War Cry

I've made several posts recently about how the public and the media seems to be making some progress in seeing BushCo for what they really are: lying, hypocritical, incompetent, self-serving scoundrels. However, I also believe them to be win-at-all-cost scoundrels and, as they see the writing on the wall for November and what they would be exposed to if the Democrats were to win either (or both!) houses, I suspect that they will become willing to do anything to win.

My big concern is that, out of this desperation, they'll resort to the same old bag of tired, but deadly, tricks. GWB's ratings were high when he was the self-declared "war president" and I'm afraid that they'll do something stupid vis-a-vis Iran in the hope of regaining some of their past glory. Having desperate people who hate government in charge of the government and having these incompetent war-mongers controlling the military spells disaster for all of us, I fear. I really hope that I'm wrong, that it's just PR talk, but these jokers scare me.

Glenn Greenwald has another great article today about the American Enterprise Institute which "sits in the innermost belly of the neoconservative beast". He reports that "The AEI played as significant a role as any other single entity in creating the justification for the invasion of Iraq, and it is currently agitating -- hard -- for a military attack on Iran". He cites numerous examples of war cries from the AEI's "Scholars and Fellows". I find myself saying: Surely, this can't be happening again, but then I realize that saner heads have been conspicuously absent from Washington DC during the last five years, and with President War-of-Choice in charge, any damned fool thing is possible.

The Washington Monthly noted previously that of all the lobbying and special interest groups, the AEI "is in a different league, because of the influence its scholars wield in Washington and their consequent power to turn research into government policy."

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Over the past five years, one would have been able very reliably to predict the actions and positions to be taken by the Bush administration by monitoring the publications and positions promoted by the AEI.

The AEI's current wish list features, at the very top, a military attack on Iran, followed by such subsidiary enabling measures as prosecuting journalists, strengthening domestic surveillance programs still further, and a reflexive defense of Israel as the highest imperative. To know what the last two, election-free years of a Bush administration would bring to this country in the absence of any Congressional checks, one should listen to the truly extremist desires of the AEI.