Transparency 2013: Good and bad news about banking, guns, freedom and all that

== Bank Secrecy 'ending' at last? ==

"Bank secrecy is essentially eroding before our eyes," says a recent NPR article. "I think the combination of the fear factor that has kicked in for not only Americans with money offshore, countries that don't want to be on the wrong side of this issue and the legislative weight of FATCA means that within three to five years it will be exceptionally difficult for any American to hide money in any financial institution."

In one sense, this would appear to be vindication of my forecast, in EARTH, that banking secrecy would become a major issue by the second decade of the 21st Century and that it would go extinct soon thereafter, propelled via anger by the rising worldwide middle classes plus the basic needs of democracy and true capitalism. Do I feel predictive vindication?  Sure.

But at another level all of this is far less substantial than I depicted. The banking havens are retreating in good order, making deals and protecting what has become their core business -- sheltering lucre stolen from developing nations by their kleptocratic leader-castes. Those klepto-depositors aren't American or European citizens and hence need not be reported. Moreover, the amounts involved -- especially if you include so-called "sovereign wealth funds" -- vastly outweigh the deposits of a few U.S. and Euro mere-billionaires. Indeed, Western governments have been complicit, so eager to reclaim tax revenues from their own citizens that they have given assurances not to go after more general transparency.

The real scenario from EARTH, has yet to be played out. When citizens in Congo and the Phillipines, in Myanmar and Mexico and Malaysia and so on become radicalized and start demanding true international transparency of ownership...

... that is when we'll see such a crisis as I portrayed in the "Helvetian War." This ain't over by a mile.

== Tentative Good News ==

In September, with most members out on the campaign trail, the House of Representatives approved final passage of the long-awaited Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (S. 743), a set of 10 reforms intended to clarify the difference between policy disputes and whistleblowing. Sponsored by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, it would expand the types of employee disclosures of violations of laws, rules or regulations that are protected and beef up employee rights. It also would broaden coverage to employees of the major intelligence agencies and the Transportation Security Administration, prohibiting the revocation of a security clearance in retaliation for a protected whistleblower disclosure. And it would expand the rights of the Office of Special Counsel to file friend-of-the-court briefs.

The bipartisan bill would strengthen authority for reviews by the Merit Systems Protection Board and provide whistleblowing employees with more access to their agency’s inspector general. It would establish whistleblower protection ombudsmen to educate agency personnel about whistleblower rights. The bill now returns to the Senate, where it is up for consideration in a November lame-duck session. In the previous Congress, a version of the bill died in a December session.

* Someone out there please report to us all -- what's the status on the legislation? *

This could be almost as important as last year's victory for transparency and civilization, when Illinois courts struck down a law banning the taping of police. No civil liberties matter was more important to our future. On this - no compromise, ever.

== Transparency in The Central Kingdom ==

As we speak, openness advocates are struggling for basic press freedom at China's Southern Weekly. This is not something I mention out of hostility but in hope that the rulers of that rapidly developing nation will come to see the benefits of light - the only possible corrective medicine for corruption - and find the courage to return to their earlier plan.

What earlier plan? Why, to let freedom at the local level clean up corruption where it does the most damage, in exchange for a social contract to leave top national power alone (in oligarchic hands) for a generation. It was a highly plausible plan and would have derived the top benefits of freedom -- accountability and prevention of abuse, crime and errors -- while still managing overall development from above -- the neo-Confucian solution. (Note: I disagree with all forms of oligarchy, but that version could have worked.)

Alas, it was a compromise they found inconvenient in countless ways (freedom often is) and so it fell aside. Overcome by the impulse, imbedded in human nature, to try to control everything.  I hope they will prove their vaunted high intelligence and go back to it, because, in reality, it is their only hope.

== Then there's Big Brother on the Bus ==

According to Wired: “Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet. The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases, according to the Daily, which obtained copies of contracts, procurement requests, specs and other documents. The use of the equipment raises serious questions about eavesdropping without a warrant, particularly since recordings of passengers could be obtained and used by law enforcement agencies.”

Again, how will you prevent this? By banning them?  So that (as Heinlein said) the bugs simply are made smaller? Better have these things in the open… and insist that WE can zoom into the control room and watch the watchers.

== SMBC Rocks transparency and philosophy! ==

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal captures much of the essence, how look-back "sousveillance" is our only recourse.

Then an oldie...but excellent explanation of the Prisoner's Dilemma.

How many of you know someone who has done this? Used this cop-out? I know several.

Impressive theology.

== Update re HFT or High Frequency Trading ==

I've spoken of calamities far worse than the multi-billion dollar "oops!" mistakes already made by HFT systems... leading all the way to "terminator" problems with emergent AI... by far the most likely way the Singularity could go very badly wrong.

Now Greg Trocchia writes: "One of the about high frequency trading concerns I voiced, as a Software Quality Assurance (SQA) professional, is that even a rigorous software development process could not preclude emergent pathological behavior on the part of the algorithm that might occur in unpredictable sets of circumstances.  It now seems that things are even worse than I had realized.  In certain cases, at least, even the most elementary software engineering precautions were absent: Chicago Fed Study Blasts lid off of High Frequency Trading.  I am aghast that software of such critical importance should be treated with such cavalier disregard of the hard-learned lessons of SQA."

== Transparency and Guns ==

Finally... On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart's riff on gun control touched most of the bases. Especially (and incredibly) he paid attention to the deep-underlying  motivation of gun enthusiasts.  One that needs to be addressed, if we are to calm them down enough so that the moderates join us in conversation.  That may demand some mental adjustments on our part.  Watch his episode then see my nuanced and careful logic about this: The Jefferson Rifle: Guns and the Insurrection Myth.

Here's Stewart's bit: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-8-2013/scapegoat-hunter---gun-control

Alas, the Gun Lobby devotes far too much faith in the protection of the Second Amendment, a slender reed that will bend at some point, when, amid some future crisis, a Court will turn to the "well-regulated militia" part of the 2nd and interpret it in ways the gun fellows will not like.  I say this not out of hostility... indeed, I support core gun rights! Rather, I point it out as a futurist who knows his game.  You guys need another amendment. And my essay offers you one that liberals would help you to pass! It would be a shoo-in, if you'd stop panicking and negotiate. (And that holds for you lefties, too.)

How does transparency relate to gun control?  Simple.  As I point out in The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom - almost all of the advantages and almost none of the disadvantages of personal firearms are available to us if we all go around armed (as we will!) with cameras.  All of the ability to hold others accountable... plus little of the ability to wreak tragic havoc the instant we fall prey to Homo-erectus rage.  Rage that - with cameras - one might later apologize for.  With a gun, it can bring regret for the rest of your life.

I am not for banning all personal weapons!  Read my proposal: The Jefferson Rifle, which is logical and preserves a certain level with safety. But try being openminded, and know that the new era will depend less on gunpowder and more on light.

And now pause... I'll have more transparency-related news, next time.

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==See more Transparency-related articles: Privacy and Accountability in an age of increasing surveillance

Will the world’s middle classes rise up, in a “Helvetian War”?

 My 1989 novel Earth is credited with a fairly high predictive score.  In fact, fans maintain a wiki to track its successful "hits" - including little things like the World Wide Web and wearable augmented reality "google goggles." See: Earth-related predictions.

(They also track some embarrassing "misses"... ah well.)

Set in the year 2038, Earth portrays citizens in that near-future era looking back upon a brutal struggle that took place in the 2020s.  The Helvetian War was unlike anything we've seen since the French or Russian Revolutions. A radical rising by a fed-up world middle class, pushed against the wall by cynics and the corrupt connivers.

What they seek - and attain - is not socialism, a discredited foolishness that arose out of silly abstractions that bore no relationship at all to real human nature. Market economies have out-performed socialist or communist or oligarchic ones so overwhelmingly that only delusional fools - or would-be oligarchs - should prefer top-down, bureaucratic control instead of the fluid productivity that we get out of creative competition. (Does that make me sound like a right-winger? Silly.  Broaden your memes.)

No, the new radicalism that may be demanded in the 2020s -- especially by emerging middle classes in the developing world -- is to give all people a chance to compete fairly, free from parasitism by their homegrown kleptocrats and from the rising global variety. Free from the secret, conspiring control of a caste that Adam Smith himself called the oppressors of freedom and market economics across 6000 years.

"All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." --Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations

Now, in that context, consider this headline. $21 Trillion hoard hidden offshore by global elite.

Yes that is a "T" and not a "B." Just sit there and consider that number.  Then think about my prediction that the world's middle classes will become radicalized, perhaps in the 2020s, or even sooner.

The study in question estimates the staggering size of the offshore economy and how private banks help the wealthiest to move cash into overseas havens. Russian, Saudi and Nigerian oil barons top the list, followed by US and British bankers and then drug lords and other criminal enterprises.  The totals amount to as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together.

With US tax rates at their lowest levels in 60 years, and taxes on the rich at their lowest levels since 1920, it would seem that they still aren't low enough for today's super wealthy.  Consider the GOP's potemkin rally in Tampa, in this context.

See also this angle: This hidden wealth costs western democracy governments $280 billion a  year in lost tax revenue. That's annual.  An amount so huge that infrastructure repair and boosted science could coincide with cuts in the actual tax rates for law-abiders who aren't part of the secret Lords Economy.

Want to see where this might lead?  Try reading Earth.

== Is a World Middle Class Even Possible?

In fact, it is more than possible. If by "middle class" you mean having a clean home with electricity and sanitation, a washing machine and access to transporation, plus kids who are in school with adequate food, clothing and books, then that already includes two thirds of the Earth's human population, a fact that is seldom mentioned by either left or right.

Why is this good news ignored? Because of the Paradox of Progress.  It's all a matter of deep personality. The reflex of folks on the right is to avert the gaze from problems to be solved and to resent nagging to solve them. The reflex of the far-left is hypersensitivity to perceived problems. To rail for solutions - but to deny that any past attempts at improvement ever worked! The right is suspicious toward the whole notion of "improvability" of either humans or society. The left wants improvability, passionately, but insists it has never happened yet.

Both extremes are - in effect, completely crazy.

See The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, by Gregg Easterbrook. 

Amid ongoing debates over progress, there is a third group. Those who seek to improve the human condition and who admit that steady improvements have already taken place.  These are called "liberals" - a very different breed than leftists - and to them the question of whether development has taken place inevitably gives way to practical discussions.  How to foster a speedup of already ongoing progress.   Pragmatic progressivism eschews dogma in favor of asking: what has worked and what hasn't?

What's becoming clear is that some parts of the world are doing better than others.  In 1970, South Korea had a lower per capita GDP than Ghana.  Today, all the nations of East Asia have left all African nations in a cloud of dust, and that includes China, which had a thirty year hiatus under Maoism.  Today, Latin America has large areas that are burgeoning -- e.g. Brazil -- and sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing its most rapid rate of growth (outside of certain hell-holes) since colonial kleptocrats gave way to local kleptocracies in the 1960s.

Still, the African acceleration is only impressive compared to previous stagnation. And some regions that have tried -- under pressure or tutelage from international development agencies -- to reform their laws and civil society, have failed to make them sufficiently competition-friendly to invite much new investment, or to give vibrant locals a level playing field against conniving local elites.

== What do the professionals say? ==

Two interesting perspectives offer a glimpse at just how difficult the problem can be.

In a fascinating and vivid audio-visual presentation, Owen Barder explores the implications of complexity theory for development policy. He explains how traditional economic models have tried and failed to understand why some countries have managed to improve living standards while other countries have not. Using complexity theory, he shows that development is a property of a system, not the sum of what happens to the people within it.

While Barder is both interesting and informative and is on-target in his range of criticisms - (do watch the video!) - in the end he winds up sounding like a lot of "complexity" fans.  Okay, so the problem is complex.  Thanks for telling us that.

For balance, have a glimpse at an interesting, if a bit depressing, appraisal of the likelihood that creative-competitive capitalism can ever take root in MENA -- the Middle East and North Africa -- despite formal legal reforms.  The problem is an ancient one... oligarchies of a few at the top, engaging in what Adam Smith called "rent-seeking," using informal connections and conniving to bypass the new "civil society reforms" and still maintain their advantages, thus repelling or driving out investment in new competitive enterprises.

It is a standard pattern that this World Bank report deems fairly hopeless to overcome in this region, though others are doing better... while the United States slips ever deeper into the classic oligarchic pattern that Adam Smith loathed.

So, shall we commit seppuku and give up?  Of course not.  There is enough light erupting all over the Earth to encourage belief in progress, not only that it can happen, but that it has.  And that tech-driven transparency will help, when citizens can record and expose local corruption with the touch of a cell phone.  And that -- far better than chiding -- is good enough reason to persevere.

== So, will the world's new middle classes rise up? ==

As I portrayed in EARTH... and explore a bit in EXISTENCE... there are two types of uber-rich.  Those who are loyal to the Enlightenment Experiment that empowered their rise and (in effect) gave them everything they have... a diamond shaped social structure in which even with their billions, they - and their children - will keep facing fresh competition from a lively, vibrant population of educated and confident citizens...

...versus a portion of the new-aristocracy that simply does not get it.  Who think - as oligarchs did in 99% of past human cultures - that they are superior NOT because of this year's latest goods and services, but because wealth inherently means lordly merit.  Such folks aren't at fault for having this reflex.  We are all descended from the harems of guys who pursued power tenaciously and darwinistically.  The reflex is in our genes.

But it's a poison. Our Enlightenment Experiment achieved more human progress in just four generations than all the preceding feudal societies combined.  Its founders, like Adam Smith, recognized the oligarchic tendency and denounced it.  They knew that the foolish "uber" types would keep trying to pound our diamond shaped society back into a pyramid, promoting "rent-seeking" income (like dividends and capital gains) ahead of the wages earned by creative and hardworking people with their hands.

Inevitably (and history bears me out) all this conniving will have just three possible outcomes.

1- They succeed.  The Enlightenment Experiment comes to an end. (In Existence I explore the rationalizations they might give, to excuse such a backward shift, some of them very clever!)

2- The middle classes - uniting in common cause with knowledge professions like science - could enact yet another mild, moderate, incremental, American-style revolution, of which 1776 was only one example. So was the first U.S. Civil War and Teddy Roosevelt's progressive era, and FDR's New Deal, in which oligarchy gets stymied just enough to keep freedom and creative competition and entrepreneurial markets and  transparency and divided power and opportunity and social mobility going, while maintaining the allure of competitively-earned wealth as a reward for delivering cool things into the world.

3- Paris... 1789.

Here is the chief difference between the good/smart/tech billionaires and the fools who now use Fox News to push an idolatry of property that has always, always, always been the enemy of competition.  The smart guys -- the billionaires in Silicon Valley for example, or Warren Buffett and Bill Gates -- want option number two. If need be, they will join the world's middle classes and help keep our looming "helvetian wars" mild.

In sharp contrast, the ones who are pushing the United States into Culture War... indeed, the lastest phase of the American civil war ... actually think they are very smart.  But their efforts, if successful, will only lead to outcome#3.

They aren't as smart as they think they are.

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== See also: Class War and the Lessons of History

and Libertarians and Conservatives must choose: Competitive Enterprise or Idolatry of Property

The Strategic/Tactical Use of Openness

Andrew said...This thread isn't political enough.

All right then… the political lamp is lit!

He also said: "The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter."

Rob further said: “Still and all, two things come to mind: it still freaks me out, unless something like David's contrarian idea of making all the records completely public were to take hold, and even then it still changes the landscape of privacy quite a lot.”

Actually, that oversimplifies. I do not call for all personal records to be public. Even in the radically open society after the Helvetian War, portrayed by my novel EARTH, secrecy is still possible... though you must cache your secrets in some legal way that BOTH protects them and still allows them to be subject to due process. Moreover, the government – too – can do this.

Indeed, in the case of government, considerable latitude should be given to those public protectors who claim to have a need to operate in cryptic ways. I have consulted for the CIA and believe me, I do NOT want them to instantly drop their pants and go naked before enemies of the West! I want them to win tactical battles, and it is the tactical battles that require secrecy most.

Still, the situation is very different over the span of strategic time... years and decades. Over those spans, it is important to recognize the big picture. That our CIVILIZATION prospers - and its opponents tend to shrivel - the more open the world and its varied competitive battlefields become. The more open is the competition, the more it becomes a matter for the accountability arenas - markets, science, democracy... that create beneficial synergies out of competition, instead of reciprocal destruction. Further, the more open the playing field, the more standing individuals have, contributing their billions of eyes to a network that can detect errors and criminality, helping the professionals to do their jobs.

All through the Cold War, the Soviet Union operated under a “logical-sounding” premise. ”If we keep a 99% CLOSED society, and the Americans keep a 99% OPEN society, then we will know 199 points of information and the Americans will know 101 points… and we’ll win!" Throughout all that time, they got more information about our defense from issues of AVIATION WEEK than we got about theirs, through all of our spies in the USSR. And yet, did they win? (Indeed, this is a prime example of the human tendency for self-hypnosis and delusion, based on repeating logical-sounding mantras over and over again… today part of the insanity of the right.)

WHY did we win – (and overwhelmingly) – this competition, despite the purported advantages of closed-control? Of course we credit open markets, for their creative fecundity, producing so many innovations that our rivals were overwhelmed. They simply could not copy them fast enough. But worth noting: it is not the corporations that make these markets. Nor the CEO aristocracy. Rather, it is openness itself. If you have it, something like creative markets will happen, no matter how the structure is set up.

Evidence? In 1945, at the end of WWII, the United States was ten years ahead of the Soviet Union in atomic technology and maybe just a couple in electronics. Spies helped the USSR close that ten year nuclear weapons gap, so we clamped down, classifying that entire field under tight wraps of security. Meanwhile, the field of electronics was left open. Forty years later? Our lead in electronics and cybernetics had grown spectacularly, into a gap of many generations that could never be crossed. Meanwhile, in the area of bombs, everybody agreed that the Soviets were essentially even with us. Conclusion? Any field in which we foster creativity through openness is one that will utilize our civilization’s strengths. Fields that we shut down, by short-term thinking and reflex, will play to the strengths of our opponents.

(And mind you, it was cold warrior Edward Teller who pushed this point, demanding utter opennes NOT as a good-goody stance, but in order to crush communism, decisively!)

Getting back to my core point: a SECULAR TREND toward a more generally open world should be our grand goal, even if it has irksome effects in the short term.

Indeed, it is no paradox to envision the CIA using cryptic tactical methodologies toward the aim of fostering secular openness trends! It is no paradox… but it does require agile, nonlinear thinking. It takes the intelligence to realize that our civilization is not about the convenience of its leaders.

No, I’ll go farther. That secular openness trend is the very thing that such officers should realize they are loyal to! It is more fundamentally a trait of “freedom” and “America” than any word or flag, or even any particular land mass.

Sticking my neck out, it is just this secular trend that has (I believe) driven most of the anti-modernist forces crazy. They are frantic, right now, across all standard borders of ideology. It is why the Iranian president recently sent a letter to President Bush, pleading that Bush take in the “big picture” and see a wider perspective. Asking him to realize that they are both allies, inherently the same. Co-belligerents against a secular-scientific and “liberal democratic” (his very words) civilization.

It would be a mistake to shrug off this letter (the way the press has) as a bit of other-culture looniness to scratch our heads over and then dismiss with a chuckle. I am deeply impressed with the Iranian’s ability to step back and see things from a wider angle than mere Shiite Islam, but rather, as a matter of deep social and psychological agendas. He does represent the same fundamental personality, the same fear of an open future, that has dominated American power in the 21st Century.

This is important because a crisis is coming. The forces of traditional authority span every spectrum of religion and culture and politics (e.g. left-to-right). What they all share is a reflex, a 4,000 year habit of preferring unidirectional vision and evasion of accountability. They will not go gently into the coming good light.

Is it truly coming? In EARTH (1989) I forecast a worldwide "Secrecy War" in the 2010s, almost an visceral and spontaneous uprising (like those fed-up Union soldiers who stood up, against orders, during the Battle of Missionary Ridge). Retaliation by an increasingly well-educated and outraged world population. A drive to cleanse the shadows wherein parasites have always prevailed.

At one level or another, this will have to happen. Not only to end corruption and make markets truly (at last) the cornucopian problem solving machines we are told they ought to be... but also, above all, so that errors in fields like nanotech and biotech et. al. are detected and discussed, openly, before they can become world-killers.

But again, let me reiterate. I am not a “nakedness radical”. What is scary about the NSA stonewalling of Justice Dept investigators is NOT that the NSA acted to preserve operational secrecy. It is that they did so in a way that in effect rejects the very notion of accountability ever applying to them and their secrets.

There is a potential middle ground. A compromise position, that could preserve their operational secrets while ensuring accountability. It is inherent in my longstanding proposal to create the office of Inspector General of the United States (IGUS) who could bridge the two worlds, by creating a corps of trusted observers who can watch the watchers for us.

But it is in the nature of human beings that we rationalize. And it is in the nature of the paid professional protective caste that they will tell themselves that they are trustworthy. That they do not require watching.

Alas, though they are our beloved protectors, they WILL forget (if we let them) that they are also our servants.

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Anonymous said...More political fuel. There is an excellent post over on Professor Balkin's blog about the risk profile of the Bush presidency going forward. The conclusion is that Bush has every incentive to make bigger gambles irregardless of who controls Congress after this coming election. I hold out hope, though, that the average person is smart enough for such a policy to backfire.

One more reason I have said repeatedly - THE top priority for all modernists (e.g. liberals, democrats, libertarians and Goldwater Conservatives) MUST be to reach out to the abused members of the Officer Corps and the Intelligence Community and the Protector Caste. Only they are positioned to detect and thwart such ploys.

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Erik, the child labor stats are amazing to me, yet credible. The people of Latin America have decided to awaken. According to my 1987 meme war theory, they had to choose whether to spiral down into macho frenzy, or rise up and become modern people, shrugging off the chains of dogma and class interest. The BIG emphasis on providing free education down there is evidence of the latter...

...But I’ll only really believe it when Spanish language SCIENCE FICTION takes off in a big way!

(BTW Steve, that’s simply wrong. Yes, in the past child labor sometimes was the 1st step up the ladder, especially seasonal farm labor. Still, that transition is all-too easy for aristocratic elites to stymie, as they have repeatedly in every culture OTHER than the most recent ones, consigning the children of child-laborers to be child-laborers, as well. A decent modern state must break such cycles! It must ensure that these children leap over that phase and devour education. There is no better role for a state. (And it is perfectly compatible with free-market capitalism.) We cannot afford to wait. Nor is waiting prudent, in an era when angry young men can become technologically super-empowered. This is a leap that must be accomplished in one more generation, or we all may die for having failed.)

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Other political matters:

More from Russ Daggatt: “Read about the latest Christian right war on contraception. You really MUST read it. The logic seems pretty simple. Contraception results in fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer abortions. This should be something that brings together all parties -- pro-life and right-to-choose. But a growing contingent among the moralists who increasingly are dictating the affairs of our country oppose contraception because, they believe, it makes pre-marital sex "consequence-free." Even within marriage, it diverts sex from its holy objective to the mere pursuit of pleasure. No sex before marriage, and thereafter only for procreation.

“The Bush administration is spending $200 million a year for "abstinence only" programs in our schools. The little hard data available suggests these programs are not only ineffective, they are counterproductive. The don't prevent sex. They just prevent acknowledging the possibility of sex and preparing for it ahead of time. Internationally, the Bush administration is diverting money allocated to HIV/AIDS prevention into abstinence only programs -- away from other priorities that actually save lives.“
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07contraception.html

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Re possible democratic strategies... like many, I find it clear that the Dems are having trouble formulating a response to Iraq that does not sound like a plaint that Saddam should have been left in power.

Effective points being made:
* incompetence
* civilian meddling/ignoring professional advice
* corruption (!)
* WMD lies

Potentially effective points NOT being made:

1. We were not greeted with "kisses and flowers" (Rummy's words). Why? We WOULD have been so greeted if we had liberated the Shiites when we promised to... in 1991! But instead of continuing 12 more hours to Basra, THESE SAME MORONS consigned the Iraqi people to 12 more years of hell. At Bush Sr's call, those people rose up against Saddam, having been promised that "We're on our way!" That betrayal - one of the worst stains on American honor in a century - was one reason why I WANTED to go get Saddam.

1a. But I wanted it done competently, surgically, honestly.

1b. THESE morons are the very last people who should lecture to ANYBODY about Saddam! Having coddled him in the 80s, then having let him take them by surprise in Kuwait… and thereupon having decided to lift him back up, brushing him off and propping him back up in 91, committing the heinous Shame of Ninety-One… they have no right. And we should all say so.

2. I just said " competently, surgically, honestly..." You mean like in Afghanistan? Exactly! Only these morons don't deserve any credit for Afgh. Bush and Rummy only had time (after 9/11) to say "go!" to a war plan that was already on the books! A war plan devised and okay'd by... wait for it.. Welsley Clark, Gen. Shinseki and Bill Clinton.

Proof of this is that the Taliban assassinated Massoud, head of the Northern Alliance, days before 9/11. They knew all about the War Plan in place and that it would rely upon the Uzbeks, Tajiks etc led by Massoud.

Indeed, there is reason to believe that THE main goal of 9/11 was not simply to harm us but to draw us into a "land war of attrition in Asia." Remember this is EXACTLY how bin Laden achieved his greatest glory, bringing down a Soviet Behemoth Empire, humbling it in Afghanistan...

...only to his shock, our agile war plan and stunning professionalism and diplomatic skill with allies resulted in him and his friends having their asses kicked! Not since Alexander has an imperium entered the Kush without regretting it, amid howls of pain. Yet, Pax Americana surprised OBL, and did it well.

Only then... out of the blue... WE DECIDE TO GIVE HIM EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED... an utterly incompetent "land war of attrition in Asia." What were the odds? How likely is it, that a great nation would reverse every military doctrine that had just won miraculous victories, in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and suddenly turn around to repeat every error of Vietnam? If a sci fi author had written it, the readers would have snorted in disdain! It could never happen!

But it did. And, even more amazingly, the administration’s critics won’t even point this out.

Yes, this is a little complicated to express to voters. But impossible? I doubt it.

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Oh! The Buffet is served! Yes, the April edition of Armageddon Buffet is online and ready for your consumption. Not ENTIRELY the same as my take on things, but entertaining as all get out.