By mid-August troop numbers had doubled
and there were 40,000 Iraqi troops more
amassed in southern Kuwait
perilously close to the Kuwait-Saudi border.
The Saudis didn't want Saddam on their border.
The Saudis wanted Saddam to be punished,
but they were afraid that this would provoke
their own fundamentalist Wahabis
by allowing U.S. infidels to attack
from the holiest lands of Islam,
thus the Saudis would have to be convinced
of an imminent threat from Saddam.
So Cheney and Powell showed Bandar photos
of three lurking Iraqi divisions
that looked like they were about to attack
several Saudi Arabian positions.
The Saudis became enraged
and wanted Saddam disposed of,
but America still liked Saddam
better than Iran's Grand Ayatollah.
And in the end Schwartzkopf was prevented
from taking out Saddam Hussein,
because the Bush Family was certain
they'd need Saddam's services again.
But even before the Gulf War had begun,
a prominent Philadelphia paper had reported
biological and chemical tech we'd exported to Iraq
would have been used on American forces.
And even after Saddam's ouster from Kuwait
there were U.S. bases in Islam's holiest lands,
which outraged some of America's proxies,
like CIA asset Osama bin Laden,
who saw the U.S. as just one more infidel horde
bent on appropriating Islam's holiest places
and shifted his sights from the Soviets to the U.S.
and from the mujahadeen birthed al-Qaeda, "the base".
* * * * * * * * *
Through the Reagan-Bush years,
conservative political media expanded,
providing the Right crucial protection
during Iran-Contra-like scandals.
George Bush One's greatest impact
on the way we conduct American politics
was the infusion of CIA theory,
secrecy and dirty tricks ala Nixon
from the covert manipulation
of foreign nations' governments
to perception management and control
of Americans' views of events.
Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine
as part of his presidential legacy
by selling off The People's airwaves,
furthering the consolidation of corporate media.
And when the Soviet Boogeyman he'd helped create
collapsed in the 1980s,
the CIA took the bullet for missing
one of the biggest events of the century.
And though Ronald Reagan will get credit
for the Berlin Wall's fall from all of posterity,
it was actually a triumph of intelligence
manipulated to fit Foreign Policy.
* * * * * * * * *
The Democratic Leadership Council
was founded in the mid-1980s
to bring a formerly broad-based party to the Right.
These DLC-body snatchers
decided the Party was in trouble
for being too sympathetic to the plight
of feminists, egalitarians,
pacifists, minorities and labor unions,
so they set out to undermine workers,
family farmers, Latins, gays, Blacks and women.
In a radical departure from Democratic values
of economic and social justice,
the DLC refused to stand up for those
left behind by the economic upturn.
The DLC was designed to create
a new, Wall Street-approved Democratic Party,
pro-"free" trade, privatization,
deregulation and increased military money.
As the '92 campaign heated up,
the DLC Chairman, William Jefferson Clinton,
engineered an historic clash between
New Democrats and the Traditionalists.
But he scurried away from the DLC message
when he saw his opinion polls drop
and as he pretended a populist position
his approval ratings went back up.
He won the presidency with personal charisma
and outstanding rhetorical gifts
which obscured his corporate agenda
and a shocking absence of personal ethics.
By now much of the mainstream media
was completely neutered and housebroken
and thus went after the Democrats
harder than any Republican.
To shed the Liberal label
they tracked further and further to the Right.
Reporters bent over backward
to avoid career-killing "liberal bias".
In '93/'94 Democrats controlled
both the White House and Congress
and worked in bipartisan style to stifle
any meaningful campaign reform progress.
Clinton gave corporations
telecommunications and banking deregulation
and steam-rolled NAFTA over Labor,
environmental and consumer protestation.
* * * * * * * * *
Back in the 40s business leaders expected
the U.S. economy to collapse
after government intervention during the Depression
and World War Two had lapsed.
They further insisted that advanced industry
"cannot exist satisfactorily
in a pure,
competitive,
unsubsidized
free enterprise economy."
"Government is the only possible savior"
they intoned in Fortune and Business Week.
And though social spending would provide
the necessary stimulus to the economy,
it's still not a direct subsidy
to the corporate sector's interests.
It's redistributive and has unsettling,
democratizing side effects.
The Pentagon System is the best way
to transfer private costs to citizens.
And so very, very easy to sell.
You just have to scare the hell out of them.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
