The Agenda Setting Edge

On a MB (Message Board) on The Agonist - one of the best blogs in the business:

"I meant Trade Center Bombing 1993, first year of Clinton in office same as 2001 for Bush. I think Al Qaeda likes first term Presidents, a point of weakness before they get their bearings."


Perhaps that is the pattern and why the USA developed a pattern of inevitability on election day every two cycles - GW Bush should not have won the last two elections on merit alone. Greeting a President with a potentially life changing act of terror gives Al Qaeda an agenda setting edge. How can the incumbent ignore the taint? It is this understanding of the political behaviour of their enemy - that is a concern as it has created a sense of preordained destiny in the political narrative of "America" (I think George Bush calls the U.S.A. "America" over and over and it leaks into the media, but Bush is the President of the U.S.A. - and referring to it as "America" is just winding Hugo Chavas up).

It is too late to save the Bush Administration from itself. "America" will suffer terribly as a result, and economically, if you read between the lines.

Corpse Bridges

The war on terror and the 77,000 unrepaired bridges across the USA are coming from the same basic problem. Infrastructure maintenance in the case of the bridges, and attention to detail with diplomacy both require strategic forward planning that was immature but advancing in the Clinton years and stopped without reason during the early Bush years.

In this article, Bush vetoes Democrat efforts to spend an additional $US631 million on road maintenance due to several hundred billion being spent on an expensive wasteful war in Iraq. It seems evident that maintenance has been inadequate and not budgetting for the maintenance of infrastructure could only be explained by considering this man genuinely belives the end is neigh - at least it appears to underlie and drive the blind directionless war logic. I think I compared Bush to Nero some years back. Bush is burning Iraq while fiddling the budget? I see a book called American Nero - the name is copyrighted right here.

It is not a good situation (unless you are a bridge builder or consultant engineer).


Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said that domestic programmes, such as replacing ageing infrastructure, had been short-changed because of the billions being spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Since 9/11 we have taken our eye off the ball," he said.

The Democrats had proposed spending $631m (£309m) more on federal highway safety than Mr Bush budgeted for but he had threatened to veto the proposal.

William Wilkins, of Trip, a transport thinktank, estimated that $65bn would be needed to replace the ageing bridges.

Maybe its in the oil

The Sunni are threatening to imminently pull out of the Malaki Government if the Shiite death squads are not being actively disarmed by this time next week. This could make the government just a little too fragile to survive a no-confidence vote, if any other party was strong enough to risk taking power. The number of political assassinations make the prospect of being in government at this time less than delightful. The job probably pays well but the likelihood of surviving each week in office is increasingly grim. And the Sunni who are helping battle people being called "Al Qaeda" but who are actually Salafi Jihadis - and not strictly the same thing - want to carry on when that is over and get the Shiites in the South.

"If this is not civil war..." statements do not clarify what it is. It is a concerted effort by a number of parties to be in control of Iraq's vast oil wealth. It is also a question of loyalty and brotherhood. Can Iraq take possession of its jewel collectively without slaughtering each other?

Perhaps we should be saying "Look, this IS A CIVIL war with specific objectives. Now what we are going to be able to achieve by occupation is... and that means...."

Then perhaps the American troops would be able to improve matters by fulfilling a valuable role rather than just battling "terrorists" with no clear objective except to cause trouble for the Americans.

What is America?

Does not see that long ago that it was breaking away from England and going out on its own. Trouble is that it never stopped growing and worse than that it is not the only mega-economy making demands upon the world's resources but it is the one that wastes more. The scale of greed is beyond reason. The cult of greed is unreasonable upon the whole of humanity. We exist not as drifting seeds but well established trees. We require a recycling of natural resources so that we are not eating away the ground on which we stand.

A self sustaining America would change the fortunes of the world, no matter who controls Iraq.

Budget, American Style

Bush created a budget balancing act based on increased spending, mainly military, of three trillion dollars. A trillion is 1000 billions, using the American system of dealing with numbers that are simply too big. 1,000,000 is our familiar million. 1,000,000,000 (one billion) is becoming a more commonplace concept of the 21st Century - and already we are talking in "trillions" (one of which looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000).

The 3,000,000,000,000 or so America spent on its friutless effort in Iraq has probably been borrowed from Saudi princes who probably are forced to indirectly fund the food chain that disposses far too many and creates al Qaeda. Perhaps that is the underlying rationale behind the Bush invasion. It was not Daddy's record, but a deal we are not allowed to know about.

The Saudi royal family and its grip on power is funded by the centering of profit from oil extraction from the largest oil fields in the world through just a few hands who then appear to me to pitch America against their own enemies - the Shiite revolution that would render their power obsolete.

America stepped into a breach that appears to be more chaotic for the intervention. It has stepped into the breach of a war brewing on both sides of it. It needs to shore up Sunni support against its new spotlight of threat: Iran.

Whom is fooling whom?

American intervention is an effort to prolong the status quo, history tells us unfathomable power in too few hands is not a stable form of Government. It has resulted in revolution elsewhere, America and France are fine examples of a Republican success that followed revolutions.