The military industrial complex had grown fat from the Cold War, and was caught short with the collapse of the USSR. Ever since, a right-wing clique has schemed to get the US back on the road to war. War equals money equals greatness equals POWER, so the thinking goes.Before, the government fed the military beast. Now, the complex IS the government! And the complex will use anything, absolutely anything, to ensure war is perpetual ­ a constant in Johnny Average’s mind, blaring on every news channel.

 

War sells, and there’s never been an administration that’s known that better than the current Oil II mafia. Sod it, they thought The Iranians tried to ruin Karl Rove’s best election party trick; Dubya’s puppet master had been planning to serve Osama up on an early Thanksgiving platter prior to the elections. Now the Pakistanis might have got a hold of George’s reelection trump card.

A defence budget more than ten times the size of its nearest rival, surely this is the most dominant military the world’s ever seen – yet those cretins who stole the White House have decided to play up our remote fallibilities. By remote, we mean you’re more likely to be killed by an errant budgerigar than Osama or Saddam. Nevertheless, with the dumb, duplicit media in tow (or is it "embedded" nowadays?) the Bush regime embarked on its loony War on Terror: the greatest rip off in history, carried out for the rich by the richest cabinet ever assembled.

Bush decided that the best way to honour the three thousand dead from 11 September was to murder five times that amount, with preemptive strikes against Afghanistan and Iraq, while at home Ashcroft strips away at every shred of the beaten and battered constitution. All those key proponents of war, Bush, Cheney , Wolfowitz et al have never served before of course – Daddy helped out each time. They’re all just plain chickenhawks.

The sheer stupidity of branding battle cries to increase military spending never seems to raise enough open cynicism from the Fox-addled public. The current War on Terror is a recurrent fear trick that Republican cronies like to play on stupefied electorates. McCarthyism, The War on Drugs, the War on Terror™ – all agendas of the right to suppress and dominate. But what really gets our goat are these continued war on this, war on that analogies. You can only go to war against people and their countries, not abstract things or beliefs. You just can’t – IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE A WAR ON TERROR. Someone explain that in one syllable words to George, please.

Notes Bob Kerrey, a disheartened member of the official senate 9/11 commision, "It would be like after the 7th of December, 1941, declaring war on Japanese planes. We declared war on Japan. We didn’t declare war on their tactic... Terrorism is a tactic."

In George Bush’s skewered new vision, that some laughably call a doctrine, the UN counts for nothing, except for some decent training grounds for spy training, international consensus are two very big unintelligible words, preemptive force is de rigeur, human rights are wronged and the environment will soon be listed as an energy stock on Wall St! For how much longer will the US public put up being force fed a diet of terror and lies. As if you really needed further proof of all the lies that have spewed forth from the White House, experts have analysed key Bush speeches on the War of Terror with the aid of a polygraph; bring on the impeachment, we say. Oh to see him squirming under a lie detector!!

The war on terror allows governments round the world to remove little annoyances, Putin’s destruction of Chechnya, Bush’s removal of Haiti’s first elected president. No where has human rights been more clearly shunned lately than in Guantanomo. Are you a big fan of the Boss? Does Bruce Springsteen (Source: The Australian) rock your world? One Spanish citizen, recently released from Guantanomo, while gently inserting his returned fingernails back in place, relived how the Born in the USA star was played in the tiny, sweaty cells 24 hours a day.

So much for Guantanomo trials being open for to the public. The Pentagon has denied access to three human rights groups, Amnesty International, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch. They have been barred from the military commissions despite assurances from the government the public could attend. Alex Arriaga, director of government relations at Amnesty International USA said the government’s decision was fuelled by a "fear of informed criticism" which would "only fuel the perception that tribunals will be show trials." Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First lamented the trial is "open only to hand-picked press and not to anyone who’s been critical."

A recent ruling means inmates at the US’ gulag-in-the-sun could be behind bars for many, many years to come with their freedom only granted from Judge Death himself, Donald Rumsfeld. Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights – a key litigator in the battle to rescue the Constitution from Bush’s warriors – told the New York Times: "The idea that you could theoretically keep someone locked up forever under these circumstances is reprehensible... It’s nothing to do with law as any person should understand it, at least since the Magna Carta. How do you know without a trial that these people are even dangerous? It all depends on the military’s word."