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Old 04-14-2010, 06:27 AM   #41 (permalink)
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But do they do this sort of thing in the U.S.? Get into extensive inquiries to investigate potential wrongdoings conducted by the executive?

The only things that come to mind are Watergate and Lewinskygate.

However, I admit I don't follow American politics that closely. Would it be a rare thing to have an inquiry into the actions of the Bush administration? Would it be unprecedented? Is this why there is so much reluctance? Would this undermine the power of the presidency in general?

It it because America is still "at war"?
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Old 04-14-2010, 07:57 AM   #42 (permalink)
 
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there haven't been a whole lot of examples like that of the bush administration.

watergate was a shitty, stupid obviously criminal side-action. the other one was a partisan witch-hunt over what i personally regard as a non-issue. either way, what they have in common is that each involves an isolated or isolatable action and that each is to the side of the actual doings of the the president. so neither is about a philosophy of executive power. both are just stupid.

the american system seems set up to address stupid side things, but doesn't seem capable of addressing either clear violations of law national and international that flow from policy positions (guantanomo) and even less violations that are clearly problematic but which may not involve an existing law---for example there may not be an explicit law that says "thou shalt not make up the grounds for a war"

there's obviously a political problem---a shitload of them---that accompany making up the grounds for war when it becomes obvious that those grounds are made up---but in the case of the bush people, alot of those problems seemed to follow from the "free" press collectively waking up and realizing that they'd not only been sold a pile of shit by the administration but worse that they'd actively-to-enthusiastically repeated that pile of shit to the point of endangering their own political credibility (political here in a broad sense)...so you could see the consequences of the bush people's actions having been so far limited to their being thrown under the bus by regions of the nation press for reasons that had everything to do with the interests of the national press and nothing at all to do with redress for doing things like

making up the grounds for a war and
systematically misleading the american public
and
that sort of thing

and it may be that the outcome of an investigation would be a new set of hedges placed around executive power at the statutory level--but the bush people couldn't themselves be prosecuted under law that their actions may have more or less caused to be written.

so it's a problem. it's particularly an issue for a centrist like obama who seems to have thought that prosecution would alienate the right when his tactical inclinations were to work with/co-opt the right. but that seems to have only provided the right space to drift further into dissociative ultra-right/neo-fascist spaces, at least at the populist level, the level that relies on affinities with fox news to get an inordinate amount of press coverage.

at the same time, i think the actions of the bush people require some kind of response...some kind of investigation, some kind of action even if it would be complicated to pull off to what i would regard as a successful conclusion. system legitimacy requires it. but i doubt it'll happen. and the system will bear the consequences of the erosion that this will engender in its legitimacy.
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Old 04-14-2010, 08:05 AM   #43 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy View Post
[...] the system will bear the consequences of the erosion that this will engender in its legitimacy.
I think this is the crux of the problem here. If the Bush administration was able to do what it did and suffer no consequences (essentially conducting several actions that break international law and getting off scot-free), what does this enable for future presidencies?

If the actions of Bush in this respect go unchecked, unexamined, unpunished, his term will be regarded as an example of some of the extremes an administration can go to without worrying much about the consequences personally and politically. It will be Bush's legacy.

And then there are the things the Bush administration did that we may never know about.
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—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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Old 04-14-2010, 08:41 AM   #44 (permalink)
 
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well, if the neocon's plan for iraq had worked out, had it not been so astonishingly stupid, had it really been the case that the u.s. would tweeze into the place, topple saddam hussein and then be greeted by an adoring populace who would then maybe sit around a great big campfire with the Great Conservative Liberator and agree "hey kidz let's put on a country" and then by gum there'd be a country underway and the americans could just put their arms on their collective hips and watch all this fine free activity happen "now there you go that's what we're in the liberation business for..." then questions of legitimacy never would have come up because the idea was never really to liberate iraq but rather to rewind the first gulf war and tell this whole multi-lateral based united nations-liking insufficiently nationalist for neo-conservative political purposes kind of new world order thing to Scatter because there's a New Sheriff in town and his name is hegemon and hegemon doesn't answer to anyone because, well, he's Hegemon dammit and he's got the guns and if you fuck with him he'll liberate you too....


except of course that things didn't work out.

but if they had would there be any of these problems?
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Old 04-14-2010, 08:52 AM   #45 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy View Post
except of course that things didn't work out.

but if they had would there be any of these problems?
Well, whether things worked out or not is a matter of opinion, and one that perhaps is yet to be determined. And now we come back to the idea of American neocolonialism in Iraq.

US Companies Join Race on Iraqi Oil Bonanza

So what we have here is a situation---a $10 billion situation---where the key beneficiaries happen to be Houston-based oil companies. It's not that non-American companies don't have rights to these contracts, and it's not that Iraq doesn't have a say in what goes on in its own country. However, given the circumstances---you know, war, destabilization, a lack of key infrastructure, continued American military operations/occupation/decision making, etc.---it would be a bit of a stretch to say that Iraq has much choice at all. In the words of Thomas Friedman, Iraq may very well need to don the "golden straightjacket."

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and look who stands to gain the most. But surely they have no connections to anyone in the Bush administration....
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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 04-14-2010 at 08:54 AM..
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Old 04-14-2010, 09:26 AM   #46 (permalink)
 
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well in terms of the famous "wolfowitz plan" which was framed by the project for a new american century's repeated requests for a new war in iraq to erase the memory of the first one, there's no ambiguity about how things in iraq have played out: unmitigated fiasco. the stage of halliburton/kbr infrastructure "development" was to have happened much earlier and more smoothly--i sometimes think the neocons imagine neocolonialism as indistinguishable from "free enterprise" to the extent that it is just the natural lot of some people's to be dominated.

anyway, yeah so the bellying up to the trough begins as the transition from colonial to neo-colonial domination gets underway (why bother with military domination when you can simply control economies? neocolonialism is more cost-effective.)

an indication of just how badly off the rails some aspects of the gameplan have gone is the static that halliburton/kbr are getting for the gaffe jobs they'd done on the provisional iraqi regimes. now they want to be permanent. of course the problem is oversight at the iraqi end.

o and here are some new numbers, for your amusement:

Quote:
Iraq War Facts, Results & Statistics at March 29, 2010
4,390 US Soldiers Killed, 31,762 Seriously Wounded

By Deborah White, About.com Guide

Iraq War Iraq Employment KBR Iraq Iraq Peace Iraq Jobs
Apr 12 2010
For your quick reading, I've listed key statistics about the Iraq War, taken primarily from data analyzed by various think tanks, including The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, and from mainstream media sources. Data is presented as of March 29, 2010, except as indicated.

U.S. SPENDING IN IRAQ

Spent & Approved War-Spending - About $900 billion of US taxpayers' funds spent or approved for spending through Sept 2010.

U.S. 2009 Monthly Spending in Iraq - $7.3 billion as of Oct 2009

U.S. 2008 Monthly Spending in Iraq - $12 billion

U.S. Spending per Second - $5,000 in 2008 (per Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on May 5, 2008)

Cost of deploying one U.S. soldier for one year in Iraq - $390,000 (Congressional Research Service)

Lost & Unaccounted for in Iraq - $9 billion of US taxpayers' money and $549.7 milion in spare parts shipped in 2004 to US contractors. Also, per ABC News, 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles.

Missing - $1 billion in tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces. (Per CBS News on Dec 6, 2007.)

Mismanaged & Wasted in Iraq - $10 billion, per Feb 2007 Congressional hearings

Halliburton Overcharges Classified by the Pentagon as Unreasonable and Unsupported - $1.4 billion

Amount paid to KBR, a former Halliburton division, to supply U.S. military in Iraq with food, fuel, housing and other items - $20 billion

Portion of the $20 billion paid to KBR that Pentagon auditors deem "questionable or supportable" - $3.2 billion

Number of major U.S. bases in Iraq - 75 (The Nation/New York Times)

TROOPS IN IRAQ

Troops in Iraq - Total 98,000 U.S. troops as of February 28, 2010. All other nations have withdrawn their troops.

U.S. Troop Casualties - 4,390 US troops; 98% male. 91% non-officers; 82% active duty, 11% National Guard; 74% Caucasian, 9% African-American, 11% Latino. 19% killed by non-hostile causes. 54% of US casualties were under 25 years old. 72% were from the US Army

Non-U.S. Troop Casualties - Total 316, with 179 from the UK

US Troops Wounded - 31,762, 20% of which are serious brain or spinal injuries. (Total excludes psychological injuries.)

US Troops with Serious Mental Health Problems - 30% of US troops develop serious mental health problems within 3 to 4 months of returning home

US Military Helicopters Downed in Iraq - 74 total, at least 36 by enemy fire

IRAQI TROOPS, CIVILIANS & OTHERS IN IRAQ

Private Contractors in Iraq, Working in Support of US Army Troops - More than 180,000 in August 2007, per The Nation/LA Times.

Journalists killed - 140, 93 by murder and 47 by acts of war

Journalists killed by US Forces - 14

Iraqi Police and Soldiers Killed - 9,431

Iraqi Civilians Killed, Estimated - A UN issued report dated Sept 20, 2006 stating that Iraqi civilian casualties have been significantly under-reported. Casualties are reported at 50,000 to over 100,000, but may be much higher. Some informed estimates place Iraqi civilian casualities at over 600,000.

Iraqi Insurgents Killed, Roughly Estimated - 55,000

Non-Iraqi Contractors and Civilian Workers Killed - 569

Non-Iraqi Kidnapped - 306, including 57 killed, 147 released, 4 escaped, 6 rescued and 89 status unknown.

Daily Insurgent Attacks, Feb 2004 - 14

Daily Insurgent Attacks, July 2005 - 70

Daily Insurgent Attacks, May 2007 - 163

Estimated Insurgency Strength, Nov 2003 - 15,000

Estimated Insurgency Strength, Oct 2006 - 20,000 - 30,000

Estimated Insurgency Strength, June 2007 - 70,000

QUALITY OF LIFE INDICATORS

Iraqis Displaced Inside Iraq, by Iraq War, as of May 2007 - 2,255,000

Iraqi Refugees in Syria & Jordan - 2.1 million to 2.25 million

Iraqi Unemployment Rate - 27 to 60%, where curfew not in effect

Consumer Price Inflation in 2006 - 50%

Iraqi Children Suffering from Chronic Malnutrition - 28% in June 2007 (Per CNN.com, July 30, 2007)

Percent of professionals who have left Iraq since 2003 - 40%

Iraqi Physicians Before 2003 Invasion - 34,000

Iraqi Physicians Who Have Left Iraq Since 2005 Invasion - 12,000

Iraqi Physicians Murdered Since 2003 Invasion - 2,000

Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity - 1 to 2 hours, per Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (Per Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2007)

Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity - 10.9 in May 2007

Average Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity - 5.6 in May 2007

Pre-War Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity - 16 to 24

Number of Iraqi Homes Connected to Sewer Systems - 37%

Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies - 70% (Per CNN.com, July 30, 2007)

Water Treatment Plants Rehabilitated - 22%

RESULTS OF POLL Taken in Iraq in August 2005 by the British Ministry of Defense (Source: Brookings Institute)

Iraqis "strongly opposed to presence of coalition troops - 82%

Iraqis who believe Coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security - less than 1%

Iraqis who feel less ecure because of the occupation - 67%

Iraqis who do not have confidence in multi-national forces - 72%
Iraq War Facts, Statistics at March 29, 2010 - Iraq War Casualties, Spending, Iraqi Quality of Life
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