Rules of Engagement and Civil Rights Become "Collateral Damage."

That's the wound inflicted by a federal sniper, October 6, 1986. IRS thought I would testify in the Omnibus Taxpayers Bill of Rights hearings. Glad you asked.

Well, it’s agreed. Official. The “rules of engagement” in the Great War on Terror say that you and I, the common, everyday nobody people are fair game anytime we come as close as the bursting radius of a 2,000 pound JDAM bomb or Hellfire missile to anyone suspected of being a terrorist by the Bush Administration. The conservative pundits all say so, the generals say so, and the Great Man himself – he talks to god, after all – says so. Suck it up – that’s just the way it is.

What the hell were you doing that close to a terrorist, anyway?! Never mind that YOUR military intelligence – never mind the oxymoron, either – would have to be a hell of a lot better than that of your government and its military (the guys shooting at you), we have to save us from “terror,” and the way we do it is kill a few of the people the bad guys are terrorizing. THEY do terror. We PROTECT you from terror. If you can’t tell the difference, you’re a damned traitor. You say "no way I'm a traitor?" Well, by god, you need to start listening to Sean Hannity and the night time radio pundits. They'll tell you. You bitch about a little "collateral damage," you're a traitor.

And if you’re a woman or a little kid . . . well, it’s the terrorist’s fault. No terrorism, no women and kids killed. You just don’t understand that there’s always going to be collateral damage. F------ traitor.

We put women in combat nowadays, anyway. What’s the difference?

Apparently, if we are to believe our illustrious Attorney General (damn - how could I forget the name of a great lawyer like that?!), the collateral damage rule of engagement is true where our constitutional rights are concerned, too. If somebody the Bush League suspects of being a terrorist (hint: don’t have friends who are of Arab descent – or look like they might be) might call you, your phone can be bugged, your e-mail read, your computer monitored and “data mined,” and your wife photographed through her bedroom or bathroom window. Coppozzolli v. IRS, remember?

Even if you’re not a terrorist, they might happen to get something good otherwise - catch you having sex or the missus nekkid, for instance – and they can always sell it like they already do with tax records and all the rest.  
Collateral damage should be profitable where it can, you know. We were going to pay for the war in Iraq with all that oil, remember? If you need instruction on that, too, just ask Halliburton and its proud corporate capitalist kind.
So there you have it, the rules of engagement in the Great War on Terror. You can be killed by a terrorist, or you can be killed by your government when it kills a terrorist. That violates your rights, too, you know. You didn’t? Well, you’re a patriot. You don’t care? Well, ditto – you’re a patriot there, too.

Now that that’s out of the way, and we’re all agreed to be sacrifices to the cause, I’m kind of wondering about a couple of other things, besides. All the same great minds who are giving us those rules of engagement for patriots are also telling us that our pull-out in Iraq would be a catastrophe. Pardon me for a traitor, but – unless we’re talking about the oil and the strategic power we seek - how? What – the Iraqis would invade us? Arab terrorists would escape - into Afghanistan, maybe? What is it exactly that would be catastrophic?

“AMERICA” WOULD SUFFER LOSS OF PRESTIGE? Surely, you jest. The rest of the world doesn’t live in the benighted state we do. They know what’s going on, and what’s going on is what I said in my January 17th "blog" here. We’ve been taxing the whole world with our inflation tax – what’s good for our people is good for everybody else – and they’re tired of “taxation without representation.” That's not all, either. Four percent of the world's population, we consume thirty-five percent of the planet's energy and resources, and want more, much more. Responsible for almost half the pollution on earth, we refuse to join with the rest of the world in the effort to clean up. The United States is like my lawyer’s description of IRS. “They take whatever they want and piss on the rest.” We not only consume and pollute everything we can reach, we've begun to demand that everybody do as we say, besides. 

Loss of prestige? Damn – now that’s chutzpah!

We’re going to attack Iran, count on it. The Maine, the Lusitania, Peal Harbor, the Cold War, Nicaragua, Panama, the first attack on Iraq (“Desert Storm”), etc., etc., etc. My god, it’s like reading a play by Shakespeare.   The attack may be a conventional one, a missile barrage to take out all of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hell, we just fired missiles into Pakistan - why should Iran be different? Or North Korea, for that matter. But it may even be a nuclear attack. The nuke would be a display of strategic power, the kind of thing I had reference to in my last “blog.” Strategic power – all those nuclear ICBMs, subs, and carriers – is one of the few things we have left to stave off the economic retribution we know is coming. That's what's really important to us.

A nuclear strike would send the message that we’re that ruthless. Bush has already warned the world that we would act unilaterally, and he did. He thinks he got away with it, and he’ll do it again. And what our “C” student (if you think he really got “C”s at Yale, I’d like to talk to you about a bargain I can give you on a famous bridge) can tell you about Arab and Islamic history wouldn’t make you blink if you got it in your eye. This is not the brightest candle on the birthday cake, you know . . .  
 
He talks to god, remember?

A friend of mine with an impressive record of forecasting economic and geo-political news predicts that oil prices will reach a hundred, even a hundred twenty dollars a barrel this year. I agree. Grab yourself by the ass and hang on, friend - this is gonna be a hell of a ride.

As I said, 2006 could be the year that was the beginning of the end.