“Operation Iraqi Freedom is over”: President Obama announced from behind his desk on Tuesday night, August 31st. A strange choice of words to announce our “victory” in defeating Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda. “The future we are trying to build for our nation may seem beyond our reach”, he inserted at the start, as if unsure whether his speech was about Iraq finally being relieved of our help or about Obama's heavy burdens here at home. “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state . . . they give us confidence that our course is true”. This also seemed most strange, for it would seem more fitting that support for our constitution or our unity as a nation would be the source of our resolve. It sounds like some tin pot dictator bragging that military 'might makes me right'. He then called ex-President Bush a patriot: “no one can doubt his support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security”. Is this the same Bush who loved his country so much that he lied to get support for a war he claimed would remove weapons of mass destruction before Sadaam could give them to Al Qaeda? “There were patriots who supported the war and patriots who opposed it” Obama explained: So are we all, all honorable men.

“A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency and terrorism and sectarian warfare threatened to tear Iraq apart”. But if the talk of WMDs was a lie, then how did we disarm them? We have been busy ever since trying to rebuild and re-arm their conventional army. Also, the word insurgency suggests something unconnected to the US mission – yet in this case the insurgency was the effort of Iraqi patriots of many stripes to drive the foreign occupiers from their land. All very puzzling. “Thousands of American gave their lives” was as close a Obama cared to go as far as actually tolling up the costs of our dreadful seven year debacle. However, Defense Secretary Gates was braver than his boss when he spoke to the American Legion in Milwaukee: "This is not a time for premature victory parades or self-congratulation”. Gates' voiced quivered as he gave the numbers of killed and wounded in Iraq — 4,427 and 34,268. Never mentioned were the one million Iraqis killed in the war, nor the 2 million Iraqi refugees driven from their country, nor the 500,00 to 700,000 children under five years of age who died for lack of clean drinking water during the 1990s after we blew up their purification plants and blocked the import of water treating chemicals. We have left behind a nation bombed back to a pre-industrial state with dependable electric power available only a few hours a day, no sewerage treatment plants still in operation, and over 60% unemployment. Combat operations are over, let abject poverty reign supreme!

The President once again said “all U.S. Troops will leave by the end of next year” even as his General in Iraq, Ray Odierno, openly voiced his desire to see 30,000 to 35,000 troops remain until 2014 or 2015. (Jeff Huber, Antiwar.com 8/30/10). Ryan Crocker, our former ambassador in Baghdad told the NYTimes (Tim Arango 8/10/10) that plans are in place to renegotiate the SOFA (status of forces agreement): “For a very long period of time we're going to be on the ground. Even if its solely in support of US weapons systems”. Having now sold the Iraqi air force 18 F-16 fighter jets, Brig. General Scott Hanson stated that “we're five years into a 10 to 15 year program”. Have we come to a point when the top brass feel so comfortably in control in control of our foreign policy that they can openly contradict the President? “The war on Iraq was never about “blood for oil,” or at least not just that. It’s always been about blood for armored humvees, blood for bombs, blood for no-bid contracts to build and operate bases, blood for jobs (and votes) in your congress critter’s district, blood for campaign contributions, blood for ever-expanding political power and for never-ending access to your wallet”.(Thomas L. Knapp, Antiwar.com 9/1/10). On to victory in Afghanistan!

STRATFOR 8/19/10 feels that destruction of Bushehr would not effect the heart of Iran's nuclear efforts, which consists of the nuclear enrichment facilities cited above that are deeply imbedded in the mountains. “Israel cannot destroy Iran's nuclear program on its own and the question has always been whether the US is willing to conduct such an air campaign” at the probable cost of Iranian blockage of oil tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. “So far, Washington has declined to attack Iran, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the timetable for Bushehr becoming operational”.

WHAT IF THE PROBLEM IS NOT ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS AT ALL?
Perhaps the conflict is not a race towards nuclear annihilation but about who is the dominant power in the Middle East. Iran under the Shah (1953-1970) was first seen by Israel as an ally against the nationalist Arab bloc led by Gamal Abdul Nasser. While the Shah harbored ambitions of becoming the hegemon in the Gulf and used US arms and training missions to support this, it did not trouble the Israelis too much, given their own developing nuclear arsenal. With the Shah's overthrow, Israel found the militancy of the Ayatollah and his aid to the Palestinians, to Syria and to the Hezbollah in Lebanon to be threatening to Israel's military dominance of its Moslem neighbors.

Now, with Iraq tied up in political wrangling amongst the Shi'a parties, and the Sunni effectively removed from the political scene thanks to the short-sightedness of the US, Iran will have considerable influence upon whatever coalition is seated in Baghdad and some ability to prevent any group from becoming dominant for long. After their disastrous losses in the 1980s war with Sadaam Hussein, Iran sees a weak neighbor as a good neighbor. Meanwhile, the US shows no desire to remove their remaining 'combat-trained' 50,000 soldier/trainers, and thus a weak central government must look good in the Pentagon as well as in Tehran. If the US long term strategy involves maintaining well fortified bases throughout the Middle East and Central Asia capable of wreaking havoc upon anyone who gets too uppity, then the likelihood of pulling all our troops out of Iraq at the end of 2011, as stated in the current Status of Forces Agreement, is very remote. It might be seen in Washington as virtually handing over Iraq to its neighbor. And therein lies the basis for a modus operandi between Washington and Tehran: the US allows Iran to meddle in Baghdad politically to assure no strong party takes power and rebuilds the Iraqi Army; in return, Iran allows the US military bases to remain so long as the Pentagon doesn't get serious about using their 50,000 boots to actually train a new Iraqi Army.

But what about Hamas' rudderless rockets, Israel's continued humiliation of one million in Gaza, Hezbullah's military strength, Israel's lust for revenge after their 2006 defeat in Lebanon, and finally what about Israel's 200 nukes? You will just have to wait for another Edition of Obama-Watch.com.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, broke from the Obama administration's contention that there were no real revelations in the reports and therefore there should be no real harm to the war effort. She told The Cable in an interview on July 27th that she was shocked by the allegations in the leaked reports that elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate were directly involved in attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan. "We need to find out if it's true. The suspicion is that it may well be true and if so, it's very serious. It's hard to believe it actually happened because of the size of it." she dithered (07/27/10). Other senior Democrats on Capitol Hill Tuesday said they weren't shocked by the reports. "I don't share her shock," Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, D-MI. (The Cable 07/28/10)

SHOOT THE MESSENGER – QUICKLY!!
Admiral Mike Mullen, our Joint Chief of Staff, accused WikiLeaks of “having on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family” (presumably who were informing against the Taliban) and Secretary Gates refers to “potentially severe and dangerous battlefield consequences”. Bill Van Auken (Countercurrents.org 07/30/10) comments “that no reporters at their joint news conference pointed to the absurdity of these angry denunciations of WikiLeaks from the two men whose colonial war had caused the deaths of well over 20,000 Afghans between 2004 and 2009” and whose hands are truly soaked in blood.

Much of the media as well as the US Congress has joined in to portray Assange and WikiLeaks as responsible for endangering innocent lives while actually providing details on the annihilation of thousands as a result of the US war. “The only crime of which WikiLeaks is guilty is that of breaking the main stream media's self-censorship of information exposing the bloody and criminal character of the US war.” (Countercurrents.org 07/30/10)

SO WHAT DO THE WIKILEAKS REVEAL THAT WE SUPPOSEDLY ALREADY KNOW?
First: Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence agency (ISI) has played a dual game for years, supporting, supplying and providing safe havens in Pakistan to Taliban insurgents while cooperating with the US in actions against the Taliban in other areas of Pakistan such as North Waziristan. Former head of ISI, Lt. General Hamid Gul regularly confers with the Taliban in Afghanistan about tactics and strategies.
Second: That the Taliban is a thoroughly sophisticated fighting force now equipped with MANIPADS, a man-portable air defense system capable of shooting down helicopters with heat-seeking missiles and ending our domination of the skies just as the Stinger missiles supplied by the US to the mujaheddin in the 1980s took away Russia's aerial warfare program and forced their withdrawal in 1989.
Third: There are actually two parallel war strategies being followed by the US Central Command. The COIN counter-insurgency program originated by General McCrystal seems to be our official position and would presumably encourage strong bonds with locals and the curtailment of air attacks upon villages and town. (Described in Obama-Watch 31st Edition). However, WikiLeaks now documents that an alternative war plan is actually the dominant tactic and involves heavy reliance upon a rain of terror from the sky upon towns and villages suspected of harboring Taliban utilizing unmanned drones operated by specialists in remote Nevada air bases with big TV screens and a bloodless hand on the trigger. It also involves Task Force 373 with 2000 senior Taliban figures on their kill or capture list, and with the very Orwellian name JPEL - 'Joint Prioritized Effects List'. Among the documents released are many reports of wanton and indiscriminate roadside killings of Afghan civilians who merely pass by Task Force 373 vehicles. Most of these are not investigated further nor are the killers even disciplined. This is a far cry from the “winning the hearts and minds” tactic loudly touted in Senate hearing rooms and praised in the main stream media.

WHY THE PAKISTANI DOUBLE GAME? The ISI continues to maintain liaison and material support to the Taliban just as they previously did (with US weapons and materiel) with the mujaheddin during the years of Russian occupation in Afghanistan. When the Russians left in 1989, the US turned over these operations in Afghanistan to Pakistan's ISI. This relationship apparently remains intact power. From Pakistan's viewpoint, it is most important that they maintain good relations with the Taliban on both sides of the border, since they will exist long after the US has withdrawn. It is not possible for Pakistan to have a hostile India to the east and a hostile Taliban controlling Afghanistan on the west. George Friedman suggests: “Given that Pakistan does not expect the Taliban to be defeated, and given that they are not interested in chaos in Afghanistan, it follows that they will maintain close relations with and give support to the Taliban. Given that the United States is powerful and is Pakistan's only lever against India, the Pakistanis will not make this their public policy, however. The US has thus created a situation in which the only rational policy for Pakistan is two-tiered, consisting of overt opposition to the Taliban and covert support for the Taliban.” (Stratfor 07/27/10). The US understands this dilemma and realizes that putting too much pressure on Pakistan could result in the unwanted destabilization of the entire Islamabad government.

MAKING SAUSAGE: As in making sausage, one must never look too closely at the messy ways in which wars are fought, particularly coalition warfare. Even the strongest alliances are fraught with deceit and dissension, as we learned working with the British in WWII. While the US is fighting to deny AlQaeda a base in Afghanistan, Pakistan is fighting to secure its western frontier against rebel tribesmen and maintain internal stability. Meanwhile, the Taliban know that they can win by not being defeated. Which gets us back to the WikiLeaks conundrum. Whoever did put all this together and leak it out, has provided the most powerful case yet for US withdrawal from Afghanistan sooner rather than later. (STRATFOR 07/27/10)

The abrupt dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal by President Obama confirms that the war in Afghanistan is going very badly indeed. The general would not have been fired for a few unguarded remarks to a 2nd tier magazine had the war been succeeding according to plan. It may well be that his only offense was to express in too blunt and undiplomatic a fashion the sentiments of broad sections of the US officer corps. Nevertheless, the COIN (counterinsurgency) strategy, that McChrystal himself designed and that his boss General Patraeus sold to Washington, is rapidly falling apart:
The death toll for US and NATO troops rose to 85 so far in June, making this the worst month since the US invaded Afghanistan way back in October 2001.
The US quartermasters who maintain the supply chain for war materiel hire various war lords to funnel these supplies from Pakistan ports and from Central Asian airports into our Afghani bases. A good portion of these transportation costs have now been exposed as flowing directly into the coffers of Taliban insurgents so as to convince them not to attack the trucks. Thus, the Pentagon is indirectly financing the insurgency to the tune of approximately $2 million a week.
The failure of the US intervention in the southern town of Marjah this spring is now admitted (McChrystal calls it “a bleeding ulcer”). The Marjah campaign was intended to demonstrate how COIN would win local support (McChrystal jokingly called it 'government in a box'). The major advance into Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city, has had to be postponed at least until next fall.
Amongst the Afghan people, President Hamid Karzai is widely reviled as a corrupt American puppet while his brother continues to operate a major opium entrepot. Opium remains the country's major cash crop (right next to US handouts and bribes).
Antiwar sentiment amongst our NATO allies is mounting, while in the United States only 44% now say the war is worth fighting, down from 56% three years ago.
The Rolling Stone article, which presumably led to McChrystal's dismissal June 23rd, and a New York Times article by C.J. Chivers both describe growing frustration among field officers, NCOs and rank-and-file soldiers in Afghanistan with McChrystal’s counter-insurgency tactics, which, in the name of reducing civilian casualties, call for “further tightening rules guiding the use of Western firepower—air strikes and guided rocket attacks, artillery barrages and even mortar fire to support troops on the ground”.
“The disrespectful behavior of the US commander in Afghanistan and his aides was symptomatic of a more deeply rooted, potentially dangerous malaise” writes Simon Tisdall in the UK Guardian (06/24/10). Surveys show that a majority of active-duty officers believe that senior officers should insist on making civilian officers accept their viewpoints and that only 29% believe that high-ranking civilians, rather than their military counterparts, should have the final say on what type of military force to use. “We want to fight like we did in Iraq and like we did in Afghanistan before McChrystal. I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts”, said a former Special Forces operator. “His rules of engagement put soldiers lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing”. (Hastings in Rolling Stone 06/22/10).
The support for the change of commanders by congressional Republicans and many right-wing media pundits shows that many had lost confidence in the General and his counter-insurgency strategy. In fact three of the most pro-war US Senators, McCain, Graham and Lieberman, issued a statement condemning McChrystal's recent comments and right wing media seems to agree to his being sacked.
Obama’s selection of Petraeus to replace McChrystal is a clear effort to appease these right-wing critics. The appointment of Petraeus was suggested in advance by neoconservative columnist William Kristol, and hailed by the right-wing media as a political masterstroke (WSWS 06/24/10).

LA PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE
In relieving General Stanley McChrystal of command US and NATO forces in Afghanistan on June 23rd, Obama intended to emphasize that he remained fully in support of the program of military escalation and counterinsurgency warfare with which McChrystal is identified. He pledged to do “whatever is necessary to succeed in Afghanistan,” adding, “This is a change in personnel but it is not a change in policy.”. Yet most Americans are thoroughly confused as to what our policy may actually be. Nowhere in the Rolling Stone article does it suggest that McChrystal disagreed with the Obama policy in Afghanistan. This is hardly surprising given that he wrote the policy himself. The old saw that “the more things change, the more they remain the same” seems to have been inverted: “The longer things remain the same (la meme chose), the more likely they must change”. There seems little doubt now that a serious reassessment of our strategy is taking place behind this facade of steadfastness. McChrystal may have done Obama a favor by forcing a re-examination of strategy now before things get any worse.
The New York Times ((06/24/10) demands “a serious reassessment now of the military and civilian strategies”. STRATFOR, the respected voice of many former intelligence operatives and policy analysts, feels that the Afghan war is much bigger than the counter-insurgency plan championed by McChrystal and Petraeus and that the war is unwinnable by force of arms no matter how concentrated the focus is on counter-insurgency (Stratfor 06/23/10). “At the end of the day, no matter who is in charge, the American-led effort in Afghanistan remains deeply intractable with limited prospects for success” (Stratfor 06/24/10).
Just What Is Our Mission? Obama, while announcing the dismissal of General McChrystal, attempted once again to define our mission as: “To disrupt, dismantle and defeat AlQaeda”. Yet, General Petraeus estimated total AlQaeda strength in Afghanistan in the “double digits” in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (06/17/10). This is the same figure General Jim Jones, our National Security Advisor, gave Obama at year end. We rarely hear of any encounters between our 90,000 soldiers and this “real enemy” AlQaeda. Instead, we continue to fight the Taliban. Obama says that our task is merely “to break the momentum of the Taliban” while not telling us what that could possibly mean short of extermination (WH announcement 06/23/10). Back in 2008 while campaigning, Obama argued that Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time, but Afghanistan was a necessary war. His reasoning went that the real threat to the US came from AlQaeda and Afghanistan had been its sanctuary. Were the US to abandon Afghanistan, AlQaeda would re-establish itself and once again threaten our Homeland (George Friedman,Stratfor 21/10/09). Looking back at this twisted logic, one must ask not only who was briefing Obama back in 2008, but how in the world he has managed to hold on to such a fatuous scenario ever since. None of the 19 named hijackers was Afghani, the Taliban had no hand in the 9/11 planning, and even the FBI has been forced to admit that “they had no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11” (Statement by Rex Tomb, FBI Chief of Investigative Publicity as reported in Muckraker Report 06/06/06).

COUNTER-INSURGENCY OR COUNTER-TERRORISM
The counter-insurgency strategy developed by McChrystal and Petraeus and announced by Obama last October was given eighteen months to demonstrate its efficacy. It proposed that we form strong bonds with local populations so as to provide intelligence against the Taliban operating in their areas. The US did this sort of thing with the Sunnis in Iraq in 2006 when we paid each of them $300 per week to stop fighting us. If COIN is to work, we must protect those who wish to cooperate with us, and this entails putting both US and Afghan troops as close to the Afghan people as possible, mainly in densely populated areas. We would need to curtail air and ground fire in such centers since that would run counter to the mission of protecting the population while winning them over. STRATFOR reports that “US and Afghani troops are unable to provide security to local populations and the locals do not appear interested or willing to break with the Taliban and cooperate with the Afghan government” (Stratfor 06/23/10). President Karzai continues to meet with Taliban leaders and the State Department has expressed interest in such talks. But, so far the State Department, neither in the person of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry or Special Representative Richard Holbrooke, has had much to do with directing our program in Afghanistan. They certainly haven't been meeting with the locals.
Joseph Biden has emerged as a strong backer of the counter-terrorism strategy. Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counter-terrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden and Ambassador Eikenberry as “shortsighted,” saying it would lead to a state of “Chaos-istan.” The remarks earned him a smack down from the President himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: “Shut the fuck up, and keep a lower profile”. Counter-terrorism would involve a smaller US armed force in country and rely more heavily upon aerial attacks and artillery as “force multipliers” to root Taliban from well entrenched positions and from population centers.

HOW WILL IT ALL END?
Make Peace With the Taliban: Negotiate with the Taliban, as we did with the Sunnis In Iraq. Pay whatever it takes to get them on our side. Gates and others admit that the Taliban has too much internal discipline right now to allow meaningful negotiation (OK - we'll make it $500 a week). There is support within the State Department for Karzai's reconciliation efforts. (Stratfor 06/23/2010).
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University and a West Point graduate as well, focused in his 2005 book “The New American Militarism” on how Americans have increasingly found themselves in thrall to military power and the idea of global military supremacy. He speaks of the “normalization of war and the acceptance of an unchallenged American military superiority”. David Lowe feels that “America is in a state of perpetual war. Before, it was the Cold War and now it is the War on Terror, AlQaeda and Islamic Terrorism, rather than Communism”. (Twitter 01/14/10). Noam Chomsky posits that a state of perpetual war is an aid to the most powerful leaders of our society to help them maintain positions of economic and political superiority. (Wikipedia). It may well be that the America military-industrial cabal has no intention whatsoever of totally withdrawing from either Afghanistan or Iraq, where we have now retreated to five huge crusader-like fortifications and can still keep our thumb upon those who run the local government while avoiding casualties that so upset the American public.
One Term Obama?: Petraeus, with his solid reputation in Congress can provide the political cover for Obama to again shift strategies in Afghanistan. If he can somehow avoid getting Obama's War blamed on him, we could see Petraeus as the Republican candidate for President in 2012. Paul Craig Roberts, who was Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, reminds us that: “Once the Roman Senate collapsed, the executive branch became the captives of the military. Now with General Petraeus replacing McChrystal in Afghanistan, we have Obama elevating Petraeus to the Republican presidential nomination in the next election. Thus Obama will have replaced himself with a man who can unify the military and executive branches” (06/24/10 ICH).
But What Do The Afghanis Want? Washington has not bothered to ask them.

David Remnick says President Obama has a penchant for compromise and avoids head-on confrontation on principle. (“The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” by David Remnick, Knopf, 2010). “His way is to absorb and synthesize the arguments of others for his earnest consensus-seeking style”. Examples abound during his first 16 months in office: Health care compromises with the insurance and drug thieves on price controls; Dropping the public option; Approving the Defense Department's surge strategy in Afghanistan; Turning a deaf ear towards the Israeli genocide in Gaza; Avoiding strong regulatory reform on Wall Street; Abandoning the auto workers and their hard-won retirement rights; No restraints upon AIG/Goldman Sachs and no government takeover of the major banks. How much of this compromising personality is a result of a minority mentality, whether the minority be intellectual, racial or foreign upbringing, and how much is sheer ambition at any cost? Obama sometimes displays a haughty self-removal from the field of play, as if he were above all that wresting in the mud stuff.

Solutions for the oil spill will not come from BP in time nor will they cover all aspects of the problem. BP has underestimated the spill, blocked independent investigation and generally taken their time in mobilizing: they have had 5 weeks and have not even capped the well. The Obama administration has provided reassurances about who is responsible and who will pay for the cleanup but has not formulated any plan whatsoever to fix the leak, leaving that entirely in the hands of the oil company that, through its own inattention to safety and to following regulations, caused the problem in the first place This is no longer a small matter but a national disaster and a national task force ought to take charge. Leaving it all to BP is equivalent to giving the arsonist responsibility for putting out the fire and repairing the house. Obama can't view this catastrophe from the beach much longer, he's going to have to wade out and get his socks oily.

SET UP A DISASTER MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY
The Obama Administration needs to appoint a group of non-partisan experts in deep offshore oil fields, underwater repairs, and coastal protection under one strong leader who will be given the authority to impose solutions upon BP. This Disaster Management Authority would take control out of the hands of the perpetrator, the rule breaker, and their lobbyists and technicians. Only in this way we can we be assured that we are getting the best, the fastest, and the most thorough program to cap the well. Obama has instead brought in the Coast Guard, the EPA, the Marine Management Service (MMS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and (for reasons most difficult to comprehend) the Small Business Administration. None, repeat none, of these bureaucracies has any noticeable expertise in capping runaway oil wells. There are plenty of specialists out there in the private sector who could be recruited to serve on such a disaster management authority. They would have no ax to grind in designing solutions to the disaster, whether related to the oil production hardware, the maneuvering of well capping or plugging equipment into place, preparing a coast line protection and cleanup plan, and oil dispersal technologies. Such a disaster management panel would not be bipartisan, it would not have any political dimension whatsoever. British Petroleum needs to be removed from the controls: their solutions are not necessarily in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Instead of a 'hands-on' approach, President Obama announced on May 21st a bipartisan commission to investigate what caused the oil spill and “figure out where the government went wrong, so as to make sure it never happens again” (NYTimes 05/22/10). Every time we hear the words 'bipartisan commission' we are warned that a political whitewash is underway, another Warren Commission report, another political coverup. With oil continuing to gush at what seems like an increasing rate, and after a month of confusion and failure by BP to come up with a workable method of capping the flow, collecting the spill, or repairing the well head, our highest priority is not an investigation of what went wrong. The Obama Administration has to come up with a plan to stop the disaster from continuing. They seem to think that the disaster was in the explosion and sinking of the drill rig. It was not. The disaster is in the present, right now, where some 95,000 barrels per day of crude oil flows unrestricted directly to the surface and spreads rapidly toward the shoreline or sinks as massive tar balls to coat the ocean bed, cutting off one end of the marine food chain.

“Mr. Obama has come under increasing fire for not being more aggressive. A letter to BP requesting more transparency was criticized as too deferential, and cable news channels are filled with commentators asking why the federal government has left so much for BP to handle. Spokesman Robert Gibbs explained repeatedly that the current law makes the company responsible for the recovery and cleanup, not the taxpayers” (NYT 05/22/10). BP has underestimated the size of the disaster from the moment of the explosion aboard the drilling rig. The current estimate of the leakage is “nearly 20 times the 5,000 barrels a day that both BP and NOAA have been citing for nearly three weeks. In fact the first estimate by BOP after the rig sank was only 1000 barrels per day. (MarketWatch 05/14/10) An engineering professor from Purdue University testified before congress on May 19th after viewing of video shots finally released by BP of the end-of-pipe. Professor Werely estimated a total flow of 95,000 barrel per day but allowed that this might be adjusted downward as more data are released by BP. Representative Ed Markey noted that the rate of leakage is critical to designing a solution, and that BP had been holding back the video and refused to allow independent scientists to perform more accurate measurements. (Wikepedia 05/23/10). Out of the total leakage, BP is collecting 5,000 barrels of oil plus associated gas through a 4 inch tube inserted into the end of the 19.5 inch well casing. This collection is brought to the surface and collected in tanks aboard their supply ship (RigZone.com 05/21/10). “If they had thought it was anything like that (95,000 barrels per day) they would have used a bigger pipe – say 10 or 12 inch - than the 4 inch employed” (Rodger Cagdell, Virtual Pipeline Systems).

So far, BP has tried five methods to cap the well including remotely operating valves on the well head, and dropping a huge metal box over the well head. The formation of ice crystals prevented this device from being successful. A 'Top Hat' was then lowered to the seabed but this approach failed as well. A 'top kill' device is now expected to be ready by Tuesday May 25th according to Doug Suttles, CEO of BP. This would involve lowering a large cap over the entire wellhead, securing this cap to the ocean floor, and pumping heavy drilling fluids (not seawater this time) into the blowout preventer to stop the flow. Then, cement would be injected to seal the well permanently (RigZone.com 05/21/10).

AN INOPERABLE BLOWOUT PREVENTER SAVED BP $500,000
Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan told a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the blowout preventer, a very complex heavy duty device mounted upon the well-head on the ocean floor, failed to operate when the drill bit encountered a bubble of high pressure gas. This device had a dead battery in its operating circuit, it had hydraulics leaks in the lines that were supposed to slam it shut, and was not designed to cut through the heavy drill pipe couplings to cut off flow. “Manufactured by industry and installed by industry with no government inspector witnessing the installation or its construction” said Coast Guard Captain Hung Nguyen during Committee hearings, and even though “MMS approves the design of the well they don't check to see if the type of drill pipe is capable of being cut by the hydraulic ram. We have self-certification and unenforceable safety notices”. MMS writes letters but does not inspect. Tighter rules for monitoring deep water drilling were proposed nine years ago by the Coast Guard but MMS higher-ups in Washington never approved them. As far as I know, they're still up in headquarters” (Alternative Energy 05/12/10). An acoustical shutoff switch intended to be the 'deadman switch' was not installed as a cost-saving measure thus saving BP $500,000. In another economy move, the drilling contractor Tranocean Ltd., replaced the heavy drilling mud, normally used to keep a positive pressure on any oil or gas that may be encountered, with sea water just prior to the blowout.

We are experiencing a major maritime disaster – well beyond the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska , the blowout in the Santa Barbara Channel 40 years ago, or even the Katrina hurricane's flooding of New Orleans. Anger is justified and demands for Presidential action are overdue. Its oily socks time in the White House!

President Barack Obama is finding that his ability as Commander in Chief to direct our military and diplomatic affairs is seriously restricted by groups within his own Administration. The CIA and the Pentagon, supported by very powerful political and corporate interests, are able to manage his access to strategic data and can threaten political havoc should he take certain initiatives they do not approve. These include direct discussions with Iran to reduce tensions, seriously pressuring Israel to eliminate illegal settlements on Palestinian land, proposing substantial reductions in nuclear missile inventories, setting dates for the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and diverting funds from our war machine to domestic needs. He seems to be in a position similar to that of John Kennedy in the early 1960s.

JOHN KENNEDY'S DOOMSDAY DILEMMA
Back almost 50 years ago, John Kennedy found himself alone in the White House surrounded by foreign policy advisers, Pentagon brass, and Central Intelligence Agency professionals whose fix on the Cold War was that the president must be unyielding in demonstrating unswerving strength and determination in the face of mad dog Russia. They were driven by fear of losing a doomsday nuclear war, by the pressure from the military/industrial complex that thrived on military buildup, by the potential loss of dominance in world markets, by cutoffs in oil supplies, and by the inevitable economic decline that would result should we lose the cold war. JFK found surprisingly few advisers willing to seriously consider negotiation with the Soviet bloc to ease tensions, to reduce nuclear weapons stockpile, or to find a way to accommodate one other short of outright victory or defeat.

Nevertheless, he undertook a number of incredibly courageous actions totally opposed by the Pentagon, the CIA and most of the Department of State. These actions eventually resulted in his having the back of his skull shot off by an assassin's bullet in Dallas, Texas. The theologian and author James Douglass, in his book “JFK and the Unspeakable” (Verso 2008), says that “for turning towards peace with our enemy, Kennedy was murdered by a power we cannot easily describe but whose unspeakable reality can be traced, suggested, recognized and pondered.” He describes JFK's gradual turning away from nuclear confrontation as follows:

1.Refusing to directly support the Bay of Pigs invasion with US troops, ships and planes.
2.Dismissing CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs debacle.
3.Negotiating for the neutralization of Laos.
4.Reducing US troops in Vietnam and establishing a timetable for complete withdrawal of US forces.
5.Encouraging peace negotiations with North Vietnam.
6.Refusing to bomb Cuba and initiating back-channel talks with Castro.
7.Conducting over a year of secret back-channel negotiations with Khrushchev for reduction of tensions and armaments.
8.Signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Russia.
9.Backing away from a military confrontation with Russian tanks along the Berlin Wall.
10.Negotiating for the removal of US missiles from Turkey in exchange for Russia's pullout of missiles from Cuba.
11.Proposing complete and general disarmament.
12.Totally frustrating the military-industrial power structure during his first 1000 as Commander in Chief. These people were accustomed to having their way.

Do we today find ourselves with another President equally caught between his campaign rhetoric, his aspirations for peace, and the military-industrial bloc's insistence upon total global domination? Is Obama frustrated by his impotence to seriously address domestic ills in a weakened economy that spends 53% of every tax dollar on wars and armaments even though no credible challenger to US global dominance exists? Obama's attempts to right the situation appear half-hearted: one cannot help but think that he must reflect upon JFK's fate when he considers negotiation with Iran or with the Taliban.

The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, saw evidence back in the early 1960s that the world had been stricken by the presence of The Unspeakable. (Peace in the Post-Christian Era" Orbis Books 2004) He saw the interlocking murders of the Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and the escalating war in Vietnam as signs of Unspeakable forces within the US national security state. His work was read carefully by Kennedy. In his poem: “Chant to be Used in Processions Around the Site with Furnaces” Merton asks: “Do not think yourself better because you burn up friends and enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done”. Since WWII, our government has found that the most heinous crimes against the innocent, starting with atomic obliteration of two entire cities, and including the firebombing unprotected civilians from Dresden to Fallujah, could be justified as a lesser evil than defeat or subjugation to a foreign enemy or terrorist band. Nuclear deterrence is still seen today as a reasonable way of preserving the peace and is under active discussion as a means to prevent Iran's achieving some sort of nuclear parity with Israel.

Every President since Kennedy has avoided direct confrontation over the relentless growth of the national security state and its insistence upon massive armed violence as the only credible response to those who would challenge us. Raymond McGovern, a 27-year CIA analyst, has described the covert arm of the CIA as operating entirely according to its own rules and without any oversight. He feels that this makes even the new CIA Director, Leon Panetta, afraid to confront them.

WHO DOES THE CIA REPORT TO?
The National Security Act of 1947 placed the CIA under the National Security Council to “acquire, evaluate and coordinate information collected through espionage and concerning the national security of the United States. They were also allowed “to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the NSC may from time to time direct”. This turned the CIA into a personal, secret, unaccountable army of the president. (“Nemesis” by Chalmers Johnson, Henry Holt 2006). Clandestine or covert operations although nowhere specifically mentioned in the Act, quickly became the agency's main activity. The question thus arises: How did an agency set up to provide the President with a source of information become instead a tool whereby groups within his own government could restrict and flavor the intelligence channeled to the President in ways that did not serve his interests?

The CIA assured JFK in 1961 that Cubans would welcome American-supported insurgents invading their island during the planned Bay of Pigs operation. They never told JFK that they had just polled Cubans, found that Castro actually enjoyed overwhelming popularity and concluded that a popular uprising against Castro was very unlikely.. In Vietnam, estimates of enemy troop strength were deliberately distorted to make it appear that the US war was very winnable. On the Cold War front, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had been deliberately over-estimating the strength of the Soviet economy and its ability to sustain itself in a new war. If, in many instances, the CIA was not acting under orders of the President nor carrying out stated US policy, then who actually does run this massive intelligence operation and what is their purpose? James W. Douglass' recent book (“JFK and the Unspeakable” Verso 2008) describes the JFK dilemma most clearly and shows how his adamant stand against the CIA probably cost him his life.

FEAR IS REAL, DEAL WITH IT
George Friedman, the founder of Stratfor, a global team of US intelligence professionals, sees a thoroughly apocalyptic world out there, and describes a reality that we peaceniks prefer to screen from sight. Friedman repeatedly shows that the other side is hell-bent upon our destruction, whether by full-fueled airliners, by nuclear suitcase bombs and biological weapons, or by shoe bombers and underpants igniters. He argues that we cannot prevent our adversaries from mounting such attacks merely by demonstrating our power to bomb their towns and cities to rubble, or by liquidating their rural wedding parties. Islamic radicals may be so hell-bent with righteous fervor as to risk all, sacrificing their individuals lives if necessary, to bring paradise closer. (George Friedman “America's Secret War” Doubleday 2004).

Our most hard headed military planners feel we must clearsightedly look into the reality of massive destruction and be prepared to use it when sufficiently provoked. They point out that humankind already lives under the threat of natural disasters like typhoon, flood, volcanic eruption, and another ice age. They see their ability to threaten total destruction with nuclear bombs as disaster by another means. But, it is what it may take to prevent our own obliteration. Holding up peace signs is a futile gesture in their view. It really gets down to kill or be killed sometimes. There may indeed be times when the threat of annihilation will temper a country's aggressiveness, when the fear of mutually assured destruction (MAD) can result in Cold War type stasis. But not right now.

In the Cuban missile standoff of 1962, the military and intelligence community was concerned that these two soft-headed leaders, Kennedy and Khrushchev, would leave the US in a more precarious position than before: a fear that the US would give away too much, get too little in return, and bring the next Armageddon even nearer. Kennedy's agreement to disband the Turkish ICBM missile sites and promise never to invade Cuba was seen as totally foolhardy capitulation. Similarly, his earlier refusal to support the Bay of Pigs invasion force with US air and sea cover not only doomed the invaders but helped assure Castro's being a fly in our eye forever. It proved for them JFK's unreliability as President.

In our current decade, where Al Qaeda has already engineered the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers and attacked the Pentagon, if they had not experienced immediate retaliation, then we could be assured that they would not hesitate to attack again, and with even more disastrous consequences. Thus, the immediate bombing of Afghanistan's pathetic little military machine was essential as a demonstration of our political will to use overwhelming power. While that war which slogs on, it now seems a very hollow demonstration of our retaliatory resolve. Friedman feels it may actually prevent another commando group from attacking our Homeland. While this is questionable to most of us, it is not to the military planners in Washington. After all, even the Palestine Liberation Organization became convinced that hijacking airplanes and ocean liners, or bombing Olympic athletes was not very productive. They learned that they would just have to live a life of fear and humiliation within their impoverished land for there seems no alternative. We have set back Iraqi civilization many decades, caused over one million casualties and inflicted unspeakable suffering amongst the innocent. Yet the military planners view it as a necessary war for it has brought military stability to the region, and assured the west of continued unchallenged access to the energy resources of the entire Middle East for decades to come. These were the gains and they are considerable, viewed from a geopolitical perspective. Were there alternatives to invasion? Could stable oil and gas production and market access have been assured by other means? Will continued pounding at remote bases in the AfPak mountains keep Al Qaeda at bay and the Pashtun resigned to living quietly in their tribal areas?

Is President Obama a wholehearted believer in this strategy, or is he merely restraining the Pentagon and the CIA from embarking upon even bigger offensives such as the 80,000 troop buildup in Afghanistan originally proposed by McCrystal (Obama bought him off with 30,000), and perhaps a subsequent military takeover of the unstable and thoroughly corrupt government of Pakistan? Will this demonstration of Presidential bloody-mindedness in Afghanistan be sufficient warning to Tehran not to pull on the United States' chain too hard about their right to produce enriched uranium. Equally, will this display of US determination continue to restrain Israel's President Netanyahu and his most frightening Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in Tel Aviv from pre-emptive attack against Iran? Obama must wake up seeing, as JFK saw each morning during the Cuban missile crisis, how close we all are to the apocalypse. A few rogue raids upon Iranian nuclear plants, an Iraqi missile attack against Israel, and retaliatory missiles fired upon Iranian sites from the US 5th Fleet in the Gulf, could well lead to the Iran's blockage of the Straits of Hormuz and the loss of the oil supply and the price stability we have won in the region since the 2003 invasion.

It was reassuring to hear General Petraeus complain the other day that: “Israel's total impunity for its intransigence is becoming a liability for the advance of US interests around the world.” (Andrew Sullivan in Atlantic Magazine – 3/04/10). Petraeus sent a team of top CENTCOM officers to brief Admiral Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) on the topic and asking that the region be made a part of Petraeus' command. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Obama's Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, was "too old, too slow and too late."

It is all well and good to demand our troops withdraw from Afghanistan now and spill no more blood needlessly, but are we simply ignoring the realities of the global power struggle we are fully engaged in? Is Obama merely a captive of the CIA and Pentagon planners or can he somehow restrain and divert them while using all of his talents to pacify the radicals and calm down all the saber rattlers? We are watching a drama far more complex than we can clearly see through the fog spread before us on the evening news and reinforced by our politicians. Will we have to wait 45 years for another book like Douglass' to explain what really was going on back in 2010? Will we still be here to read it?

Never has the public been more effectively misled, ill-informed, and blatantly deceived than during the supposed health care debate over the past few months. We all have a naive belief that somehow debate between opposing arguments will yield truth and enlighten us as to the facts. This is rubbish!

There has been a televised debate between President Obama, Senators and Congressman who have more in common on the health care issue than differences. Most of them have accepted campaign financing from the health care lobby and are not seriously concerned about the soaring costs of prescription drugs nor the least bit troubled about leaving questions concerning our health up to the wisdom of insurance companies. Big Pharma and the five largest medical insurance companies have caused the health care crisis by their unrestrained thirst for outrageous profits. Yet, there has been no serious discussion in Congress about placing controls on these vultures or replacing them with a public-financed single payer system, as is the common practice in almost all industrialized countries in the world. President Obama began private negotiations with Big Pharma and the insurance thieves many months ago, assuring them they need not fear price controls nor a federally-managed health care system similar to Medicare. He never meet with the many associations of health care professionals such as the Nurses Association, Doctors for Universal Health Care, the American Medical Association or others who have advocated a single payer system.

LET THE LOBBY RULE – IT'S THE AMERICAN WAY
Congress has been besieged by well-paid agents for the insurance and drug industries, who now admit to having 13,739 paid lobbyists. Imagine – that's 25 for every member of Congress! Between 1999 and 2009, the medical industry budget for lobbying Congress has grown from $1.44 billion to $3.47 billion. Also, according to Health Care for America Now, premiums for family insurance grew more than twice as fast as the actual cost of medical care between 2000 and 2008. Notwithstanding these facts, the Heath Care industry’s trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), has consistently pointed to sky-rocketing health costs as the reason for all the growth in their premiums. (Washington Post 02/28/10).
Upon passage of the Health Care Reform bill in the House of Representatives last Sunday night, March 21st, the New York Times (David Sanger 03/22/10) assured us that “Obama will go down in history as one of the handful of presidents who found a way to reshape the nation's social welfare system”. Obama's methodology was actually quite simple: let the insurance thieves craft a piece of legislation that would make sure that they had captured the entire health care market without any restraints upon the prices they charge, and then tell the Democrats it was the best he could work out. If Obama had wanted to reduce health care costs, he would have worked vigorously for a single-payer system or at the very least placed some restraints upon the insurance and drug companies lust for profit. The fact that he negotiated privately with the drug and insurance industry from the start was an acknowledgment that they held the necessary political and financial power over both the White House and the Congress.

Obama assured the health care industry that their monopoly would not be endangered by any federally -run single payer option. He then acted out a series of phony populist rants against the insurance giants to make an already badly informed public think he was really on their side. A lot of people believed until the very end that their guy Obama was really intent upon serving their interests! WSWS reports (03/22/10) that: “Details of the legislation have been kept deliberately vague. The public presentation by the administration and congressional Democrats is designed to conceal far more than what it reveals. People are largely left in the dark as to the bill's provisions. There has been no honest public discussion”. In actuality, the bill promises cuts in Medicare, requires that families obtain insurance from private firms or pay a fine, and delivers a huge number of new premium payers to the private for-profit insurance companies. Employers will be under no obligation to provide health insurance to their workers and can avoid this responsibility with a minimum fine.

AN HISTORIC MOMENT INDEED
The New York Times editorial (03/23/10) in lauding what it calls Health Care 'Reform' argues: ”Over time the reforms could bring about sweeping changes in the way medical care is delivered and paid for. They could ultimately rival Social Security and Medicare in historic importance”. This is complete nonsense: Social Security and Medicare were actually wrested from the ruling establishment as the result of great social struggles by working men and women, whereas Obama's health care plan has been written by the insurance thieves themselves with no input by working class people, by labor unions, or by health care professionals. It bears no relation to genuine reform. The NYTimes suggests that the Obama plan would provide a brake on skyrocketing insurance premiums through the proposed Health Insurance Rate Authority. Unfortunately, this early proposal was eliminated during Congressional negotiations and no mechanism to control a rise in premiums any longer exists in the bill the President has signed. No one bothered to tell the NYTimes apparently.

The United States already spends twice as much as other industrialized countries on health care - $7,129 per person. If the system is not changed, soon one dollar out of every five spent by our citizens will be for health care alone, while the amazingly inefficient and costly insurance industry wastes 31 cents of every health care dollar on paperwork, corporate bonuses and profit. A total of 80% of registered Democrats favor universal single-payer health care. Yet Obama, with a rock solid majority in both Houses of Congress, has just imposed a health care plan that ignores the public will. Popular support was not considered important and could always be manipulated once you've banked the lobby's campaign contributions and gotten the media safely on your side. He discovered that it was a slam-dunk to get people like Denis Kucinich, John Conyers and Howard Dean to abandon their principles once he raised the promise of future campaign assistance and access to his good ear. With the promise of a few dams, bridges and roads to nowhere, he might have even bought himself some errant Republican votes, in the lubricious tradition of LBJ.

A TRIUMPH FOR HARD-WORKING AMERICANS, A OPEN DOOR FOR THIEVERY
The NYTimes called the Obama plan “a triumph for hard-working Americans by reigning in the worst practices of the insurance companies”. Yet this same newspaper's Business Section in that very same edition called it “a boon for hospitals, drug makers and private health insurance companies”. The share prices of Merck, Pfizer, Cigna and Aetna surged merrily. Health care is the most profitable sector of the American economy and, with the financial sector, the largest contributor to our politicians' re-election campaigns. There is a growing disillusionment with Obama, with the Democratic-led Congress that has given the banksters a trillion dollar social welfare program, and provided no further jobs program to counter increasing unemployment and increased reliance upon food stamps everywhere across the country. How was it that, after finally realizing that he would not get a single Republican to vote for real Health Care Reform, Obama even further weakened the bill by dropping even his watered-down public option clause? Didn't he have even a modicum of belief in reform?

We are currently spending $1.4 trillion dollars more each year than we are collecting in taxes. President Barack Obama announced February 18th the appointment of a special blue-ribbon panel to recommend ways to cut back on Medicare and other domestic spending and to trim Social Security benefits. He named former Senator Alan Simpson, a Republican, and former White House Chief of Staff, Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, as the co-chairmen. They have both long been committed to gutting the social nets that working people, safeguards built over many decades to make old age less of a burden for those not blessed with retirement funds or employer-funded health insurance. An 18 member panel, including 6 appointed by Obama, 6 appointed by Republican congressional leadership and 6 by Democratic leadership, will supposedly issue a report approved by at least 14 of their number this coming December. The goal will be to reduce the annual budget deficit from its current 12.4% of GDP to 3% by 2015: a not-inconsiderable task.

We are told by the banksters and many members of congress from both political parties that Social Security and Medicare are “unfunded liabilities”, a form of welfare we cannot afford. This is an outright lie – the social security money Obama wants to cut already belongs to the people. They paid it into the Federal Government trust fund over their entire working lives. Can he really take away that which does not belong to the government? Furthermore, the Social Security system is now healthy and self-funding. It is not in deficit and can continue to fund retirements for another 75 years if a modest adjustment in rates, amounting one half of one percent of GDP) is made in future. We are mislead on this issue by the sly deceptions of Wall Streeters and their paid political hacks in Washington. We can expect that this blue ribbon panel will again suggest privatizing Social Security and giving all these funds to the Wall Street Banksters to play with. As Paul Craig Roberts, former Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan said (Feb 17, 2010 Counterpunch): “After the latest crisis brought on by Wall Street's dishonesty and greed, trusting Wall Street to manage anyone's old age pension requires a leap of faith that no intelligent person can make... Having deprived the working population of homes, jobs, and health care, Wall Street is now after senior citizens' old age security”.

The annual budget deficit has soared under Bush 43: We had a $236 billion surplus in the final year of the Clinton administration, now our deficit has reached $1.4 trillion as Obama continues the policy of George W. Bush to throw trillions away on endless wars and costly and sophisticated armaments to defend our shores from primitively-armed bands of enemies such as the Taliban, the remnants of Al-Qaeda and assorted Somali pirates. The current deficit, is almost the same as that of Greece, whose government is about to go belly-up in default. This deep deficit is the result of (1) not only a bloated defense budget, but also (2) two costly foreign wars, (3) cutting tax rates on the wealthy from 70% to 35% under the Bushes, (4) fabricating enough tax loopholes to keep many large corporations from paying anything at all, (5) the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and (6) bailing out the banksters from their reckless gambling these past several years.

Expressed in terms of total national debt, we are currently faced with a $12.4 trillion total debt as of February 2010. It was only $3.2 trillion in Fiscal Year 2001 when Bush 43 took the reins and Cheney explained to him that deficits didn't matter. Obama's total proposed military budget is nearly $1 trillion including $880 billion for the Pentagon itself, plus secret (black) programs, military aid and bribes to Israel, Egypt and Pakistan, the costs of 225,000 mercenaries employed overseas by defense contractors like Blackwater, veterans' benefits, and intelligence services.
Afghani and Iraqi wars alone will cost $200 to $250 billion this year.

THE POLITICAL COVER COMMISSION
Why is the President cutting the retirement benefits of working people now, when we are in the depths of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Will putting less money in the hands of our senior citizens help to stimulate the economy? As Shamus Cooke explains: “Obama is being left with the dirtiest of missions – to cut the deficit by gutting domestic programs. He refuses to do this alone and talks about “bipartisan cooperation” (Counterpunch 02/16/10 ). Thus we have all this jockeying around to establish a Congressional Blue Ribbon Panel that will provide everyone with political cover while they stick the knife into the middle class while leaving the fat cats untouched. The strategy requires of course that there are no fingerprints on the knife. Even the corporate-friendly Wall Street Journal has called it “The Political Cover Commission” although their real motivation is to warn Republicans of the political fallout from cutting entitlements. The WSJ would rather let the Democrats take all the blame.

A ONE-TERM PRESIDENT?
When Democratic Party voters becomes fully aware of the complicity of Obama in this nasty business, they are likely to stay home in droves when he runs for re-election in 2012. Is he fated to be another of our one-term presidents? Maybe it will really take a Republican in the White House to rein in the banksters and bring Pentagon spending back under control, as George H.W. Bush once attemp