Posted on 2-9-2003
What
A Tangled Web They Weave
By Alan Marston
To construct and then sustain anything built on lies demands
a high level of intelligence and corresponding deep psycho-pathology,
in short you have to be a mad genius. The cabal of current
`top men' around the US president, and the man himself, are
very probably mad enough, but they're not smart enough to avoid
being trapped in their own web of deceit. Iraq is proving to
be one web too far.
Sticky trap #1: Promising to improve Iraq after invasion and
occupation. This is a very sticky one because the invasion,
occupation then re-construction of a country, unlike the reconstruction
of political images, cannot be done on the cheap in a fully
controlled virtual world of electronic media, mainly TV, nor
can it be paid for with advertising. The dollar cost of a modern
invasion and occupation is huge because the `contracted out'
armed services of the global market economy demands costs +
gouging + superprofits - and that's only the armed forces. The
so-called reconstruction will be worse as companies like Halliburton,
the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, gets its
promised contracts... and they turn out to be worth more than
$1.7 billion. In a shameless case of corruption Halliburton
is so far the sole recipient of contracts under (hold your nose)
Operation Iraqi Freedom and it stands to make hundreds of millions
more dollars under other no-bid contracts awarded by the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers. The size and scope of US government
contracts `awarded' to Halliburton alone, in connection with
the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously
disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance
on for-profit corporations to run it. As much as one-third
of the monthly $3.9 billion cost per month of keeping U.S. troops
in Iraq is going to privately owned contractors. Brown and Root,
another insider, `won' a competitive bidding process in 2001
to provide a wide range of "contingency" services
to the military in the event of the deployment of U.S. troops
overseas. The contract, known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation
Program, or LOGCAP, was designed to free uniformed personnel
for combat duties and did not preclude deals with other contractors.
Sticky trap #2: The classic trap for the madman who isn't too
bright, believing one's own lies. The neo-con artists in the
White House played the terror card but unlike other war-mongers
they played the whole deck, and some. Unlike most war-mongers
the Bushettes also conducted the we'll be welcomed as liberators
orchestra. Both these nifty ploys are very effective for getting
war rolling, but steering the war home is going to prove a bit
tougher, if not impossible, because facts are stubborn things
and hang around a lot longer than political climates. The facts
are turning out to be that Iraq had very little to do with the
terror networks, it is Saudi Arabia (a so-called US ally) that
supplies the money and men for that. Also, most people in Iraq
want liberation from poverty and disease and if the US is only
interested in liberating them from their oil, as it has so far
demonstrated, then the US will be seen by most Iraqis not as
liberators but as thieves.
Sticky trap #3: Relying on a never-ending supply of sociopaths
to act as US stooges in the governments of countries designated
as US `zones of interest'. This one shows the level of stupidity
that accompanies blind greed. After all Saddam Hussein was the
US's ruthless dictator, which is called good, until about 1990
when he became his own ruthless dictator, which is then called
evil. It has taken 13 years and an enormous social and economic
cost to get rid of this one stooge who decided he could play
the dictator game better without his former handlers. And now
its simply a matter of finding a `good' man again? Get real.
History, first of all the Roman Empire, tells us that the Empire
that lasts may be lead by people with a lot of faults, but utter
stupidity is not one of them.
Sticky trap #4: The double-edge of technology. Supplying `our
bastards' with rockets, bombs and guns to fight `their bastards'
is heading for trouble, for the simple reason that bastards
aren't reliable, they can suddenly without warning turn their
weapons 180 degrees, back at those who supplied them. Intelligent
people know that, they don't have to read Machiavelli. However
it's all too apparent that the neo-con reading list doesn't
feature The Prince.
Sticky trap #5: Not accepting that life is full of sticky traps,
none more sticky than killing people on the basis it's for their
own good.
Bush and the neo-cons will without doubt be caught by their
own traps, but watching the damage done every day until they
are immobilised by their own lies and misdeeds is excruciating,
however the only person with enough power to make a trap big
enough to catch the US President, is the US President. And that
is his one redeeming feature.
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