“Oiligarchs” and Their Enablers, Not War Critics, Endanger America.

Quicker than George W. Bush could spell q-u-a-g-m-i-r-e, the White House PR team re-branded the war "on terror" as the new and improved “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremists” (GSAVE), no doubt a new kind of faith-based initiative. In one sweep, the administration devised an elision of the two Gs (George and God) in one PR device. Old George, evoking those “Jesus Saves” billboards, must have a God complex. It was Bush, after all, who morphed images of himself and the deity when speaking from a cross-imbedded pulpit at the Republican National Convention last year. And the enablers genuflect. The way they see it, the rest of us just don't get Bush's “vision.”

No sooner had the Bush administration rolled out its convenient repackaging than commentators and pundits flooded the airwaves pointing out the implicit admission that the war is un-winnable. So, G. W. took to the microphone at a plush Texas resort to see how many times he could force the word "war" into one speech. As Jon Stewart suggests, we get it: He's "the war president." Then, cable “news" bullies heightened the invective against war critics. One prominent Fox bully, who can "factor," but can't add two-plus-two when it comes to the Constitution, called for the arrest of the people at Air America Radio (read more here: http://mediamatters.org/items/200506220006)! This same commentator promised to investigate every ACLU donor. Every right-wing pundit has focused his or her destructive sights on Cindy Sheehan. And, on July 22, Thomas Friedman, one of the most widely read columnists in America, and a supposed a moderate, called for an enemies list of those he calls “excusers.” These include anyone who suggests that Bush is making matters worse in Iraq or is embarked on an imperialist agenda.

Terror is heightened fear. But, despite opportunistic fear-mongering by Bush and his apologists, the fight against fear is ours to wage within ourselves, not the government's. It was the government's job to protect us when it had abundant warnings of impending attack that infamous September. Despite the August 6, 2001 President's Daily Briefing (PDB) Bush took a month-long vacation instead. Although terrorists are to blame, Bush was negligent and manipulative in his handling of the crisis. With false linkages of Iraq to 9-11, forged documents, and fake warnings of mushroom clouds, phony evidence (e.g., aluminum tubes unrelated to weapons of mass destruction; “laboratories” that only had cooking oil; and a terrorist camp in Northern Iraq, which was actually under US and British controlled air space), the boogey-man-in-chief and his apologists ratcheted up the nation’s fear level.

Intelligence and military experts, including General Richard Meyers, agree: The “war on terrorism” also was a flawed metaphor, because it's hard to wage a war on a tactic. When England suffered the recent series of attacks, police and security teams dismantled terrorist cells not with “war,” but – good police work. But Bush apologists think waging a war against a country, most of whose airspace we've controlled since 1991, and whose arsenal was already dismantled, is better.

The House of Prescott-Bush has been playing one side of a conflict against another for four generations. Former Republican, now Independent, historian Kevin Phillip’s American Dynasty tells the sordid tale of how the Friends of George (FOG) use our tax dollars for their adventures and profit. George W. Bush did have a “vision,” but not the kind his enablers think. Back in 1996 advisors including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and others talked up regime change in Iraq. Originally, the plan was not to democratize Iraq, but to install a Hashemite Kingdom. Bush pulled “freedom” and “democracy” out of sky because they sell. And let us not forget that even before election 2000, Bush advisors prepared a document arguing for regime change (The Project for a New American Century) in Sept. 2000, before Bush was even elected. Does anyone really believe that, with Halliburton contracted for 14 permanent bases in Iraq, we are there for anyone's freedom?

Finally, besides the real terrorists, the second biggest threat to America is unquestioning, permissive Bush-enablers and neo-McCarthyites who'd go “Yeah” if Bush even wink-winks the word “freedom” at them. There’s nothing about freedom in what Bush is doing. It's about abuse of power; misleading Congress; dismantling the Constitution; increasing big-government control over our private lives; and no-bid contracts. These knee-jerk pseudo-patriots would leave no “Oiligarch” behind, but scapegoat their fellow citizen-messengers. They should look in the mirror. The second coming of Bush is their fault.