Al-Jazeerah, January 3, 2006

There is nothing traditional about the current war in Iraq. There is no clearly defined or uniformed enemy, there is not even a front line or a foreseeable conclusion to what the president has described as "unending war." Most important, this was not a war based on an attack against us – the Iraq War was an illegal preemptive strike – which is something that violates every aspect of all the rules of war, because in Bush’s world, any country can now be attacked for just thinking about opposition to the United States, or to our policies.

 This is a situation that the USA has not faced before, because international law forbids "preemptive military action," for acts believed to be 'potentially pending.’ Had the president and his advisors been able to prove that an attack was actually eminent that might have been different, but all the intelligence they used to support that theory has been proven false. Not only is this a war against shadows, the War-on-Iraq was and is illegal. Now it appears that when we are at war, Bush believes there is only one branch of government – and because of his interpretation of the Second Amendment – no laws can be valid if those laws seek to reign in his power over either the military or the population.  

Everything about this war and its continuing fallout is very difficult to keep up with, primarily because everything we are trying to understand is either illegal or secret, because this president does not trust congress, the courts or the American public. What we got instead of candor was layer upon layer of half-truths, self-justifications and outright lies.  

After stealing his first election Bush was lurching though his destruction of most of our treaty obligations around the world when September eleventh came around. Almost immediately, without consultation or inquiry Bush came to the Oval Office to announce that we had been attacked by terrorists. (No proof was provided except some grainy video that purported to show a number of "terrorists" of Arab descent boarding the ill-fated flights – undamaged passports however seemed to survive the explosions and fires that obliterated the towers, but no one questioned that anomaly). Very soon on the heels of these revelations Bush demanded and obtained a License to Kill, from the Congress of the United States. http://www.kirwanesque.com/politics/2002/p29.htm and thus began this War on Shadows! 

The theft of the election coupled with the License, created that belligerent tone that we have lived with from that day to this. In translation we are seeing utter distain for representative government, which has become the hallmark of this presidency. Early on it was clear to George if not to everyone else, that he need not fear anyone or anything in this country – because he got away with stealing this nation’s highest office, along with being allowed to claim absolute proof, within days of the attack that precluded any evidence that a crime had been committed. This was insured by the government’s haste in destroying all traces of the wreckage of the towers in the interest of restoring normalcy to New York City. At that point Bush and his handlers began his real presidency – and that consisted of a new and completely secret "presidency’ that would soon become a refutation of everything legal, moral, or ethical, that had preceded his occupancy of the office.  Most important there would be no consequences for whatever he and his advisors chose to do (he attributes this to his powers under the Second Amendment). So when laws were inconvenient, Bush overrode them, to hell with the congress, with the United Nations, or with the courts: By the time he decided to attack Iraq he had become a legend in his own mind, the Commander-in-Chief of the World! But reality has finally found its way to the surface, no matter how deeply it might have initially been buried; and that is where the mighty Bushwhacker finds himself today.   

His administration sold this reckless behavior as absolute safety no matter what the threat, while the stench of the burning towers still filled the air. Now is the time to revisit all his actions in light of the laws that he has broken, and in light of all the death and carnage created, he and his people need to be charged with each and every broken law.  

Many began by believing, that Bush believes what he says; yet too many fail to notice that he has no use for the rule of law, or for the continued viability of the country or the public. Bush has a love affair with the title of Commander-in-Chief, which is actually trumped by the powers vested not in his military capacities, but in the Office of the Presidency – in our society. This may also be why he thinks that his military title applies to every citizen and not to just the military.  

Why was so much effort spent on the destruction of any and all contradictory evidence of what really happened, before during and after the fact of that dark day we know as September 11? Why was the possibility of a major-crime, never seriously considered? 

When we suddenly pulled out of Afghanistan and began to thunder-on about Saddam Hussein, a restive public began to wonder aloud about the strength of his assurances. Instead of a serious and determined investigation – he gave us a reorganization of the entire security service of the United States that resulted in a white elephant called HOMELAND Security. This was supposed to insure the "Sharing of All Intelligence & Information" between agencies at all levels – another major failure – if one is to believe the excuses given for retaining the excessive intrusions of the USA Patriot Act. Since Katrina, the entire world has now witnessed how ineffective this throwback to bureaucratic bungling really is when it counts. This misbegotten government has failed at everything they have tried to do!   

In the real world we have seen the hands of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle and Rove reaching out from beneath the cloak of National Security to manipulate events and secret no-bid contracts, in furtherance of the illegality of the War on Iraq. The Bushwhackers put the world and the public through years of childish displays about the accuracy of their "intelligence, and the "wisdom" of their military actions that were somehow averting another attack upon the United States by simply "staying the course!" Why has so inept a leadership been allowed to continue for five long years? 

What was really happening in the War on Shadows was torture and double-speak about the truth of what this misguided attack brought to the planet. The blatant end-runs-around the laws were apparently greatly aided by Bush’s original appeal to the American  public’s passion for the absolute need of safety and security, regardless of the real costs involved in national stature and international reputation as well as to our way of life. Safety and Security were used by Rove in the name of National Security as a reason to abandon all that this country was supposed to be about, and apparently in the spirit of me only, many bought into that farce.  

One of the lessons in Iraq; was that the administration has grudgingly learned that people who seek freedom will fight and even die for their right to existence – because whenever basic human rights are surrendered in exchange for token guarantees of "freedom"- 'then those who gave their freedoms away shall have neither freedom nor security.’ The Bushwhackers have reached too far, and their justifications are being questioned everywhere. We attacked Iraq without an exit plan, because we did not plan on leaving. There was no real plan for victory – because when they invaded Iraq, the Bushwhackers assumed victory, and in the Bush playbook, whatever they choose to think IS reality – 'the rest of the world just needs learn to live with whatever they decide is truth.’  These Shadow Enemies are right out of Orwell’s 1984! 

To argue that Iraq is becoming secure because of some bogus elections that we have so generously gifted them with (only our latest in the long list of what this war was really supposed to be about), is only the most recent lie. Now the Iraqi public is beginning to smell something ugly that may have come with balloting and the delay in counting the votes. If Bush gave them the same freedom and democracy that he took from us – in the two elections that he stole – then what has happened in Iraq till now will be mild compared to the backlash that the possibility of election fraud in Iraq could bring.  

What is "freedom" if you cannot leave your house, what is democracy if you can vote, but cannot walk the streets in public? No figurehead worthy of the name can openly fly into Baghdad Airport today (why did Cheney recently have to sneak into Iraq), because he might well have been assassinated! It’s as dire and as simple as that. Spending on that war is approaching a trillion dollars (when all the secret deals are factored in) – given the needs of this nation, was this really a judicious use of our money?  

Never forget that we started the War on Iraq – it had nothing to do with 911, or anything else except the bloodlust of the Bushwhackers to steal what they could not get in any other way. They failed because they did not understand the depth of commitment that people the world over have, to their own lives and to their own beliefs. Apparently the Bushwhackers still have not learned the lessons of Vietnam, despite the fact that Rummy was also the US Secretary of Defense back when US helicopters had to flee from the rooftop of the Embassy in Saigon. They had puppet governments in Vietnam, and 'elections’ too, but we still lost! Since we obviously did not learn that lesson of history are we now going to repeat that whole sad litany all over again?  

In Iraq, the Bushwhackers were probably banking on how quickly Americans had been willing to allow all that they had worked for to be usurped by the tin-solder imposter that by then, Bush had become.  

There are also continuing complications created by violating the Geneva Conventions, in renaming those (including women and children) who were swept up in viper-raids as enemy combatants, and not as prisoners of war. That debate became super-charged when torture was discovered, among those in US custody. This became an even more toxic subject when over-flights were discovered that were taking CIA prisoners to secret prisons in other countries – for torture. In the eyes of the resistance this only added fuel to the case for removing the USA from Iraq.  

The Bushwhackers were not the first, or the only ones to seek the path to American Empire. Since the end of the Second World War every US president has added something to the creation of the ground on which this nightmare was built. Part of that groundwork has always been government spying on the innocent public. In the 1950’s, the Cold War began changing almost everything that most Americans cared about by the open propagation of unfounded fears. The Army-McCarthy Hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee was one example. Those hearings created baseless fears that infected the public mind, while they actively created blacklists and nightmares that continue to this moment: After McCarthy faded, the FBI picked up the cudgel with Cointelpro (1956-71) which became Carnivore. "In 1997, the FBI deployed the second generation program, Omnivore. According to information released by the FBI, Omnivore was designed to look through e-mail traffic traveling over a specific Internet service provider (ISP) and capture the e-mail from a targeted source, saving it to a tape-backup drive or printing it in real-time. Omnivore was retired in late 1999 in favor of a more comprehensive system, the Dragon Ware Suite, which allowed the FBI to reconstruct e-mail messages, downloaded files or even Web pages."  

That is just the public part of the FBI portion of one program that was designed to spy on Americans, and that agency is possibly the least effective of all who do this on a routine basis. Spying on US citizens is not new, but under the USA Patriot Act the government wants to make it a permanent part of how life is lived here and now. 

If we really are at War, then why have we not had public trials for our "enemies"? Predator drones have executed numbers of people the government says were hated enemies of ours (more and more shadow warriors, faceless and virtually nameless, in a war without end).  A great many other so-called major figures seem to have died during the actions of our fighter pilots, and our ground forces, along with lots of women and children, but we have yet to explain those missions, due to National Security, of course!  

With all our technology why can we not capture some of our enemies alive, and put them on trial in a courtroom, where the proceedings can be watched by the public – instead of just executing them in the field? For that matter where is Osama Bin Laden ("You can run but you can’t hide!" – Bush said when he invaded Afghanistan) – So where is Osama bin Laden?  

Few will believe that what has happened - could have happen here. But fear (both real and imagined) is killing imagination and attempting to limit life in vastly more unacceptable ways.  Change may be as certain as death and taxes, but values like responsibility and consequences should never be negotiable – at least not when the future of one’s nation or possibly even the world may be at stake. 

If as Bush says "We Are At War!" then where are the profits and the jobs that once flowed from manufacturing the weapons of war that we are using up at obscene rates? Of course China now makes our flags, our uniforms and probably most if not all our weapons systems – but that’s just the New World Order spreading the wealth around a little. Where are the taxes on the wealthy that would have the most to lose, if this nation had really been attacked? The rich are not paying for the wars, in fact they continue to directly profit from the tax-cuts and the no-bid contracts given so freely by their President and their Congress.  

Bush wants America to believe not what has happened, but what he says will happen to a country and a region that he has attempted to utterly devastate. Which part of his plan is he loyal to? What about the damage the Bushwhackers have done to this nation? How does he plan to compensate the dead on all sides for all those "missteps" while he was playing at being the Commander-in-Chief of the World? Who will lead us out of Katrina’s aftermath, and who will be responsible to the public for the failures of this administration both at home and abroad? The War-on-Terror may be a War upon Shadows, but there still must be internationally recognizable rules by which to govern all the actions undertaken in this effort. This despot and his entire cabal must be stopped by legitimate inquiries, because while the entire debacle is finally beginning to unravel, this must be prevented from ever happening again!

References:

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_277.shtml 

http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=8202 

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/carnivore.htm

Jim Kirwan, kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net