Steve Clemons Documents War for Oil & the Cheney/Rumsfeld "War Paradigm"

Two important readings of the decision-making to go to war, the war for oil and the new "war paradigm" promoted by the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal. ...

Kevin Phillips goes into the war for oil aspects, after he shows that Bush et al. used the Xtian's belief in Armageddon to generate support for the invasion of Iraq.Phillips writes (via Washington Note)

. . .Such endeavors, once largely confined to the Gulf area, are now being extended to unstable oil regions in other parts of the world. Slowly but surely, the U.S. military is being converted into a global oil-protection service." How much do these tax-financed costs effectively add to the price of a gallon of gas or heating oil sold in the U.S. -- 25 cents, 40, 85?

In sum, the energy-related price of the administration's dishonesty and massive miscalculation in Iraq ought to be a central discussion point in this election year and again in 2008. The citizenry has to comprehend just how much is at stake and how the nation's future has been jeopardized.

For his part, Steve Clemons describes Wilkerson's portrayal of the utter disregard that Cheney/Rumsfeld have for anything resembling democratic procedures:

What is interesting is that Cheney, Libby, Addington, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, and others decided to shed the "rules of war" as well and to substitute this so-called "war paradigm" in America's military and intelligence programs.

This was a systemic change and explains why we see the absence of legal gravity in everything from the manner in which prisoners were handled in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo to the establishment of enormous and extra-legal domestic spying operations as in the warrantless wiretap case to the White House simply lying to or failing to inform the Congress of its activities -- as Peter Hoekstra, a Republican House member, has been telling the press.

Cheney promoted a monarchy that spat at constraints and the other branches of government. He promoted a pugnacious, fear-mongering nationalism whose clarion call to other nations was that they would either assimilate with the U.S. or be annihilated. He shed rules of engagement with and capture of enemies that have been part of the most sacredly held military ethic. And many were indeed tortured and died because of Cheney upending not only a legal environment in which accused and detained individuals had rights but a system of norms that had always served as ethical benchmarks for the bulk of our military forces.

Cheney and his team argued that the horror ot 9/11 terrorism and the uniqueness of America's place in the world allowed America to strip itself out of legal norms and routines that had been fashioned for centuries and which were part of America's sense of self.

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