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The Fix Is In
By Chris Floyd
10/20/05 "Moscow
Times" -- -- Having railed at the wanton
criminality of the Bush faction for so long, this column naturally
partakes of the general glee arising from the looming possibility of
genuine, grade-A grand jury indictments for some of the gang's top
thugs.
Of course, we all know that the fix is in: If anyone in the White
House is actually indicted and convicted for the high crime of
exposing the identity of an undercover agent -- in wartime, no less
-- they will certainly be pardoned when George W. Bush finally limps
away from the steaming, stinking, blood-soaked ruin of his
presidency. Nobody will do any hard time; in the end, the whole sick
crew will simply pass through the golden revolving door into the
lifetime gravy train of corporate grease and right-wing
lecture-circuit glory.
Still, it is heartening to see the fever-sweat of fear popping out
on the brows of these swaggering world-shakers, these third-rate
goons and half-wit cranks posing as great statesmen, if only for a
little while. Fear has always been their weapon of choice: They've
used it to foment aggressive war, to crush political opposition, to
manipulate the electorate and to mask their own incompetence,
corruption and greed. Now they're getting a taste of it themselves
-- and they can't take it.
You can see it in their darting eyes, the twitches and fidgets: the
fear, the nagging worry that perhaps, just perhaps, they haven't got
it all nailed down this time; that perhaps, just perhaps, the law is
something more than a fancy cane to beat the poor with; that it
might, just might, apply to them as well. The sight of Bush's porky
puppetmaster, Karl Rove, tottering out of his fourth grand jury
appearance last week, with the shadow of manacles dangling before
his pinched, bloated face, was an image to warm the cockles of every
American patriot's heart.
But this schadenfruede, however tasty and effervescent, is no
substitute for the strong meat of justice. And even in the unlikely
-- not to say inconceivable -- event that the entire pack of jackals
gets herded into the hoosegow for the agent-outing conspiracy, it
will not bring back the innocent dead murdered at their command. It
will not restore the shattered families writhing in the pits of
grief and loss, from Baghdad to Burbank. It will not be recompense
for the pointless sacrifice of soldiers and reservists sent on a
criminal errand, plunged into a brutal and brutalizing hell -- for
nothing, for a chimera, for ideological lunacy, for the enrichment
of cats already so fat they can barely stand up and waddle to the
dish for another slurp of cream.
Not unless every one of the war conspirators and their chief minions
-- Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul
Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, Scooter Libby, Andrew Card, Douglas Feith,
John Bolton, Karen Hughes, John Yoo, Zalmay Khalilzad, George Tenet,
Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, Stephen Hadley, Jerry Bremer, Nicholas
Calio, Richard Perle, Tony Blair and all the rest -- were lined up
in the public square with the entrails of their victims draped
around their necks would anything approaching justice be done. But
as Shakespeare told us long ago, "in the corrupted currents of this
world, offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, and oft 'tis seen
the wicked prize itself buys out the law."
For while official Washington strains to read the special
prosecutor's tea leaves, Bush's war crime grinds on. Last weekend
saw the "passage" of the much-ballyhooed Iraqi constitution -- a
desperately thrown-together rigamarole that quietly preserves the
special privileges for Bush's business cronies imposed by the former
satrap, Bremer, while exacerbating the violent ethnic rivalries that
Bush has unleashed across the tortured land.
This "victory for democracy" -- achieved, in typical Bushist
fashion, through outrageously rigged vote counts, as The New York
Times reports -- is in fact a blueprint for disaster. The Kurds will
accelerate their U.S.-backed "ethnic cleansing" of the oil-rich
north, while the Iranian-backed Shiite militias in the oil-rich
south will accelerate their already murderous imposition of
Talibanic religious rule. The once-dominant Sunni Arab minority, now
marginalized and impoverished, will swell the ranks of the growing
insurgency, as Baghdad and the nation's central provinces plunge
further into Somali-style anarchy. Terrorist freebooters, set loose
in the one of the world's most strategic locations by Bush's
destruction of the Iraqi state, will thrive in the chaos.
With no chance for the deliberately enfeebled central Iraqi
government to take responsibility for the nation's security, U.S.
forces will remain knee-deep in the quagmire, killing and being
killed without rhyme or reason -- or hope of escape. Indeed, Bush is
already signaling "a longer, broader conflict" in his speeches on
the war, The New York Times reports. There is no "exit strategy"
because Bush has never intended to leave. The installation of a
permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq has been the war
conspirators' loudly proclaimed goal for many years, long before
Bush was shoehorned into power -- as we have noted here incessantly
since 2002, citing chapter and verse from their own publications.
This is why they lied their way into war, this is why they outed a
CIA agent whose husband exposed one of their lies: to pursue their
dream of "global dominance," of endless war profiteering and oil
baksheesh. The prosecutor might give them a pinch, but the damage is
already done: The dead will stay dead, the maimed will stay maimed,
the tortured will never escape their nightmares. And the killing,
the wounding and torment will go on.
Annotations
Monitors in Iraq Review Votes Where 'Yes' Ballots Hit 90%
The New York Times, Oct. 17, 2005
Iraq's Final Referendum Results Delayed
The Guardian, Oct. 18, 2005
The
Plame Affair
Wikipedia, Oct. 20, 2005
Civilians Killed as US Targets Insurgents
Associated Press, Oct. 17, 2005
Basra Militias Put Their Firepower Above the Law
New York Times, Oct. 9, 2005
Shia Militants Gaining Strength in Basra
BBC, Oct. 16, 2005
Dark Passage: PNAC's Blueprint for Empire
Empire Burlesque, March 27, 2005
Administration's Tone Signals a Longer, Broader Iraq Conflict
New York Times, Oct. 17, 2005
US
Airstrike Kills Dozens After Vote
MSNBC, Oct. 17, 2005
Sectarian Resentment Extends to Iraqi Army
Knight-Ridder, Oct. 12, 2005
Experts See Grim Times Ahead, a Torn Iraq, Even if Constitution is
Approved
San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 11, 2005
Colin Powell: The Most Honest Man on Earth
A Tiny Revolution, Oct. 11, 2005
Judy Miller and the Neo-Cons
Salon.com, Oct. 14, 2005
2000 Dead? Who Cares?
Salon.com, Oct. 10, 2005
Death Squads and Diplomacy
TomPaine.com, Oct. 5, 2005
Undeclared Civil War in Iraq
CBS, Sept. 26, 2005
The
Economic Invasion of Iraq
Independent Media Institute, Aug. 22, 2005
Cheney May Be Target of Probe
New York Daily News, Oct. 18, 2005
Copyright © 2005 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved
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