This has to be the lead story for a major spleen rant. "BushCo Pleads Guilty!" Try to imagine a criminal telling the court "The law was wrong, but my act was right." Well, no wonder the Bushies reject all courts (except for the 5-4 SCOTUS). The speaker in this case was Perle, one of the top neo-cons. He's already eaten his foot a couple of times, but Dubya still has him in a very prominent position directly under Rumsfeld, who's also an expert at sticking his foot in his mouth.

Actually, you have to put this in context. Perle couldn't actually say anything as honest as "Waging a war of aggression is a war crime" or even "We're guilty imperialists and we just wanted the oil." Like Dubya, he apparently can't conceive of being in the wrong. He actually said that international law was preventing the US (falsely equated with BushCo) from doing what was "right", so attacking Iraq was okay, even though it violated international law. Every criminal would like to define his crime as right, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having laws, wouldn't it?

So now look at it in light of the results--which Perle certainly must be aware of. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, which was the main justifying claim (AKA "selling point") for the war. International law insisted on concrete evidence, and post-invasion searches have shown there was no evidence to be found. Funny. Looks to me like international law was right.

The main secondary claim was about Al Qaeda and fighting terrorism, but again the awkward truth is that Bin Ladin's monsters had no significant presence in Saddam's secular Iraq, though now they are clearly growing much stronger throughout the region. Lot of awkward truthtellers also said that would happen. (And this reminds me of that convenient treason directed against Valerie Plame, the wife of one of those nasty old truthtellers. Remember that Dubya said that particular "evildoer" whe revealed she was a CIA agent would probably never be found. (But everyone already knows it was Karl Rove.) Treason? As defined by law? BushCo don't need no stinking laws.)

Various other claims and rationales for the invasion have all fallen apart. The unavoidable conclusion is that the "war" with Iraq was unprovoked aggression. Closest comparison in my mind is to a schoolyard bully collecting lunch money.

Big difference from the schoolyard bully is the corpses. Today's extremely conservative estimate is 7,898 Iraqi civilians have died because of BushCo's invasion. Probably more like 10,000, but there's no official number because BushCo is good at propaganda and labels bad (or even awkward) truths as "unpatriotic". Still, we can't avoid saying that just in Iraq, America is already responsible for killing about 3 times as many civilians as Al Qaeda killed on 9/11. Also some large number of conscripted Iraqi soldiers, but who cares? Also some large number of civilians in Afghanistan in the previous war, but who cares? Also a few hundred Americans, and apparently BushCo doesn't even care about them.

Actually, that last bit angers me quite a bit. Hiding the coffins. Bad publicity, you know. Bad publicity be damned, this is wrong. I admit that the timing of my birth was lucky--when I went into the service there was no actual war and not much chance I was going to get killed in combat. Long time ago, but I was 18 or 19 years old. No big reason, but I just felt I should do a hitch to serve my country. JFK jet lag? However, if I had died in the service of my country, I would have thought it appropriate for that fact to be publicly recognized and acknowledged, not hidden and covered up. If our men are dying for a "good cause" in Iraq, then we should be honoring them in public, not hiding them like they're some sort of terrible failures for getting themselves killed.

Don't forget that Perle is another one of those chickenhawks who avoided combat when he had the chance. War is fine with him as long as other people do the dying.

Me, I always felt that war was a bad thing, but sometimes you just had to do it, and you always have to be ready to use force, just in case. However you should never enjoy the fighting or killing. I think that's the real difference between good and evil. When a good person uses force, it is without pleasure, but only because there is really and truly no other option. I think these Bushies LIKE using force. Of course the extreme example is Dubya himself joking about a woman who was being put to death with his "blessing". Like his black trifecta joke? Bad things are good for him, so Dubya isn't going to lose any sleep just because he causes other people to die.

Not sure why, but that reminds me to mention the recent report on the Wellstone crash. I have trouble with conspiracy theories. I believe that conspiracies have to unravel. On the other hand, that report was not very convincing. Pilot error? Only if the pilots were transmuted into chimps and distracted by a banana. I was a lousy pilot, but I could not have allowed my airspeed to drop like that, and I certainly would have responded with corrective action. The stun grenade explanation makes more sense.

Meanwhile, in the latest conquered territory, California, the Governator has announced his solution to the budget problems he rode into office. Borrow LOTS of money. Gee, has anyone told all those bankrupt people yet? When you go broke, all you need to do is borrow more money! What a brilliant solution!

For legal entertainment, we have Ashcroft announcing the arrest of a few Internet scammers. If that's all there are, then the Internet was amazingly law abiding. Of course the more likely truth is that Ashcroft is playing another political game with a few "show trials", quite likely hoping to discredit the Internet. After all, the Web is a place where you can read such TERRIBLE stuff as this blog. At least you can read it for now, but I'm sure Ashcroft has bigger plans than nailing a few scammers.

Rather desperately fishing for a few glimmers of good news. Two do come to mind. One is the requirement for printed ballots in California, though the schedule is so slow it may not matter. These BushCo crooks are much worse than the Teapot Dome gang and Nixon's Plumbers combined, and I'm sure they plan to "conquer" this next election by ANY means necessary. Just like 2000. (Actually, I think the main reason that Teapot Dome finally unraveled was only because the shallow but "popular" front man up and died. That's Dubya's role this time around, but he looks healthy enough, in physical if not in moral terms.)

The other nice bit is Michael Moore's latest book, Dude, Where's My Country? Interesting read, well targeted, and, as a best-seller, reaching a lot of people, to boot. Lots of strong aspects, though the questions in the first chapter are especially poignant. Letting Bin Ladin's family escape was VERY wrong. Family members know a lot about each other, and no matter how innocent, what they knew was important. Remember that 3,000 people had just died and Bin Ladin's family almost surely knew something to help make sure he got properly nailed for it--which STILL hasn't happened. However, it was apparently most important to BushCo to protect the Bin Ladins and their friends--who turn out to be those selfsame Bushes. Plato would not be amused: "But who shall guard those selfsame guardians?"

In closing, someone's new Ductator Dubya-speak words of the day:

Qwagmire: Dubya's latest mess in Iraq.

Sqwander: What Dubya did with the budget surplus.