-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.radix.net/~tarpley/bush24.htm <A HREF="http://www.radix.net/~tarpley/bush24.htm">Bush book: Chapter -24-</A> --[24d]-- The following week was a time of great political hemorraging for George Bush. His problems grew out of a clumsy series of trial baloons he floated about what kind of tax package he would accept. By one count, he changed his mind five times in three days. First came the government itself. Any president, and especially an apparatchik like Bush, has a healthy respect for what the Washington bureaucracy might do to him if it, like the mercenaries Machiavelli warned about, were not paid. Bush accordingly relented and signed a short-term continuing resolution to keep the paychecks flowing and the bureaucracy open. Now Congressmen of both parties began to offer amendments on the $22 billion tax bill that was at the heart of the new austerity package. First Bush indicated that he would accept an increase in income tax rates for the most wealthy in exchange for a cut in the capital gains tax. Then he indicated that he would not. In a press conference, he said such a deal would be "fine." Then a group of Republican Congressmen visited him to urge him to drop the idea of any such deal; they came out declaring that Bush was now in agreement with them. But then Bush drifted back towards the tradeoff. Richard Darman, one of Bush's budget enforcers, was asked what Bush thought about the tax rates trade off. "I have no idea what White House statement was issued," said the top number cruncher, "but I stand behind it 100%." By the weekend of October 13-14, there were at least three draft tax bills in circulation. Even hard-core Bushmen were unable to tell the legislators what the president wanted, and what he would veto. The most degraded and revealing moment came when Bush was out jogging, and reporters asked him about his position on taxes. "Read my hips!," shouted Bush, pointing towards his posterior with both hands. It was not clear who had scripted that one, but the message was clear: the American people were invited to kiss Bush's ass. It was one of the most astounding gestures by a president in modern times, and posed the inevitable question: had Bush gone totally psychotic? "The public is not laughing," commented a White House official. Newsday, the New York tabloid, went with the headline READ MY FLIPS. The New York Times revived the label that Bush resented most: for the newspaper of record, Bush was "a political wimp." A senior GOP political consultant noted that "the difference is that Reagan had principles and beliefs. This guy has no rudder." In the opinion of Newsweek, "Bush took no stand on principle and didn't seem to know what he wanted....He made incomprehensible jokes. He was strangely eager to please even those who were fighting him, and powerless to punish defectors. As in the bad old days, he looked goofy." [fn 52] The haggling went on into the third week of October, and then into the fourth. Would it last to Halloween, to permit a macabre night of the living dead on the Capitol? Newt Gingrich told David Brinkley on "This Week" of October 21 that most House Republicans were prepared to vote against any plan to increase taxes, totally disregarding the wishes of Bush. Senator Danforth of Missouri complained, "I am concerned and a lot of Republicans are concerned that this is becoming a political rout." At this point the Democrats wanted to place a 1% surtax on all income over 41 million, while the GOP favored reducing the deductions for the rich. In yet another flip-flop, Bush had conceded on October 20 that he would accept an increase in the top income tax rate from 28% to 31%. By October 24, a deal was finally reached which could be passed, and the next day Bush attempted to put the best possible face on things by assembling the bruised and bleeding Republican Congressional leadership, including the renegade Gingrich, for another Rose Garden ceremony. The final budget plan set the top income tax rate at 31%, and increased taxes on gasoline, cigarettes, airline tickets, increased Medicare payroll taxes and premiums, while cutting Medicare benefit payouts and government payments to farmers. Another part of the package replaced the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings once a year sequester threat with a "triple, rolling sequester" with rigid spending caps for each of the three categories of defense, foreign aid, and discretionary domestic spending, and no transfers permitted among these. The entire apparatus will require super-majorities of 60 votes to change in the future. Naturally, this package was of no use whatever in deficit reduction, given the existence of an accelerating economic depression. In Bush's famous New World Order speech on September 11, he had frightened the Congress with the prospect of a deficit of $232 billion. In October of 1991, it was announced that the deficit for the fiscal year ending September 31, 1991, the one that was supposed to show improvement, had come in at $268.7 billion, the worst in all history. Predictions for the deficit in the year beginning on October 1, 1991 were in excess of $350 billion, guaranteeing that the 1991 record would not stand long. Bush's travail of October, 1990 had done nothing to improve the picture. Bush's predicament was that the Reaganomics of the 1980's (which had been in force since the period after the Kennedy assassination) had produced more than a depression: they had engendered the national bankruptcy of the United States. That bankruptcy was now lawfully dismembering the Reagan coalition, the coalition which Bush had still been able to ride to power in 1988. Since Bush refused to replace the suicidal, post-industrial economic policies of the last quarter century, he was obliged to attempt to smother irrepressible political conflicts with police state methods, and with war hysteria. But in the interval before he could start the war, Bush would pay a heavy political price. According to the Newseek poll, Bush's job approval rating had dropped from 67% during the Gulf scare of August to 48% at the end of the October budget battles. The 20-point free fall was a reminder that Bush possessed no solid base of support among any numerically significant group in the US electorate. Now, the Carteresque Bush found that his own party was turning against him. A split had opened up in the GOP which threatened that party with the fate of the degenerate Federalists. In the midst of the budget upheaval Bush, ever true to his family's racist creed, had impudently vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1990. To make the symbolism perfect, he signed the veto after an appearance at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award ceremonies in Washington. Bush was playing the card of racism for 1990 and 1992. "I deeply regret having to take this action with a bill bearing such a title," said Bush, "especially since it contains provisions that I strongly endorse." But he was adamant that this bill "employs a maze of highly legalistic language to introduce the destructive force of quotas into our national unemployment system." Bush claimed that this was a quota bill, and since equal opportunity was thwarted by quotas, "the very committment to j ustice and equality that is offered as the reason why this bill should be signed requires me to veto it." An attempted override fell short by one vote in the Senate, 66-34, even though Minnesota Republican Rudy Boschwitz, who had been against the bill, switched sides to oppose Bush's veto. Boschwitz was doomed to defeat in the November election in any case. A most dramatic sign of the repudiation of Bush even by the Republican party apparatus was the celebrated memorandum issued on October 15 by veteran political operative Ed Rollins of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Rollins had been given a four-year, million dollar contract to help the GOP win a majority on the Hill. He was dedicated to helping his Congressional clients, incumbents and challengers alike, to get elected. Watching the polls, Rollins saw that Bush's June 26 broken promise was sure to be poison at the polls in early November. He sent out a memo that made the following points: The mood of the country has shifted dramatically in the past ten days; voters have become as pessimistic about the direction of the country as at any time in recent history. The President's approval/disapproval and job performance ratings have dropped precipitously. This is no doubt due to the lack of a budget resolution and the lack of a clear Republican position on taxes and spending. Understanding that several members have never taken a no tax pledge, my best advice today is to urge you to oppose taxes, specifically gas and income taxes. Do not hesitate to oppose either the President or proposals being advanced in Congress. [fn 53] Bush appears to have learned of the Rollins memo in an NBC news broadcast on October 24. According to one source, Bush then told a group of GOP Congressional leaders that while he could not control all Republican political consultants, he "did control Rollins," and wanted him fired immediately. Rollins's immediate boss, Rep. Guy Vander Jagt, a Republican wheelhorse from Michigan, complained that he had come out of this meeting with Bush "black and blue" from the president's punishment. [fn 54] The answer from Rollins was, "I don't plan to resign." Incredibly, Bush was unable to secure the ouster of Rollins, who, one must conclude, enjoyed more support from rank and file Republican Congressmen at this point than Bush himself. Some consultants suggested that Bush should simply back off: "If the November 6 results are as bad as they appear, the consensus will be that George Bush blew it," said one. Bush "is the George Steinbrenner of politics," said another perception-monger. "He just booted away the best franchise in the sport." Dreams of taking House seats were vanishing with each new poll; the GOP now hoped for damage control measures to keep the loss to ten seats if they could. On the campaign trail, Bush was finally receiving treatment commensurate with his merits. October 23 was a day he will never forget. George had gotten up before dawn to make a day of it on the hustings, only to find that he was being shunned as the new Typhoid Mary of American politics. The first stop was an early-morning fund raiser in Burlington, Vermont, designed to benefit Rep. Peter Smith, a freshman Congressman. Smith was supposed to give Bush a rousing introduction and then bask in the warmth of Bush's support. But instead, Smith astounded Bush and his handlers by launching into a tortured monologue on all the points of disagreement that divided him from Bush. Smith told of how he had been loyal to Bush on October 5, and of how his constituents had then rebelled, with the result that he caught political hell for his pro-Bush vote. Smith demanded that Bush now raise taxes on the wealthy. Smith also menmtioned the civil rights bill: "My specific disagreements with this administration are a matter of record," Smith stressed. Poor Smith: his pro-Bush vote on October 5 had doomed him to defeat in his close race with Bernie Sanders, the former socialist mayor of Burlington. Bush stewed, raged, and squirmed. He looked around to see if anyone would come to his aid. Sitting next to Bush was GOP Senator James M. Jeffords, who had voted in favor of the civil rights bill Bush had vetoed. He had made an emotional speech in the Senate lambasting Bush for trying to punch giant "loopholes" in the civil rights of citizens. Jeffords sat staring straight ahead, doing a fair imitation of Bush at the Nashua Telegraph debate. When Bush got up, he was dissociated and tongue-tied. He stumbled through his speech, improvising a few lines in which he praised the independent-mindedness of Vermonters like Smith, but whined that he wished it would not come at his expense. Bush then asserted that we have a sluggish economy out there nationally. That's one of the reasons why I favor this deficit so much. [fn 55] The crowd was puzzled; some of them were perhaps driven to try the socialism of Bernie Sanders over this. The mental disintegration of George Bush went on apace. Bush's second stop of the day was in Manchester, New Hampshire. Here he was greeted by his old friend, the Manchester Union Leader, with a front page cartoon of the granite-faced man in the mountain saying "Read His Lips, Mr. President. Go Home and Take Your Taxes with You." Here there was no attack on Bush's economics; the candidate he was supposed to be helping, Rep. Robert C. Smith, had obviously concluded that any film footage showing him in the same picture with Bush would pose the threat of disaster, so he had simply stayed in Washington. The congressman's wife was there to tell the audience that her husband had stayed in Washington for House votes he could not miss; an apoplectic Bush ferociously chewed on an apple before he rose for perfunctory remarks. Bush's third stop was in Waterbury, Connecticut, where the beneficiary of his presence was Gary Franks, a black Republican whom Bush needed as a fig leaf for his veto of the civil rights bill. Franks solved the Typhoid Mary problem by barring the news media from the campaign event, so no sound bites associating him with Bush could be used against him by his opponent. Later there was a brief photo opportunity with Bush and Franks together. Surely Bush had cut a ridiculous figure. But how many Iraqis would die in January, February and beyond to assuage Bush's humiliations of this day? Bush's last pre-election campaign trip would eliminate stops in Oregon, Nebraska, Illinois, and North Carolina, where Republicans teetered on the edge of defeat. Bush was trying to cut his losses, and he was not alone. During the months before the election, Bush had spent hours sweating under television lights to tape endorsement commercials for over 80 GOP candidates. One Congressman, Rep. Alfred A. McCandless of California, used pieces of Bush's tape in a commercial designed to highlight his differences with Bush. Many of the other tapes were never used; many of those endorsed pleaded as an excuse that their fundraising had been ruined by Bush's tax policy, so they never had the money to put them on the air. Bush attempted to regroup by seeking new demagogic themes. For those struggling with economic depression he offered...term limits for members of Congress, in the hands of the GOP a transparent attempt to flush out Democratic incumbents. Term limitation, said Bush, was "an idea whose time has come." "America doesn't need a liberal House of Lords," said Bush in Oklahoma City. "America needs a Republican Congress." The Democrats "truly believe they deserve to be elected from now until kingdom come," said Bush in Los Angeles. The response was less than overwhelming. Then Bush tried to blame the depression on the Democrats. The venue chosen was a $1000 a plate fundraiser for Sen. Pete Wilson, who wanted to be governor of California. The "strong medicine" of the defecit package, Bush claimed, "is required because the Democratically controlled Congress has been on an uncontrolled spending binge for years." In Oklahoma City, he averred that the Democrats had "choked the economy" and brought the country to the verge of recession. He accused Congressional liberals of spewing out the "class warfare garbage" they always resurrect at election time. But none of this had any bite. [fn 56] On November 3, Bush reached into his talk bag and pulled out Jimmy Carter, threatening voters with a return to the "malaise days." According to Newseek, Bush had reacquired that "electrocuted" look. Bush went back to his staple offering: hysterical, rage-driven warmongering, with an extra dividend for some audiences coming through the clear racist overtones. Once Congress had adjourned, one observer noted, "Bush was able to switch to his favorite script, 'Desperately Seeking Saddam.'" [fn 57] Bush grimaced and pouted against the "butcher of Baghdad" trying to look like a more genteel, Anglo-Saxon Mussolini. Saddam was now "Hitler revisited." Later, there were estimates that Bush's exclusive concentration on the war theme had saved one to two senate seats, and perhaps half a dozen in the House. But Bush came dangerously close to overdoing it. In the last days of October, he had begun a demagogic effort to whip up hysteria about the US citzens interned by Iraq. "I have had it" with the Iraqi handling of the internees, was now Bush's favorite line. When Bush wrapped himself in the flag, he expected the Democrats to kow-tow, but now there was some opposition. Bush met with some 15 Congressional leaders active in foreign policy, and began raving about the "horrible, barbarous" conditions of the hostages. Sharp questions were immediately posed by Democrats, many of them facing re-election in a few days. According to one Congressman, "They were asking, in not so many words, Is this trumped up? If it isn't, how come we just have started hearing about it in the middle of this political mess the president is in? It seems to be coming out of nowhere. Dante Fascell said the Democrats had told Bush, "If there is additional provocation [by Iraq], it better be real and able to stand up to press scrutiny." Too bad the Democrats had not applied that standard to the whole trumped-up Gulf crisis. [fn 58] The result of the November 6 election was a deep disappointment to Republicans; Bush's party lost one senate seat, 9 House seats, and one governorship. Not all of these gains went to Democrats, since disgruntled voters gave two governorships and one House seat to independents outside of the two party system. Most dramatic was the anti-incumbent mood against governors, where economic crisis and tax revolt had been on the agenda all year: the governing party, whether Republican or Democrat, was ousted in 14 of the 36 state houses that were contested. For Bush there were very special disappointments: he had campaigned very hard for Clayton Williams in Texas and for Governor Bob Martinez in Florida, but Bush's coattails proved non-existent to negative; Democrats won both governorships. The loss of Texas and Florida was a very ominous threat for Bush's 1992 re-election campaign, since these were the two indispensable keystones of the Southern Strategy. Now, that GOP lock on the Electoral College might be drawing to a close. But unforunately, that was for the future: Bush's repudiation at the polls this time around was not enough to reduce him to an impotent lame duck with no mandate to wage war. Bush was now a wounded beast who could, and would, lash out. Bush emerged gravely damaged: Business Week devoted a cover to a photo of Bush and the legend: "Losing Ground: GOP Losses in Congress, statehouse setbacks, and internal party strife are eroding George Bush's authority-- and his ability to lead the nation." "A few more good days like that and Republicans will go the way of Whigs," wrote the magazine. The vote was a "humbling rebuke to a barnstorming Bush." [49] In the words of an October 31 headline in the pro-regime Washington Times, "Bush in 92? 'Dead Meat,' say skeptics." Kevin Phillips noted that economics could prove fatal for Bush: "Since World War II the GOP's pattern has been for economic downturns during midterm election years: full-fledged recessions in 1954, 1958, 1970, 1974, and 1982, and a severe farm-belt and oil-patch slump in 1986. Today's economic thunderclouds, however, are the first in memory (at least since the post-1929 period) to portend their storms for the third year of a GOP presidency." And for Bush, the economic bad news was to be found even in the New York Times: "What Recession? It's a Depression," proclaimed one article. Leonard Silk made the optimistic case in the same paper: "Why It's Too Soon to Predict Another Great Depression," was his title. [fn 59] But well before the dust had settled from the election debacle, Bush had resumed his march towards a holocaust in the Middle East. On the day after the election, Baker, speaking in Moscow, launched Bush's all-out press for a UN Security Council resolution legitimizing the use of armed force against Iraq over the Kuwait question. Bush had to push his war through both the US Congress and the UN permanent five; his estimate was that the world powers would be easier to dragoon, and that the assent of the Security Council could then be used to bludgeon the Congress into acquiescence. [fn 60] It is important to note that in shifting his policy towards aggressive war, Bush was once again dancing to the tune being piped in from London. On Wednesday, November 7, the racist crone Thatcher, now on her way out as Prime Minister, issued her most warmongering statement so far on the Gulf crisis: Either [Saddam Hussein] gets out of Kuwait soon or we and our allies will remove him by force and he will go down to defeat with all the consequences. He has been warned. [fn 61] Yet again, the United States was to be drawn into a useless and genocidal war as the tail on the British imperial kite. And so, flaunting his vicious contempt for the democratic process, on Thursday November 8, just two days after the election, Bush made what any serious, intelligent person must have recognized as a declaration of preemptive war in the Gulf: After consultation with King Fahd and our other allies I have today directed the secretary of defense to increase the size of US forces committed to Desert Shield to ensure that the coalition has an adequate offensive military option should that be necessary to achieve our common goals. Towards this end we will continue to dicuss the possibility of both additional allied force contributions and appropriate United Nations actions. Iraq's brutality, aggression, and violations of international law cannot be allowed to succeed. [fn 62] For those who had ever believed Bush's verbal declarations, here was an entirely new policy, advanced without the slightest motivation. Bush argued that the current US troop stregnth of 230,000 was enough to defend Saudi Arabia, but that was no longer good enough. Bush's only argument was that gradual strangulation by sanctions might take too long. Reporters pointed out that Thatcher had threatened to use military force the day before. Did Bush want war? "I would love to see a peaceful resolution to this question, and that's what I want." Some of the more lucid minds had now figured out that Bush was indeed a pathological liar. For the rest of the month of November, a modest wave of anti-war sentiment was observed in the United States, some of it coming from Democrats of the strangler faction who had never wavered in their devotion to evil. On Sunday, November 11 Sen. Sam Nunn questioned Bush's rush to war. But Nunn did not call for a denial of funds to wage war on the model of the Hatfield-McGovern amendment which had finally tied Nixon's hands in Vietnam. Nunn was a leader of the strangler group, urging reliance on the sanctions. James Reston wrote in the New York Times, that "Bush's comparison of Hussein to Hitler, a madman with superior military forces in the center of industrial Europe, is ridiculous." "Saying 'My President, right or wrong,' in such circumstances, is a little like saying, 'my driver, drunk or sober,' and not many passengers like to go that far." [fn 63] The following day, under a headline reading "Tide against war grows at home, abroad," the Washington Times carried a warning from New York Senator Moynihan: "If George Bush wants his presidency to die in the Arabian desert, he's going at it very steadily and as if it were a plan. He will wreck our military, he will wreck his administration, and he'll spoil the chance to get a collective security system working. It breaks the heart." Sen. Kerrey of Oklahoma declared himself "not convinced this administration will do everything in its power to avoid war. And if ever there was an avoidable war, it is this one." On November 15, Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey warned Bush that "to continue to hold the support of Congress, [Bush] must suspend the newly announced buildup of offensive forces against Iraq until he justifies why he has downgraded the promising strategy of patient pressure. Without hearing a convincing explanation of that change, and with the cost of Operation Desert Shield now heading toward $30 billion, Congress should authorize no expenditures for an enlarged offensive option to invade Kuwait or Iraq." [fn 64] Bradley had to pay attention to public opinion; he had almost lost his seat earlier in the month. On the following day, Gorbachov's special envoy to the Middle East, Yevgeny Primakov, called for a delay in the resolution on the use of force against Iraq to allow Saddam Hussein a "face-saving" way out. One week later, in the context of the Paris Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Gorbachov directed his desperate appeal to the world for food shipments to the USSR. Even if the Kremlin had wished to resist Bush's war drive, their weakness was evident. The Soviet Union, like China, would soon vote for the resolution that would justify Bush's January attack. But the hyperthyroid Bush was unwilling to brook criticism. In best bullying style, he came to a meeting with Congressional leaders on November 14 with a sheaf of articles from Iraqi newspapers reporting, among other things, Moynihan's speech of a few days before. Even Republican Richard Lugar was targetted by Bush's ire. Bush whined that such statements were giving Saddam reasons to doubt US resolve. On November 16, the National Council of Churches condemned Bush's Gulf policy, citing "reckless rhetoric," "imprudent behavior," and the precipitous military buildup. James Baker, groping for reasons for the coming war, thought he had found one: "If you want to sum it up in one word, it's jobs. Because an economic recession, worldwide, caused by the control of one nation, one dictator, of the West's economic lifeline will result in the loss of jobs on the part of American citizens." [fn 65] Many citizens were offended by Baker's patronizing condescension, which was coordinated with Bush's remarks of the same day in which he admitted that the country was in a "downturn," and hinted that the depth of any recession would depend on whether or not the Gulf crisis turned into a prolonged standoff. If recession were to come, said Bush, "it will not be deep and we will come out of it relatively soon- six months at most." [fn 66] Com menting on what really concerned him, Bush commented, "holding public opinion forever is very difficult to do." Bush was not even succeeding in the short term: Pennsylvania Democratic Chairman Larry Yatch told reporters that support for Bush's Gulf policy was "at the teetering point-- the people are really becoming skeptical." His Louisiana counterpart, James J. Brady, noted that Bush " has not given them answers to their questions." "Jobs are not the reason we are there," he added. [fn 67] In the House of Representatives, a group of 45 House Democrats went to federal court in a vain attempt to stop Bush from initating hostilities, and Rep. Gonzalez of Texas, the honorable maverick, offered a bill of impeachment against Bush. On November 16, Bush left on a multi-country blitz of Europe and the Middle East which was intended to shore up the anti-Iraq coalition until the buildup could be completed and the war unleashed. In Prague, Bush was lionized by large crowds; President Havel gave Bush a testimonial of support about the lessons of Munich 1938 and appeasement that Bush would wave around all through the war. It was unfortunate that freedom from communist tyranny for some politicians seemed to mean the freedom to lick Bush's boots. In Speyer, Germany, Bush had another apoplectic moment when Catholic Bishop Anton Schlembach wished Bush success "but without war and bloodshed." Bush sat red-faced like a roasted cherub. Germans were not happy about Bush's extortion of their country when they needed money to rebuild the newly freed federal states in the east; Germany was now reunified. Bush had a strained meeting with Kohl, and, at the CSCE finale in Paris, a cordial one with Mitterrand, with whom his rapport was excellent. Here our hero pressed Gorbachov for a Soviet imprimatur on his war resolution, but Gorbachov was still stalling. On Thanksgiving Day, Bush and Bar were with the troops in Saudi Arabia. Many soldiers told reporters that they were not happy to be there, and were not in favor of war. One trooper asked Bush, "Why not make a deal with Saddam Hussein, Mr. President?" while Bush gagged on his chicken a la king Meal Ready to Eat (MRE). Flying westward the next day, Bush stopped in Geneva for a meeting with Hafez Assad of Syria, a true villain and butcher who had, during the month of October, taken advantage of his deal with Bush to finish off Gen. Aoun's independent Lebanese state. Bush's meeting with Assad lasted for three hours. Assad had provided 7,500 Syrian troops for the coalition attack force in Saudi Arabia, which he promised to increase to 20,000. "Mr. Assad is lined up with us with a committment to force," said Bush. "They are on the front line, or will be, standing up to this aggression." Manic hysteria at the top of a bureaucratic apparatus will swiftly infect the lower echelons as well, and this was illustrated by the mishaps of Bush's travelling entourage, which clashed with Swiss security officers while entering and leaving Geneva Airport. A new factor exacerbating Bush's mental instability during this trip was the imminent fall of his Anglo-Saxon Svengali, Margaret Thatcher, who was about to be dumped as prime minister, primarily because she had become persona non grata among the leaders of western Europe in an era in which Britain's future survival depended on parasitizing the wealth of the continent. The Swiss have some of the most level-headed and expert airport protocol personnel in the world, but Bush's retinue was determined to run amok. Bush and Fitzwater wanted the press corp free to run around the airport to get the most dramatic shots and sound bites of Bush's epic entry into one of the centers of world diplomacy. When Bush landed, the "photo dogs" wanted to gather under the wing of Bush's plane, but the Swiss moved them out of the area. At the departure, the press corps went bonkers, and many of them had to be physically restrained by the Swiss officers when they attempted to break through a crowd-control line. Fitzwater complained that State Department protocol chief Joseph V. Reed (the scion of the Jupiter Island magnate) had had a machine gun shoved into his stomach, and that Sununu had been "verbally abused" during the altercation. But Fitzwater was an accomplished prevaricator: "I must say I have never seen that kind of brutal and vicious treatment by a security force in the last 10 years. It's strange. It's supposedly a peace-loving nation but they gave us the most vicious treatment I've ever seen." Thierry Magnin described the actions of some US reporters as "deplorable" and "inadmissable." Magnin said there had been "a row and heated words, but this was to enforce security measures...taken in accord with the American security services." He denied that any submachine gun was ever pointed at Reed. [fn 68] Magnin said the Geneva police would not apologize, and later it was indeed the US which backed down. It was during this period that Lyndon LaRouche, from his jail cell in Minnesota, called attention to Bush's increasingly psychotic behavior. On November 24, LaRouche commented: I have been obliged today to use nothing other than the term "psycho-sexual impotence" to describe the characteristic features exhibited by a visibly paranoid President George Herbert "Hoover" Walker Bush in the context of his reactions simultaneously to knowledge of the certainty of the ongoing economic depression, and the mess in the Persian Gulf, in which he, guided largely by certain Israeli influences and Margaret Thatcher, has enmired himself, the nation, and a good deal of the world. There is no question that President George Bush is suffering a more acute form of implicitly schizophrenic paranoia than he showed during the height of the moments of uncertainty during the Panama atrocity by forces under his direction. The President, in short, is CRACKING: HE IS GOING NUTS. The proper term to be used, to understand this particular problem of the President as President, is "psycho-sexual impotence" as I have used the term, in connection with, for example, the "Beyond Psychoanalysis" series... Bush ...is a killer; he is a heartless, amoral, immoral bureaucrat, who's capable of any dirty thing in the book, for the sake of expediency; he probably has a sense of ethics, which means ethics in the sense of Nichomachean Ethics, which means a complete lack of morality..... ...And George simply reacts like a Nietzschean fascist, to say that he will impose by brute force and by exercise of the will, his arbitrary values, his belief structure, upon an uncooperative Creator and Creation. That is the case in which the psycho-sexual impotent goes over to the practice of RAPE- because the woman, or women, refuse to be responsive to his advances, and therefore he says, "I'll make you responsive; I'll rape you." That's George Bush. Therefore, one must use the concept of psycho-sexual impotence in the case of Bush in order to understand him, and to understand the crisis which besets the presidency at this time. You have a man who is intellectually distinguished by the banality of his mediocrity, who is faced with a situation in which there is no room for mediocrity, in any part of the world, with respect to any important domestic or international policy matter. But, you have a mediocrity who, at the same time, is a megalomaniac mediocrity who refuses to accept anything which might suggest the slightest tinge of mediocrity in his mediocrity. And he's gone over to a Nietzschean kind of triumph of the arbitrary will, which he conceives of, as did Hitler, as a new world order, at the behest of the impulse of this poor mediocrity himself. [fn 69] On November 30, UN Security Council, now reduced to a discredited tool of the Anglo-Americans, voted for a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. This piece of infamy was labelled resolution 648 and passed with twelve assenting votes against the no votes of Cuba and Yemen, with the People's Republic of China abstaining. (International jurists later pointed out that according to the text of the UN Charter, which requires the positive votes of all five permanent members to approve substantive resolutions, the resolution had not passed, and that in acting on it the UN had entered a phase of anarchy and lawlessness.) Iraq was given 47 days to leave Kuwait, and this ultimatum was to expire on January 15. Bush clearly hoped that this resolution could be used to silence his Congressional critics. But in the meantime, Bush's path to war was beset with troubles on the domestic front. The ghoulish Scowcroft and other Bush spokesmen had been attempting to whip up war sentiment with wildly exaggerated reports about Iraq's nuclear preparations; these accounts, like the later alleged findings of "UN inspector" David Kay, failed to distinguish between peaceful and military uses of nuclear energy; the name of this game was technological apartheid. This campaign had evoked much skepticism: "Bush's Atomic Red Herring" was the title of one op-ed in the New York Times. Anti-war sentiment now crystallized around the hearings being held by Sam Nunn's Senate Armed Services Committee. Two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William J. Crowe and General David C. Jones, urged a policy of continued reliance on the sanctions. They were soon joined by former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, Gen. William Odom, and other figures of past regimes. Bush's principal support came from the croaking voice of Henry Kissinger, who was for war as soon as practicable. These were the days when King Fahd flirted briefly with the idea of a negotiated settlement, before he was reminded by the State Department that he ruled an occupied country. "Once Again: What's the Rush?" asked the New York Times of November 29. Bush wanted the Congress to pass a resolution giving him a blank check to wage war, but he hesitated to set off a debate that might go on all the way to January 15 and beyond, and in which he risked being beaten. After all, Bush was still refusing to negotiate. Now, on Friday, November 30, Bush executed the cynical tactic that would ultimately paralyze his craven domestic opposition and clear the way to war: he made a fake offer of negotiations with Iraq: However, to go the extra mile for peace, I will issue an invitation to Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to come to Washington at a mutually convenient time during the latter part of the week of December 10th to meet with me. And I'll invite ambassadors of several of our coalition partners in the gulf to join me in that meeting. In addition, I am asking Secretary Jim Baker to go to Baghdad to see Saddam Hussein, and I will suggest to Iraq's president that he receive the secretary of state at a mutually convenient time between December 15 and January 15 of next year. [fn 70] It was all a fiendish lie, even down to the offer of times and venues for the talks. When Iraq responded with proposals for the schedule of meetings, Bush welched and reneged. Iraq released the US internees, but Bush still wanted war. "We've got to continue to keep the pressure on," was his reaction. Then came a full month of useless haggling, which was exactly what Bush wanted. As his text had pointed out, he was not interested in real negotiation anyway; the UN resolutions had already resolved everything. The real purpose of this gambit was to suppress the domestic opposition, since negotiations were allegedly now ongoing. The most important opposition to a January 15 war according to the deadline railroaded through the UN by Bush came from the US Army, the service least enthralled by the idea of a needless war. During a visit by Powell and Cheney to Saudi Arabia, Lieut. Gen. Calvin A. H. Waller, the second in command of US forces in the Gulf, remarked that there was a "distinct possibility that every unit will not be fully combat-ready until some time after February 1," or perhaps as late as mid-February." "If the owner asks me if I'm ready to go, I'd tell him "No, I'm not ready to do the job,'" Waller told the press. It was understood that Waller was acting as spokesman for a broad stratum of senior officers. The Bush White House was once again infuriated. "This is not the message we were trying to send now," said one top Bushman. [fn 71] Waller and the other active duty officers would henceforth remain silent. Bush's buildup went on inexorably through the Christmas holidays. In the first week of the New Year, Bush offered a meeting of Baker and Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi foreign minister, in Geneva. His ground rules made the meeting pointless even before it happened: "No negotiations, no compromises, no attempts at face-saving and no rewards for aggression." [fn 72] Bush was showing more of his hand now; the buildup was approaching what he, if not the generals, thought enough to start bombing Iraq. The Tariq Aziz-Baker talks in Geneva went on for six hours on January 10, with no result. Baker was an Al Capone in striped pants; Tariq Aziz expressed himself with great dignity. Tariq Aziz had made clear that since Israel was in reality an integral part of Bush's Gulf coalition, it could not be exempt from retaliation if Iraq were to come under attack. For Bush, when millions of lives were at stake, the issue of greatest moment was a letter full of threats which Tariq Aziz had read, but refused to accept, and had left lying on the table in Geneva. (In this letter, which was later released, Bush was revealed as a megalomaniac who warned Saddam "we stand today at the brink of war between Iraq and the world," as if Bush were the chief executive of the entire planet.) Here was a new focus for Bush's apoplectic rage: he had been insulted by this Arab! What about that letter, the reporters asked. A surfeit of thyroxin coursed through Bush's veins: Secretary Baker also reported to me that the Iraqi foreign minister rejected my letter to Saddam Hussein, refused to carry this letter and give it to the president of Iraq. The Iraqi Ambassador here in Washington did the same thing. This is but one more example that the Iraqi government is not interested in direct communications designed to settle the Persian Gulf situation. But this was a -this was a - a total stiff-arm. This is a total rebuff. The letter was not rude; the letter was direct. And the letter did exactly what I think is necessary at this stage. But to refuse to even pass a letter along seems to me to be just one more manifestation of the stonewalling that has taken place. [fn 73] The gods were laughing. --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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