If you can spare the time tonight, watch the 2nd part of Frontline series "Bush's War" tonight on PBS (9pm on Ch. 12 WHYY).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/
Part One, aired last night, was a simultaneously riveting and infuriating look at the Bush administration's (e.g. Dick Cheney) and the neo-conservatives' single-minded, utterly-duplicitous, inconceivably-manipulative machinations to plunge this country into the most perilous, costly, fruitless, and entangling foreign misadventure in our history.
The bureaucratic-warfare politics and Machiavellian skullduggery laid out by first-hand witnesses from both sides of the issue are a monologue of proof that raw power is far too concentrated in Washington, D.C. and the power in D.C. is far far too concentrated in a unitary chief executive. The temptations of this level of power and the designs of evil men find too easy a nexus....as they did and still continue unabated.
Also laid out in this extremely well-produced Frontline series is how the treachery to the best interests of this country by this shadowy set of warmongers has been met so far by most of our entrenched mainstream political establishment with sheepish disbelief and then eventually purely-superficial Johnny-come-lately opposition.
Thankfully, the large bulk of the public now seems to possess a rather deep and disgusted resolve to stop these dangerous people and their enablers. I believe any good citizen who takes the time to watch the series will only have their resolve hardened.
What the series doesn't touch in its analysis of the drive to war is the confluence of true interests behind it all. Conveniently for the bunch that initiated this insane terminal bloodletting of our national resources down a sandy rat hole, all their cozy fellow travelers in oil, arms, mercenaries, and countless other manner of war-sensitive profiteers are all getting rich beyond belief.
(Where does everyone think that $12,000,000,000 / month is going?).
I really hope we see justice served some day for this outrageous plundering of our country. The whole lot should be the subject of war crimes inquiries if not prosecution for conspiracy to commit treason. Under any standard their provable actions represent gross and wilful disregard for the Constitution in service to an interlocking set of private agendas at a sickening expense in human blood and misery.
But let's worry about that after we get this war ended post-haste.
All American patriots should be livid with the actions of our "leaders" as laid out so neatly in Bush' War. We should also be extremely skeptical that the same media that cheer led Bush's War continues leading us all by the nose into believing the presidency and its powers (or just its increasingly shallow horse race campaign) should be so exalted to perpetually consume our entire national conversation.
Looking ahead I wish we could all stop, think, and direct our attentions away from the "mainstream" media's frenzied mania conflating the importance of the presidency into a self-fulfilling prophecy, while subconsciously turning what should be the absolute strongest branch of government, our Congress, into a wayward sideshow.
Every person who believes in liberty and democracy in our Republic should be both highly-suspicious and politically-hostile to the power of a unitary executive atop a unitary federal government with unlimited resources (or access to "money", at least).
It is this that makes wars like Bush's possible...not merely the greed, deceit, and megalomania of a handful of powerful sociopaths.
We can only hope that Bush's War will ultimately be the turning point to restoring our country to political balance, ideological sanity, and grassroots-engaged popular rule.
Political and legal castration of these DC power brokers and their extended networks of fellow travelers would be their minimum just deserts.
As the old phrase about the price of liberty goes, it will take our eternal vigilance in the form of permanent political engagement by all of us.
I can think of no better answer to Dick Cheney's recent flippant question in contempt of the American people, as he and his bunch are ridden out of town, than :
SO THERE, DICK.
Or you can watch it online :
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/
Part One, aired last night, was a simultaneously riveting and infuriating look at the Bush administration's (e.g. Dick Cheney) and the neo-conservatives' single-minded, utterly-duplicitous, inconceivably-manipulative machinations to plunge this country into the most perilous, costly, fruitless, and entangling foreign misadventure in our history.
The bureaucratic-warfare politics and Machiavellian skullduggery laid out by first-hand witnesses from both sides of the issue are a monologue of proof that raw power is far too concentrated in Washington, D.C. and the power in D.C. is far far too concentrated in a unitary chief executive. The temptations of this level of power and the designs of evil men find too easy a nexus....as they did and still continue unabated.
Also laid out in this extremely well-produced Frontline series is how the treachery to the best interests of this country by this shadowy set of warmongers has been met so far by most of our entrenched mainstream political establishment with sheepish disbelief and then eventually purely-superficial Johnny-come-lately opposition.
Thankfully, the large bulk of the public now seems to possess a rather deep and disgusted resolve to stop these dangerous people and their enablers. I believe any good citizen who takes the time to watch the series will only have their resolve hardened.
What the series doesn't touch in its analysis of the drive to war is the confluence of true interests behind it all. Conveniently for the bunch that initiated this insane terminal bloodletting of our national resources down a sandy rat hole, all their cozy fellow travelers in oil, arms, mercenaries, and countless other manner of war-sensitive profiteers are all getting rich beyond belief.
(Where does everyone think that $12,000,000,000 / month is going?).
I really hope we see justice served some day for this outrageous plundering of our country. The whole lot should be the subject of war crimes inquiries if not prosecution for conspiracy to commit treason. Under any standard their provable actions represent gross and wilful disregard for the Constitution in service to an interlocking set of private agendas at a sickening expense in human blood and misery.
But let's worry about that after we get this war ended post-haste.
All American patriots should be livid with the actions of our "leaders" as laid out so neatly in Bush' War. We should also be extremely skeptical that the same media that cheer led Bush's War continues leading us all by the nose into believing the presidency and its powers (or just its increasingly shallow horse race campaign) should be so exalted to perpetually consume our entire national conversation.
Looking ahead I wish we could all stop, think, and direct our attentions away from the "mainstream" media's frenzied mania conflating the importance of the presidency into a self-fulfilling prophecy, while subconsciously turning what should be the absolute strongest branch of government, our Congress, into a wayward sideshow.
Every person who believes in liberty and democracy in our Republic should be both highly-suspicious and politically-hostile to the power of a unitary executive atop a unitary federal government with unlimited resources (or access to "money", at least).
It is this that makes wars like Bush's possible...not merely the greed, deceit, and megalomania of a handful of powerful sociopaths.
We can only hope that Bush's War will ultimately be the turning point to restoring our country to political balance, ideological sanity, and grassroots-engaged popular rule.
Political and legal castration of these DC power brokers and their extended networks of fellow travelers would be their minimum just deserts.
As the old phrase about the price of liberty goes, it will take our eternal vigilance in the form of permanent political engagement by all of us.
I can think of no better answer to Dick Cheney's recent flippant question in contempt of the American people, as he and his bunch are ridden out of town, than :
SO THERE, DICK.
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