Dare To Dream?

Here's my dream. A year from now, Bush and his mob are out of the White House (if not in prison yet) and fending off lawsuits, indictments and whatever else decent people can throw at them. The GOP is in crisis, with supporters outraged by a flood of sordid and alarming revelations. These include the ousting of a hidden fascist power clique within the CIA and the Whore House, sorry I mean the White House, with close links to Big Business and the Christian right-wingers. Newspapers carry an endless steam of stories revealing a twisted agenda of religious evangelism tightly bound with controlled globalization, not to mention dozens more Iran-Contra-style illegal operations...

In my dream, it has just been revealed that Bush's boyz used blackmail to ensure that Blair and Howard maintained support for Bush's mad policies throughout the war in Iraq, and the British and Australian publics are now aghast as the true nature of the blackmail is revealed (Tony Blair is a coke-snorting cross-dresser? Howard paid priests to service his kinky needs?). Meanwhile, after Israelis staged a series of massive street protests, their new leaders are finally negotiating lasting peace with their Palestinian neighbours (it's a dream, OK?).

Meanwhile, President Nader has won the election in a landslide after John Kerry was forced to withdraw a week before polling, admitting his close links to the Bush fascist clique and shamed by front-page photos of bizarre sexual acts at several Skull and Bones initiations.

President Nader, with the full support of the people of the USA, pledges renewed support for the UN, including a massive increase in funding that will allow UN peace missions to function effectively and quickly. He says the USA will unilaterally give up its Security Council veto and calls on other Security Council members to do the same so that genuine UN reform can begin.

President Nader also pledges to rejoin the International Criminal Court and nominates Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for war crime charges. The USA apologizes to the world at large for decades of militant subterfuge and economic pressure, pays war reparations to all Iraqis and funds the entire cost of reconstruction (through the UN). Nader also makes huge new environmental commitments, off-set by massive cuts in defence spending, and renegotiates the missile and nuclear treaties to effectively end the threat of nuclear war for another generation at least. The Cold War, he declares, is finally over.

Then I wake up.

It's still just one year and 11,700 lives after the bombs started falling on Baghdad, and the madness continues...

United Press International describes a very different 'Shock and Awe':

"The whole prisoner abuse incident makes one wonder what they -- from Donald Rumsfeld on down to the generals and field commanders in Iraq -- were thinking. The simple answer is that they were not thinking. And this is where much of the problem lies. Not only were they not thinking, they refused to listen to those who knew the local customs and tried to offer guidance."

The article also examines how many reversals of policies the Bush administration has been forced to make in Iraq:

"-- U.S. Marines issued a number of ultimatums to the Fallujah rebels holding out in the rebellious town, then cut deals with them and settled on allowing the newly formed Fallujah Brigade to take control of the town. Some members of the new brigade are former militiamen who fought the Marines.

-- Banishing former Baathists then naming a Baathist Republican Guard general to command the Fallujah Brigade, then only a day later ousting him and replacing him with another former Iraqi army general.

-- Calling Iran a member of the "axis of evil," and then negotiating with Iran over the Moqtada Sadr debacle.

-- Sidelining the United Nations on Iraq and now placing great hope on Lakhdar Brahimi, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy to Iraq, hoping he can pull a proverbial rabbit out of the Iraqi hat.

The list goes on..."

And these are the people who run million-dollar ad campaigns accusing Kerry of "flip-flopping".