I was offered a copy of Joe Conason's soon to be released book, It Can Happen Here. I've made it through the first two chapters.
I made the mistake of, simultaneously, renting Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films offering, Iraq for Sale.
Note to reader: this is not recommended behavior. It will make you ill.
See, the thing is, you learn a lot reading blogs. The outrage comes in chunks and clumps. It's manageable. But ugh. Read a book... and watch a documentary? It's just too fucking much.
The right engages in hate speech and eliminationist rhetoric as a hobby. After immersing yourself in the true fetid swamps of wingnuttery for power and profit, it takes all my moral fortitude to refrain from sharing my view of how much better off the world would be if Malkin, Podohertz, Limbaugh and Kristol were French-revolutioned...
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Conason's book is based on Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here. In Lewis' novel, a down home and earthy sort of fellow is groomed into the Presidency by a sly political operative. The President becomes a tool of the corporate right and America steadily slides into vanilla authoritarianism before descending into habenero fascism...
Conason unsettlingly draws the obvious parallels with surgical precision born out of formidable research and an obviously immense knowledge of his subjects.
I can't get too involved right now, but let me share one nugget Conason brought to my attention that almost had me puking.
On page 30, Conason writes that John Podohertz (son of neocon Norman and NY Post columnist) wrote the following in the summer of 2002 (a time of great embarrassment on Wall Street):
There's a luscious double trap in starting the war as soon as possible, Mr. President. Your enemies are delirious with excitement about the corporate greed scandals and the effect it might have on your popularity and the GOP's standing in November.
Fucking nice. Corporate America has run amok, hundreds of thousands have lost their retirement savings and Podohertz thinks the answer is to start a fucking war in order to allow corporate America and their GOP enablers to avoid accountability. I'm not exaggerating. Podohertz went on:
If you get troops on the ground quickly, they will go berserk. Incautious Democrats and liberal pundits will shriek that you've gone to war solely to protect yourself from the corporate-greed scandal. They will forget the lesson they so quickly learned after September 11, which is that at a time of war the American people want their leaders to stand together."
Are you tearing up yet? You damned-well should be. Berserk military and Abu Grahb?
Podohertz was too fucking right about the way shit played out - except that I don't remember hearing very many influential Democrats standing against the war or offering spirited defenses of the anti-war position. Except for Al Gore. Always remember Al Gore.
More Podohertz:
Your enemies will hurl ugly accusations against you, Mr. President. And at least one of them will be true - that you began the war when you did for political reasons.
But that won't matter. It won't matter to the American people, and it won't matter as far as history is concerned. History will record that you and the U.S. military brought an end to a barbaric regime on its way to threatening the world.
Yeah, so how did that work out? I guess it worked out well enough to get Shrub re-elected, but how 'bout ending that tyranny?
This is what you get when you allow irresponsible ideologues, gluttonous and slothly, chickenhawks all, to determine policy. The sad fact is that they are incredible students of the American psyche - every prediction of how the US would react to the bumbling president's war-making decisions was correct. But they're sorry incompetents - lazy and boorish - at everything else they do.
I really don't have the time this diary requires, but Conason's book is must read. Like I said, I've only read the first two chapters, but I'm already overwhelmed. there's a lot of information in the book that you, an avid blog reader, will have already known. He puts it together in a way that knocks you over. And then he adds so much new information that by the time you put the book down after a half hour of reading, you're spitting nails. Remember John Ashcroft? You're gonna wish you didn't by the time Joe finishes reminding you of his blinkered incompetence. You've heard of Michael Ledeen, right? Well after reading this book, you'll know that evil, sick bastard.
Anyway, after plunging into Conason's book, I made the mistake of renting Greenwald's Iraq for Sale. Ugh. CACI. Blackwater. Halliburton. KBR. At times the movie was a little unsatisfying - I'd love to know more about the families that lost loved ones because Blackwater and Halliburton treated them like cannon-fodder. But the grand picture painted... well, it burns your eyes out.
My brother-in-law's nephew, Matt, joined the Marines and went to Iraq. If you go to the Iraq Coalition Causuaties page, you'll notice that many thousands of soldiers and Marines were evacuated from theater suffering from non-combat related injuries. Matt was one of those evacuees. They still don't know what made him sick. Look at that page - there are tens of thousands like him.
Iraq For Sale sheds some light on the issue. Yeah - it may be a depleted uranuim thing - I don't want to discount that possibility... But more likely, at least in my opinion, it was Halliburton supplied water. Rent and watch Iraq for Sale. It's bruising, but you must know these things if you truly want to stake a claim to supporting the troops.
BTW - Conason's release date is 2/20 for It Can Happen Here - pick it up if you can...