Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The index into voters' minds and accompanying seething discontent resides in the Iraq War.  The desire is for the war to be quickly ended.  

While George W. Bush and Dick Cheney argue passionately to extend the commitment from a posture of steadfast American opposition to their policies in Iraq as well as domestically, the Democratic leadership team of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi shrink with seeming terror over taking the one step that can bring the chicken hawk machismo of the Cheney-Bush Administration and their media mouthpieces to an abrupt end.

Impeachment investigation is the route to Iraq withdrawal.  While all the huffing and puffing continues over what "surrender" constitutes, an impeachment investigation would open up avenues of information in areas where only the bold previously treaded.

As so many progressive critics of what is occurring in freefall Cheney-Bush America have noted, the unmistakable neoconservative origin of the Iraq War and its intellectual underpinnings are studiously avoided.  It is time to investigate and let the American people know just what prompted Cheney and Bush to invade Iraq.

The name that has been revealed so infrequently by the mainstream media is the one that should be invoked early and often in an impeachment investigation.  

The Project for the New American Century is the prominent neocon think tank where the objective of invading Iraq took shape and was thereafter guided to bloody fruition by prominent chicken hawks such as William Kristol, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.  

These ardent disciples of Leo Strauss, who advocated a robust and aggressive foreign policy built on invasion and global dominion, had placed the goal of an Iraq War on the front burner even before George W. Bush arrived in the White House in January 2001.

The PNAC documents pertaining to the Iraq War should be studied and evaluated, as should the activities of Dick Cheney in his unsubtle and relentless march to war.  It was no accident that neocon Cheney as former CEO of multinational Halliburton was tapped to lend needed "gravitas" to Washington newcomer Bush's stewardship.

Astute political analysts are aware of the secret meetings held in Cheney's office prior to the Iraq War.  The divisions of spoils were discussed among global corporate giants such as Cheney's own Halliburton and longtime Republican favorite Bechtel, which George Schultz and Casper Weinberger proudly served.  

The details of what occurred and the conspicuous timing of events need to be evaluated in careful detail and made public.  

Another point of grave concern was the slippery fandango Cheney danced when Congressman Henry Waxman requested that the details of those secret meetings, which he maintained should not be subject to executive privilege, be made public.

Cheney's reaction up to the courtroom culmination of thwarting Waxman's legitimate request by virtue of rulings by Ronald Reagan-appointed judges should be carefully examined.  

What is Cheney hiding?  This is a conspicuous area where public interest could be aroused through diligent investigation.  

What about those warnings of the impending "mushroom cloud" awaiting us from Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction"?  Tie those warnings, along with the urgent articles in the New York Times by Judith Miller, to the source behind them.  

That source was infamous international con artist Ahmad Chalibi, who was paid large sums by Paul Wolfowitz to provide just the information the noted PNAC war propagandist and Bush Administration operative wanted to be disseminated to Americans.

Is this an unfair assessment of Wolfowitz?  Hardly, when one analyzes Chalibi's checkered past.  Surely Wolfowitz must know that information is no better than the individual supplying it.  Was Chalibi a proven man of veracity?

The Government of Jordan would answer the aforementioned question in the negative.  Should Chalibi ever set foot in Jordan, which is unlikely, he is subject to immediate arrest, and so he was Wolfowitz's choice to provide information that could wreak immediate death and destruction, which is what ultimately occurred.

If ever there were an American figure bullish on taking his country to war that person would be Dick Cheney.  The same staunch anti-Communist who maxed out on college deferments and avoided service in Vietnam by impregnating his wife is anything but cautious in sending others into battle at his personal instigation.

Cheney personally cleaned house in the State Department, badgering experienced Middle East hands who knew the area and the dangers inherent in an Iraq invasion and occupation into either submitting to his request to slant information to make Saddam Hussein look a lot more militarily powerful than he was or leave government service.

Leaving no stones unturned, Cheney also made personal trips that were unprecedented on the part of a vice president to the Central Intelligence Agency.  He leaned hard on Middle East hands and particularly those who specialized in weapons capabilities to deliver the harshest possible conclusions concerning Iraq's military might under Saddam Hussein.

Not only should those CIA visits be investigated in detail.  More light should also be shed on what happened when Joseph Wilson and others drew opposite conclusions from the militant pro-war pronouncements on the part of Cheney, Kristol, Wolfowitz, Perle and the rest of their neocon attack and occupy elder affinity and their strident media mouthpieces such as Charles Krauthammer, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

It is true that investigating all of the aforementioned area reveals only a small part of the pattern of abuse of an unelected government hell-bent on global domination and rigid submission of Americans.

By disclosing the truth on how and why we attacked Iraq the American public would become so thoroughly outraged that the removal of Cheney and Bush would be demanded.  Once this pattern unmistakably emerged the Republicans would promptly devise a plan to save their own skins.

Under the circumstances set forth my confident prediction is that an impeachment trial would never occur.  Fearful of a calamitous collapse of the Republican Party, the Nixon resignation pattern would be emulated.  

This result would enable the party to search for a submissive stooge to be unfurled as an independent removed from petty political considerations who could then "save America" from bitter partisanship.  

If your conclusion is that I am suggesting a revival of the Ronald Reagan game plan then congratulations, you earned an A grade, and proceed at once to the head of the class.