BENEDICT ARNOLD IN IRAQ
By Peter Fredson
A Political Rant
September 23, 2005
Many years ago, after marching through the Arch of Triumph in Paris on VE-Day, I asked for a short leave to try to contact relatives in Norway. I had not heard from them since 1940 and was worried that the war had not treated them kindly. However my request to visit Norway was denied. The reason was simple: all transportation was disrupted, roads impassable in many regions, the food shortage was acute, and the country was still not safe for travel due to some Hitler collaborators called Quislings.
A Norwegian Major called Vikdun Quisling had decided to put his country under German "protection," and invited the Germans into Norway. On April 9, 1940, Quisling became the first person in Norwegian history to announce a coup d'etat wanting the Germans to support it. Quisling had met Hitler and thought of collaborating with the Nazis to perhaps escape from the vile treatment accorded other occupied countries. He was not trusted by the Germans but later became Minister President of Norway until the end of the war.
His reputation as a home-grown traitor led to his trial and execution by the Norwegians, for high treason. Quisling's name became a hated synonym for treachery.
Today we have an analogous situation in Iraq, where homegrown Iraqi expatriates have decided to cooperate with the brutal occupation of Bush. Ahmed Chalabi, a detestable expatriate, is the Lord Haw-Haw of Iraq.
Bush has "appointed" the entire "government" of Iraq in his inimitable image, and directed them to make a "constitution" to his liking.
Not a drop of sweat can be wiped from their foreheads without Bush's permission. At any time Bush can order vicious reprisals and murderous assaults on any Iraqi determined to resist the hell he has created in Iraq.
Let there be no mistake. Bush with 140,000 soldiers and thousands more "contractors" and mercenaries is in debatable military control of Iraq but has created countless persons seething with anger over the mess he created by lies. Bush created terror in Iraq and Rumsfeld applied it wholesale.
Bush named a Roman-type regent to govern the Iraqis, who promptly gave them a long list of demands under extreme duress. All the while Bush prated of giving "sovereignty" back to his Quislings, while in reality not surrendering one ounce of bullying power.
It is a fake sovereignty for a fake government arranged by a master faker, and carried out by Iraqi Quislings. Julius Caesar would have been proud.
The appointed "leaders" have literally acted under the gun as U.S. troops point weapons everywhere, smash houses, destroy infrastructure, launch missiles, use gunships to spray neighborhoods, and in all respects show that the imperial will of Bush must be obeyed under penalty of death or indefinite detention and abuse.
Collaboration with Bush did not at all bring an end to murder, torture, and destruction of the country. On the contrary, it has augmented until it threatens to become a long-term civil war. Bush has created a bigger mess in Iraq than Saddam, has probably killed more Iraqis than Saddam, and has created more terror against the Iraq people than Saddam.
People who use the Bush criteria of EVIL for regime change should certainly think of applying it to Bush himself.
As expected, the deceit, stealth and violence of Bush demanded that he and his troops be forever immunized against any courts, suits, trials or accusations of any kind. It was like a bank robber demanding that the bank president give him immunity from arrest after robbing all the money in the safe.
Other U.S. demands would give Bush complete liberty to seize any assets at any time without hindrance and convert them to his corporate buddies, but still allow him to swagger for giving Iraq "liberty and democracy."
This is the greatest display of arrogance, conceit, hubris, deceit and egomania in recent world history. Certainly the faith-based supporters of Bush need a tremendous amount of faith to deny his use of lies, deceit, misinformation and bullying of the UN to justify sending our troops to die in Iraq.
Bush has never explained the "noble purposes" behind switching his violent attentions from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein.
Yet the entire world, except for Republican Senators and fundamentalist white supremacists know it was to seize oil, erect military bases, and launch aggression against other Middle Eastern countries in the neuron quest for power and glory in world dominion.
Arrogance and brutality has its rewards, when U.S. troops bearing heavy weapons point them at a defeated occupied population. Arrogance exceeded all bounds when Bush declared that Millennium Corporation would process all the oil of Iraq without any nasty formality of bidding on a contract.
Somehow this was connected to Vice-President Cheney who had once been CEO of Millennium Corporation, although he claims he knows nothing of any deals. It also is strange how millions of dollars can simply evaporate and leave no trace. Perhaps Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld can elucidate or have Karl Rove give fanciful explanations to gull the public.
"Reconstruction" of the infrastructure of Iraq is an abysmal failure. Life in Iraq right now is a hell on earth, created by Bush for Muslims under the guise of compassion, another lie of which Hitler would approve for utility in world propaganda.
Bush also seized some of the intact buildings for his own use, such as Saddam's palaces, which he used to house troops upon the Iraqis and from which he will invade countries like Syria and Iran when he can find a suitable excuse.
Being "under the gun" gives rewards to the gunmen, unless they get shot in the process, but that is not likely with the vast perpetual protection of a paranoid and haughty egomaniac.
Bush has been accused of not having an exit strategy from Iraq but this charge is unsuitable as he never intended to exit from Iraq. He intends to privatize all the oil for his own corporations, to seize large lands on which to build huge permanent military bases, and to build a super-embassy with 1,800 staff to be used to bully and dominate the entire Middle East.
The ultimate aim of Bush and his neuron supporters is to dominate the world, as shown by their own statements. Humility is not a virtue of the Bush administration, but is considered a detriment.
When Bush has finished destroying and looting Iraq he may pull out, but claims that to pull out now would give the enemy hope and put his troops at risk. So he wants to remain and lure Muslims into Iraq so he can kill them, and when they are all dead, in twenty or thirty years, then the U.S. can pull out, satisfied that he has done his part in spreading "democracy and freedom" terms which have now been sullied beyond recognition.
Condi Rice, another arrogant sycophant, prates and lectures to other countries on the virtues of peace, while her employer kills Muslims wholesale, and plans to invade Syria and Iran. Venezuela will be lucky to escape invasion due to lack of U.S. troops but Bush will try to destabilize the country so that no one can resist his imperial will. It was a terrible mistake to give Bush any control of military force.
This entitles him to strut, swagger, grin, throw hussy fits, get hundreds of photo-ops, give Medals of Freedom to Karl Rove, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other fundamentalist neo-con cowardly warmongers to reward them for turning the perfectly good democracy of his own country into a semi-fascist theocracy. Then he can retire to cutting brush in Crawford, Texas, satisfied that only 30% of the Country hates him.
But the millions of bucks he has accumulated will surely give him much comfort, although the rest of the country will be deeply in debt for the next century, loathing his name much as Norwegians feel about Vikdun Quisling or Hitler.
Meanwhile the Quislings in Iraq, running the "government", kowtow to Bush, lick his hind end, and laud his every move in a sickening display of sycophancy. The rest of the population will have to endure their vile domination unless some "thugs" among them assassinate the "chosen,"
At any rate, whenever Bush leaves, unless he keeps a huge amount of "contractors" under arms in Iraq, the patriots will assuredly form a firing squad, like the Norwegians did for Quisling, to show their contempt for traitors and collaborators.
Unlike the Bush collaborators in the U.S. that are protected by hordes of True Believers, a lobbyist's dream Congress, a pliant faith-based Supreme Court, a brutal Rumsfeld Pentagon, riot squads,and a tightly controlled billionaire press, impeachment proceedings in Iraq will be fairly quick and a firing squad will probably eliminate the residues of the brutal and illegal Bush invasion and occupation.
Benedict Arnold could probably explain it better.