U.S. Defense analysts are paying more attention to a “working hypothesis,” based on stories told by Iraqi captives, that no live WMD may ever be found. Some U.S. officials even think Iraqi defectors who surfaced before the war saying Saddam was still making WMD were double agents dispatched by Saddam to spread disinformation to deter his enemies.
So let's see:
Iraq War Rationale 1.0: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction
No WMDs
Iraq War Rationale 2.0: Liberate grateful Iraqis
Iraqis hate us, want us to leave.
Iraq War Rationale 3.0: Rebuild Iraq
Country is bottomless money pit.
Iraq War Rational 4.0: Bring Peace to the Middle East
Peace "process" falling apart.
Iraq War Hidden Source Code: Grab the Oil
Oil industry is a wreck; infrastructure can't be protected.
More Iraq War Hidden Source Code: Funnel pork barrel contracts to Halliburton, Bechtel
OK, so that sub-routine works.
This leaves:
Iraq War Rationale NT: Fight terrorists.
Finally! A self-executing program that doesn't use too much memory.
Hell, even Microsoft can do better than that.
A 15-minute speech does not make up for 15 months of misleading the American people on why we should go to war against Iraq or 15 weeks of mismanaging the reconstruction effort since we have been there." - Howard Dean
We went into Iraq to eliminate Saddam's stock of weapons of mass destruction, to depose a reckless strongman at the heart of a vital region, and to overawe unfriendly regimes on the country's borders. Agree or not, those were the prime stated reasons. Now we've got a deteriorating security situation and a palpably botched plan for reconstruction. And our effort to recover from our ill-conceived and poorly- executed policy is now the 'central front' in the war on terror, which is among other things extremely convenient.
The president has turned 9/11 into a sort of foreign policy perpetual motion machine in which the problems ginned up by policy failures become the rationale for intensifying those policies. The consequences of screw-ups become examples of the power of 'the terrorists'.
We're not on the offensive. We're on the defensive. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo and flim-flam doesn't change that.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who strongly supported the war, was also skeptical, saying Bush had presented "a goal, not a plan" for winning the peace.
THE SO-CALLED economic recovery being touted by the federal government and appropriately spread by accommodating media is becoming the joke of 2003.
How can there be a recovery when thousands of workers are simultaneously being laid off? The two are incongruous and don't belong together.
For example, in the first four months of 2003, employers cut an estimated 500,000 employees, some 150,000 in April alone, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., which daily tracks corporate job cuts.
To make economic matters more dismal, in a 36-month period the unemployment rate has climbed 58 percent from a 31-year low of 3.8 percent to its present level of 6.0 percent. Regardless of what the newscasters are saying, figures never lie and are reflections of the truth.
Let me say this again. Have you ever heard of a recovery when people are losing their jobs? There is something strange going on that no one seems able to explain.
Even the experts (if they are being honest) are baffled by a recovery that is not recovering. Is it possible they are being guided by that bogeyman, political correctness, the newly found government directive that alters freedom of expression in a country that exemplifies it?
In the modern industrial environment, times have changed drastically since the advent of the North America Free Trade Agreement. Companies saw this as a means of moving their production facilities overseas to take advantage of paying lower wages to foreign workers.
Since its inception in 1994, NAFTA has been costing the United States about $41.6 billion every year in trade deficits, not to speak of the tens of thousands of American jobs lost. In 2002, the trade deficit hit an alarming $484 billion, up from $77 billion in 1991.
Strangely, no expert has spoken out on the trade issue despite its glaring importance. Would mentioning this be politically incorrect? So goes the charade with no end in sight.
<snip>
Though President Bush has emphasized tax cuts as the major stimulus to get the economy going again, it is still no substitute for a cohesive economic remedy. His tax cut is estimated at $674 billion over the next 10 years. However, it creates another troublesome problem for Bush because it produces a deficit of between more than $300 billion this year. This could well affect credit markets, which could cause interest rates to soar, making stocks nosedive and a recovery all the more difficult. As a master politician, President Bush didn't mention the deficit because it would be too embarrassing.
How all this plays out will be a major factor in determining who becomes the next president. Many voters are disgruntled about the war in Iraq and the daily loss of American lives. This is why President Bush must come up with a solution that satisfies the people's desire for a full, vibrant economy and an approximate date for the soldiers' return from Iraq.
The many ominous clouds hovering on the economic horizon put Bush in a difficult quandary. If he can solve it without starting another war, the people will love him and should brighten his presidential efforts toward his re-election.
