Sometimes elections are about the economy and sometimes they are about wars. This time around it's both in one.
Cheney made a visit to his proxy Maliki and shortly thereafter Maliki took on Sadr in Basra, the small end of the funnel through which oil must pass to be shipped around the world. Oil is Iraq's patrimony, their almost sole source of revenue. Whoever controls Basra controls Iraq's purse strings.
Iraq is considered to be sitting on the third largest oil reserves on the planet, with Iran the second largest. Iran's strongest influence in Iraq is in the Basra area. If Iran controlled Iraq's oil that combination of reserves would be larger than the Saudi reserves, currently considered to be the largest on the planet controlled by the regime of any single country.
The most recent fighting has been between Shia and Shia, not Shia and Sunni. The Sunnis are being armed and paid by Cheney/Bush to cool it in their tribal wars against the Shia whom they persecuted under Saddam for the past few decades. Who knows what they've been promised in exchange?
Both Shia and Sunni are Muslim and Arabs; Iran Shia are Muslim and Persian. It's been said for ages that politics make strange bedfellows. It's also been known that greed makes strange bedfellows. Suppose you were a politician. Suppose you were greedy, "But I repeat myself" said Mark Twain when considering idiots and Congressmen.
It's really not all that difficult to connect the dots, though the resulting path will not neatly describe a straight line, much to Cheney/Bush's consternation. They seem to have overlooked the cultural differences of our Middle Eastern human brothers and sisters. Bush proudly told Joe Biden, "I don't do nuance". Cheney's response to a journalist's observation that the voters have a negative view of the war was, "So?". Good grief, oy vey!!! He's not out of touch, he believes he's untouchable. So far Pelosi and Reid have done nothing to disabuse him of that belief.
Nixon was shamed out of office by being threatened with impeachment for a breaking and entering charge, and B. Clinton was impeached because at the time he was the most recently famous, voluntary head, and thus most vulnerable of the members of the Belt and Zipper Brotherhood who did stuff because the could.
Why are Pelosi and Reid giving Cheney and Bush a stay out of court free card when the consequences of their actions have been so much more disastrous than those of Nixon and Clinton?
I have some thoughts, and I hope you will share yours by leaving a comment. Here are a few of mine.
In Nixon's case the B&E evidence would have been used to convict him of breaking a criminal law.
In B. Clinton's case the evidence was used to accuse him of violating laws of decency.
Even a correspondence course in Cultural Anthropology 101 might have given a larger man pause. But Bush is "that small dim man", and "the current occupant" of the White House, saith Garrison Keillor. Dick Cheney is today's Machiavelli; do what you have to do to get your way, and a one man gang who couldn't or wouldn't shoot straight.
Their actions and pronouncements rise to the level of arrogance and hubris equal to Stalin's retort; "And how many divisions does the Pope have?"And these are the guys who lay claim to the property of family values. Hello out there? What else do you who support them need to get it that these people are snickering you, playing you for suckers, lying to you?
Here's another site which I hope you will visit. It's a column by William Rivers Pitt. It's about lying.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040808J.shtml.
But the Cheney/Bush lies are not under oath. Just spin and propaganda. As such they don't rise to the level of perjury. Not a crime however criminal it seems that they escape impeachment.
One thing is clear. Since 2000, the voters have been split almost equally. My view is pretty much offset by the opposite view. It's difficult for me to square this with the 80 some percent of the public who think the country is headed in the wrong direction, according to polls.
Leanderthal, Lighthouse Keeper
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