Imperialism 101 -  Part 2

Stephen Lendman

Imperialism 101 - The US Addiction to War, Mayhem and
Madness - Part II - by Stephen Lendman

Part I of this article explained that the US was
always a warrior, imperial nation, building it in
steps and addicted to its madness.  First we took it
from its original inhabitants; then we expanded it
beyond our borders by seizing the half of Mexico we
wanted; later we established colonies abroad; and now,
our method of choice is to rule the world through
compliant leaders in client states everywhere serving
our interests.  We began doing it gradually following
WW II when we emerged as the only dominant nation left
standing, unchallengeable as the world’s only
economic, political and military superpower.  Even
before the war ended, we planned to take full
advantage of that indomitable status once it did.  We
pursued it throughout the “cold war” and in the 1990s
when it was over.  Then came 9/11, the gloves came off
in the Bush administration, and top officials in it
ended any pretense of what our real aims are.  The
rest, as they say, is history, and the nations we
target in our quest for world dominance and our own
people at home pay a dreadful price.  Below is a case
study of our imperial madness in Iraq documenting how
painful that price is.

A Case Study In Imperial Mayhem and Madness and Its
Disasterous Consequences - First the Victims

If the US had a slogan or motto on how best to fight
wars it might be “all’s surely fair in war as well as
love.”  The only rules we observe are the ones we make
up as we go along.  With that code of conduct and with
total disregard for the rule of domestic or
international law, designated targets can only expect
their earth scorched followed by a living hell
delivered in the name of democracy and liberation.
Iraq, like Southeast Asia in the sixties and seventies
and Nicaragua and El Salvador in the eighties, is a
classic example with Afghanistan being more of the
same.  The people on our receiving end of our
gunsights know democracy American-style is none at
all.

For anyone paying attention to events unfolding in
Iraq from the few credible sources available (meaning
unembedded journalists, reports from our disillusioned
military and leaks including high level ones), there’s
little doubt the situation on the ground is disastrous
and getting worse - for us as well as the Iraqis.
From these reports on the ground, we continue learning
more of what the Pentagon and administration try to
suppress, always with the full cooperation of the
corporate-run media.  But the truth can’t be hidden,
the lies are unravelling, and the charade of progress
is being seen as a shamless myth.

For 26 million Iraqis, liberation American-style is
none whatever.  For them it’s an endless living hell
nightmare since the US first attacked and invaded in
January, 1991.  At that time we deliberately and
illegally destroyed essential infrastructure like
power generating stations and clean water facilities
vital to the health, welfare and safety of the people.
We also wontonly slaughtered many thousands of
defenseless civilians and Iraqi military who had given
up the fight they wanted no part of in the first
place.  The likely toll was at least 100,000 killed in
just a few weeks of brutal one-sided combat mostly
inflicted from the air against a target country we
knew was defenseless.  Our initial cost was modest for
an operation involving 580,000 military personal - 146
killed (including by friendly fire) and 467 wounded.
A far greater cost to US forces would show up later
that’s discussed below.

What followed Operation Desert Storm was a dozen years
of continued air-assault bombings along with
oppressive and unjustifiable economic sanctions.
Combined they destroyed all the institutions of a
modern civil society which Iraq was prior to 1991.
They left in their wake an epic humanitarian disaster
by every measure imaginable including median Iraqi
income creating mass poverty. Because of the country’s
oil wealth, Iraq was once the most advanced and
developed country in the Middle East with a per capita
income of $2,313 in 1979. By 2003, that income had
declined to $255 per capita and in 2004 it had fallen
further to about $144. It’s easy to understand why
based on a study by the college of economics at
Baghdad University that estimated the unemployment
rate to be about 70%. Even the so-called “oil for
food” program did little to relieve the crisis prior
to the current invasion and war.  It wasn’t intended
to as the US plan was to inflict the greatest possible
hardships on the people hoping it would encourage them
to rise up and topple Saddam.  In fact, it had the
opposite effect despite the severity of the toll.
Instead of blaming Saddam, Iraqis relied on him for
whatever relief they could get. It wasn’t much or
nearly enough because the US allowed him little to
give.

The combination of war and economic sanctions likely
caused the death of at least one million by even
conservative estimates including 500,000 children.
Other estimates put the number as high as 1.5 million
in total by the end of the nineties. When Denis
Halliday resigned in 1998 as UN head of Iraqi
humanitarian relief he said he did so because he “had
been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies
the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that
has effectively killed well over one million
individuals, children and adults.” He went on to say
5,000 Iraqi children were dying needlessly every
month.

Conditions got far worse following the US illegal
aggression beginning in March, 2003.  The daily toll
of death and destruction from the ongoing endless
conflict is unknown precisely, but even honest
conservative estimates are appalling and shocking
despite efforts by the Pentagon to suppress them.  The
British Lancet reported in October, 2004 by their
“conservative assumptions” an Iraqi toll of about
100,000 “excess deaths” post March, 2003.  They then
updated their earlier estimate in February, 2006 to a
likely 300,000 that seven months later is considerably
higher.  Other assessments suggest an even greater
number, up to 500,000 according to one estimate a few
months ago.  Whatever the true number, the US
inflicted disaster on Iraq and its people is one of
epic proportions in all respects.

It’s destroyed a once prosperous nation and left in
its wake today a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland
with few or no essential services like electricity,
clean water, medical care, fuel or most everything
else needed for sustenance and survival.  It shows up
in Baghdad’s morgue that can’t cope with the number of
corpses it gets daily while those still living can’t
get desperately needed care at hospitals unable to
provide it.  It’s also there in the US-run
torture-prisons where anyone can be brutalized in a
kind of a ritual foreplay for no reason at all.
Thing’s aren’t improving. They get steadily worse as
the occupation grinds on and death squads room at will
including the US “Salvador option” ones modeled after
the types used in the Reagan era against the leftist
guerrilla resistance in El Salvador in the 1980s that
murdered many thousands.  This is what life in most of
Iraq is now like, and it clearly warrants the label
genocide.  It also makes all US officials at the
highest levels responsible for it guilty of egregious
war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Will they
ever be held to account for what they’ve done?  Never,
as long as the US occupier lives by the rules of
victor’s justice that insures none at all for the
victims. 

A notable sign of US-style justice happened at the end
of July when the Pentagon awarded the Distinguished
Service Medal (DDSM) to retiring General Geoffrey
Miller who supervised the infamous US torture-prisons
at Guantanamo and later Abu Ghraib.  The DDSM was
established by Richard Nixon’s 1970 Executive Order so
the Secretary of Defense could award it to officers of
the US Armed Forces “whose exceptional performance of
duty and contributions to national security or defense
have been at the highest levels.”  Clearly generals or
other officers in charge of torture now qualify for
the award.

The Toll of Mayhem and Madness On Our Own Military
Forces On the Ground and Reporters

No one should ever believe anything from government
sources, especially our own.  We practically invented
and defined the art of disseminating lies and
practicing deceit.  We’re at it daily, particularly in
how and what we report on the war in Iraq.  The
military holds update briefings at its media nerve
center for the war - CentCom.  It’s a worthless
exercise there and whenever else US officials report
on the war.  Anyone expecting to get a true picture of
conditions on the ground won’t ever because the most
important information known is censored or suppressed.
In times of war, the first casualty is truth, and the
corporate-run media is always willing to oblige to
keep it that way.

The Pentagon is also ready to use its muscle to
censor, shut down, or destroy any news source in the
country that may reveal what it wants suppressed.  It
repeatedly harasses and assaults Al-Jazeera closing it
down and in 2003 attacked its Baghdad offices by air
killing one of its correspondents and injuring
another.  Previously in Afghanistan in November, 2001,
Al-Jazeera’s Kabul offices were destroyed by a US
missile in a deliberate attempt to stop unfavorable
news reports from coming out.  Another time a US tank
with no provocation fired point blank at the Palestine
Hotel in the capitol where most non-embedded
international journalists are based killing reporters
from Reuters and the Spanish network Telecino.  These
are just a few examples of the deadly effects of US
efforts to silence honest news reporting from the
country.  The International Press Institute (IPI)
keeps a journalist death watch count and reports that
including all of 2003 76 journalists have been killed
in Iraq by all assailants making this country by far
the most dangerous venue in the world for members of
the fourth estate.  That number has now been updated
by other sources that report since March, 2003 to the
present 107 journalists and other media workers have
been killed in this most dangerous of all places for
them to work.

In spite of the danger and toll its taken, much of
what Washington and the corporate-run media conceal is
being reported from unembedded journalists and a
growing number of unofficial accounts emerging or
leaking out.  They show what conditions are really
like on the ground and the effect the conflict has had
on US ground forces in the country.  They’re being
increasingly stressed and terrified out of their
minds, most are physically and/or psychologically
traumatized or ill, many quite seriously from the
deadly effects of depleted uranium (DU) poisoning and
other toxins that have already disabled as many as
350,000 or more Gulf war veterans according to what
can be pieced together from the little information the
Veterans Administration (VA) reports (they don’t
explain from what or make a serious effort to find
out).  The psychological toll is also growing from
witnessing or obeying orders to participate in the
daily barbaric slaughter of Iraqi civilians including
women, children, the elderly and infirm.  The result
is the rate of suicides is believed to be rising to
alarming levels as is the number of desertions the
Pentagon reports to be about 40,000 since 2000 from
all branches of the military, half of them from the
Army.  Over 5,500 of them are Iraq related (the
Pentagon keeps this very quiet) with many dozens more
joining their ranks each month.  In addition, many
others are refusing to return to Iraq for another tour
of duty after serving there one or more times.  Those
who do it unannounced are being quietly discharged in
most cases, while the ones going public to denounce
the war saying they won’t serve in it any longer face
courts martial, dishonorable discharge and possible
prison terms.

Little of the above information has been reported, but
most disturbing of all is the true unreported daily
death and injury toll of US military personnel that’s
far higher than the official numbers.  Department of
Defense (DOD) reports are now being quietly circulated
indicating over 12,000 dead, not the current announced
total approaching 2,700.  That figure includes
thousands of previously unreported deaths of US
military personnel who died en route to German or
other hospitals or after arriving there.  There’s also
evidence from Military Air Transport Service (MATS)
manifests that show many more bodies shipped to Dover
Air Force Base than are officially reported when there
are any reports at all. 

The true number of serious injuries has also been
grossly understated.  It could be twice as high as the
official numbers based on reports from the Landstuhl
Regional Medical Center in Germany alone that has
treated over 25,000 wounded military patients even as
the DOD only officially acknowledges around 15,000 in
total and then quietly at first increased the number
to about 19,000.  These injuries, rarely discussed,
include loss of limbs, brain damage and other
debilitations that will scar those affected by them
for the rest of their lives if after treatment and
recovery they even survive.  And there’s never any
mention of the later physical and/or psychological
pain and suffering veterans endure or how many of them
had or likely will have their lives shortened as a
result of the time they spent in combat theaters
“serving their country.”

In addition to the stress of trauma, possible death or
serious injury US forces face, they must also cope
with the problems of daily life on the ground making
their lives difficult or too often unbearable.  Many
of their Forward Operations Bases don’t get enough
daily drinking water and other necessities such as
proper food to eat regularly.  It makes an intolerable
situation even worse.  For many there’s also a lack of
basic amenities like clean clothes, a daily shower and
a comfortable bed to sleep in.  In addition, the
equipment on the ground is being consumed and not
replaced including weapons, vehicles, ordinance, body
armor and most everything else.  Despite the
multi-billions spent on this imperial adventure, too
little of it is going to “the boots on the ground,”
because too much of it is budgeted for corporate
friends of the administration feasting on huge no-bid
contracts.  The situation isn’t improving.  In fact,
it’s steadily deteriorating despite official denials.

By the time our forces are finally withdrawn from
Iraq, as one day they will, the human disaster will
be almost incomprehensible.  From just a short
one-time deployment during the 1991 Gulf war, hundreds
of thousands of our forces sent there are now on some
form of disability either from the deadly effects of
DU poisoning, the stew of other toxins they were
exposed to, the physical injuries they received or the
permanent psychological scars they may take to the
grave.  But the worst is yet to come.  Beginning with
the Afghanistan war in late 2001 and the Iraq war from
March, 2003, over 1.3 million of our military forces
have served one or more tours of duty for extended
periods in what are beyond question the most dangerous
and toxic environments on earth.  The best estimates
(because the VA won’t say) are that between 30 - 70%
of Gulf war vets so far are now on some kind of
disability.  If only that same range is applied to the
1.3 million of our military now serving or having
served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, between
400,000 and 900,000 of them may end up on disability
or die from exposure to the DU munitions used in these
wars which we’ve learned are vastly more toxic than
the ones used in the Gulf war.  And if they manage to
avoid DU poisoning, they may succumb to the effects
from the many other toxic pollutants they had to live
with or become scarred or maimed for life from the
violent environments they had to serve in or the acts
they had to commit fulfilling their duty there.

In simple terms, it’s likely we can expect an eventual
overall catastrophic human disaster and one being
covered up because of its enormity.  US high officials
and Pentagon brass that planned this holocaust to both
sides likely knew the human cost to our forces alone
would be high but decided anyway the innocent mostly
young people we sent to fight were expendable and
could be written off to be replaced by new and fresh
equally innocent recruits - as long as their dirty
secret never gets out.  The lives lost or ruined on
both sides are dismissed as “collateral damage” or
just a “price that has to be paid.”  It’s a human
price and one that’s paid to enrich well-connected big
corporations that love wars because they’re so
profitable. 

The Madness of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution gives the
power to declare war solely to the Congress.  The
Founding Fathers rightfully believed that authority so
important they codified it.  They wanted to assure
that for the single most important issue a nation ever
faces, that awesome power would never be placed in the
hands of a single individual like the president.  They
wanted only the legislative branch to have it and only
exercise it after careful, deliberative debate.  That
branch still has it, but for the last 65 years it’s
abrogated its authority and allowed Presidents from
Harry Truman to George W. Bush to usurp it.  The
result has been the many wars we’ve fought since WW II
along with the many we encouraged, supported and
financed plus all the CIA covert mischief and abuse
going on at all times. 

The result is that every war this country fought in
since WW II from Korea to Iraq to the one now planned
and “signed off” on by George Bush against Iran and
possibly Syria and Venezuela as well to oust President
Hugo Chavez to begin on future so far unknown dates
was and will be acts of illegal aggression.  In each
case the US either committed the first overt hostile
act or goaded its designated target country enough to
do it to provide us with a casus belli for the war we
planned and intended to wage.  We provoked the North
Koreans (through our South Korean proxies) enough in
1950 to get them to respond to give us an excuse to
enter a civil conflict between the North and South.
We did the same thing again to Iraq (through our
Kuwaiti proxies) in 1990-91.  In each case, from Korea
to the present, we did it against adversaries that
never threatened to attack us or had any intention to.
Our actions each time were planned, willful acts of
illegal aggression, which is what the Nazis were tried
for at Nuremburg. 

The Tribunal called their crime the “supreme
international crime” and specifically said:  “To
initiate a war of aggression….is not only an
international crime, it is the supreme crime,
differing only from other war crimes in that it
contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole.”  For the last 55 years, the US has repeatedly
committed “supreme international crimes” but has yet
to be held to account for any of them.  In a just
world, those in power during each of those illegal
wars would have been put in the dock, tried, convicted
and either hanged like the most egregious Nazis or
given appropriate prison terms for their crimes.  The
US has also violated the UN Charter that allows a
nation the right to use force in its self-defense only
under two conditions: when authorized to do it by the
Security Council or under Article 51 that permits the
“right of individual or collective self-defense if an
armed attack occurs against a Member….until the
Security Council has taken measures to maintain
international peace and security.”  By attacking
another nation without provocation and with no
Security Council authorization, the US violated this
sacred covenant.  It also violated the US Constitution
that says….“all Treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the Authority of the United States, shall
be the supreme Law of the Land.”  The Bush
administration continues to remind us of its disdain
for all laws that conflict with its policies.

It should also remind responsible people that’s why
the International Criminal Court was established by
the Rome Statute of 1998 to which the US is a
signatory.  The Court’s authority became effective
after receiving its required number of ratifying
signatures in 2002 to be a permanent tribunal to
prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against
humanity and genocide as defined by the Nuremberg
Charter of 1945.  However, the Bush administration
refuses to participate in the Court unless its
military personnel are given immunity from prosecution
- an outrageous demand made for obvious reasons.  As a
result, no US official or military offender will be
held to account before the court unless brought there
against their will which isn’t likely.  That’s not how
things work in a world ruled by victor’s justice.
Only losers pay the price in that kind of world, even
when they’re victims.

Besides committing the supreme international crime of
illegal aggression, the US is a serial offender in
other ways.  It violated international law by waging
war without restraint using every weapon it chooses
including illegal chemical and possibly biological
agents.  During the 1950s the effects of such agents
were ilicitly tested in selected US cities including
New York and San Francisco on our own unwitting
population.  However, through the years post WW I, the
1925 Geneva Convention Gas Protocol and various
succeeding Geneva Weapons Conventions outlawed the use
of chemical and biological agents in any form for any
reason in war.  In addition, under various UN
Conventions and Covenants that are binding
international law for its signatories, the use of any
weapons that cause harm after the battle including
away from the battlefield, harm the environment, or
kill, wound or cause harm inhumanely are illegal and
banned. 

Since the Gulf war in 1991, the US has routinely used
illegal weapons including depleted uranium munitions
in four wars that spread deadly toxic irremediable
radiation over the target sites attacked and a vast
area beyond them.  These DU weapons are poisonous
under international law and violate all the above
conditions.  Even the respected Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, which is legally non-binding to its
signatories, implies a moral duty never to use any
weapons as potentially harmful as DU ones or any
chemical or biological agents.

In all its wars the US has also willfully violated
international law by deliberately attacking
non-military targets as a tactical strategy against
area “resistance.”  It’s also been callously
indifferent to heavy civilian “collateral damage”
(words that signify war crimes for some) in attacking
military ones.  The choice of weapons has been
indiscriminate as well and include ones judged illegal
and outlawed.  In Iraq these have been chemical gases,
questionable cluster bombs and a terror weapon called
“flashettes” which explode and shoot out 1000s of
nails in all directions with deadly results.  Two even
more deadly terror weapons have been indiscriminately
used in Iraq including in civilian areas.  One is the
napalm-like white phosphorous bombs and shells, known
as Willy Pete, that burn flesh to the bone and can’t
be extinguished by water that only makes it worse when
used.  The other is an updated version of napalm
called Mark 77 firebombs which do about the same thing
to flesh. 

One other terror weapon likely also is used called a
thermobaric bomb which is a modification of still
another prohibited weapon called fuel air explosives
(FAE) that in their original form are enormously
powerful and destroy and incinerate structures and
people.  The thermobaric update contains
polymer-bonded or solid fuel-air explosives in its
payload.  It’s also able to penetrate buildings,
underground shelters and tunnels creating a blast
pressure great enough to suck the oxygen out from the
spaces and lungs of anyone in the vicinity.  Used
against civilians, these weapons are illegal under the
1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
However, George Bush arrogantly dismisses the Geneva
Conventions claiming they don’t apply in the “war on
terror.”  He echoed the sentiment of his then White
House counsel Alberto Gonzales (the current Attorney
General) whose memo in early 2002 stated:  “The nature
of the new war (on terror) places a high premium on
other factors such as the ability to quickly obtain
information from captured terrorists…..In my
judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s
strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners
and renders quaint some of its provisions.”  Such is
the language of tyrants and those around them in high
places.  The Pentagon also acts with disdain for the
law and freely uses whatever terror weapons it chooses
against any target.

The sum of these actions and policies is that the
George Bush’s legacy will based on the notion of
endless illegal aggression in the “permanent state of
war” his administration declared after 9/11 that now
has been rebranded as “the long war” against
“Islamo-fascism.” It also sanctions the use of banned
weapons against civilians, and it believes the most
sacred international law is quaint, obsolete and out
of date.  Is it any wonder this administration has
laid waste to scores of villages, towns and cities
across Iraq and Afghanistan and done it not just to
destroy targets but to send a message that no
restraint will be shown to crush all resistance
against imperial aggression.  This scorched earth
policy is called the “Fallujah model” which, of
course, was the city in al-Anbar province of 350,000
US ground and air forces attacked full-force in
November, 2004.  It was done using most every terror
weapon they had, other than nuclear ones, to inflict
maximum destruction including to essential
infrastructure like water, electrical power and
hospitals to wipe out whatever resistance was there.
Now the same model is being used against the people of
Ramadi, the capitol of al-Anbar and a city larger than
Fallujah that was surrounded and attacked by a large
combined US and proxy Iraqi force beginning on June 9.
The assault is still ongoing, and in the words of its
US commander, it’s unclear how long it will take to
“pacify” the city. 

What the commander meant but left unsaid was that US
style pacification means mass killing and destruction
like what was done to Fallujah or alternately
following the “Leningrad”, “Ben Tre” or “Jenin” model.
Whether the plan is to break the will of the people
and starve it to submission, “destroy the town to save
it” or just inflict barbaric retribution in an act of
vengeance and do it against innocent people there,
these acts are outrageous war crimes and crimes
against humanity.  What the commander also didn’t say
is what’s been coming from unembedded and leaked
reports on the ground - that despite the intense and
protracted effort to suppress the resistance, the US
military has effectively lost control over all of
al-Anbar province west of Baghdad that comprises about
one-third of the country.  This assessment was
confirmed in August by Col. Pete Devlin, the Marine
Corps chief of intelligence, who characterized the
situation there as beyond repair and that US forces
have lost the battle in al-Anbar.  It’s happened in
spite of the intense fighting across areas under US
control including the tactical strategy of committing
war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The latter crimes are those the Nuremburg Charter
cited to explain what Hitler did to the Jews. The UN
Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) ruled these actions
are the historical and legal precursors to the
international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide.  From the 15 year unrelenting
assault against the Iraqi people beginning with the
Gulf war, the devastating economic sanctions,
continued bombings throughout the 1990s up to the 2003
illegal war, occupation and daily crimes committed
under it, the US is as guilty of genocide as were the
Nazis against the Jews and all others they sought to
eliminate.

Add to that the systematic use of torture at the
hellhole prisons with names now well-known and many
others around the world the CIA and military run or
“rendition” victims to so they can learn how American
justice works.  It’s the same way it worked in Nazi
Germany and under all other regimes run by tyrants.
Victims have no rights and can be treated any way
their oppressors choose.  International laws that are
the supreme law of the land are quaint and ignored,
the notion of innocent unless or until proved guilty
is a nonstarter, and knowing torture isn’t an
effective way to break resistance and obtain credible
information hardly matters.  When you’re the world’s
only superpower, can decide alone what’s lawful or
not, and are on the rampage, who’ll be brave or
foolish enough to challenge you?  Few, in any, dare.

Is Justice Possible in A World Where Might Makes Right

The rule of law is sacred and should protect us from
oppression and injustice.  It doesn’t because a
greater force prevails - the power of the strong over
the weak, to write the laws it wants and ignore all
others, to recklessly pursue its ends, to pillage and
plunder because it can get away with it.  It’s called
the law of might makes right, ruled by the code of
victors’ justice where only the vanquished are held to
account and no one has rights except the powerful who
make their own.  It’s a world of lawlessness, disorder
and endless conflict, our world, and it’s brought to
us by a rogue superpower posing as a model democratic
state.  Those under its oppressive heel, now and in
the past, know it well.  For many of them it’s the
curse of having too much of a valued natural resource
the US wants to control and exploit.  It was true for
Iraq and is no different for Iran and Venezuela that
also are on the US target list.

What’s clear abroad is also true in the US where
sacred constitutional law and the political process
are effectively dead letters.  So too are
long-established international laws and norms that
interfere with the plans of the new rulers of the
world.  The power of the Executive declared it so, and
the Congress (a Greek chorus posing as a legitimate
legislative body) went along - while a modern-day Rome
slowly burns and threatens all humanity with its
fallout. 

It never should have been this way nor was it intended
to following WW I.  Because of the frightening horror
from that conflict, 63 nations, including the US, were
signatories to the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 that
renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy and
said never again.  The Pact failed to prevent WW II
that began 11 years later nor has the UN formed in its
aftermath been able to do be any more successful.
This world body was established to maintain
international order and security and to develop
friendly relations among nations to strengthen
universal peace.  Its stated mission in its Charter
was that it was to be an international body “to save
succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which
twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to
mankind.”  It hasn’t done it and never will as long as
it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the reigning
superstate (aka predator) that co-opts it to serve its
interests and prevents it from functioning as it
should.  What can all humanity look forward to if the
institutions established to protect us don’t work, and
the only rule of law is the one of the jungle and
survival of the fittest and most powerful.  More on
this below.

A Possible Hidden Economic Connection to the Iraq War
and Future Ones Planned

The clear connection to the Iraq war, and likely ones
in some form planned against Iran and Venezuela, is
the ocean of oil each country literally floats on.
Saddam became a target for regime change when he
refused to submit and cede control of it to the US
demanding he do it.  Now the Iranian mullahs and its
President Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez may
be next in our target queue for the same reason.  Like
Iraq, with only conventional weapons for defense,
these two countries are no match militarily against an
all out US assault unlike North Korea that may have a
nuclear deterrent giving that country a degree of
invulnerability only states with that type weapon have
against an aggressive superpower.  The US picks its
targets judiciously, and like a schoolyard bully never
attacks an adversary that can put up a decent fight -
at least by its military. 

There also may be another motive behind our
belligerence besides the clear oil related one.  It’s
much less visible, not discussed, and well concealed
beneath the radar.  It relates to the notion believed
by some economists that flawed and/or out of date
methodologies are used to compute some of our key
economic data like the gross domestic product (GDP),
the total employment and unemployment figures known as
the monthly jobs report, and the federal deficit.  The
reasoning goes that if the unemployment rate today was
computed by the same methodology used during The Great
Depression when it rose to 25% of the working
population, the true current figure would be about 12%
instead of the reported 4.7% which includes part-time
workers and anyone working as little as one hour
during the reporting period.  It also excludes all
those who wish to work but have stopped looking
(discouraged workers) because they can’t find any. 

A cover story just out in the September 25 issue of
Business Week magazine lends credence to the notion
that official published government data is manipulated
and flawed to look better than, in fact, it is.  The
article is titled: “What’s Really Propping Up The
Economy.”  It states since 2001, all newly created
private sector jobs (1.7 million) came from one source
- the health care industry which includes the drug
companies and insurers offering health insurance.
This one industry today represents 12% of the
workforce and $2 trillion in annual spending (about
one-sixth of the nation’s GDP and growing).  The story
goes on to explain that without the private sector
jobs from this one source “the nation’s labor market
would be in a deep coma” so that while some other
sectors like construction and areas related to it
added 900,000 jobs since 2001, that gain was offset by
“the pressures of globalization and new technology
(that) have wreaked havoc on the rest of the labor
market” resulting in factories closing and shrinkage
in other areas.  Even information technology, “the
great electronic promise of the 1990s,” turned into a
bust as far as its ability to generate new jobs.
Instead of creating any, it lost 1.1 million of them
since 2001 and now employs fewer people than in 1998
“when the Internet frenzy kicked into high gear.” 

This kind of data doesn’t reflect a healthy, expanding
economy and clearly is a strong indication of one
showing very disturbing signs.  The current situation
is still further complicated by a failing policy of
imperial overreach, massive and out-of-control federal
deficits discussed below, and the greatest housing
boom in history that propped up the economy, became a
bubble, and is now unwinding and likely to become
painful before it ends.  Just how much and how fast
won’t be known until a future time when an assessment
is made of the amount of damage done and what economic
conditions are in its wake.  It may show things to be
lots different than the rosy way they’re portrayed now
by most analysts.

It may be why at least one economist (maybe an honest
one) believes a more accurate calculation of the real
GDP indicates it’s contracting and not expanding in a
healthy fashion as is now reported each quarter.  And
most disturbing of all is an analysis of the federal
deficit, the computation of which has been
miscalculated since the Johnson administration began
using accounting gimmicks to hide the true costs of
the Vietnam war.  If the deficit were calculated based
on GAAP methodology (the accounting rules required of
all publicly traded corporations in preparing their
financial statements), the true figure would have been
$665 billion for fiscal year 2003 and $760 billion for
2005 instead of the reported $375 billion 2003 figure
and $318 billion for 2005.  But that greater figure
expands to an astonishing $3,700,000,000,000 ($3.7
trillion) for 2003 and a similarly frightening one for
2005 if the annual increase in the net amount of
unfunded Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and
government pension obligations are included.  This
shadow deficit has been mounting since the Johnson
years and shows that the US government in fiscal year
2003 had a negative net worth of $34,000,000,000,000
($34 trillion) by one estimate.

Another economist paints an even grimmer picture than
the one above.  That economist, Boston University
Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, prepared a recent
detailed report for the Federal Reserve Bank of St.
Louis in which he stated, by some measures, the US is
already bankrupt and unable to pay its creditors (the
ones holding its debt instruments and due its
entitlement payments).  Professor Kotlikoff wrote that
a country’s solvency depends on its ability to honor
its lifetime fiscal obligations which are the
difference between all required future spending and
the revenue expected to be received to do it.  That
gap will widen exponentially as the accumulated US
sovereign and other debt obligations plus the amount
of revenue needed to cover the bill for retiring Baby
Boomers’ unfunded liabilities of social security,
medicare, medicaid, government pensions and all else
rises to an incomprehensible and unmanageable
$65,900,000,000,000 ($65.9 trillion) by the
calculations he used from a study by two other
professors.  Professor Kotlikoff explained this figure
is over five times the current US Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) and double the national wealth.  He
added that if his analysis is right, it means the US
is bankrupt, will face a fiscal calamity ahead and
will have to default on its debt, entitlements and
other obligations. 

Professor Kotlikoff had more to say on this matter in
a recent extended essay he wrote for the Federal
Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review July/August issue
titled “Is the United States Bankrupt?”  In it he
stated that future US workers would need to be taxed
at the rate of 55 - 80% over their working lifetimes
to pay for the estimated $80 trillion in unfunded
future entitlement liabilities or more than six times
the current US GDP.  Whichever of his two numbers is
more accurate (if either one is), Professor Kotlikoff
is beginning to be heard and is gaining some
adherents.  They believe the US faces a potential
future fiscal meltdown even though it’s understood the
nation’s balance sheet isn’t static and includes
increasing assets as well as liabilities that must be
figured into any bottom line calculation of net
obligations.  So as dire as the current and future
situation may be, the true state of the problem likely
won’t be known precisely until the inevitable day of
reckoning arrives revealing how ugly it is.

What is known is that whichever analysis of the
problem is right, the future consequences eventually
will likely shake the world and change our way of life
at home irrevocably at the least.  So how does that
relate to this country’s addiction to war and the
current notion of permanent or long ones.  Simple.
Hot wars stimulate the economy and make it grow -
especially extended ones. They require lot’s of
spending, but so far the funding’s there for them from
institutional and foreign investors willing to buy our
sovereign debt and the Federal Reserve always
cooperative by printing up lots of ready cash.  But
all this comes at a price.  Along with shamless tax
cuts for the rich and massive corporate welfare
subsidies and war-related contracts, it’s caused the
federal budget and current account deficits to balloon
exacerbating an unmanageable fiscal problem since 2001
alone the result of George Bush’s reckless policies of
excess greed and imperial overreach.  The latter is
his new “long war” policy, and the more of them we
wage, the more positive it is for the economy and
corporate profits - in the short run.  Without them
and their spoils, the economy might not be as healthy
or could even be in trouble. 

So the nation may face a Hobson’s choice: continue our
profligate spending ways or see our fiscal house of
cards collapse - a conundrum with no solution.  The
larger our economy gets, the more dependent it is on
wars and militarism for economic stimulus. It results
in more debt to get the same bang for the bucks we now
spend like drunken politicians. It’s an unending cycle
requiring increasingly greater capital infusions
without end in a sort of fiscal game of musical
chairs, but one where we dare not let the music stop.
Because our economy is so large, we need huge amounts
of capital to maintain growth. But finding it becomes
harder, and our addiction to it is like being on a
treadmill we can’t get off of. As a result, we may
heading for an eventual day of reckoning, like the one
Professor Kotlikoff envisions, no one wants to imagine
or confront. It’s the same problem a drug addict has
needing bigger fixes for the same effect. That
behavior guarantees a bad ending, eventually killing
the addict. In the same way, no nation can spend and
borrow beyond its means forever and always need more
for the same results. Nations doing it are like out of
control drug addicts and face the same unavoidable
fate.  They can delay the inevitable but not forever.
The penalty for the sins of excess are high, painful
and certain. The day eventually comes when the “piper”
must be paid. It may not be next month or next year,
but “pipers” are very patient and always have the
final say. Richard Nixon’s former chief economic
advisor, Herb Stein, said it well: “Things that can’t
go on forever, won’t.” He might have added how
unpleasant it is when the day of reckoning comes.

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Endless War, Its
Fallout and A Future No One Wants

The US is now at a dangerous watershed moment
struggling to save the tattered republic and our
sacred constitutional rights.  Unless we reverse the
present course, our future may be the one Orwell
foresaw when he wrote: “If you want a picture of the
future, imagine a boot stamping on a human
face….forever….”  Like the totalitarian state of
Oceania led by Big Brother in his best known book
1984, we’re waging a permanent long war; no one is
safe anymore - from our own government; we’re all
being illegally surveilled; anyone may be forcibly
taken away, detained, tortured or murdered - all to
make the world safe for a brave new world order ruled
ruthlessly by capital that’s called democracy.  It’s
one without a political process because the Congress
gave it up to a “Unitary Executive” with the power to
abrogate the separation of powers doctrine, bypass the
lawmakers and courts and act as he chooses to protect
the nation’s security or for whatever other reason he
decides.

We’re now nearing a crisis because George Bush chose
to invoke the wartime contingency “national security
initiatives” established during the Reagan years that
gives the President the power to suspend the
Constitution and declare martial law.  Bush did it by
signing executive orders post 9/11 giving himself
absolute power in times of whatever he alone decides
is a “national emergency.”  If he assumes it, he’ll
become a dictator, accountable to no one, which he
claims the right to do on his say alone.  The only
sensible recourse is for mass people action (like now
ongoing for weeks in the streets of Mexico against
authoritarian rule) to prevent our crossing the
Rubicon and passing from a shaky republic to the
tyranny of a full-blown national security police state
and a future no one wants.  It can happen here just as
it did in ancient Rome and in Weimar Germany when the
good people there lost their model democratic state.
They allowed Hitler to steal it while they weren’t
paying attention.  They bought into his demonic appeal
to his divine mission as the nation’s savior (sound
familiar?) and his pretense to be protecting them from
an outside threat that didn’t exist.  That history
should remind us how fragile our sacred liberties are
and how easily they’re lost when tyrants are allowed
to go unchecked and unchallenged.  We’re at a moment
now when there’s still time to act before it’s too
late to save a nation conceived in liberty that may
soon no longer have it.  Edmund Burke explained it
long ago when he said: “All that is necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  I’m
sure today he’d remember the importance of women.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).  Also visit his blog
address at sjlendman.blogspot.com.