Part I of this article explained that the US was always a warrior, imperial nation, building it in steps and addicted to its madness. First we took it from its original inhabitants; then we expanded it beyond our borders by seizing the half of Mexico we wanted; later we established colonies abroad; and now, our method of choice is to rule the world through compliant leaders in client states everywhere serving our interests. We began doing it gradually following WW II when we emerged as the only dominant nation left standing, unchallengeable as the world’s only economic, political and military superpower. Even before the war ended, we planned to take full advantage of that indomitable status once it did. We pursued it throughout the "cold war" and in the 1990s when it was over. Then came 9/11, the gloves came off in the Bush administration, and top officials in it ended any pretense of what our real aims are. The rest, as they say, is history, and the nations we target in our quest for world dominance and our own people at home pay a dreadful price. Below is a case study of our imperial madness in Iraq documenting how painful that price is.

A Case Study In Imperial Mayhem and Madness and Its Disasterous Consequences - First the Victims

If the US had a slogan or motto on how best to fight wars it might be "all’s surely fair in war as well as love." The only rules we observe are the ones we make up as we go along. With that code of conduct and with total disregard for the rule of domestic or international law, designated targets can only expect their earth scorched followed by a living hell delivered in the name of democracy and liberation. Iraq, like Southeast Asia in the sixties and seventies and Nicaragua and El Salvador in the eighties, is a classic example with Afghanistan being more of the same. The people on our receiving end of our gunsights know democracy American-style is none at all.

For anyone paying attention to events unfolding in Iraq from the few credible sources available (meaning unembedded journalists, reports from our disillusioned military and leaks including high level ones), there’s little doubt the situation on the ground is disastrous and getting worse - for us as well as the Iraqis. From these reports on the ground, we continue learning more of what the Pentagon and administration try to suppress, always with the full cooperation of the corporate-run media. But the truth can’t be hidden, the lies are unravelling, and the charade of progress is being seen as a shamless myth.

For 26 million Iraqis, liberation American-style is none whatever. For them it’s an endless living hell nightmare since the US first attacked and invaded in January, 1991. At that time we deliberately and illegally destroyed essential infrastructure like power generating stations and clean water facilities vital to the health, welfare and safety of the people. We also wontonly slaughtered many thousands of defenseless civilians and Iraqi military who had given up the fight they wanted no part of in the first place. The likely toll was at least 100,000 killed in just a few weeks of brutal one-sided combat mostly inflicted from the air against a target country we knew was defenseless. Our initial cost was modest for an operation involving 580,000 military personal - 146 killed (including by friendly fire) and 467 wounded. A far greater cost to US forces would show up later that’s discussed below.

What followed Operation Desert Storm was a dozen years of continued air-assault bombings along with oppressive and unjustifiable economic sanctions. Combined they destroyed all the institutions of a modern civil society which Iraq was prior to 1991. They left in their wake an epic humanitarian disaster by every measure imaginable including median Iraqi income creating mass poverty. Because of the country’s oil wealth, Iraq was once the most advanced and developed country in the Middle East with a per capita income of $2,313 in 1979. By 2003, that income had declined to $255 per capita and in 2004 it had fallen further to about $144. It’s easy to understand why based on a study by the college of economics at Baghdad University that estimated the unemployment rate to be about 70%. Even the so-called "oil for food" program did little to relieve the crisis prior to the current invasion and war. It wasn’t intended to as the US plan was to inflict the greatest possible hardships on the people hoping it would encourage them to rise up and topple Saddam. In fact, it had the opposite effect despite the severity of the toll. Instead of blaming Saddam, Iraqis relied on him for whatever relief they could get. It wasn’t much or nearly enough because the US allowed him little to give.

The combination of war and economic sanctions likely caused the death of at least one million by even conservative estimates including 500,000 children. Other estimates put the number as high as 1.5 million in total by the end of the nineties. When Denis Halliday resigned in 1998 as UN head of Iraqi humanitarian relief he said he did so because he "had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over one million individuals, children and adults." He went on to say 5,000 Iraqi children were dying needlessly every month.

Conditions got far worse following the US illegal aggression beginning in March, 2003. The daily toll of death and destruction from the ongoing endless conflict is unknown precisely, but even honest conservative estimates are appalling and shocking despite efforts by the Pentagon to suppress them. The British Lancet reported in October, 2004 by their "conservative assumptions" an Iraqi toll of about 100,000 "excess deaths" post March, 2003. They then updated their earlier estimate in February, 2006 to a likely 300,000 that seven months later is considerably higher. Other assessments suggest an even greater number, up to 500,000 according to one estimate a few months ago. Whatever the true number, the US inflicted disaster on Iraq and its people is one of epic proportions in all respects.

It’s destroyed a once prosperous nation and left in its wake today a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, medical care, fuel or most everything else needed for sustenance and survival. It shows up in Baghdad’s morgue that can’t cope with the number of corpses it gets daily while those still living can’t get desperately needed care at hospitals unable to provide it. It’s also there in the US-run torture-prisons where anyone can be brutalized in a kind of a ritual foreplay for no reason at all. Thing’s aren’t improving. They get steadily worse as the occupation grinds on and death squads room at will including the US "Salvador option" ones modeled after the types used in the Reagan era against the leftist guerrilla resistance in El Salvador in the 1980s that murdered many thousands. This is what life in most of Iraq is now like, and it clearly warrants the label genocide. It also makes all US officials at the highest levels responsible for it guilty of egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity. Will they ever be held to account for what they’ve done? Never, as long as the US occupier lives by the rules of victor’s justice that insures none at all for the victims.

A notable sign of US-style justice happened at the end of July when the Pentagon awarded the Distinguished Service Medal (DDSM) to retiring General Geoffrey Miller who supervised the infamous US torture-prisons at Guantanamo and later Abu Ghraib. The DDSM was established by Richard Nixon’s 1970 Executive Order so the Secretary of Defense could award it to officers of the US Armed Forces "whose exceptional performance of duty and contributions to national security or defense have been at the highest levels." Clearly generals or other officers in charge of torture now qualify for the award.

The Toll of Mayhem and Madness On Our Own Military Forces On the Ground and Reporters

No one should ever believe anything from government sources, especially our own. We practically invented and defined the art of disseminating lies and practicing deceit. We’re at it daily, particularly in how and what we report on the war in Iraq. The military holds update briefings at its media nerve center for the war - CentCom. It’s a worthless exercise there and whenever else US officials report on the war. Anyone expecting to get a true picture of conditions on the ground won’t ever because the most important information known is censored or suppressed. In times of war, the first casualty is truth, and the corporate-run media is always willing to oblige to keep it that way.

The Pentagon is also ready to use its muscle to censor, shut down, or destroy any news source in the country that may reveal what it wants suppressed. It repeatedly harasses and assaults Al-Jazeera closing it down and in 2003 attacked its Baghdad offices by air killing one of its correspondents and injuring another. Previously in Afghanistan in November, 2001, Al-Jazeera’s Kabul offices were destroyed by a US missile in a deliberate attempt to stop unfavorable news reports from coming out. Another time a US tank with no provocation fired point blank at the Palestine Hotel in the capitol where most non-embedded international journalists are based killing reporters from Reuters and the Spanish network Telecino. These are just a few examples of the deadly effects of US efforts to silence honest news reporting from the country. The International Press Institute (IPI) keeps a journalist death watch count and reports that including all of 2003 76 journalists have been killed in Iraq by all assailants making this country by far the most dangerous venue in the world for members of the fourth estate. That number has now been updated by other sources that report since March, 2003 to the present 107 journalists and other media workers have been killed in this most dangerous of all places for them to work.

In spite of the danger and toll its taken, much of what Washington and the corporate-run media conceal is being reported from unembedded journalists and a growing number of unofficial accounts emerging or leaking out. They show what conditions are really like on the ground and the effect the conflict has had on US ground forces in the country. They’re being increasingly stressed and terrified out of their minds, most are physically and/or psychologically traumatized or ill, many quite seriously from the deadly effects of depleted uranium (DU) poisoning and other toxins that have already disabled as many as 350,000 or more Gulf war veterans according to what can be pieced together from the little information the Veterans Administration (VA) reports (they don’t explain from what or make a serious effort to find out). The psychological toll is also growing from witnessing or obeying orders to participate in the daily barbaric slaughter of Iraqi civilians including women, children, the elderly and infirm. The result is the rate of suicides is believed to be rising to alarming levels as is the number of desertions the Pentagon reports to be about 40,000 since 2000 from all branches of the military, half of them from the Army. Over 5,500 of them are Iraq related (the Pentagon keeps this very quiet) with many dozens more joining their ranks each month. In addition, many others are refusing to return to Iraq for another tour of duty after serving there one or more times. Those who do it unannounced are being quietly discharged in most cases, while the ones going public to denounce the war saying they won’t serve in it any longer face courts martial, dishonorable discharge and possible prison terms.

Little of the above information has been reported, but most disturbing of all is the true unreported daily death and injury toll of US military personnel that’s far higher than the official numbers. Department of Defense (DOD) reports are now being quietly circulated indicating over 12,000 dead, not the current announced total approaching 2,700. That figure includes thousands of previously unreported deaths of US military personnel who died en route to German or other hospitals or after arriving there. There’s also evidence from Military Air Transport Service (MATS) manifests that show many more bodies shipped to Dover Air Force Base than are officially reported when there are any reports at all.

The true number of serious injuries has also been grossly understated. It could be twice as high as the official numbers based on reports from the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany alone that has treated over 25,000 wounded military patients even as the DOD only officially acknowledges around 15,000 in total and then quietly at first increased the number to about 19,000. These injuries, rarely discussed, include loss of limbs, brain damage and other debilitations that will scar those affected by them for the rest of their lives if after treatment and recovery they even survive. And there’s never any mention of the later physical and/or psychological pain and suffering veterans endure or how many of them had or likely will have their lives shortened as a result of the time they spent in combat theaters "serving their country."

In addition to the stress of trauma, possible death or serious injury US forces face, they must also cope with the problems of daily life on the ground making their lives difficult or too often unbearable. Many of their Forward Operations Bases don’t get enough daily drinking water and other necessities such as proper food to eat regularly. It makes an intolerable situation even worse. For many there’s also a lack of basic amenities like clean clothes, a daily shower and a comfortable bed to sleep in. In addition, the equipment on the ground is being consumed and not replaced including weapons, vehicles, ordinance, body armor and most everything else. Despite the multi-billions spent on this imperial adventure, too little of it is going to "the boots on the ground," because too much of it is budgeted for corporate friends of the administration feasting on huge no-bid contracts. The situation isn’t improving. In fact, it’s steadily deteriorating despite official denials.

By the time our forces are finally withdrawn from Iraq, as one day they will, the human disaster will be almost incomprehensible. From just a short one-time deployment during the 1991 Gulf war, hundreds of thousands of our forces sent there are now on some form of disability either from the deadly effects of DU poisoning, the stew of other toxins they were exposed to, the physical injuries they received or the permanent psychological scars they may take to the grave. But the worst is yet to come. Beginning with the Afghanistan war in late 2001 and the Iraq war from March, 2003, over 1.3 million of our military forces have served one or more tours of duty for extended periods in what are beyond question the most dangerous and toxic environments on earth. The best estimates (because the VA won’t say) are that between 30 - 70% of Gulf war vets so far are now on some kind of disability. If only that same range is applied to the 1.3 million of our military now serving or having served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, between 400,000 and 900,000 of them may end up on disability or die from exposure to the DU munitions used in these wars which we’ve learned are vastly more toxic than the ones used in the Gulf war. And if they manage to avoid DU poisoning, they may succumb to the effects from the many other toxic pollutants they had to live with or become scarred or maimed for life from the violent environments they had to serve in or the acts they had to commit fulfilling their duty there.

In simple terms, it’s likely we can expect an eventual overall catastrophic human disaster and one being covered up because of its enormity. US high officials and Pentagon brass that planned this holocaust to both sides likely knew the human cost to our forces alone would be high but decided anyway the innocent mostly young people we sent to fight were expendable and could be written off to be replaced by new and fresh equally innocent recruits - as long as their dirty secret never gets out. The lives lost or ruined on both sides are dismissed as "collateral damage" or just a "price that has to be paid." It’s a human price and one that’s paid to enrich well-connected big corporations that love wars because they’re so profitable.

The Madness of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution gives the power to declare war solely to the Congress. The Founding Fathers rightfully believed that authority so important they codified it. They wanted to assure that for the single most important issue a nation ever faces, that awesome power would never be placed in the hands of a single individual like the president. They wanted only the legislative branch to have it and only exercise it after careful, deliberative debate. That branch still has it, but for the last 65 years it’s abrogated its authority and allowed Presidents from Harry Truman to George W. Bush to usurp it. The result has been the many wars we’ve fought since WW II along with the many we encouraged, supported and financed plus all the CIA covert mischief and abuse going on at all times.

The result is that every war this country fought in since WW II from Korea to Iraq to the one now planned and "signed off" on by George Bush against Iran and possibly Syria and Venezuela as well to oust President Hugo Chavez to begin on future so far unknown dates was and will be acts of illegal aggression. In each case the US either committed the first overt hostile act or goaded its designated target country enough to do it to provide us with a casus belli for the war we planned and intended to wage. We provoked the North Koreans (through our South Korean proxies) enough in 1950 to get them to respond to give us an excuse to enter a civil conflict between the North and South. We did the same thing again to Iraq (through our Kuwaiti proxies) in 1990-91. In each case, from Korea to the present, we did it against adversaries that never threatened to attack us or had any intention to. Our actions each time were planned, willful acts of illegal aggression, which is what the Nazis were tried for at Nuremburg.

The Tribunal called their crime the "supreme international crime" and specifically said: "To initiate a war of aggression....is not only an international crime, it is the supreme crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." For the last 55 years, the US has repeatedly committed "supreme international crimes" but has yet to be held to account for any of them. In a just world, those in power during each of those illegal wars would have been put in the dock, tried, convicted and either hanged like the most egregious Nazis or given appropriate prison terms for their crimes. The US has also violated the UN Charter that allows a nation the right to use force in its self-defense only under two conditions: when authorized to do it by the Security Council or under Article 51 that permits the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security." By attacking another nation without provocation and with no Security Council authorization, the US violated this sacred covenant. It also violated the US Constitution that says...."all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." The Bush administration continues to remind us of its disdain for all laws that conflict with its policies.

It should also remind responsible people that’s why the International Criminal Court was established by the Rome Statute of 1998 to which the US is a signatory. The Court’s authority became effective after receiving its required number of ratifying signatures in 2002 to be a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide as defined by the Nuremberg Charter of 1945. However, the Bush administration refuses to participate in the Court unless its military personnel are given immunity from prosecution - an outrageous demand made for obvious reasons. As a result, no US official or military offender will be held to account before the court unless brought there against their will which isn’t likely. That’s not how things work in a world ruled by victor’s justice. Only losers pay the price in that kind of world, even when they’re victims.

Besides committing the supreme international crime of illegal aggression, the US is a serial offender in other ways. It violated international law by waging war without restraint using every weapon it chooses including illegal chemical and possibly biological agents. During the 1950s the effects of such agents were ilicitly tested in selected US cities including New York and San Francisco on our own unwitting population. However, through the years post WW I, the 1925 Geneva Convention Gas Protocol and various succeeding Geneva Weapons Conventions outlawed the use of chemical and biological agents in any form for any reason in war. In addition, under various UN Conventions and Covenants that are binding international law for its signatories, the use of any weapons that cause harm after the battle including away from the battlefield, harm the environment, or kill, wound or cause harm inhumanely are illegal and banned.

Since the Gulf war in 1991, the US has routinely used illegal weapons including depleted uranium munitions in four wars that spread deadly toxic irremediable radiation over the target sites attacked and a vast area beyond them. These DU weapons are poisonous under international law and violate all the above conditions. Even the respected Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is legally non-binding to its signatories, implies a moral duty never to use any weapons as potentially harmful as DU ones or any chemical or biological agents.

In all its wars the US has also willfully violated international law by deliberately attacking non-military targets as a tactical strategy against area "resistance." It’s also been callously indifferent to heavy civilian "collateral damage" (words that signify war crimes for some) in attacking military ones. The choice of weapons has been indiscriminate as well and include ones judged illegal and outlawed. In Iraq these have been chemical gases, questionable cluster bombs and a terror weapon called "flashettes" which explode and shoot out 1000s of nails in all directions with deadly results. Two even more deadly terror weapons have been indiscriminately used in Iraq including in civilian areas. One is the napalm-like white phosphorous bombs and shells, known as Willy Pete, that burn flesh to the bone and can’t be extinguished by water that only makes it worse when used. The other is an updated version of napalm called Mark 77 firebombs which do about the same thing to flesh.

One other terror weapon likely also is used called a thermobaric bomb which is a modification of still another prohibited weapon called fuel air explosives (FAE) that in their original form are enormously powerful and destroy and incinerate structures and people. The thermobaric update contains polymer-bonded or solid fuel-air explosives in its payload. It’s also able to penetrate buildings, underground shelters and tunnels creating a blast pressure great enough to suck the oxygen out from the spaces and lungs of anyone in the vicinity. Used against civilians, these weapons are illegal under the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. However, George Bush arrogantly dismisses the Geneva Conventions claiming they don’t apply in the "war on terror." He echoed the sentiment of his then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales (the current Attorney General) whose memo in early 2002 stated: "The nature of the new war (on terror) places a high premium on other factors such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists.....In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." Such is the language of tyrants and those around them in high places. The Pentagon also acts with disdain for the law and freely uses whatever terror weapons it chooses against any target.

The sum of these actions and policies is that the George Bush’s legacy will based on the notion of endless illegal aggression in the "permanent state of war" his administration declared after 9/11 that now has been rebranded as "the long war" against "Islamo-fascism." It also sanctions the use of banned weapons against civilians, and it believes the most sacred international law is quaint, obsolete and out of date. Is it any wonder this administration has laid waste to scores of villages, towns and cities across Iraq and Afghanistan and done it not just to destroy targets but to send a message that no restraint will be shown to crush all resistance against imperial aggression. This scorched earth policy is called the "Fallujah model" which, of course, was the city in al-Anbar province of 350,000 US ground and air forces attacked full-force in November, 2004. It was done using most every terror weapon they had, other than nuclear ones, to inflict maximum destruction including to essential infrastructure like water, electrical power and hospitals to wipe out whatever resistance was there. Now the same model is being used against the people of Ramadi, the capitol of al-Anbar and a city larger than Fallujah that was surrounded and attacked by a large combined US and proxy Iraqi force beginning on June 9. The assault is still ongoing, and in the words of its US commander, it’s unclear how long it will take to "pacify" the city.

What the commander meant but left unsaid was that US style pacification means mass killing and destruction like what was done to Fallujah or alternately following the "Leningrad", "Ben Tre" or "Jenin" model. Whether the plan is to break the will of the people and starve it to submission, "destroy the town to save it" or just inflict barbaric retribution in an act of vengeance and do it against innocent people there, these acts are outrageous war crimes and crimes against humanity. What the commander also didn’t say is what’s been coming from unembedded and leaked reports on the ground - that despite the intense and protracted effort to suppress the resistance, the US military has effectively lost control over all of al-Anbar province west of Baghdad that comprises about one-third of the country. This assessment was confirmed in August by Col. Pete Devlin, the Marine Corps chief of intelligence, who characterized the situation there as beyond repair and that US forces have lost the battle in al-Anbar. It’s happened in spite of the intense fighting across areas under US control including the tactical strategy of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The latter crimes are those the Nuremburg Charter cited to explain what Hitler did to the Jews. The UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) ruled these actions are the historical and legal precursors to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. From the 15 year unrelenting assault against the Iraqi people beginning with the Gulf war, the devastating economic sanctions, continued bombings throughout the 1990s up to the 2003 illegal war, occupation and daily crimes committed under it, the US is as guilty of genocide as were the Nazis against the Jews and all others they sought to eliminate.

Add to that the systematic use of torture at the hellhole prisons with names now well-known and many others around the world the CIA and military run or "rendition" victims to so they can learn how American justice works. It’s the same way it worked in Nazi Germany and under all other regimes run by tyrants. Victims have no rights and can be treated any way their oppressors choose. International laws that are the supreme law of the land are quaint and ignored, the notion of innocent unless or until proved guilty is a nonstarter, and knowing torture isn’t an effective way to break resistance and obtain credible information hardly matters. When you’re the world’s only superpower, can decide alone what’s lawful or not, and are on the rampage, who’ll be brave or foolish enough to challenge you? Few, in any, dare.

Is Justice Possible in A World Where Might Makes Right

The rule of law is sacred and should protect us from oppression and injustice. It doesn’t because a greater force prevails - the power of the strong over the weak, to write the laws it wants and ignore all others, to recklessly pursue its ends, to pillage and plunder because it can get away with it. It’s called the law of might makes right, ruled by the code of victors’ justice where only the vanquished are held to account and no one has rights except the powerful who make their own. It’s a world of lawlessness, disorder and endless conflict, our world, and it’s brought to us by a rogue superpower posing as a model democratic state. Those under its oppressive heel, now and in the past, know it well. For many of them it’s the curse of having too much of a valued natural resource the US wants to control and exploit. It was true for Iraq and is no different for Iran and Venezuela that also are on the US target list.

What’s clear abroad is also true in the US where sacred constitutional law and the political process are effectively dead letters. So too are long-established international laws and norms that interfere with the plans of the new rulers of the world. The power of the Executive declared it so, and the Congress (a Greek chorus posing as a legitimate legislative body) went along - while a modern-day Rome slowly burns and threatens all humanity with its fallout.

It never should have been this way nor was it intended to following WW I. Because of the frightening horror from that conflict, 63 nations, including the US, were signatories to the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 that renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy and said never again. The Pact failed to prevent WW II that began 11 years later nor has the UN formed in its aftermath been able to do be any more successful. This world body was established to maintain international order and security and to develop friendly relations among nations to strengthen universal peace. Its stated mission in its Charter was that it was to be an international body "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind." It hasn’t done it and never will as long as it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the reigning superstate (aka predator) that co-opts it to serve its interests and prevents it from functioning as it should. What can all humanity look forward to if the institutions established to protect us don’t work, and the only rule of law is the one of the jungle and survival of the fittest and most powerful. More on this below.

A Possible Hidden Economic Connection to the Iraq War and Future Ones Planned

The clear connection to the Iraq war, and likely ones in some form planned against Iran and Venezuela, is the ocean of oil each country literally floats on. Saddam became a target for regime change when he refused to submit and cede control of it to the US demanding he do it. Now the Iranian mullahs and its President Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez may be next in our target queue for the same reason. Like Iraq, with only conventional weapons for defense, these two countries are no match militarily against an all out US assault unlike North Korea that may have a nuclear deterrent giving that country a degree of invulnerability only states with that type weapon have against an aggressive superpower. The US picks its targets judiciously, and like a schoolyard bully never attacks an adversary that can put up a decent fight - at least by its military.

There also may be another motive behind our belligerence besides the clear oil related one. It’s much less visible, not discussed, and well concealed beneath the radar. It relates to the notion believed by some economists that flawed and/or out of date methodologies are used to compute some of our key economic data like the gross domestic product (GDP), the total employment and unemployment figures known as the monthly jobs report, and the federal deficit. The reasoning goes that if the unemployment rate today was computed by the same methodology used during The Great Depression when it rose to 25% of the working population, the true current figure would be about 12% instead of the reported 4.7% which includes part-time workers and anyone working as little as one hour during the reporting period. It also excludes all those who wish to work but have stopped looking (discouraged workers) because they can’t find any.

A cover story just out in the September 25 issue of Business Week magazine lends credence to the notion that official published government data is manipulated and flawed to look better than, in fact, it is. The article is titled: "What’s Really Propping Up The Economy." It states since 2001, all newly created private sector jobs (1.7 million) came from one source - the health care industry which includes the drug companies and insurers offering health insurance. This one industry today represents 12% of the workforce and $2 trillion in annual spending (about one-sixth of the nation’s GDP and growing). The story goes on to explain that without the private sector jobs from this one source "the nation’s labor market would be in a deep coma" so that while some other sectors like construction and areas related to it added 900,000 jobs since 2001, that gain was offset by "the pressures of globalization and new technology (that) have wreaked havoc on the rest of the labor market" resulting in factories closing and shrinkage in other areas. Even information technology, "the great electronic promise of the 1990s," turned into a bust as far as its ability to generate new jobs. Instead of creating any, it lost 1.1 million of them since 2001 and now employs fewer people than in 1998 "when the Internet frenzy kicked into high gear."

This kind of data doesn’t reflect a healthy, expanding economy and clearly is a strong indication of one showing very disturbing signs. The current situation is still further complicated by a failing policy of imperial overreach, massive and out-of-control federal deficits discussed below, and the greatest housing boom in history that propped up the economy, became a bubble, and is now unwinding and likely to become painful before it ends. Just how much and how fast won’t be known until a future time when an assessment is made of the amount of damage done and what economic conditions are in its wake. It may show things to be lots different than the rosy way they’re portrayed now by most analysts.

It may be why at least one economist (maybe an honest one) believes a more accurate calculation of the real GDP indicates it’s contracting and not expanding in a healthy fashion as is now reported each quarter. And most disturbing of all is an analysis of the federal deficit, the computation of which has been miscalculated since the Johnson administration began using accounting gimmicks to hide the true costs of the Vietnam war. If the deficit were calculated based on GAAP methodology (the accounting rules required of all publicly traded corporations in preparing their financial statements), the true figure would have been $665 billion for fiscal year 2003 and $760 billion for 2005 instead of the reported $375 billion 2003 figure and $318 billion for 2005. But that greater figure expands to an astonishing $3,700,000,000,000 ($3.7 trillion) for 2003 and a similarly frightening one for 2005 if the annual increase in the net amount of unfunded Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government pension obligations are included. This shadow deficit has been mounting since the Johnson years and shows that the US government in fiscal year 2003 had a negative net worth of $34,000,000,000,000 ($34 trillion) by one estimate.

Another economist paints an even grimmer picture than the one above. That economist, Boston University Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, prepared a recent detailed report for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in which he stated, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt and unable to pay its creditors (the ones holding its debt instruments and due its entitlement payments). Professor Kotlikoff wrote that a country’s solvency depends on its ability to honor its lifetime fiscal obligations which are the difference between all required future spending and the revenue expected to be received to do it. That gap will widen exponentially as the accumulated US sovereign and other debt obligations plus the amount of revenue needed to cover the bill for retiring Baby Boomers’ unfunded liabilities of social security, medicare, medicaid, government pensions and all else rises to an incomprehensible and unmanageable $65,900,000,000,000 ($65.9 trillion) by the calculations he used from a study by two other professors. Professor Kotlikoff explained this figure is over five times the current US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and double the national wealth. He added that if his analysis is right, it means the US is bankrupt, will face a fiscal calamity ahead and will have to default on its debt, entitlements and other obligations.

Professor Kotlikoff had more to say on this matter in a recent extended essay he wrote for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review July/August issue titled "Is the United States Bankrupt?" In it he stated that future US workers would need to be taxed at the rate of 55 - 80% over their working lifetimes to pay for the estimated $80 trillion in unfunded future entitlement liabilities or more than six times the current US GDP. Whichever of his two numbers is more accurate (if either one is), Professor Kotlikoff is beginning to be heard and is gaining some adherents. They believe the US faces a potential future fiscal meltdown even though it’s understood the nation’s balance sheet isn’t static and includes increasing assets as well as liabilities that must be figured into any bottom line calculation of net obligations. So as dire as the current and future situation may be, the true state of the problem likely won’t be known precisely until the inevitable day of reckoning arrives revealing how ugly it is.

What is known is that whichever analysis of the problem is right, the future consequences eventually will likely shake the world and change our way of life at home irrevocably at the least. So how does that relate to this country’s addiction to war and the current notion of permanent or long ones. Simple. Hot wars stimulate the economy and make it grow - especially extended ones. They require lot’s of spending, but so far the funding’s there for them from institutional and foreign investors willing to buy our sovereign debt and the Federal Reserve always cooperative by printing up lots of ready cash. But all this comes at a price. Along with shamless tax cuts for the rich and massive corporate welfare subsidies and war-related contracts, it’s caused the federal budget and current account deficits to balloon exacerbating an unmanageable fiscal problem since 2001 alone the result of George Bush’s reckless policies of excess greed and imperial overreach. The latter is his new "long war" policy, and the more of them we wage, the more positive it is for the economy and corporate profits - in the short run. Without them and their spoils, the economy might not be as healthy or could even be in trouble.

So the nation may face a Hobson’s choice: continue our profligate spending ways or see our fiscal house of cards collapse - a conundrum with no solution. The larger our economy gets, the more dependent it is on wars and militarism for economic stimulus. It results in more debt to get the same bang for the bucks we now spend like drunken politicians. It’s an unending cycle requiring increasingly greater capital infusions without end in a sort of fiscal game of musical chairs, but one where we dare not let the music stop. Because our economy is so large, we need huge amounts of capital to maintain growth. But finding it becomes harder, and our addiction to it is like being on a treadmill we can’t get off of. As a result, we may heading for an eventual day of reckoning, like the one Professor Kotlikoff envisions, no one wants to imagine or confront. It’s the same problem a drug addict has needing bigger fixes for the same effect. That behavior guarantees a bad ending, eventually killing the addict. In the same way, no nation can spend and borrow beyond its means forever and always need more for the same results. Nations doing it are like out of control drug addicts and face the same unavoidable fate. They can delay the inevitable but not forever. The penalty for the sins of excess are high, painful and certain. The day eventually comes when the "piper" must be paid. It may not be next month or next year, but "pipers" are very patient and always have the final say. Richard Nixon’s former chief economic advisor, Herb Stein, said it well: "Things that can’t go on forever, won’t." He might have added how unpleasant it is when the day of reckoning comes.

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Endless War, Its Fallout and A Future No One Wants

The US is now at a dangerous watershed moment struggling to save the tattered republic and our sacred constitutional rights. Unless we reverse the present course, our future may be the one Orwell foresaw when he wrote: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face....forever...." Like the totalitarian state of Oceania led by Big Brother in his best known book 1984, we’re waging a permanent long war; no one is safe anymore - from our own government; we’re all being illegally surveilled; anyone may be forcibly taken away, detained, tortured or murdered - all to make the world safe for a brave new world order ruled ruthlessly by capital that’s called democracy. It’s one without a political process because the Congress gave it up to a "Unitary Executive" with the power to abrogate the separation of powers doctrine, bypass the lawmakers and courts and act as he chooses to protect the nation’s security or for whatever other reason he decides.

We’re now nearing a crisis because George Bush chose to invoke the wartime contingency "national security initiatives" established during the Reagan years that gives the President the power to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law. Bush did it by signing executive orders post 9/11 giving himself absolute power in times of whatever he alone decides is a "national emergency." If he assumes it, he’ll become a dictator, accountable to no one, which he claims the right to do on his say alone. The only sensible recourse is for mass people action (like now ongoing for weeks in the streets of Mexico against authoritarian rule) to prevent our crossing the Rubicon and passing from a shaky republic to the tyranny of a full-blown national security police state and a future no one wants. It can happen here just as it did in ancient Rome and in Weimar Germany when the good people there lost their model democratic state. They allowed Hitler to steal it while they weren’t paying attention. They bought into his demonic appeal to his divine mission as the nation’s savior (sound familiar?) and his pretense to be protecting them from an outside threat that didn’t exist. That history should remind us how fragile our sacred liberties are and how easily they’re lost when tyrants are allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged. We’re at a moment now when there’s still time to act before it’s too late to save a nation conceived in liberty that may soon no longer have it. Edmund Burke explained it long ago when he said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I’m sure today he’d remember the importance of women.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog address at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The US-led aggression in the Middle East and the three failed attempts to oust Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez since 2002 (with a fourth now planned and likely to be implemented soon) are just the latest examples of this country’s imperial agenda and the "new world order" it has in mind. The way this country now engages throughout the world isn’t much different than what it’s done close to home and worldwide since inception. Only the venues chosen, the scope of our aims, and the extent of our power have changed. This article in two parts gives some historical perspective and then concentrates on the imperial grand strategy of the Bush administration under which regime change is a central element.

In Part II, the focus is on the war in Iraq as a case study of imperial madness and its consequences. It also covers a possible little discussed economic motive behind what’s now being called "the long war."

Maybe it’s something in the air or water around the Capitol that makes it happen - causing the men and women elected or appointed to high office to do bad things. It may in part be going along to get along for some of them. But mostly it’s the dangerous and deadly sickness or syndrome of power corrupting and absolute power doing it absolutely. That’s bad enough, but when it happens to rulers of a superpower and those in league with them, it can inflict immeasurable harm and human suffering. In cost/benefit analysis terms: what serves the interests of a superstate comes at the expense of the public welfare.

The US Has Always Been A Warrior, Imperial Nation

There’s no longer a dispute that the US pursues an imperial agenda. What once was hidden behind a politically correct facade and would never be admitted publicly is now seen as something respectable and even an obligation to advance "western civilization." How low we’ve sunk in coming so far. But how different is today from the past? Not much for those who know the country’s true history that’s quite different from the proper and polite version of it taught in school at all levels. Expansionism and militarism have always been in our DNA since the early settlers first confronted the nation’s original inhabitants and then over the next few hundred years slaughtered about 18 million of them to seize their land and resources. We may even have put language in our sacred Declaration of Independence to give us a birthright to do it. In it we called our native people "merciless indian savages," and with that kind of framing gave ourselves a moral justification to remove them. It’s a code based on the notion of might makes right and what we say goes. It didn’t matter that our original inhabitants lived mostly in peace for 20-30,000 years on the lands we took from them. There also was no concern that the native peoples treated the early settlers graciously, helping them survive through the early years of struggle and hard adjustment. We showed our gratitude with hostility, open warfare and genocidal extermination. It never ended and continues in less conspicuous ways today as the current unstated national policy is to eliminate native cultures through assimilation into our own. It’s hardly a testimony to the benefits of "western civilization" Gandhi thought would be a good idea when asked what he thought of it.

Our belligerence wasn’t just directed against the indian nations as we always were apparently willing to pick a fight. It’s hard to believe that this country since inception has been at war with one or more adversaries every year without exception to this day. That’s in addition to all other attempts to destabilize or overthrow governments of nations whenever their leaders weren’t willing to sacrifice their national interest in service to ours. Imperialists don’t ever tolerate that, especially one that happens to be an unchallengeable superpower.

But long before we gained that status, we pursued a land-grab policy throughout the 19th century to expand the new nation from "sea to shining sea" including taking the half of Mexico we wanted along the way. It’s surprising we didn’t take all or most of Canada as well and nearly did twice in the past: during the War of 1812 with the British when our interest was more on expansion than the British impressment of our seamen and again in 1920 when we eyed Canada for the same reason we’re waging two wars today - O-I-L. Only fate may have prevented it from happening. A few cooler heads also likely prevailed, and our attention both times got diverted to other "adventures" and priorities.

But despite our tradition of imperial expansion, we stated our aims carefully and diplomatically and still do. The closest we came early on to an open admission of our true intent was in code language like "manifest destiny" or being willing to heed Rudyard Kipling’s racist call to ally with Britain, take up the "White Man’s Burden," and engage in "savage wars" to bring civilization to dark-skinned people in countries like The Philippines we decided didn’t have any. So in our imperial wisdom, we came, stole, and conquered "for their own good" and in the process left lots of bodies around to prove our good intentions.

Theodore Roosevelt welcomed Kipling’s call, publicly supported an expansionist foreign policy before he became president and during most of his time in office. He wanted colonies to make over in our own image and was willing to go to war for it if that’s what it took to do it. He won a Nobel Peace prize for his efforts and was the only US president to get one until Jimmy Carter (another dubious man of peace) received the award in 2002. While president, TR’s foreign policy was to solidify the country’s world position it gained from the Spanish-American war during which and after he had a hand in extending the US empire to The Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, Guam, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Canal Zone area part of Colombia that broke away to become the new nation of Panama. Building the canal there across its isthmus fulfilled TR’s dream to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans even though it took devious tactics to arrange the deal, manage to begin construction during his time in office, and finally see it completed about four and a half years before he died. TR also ironically allowed the number of US possessions to shrink during his second term in office - maybe out of guilt over what he did in his first four years and earlier.

Woodrow Wilson was another of the "noted" presidents we now revere as one of our greatest who came to office with noble promises of wanting to reform national politics and have an enlightened presidency only to fall far short. While proclaiming all nations had the right of self-determination, he believed that America had a duty to see they all had the kind we practiced even if we had to bring it to them at the point of a gun. The result during his tenure was the military occupation of Nicaragua, Haiti (beginning 20 oppressive years) and the Dominican Republic. He also had his problems with Mexico and did what any good US president would do. He sent in the Marines to invade the country, seize and occupy Veracruz, the country’s main seaport, manage to resolve that dispute and then do it again with Army regulars under General John Pershing (the Dwight Eisenhower of WW I in charge of the American Expeditionary Force sent to Europe) to hunt down Pancho Villa as payback for Villa’s cross-border incursion into the US killing 19 Americans. Pershing didn’t find him but nearly began a full-scale war with Mexico trying before Wilson decided the whole adventure was a bad idea and called it off.

But all this was prologue to what Wilson wanted most while claiming otherwise - getting the US into WW I to further our undeclared imperial ambitions. In 1916 Wilson was reelected on a platform promise of: "He Kept Us Out of War" - referring to the one raging in Europe since 1914. Of course, he had to promise that as the US public overwhelmingly wanted nothing to do with it. But he no sooner was reelected than he began making plans to get into it. He established the Committee on Public Information under George Creel which was able to turn a pacifist nation into raging German haters resulting in the Congress overwhelmingly declaring war on Germany in April, 1917. Once in the war, he managed to control most public anti-war sentiment with the help of the outrageous Espionage and Sedition Acts that outlawed criticism of the government, the armed forces or the war effort, imprisoned or fined violators and censored or banned publications daring to publish what the Wilson administration wanted suppressed. It all has a familiar ring to it.

After the war, Wilson failed to create the new world order he had in mind. The vengeful Treaty of Versailles set the stage for the greater conflict to follow in 20 years, and Wilson left office a defeated, broken and very ill man. Despite it all, we hail him as one of our greatest presidents, even though with an honest assessment it’s clear he fell far short. It’s also clear there’s a thin line between the ones we call our best and those we rate our worst. It hardly matters as the only qualification for the job is to faithfully pursue the interests of the power brokers who get to choose the ones they think will serve them best. It was true for Theodore Roosevelt, his younger cousin Franklin (who had a little Great Depression to deal with and had to give some to save capitalism), Woodrow Wilson and the current undistinguished incumbent in Washington.

At the heart of those interests is the pursuit of wealth and power and a system of governance beholden to capital, now more than ever dominated by giant predatory corporations that control and decide everything - who governs and how, who serves on our courts, what laws are enacted and even whether wars are fought, against whom and for what purpose. It’s for the profit, of course, because wars are good for business, which is why we wage so many of them. Corporations have to keep growing. They’re mandated by law to do it to maximize shareholder value for their owners, and the only way they can is by increasing profits. They do it by growing sales, keeping costs low, expanding their market share when possible and always seeking new opportunities globally for their products and services. It doesn’t matter how they get them as long as they do, and the surest way when others fail is through strong-arm imperialism. The easy kinds through favorable (one-way) trade agreements or other market-opening arrangements are always preferred. But if those methods fall short, the alternative is direct confrontation or all out aggressive war. When it happens, corporations are the winners as long as the adventure doesn’t harm the economy. It usually harms the public interest asked to sacrifice butter for guns and their civil liberties in the name of greater security (never gotten), and then having to pick up the tab.

It’s part of the same dirty business Senator Henry Cabot Lodge noted in his 1885 unguarded moment comment that "commerce follows the flag." Today it’s more true that the flag goes where commerce directs it to secure new markets and a corporate friendly environment once they’ve been opened for business. That’s how imperialism works and why war is an effective geopolitical way to pursue it. War, of course, is just geopolitics by other means, and powerful capital-controlled countries like the US use it freely because it works so well most often. The great political economist Harry Magdoff wrote of it this way in his Age of Imperialism in 1969: "Imperialism is not a matter of choice for a capitalist society; it is a way of life of such a society." He also knew the only way our system can work is through repression, institutionalized inequality and militarism all camouflaged in the deceit of serving the public interest. Magdoff knew those elements are in the DNA of our capital-controlled society that thrives and prospers best by pursuing a global predatory policy that assures continued economic growth at the macro level, geopolitical control, and greater wealth for the rich and powerful at the expense of all others.

Our tradition of imperialism began at the republic’s birth, but until the end of the "cold war" wasn’t discussed in polite society or acknowledged publicly. But that changed in the 1990s, and now it’s seen as something respectable, a matter of national pride and contributing to the advance of civilization. It shows in our new language that portrays us as agents of a humanitarian mission (a benign Pax Americana or modern "white man’s burden") still hiding the cold reality that what we’re really up to is keeping the world safe and profitable for corporate America. Those on its receiving end need no explanation, but the public at home does as it harms them too. They must be convinced that what’s good for business also serves them, but it’s never stated in those terms. It’s always sold at home as an effort to achieve national security, make the world safe for democracy, or bring our form of rule to other parts of the world we decided need our version of it. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, just that we say it is and can convince people to believe it. Based on our track record, that’s not a problem as time and again the public is willing to swallow most any reasons government officials tell them (reinforced, of course, by the corporate media trumpeting them like gospel) to get them to go along with the schemes they have in mind, no matter how outrageous they are. They’re never told the truth because it’s so unpalatable it’s has to be suppressed, especially in time of war when it’s the first casualty.

The Second Great War to End All Wars Changed Everything

The US emerged from WW II as the only dominant nation "left standing." We became the world’s leading and unchallengeable economic, political and military superpower almost like we planned it that way, which we did. We decided while the war was still ongoing to take full advantage of our new post-war status once it was clear what the outcome would be - to dominate all other nations, have them serve our interests, and do it either through cooperation or by force of one kind or other. With our allied global North partners we’ve done it through political and military alliances as well as trade and other economic agreements and incentives where we have to give enough to developed nations to get more back in return if we do it right. With the developing world though it’s another story, especially those nations with vital strategic resources like large hydrocarbon reserves. Our dealings with them are crafted one-way on the basis of all take and little give in return. For us, it’s a sweet deal to serve our dominant capital interests, but for them it’s a pact with the devil - one always made at the expense of the public welfare everywhere.

The Beginnings Of Our Current Imperial Grand Strategy

One way or another, the US is moving ahead with its plan to rule the world with little regard for how likely it is to succeed. The Bush administration makes no pretense about this and has put its plans in writing for anyone to read and know what it has in mind. Current era thinking goes back at least to 1992 and a Pentagon document written by Paul Wolfowitz, former Bush administration Deputy Defense Secretary and current World Bank president, and the now-indicted Richard Cheney aide Lewis Libby. It was an outline of a plan for US world dominance with no allowable challenge from other nations. At the time, the George H. W. Bush administration dismissed it as off-the-wall and over-the-top after it was leaked to the public, but in September, 2000 the neo-conservative think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC - established in 1997) revived the plan and put meat on its bones in a document they called - Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century. Leading PNAC members are well known and include Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a rogues gallery of many other high ranking Bush administration neocon officials.

This document was and still is a grand imperial plan for US global dominance to extend well into the future to be enforced with unchallengeable military power. The PNAC plan was a blueprint for the current "war on terror" (now being rebranded as a war against "Islamic fascism") and "preventive wars" now raging in Iraq, becoming that in Afghanistan, and planned and "signed off" for against Iran, likely Syria, and possibly Venezuela and other targeted states not submissive to US authority. This plan was also a 21st century update of the Truman Doctrine, conceived by State Department advisor and analyst George Kennan who was the ideological godfather of "containment" and the "cold war." Kennan’s plan became the first post WW II formulated strategy for US global military and economic dominance. He did it by creating the myth that the Soviet Union was a serious threat to our security, and we had to take preventive action.

The truth was the "Russians were never coming." In fact, they had their hands full until around 1960 just rebuilding their war-torn nation to its former state after being devastated by the Nazi Wehrmacht. The public, of course, never knew the truth, and the leadership was able to convince it to go along with the big lie through scare tactics. As already explained, it’s an age-old tactic that always seems to work. This time it was to justify a planned military buildup in peacetime. The myth of a Soviet threat and world communist conspiracy was used to sell it, and it remained the method of choice until that nation came apart in 1991 to what are now 15 separate and independent republics.

We then had a brief respite while the first Bush administration desperately tried to find a new enemy to keep the public off guard and hypotized by the fear of a "new Hitler" threatening us. Saddam, of course, took the bait and obliged, and the Gulf war and its aftermath ensued, followed by a dozen years of brutal and crippling economic sanctions and continued bombing up to the second Iraq war. Now after nearly 16 years, the US-led reign of terror against a defenseless nation and its people continues unabated with no end in sight or plan for it except the apparent intent to foment a full-scale civil war hoping to divide the country to make it easier to rule. The combination of endless war, harsh economic sanctions and no serious effort to rebuild or aid the people has effectively destroyed the most advanced and prosperous nation in the Middle East. It’s also caused extreme suffering, hardship and mass disease, death, and destruction to millions of Iraqi victims whose only mistake was having been born in the wrong country at the wrong time. It’s a country with the terrible misfortune of having immense and easily accessible oil reserves that are coveted by the most powerful nation on earth wanting to control them.

Post 9/11, The Gloves Came Off As Well As Any Pretense of What Our Present Aims Are

The second war against Iraq became possible after 9/11 and was spelled out in what may be called the Bush Doctrine. It refers to this administration’s aggressive foreign policies which were framed by George Bush in an address to the Congress shortly before the attack against and invasion of Afghanistan in which he stated the US would "make no distinction between ’the terrorists’ who committed these (9/11) acts and those who harbor them." Bush arrogantly went on to say "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." It didn’t matter that Osama bin Laden was our invention and a former CIA asset against the Soviets in Afghanistan and again in Bosnia in the 1990s against Slobadan Milosevic and Serbia in the Balkan wars. The public didn’t know it or once did and forgot so it was easy using him and an ill-defined al-Quaida to scare it to go along with the schemes we had in mind but needed the power of fear to do it. The ploy worked as it always does, and now the nation is embroiled in two endless wars and others in the queue to begin by whatever means the plans are to pursue them and whenever they’re intended to be rolled out.

It’s all part of the Bush Doctrine and Messianic mission which also include the notion of a permanent state of preventive war (now called "the long war") against those nations and "Islamic fascists" we claim threaten our national security, whether or not it’s so. That notion became the pretext for the Iraq war, others we have in mind, and our claiming the right to ignore the inviolable rules and established codes of warfare in the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions going back to the 1850s. This recognized and accepted body of international law covers what weapons are banned, the treatment of prisoners including prohibiting torture and mistreatment, and the care of the sick and wounded. But, by Bush Doctrine standards, those laws are now judged "quaint" and "obsolete" and no longer apply. From now on, the law is only what we say it is or make up as we go along despite the fact that all treaties and conventions we’re signatories to are the supreme law of the land. That’s a level of arrogance only an imperial superpower without challengers can get away with, but it’s much easier when a complicit corporate media goes along as cheerleaders "fixing the facts around the policy." The Bush administration pursues this policy wantonly and recklessly regardless of who approves or doesn’t. It even writes it down so others can read it and know what we have in mind. It makes for frightening reading for those who do it.

It’s there in the National Security Strategy (NSS) of September, 2002 that was just updated earlier this year. This plan lays out an "imperial grand strategy" with more belligerent language than the original version which was intended to be a declaration of "preventive war" against any nation or force this administration claims is a threat to our national security. It doesn’t mean it is, just that we say it is. That threat includes any nation we label "unstable" or a "failed state," a term we use for nations seen as potential threats to our security which may require our intervention in self-defense. However, the very notion of what a "failed state" may be is imprecise at best. It may be its inability to protect its citizens from violence or destruction. But it may also be a nation that believes it’s beyond the reach of international law and free to act as an aggressor. Under any of those conditions, the US now claims the right to wage preventive war in self-defense although in so doing that makes us the kind of "failed state" we claim the right to protect ourselves from.

Before the NSS was updated in 2006, we had four other important imperial documents. First was the May, 2000 Department of Defense (DOD) Joint Vision 2020 that outlined a plan for "full spectrum (or world) dominance." This was code language or "Militaryspeak" meaning total control over all land, sea, air, outer space and information with enough overwhelming power to defeat any potential challenger or adversary even by use of nuclear or any other new weapons we might develop. Second was the Nuclear Policy Review of December, 2001 that claims a unilateral right to declare and wage future wars using first strike nuclear weapons that have the potential to destroy all human life on the planet if enough of them are used. Third was the FY 2004 Air Force Space Command Strategic Master Plan. This was a plan to "own outer space", weaponize it with the most advanced, destructive and planet threatening weapons and technology we have or hope to develop including nuclear ones. It also called for developing and placing out there unmanned space vehicles to surveille the entire planet and be able to launch an overwhelming attack against a target country or enemy force that can’t retaliate against us from that vantage point.

The fourth document is the Pentagon’s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review issued in February. As congressionally mandated, this report is a "comprehensive examination of the national defense strategy, force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defense program and policies....for the next 20 years." The review covers the military’s main missions of homeland defense - which, if implemented, even by federally mandating National Guard troops to patrol our southern border as has been done, will violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that prohibits the military from acting in a domestic law enforcement capacity unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress and only in an extreme situation like putting down an insurrection. Other missions are the so-called "war on terrorism" which famed author Gore Vidal says is "idiotic...slogans...lies (and as nonsensical as) a war against dandruff," irregular or asymmetric warfare (against non-state enemies), and what Pentagonspeak calls "shaping the choices of countries at a crossroad" which translated means the potential threat of China as an emerging global power able to challenge our dominance.

The document also unveiled the notion of "the long war" Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signaled in his February National Press Club appearance when he said "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war." George Bush then announced it in his September 5 speech to an association of US military officers in which he declared war against "Islamic fascists." The Pentagon report used the phrase "long war, long global war (or) long irregular war" 34 times in its Quadrennial Review including as the title for the first chapter called "Fighting the Long War." The clear message is that all resisting Muslims and their sympathizers are Islamo-fascists and must be defeated in a "long war" struggle to preserve and spread "western civilization." The much clearer message is that post-9/11 the Bush administration embarked on a messianic bankrupt global racist colonial "war OF terror" against all nations and peoples everywhere opposing its quest for world dominance.

The bottom line for the Pentagon, backed by administration rhetoric, is to assure the Congress will go along with the near half-trillion dollar defense budget for adventurism in the next fiscal year with steady increases in subsequent years plus the off-budget add-ons for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, others to come, and any other special funding DOD may ask for. So far, since 9/11, the Pentagon got a blank check for anything it wants called "national security" - meaning grand theft from the public to enhance profits for defense-related industries and the well-connected corporations chosen to rebuild and police the countries we first destroy so they can then get large, no-bid war-profiteering contracts. It also means the erosion and eventual loss of our civil liberties now fast disappearing, as a nation dedicated to perpetual unjustifiable war can only do it at the expense of a free society at home. It’s what James Madison meant when he wrote: "Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it compromises and develops the germ of every other. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended...and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people."

Imperialism Often Includes Regime Change

A previous article called War Making 101 - A User’s Manual prompted the writing of this one as a follow-up. The earlier article about war making laid out the steps or rules this country follows in preparing to take the nation to war. The same idea is used here to explain how we pursue our imperial aims. For them to work, it’s essential to have foreign leaders in place who know "who’s boss" and will cooperatively go along and serve our interests ahead of those of their own people. When they don’t, the plan calls for regime change to replace them with someone who will. Below are listed and explained the different ways we go about it in order of preference. Here they’re called plans instead of rules.

Plan One: Always try the easy way first. It works most often.

No imperial state, now or in the past, prefers the messiness and bother of hot conflict. Even the tyrannical ones need to convince their people of a plausible reason to get their young men motivated enough to go to war and fight hard enough to win it. The US is no different, and ideally prefers "convincing" foreign leaders to do it our way through diplomacy with enough of a sweetener to their key political and business elites to gain their acquiescence. That way works best in states headed by "strongmen" who gained power politically, militarily or from their royal predecessor or family. It’s a lot easier having relations with one person in power who can decide everything rather than having to deal with messy democrats chosen by elections who must answer to voters and may have to consider their needs along with or ahead of ours. It still works with them if they’re subservient enough to our wishes. It’s only when they aren’t that we try another method.

Plan Two: If Plan One fails, up the ante to harsher tactics. This second choice also works most often.

If at first you don’t succeed the easy way, try again more forcefully. So the second choice is always: remove the "uncooperative leader" and install a more dependable new one we can rely on - to do things our way but nearly always at the expense of the great majority of the people. We’ve also had lots of experience with Plan Two, and most often it works.

There are two ways to do it. Method A is the easy and preferred way. It involves co-opting and bribing officials to do the dirty work. There are usually ready-takers willing to go along and share in the spoils. We then train and fund them, choose the time, opportunity and place to implement the scheme, then stand back and hope all goes as planned. However it turns out, we can claim plausible deniability they did it, not us. This was the method used in Venezuela in three unsuccessful attempts from 2002 - 2004 to oust Hugo Chavez, put the country’s oligarchs back in power, and destroy the Bolivarian Revolution that created a model system of participatory democracy based on the principles of political, economic and social justice. Method A failed in Venezuela because Hugo Chavez gave his people what they never had before and despite the coup plotters’ best efforts they weren’t able to defeat the will and spirit of the people who showed through their determined efforts they wouldn’t tolerate returning to the ugly past they’ll never again accept.

So when things don’t work out, as happened in Venezuela, Method B is tried. It involves eliminating an uncooperative leader by assassination as discretely as possible. It may be by a "rogue element’s" bullet, some well-placed and hard to detect poison, or an unfortunate plane crash the CIA conveniently arranges. We’ve used this one enough times too, so we’re usually able to pull it off with the public none the wiser in the target country or at home.

The CIA used this method to murder Panamian president Omar Torrijos in a 1981 plane crash and Equadorian president Jaimi Roldos in a helicopter crash the same year. Perhaps the most infamous CIA arranged coup and presidential assassination happened on another September 11 in 1973 when General Augusto Pinochet with strong US backing overthrew and had murdered democratically elected President Salvador Allende. It ended the strongest and most vibrant democracy in the Americas and ushered in a brutal right wing military dictatorship for the next 16.5 years. Hugo Chavez now fears this is the fate the US has in mind for him and has said so publicly. What happened in Chile can happen anywhere, and it shows the fragility of a free and democratic society that can easily be toppled by forces determined and strong enough to do it. It’s not that hard when the public is unprepared or unwilling to resist to save the liberties it takes for granted until it’s too late. But it also shows how successful people-power can be when mobilized in force to resist a looming tyranny it refuses to accept. That’s the lesson of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, and it’s visible on the streets of Mexico in the wake of (another) stolen election and a system of authoritarian rule the people have begun to resist.

Plan Three: This choice of last resort is only used when the two preferred methods fail - open conflict or war involving an invasion and possible occupation.

If the top two choices fail, as was the case in Iraq after years of trying Plans One and Two, and the target is too important to pass up (again like Iraq), the only choice left is open conflict or war. It can be simple, quick and easy like Ronald Reagan’s walkover against Grenada in October, 1983 that was mostly over after several days or G.H.W. Bush’s Operation Just Cause invasion of Panama in December, 1989 that was almost as easy. It might also be like the Gulf war which was not simple because of the long buildup and expense but was still quick and involved no occupation.

However it’s done, this least preferred option is messy, costly and usually takes much more time from planning to completion. It’s also only undertaken against targeted foes too weak to put up a good fight and have no weapons that will cause us heavy damage or loss of life. Guessing wrong on either count will make it hard to maintain public support for long, as it’s never easy explaining the body bags when they arrive home in large numbers. It’s even harder when the pretext for going to war in the first place was based on lies (as they always are), and they’re beginning to unravel.

Once the war option is chosen though, the administration needs to prep the public to go along with the "big lie" they concocted. It takes time and effort but involves what so far is the proved the time-tested method of choice guaranteed to work as explained above - scaring the public to death by convincing it the targeted country threatens our national security and welfare. The message repeated ad nauseam is that we patiently tried reason, but all diplomatic efforts failed and we’re only left with one viable option - force. We’ve done this so often we’re expert at it, so it’s likely the public will be traumatized enough to go along with even the most implausible, extreme or outrageous plan we have in mind like using nuclear weapons against a targeted enemy that likely can’t even put up a decent fight against conventional ones.

Sometimes though we outsmart ourselves or refuse to listen to cooler heads and end up in a hopeless quagmire. It happened in Vietnam, and it’s being repeated again in Iraq and heading toward more of the same in Afghanistan. But despite a bad situation that’s getting worse, it’s usually not good strategy for an imperial power to admit making a mistake, decide to cut its losses and leave. It’s generally not popular with voters (except when most of them are fed up and want a quick exit) and doing it also emboldens others targeted to see us as willing to back down when things go sour. They’ll likely get the idea they can make us quit if they make it tough enough long enough, and they’re likely to be right. It’s no different than a schoolyard bully able to get away with it as long as the ones picked on allow him to do it. Once one retaliates and strikes a telling blow, it shows the bully isn’t as tough as he wants others to believe.

So to avoid that fate, as well as saving face, we can never admit a mistake or decide to give up a bad fight, even ones we can’t win - just like we’re now doing in Iraq and beginning to face in Afghanistan. Instead we foolishly have to keep up the charade with the public, say we’re making good progress, and claim there’s light at the end of the tunnel. At most we’ll admit it’s taking longer than expected, but we’re still on plan and with some patience we’ll succeed. But that strategy only works for so long, because if winning isn’t likely or can’t happen before patience runs out, the only light the public will see in the tunnel is a train wreck in the making. If it comes to that, the game is over, the administration suffers, and the opposition party (if that’s a proper term any more) will likely be the beneficiary. The public never is. It’s always the patsy during a conflict and when it ends. It must sacrifice butter for guns and then pay the tab when the bill comes due.

Will the Public Ever Realize It’s Been Had

The scaremongering scam has been used so often before with the same or similar language that later proved false, you’d think the public by now would have caught on. But you’d be wrong. Up to now, it’s worked like a charm every time proving again you can fool most people all the time so why not keep doing it - as long as it keeps working. The only differences from one conflict to the next are the names, dates and places. The playbook is always about the same. All that’s needed is an old one, and then fill in the blanks.

But imagine a "what if" using the well-known Aesop fable about The Boy Who Cried Wolf but with a different moral. We remember the tale about the bored shepard boy who broke his monotony by falsely crying "wolf" and getting the nearby villagers to come to his rescue. When the villagers tired of his false alarms they stopped coming. That’s where our analogy ends. In the fable the wolf finally came, the villagers ignored the boy’s cry for help and the flock perished. Aesop’s fables always had a moral so we’d learn from them. His was that even when liars tell the truth, they’re never believed. Today, however, when liars keep lying, the public never catches on and they keep getting away with it - to our detriment. Hopefully, one day the lesson learned will be that liars can only get away with so many lies until finally no one believes anything they say. Maybe some day if the public knew about famed journalist IF Stone and what he once said - that "all governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed."

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Part II of this article will include a case study of imperial madness. Also visit his blog site at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com.