We're ruled by warmongers (who are losing two wars they started)

With a Little Help from Republicrats
World War W
By MICHAEL CARMICHAEL (from Counterpunch.org)

North Korea's detonation of a nuclear device reveals the latest failure of the foreign policy of the George W. Bush and Richard Cheney administration. When Bush and Cheney took office in January 2001, they inherited mature negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang designed to achieve the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. At that time, Bush and Cheney took the momentously wrong decision to abandon the non-proliferation negotiations with North Korea that had been in place for six years in the vain hope that the regime of Kim Jong-Il would be nice, do the right thing and decide voluntarily not to develop nuclear weapons.

Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld followed this same pattern in developing their foreign policy for the Middle East. They inherited advanced peace negotiations between the Barak government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but the Bush-Cheney White House chose, instead, to abandon the Middle East peace process. The results? 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid and Bali bombings and two wars between Israel, the Palestinians and Hizbullah.

Still unable to bring themselves to exercise diplomacy, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice administration is now preparing to broaden America's military activities in the Middle East in anticipation of a wider, more engulfing and, perhaps, even global war - World War W.

In anticipation of future pre-emptive wars to uphold the Bush Doctrine in military clashes against North Korea and Iran, Donald Rumsfeld recently ordered the re-tooling of a significant proportion of America's arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) so that they could carry "conventional" warheads. Rumsfeld took this inane decision against the shrill warnings of some of America's leading experts on national security who fear the outcome of such a dangerously unsound policy.

Leading American experts based at Stanford and MIT warn that Donald Rumsfeld's program to re-tool America's ICBMs to carry conventional warheads could precipitate a nuclear world war, and the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, agrees with the experts.

In a stark warning aimed directly at Bush's America, Putin stated that the launch of non-nuclear ICBMs could be misinterpreted, and it might lead to a retaliatory response that could trigger a full-scale nuclear war ala the Doomsday Device of Dr. Strangelove. In the twenty-first century, these Strangelovian fears are no longer far-fetched. In 1995, the launch of an unarmed Norwegian space rocket triggered a nuclear alert that appeared at the time to be an American ICBM attack on Moscow. At that time, former Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, activated his nuclear briefcase and took the first steps to retaliate against a broad array of American targets before he discovered the mistake.

Elsewhere, the Bush-Cheney White House and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon have ordered a broadening of US military operations in the Middle East. Led by the Nimitz class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Eisenhower, a strike force bristling with Tomahawk missiles is headed to the Persian Gulf to take up a position to launch an aerial "shock and awe" campaign against Iran. The Prepare To Deploy Orders (PTDO) issued to the USS Eisenhower led Time magazine to call public attention to American moves in apparent preparation for imminent war with Iran. The USS Eisenhower is scheduled to arrive in the Persian Gulf on the 21st of October, just slightly over two weeks before the ominous midterm elections on the 7th of November.

Over the past two years, America and the global community have been bombarded with reports of the White House and Pentagon's detailed military planning to wage war against Iran. With the time clock ticking, and Bush's presidency on the wane, the window of opportunity to launch the next phase of the Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) schemes of global conquest to deliver ongoing US control of world oil reserves is swiftly drawing to its close.

George W. Bush's presidency is deeply unpopular in America, and it is disastrously unpopular throughout the rest of the world. Faced with the probability that Bush will lose power through the midterm elections, the Republicans have been grasping at straws in pursuit of their neoconservative vision of a muscular and aggressive America on a permanent war footing in hot pursuit of the dreams of full-blooded military glory of PNAC. These Republican neoconservatives have a fifth column of support inside the Democratic Party. Headed by Al From, a man who is at once a confirmed neocon and a zealous Zionist, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) supports the policy agenda of PNAC hook, line and sinker.

Worse. At the head of the Democratic Party's campaign to regain a majority in the House of Representatives we find a belligerent bully of a Congressman, Rahm Emanuel. Even though it is the official position of his party to withdraw and disengage from Bush's unpopular war in Iraq, Rahm Emanuel still grants interviews to reassert his support for the war to topple Saddam Hussein even though the war is now recognized as America's gift to those who long for the growth of terrorism in the Middle East. Frequently described as "obnoxious" by his colleagues, Congressman Emanuel rules his official party position as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) with an iron fist.

And, worse. The Democratic Party's campaign to regain a majority in the US Senate is headed by Senator Charles Schumer. While the majority of his party favour a timely withdrawal and disengagement from Iraq, in what should be regarded as a very curious development, Senator Schumer voted against setting a timetable for strategic deployment from Iraq. Additionally, Senator Schumer has created controversy as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). Earlier this year, Senator Schumer endorsed the deeply unpopular Senator Joe Lieberman in his primary campaign against a very popular anti-war Democratic challenger, Ned Lamont. Schumer and Lieberman are both members of the right-leaning group of Democrats who purport to swing a lot of weight on national security affairs in their party caucus and the DLC--as well as being the Bush-Cheney White House's favorite "Democrats."

With the war in Iraq the single most unpopular policy of the entire Bush presidency, it does seem odd that the Democratic Party's dual campaigns to win majorities in both houses of congress are being headed by two pro-war Democrats, both of whom are warmly regarded by the Republican-leaning DLC.

On the global stage, the increasingly ominous scenario unfolding against a backdrop of the US war in Iraq is dark and getting darker. Not only is America moving much more military hardware into the theatre, a constellation of its allies in NATO are moving heavy hardware into the Eastern Mediterranean where they will be in position to cheque any potential retaliation by Syria or Hizbullah against Israel in the wake of a US assault on Iran.

The repercussions of a US attack on Iran could well be dire--especially for Israel and Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There have been reports in the international media of tens of thousands of suicide bombers awaiting the order from Iran to launch themselves against targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, America, the United Kingdom and other allied targets--if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld give the orders to launch "pre-emptive" war against Iran.

Some of the world's leading military experts now believe that a unilateral US strike against Iran could broaden America's wars in the Middle East to engulf the oil-rich regions of Central Asia. Kazakhstan and Russia are now in possession of massive reserves of untapped oil. The enlargement of NATO that began in the 1990s has led to a new system of counter-balancing alliances in Central Asia involving Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgztan in a new organization called the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Recently, CSTO conducted joint military exercises at the same time that Iran staged the largest war games in her history. These collateral military operations between CSTO and Iran were stage-setting defensive manoeuvres in advance of the anticipated American attack against Iran so stridently threatened by the Bush-Cheney White House and their minions led by Condoleezza Rice in Foggy Bottom and Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

Last week, Condoleezza Rice visited the Middle East. In advance of her trip, the reports were to the effect that she would experience an icy reception, but there was vanishingly little coverage of the outcome of her mission in the western media. However, in the Middle East, there was ample coverage. We learn from reports from Cairo that Rice was greeted politely, but when she launched into her usual harangue about American fears of nuclear technology in Iran she met with a wall of cold, hard logic. A stream of Middle Eastern diplomats delivered a calm, cool and lucid concatenation of criticism of provocative US policy in the region. Rice learned, perhaps, for the first time in her life - that American policy for the Middle East should not be predicated on bogus fears about Iran and Iraq but on Israel and its persistent historical denial of human rights to the Palestinians, a travesty of justice that is now entering its seventh decade. From the perspective of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, Rice's latest mission to the Middle East was a total failure. Their warships, missiles and bombers are now in striking position--and they have a very important ace-in-the-hole--a well-financed fifth column of support in Iran.

With a budget estimated in published accounts of circa eighty-five million dollars ($85,000,000) per year, the US State Department funds a covert pro-democracy movement inside Ahmadinejad's Iran. This US-Iran project has been roundly criticized in the US and in the international media for its financial support of the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK)--an independent militia that has been labelled a terrorist organization for the past twelve years because of its overt links to Saddam Hussein. That dubious distinction does not prevent the MEK from finding warm support in the Republican-dominated Congress. While the right-wing extremists, Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) are the most vocal supporters of the MEK, at least four more members of Congress have also voiced their support for the terrorist militia. Astonishingly and shamefully, three of them are Democrats. These Republican-leaning Democrats are: Edolphus Towns (D-NY); Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). In addition to these Republicrats, the rabid Republican right-winger Lincoln Diaz Balart of Florida is known to be a supporter of the pro-Saddam faction in Iran.

An ark of darkness is moving swiftly across American history. Not only has America undertaken to: provoke nuclear war with Russia; wage expansionist wars in the Middle East; precipitate the proliferation of nuclear weapons in North Korea; encourage wars between Israel and its neighbouring territories and conduct its foreign policy through the constant and obsessive resort to belligerent military confrontations instead of diplomacy--the Bush-Cheney White House is also attempting to implement a dynastic succession designed to perpetuate its imperialistic wars for generations to come. The bureaucrat in charge of the vast budget for support of the MEK and other insurgents in Iran is none other than Dick Cheney's eldest daughter, Elizabeth Cheney.

Born in 1966, Elizabeth Cheney is the mother of five children as well as the American bureaucrat responsible for the "democratization" of Iran. As head of the Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG), Elizabeth Cheney controls a strategically important unit of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department.

World War W--a grand military scheme to dominate the world's largest land mass and some of the most oil-rich regions of the planet as we enter decades of waning oil production depends in no small measure on the judgement of the Vice-President's daughter, who has only recently returned to her desk at the State Department after taking maternity leave to give birth to her fifth child. "Richard Cheney" was born unto Elizabeth Cheney on the eleventh day of July, 2006. He is now the youngest grandson of America's Vice President - Richard Cheney. Both his grandfather and his mother are deeply involved in critical military planning and intelligence operations designed to alter the face of the Middle East and to recalibrate the balance of power on the planet for at least one hundred years. Both Cheneys, father and daughter, are integral to the execution of America's plans to wage war on Iran.

Given the chain of bad, bogus and downright ridiculous decisions flowing from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice administration and speaking entirely for myself, I am not confident in their ability to govern America--much less to design, launch and wage World War W.

(Michael Carmichael has been a professional public affairs consultant, author and broadcaster since 1968. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC's Today Programme, Hardtalk, PM, as well as numerous appearances on ITN, NPR and many European broadcasts examining politics and culture. He can be reached through his website: www.planetarymovement.org)