One Nation, Under Mammom

Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful?
What madness there is! What blindness! What unintelligent leadership!
A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity, crashing headlong
against each other, propelled by an orgy of greed and brutality.
--Lost Horizon (1937)

"I never got to ask the enemy why he hated freedom
because he was too busy hating us for being there"
--columnist Reg Henry, on his service in Vietnam
________

Why is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board expressing anything other than Federal Reserve business to GWB, Cheney and Rumsfeld?

Not only has former chairman Greenspan said in the past week while discussing his dystopically titled memoir, The Age of Turbulence, that Iraq was predominantly about oil, but that he personally advocated "taking Saddam out." As Dan Akroyd's Leonard Pinth-Garnell might say, "Monumentally ill-advised!"

"Mr. Greenspan was himself a behind-the-scenes advocate of overthrowing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. He says he felt 'getting Saddam out of there was very important,' not because of weapons of mass destruction, but because he was convinced the Iraqi dictator wanted to control the Strait of Hormuz, through which a sizable portion of the world's oil passes.

"He said he conveyed that view to both Mr. Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, another friend from the Ford administration, but doubts that played a part in the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq (Greenspan's Dismay Extended Both Ways.)"

Elsewhere, Greenspan has been quoted sounding something like a General, saying he did not suggest war, but that he "did not know what Plan B was."

"Greenspan said he had backed Hussein's ouster, either through war or covert action. 'I wasn't arguing for war per se, he said. But 'to take [Hussein] out, in my judgment, it was something important for the West to do and essential, but I never saw Plan B' -- an alternative to war(Greenspan: Ouster of Hussein Crucial for Oil Security.)

What is the Fed Chairman doing talking about taking anyone out? Not only the boychick was wearing a six-shooter -- the bravado had even spread to cooler heads like Greenspan, the money counter?

What need had he to know of Plan A or Plan B? Acts of military aggression are totally not his domain.

What geopolitical grasp does the Chairman of the Fed possess? The problems facing America are the result of everybody doing somebody else's job; nobody is doing the job they are paid to do. For example, the Department of Defense now co-opts Department of State and Department of Justice, and who knows what the State Department is doing.

Greenspan's views on Saddam are as meaningless as tits on a bullfrog. It was an erroneous and unauthorized bleeding of personal views over into official, behind-the-scenes power-mongering.

"Defense Secretary Robert Gates, appearing on ABC's This Week, rejected the assertion in Mr. Greenspan's book that the Iraq war 'is largely about oil.' Mr. Gates said, 'it's about stability in the Gulf. It's about rogue regimes trying to develop weapons of mass destruction."

Mr. Gates' contradiction of Mr. Greenspan's assertions are absolutely incredibly dumb. If it is a war about stability, and the U.S. is the destabilizing factor in the equation, then we are not achieving our stated goals from the outset. War ≠ stability, and it is only U.S. actions which have totally destabilized the region.

Mr. Gates' statement of plurality -- "It's about rogue regimes trying to develop WMD" leaves the barn door open. Remember that inconvenient fact that Iraq did not have WMD, and someone's just gotta have them.

So why are we fighting in Iraq? Is the Battle of Baghdad Pt. I of the Battle of Tehran?

And of course, an attack on Iran will be for the stability of the region.

--Jim and Lisa