Buencamino does foreign and political affairs analysis for Action for Economic Reforms. This piece was published in the Yellow Pad column of Business World, 02 August 2004 edition.
At a time when accusations of cowardice are flying around, it’s good to find out who are truly courageous.
The New Hampshire Gazette is America’s oldest newspaper. The Gazette
investigated the military backgrounds of Bush and his war party and
discovered that all of his top war planners, with the exception of
Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, were chickenhawks.
What is a chickenhawk? The Gazette defines it as, ” n. – A person
enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly
when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most
emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample
opportunity in that person’s youth.”
Here’s an interesting and informative list on our “courageous” allies in the Bush team:
1. George “Dubya” Bush avoided the Vietnam War by enlisting in the
National Guards, a known hide-out of the children of the rich and
powerful during the Vietnam War. George Bush is accused of going AWOL
while with the Guards. Service records during the period of his AWOL
are missing.
2. Condoleza Rice avoided the Gulf War. She was the one who blew smoke
out of her ass and called it a “mushroom cloud”. She is famous for
having said, “I was going to do all of these things that were revered
in white society so well, that I would be armored somehow from racism.
I would be able to confront white society on its own terms.” She is a
former board member of Chevron, one of the beneficiaries of the
War.
3. Karl Rove, Bush Senior White House Advisor, avoided the Vietnam War.
He is suspected as the likely source of the leak exposing CIA operative
Valerie Plame, wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the man who exposed
the bogus “Niger Yellowcake’ story.
4. Richard “Dick” Cheney avoided the Vietnam War because he had “other
priorities”. He is best known for awarding no-bid contracts to
Halliburton, an oil services company he used to head. He still receives
money from Halliburton. He is inevitably one of the usual suspects for
just about anything shady.
5. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby went to Yale instead of enlisting to fight
in Vietnam. He is Cheney’s Chief of Staff. He is suspected of inserting
the “Niger Yellowcake” horseshit in Bush’s State of the Union Address
and leaking the name of CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to the press.
6. Donald “Don” Rumsfeld avoided the Korean War. He is Secretary of
Defense. He spent the Korean War in Princeton and enlisted in the navy
when the Korean War was conveniently over. His reaction to the Abu
Ghraib tortures was to blame camcorders and digital cameras. He is the
only Bush official who is pictured in chummy poses with Saddam. The
pictures were taken when he was trying to sell an oil pipeline deal to
Saddam on behalf of Bechtel, a no-bid contractor in post-Saddam Iraq.
7. Paul Wolfowitz avoided the Vietnam War. He was able to get draft
deferments after graduating from Cornell in 1965, just when the Vietnam
War was heating up and brave men were needed to serve. He is Rumsfeld’s
Deputy Secretary of Defense and one of the leading architects of the
War.
8. Eliot Abrams avoided the Vietnam War. He handles Middle East Affairs
in the National Security Council which Condoleeza Rice heads. He was
convicted of perjury for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra
Affair. He was pardoned by George Bush the elder.
9. John Bolton avoided the Vietnam War. He is the resident hawk of the
State Department. Colin Powell didn’t want him but was over-ruled by
“higher-ups”. His job at State, aside from beating war drums, is to
keep an eye on Powell and Armitage.
10. Richard Perle avoided the Vietnam War through the deferment route.
Along with Wolfowitz, he is one of the architects of the War. Like
Cheney, there are many questions about his shady business dealings.
11. John Ashcroft avoided the Vietnam War. He is US Attorney General
and the prime enforcer of the Patriot Act. He lost a senatorial
election to a dead man and he belongs to a Christian cult that
specializes in speaking in tongues.
The list is incomplete.
Dwight Eisenhower refused to join the British during the Suez Canal
War. Eisenhower was angry because the British misled him. More
important, he saw the carnage of WWII firsthand and thereafter abhorred
war.
George Bush’s father was a navy pilot during WWII. When Bob Woodward of
the Washington Post asked the younger Bush whether he consulted his
father before ordering the invasion of Iraq, he replied, “he is the
wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength; there is a higher
father that I appeal to.” I hope he wasn’t referring to God as the
higher father.
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