"Think of the media as an offensive weapon," says Jerry Broeckert, a retired Marine public affairs officer. He calls Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "a master of information control and media manipulation." Interesting insights from a military PR insider in Rake Magazine.
This just in: Halliburton's out. "After taking some political heat, Halliburton is stepping out of the kitchen. The giant energy and construction firm once managed by Vice President Dick Cheney is no longer in the running for a $600 million rebuilding contract in postwar Iraq, NEWSWEEK has learned."
UPDATE: I was corrected on the Agonist comments board for confusing this contract with the Halliburton firefighting and other deals which are not affected. A related post is here.
Warren Langley, a former president of the Pacific Exchange in San Francisco, was arrested March 14 while blocking the entrance to the exchange during an antiwar protest. The 60-year-old Air Force veteran talked to us about why the conflict in Iraq prompted him to protest war for the first time, and what he is doing to get others in the business community involved.
What's different about this war that led you to get involved opposing it?
I was in my 20s and 30s [during the Vietnam War] and my view of the world was different. I was in the Air Force and was trying to do my job as best I could. I didn't question whether the war was right or wrong or any of those things at that point in time. [Mr. Langley served as a U.S.-based engineer and professor for the Air Force during the Vietnam War.]
Now, I turned 60 in January so I have a different perspective of the world. I watched things unfold after Sept. 11 and it seemed to be that we jumped from protecting against terrorism to focusing on Iraq, and that never made sense to me. As we kind of marched through the fall there was this huge disconnect between what are we doing and why are we doing this. It started to feel like a political war to me.
Fundamentally, I think war is the last resort. War is when you can't find other ways to accomplish your means, and it appeared to me there were lots of ways to disarm Saddam Hussein without invading him. That just didn't make sense to me and I always rebel against things that just seem totally out of whack. I have to say that that feeling got stronger on my 60th birthday in January. My wife said, "Well, what do you want to do for your birthday?" And I said, "Well, I'd like to march in this march they're having here in San Francisco." And so on my 60th birthday I went down and marched.
What was your role up until then in the antiwar movement?
I had been writing to [my senators] and asking them why they haven't been speaking out more strongly against the war because they're my elected representatives. I've always followed the rules and that's what you're supposed to do.
[...]
How did it feel to get arrested?
It's one of those things where you're nervous because you've never done it before and it is certainly something that you've been taught all your life is wrong, so there's this overhanging guilt. The police acted very appropriately and it wasn't confrontational. There was a group of us sitting around in a circle at the intersection and the police went around with a last warning, and then you got up and they handcuffed you. It was a bit strange to suddenly have this helmeted guy with a face mask, a plastic face shield, putting handcuffs around my arms and putting me into a prison bus with metal barriers all around it. That felt really strange. The next day I was actually riding in a taxi someplace and I saw a police car and my stomach flip-flopped. I do look at the world slightly differently because I went through that process.
How would you characterize the protesters?
There are a lot of different groups. There was a very strong veterans' group and I kind of identified with those guys. There were more traditional protesters, if you will, and then there were some odds and ends like me. A trader I used to know very well from the floor came and sat with me on the street until the police warned us for the last time and then he got up and left. People were mostly in their 20s and 30s and my gray hair stood out.
[...]
Is the goal now still to stop the war?
You don't want to take on things that are totally impossible. You need to take on things that are achievable.
What do you think the protestors will achieve?
I hope it makes politicians who are in office right now more accountable and gives those who need it more courage to stand up because they realize there are people out there, more than they thought, who think a certain way. I hope in the next year or two it affects choices we have to make about supporting peace in Israel, about reorganizing Iraq, about not going into North Korea and about not going into Iran.
What have you found the reaction to the war to be in the business community?
I think people who are in the middle of their careers, I found a number of them who agree with me. But they are reluctant to speak out because they see it as a risk. If I'm running a business, what if half my customers don't like what I say?
[...]
What's going to happen when you go to court?
I don't think I'll contest it. I did it. I'm used to consequences. When you make choices, you have consequences. [Protesting] is one of things I'm most proud of in my life. I feel like my taking a little bit of risk myself has had an effect. I certainly didn't stop the war, but certainly maybe will add one stick to the pile of stopping the next war.
Kudos to the Journal for this interview, which presents a point of view quite different from its opinion pages. In the online version there was a picture and biographical highlights, a nice tribute to an ordinary hero.
Gary Hart is now a blogger too. We applaud the move and wish him much success in his effort "to engage people on critical policy matters and the future of our country."
We also hope that the blog doesn't ever devolve into pleasantries written by staff. Oh, and good luck keeping the comments tidy.
U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon indicated today she will make public the bulk of 19 million pages of Enron documents the company provided to the government and has also produced in two massive would-be class action lawsuits.
[ ]
John Strasburger, the Houston-based lawyer representing Enron, said the company wants to protect private employee information and information on on-going contracts, asset sales and lawsuits that could lessen the value of assets if revealed. He said the company has already reviewed 10 million pages and found 4,000 documents that it wants kept private.
Strasburger said Enron has already produced to the depository most of what it has given to federal authorities. "For more than a year the federal government has been waging a campaign of shock and awe against Enron," he said. He said the public has been well served by the mass of information the company has provided the government agencies, and now the depository in the civil case.
Paul Howes, lawyer for lead shareholder plaintiff the University of California Board of Regents, agreed some personnel information should be kept private but not personnel performance reviews. He said Enron's request for categories of confidentiality like ongoing lawsuits or contracts are too broad and could be used to hide important information from the public.
"This is not an ordinary case. What we are talking about is a case of historic proportions, " Howes said. "The public interest has to be balanced."
Harmon indicated she will ask Enron to provide a list of the documents it wants kept confidential and that it may take another few months to finish compiling the full list if it provides some intermediate lists in the mean time.
The list will also be provided to the news media, the judge indicated. A lawyer representing several news interests including the Houston Chronicle asked that all the information be made available to the public as soon as possible.
I think it's a little early in the game to use "shock and awe" as an all-purpose clichι and metaphor, considering that the Siege of Baghdad hasn't even happened yet, and, besides, this particular metaphor is being used in defense of Enron, fraudulent financier to Bush's cabal and their Husseinomania.
I hope the Chronicle stays on top of this story. They've been doing a very good job so far, and I have to admit I'm looking forward to reading Andrew Fastow's performance reviews.
We also urge all plaintiffs and their attorneys to release as much information as possible online, where it can be searched and dissected and analyzed among the Volunteer Brigade for Justice namely, us bloggers.
The oil industry has gone to great lengths to distance itself from any planning related to the potential post-war opening of Iraq's massive fields, now partly in U.S. and British hands. But it is becoming clear that a number of companies played significant advisory roles in military operations taking place on those fields, underscoring an unusual partnership between the military and private companies in the Iraq campaign.
BP PLC employees in Kuwait showed the Royal Engineers and other combat troops how oil fields operate before their assault on South Rumeila, along the Kuwaiti border. Houston fire-fighting firm Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc. helped draw up emergency and contingency plans for securing the field, and private-sector U.S. oil executives, serving as U.S. reserve officers, ran soldiers and combat engineers through fields in West Texas in preparation for the attack.
[...]
Army engineers have been working with Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root for months, drafting a plan of action for rebuilding Iraq's oil infrastructure. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to dole out other contracts to oil-field service companies in the days and weeks ahead.
But it is now apparent that oil companies have played a greater behind-the-scenes role in military planning than previously known. For centuries, private companies and citizens have volunteered to help their governments in time of war. But Iraqi oil -- a primary focus of the Pentagon's military campaign -- has been a thorny political issue for the Bush administration, which has strong ties to the oil industry. Vice President Dick Cheney ran Halliburton until 2000, for instance, when he resigned to run for office. He has since divested his stock in the company.
Cheney divested his stock, but is even today still on the Halliburton payroll.
With the Bush administration eager to avoid accusations that it is going to war for oil -- and executives sensitive to appearing opportunistic as soldiers fight and die in Iraq -- companies have shied away from talking about their discussions with U.S. or British officials concerning Iraqi oil.
Of course Texas oil executives are sensitive about appearing opportunistic because they are opportunistic, exchanging human lives for illegitimate claims to foreign oil. And while US soldiers fight and die in Iraq to protect oil fields while US civilians sit mesmerized by CENTCOM and FoxNews, guess who's making off with all the money in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy, war profiteering, no-bid government contracts, and a whole raft of corporate fraud schemes that will never stop surfacing as long as we all live on this faith-based, god-forsaken planet.
Federal regulators condemned energy companies for past market manipulation Wednesday and started pursuing sanctions against several of them for their roles in the 2000-2001 California power crisis.
[...]
All of the Enron-related companies that are mentioned in the report are in bankruptcy, so any effort by the state of California to get refunds from the companies will need to go through a U.S. bankruptcy court in New York.
The commission also signaled that it probably will not force energy companies to renegotiate more than $20 billion in long-term power contracts California agreed to when natural gas and electricity prices soared to record levels in 2000 and 2001.
[...]
The report also says that Enron could not have done the transactions that allowed it to manipulate the markets without the help of other parties, such as municipal utilities that would buy or sell power at Enron's request to create certain conditions.
The report also refers to a handbook that Enron had for employees. The handbook had directions on which counterparties to call in certain market situations so that the counterparties could take advantage of the conditions.
Did I understand that right? Enron couldn't have pulled the manipulations off without the help of municipal utilities "counterparties" that were in on the scheme.
This vast right-wing conspiracy even had a market manipulation handbook of phone numbers to call to move the market in this or that direction. The laissez-faire "unseen hand of the marketplace" was rooting around in California's pockets and removing $45 billion in one fell swoop.
Meanwhile, the beneficiary of all that Texas energy industry largesse was a certain George W. Bush, who had this to say about the California energy crisis during a White House press conference on March 29, 2001 (shortly after Cheney's six secret energy meetings with Enron): "We need a full affront on an energy crisis that is real in California and looms for other parts of our country if we don't move quickly."
Language mash-up aside, there are several things wrong with this statement. One, the energy crisis in California was not real. Two, the energy crisis was engineered by his campaign contributors and personal friends. Three, it is a bad idea to extrapolate from a phony situation concocted by cronies to create scenarios of looming crisis for the rest of the country.
The energy crisis wasn't real, but the "full affront" is quite real and it's on us.
Enron, although one of the most egregious, wasn't the only company identified by the FERC. The others include Reliant, BP, Dynegy, El Paso, Williams, Duke, Mirant, CMS and Coral.
UPDATE:bad things once again comes through with the telling detail. None other than the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and several smaller municipal utilities were involved in "Death Star," a ploy of scheduling nonexistent energy transmissions to create the appearance of congestion so that utilities and power generators could collect payments to relieve it. Go read the whole post. Bonus points if you catch the phrase "bad thing" in the cited text.
The specially called Enron grand jury Wednesday indicted two former midlevel executives on charges of conspiracy and fraud in scheming to generate $111 million in false earnings through a failed Enron online movie service.
Kevin Howard, former chief financial officer of Enron Broadband Services, and Michael Krautz, former EBS senior accounting director, were both indicted on 15 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and one count each of making false statements to federal investigators.
The two men were arrested on these charges March 12.
The indictment issued Wednesday clearly shows the government thinks lies were told about EBS and appears to indicate more EBS-related charges could surface.
"However, many of the representations made about Enron's network and software at the Jan. 20, 2000, analyst conference were false, in that Enron did not possess the network software or capabilities that it claimed. Subsequently, EBS failed to generate any significant recurring revenue from its telecommmunications business," the indictment stated under a section headed "the scheme to defraud."
Belated apologies to mmw of bad things who correctly pointed out to me in a 3/12/03 email that Howard and Krautz are "not Ken Lay, but not exactly nobodies either" after one of my extended rants about Enron CEOs not being in captivity. He provided news of their arrest from that bastion of liberalism, Forbes.
Police arrested two Nobel Peace prize winners along with more than 60 other people protesting on Wednesday near the White House against the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Police handcuffed Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who won the prize in 1976 for peace activism in the Northern Ireland conflict, and Jody Williams, a 1997 winner for her work to ban land mines, after they refused to leave Lafayette Park opposite the home of the U.S. president.
The Nobel laureates were detained along with religious leaders and Vietnam-era protester Daniel Ellsberg as they sat in a circle in the park and chanted "Peace, shalom." They held roses as well as gruesome posters showing civilian casualties from the war.
Internationally recognized peace activists arrested for protesting war. Only in Bush country.
Another shameful day for America. Go read the whole thing.
The Memory Hole will show you photographs of the civilian and military casualties that embedded reporters are somehow managing not to file. [Warning: graphic, unsettling and tragic images]
Pat Wood, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said that as a result of the manipulation California would receive more than the $1.8 billion in refunds recommended by a FERC judge in December. The exact amount is to be determined in the coming months.
The FERC singled out seven subsidiaries of bankrupt Enron Corp. and five other companies for taking advantage of a dysfunctional market and reaping millions of dollars in unjust profits.
"The price gouging abounded," Commissioner William Massey said. He said he regretted that FERC did not intervene earlier to police the newly deregulated power market in California.
[...]
"Enron manipulated thinly traded physical markets to profit in financial markets," FERC said, estimating that Enron made more than $500 million in online trading in 2000 and 2001.
FERC investigators recommended that the companies be forced to give up unfairly earned profits.
The energy crisis cost the state as much as $45 billion over two years in higher electricity costs, lost business due to blackouts and a slowdown in economic growth, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
How mad are Californians that they were so publicly and humiliatingly gouged by the bankrupt company that was instrumental in making George W. Bush Governor of Texas and then Occupant of the White House?
Mad enough to vote for someone else in 2004?
UPDATE: Zed of MemeMachineGo politely refreshes my faulty memory with the following email: "Well, we already voted against him in 2000 (Gore had 5.6 million to Bush's 4.4 million.) I expect the Democrats to take CA again in 2004 (but it's easy to get tunnel vision living in one of the most liberal areas in the country, and I'm not taking this for granted as something that's going to happen without people working for it.)"
I would hope that the missing $45 billion would be reason enough for many of those 4.4 million Californians to use the power of their vote NOT to enable corporate criminals who put the state into financial crisis next time around. Orange County, are you listening?
Today [2/24/03], the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, under the leadership of Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and Associate Deputy Attorney General Karen Tandy, has taken three decisive steps to dismantle the illegal drug paraphernalia industry by attacking their physical, financial and Internet infrastructures.
Karen Tandy was in charge of stealing the websites of bong dealers. Wow. So much for effective drug policy.
The rest of the world has already figured this out, and is beginning to refer to the bombing as a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
Are the US media so blind as not to realize that treating the media as a legitimate military target virtually guarantees that potential future terrorist attacks will occur against them?
The [U.S.] Energy Department, which regularly reviews oil-producing countries, estimates Iraq's foreign debt at between $100 billion and $200 billion. The U.S. is working on a broad plan to set up the economy of a post-Hussein government, and dealing with the debt is part of that plan.
Who are these creditors? Let's start naming names:
One company already seeking repayment from Baghdad, for about $1.1 billion in debt, is Hyundai. The company was one of nearly a dozen Korean contractors that made a push into Iraq in the late 1970s, seeking to reap big cash rewards from the petrodollars then washing over the Middle East. In all, Hyundai landed 34 infrastructure projects that were set to earn the company more than $4 billion in revenue. The company built power stations, housing complexes, a fertilizer plant and an expressway linking Baghdad to neighboring Jordan and Syria.
[...]
But following the initial imposition of U.N. sanctions on Iraq in 1990, Mr. Hussein's government placed a moratorium on all debt payments. Hyundai has kept a representative office in Baghdad and annually confirms the debts owed to it with Iraqi government officials. The company also filed lawsuits in London and New York to try to get back some of the cash it is owed. Today, Hyundai officials say the possible arrival of a new Iraqi government, backed by Washington and its allies, offers a real chance to settle its debts.
"We'll be in a much better position to get back the money, as they're sovereign debts owned to Hyundai," says Min Su Kwang, Hyundai's executive vice president in charge of foreign contracts. Mr. Min says the firm is expecting a creditors committee to be set up once the war is over. Hyundai officials say the company is looking at alternative ways for Iraq to pay back its debt, such as the transfer of even more crude oil or awarding the company reconstruction contracts.
So regime change will benefit Hyundai. I feel better as an American taxpayer already.
But, wait, there's more...
States such as Russia and France also are expected to get in line for debt repayments once the war is over. Moscow says Iraq owes it at least $9 billion, mostly for weapons supplied during the Soviet era. Government officials have said in recent days that they expect repayment, despite Russia's strong opposition to the U.S.-led war. "Our priority is to protect our lawful interests," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said this week.
Russian companies, too, will have claims to press when the dust settles. Mr. Hussein has promised half a dozen Russian concerns the rights to develop big oil deposits, though only two of the deals have been solidified in contracts, according to Russian officials. The rest are described as handshake agreements.
Dumb move. Looks like Pootie-Poot misplaced his bet in opposing Junior's war. An oral agreement with Saddam Hussein isn't worth... oh, never mind.
Smartest of all? The French. They wrote the bad debt off.
French companies, historically among Iraq's biggest trading partners, have written off the money owed them by Mr. Hussein's regime, analysts say. Iraq's unpaid bills to France, for weapons and other purchases, come to between 2.13 billion and 2.44 billion ($2.26 billion and $2.59 billion), according to a report written for the French National Assembly's Defense Commission.
Meanwhile, with a $75 billion down payment on the war, US taxpayers will protect Hyundai from Saddam Hussein's bad credit history. And the world will be safer for American corporations. Or at least more creditworthy, thanks to the Bush-invoked generosity of the US Treasury.
Next expense for the American taxpayer: protecting South Korea and Japan from North Korea.
Refresh your memory about Halliburton's colorful history of $3.8 billion in corporate welfare, as well as its extensive lobbying efforts, manic corruption, alleged connections to Russian organized crime, and other cronyish behavior with this very readable August 2000 report from Center for Public Integrity. "If Halliburton has benefited from government generosity, it also has reciprocated with substantial political contributions, largely to Republicans." You don't say!
There's also a bunch of worthwhile Halliburton links (Guantanamo Bay! Nigerian dirty bomb americium!) in this post and here too.
In an effort to distance itself from its own reputation, The Straights have resurfaced under the name of DFAF (Drug Free America Foundation). These crusaders hide behind 501(c)(3) status and faith-based labelling to fund their zealotry of pro-workplace drug testing and irrelevant attacks on medical marijuana.
The evil of this sort of federally-funded righteousness should not go unpunished.
Google the cult leaders for links to their propaganda, and responses to it: Betty S. Sembler, one of ten founding members of Straight, Inc., and Calvina L. Fay, executive director of DFAF and Save Our Society From Drugs (SOS).
Forget principles, forget context, forget history, forget strategy. The media pecking order provides the map to the military pecking order. The mission of these particular Marines becomes more meaningful because CNN is there with them. So if your unit is assigned an embedded reporter from, say, Joliet or Trenton, you know you're toast.
The arrest of two relatively unknown Enron executives this month raises hopes that the investigation is moving forward but also raises questions of whether criminal charges will ever reach the top of the corporate ladder.
Of the 12 criminal charges filed in connection with Enron's demise, only seven have been against Enron insiders and only one of those against a big fish -- the 78-count indictment against former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow.
Sixteen months after the company revealed accounting problems that lead to its downfall, a year after a special grand jury was seated and indicted Enron's accounting firm, the question that's being asked in office chatter and at dinner tables throughout Houston is whether executives such as former Chairman Ken Lay, former CEO Jeff Skilling or others will be charged.
"This is like Chinese water torture," said a lawyer familiar with the investigation. "There are all these threats and muscle-flexing from the government, but then nothing much happens."
The miilitary invasion of the world's second-largest known oil reserves doesn't really cut it as "nothing happening."
Lay, Skilling, and their Enron fraud helped these madmen come to power. Now that Cheney has sealed off the minutes of his six secret Enron meetings, and now that American profiteering has moved on to Iraqi slaughter, the White House is furiously rewriting history in the ugly scrawl of Karl Rove's and Karen Hughes's partisan penmanship.
Oliver L. North -- Indicted March 16, 1988, on 16 felony counts. After standing trial on 12, North was convicted May 4, 1989 of three charges: accepting an illegal gratuity, aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and destruction of documents. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell on July 5, 1989, to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service. A three-judge appeals panel on July 20, 1990, vacated North's conviction for further proceedings to determine whether his immunized testimony influenced witnesses in the trial. The Supreme Court declined to review the case. Judge Gesell dismissed the case September 16, 1991, after hearings on the immunity issue, on the motion of Independent Counsel.
John M. Poindexter -- Indicted March 16, 1988, on seven felony charges. After standing trial on five charges, Poindexter was found guilty April 7, 1990, on all counts: conspiracy (obstruction of inquiries and proceedings, false statements, falsification, destruction and removal of documents); two counts of obstruction of Congress and two counts of false statements. U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene sentenced Poindexter June 11, 1990, to six months in prison on each count, to be served concurrently. A three-judge appeals panel on November 15, 1991, reversed the convictions on the ground that Poindexter's immunized testimony may have influenced the trial testimony of witnesses. The Supreme Court on December 7, 1992, declined to review the case. In 1993, the indictment was dismissed on the motion of Independent Counsel.
Richard V. Secord -- Indicted March 16, 1988 on six felony charges. On May 11, 1989, a second indictment was issued charging nine counts of impeding and obstructing the Select Iran/contra Committees. Secord was scheduled to stand trial on 12 charges. He pleaded guilty November 8, 1989, to one felony count of false statements to Congress. Secord was sentenced by U.S. District Chief Judge Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., on January 24, 1990, to two years probation.
Albert Hakim -- Pleaded guilty November 21, 1989, to a misdemeanor of supplementing the salary of Oliver L. North. Lake Resources Inc., in which Hakim was the principal shareholder, pleaded guilty to a corporate felony of theft of government property in diverting Iran arms sales proceeds to the Nicaraguan contras and other activities. Hakim was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell on February 1, 1990, to two years probation and a $5,000 fine; Lake Resources was ordered dissolved.
Fifteen years have passed. Where are they now?
Oliver North was allegedly flying alongside the helicopter that went down, marking our first casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to Fox, he has the whole thing on tape and has handed it over to the Pentagon.
John Poindexter is still the Director of DARPA's Information Awareness Office, according to this February 2003 PDF file FAQ.
Richard V. Secord is heading up a penny stock company and may face an insider trading scandal, according to the New York Post:
Computerized Thermal Imaging, Inc. This Nevada penny stock has been headed since 1996 by Gen. Richard V. Secord, of Iran/Contra fame. During Iran/Contra, Secord worked closely with U.S. Marine Corps Col. Oliver North to sell arms to Iran, then funnel the profits to anti-Communist forces in Nicaragua.
With Secord as the company's face to the world, the firm's shares soared from $1 to nearly $14 in the tech bubble, then instantly collapsed when the bubble popped, and are today selling for 10 cents. In February, the company acknowledged that a federal grand jury in New York is probing possible insider trading in its shares last December. Early this month, the company issued a report saying its finances are so shaky it may not survive.
The cable networks, including AOL Time Warner Inc.'s CNN, News Corp.'s Fox News and MSNBC, which is jointly owned by General Electric Co.'s NBC and Microsoft Corp., on Saturday returned commercials to their screens amid continued heavy war coverage, although not as many ads as before the war began. Many advertisers still are hesitant about having commercials run alongside violent footage of bombs and tanks.
For NBC, Viacom Inc.'s CBS and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, the pace of the war has been strangely beneficial to their own programming concerns. Before last week's initial attacks, the general consensus was that the broadcast networks likely would go days with uninterrupted, commercial-free coverage, as was the case after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But some networks returned to regular programming as early as Thursday night, and all had returned to entertainment and sports by the weekend.
A commercial in a war broadcast is morally equivalent to selling concessions at a gladiator forum. Just as in ancient Rome, such commerce and routine consumption are to be regarded as normal from the point of view of the Empire that stages and broadcasts the spectacle of the killing.
The phrase "theater of war" has never had so much resonance.
The Bush doctrine is grounded in the belief that international relations are relations of power; legality and legitimacy are decorations. This belief is not entirely false but it exaggerates one aspect of reality -- military power -- at the exclusion of others.
I see a parallel between the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy and a boom-bust process or bubble in the stock market. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality but reality is distorted by misconception. In this case, the dominant position of the United States is the reality, the pursuit of supremacy the misconception. Reality can reinforce the misconception but eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable. During the self-reinforcing phase, the misconception may be tested and reinforced. This widens the gap leading to an eventual reversal. The later it comes, the more devastating the consequences.
The stock market bubble of the 1990s was based on fundamental misconceptions, and so is the Bush doctrine now. The longer we wait to push him and his cabal out of office, the higher the price US citizens and the rest of the world will pay for the unintended consequences of his mania.
