McCain & Cheney in ‘the Zone’

The inimitable, legendary vaudeville tap-dance duo, McCain & Cheney made a surprise visit to Baghdad this week. John McCain, dubbed ‘the brash one’ quipped, “We’re here to kick up our heels to salute the troops.”Not to be out-done, ’Dick’ Cheney, the spry, younger member, waxed, “A little terpsichorean dalliance is just what the grunts need. If only Bob Hope were here.” And he wiped away a tear.

The veteran hoofers will be in the Green Zone all week. Be kind to your waitresses and try the veal.

In other news, it was revealed that Bob Hope was successfully cloned several years before he passed. It was further announced that more than 30 cloned ‘Hopes’ will be available in the next decade to begin entertaining US troops at the more than 700 US military bases in more than 90 countries around the world.
“It’s uncanny.” said the lead technician on the heretofore secret project, “Each of the clones has the same, brilliant comic delivery as the original Hope. And a golf club, besides.” The next phase of the project is the cloning of Joey Heatherton, Jill St John and Anita Ekberg.

“Thanks for the mammaries”?

In reality, Republican presidential hopeful, John McCain reportedly insisted his visit to Iraq was a fact-finding venture, not a campaign photo opportunity.

Yeah, pull the other one.

Want facts, John? Here are some to gnaw on:

The PBS documentary from 2004 ‘Private Warriors’ presented this fact: 6 months before the US invaded Iraq, former Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, were already building bases and installations in preparation for the invasion. The commitment to an invasion of Iraq had been made and contractors hired to provide logistical support for an armed assault long before Bush and his administration got too far along in the litany of 900+ lies regarding WMDs and Al-Qaeda connections.

After searching through more than 600,000 documents Iraqi captured in 2003, the Pentagon has concluded that there was no "direct operational link" between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Al Qaeda.

Nevertheless, $12 billion in services were contracted from 2002 to 2005 to wage the war... uh... bring Democracy to the Iraqi people, that is.

In little more than a year, the New York Federal Reserve Bank made 21 shipments of currency to Iraq totaling $11,981,531,000. The Fed shipped 281 million individual banknotes, in bricks weighing a total of 363 tons to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Ultimately, $9 billion of the nearly $12 billion went missing.

Ooops! (Now, what’s this about a credit crisis?)

And check these killer bullet points, Johnny Mac!

• Nearly 4,000 dead Americans from hostile and non-hostile events
• 30,000 Americans wounded
• Upwards of 90,000 documented civilian Iraqis killed (or is that ‘liberated’?)
• 2 million Iraqis internally displaced (bureaucratese for ‘homeless’) due to violence
• More than two million refugees from Iraq have fled to neighboring countries
• The Iraq War is now costing US taxpayers almost $2 billion a week
• Total estimated cost of the war in Iraq? $3,000,000,000,000.00 (Yes, that’s $3 trillion.)

Enough facts for one visit, John?

How about another hundred years of facts like these?

Of course, the US will have gone broke long before it comes to that.

Meanwhile, everybody’s favorite ‘Dick’ – Cheney, that is - also dropped by the Green Zone to share the Bush administration’s delusional vision of prolonging “the campaign that liberated the people of Iraq from Saddam Hussein's tyranny, and launched them on the difficult but historic road to democracy." Cheney stated almost wistfully, “So, if you reflect back on those five years, I think it’s been a difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavor and that we’ve come a long way in five years and that it’s been well worth the effort.”

No doubt he’s thinking of the billions reaped in no-bid, cost-plus contracts for his ol’ buds at Halliburton, KBR, et al.

http://ga3.org/campaign/Iraqi_refugees?gclid=CLvpktmFl5ICFQIaewodEn0R6g

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/09/28/cost_of_iraq_war_nearly_2b_a_week/

Debt - the American Way

It never rains but it pours.

Credit card debt in America reached a record high of nearly $800 billion dollars last November. A new report from the Center for American Progress warns that a rise in credit card defaults could produce economic fallout on par with the current mortgage crisis. Approximately 35 million credit card customers can no longer afford to make more than the minimum payment every month.

Meanwhile defaults on home mortgages have reached another all-time high. The Mortgage Bankers Association say nearly 80% of all home loans in America were past due or in foreclosure at the end of last year. The Federal Reserve also announced that Americans’ percentage of equity in their homes has fallen below fifty percent for the first time since 1945.

But that’s not all!

The price of oil hit a new high Thursday nearly reaching $106 a barrel, a 300% increase over 7 years ago, at the start of Bush’s neo-con regime.

And that’s only part of it. The record oil price came as the US dollar struck a new low against all major currencies.

The Bush administration pats itself on the back for sending out checks for a few hundred dollars to each American family to off-set the collapse of the dollar.

What a bunch of great guys.

On the other hand, the US government gives out more than $5 billion a year in direct aid to Israel. Has done for more than a generation.

$13,812,154 a day.

That works out to more than $10,000 per Israeli per annum.

You got bought off cheap, sucka.

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville

Oh, by the way, Dubya probably had to borrow the money he deigned to dole out to you. So, as US taxpayers, you’ll be expected to pay all of it back.

With interest. Just hope Dubya didn’t put it on his credit card.

http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/table.html

http://www.americanprogress.org/

http://www.mortgagebankers.org/

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/7/headlines