Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The other device differing from how we slid into the Vietnam War was the phony million dollar pipeline.  

Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter, along with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, were victims of a disenchanted Iraqi businessman-con artist for a price of reputedly a million dollars as he fed false information about Saddam Husssein's alleged weapons of mass destruction and aggressive and immediate nuclear plans.

That con artist was Ahmad Chalabi.

Chalabi last night survived the latest of at least four assassination attempts returning to his home in west Baghdad.  Contrary to John McCain's claim, the streets there are not safe and Chalabi constantly travels with a large protective convoy.

If this were not bad enough, Secretary of State Colin Powell read forged fright documents to the UN.  The documents declared the U.S. was under nuclear threat.  This doctrine was derived from a plagiarized term paper of a student who opposed the war and sharply repudiated Powell, revealing that he had not taking the hysterical pro-war stance that Powell was advancing forcefully to the UN.

Amidst all this war cry hysteria some senators would not go along with the rush to war.  Now, six years later, years after Bush survived the discovery that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and no nuclear threat from Saddam Hussein, he conveniently re-invented himself.

All at once Bush changed from a president saving the U.S. from Saddam and transformed the Iraq War into a fight to deliver democracy and freedom to that Middle East nation.  Meanwhile the very terrorist forces that Bush vowed to fight to make America and the world safer multiplied in number and continue to gain strength.

But after six horrifying years with an estimated toll of better than 1.25 million Iraqi deaths, with a shattered Iraqi infrastructure, the only thing spreading to the entire Middle East were frightened Iraqis fleeing to Syria, Jordan and Iran.

Al Qaeda, which had not been a strong force in Iraq when Saddam Hussein had been in power, was now a strong force.  In other words, instead of bringing peace to Iraq the U.S. strengthened the clash of forces.  Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds continuously clashed.

The real reason for the Iraq venture, many claim, is a three letter word "oil".  This is what Alan Greenspan declared in his book "The Age of Turbulence".

The contract the U.S. wants Iraqis to sign granting foreign lease rights to 63 of its 80 oil wells will not be signed.

With 4,152 U.S. service personnel returning in coffins this administration does not want displayed on TV the human cost of the war.  There are also 55,000 wounded U.S. service personnel, and for what?  

In the August 31 Los Angeles Times we get a glimpse of what U.S. negotiators really want Iraq to agree to:

"Some Western and Iraqis officials blame the Americans for sending a team in the spring that demanded more than 50 long-term bases, the ability to launch operations without permission from the Iraqi government and immunity for security contractors and U.S. troops.  Their opening stance played into the hands of Shiite lawmakers in (Iraq Prime Minister Nouri) Maliki's coalition, who want the Americans to leave, officials said."