Omissions In the Iraq Study Group Report

By Stephen Lendman
Created Dec 14 2006 - 9:21am

Noted historian Eric Foner in a December 7 article on OpEd News.com calls
George Bush "the worst president in US history....(who) in his first six
years in office....managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided
policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors." Equally noted
historian Gabriel Kolko agrees, and along with his other comments, calls the
Bush administration "the worst set of incompetents ever to hold power in
Washington." And referring specifically to the war in Iraq, Kolko colorfully
describes what former Reagan administration National Security Agency (NSA)
chief General William Odom calls "....the worst strategic mistake in the
history of the United States" by saying the Bush administration "shocked and
awed....itself." Hard to say it better than that.

Enter James Baker and the Iraq Study Group (ISG) that reported its findings
publicly on December 6 after most of it was leaked well in advance making
its release and full-court corporate media press hyping and griping
anti-climactic as well as disappointing and disturbing. The ISG was formed
in March with at least four crucial aims:

--to avoid a perceived inevitable political and fiscal train wreck caused by
the disastrous Bush administration policy over the past six years.

-- to buy time for the failed and discredited Bush administration attempting
to save it along with the family's name and reputation.

-- to devise a scheme to assure US dominance in the Middle East, fast
slipping away, is restored and maintained going forward so this country
doesn't lose control over what a State Department spokesperson in 1945
called a "stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest
material prizes in world history -(the region's oil)."

-- to be a (thinly-veiled) attempt to assuage public anger over a war gone
sour, that's illegal, can't be won, is taking a terrible toll, and never
should have been waged.

The ISG did it by proposing 79 recommendations supposedly comprising a
change of course strategy that, in fact, amounts to little more than moving
the existing chess pieces around the Iraq board, ending up almost where we
are now - in a hopeless unresolvable quagmire approaching an apocalypse with
no possibility of winning an unwinnable war and no high-level policy-makers
thinking we can save for a president mired in a state of denial.

He's out of touch with reality, and according to Capitol Hill Blue editor
Doug Thompson from insider reports he's getting calling the president "a
dangerous cornered animal" he writes: Bush is a man "living on the edge"
growing "more sullen and moody with each passing day....his
paranoia....increasing to manic levels as he launches into tirades about
traitors in his own party, in the press and among his allies (and) feels
betrayed by....James Baker (whose ISG report he feels humiliated his
administration)." The president, hasn't a clue that Jim Baker didn't do
this. George Bush did a very thorough job of it himself.

What the ISG Should Have Addressed but Didn't

That said and well reported, what's most striking about the ISG report isn't
what it says but what it leaves out. Beginning in 1991, the US conducted an
unending war of aggression in two phases, with a dozen years of punishing
and unjustifiable sanctions sandwiched between them, against a country
posing no threat to us or its neighbors following its long and costly war in
the 1980s with Iran (that the US urged Saddam to wage and supported him
throughout) from which it needed financial help to recover but hadn't gotten
enough to make a significant difference. It began after Saddam misread US
intentions regarding his troubled relations with Kuwait, allowing himself to
be deceived by the first Bush administration into believing we had no
interest in how he chose to settle his justifiable dispute which Washington
had a hand in creating.

With US urging, Kuwait demanded repayment of $14 billion in outstanding
loans incurred to help finance Saddam's war with Iran, it also helped keep
oil prices low when Iraq needed them higher to oblige, and it was slant
drilling into Iraqi territory and provokingly refusing to negotiate a
reasonable settlement to all disputes. Finally, Iraq took matters into its
own hands to do by invasion what it couldn't achieve through months of
failed diplomacy but only with de facto US approval it thought it got that
proved not to be.

Saddam fell into the trap, and the rest is history. He's now still in the
dock after one conviction, was sentenced to be hanged by the US-administered
kangaroo court after the first of his trials, his country is occupied and in
ruins, and his people are living in a state of out-of-control violence and
desparation because of an illegal and brutal occupation that must end
unconditionally for them to have any hope for a normal life again.

The ISG report ignores this history and the reasons we went to war with Iraq
in the first place. It began with Saddam's misguided invasion of Kuwait in
August, 1990 with the US then claiming it would liberate the country
forcibly even though he was willing to negotiate a settlement and pull out
his forces. But once the trap was baited with Saddam in it, there was no
turning back from a war the US wanted. Events were unstoppable which was
clear from GHW Bush's belligerent language saying "(Saddam's) Naked
aggression will not stand" and refusing all his overtures to negotiate and
his willingness to remove his occupying forces wanting only reasonable
redress.

GWH Bush got the war he wanted, but the US plan wasn't to liberate Kuwait.
It was to remove or fatally weaken a leader we couldn't dominate and
liberate his nation's oil and sovereignty from his control to ours. It was
also a way to accomplish what GHW Bush said at war's end six weeks after it
began on January 17, 1991: "It's a proud day for America - and, by God,
we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all," but he failed to
explain what he meant was this now gave the US license to attack and invade
another country any time henceforth it could convince the public a threat
existed to justify it. Given the power and complicity of the
corporate-controlled media, that hasn't been a problem since.

So faced with the syndrome's resurgence from the disaster today in Iraq, the
ISG is waging a frontal attack to contain it deceiving the public to believe
a new course is at hand hoping to assuage its anger so essentially the same
failed policy can continue unabated. It's also to buy enough time for George
Bush to get through the next two years, hold together his failed
administration slowly coming apart for lack of public support, and keep the
ship of state from being wrecked on the shoals of the administration's
ineptness and arrogance extreme enough for a growing number of former
adherents to walk away not wanting the taint of it to tarnish them any more
than it already has.

It doesn't matter what was proposed on December 6 or that there's no chance
it can work any better than current policy. That's for the next
administration in 2009 to worry about. What does matter is to convince the
public it's a new course, even though it's only smoke and mirrors, and one
sensible enough to work that will end the US occupation and involvement in
the country but at an unspecified time left unstated because there is none
or any intention to leave the country or give up control of its oil
treasure. Just like in the run-up to the March, 2003 attack and invasion,
the public again has been had, and it remains to be seen how long it will
take for it to catch on and continue opposing an illegal war of aggression
that never should have been waged in the first place.

Other Omissions in the ISG Report

Start with its members and the interests they represent. Overall it's an
assemblage of high-level elitists from past government service working with
their counterparts in the military and ideologically-driven right wing think
tank experts brought together to find a way to assure the US imperial agenda
stays on track meaning despite what its report said, the US is in Iraq to
stay as long as there's enough oil in the region to make it worthwhile as
that's why we came in the first place along with neutering Saddam to remove
Israel's main obstacle to its regional hegemony.

Jim Baker led the group along with his co-chair and leading figure of the
9/11 commission whitewash, former Democrat congressman Lee Hamilton, who's
another long-standing loyal servant of empire and serial abuser of the
public trust. They and the others on the Commission share another dubious
attribute. Like George Bush and his administration co-conspirators, these
figures, too, are war criminals along with their other abuses of the public
trust that should have put them in the dock of justice and made them be held
to account along with George Bush, Dick Cheney and their band of neocon
rogues. They never will be in a nation ruled by victor's justice meaning
none at all for the law-breakers and a whole lot of injustice for its
victims.

Jim Baker's association with crime and scandal is long-standing, but he's
always emerged unscatched, his reputation, in fact, enhanced, with each new
episode of lawlessness he's played a central role in while navigating safely
through each of them. He's done it almost without breaking a sweat in his
role as a man at the center of power since the inception of the Reagan
administration in 1980. Outside the Bush family, no one is closer or more
important to the president's father and former president than Baker. And no
one has more influence with him or with other major players in the nation's
power establishment, at least on the dominant Republican side. It's why,
along with others of his status, he's able to get away with murder and most
anything else.

Baker formed his own think tank in 1993 after leaving the Bush
administration, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy in
Houston, where the former president happens to live when he's not at his
summer home in Maine. It supports "oil and petrodollar conquest" policies,
played a major role in post 9/11 policy and the fraudulent "war on terror"
making it possible, and is also a prominent attorney connected with the
notorious Carlyle Group that's profited enormously from all things connected
to the defense establishment and uses the services of GHW Bush in the role
of "senior consultant" and master rainmaker/fixer-arranger at a very high
price for his services.

Baker also engineered the theft of the 2000 presidential election for the
younger Bush by assuring he got the necessary 25 Florida electoral votes and
not Al Gore who won them and the presidency he never got because George Bush
was chosen for the role regardless of the will of the electorate. Five
complicit US Supreme Court justices went along with the scheme to seal the
deal and in so doing abrogated their constitutional duty to uphold the law
of the land. One of them was commission member Sandra Day O'Connor, now
rewarded for her participation in the infamous judicial coup d'etat giving
her an encore performance as legal advisor and expert law twister/subverter
for the interests of wealth and power she swears allegiance to like all the
other members of the "Gang of Ten" co-conspirators.

Baker is their leader and is presented as an respected diplomat and elder
statesman sent to rescue the ship of state and Bush administration to keep
it afloat and him in the White House at least for another two years. What he
is, in fact, is a master criminal/manipulator/schemer, a dangerous and
ruthless power broker deserving no public trust who should be made to answer
for his malfeasance according to the law he doesn't respect or acknowledge
unless he can twist it to serve his interests or those of his clients.

More Omissions - Trashing International Law Including the UN Charter and US
Constitution to Wage An Illegal War of Aggression

How could a nation born as a great democratic experiment rebelling against
the divine right of monarchs become instead now one worshipping the divine
right of capital and capable of being even more repressive. Ben Franklin
warned about this early on saying "(The US Constitution) is likely to be
administered for a course of years and then end in despotism....when the
people shall become so corrupted as to need (or not be vigilant enough to
prevent) despotic government, being incapable of any other."

Much earlier, Roman historian Tacitus explained what then happens: "They
(pillage) the world. When the land has nothing left for men who ravage
everything, they scour the sea. They....are greedy....they crave
glory....They covet wealth....They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and
call it....'empire.' They make a desert and call it peace." Today they
pillage, destroy and enslave in serfdom and call it democracy. They believe
it's their right, divine or otherwise, and their cause is just. They lead
this nation, and the rest of the world trembles and suffers dearly as long
as they rule. The Iraq conflict is just their latest excursion to satisfy
their insatiable lust for more wealth, power and glory.

The initial Bush-led "shock and awe" attack against that afflicted country
didn't start on March 18, 2003. It began in small, incremental steps
continuing the intermittent harassing mostly below-the-radar strikes that
went on throughout the 1990s and picked up again after 9/11 as violence in
the so-called No-Fly Zone increased and the Washington anti-Saddam
demonization rhetoric was rolled out prepping the public for the Iraq war
the Bush administration wanted as soon as it came to town.

It only reached full fury in the opening days of the war that began in
mid-March, 2003. It's now gone on longer than WW II with no resolution in
sight, despite all the lofty disingenuous talk and one over-hyped commission
practicing the Sun Tzu Art of War deception on the US public in its cooked
up reworked version of the same failed policy of aggressive war and
permanent occupation. It has no chance to end the resistance to it unless or
until all our forces are unconditionally withdrawn, something this country
won't ever agree to but, in the end, will be forced to do just like it had
to acknowledge defeat and leave Southeast Asia in 1975. History has a way of
repeating for those failing to learn its lessons. This time the price being
paid looks a lot stiffer and more painful than the last misadventure, but
the full amount won't be known until the current exercise in futility
finally ends.

Unstated in any part of the ISG report or in any Washington or mainstream
commentary on Iraq policy since the confrontation with Saddam began in
January, 1991, is that the US planned and carried out a war of illegal
aggression now near completing its 16th year. Early on, this country got
some UN-cover by dint of its high-pressure to shape Security Council policy
to fit its own. That process, however, broke down in the run-up to the
current conflict beginning in March, 2003 when the US pretext for war was so
outrageous, enough countries with clout and Security Council veto power
opposed us forcing Washington to go it alone with an embarrassing "coalition
of the willing." Those countries in it became shameless co-conspirators by
agreeing to join in partnership with the US defiantly flaunting
international laws and norms as participants in this exercise of
lawlessness.

You won't find any of that hinted at in the ISG report. It's not mentioned
that this country began by violating Article I, Section 8 of the US
Constitution that gives the power to declare war solely to the Congress,
although it hasn't exercised it since it declared war against the Axis
powers in WW II. It also ignores our violating what the Nuremberg Tribunal
trying Nazi war criminals called the "supreme international crime" stating:
"To initiate a war of aggression....is not only an international crime, it
is the supreme crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it
contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." And it doesn't
mention this country violated the UN Charter that's international law this
country is bound by. It allows a nation the right to use force in its
self-defense only under two conditions: when authorized to do it by the
Security Council or under Article 51 that permits the "right of individual
or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a
Member....until the Security council has taken measures to maintain
international peace and security."

By attacking Iraq without provocation and with no Security Council
authorization for it prior to March, 2003, the US violated this sacred
covenant it's a signatory to. It also violated the US Constitution that
says...."all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of
the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." The Bush
administration flaunts that law, but the ISG is unperturbed, allows this
elephant in our face to go unmentioned, by its silence supports its
continuance, and is unwilling to act responsibly to assure going forward
this country abides by all laws and standards as a first prerequisite to
resolving the conflict in Iraq and most important to preventing future ones.

It can't do it, because if it does it would then have to acknowledge this
country attacked, invaded and now occupies Iraq in violation of
international laws and norms, must now end its illegal occupation, and those
responsible must be held to account for what they've done in the world and
national bodies established to deal with these type crimes of war and
against humanity. It would also have to acknowledge that all the commission
members have their own closets filled with disturbing skeletons including,
of course, the former High Court justice exposed above whose judicial act of
infamy allowed this holocaust to happen and never spoke out publicly against
it indicating she finds mass slaughter and destruction quite acceptable by
her legal and moral standards - the same rogue standards all commission
members and those in the Bush administration endorse so they act
co-conspiratorially to cover for each other.

The ISG also ignored other international laws this country is legally bound
to obey but didn't and won't ever under a Bush administration that mocks
them. Nonetheless, the US can't hide its use of banned chemical and
poisonous depleted uranium weapons outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Convention
Gas Protocol and various succeeding Geneva Conventions banning the use of
chemical and biological weapons in any form for any reason in war. In
addition, under various UN Conventions and Covenants that are binding
international law for its signatories, the use of any weapons that cause
harm after the battle including away from the battlefield, harm the
environment, or kill, wound or cause harm inhumanely are illegal and banned.

In the Gulf war and thereafter, the US military routinely used illegal
weapons including depleted uranium munitions for 16 years in Iraq that
spread deadly toxic irremediable radiation over a vast area of the country.
These weapons are poisonous under international law and violate all the
above conditions. The Pentagon also willfully violated international
statutes by using an array of banned and questionable weapons with no
restraint including against non-military civilian targets as a tactical
strategy, a practice prohibited by these codes of law.

By its silence, the ISG tacitly endorses these practices as well as the
administration's use of torture outlawed by various binding international
statutes including the significant 1984 UN Convention against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) that
includes rape and the kinds of sexual abuse routinely used in
US-administered prisons in Iraq as part of the interrogation, dehumanizing
and terror-inducing social control process authorized by the December 18
departing Secretary of Defense and unindicted war criminal Donald Rumsfeld.

Jim Baker and the other commission members also are comfortable with the way
the US military treats the thousands of prisoners it holds even though
they're denied all rights guaranteed them under the Third Geneva Convention
of 1949 (GCIII) that provides for humane treatment including an array of
services like enough proper food and medical care and prohibits the kinds of
abusive practices the US routinely engages in. The ISG report also ignores
any change of policy regarding the rights of civilians guaranteed under the
Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 (GCIV) that covers a range of protections
routinely denied them as another part of the Bush administration's flaunting
of all international laws that prohibit whatever practices it wishes to
engage in, law or no law. No problem for Jim Baker and his "Gang of Ten"
including the former High Court justice member who understands the law and
was sworn to uphold it while on the bench, domestic and international that's
binding US law under the Constitution.

Omissions About the Human Cost in Iraq

The few ISG findings deserving mention and discussion have largely been
ignored in the corporate-controlled media because doing so would be
embarrassing to the Bush administration trying to cover them up as further
evidence of its failure in Iraq that can only be characterized as criminal,
disastrous and hopeless short of a full and unconditional US withdrawal not
in the cards.

One of them at the end of the long report mentions a "significant
underreporting of the violence in Iraq." It's part of the cover-up from the
White House and Department of Defense the commission says acts "as a filter
to keep events out of reports and databases (to distort) events on the
ground." It cites an example that last July the Pentagon report of 93
attacks one day was distorted to hide the reality that "a careful review of
the reports....brought to light 1,100 acts of violence (on that day, or a
slight 11-fold greater amount of it)."

Noting that is fine as far as it goes, but it's not near enough as the ISG's
mini-revelation hides the greater truth about the US-inflicted holocaust
against the Iraqi people that began in January, 1991, continues unabated and
won't end until the occupation does. That's the key "reality" the ISG report
suppresses as does the corporate-controlled media including parts buried
deep in it they're silent on.

For 16 years, the US created a living hell in Iraq. It willfully and
illegally destroyed essential infrastructure like power generating stations
and clean water and sanitation facilities vital to health, welfare and
public safety. It wantonly targeted and slaughtered many thousands of
civilians. It unjustifiably imposed a dozen years of punishing economic
sanctions causing the deaths of as many as 1.5 million innocent Iraqis two
UN heads of humanitarian relief resigned in protest over, being unwilling to
participate in a US-imposed policy one of them characterized as "genocide."

Even today, little, if anything meaningful, has been done to ameliorate a
hopeless situation on the ground in most of the country. The ISG report
ignores US war crimes in destroying a once prosperous nation, leaving in its
wake a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland with few or no essential
services by design including electricity, clean water, medical care, fuel
and most everything else needed for sustenance and survival.

The commission report is also silent on the shocking 2006 Lancet study that
accurately assessed the human toll of the war since 2003 using statistically
reliable random household "cluster sampled" personal interviews with death
certificate verifications in most cases. It estimated 655,000 violent deaths
since March, 2003 attributable to the war stating the true number might be
as high as 900,000 as interviewers were unable to survey the most violent
parts of the country like Fallujah and Ramadi in al Anbar province
(comprising one-third of the country) where mass killing still goes on daily
as well as to include in the study the thousands of families in which all
its members were killed. By its silence, the ISG is willfully participating
in the cover-up of this massive crime against humanity and by its failure to
offer redress is co-conspiratorially part of it.

The ISG also ignores the true cost to US forces in Iraq that began in the
Gulf war and continues today. One-third or more of the 696,841 military
personnel who served in the Gulf from August 2, 1990 to July 31, 1991 have
filed claims for or have been reported by the Veteran's Administration (VA)
to be on some form of disability in 2004, most likely from the deadly
effects of depleted uranium (DU) or other toxic poisoning the Pentagon tries
to suppress and deny.

Today the situation is far worse, but it'll be years before the final human
toll is known. The effects of DU poisoning alone may be much more
devastating now than in the Gulf war. In this conflict, the DU used in
munitions is much more toxic than the kind used earlier. In addition to
U-238 used earlier, today's DU weapons contain plutonium (the most toxic of
all known substances), neptunium, and the highly radioactive uranium isotope
U-236. According to a 1991 study by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, these
elements are 100,000 times more dangerous than the U-238 in DU. It takes
only the most minute, nearly unmeasurable, amount of this substance in one's
body (that can easily be inhaled or otherwise ingested) to be fatal.

Further, the situation today is exacerbated by the current war having been
ongoing for over three and one-half years (longer now than WW II) compared
to the earlier six week one in 1991. Also, twice as many US forces have been
engaged in this toxic environment for extended multiple tours of duty
setting up the possibility for an enormous human calamity in years ahead as
more of them return home, their bodies poisoned, and their lives and future
health put seriously at risk.

In addition, daily life on the ground has been difficult to unbearable for
US forces. Many have been ill-equipped with weapons, vehicles, ordinance,
body armor and most everything else being consumed and not replaced. It's
even worse for Forward Operating Bases often unable to get enough drinking
water and other necessities such as proper food, clean clothes, a daily
shower and a comfortable bed to sleep in. The effects of conflict and
conditions on the ground have taken a devastating toll already with many
there increasingly stressed and terrified out of their minds from physical
and/or psychological trauma often ignored by commanders.

Most disturbing is the cover-up of the true death and injury toll already
that's far higher than the published figures that are phony to avoid likely
public anger if they were known. One incident suppressed happened on October
10, 2006 when Forward Base Falcon was attacked by mortars and rockets
causing huge stocks of fuel and ammunition to explode most of the night
killing or wounding hundreds of the 3,000 troops based there. Pictures
gotten out show how extensive the damage was that leveled buildings to the
ground explaining why the Pentagon wanted none of this to get out. It did
but not in the major media and not in the ISG report.

Despite public disclosures, more accurate data overall is quietly coming out
of the Pentagon, unreported in the corporate media, and unmentioned in the
ISG report that shows the number of US forces killed is about four times the
"official" total, and the number wounded may be about twice the official
figure. Almost never mentioned is that many injuries include loss of limbs,
brain and severe psychological damage and pain and other debilitations that
will scar those affected and their families for the rest of their lives if
after treatment and recovery they even survive.

None of this bothers the "Gang of Ten" commission members whose families are
safe from this carnage and whose verdict rendered in their report
effectively is to let the war go on without end, the enormous and rising
human toll on Iraqis and Americans notwithstanding. For them, it's a price
worth paying as it serves the interests of empire in which human beings are
just another commodity to extract value from and then discard when no longer
of further use. That's how the Bush administration and ISG members think and
act.

Omissions on the Domestic Front Related to the Iraq War and the "War on
Terror" Allowing It to Happen

Domestic and foreign affairs are inextricably linked, and when the nation
goes to war, or is planning to, everything is fair game on the home front,
but don't expect it will serve the public interest. Ordinary people always
pay dearly and gain nothing beyond the right to make the weapons and pay the
bills that in the current conflict are huge enough at the least to put an
enormous strain on the economy and over time as the out-control costs mount
may endanger the nation's economic health. The ISG report doesn't address
this reckless endangerment that Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz
believes may have an eventual price tag of well over $2 trillion
exacerbating already massive budget deficits far higher ($760 billion in
2005, not the "official" $318.5 billion) than the phony numbers reported to
hide how bad things really are and on top of an alarming current account
deficit now in the range of $800 billion a year and climbing.

It also is unperturbed by the grim picture economist Laurence Kotlikoff
presented in a recent detailed report for the Federal Reserve Bank of St.
Louis in which he stated, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt and
unable to pay its creditors. Professor Kotlikoff believes US fiscal policy
is so out-of-control, including for the reckless spending for wars, that the
country's debt is rising exponentially and will reach an incomprehensible
and unmanageable $65.9 trillion creating a fiscal calamity forcing the
nation to default on its debt obligations. He later updated his figures and
now believes the country's future overall liability may reach the $80
trillion level that will trigger an inevitable economic meltdown if it
happens.

Spending hundreds of billions annually and rising for "defense" including
all the off-the-books (but out of taxpayers' pockets) allocations for Iraq
will only speed up the pace to the future apocalypse Kotlikoff potentially
foresees ahead. No problem for the Baker collective who operate with tunnel
vision, and like those three monkeys, hear no, see no, and neither speak nor
write anything beyond their re-flavored stay the course agenda for Iraq
disguised to look like a new drawdown policy it isn't.

Other Domestic Front Omissions - The Destruction of Democracy and Loss of
Personal Freedoms

The ISG was formed to serve US imperial interests including its wars of
aggression for wealth and power. It doesn't matter how destructive they are
to the public welfare or how they're allowing the nation to pass from a
republic to tyranny. For every blow the US military strikes against the
people of Iraq (and Afghanistan), the political establishment here and its
"homeland security" enforcers inflict a similar amount of damage in kind
against the body politic at home, not through the barrel of a gun (yet) but
by the destruction of our civil liberties and human rights that stand in the
way of the grandiose schemes people like Jim Baker and his "Gang of Ten"
allies hope to pull off - to gain total imperial control over planet earth
and the heavens above it with ordinary working people everywhere just more
commodity inputs for their production meat grinder to be chewed up for
profit and then discarded.

So for Baker and the ISG team, keeping mum about the war at home is part of
the scheme to let it go on largely under the radar until the time comes to
strip off the mask and send the jackboots and tanks to the streets making
them look like the ones in Baghdad and with some of the same horrific
fallout as things get ugly. For their plan to work, they must crush the last
remnants of a free society and create the Orwellian vision he described
saying: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
human face - forever." The ISG is trying to do with guile and deceit what
George Bush already did in the new legislation he signed into law on October
17 giving himself what noted British journalist John Pilger calls "the power
of unrestricted lawlessness" with scant public awareness it even happened.

On that day, with ISG tacit blessing and approval by its silence, Bush
signed into law the infamous Military Commissions Act effectively giving
himself the power to subvert the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The bill
authorizes the use of torture and allows the president the right to call
anyone an enemy of the state on his say alone with no corroborating evidence
and strips the accused of all constitutional rights. It means anyone can be
arrested, interrogated, tortured and incarcerated in a secret prison
anywhere in the world, subject to the justice of a military tribunal like in
Iraq or Guantanamo, with no competent defense or habeas right of appeal. It
makes everyone an "enemy combatant" subject to the will of a man willing to
use his power recklessly with no concern for its consequences.

George Bush went further that day privately and quietly signing into law a
provision revising the Insurrection Act of 1807 that along with the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of federal and National Guard troops
for law enforcement inside the country except as allowed by the Constitution
or expressly authorized by Congress in times of a national emergency like an
insurrection.

No longer. The new Public Law 109-364 (HR 5122) allows the president the
right to claim a public emergency, effectively declare martial law on his
say alone, and send the jackboots to the streets to suppress whatever he
calls public disorder that may include peaceful protests to redeem our
constitutional rights now lost.

These new repressive laws add to the ones already on the books including
infamous repressive Patriot Acts I and II and the National ID Act that will
enable the government to track and control everyone in the country in the
"Big Brother" fashion George Orwell foresaw in his dystopian book Nineteen
Eighty-Four depicting a totalitarian national security police state society
the US has now become. This act alone legalizes tyranny, but it's only one
among others including the president having given himself unlimited power by
designating himself a "unitary executive" with the right to circumvent the
law in the name of national security on his say alone that a threat exists,
with no evidence needed to warrant it or congressional approval.

The Congress approves, and again silence from the ISG members plotting their
own schemes while watching the country's founding principles being destroyed
making it all the easier for them to pull off their heist of the republic to
go along with controlling Iraq and the rest of the Middle East and its oil
treasure they'll go to any lengths to hold onto - and that's only for
starters.

What Chance for ISG Success

The Commission members believe their plan can succeed, but don't be deceived
by their (thin) veneer of confidence. Other insiders aren't so sure, and
according to the New York Times on December 9 the report "exposed deep
fissures among Republicans over how to manage a war that many fear will
haunt their party - and the nation - for years to come." From the hard
right, critics call the ISG report a shameful retreat while moderate party
voices expressed hope George Bush would adopt the Commission's principle
recommendations and "begin a process of disengagement from the long and
costly war." In the middle, White House officials concluded their own
initial assessment of Baker's work saying many of its proposals are
"impractical or unrealistic."

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page had its own ideologically-driven
say. As expected, it wants no part of engaging Iran and Syria and supports
the Israel Lobby position instead. It called the report "a bipartisan
strategic muddle ginned up for domestic political purposes." The Journal
editorial writers do have a way with words leaving nothing to their readers'
imagination.

Unmentioned in the Times story is the unreported view from the Pentagon high
command that apparently is much different from its public stance agreeing
with the blunt mid-October assessment of Britain's Army Chief of Staff
General Richard Dannatt who stated (in contradiction to the Blair
government) the presence of UK forces in Iraq "exacerbates the security
problems (and they should) get out some time soon" - meaning as soon as
possible.

In simple terms, General Dannett and the Pentagon brass believe what most
every honest observer understands - that the presence of an occupying force
in Iraq is the cause of the problem, not its solution. The longer it
remains, the more unstable and intolerable conditions will become.
Increasing the force size and/or reshuffling the deck with fewer combat
troops and more trainer/advisors will only increase the level of Iraqi
resistance against them and ultimately elevate public opposition at home
once people catch on and realize they've again been had and the Baker plan
is just another scheme to keep our forces in Iraq in perpetuity to maintain
the country as a colony and the region's oil under US control.

Middle East expert and scholar Gilbert Achcar states in his new book
Perilous Power, co-authored with Noam Chomsky, that the longer US forces
remain in the region, the worse things will get, no matter what role they
adopt that's just cover for the US to maintain tight control. Achcar says
the Bush administration since March, 2003 has been "stupid" and "will go
down in history....as the undertaker of US interests in the region." It
doesn't get any clearer, stronger, or more on the mark than that, and it
goes to the heart of the problem the ISG was formed to deal with -
maintaining US control over Middle East oil now in jeopardy and getting the
US public to go along.

If the US occupation of Iraq ever ends without a reliable client state
government in place, it will create the possibility of Washington's worst
nightmare - a majority Shiite ruled Iraq allied with Shiite Iran that might
link with the Saudi Shias located in the bordering oil-rich part of the
kingdom. If that Tripartite Shia Middle East alliance forms, it will control
most of the world's oil supply. It might then choose to align with the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) formed to compete with the US for
control of Central Asia's huge energy reserves and whose core members are
China and Russia giving those countries a chance for a leg up on the US at
least for access to Middle East oil. The ISG and Bush administration will do
all in its power to prevent this from happening, but the US has lost so much
credibility in the region, they face a daunting task and long odds for
success.

The ISG report mentions none of this, but does stress the importance of
Iraq's oil by mentioning it 63 times and calling for the US to help Iraq
privatize its state-owned oil industry, opening it up to Big Oil foreign
exploitive investment and the profits from it. If or when the US ends its
occupation without leaving a reliable client state in place, it would be
hard to imagine Iraq will quickly forgive and forget and be willing to
conduct business as usual with oil or other corporations from the country
that laid waste to it and only left in humiliation and defeat.

It shows how hard it will be for the US to get out of this mess, and it's
likely to prove more than Jim Baker, his high-powered team, and "all the
king's horses and men" are up to. They stand virtually no chance to
implement a coherent, workable plan for success short of the only operable
one they'll never agree to until they no longer have a choice - a full and
unconditional withdrawal. It only remains to be seen how long it will take
for them and whatever administration is in power in Washington to draw that
conclusion and how much time the public's willing to give them, the Bush
administration and the majority Democrats in the Congress elected to chart a
new course they've so far indicated no intention of doing.

It all adds up to an exercise in deception and futility, but in the end
things will end up where they all began in 1990 before the long US assault
against Iraq started. When it does, that country will again be free from a
foreign occupier but will face a long, expensive and painful struggle to
mend and rebuild. As happened when the US left Vietnam, this country will
leave it to the Iraqis to recover and regenerate from the carnage and misery
on their own that may take a generation or more to achieve and that for most
now alive may never be possible.

This will be the legacy of the US invasion and occupation and tainted
presidency of George Bush and his corrupted notion of moral superiority,
claiming to have brought democracy, liberation and the benefits of western
civilization to this blighted country but having to do it through the barrel
of a gun. This time things unraveled faster than usual, but it only showed
the people of Iraq reject what too many at home still believe - that the US
is a benevolent democratic republic serving the will and needs of its people
and supporting the rights and sovereignty of free people everywhere to live
in peace and security. It's an illusion understood by most others around the
world and gaining recognition at home as being just as hollow here as on the
streets of Baghdad and Kabul.

It remains to be seen how long it will take for a mass awakening to occur to
arouse the public at home, as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, making them no
longer willing to put up with the kind of abuse and neglect they've so far
failed to resist. If history is a guide, it will happen, and when it does it
may signal the denouement of another repressive imperial state succumbing to
the arrogance of its own overreach, excess, hubris and disregard for the
needs of its own people demanding redress. It can't come soon enough for the
many around the world oppressed by it crying out "freedom now" and beginning
to do something about getting it.
_______

About author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net [1]. Also visit his blog site at
sjlendman.blogspot.com [2].

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson