APRIL-MAY2008

It has been a long Good Friday even though Easter arrives early this year.  Today’s full moon coincides with yesterday’s vernal equinox to deliver a very early Passover and Easter.

This holiday weekend, elite political circles will be charged with talk of a Republican “Double Whammy,” the internal nomenclature for a top secret plan to deliver the White House to the hand-picked candidate of the Bush-Cheney junta.

While the media is filled with stories analyzing and dissecting the White House plans for war with Iran in the wake of the sacking of Admiral William Fallon, only a select few politicians and their minions will be privy to a plan that it is arresting in its boldness and predicated on the establishment of an ironclad pretext for the forthcoming US hard-power attack on the regime in Tehran.

Some Republican strategists have become apoplectic at the rise of Barack Obama.  Sagacious Republicans now see Obama as the most dangerous threat their party has faced since the Great Depression, when FDR relieved them of power for the next twenty years.

Republicans have never been as motivated to maintain their weakening grasp on power as they are today.  The new era of Republican ruthlessness launched in 2000, when James Baker and his cronies, John Roberts and John Bolton, engineered the legal coup d’etat to rescue their lost election and place the Bush-Cheney junta in power.

Karl Rove is deemed to be a mastermind of political strategy, but Rove’s presidential campaigns have both resulted in colossal failures.  In 2000, Gore won the popular vote, a factor that tarnished the first Bush-Cheney administration with the taint of illegitimacy.  In 2004, Rove’s plan led to what appeared to be a narrow margin for the re-election of a sitting president in time of war – in fact, it was the smallest proportional margin for a presidential re-election since 1828.  It eventually became apparent that Rove and his Republican operatives had manipulated votes across the red and blue spectrum of states using a veritable cornucopia of tactics for rigging and fixing the outcome.

So where’s the Rovian beef?  As Greg Palast informs us, Rove’s beef is there in several dubious achievements in which he has established himself as a master:

•    the suppression of Democratic votes by racial discrimination;

•    vote rigging via ‘spoiled’ paper ballots;

•    purges of voter rolls of eligible voters with names similar to convicted felons and

•    hacking elections via clandestine manipulation of electronic voting machines.

At this point in the current campaign, Democrats are still engaged in settling the matter of the presidential nomination.  In actual point of fact, Barack Obama has won the nomination as Hillary Clinton cannot reasonably expect to overtake his lead in delegates in the remaining primaries.  Neither can she hope that a majority of the superdelegates will violate the will of the primary voters and opt for her over Obama – after he has won the majority of delegates available in the primaries and the majority of their votes, as well.

In short, the Clinton campaign has actually morphed into some sort of political zombie, dead yet seemingly alive or half-alive and apparently undead according to the latest polls.  The Time cover said it best.  With a flattering picture of Hillary Clinton, the cover proclaims her, “The Fighter:  How she came back and why it could be too late.”

The editors at Time were being polite with Senator Clinton; the arithmetic of her campaign is now clear.  She is no longer a viable contender for the Democratic presidential nomination even though polls say she is now more popular than she was one month ago.  Her Chief Strategist, Mark Penn, trumpets her marginal improvements over the last month reflecting her apparent victories in Texas and Ohio, as he would be expected to do.

But, the professional prognosis of Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects is entirely different from Penn’s rosy picture of his client’s faltering but apparent rejuvenation.  It came too late.  Obama has a palpable lead in the delegate count and the votes, and her lingering popularity is not capable of overwhelming his lead.  Finally, her “victories” in Texas and Ohio were barely that - for they were won only through massive influxes of Republicans who voted for Clinton under command from Rush Limbaugh and his ventriloquist, Karl Rove.

The Republicans are more than well aware of the shape of the Democratic nomination.  They were hoping and praying and manipulating to the best of their abilities for their chance to destroy Hillary Clinton.  Now that Clinton’s viability has been eroded by the Democratic base itself, the Republicans are moving swiftly to Plan B – an insidious plot to shock and awe the body politic with a double blow to the psyche of America.

For several years, Seymour Hersh has elucidated the ominous plans of the Bush-Cheney junta to complete their conquest of the Middle East by attacking Iran.  Iran is now in the grip of an enormous and extremely uncomfortable American vise.  The US occupies both Afghanistan to Iran’s east and Iraq to her west.  The rich oilfields of Iran are arrayed in a belt near her south-western coast just over the border from Basra on the west.  And, there is an enormous US flotilla now stationed just off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf.

While the story of Bush and Cheney’s designs on Iran are well known to international audiences, most of America remains oblivious to the impending expansion of the unpopular war.  Fewer still are aware of the political motivations now calculating the moves in the global game of chess.  The players are not really Bush and Cheney on the one hand and Ahmadinejad and his mullahs on the other.  The opposing forces are now the Republicans against the Democrats, for the stakes are quite simple:  the presidency of America and the key factor in its bristling portfolio of power – Commander-in-Chief of America’s vast arsenal.

Karl Rove has a powerful force arrayed on the field:  the Pentagon, Central Command and the White House with its lame duck presidency encompassing overall command and control of the US military and, therefore, foreign policy.  On the other hand, the Democrats have little to oppose the massive bureaucratic power of the Republican forces:  slender majorities in both the House and the Senate – where Democratic support for ending the war is fragmented by blocs of “Blue Dog” Democrats who faithfully follow every command they perceive from the Republicans in the White House.

In his perceptive paper, Guy Saperstein has proposed that the Democrats could respond to a Republican-dominated attack on Iran by assembling Congressional investigations that could subpoena Admiral William Fallon and other stalwart patriots in the US military who oppose a US attack on Iran.  Saperstein’s suggestion is certainly a good one, and it has the added distinction of being the only one on the table.  But, the truth remains as Saperstein points out, the Democrats do not have a viable Iran strategy, nor are they likely to settle upon one anytime soon for they are preoccupied with the struggle between Obama and Clinton for the nomination.

The geopolitical ramifications of a US attack on Iran will be grave.  It will signal the end of America’s global domination as the sole superpower.  A triumvirate of nations:  China, Iran and Russia will arise to challenge the US for global supremacy launching a new cold war and its concomitant arms race.  The next phase of geostrategic military rivalry will extend to the astronomically expensive region of outer space, where Donald Rumsfeld has already made the preliminary moves to establish US supremacy in an area that was supposed to be permanently disarmed by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.  The US aerospace industry will be pleased, and their profits will surge.

While that scenario is bad enough, it does, indeed, get worse.  Much worse, as a matter of fact.  A sagacious retired US military professional, Captain Eric May, has warned that a false-flag attack could trigger public panic and mobilize massive political backing for the next phase of neocon belligerence.  Thanks to Seymour Hersh and others, we know that the next phase of neocon expansion of conflict is their well-planned launch of the Iran War.

That is the “Double Whammy” now enthralling top-level Republican strategists – a counterfeit attack on US soil (a typical false-flag operation modeled on Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag) followed swiftly by a shock and awe bombing campaign against Iran.  At this point, there is no Democratic response on the drawing boards for such a crisis.  It is obvious that the presidential nominee should lead the protest to expand the war.  But, what will he or she do if there is a traumatic false-flag operation as Captain May proposes?

That opening move and the sequence of moves to follow are transparently obvious:  both Clinton and Obama should lock arms and decry the total failure of Bush-Cheney and their neocon junta to protect Americans from the onslaught of terrorism.  Congress should immediately convene to launch impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney and simultaneous investigations of the latest act of “terrorism” and its predecessor:  9/11.  All 9/11 files currently classified should be immediately opened to public scrutiny by the Congressional investigators.

If the Republicans make the mistake and open with the False Flag-Iran Gambit, the Democrats should be ready to repudiate it in unison.  At this point in the political calendar, there is no clear indication that they will be able to do more than rubber stamp the next Republican moves to ensure that national security will determine the outcome of this November’s election.  That is what Karl Rove predicts.

In several televised interviews, Karl Rove has predicted that national security will be the defining issue of the next election and that the Republican nominee will prevail over the Democrat.  That is why the top-drawer Republicans are so enthralled with their marvelous new toy - the “Double Whammy.”

SOURCES

Survey finds McCain would defeat both Obama and Clinton in latest prospective General Election match-ups

The Shift to Hillary by Mark Penn

Why we want to keep Hillary alive by Rush Limbaugh

The Boston Globe / Many voting for Clinton to boost GOP:  Seek to prolong bitter battle

Rush Limbaugh Explains Why He’s Urging Republicans in Texas and Ohio to Vote for Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday 2

The New Yorker / Annals of National Security – The Iran Plans by Seymour Hersh

Guy Saperstein, The Dems Need an Iran Strategy ASAP

The resignation of Admiral Fallon will provoke renewed fighting in Iraq

False Flag Prospects, 2008 — Top Three US Target Cities

The Shock and Awe of Bombing Iran: The Bush-Cheney Grand Finale of Destruction

Outer Space Treaty (1967)