Ochenski: Connecting the dots
Missoula Independent, Vol. 15 No. 25 - 6/17/2004

If the reports are true, President Bush consulted with fundamentalist Christians before deciding if the Israeli move to withdraw from Gaza would fit in with their "End Times" view of the world. In everything from wild dreams of an American Empire to a callous disregard for the frail environment on which all life relies, Bush's short-term policies seem to indicate he is indeed ready for an imminent Second Coming. What seems to be coming, however, in a "like father like son" replay, is End Times for the Bush regime.

The really tough question on the collapse of the presidency of George W. Bush these days is where to start. If you go back even a little way, the connection between the Bush family and the oil moguls of Saudi Arabia is so clear and convincing that a hundred websites have been dedicated to it. Check out http://www.copvcia.com and follow the links from there. When you're done, you'll find the Bush presidency/ family/cabinet/business interests so intertwined with our aggressive foreign policy that you begin to understand why we are in Iraq--and it doesn't have a thing to do with 9/11.

The 9/11 attackers were mostly citizens of Saudi Arabia, our supposed friend, or at least partner in ARAMCO, the Arabian-American Corporation that encompasses the Saudi Royal Family as well as 25 percent of the world's known petroleum reserves.

Unfortunately, thanks to the Bush Crusade, our "friends" the Saudis are now experiencing a revolution of their own as Arabs seek to crawl out from under the thumb of the Americans. They are killing Westerners, and particularly Americans if they can, not because they "hate freedom," but because they hate American corporate control over their lives. It is exactly this corporate control, backed up by force of arms, which George Bush and the sneering countenance of Dick Cheney would impose on the entire world through their radical policy of global militarization.

We no longer have to wonder: "Why do they hate us?" But now, the grand dreams of American Empire, just as all grand dreams of empire, are coming undone.

Perhaps you have seen Bush's latest poll numbers, where he is not quite down to Judy Martz levels, but is certainly headed that way. John Zogby, the highly respected pollster, has opined that Bush's numbers are now so low that "the race is Kerry's to lose."

Or perhaps you have seen the poll numbers on whether or not it was worth going to war in Iraq. The single pounding message from the White House for the last two years has been that we had no choice but to go to war to protect our nation. Then, after the collapse of the phony WMD premise, how necessary it was for us to depose Saddam and "free" Iraq. Yet, on a daily basis, fewer and fewer Americans are finding the message either accurate or convincing, and now less than half think it was worth all the money and blood we have poured into those desert sands.

You may also have noticed, despite the best efforts of Washington to obfuscate the news with endless paeans to Ronald Reagan, that the CIA's director and top assistant resigned last week--back to back in the middle of the night. So now, with the nation on Code Orange alert and expecting the attacks al-Qaeda has promised to deliver, we are left with no one at the top.

Or how about the news that both Bush and Cheney have retained private criminal attorneys because they are beginning to get worried over what is finally crawling its way to the light of day in the case of Valerie Plame, the CIA undercover agent whose identity was revealed by someone at the highest levels of the Bush administration in a vindictive attack on her husband, who blew apart the myth that Iraq was purchasing nuclear material from Niger.

They might also need those attorneys as the Abu Ghraib torture investigation leaves behind the urine- and blood-stained cells of the infamous prison and brings fear to the halls of the Pentagon and White House. Private Lynndie England, the lady with the prisoner on the leash in the notorious Abu Ghraib pictures, is putting up a fight over becoming the sacrifice for America's shame--and the finger, like her witness list, is pointing ever higher up the chain of command.

Then there's the latest admission by the Pentagon that Dick Cheney overruled an Army lawyer in the awarding of billions in "no bid" Iraq oil contracts to his former company, Halliburton. Although he has vigorously denied any involvement, a letter sent this week to Cheney from Rep. Henry Waxman said the circumstances "appear to contradict your assertions that you were not informed about the Halliburton contracts. They also seem to contradict the administration's repeated assertions that political appointees were not involved in the award of contracts to Halliburton."

Or how about Enron's billion-dollar energy rip-off of the Western States, where their cold-blooded traders laughed about the "poor grandmothers" desperately trying to pay the price of their savagely manipulated utilities? Remember who told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to stay out of the fray? Yep, the White House once again.

As Bush's election chances diminish and his desperation grows, who can miss the delicious irony that one of the most corrupt and lying administrations of modern times is now taking the unprecedented step of trying to get their religious backers to bring politics to their pulpits. Their apparent quid pro quo is a promise of leniency in enforcement that would otherwise revoke the tax-free status for religious groups who infuse their sermons with political endorsements.

As the End Times descend on the Bush administration, it's no wonder they're hoping for the Second Coming to save them. What's more likely to happen, however, is the Second Going--as Bush follows his father out of the White House after just one term.

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When not lobbying the Montana Legislature, George Ochenski is rattling the cage of the political establishment as a political analyst for the Independent.