2002-08-16 10:27 a.m.
time for ranting!

okay, fucking rant time.

from today's NY Times:

"Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq, saying the administration has neither adequately prepared for military action nor made the case that it is needed."

Let me get this straight. President Bush, against all sane advice from every country in the free world's leaders as well as the Congress holds him in check, wants to move forward with a war with Iraq, a country who has made no movements towards us or anyone else since the United States shelled the living shit out of them back in 1991.

Point 1: assuming that Iraq has the means and skill to produce "weapons of mass destruction" (jesus, what a Republican wet dream that phrase is), who are they likely to use them on first?

Well, um, no one. Iraq is surrounded on all sides by countries not overly interested in them. If Iraq were to get involved with the Israel/Palestine dispute (which they wouldn't, because Israel could vaporize them in a heartbeat, nuke strikes or no), they'd only draw the ire of the entire Middle East. Jesus, even Muslim fundamentalists would be on the back porch, cuffing Saddam up the side of the head for being such a political moron � worse than W in this case.

Point 2: if Iraq isn't engaged in any hostile activity towards the US (which, according to our own "intelligence" reports, he isn't), who would attacking the Iraqis and ousting Hussein benefit?

Let's see:

• NOT the United States, with the possible exceptions of:
  • W himself (for the footnote in a history book ousting Hussein that he'd get, which no doubt would escalate the so-called war on terrorism, not declaw it);
  • the arms industry in the US, who paid for much of W's campaign;
  • perhaps the workers making the weapons, whose stock options will go through the roof;
  • and big business, who will supply the raw materials and communications infrastructure for our high-tech war games.

That's about it. The Kuwaiti princes may be thankful the US stepped in and carpetbombed to save their oil fields, but there's no such danger to our oil interests this time. I'm surprised Bush isn't waving pictures of Hussein with a swastika armband on to get us riled up.

George W. Bush reminds me, in almost every way, of Miller and Siekiewicz' Nixon-like president in "Elektra: Assassin", a tiny, wrinkled man (with a gigantic wife) holding desperately onto The Box (a box with a big red button on it) that could commit the US to a nuclear strike, constantly murmuring, "I've got the Box; I'm the President, goddamnit, and I've got the Box, and no one can take it away from me."

He's been chronicled as a mediocre student, a failure as a businessman, a weak governor (Texas schools had among the lowest test scores in the country, while being run by a man who claims to want to improve education)...and this is the man in charge of our country.

It all makes me cringe that someone hasn't put this idiot out of our misery yet, moreso that 25% of the country actually voted for the jarhead.