Used dis-information thus obtained from one Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi to start a war.
Planted phony memos and paid stooges in the media.
Honestly, folks, this barely scratches the surface. I could go on to stories of false-flag schemes, secret armies of mercenaries, bribed Sunni terrorists, the debacle at Tora Bora, used depleted uranium, use of illegal weapons and much else that journalists such as Seymour Hersh and Greg Palast have worked to uncover. Because Bush and Putin are bottomless pits of such schemes, I had no problem taking Bush at his word when he said Putin is a kindred spirit.
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.
No doubt, Putin saw his reflection in Bush's vacuous eyes, for this is a man who, like Bush, views war as the natural state of humankind. Putin, like Bush, has one foot planted permanently in the shadow-world of his nation's intelligence gathering apparatus, legitimate and otherwise. And Putin, like Bush, is intent on restoring his country's "greatness" at any cost.
Such men have no patience with peaceniks, hippies, humanitarians and others who oppose a Cold War mentality.
In short, they're dinosaurs. Now consider the world they inherited--Bush as the son of a president, Putin as former head of the KGB.
Contrary to plentiful news images, every objective study shows the world growing more peaceful, not less, as the post-modern age rolls. Advances in communications, the icon of the Whole Earth as seen from space, cultural and business exchanges that allow nations to see the world new, cultural relativism, the unifying power of threats such as global warming and species decline, meditation and other sacraments that reveal universal truths have all served to unite many of us.
You can chart the reality on a graph that the number of those killed in wars and at the hands of their own governments has declined steadily since the 1940s. That's nearly 70 years of progress toward peace. In the 1960s and 1970s, forces converged to create visions for millions, if not billions, of a world based on understanding, rational initiatives, intelligent marshaling of resources and preservation of the Whole Earth, so fragile, so small, as seen from space.
This is the vision Bush has done his best to wreck the past seven years. His dislike of hippies, peaceniks, Whole Earthers, and forward-looking scientists and their adherents--such as the late Carl Sagan and Al Gore--could scarcely be more obvious.
The tragedy of my generation--the tragedy of our world--is that Bush landed at the controls of the whole damn planet. His belligerence--invading Iraq, putting missiles in Poland, planning new nukes and so forth--made Putin's copycat aggression nearly inevitable.
Still, theirs are archaic, almost quaint crusades. Like Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who seized on war as means to fortune and fame, Bush will soon be a relic of the past, along with his virtual doppleganger and soul mate, Vladimir Putin.
Together they're doomed to spend that pseudo-eternity known as “history” mirrored in each other's eyes. Generations rejected their war-making ways nearly half a century ago, and they're rejecting them again.
Reason and compassion are emergent in the world, as I can show you on a graph. Yes, it resembles a diagrammed waltz, because Bush is leading us backwards. The only question is, will we step forward again fast enough to take the lead from these relics of a dying age whose skeletal hands grasp desperately at history's levers to bring down the house before turning into dust.
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