The New American Empire [Paperback]

To begin with, the lunacy of declaring a "crusade" against a billion and a quarter Muslims seems to be taken right out of a book of horrors. Instead of isolating the small groups of religious fanatics around Osama bin Laden, the Bush administration chose instead to make heroes of them the very moment they attacked a Muslim country, Iraq, without any provocation whatsoever. In doing so, Bush became al-Qaeda's best recruiter and made Iraq an enlarged training camp for terrorists. Those are the facts that anybody not lost in wishful thinking can see all too clearly.

The book "The New American Empire" explains how such a self-defeating approach to Islamist terrorism came about and became U.S. foreign policy. -After Sept. 11, the "geniuses" around Bush and Cheney saw an opportunity to seize control of the entire oil-rich Middle East region. By linking Iraq to the attacks of 9/11, the American public would not object to an aggressive war, so they thought, if Americans could be made to believe that a military invasion of a Muslim country would make the U.S. more secure.

They designed a policy that they called the "Bush Doctrine", and embraced the myth that "The best defense is a good offense," in order to justify this mammoth departure from international law.

On September 20, 2002, the National Security Strategy document was published. It was nearly a verbatim reproduction of another document, published on September 2000 by the "Project for the New American Century", a group of Neo-conservative pro-Israel interventionists who had argued that the United States should not miss its chance to become a global empire and should assert the unilateral right to act as the world's policeman, especially in the Middle East.

Therefore, and this is important, the policy of turning the USA into an aggressor state did not come about after, but preceding the attacks of September 11, 2001. These devastating terrorist attacks were then used to implement a policy which had nothing to do with fighting terrorism but was rather a long-thought out plan to use American military power to subjugate the entire Middle East. Such a policy had been proposed previously, among others, by Ariel Sharon's Likud party in Israel.

The official story about attacking Iraq because this country supposedly had weapons of mass destruction or because it had links to al-Qaeda never made sense. And in fact, these rationales have been proven complete bogus. -What remains is the initial plan. -That's the reason why Bush does not have an exit strategy in Iraq: He intends to remain there forever and build 14 permanent military bases. In his eyes, Iraq is sort of an American colony and it will host permanent American military bases forever, for the greater benefit of American oil companies and for the greater benefit of the state of Israel.

That's the plain truth and this explains all the lies and the inconsistencies that the Bush administration has resorted to in order to sell this illegal and immoral war. And that's why the Bush administration will attack Iran, as soon as a new pretext can be created for doing so. That is also why the Bush administration, John Bolton at the forefront, does not have any use for the United Nations which has no military force of its own: The U.S. "is" the United Nations and the world has to be subservient to the new empire. But, you may ask, how many terrible crimes will the U.S. have to commit to implement such an imperial policy?

Sounds like a comedy or a comic movie.

Not in Bush's mind or in the Neocons' minds. That's their crazy plan that we see unfolding everyday under our very eyes.

Where do you fit in such a diabolic plan?

George W. Bush is an immature person who refuses to consider policy alternatives and possibilities and who is afraid of listening to dissenting opinions. Because he is weak, he surrounds himself with yes-men and yes-women who cater to his wishes and comfort him in his illusions. The problem is that most of these yes-men and yes-women are liars.

According to ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkinson, chief of staff of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, under Bush II, "some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security - including vital decisions about postwar Iraq - were made by a secretive, little-known [neocon] cabal," ..."not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy."

There we have it. A highly placed official from within the Bush administration compares George W. Bush to a dictator.

One of the consequences of George Bush's amateurish approach to government has been his ruinous foreign policy based on "fixed" intelligence and facts "around the policy" and supported by ultra-neo-conservative foundations, many of them with ties with the Israeli government. Today, the entire world knows that George W. Bush presided over a campaign to lie to Americans, traumatized by 9/11, and lead them into a war against Iraq. This is now well documented. Why and for whose interests? This remains to be ascertained.

On August 26, 2002, for example, Vice President Cheney started his provocative campaign to frame Iraq for a military attack when he said: "Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon", even though the Bush administration knew this was false. Iraq had no active nuclear weapons program. The "weapons of mass destruction" argument was a fabrication and this has been confirmed by both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Nevertheless, on September 8, 2002, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice repeated the lie:"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

And, when former national security advisor and former Air Force general Brent Scowcroft warned against invading Iraq under such false pretenses, in August 2002, he was castigated by none other than Condoleezza Rice herself.

With the fiasco of the war against Iraq, it's no wonder that Bush's approval rating is 38%. It should be 0% if everybody knew better.

This is one of those books that opens one's eyes. Because it is a synthesis, it provides a wide picture of what's going on without being too obtuse. The clear message that comes out of this book is that George W. Bush will go down in history as a national catastrophe.