Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Paying for Eight Years of Bush’s Delusions

He should be tried by the World Court under the Geneva Convention after he stepped down as President.He has done more harm to world peace and the global economy than any other President or leader of any nation.He has killed more Muslims out of revenge and put Islamic nations in turmoil than any other President before him.He deserved to be locked up...... Hantu Laut.

By Robert Fisk

American lawyers defending six Algerians before a habeas corpus hearing in Washington this week learned some very odd things about U.S. intelligence after 9/11. From among the millions of “raw” reports from American spies and their “assets” around the world came a CIA Middle East warning about a possible kamikaze-style air attack on a U.S. navy base at a south Pacific island location. The only problem was that no such navy base existed on the island and no U.S. Seventh Fleet warship had ever been there. In all seriousness, a U.S. military investigation earlier reported that Osama bin Laden had been spotted shopping at a post office on a U.S. military base in east Asia.

That this nonsense was disseminated around the world by those tasked to defend the United States in the “war on terror” shows the fantasy environment in which the Bush regime has existed these past eight years. If you can believe that bin Laden drops by a shopping mall on an American military base, then you can believe that everyone you arrest is a “terrorist”, that Arabs are “terrorists”, that they can be executed, that living “terrorists” must be tortured, that everything a tortured man says can be believed, that it is legitimate to invade sovereign states, to grab the telephone records of everyone in America. As Bob Herbert put it in The New York Times a couple of years ago, the Bush administration wanted these records “which contain crucial documentation of calls for a Chinese takeout in Terre Haute, Indiana, and birthday greetings to Grandma in Talladega, Alabama, to help in the search for Osama bin Laden”. There was no stopping Bush when it came to trampling on the US Constitution. All that was new was that he was now applying the same disrespect for liberty in America that he had shown in the rest of the world.

But how is Barack Obama going to repair the titanic damage which his vicious, lying predecessor has perpetrated around the globe and within the U.S. itself? John F Kennedy once said that “the United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.” After Bush’s fear-mongering and Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” and Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and secret renditions, how does Obama pedal his country all the way back to Camelot? Our own dear Gordon Brown’s enthusiasm to Hoover up the emails of the British people is another example of how Lord Blair’s sick relationship with Bush still infects our own body politic. Only days before the wretched president finally departs from us, new U.S. legislation will ensure that citizens of his lickspittle British ally will no longer be able to visit America without special security clearance. Does Bush have any more surprises for us before 20 January? Indeed, could anything surprise us any more?

Obama has got to close Guantanamo. He’s got to find a way of apologising to the world for the crimes of his predecessor, not an easy task for a man who must show pride in his country; but saying sorry is what – internationally – he will have to do if the “change” he has been promoting at home is to have any meaning outside America’s borders. He will have to re-think – and deconstruct – the whole “war on terror”. He will have to get out of Iraq. He will have to call a halt to America’s massive airbases in Iraq, its $600m embassy. He will have to end the blood-caked air strikes we are perpetrating in southern Afghanistan – why, oh, why do we keep slaughtering wedding parties? – and he will have to tell Israel a few home truths: that America can no longer remain uncritical in the face of Israeli army brutality and the colonisation for Jews and Jews only on Arab land. Obama will have to stand up at last to the Israeli lobby (it is, in fact, an Israeli Likud party lobby) and withdraw Bush’s 2004 acceptance of Israel’s claim to a significant portion of the West Bank. U.S. officials will have to talk to Iranian officials – and Hamas officials, for that matter. Obama will have to end U.S. strikes into Pakistan – and Syria.

Indeed, there’s a growing concern among America’s allies in the Middle East that the U.S. military has to be brought back under control – indeed, that the real reason for General David Petraeus’ original appointment in Iraq was less to organise the “surge” than it was to bring discipline back to the 150,000 soldiers and marines whose mission – and morals – had become so warped by Bush’s policies. There is some evidence, for example, that the four-helicopter strike into Syria last month, which killed eight people, was – if not a rogue operation – certainly not sanctioned by Washington or indeed by US commanders in Baghdad.Read more.........

5 comments:

Cruel Angel said...

Bush is my her0!

He teach those Arab... what is fear!

U wont understand until u work in the middle east.

This Arab need someone to spank them!

gram.kong said...

Cruel Angel,
I have done businesss with the Arabs close to 20 years,I agree they are not the nicest people, but that doesn't mean you have to bomb them to teach them a lesson.

Don't get me wrong,I am not anti American,I am anti-Bush...the moron.

Anonymous said...

Obama is just a "House Negro".
One of those niggers allowed to live with the masters in return for being "a good boy"

gram.kong said...

anonymous,
Bigotry and racism is not going to do you any good and this is not the place to make such remark.

Anonymous said...

Ya right. China paid for 8 years of Bush's delusion by becoming the largest power in Asia and the premier manufacturing country in the world by exporting to a 'delusioned' US. The oil producing countries which were raking in obscene amounts of money due to the China boom were also 'delusioned'.

Bush is probably the most free-wheeling president in the history of the US when it comes to trade. China and to a lesser extent India among many other countries were able to capitalise on an economic climate created by Bush which allowed for generally unfettered trade in goods and services.

Yes, we are paying now but not because of 'Bush's Delusions'. Quite simply any boom will be followed by a bust. The people who survive the bust will be those who were not 'delusioned' by the boom. Countries such as Venezuela and Iran are two examples of those who did not prepare for the bust which is why they are jumping around like monkeys screaming for OPEC to maintain high oil prices. The Saudis on the other hand were under no delusion over high oil prices.

At home, the plantation companies which are reeling from low palm oil prices are showing no signs of collapse or financial distress simply because they put away something during the commodities boom. Look at the companies on the Bursa and you will see that many of the oldest listed companies are plantation companies.