The one thing you can say for Bush is that Congress is even more despised than he is. A whopping 18% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 80% do not. (Two percent were apparently unclear on what Congress is.) Dislike of Congress has been dropping in recent weeks, months, years, and decades. When Nixon was deeply despised, Congress was not. But, of course, Congress in those days was a branch of government that asserted independent powers and challenged the abuses of the Executive.

What specifically are people upset about today? In order of priority, according to the Harris poll: the war, immigration, gas and oil prices, the economy, and healthcare.

Kind of makes you wonder whether people would think better of Congress if it were to oppose Bush on some of those issues, doesn't it?

Or, here's another possibility, the Democratic Party could oppose Bush on some of those issues. In fact, Republican Congress Members are beginning to distance themselves from Bush. And the Republican National Committee, revealing its deepest fear, is blasting the media with talking points in opposition to the threat of investigations or impeachment should the Democrats take control after this year's elections.

The Republicans are even claiming, baselessly and ludicrously, that it would help their election prospects if the Democrats threaten to hold Bush and Cheney accountable. Many of the Democrats in Congress are falling for it and promising not to impeach anybody. But look at Bush's disapproval among Democrats (90%) and approval among Republicans (67%). Which side will turn out more voters in an off-year election if the issue is investigation/impeachment of Bush?

The RNC is pounding away with the myth that the Democrats are gung-ho for impeachment, a tactic that may backfire by turning out support for the Democrats. It will come down to a question of whether voters believe the RNC's story that Democrats really plan to stick up for the public and the Constitution, or Democrats in Congress believe the RNC's claim that impeachment is what Bush really wants and consequently assure voters that he's in no danger of it.

This calls to mind an old story that, in the version I read to my son, bears the title "Brer Bush and the Impeachment Baby."

One day Brer Democrat thought of how Brer Bush had been cutting up his capers and bouncing around until he'd come to believe that he was the boss of the whole gang. Brer Democrat thought of a way to lay some bait for that uppity Brer Bush.

He went to work and got some Impeachment and mixed it with some turpentine. He fixed up a contraption that he called an Impeachment-Baby. When he finished making her, he put a straw hat on her head and sat the little thing in the middle of the road. Brer Democrat, he lay off in the weeds to see what would happen.

Well, he didn't have to wait long either, 'cause by and by Brer Bush came pacing down the road--lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity--just as sassy as a jaybird. Brer Democrat, he lay low. Brer Bush came prancing along until he saw the Impeachment-Baby and then he sat back on his hind legs like he was astonished. The Impeachment-Baby just sat there, she did, and Brer Democrat, he lay low.

"Good morning!" says Brer Bush, says he. "Nice weather we're having this morning," says he, smirking and sticking his ears out.

Impeachment-Baby didn't say a word, and Brer Democrat, he lay low.

"How are you feeling this fine Texas morning?" says Brer Bush, says he.

Brer Democrat, he winked his eye real slow and lay low and the Impeachment-Baby didn't say a thing.

"What is the matter with you then? No speaka Englisha?" says Brer Bush, says he. "Cause I can holler louder," says he.

The Impeachment-Baby stayed still and Brer Democrat, he lay low.

"You're stuck-up, that's what's wrong with you. You think you're too good to talk to me," says Brer Bush, says he. "And I'm going to cure you, that's what I'm going to do," says he.

Brer Democrat started to chuckle in his stomach, he did, but Impeachment-Baby didn't say a word.

"I'm going to teach you how to talk to respectable folks if it's my last act," says Brer Bush, says he. "If you don't take off that hat and say howdy, I'm going to bust you wide open," says he.

Impeachment-Baby stayed still and Brer Democrat, he lay low.

Brer Bush kept on asking her why she wouldn't talk and the Impeachment-Baby kept on saying nothing until Brer Bush finally drew back his fist, he did, and blip -- he hit the Impeachment-Baby on the jaw. But his fist stuck and he couldn't pull it loose. The Impeachment held him. But Impeachment-Baby, she stayed still, and Brer Democrat, he lay low.

"If you don't let me loose, I'm going to hit you again," says Brer Bush, says he, and with that he drew back his other fist and blap--he hit the Impeachment-Baby with the other hand and that one stuck fast too.

Impeachment-Baby she stayed still, and Brer Democrat, he lay low.

"Turn me loose, before I kick the natural stuffing out of you," says Brer Bush, says he, but the Impeachment-Baby just sat there.

She just held on and then Brer Bush jumped her with both his feet. Brer Democrat, he lay low. Then Brer Bush yelled out that if that Impeachment-Baby didn't turn him loose, he was going to butt her crank-sided. Then he butted her and his head got stuck.

Brer Democrat walked out from behind the weeds and strolled over to Brer Bush, looking as innocent as a mockingbird.

"Howdy, Brer Bush," says Brer Democrat, says he. "You look sort of stuck up this morning," says he. And he rolled on the ground and laughed and laughed until he couldn't laugh anymore.

By and by he said, "Well, I expect I got you this time, Brer Bush," says he. "Maybe I don't, but I expect I do. You've been around here sassing after me a mighty long time, but now it's the end.

And then you're always getting into something that's none of your business," says Brer Democrat, says he.

"Who asked you to come and strike up a conversation with this Impeachment-Baby? And who stuck you up the way you are? Nobody in the round world. You just jammed yourself into that Impeachment-Baby without waiting for an invitation," says Brer Democrat, says he. "There you are and there you'll stay until I fix up a brushpile and fire it up, "cause I'm going to barbecue you today, for sure," says Brer Democrat, says he.

Then Brer Bush sstarted talking mighty humble.

"I don't care what you do with me, Brer Democrat, says he, "Just so you don't fling me in that orgy at the Watergate."

Investigate me, Brer Democrat, says he, "But don't fling me in that Watergate orgy."

"It's so much trouble to subpoena witnesses," says Brer Democrat, says he, "that I expect I'd better censure you," says he.

"Censure me just as often as you please, Brer Democrat, says Brer Bush, says he, "but for the Lord's sake, don't fling me in that Watergate orgy," says he.

"I don't have enough votes, " says Brer Democrat, says he, "Now I expect I had better prosecute you in court," says he.

"Charge me with every crime you please, Brer Democrat," says Brer Bush, says he, "But please do not fling me in that Watergate orgy, " says he.

"There's no lawyers near here," says Brer Democrat, says he, "And now I reckon I'd better just impeach you," says he.

"Impeach me Brer Democrat," says he. "Expose all my crimes, remove me from office," says he, "But please, Brer Democrat, don't fling me in that Watergate orgy," says he.

Of course, Brer Democrat wanted to get Brer Bush as bad as he could, so he caught him by the behind legs and slung him right in the middle of the orgy. There was a considerable flutter of dollar bills when Brer Bush struck the pile of fornicating fascists, and Brer Democrat hung around to see what was going to happen.

By and by he heard someone call his name and 'way up on the top floor of the Watergate he saw Brer Bush strutting in a flightsuit and scratching the Impeachment pitch out of his hair. Then Brer Democrat knew he had been tricked.

Brer Bush hollered out, "Born and bred in the orgy. I was born and bred in the orgy!" And with that he skipped out just as lively as a cricket in the embers of a fire.

Zinni, whose call sign in the Marine Corps was "The Godfather," was in Washington touting his new book, "Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose." Zinni, a straight talker who has been often critical of the way the war on terrorism has been fought, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in Washington.

Zinni has long called for a more-comprehensive approach to solving problems in the Middle East that doesn't solely rely on the military. He is regarded as having built close working relationships built on trust with leaders across the region during the time he was Central Command commander.

Zinni said the current focus of U.S. policy - to build up the Iraqi Security Force as a "small version of ourselves" - is a mistaken approach. To bring security and stabilization to Iraq doesn't necessarily mean building a massive army there as much as building specific skills among the Iraqi troops to combat each element of the insurgency. He said the problems in Iraq really stem from about 24,000 Sunni insurgents, former Baathists, foreign fighters and others.

"Each one of those requires a different approach," he said.

Zinni wants to see a group created that could organize all the ideas people have to fix the problems in Iraq and move those ideas forward. First, he said, it's important to figure out "what the hell is going on in Iraq" since there seem to be so many disparate viewpoints. Some reports say things are going well, some say they're going awfully.

"We've got to get a clear picture done by some assessment group as to what the situation is," he said. "Every report ... paints a different picture," Zinni said.

Wright, who grew up in Bentonville, graduated from the University of Arkansas and joined the Army to get out of Arkansas _ later joining the Foreign Service _ returned to her home state Wednesday to speak at an anti-war gathering sponsored by Veterans for Peace.

Also speaking at the meeting was Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., the "peace mom" who last summer led protests outside President Bush's Texas ranch. Sheehan's son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

Wright was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, when she resigned from the State Department in March 2003.

She said many of her peers in the government thought the war was "the craziest thing" but no one wanted to speak against the administration's decision to start it. Wright said it was a bad idea to start the war without the support of the United Nations.

Sheehan said she's often "preaching to the choir" when she speaks against the war, but she urges everyone in that choir to start singing.

"When we have demonstrations, millions of people should be out on the streets demanding to bring our troops back," she said.

Sheehan, who described her son as a "sweet, gentle young man," said her short-term goal is to get the government to pull the troops out of Iraq.

She said she started speaking out to put a human face on the war, a war she said was unnecessarily started to provide profits for corporate colonialism. But the number of opponents to the war is growing, Sheehan said, and "I think we are prevailing and (American troops will) be home soon."

Outside the municipal auditorium where the event was held, Julie Smithwick, 43, of Green Forest held a sign saying "Cindy ... you do not speak for me. I support our troops."

Smithwick, who said her son is in the Marines and will be heading to Iraq in the fall, said she does not like hearing Sheehan say she is speaking out for the American people. Smithwick said she can speak for herself.

"I can't see any serviceman who wants the war, but it's their job," she said. "Sometimes we have to get dirty."

The reserve has used the unpublicized policy, first adopted in 2004 and strengthened in a May 2005 memo, to reject the resignations of at least 400 reserve officers, the report said.

The memo surfaced during litigation over the policy. At least 10 reserve officers have sued the Army, saying they should be allowed to get out because they have finished their mandatory eight years of service.

The May 2005 memo states that to be allowed to resign, a reserve officer must first either serve a term supporting militaryoperations in Iraq, in Afghanistan or for homeland defense; be assigned to a job specialty that has at least 80 percent of its personnel; or suffer a recent family death or financial trouble that would lead to serious, permanent hardship unless the resignation is granted.

At the heart of the controversy is whether a law stating that commissioned reserve officers are appointed "for an indefinite term and are held during the pleasure of the president" gives the government the power to force them to serve permanently, accordingto the report.

Blocking reserve officers' resignations is one of several stepsthe Army has undertaken in recent years to keep soldiers beyond their original terms of service, as today's wars place unprecedented demands on the all-volunteer force.

Under another practice, known as "stop-loss," thousands of active-duty Army and reserve soldiers have been temporarily prevented from leaving the military, either because their skills were needed or because their units were going overseas.

In addition, Army regulations have included broad language for several decades that could be used to restrict a reserve officer'sability to leave the service, including a 1987 rule that resignations may be accepted except during a national emergency proclaimed by the president or "other conditions which may necessitate such action," the report said

It all started with the Office Of Special Plans ~ set up by the Pentagon to feed tainted intelligence to Dick Cheney ~ who in turn directed Bush on what to say on the run up to the war with Iraq.

Now it has become a government within itself and Henry Adams, United for Peace for Pierce County, blows the whistle and names the principle players.

Allen L Roland

THE PENTAGON AS SECRET GOVERNMENT

By Henry Adams

United for Peace of Pierce County

May 10, 2006

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4453/

A front-page piece in today's *New York Times* calls attention to the important role of Stephen A. Cambone as "one of the nation's most powerful intelligence officials."[2]

He is, after all, "one of [U.S. Secretary of State Donald] Rumsfeld's most trusted aides." But Eric Schmitt of the *Times* is oblivious to what is most important about Cambone, which is his role in Donald Rumsfeld's all but completed redesign of the Pentagon as an independent branch of government -- or rather, a government within the government, independent of oversight.

In other words, when the *Times* calls Cambone "the Pentagon's intelligence czar," it's more than just a metaphor.

The military's intelligence grab has been underway for years. Consider the case of the Pentagon's "Strategic Support Branch."

In January 2005, ace *Washington Post* reporter Barton Gellman ("Secret Unit Expands under Rumsfeld's Domain," [http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2135/]) wrote: "

[T]he Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad. . . . The new unit . . . the Strategic Support Branch . . . has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. . . [T]he creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld's asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before." Gellman reported that the unit had been created "without explicit congressional authority or appropriation."

Gellman reported: "Under Title 10, for example, the Defense Department must report to Congress all 'deployment orders,' or formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to position U.S. forces for combat.

But guidelines issued this month by Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone state that special operations forces may 'conduct clandestine HUMINT operations . . . before publication' of a deployment order, rendering notification unnecessary.

Pentagon lawyers also define the 'war on terror' as ongoing, indefinite and global in scope. That analysis effectively discards the limitation of the defense secretary's war powers to times and places of imminent combat."

Plans to make the Pentagon effectively independent of civilian authority date from early on in the first Bush administration. They were formally described as "Project Icon" on April 25, 2002. Stephen Cambone's role in designing these changes is well-known.

What all this means is that the Department of Defense is developing an operational capacity that is independent of all civilian oversight, both in the area of special operations and in the area of intelligence.

On Jun. 2, 2005, Steven Aftergood (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2894/) called attention to a number of bizarre documents issued by Cambone, one of Donald Rumsfeld's neoconservative protégés, which purported to codify the Pentagon's expansion into the arena of counterintelligence.

Cambone is a key player in this subversion of traditional principles of American government.

In December 2003, Seymour Hersh ("Moving Targets," [http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/031215fa_fact] *New Yorker*, Dec. 15, 2003) called Cambone "[t]he rising star in Rumsfeld's Pentagon."

Gen. Hayden's appointment to the CIA has provoked so much concern in Congress because the final remnants of oversight of the military-industrial complex are being lost by the democratic institutions of U.S. society.

In February 2005, Barton Gellman reported ("Controversial Pentagon Espionage Unit Loses Its Leader," [http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2255/] *Washington Post* [Feb. 13, 2005]) that Cambone had participated in closed briefings alongside senior defense officials where "[i]n sometimes heated exchanges . . . members of both parties complained to Cambone about learning from a newspaper account that the Pentagon created a new espionage team more than two years ago, using funds 'reprogrammed' from congressional appropriations.

Members of Congress also asked about Pentagon legal theories under which defense personnel could conduct 'routine' and 'traditional' operations without notifying Congress."

At that time, Republicans purported to be reassured by Cambone's responses. But the recent flak that the administration is receiving over the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden is a revival of these long-standing concerns.

The real issue is not military control of intelligence, but the development of the Pentagon as an independent branch of government, free of all oversight from other branches -- even the executive branch.

As Erich Schmitt's article shows, September 11 is the all-purpose legitimating principle of these fundamental changes. In fact, however, they are driven by the neoconservatives' militaristic ideology. September 11 is just an excuse.

Stephen Cambone has had little knowledge of on-the-ground military realities in his career. Like Paul D. Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith, Cambone is an armchair warrior with a Ph.D. and has never served in a combat environment.

(The same holds true for many of the deputies chosen by Donald H. Rumsfeld to carry out this project, like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith -- and, indeed, for Rumsfeld himself, as Robin Wright pointed out in the *Washington Post* (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/1119/) on Aug. 3, 2004.)

As Hitler's popularity and power grew, fueled largely by his early successes in restoring the post WWI economy, he carefully fanned the resentment of the people over their post World War I humiliations and economic plight.

The Jews presented a convenient scapegoat, for all German miseries past and present. Hitler's impassioned diatribes fed not only the anger of the masses, but also their nationalistic ambitions.

He embarked on a messianic mission to restore Germany's greatness and expand her influence -- an influence he believed would ultimately benefit all who experienced it. He felt that "No one in German history was equipped as he to bring the Germans to the position of supremacy which all German statesmen have felt they deserved but were unable to achieve." (L. p.33.) His nearly godlike status due to what some considered his nearly miraculous successes in restoring the German economy convinced him he could do anything and the people would be behind him.

Because they are kept in ignorance of America's true history, or conveniently forget that we wiped out millions of our own indigenous people, built an economy through the labor of forcibly imported black human beings whom we bought and sold, as well as the indentured servitude - also often virtual slavery - of countless others, not to mention the millions of people we have killed through the bombings of non-combatant countries since WWII, most Americans -- largely because we rescued the world from Hitler because he engaged in a war of aggression choose to see the United States as an almost totally benevolent entity, and especially in a time of war, that type of "benevolent intent" is also attributed to our leader.

America was never as altruistically benevolent as many Americans would like to believe, but it is only under Bush that we are becoming a nation more hated than loved by the people of the rest of the world.

Bush frequently confided to friends that he believed God wanted him to become president. He was so convinced of this that when he did not win the 2000 election honestly, it did not cause him to lose any sleep that with the help of Daddy's friends, he managed to steal it. We know that at least one of Bush's generals, Jerry Boykin, believes that because Bush was not elected president, but became president anyway, that proves God meant for him to be president.

"Even his [Hitler's] refusal to permit ordinary scruples to get in his way is cited as a sign of his greatness." (L. p. 58.) "Hitler's ability to repudiate his own conscience in arriving at political decisions has eliminated the force that usually checks and complicates the forward going thoughts and resolutions of most socially responsible statesmen. He has, therefore, been able to take that course of action that appeals to him as most effective without pulling his punches." (L. p.74.)

I defy any reasonable person to assert that Bush would have become president had his brother not been governor of Florida at the time of the 2000 election. But insecure people like the fact that Bush does not waffle - something most thinking people like Kerry, when considering complex issues, do.

Again I quote former Republican Judge and Senator from Kentucky, Marlow Cook," who repudiated Bush's morals in an article for the Courier-Journal before the 2004 election:

"In 2000, to defeat Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. - a man who was shot down in Vietnam and imprisoned for over five years ... They started the rumor that he was gay, saying he had spent too much time in the Hanoi Hilton. They said he was crazy. They said his wife was on drugs. Then, to top it off, they spread pictures of his adopted daughter, who was born in Bangladesh and thus dark skinned, to the sons and daughters of the Confederacy in rural South Carolina.

To show he was not just picking on Republicans, he went after Sen. Max Cleland from Georgia, a Democrat seeking re-election. Bush henchmen said he wasn't patriotic because Cleland did not agree 100 percent on how to handle homeland security. They published his picture along with Cuba's Castro, questioning Cleland's patriotism and commitment to America's security. Never mind that his Republican challenger was a Vietnam deferment case and Cleland, who had served in Vietnam, came home in a wheel chair having lost three limbs fighting for his country. Anyone who wants to win an election and control of the legislative body that badly has no moral character at all.

We know his father got him in the Texas Air National Guard so he would not have to go to Vietnam. The religious right can have him with those moral standards. We also have Vice President Dick Cheney, who deferred his way out of Vietnam because, as he says, he "had more important things to do..."

"I hope you all have noticed the Bush administration's style in the campaign so far. All negative, trashing Sen. John Kerry, Sen. John Edwards and Democrats in general. Not once have they said what they have done right, what they have done wrong or what they have not done at all..."

"I fear a secret government. I abhor a government that refuses to supply the Congress with requested information. I am against a government that refuses to tell the country with whom the leaders of our country sat down and determined our energy policy, and to prove how much they want to keep that secret, they took it all the way to the Supreme Court..."

And from Dan Kennedy's blog in the Boston Phoenix link

I couldn't help but be struck by how pallid Jacoby's examples [of liberal hate speech] were compared to, say, George W. Bush's attaboy to the guy at one of his campaign rallies who accused John Kerry of faking his war wounds, or Dick Cheney's insinuation that a vote for Kerry was a vote for Osama bin Laden.

Hitler fell in love with his own power. His popularity, his belief in a divine mission, and his ever increasing power provided him with the opportunity to expand the scope of his vision through force - the power he believed in -- to punish the "evil-doers," in his case, the Jews, and to spread his vision of a new social order throughout Europe, and he invoked the idea of a militant, vengeful God - A God preoccupied with "justice Hitler style" against the people he branded the enemy, to do it. Hitler's Jesus was not the Jesus of the Beatitudes. Nor is G.W.'s.

Hitler said, "My belief as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter...who, God's truth was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love, as a Christian and a man, I read through the passage which tells me how the Lord rose at last in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders." (H. p. 39.)

Hitler believed in using people's fears to manipulate them to feel the hatred that would allow them to kill. He believed that above all else, it was the people's terror of death which could be used to motivate them.

All the manipulated intelligence and all the lies and exaggerations members of the Bush administration told in the run-up to war - all the carefully and deliberately crafted words and the images those words invoked to guarantee the people stayed afraid were chosen to do just that. Members of the Bush administration used the words "terrorists," "Hussein," "Iraq" and "9/11" in close conjunction with each other in order to magnify those fears, thus making the people more susceptible to supporting a war out of fear against a country and a man whom common sense should have told them gave them little reason for fear. The administration was so successful at doing this, and the media did such a miserable job of purveying the facts, that to this day a majority of Bush supporters believe Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or significant ties to Al Qaeda, even though Bush himself, belatedly, confessed there was no proof such ties existed. However, the name of Bin Laden is rarely mentioned. To the masses Bin Laden has been successfully morphed into Saddam Hussein.

From everything I have read about Saddam Hussein, he is a lot of things, but he is not stupid. He knew if terrorist acts could be traced back to him we would hit him with everything we had. He had, for heaven's sake, already had a taste of what that might entail in Gulf War I! WE are the country with almost as many weapons of mass destruction as all other nations combined! Who should be afraid of whom?

What his domestic successes did for Hitler, 9/11 did for Bush. The people rallied around him and he became the symbol of this nation. His vengeance and promise to seek "justice" became synonymous in the peoples' minds with "God's vengeance" and "God's justice." His promises of justice and revenge after 9/11 garnered him the popularity he needed to embark on his obsession - war with Iraq. Never mind that we now know that not only was he not a hero regarding the events of 9/11, he was shamefully negligent in doing nothing to prevent the attacks in the face of numerous warnings.

Be that as it may, his threats and blustering, and promise to exact "justice" from those responsible made him so popular that he had reason to believe the people could be made to suspend their own wishes and adopt his. And, we know it had been the wish of the neocons to control the Mideast and its oil since the first President Bush's time. As happened with Hitler, Bush's mission became militant.

Hitler had an extraordinarily messed up childhood. He had a powerful and abusive father and identified more with his indulgent mother. He was absolutely devastated when she died.

"We can now understand why Hitler fell on his knees and thanked God when the last war [WWI] broke out. To him it did not mean simply a war, as such, but an opportunity of fighting for his symbolic mother, of proving his manhood and of being accepted by her." (L. 174.)

Psychologists have opined that because of Bush's childhood - growing up in the shadow of a powerful and largely absent father, and also powerful grandfathers, as well as being plagued by learning disabilities, Bush suffered from an inferiority complex. His overwhelming desire and need has been to "prove" himself -- to succeed where his father had failed - to be a greater "warrior" than his father. Perhaps the ridiculous flight suit stunt on the Abraham Lincoln, aside from being a photo op, was a way of trying to experience the glory vicariously that he might have earned honestly had he actually served as a fighter pilot in Vietnam. In any case, 9/11 gave him his chance to be a leader during a time of attack. The belligerence and bullying which have been a part of his makeup since childhood were custom made for the blustering and threatening calls for "justice" (vengeance) he spouted standing and speaking at "ground zero."

Again, the media has done us a disservice by not even featuring discussions of Bush's psychological makeup. Do we really want madmen running our country? Unfortunately, some of us do.

It is a fact that especially during a time of crisis "the overwhelming majority of the people want to be led and are ready and willing to submit," (L. p. 73.) Again from Mein Kampf, "The psyche of the broad masses does not respond to anything weak or half way. Like a woman, whose spiritual sensitiveness is determined less by abstract reason than by an indefinable emotional longing for fulfilling power and who, for that reason, prefers to submit to the strong rather than the weakling-the mass, too, prefers the ruler to the pleader." (H. p 52.)

Hitler had a "keen appreciation of the value of slogans, catchwords, dramatic phrases, and happy epigrams in penetrating the deeper levels of the psyche." (L. p. 72.)

Think of the slogans. "Axis of Evil," "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists," "evil doers," and the constantly repeated references to terrorists, terrorism, liberty, freedom, justice, not to mention direct and indirect references to God.

To me, it defies belief that anyone still believes anything anyone in the Bush administration says, they have lied about so many things. As Stan Goff says "How can you tell this administration is lying? Their lips are moving." But, Bush says "God bless America" and again spouts his love of God, and people believe him. Because they want to.

He [Hitler] "appeared to be so sincere in what he said that the majority the listeners were ready to believe almost anything good about him because they wanted to believe it." (L. p. 54.)

A couple of thousand years ago Aristotle said "A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side:"

Hitler's threats, bluster, hate, and promises of vengeance were a vicarious outlet for the anger of the German people over the humiliation they had suffered in their WWI defeat, and the poverty and deprivation many had experienced following that war. His promises of a new order in which Germany was "on top" gave them both hope and pride.

"Hitler is a man without compromise. Above all he knows no compromise with himself. He has one single thought that guides him: to resurrect Germany...He is the embodiment of the National will." (L. p. 59.)

9/11 made Americans realize America is not invincible. That we, too, can suffer catastrophe. Bush's promise to extract justice gave them the desperately needed conviction that America's power would make them "safe" and America would be "in control" again. Bush might be wrong, but he is "resolute." Not a namby-pamby who thinks too much. He is a man who stays on course. Never mind that, as General Zinni said, that course is taking us right over a cliff. And, never mind that President Eisenhower, who knew a bit about war said:

"There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone."

To be continued...

The Marines were traveling in a U.S. M1A1 Main Battle Tank when the accident occurred Thursday near Karma in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, according to the military.

The four were assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5, the military said.

The U.S. military death toll in the Iraq war stands at 2,434.

On Thursday, roadside bombs killed three U.S. soldiers in separate incidents southwest of Baghdad, the military said.

Two soldiers died when a bomb hit their vehicle while they were on patrol, the military said. Another soldier also was killed while on patrol.

In addition, a U.S. soldier died Tuesday from noncombat-related wounds near the northern city of Mosul, the military said. An investigation into the cause of the soldier's death is under way.

U.S.: Civilian attacks rising

Al Qaeda in Iraq is increasingly attacking civilians, a U.S. military spokesman said Thursday, blaming terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for inciting violence between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said that attacks against civilians in the past 2 1/2 months have increased 80 percent since November.

"This is what [al-Zarqawi is] telling his people that we have to do -- 'We have to drive a wedge between the Shia population and the Sunni population inside of Baghdad.' "

The general said the group is targeting Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the Iraqi population but only came to power after Saddam Hussein's ouster. Sunnis controlled the country under Hussein's reign.

The Baghdad morgue reported that 1,091 people were killed in the city's daily violence in April, the Iraqi president's office said this week.

The Jordanian-born Al-Zarqawi is trying to "move the Shias from mixed neighborhoods" and incite sectarian killings, Lynch said.

The U.S. military based its assessment on documents found in an April 16 raid in Yusufiya, south of Baghdad.

The troops also discovered the video of al-Zarqawi that the U.S. military released last week.

Insurgents pose as Iraqi troops

American and Iraqi soldiers battled dozens of insurgents dressed in Iraqi army uniforms Thursday near Baquba, north of Baghdad, a U.S. military source said.

The military received a tip about the insurgents' presence in Arab Jubar, a village 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Baquba. Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, has been a flash point for insurgent activity.

A man who identified himself as a village leader reported seeing Iraqi troops conducting a raid and detaining residents, the military said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces went to investigate, and they found insurgents wearing Iraqi army uniforms and riding in trucks and sport utility vehicles painted in camouflage to look like Iraqi military vehicles, according to the military.

Some insurgents escaped in a small truck, and others were killed or captured. There were conflicting reports as to how many insurgents died. It also was unclear how many were detained.

Posing as Iraqi security forces is a tactic commonly used by insurgents, who sometimes establish fake checkpoints to ambush their targets.

Other developments

- An Iraqi soldier was shot dead Friday when gunmen fired at a convoy in western Baghdad.

- The withdrawal of a small Shiite political party from government-formation talks may clear the way for the selection of the key post of Iraqi oil minister. The Fadhila Party -- a small but influential group in the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance -- said Friday it was withdrawing from talks because of U.S. involvement. The party had been politicking for its candidate against Hussain al-Shahristani, whom larger groups in the Shiite bloc favor. Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki is working to meet a May 22 deadline to present a government to parliament, which must approve the list.

- Five garbage collectors were killed and another wounded Thursday when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood, Iraqi emergency police said. Also in Mansour, gunmen killed an attorney with the Karkh Court's civil investigation unit. Siras Mohammed was gunned down as he was driving his car near the courthouse, police said.

Meanwhile, the CIA--whose mission is to sabotage popularly elected democracies and replace them with right-wing torture-dictatorships--has become the liberal branch of government. According to insiders, Porter Goss was fired as the agency's director because he failed to purge its "soft leakers and liberal Democrats." A former senior CIA official with continuing links to the Bush Administration and the agency told the Baltimore Sun upon Goss' appointment in 2004: "The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda." CIA liberals. Right.

Finally and most terrifyingly, George Orwell's "thoughtcrime"--the equating of mental disloyalty with actual sedition--has gone mainstream. Media discussion about the recent trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of possibly maybe thinking about becoming the "20th hijacker" on 9/11--or was it the second 20th hijacker?--spanned a vast spectrum of acceptable political discourse. The "conservatives" demanded that Moussaoui be executed, the "liberals" that he be sentenced to life in prison. Nowhere in the press or on the air could anyone be found who was willing to ask the most obvious question:

Why was the guy on trial at all?

Lest we forget, Moussaoui didn't do anything. He couldn't have. He was in jail on immigration charges; he had already been behind bars for nearly a month on 9/11. The government charged him with six counts--not of committing a crime, but of conspiring to participate in 9/11. Count Four, Conspiracy to Use Weapons of Mass Destruction, relied solely on Moussaoui's alleged membership in Al Qaeda. If Al Qaeda ever tried to acquire WMDs--evidence of this is sketchy to non-existent--it's absurd to imagine that
Osama bin Laden might have involved a demented third-stringer like Moussaoui.

Moussaoui probably didn't know about 9/11, either. (Failing to notify the authorities about the terror plot formed the basis of his prosecution.) Neither Khalid Sheikh Mohammed nor any other Al Qaeda prisoner held in U.S. torture camps had heard of him. Even federal prosecutors admit that Moussaoui fabricated his claim that attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid was supposed to help him hijack a fifth plane and crash it into the White House on 9/11.

But innocence isn't Moussaoui's only defense. He's also insane. Only a loon would refuse to cooperate with his own lawyers, testify against himself and shout "You will never get my blood! God curse you all!," "God curse America and save Osama bin Laden! You'll never get him!" and "I am Al Qaeda! I'm the enemy! This trial is a circus!" while on trial for his life before a jury of 12 Americans. After the jury sentenced him to life, he filed a motion for a new trial--a right he waived when he plead guilty to the original trumped-up charges. The man needs Zoloft, not a prison cell.

Contrary to Bush's promises, it's beginning to look as if none of the criminals behind 9/11 will ever be brought to justice. Fortunately for him the American people seem to be satisfied with Soviet-style show trials of political patsies and scapegoats, of which Moussaoui is merely the most recent in U.S. history.

During World War I, Socialist Party general secretary Charles Schenck was arrested for passing out pamphlets opposing the draft. The Supreme Court affirmed his sentence of 15 years in prison for sedition, although he ended up serving only six months.

And in 2002 21-year-old "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh was jailed for 20 years after lengthy homoerotic torture at the hands of American soldiers. Lindh had joined the Taliban many months before 9/11, while the Bush Administration was financing the fanatical Afghan regime and conducting negotiations for an oil and gas pipeline with its officials, in order to fight the Northern Alliance. There is no evidence that he drew his weapon against U.S. forces.

Lindh and Moussaoui are clearly guilty of dumbassery. But if that's a crime worthy of life in prison, we're going to need to build millions of new cells.

Too many Americans seem to have been taken in by the present Administration's rhetorical strategy of blurring the general with the specific. "My brother had his throat slit with the very kind of knives that Moussaoui secreted on his person," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of the flight that crashed into the
Pentagon. "It is ridiculous to say that because he was sitting in jail that he was somehow not responsible."

How is it "ridiculous" to say that a man who couldn't commit a crime didn't do it? Shall we imprison everyone who owns the same type of knife? Whatever happened to common sense?

The trial and sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui has been an embarrassment to the United States, unmasking both our disrespect for the rule of law and glaring disregard for the purpose of jurisprudence: the search for the truth. We have exposed our willingness to scapegoat anyone with a skullcap and a beard for crimes committed by men our government is too stupid, inept or corrupt to capture.

"America, you lost!" Moussaoui yelled when the verdict came down. The man is a lunatic, but he's not as far gone as our judges and juries.

(Ted Rall is the editor of "Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists," a new anthology of webcartoons.)

"Days after 9/11, a senior Pentagon official lamented the lack of good targets in Afghanistan and proposed instead U.S. military attacks in South America or Southeast Asia as 'a surprise to the terrorists,’ according to a footnote in the recent 9/11 Commission Report. The unsigned top-secret memo, which the panel's report said appears to have been written by Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith, is one of several Pentagon documents uncovered by the commission which advance unorthodox ideas for the war on terror. The memo suggested 'hitting targets outside the Middle East in the initial offensive’ or a 'non-Al Qaeda target like Iraq,’ the panel's report states. U.S. attacks in Latin America and Southeast Asia were portrayed as a way to catch the terrorists off guard when they were expecting an assault on Afghanistan."

The content for the memo came from usual suspects Michael Maloof and David Wurmser:

"They argued that an attack on terrorists in South America – for example, a remote region on the border of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil where intelligence reports said Iranian-backed Hizbullah had a presence – would have ripple effects on other terrorist operations."

The report goes on to note that Wolfowitz wrote a September 17, 2001 memo advocating an attack on Iraq, based on the theories of nutjob Laurie Mylroie.

Conspiracy theorists have noted that the events of September 11 look suspiciously like the desired event in the PNAC document "Rebuilding America’s Defenses":

"...the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

The Feith/Maloof/Wurmser/Wolfowitz (quite a group right there, all dual American/Israeli citizens, but don’t forget, there is no Lobby, and it has no power!) cynicism is so extreme that they are ready to use September 11 as their Pearl Harbor for attacks wherever and whenever it is most convenient (note that even early on the liars didn’t believe their own lies, describing Iraq as a "non-Al Qaeda target"). It didn’t matter to them whether there was even the slightest reason to believe that the area under attack had anything to do with the attacks on the United States. Afghanistan’s lack of good targets reminds me of the joke of the drunk searching for his lost wallet under the street lamp, not because he lost it there, but because the light was better.

And, when he was president he put forward "the Carter Doctrine" in a State of the Union Address in 1980 that acknowledged "the overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East" and promised military force would be used to ensure access to Middle East oil: "Any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America and . . . will be repelled by any means necessary including the use of force."

But, according to a book by Antonia Juhasz, "The Bush Agenda," it was the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations that most aggressively pursued the Iraq oil economy. Her excellent book tells a story that explains the reasons for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It shows how the Reagan and Bush I administrations began by building a friendly trade relationship that provided money, arms, intelligence, and political protection to Saddam Hussein--despite his brutal record as a despotic dictator. And, how the Clinton years led to 'regime change' in Iraq becoming the policy of the United States and naturally following that was the Bush II's military invasion of the country.

She highlights the web of corporate interests from the oil, oil engineering and military sectors of the U.S. economy that have combined with government to the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. Many of the corporate players--Chevron, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin and Halliburton--have corporate leaders who went into and out of government over the years, influencing the direction of U.S. policy and then ensuring that their corporations profited mightily from the policies they put in place. Juhasz points to Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, L. Paul Bremer, Scooter Libby, Robert Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad and George Shultz, as key players in the long term quest to takeover of Iraq's economy.

The Root of the Problem: Peak Oil in the U.S. and Corporate Globalization of Trade

The story of the invasion of Iraq and theft of the Iraqi economy is part of a larger story of multi-national corporations and corporate globalization affecting much of the world. Under the guise of "free trade" economic policies that make multinational corporations more powerful than governments. Laws favoring corporations are put in place: less regulation, less commitment to specific locations, and restrictions on government preventing the shift of economic benefit away from small, local business, workers, consumers and the environment. Globalization of trade claims to benefit by trickling down the profit, but in reality it continues to funnel wealth to the top--making the rich richer, the poor poorer and the middle class class smaller.

In 1970, U.S. domestic oil production hit its peak. The United States began to rely on foreign sources of oil, and went deeper into an oil addiction that continues to this day. It was also the decade where Middle East oil producers began to flex their muscles. OPEC used oil as a weapon in response to the 1973 Arab-Israel War, imposing an embargo on the United States. The embargo ended in March 1974, but the threat was heard.

President Carter fought back, in 1977 his Defense Secretary, Harold Brown, described the insecurity around oil as the most "serious threat to the long-term security of the United States." In 1978 the second oil shock hit with the Iranian oil embargo, reducing supplies by 5 percent, increasing oil prices by 150 percent causing inflation and interest rates to skyrocket in the U.S. and the debt load of developing countries to rapidly rise. Carter threatened military force to protect access to oil and turned to the World Bank to find more oil--by 1981 the World Bank had 28 oil projects underway.

President Reagan took the World Bank to another level--forcing countries to change their laws so that U.S. corporations would have direct access and control of oil. Reagan increased World Bank oil projects from 1982 to 1984 to more than 55. Reagan also aggressively put forward the trickle down theory--at home and abroad--making the wealthy wealthier would, in theory, trickle down resources to all. But the facts were the opposite. Juhasz points out that in the thirteen years before Reagan the income divide was shrinking--from 1967 to 1980 the poorest in the U.S. increased their share of total income by 6.5 percent. Reagan's aggressive redistribution of wealth to the wealthiest reversed that trend and from 1980 to 1990 the Census reports that the poorest Americans lost more than 10 percent of the income pie, while the wealthiest gained almost 20 percent.

Reagan and Bush I also dramatically increased trade with Iraq. They knew of Saddam's human rights atrocities, and that Iraq was on the U.S. terrorism list but they supplied money, arms, and commercial products to Iraq. They even allowed U.S. corporations to provide the ingredients for weapons of mass destruction. See the Arming of Iraq, .

Reagan removed Iraq from the list of terrorist nations in March 1982 to open up more trade. There was virtually no trade with Iraq in 1981 but by 1989 annual trade was up to $3.6 billion and had been expected to double in 1990 before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. When Saddam refused U.S. efforts to build an oil pipeline, the strategy changed to the removal of Saddam from office. The first effort the Gulf War and the aftermath failed to achieve that goal.

The Blueprint for the Economic Takeover of the Middle East

The initial blueprint for the takeover of Iraq came in 1992 in the final year of the Bush I administration. The 1992 "Defense Planning Guidance" (DPG) describes America's overall military strategy and represents guidance from the president and secretary of defense. The 1992 DPG was written by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalamy Khalizad, Scooter Libby, Eric Edelman and Colin Powell--six men who served Bush I and II, most worked in the Reagan administration as well.

The DPG was written after the success of the 1991 Gulf War, and the failure to remove Saddam Hussein from power--two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the emergence of the U.S. as a sole superpower. The document, built on the Carter Doctrine and remained in effect through the Clinton years, states the goal clearly--the objective of the United States in the Middle East is "to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." The document describes an aggressive, unilateral, preemptive military agenda--that includes ad hoc coalitions of countries--rather than working through organizations like the U.N.

Many in this same group reunited in 1997 to establish the Project for the New American Century. PNAC restated support for the DNG and sought U.S. military dominance in the world. They recognize the importance of economic dominance as a compliment to unrivaled military power. They proposed an annual increase in military spending of $15 to $20 billion. Being able to act preemptively in the Middle East gets special attention noting that "the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security." They describe Saddam Hussein as providing an "immediate justification" for a "substantial American force" in the Middle East. In January 1998 PNAC wrote President Clinton urging the removal of Saddam Hussein from power noting that Hussein was a threat to "a significant portion of the world's supply of oil."

Another key group was the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. The group was founded in 2002 by Robert Jackson, a Lockheed Martin executive who wrote the Republican Party foreign policy platform in 2000. He formed the Committee while at Lockheed and advocated aggressively for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Chairman of the Committee was former Secretary of State and Bechtel executive, George Shultz. Shultz wrote a column in The Washington Post in 2002 claiming the US must "ACT NOW. The danger is immediate. Saddam must be removed." The article argued heavily for an immediate attack because of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's ties to terrorism saying: "If there is a rattlesnake in the yard, you don't wait for it to strike before you take action in self-defense." Shultz fanned the flames of fear saying the risk is "tens or hundreds of thousands killed by chemical, biological or nuclear attack." After the occupation Lockheed Martin received more than an $11 billion increase in sales and contracts including $5.6 million for work with the Air Force in Iraq. Bechtel received nearly $3 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts.

The pro-military dominance advocates worked in other spheres as well. Paul Wolfowitz left the Clinton administration and went to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he began to advocate for a second Gulf War--this time including the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Zalmay Khalilzad, the current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, went to the Rand Corporation and founded the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and also served as a paid adviser to Unocal Oil Corporation (purchased by Chevron in 2005) where he openly advocated for a close relationship with the Taliban in order to build a 890 mile natural gas pipeline. In a Washington Post Oped he urged re-engaging the Taliban as "The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. Style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran."

Bush II united military and corporate globalization into what Juhasz calls "one mighty weapon of Empire." She points out that Bush's unilateralism became evident before 9/11 with the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, rejection of the International Criminal Court and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention protocols. Instead of a new DPG, Bush issued a National Security Strategy which makes U.S. status as the only superpower a reason to expand U.S. military spending to dissuade others from challenging U.S. dominance. Bush also put forward that America "will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively."

Embedding U.S. Corporations in the Iraq Economy

After George W. Bush became president, those who had planned and advocated an attack on Iraq to remove Saddam took power. Dick Cheney held meetings under his "Energy Task Force" with corporations including Halliburton, Bechtel and Chevron. A draft of the Task Force's recommendations came out to the media in April 2001. The first recommendation under Strengthening Global Alliances included a graph of Iraq oil output to the United States in 2000 and said a goal was to "make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy." The second goal was for the U.S. to "support initiatives by [Mid East] suppliers to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment." In 1998 Chevron's CEO said: "Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas--reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to." His dream was about to be realized.

The well-known drum beat for war with Iraq began and after the success of the invasion the economic takeover began. The initial U.S. czar of Iraq, Jay Garner headed the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. He advocated for putting Iraqis in charge as soon as possible, with elections held quickly. Garner was fired by Rumsfeld on the night he arrived in Iraq--fired, he believes because of these views. He was replaced by neo-con Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Bremer was in charge from May 6, 2003 to June 28, 2004. He had complete legislative, executive and judicial authority over Iraq. Bremer had four decades of corporate and government experience, working with Kissinger as managing director of Kissinger and Associates, as well as working in government with George Shultz and Donald Rumsfeld.

Prior to the invasion, Bearing Point received a $250 million contract from US AID to develop a blueprint for the remaking of Iraq's economy into a 'free-market' economy friendly to U.S. corporate interests. Bremer's job was to implement the Bearing Point plan. Juhasz points out that while there may have been an inadequate military plan, there was in fact a plan for the takeover and remaking of the economy of Iraq.

Bremer had the power to create laws by issuing "binding instructions or directives." Bremer issued 100 Orders, Juhasz in 2005 interview describes some of the key orders:

"Order No. 39 allows for: (1) privatization of Iraq's 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) "national treatment" - which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and (5) 40-year ownership licenses.

"Thus, it forbids Iraqis from receiving preference in the reconstruction while allowing foreign corporations - Halliburton and Bechtel, for example - to buy up Iraqi businesses, do all of the work and send all of their money home. They cannot be required to hire Iraqis or to reinvest their money in the Iraqi economy. They can take out their investments at any time and in any amount.

"Orders No. 57 and No. 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations.

"Order No. 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq's laws. Even if they, say, kill someone or cause an environmental disaster, the injured party cannot turn to the Iraqi legal system. Rather, the charges must be brought to U.S. courts.

"Order No. 40 allows foreign banks to purchase up to 50% of Iraqi banks.

"Order No. 49 drops the tax rate on corporations from a high of 40% to a flat 15%. The income tax rate is also capped at 15%.

"Order No. 12 (renewed on Feb. 24) suspends "all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq." This led to an immediate and dramatic inflow of cheap foreign consumer products - devastating local producers and sellers who were thoroughly unprepared to meet the challenge of their mammoth global competitors."

Full interview at: http://democracyrising.us/content/view/180/164/.

The result of these orders was to create an economic environment more favorable to U.S. corporations than laws in the United States. As a result Iraq corporations, and Iraqi workers have been excluded from the rebuilding of Iraq. And, the Iraq reconstruction has failed to provide adequate electricity, food, sewage treatment and even gasoline--but U.S. corporations have profited handsomely from this failed reconstruction.

Juhasz describes the impact of U.S. policies on the Iraqi economy:

"The new economic laws have fundamentally transformed Iraq's economy, applying some of the most radical, sought-after corporate globalization policies in the world and overturning existing laws on trade, public services, banking, taxes, agriculture, investment, foreign ownership, media, and oil, among others. The new laws lock in sweeping advantages to U.S. corporations including greater U.S. access to, and corporate control of, Iraq's oil. And the benefits have already begun to flow. Between 2003 and 2004 alone, the value of U.S. imports of Iraqi oil increased by 86 percent and then increased again in the first three quarters of 2005."

To further embed a U.S. corporate economy in Iraq, the Iraq Constitution contained provisions that approve the Bremer Orders. The new Iraqi Constitution specifically repealed the Transitional Administrative Law, but did no such thing for Bremer's Orders and therefore they continue to be the law of the land. Thus, U.S. corporations continue their hold on the reconstruction of Iraq, and U.S. contractors continue to have full immunity from prosecution in Iraq. Beyond that, several articles of the Constitution re-enforce the Bremer Orders, e.g. Article 25 requires "modern economic principles that insure the full investment of its resources, diversification of its sources and the encouragement and development of the private sector; Article 26 "guarantees the encouragement of investment in various sectors," Article 27 allows for the privatization of state property. Juhasz points out that modern economic principles means corporate globalization and the market principles of the Bremer Orders, and private investment means foreign investment.

Further, the Iraq Constitution does nothing to end the military occupation. Early drafts of the Constitution included provisions that forbid Iraq "to be used as a base or corridor for foreign troops" and "to have foreign military bases in Iraq." These provisions were deleted in the final draft.

The Future: Oil Takeover, US Economic Dominance of the Middle East and the Battle Lines of World War III

The next stage for Iraq is a national oil law that will allow for oil companies to sign contracts with Iraq that gives them access and control over Iraqi oil. Juhasz points out that U.S. oil companies were brought into to advise the Bush administration on Iraq oil policy six months before the invasion. Further, the State Department's "Future of Iraq Project's Oil and Energy Group," which included Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulou,, a U.S. educated oil industry who served as Iraqi Minister of Oil from September 2003 and again beginning in May 2005, agreed that Iraq "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war."

The method being used for U.S. control of Iraq's oil is Production Sharing Agreements. PSA's favor private companies at the expense of exporting governments as the entire exploration, drilling and infrastructure-building process are turned over to private companies in contracts that last twenty-five to forty years. These contracts lock in the laws at the time the contract is signed. Thus contracts signed now would have the Bremer Orders as their law no matter what a future Iraqi government did.

Interim Prime Minister Allawi submitted guidelines for Iraq's new petroleum law in September 2004. The guidelines put "an end to the centrally planned and state-dominated Iraq economy" and urged the "Iraqi government to disengage from running the oil sector." Further, he recommended privatization stating the industry "should be exclusively based in the private sector, that domestic wholesale and retail marketing of petroleum products should be gradually transferred to the private sector, and that major refinery expansions or grassroots refineries should be built by the local and foreign private sectors." Finally, Allawi called for all undeveloped oil and gas fields to be turned over to private international oil companies. This, at a time when only seventeen of Iraq's eighty known oil fields have been developed. Article 109 of the Iraq Constitution re-enforces this goal stating that the federal government only administers existing oil and gas fields. The plans for a new Iraq petroleum law were made public at a press conference in Washington, DC by Adel Abdul Mahdi, formerly the Finance Minister, and now a Deputy President of Iraq.

Thus, the goal is about to be realized, control of Iraq's oil and the Iraqi economy. Iraq will be dominated by U.S. corporations, supported by the U.S. military. Ending the economic occupation of Iraq may be more difficult than ending the military occupation. The embedding of laws favoring foreign investment through the Bremer Orders and the Iraq Constitution will make it difficult to give Iraq back to the Iraqis.

The U.S. is already moving to gain control of the broader Middle East economy. The U.S. is aggressively pushing the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area. MEFTA is modeled after NAFTA and seeks to economically tie the region--where 54 percent of the world's oil reserves exist--to the United States. MEFTA seeks to cover 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. MEFTA is being developed through bi-lateral negotiations with each country, leading to a region-wide agreement. The U.S. is using the "us against them" strategy--those that oppose us will be viewed as against us. Part of the negotiation includes Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) which provide for duty free import into the United States. Unique in the Middle East is the trilateral nature of these agreements--the U.S. and another country plus Israel. To get duty free entry to U.S. markets a certain percentage of goods must go through Israel allowing Israel to take a piece of the profit.

Iraq is the first economy to fall. The massive U.S. Embassy in Baghdad shows it will be the base of U.S. operations in the region. Juhasz subtitles her book "Invading the World, One Economy at a Time." This is consistent with the views of PNAC, the 1992 DPG, and the 'access of evil' speech. As John Gibson, the founder of Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and a Lockheed Martin executive, said in 2003 "We hope Iraq will be the first domino and that Libya and Iran will follow. We don't like being kept out of markets because it gives our competitors an unfair advantage." PNAC labeled the countries of greatest concern 2000 as Iraq, Iran and North Korea--the future 'axis of evil' of George W. Bush. They placed Iran as the second target saying "Over the long-term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has."

President Bush has declared that we are now in World War III. While this World War is framed in terms of good vs. evil--terrorism against the United States--what it may really be about is U.S.-corporate and military dominance of the world. As Juhasz says--the U.S. taking over one economy at a time.

For more information on "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time," by Antonia Juhasz, Harper Collins, 2006 visit www.TheBushAgenda.net. Juhasz is a leading expert on corporate globalization, formerly the Project Director of the International Forum on Globalization and currently a visiting scholar at the Institute of Policy Studies. This is a must read book for those who want to understand how we have gotten where we are in Iraq, and where the next phase of 'World War III' will take the U.S.

Kevin Zeese is Director of Democracy Rising and a candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland.

Hopes for a breakthrough hinge on the assumption that al-Maliki will be able to act more decisively than his failed predecessor, Ibrahim Jaffari, in crucial areas: putting together a government acceptable to all the parties, restoring a state monopoly on the use of force (i.e., disbanding militias), preventing sectarian killings, restoring basic services, and resolving the explosive question of federalism. Al-Maliki seems more aware than Jaffari of the urgency of these problems. But the painful fact is that they are almost certainly beyond his ability to solve.

Despite the hype that will attend the formation of a new government, whenever it finally comes about, there is little prospect that it will make a decisive difference. Al-Maliki seems doomed to preside over a lot of violence and chaos, and can only hope to make a difference at the margins. And the increasing hostility of the Shiites in the south to the Anglo-American troop presence will put the question of when they are leaving on the new parliament's docket.

In the fractured, mistrustful world of Iraqi politics, it is unclear whether any figure could serve as a uniter. But al-Maliki carries far too much baggage. His years of activism on behalf of a movement for a Shiite, Islamic state -- and his support for policies that explicitly targeted Sunnis -- will leave the secular-leaning Kurds and the fundamentalist Sunni Arabs, who form the other major blocs in parliament, permanently mistrustful of him. Nor does he have the political clout to impose his will. Al-Maliki's United Iraqi Alliance, grouping Shiite religious parties, has only 46 percent of the seats in parliament, and no prospect of gaining a reliable ally on the whole range of issues facing it among other parties. Even if al-Maliki can form a government, it will be weak and vulnerable to a vote of no confidence.

The same schisms and group loyalties that have ripped Iraq apart have plagued the attempt to form a government. Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi complained on Sunday about the vying for cabinet posts among the largely faith-based or ethnic parties, saying that cabinet posts should "go to upstanding persons of experience and competency." Former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi sounded the same theme, warning of the "danger that some parties and blocs are dealing with the ministry portfolios as though they are spoils."

Al-Maliki attempted to quiet some of those fears this week, saying that an agreement had been reached among the parties that the sensitive ministries of Defense and Interior would go to technocrats with no ties to ethnic militias. Al-Maliki admitted, however, that no actual candidate had been agreed upon for either of these key cabinet posts or for oil, trade and transport. Several names are still in contention for each, and some party has strong objections to each of the candidates.

The petroleum portfolio is especially crucial, since the ability to pump oil and receive the proceeds is one key to strengthening the nascent Iraqi government. Petroleum production is lower than it has been for decades: Iraq pumped only 1.1 million barrels a day in January, down from 2.8 million before the 2003 invasion. Foreign oil analysts are on tenterhooks about the outcome of these negotiations. The cabinet negotiation process seems likely to drag on for days or weeks. There is still no new government five months after the Dec. 15 elections.

Al-Maliki had announced his intention to appoint "independents" to Defense and Interior soon after his nomination in April. The appointee, he said, might be a member of parliament elected on one of the major Shiite, Sunni Arab or Kurdish lists, but would have to be unaffiliated with a specific party or militia, and must "not be sectarian in character or stand accused of any sort of involvement in the phenomenon of the use of force."

The new man at the helm charged that his predecessor, Ibrahim Jaafari, suffered from having "a discordant cabinet and from ministers who were sometimes accused of making their ministries not national cabinet posts but ... rather the property of the perspective or the party to which they themselves belonged, or the ethnic or religious group that they represented." He branded such sectional loyalties a dire menace to the unity of the Iraqi state, and a threat to each Iraqi's right to be served by each government department.

Al-Maliki has pledged to do something about the spoils system that has grown up in the ministries, whereby the party leaders who control them hand out cushy bureaucratic jobs to party operatives. He minced no words in a nationally broadcast interview as he began to put his government together: "I say with complete frankness that if I discover that any of the ministers, whoever it might be, has begun to pack his ministry with employees from his party, whatever that party might be, or from his ethnicity or sect or religion, I will not put up with it. I will take the matter to the parliament to have it make the appropriate decision about him."

In short, al-Maliki seems to recognize what the problem is, and is saying all the right things about fixing it. But he will find it much easier to describe the problem than to implement solutions -- not least because of his own political and religious past.

Al-Maliki is from the revolutionary Islamic Dawa Party, founded in the late 1950s to establish an Islamic state in Iraq. His B.A. is from the Usul al-Din College in Baghdad, a seminary founded in 1964 by clerical Dawa leader Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. (He also holds a master's degree in Arabic literature.)

Al-Maliki spent two decades in exile, at first in Iran but then mainly in Baathist Syria. The 1980s were times of severe conflict between the Iraqi Dawa and the United States. Dawa operatives in Lebanon helped to form the radical Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1984. But if Washington seems willing to forgive Maliki for whatever he did in Damascus, Sunni Arab Iraqis may not have such short memories.

Since his return to Iraq in 2003, Al-Maliki has emerged as one of the few publicly identifiable faces of the secretive Dawa Party, serving on its politburo and then as a member of parliament since early 2005. He was deeply involved in the Committee for Debaathification, which took a punitive stance toward Sunni Arabs who had been members of the Baath Party, regardless of whether they could be shown to have been guilty of wrongdoing. Some 100,000 Sunni Iraqis are said to have lost their jobs since the fall of the old regime, and each supported a large number of family and clan members.

Al-Maliki is such a strong Shiite partisan that when he was asked at the time of the January 2005 elections about the strengths of the United Iraqi Alliance, he replied, "One other strong point is the fact that this list has received the endorsement of the religious authority." He was proud of the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to put the party in power, a move deeply criticized by Sunni Arabs and secularists. He helped to craft the constitution that forbade the parliament from contravening Islamic canon law. In fall of 2005, he let it be known that he was far more impatient with the continued American occupation than are the Kurds. "At the end of the remaining period of time, that is, at the end of the constitutional process and elections and the advent of a new government, we will come face to face with the pressing need of telling the occupation and foreign forces that the process is over. We have reached the shore of safety we sought to reach and there must be withdrawal."

Al-Maliki has a lot of fences to mend with politicians of the other ethnic and religious groups, and his Dawa Party does not even see eye to eye on some pivotal issues with Shiite allies such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). But whether the new political class can overcome its grudges is less important than the downward spiral in the security situation and basic living conditions during the five months since the election, as Iraq has remained rudderless.

Observers on the ground note a new ugliness to the attitudes of many Shiite Iraqis to the continued U.S. troop presence in their country. Shiites south of Baghdad for the most part enjoy fair security, most of it apparently supplied by religious militias, and therefore do not feel that they need foreign troops. Anti-Americanism and anti-Western feeling has grown with the revelations of American torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib and U.S. bombardment of Shiite cities such as Kut and Najaf during the uprisings of the Mahdi Army militia in 2004.

On Sunday, a bomb killed 15 and wounded many more in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, the center of Shiite Islam's cult of martyrs. Such atrocities raise for Shiites the question of what the U.S. military is good for, if it cannot forestall them. The previous day, Los Angeles Times correspondent Borzou Daragahi had reported from Karbala the observations of one Jaffar Mohammed Asadi about the mood in the shrine city. He quoted Asadi as saying, "There is an anger ... You can hear it in the slogans at Friday prayers: 'Death to America' ... They're burning American flags. They're saying, 'The Americans won't leave except by the funerals of their sons.' "

These chilling observations appeared in print the very day that a new round of deadly Shiite militia and mob violence broke out in the southern port of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. An unknown guerrilla group shot down a British military helicopter and killing 5 British soldiers on Saturday.

A crowd of hundreds of Shiite youth gathered to celebrate and to chant anti-British slogans. They probably belong to a splinter group of the Sadr movement, led by dissident Sheikh Ahmad al-Fartusi, who is even more militant than Muqtada al-Sadr. They chanted that they were all soldiers of "the Sayyid," probably a reference to Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was killed in 1999, probably by Saddam's secret police. Basra Sadrists tend to reject the leadership of the ayatollah's young son, Muqtada, who is popular in the slums of East Baghdad and southern cities such as Amara.

When British search and rescue teams showed up, the mob attacked them with stones and Molotov cocktails, and a paramilitary got off some mortar rounds. Several British soldiers were wounded, and their vehicles set afire. Either as a result of British fire or because they were caught in the cross-fire with the militia, five Iraqi civilians were left dead and 28 wounded. In the aftermath, a group calling itself the National Front for the Liberation of Iraq, implausibly led by a Sunni named Musa al-Hadithi, distributed pamphlets throughout the city demanding an immediate British departure, and warning of severe consequences otherwise. Although a draconian curfew and the deployment of Basra security forces dampened tensions, resentment of the foreign presence will likely persist.

Actually, the British benefited from the rivalry among Shiite militias, some of which are less militant than others. The security forces have been infiltrated by the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which holds 20 of the 41 seats on the provincial council, and by militiamen loyal to the Fadilah or Virtue Party, which reveres Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr but rejects his son, Muqtada. Fadilah is the most moderate of the Sadr movements, and deeply disapproves of al-Fartusi's group and its violence.

Meanwhile, the daily horror show in Iraq continues. Mostly fundamentalist political parties dither and jockey for position behind their downtown barricades, while armed gangs kill with impunity. On Sunday alone, 51 bodies showed up dead in the streets of the capital. Baghdad police have regularized the custom of the morning "corpse patrol," in the course of which victims of the country's low-intensity sectarian civil war are discovered, hands bound and a bullet behind the ear. The reprisal killings by religious militias have forced some 100,000 Iraqis from their homes since the bombing in late February of the sacred Askariyah Shrine of the Shiites in Samarra, according to Iraqi government estimates.

The lack of security has kept the economy a basket case. A third of Iraqi children are malnourished, according to UNICEF. The guerrillas' successful siege of the capital has reduced electricity availability to only three hours a day in the midst of a scorching summer, causing food to spoil. Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor reported this week that services in the capital are at an all-time low. The ethnic cleansing of mixed Baghdad provinces is proceeding apace, with minority Shiites or Sunnis being forced out.

That the new Iraq's seething religious and ethnic hatreds and the increasing mobilization of neighborhood-based militias can be fought by appointing a technocrat as minister of the interior, or by installing new ministers of trade or transport, beggars belief. The nightmare seems destined to continue.