ENGINEERING A HELL

Whatever. Recently Pentagonians proposed a futures market. It would allow traders to profit from accurate predictions on terrorism, assassination and the like in the Middle East. Thinkaboutit. Equal opportunity profit from terrorism. Head honcho of this idea is "Porn"dexter, head of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

"A former national security adviser to President Reagan, Poindexter was a key figure in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal. In addition to FutureMAP, his office oversees the Terrorism Information Awareness project, a computerized surveillance program that has raised privacy concerns."
-- Washington Post

Democrats and Republicans alike have heaped scorn on the idea and the Pentagonians dropped this plan. Now one must wonder how many more hair-brained schemes are lurking just below the scummy surface where Rummy and Wolfie prowl.

Don't expect to hear about them from Rummy's press conferences. Actually that's a misnomer. Rummy puts on a show with humorous remarks that get the reporters giggling so hard they usually forget to ask follow-ups or hard questions.

Even when they ask a question the answer is seldom forthcoming. Rummy usually ignores reporter's questions and asks and answers what he thinks the reporters should know. Garry Trudeau has been characterizing Rummy's style all week in his comic strip Doonsbury.

A sample of Trudo's hilarious parody of Rummy: "Do Cheney, Pearl and Wolfowitz -- the chicken hawks who dreamt up this war -- regret once avoiding the draft? Gosh, NO! Does Bush regret skipping his last year of National Guard duty? My goodness, not at all!"

Will Rogers had good advice for Rummy.

After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him... The moral, when you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.

And right on cue as the accusations against this administration get hotter and hotter we hear about another "terrorist alert." Yet no reporter cries, "Wag the dog" or really criticizes its failure to prevent terrorism.

And why oh why when we hear of all the graves found in Iraq that testify to the evilness of Saddam do we not also hear that many of them resulted from the United States breaking its word after the first Gulf War? The Iraqi rose up to overthrow Saddam believing the US would come in and help them. They ended up, betrayed by this country, in mass graves.

Will Rogers also had words for these Pentagonian clueless hawks:

There are three kinds of men.
The ones that learn by reading.
The few who learn by observation.
The rest of them that have to pee on the electric fence.

He states that "U.S. leaders now see themselves as priests of a divine mission to rid the world of its demons." He warns of the consequences.

The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted: "light the darkness of the entire world". Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.

2003-031

Copyright 2003 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@sover.net.