Madness as Method

So what happens when the US and world economies tank, go bust, head south, crash, etc? The only thing worth anything will be hard assets like gold & other precious metal commodities.

Why do you think the Zionists in the past few years have managed to gain control of 40% of the world's gold reserves, buying it up very discreetly & quietly? Another 30% are held in private hands, but you can bet as many worthless dollars as you can carry it is not 'Joe six-pack' those 'private hands' are attached to. More likely it is some of the 'super rich' who have put two & two together the Zionist/neo-CON scheme for world control/domination is to ruin the US economy to the point the $US is just worthless paper.

To this effect the ruination of the US military is a must, since the might/threat of our miltary is the only thing that gives our currency value at present. This is one reason why we keep going after the few countries that have threatened to change the world's reserve currency (oil purchases are valued & traded by this 'fiat' currency) from the dollar to something else (Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela have threatened and look what is happening to them).

Once the economic fall begins it will go into freefall as China calls in its markers for all the money the Republicns have borrowed to finance the Iraq debacle. No one then will want dollars at all, and you can expect the Zionists to financially 'invade' the US like the proverbial horde of locusts, buying up everything in site since their currency (gold) will be the only one with any real backing. The tragic 'quip' I have seen a number of people posting, the "United States of Isreal", actually is not that far from becoming truth, except maybe it should read Isreal/China.

For many this is what globalization is all about. Other counries around the globe get a piece of ownership in the US, and except for the few wealthy elite the ordinary US citizen gets a lowered standard of living, and also becomes subject to financial slavery instead of democratic freedom. It's all laid out in the cards presently on the table and an inch shy of becoming reality. Be aware, alarmed, and become active against this economic-terrorist threat. It is much more insidious, dastardly, and dangerous to our well being than any conventional terrorist's bomb.

What might appear as 'mad' is actually very cold, calculated, and methodical, and is a culmination of decades of effort by our internal & external enemies.

Who can think past I'm-a-Dinner-Jacket? Hell, I can't stop laughing!

These meat puppets are merely trying to grab all they can for the thieves who paid good money to put them in office. The dollar bill is counterfeit; and they know this game must reach a logical conclusion if they're going to get to keep all their ill-gotten wealth - which can only happen if they get one of their own in the White House... like Dame Hillary or any of the top-tier Repugs.

If Ron Paul gets in... THEN the party's over for Bushco and his merry men. But he's the last best hope we've got to set things right.

Time's running out - for them and for us - in fact, we may all be living in pup tents and herding donkeys in '09!

I'm-a-Dinner-Jacket, hey man, ya gotta "putti-tooh-poo, ya gotta putti-pooh-too"... or... oh hell, if you prefer... "sticks and stones may break my bones, but...

Kasparov says Putin won't do anything if he can just get his hands on more money for his oil and natural gas. So you're just a pawn here, babe. Take your lumps... then sell your oil for Euros.

America's toast... and the mad scramble's on over who gets to pick up the crumbs... after the thieves have left Baghdad.

"I really hope there are sane people on capitol hill who understand what's going on. More and more I think I must have gone through some portal to the parallel "evil" world."

Please, PLEASE, send back directions if/when you retrace your steps...

Iran serves many-purposes 'as is' (powerful-Interests require a more powerful-'enemy' than an ex-CIA-asset living in a cave with a few-hundred followers)-- ergo it is reasonably-safe (for now). [Syria (and/or Cuba, for that-matter) may want to worry between now and 2008, since they 'hang low' as "Presidential-legacies".]

Hey Maureen, Shame on you! That last line shows no more sense than the one by Buchanan.

And there aren't any cowboys there. Just a bunch of pompous preppies trying to have everything without paying for it personally.

Annike:

"In other words, once our cowboys have talked their crazy talk, they have to walk their crazy walk."

Thanks for calling Dowd out on this statement - it's deplorable. It doesn't matter if it's done in the name of sophisticated humor to lighten the mood or laugh at ourselves, comments such as Dowd's should be condemned and transmuted immediately and thoroughly.

Thus, Bush/Cheney don't have to do their "crazy walk" - they are being impeached and/or cast aside as irrelevant by the coming new world order, the order based on humanity and human dignity.

How childishly and destructively self-centered American politics, policy and journalism are. Who in the world (and I mean the world) imagines that, if Iran had invaded Mexico to save it from itself, the U.S. would not be sending people including soldiers and weapons across its border to try to affect the outcome? Instead, the unconsidered presumption is simply that the U.S. has a clear right to be in the Middle East because, like a heavily armed junkie, it tied its economy to somebody else's resources....

"I don't see how … Bush and Cheney can avoid attacking Iran and retaining their credibility going out of office."

What a kidder - as if Cheneybush had any credibility to begin with. As if another illegal mass murder of innocents would help "retain" credibility whether in or going out of office, assuming there was any credibility left to retain, which there never was...

But the real problem is the world's failure to accept "our" vision for "their" future. Right, Condi-liar? "Iran is a major obstacle to the U.S. vision of a Middle East..." Thank you for the clarification, Ms. Vader...

Note to B Payne... that kind of craziness is useless against religious fanatics who see their reward coming in the NEXT life.

What we have is a bunch of power-mad nutjobs who see endless war as little more than endless opportunity to increase their own personal wealth and power. They don't worry about the cost, it's the rest of us that pay it... in money and lives.

Trouble is, they are so skilled at their lies and manipulations that they manage to drag many people along with their parade into the abyss.

randolfski, good post.
ascrowflies, Pat Buchanan is crazy enough to hope that if he repeats "I don't see how … Bush and Cheney can avoid attacking Iran and retaining their credibility going out of office." it will happen.

Craziness? Our ideologues in chief and co-chief? There is an ideologic to their madness.

"I don't see how … Bush and Cheney can avoid attacking Iran and retaining their credibility going out of office."

Pat Buchanan has said some stupid things over the years--this trumps all of them.

Yes, the Bush/Cheney credibility is paramount to preserving American foreign policy and moral integrity.

Christ!!

I wonder if Cheney has notices that Czar Vladimir is back! If anyone is willing and able to stand up to and go toe to toe (or whatever to whatever) with Cheney, its Putin.

i think yes there is madness as strategy. but it only works when the populace isn't paying attention. like now. American Idol, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Biggest Loser, gag, gag, retch, etc. ad nauseum. We have become a nation of self occupied narcicists. In my little town, the rednecks preach "freedom isn't free" as they burn up the roads and trails with their SUVs and four whelers and dirt bikes. Our god given right to use up as much of the world's energy and resources isn't free. It costs the lives and property and sovereignty and dignity of people, usually with brown or black skin, who live somewhere other than here. War is just packaged, organized racism and its intent is to take what others have got. It's been going on for millenia with a new face every thousand years or so. And this will not change until we change. Until we decide to strangle the beast that oppresses us, by driving less, using less, building more efficient, our protest is just lip service to our mother Earth. And she is in the process of shaking us off like a bad cold. Read James Lovelock's "the gaia theory." He describes our planet as a living, dynamic cell. And when any cell is attacked by a virus, a.k.a. any organism with unchecked growth, the cell produces an immune response. Take the micro to the macro and you have global warming. Our world has a fever which will quite successfully eliminate the attackers. And the only solution is for a majority of the attackers to learn cooperation and kindness. I'm not holding my breath.

A US attack on Iran would not be crazy from the perspective of the current masters of the world. The only things they need to protect are domestic order, high real returns on investment, and the global military dominance of the United States. Domestic order is important because they have to live here (if they lived somewhere else and lost control of this country and its military their paper coupons would be worthless). Real returns on investment are important because they are the mechanism through which the rulers maintain and expand their wealth. US military dominance is the tool through which foreign populations are controlled and prevented from denying the rulers their precious real returns on investment.

Note: A US attack on Iran would deepen US debt, and so raise interest rates and increase the value of savings. They like that. Also interest rates would face upward pressure again at a later time as the country would demand lots of capital to be rebuilt.

Note: A US attack on Iran would harm the US military, which would make the restoration of prewar strength more costly. They don't like this. However, if the retooling costs are to take the form of future borrowing (which they like), the real deterrent of military action against Iran is not financial but political. If they judge that they can both attack Iran and not suffer political setbacks at home then they will surely want to attack Iran.

Note: Since their concern with military "readiness" is reducible to domestic political concern, domestic concern is the only thing which may cause them to seek to avoid this war.

I really hope there are sane people on capitol hill who understand what's going on. More and more I think I must have gone through some portal to the parallel "evil" world.

There are Kurdish-Iranian guerrillas too.

There is no such thing as sane-insanity. There is no such thing as madness as an intelligent strategy. It is possible to give the appearance of madness as a bluff, but when Bush follows through with his madness, it is nothing but pure madness.

Here we go again...just say no to crazy economists!

Mr. don_alejandro,
A gorilla group by the name Mujaheddin Khalq, also referred to as MK, a group designated by United States as a terrorist group, yet now under protection of U.S. forces in Iraq, is the likely group since it has been carrying out attacks against Iran and is a source of intelligence for the U.S.

The republicans must have their boogie men in order to play the fear card. And I do fear this may all be tied to the election. It's pretty scary stuff. These guys should have been impeached long ago before they had the opportunity to do something as crazy as attack Iran. Who's going to stop them?

If I'm Iran, I think I would show that I can be crazier than my adversary, I would talk up the adoption of the Euro as the medium of exchange for oil sales to Europe, China and Japan as well as urge the rest of oil exporting countries to do the same thing.

Then as the oil price spirals out of control on the Comex I would hint darkly at the possibility that a few scuttled tankers strategically placed in the Persian Gulf could further accellerate the price of that substance to which the US and the rest of the world is addicted.

I still believe the Iran issue is seen by Republicans as something they can use for scary talk right up to election 2008--far better, for instance than they could defend to voters having already started yet another war.

So why is it that Pat Buchanan, who has written another piece (find it informationclearinghouse) expressing concern over the coming police state -- yes Buchanan -- have to engage in ENABLING LANGUAGE. Which is now seconded by Dowd -- sorry Mo, the fact that you're more WRY doesn't help you.

They don't have to walk the walk. Did she just want a great ending for her piece?

Be very wary of fait accompli language. It is the very tactic they use to get what they want. Just say it's already done and people are more likely to accept the action.

I feel Dowd and Buchanan, on this level, are collaborators.

Moreover, Rice and Gates are on board, and if you know anything about their backgrounds, it seems highly unlikely they were cowed.

As the Bush administration prepares for yet another unprovoked and illegal aggression against another country, I hope that the American people, this time, are more critical of the propaganda the government unleashes through the corporate mass media, predominately Fox News. As we all know, the drums of war and the saber-rattling have already begun. Cheney is on his PR tour speaking to allied audiences, harkening back to just a few years ago when he said essentially the same thing in regard to Iraq.

The total erasure of the Iraqi economy, and the hoped-for Iraqi people's compliant replacement with a non-regulated, laissez-faire, free-for-all market, hasn't materialized as he had sought during this boondoggle. I guess he figures he and his neocon accomplices have learned from their mistakes and will try to implement the same disaster capitalism on Iraq's neighbor. He has to try. This administration is up to its eyeballs in corporatist money and influence-pedaling.

I suspect, if enough support or at least compliance from the American people is perceived, the PR tour will be ratcheted-up in the following months in preparation for an eventual Iran "misadventure".

METHOD MADNESS

Madness as part of foreign policy included the policy of MAD (mutually assured destruction) in the cold war, as described below by Michael Kinsley. It's part of game theory from the economists hidden away in closets that churn out research for the government. It was also used to expand the Vietnam war.

MICHAEL KINSLEY
"So you're standing at the edge of a cliff, chained by the ankle to someone else. You'll be released, and one of you will get a large prize, as soon as the other gives in. How do you persuade the other guy to give in, when the only method at your disposal—threatening to push him off the cliff—would doom you both? . . . Answer: You start dancing, closer and closer to the edge. That way, you don't have to convince him that you would do something totally irrational: plunge him and yourself off the cliff. You just have to convince him that you are prepared to take a higher risk than he is of accidentally falling off the cliff. If you can do that, you win. You have done it by using probability to divide a seemingly indivisible threat. And a smaller threat can be more effective than a bigger one. A threat to drag both of you off the cliff is not credible. A threat to take a 60 percent chance of that same thing might be credible. . . . Madness can be wickedly rational. If one of those two folks on the cliff can convince the other that he is just a bit nuts, that makes his threat to drag them both off the cliff much more plausible. Some defenders of Richard Nixon used to claim that the evidence of insanity that bothered a few Americans was actually a purposeful strategy to enhance the deterrent power of our nuclear arsenal.3"

" "Tehran even says Washington aids the Iranian guerrillas, a charge the United States denies," Oppel writes. "

I suspect the above line was meant to say "Kurdish guerrillas," else it makes little sense...