the medellin strategy

OK so here’s a theory – actually on further consideration its basically bunk but I'll lave it for you to consider… I'm still working on a new 'not crap' version...

So let’s start off with the fact that this recent ‘surge’ thing makes absolutely no sense. It stares you straight in the face that an extra 20,000 troops… not even returning force levels to where they were 2 years ago, is not really gonna make a big difference. So the next question. Why – from Bush’s perspective is this worth doing? Is it something really worth pushing things to the brink of constitutional crisis with the Dem’s over.
To my way of thinking, you have to work hard to keep imagining how evil the Bush team really is. So let’s dispense with some of the less imaginative theories first. According to one, Bush wants to leave a ‘legacy’ and not be the one that ‘lost the war’ in Iraq. If ‘he’ can just hold on till 2008 then his name may not be complete mud when he leaves office. OK, so this makes even less sense than the escalation strategy. First off, it assumes some actual input by George Bush himself into the Iraq strategy. Secondly, if it somehow part of some strategy to retain Republican control of the presidency, it ignores the strategic fact that even 150,000 troops just cannot hope to control Iraq by 2008 and surely even the Republicans know that.
Another theory holds that the Saudi’s are in some way insisting that the US stay in Iraq and effectively fight the proxy war on their and Shia behalf (or else they’ll triple the price of oil or something). And hey it’s a lot more believable than the last one. Problem is, if the Saudi’s love the US GI’s so much why did they kick them out of Saudi Arabia.
There is of course the mad delusion, can’t face up to the horrible reality of the situation he/they find themselves in, and that they are striking around for just anything. That to withdraw and give the war to others to fight would lead to major regional chaos so they have to do something. I guess that certainly has an appeal. It also has echos of Vietnam when – according to the standard narrative, the US administration simply failed to deal with defeat and kept hoping that somehow more troops would turn the tide. But the problem with that is that in many ways America actually achieved its strategic objectives in Vietnam – namely to turn the place into a hell hole and thereby very effectively dissuade any of the other non-aligned countries, or heaven forbid some of the aligned ones from truly contemplating the fun of having their own communist revolutions, aka Cuba or Nicaragua.
So, a bunch of good reasons, but how about this one for a lark. Maybe he cooked up as Jon Stewart says this “giant pot of ***” – namely the media circus of “double or nothing” and “putting it all on the line” (or should I say, “following the line”) at exactly the right time to hit us with some ‘budgetary end runs’ massive escalations in ‘halliburton expense reports’ that might manage to pump up that *other* 100,000 troops and ordinance, namely the contractors.
Lets’ not forget the Pentagon has completely failed to meet an audit for going on 5 years now. Keith Olbermann recently interviewed John Dean (of Watergate fame).
Keith Olbermann: If the troops are there, congress can’t very well call them back. And if the safe is locked the President can’t very well pay for [the troops] out of his own pocket.
John Dean: We don’t know about that. We know that that did happen during the Reagan administration where the was a tin cup handed around [during the Iran Contra scandal] …
Oh that’s right, the ‘tin cup’, namely ‘the cause’ as it was referred to by (our hero) Oliver North and that whole uber-corruption scandal involving Jeb Bush and (probably) Bush senior (in his roles as CIA director), and of course lets not forget the huge amounts of cocaine flowing into the country and being peddled by the CIA for black funds and ultimately benefitting people like the Harvard endowment whilst it further impoverished the urban poor.
Even the worst Junta’s know that when it comes to cooking the books to pay for arms, someone still has to pay the piper at the end of the day. And with by far the biggest heroin producing country in the world now nicely under the thumb of the CIA (or, I guess I should say ‘not quite’, and maybe ‘not quite them’) it may just be that looks like the US military machine is may be about to adopt the same funding strategy as the Medellín narco-terrorists.
Jefferson apparently talked about using the purse to ‘control the dogs of war’. But it may be that we can just about forget the battles over line item vetoes, the president (or should I say ‘not quite’) may be about to build his own personal army.
Like Jon Stewart says – in this excellent clip - you know what this needs? A pinch of salt.