Buyers' Remorse--Returning the Shoddy Merchandise of War

Any hour now we should know who has been targeted with indictments by Fitzgerald in the CIA leak investigation. Thus things are looking as good as they possibly could for the hope for some measure of accountability and restoration in the post-Bush America, a nation that has been hijacked by a cabal of militant zealots, whose "insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy."

Yes, that's right, more like a dictatorship than a democracy. These are the words in the op-ed piece in yesterday's LA Times not by some leftist Bush-hating fanatic but by the former number 2 guy in the Colin Powell State Dept., Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Far from backing off from his statements made in a public address last week, Wilkerson followed it up with a written statement to the same effect, that a small "cabal" has overtaken the formal executive decision-making process in the United States, and that the result has been an unmitigated disaster.

"Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38% and a vice president who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled military forces. We have a secretary of Defense presiding over the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our overstretched armed forces (no surprise to ignored dissenters such as former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki or former Army Secretary Thomas White). It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time."

Note that the "frustrating bureaucracy" Wilkerson refers to is not Congress and its oversight--though I am sure he would certainly favor that bureaucracy operating effectively as well--but the already close-knit advisory group of the NSC, National Security Council. It is this executive bureaucracy established in 1947 that Wilkerson saw being manipulated and ignored, its cumbersome inefficiency being used as a mask for the smaller cabal of zealots lead by Cheney and Rumsfeld to push through, by force and guile, their narrow and narrow-minded agenda.

But the leak investigation is now reaching the explosive stage. It is becoming increasingly clear that we have an international conspiracy on our hands. The connections to the Italian Niger Embassy break-in and the forged documents bought by the Administration when the CIA wouldn't have them, as reported by the Reppublica in Italy (see here for links and discussion in English)--this is the wildcard that threatens the entire BushCo elite with the ride-out-on-a-rail treatment.

The key to the entire widening investigation is the timing between the forged Niger documents and the WHIG committee--which might as well be identified as Wilkerson's "cabal" under another name. The White House Iraq Group reportedly formed in August 2002, seven full months before the big show "Bombs over Baghdad" premiered on the privatized government propaganda networks of CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX.

By the way, Dennis Kucinich is leading the charge for a resolution of inquiry into WHIG by Congress, an effort that can use and profit from grassroots activist support.

Long story short for now, Stephen Hadley was a member of the WHIG cabal. It is being reported that he met secretly with Italian intelligence in Washington on September 9, 2002, just after the formation of WHIG. It was around this exact time that the infamous media blitz began, in which the WHIG cabal put on its best ad-man con face and sold the "imminent Iraqi threat of WMD" to the American people and Congress. Why it began after Labor Day was in accord with advertising wisdom; as Andrew Card said at the time, "From a marketing point of veiw, you don't introduce new products in August."

The cynicism of that statement has come home to roost. This "product" marketed so zealously and successfully, has netted 2,000 American dead and counting, and not forgetting the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead.

America has buyer's remorse. This investigation is about returning the shoddy merchandise of war. Let's hope Fitzgerald has all his arguments and evidence in a row when he finally reaches the customer service counter--and that he insists on all our behalves that the WHIG Co. take back their defective goods and pay for the damage they've done.