The 2008 Bush-Mubarak Love-In

A bit over halfway between the rigged Egyptian presidential election of 2005 and that of 2010, US President George W Bush met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in January 2008 in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el Sheikh.

Bush opened with:

“Mr. President, thank you, sir. It’s a pleasure to be back in Egypt. This is such a beautiful sight, Mr. President. Thank you for hosting my visit here. As you mentioned, I’ve been on a long trip and I can’t think of a better place to end it than right here with you in this beautiful setting.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t get any less gushy than Bush’s opener, and there’s not even the most oblique reference to rigged elections, dictatorship, suppression of democratic aspirations, or anything uncomfortable like that.

Nope, it’s all about “building on important steps” led by Mubarak’s “leadership,” which inexorably lurched into the next rigged presidential election of 2010.

Tragically, Mr Bush couldn’t stand for yet a third term to set that all to rights.

But hey, maybe it wasn’t at all Bush’s murderous, deceitful war in Iraq that set Egypt aflame this last week, but rather Obama’s wide-ranging, visionary 2009 speech in Cairo.

If it all goes pear shaped, then at least you can blame it all on Obama.

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Johnny basks in distinguished company

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard is in Washington to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from his out-going good buddy President George W Bush.

Mr Howard took the honour along with former British PM Tony Blair and... Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe...

Medal of Freedom...? Alvaro Uribe...? Medal of Freedom...?

Under President Uribe’s watch, there has been a dramatic increase in reports of extrajudicial killings of civilians by the Colombian Army. And while Uribe’s government has strongly confronted the abusive left-wing guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Uribe has failed to take a similarly clear stance against equally abusive drug-running paramilitary groups, who have massacred, raped, and forcibly displaced thousands of Colombians in recent decades. Fundamental flaws in a paramilitary demobilization process under Uribe have permitted many of the groups to continue to engage in abuses under new names. The president's verbal attacks on his country’s human rights defenders have been frequent and disturbing. And Uribe has often opposed efforts to break paramilitaries’ influence in the political system, including by making unfounded accusations against the Supreme Court justices who are investigating more than 70 members of the Colombian Congress for links to paramilitaries.

It’s curious that our Mr Howard would want to accept an award so compromised by such a co-recipient. Oh wait...

...

• 25/04/2008 - Colombia: No reduction in assassinations and death threats
• 25/06/2008 - Colombia: Two more trade unionists assassinated
• 29/08/2008 - Colombia: Three trade unionists murdered in August
• 24/09/2008 - Colombia: Several trade unionists receive death threats
• 19/12/2008 - Colombia: Another trade unionist asassinated

...

Hmmmm...

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Bush: Seleucus VII Petro-Euergetes

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger...

George W Bush, March 19, 2003: Address to the American People

Those words, uttered over five years ago, form the basis of the Bush Doctrine or orthodoxy with respect to Iraq. Note we were going to disarm a tyrant and free Iraq's people. Not to stay and occupy into the foreseeable future, rather to provide a future for Iraqis they were not going to have otherwise. It was not about oil, it was not about geopolitical considerations it was about weapons of mass destruction and freedom for the Iraqis. Indeed the operation was monikered "Operation Iraqi Freedom", one of those nonsensical names that governments and their Military arms are so fond of.

We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.

George W Bush, March 19, 2003: Address to the American People.

That is a line that has been run many times since in one guise or another. This is the religious ritual of the occupation: it is all in the name of Iraqi freedom; the spreading of democracy; the right of "ordinary" Iraqis' rights to live as they choose and without fear of persecution; that "ordinary" Iraqis might choose their own destiny and enjoy the freedoms that we in the west take for granted. We know, we know - we've heard many times and in many forms.

God forbid that it was ever motivated by the current world hegemon to secure its access to that resource which drives its industrial economy. Nor that it was ever motivated by that hegemon's geopolitical concern for a "landed" or "rooted" presence in a vitally strategic area of the world. Never let it be stated that the world hegemon might have driven this policy for resource and political security concerns. that might be too frank by far.

Today's Independent (Patrick Cockburn - a journo who has done a hell of a job these five over years) is reporting the leaking of the terms of the Bush White House's "Strategic Alliance" that it is currently forcing upon the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. A government hobbled within and without Iraq due to its zimmer-frame reliance upon US backing and increasingly viewed as "puppet" in nature. Should this deal be signed that view will be confirmed as if raised upon a new ziggurat in Babylon.

Essentially this is requiring the signing off for the continuation of the US presence in Iraq, operating from over fifty bases, for the foreseeable future. Too, it will require the Iraqi government to cede its control of Iraqi airspace (below 29,000 feet) to the US as well as to allow it to carry on its war on terror from the bases already mentioned. There is more, to quote Cockburn:

American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

This is, for all intents and purposes, what currently obtains in Iraq. Interesting that US forces should require such "immunity". The demands that the current mercenary - and lets be real here: "contractor" is simply a tasteless euphemism for those used to fight for pay in Angola and elsewhere - forces in the country want similar are absolutely unsurprising and raises serious ethical issues.

Should the Iraqi government sign this - and the pressure before the Us election will be immense - it will consign itself to the vassal status that this province has enjoyed under so many hegemonic and imperial boots in its past. The Persians set the table and the Macedonians wrote the cookbook: the locals are there to serve their implanted betters and their governments, whilst tolerated, are merely vassal or client in status.

We can then welcome, for a short time (nothing new there) the latest Seleucid Emperor: Seleucus VII Bush Petro-Euergetes ("Euergetes" in the Greek being "preserver")

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Intel assessment nukes ‘Iran nukes’ hysteria

George W. Bush in January 2007:

I take the Iranian nuclear threat very seriously, even though the intel on Iraq was not what it was thought to be.

Happily not too many people seem to be taking this man very seriously at all of late.

Iran hasn’t had a nuclear weapons programme since 2003, a stunning new assessment released by US intelligence agencies has found.

Perhaps this is a tad premature, but this could be the final nail in the coffin of the credibility of this clown and his troupe.

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