Finally.

We now know why we’ve lost over 4150 troops, suffered 10ks of thousands of grievously wounded, murdered a million Iraqis, created refugees out of millions more, destabilized the Middle East, squandered our remaining moral standing in the world, and saddled our children’s children’s children with trillions of dollars of crushing debt.

The neoconmen must be apoplectic.

Iraq Signs Oil Deal With China Worth Up to $3 Billion
By ERICA GOODE and RIYADH MOHAMMED, NY Times
August 29, 2008

BAGHDAD — In the first major oil deal Iraq has made with a foreign country since 2003, the Iraqi government and the China National Petroleum Corporation have signed a contract in Beijing that could be worth up to $3 billion, Iraqi officials said Thursday.
[snip]

Impact of two terms of Bush’s management of the US Economy

The Bush Administration today issued a mind boggling record deficit projection of $482 billion for 2009. And that’s not even counting the off-budget estimated $80 billion being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the cost of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and homeowner bailout bill.

That’s a yearly deficit of over one-half trillion dollars, most of it borrowed from strategic competitors like China and Kuwait.

Skyrocketing energy costs are only beginning to ripple through the economy, showing up as higher prices in everything from food to tires to pharmaceuticals.

Home foreclosures are up a staggering 250% (in LA), unemployment is rising rapidly, and even successful businesses with great credit history can’t get a loan.

The entire financial system, ranging from Wall Street, investment houses, to regional banks is in a deep freeze driven by the fact that no one knows what anyone’s paper assets are worth. The economy is so bad that Bush has been forced to betray his conservative base by doing an about-face (legacy pun intended) on the aforementioned bailout. Ayn Rand must be rolling over in her capitalist grave.

Obviously, this is bad news for all Republicans running for office this year. Despite the tragedy of Iraq and the increasing threat of a reconstituted Al Qaeda and resurgent Taliban in Afganistan and Pakistan, we’re back to “It’s the economy, stupid” as the overriding political issue of the 2008 election. And it’s hitting the McSame Campaign like a Democratic mule kick to the gut.

McSame has admitted that the economy is not his strong suit, and that he’s trying to make up it for it by reading the book by the man who did as much as anyone to create the current crisis, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Kinda like asking a surgeon with a history of amputating the wrong limbs to take a little off the top.

McSame’s answer to the ruinous cost of energy— his flip-flop on off-shore drilling, is a classic case of bad timing, considering that oil billionaire (and Swift Boat funder) T-Boone Pickens is currently spending $58 million on an advertising campaign that states that we can’t drill our way out of the crisis.

Oh well, McSame can still run as Commander-in-Chief of the “surge.”

As for his snuggling buddy, George Junior, the latter can sleep easy knowing that once again he has bested his father, the previous deficit champ. By racking up the three largest deficits in US history, W. wins the gold, silver and bronze medals. Now it’s on to the Beijing Olympics, where he has volunteered to judge the synchronized waterboarding competition.

UPDATES

July 29 (Bloomberg) Merrill Lynch, the third-biggest U.S. securities firm, will sell $8.5 billion of stock and liquidate $30.6 billion of bonds at a fifth of their face value to shore up credit ratings imperiled by mortgage losses.

July 29 (Reuters ) Home Prices Fall in May, Erasing Four Years of Gains. ...S&P said the composite index of 10 metropolitan areas fell 1 percent in May, for a 16.9 percent year-over-year drop. Regions that saw some of the largest gains during the housing boom, such as Miami and Las Vegas, were the worst performing markets in May. Miami home prices fell 3.6 percent in May from April for a 28.3 percent annual drop. In Las Vegas, prices in May slumped 2.9 percent, for a 28.4 percent decline from a year earlier.

McClatchy News Services reports:

Cheney on Wednesday told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that “oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida.”

“We’re not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government.”

”Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply,” he added. “Yet Congress has said … ‘no’ to drilling off Florida.”

The claim was immediately repudiated by U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., an independent congressional report, industry experts and other observers, who said there is zero evidence that China is drilling in Cuban waters.

China doesn’t even hold a lease to drill offshore…

With both parties squabbling over what to do about rising gasoline prices, Democrats had seized on the remarks to bash the GOP, accusing it of spreading the Cuba-China rumor as a “scare tactic” to force Congress to lift a ban that prevents drilling along the Outer Continental Shelf and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Same old scare tactics Darth Cheney and his his oil buddies used to launch the Iraq war and drive up the price of oil 600% since 2002.

God how the dead men
Grin by the wall.
Watching the fun
Of the Victory Ball.

—Alfred Noyes

John and Cindy McCain, (who was not actually there but sent a clone), looking appropriately Hasidic at the Western Wall

Michael D. Shear, WaPo wrote:

JERUSALEM — What was supposed to be a somber visit by Sen. John McCain to the Western Wall this morning was marred by an unruly mob of Israeli photographers, police and tourists who threw punches at each other as they engulfed the Republican presidential candidate.

McCain was not hurt, but appeared rattled by the spasm of violence as he began a second day of meetings with high-level Israeli officials as part of a congressional trip to the Middle East and Europe.

The crush of people surrounded McCain (Ariz.) after he and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) briefly touched the towering wall at the base of the Temple Mount, where the Second Temple stood until its destruction nearly two thousand years ago. The senators placed notes in the cracks between the ancient stones, a common tradition. McCain declined through a spokesman to reveal what his note said.

We’re not going to tell you how we obtained the text of that note, suffice it to say that many Jews still consider the placing of such prayers to be desecration of the holy. McCain produced the note from his left suit coat pocket, and with a series of awkward looking jabs, he finally forced the note into a tiny crevice of the ancient wall.

Surprisingly, the note was not penned in McCain’s jerky scrawl, but appeared to be a first draft, printed off the computer in crisp, orderly, 18 point justified type. The note:

My Dear Western Wall Friends    Friend,

As you know, I’m the Republican nominee for president of the United States, and unlike my opponents Hillary Clinton, a woman, or Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, I’m ready from day one to lead the fight for what ever, for ever. But today I need your help, dear friend. (I feel like I’m talking to a wall , ha ha!) Some of my good Jewish friends say you are more than just a frakin’ stone wall venerated by a superstitious people. If this is so, I’d like you to know— not just how important it is to me that I’m the next president— but also the staggeringly huge sum of money I need to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, more importantly, to wage new wars against Syria and Iran, and probably North Korea.

Oh, remember that great song, Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran! Well it isn’t just a great song my friend, it’s my ticket to another historic war presidency! (Nothing changes an enemy’s behavior like bombs, my friend, and lots of them; remember I’ve personally dropped my share of bombs on evil men, women, and children, and I’d like to think you’re the kind of wall that would want to support my willingness to continue this important attack against the ever present threats to our national security.)

So my friend, I’m going to need to recruit some seriously enormous amounts of young cannon fodder, in order to wage more wars in the global fight against terrorism, in order to keep my country safe from our many enemies who hate our freedom, the radical Islamist extremist terrorists, the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Syrians, and our future enemies, the Chinese commies, the Russian commies, and, well, you know, anybody that won’t see things our way.

If you could grant me this grotesque amount of blood and capital, my friend, I will ensure that the war against a world full of terrorists is fought intelligently, with endless patience and resolve, using all the toxic instruments of national power and death I can get my hands on. And I will lead this fight with the understanding that to impinge more than we already have on the rights of our own citizens, or to further restrict the freedoms for which our nation stands will be done only as necessary, because to do so is to give terrorists the victory they seek.

In closing my prayer, let me say that John McCain believes that just as America must be prepared to meet and prevail against any adversary on every field of battle, we must also engage and prevail against them on the battleground of ideas. So if you have any great ideas, please pass them along to my advisers. In so doing, we can and must deprive terrorists of the converts they seek and teach the doctrine of hatred and despair.

Your old friend in the White House,

John McCain

PARAG KHANNA writes in “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony“. . .

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.

Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to collective security and prosperity? Indeed, improvements to America’s image may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little.

And that is so because, not only did we not “reconnect with the United Nations,” but we remain clueless about the growing urgency of establishing the working rudiments of a genuine federation of all nations, bringing about a global government.

The cruel irony is, the nation of independent states who surrendered their sovereignty to a federal government and thereby created the strongest, freest nation on planet earth, has shown neither the moral insight or leadership ability to engineer the same workable model on a global scale. Instead, we have a moronic cowboy who takes democracy to other nations through war and occupation, killing a million or so of the natives in the process.

Condoleezza Rice has said America has no “permanent enemies,” but it has no permanent friends either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial counter-movements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.

Yep; the hegemony wielded by Imperial America has done just as much to grow an “alternate world order” than anything Europe or China has done. Nor does it serve America’s interests to do anything to inhibit their growth. Perhaps when we find the collective wisdom to use the power jointly in an effort to insure peace throughout the world, we can begin solving the grievances smaller nations have concerning their place in the “alternate world order.”

The Geopolitical Marketplace

At best, America’s unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war “peace dividend” was never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership. So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing — in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three.

And we will continue to lose. . . unless we recognize we all sink or swim together. Each passing year brings new urgency to solve the increasingly complex problems our interdependent world brings; and these problems will persist as long as we continue to cling to the illusive notions of unlimited national sovereignty.

The growth of political power must continue to encompass larger and larger segments of the total of mankind, until the stage is set for the final consummation of political growth— the government of all mankind, by all mankind, and for all mankind.

Urantia [earth] will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men—mankind government. Internationalism—Leagues of Nations—can never bring permanent peace to mankind. World-wide confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from the League and declare war.

You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth.

As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create the essential nucleus of supernational power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind.

Peace will not come to Urantia until every so-called sovereign nation surrenders its power to make war into the hands of a representative government of all mankind. Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world. When all the peoples of Urantia create a world government, they have the right and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN; and when such a representative or democratic world power controls the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail but not until then. —The Urantia Book