I've never been a fan of Bush!

Eeeuuuch, bush!

In 1997 a political think tank was founded in Washington DC and named The Project for a New American Century or 'PNAC'. 

The stated goal of this neo-conservative group was "to promote American global leadership into the 21st century". 

Additionally the membership suggested that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world," and it sought to build support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity".

Of the 25 original members of and signatories to PNAC, 10 went on to serve in George W Bush's cabinet during his two terms in the Oval Office. Among others, but most notably, Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defence 2001 - 2006), Dick Cheney (Vice-President 2001 - 2009) and Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defence 2001 - 2006) all formed an integral part of Bush's core administration.

Four Core Objectives 

Published in September of 2000, PNAC's first report entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century', recommended that the US military be presented with 'Four Core Objectives'.

• The defence of the "American homeland."

• The fighting and winning of "multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars."

• The performance of "constabulary duties associated with shaping the    

        security environment" in key regions.

• The transformation of US forces "to exploit the revolution in military          

        affairs."

You can read the full report below by clicking the link...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

However it is 90 pages long and will likely bore you into unconsciousness so please, let me cut to the chase. 

Basically it describes in some detail how the United States military should accomplish the four goals suggested be set for it, however the most interesting section of the report falls under a section titled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force". 

It suggests that "the transformation of American armed forces through new technologies and operational concepts is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

Now here we go, here's the body of this week's missive and to highlight my subject matter I'm going to quote that last part one more time, "the transformation of American armed forces through new technologies and operational concepts is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

In November of the same year, 2000, George W Bush won the Presidential election and on January 20th 2001 he and his cabinet, the authors of Rebuilding Americas Defences and members of PNAC took office. 

September 11th 2001. 

Is it just me? Or does anyone else smell something's not right?

Now don't get me wrong and please don't worry, I'm not going to spend the next 1000 characters laying out the alternate evidence for the events of 9/11, but seriously, come on people! 

Had you ever heard of The Project for a New American Century? Had you heard of its report and the four core missions? Had you understood that right there, in print, in September of 2000, for all to read and digest, were the Bush Administration's complete war plans for the next eight years and that they were written by people who now held the most powerful roles in the United States. 

All George Bush needed was an excuse to enact them. And even that's there too in all its glory, "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

I'm guessing that the lovely Mr Bin Laden had been avidly reading Rebuilding Americas Defences too. Indeed he was clearly thoroughly supportive of promoting American global leadership into the 21st century, because as the 9/11 Commission informed us in July of 2004, Osama Bin Laden and his band of nasty men managed, rather helpfully it would seem, to organise almost exactly what PNAC had suggested was required in order for the 'Four Core Objectives' to be enacted. 

The 'War on Terror' began on 7th October 2001 and continues to this day. 

The cast from Eastenders

In 2002, having reduced most of Afghanistan to a point where the populace were so bombed into submission and reduced to stone age cultures that many of them started to resemble the cast of Eastenders, good old George and his compatriots set their sights on an auld enemy. 

Coincidentally this 'auld enemy', Iraq, also possessed the world's fourth largest supply of crude oil. 

However it was argued, for some minutes even, that Iraq continued to hide illegal chemical and biological weapons from United Nations weapons inspectors. 

Initially, Bush's administration had tried to find a 'connection' between Iraq and al-Queda in order to conclude that Iraq had played a part in the 9/11 conspiracy and thus could be included in the 'War on Terror', but despite numerous tenuous links a connection was never taken seriously. 

And so the hiding of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was going to have to be the basis of the Bush Administration's argument for, as the term became, 'regime change', in Iraq. 

Some of us might remember the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations when seeking an international mandate for a US led invasion of Iraq. 

Powell presented what appeared to be compelling evidence of hidden chemical weapons factories and satellite imagery of mobile launcher units that, we were told, would be used to send biological weapons into Tel Aviv or Riyadh. 

The mandate for invasion was ultimately never given, not because the evidence presented wasn't convincing, it was. But simply as Russia couldn't be convinced to give up it's politically inspired veto. 

So the United States of America became the first modern 'Western' nation to invade another sovereign country solely on the basis of evidence supposedly so strong, so set in concrete that when the troops did uncover the hidden weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), good ole Johnny GI could dance a southern inspired banjo based jig knowing that what had been perpetrated had been done in the name of an honourable cause. 

Of course as we all know the WMDs were never found, in fact we've since discovered that the Iraqi leadership had destroyed all stockpiles of illegal weaponry as they had been instructed to do following Gulf War part one back in 1993. 

Leaked CIA documents

What most of us suspected but didn't know was that the CIA and the Bush Administration were intimately aware all along there were no WMDs. In fact recently leaked CIA documents show that Colin Powell's speech to the UN was entirely based on 'evidence' secured from one man, an Iraqi General who turned out to be an agent for the Turkish intelligence services and who subsequently 'disappeared'. 

George and his cronies knew from the word go that the entire plan was based on a lie, one who's core lay in securing the supply of Iraqi oil, gaining billions of dollars in the resultant oil revenues and ensuring a massively profitable future for the hundreds of US companies, likely owned or led by the families or close friends of prominent Republicans. 

The truth was they just didn't care that hundreds of thousands of people would die and millions of lives would be ruined all in the name of greed. 

Even if we look back at November of the year 2000 when our Mr Bush won the Presidential election we find suspicion and questionable behaviours in the results.

The state of Florida, run then and still run now by George's little brother, Governor Jeb Bush, was the clincher state. As the vote across the nation was so tight, so knife-edge, it became that Florida would effectively decide who the next President of The United States would be.
In an action that caused and still causes enormous controversy to this day, good ole reliable little bro Jeb declared that 5000 Floridian voting papers cast in the Presidential election had been incorrectly completed and thus were not to be counted. Coincidentally they were votes from an economically deprived area and arguably likely to have been in favour of the Democratic candidate Al Gore. 

The result was that the margin of victory in Flordia and so the nation, was so slim that it triggered a mandatory recount. The national Presidential election was then to be decided on this Sunshine State re-count. 

Trouble was that the lawyers and the money were then in charge and so on December 12th, without even waiting to hear the result of the recount, The United States Supreme Court declared George Bush the winner.
This represented the first time in US history where a President had essentially been appointed, rather than elected. 

Some have argued a coup d'etat occurred that day in The United States of America. 

Emperor's New Clothes

In addition to all the above, George Bush and his Republican Party presided over the removal of so many limits and legislative controls over American and thus world financial markets, Wall Street became the equivalent of 'The Emperor's New Clothes'. 

Everyone was trying to buy 'product' whose value was determined by the belief whatever it was actually had a value. 

The right wing rhetoric was that a free market should be free, and trader and tradee would be responsible with their power. 

Of course we all know what happened there. 

In September of 2008 millions of people discovered that what they had bought did actually have a value, and that it was similar to that of a particularly poverty stricken Bolivian peasants handbag. 

Turns out you see we were all very lucky the planet didn't actually explode that day as banks almost collapsed taking with them all the money in the world. 

But several billion of us did lose our jobs, our homes, our savings and much more besides. Most of us couldn't afford the losses then and a great many of us still feel the effects of this fiscal irresponsibility today.
Of course interestingly, and perhaps we'll cover this in another missive, the result of this 'financial collapse' created through the seeming financial mismanagement of huge corporations by the wealthiest of individuals, was that those individuals only got wealthier!

All this happened as a result of right wing commercial policy argued by corporate lobbyists and set into legislation by a White House led by....there it is, Mr George W Bush!

And here I sit, at my PC writing today's missive six years after the lovely George left office in 2009 and the world still reels from the wars and the fiscal apocalypse he and his minions created. 

And now what's this I hear on the news this morning...Jeb Bush, the little brother is running for President. What!?! Oh for fucks sake!

Hope you enjoyed this week's musings. Comments are of course welcome and please come back for more.