Make no mistake, the war on Iraq is no mistake

Don't be misled by the title of this post. The war on Iraq is a war crime. It's a disaster for the vast majority of US citizens. It's a fucking disaster for everyone in Iraq. It's probably going to turn into a disaster for the whole world. But it's not a mistake.

Why do I say it's not a mistake? Because it was planned by Cheney and Wolfowitz back in 1992. It's not the result of faulty intelligence. It's not the result of an error of judgement. It's not the result of miscommunication ("You invaded Iraq? I asked you to get me an order of fries. You must have misheard me.")

And why do I point out what ought, if the mainstream media weren't in Cheney's pocket, to be obvious? Because it means that, as usual, the forces of sanity are fighting the wrong battles. You will never persuade Bush and Cheney that the war is a mistake because for them it wasn't. You will never persuade Bush and Cheney that it's turned into a fucking disaster because it's all going exactly how they want it to. You will never persuade Bush and Cheney to pull out and save American lives because they don't give a flying fuck for the lives of US soldiers. As Rumsfeld said, the troops are "fungible" (meaning if one wears out or breaks you can just requisition another one).

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until people wake up: the Bush administration is not stupid. Bush might have the knowledge, intelligence and emotional stability of a retarded five-year-old with ADHD, but Cheney is running the show, aided and abetted by people like Rove and the rest of the neocons. And everything is going exactly according to their plans.

Where almost everyone makes a gigantic mistake is in assuming that the Bush maladministration has the good of the American people as its primary objective. Get real. Of course they don't. Their objectives are:

• Turn the US into a fascist dictatorship with them in control.
  
• Make their obscenely rich buddies and backers obscenely richer.
  
• Steal the world's oil.
  

If you work on the assumption that Bush and Cheney are trying to do what's best for America you have to conlude that they're stupid, incompetent fucktards; if you oppose them based on that assumption you'll never be rid of them. That's what they want you to do, because you're falling for the feint and leaving yourself wide open to the real thrust of their attack.

Look at just two of their past tricks.

• Stole the 2000 election using many different tactics, including voter intimidation. The tame press focused on "butterfly ballots" and "hanging chads," which meant the the trojan horse of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) went through unopposed. A trojan horse because it caused electronic voting machines (programmed by corrupt Bush supporters) to be used almost universally.
  
  
• Leaked the true details of Bush being AWOL from TANG. All the liberals gloated when Dan Rather broadcast them: at last the true nature of Bush was revealed and the voters would turn away from him. Then it came to light that the documents used by Rather might be fakes. That was enough to turn the whole issue into a discussion not of Bush's cowardice but of Rather's competence, thereby defusing the whole situation.
  

So let's be clear about Iraq. It was planned back in 1992. Then-Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney asked then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz to draft a strategy report. Shorn of military and political euphemisms, the report basically said that the US should invade Iraq to steal its oil, then use Iraq as a forward base to invade all the surrounding oil-rich countries so their oil can be stolen too. The war on Iraq was no mistake.

Under international law, the US must leave Iraq as soon as the country is stabilized. Under international law, the US cannot leave Iraq until the country is stabiliized. Cheney wants to stay in Iraq until not only is its oil sucked dry but the oil of the surrounding countries is sucked dry. Chaos in Iraq suit's Cheney's plans. It is no mistake.

There is a toll in life, of course, but Iraqis are "sand niggers" and don't count to the racist GOP. Nor do the lives of US troops because none of them are the relatives of rich and powerful Republicans. Nor is there any danger of running out of military personnel, even without a draft: Bush has flushed the US economy down the shitter so fast and so hard that there was a sonic boom at the sewerage works. For a lot of poor, hungry people the only hope of employment is in the military.

Before the war the oil companies all stated that they opposed the war because it was likely to disrupt oil production and therefore be bad for business. Oil production was disrupted. Prices went up. In the years since this illegal war started, all the oil companies have reported record profits. Of course, it's no surprise that the oil companies lied back then: they're such liars that they refused to take an oath when testifying to the Senate (and were later shown to have—surprise—lied to the Senate).

Bush and Cheney really, really want the power to torture Iraqis. Not because it gains them usable information (it doesn't and they wouldn't use the information if it did). All that torture does is inflame the Iraqis and the entire Islamic world. Which is exactly what Cheney wants. Remember, the US is not allowed by international law to leave Iraq while it is in chaos, and Cheney doesn't want to leave Iraq. No mistake there, and the "leaking" of the Abu G'hraib photos was probably deliberate.

Inflaming the Islamic world is an added bonus because most of the Islamic world just happens to sit on vast reserves of oil. It would not be surprising if other Islamic countries perpetrated terrorist attacks on US soil (or the attack was a domestic creation that was attributed to Iran or Syria or Libya or Nigeria). No mistake there.

There are fourteen permanent military bases (except they're no longer called "permanent" because that word caused too many ripples) in Iraq. Bases which can be used as staging posts to invade surrounding oil-rich countries. The US is constructing its largest embassy in the world there. Far, far larger than it need be if it's to be purely an embassy (Iraq is not the largest country by area or population, nor does it have the largest number of civilian US visitors). But it is of an appropriate size if it is to be used as a regional administrative HQ for the US's newly-acquired (by invasion) oil serfdoms.

Iraq is all going exactly to the plans drawn up by Cheney and Wolfowitz in 1992. See the excellent PNAC Primer for the sordid details. PNAC, the Project for a New American Century is a neocon thinktank with a membership that is comprised of key figures in the Bush administration and those who exert significant influence upon it: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, JEB Bush, etc.

In the PNAC Primer you'll also see that PNAC issued a policy document in 2000 calling for (again, I'll translate the euphemisms) the transformation of the US military into a force of marauding pillagers who'd go around stealing the world's resources (primarily oil). It notes that:

[...] 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.

You might recall that because of the similarities (attack without warning on US soil, around 3,000 casualties) 9/11 was frequently labelled "a second Pearl Harbor" and "a new Pearl Harbor."

Imagine that! Because of the Bush Maladministration's seeming incompetence, Cheney gets his wet dream of a decade turned into a reality. It couldn't have worked out any better for him had he planned it all himself.

So if you persist in thinking of this bunch of evil bastards as incompetent and stupid then the result of your opposition to them will be that one day you'll wake up to find their jackboots kicking your teeth down your throat. We don't stand a chance of fixing things if people persist in thinking that the war in Iraq is a dreadful mistake rather than a coldly cynical, evil action.

BTW, don't congratulate yourselves that the Dems took control of Congress. Liebold machines, voter intimidation and the like mean that Cheney could have retained control if he wanted to. The conclusion is that he didn't need to. I can think of the following possiblities as to why he might not feel such a need:

• The public isn't too smart, so when Iraq is still a fucking mess in 2008 they'll blame the Democrats.
  
  
• The illegal NSA wiretapping of Democrat congresscritters has turned up enough blackmail material that Cheney can still get Congress to do whatever he wants. This illusion of cross-party support is something most dictatorships like to foist upon the world.
  
  
• Imposition of martial law in response to another horrific terrorist attack on US soil effectively makes Bush resident-for-life.
  

Take your pick, or come up with an alternative. Because you can bet this bunch of evil fuckers will not give up power without a struggle, and they could have stolen the mid-terms as easily as they stole the last two presidential elections.

Just remember that they're not stupid or incompetent, they're fucking evil and we have a small chance of foiling their plans. Fall for the "Bush makes yet another mistake in calling for a surge" headlines and we're all fucked.