How Dangerous Is NATO's Economic Purpose?

by Gaius Publius

I'm going to break the rule normally applied when one asks a question in a title ... by answering it immediately. Using NATO for economic purposes is very dangerous indeed, since it could, and perhaps will, lead to war.

The stated purpose of NATO is "defense," yet it seems to exist for a different purpose — (a) to bring money into the coffers of U.S. corporations by strangling European trade with Russia as an economic competitor to the U.S., and (b) to guarantee billions of dollars in armament sales for U.S. weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon, Grumman and Lockheed.

To expand that point, let's examine the excellent brief interview with economist Michael Hudson above (h/t Naked Capitalism). We start where the interview starts, with a recent speech by Barack Obama re-emphasizing the importance of NATO for U.S. policy-makers.

Obama said (my emphasis everywhere):

"In this challenging moment, I want to take this opportunity to state clearly what will never change. And that is the unwavering commitment of the United States to the security and defense of Europe, to our transatlantic relationship, to our commitment to our common defense. ... The United States has increased our presence here in Europe. NATO is as strong, as nimble, and as ready as ever."

Since 2014, people have been calling this new NATO posture a "reset," a reformulation of the alliance in a way that "assumes Russia is not [and will not be] a partner," according to Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove. Guess for yourself what that makes Russia, vis-à-vis NATO? But don't take too much time; the Russians have already figured it out.

Keep in mind that NATO is America's army in Europe, to be used as America chooses — which gives most ordinary Americans the kind of tingle that bypasses thought — yet NATO wouldn't exist without its member nations. Keep that last in mind as you listen to what Michael Hudson says.

Defense? Against What?

First, from the transcript, Hudson on the idea that NATO's purpose is defense:

One of Russia’s leading military strategists said, here’s what the problem is: NATO wants to move bombers and atomic weapons right up to the border of Russia. That means that if they launch a missile over us, we have only a few seconds to retaliate. President Putin a little while ago had given a speech saying that Russia doesn’t really have a land army. In fact, today, no country in the world – in the Northern Hemisphere, at least – has a land army that can invade anywhere.

Try to imagine America being invaded by Canada, or by Mexico on its borders. You can’t imagine it. Impossible. No democracy can afford a land army anymore because the costs are so high that the costs of mounting a land war will just impoverish the economy.

As a matter of fact, what NATO is trying to do is to goad Russia into building up an army so the US can undercut its economy by diverting more and more resources away from the economy towards the military. Russia’s not falling for it. Putin said that Russia has no intention of mounting a land army. It is unthinkable that it could even want to invade the Baltics or Poland.

Putin is relying on his nuclear arsenal for Russia's defense rather than pouring money into building the kind of army that can take on NATO. If so, what is NATO defending Europe against?

Europeans Want Trade with Russia, Not Defense Against Them

Which brings us to the real purpose of NATO, to force European purchasers — not just of arms, but of oil and gas, not to mention consumer products — to buy from the U.S. instead of from Russia. Hudson:

Europe is saying, well we really don’t need defense. We’d rather have an economic relationship with Russia. Especially the Germans say they don’t want the sanctions. The Italians say they don’t want the sanctions. The Americans say, we don’t want you to make money off Russia. Buy from us, not from Russia. Buy your agricultural goods and your other goods from us, or at least from countries in the dollar orbit, not from the Russian orbit.

That, essentially, is what Obama meant by the reset. It meant a new Cold War. But the essence of this new Cold War is to fight in the new way, which is a financial war. The military are now only a catalyst for the financial warfare by the United States.

We shouldn't lose sight of the arms trade and its value to the multi-billion-dollar U.S. armament industry:

[O]ne of the points made at the NATO meetings was NATO urged countries not to rely on Russian weaponry. There was an insistence by Obama that the NATO countries spend 2 percent of their GDP on NATO, on arms, mainly by buying arms from American military manufacturers, Raytheon, Boeing and the others.

Now, look at what’s happening in Europe. It’s not even growing 2 percent, because of the austerity that’s being imposed on it. So 2 percent is the entire annual economic growth in Europe. This large amount has to be spent on American arms. So it turns out that this sabre-rattling to Russia is a means of obliging the European countries to pay the United States arms manufacturers for goods, and to basically hold Europe up for ransom, saying if you don’t be a part of this, we’re not going to defend you.

According to an early 2000s study at Stanford University:

The three largest defense companies in the world are all United States companies. With a combined total revenue in 2001 of $100 billion and employing 400,000 people, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing are three powerhouses of American business.[i] Their combined revenues account for 1% of the United States' $10 trillion GDP.[ii] Each company is on each of the Fortune lists: America’s Most Admired Companies, Global Most Admired Companies, Fortune 500 and Global 500.[iii] Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing are also the three top arms-producing companies in the world.

As part of this "pivot" the U.S. has gotten the government of Poland to place a Patriot missile installation within its borders:

Poland to buy US Patriot missiles amid Russia tensions

President Bronislaw Komorowski said Poland would start talks with the US to finalise the multibillion contract.

The move follows reports that Russia has deployed missiles in its exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland.

You can read the rest — it's very U.S. friendly. But note, first, that the response is to a Russian missile deployment within its own borders, not outside of them, and second, this "multibillion" dollar contract will go entirely to the corporations, like Raytheon, that produce and support the Patriot missile.

And not to put too fine a point on it: "Poland also plans to buy helicopters, submarines and armoured personnel carriers." Sounds like money to me.

What Does Russia Want? What Will We End Up With?

Finally, take note of this exchange from the interview:

DESVARIEUX: Michael, what about on the Russian side? There are interests that are encouraging this reset?

HUDSON: They [the Russians] had hoped that the reset would mean a winding down of military spending. Russia and almost every country would like to use more of its resources for the domestic economy, not for military overhead. America is trying to force Russia to spend more on overhead as part of its economic warfare with Russia.

This was Brzezinski’s plan in Afghanistan, you know, under the Carter administration. The idea was that if you could force Russia to pay more for its military to defend Afghanistan, then its economy would buckle and discontent would spread. This is the essence of American strategy: to spread chaos. Then the Americans can come in and promote nationalist and other localist breakups, and try to break up Russia just as America is trying to push a breakup of China as a long-term strategy.

And:

There’s no way that this cannot backfire on the United States.

He's right. There's no way at all this cannot backfire. In blood.

There's No Need for NATO

The good news is that the Germans and French may not go along with it. Early days yet, but still. The solution, of course, is simple. As Hudson put it, "Essentially to dissolve NATO, which France has been pushing now for many years. There’s no need for NATO now that there’s no threat of any military invasion anymore."

Nor should we be blind to that lack of need, despite the guilty testosterone tingle that having a trans-European army at our beck and call offers us.

What Would Hillary Do?

Trouble is, the news these days is filled with items like this, from The Guardian:

Potential Hillary Clinton Pentagon chief calls for increased action against Isis

A security specialist tipped as the potential defence secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration has set out an agenda that confidently asserts American leadership in the world, backed by strong military force.

Michèle Flournoy, cofounder and chief executive of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) thinktank, launched a report on Monday that some in Washington might be tempted to mischievously characterise as an 18-page job application....

The 55-year-old told the Guardian on Monday: “I don’t want to speak for her, but what I will say is I think the policies she’s already articulated in a series of speeches and in her record as secretary of state suggest that she understands the importance of American leadership in the world, that she is in the bipartisan consensus that has supported a smart approach to US engagement as the best way to protect our interests and also underwrite the global order. ...

The CNAS published its report, Extending American Power[pdf], after a yearlong series of dinner discussions with experts and ex-officials co-chaired by Robert Kagan [a major Bush-era proponent of the Iraq War], who sits on the secretary of state’s foreign affairs policy board, and James Rubin, who was assistant secretary of state and chief spokesman for the state department during the Bill Clinton administration. Its conclusions are endorsed by Flournoy and others.

In a tantalising glimpse of a possible Hillary Clinton foreign policy agenda, the report recommends increased US military action against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

If you go to that report (pdf) and search on "NATO" you find sections like these, regarding Europe:

Many policymakers tend to forget the centrality of the transatlantic world, strategically, politically, and economically, because for so long the story in Europe had been one of remarkable success. Through the Cold War and then in the two decades that followed the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Europe has been a region of expanding peace and security, growing prosperity, and increasing democracy.

To a greater extent than many realize, this success is being threatened now. Strategically it is threatened by growing Russian ambition and willingness to use force, including the invasion of neighboring countries. It is also threatened by British strategic retrenchment, French economic weakness, and historic German strategic ambivalence in the security sphere.

On NATO specifically from just the introduction:

Underwrite credible security guarantees to NATO allies on the frontlines with Russia. Given recent Russian behavior, it is no longer possible to ignore the possible challenge to NATO countries that border Russia. The Baltics in particular are vulnerable to both direct attack and the more complicated “hybrid” warfare that Russia has displayed in Ukraine. To provide reassurance to U.S. allies and also to deter Russian efforts to destabilize these nations, it is necessary to build upon the European Reassurance Initiative and establish a more robust U.S. force presence in appropriate central and eastern Europe countries, which should include a mix of permanently stationed forces, rotationally deployed forces, prepositioned equipment, access arrangements and a more robust schedule of military training and exercises. Such measures should not be seen as inconsistent with international law. On the contrary, they should be regarded as a fully justified, appropriate, and proportionate response to Russia’s violation of the purpose of the NATO-Russia Founding Act. The United States should also work with both NATO and the EU to counter Russian influence-peddling and subversion using corruption and illegal financial manipulation.

And this telling paragraph about the true economic goal of the NATO alliance (note the apparent Freudian typo):

Strengthen and modernize economic and resource cooperation. For all of Europe, west, east, and south, it is essential to pursue greater transatlantic economic integration and cooperation. Europe’s continuing energy dependence on Russia is a particular vulnerability. It will take time to reduce that independence [sic, but quite a tell], but that is all the more reason serious efforts should begin now.

"Reduce that [European] independence" indeed.

Again, building NATO forces outside the U.S. and positioned in countries on Russia's borders, as a response to Russia's internal deployment of its own forces. All to establish American "leadership" and support its corporations' lust for more money. (The section I quoted just above pivots smoothly to making the case for TTIP, the TTP of the Atlantic.)

Kiss Kiss Kill Kill

I get the argument against Trump; I really do. It's just that I don't want Clinton anywhere near U.S. foreign policy.

Kiss kiss, kill kill. They've actually been friends for a very long time.

No, I really don't. Maybe the French, with their resistance to NATO, can save us one more time.

GP
 

Have You Ever Peed On Anyone? I Mean On Anyone You Dislike

Yorba Linda in Orange County isn't that far from where I live in L.A. It takes an hour and 5 minutes down the 5 Freeway passed Downey, Norwalk and Buena Park to the 91 just before Anaheim and then up the 90 for a few minutes. But it's not an area I would ever want to go to and the Nixon Library's never high on my list of must-see attractions. A decade or two ago Roland schlepped me there. I so did not want to go; unlike him, my recollections of Nixon are not academic and historical. I left the country and lived abroad for nearly 7 years after he was elected. I was still feeling the hate. But I agreed to go so I could pee on his grave. I didn't tell Roland that. When we got there I kind of liked the museum but when I saw the grave, there were too many people around for me to whip it out and pee. So I spit instead. Roland freaked out and ran away. He probably would have been angrier if I had pissed on the grave.

Am I the only one who wanted to pee on Nixon's grave? Or who spat on it? Maybe. But Skip Kaltenheuser had something even cooler in mind a bit earlier-- peeing on the living war criminal Henry Kissinger. I'm sure that would have caused a fuss. "Henry the K is back," he recently wrote for Ozy. "Not hanging with Jill St. John but holding hands with Hillary. A mentor. My guilt by association resurfaces, decades after I hung out with him."

It’s 1980 and here I am at F. Scott’s, a hip, upper-crust bar in Georgetown with an art deco motif. Looks like Reagan will win the White House. Winds of change are coming, particularly at über-liberal programs such as Action (Peace Corps combined with VISTA), where I’m in the legal office.

Some occasion has brought my whole office, still wearing suits, to the bar for drinks. I’m with a girlfriend who makes her bread as a torch singer of Cole Porter and George Gershwin standards. She sings in a private nightclub called the Gaslight Club, where old-hand lobbyist types hang out. Rumors of deals cut during card games. The Gaslight’s Gay ’90s motif was legendary in the heyday of LBJ-- dark rooms worlds from the see-me-now crowd of the brightly lit F. Scott’s.

I’m feeling no pain. Drinking rock ’em, sock ’em ice cream drinks, the sweet girlie kind that really sneak up on a man. Now I’m in the john, whistling a merry tune and thinking what a bright boy am I, ready to whiz in one of those marvelous marble stalls that stick out from the wall like angel wings, the urinal packed with ice like a weird snow cone.

As I unzip, a man slips into the stall to my right. Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger. Always loathed him. I had a lady pal whose good friend was the widow of a Chilean minister under Allende. The former minister, a foe of Pinochet and an opponent of foreign investment in Chile, was blown up while driving along Washington’s Embassy Row. My friend despises all things Kissinger, who helped usher in Pinochet’s dictatorship.

A great conundrum faces me. I have a chance to symbolically avenge the widow, and so many more, and thrill my friend. All I need to do is power-wash Kissinger’s shiny black left wing tip. With any luck, collateral damage to his left ankle. Easy to act very drunk, being very drunk, and make profound apologies about the accident.

A sudden wobbling of my knees. I know that, whether or not he believes me, Kissinger can get me good. Even if Reagan wasn’t coming to town. Knows people.

But the Peace Prize, what a travesty! Pinochet, murderous jerk. Cambodia. Nixon’s secret plan to end-- prolong!-- the Vietnam War. Bombing as a campaign strategy. Thumbs-up to massacres in East Timor. My thoughts race. How would the office react? Who cares, I can dine out for years on being the guy who was kicked out of F. Scott’s for pissing on Kissinger’s shoe.

I hold back. Realpolitik pressure builds like a fire hydrant. I so need to pee. I so want to pee on Kissinger’s shoe. I size up the trajectory, ready my aim …

And I stall out. My gaze returns to the ice in my urinal. Then I hear him grunt and zip and he’s finished. With a glance my way and a nod, he steps back. I nod too, but in shame. Does he know how close he came? Does he ever even consider the possibility? Opportunity knocks. I hesitate. Opportunity moves on. I face my moment of truth-- and clutch like a Jayhawk in the Final Four. Pissing on his grave wouldn’t be the same. Anyone can, under cover of darkness.

I live haunted by this specter, praying for opportunity’s redemptive knock.

Fair warning, Henry. Wear your storm rubbers.

I was thinking... if you don't do something-- get arrested, spit on their grave, pee on their foot, something... are you just as guilty as your country's leaders? I'm trying to get Skip to start writing for DWT. What do you think?

Republican Strategists Are Beginning To Realize Hillary Isn't Being Embraced By Democratic Voters

Last week, writing for The Intercept, Lee Fang reported that the Clinton campaign is stuffed full of advisors and fundraisers who were lobbyists working to kill Obamacare and Dodd-Frank. That's the Clinton Machine, her team and her allies-- corrupt lobbyists working against progressive values on every level.

Hillary Clinton is campaigning as a guardian of President Barack Obama’s progressive policy accomplishments. In recent weeks, she has called the Affordable Care Act “one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic Party, and of our country,” and promised that she is “going to defend Dodd-Frank” and “defend President Obama for taking on Wall Street.”

Meanwhile, however, Clinton’s campaign has been relying on a team of strategists and fundraisers, many of whom spent much of the last seven years as consultants or lobbyists for business interests working to obstruct Obama’s agenda in those two areas.

Consultants associated with the Dewey Square Group, a lobbying firm that has been retained by business interests to defeat a variety of progressive reforms, are playing a major role in the Clinton campaign. Charles Baker III, the co-founder of Dewey, is a senior strategist and the campaign’s chief administrative officer. Michael Whouley, another Dewey co-founder, played an early role in advising Clinton’s plan for the current campaign by convening some of the very first strategy sessions. Senior Dewey officials Jill Alper and Minyon Moore are also close advisers and fundraisers for Clinton, while at least four other Clinton officials have worked at Dewey within the last four years. In addition, disclosures show that Clinton’s Super PACs Priorities USA Action and Correct the Record have also paid Dewey Square Group for a variety of services in this election.

Dewey, for instance, worked on behalf of the health insurance industry during the health reform debate, specifically to block the changes to Medicare Advantage that were critical for financing the Affordable Care Act. Medicare Advantage, which allows Medicare beneficiaries to use plans administered by private insurers, had long served as a cash cow for the health insurance industry. By one estimate, insurance companies over-billed the government by nearly $70 billion in improper payments over just a five year period. Dewey, which had been tapped to by health insurers to block cuts from the program starting in 2007, continued during the Obama era to lobby to protect Medicare Advantage, even as such reforms became a major part of how Democrats and the Obama administration sought to finance the Affordable Care Act.

...On financial reform, Clinton has similarly tied herself to Obama’s legacy. Speaking with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last month, Clinton asserted that on Dodd-Frank, Obama’s financial reform legislation, she is one of the “many Democrats” who are “fighting to prevent it from being turned back.”

Clinton’s inner circle, however, has lobbied to help obstruct and roll back many of Dodd-Frank’s signature reforms.

The Benenson Strategy Group, the consulting firm run by Joel Benenson, now serving as the Clinton campaign’s chief pollster and strategist, was retained by the Financial Services Forum, a lobbying group for Wall Street interests such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Lobbying records show the Financial Services Forum has worked over the years to weaken a variety of Dodd-Frank reforms. In 2013, the Financial Services Forum paid Benenson’s firm $273,459 while it was lobbying on a number of rules that were mandated by Dodd-Frank, including capital requirements designed to prevent another financial crisis. Danny Franklin, a partner with the Benenson Stategy Group, wrote to The Intercept to say the Financial Services Forum is not currently a client of his firm, but declined to comment any further.

  Last month, Benenson convened a conference call with reporters to “deride Bernie Sanders for airing an ad that criticized Wall Street firms and the politicians who accept their donations,” according to a report from International Business Times. As IBTimes reported, Benenson has also represented JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, among other corporate clients.

...Speaking to The Hill last year, Tony Podesta said that unlike President Obama, who instituted a ban on registered lobbyists in his administration, K Street will find a more welcome home in a Clinton White House.

“I think Hillary Clinton will be the next nominee and probably be the next president, but whomever the next president is will not maintain the lobbying ban,” he predicted. “It was a good applause line for Obama, but it didn’t seem to make much sense for policy.”

Similarly, when we look at which members of Congress voted against the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (Dodd-Frank) and against the Affordable Care Act, many are Clinton surrogates or on her Leadership Teams. Most the the 34 conservative Democrats who crossed the aisle and voted with the Republicans against the Affordable Care Act were subsequently defeated for reelection by Democratic base voters who refused to turn out and vote for them in the 2010 midterms, 7 months after the Obamacare debate. We referred to it as the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse, since nearly the entire Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- a big part the Hillary support team-- was wiped out in one fell swoop. Only 3 are still in Congress-- Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Stephen Lynch (MA). Lynch is on the Clinton Massachusetts Leadership Team and several of the defeated Blue Dogs-- like John Tanner and Lincoln Davis of Tennessee-- have also endorsed her. 27 Democrats voted against Dodd Frank. The only ones still in Congress are Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Marcy Kaptur (OH), Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR) and Pete Visclosky (IN). Cuellar, Kirkpatrick and Schrader are on Clinton Leadership teams in their states.

When her close relationship with Establishment war criminal Henry Kissinger was exposed on national TV during last Thursday's debate-- followed by her public defense of the reviled figure-- many Democrats began to see for the first time what they are being asked to support. As David Corn reported for Mother Jones after the debate, the Clintons and Kissingers are close personal friends and spend summer holidays together in a Dominican beachfront villa owned by Oscar de la Renta. Watch the video of the Kissinger exchange at the top of the post.

What Clinton did not mention was that her bond with Kissinger was personal as well as professional, as she and her husband have for years regularly spent their winter holidays with Kissinger and his wife, Nancy, at the beachfront villa of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, who died in 2014, and his wife, Annette, in the Dominican Republic.

Oscar de la Renta, Hillary and war criminal Henry Kissinger

This campaign tussle over Kissinger began a week earlier, at a previous debate, when Clinton, looking to boost her résumé, said, "I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time. So I have an idea about what it's going to take to make our government work more efficiently." A few days later, Bill Clinton, while campaigning for his wife in New Hampshire, told a crowd of her supporters, "Henry Kissinger, of all people, said she ran the State Department better and got more out of the personnel at the State Department than any secretary of state in decades, and it's true." His audience of Democrats clapped loudly in response.

It was odd that the Clintons, locked in a fierce fight to win Democratic votes, would name-check a fellow who for decades has been criticized-- and even derided as a war criminal-- by liberals. Bill and Hillary Clinton themselves opposed the Vietnam War that Nixon and Kissinger inherited and continued. Hillary Clinton was a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Nixon, and one of the articles of impeachment drafted by the staff (but which was not approved) cited Nixon for covering up his secret bombing of Cambodia. In the years since then, information has emerged showing that Kissinger's underhanded and covert diplomacy led to brutal massacres around the globe, including in Chile, Argentina, East Timor, and Bangladesh.

With all this history, it was curious that in 2014, Clinton wrote a fawning review of Kissinger's latest book and observed, "America, he reminds us, succeeds by standing up for our values, not shirking them, and leads by engaging peoples and societies, the sources of legitimacy, not governments alone." In that article, she called Kissinger, who had been a practitioner of a bloody foreign-policy realpolitik, "surprisingly idealistic."

This Clinton lovefest with Kissinger is not new. And it is not simply a product of professional courtesy or solidarity among former secretaries of state, who, after all, are part of a small club. There is also a strong social connection between the Clintons and the Kissingers. They pal around together. On June 3, 2013, Hillary Clinton presented an award to de la Renta, a good friend who for years had provided her dresses and fashion advice, and then the two of them hopped over to a 90th birthday party for Kissinger. In fact, the schedule of the award ceremony had been shifted to allow Clinton and de la Renta to make it to the Kissinger bash. (Secretary of State John Kerry also attended the party.) The Kissingers and the de la Rentas were longtime buddies. Kissinger wrote one of his recent books while staying at de la Rentas' mansion in the Dominican Republic and dedicated the book to the fashion designer and his wife.

...When awarding herself the Kissinger seal of approval to bolster her standing as a competent diplomat and government official, Hillary Clinton has not referred to the annual hobnobbing at the de la Renta villa. So when Sanders criticized Clinton for playing the Kissinger card-- "not my kind of guy," he declared-- whether he realized it or not, he was hitting very close to home.

What did he teach her? "The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern." Or was it this? "It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination." Or was this Kissinger quote where she got her attitude? "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." Or maybe he taught her how much money she could put in her pocket by giving speeches to groups eager to bribe her.

Although low-info Democrats still back Clinton to a great extent-- she is still ahead of Bernie in virtually all polls-- the margins are rapidly shrinking and her campaign is beginning to disintegrate. Republicans are now starting to prepare for what seemed out of the question just a few months ago-- that they will be facing Bernie Sanders, not the fatally flawed Clinton they had hoped for, in November. Friday BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski reported that a Republican opposition research firm, America Rising, has already begun compiling an opposition book on Bernie. In fact, they've already released their first video attempting to smear him:

They Walk Among You... And By "They," We Mean War Criminals

Ever hear of Kim Howells? His dad was a Communist lorry driver and young Kim was a good Welsh union man and a Communist himself, before joining the Labour Party in 1982. Seven years later he was elected to the House of Commons and gradually distanced himself from his communist roots, finally suggesting in 1996 that the word "socialism" ought to be "humanely phased out" of anything to do with the Labour Party. Pleased as punch, Tony Blair gave him a series of junior ministerial positions starting the following year, until, in 2005, Blair made him Minister of State for the Middle East in the Foreign Office. In a post at CounterPunch yesterday, From Pol Pot to ISIS: the Blood Never Dried, John Pilger happened to mention Howells.

It is 23 years since a holocaust enveloped Iraq, immediately after the first Gulf War, when the US and Britain hijacked the United Nations Security Council and imposed punitive "sanctions" on the Iraqi population-- ironically, reinforcing the domestic authority of Saddam Hussein. It was like a medieval siege. Almost everything that sustained a modern state was, in the jargon, "blocked"-- from chlorine for making the water supply safe to school pencils, parts for X-ray machines, common painkillers and drugs to combat previously unknown cancers carried in the dust from the southern battlefields contaminated with Depleted Uranium. Just before Christmas 1999, the Department of Trade and Industry in London restricted the export of vaccines meant to protect Iraqi children against diphtheria and yellow fever. Kim Howells, parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Blair government, explained why. "The children’s vaccines," he said, "were capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction."

Pinger had nothing more to say about Howells in his essay. In fact, there were far worse villains than Howells sprinkled throughout-- Tony Blair himself, of course, and another Foreign Office minister responsible for Iraq under Blair, Peter Hain (lately Baron Hain), currently working as a propagandist embedded at The Guardian, striving hard on behalf of the establishment at character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn. But, in 2009, the former Communist Howells was knighted and is now known as the Right Honourable Kim Howells. Two years after that he was to receive an Honorary Doctorate but made some derogatory statements, publicly, about Libyan students studying in the U.K. being security risks. He eventually succumbed to widespread student pressure to withdraw from the ceremony. As far as I can find, that's the only "punishment" that particular little war criminal ever received.

Of course, we don't have to hunt up obscure British politicians to find criminals and crooks-- Hains was caught stealing £103,156 before he was made a Baron-- who escaped punishment. We have Cheney. We have Bush. Even the worst war criminal of all, Henry Kissinger, still walks among us. In fact, Pinger ends his essay with this paragraph:

More than 40 years ago, the Nixon-Kissinger bombing of Cambodia unleashed a torrent of suffering from which that country has never recovered. The same is true of the Blair-Bush crime in Iraq, and the Nato and "coalition" crimes in Libya and Syria. With impeccable timing, Henry Kissinger’s latest self-serving tome has been released with its satirical title, World Order. In one fawning review, Kissinger is described as a "key shaper of a world order that remained stable for a quarter of a century." Tell that to the people of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Chile, East Timor and all the other victims of his "statecraft."  Only when "we" recognise the war criminals in our midst and stop denying ourselves the truth will the blood begin to dry.

That these politicians go unpunished for their monstrous crimes against humanity, is outright encouragement for deranged sociopaths like, for example, Ted Cruz. Bad for America. Bad for humanity. But for the world.

"There are a number of people who will never forgive [Barack Obama] for being half-black" (the late Stanley Hoffmann)

Plus some thoughts on Zbig Brzezinski, Henry the K,
the brothers Kennedy, and some fellow Frenchies


Harvard Prof. Stanley Hoffmann speaking on European-American relations at the Salzburg Global Seminar in 1984

by Ken

The New York Review of Books is remembering a frequent contributor, the late Stanley Hoffmann, longtime professor of international relations at Harvard. who died on September 13, with online publication of a "conversation" drawn from a never-published December 2011 interview with Michal Matlak ("a PhD student in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and a regular contributor to the Polish magazine Liberal Culture").

I've plucked out a few excerpts from those excerpts.


A COUPLE OF HARVARD DEPARTMENTAL COLLEAGUES:
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI AND HENRY KISSINGER

About Brzezinski, and the radical change he underwent, Hoffmann recalled:

He was always fascinated by and worried about the Soviet Union and nothing else. I liked him very much. But then he was a great supporter of the Vietnam War which I thought was a disaster and unwinnable. Now he has completely changed. I don’t think he remembers that he was such a supporter of the war. I was quite surprised at a conference which took place in Berlin about ten years ago to hear Zbig explaining that what the US did in Vietnam was a form of colonialism. He would never have said that earlier. In other words he was wise enough to change his mind. We are exactly the same age.

Zbig is a complicated guy. There was this permanent battle that went on between Zbig, representing the hard line on Russia, and Cyrus Vance, who wanted more accommodation, more flexibility. And the relations between the two of them were just awful. The story of my department was, for years, the battle between Zbigniew and Henry Kissinger. The difference has been that Kissinger never took Zbigniew seriously, and Zbigniew could not tolerate Henry, because Henry was there always before Zbig in occupying the high positions.

As for Henry the K, Hoffmann said: "I could write a book on Henry, which I will not. Everything is very complicated with Mr. Kissinger."

He did comment on something Kissinger "was very good at":

There was very recently, in The New York Times, a long front-page review by him of a new and very long biography of George Kennan. And what I found remarkable about Henry’s article was that it said nothing. I went through all of it and you don’t know at the end what he really thought. And he was very good at that.

ABOUT THE BROTHERS KENNEDY

After some conversation about "politicians who are able to combine moral ends with Realpolitik, Hoffmann was asked about another possible "successful idealist."

You knew John F. Kennedy. Did he belong to the same group of successful idealists?

Although I knew Kennedy a little, I did not like him, for purely personal reasons. He was very much an opportunist, very intelligent. I knew all three of the Kennedys. The youngest one, Teddy, who died about three years ago, was my student. He was not a genius, but he was a good person. He spent much of his time as a member of the Senate helping people get visas to the United States. He saved people. And he never really thought much about himself, because he didn’t think he was quite smart enough to reach the heights. But I liked him. The other two, Bobby and John Kennedy, struck me as hard-nosed, calculating machines.

So you don’t see in their politics a strong connection to human rights?

I think that the one who developed [this connection]—just before he was murdered—was Bobby Kennedy. He started as an aide of [Republican Senator Joe] McCarthy, so he travelled a great deal, so to speak. John F. Kennedy, I couldn’t quite figure him out. In any case his assassination was a disaster, because his successor, LBJ, did some very good things in some areas relating to human rights, but foreign policy was not his domain. But who are we to pass judgment on everybody?

"FOR THE TIME BEING AMERICA IS UNGOVERNABLE"

About President Obama, Hoffmann expressed admiration for his two books, saying, "He writes well and he is a very good speaker."

[Y]ou have lots of people, including Newt Gingrich and some others, who still wonder whether Obama is really an American. It requires a certain amount of chutzpah for somebody like Obama to be president because he knows there are a number of people who will never forgive him for being half-black. And for the time being America is ungovernable. The Constitution—and all the additions that have been grafted on it—make effective government almost impossible. For almost every important measure you need a 60 percent majority in the Senate. It is almost impossible to get this. So nothing works.

AS YOU CAN NO DOUBT GUESS FROM THE NAME --

Stanley Hoffmann was by birth French. (He had vivid memories of the Nazi occupation of his homeland.) And he had interesting things to say about Europe generally, and in particular about several of his countrymen, including --

• Mitterrand, about whom he wrote a book, and whom he described as "not an admirable politician," "highly intelligent, but also a narcissist."

• De Gaulle, of whom he said, "I have learned more about politics by studying de Gaulle than by studying Mitterand." He admired De Gaulle's being "very flexible when it came to the personalities with whom he worked." "[A]fter the liberation, some of the people who were most useful to France were not politicians or ex-politicians; they were business people, technicians, civil servants, who were totally indifferent to the battles between socialists and Christian democrats."

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Did You Ever Have Any Doubt That Nixon Was A Traitor To America?

He was-- but "traitor" is a more appropriate description

Writing for Common Dreams, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman assert what many people long suspected. The first paragraph of their piece has only 5 words: "Richard Nixon was a traitor." Right-wing clown George Will was the source of their information, which also points to Kissinger's complicity.

Nixon's newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them to refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson.

Nixon's interference with these negotiations violated President John Adams's 1797 Logan Act, banning private citizens from intruding into official government negotiations with a foreign nation.

Published as the 40th Anniversary of Nixon's resignation approaches, Will's column confirms that Nixon feared public disclosure of his role in sabotaging the 1968 Vietnam peace talks. Will says Nixon established a "plumbers unit" to stop potential leaks of information that might damage him, including documentation that he believed was held by the Brookings Institute, a liberal think tank. The Plumbers' later break-in at the Democratic National Committee led to the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down.

Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks was confirmed by transcripts of FBI wiretaps. On November 2, 1968, LBJ received an FBI report saying Chernnault told the South Vietnamese ambassador that "she had received a message from her boss: saying the Vietnamese should "hold on, we are gonna win."

As Will confirms, Vietnamese did "hold on," the war proceeded and Nixon did win, changing forever the face of American politics-- with the shadow of treason permanently embedded in its DNA.

The treason came in 1968 as the Vietnam War reached a critical turning point. President Lyndon Johnson was desperate for a truce between North and South Vietnam.

LBJ had an ulterior motive: his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, was in a tight presidential race against Richard Nixon. With demonstrators in the streets, Humphrey desperately needed a cease-fire to get him into the White House.

Johnson had it all but wrapped it. With a combination of gentle and iron-fisted persuasion, he forced the leaders of South Vietnam into an all-but-final agreement with the North. A cease-fire was imminent, and Humphrey’s election seemed assured.

But at the last minute, the South Vietnamese pulled out. LBJ suspected Nixon had intervened to stop them from signing a peace treaty.

In the Price of Power (1983), Seymour Hersh revealed Henry Kissinger-- then Johnson’s adviser on Vietnam peace talks-- secretly alerted Nixon’s staff that a truce was imminent.

According to Hersh, Nixon “was able to get a series of messages to the Thieu government [of South Vietnam] making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different views on peace negotiations."

Johnson was livid. He even called the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, to complain that “they oughtn’t be doing this. This is treason.”

“I know,” was Dirksen’s feeble reply.

...In the four years between the sabotage and what Kissinger termed “peace at hand” just prior to the 1972 election, more than 20,000 US troops died in Vietnam. More than 100,000 were wounded. More than a million Vietnamese were killed.

But in 1973, Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the same settlement he helped sabotage in 1968.

According to Parry, LBJ wanted to go public with Nixon’s treason. But Clark Clifford, an architect of the CIA and a pillar of the Washington establishment, talked Johnson out of it. LBJ’s close confidant warned that the revelation would shake the foundations of the nation.

In particular, Clifford told Johnson (in a taped conversation) that “some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have [Nixon] elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s best interests.”

In other words, Clifford told LBJ that the country couldn’t handle the reality that its president was a certifiable traitor, eligible for legal execution.

Fittingly, Clark Clifford’s upper-crust career ended in the disgrace of his entanglement with the crooked Bank of Credit and Commerce (BCCI), which financed the terrorist group Al Qaeda and whose scandalous downfall tainted the Agency he helped found.

Perhaps it was this Nixon maneuver that inspired Ronald Reagan to make almost identically treasonous moves to sabotage the Iran hostage crisis solution President Carter had worked out.

Senile Traitor and War Criminal to Endorse Jeb Bush?

Henry K: Remember the last time he picked our next president?

by Noah

The New York Observer, a Manhattan-based weekly newspaper, is reporting that Henry Kissinger will be throwing his weight behind the candidacy of Bush Crime Family member Jeb Bush by endorsing his candidacy for president tomorrow at a fund-raiser being held by Bush's interestingly named "Right to Rise PAC." It's a move that should forever be known as the political equivalent of syphilis endorsing gonorrhea.

Bush, whose real name is John Ellis Bush (the name "Jeb" should be considered a bit of marketing or branding designed to give Bush appeal to neo-confederates), has not yet officially declared his candidacy, but all indications are that he will run and ask America to play Russian roulette again by voting for a Bush.

Kissinger previously got involved at an early date with the 1968 presidential candidacy of Richard "I Am Not a Crook" Nixon nearly 50 years ago and should be most notably known for his role in blowing up the 1968 Paris peace talks that were being conducted by the administration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in hopes of bringing about a truce in the Vietnam war. How devious is Henry Kissinger? He sabotaged the talks while he was Johnson's lead negotiator. Evil does walk the Earth.

It was Kissinger who told Nixon, during the 1968 campaign, that a truce agreement was imminent. Nixon then, in a clear violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from interfering with official negotiations between our government and any foreign nation, had his own liaison with the South Vietnamese government, Anna Chennault, tell the South Vietnamese that they should put off reaching a deal with Johnson -- that Nixon would give them a better deal once he was elected.

That sabotaging of the peace talks resulted in years of continued war in Vietnam and tens of thousands of U.S. casualties (20,000 U.S. dead, 100,000 wounded) and Vietnamese casualties (1,000,000 dead). Some dare call that treason. It is. Only recently, has it come out, through the release of Johnson's tapes and FBI wiretaps, that Johnson knew of the treasonous sabotage but did not act because he believed that the revelation of treason by a candidate for president would throw the country into even more turmoil than the war itself had already caused. The year had already seen the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

The sabotage also achieved its goal of narrowly electing Nixon as president over Hubert Humphrey, since America was getting mighty sick of the pointless war and Nixon had announced that he had a secret plan to end it. A truce before the election would most likely have changed the outcome of such a close election.

The war-criminal-traitor buddies back in the day

The corporate news media have remained largely silent about Kissinger's and Nixon's actions for all these decades. In the era of the creation of the Logan Act, 1797, the pair would rightly have been hung for their treason.

To Kissinger and Nixon, the deaths and maiming meant nothing. It was all about power. Nixon rewarded Kissinger by naming him as his own national security adviser. In an example of astounding irony and cynicism, Kissinger was eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1973, for negotiating the same agreement between the parties that he had sabotaged five years and so many lives earlier.

Had Kissinger been exposed at the time, his name, reputation, and opinions would not be highly regarded today, let alone in 1973. However, they are highly regarded, especially by most republicans and much of the Washington establishment.

Bush is not the only potential republican candidate who has sought Kissinger's endorsement.  In recent months neo-fascist Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and America's most obnoxious politician, New Jersey loudmouth Gov. Chris Christie have all knelt before Kissinger to kiss his ring and grovel for his endorsement.

The successful quest for Kissinger's tainted endorsement isn't the only recent indication of Jeb Bush's shady character. As if Jeb Bush's corrupt machinations in the 2000 "election" of his brother and the family name itself were not enough to define what kind of person John Ellis Bush is, there is the hiring of his online media expert, Ethan Czahor, cofounder of Hipster.com.

Czahor ain't exactly the hippest guy around. He appears to be most famous for his habit of tweeting his sexist, racist, and homophobic thoughts to his twitter followers. The tweets are typical republican fare. They are anything one would hear at any time from any republican you have the misfortune to be in the presence of. The tweets recently disappeared, as if by magic, but not before some timely screen grabs were made, and Buzzfeed has a quite magnificent collection of 'em.








Czahor's official title was chief technology officer for Right to Rise. I say "was" because he has just been fired.



Jeb may have loved the guy enough to hire him, but hey, Czahor's actions just don't fit the phony image that Bush wants to present to Americans who are either crazy or gullible enough to vote for him.

Poor Czahor! Someone else will now have the job of putting a voting-machine-hacking team together, unless they just want to fall back on Bush Crime Family capo Karl Rove. Jeb's Florida team also proved very adept at purging certain demographics from the voting roles, so would it surprise anybody but the most naïve people on Earth that Czahor's replacement will be putting his or her hands on that as well? Hey, what's Katherine Harris doing?

The bottom line is that who a candidate for any office surrounds himself or herself with does matter. When we vote for a candidate, we are not just voting for the name on the ballot. We are voting for the candidate's team of people. John Ellis Bush has a track record of surrounding himself with undesirable types. Imagine, though, how Czahor may feel if and when he thinks about Bush firing him one day and two days later officially accepting the endorsement of a traitor and war criminal. Damn, Ethan, it's enough to make ya sour on politics forever, isn't it?

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Kissinger: Even Worse Than Cheney

Constantin Costa-Gavras' 1982 film, Missing, had some pretty big stars-- including Jack Lemmon, Charles Cioffi and Sissy Spacek-- and won some pretty big awards-- including the Palme d'Or at Cannes for best male actor and the Academy Award for best writing-- and had a hugely acclaimed score by Vangelis, but there's a good chance you never saw it-- nor read the Tom Hauser book it was based on, The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice. That's because Henry Kissinger didn't want anyone to see that film or read that book. He got it banned. Really… in America. [It was banned in Chile too.] Earlier this morning we looked at the tragedy of war criminals being given a pass, making it inevitable for the destructive work of future war criminals. It was Dick Cheney and King Leopold we were looking at. In between them, though, was, chronologically speaking, Henry Kissinger, who's still alive, still unpunished, still welcomed into polite company, at least in some circles.

So the movie is about an American journalist, Charles Horman, who was as excited as I was when Allende was elected president of Chile. Luckily for me, I was driving a VW van around Asia at the time. Harmon and his wife drove their VW van down to Chile-- right into a bloody coup engineered by Nixon, Kissinger and Chilean fascist Agusto Pinochet. A very bloody coup. The CIA murdered Harmon. The movie is about his dad and his wife looking for him. This week a Chilean court finally admitted what happened, as if anyone whip know anything about the case-- other than Republicans and fascists-- ever suspected anything else.

A Chilean court said U.S. military intelligence played a key role that led to the 1973 killings of two Americans, whose story inspired the 1982 Oscar-winning film Missing. The court said former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis gave Chilean officials information about journalist Charles Horman, 31, and student Frank Teruggi, 24, that led to their arrest and execution. This took place days after the 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. The movie Missing was about the search for Horman by his wife and father. The case was practically ignored in Chile until 2000, when Horman's widow Joyce filed a lawsuit against Pinochet. Courts in Chile thought Davis was living in Florida and had sought extradition, but he was secretly living in Chile and died there last year. "Judge Zepeda's ruling both implicates and incriminates U.S. intelligence personnel as playing a dark role in the murder of my husband," said Horman's widow Joyce. "My hope is that the record of evidence compiled by the court sheds further light on how and why Charles was targeted."

Former U.S. Ambassador Nathaniel Davis and two other Kissinger stooges sued Costa-Garvas, Hauser, Universal Pictures and MCA for defamation of character in a successful attempt to keep the movie and book from being widely seen in the U.S. The U.S. State Department-- which still publicly displays a picture of Henry Kissinger--half-heartedly persists in denying any involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Horman, half-heartedly because in 1999 a declassified 1976 State Department memo admitted, "U.S. intelligence may have played an unfortunate part."

So do I think, Kissinger should be dragged out of his home and shot like a dog today? I admit that I do but I also believe in due process of law and I would regret if Kissinger (and Cheney) were shot without trials. But unless there are trials and accountability there will be more Kissingers, more Cheney and, alas, more murdered Charles Hormans.

So who do we listen to re. Afghanistan, Karzai or Kissinger? (Sigh)

"The president of another country became a player in our country's political deliberations," says E. J. Dionne Jr. Well, Henry Kissinger has also offered his take. Any takers?

"[President Obama] still needs to make his objectives clearer, beginning with an answer to this question: Are we serious about beginning withdrawals next July? Given what's happened so far, we should be."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column today,

"The wound that Stanley McChrystal opened"

by Ken

On the basic outline of the Afghanistan problem, I don't have any quarrel with Howie's take earlier today. Of course General McChrystal had to go. I can't see any reason why he and his people would have engaged in the Rolling Stone interview except to test the limits of their impunity -- unless maybe they thought there weren't any such limits. But dumping our Stanley still leaves us with the problem of Afghanistan, and it's not encouraging that the president chose to stress, in announcing the change in the war command, that this doesn't mean any change in our policy there, whatever it is.

Which is why I'm intrigued by E. J. Dionne Jr.'s column today, which delves into the behind-the-scenes tug of war apparently going on among the D.C. policy geniuses. "The McChrystal imbroglio," he writes, "highlighted the obstacles facing Obama's effort to find a third way between rival policy factions in his own White House."

Everyone on the president's team, including McChrystal, said they had signed off on the Obama compromise: to give McChrystal the troops he said he needed to improve the situation but to place a clear time limit on how long the troops would stay.

Yet the president's advisers continued to feud, sowing uncertainty about what the policy actually was. Those who had been against McChrystal's proposed buildup said Obama's declared July 2011 deadline for beginning troop withdrawals was firm. McChrystal's backers said the deadline was flexible.

The administration was openly divided over how effectively it could work with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Unlike McChrystal, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, have been far more critical of Karzai's leadership.

E.J. savors the irony that Karzai himself has joined in the hubbub rising from the Rolling Stone piece, offering his judgment that our Stanley is "the best commander the United States has sent to Afghanistan." E.J.'s wry note: "The president of another country became a player in our country's political deliberations."

Paradoxically, Karzai's supportive comments underscored why McChrystal had to be relieved. One little-noted passage in Michael Hastings's article underscored McChrystal's central problem. "The most striking example of McChrystal's usurpation of diplomatic policy is his handling of Karzai," Hastings wrote. "It is McChrystal, not diplomats like Eikenberry or Holbrooke, who enjoys the best relationship with the man America is relying on to lead Afghanistan. The doctrine of counterinsurgency requires a credible government, and since Karzai is not considered credible by his own people, McChrystal has worked hard to make him so."

A military strategy is supposed to fit the facts on the ground. But McChrystal was trying to invent an alternative reality to fit the facts to his counterinsurgency strategy, trying to turn Karzai into something he isn't. The open split on the American side has reduced Karzai's incentives to alter his behavior.

All of which still leaves us with the question: What the hell do we do?

Obama is not off the hook. On the contrary, he stuck with McChrystal, despite ample evidence that the general would go around the White House to push his own preferences.

Moreover, Obama's approach to Afghanistan was always a delicate balance, a Goldilocks strategy that was neither too hawkish nor too dovish: Escalate now to speed withdrawal. It was a nice idea, and maybe it can still allow us to leave behind a modestly improved situation.

The problem is that this careful equilibrium required everyone in the administration to pull together, accepting that the policy was settled and not open to constant challenge. It required very big egos to get along. It required Karzai to change. It required Obama to have real authority over our military.

Obama asserted that authority in a statement made after McChrystal's resignation that was gracious but firm, and he reminded his fractious team of the importance of a "unity of effort." But he still needs to make his objectives clearer, beginning with an answer to this question: Are we serious about beginning withdrawals next July? Given what's happened so far, we should be.

Sigh. Well, I need milk, and the store is about to close. So I'll just leave you with this thought: It is possible to get advice from Henry Kissinger. Yessir, old Hank the K is right there in today's Post, telling us: "America needs an Afghan strategy, not an alibi." Can we sink any lower?

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Robert S. McNamara (1916-2009)

Washingtonpost.com News Alert:

Robert McNamara, Architect of Vietnam War, Dies at 93
Robert S. McNamara died in his sleep at his home in Washington early this morning, family members said. McNamara, who served as secretary of defense during the Vietnam war under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, was 93.

by Noah

David Halberstam's assessment was right. Mix that with the fact that McNamara was both a banker and an oilman, and was probably exposed to Henry Ford's political sympathies, and it doesn't look good.

I am reminded of the bios of some of Hitler's inner circle of industrialists and military men. He even looked the part. So many died and died horribly because of this guy. If I ever meet "God," I might have to ask him why such people live so long, while so many good people live half as long. It says something bad about us that he was never tried and imprisoned for the rest of his days.

What should be on his tombstone?

1) "What an ASSHOLE!"

2) "MASS MURDERER"

3) "War Criminal Extraordinaire"

4) "Proudly strove to be one of the worst people EVER to walk the Earth!" (In the end, he failed at that just like he failed at most things, but he gets an A for effort.)

5) "A real piece of shit!"

6) "Feel Free to Relieve Yourself Here."

Maybe the family should hold an epitaph contest, or maybe DWT should, at least. I have to go take a shower now, after just READING about this despicable cretin.

We've let this guy off the hook, but there's still time for Henry Kissinger.

KEN ADDS: ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, THERE'S NO
SHORTAGE OF BUDDING NEW WAR ARCHITECTS

If you've got a really great new war you need architecturalized, there's plenty of talent in the wings. For starters, you might send a flier to the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution and ask them to post it on their bulletin boards. (Hint: If you have access to a free copying machine, make a whole bunch of copies of your flier and send a stack to each to give out!)

HOWIE ADDS: ROBERT S. WHO?

Are the people lining up for scalped tickets for his Staples Center memorial?

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