because it is totally circumstantial evidence, no memory defense, and good for a nice long tour in the Real Federal Prison, not the country club that Scoots (or should we say Inmate 28301-016) will probably attend.

Steve Clemons has written a piece for TPMCafe that essentially comes down on the MSM take for the Angler series, namely that Vice President Cheney is a loon who should be impeached forthwith. Steve has his own fine blog, and I'm pleased to see his reduction of the Angler series matches mine.

Bruce Fein, a Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan Administration, has also taken his marching orders from the Angler piece and eructed a stern call for impeachment of the Vice President. Pity it is so scripted I could have written it myself with a state machine derived from the input parameters of the Angler articles. I suppose it is one more brick in the wall.

Taylor Marsh steps up with a fine distillation of the Rampages Of Deadeye Dick. Bottom line, in his haste to feed the Republican Big Farma Lobby (deliberate pun, not a misspelling), Vice President Cheney has accidentally destroyed the Republican base in the western united states. Oopsie. Of course, it hardly matters when you control the election vote counting servers. Whew!

Scott Horton over at No Comment has a marvelous FUD-cutting piece about the sudden announcement of gas rationing in Iran. Is it war hysteria? Is a U.S. air attack on the massive refinery installations in Iran imminent? From the hyperbole of some like the BBC, you'd think so. But there is one little problem. Iran has very little refining capacity! The reasons are a bit murky, but seem to indicate that it has never been a priority of the Mullahs. So why the rationing? To stir up anti-American feeling, that's what? Turns out the Iranian people, particularly the educated middle and upper classes, are very pro American in outlook. By stirring up the anger of the lower classes with gas rationing, their pushback against any attempts by the hard-liners will be blunted. Also, the sudden drop off in rhetoric indicates that one of the four high=profile hostages Iran has may soon be released, probably in exchange for one of the similar number of hostages the U.S. holds in Iraq. You can't tell the players without a scorecard. Who's on first?

As further proof that despite its on-air pretense of total idiocy, Faux News in fact can and does work effectively behind the scenes, their smoke signal back to the authorizers of the Angler assassination piece has been lifted unto the soaring heavens, by none other than John Gibson, host of The Big Story news show. Since this is Faux News, plausible deniability is all important, and so for their reponse blip Faux selected The Raw Story, a "Bush and Cheney hating" leftie blog. Seems these radical purveyors of left-wing nuttery actual talked about abolishing the Vice Presidency. Quelle Horrors! Do they smack it down with Ghod's vengeance? Well, no, not as such. Instead, they signal their receipt of the "lock, load and stand ready" message with the assertion that "the idea will still "take on real currency and [prompt] serious discussions."". Standing by, sir!

In the snowball continues to roll down hill department, Sideshow has a lovely blog post by Wampum. providing some important details about the Shadow Government that the Angler series left out. In it are the opening details of the war on the Native Americans of the region, and how that the Cheney Administration still has top people in positions of high importance in that area. Indications are given of many more juicy details to follow. so we'll wait with bated breath.

So endeth the lesson for today. We are in a holding pattern over Reagan Field until either Festung Cheney bombs it, or Festung Bush clears the runways and allows the jittery national political psyche to return to normal.

Wait! What was that noise! Oh, never mind, it's just the shredders toiling away at the Naval Observatory.....

Polonium On The Potomac Cui Bono Edition

2007-06-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

After having read and carefully deconstructed the four-part Angler series about Vice President Richard Cheney in the Washington Post over the last four days, I am left in a state very similar to being "shocked" and "awed". In all my years as a political junkie and a professional information warrior, I have rarely if ever seen such a sophisticated hatchet job done on anyone, especially a sitting Vice President. What makes it even more "shocking" is that it almost casually delves into the areas that the Vice President has been especially secretive about, exposing underhanded, even criminal conduct with breathtakingly innocent on-the-record quotes from administration officials at both the highest and lowest echelons. If you had told me a week ago that a piece like this was going to be published at all, much less by the Washington Post, I'd have suggested that you had forgotten to wear your tinfoil hat last night and the Trilateral's mind-rays had finally gotten to you.

But it has been published, and after careful deconstruction three major points emerge. First, whoever ordered this hit job had top level authority to do so. And by top level I don't just mean the sitting President, but also his father and even his mother (anyone who thinks Barbara Bush is left out of major policy decisions of Bush and Company, Limited Liability Partnership, is not paying attention). That can be easily seen by the fact that Karl Rove is speaking on the record, along with a number of Bush 41 administration officials. With all due respect for their insider knowledge and years of professional experience, I must disagree with a number of my blogger colleagues; this is not a maneuver in some internal power struggle of the current administration. This is a non-fatal gut-shot, a deadly wound deliberately inflicted so as not to cause death, only maximum suffering.

And let us put to rest the idea that the Vice President "just doesn't care", is "unfeeling" and "above it all". This is a man who, in front of the assembled Senators of the United States, when offered an attempt at reconciliation with a onetime friend, told said onetime friend, in front of all his colleagues, to "go fuck himself". The coarse language was no accident, it was deliberate. The Vice President coolly humiliated his opponent in the most brutal way possible in an institution that is often driven by subtleties and gestures of respect. He feels every cut, every wound, every slight, every denial. And Richard Cheney waits until he can return fire with as bad, or worse, as options permit. Let no one deceive themselves that the Vice President isn't suffering from his wounds, far from it. But this time he was shot from behind, by associates he previously trusted, with clear approval of his nominal superiors. And that, my gentle readers, is a very, very bad thing indeed.

The Vice President cannot turn on his assailants as he normally would. Indeed, his very power base, the "shadow government", is suddenly in disarray. In many ways this hatchet job was directed towards that phantom administration, not to directly injure but rather to warn. The take home message to that pseudo-government is "get out of line, try to continue with the Vice President's agenda, and you'll be taken down next." It is important to note that if the office of the person being exposed in these articles was anything lower than the Vice Presidency, there would be calls for bills of impeachment within days. Only the uniqueness of the Vice Presidency in the constitutional framework allowed this murderous set-piece to be published; impeaching the Vice President is one step from Mutually Assured Mutual Political Destruction. (It also has curious technical hurdles, as noted by the fact that the Vice President would be constitutionally bound to chair his own impeachment trial. The founders missed that one.) So Mr. Cheney can survive this perforation of his small and large bowel, but lesser flunkies don't have that regenerative power; they took flashier ones, like "able to do enough favors for industry to live in upper class luxury for the rest of their lives." The problem is, if you get tarred and feathered in Washington before you start collecting your ill-gotten spoils, industry has a habit of developing a faulty memory. "We owe you what? Who is this person? Security!". Ooopsie. Your bad.

And so we come to the title of this little bit of ectoplasmic wisdom, cui bono. This is Latin for "to whom the good", meaning in context, who benefits from hosing Mr. Cheney from behind, almost killing him but not quite?

And the startling answer is, no one!

As the text message says, "WTF?"

First of all, let me make clear that I believe that the authors of this article could have been given information that would have led to Mr. Cheney's removal from office. That they were not is a clear signal that the sponsors of this set of articles do not, at this time, want the Vice President to resign, or be Impeached, tried and convicted. If this is the case, then why did they bother to put out this information at all?

The only answer I can find that makes sense is simple, and terrifying.

There was one area of the administration which remained almost if not completely out of the line of both fire and illumination in these articles, namely the defense sector, both civilian and uniformed branches and their information war allies the NSA and CIA. Why the limitation? Mr. Cheney was hugely involved in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and then in the attempt to spin the resulting disaster out for as long as possible. The same techniques applied in this piece could have been used for that theater of operations of the pseudo-government, so why wasn't there a fifth installment?

Maybe there in fact is a fifth installment, even a sixth and seventh (with the fifth being the corruption of the defense intelligence apparatus to feed the run up to the Iraq war, the sixth being the way in which CIA was manhandled by the shadow government, and the seventh being the gory details of the various illegal and immoral deals that Mr. Cheney set up with Halliburton and other corporations during his tenure.) And by their being withheld for now, the Vice President and his shadow aparatchiks can survive. But if they do exist, and frankly I cannot conceive of the first four pieces being all there is to the story, they are a sword of Damocles hovering over the head of every operative in the Cheney Administration.

But again, why bother? Who is benefiting from keeping the Cheney Administration hunkered down and defensive, unable to prosecute effective actions?

The shocking answer: the Bush Administration.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen of the Blogosphere, we are blessed to be living in "interesting times" , in the full meaning of the ancient Chinese curse. For the first time in the history of the American Republic, it has double the chaos, double the disfunctionality, double bad double bad Double Aministrations. (Cue the old Doublemint Twins ad jingle.) And this is no accident. President Bush undoubtedly agreed to the existence of the Cheney Administration, not because he was incompetent or not paying attention (that idea is Kognitive Kool-Aid for the "libruls", used to flavor the whole thing so they'll pay attention to that aspect rather than the colder, and much much more dangerous alternative perspective) because it gave him plausible deniability, the holy grail of modern Potomac Politics. All the supposed "victories" the series touts as being distasteful or even undesirable to the Bush Administration are in fact exactly the desired outcome of the B.A., but by allowing the C.A. to do it, they're covered politically.

And everything has gone just swimmingly up until now. In fact, it wasn't until the election of 2006 that the hideous danger inherent in this doppelganger approach to governance began to manifest itself. Because the whole hidden administration trick only works if it is invincible. If you study the history of government as government, rather that as part of a greater national context, you quickly observe that a government which is undefeatable can literally rewrite the very rules of reality for itself and its people (and a few Bush Administration and even a few Cheney Administration staffers actually said as much about 2003 as I recall..) But this little gimmick only works if you are utterly invincible. The election of 2006 proved to the echelons of the government whose obedience the doppelgangers needed not only that the two-headed hydra was mortal, but that there would be accountability for the survivors, a rather harsh one in all likelihood. And so suddenly the overall bureaucracy started saying "no" to both administrations. And when they got away with it, the overall bureaucracy started saying "hell, no!" and started sending letters to congress about what was really going on. Like the knitted sweater caught on the nail as the train pulls out, the very fabric of the doppelganger administrations started to unravel.

But even this wasn't the clincher. The Bush Company, LLP, has some of the finest minds on the planet working for it. They quickly arranged for appropriate damage control via the mainstream media and various legal stratagems. A ruthless triage was set up, as to which priorities were still achievable and which would have to be cut loose to fend for themselves or even be cut down to provide hollow victories for the pursuing mob. (Hint: TBC, LLP, has been doing this a long time. This isn't their first trip around the block. That's why they've been able to respond as quickly and effectively as this.) The Bush Administration informed the Cheney Administration of the new battle plan, and things were supposed to return to normal as both administrations rode out the remaining two years of their term in office.

Unfortunately, even the most beautiful mind can make mistakes or be undone by the cruel fact that other minds are not, in fact objects, but subjects who have the awful habit of thinking and acting on their own. Despite billions of dollars in research by the finest mind control experts known, no way has been found to suppress this annoying tendency. And Federal Judge Reginald Walton, combined with United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, were two such minds. They managed, in spite of the combined efforts of the main stream media and the dreaded cocktail party circuit (the second most lethal weapon in Washington, D.C.) to convict Mr. Libby, a Cheney Administration Cabinet Secretary, of four felonies, and then had the audacity to send him directly to jail. Oh, the humanity!

This, to the Cheney Administration, was not in the cards. Their contracts made it clear that this would not be allowed to happen. So they turned, happily expectant, to the Bush Administration, for a grant of relief from the exigencies of the commons. After all, the peasants are revolting; that's why we don't invite them to our cocktail parties!

What they got was the cruel sound of silence, punctuated by the crickets hopping around the exercise grounds of the minimum security Federal Prisons.

And then the Cheney Administration suddenly learned what so many others have learned. They were "the help". The Help TM SM do not get to demand things of The Masters TM SM. They are expected to do their jobs, and if they get injured or killed, well, that's the way it is. It was a privilege to serve, that sort of thing. Suck it up. Be a man.

And at that point, the Cheney Administration, realizing they had indeed been betrayed, took counsel and started the Second American Civil War. (Cue the Talking Heads "Life In Wartime".)

I used to tell my co-workers and subordinates, if a picture doesn't make sense, try flipping the telescope. Quite often data that is utterly meaningless from one perspective is transparently obvious from its opposite. If you re-examine everything that has started to happen from the conviction and denial of bail to Mr. Libby and the subsequent refusal to immediately pardon him by Mr. Bush from the standpoint of an internal insurrection by the Cheney Administration, it suddenly makes a great deal of sense.

The war may have begun with the loss of Festung Libby, but it was in process even before then. Why? Because the clients of the Bush Administration are Big Oil and no one else. They'll happily permit remoras and other hangers-on, but such are clearly warned they are not under protection and may be killed or cast off at any time. The Cheney Administration, however, is more protean. Their clients are Big Business, period. And Big Business wants something it has not yet gotten: a permanent war in the Middle East, between the United States and whoever fits the bill. Right now it is Iran, but tomorrow it may be Turkey or Pakistan or even India. But if something is not done, when the Bush Administration leaves office, the incoming Democratic administration will decimate the defense budget and all those lower level businesses that depend on it.

Now this had presented Co-President Cheney with a problem. He cannot directly go against the Appointed President (Oh, if I haven't mentioned it, evidence is mounting rapidly that, like the 2000 election, the 2004 election was also stolen, in the dark of night by server computers run by an IT firm under contract with the RNC. Film at eleven.) without risking open war. So he has tried to noodle around the issue, giving bellicose speeches on the decks of aircraft carriers off the coast of Iran, using apparent double agents in the Iranian military to try and kidnap sailors as a casus belli, and even arranging for four aircraft carrier groups to be offshore of Iran at the same time, something unheard of prior to now. But nothing has happened, yet.

But remember the Second Civil War! It is still smoldering, and indeed may break into open warfare at any time, as the two factions fight it out using Congress as their surrogate battlefield. And in that context, let us examine the recent actions of the Appointed President.

First, he has agreed to negotiate with Syria, and has apparently told the hawks in Israel to sit down and shut up. Second, he has suddenly given in and started negotiations with North Korea, allowing for the real possibility that the tensions on the Korean peninsula may finally get ratcheted down. Remember, most Koreans are heartily sick of the partition, especially the ones trapped on the north side. China, despite its one-time role in abetting the conflict, now wants the whole thing to go away forever. And South Korea is so stuffed with both money and pride, they would be eager to forgive, forget, and grab those North Korean relatives and after suitable family reunions, lead them to the nearest assembly center. They need bodies worse than Blackwater does! And finally, he has agreed to start negotiations with Iran intended to gain their aid in stabilizing a post-amercian Iraq as well as finding an acceptable bribe to get them to give up their nuclear program. While credit is being given publicly to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in fact it is the Appointed President and his council of advisers who have to sign off on this and have clearly done so.

This leaves the Co-President up the proverbial creek. His clients will suffer significant losses if he is unable to deliver a permanent Mideast war, and he knows full well how they treat politicians who don't deliver. He has ambitions even yet, it would seem. His wife seems interested in a Senate run, and perhaps even a Vice Presidential slot some day. His daughters are steadily moving up the ranks of the Defense establishment, and their husbands are busily earning their way into the upper echelons of the bureaucracy. They are, at the moment, effectively hostages to Big Business; if Cheney fails to deliver, their careers are toast or at best stunted.

I apologize if this seems like too much stage setting. It is necessary to have all the pieces of the puzzle in place before the deadly clarity of these four articles can be perceived.

Putting all the above facts together, the message from these four ruthless hatchet pieces to the Co-President and his Shadow Administration is very, very clear.

Start a war with Iran without our permission, and we will put you either in jail or in economic and political purgatory. All of you. No exceptions. No mercy. This is proof we can do it. Don't fuck with us again. You have been warned.

(And before anyone accuses me of "Tin Foil Hat" tendencies here, remember the incontrovertible evidence that Co-President Cheney has a direct pipeline to the Israeli government and military through his Best Friend Forever Bibi Netanyahu. One disposable cell phone call to Bibi's drop number and a full blown war with both Syria and Iran will be underway within a week, possibly much faster. Those Israeli jets are fast and very effective. And American military officers won't shoot down Israeli aircraft even if they aren't flying authorized missions through Iraqi air space. And Iraq doesn't have an air force. And if Iran is attacked by Israel, do we really think they would say to the U.S., "Oh, we know you didn't do it, so we'll just take out our frustrations somewhere else." No, they would promptly retaliate. And nothing says "screw you" like sinking an aircraft carrier or two. Definitely gets people's attention. The rest, as they say, would come naturally. So don't doubt for one minute that Co-President Cheney doesn't have his finger on the nuclear trigger. It's just not our nuclear weapons; it's Israel's.)

So with that in mind, these four articles are Appointed President Bush's bloody horse head deposited on Co-President Cheney's pillow.

The question is, will Co-President Cheney knuckle under, or go out fighting? Time, unfortunately, will tell.

Polonium On The Potomac Part Three

2007-06-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

This is the third in the series of Angler articles. It's title is "A Strong Push From Back Stage". The title itself can be deconstructed as follows:

Strong Push -- The person doing it is in control but also domineering. Positive equivalent phrase is "Loyal Support".
Back Stage -- The person doing this is being underhanded, not willing to be seen. Positive equivalent phrase is "From Behind The Curtain".

Putting these two together the THM (Take Home Message) of the title is : "Unwilling To Expose Himself Publicly, Cheney Domineeringly Controlled The Administration". The Fox News THM (FNTHM) is: "Scheming even then to destroy President Bush, Cheney lurked just out of sight anytime the President tried to do anything in order to destroy it."

Now let's look at the structure of the article. It has four named subheadings plus a rather longish stage-setting untitled introductory section. We'll look at each section by itself, and then summarize into the TMH and FNTHM from each section strung together for your subconscious's viewing pleasure.

Untitled Introductory Section

There are eleven paragraphs here, so we'll cover them one at a time. It is worth noting, however, that several of these paragraphs are one sentence paragraphs, and at least one has only a few words. This is a the equivalent of a journalistic rant; the journalist is effectively raving at his audience, using tactics more usually seen in pamphleteering. This is another way in which this set of articles is unusual to me.

Paragraph 1 -- Key phrase here is "he had come to sell them on" the new economics package the administration was proposing. Note that this is taking place at a retreat for Representatives and Senators, so it's also off the record and perhaps a little underhanded. If this was a canonization piece, the phrase used would have been "he had come to help them understand the essential wisdom" of the economics package. "selling people on something" is usually an indication of deceit and perhaps a bad product as well.

Paragraph 2 - Key phrase here is "Cheney ..[made sure the economics package] .. had everything he wanted." The domineering theme is expanded to now suggest Cheney essentially designed the whole economics package of the Administration. And then we see "one thing is missing." This teases us to the third paragraph.

Paragraph 3 - Oh, this is getting good already. It turns out the dangerous deficits we've all been hearing about are Cheney's fault! Who knew? "[The President allowed Cheney to sway him], overruling senior economic advisers who forecast dangerous budget deficits." And then the courageous President stands up to the domineering Cheney (theme reuse please note) by "rejecting deep reductions in the capital gains tax on investments." Wait a minute, the President didn't like reductions in capital gains taxes? What's going on here?

Paragraph 4 - Blather about how Bush stood up to the evil old man. What is noteworthy is that Cesar Conda is speaking on the record for this. He was Cheney's major adviser on taxes and such. (And to show you just how odd this article series is, they have even included links in the text of the online article to "dramatis personae", the "cast of characters" . What is this, Shakespeare?

Paragraph 4 - "Not for long." That's the entire paragraph. What do these folks think they are doing, writing a blog? This is The Washington Post for heaven's sake! (first indication of a rant approach).

Paragraph 5 - This is the money paragraph for this section. To wit: ".[To] Republican lawmakers ... the vice president revived the argument, [claiming it would offer redemption from the scandal of].. Enron. House allies [did Cheney's bidding].. at the expense of ... abolishing the tax on stock dividends." Two hard body blows for Cheney here. First, he is again tarred with our thrifty Guilt By Association(TM) brush using the deadly code word Enron. This may be where they inserted the Polonium, Enron is certainly that toxic. But the real killer is the loss of the tax on stock dividends. To the true masters of Bush and Cheney, this is high treason. This is not snark, I really mean it. This is the equivalent to McCain accusing Rudy Guilianni of being a cross-dresser. Oh, wait.....

Paragraph 6 - No real money quotes here. However, despite looking on the surface like a praising of Cheney's accomplishments, the adjectives used convert its THM into "Cheney is the most powerful VP in history and has poked his fingers into everything, but only to further his own executive pseudo-presidential power."

Paragraph 7 - This paragraph sets the stage in that it indicates "scores of interviews" with "advisers" and "senior government officials" are the basis for the following statements. It is vitally important to note that the phrases "off the record" and "on background" are not found here. These people were allowed to speak for the record. This is yet another indication that George W. Bush himself is in the end the effective author of this piece. He apparently gave the two journalists unfettered, on the record access to virtually the entire government. Whooo! The paragraph's last two sentences effectively depict Cheney as going behind Bush's back to get his own way. "The president is "the decider," ... but the vice president often serves up [Bush's] menu of choices."

Paragraph 8 and 9: I'm going to lump these two paragraphs into a bullet points list (Why yes, I did used to work at the Pentagon. Why do you ask?) Warning: the last bullet point is a bombshell of considerable heft. Do not read it with liquid in your mouth, of any kind.)

Winnowed Bush's list of Supreme Court Nominees. ("Winnowed" is code for "chose his favorite")
Resolved A Crisis In The Space Program (What crisis? The careerists and top managers at NASA had to stop flying Shuttle with inadequate safety measures. Cheney did not personally go down there and rivet extra shielding on the Shuttle's wings. I checked the range safety videos, he is not in them.)
Fashioned A Controversial Truce Between Congress And FBI And Averted Mass FBI Resignations. (Like that is a good thing? And please note this is setting Cheney up as blame sponge later on.)
Was Guardian Of Orthodoxy on Budget And Tax Matters. Was even willing to backstab old friends (Greenspan) and people he had put into their jobs with the current administration to do so. (Note; Guardian Of Orthodoxy, or GOO, is a GS-666 rank position. The serving GOO gets to wear a really nice hat which obscenity regulations prevent me from displaying here.)
Browbeat "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush Into Allowing Unjust Tax Cuts For The Wealthy. (See GOO above, and no throwing up on your keyboard. We aren't done yet, you can hurl later.)
"He even orchestrated a decision to let a GOP senator switch parties -- giving control of the chamber to Democrats -- rather than meet the senator's demand for billions of dollars in new spending." Jim Jeffords was Dick Cheney's Sock Puppet. Who Knew? (PS you can hurl now.)

Paragraph 10 - We get a major drive-by knifing of Cheney in the very first sentence here. "... the vice president is well known for leading a secretive task force on energy policy." Only inside the Beltway, guys. Bush and Company have spent millions via their talking heads to get us to forget that little tidbit. Thanks for reminding us. Then we start the next stage of the beating: "... Cheney more often kept his role concealed, even from top Bush advisers." Shorter version: "Cheney was rogue actor running around behind everyone's back, out of control."

Paragraph 11 - This sets the tone for the rest of this piece: ""... a black box, and I think designedly so," [said] David Frum. "[Describes hidden magnet experiment from Mr. Wizard] You know there's a magnet there because of what you see happening, but you never see the magnet."" THM : Dick Cheney was a designing manipulator who stayed out of sight. FNTHM: Dick Cheney ran a secret government inside the Bush Administrator for seven years!

Second Topic "A 'More Effective Role'"

This topic has 15 paragraphs, running from 13 to 26. They are expansions of the backstory set up by the first unnamed topic. We'll examine them here and then see how they tie in to the previous scene setting.

P13 - We start the meatier part of the article with a direct attack on Dick Cheney. To wit:"[Bush] chose a man who had put a great deal of thought into how a vice president can transform himself from a funeral-trotting figurehead into a center of real power." In short, a man obsessed by running a secret presidency from "behind the stage" (feeding back to the second title meme).

P14 - We now are given the backstory to Cheney's love of power, namely "As ... Ford's chief of staff ... Cheney saw ... how a vice president such as Nelson Rockefeller could become so marginalized as to be dumped from the ticket." It gets better! "... Cheney knew that he needed to control the process by which the president makes choices [in order to] ride "the rushing river of power" that winds through the West Wing to the Oval Office." Rushing River Of Power, oh my. Control The Process. This is truly the best job of damning with facts I have seen in a long time. The THM here is "Cheney watched another VP get tossed under the bus and decided to prevent it happening to him by emasculating the President (emasculating is a sexually charged word, and so is RROP for Finagle's sake.)

P15 - Cheney is allowed a defensive paragraph, but it is slyly written to actually continue the assassination. Note that the speaker is a "Cheney Friend", no other role given, and thus immediately suspect. Also he is quoted as if he is parroting Cheney's views rather than intellectualizing them. THM: Cheney's friends are brainwashed drones. Don't believe them.

P16 - Bush is sainted "willingness to delegate", Cheney is characterized as "detail-oriented". The real damage is done very softly, to wit: "In Bush, Cheney found the perfect partner. ... left plenty of room...." This depicts Cheney as looking for a stooge who could be duped and worked around. This is the nastiest characterization of Cheney yet in the entire set of articles. It virtually calls him a traitor to the Bush Presidency. Yeek.

P17 - Another seemingly Cheney-friendly quote, but it actually only canonizes Bush, who is "Reaganesque" while Cheney "gets down...below decks". Remember the audience for this. The quoted speaker (again on the record please note) has effectively called Cheney "the help". Not flattering at all.

P18 - Having put us in a mindset where Cheney is suspect and indeed almost a rogue actor, we then smash open the unhealed national wound of the loss of the Columbia Shuttle spacecraft. "Bush was consumed with concern for the families of the seven dead astronauts. That left Cheney to make the first critical decisions about the future of manned spaceflight." This is literally a textbook example of how to smear someone with a smile. Bush wears the halo (concern for the families...(cue weepy organ music) while Cheney whips out the pitchfork (critical decisions about manned spaceflight. Dammit man, have you no humanity? Soulless monster.

P19 - "Even as the [administration was trying to deal with the evil incarnate of Saddam Hussein], Cheney [stayed on the space program], said ... Sean O'Keefe, a Cheney protege." The Good Guys (Bush, Condi, etc.) are focussing on Iraq, while The Bad Guy (Cheney) is still fiddling with the space progam. Note that the speaker is labelled a "protege". This is usually an at least mildly negative description. Positive equivalent is "former NASA administrator who taught Cheney about the space program".

P20 - Setup para on the problems of post-Columbia NASA. Fairly neutral.

P21 - Here's the next bitch-slap. "The vice president's solution...was to get around the law [using a shady tactic which no one understands] " Being accused of "going around the law", IIRC is not considered a gesture of political friendship. This whole para if written for canonization would have said something like "...was to use a well-known legal maneuver often chosen to prevent partisan politcs from endangering national security." Same basic information, but my oh my doesn't it sound different.

P22 - Closure on the space program fix with subtle slanders like "persuading the state department" and "never came to public attention." Cheney actually did a good thing, but this account gives him no points for doing it. Rather he is portrayed as exercising his power way beyond normal limits.

P23 - Now the knife is out. "Cheney [once again forced] unprecedented and controversial deal that inserted the White House into an ongoing criminal probe." Okay, unprecedented and controversial are at least questioning the whole next set of actions, but through in "inserted ....into an ongoing criminal probe" and you've got a whiff of impeachable offense. Americans don't like politicians "inserting..into an ongoing criminal probe". Elliot Ness, please pick up the white courtesy phone!

P24 - We learn that this criminal probe is none other than the one involving House Representative William Jefferson. It is indicated that Congress is trying to protect Jefferson to protect their own similar scandals.

P25 - Wham! Right in the teeth! "Cheney quickly gravitated toward the [corrupt congress]'s position" while stalwarts Alberto Gonzales, Paul McNulty, and Robert Mueller threaten to resign if he forces them to do his bidding. Geeze guys, couldn't you have done this a little sooner, like in late 2002? But the THM is "Cheney, to protect his own questionable power grab, sided with the lawbreakers in congress." Like this is news.

P26 - Zap! We end this section with the clear implication that Cheney's intransigence is going to let William Jefferson, the corrupt congresscritter, go free. "..delay [caused by Cheney's interference] was decisive. Jefferson was indicted .... But nearly half of the files remain off-limits, tied up in legal disputes."

The THM from this topic is short and sweet. "Cheney, determined to run his shadow presidency, ran roughshod over Congress in a dubious deal to use malfunction-plagued, substandard Russian space hardware in a ploy that allowed Russian agents access to our most secret space program components. He even went so far as to interfere in the FBI investigation of the indicted Representative William Jefferson in such a way that half the evidence was lost, very probably leading to Jefferson's acquittal."

The FNTHM is a bit simpler: "Cheney broke the law to hand American space program secrets to Russia and to protect corrupt liberal Democrat congressmen. It that isn't treason, I don't know what is!"

Third Topic: "Taking Options 'Off the Table'"

This section runs from paragraph 27 through paragraph 45 and is many ways the meat of this piece, although the really nasty stuff is all in the last segment. This set is mainly illustrations, usually slightly slanted negatively, of the way Cheney has operated within the day to day decision making at the GWB whitehouse.

P27 - Short setup para with money quote "his extraordinary involvement in the daily machinery of the White House.". This is code for "he was sticking his nose into everybody else's business, micromanaging them."

P28 - After some whitewashing of Bush, the knife goes right in: "Cheney's leadership of the panel gives him direct and indirect power over the federal budget -- and over those who must live within it." Shorter Version: Cheney was the Chancellor of the Exchequer -- the ultimate paymaster, with his own agenda. This hasn't been highlighted up to now, so I count this a serious outing of Cheney's shadow government. It certainly explains why so many otherwise inimical agencies agreed to do his bidding.

P29 - Bush's Budget Guy (now governor of Indiana) provide the "stunning" fact that no one ever appealed Cheney's decisions on the budget to Bush directly. Apparently this was a major departure from business as usual. Again, note on the record.

P30 - Blather to save face, and a sly hint that Cheney effectively controlled Bush like a sock puppet.

P31 - Oooh! We now get down and dirty! Money quote: "... to a degree unmatched by his predecessors, [Cheney controls] lower-level meetings where proposals are born and die." Translation: he's micromanaging and stepping on the little people.

P32 - The details hinted at above are fleshed out. "[Cheney is a] vocal participant [at any economic meetings ] which gathers without the president. ... Cheney receives great deference from Bush's advisers." Translation: Cheney goes to meetings with junior staff and shouts them down and throws his weight around. This is the beltway equivalent of stealing your own kid's lunch money, and then grounding him for not taking care of his money! (In Scotland, that is also known as being Mingy, the first derivative of stingy.)

P33 - Gives anecdotal account of Cheney's behavior that comes off as only slightly below despotic. Even Oval Office Policy Director have to come to him, hat in hand, to beg for their money. The code words are "Wise officials vet their proposals in advance". Cheney is turning into Henry VIII as we watch here!

P34 - More on-the-record anecdotal evidence that Cheney is underhanded, "never gives orders". Even more despotic behavior, namely concealing orders behind sly language. Only bad rulers do this. Good rulers give their subordinate fraternity nicknames.

P35 - We now return to the shadow government meme with this little gem "[Cheney has the] power to stop [unwanted policy initatives] before they reach the Oval Office." This states more and more clearly that Cheney had usurped Bush's effective power for himself.

P36 - An on the record anecdote from a former white house staffer who effective says, "Cheney controlled all legislative initiatives." More shadow government meme.

P37 - The staffer admits to always having to knuckle under to Cheney. Key quote: "I can't think of a time when I have thought I was right and the vice president was wrong."" Can you say "browbeaten"? I thought you could. This feeds back to the domineering meme.

P38 - A Cheney "longtime friend" admits Cheney only actually intervened if he cared about something, if it would advance his agenda. Major reinforcement of shadow government meme, with its own "agenda". Note to non-beltway-insiders: In the land of the Potomac "having an agenda" is bad. Very very bad. Good people have "causes", bad people have "agendas". Remember the "homosexual agenda"? Like that.

P39 - Ouch! A trifecta of slams! First, we learn that "stem cell policy" wasn't part of Cheney's shadow agenda. Second, we learn further that he didn't give a crap about all the "faith based initiatives". And third, we learn he runs for cover when Bush indicates he can't be jollied along. THM for this paragraph: "Cheney is chillingly indifferent to both matters of faith and to the battle against baby-killers. And he is a coward who won't stand up to the President to his face." The hint is that Cheney instead scurries around to the back and does the dirty deed there.

P40 - We are informed that, in addition, Cheney is a racist, he wanted a total end to affirmative action via Supreme Court reversal of the original affirmative action decision. He only shut up when Bush point blank told him to.

P41 - We learn that Bush encourages Cheney to hide his failures. Then we learn that there in fact have maybe been a lot more of them than we ever know. THM: Bush has been putting up with this clown far longer than anyone knew, but even he's beginning to tire of him.

P42 - Another three-fer! We learn that Cheney "hated No Child Left Behind." He didn't like the President's spending lots of money (ie he was a stingy old man). And he didn't like letting Bush help old ladies buy their medicine because he was a penny-pincher. Cheney is effectively portrayed here as hating children, hating old ladies, and micromanaging the federal budget against Bush's wishes.

P43 - Cheney is suddenly portrayed as being sharply reigned in by Bush. Who knew?

P44 - This para sorta kinda whitewashes Cheney a little. He was a "loyal soldier". Funny thing, I just can't make myself believe that anymore. I wonder why...

P45 - Bingo! In a supposed attempt to give Cheney equal time, the authors of the article drop in a serious bombshell, as follows: "said former senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), in a recollection disputed by Cheney's office. " We now know that the two journos who wrote this hit job have contacted the VP for confirmation or denial. Wow.

THM: Cheney has been micromanaging the administration, particularly its purse strings, almost from the get-go. Only President Bush's stern moral center allowed him to bring Cheney and his shadow government to heel finally. At first Bush tried to keep Cheney's misdeed out of the media as a kindness to his old friend. But now he is being forced to permit some knowledge of Cheney's inappropriate actions (hating children and the elderly) to receive media attention.

FNTHM: Cheney hates children, the elderly, and god knows who else. How do we impeach this yo-ho?

Fourth Topic: "'A Spine Quotient'"

This topic gives the gory details on the Jeffords Defection, and leads us back to the central meme of the entire piece, namely that Dick Cheney has betrayed his masters. We have 14 paragraphs in this section.

P46 - This entire topic is much more positive on the surface to Cheney than the preceding ones. However, it all ends up only setting the knife deeper in the end. It effectively details how Cheney operated and what he considered important. This para simply sets up the situation surrounding the Jeffords defection.

P47 - On the surface, this para simply says that Cheney stood up against more big-government spending. But the use of the term "special education spending" tempers it and in fact rather makes Cheney look somewhat like an Ogre who doesn't care about helping disabled or challenged children if it cuts into his pet projects. No money quote.

P48 - A Cheney-positive para. Phil Gramm is quoted on the record saying Cheney stood for the tax-cuts against Jeffords and other big-spender Congressmen. Gramm is allowed a snide remark towards Congress.

P49 - Ah! We suddenly note that Gramm "worked closely with Cheney" on the negotiations. Maybe Cheney has been getting credit that should have gone to Gramm?

P50 - This details the outcome, including Jeffords defection. While it does mention the successful tax cuts, there is a hint that by blowing off Jeffords, Cheney set the administration up for bigger problems down the road.

P51 - Praise para for Cheney. He holds the line on conservative principles like low spending and big tax cuts. Mary Matalin is allowed an on the record quote about his bringing a "spine coefficient" to meetings.

P52 - Another praiser for Cheney. He is "meticulously prepared" and "a ferocious negotiator."

P53 - Oops, they couldn't sustain it. The subtle slaps begin again. Mention is made of a "kitchen cabinet" a very derogatory term inside the beltway. For outsiders, think of it as having your local bank bring in street people to help them make decisions. Further on we learn about "obscure data" and "subtle ways...of government influence." The meme from this para is that Cheney is a bit of a nut who micromanages to the nth degree but always tries to hide his tracks and works with low level "experts" (nutcase eggheads). Totally unflattering ways used to present basic facts.

P54 - Canonization para for Bush! His advisers aren't "kitchen cabinets", they are "Harvard economics professors" and "National Bureaus of Economics". Bush is lauded as a "big picture guy" who doesn't like "technical presentations." The meme here is that Bush is a caring, competent executive who works with top flight guys and leaves the details to them. (Cue choir music, video of soaring temples of knowledge...)

P55 - This para reinforces the "experts" meme on Cheney. He wants the nitty gritty details, but for perhaps questionable purposes. No such accusation is overtly made, but the lack of any other information leaves it implied at least.

P56 - Wow! The "cheney is weird" meme is seriously reinforced here. "Kitchen cabinet" is heard from again. Also the phrase "furiously jotting notes" is applied, giving the impression of someone in frenzied action, but also perhaps a bit out of their league. The "Vice Presidential Seal" on the notecards is emphasized, for no possible purpose I can see other than to reinforce the idea that Cheney is so impressed with himself that his toothpaste has embossed VP seals in it printed on the surface of the paste. "interrupting the experts" is also mentioned, which reinforces the domineering meme noted earlier. The visual we assemble from this para is almost of a mad scientist in his lab, cackling gleefully as he insanely tossed pieces of paper around designing his next atrocity.

P57 - Sure enough, the lightning struck and Cheney emerges with his monstrosity, namely a plan to let businesses write off big ticket investments immediately instead of the usual way with depreciation. The weird meme is subtly continued with the "on fire" description. We can visualize him running across from the EOB, followed by frantic staffers with seltzer water sprayers trying to extinguish his trousers. The saintly Bush hears him out and accepts the proposal. (Clue: this para sets Cheney up big time and cannonizes Bush. wait and see!)

P58 - Aha! It turns out all this isn't kosher after all. Such initiatives are supposed to be worked out at Treasury, where the geniuses run their computers and understand the arcane science of the economy. We come to find out Cheney has put an end to all that by hijacking the saintly President's desire to have "Treasury work for the White House". But no good will come of it!

P59 - Suddenly all the sweetness and light for Cheney evaporates! The bombs begin dropping from the journalistic predators, to wit: "All this put Cheney in a position to outflank some of Bush's top advisers, and even his old friend Greenspan, to shape the administration's signature tax package: the 2003 cuts that Cheney sold at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia." Wow! Cheney is "outflanking top bush advisers" (ie the guys who know what they are doing) and even put it to "old friend Greenspan". The goal: control over the 2003 tax cuts proposal. (Cue creepy music as the villain starts to perform his evil deed...) Note also the "sold" reference again, to maintain the domineering meme.

This section is one of the most beautiful works of this kind of black art I have seen in my career. It is carefully crafted on the surface to appear to be praising Cheney by stating his "good points". But in fact, it is setting him up to be the true villain in the last topic.

THM: "Cheney is a hard worker for the President, but frankly more than a little strange. Instead of being guided by the experts at various Cabinet Departments, he uses his own "kitchen cabinet" of less-qualified intellectuals to furiously devise plans that, over time, often have failed to work. The main reason may be that in the end, he is still pushing his own personal agenda rather than the President's."

FNTHM: "Cheney turns out to be a wack job deluxe, one of those tin foil hat nuts who cover their offices in post it notes with their corporate logo on them. But because Bush trusted his old friend, the real facts didn't come out until the damage was done. That's the way they say it works with the insane, though."

Fifth Topic: "The President Made the Call"

The last topic is where the tactical nuke is dropped on Cheney, and in a very stealth way. You have to be very careful reading these last 18 paragraphs to keep your eye on the balls in play, namely Bush's Dividend Tax Elimination versus Cheney's Capital Gains Tax Reduction. The status of each proposal will be given at the end of each paragraph's discussion. Because in the end, the tactical nuking of Cheney is that he cost the upper classes their long-coveted Dividend Tax Elimination. Hell hath no fury like...

P60 - We start with a vision of the saintly Bush and Greenspan having tea, assured that all is right with the world; Bush knows about the dangers of his tax cuts because Cheney, Greenspan's old friend, has kept Bush full informed of Greenspan's worries. (DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P61 - Oh! Cue soft background spooky music. We learn about Greenspan's many meetings with Cheney, but also learn that Cheney arranged to always be in the room when Greenspan met with Bush. The meme is that Cheney is playing both ends against the middle. (DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P62 - Cue mournful violins! Greenspan has been "friends" with Cheney for a long time and trusts him. It's so sad......(DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P63 - Bright hopeful wind instruments! Greenspan sends trusted Cheney a very well done paper on why big tax cuts are bad. All will be well (DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P64 - Now the dark tuba theme with chattering snare drums, for it's skulduggery at the crossroads! Cheney pretends to like the study, but actually has his own people trash it inside the white house. He never gets around to mentioning this to Greenspan, the no good! (DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P65 - Time for Hoedown by Aaron Copland (never mind he was gay)! The white hats ride to the rescue, stalwart administration economic experts to chase away the evil manipulations of Cheney. Unfortunately, he has them ambushed at the pass by Halliburton security guards with automatic weapons. (Weeping strings at the line of tombstones of those who died fighting the good fight...)(DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P66 - Cue the Hall of the Mountain King by Grieg! Cheney wants all the gold as well as the fair young maidens. He is shown to be duped by the discredited "supply side economics" concept. Add a fool hat to his dwarf costume...(DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P67 - Cue the Gotterdamerung! The forces of good at last challenge the Cheney of evil, in the hall of the sainted Roosevelt.(DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P68 - More hopeful wind instruments, then the tuba solo! A loyal counselor supports Greenspan's worries "irritating" Cheney. Oooo, we all know what happens when Cheney gets "irritated". Unfortunately it wasn't quail season, so Cheney just had to force the guy to resign.(DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P69 - Cue the bassoon solo, leading to up tempo woodwinds and strings! Bush at first is deceived by Cheney, but sees the light! He is only worried that perhaps he isn't being "compassionate enough" by giving all these tax breaks to the wealthy. In the end, to assuage his conscience, he decides to favor a full removal of the Dividend Tax, but leave out the Capital Gains Tax Relief. Cheney explodes in a ball of flame and returns to his lair to wreak further evil magic! (DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P70 - Cue Hail to the Deciderer! Bush totally drops CGTR in his public announcement on the package.(DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P71 - Cue blast of flutes and oboes then shocked silence. The Architect speaks (on the record please note, which in and of itself is a pretty good hint who set this up.) Master Of Black Arts Rove assures us all that "The President Made The Call!" Praised be his name! (DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P72 - Cue sinister oboe and tuba music with tom toms. Cheney is "doubling back". We're in trouble now!(DTE=GO,CGTR=NOGO)

P73 - Cue Indian Snake Charmer music! Cheney inveigles his way into the combined conference of the House of Lords and House of Commons. There he begins to cast his "Ressurect Capital Gains Tax Relief" spell.(DTE=MAYBE,CGTR=MAYBE)

P74 - Cue blaring horns and thundering drums! Cheney successfully enchants the Houses of Congress and restores the CGTR! He waddles away, cackling evilly! (DTE=NOGO,CGTR=GO)

P75 - Cue snide piccolos and muttering drums, for we learn of the traitor Thomas, who brags that he and Cheney "use each other" all the time. Sounds like that homosexual agenda again. Ewwwww!(DTE=NOGO,CGTR=GO)

P76 - For this, only Mahler will do! (Any Mahler, they're all good for this bit) Thomas then enchants the President, corrupting his "compassionate conservative heart" into the foul clutches of money-grubbing Cheney. (More Mahler, until about half the audience is hospitalized with manic depression. (Hint: I hate Mahler. Can you tell?))(DTE=NOGO,CGTR=GO)

P77 - Continue with the Mahler, for the end hath arrived! "The vote in the Senate was 51 to 50. Cheney, exercising his only formal power under the Constitution, cast the tie-breaking vote." Note the subtle dig at Cheney, his sole power "under the Constitution". But we all know he's got a lot more power than that, don't we? Perhaps we should rid ourselves of this evil man? Where is his lair? Cue Ride of the Valkyries and fade out just in front of the naval observatory...

THM: "Cheney conspired with reactionary congressmen to scuttle the compassionate conservative agenda of President Bush in order to line the pockets of his greedy war-profiteering corporate sponsors!"

FNTHM: see above.

Take Home Message for those who really count: "Cheney stole your Dividend Tax Exemption and gave it to Halliburton. Have a nice day."

Polonium On The Potomac Part One

2007-06-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

This is part one of a four part series of blog posts on the Angler articles currently being serialized in The Washington Post. It is not an attempt to analyze the articles for facts, nor it is trying to figure out who is trying to do what to whom in these elegantly crafted murder media weapons. What I do in these blogs is to show my readers the information warfare techniques created by the early Bolshevik revolutionaries of Russia and transformed into a science by Nazi propagandists and finally released into the wild after polishing and finishing by the mind-masters of Madison Avenue. Shorter Spook: I'm showing you how the way an article is written contains ten to fifty times as much information as the raw facts. The take home message is this: your subconscious is always listening and learning even if you are not. Mind control techniques such as I am illustrating here are aimed solely at that internal listener, which has the sapience of a six year old and the moral center of a frightened grizzly bear. If you have ever wondered why Fox News Network is so successful despite being blatantly inaccurate in factual terms, now you know. The "inner child" doesn't know from facts, but it does know from fear!

Okay, let's begin.....

[will come back to this after I finish part two which is mostly written. AK]

My Blog And Welcome To It!

2007-06-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

Well, hello world! I am a newborn blog. Wahhhhhh!

I have been posting on FireDogLake blog for about a year now (the memory dims after the first few decades, I'm afraid) but events have conspired to force me to start my own digital virtual soapbox. This is it!

First, a little about me. I'm a retired government employee who worked in and out and above and below most of the IT-oriented national security elements of the defense establishment from the early sixties to the mid nineties (1960 to 1990 for you young whippersnappers who have become sapient since the turn of the millennium). I was never very high on the totem pole and preferred it that way. As the ubiquitous "damn fine staffer" I got to go places and see things far more than those who wolverine-clawed their way up the GS ladder. I deliberately don't give specifics about my work in my blog, and the vague hints I give are carefully designed to confuse and distract you. None of them are in any way false, but they are designed to keep you from figuring out exactly what I did and where. This little technique allows me to simultaneously keep my security clearance and spill all sorts of lovely secrets and even better hidden in plain sight facts at the same time. Shorter Spook: don't try to parse out my secrets from this blog. I'm a professional at this stuff.

Politically, I am a democrat solely because the democrats are a slightly less poisonous political party than the Republicans. I don't currently support third party attempts because of the winner-take-all nature of American politics at the moment. But don't count on me giving aid and comfort to someone or something because it is wearing a cute little "I"m a Democrat" button. All that does is give me a nice place to put the laser dot before I verbally squeeze the trigger.

Personally, my background is solid middle middle class. My dad was a graduate theologian who decided to bypass church politics and teach at a Texas state university. My mom was a gifted piano artist who considered a life as a concert pianist but was seduced by my old goat father into joining him in a life of middle class bliss. The only sour note was their discovery of my mom's cleft uterus, which caused several very bad miscarriages. Finally, she was able to bring me to term with the help of DES, and then had to have a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding. If I was a girl, I'd be dead of ovarian cancer. Instead I have survived and am paying back my mom's sacrifice by fighting corporate and government stupidity and corruption in every way I can. My mom died in 2003, my dad is still with me but has Alzheimer's Disease and is effectively bedfast. When he is cognitively here, though, he is the same moral and intellectual titan I grew up with.

My own life has been rather dull. Married my first sweetheart right out of college, moved to Denver to be a part of the booming federal center there and stayed to raise four kids and innumerable pets and tomato plants. My wife and I were gardners before it was fashionable, and afterwards too. We grew squash and cucumbers and purple pole beans and name it, plus an extensive herb garden. We had a five acre spread just north of the plutonium manufacturing center, obtained when land was dirt cheap. We stayed there until she died in 2005 of an indiagnosed brain tumor. I then moved here to San Antonio to take care of my dad, who had remarried but whose second wife developed manic depressive symptoms so severe she had to be institutionalized. I have forbidden my dad to take a third wife, as he is too hard on them.

My personal devotion is to science and technology, but not at the risk of sanity. I am a functional atheist (and if you read my blog you'll eventually find the definition for that, it's too long to put here) but I do believe that consciousness, pure mind, is transcendental and exists pre and post somatic death. I also think evolution occurs on every level of existence and being, including consciousness itself. I take great pleasure in making my secular humanist and Nicene fundamentalist friends THINK about their positions. I do have to buy a lot of rounds in penance, however. I utterly oppose any form of merging of state and church, any church. I also utterly oppose any attempt by state to intervene in religious practices of any church except in regard to physical survival of children. I think that the gay and lesbian communities are in fact leftovers of a biological catastrophe in prehistory that lost us four full genders; we are going to have to find that missing DNA and repair the human sexual genome. From these basic positions, I think you can tell I have a slightly sideways approach to many modern issues. It is the unavoidable result of being 4 dimensional, you see. And ectoplasmic.

But enough about me. Let's start this blog off right! The next blog postings will be detailed analysis of the recent four part Washington Post series on our esteemed and beloved Vice President Richard Cheney, titled "Angler", his Secret Service Code Name. The following blogs are designed to cover, not facts per se, but rather the way that this assassination piece has been carefully crafted to manipulate the minds of both ordinary people and the Fox News underclass. I do this in professional admiration of the media equivalent of Polonium poisoning. Mr. Cheney is being condemned in these articles to die a slow, agonizing political death. Vladimir Putin would be proud.