Jail Blair, Bush & Cheney First

Jonathan Cook responds to Cheney’s warning against the re-election of Donald Trump.

U.S. soldiers near a burning oil well in the Rumaila oil field, Iraq, April 2003. (U.S. Navy)

By Jonathan Cook
MintPress News

There is not much to thank Dick Cheney for. But perhaps he deserves credit for one thing: illustrating how effectively our political systems can rehabilitate even the most monstrous of moral monsters.

Just watch this short clip that went viral on X (formerly Twitter), in which Cheney warns against the re-election of Donald Trump. Perhaps not surprisingly, it has proven a big hit with Democratic party supporters, those who once reviled Cheney for his role in invading Iraq.

In the video, Cheney declares: “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

That is almost certainly wrong, even judged in narrow, parochial terms that only consider U.S. domestic concerns. The damage unleashed by Cheney — and the shockwaves that continue to ripple abroad and at home two decades on — surely qualify him as an even greater menace.

But current U.S. President Joe Biden should be in the running, too. He has risked all of our lives in Ukraine by playing a game of nuclear chicken with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

Before grappling with such issues further, let’s offer a brief recap for those for whom the 2003 Iraq war is a distant memory.

Cheney was vice-president during George W. Bush’s presidency – and the man who actually ran the show.

Cheney and Bush in the White House bunker on Sept. 11, 2001, after returning to the White House from Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska. (U.S. National Archives)

While Bush struggled to form complete sentences — much as Biden does today — but looked all-American in his vintage leather jacket, the ghoulish Cheney went about arranging the destruction of entire countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq, on behalf of the military-industrial complex.

Untold millions of people in the Middle East died, were made homeless, or were driven across borders through his deceptions. Those wars, though catastrophic for the Middle East, were exceptionally lucrative for corporate interests invested in the West’s war industries.

Not least among them was Halliburton, which Cheney had headed until he became vice president. Following the invasion, Halliburton was awarded a $7 billion contract in Iraq – without a competitive tender.

Cheney continued to retain large stocks in the company while it was helping to plunder Iraq’s resources, including its oil.

He did not just trash Iraq and Afghanistan. He intensified the dark sectarian forces unleashed in the 1980s by the “Great Game” clash of imperialism between the Soviet Union and the U.S. in Afghanistan that spawned the mujahideen and later Al-Qaeda.

The destruction of Iraq, in particular, launched the death cult of the Islamic State, which would gain a more significant footprint every time the U.S. meddled in the Middle East, from Libya to Syria.

If anyone can rightly be described as a monster, if anyone should be in the dock at The Hague accused of the “supreme international crime” of launching a war of aggression, it is Dick Cheney. More so than the ridiculous, strutting Bush Jr.

Short Memories

Jan. 31, 2003: Bush and Blair addressing the media after privately discussing the invasion of Iraq. (White House/Paul Morse, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

But if we are considering how our political systems are designed to shorten memories so that not only can monsters walk among us, but they are celebrated and profit year after year from their crimes, then Tony Blair deserves a dishonorable mention.

If anyone is as politically and morally monstrous as Cheney, it is the vainglorious, power-worshipping British prime minister of that period. While Bush sold the neocon plan for Iraq’s destruction in a leather jacket, Blair sold it to Europeans – or at least those who were gullible enough to take him seriously – in crisp white shirts and power suits.

Blair’s role was to fill in the credibility gaps of the inarticulate, posturing Bush. Blair was the brains to Bush’s brawn.

Donate to CN’s Fall Fund Drive

Blair fronted the diplomatic push. He made measured but impassioned appeals for action to the public. And most especially — with the “dodgy dossier” of intelligence lies cribbed straight from the internet, claiming that Saddam Hussein could hit Europe with his stockpile of non-existent weapons of mass destruction in little more time than it takes to have a shower – he excelled at fear-mongering.

It is hard not to notice how the treatment of Blair and Cheney exemplifies our skewed political and moral priorities, even after much of the dust has settled in Iraq and across the Middle East.

May 2006: A disabled 28-year-old Iraqi woman seeking medical attention after losing both of her legs during combat operations by Coalition Forces against insurgents in 2005 in her hometown near the Iraq-Syria border. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

The clamor grows daily for Putin to be dragged to the Hague war crimes court for invading neighboring Ukraine. In March, the International Criminal Court even issued an arrest warrant for him to be tried over the alleged forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

There is, of course, no arrest warrant for either Blair or Cheney, even though in the hierarchy of war crimes, their roles are almost certainly worse. Putin at least has an argument that his invasion was provoked by NATO’s efforts to move weapons ever closer to Russia’s border, undermining Moscow’s nuclear deterrent.

By contrast, no one ever refers to the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq as “unprovoked,” even though it undoubtedly was. The “dodgy dossier” was packed with lies. There were no WMD in Iraq, as U.N. inspectors had warned. And Saddam Hussein had no ties to Al-Qaeda. Every pretext for the invasion was disinformation — just as it was intended to be.

For this reason alone, the rent-a-quote Blair has been remarkably careful to avoid discussing war crimes concerning the Ukraine war. Whatever allegations he makes against Putin could easily be turned against him three or fourfold. Instead, his focus has been simply on how to “defeat Russia.”

The man who, in power, so loudly and childishly framed world events as a clash of civilizations — in which the West was always on the side of the angels — speaks now in hushed tones about the manufactured moral crusade of the day: Ukraine.

Swamp Creature

But it is far worse than the lack of an arrest warrant and trial. In Blair’s case, the media continued to treat him with reverence. His opinion is sought out. In no media interview is he ever confronted with the evidence that easily proves he committed the supreme crime against humanity in invading Iraq.

And worse still, his crime has actually been subsumed within his brand, becoming a selling point. He is an international statesman, an Elder, and the head of a think-tank empire, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He now has 800 staff dedicated to advancing his policies in 40 countries.

The truth is that, despite his official rehabilitation by the media and fellow politicians, much of the British public reviles Blair. This is why, by necessity, the power he wields — possibly greater than when he was Britain’s prime minister — operates entirely in the shadows.

 Blair representing his Institute for Global Change at an international internet conference in 2018. (Web Summit, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Blair, like Cheney, is still every bit as much of a swamp creature, a peddler of concealed corporate interests — from the oil industry and arms makers to the parasitic bankers that feed off the asset-stripping the other two excel in — as he was when he invaded Iraq.

One of his main clients is Saudi Arabia, a regime that has used its oil riches to bomb civilians in Yemen year after year and to finance poisonous religious extremist movements that have helped to wreck entire countries.

His institute, representing corporate interests such as bankers JP Morgan and Swiss insurance behemoth Zurich, can now bypass even the minimal democratic accountability Blair was subjected to as prime minister.

Behind the scenes, Blair was the one advocating on behalf of his corporate clients for many of the science-busting Covid policies the U.K. government adopted, and he continues to push hard for the roll-out of digital identification technologies and investment in artificial intelligence.

His Brave New World privacy-destroying tech agenda, shared with the billionaire class, from Bill Gates to George Soros, is barely scrutinized.

This is why his brand grows, even as his credibility with the British public remains rock bottom.

Grandpa of Politics

Across the Atlantic, the dull-witted George W. Bush may not have managed to establish an institute of comparable standing in his name. Still, efforts to rehabilitate his image among the public have been more successful. His very gormlessness has been rebranded as down-to-earth affability, honesty and kindliness.

In 2003, Bush’s simple-mindedness offered Cheney and the West’s war industries the “plausible deniability” they needed to shelter behind. The destruction of Iraq could be excused as an unfortunate, well-intentioned cock-up — a “humanitarian war” that turned out badly — rather than another colonial-style resource grab by corporate America.

Bush, like Cheney and Blair, an indisputable war criminal who puts anything done by Russia’s Putin in the shade, has not paid any price for his crimes. Instead, courtesy of the establishment media, he has been refashioned as the kindly grandpa of U.S. politics.

Bush delivers the eulogy at the funeral for his father on Dec. 5, 2018, at the Washington National Cathedral. (White House, Andrea Hanks)

When they come, obituaries will not focus on the Iraqi families incinerated by the Shock and Awe bombing campaign he greenlighted on entirely bogus grounds. They will show him reaching out to hand a sweet to Michelle Obama, wife of a supposed political rival, at John McCain’s memorial service and again at his father’s funeral.

It is a tender, bipartisan moment meant to serve as a stark, juxtapositional reminder that Trump supposedly exists outside this club of the great and good.

We are meant to forget that before Trump entered politics, there were plenty of photos of him rubbing shoulders at elite parties with the Bush and Clinton political dynasties.

Image-laundering is a staple of our political systems. It is why most of the billionaire-owned media have continued to treat Biden deferentially, dismissing his glaring cognitive difficulties simply as evidence of a lifelong stutter, even as the president is regularly caught on video not only going off-script but losing any sense of where he is or what he should be doing.

It took the rightwing, Rupert Murdoch-owned “Sky News,” which prefers that Biden be replaced with a Republican, to give a flavor in the mainstream of how severe Biden’s physical and mental decline is. Even then, it was Murdoch’s distant Australian operation that took the gloves off. In truth, the public image assigned to our leaders is force-fed into our subconscious – like stuffing a goose before slaughter – by a corporate media embedded in the same web of corporate interests that oils the tank treads of the West’s war machine.

High-Wire Act

Cheney’s claim that Trump is some anomaly in U.S. politics is so plainly nonsense. Or at least it is in the sense that Cheney means it.

True, Trump is an outlier. As a narcissist operating in the always-on, digital era — one in which distinctions between news and celebrity have been eroded — Trump happily suns himself in the glare of publicity.

He is a paradox: a political showman and a shadowy corporate deal-maker. These combined roles make this a high-wire act, one in which the safety net of plausible deniability is removed.

He is no different from a corrupt Cheney, a corrupt Gates, or a corrupt Soros. Except unlike them, Trump has given the swamp an incentive — at least a temporary one — to expose him, not least because he cannot be rebranded as a philanthropist or elder statesman.

Elon Musk is treading a similar, reckless path — unless he can be corralled back into line. Once best known and loved for producing “planet-saving” electric cars, he has turned unlikely, and increasingly loathed, whistleblower, highlighting the corrupt ties between social media corporations and the intelligence services.

But the idea of good and bad billionaires is yet more misdirection.

There is no way to become that rich without being entangled in the inherently corrupt world of transglobal capital movements, without carrying out secretive corporate operations that depend on the collaboration of resource-rich states and their similarly corrupt elites.

Any billionaire could face their own Russiagate if their rivals willed it. Each certainly deserves it. But only in Trump’s case is the incentive strong enough to carry it through.

Why? Because Trump found a replacement for the safety net. He exploited the paradox at the heart of his brand by presenting himself as the insider-outsider, the rich man fighting for poor, white America, the billionaire taking on the media owned by and enriching his best friends. He sold himself as the opposition to the swamp he feeds off.

Trump’s act, his man-of-the-people posturing, made it impossible for the swamp to rehabilitate him, as it has done Cheney and Bush. To acquit him would be to indict itself.

This is why the swamp is now trying to drown him in legal entanglements to keep him out of the White House.

Soaked in Blood

White and red flags, representing Iraqi and American deaths respectively, on the campus of Oregon State University in May 2008 as part of the traveling Iraq Body Count exhibit. (Parhamr, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

The paradox is coming full circle. Trump draws his political power from the crowd, from the mob. If Trump was less of a narcissist, was he more of a political strategist, was he the Hitler so many imagine him to be, he could harness that support, mobilize it, beat back the swamp’s onslaught and protect himself.

He would be able to browbeat his corporate friend-rivals into submission. But Trump is no Hitler. So the swamp is winning: it is crushing Trump legally and politically. It will seek to bog him down in legal difficulties to sap him of political momentum.

But as is the danger with all paradoxes, the picture could yet grow more complex. The more the swamp tries to drown Trump, the more credibility it breathes into his showman’s bogus claim that he is standing up for the little guy. But also, and more dangerously, the more the swamp makes itself visible.

Trump’s vanquishment inevitably comes at a heavy price: focusing public attention on the reality that a tiny, corrupt corporate elite has rigged the system to maintain its power and enrichment.

It should not have needed someone like Trump to have made this explicit. The arch-criminals Blair, Bush and Cheney are all soaked in blood. The fact that their images have been so wholly laundered that they are publicly treated as whiter than white should have been proof that we are being subjected to a sustained campaign of gaslighting.

So long as swamp creatures like Cheney can direct our gaze exclusively at Trump, they grow in power. They can keep waging wars, keep stealing resources, keep bombing children – and keep getting richer.

The system they built to maintain their power needs to be overthrown. But that cannot be achieved so long as only Trump – not Bush, Blair and Cheney – is facing the dock.

Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

This article is from MPN.news, an award winning investigative newsroom.  Sign up for their newsletter.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Donate to CN’s
Fall 
Fund Drive

 

 

 

30 comments for “Jail Blair, Bush & Cheney First

  1. CaseyG
    October 5, 2023 at 14:02

    Since Ronald Raygun, it seems that all America has lied about so much The novel “1984,” came out long ago, but I always wondered if those in power decided to create their” new nation,” based on that scary novel.

  2. Tony
    October 5, 2023 at 09:21

    One of the great difficulties with some of these articles is deciding which aspect of it to comment on.

    Whilst it is certainly true that Trump tried to steal the 2020 presidential election, I hardly think Cheney is the best-qualified person to make the attack. The 2000 election was stolen in Florida and the 2004 election was stolen in Ohio.

    Further reading:

    What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election by Robert J. Fitrakis, Steven Rosenfeld, Harvey Wasserman. Prior to reading this book, I thought that Bush/Cheney had actually won that time.

    • MEexpert
      October 5, 2023 at 14:02

      I beg to disagree. It was the democrats/military-industrial-intelligence complex that stole the election. The intelligence community especially felt threatened by Trump.

      • Onlooker
        October 5, 2023 at 16:05

        Read “Tony”‘s comment again, more carefully! He was referring to the two-thousand-and-four Presidential election…

  3. Jimm
    October 4, 2023 at 19:48

    Tremendous article with direct correlation to another great article, that being “Cognitive Warfare” by Patrick Lawrence.
    The list of persons soaked in the same blood as Bush, Cheyney, and Blair is a long one. Praise to Mr. Cook for providing even a tiny memorial to the victims of this blood soaked group. And the greatest threat to the free world is —- Julian Assange of course.
    Time for many to wake up, there is and has been a whole lot of conspiring going on.

  4. Dr. Hujjathullah M.H.B. Sahib
    October 4, 2023 at 13:51

    This is a long overdue candid censorious diatribe against the American foreign policy elites and the presidential actors serving the Deep State network in Washington, D.C. I can’t resist the opportunity to join in with satirical squib of my own here : Everyone knew of the activism of dick behind bush but it took Cook to journalistically add to this vital UNDERstanding. So, from now on the public would know that “According to Cook the Dick behind Bush is also blur, oops Blàir !” What a fantastically UNDERstated literary manifestation of all that is swampy in Washington, D.C. !

  5. Suzy Que
    October 4, 2023 at 13:22

    I am happy to accept a Bi-Partisan compromise on this issue, for the usual reasons, like Patriotism, Truth, Justice and Superman and all that…..

    Lock Them All Up!

    They are all crooks. They all have lied, cheated and stolen to get to the top of the dog pile. They all deserve prison cells and chains and manacles when being moved between cells by guards with tasers and shotguns. Locking up every corrupt crook in American politics and business would be a good step forward for the nation. That sounds like the best idea I’ve heard for ‘national security’ in a long time. Lock them all up!

    And don’t forget that the motto of the NSA has been “Collect Everything.” The truth is out there.

  6. JonnyJames
    October 4, 2023 at 12:07

    I firmly agree. Many have commented over recent years how ironically unjust it is to have Assange in prison, while Bush Jr./Blair et al. make millions and are lauded as senior statesmen.

    Alas, the institutionalized corruption makes the possibility of justice in high places quite unlikely. I would personally like to see The Clintons, Bush Jr./Cheney/Blair, John Bolton, Trump, Biden, Blinken, Pompeo, Obama, and more in prison. But that aint gonna happen.

  7. Eddie S
    October 4, 2023 at 11:13

    I agree 100% with the author’s sentiments — these assholes should AT LEAST be spending the rest of their days in prison for all the human suffering they created. Unfortunately, I believe that realistically there’s a 99% probability that this WON’T happen since the majority of US voters don’t really care about human suffering if it doesn’t directly impact them. Hell, it took 4 or 5 years of 50-100 US soldiers KIA per WEEK in the early days of the Vietnam conflict before the general US populace turned against it, and those was ’our own boys’. And these same voters saw fit to RE-ELECT ‘W’ in 2004 even AFTER the phony justifications of the Iraq War(crime) were all over the MSM! The US has over 350 million firearms in private possession, including ~19.8 MILLION ‘assault rifles’. These are just a couple of reasons for my glum perspective for humanity’s ‘better angels’ prevailing, especially here in the US.

  8. Steve
    October 4, 2023 at 06:37

    Brilliant piece, thank you.

  9. Robert Harrow
    October 3, 2023 at 22:50

    Trump is far less responsible for the deaths of people in foreign lands than any other President we’ve had since Carter. The sins of Trump, though definitely plentiful, do not at all approach the war sins of our other “leaders”.
    How do you compare Trump’s obnoxious personality, his narcissistic interviews and speeches, tax cuts for his rich buddies etc etc, to the sick and evil actions of Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Obama, Blair and their ilk. They should be way ahead of Trump in line for very serious jail time.

    • Lois Gagnon
      October 4, 2023 at 09:12

      Trump’s worst crime to me is allowing Pompeo to instruct the Brits to drag Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy to prison to face being extradited to the US for phony charges of espionage.

    • Michael O Malloy
      October 4, 2023 at 09:32

      Spot on!

    • JonnyJames
      October 4, 2023 at 12:13

      Please stop with the lesser of two evils BS – it got old years ago. Dude almost started WWIII by assassinating General Suleimani. His support of Israel in committing ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestine alone makes him worthy of prison for life. His bombing of Syria, blockading Venezuela/Cuba etc. resulted in thousands of deaths. Let’s not be so naive about politics please – especially here with so many informed readers.

    • Suzy Que
      October 4, 2023 at 13:31

      Well, I guess that depends on how you count the deaths. If you mean killed by Washington Bullets fired by Washington Boots on the Ground, or from Washington Missiles fired from Washington planes, you may have a point. Especially with “World War Biden” following him to the throne.

      But then again, during his time, the amount of ‘extra deaths’ in the world skyrocketed. The guy who’s response to a hurricane in Puerto Rico was to throw paper towels was not exactly a great humanitarian, and a whole lot of people died on his watch. Greed kills, and there was an abundance of both greed and death while Trump sat on the throne.

    • Onlooker
      October 4, 2023 at 16:54

      > ” in line for very serious jail time.”

      Pah! In a good number of countries, including the USA, they still have a more appropriate penalty for such crimes.

  10. Rafi Simonton
    October 3, 2023 at 22:12

    Turns out Satan doesn’t go by that many names after all. No legions.

    When I looked for a version of the vaguely remembered phrase I just used, various synonyms for the devil came up. But so did items about how Kevin McCarthy has been ousted by hard right Repubs. Oddly appropriate synchronicity or search engine programming in service to the Swamp?

    Speaking of…why no mention that Cheney’s proteges are running the Biden State Dept.?

    • Suzy Que
      October 4, 2023 at 13:47

      Don’t blink, because I suspect that Liz Cheney is rapidly becoming the ‘left-wing’ of the Democratic Party. Or, if she doesn’t want to get passed by the progressives, she needs to put on her running shoes to move quickly to the right to stay ahead of them. If she hasn’t called recently for mass death from war and the other four horsemen of the apocalypse, the Democrats might expel Liz from the party.

      I’m only half joking. The ‘progressive/socialist’ mayor of Chicago is hiring a military contractor to build ‘camps’ for migrants. If I heard correctly, the same contractor who built the cages Trump used to hold migrants. Liz is going to need those running shoes to stay right of the ‘progressives’. FDR paid people to do needed work. These progressives funnel the money to corporations that do military contracting Liz better keep up, because the pack is rather vicious towards stragglers, and she’s decided to run with The Big Guy now.

      • Steve
        October 4, 2023 at 22:36

        Trump didn’t build any cages to hold migrants. He used the ones built during the Obama administration. The only thing new about his policy was splitting up families. The cages thing was a continuation of a ‘Deporter in Chief’ policy.

    • Suzy Que
      October 4, 2023 at 14:12

      BTW, this is not a surprise to the minority who pay attention and have a functioning memory.

      Sen Biden’s best friends in the US Senate were people like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. Biden had run for President twice before, and each time is campaign spiel stressed these friendships and promoted his ability to be a bi-partisan leader. Needless to say, this speech led to him getting the support of about 1% of the Democratic Party voters in the early primaries, before Joe took his money and went home.

      I’m not exactly sure that Joe, Jesse and Strom didn’t chat in the Senate Cloakroom’s about that radical liberal from Wyoming named Dick Cheney. I exaggerate for effect, but the idea of Senator Biden and Chief-of- Staff/Representative/Vice-President Cheney being enemies is silly. They were always in the same club.

      But remember, Hate Trump. That’s the key. Vote Hillary, no strike that, vote Biden, because you Hate Trump. Flash that on the screen until the subliminal message is fully impacted. Hate Trump. It’s the entire platform. Hate Trump. Don’t pay any attention to who you are electing. Hate Trump. Vote Biden.

  11. cfmmax
    October 3, 2023 at 20:47

    I’ve detested the very sight of Bush, Cheney, and Blair since their actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, I detest Biden, his minions and his State Department just as much. And then there’s Hillary who I had the nauseating experience of catching in a far too long interview on PBS this evening with one of the two nitwits replacing Judy W. They make me vomit.

    So, I just don’t understand it. I suppose I’m an Existentialist with no real belief in God or an Afterlife and I wonder where / if / how / when Justice is ultimately doled out to these cretins. Does Karma really exist? But if that day ever comes in this life, or should I be wrong about God, I hope I’m there to watch and I will relish every single moment.

  12. Graeme
    October 3, 2023 at 19:50

    Wonderful article, thanks Jonathan.
    These events in history should never be forgotten.
    It is how governments operate, and will continue to operate if their version(s) of history become accepted orthodoxy.

    No argument concerning the criminal activities of Bush, Blair and Cheney (and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz).

    But it just wasn’t the aforementioned who have escaped any form of justice.

    Here in Australia, Prime Minister (from 1996 to 2007) John Howard was a willing participant, a convenient and pliable lapdog who regurgitated the lies that were fed to him not only to the media but also to parliament, where he was under oath to tell the truth.

    Like Blair and Bush, Howard stands by his decision to commit Australian troops to Iraq, a war the majority of Australians (then and now) vehemently opposed.

  13. Lois Gagnon
    October 3, 2023 at 17:26

    If we survive this imperial collapse we are in, I sincerely hope there will be war crimes tribunals for all the Western imperialists who have waged economic and military war on the world. And unlike during the Nuremberg Trials, no sneaking some of them out to rebuild their fascist regimes as they are attempting to do now.

  14. alley cat
    October 3, 2023 at 17:24

    “Putin at least has an argument that his invasion was provoked by NATO’s efforts to move weapons ever closer to Russia’s border, undermining Moscow’s nuclear deterrent.”

    Overall, a very perceptive analysis by Jonathan Cook.

    I would argue that “NATO’s efforts to move weapons ever closer to Russia’s borders” constitute a three decades-long attack on Russia, from NATO expansion and the Maidan coup to the Minsk Accords gambit, that forced the Russians to resort to a “military-technical action,” as Putin called it, to defend themselves.

    Undermining a country’s nuclear deterrent is an attack, or at least the prelude to an attack. It’s more than just a provocation, which would imply that the victim has a choice whether to react.

    Someone please tell me how any nation can remain passive while its nuclear deterrent is neutralized, especially when it’s being neutralized by one of the most predatory nations in history?

    Exactly how can it be a crime to defend yourself if you have no other choice? Ergo, Putin is no war criminal for defending Russia.

    Cook links to another fine article of his in which he writes: “Seen from Moscow’s perspective, Putin’s error looks less like he launched an unprovoked war against Ukraine than that he delayed too long in invading.”

    Well said. The same conclusion follows when the facts and background of the war in Ukraine are seen from any honest, unbiased perspective.

  15. robert e williamson jr
    October 3, 2023 at 17:02

    Hitler’s WWII was a war of choice, to say it didn’t turnout well for him would be a gross understatement. The North Korean’s and the Chinese didn’t fair well either and resulted in a huge mess, a war of choice. LBJ went “all in” , his war of choice in Vietnam which ruined South Vietnam and the result was the North controlling the South, ended terribly for the U.S..

    Then after 911 43 & Company wanted first money, oil, revenge and little else, so another war of choice, the result being a horrendous meat grinder in Iraq and the destabilization of the entire region with the loss of life in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. 41 & 43’s war of choice,

    What did the U.S. learn, not much.

    The U.S., Biden & Co. left Putin with little or no choice in the shit show that is the Ukraine War, a war of choice by Putin who was left little or no choice other than war.

    American leadership is so “screwed in the head” we have some social misfit like Cheney weighing in with his opinion at this point in time when he should be hiding in a gopher hole someplace in Bum F*&% Egypt waiting for a Cock Pheasant he can shoot.

    Here I am, having a not too bad of day, and you bring up this, in my definite opinion, most miserable prick. Talking shit about the Donald, after years of nothing but silence and to beat all the jerk doesn’t do it until donny, opens doors that might at some point, if there really is any true justice, get D-Priq ” The Tin Man” Chainey in legal trouble of his own. I can wish ya know.

    So thanks Jonathan you managed to get me real fired up.

    Thanks CN

  16. Piotr Berman
    October 3, 2023 at 16:32

    I wish Trump well, at least for one election cycle, because of Russiagate and provoked war in Ukraine. The elite has to learn the personal risks of lies and fomenting wars.

    It is deeply ironic that highly imperfect Trump is the best vehicle in sight to deliver such lesson, but here we are. If thoughtful arguments had traction, we would not be in this mess. In a better World, our major parties would dispute what to do with budget surplus created by removing waste fr0m spending on defense and medical complex (hospital, pharmaceutical, insurers etc.): cut the taxes or spend on worthy causes, and if so, how. In a yet better World…

  17. D.H.Fabian
    October 3, 2023 at 16:23

    It goes back to Hillary Clinton – from the Clintons’ conflicts with Russia concerning their (the Clintons’) business interests in Ukraine years ago, to launching the Russiagate scheme that destroyed decades of diplomatic progress and brought us to the brink of nuclear world war. First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did that.

  18. Cal Lash
    October 3, 2023 at 16:22

    Excellent article.

  19. James White
    October 3, 2023 at 16:11

    Those people no longer hold any relevance. For optimal impact in the present day, start with Biden, Blinken and Nuland.

  20. Valerie
    October 3, 2023 at 16:02

    Re: Blair

    Xxxx//www.voice-online.co.uk/news/world-news/2023/02/10/what-is-tony-blair-doing-in-africa/

    And how in the hell was he appointed as Middle East Peace Envoy in 2007. What a travesty.

Comments are closed.