The Bush regime came with its in-built conspiracy theory.
Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 5:45 pm(The following outline is not quite what I had in mind, but it may serve as a conversation starter on the issue of theses positing "Zionist control of U.S. policy.")
There's a trick the Pentagon planners like to play on us, revealing what they're all about one day and pretending it was a gaffe the next. Remember Bush's post-Sept. 11 declaration of Crusade, and the first operational name for the "global war on terror," Infinite Justice? They knew exactly what they were doing: taking the mantle of the awesome, the all powerful, the all-justified deity. Because of the protests and revulsion, they pretended it was a mistake, and changed the name to the more ambiguous "Enduring Freedom" (whose freedom are we enduring?). But they knew that the message had been sent. Same thing with "Operation Iraqi Liberation," changed hours later in pretend-embarrassment to Operation Iraqi Freedom. You really think they didn't know what the first name spelled?
There are those who say Iraq wasn't about the oil, citing the opposition prior to the invasion by a number of oil companies. But oil companies are not automatically in lockstep. How a given company will act very much depends on which territories it possesses concessions, or on which territories it hopes to gain concessions, and who its competitors are in gaining those concessions.
Now if there's a model of a company that would develop the vision and understanding of a more general interest relating to oil, the oil-based world economy and its relation to U.S. imperial geostrategy, well... you might expect that in an industrial services company, say a pipeline builder that does business with all major oil companies and simultaneously with the Pentagon (designated officially as the ultimate guardian of the oil flow since the days of the Carter Doctrine).
I can think of one such company that fits this description exactly. This company, Halliburton, happened to place its CEO (who is still legally on its payroll!) as the current vice-president-cum-emperor behind the scenes. Mr. Cheney got the prize of USA-CEO after a stolen election engineered by the alternate, privatized CIA created under Papa Bush's aegis in the 1970s -- largely the same group of men who had previously come to power as the "Reagan administration" and the Iran-Contra crew.
Note that the first thing Cheney did on assuming power over the state was not to issue a declaration or even plot covertly on behalf of Greater Israel, but to hold several dozen secret energy meetings at which future Iraqi and Central Asian concessions and pipeline plans (such as through Afghanistan) were dicussed with persons unknown (the records are still a state secret as protected by yet another 5-4 Supreme Court decision thanks to Cheney's duck-hunting partner, Scalia).
Cheney also had himself appointed the anti-terror czar. Simultaneously, the State Department held back-channel talks with the Taliban, demanding their conformity on a set of conditions and threatening to bomb and depose them otherwise. (Sorry if all this is "so 2003," as one of my critics recently put it.)
Owing to
a) the history of the robber barons (oil and banking synergy),
b) the central nature of the commodity as the energy source for a civilization,
c) its use as the backing for the currency system, and
d) oil's status as one of the big "forced profit" industries (no one feels they have a choice about wanting it)*
--I would submit that oil companies are practically synonymous with the major banks to which they are tied. At any rate, they form a complex.
The banks/financial sector provide the insurance contracts and futures systems to guard against price fluctuations, so that there's profit in both rises and falls of price, either for them or for the oil companies, with which they are interlocked.
From a strictly profit perspective, the ideal situation for the oil-banking complex as a whole is one of swings in price in the range between very high and astronomical. So even the companies who were allegedly reluctant about the Iraq invasion are for now likely to look at the resulting high prices and fluctuations and agree: "Mission Accomplished."
(One of my favored targets of derision are commentators who claim Iraq couldn't have been about oil because, um, the prices went up and gas is more expensive for "Americans" as a result. Duh!!!)
Then there's that Peak Oil thing. I know it has its denialists, but it becomes a concern not when it happens (whether in 2006 or in 2046) but as soon as it's understood that one day the maximum achievable supply will be less than demand, and that another day will follow a few decades later when the energy return on energy investment for further extraction approaches zero. So regardless of when Peak Oil comes, the time to secure the oil is now.
And then there's the context of that Dollar Armaggedon thing. An insolvent currency in need of seizing some real collateral - like Iraq - and some real leverage on the potential competitors - like what Iraq (and Afghanistan) potentially give vis a vis China, Russia, and Europe.
This is related to the Decline-of-Empire/Rise of Other Powers thing so central to the Cheney world domination plans of 1990 and the documents of the later marriage of the Bush Iran-Contra mob and the Likudnik cheerleaders, known as the "Project for a New American Century."
Not to mention that eternal need-a-good-war to justify all this MIC gear thing. (It must have felt so good to plunder the remaining taxpayers, once the Bush tax cuts took the super-rich almost entirely off the hook.)
Not to mention that Hubris thing: Hey, We the Empire have always cashed in and won on (almost) all imperial adventures to date, right? Right?!!
Given all that, Iraq (and 9/11 as triggering event) makes a lot of sense independently of the "Zionist and American interests are identical" synergy, which is also operative -- and which I believe the other elements in "the coalition" of real interests behind the Iraq insanity view as a convenient lightning rod.
I do believe the Bush mob came to power with awareness of their own in-built conspiracy theory: the Neocons, the exact same guys who in a previous incarnation were known as "Team B" (a Papa Bush production dating from the 1970s). It's the presence and fanaticism and generally ugly statements and mugs of the leading neocons that allowed the likes of Scowcroft and Powell and Brzezinski and Papa Bush himself to pretend they were somehow innocent statesmen, once the sense of adventure went south.
---
(*along with war and drugs; the spook favorites)
There's a trick the Pentagon planners like to play on us, revealing what they're all about one day and pretending it was a gaffe the next. Remember Bush's post-Sept. 11 declaration of Crusade, and the first operational name for the "global war on terror," Infinite Justice? They knew exactly what they were doing: taking the mantle of the awesome, the all powerful, the all-justified deity. Because of the protests and revulsion, they pretended it was a mistake, and changed the name to the more ambiguous "Enduring Freedom" (whose freedom are we enduring?). But they knew that the message had been sent. Same thing with "Operation Iraqi Liberation," changed hours later in pretend-embarrassment to Operation Iraqi Freedom. You really think they didn't know what the first name spelled?
There are those who say Iraq wasn't about the oil, citing the opposition prior to the invasion by a number of oil companies. But oil companies are not automatically in lockstep. How a given company will act very much depends on which territories it possesses concessions, or on which territories it hopes to gain concessions, and who its competitors are in gaining those concessions.
Now if there's a model of a company that would develop the vision and understanding of a more general interest relating to oil, the oil-based world economy and its relation to U.S. imperial geostrategy, well... you might expect that in an industrial services company, say a pipeline builder that does business with all major oil companies and simultaneously with the Pentagon (designated officially as the ultimate guardian of the oil flow since the days of the Carter Doctrine).
I can think of one such company that fits this description exactly. This company, Halliburton, happened to place its CEO (who is still legally on its payroll!) as the current vice-president-cum-emperor behind the scenes. Mr. Cheney got the prize of USA-CEO after a stolen election engineered by the alternate, privatized CIA created under Papa Bush's aegis in the 1970s -- largely the same group of men who had previously come to power as the "Reagan administration" and the Iran-Contra crew.
Note that the first thing Cheney did on assuming power over the state was not to issue a declaration or even plot covertly on behalf of Greater Israel, but to hold several dozen secret energy meetings at which future Iraqi and Central Asian concessions and pipeline plans (such as through Afghanistan) were dicussed with persons unknown (the records are still a state secret as protected by yet another 5-4 Supreme Court decision thanks to Cheney's duck-hunting partner, Scalia).
Cheney also had himself appointed the anti-terror czar. Simultaneously, the State Department held back-channel talks with the Taliban, demanding their conformity on a set of conditions and threatening to bomb and depose them otherwise. (Sorry if all this is "so 2003," as one of my critics recently put it.)
Owing to
a) the history of the robber barons (oil and banking synergy),
b) the central nature of the commodity as the energy source for a civilization,
c) its use as the backing for the currency system, and
d) oil's status as one of the big "forced profit" industries (no one feels they have a choice about wanting it)*
--I would submit that oil companies are practically synonymous with the major banks to which they are tied. At any rate, they form a complex.
The banks/financial sector provide the insurance contracts and futures systems to guard against price fluctuations, so that there's profit in both rises and falls of price, either for them or for the oil companies, with which they are interlocked.
From a strictly profit perspective, the ideal situation for the oil-banking complex as a whole is one of swings in price in the range between very high and astronomical. So even the companies who were allegedly reluctant about the Iraq invasion are for now likely to look at the resulting high prices and fluctuations and agree: "Mission Accomplished."
(One of my favored targets of derision are commentators who claim Iraq couldn't have been about oil because, um, the prices went up and gas is more expensive for "Americans" as a result. Duh!!!)
Then there's that Peak Oil thing. I know it has its denialists, but it becomes a concern not when it happens (whether in 2006 or in 2046) but as soon as it's understood that one day the maximum achievable supply will be less than demand, and that another day will follow a few decades later when the energy return on energy investment for further extraction approaches zero. So regardless of when Peak Oil comes, the time to secure the oil is now.
And then there's the context of that Dollar Armaggedon thing. An insolvent currency in need of seizing some real collateral - like Iraq - and some real leverage on the potential competitors - like what Iraq (and Afghanistan) potentially give vis a vis China, Russia, and Europe.
This is related to the Decline-of-Empire/Rise of Other Powers thing so central to the Cheney world domination plans of 1990 and the documents of the later marriage of the Bush Iran-Contra mob and the Likudnik cheerleaders, known as the "Project for a New American Century."
Not to mention that eternal need-a-good-war to justify all this MIC gear thing. (It must have felt so good to plunder the remaining taxpayers, once the Bush tax cuts took the super-rich almost entirely off the hook.)
Not to mention that Hubris thing: Hey, We the Empire have always cashed in and won on (almost) all imperial adventures to date, right? Right?!!
Given all that, Iraq (and 9/11 as triggering event) makes a lot of sense independently of the "Zionist and American interests are identical" synergy, which is also operative -- and which I believe the other elements in "the coalition" of real interests behind the Iraq insanity view as a convenient lightning rod.
I do believe the Bush mob came to power with awareness of their own in-built conspiracy theory: the Neocons, the exact same guys who in a previous incarnation were known as "Team B" (a Papa Bush production dating from the 1970s). It's the presence and fanaticism and generally ugly statements and mugs of the leading neocons that allowed the likes of Scowcroft and Powell and Brzezinski and Papa Bush himself to pretend they were somehow innocent statesmen, once the sense of adventure went south.
---
(*along with war and drugs; the spook favorites)
in the anti-war movement. That guy....
