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Stalemate Over Iraq Intervention Serves Bush Cartel's Hidden Agenda
BUZZFLASH
READER COMMENTARY
by Bob
Jewett
Dear BuzzFlash,
Almost daily, from President George W. Bush, Secretary Of State Colin Powell and assorted White House spokespersons, the Administration pronounces it is out of patience with Saddam Hussein's intransigence, the United Nation's renitence and France's obstinacy; adding that the nation will go it alone if military action is forced upon it to disarm Iraq.
Yet nothing has happened since the arrival of an estimated 100,000 American troops in the Middle East and enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2003 allowing the President "to deploy U.S. military personnel to a foreign country in such numbers as he considers appropriate for purposes of assisting the government of that country in its efforts to combat terrorism, if he certifies to Congress that such a deployment is important to the national interest of the U.S."
In the opinion of Pentagon planners ground forces must move this month, February, or early March before the heat of the Iraqi Summer. The Bush Administration's disdain for the United Nations, moreover, is of public record so why the hesitancy in attacking Iraq now?
While the Congress, the media and the public is distracted by terror alerts, bashing France, Germany and the United Nations and sensational murder and kidnapping cases, that have no national import, the real threats of America's security go un-addressed.
A Congress that authorized $65 million to investigate former President Clinton's sexual peccadilloes seemingly cannot find the funds to thoroughly investigate the events of September 11, 2001, the Enron scandal or who attended Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy meeting.
Democrats as well as Republicans are responsible. For example Democratic Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, while chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee, promised to thoroughly investigate Enron's influence in the Bush White House. Yet the process dragged on until after the 2002 elections with the chairmanship going to Maine Republican Susan Collins who is turning the committee's focus toward Homeland Defense.
Meanwhile Attorney General John Ashcroft's staff drafted "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003" granting the Federal government enhanced powers of domestic surveillance, warrentless wiretaps and secret arrests. Until a reporter with the PBS program "Now with Bill Moyers" showed it to Iowa Senator Chuck Grassely, a member of the Judiciary Committee, only Speaker Dennis Hastert, R, IL, and Vice President Cheney knew of the document outside the Justice Department.
Two million, and counting, Americans unemployed, a record budget deficit of $304 billion, a stock market recession, a crisis in health care and continuing business scandals are greater threats to national security than all the Osama bin Ladens and Saddam Husseins combined. The Administration pays scant attention to these issues while forging ahead with its tax cut plan that even Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warns will have deleterious consequences for the country's future economic well-being.
Could it be that the Administration is content to let the situation with Iraq indefinitely drag on as our national treasury is pilfered, pension-plans plundered and civil liberties eroded all in the name of a never-ending war on terrorism?
Bob Jewett
BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
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