http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_071125_iraq_and_afghanistan.htm

You put your surge troops here you put your surge troops there you put your surge troops here and you shake them all about, you do the Hokey Pokey and you move the troops around, that’s what it’s all about.

by Steven Leser

Must be some hellacious “Blue-Light Specials” down at the K-Mart…If all them furriners is gonna save money shoppin’ here after paying for round-trip airfare from Lower Slobovia - or wherever…

I am a little nervous that Clinton won’t reverse all of them, if only so she can answer neo-con critics with a line she has wanted to delvier for 7 years. “Well, Bush did it.”

In the meantime, the dollar has dropped almost 80% against the Euro under Bush and oil prices have increased over 200% while real wages for American workers have slightly declined and Health Care costs resumed their double digit increases.

Oh, and they say inflation is under control, yet since the Clinton years the inflation figures have been fudged. Inflation using the pre-Clinton era methodology is close to 7%, double what we are told under it is with the new methodology. Money supply is increasing so fast the government stopped reporting the M3 figures last year as it approcaed 10% growth, estimates by some indicate it is now over 15% growth. Proof that inflation is here.

The federal deficits is under control? Remember, it does not include the 225 billion take from the social security trust fund or the 200 billion in supplementals to fund the war. Under Bush, the federal debt will have gone from 5.7 trillion to almost 10 trillion dollars when he leaves office (today it is over 9 trillion). Every man women and child today owes 30,000 dollars on the debt (compare to the Chinese each having 1000 dollars per person in foreign exchange reserves).

Unemployment rate? People do not know this is a rate based on a telephone survey. Would you tell a stranger over the phone you do not work if you were unemployed. What about those unemployed folks who only own a cell phone? Bogus numbers.
And even if they are accurate, consider the jobs that are being created, most having serving fries and using bed pans in the job description. The capitalists are moving all the good jobs out of the country under the guise of free trade and globalization.

Don’t blame it all on Bush, the Democrats seem happy to play along
with this fiscal insanity since the MSM gives them all a free ride.

Everyone else thinks Bush rolled the dice and lost big, but money is patient and can afford to take the long view. So they didn’t quite achieve their aim in the Middle East during Bush’s tenure; perhaps this will happen during the next administration or the one after that. Bush (as well as the leading Democrats) envision a decades long presence in Iraq using South Korea as a model.

As Stiglitz noted, the effects of Bush’s policies are deep rooted, and that’s by design. As the days wind down on this mal-administration, I’m certain they’re looking even harder at ways to make the stain of their rule ever more permanent and irreversible. And the public be damned, money will get its way, regardless of what party takes over. This is why the plutocrats, as well as Bush himself, think he’s an amazing success.