No, Kerry is a leftist war monger like Clinton. However, it makes little difference whether Kerry is a leftist, neocon, or crypto-communist for the three factions are in fact the same.

I suppose the truth in the assertion “it makes no difference” depends on our objectives. If I were attempting to divide and conquer an alliance of imperialists I would probably as a strategic matter want to understand them with a bit more nuance than “they are the bad guys.” Even if I didn’t have any tactical intentions, if what is true is what is important to me then “they are the oppressor-bad-guys” doesn’t shed much light. On the other hand if what I wanted to do was reassure myself of my own moral superiority then actually understanding them might not be so important.

I wish to confess a taboo idea I have had for several years now and to see where I am wrong. I am unwilling to die for America because America is not worth dying for at the present time.

I oppose ordering Americans to war at the present time, and therefore, I oppose the war on Saddam Hussein unless we use mercenaries or limit the use of American soldiers to manning stand off weapons. My conscience prevents me from consenting to the ordering of others to die for me when I am unwilling to die.

I am not willing to die to preserve establishment causes that are rapidly destroying America from within such as 1) mass immigration, 2) massive numbers of violent crimes, 3) Supreme Court legislation, 4) religious repression, 5) elimination of the white race, 6) officially ignoring the removal of George Washington from the names of my hometown schools, and 7) Presidential encouragement of a Mexican invasion, among other immigrant invasions. Stranger than fiction is the President favors a Mexican invasion and is from Texas, which was won from Mexico by the deaths of Americans such as the sad Colonel Sam Travis of Alamo fame, a man recently shoved to the back pages of Texas’ history books. The war I am willing to fight is a political war within America.

I am not a pacifist. For now, I will fight for my family and myself when the enemy is coming up to my house. I know a pre-emptive strike is brilliant military strategy, and I know the worst time to start defending oneself is when the enemy is at the doorstep. But I will be dying for something I do believe in, my family (which I am temporarily allowed to believe in). I do not want myself and my family to end up like Colonel Travis and his family. If it comes to it, my family and I can feign allegiance to a false Islamic god while praying in catacombs. The Left has no trouble feigning allegiance to America while celebrating with one another their subversion of America.

I have no choice but to remain hopeful. I am proactive in fighting a political war for the things I believe in, unlike most of the safe and secure violent war advocates, so that violence will be unnecessary. American operatives should have assassinated Saddam many years ago, but the same Republicrats that are destroying America from within opposed this.

(For someone to comment on in another essay: We should allow people to advocate war only if the advocates must serve on the front line until the war is over.)

Interesting points here, Paul. What drives me nuts is how pro-war conservatives endlessly conflate Middle America (the one worth saving) with the managerial state. “We” must get “them.” Well, who is we?

Are “We” the corporatists who see the Middle East as their own chessboard? Or are “We” the ones who want a free and viruous society for our kith and kin. Pick one or the other, because you can’t have both.

It could be that America is simply not worth saving, and that therefore any discussion of levels of threat, etc are moot. The bits of it that are good are so entangled with the bad that we may as well treat it as all bad until the devil is actually at the door, and then every man and his rifle for himself. I’ve had my struggles with that conundrum as much as anyone.

There are circumstances in which I would personally lead the charge, though — first boot on the battlefield. If I thought by doing so I would prevent nuclear annihilation of an American city, for example, I wouldn’t hesitate a second. Lets roll.

The notion that someone who isn’t actually leading the charge can’t possibly have anything valid to say is a form of deliberate ignorance, though. It is logically flawed for one thing: if a statement has objective merit then that merit doesn’t depend on who is stating it (with the exception of certain pathological speaker-referential statements, of course). Saying that we are going to stop up our ears to anything that isn’t spoken by a footsoldier is a radical form of deliberate ignorance. I’m no champion of knowledge-above-all-else, but I don’t have such a fear of knowledge that I think nobody except for a certain small class of people should be allowed to speak at all. I expect that advocating deliberate ignorance isn’t going to be helpful in the long run.

I just want to say to Jason Eubanks and Paul Murgos: excellent letters, both! Paul, I feel certain that W’s big push to abolish the white race in this country and replace it entirely with Mexican peasants and other incompatible ethnicities from around the world (WHO WOULD’VE DREAMT a dozen or fifteen years ago that we’d be facing such a thing today!) is bound to lose him the next election. Thanks to Karl Rove, George Bush that feeble-minded low-IQ moron, and the America-hating neo-cons who control their administration lock, stock, and barrel, and can’t WAIT to see the last of the white race in this country — thanks to this lot, 2004 will see a left-wing Democrat in the White House, likely with Dem majorities in both houses of Congress either then or shortly thereafter.

The comment by Paul Murgos is extremely revealing of where many members of the antiwar right are coming from. Why their continual ad hominem arguments and conspiracy theories? Why their refusal to engage the war issue as the vast majority of their fellow Americans understand it—as a practical matter of what to do about the threat of Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction? The answer, as indicated by Mr. Murgos, is that they are so alienated from America that they cannot identify with or participate politically in America any longer—even to the point of refusing to discuss what America should do about the possible use of a nuclear weapon against this country. The alienation is understandable, but the antiwar rightists are taking it too far (thus replicating the mindset of the Southern Secessionists, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere).

Also, this radical alienation, because it cuts them off from rational, public discourse, makes them almost insensible. Look at Mr. Murgos’s attack on people who advocate war but haven’t had military experience. Yet this blog is about the endorsement of the war by Sen. John Kerry, who as everyone knows served in Vietnam. So there is a breakdown of the ability to hear what is being said by one’s opponents (once again, just like the Southern secessionists).

Paul Weyrich, while raising the idea of cultural separation, said that even as we culturally separate from the mainstream culture, we need to remain politically involved in mainstream society. The antiwar right does not do that. They literally do not engage with the issues everyone else is engaged in. They have intellectually and politically seceded, and they have done so not on merely ideological or cultural issues, but on an issue that involves our very physical survival.

Larry,
Your comments are well-informed as usual, but I would like to raise one point. The polls show majorities for attacking Iraq because they think it will be casualty-free. I ask people, “What if we have 100-200 KIAs a week for several months?” There enthusiasm goes down. People have become conditioned to think of war as air strikes and cruise missiles with few casualties on our side.

That may change one of these days. Again, the aftermath is likely to be the main problem.
Thank you,
David

Why does Mr. Auster continue to accuse us of proliferating “conspiracy theories”? What paleo here has tendered a conspiracy theory to explain the Iraqi war? None, it’s a straw man.

As far as these absurd personality diagnoses go, I suggest Matt and Mr. Auster write a book entitled _The Antiwar Personality_ if it appeals to their sense of self superiority.

P.S.
Don’t look now but the pro-Taliban parties are gaining in Pakistan thanks to the intervention of the US. Yet another group of people in an already long list that wish to see us destroyed.
http://www.canada.com/news/story.asp?id=%7BED019DE7-5A25-4548-8B8C-C6C7074C91B8%7D

“There is virtually no situation in the world that can’t be made worse by US intervention”

To answer Mr. Eubanks’ question with one specific recent example which I expect Mr. Auster had in mind (as a part of current discussion), a particular conspiracy theory was propogated by Rick De Ment here on VFR this morning. My reply to it is here:

http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/000852.html#1680

You can find the actual conspiracy theory by scrolling up a few posts, but since it was a short post I will quote it in full:

“I’m confident that a half built nuke will be discovered whether Saddam built it or not. There is no way the government can oust Saddam and take the chance that there was never really anything to find.”

Mr. Eubanks is of course welcome to distance himself from it.

That’s not really a conspiracy theory, its point was to bring up the fact that the “War Party” will lie after the fact to justify their blood lust.

Something similiar happened during the Kosovo War. Do you remember the reports of mass-graves in Kosovo that turned out to be a NATO propagated war hoax to justify their aggression and war crimes? What erstwhile magazine was on top of reporting these lies, insanities, obscene jokes? Hint: It’s abbrevation is WS. Forget Saddam, we need to find a cure for Bill Kristol’s rabies.

Mr. Eubanks asked for evidence of conspiracy theories, Matt provided him with the evidence (which was, moreover, present in this very thread), and now Mr. Eubanks is unwilling to concede the point. Mr. Eubanks seems determined to provide us with a personal demonstration of everything I’ve been saying about the antiwar right’s rejection of rationality.

Fair enough, I didn’t articulate my objection to Matt very well. Let me rephrase.

The intent of Mr. De Ment’s post was to predict the Government’s future behavior from a past pattern of events. If the US Government and war apologists have lied in the past to further their agenda then it’s reasonable to suspect they’ll continue do so in the future. I then provided the general pattern that supports Mr. DeMent’s speculation.

1) Where’s the conspiracy theory? I suppose two men predicting if certain alcoholics will be drunk after a party could be accused of promulgating a conspiracy theory. It strikes me as odd characterize it as such.

2) How is that irrational unless Mr. Auster thinks that any speculation is irrational? If that’s the case, then he needs to muzzle the “terrorists smuggling nukes to America in ship containers” talk along with Iraq’s alleged ties with OBL. Not to mention the speculation surrounding to Saddams’ nukes.

3) Does Mr. Auster really think that the US Government wouldn’t lie to the public to advance it’s war aims? If he does feel that way then he’s sure to get a job at the Weekly Standard or Wall Street Journal.

Lawrence Auster wrote:

“Why their refusal to engage the war issue as the vast majority of their fellow Americans understand it—as a practical matter of what to do about the threat of Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction?”

Here’s an article by Robert Higgs, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, that appeared today at LR.com. Higgs makes his case against Bush’s proposed invasion of Iraq. I think you’ll find that it isn’t saturated with ad hominem attacks on neo-conservatives (in fact, he doesn’t even mention them) or conspiracy theories. Your comments on the article please.

“For some forty years, the United States lived under constant threat of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. For those who have forgotten, the Soviet regime was not composed of poets and flower peddlers. If Saddam Hussein is, as the president insists, “a ruthless and aggressive dictator,” what was Joseph Stalin? What was Leonid Brezhnev?

Nor did the rulers of the USSR play single-softball with respect to nuclear warheads. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet arsenal contained more than 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads and some 30,000 nonstrategic nuclear warheads. Unlike Iraq, which has no capability to deliver a nuclear weapon at long range, the USSR had more than 6,000 nuclear warheads mounted on more than a thousand intercontinental ballistic missiles, most of them programmed to strike targets in the United States within half an hour of launch. In addition, thousands of submarine-launched nuclear weapons and more than a thousand nuclear bombs carried by long-range jet aircraft augmented the Soviet threat.

Yet, notwithstanding the tens of thousands of Soviet nuclear warheads and their sophisticated delivery vehicles kept in constant readiness, the United States was not “blackmailed” by the USSR. Odd that now the United States should quake at the prospect of a single Iraqi softball of fissionable material.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs11.html

Here’s Texas congressman Ron Paul’s take on the impending war with Iraq:

Claim: Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass destruction against us – he has already used them against his own people (the Kurds in 1988 in the village of Halabja).

Reality: It is far from certain that Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurds. It may be accepted as conventional wisdom in these times, but back when it was first claimed there was great skepticism. The evidence is far from conclusive. A 1990 study by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College cast great doubts on the claim that Iraq used chemical weapons on the Kurds. Following are the two gassing incidents as described in the report:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul58.html

If I am interpreting Mr. Eubanks correctly, he says that OK, Mr. De Ment’s conspiracy theory is in fact a conspiracy theory but it is plausible to believe that some small cabal of members of the Bush administration will plant an atomic bomb on Saddam Hussein’s dead corpse because there have been untrue press leaks in past circumstances under a different administration. Do I understand the substance correctly?

I should point out that there can be no conspiracy if there are not yet any acts to suggest a possibility of a conspiracy.

You also miscontrue what NATO did. They reported what they new to be untrue through their press confrences. There false reports were widely reported in the press as true events. That’s outright lying. The same general group of elites and military leadership who backed (or ran) the Kosovo campaign now want a war with Iraq. Why should I trust what they say now when they plainly engaged in a disinformation campaign not three years ago.

Mr. Eubanks draws an equivalence between the following conspiracy theory about the Bush administration and Iraq:

“I’m confident that a half built nuke will be discovered whether Saddam built it or not. There is no way the government can oust Saddam and take the chance that there was never really anything to find.” (Mr. De Ment)

and the following (lets us suppose it perfectly accurate for the sake of argument) about the Kosovo period and the Clinton administration:

“They reported what they new to be untrue through their press confrences.” (Mr. Eubanks)

I suppose there are two ways I could interpret this. One is that Mr. Eubanks is simply suffering from some basic intellectual incapacity. There is I think a more charitable possibility though. A few posts back I asked if Mr. Eubanks wanted to distance himself from the explicit conspiracy theory. I could interpret his latest as a very oblique way of saying “yes”. The only problem with that interpretation is that it leaves his objection to my use of the term “conspiracy theory” unexplained.

Garet_Garrett puts some more flesh on the bone of the deterrence argument by a comparison with the USSR. There is some merit to deterrence (I’ve said as much before). As an analogy the comparison isn’t perfect: for example it banks on Hussein personally believing Iraq will be annihilated even if he uses terrorists as a long range deployment mechanism and establishes plausible deniability. There was no analogue for the USSR: with any attack the clear identification of the attacker would not have been an issue. Even in the case of the cold war it was a gamble as to who would outlast who: winning roulette yesterday doesn’t guarantee a win at poker tomorrow. Plus an attack on Iraq has objectively much greater chance of success at much lower risk than an attack on the USSR would have. Deterrence counts on no coup by more radical groups occurring once Hussein actually has his nukes, and no theft of a nuke by terrorists, but that is imperfectly analogous to (for example) Pakistan as well — so it is legitimate to say that if that were the only concern we would have to invade Pakistan too. There is no “only one concern” that decides this whole mess conclusively, as far as I can tell.

I’ve said before that deterrence is a legitimate part of the overall picture to be weighed, and it is refreshing to see comparative dispassion and substance. If someone wants to bet on deterrence, while acknowledging that (like all of our options at present) it is a quite risky bet and that those who make different bets can do so in good faith, I can’t fault that intellectually. Some will argue against deterrence as a more risky alternative than others. It is a substantive position on the actual weighing of real risks and actual alternatives though.

It does amount to saying that “mushroom cloud over manhattan and proof that it came from Saddam” becomes our standard of evidence justifying an attack on Iraq, though, so any AWR who wanted to hang his hat on deterrence would have to concede that that is not a straw man.

I suppose if I were Hussein and I wanted to nuke an American city or two in the face of a deterrence policy, I would do the following:

1) Build some nuclear weapons.

2) Find a terrorist group to deploy them.

3) Allow that terrorist group to “steal” some and announce to the world that that had occurred. Sorry guys, the lock was broken, my bad. “Cooperate” in the “investigation.” This announcement would occur before any actual nuke goes off anywhere; probably a long time before, in order for the announcement itself to have the desired effect on world markets, etc. Wait it out long enough for security to get sloppy again after the inevitable initial clampdown.

4) Watch the mushroom clouds from afar.

Matt, a few questions:

1): Isn’t it “simply presumptuous” to claim what you’d do if you were Saddam and wanted to nuke the US? If not, why?

2): Saddam’s government is a secular government that despises Muslim fundamentalists. He has no ties with al-Qaida, so it remains unclear to me which terrorist groups you’re talking about. My question is, which terrorists is he going to slip these nukes to?

3): How could he blackmail a country that could reduce his to a parking lot?

The US’s policy of containment worked with the USSR who had thousands upon thousands of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, unlike Iraq.

Also, claiming either that Saddam “could” use nuclear weapons to blackmail the US or that he “may” slip them to terrorists he isn’t affiliated with seems like a whopping big inference to make, given what we know about him.

What if Russia or China decide to follow Matt’s plan? Attempt to succeed where Hitler and Napoleon failed and go take Moscow? Try your hand at stopping China’s human wave tactics? Can’t really defend against this.

Secondly, smuggling a nuke is far-fetched because we have intelligence aircraft specifically tailored to detect nuclear weapons radiation from afar (SR-71 and U2). An USAF SR-71 successfully detected Israel equipping their nukes during the Yom Kippur War (even though Israel tried to shoot it down):

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=16042002-111350-1992r

The nuke in a “shipping container” theory is bunk dreamt up by some of our administation’s neocon kooks (probably Wolfowitz).

Garet_Garrett asks:

“Isn’t it “simply presumptuous” to claim what you’d do if you were Saddam and wanted to nuke the US? If not, why?”

I apologize, but I have no idea what this question means. As a person who has created new technologies and institutions wrapped around them out of whole cloth before the most natural question I ask myself is “at a given resource level, do I think I could accomplish these objectives?” There are of course other ways to imagine plausible scenarios but I don’t know why simply assuming that others are as capable as I am personally would be presumptuous, nor even if true what making that observation would add to a strategic decision process.

“Saddam’s government is a secular government that despises Muslim fundamentalists. He has no ties with al-Qaida, so it remains unclear to me which terrorist groups you’re talking about. My question is, which terrorists is he going to slip these nukes to?”

I agree that Saddam and Moslem extremists were not natural allies until recently, but we have managed to align their interests and unique capabilities/tendencies as they were not before. Saddam needs a delivery vehicle and plausible deniability, while Moslem extremists need WMDs and other resources. War and politics after all tend to unify rather than divide. Russia and the US weren’t natural allies in WWII either, but I am sure the Axis wishes in retrospect it had taken the possibility of an alliance seriously. As to the other question, I don’t see a simplistic blackmail scenario as likely but if I personally were in Saddam’s shoes and had his apparent objectives there are many ways I could go about accomplishing them, in part by leveraging those who prefer deterrence and other conciliatory approaches. I suppose if someone thought that making the assumption that Saddam is no less capable than me personally was presumptuous then they could apply the label, but I am not sure what doing so adds to the discussion. Without having access to all of the intelligence data and other resources at the administration’s disposal I don’t have a prayer of doing anything but making inferences, whether someone wants to view them as whopping big or otherwise.

Mr. Eubanks is right that of course China or some other power could attempt a similar strategy to the possibility I sketched out, assuming they had identical objectives. The emergence of an effective delivery vehicle with plausible deniability has intrinsically changed the balance and stability of the nuclear powers whether anyone wants to recognize it or not. 9-11 really did change everything, and unlike many I don’t claim to have pat answers to all the questions and implications. That seems to provide yet another good reason to narrow the field by eliminating its most unstable participant, but I don’t see where it implies anything inconsonant with anything else I’ve said about the matter.

Another thought: The US obviously has a very limited capacity to conduct multiple ground wars. Two Islamic nations, say Indonesia and Libya, could possibly act in concert to develop nuclear weapons. With the doctrine of premption, this stategem will serve to stretch the US military very thin. The US can’t intervene in both countries at the same time with the current deployment load.

Watch Pakistan because the Islamists seem to be gaining ground there. If they take over while the US is fiddling around with Saddam - it’s checkmate.

Matt wrote:

“I apologize, but I have no idea what this question means.”

Sorry, I misphrased what I meant to ask you. What I originally meant was, isn’t is presumptuous to say what you’d do if you were Saddam — given what we know about him — and had nukes? You seem to assume one of his objectives is to nuke the US using terrorists as carriers without any supporting evidence.

“I agree that Saddam and Moslem extremists were not natural allies until recently, but we have managed to align their interests and unique capabilities/tendencies as they were not before.”

This is, of course, again based on the spurious assumption that Saddam is just dying to nuke us. So far the amount of evidence I have seen supporting this theory is zilch.

“Saddam needs a delivery vehicle and plausible deniability, while Moslem extremists need WMDs and other resources. War and politics after all tend to unify rather than divide. Russia and the US weren’t natural allies in WWII either, As to the other question, I don’t see a simplistic blackmail scenario as likely but if I personally were in Saddam’s shoes and had his apparent objectives there are many ways I could go about accomplishing them, in part by leveraging those who prefer deterrence and other conciliatory approaches. I suppose if someone thought that making the assumption that Saddam is no less capable than me personally was presumptuous then they could apply the label, but I am not sure what doing so adds to the discussion. Without having access to all of the intelligence data and other resources at the administration’s disposal I don’t have a prayer of doing anything but making inferences, whether someone wants to view them as whopping big or otherwise.”

Matt, take heart: we’re all making them. The only difference between mine and yours is that yours seem to rest on unproven premises. For instance, you seem to assume that al-Qaida and Saddam have the same goal of wanting to destroy the US. Rest assured, if the fate of the US hangs in the balance, it’s unrelated to anything Saddam’s doing out in the desert.

I agree completely, it seems, with Mr. Eubanks’ assessment of any broad-based doctrine of preemption that goes beyond Iraq as well as with his assessment of Pakistan’s instability and importance. (That doesn’t mean it isn’t the least-bad of our options, just that his pessimism is completely warranted).

Garet_Garrett: I do not assume that Saddam Hussein would nuke a US city (using terrorists as a vehicle) simply for its own sake, but rather as a tactic in an overall strategy of shifting the balance of power away from Western dominance. I suppose someone could claim that there is no supporting evidence that Hussein has such goals, but such a person is not likely to allow himself to be confused by any amount of facts. All I have to do to conclude as I have is assume that Hussein has such goals and that he is as smart and capable as I am.

The whole situation is far uglier than either the antiwar right or the neocons want to admit. The neocons blithely assume that we can stomp our way around the globe wiping out despots and setting up democracies. Sure there will be a few hiccups along the way, but we are the good guys, we represent the future and the end of history, so we will win out. The AWR’s assume that if we embark on a strategy of controlled disengagement and appeasment the McNuclear world with all of its implications will somehow disappear. I think that both are wildly optimistic. The neocon view is irresponsibly optimistic by virtue of the fact that neocons hold power right now. But if we completely transferred all of that power directly to Pat Buchanan or Lew Rockwell I think we would face a different sort of irresponsible optimism. The first step toward thinking our way out of a dilemma is to face the facts. The AWR is irresponsibly optimistic in its own way (irresponsible because by checking out of the discussion and hurling invective from afar it insures that the substantive issues it represents won’t be taken seriously).

The thing that motivates me to participate in these discussions is not my support for some particular substantive position that has been publicly articulated that I think makes sense. I haven’t seen one to support. The thing that motivates me to participate in these discussions, and to attempt in my own little squeaky way to get the important voices of the paleocons engaged in them, is a desire to see the facts faced as a necessary prerequisite to any discussion about substantive options. A naive optimism of whatever sort, e.g. a failure to face facts by dismissively proclaiming that Hussein has no designs on increasing his own power at the expense of the West with America as its clear leader, is the sort of thing that will get us all killed and our country destroyed.

Allow me to explain my own “conspiracy” theory. There is currently much at stake in what is amounting to a geo-political poker game. The Bush administration insists that there is evidence that Hussein is very close to developing a nuclear weapon this timeline has been constantly changing over the last year presumably in response to new intelligence. The step of a pre-emotive invasion / regime change can only be justified if there is a clear threat of an attack against us. The administration says that Iraq has them or will have then soon and when they do they will use them on us. The problem is that there is no “smoking gun” and the administration admits as much. “But,” they tell us, “We cannot wait until Saddam has carried out the nuclear attack to be 100% sure, we must act before he acquires the capability.”

Suppose the UN and various countries simply don’t agree with our evidence and feel that we are overstating the threat and that our incursion into Iraq is little more then an imperial adventure; so the US decides to go it alone. We roll into Baghdad and we find out we were wrong, there was no nuke program to speak of and that threat to the US was overstated many times over. Are the war supporters telling me that administration hawks are going simply do a mea culpa? Given the kinds of scandals that are routinely covered up every day in all levels of government, I think that this is just naive. In all likelihood we will offer some up some facility or lab and just say that that was were the nuke was being constructed and destroy the evidence before it could be independently verified. Nothing as movie-of-the-week such as planting an elaborate hoax would be required or desirable as fakes would be easy to spot.

In all fairness should the opposite be true, and the half –built nuke actually discovered along with plans to destroy an American city and other “smoking gun” type evidence, there will be those who claim that that evidence was faked and websites will sprout up on that subject to go along with Vince Foster and fake moon landings. So if you want to criticize the entire notion based on the fact that believers on both sides of the argument will believe what they believe in spite of evidence to the contrary then you will get little quarrel from me.

Having said that, if we are to discuss the issue of an Iraqi invasion / regime change without looking at all of the motivations that might influence a decision then we do ourselves a disservice. Action against Iraq may well have a number of security benefits to the US and be another step useful in the fight against the jihadists that seek to destroy us. But a pro US government in Baghdad would have an economic impact on the domestic economy that is so profound it would be difficult to measure in just dollars and cents. I’m not talking about marginal increases in the profits of US producers; I’m talking about securing the fundamental base of our entire economy for the next 20 years, which currently is extremely vulnerable. And before I get consigned, once again to the tin foil hat room, it might be useful to ask yourself what you really know concerning the current world oil situation from a geological, thermodynamic and economic perspective.

Well, at this point I think there are enough allies involved — ten or so? — that the “go it alone” scenario is unlikely. I also think it is unlikely that we will see outright false press releases from the Bush administration claiming the existence of partially built nuclear bombs. I think Bush and his closest advisors really and truly believe their own BS, as it were.

But you wouldn’t have to wear a tinfoil hat to think otherwise, and certainly this way of discussing it is much more productive I think than the prior discursive approach.

I agree that all sorts of people will favor all sorts of policies for all sorts of reasons. I suppose to me that is obvious enough that I haven’t dedicated much discussion to it. Furthermore, it is clear that at least in part the assault on America is an economic one. One of the targets was an office complex, and one of the express objects was economic disruption. There is a tendency in modern thought to treat economics as a matter of selfishness and greed. There is no doubt some validity in that but at one end of the spectrum I can guarantee you that Americans have died because of the economic disruption of 9-11. Their families didn’t get big memorial services or millions in compensation but they are just as dead. Certainly in the modern world economics are correlated with the whole spectrum of prosperity including life and death, as much as explicit geographic territory used to be so correlated, so while I wouldn’t want economics to be the only concern it seems just as wrong to repudiate including it along with other forms of national security like geography.

It’s not just Kerry’s hair that’s funny.

There’s something profoundly weird as well about his furtive membership in SKULL AND BONES, Yale University’s secret society for the scions of the Eastern Establishment. A finer assortment of globalist ‘New World Order’-mongers could scarcely be imagined! And - guess who? - George W. Bush is also a member.

Two globalist Bonesmen ‘competing’ against each other to lead the United States into the embrace of a coming One World Government - democracy in action!

You’ll find a full report at http://www.survivalistskills.com/kemp.htm and a full selection of invaluable articles on the New World Order at http://www.survivalistskills.com/sect22.htm

For a wide array of recommended books on the groups and individuals fostering the New World Order, at the expense of America’s sovereignty, see http://www.survivalistskills.com/sect21.htm

And for a growing list of rare and hard to find books on alternative history, see http://www.rarehistorybooks.com