Re: SC51

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6396

Saving A President

........................Looking Ahead

With 18 months left in office and his presidency foundering, George Bush is like a cornered animal desperate enough to try anything to survive. Surrounded by a dwindling, but still potent, number of hard liners, this article suggests a disturbing scenario ahead that bodes ill for the nation and world if it happens. It appears the Bush administration's scheme involves changing the subject by scare-mongering that may be followed by staging one or more major home-based terror attacks on the order of 9/11, then waging war with Iran on the phony pretext Tehran threatens US and regional security. Further strikes may also be planned against the tribal areas of Pakistan along with backing Israel's intentions against Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. These will be ominous developments if they happen as explained above. In an effort to survive and finish out their term in office, George Bush and Dick Cheney may be willing to gamble everything for what, in the end, can't be achieved.

An earlier CIA assessment points out part of the problem. It was blunt and frightening saying if the US attacks Iran, Southern Shia Iraq will light up like a candle and explode uncontrollably throughout the country. It will also likely incite Saudi Shiites who happen to be in the most oil-rich part of the Kingdom, but it very possibly could include the entire Muslim world in armed rebellion against anything American and Western. It's heading toward that kind of showdown now.

The US is already a pariah state, losing influence as its recklessness intensifies. Take away its military strength, and it faces an unfriendly world, likely to be less receptive to its demands if it can't back them up with the muscle it has now or shies away from using what it has. That's a future possibility, though, not a present one. More immediate is the threat of nuclear war, the end of the republic, and what little is left of constitutional law. That's along with a nation spending itself into bankruptcy and already, by some measures and analysis, at an impossible to repay $80 trillion or more in unfunded future entitlements and other liabilities. That's the assessment of economist Laurence Kotlikoff in his 2006 appraisal for the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank in an article titled "Is the United States Bankrupt?"

It won't happen as long as Fed Chairman Bernanke keeps printing money at the same reckless double digit pace Alan Greenspan did before him. They and other Fed chairmen are beholden to the same banking cartel and Wall Street establishment that owns and runs the Federal Reserve for their benefit, not ours. Their scheme is Ponzi-like to monetize continued prosperity as long as the string holds out that can't forever as former Nixon chief economic advisor Herb Stein once explained earlier. But the longer it does, the worse the outcome when the inevitable end comes with the public set up for the hardest fall like always.

The present domestic economic turbulence and threatening credit crunch (with global implications) is the result of the following that's bad enough but no disaster yet:

-- slumping housing,

-- fallout from recklessly leveraged speculation in hedge funds and on Wall Street overall with the Federal Reserve fueling it all,

-- troubled collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) linked to sinking sub-prime mortgage valuations,

-- once AAA-rated residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), now downgraded,

-- sinking sub-prime loans,

-- the multi-trillion dollar financial derivatives market speculation Warren Buffet calls "time bombs" and "financial WMDs",

-- junk bonds getting "junkier,"

-- dollar weakness,

-- inflation much higher than reported and rising because of years of over-spending, over-borrowing and under-taxing,

-- and other potential near and intermediate-term financial trouble sure to surprise if it comes.

So far, it's cyclical noise compared to a greater secular meltdown ahead from built-up financial excesses, peak oil, global warming, intensifying ecological disasters, permanent wars on the world, and the full-blown emergence of homeland tyranny.

This writer takes issue with others who think America is currently in an economic meltdown. Where there's strong agreement, however, is that one lies ahead, no one knows when precisely, it'll likely surprise when it arrives, and it may strike like Armageddon when it hits making The Great Depression look tame by comparison and last even longer.

For now, though, removing the criminal class from Washington, restoring the rule of law, saving the republic, avoiding further wars, and ending the current ones is job one. Failure to do it may mean whatever's ahead won't matter. It'll be too late long before it arrives. Those who care about these things and see the threat better enlist others, do more than complain about it, and act in time collectively to stop it. It can only come from the bottom up, never the other way.......................