Plessner Chronicle Blog

The George W. Bush plan for ending his war on Iraq is becoming increasingly clear. The New York Times, in an article by David E. Sanger, reports that “the Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisors now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited.”

By pushing any evaluation beyond the times established by Congress in the recent bills which the president has vetoed or promised to veto, the president is creating a situation in which a much longer commitment of front line troops will be required.

This will cause American soldiers and Marines patrolling the treacherous streets of Baghdad to remain well into late 2008. This will require longer deployments of more troops — regular, National Guard and Reserves — than ever before, causing more deaths and casualties to our troops in the field.

It will also allow George W. Bush to force the decision to withdraw from Iraq on the next president, presumably a Democrat. That way the president and future Republican politicians can blame Democrats for “losing” the war in Iraq. The president then can salvage some shred of his so-called legacy.

It won’t matter much to the president or his fellow Republican politicians that as many as 1,000 additional military lives will be lost because of his feckless leadership, but it will cause additional havoc to thousands of American service men and women, their families and the many thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians caught up in this horrific war, brought to them by an American Republican administration.

Every American citizen should remember that — today, tomorrow and in coming elections.

(First installment exposing the neo-conservative conspiracy to subvert American foreign and defense policy)April 20, 2007 – It’s beginning to feel like a recurring nightmare — a bad dream that keeps coming back over and over again. The three neo-conservative horsemen of the Apocalypse — Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and John Bolton — are back on television telling us how to rule the world. And what’s even more disturbing is that our president and vice president depend on these people for advice!

PAUL WOLFOWITZ

Paul Wolfowitz was the Assistant Secretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld. Wolfowitz is the one who refined the rationale for the war on Iraq. A key member of the Project for the New American Century, Wolfowitz is perhaps the most important neo-conservative after Dick Cheney.Among other deceptions in the run up to the war, Wolfowitz refused to answer Senators’ questions about Bush administration plans for the invasion of Iraq. He then refused to tell the Senate what the war would cost before it was stampeded into voting to support the war. Wolfowitz is a leading neo-conservative intellectual. He has been involved at every point in their subversion of American foreign and defense policy that has brought the United States to its current status of distrust and disrespect in the world.

As Assistant Secretary of Defense under the hapless Rumsfeld, one of Wolfowitz’s key roles seems to have been to keep generals and experts in post-war planning out of the preparation for the war. Read the rest of this entry »

   Right-wing talk show hosts should be losing sleep over the firing of Don Imus, one of America’s most popular, if modestly talented, morning radio personalities.

   I listen to as many of the talk radio big names as my hours on the freeway and my capacity for torture permit. I believe it my patriotic duty to tell my readers about the virulent stream of hate — almost exclusively aimed at liberals, illegal immigrants and sex offenders — that those guys put out.

   I believe that talk show loudmouths do have something to worry about. And it’s about time. Right wing talk radio thrived over a period when conservative, social values, pro-imperialism issues were at their height in the United States.
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A recent commentary on the Los Angeles Times editorial page was headlined, “What’s not to like about Libertarianism?” You only have to look at the world around you to know the answer. Plenty!

Republicans have been arguing about why they lost so badly in the November 2006 election and a lot of those Republicans — from leaders to grass-roots voters — are blaming the party’s abandonment of the philosophy of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater. Smaller government and lower taxes are their mantra.

But the truth may well lie elsewhere. The party of Reagan and Goldwater, and before them of Eisenhower and Taft, has been taken over by Libertarians masquerading as Republicans. And our nation is now suffering the consequences of that subversion.

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