On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Let us not forget that Clinton was above all (a) the destroyer of public
> aid, (b) the sponsor of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty
> Act, and (c) the war criminal whose relentless and lethal harassment of
> the Iraqi people made possible the present war. He is, after all,
> included among those post-war presidents who, as Chomsky has pointed
> out, would be hanged if the Nuremberg principles held universally.
>
> Carrol
To put it cynically, all U. S. presidents nowadays have to be war criminals (it's part of the implicit job description). However, on the lethality/brutality scale, the Bush Cabal is an order of magnitude higher than Clinton. Shameless mendacity to justify incoherent, ineffective policies: Bush again an order of magnitude higher. This has to be obvious to anybody who has even a passing knowledge of the activities and accomplishments of the Clinton and Bush administrations.
The upshot here is that somebody has to be president of the U. S. in 2004 (I'm not expecting the revo that soon). The next president will inevitably commit war crimes to protect the empire; he will sign laws that systematically benefit the wealthy; he will compensate his donors with political favors. The difference between Dean/Clark/etc and the Bush Cabal is this: You can reason with most Demos; they're rational human beings (e.g., Clinton's position in the budget standoff with the Gingrich Congress). In contrast, the Bush Cabal is irrational. Evidence is irrelevant, logic is irrelevant, lying to advocate policy is itself acceptable policy. Compromise is weakness. Peace is war.
In short, the Bush Cabal scares the fuck out of me.
Miles