"If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." -- Albert Einstein
Is George W. Bush planning an attack on Iran?
Is that the real basis for his force surge in Iraq?
Is there some sort of terrorist incident planned or expected to justify an attack on Iran? Would the Bush Administration set up a "false flag" operation that either threatened or actually assaulted an American city, or American military assets overseas, possibly with weapons of mass destruction, in order to justify an attack on Iran with tactical nukes?
Do bears defecate in the woods?
The Iranians and Kurds are the only real winners so far in Operation Iraqi Freedom (originally Operation Iraqi Liberation or OIL). The Kurds have a de facto independent state in what was northern Iraq. The Iranians are within a hairsbreadth of gaining de facto control of southern Iraq and its oilfields; with the bonus of watching its most substantial potential enemy, the United States, eviscerate its military. Yet, current circumstances indicate that the Busheviks are planning an attack on Iran.
There are two critical pieces of evidence which leads me to this conclusion.
The first of these is the fact that this "surge" is going to include Patriot Surface to Air Missiles, to protect ourselves and our allies from air attack. The Iraqi insurgents do not have aircraft; and the Patriot is useless against whatever rockets that the insurgents might possess. (Those rockets would be similar to the Soviet-designed Katyushas used by Hezbollah against Israel last year.) Our Patriot surface-to-air missiles are highly useful for defending against an Iranian (or even an Iranian/Syrian) aerial counter strike against our allies, as well as U.S. airbases in Iraq, Turkey, and the Arabian Peninsula, employing aircraft and cruise missiles. Against Katyusha rockets, they are worthless.
The second is the appointment of Admiral William D. Fallon to head Centcom.
This is the first time a Naval officer has been appointed to that command. His specialty is aviation. I have to wonder if he wrote a paper (immediately declared Top Secret-Shoot Yourself Before Reading) in either the Navy's or the Pentagon's War Colleges, describing how to take out Iran's nuclear and other potential facilities of WMD manufacture. His appointment, together with our unprovoked assault on an Iranian Consulate in Iraq, screams that George W. Bush is planning an air and missile war against Iran.
So if George W. Bush wants to start a war against Iran, what is his motivation?
George W. Bush wishes to be remembered as a "great" President, and believes that the best way to do this is to be a successful "war time" President. This belief demonstrates President Bush's abysmal ignorance of history. The wartime Presidents who have engaged in wars for empire (Polk in the Mexican War, McKinley in the Spanish-American War) are not remembered fondly (if at all) by the American People.
Underlying George W. Bush's wish to be remembered as a "great President," is his desire (bordering on obsession) to outdo his father, President George H.W. Bush. Dubya has, I suspect, been very conflicted every time his father has-directly or indirectly-bailed his eldest son out of trouble. Arbusto, Harken Oil, the Texas Rangers baseball team, the 2000 election: each of these incidents has left President Bush 43 both grateful and resentful about his father's help in the same instant. He desperately wants to succeed where he feels his father failed: Iraq. I believe that this mindset will make it impossible for him to withdraw American troops from Iraq. This is the reason he is leaving the problem to the "next President." This is also one of the underlying reasons he wishes to attack Iran, to distract the American people from his growing failure in Iraq.
I would like to now consider President Bush's other psychological (and psycho-pathological) motivations and drives. Dr. Justin Frank has already dealt extensively with Mr. Bush's mental state in his excellent book, Bush on the Couch, as have many other individuals on various websites, most recently clinical psychologist Dr. Abbas Sadeghian, in an article on OpEd News.com, The Neuropsychology of George Bush (January 12, 2007).
We know that President Bush has a sadistic streak (branding frat pledges at DKE fraternity in the sixties, blowing up frogs when he was a boy); and that he lacks empathy for others (the execution of Karla Faye Tucker and his treatment of Cindy Sheehan when she first went to the White House after losing her son are two examples). The more recent examples of this sadism can be seen in his approval of torture, even after the travesty at Abu Ghraib. At the time of the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal, I wondered out loud to a friend if the President and the rest of his death-aspected coterie were enjoying videos of torture from Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, and other detention facilities throughout the world, at parties in the White House and Pentagon. It is still a question I wonder about.
George W. Bush also has an inferiority complex, for which he overcompensates by bullying people to dominate others and get his own way. I suspect that much of his bullying habit came from his domineering (and possibly abusive) mother, absent father, and his severe dyslexia. He is incurious because it is frustrating for him to try and study any subject in depth. His obsession with physical fitness is an overcompensation for his inferior academic ability, as well as a means for his brain to produce additional endorphins and other neurochemicals to compensate for the alcohol and drugs President Bush allegedly no longer imbibes. Obsessive exercise, his abuse of drugs and alcohol, as well as his conversion to a fundamentalist form of Christianity, has been a way to block out the emotional anguish and frustration that he has experienced his entire life, without having to constructively deal with these emotions.
Richard Girard is an increasingly radical representative of the disabled and disenfranchised members of America's downtrodden. His fondest desire is to be the one to arrest Bush and Cheney after they leave office in 2009.
To say "impeachment is off the table" is the equivalent of saying the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy are no longer relevant.
Maybe the Democrats are actually fearful of doing anything with good reason. The anthrax attacks were directed at ONLY the Democrats and certain segments of the Media. Fox news didn't receive any. And, oddly enough, although nobody considers the National Inquirer to be part of the media, or a threat to anyone except slandered celebrities, their corporate headquarters were targeted first. Why is that odd? They were running stories on the drunken Bush twins prior to 9/11 and about George's cocaine habit before the 2000 election. There is also the strange admission that top Republicans were taking prophylactic doses of Cipro prior to those attacks.
It is also very "odd" that only prominent Democrats who are critical of this administration seem to die in tragic airplane crashes.
Needless to say maybe the Dems know the Bush crime family is vengeful and capable of pure evil. That should not be an excuse for postponing impeachment, but instead should be the very reason they get started immediately with impeachment hearings and eventually lead to criminal prosecutions. I guess they are waiting for either WWIII, (that starts with Iran and Syria, then China, etc); or for those detention camps of Ollie North's to start filling up with millions of Americans who protest in demand of impeachment.
It is already almost too late. If either of the above mentioned atrocities take place it [impeachment] will be virtually impossible. And God forbid they engineer or allow another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil. At that point martial law will be instituted and George W. Bush will have the dictatorship he always wanted.
In the meantime how many more soldiers and innocent Iraqis must die? How many more of our civil liberties and rights will vanish in the name of national security? How many more high crimes will be committed by this imperial president? The truly patriotic of America are demanding answers and justice right now.
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JohnNmissouri (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 40 comments)
on Friday, January 26, 2007 at 4:35:19 PM
If you are going to successfully remove the most powerful man in the world from power, You have to do it by the numbers. If you don't, some idiot will claim: "If they had only done this, Bush would have realized he had gone too far, and stopped." It's bullshit, but it is true
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Richard Girard (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 39 comments)
on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 12:58:47 PM
I'm pleased to hear about the amendment concerning the president's mental health. I believe that presidents are required to have an annual physical to make sure they are in good health. I believe we should make it law that every president-elect have a thorough mental exam before taking the presidency and another one every year thereafter. A physically impaired president is far less dangerous than a mentally impaired one.
Aside from the book and article mentioned, another book is of interest in Bush's case, "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout. It's a chilling book in that she claims that 4% of the population is a sociopath-psychopath. That's one in 25. If you know 25 people, you probably know a sociopath.
The number sounds small until you realize that it means there are 120,000 sociopaths in the United States and at least 5,200 fighting for us in Iraq. Because of the attraction to killing of many sociopaths, there are probably a higher percentage in our armed forces and certainly among the paid security forces in Iraq.
There are many possible diagnoses for George and more than one may be relevant. I favor the sociopath because it is simple and it explains all of Bush's past and present behavior. Simply put, a sociopath has no conscience. They are pathological liars. They care only for themselves and everything they do is only for their benefit. Thus the desire to be a great president. Sending thousands and hundreds of thousands to their death does not cause the slightest quiver of guilt in a sociopath.
One psychiatrist suggested that psychopaths make good CEOs. Many of our highly overpaid corporate leaders are nothing but professional liars. Given that, it is highly probable that Cheney is also a sociopath. He also shows no concern about the death, the torture, the maiming, and the psychological scarring from this war.
Because George Bush, Cheney, and possibly others in the administration, are sociopths, this nation is in great danger. They will not hesitate to commit the most heinous of crimes. They will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they believe it will further their cause. The hesitation of a normal human being over the possibility of massive deaths and generations of sick people from fallout, would simply not be there.
I would think that most Americans could see that Bush is insane, but the idea of someone not having a conscience is almost impossible to grasp. But I have known three sociopaths personally and the things that they can do, without a qualm and completely without any sense of guilt or shame, is really frightening.
Whether through impeachment or forcing a mental exam, George Bush must be removed from office. The damage he has already done is almost irreversible. Even another year of his "leadership" and it would surely be completely irreversible. We need to keep pounding away at our leaders in both parties and try to make them fully aware of the danger. We cannot afford to continue to play politics with American and Middle Eastern lives. He must be stopped or we could see the end of the US, as we know it, in our lifetimes.
In hope.
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Bob (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 34 comments)
on Friday, January 26, 2007 at 5:55:54 PM
and it lands me here on OpEd NEws. Fascinating subject. It amazes me how much force is required to keep the ponzi scheme called the US Dollar afloat. but if the Euro is such a threat to the USD, then why not negotiate with the EU???? instead of war.
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Crazy John (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments)
on Friday, January 26, 2007 at 9:23:04 PM
