Are Our Leaders Really Incompetent ... Or Just Pretending?

→ Washington’s Blog

People want to assume that when someone in power messes up - especially someone who appears incompetent - it was just a mistake.

For example, folks can't believe that an incompetent president could carry out scoundrelly deeds.

But as I wrote 5 years ago:

As noted social historian and author Michael Parenti writes:

"Generally, US foreign policy is remarkably consistent and cohesive, a deadly success, given the interests it represents. Those who see it as repeatedly befuddled are themselves revealing their own befuddlement.

Sometimes the policymakers themselves seize upon incompetence as a cover. [For
example, when the Iran-Contra affair was discovered, President Reagan
pleaded incompetence.] His admission of incompetence was eagerly
embraced by various analysts and pundits who prefer to see their leaders
as suffering from innocent ignorance rather than deliberate deception.
Subsequent testimony by his subordinates, however, revealed that
Reagan was not as dumb as he was pretending to be, and that he had
played an active and deciding role in the entire Iran-contra affair.

***

No
less a political personage than Henry Kissinger repeatedly pretended
to innocent ignorance and incompetence when confronted with the dirty
role he and his cohorts played . . . ."

This strategy
of "playing dumb" and acting incompetent has, in fact, long been
employed by leaders on both the left and the right. Many liberals and
old fashioned conservatives have been suckered by this dumb and dumber
act.

***

Let's take a look at the actual history of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for insight into whether they are incompetent leaders.

After
Bush lost his bid for congress because he was perceived as an
over-educated, "spoiled rich kid from back East", he cultivated a
bumbling, "good old boy" image, and then started winning his political
elections. That's right: Bush actually cultivated a bumbling, misspeaking mannerism.

Moreover, President
Bush proposed painting a U.S. surveillance plane in the colors of the
United Nations in hopes of drawing fire from Iraqi military, as a
way to justify war against Iraq. Is this the kind of proposal that
someone who is incompetent would make, or is it the kind of thing a
conscious deceiver would suggest?

Rumsfeld and Cheney are also long-time experts at using deception to
justify their military and political goals. They were, in fact, the
folks who intentionally hyped the Soviet threat during the Cold War so that the defense contractors would make a killing and the U.S. would have a suitably scary "bad guy" to rally against (see this article). These guys, like other neocons, are students of Machiavelli.

Remember how the TV character Detective Columbo pretended he was bumbling and dumb, so that people would underestimate him? Or remember the TV show Matlock, where Andy Griffith pretended to be a slow-witted country lawyer in order to put people off their guard?

I would argue that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have also used this same trick: playing dumb.

Prominent
liberal figures and 0ld-fashioned conservatives have tried to warn
others of the ploy. For example, liberal guru George Lakoff wrote an
article in 2006 called "Bush Is Not Incompetent" which demonstrates that the Bush administration has been incredibly successful
in implementing its agenda (the article is well worth reading for its
evidence that Bush is not incompetent; however, I believe Lakoff
confuses neoconservatism with true conservatism).

Similarly, in an article entitled "Bush Didn’t Bungle Iraq, You Fools",
veteran investigative reporter Greg Palast says that the
administration got exactly what it wanted from the Iraqi war. And
popular liberal writer William Pitt says "the 'incompetence' thing is nonsense . . . Can anyone still think this was all by accident?".
Pitt recognizes that the White House, rather than being incompetent,
has gotten exactly what they wanted all along -- to invade Iraq, get a
foothold in the Middle East and to get control of the oil.

Indeed, the neocons have openly advocated civil war and instability in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries as a long-range strategic plan.

I noted last year:

Countries need to lie about their enemies in order to demonize them sufficiently so that the people will support the war.

That is why intelligence "failures" - such as the following - are so common:

• The
  U.S. Navy's own historians now say that the sinking of the USS Maine
  -- the justification for America's entry into the Spanish-American War
  -- was probably caused by an internal explosion of coal, rather than an attack by the Spanish.

• It is also now well-accepted that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident which led to the Vietnam war was a fiction (confirmed here).

• And two lies were used to justify the 1991 Gulf War: the statement that Iraqis murdered Kuwaiti babies and the statement that a quarter of a million Iraqi troops were massed on the border with Saudi Arabia (see also this article)(technically, the statement about Kuwaiti babies did not come from the U.S. government, but from a public relations firm hired by the government).

Oops.

Obama's Economic Incompetence

Obama - like Bush before him - also appears to
be totally incompetent with regard to the economy. He hasn't been
able to rein in the giant banks or significantly lower unemployment.
Obama is following disproven models, and has appointed economists who
either helped cause the crisis in the first place, or who have drunk the
kool-aid of failed economic theory.

But Obama has actually been serving "his constituency": Goldman Sachs and the other Wall Street giants which funded his campaign.

And as I pointed out
last year, top economists running the Fed and advising Obama don't miss
the dangers to the economy due to negligence, but because they are rewarded for doing so:

Most economists don't exercise any independent thinking because economists are trained to ignore reality:

As
I have repeatedly noted, mainstream economists and financial
advisors have been using faulty and unrealistic models for years. See
this, this, this, this, this and this.

And I have pointed out numerous times that economists and advisors have a financial incentive to use faulty models. For example, I pointed out last month:

The decision to use faulty models was an economic and political choice, because it benefited the economists and those who hired them.

For
example, the elites get wealthy during booms and they get wealthy
during busts. Therefore, the boom-and-bust cycle benefits them
enormously, as they can trade both ways.

Specifically, as Simon Johnson, William K. Black and others point out,
the big boys make bucketloads of money during the booms using
fraudulent schemes and knowing that many borrowers will default. Then,
during the bust, they know the government will bail them out, and they will be able to buy up competitors for cheap and consolidate power. They may also bet against the same products they are selling during the boom (more here), knowing that they'll make a killing when it busts.

But economists have pretended there is no such thing as a bubble. Indeed, BIS slammed the Fed and other central banks for blowing bubbles and then using "gimmicks and palliatives" afterwards.

It
is not like economists weren't warning about booms and busts.
Nobel prize winner Hayek and others were, but were ignored because
it was "inconvenient" to discuss this "impolite" issue.

Likewise, the entire Federal Reserve model is faulty, benefiting the banks themselves but not the public.

However, as Huffington Post notes:

The
Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants,
visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly
dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central
bank has become a career liability for members of the profession,
an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.

This
dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee
the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the
central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic
economists. In the Fed's thrall, the economists missed it, too.

"The
Fed has a lock on the economics world," says Joshua Rosner, a
Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. "There is
no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so
wrong."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/07/priceless-how-the-federal_n_278805.html

The
problems of a massive debt overhang were also thoroughly
documented by Minsky, but mainstream economists pretended that debt
doesn't matter.

And - even now - mainstream economists are STILL willfully ignoring things like massive leverage, hoping that the economy can be pumped back up to super-leveraged house-of-cards levels.

As the Wall Street Journal article notes:

As they did in the two revolutions in economic thought of the past century, economists are rediscovering relevant work.

It
is only "rediscovered" because it was out of favor, and it was
only out of favor because it was seen as unnecessarily crimping
profits by, for example, arguing for more moderation during boom
times.

The powers-that-be do not like economists
who say "Boys, if you don't slow down, that bubble is going to
get too big and pop right in your face". They don't want to
hear that they can't make endless money using crazy levels of
leverage and 30-to-1 levels of fractional reserve banking, and credit
derivatives. And of course, they don't want to hear that the Federal Reserve is a big part of the problem.

Indeed, the Journal and the economists it quotes seem to be in no hurry whatsoever to change things:

The
quest is bringing financial economists -- long viewed by some as a
curiosity mostly relevant to Wall Street -- together with
macroeconomists. Some believe a viable solution will emerge within a
couple of years; others say it could take decades.

Saturday, PhD economist Michael Hudson made the same point:

I
think that the question that needs to be asked is how the
discipline was untracked and trivialized from its classical
flowering? How did it become marginalized and trivialized, taking
for granted the social structures and dynamics that should be the
substance and focal point of its analysis?...

To
answer this question, my book describes the "intellectual
engineering" that has turned the economics discipline into a public
relations exercise for the rentier classes criticized by the
classical economists: landlords, bankers and monopolists. It was
largely to counter criticisms of their unearned income and wealth,
after all, that the post-classical reaction aimed to limit the
conceptual "toolbox" of economists to become so unrealistic,
narrow-minded and self-serving to the status quo. It has ended up as
an intellectual ploy to distract attention away from the financial
and property dynamics that are polarizing our world between
debtors and creditors, property owners and renters, while steering
politics from democracy to oligarchy...

[As one
Nobel prize winning economist stated,] "In pointing out the
consequences of a set of abstract assumptions, one need not be
committed unduly as to the relation between reality and these
assumptions."

This
attitude did not deter him from drawing policy conclusions affecting
the material world in which real people live. These conclusions
are diametrically opposed to the empirically successful
protectionism by which Britain, the United States and Germany rose
to industrial supremacy.

Typical of this now
widespread attitude is the textbook Microeconomics by William
Vickery, winner of the 1997 Nobel Economics Prize:

"Economic
theory proper, indeed, is nothing more than a system of logical
relations between certain sets of assumptions and the conclusions
derived from them... The validity of a theory proper does not
depend on the correspondence or lack of it between the assumptions
of the theory or its conclusions and observations in the real
world. A theory as an internally consistent system is valid if the
conclusions follow logically from its premises, and the fact that
neither the premises nor the conclusions correspond to reality
may show that the theory is not very useful, but does not
invalidate it. In any pure theory, all propositions are essentially
tautological, in the sense that the results are implicit in the
assumptions made."

Such
disdain for empirical verification is not found in the physical
sciences. Its popularity in the social sciences is sponsored by
vested interests. There is always self-interest behind
methodological madness. That is because success requires heavy
subsidies from special interests, who benefit from an erroneous,
misleading or deceptive economic logic. Why promote unrealistic
abstractions, after all, if not to distract attention from reforms
aimed at creating rules that oblige people actually to earn their
income rather than simply extracting it from the rest of the
economy?

***

Not
only have our government "leaders" in the Fed, Treasury, Congress and
White House ignored the real world, they have taunted it - like
monkeys who pull the tail of the lion and then are surprised when the
lion attacks:

They have:

• Let the largest U.S. banks go bankrupt repeatedly due to wild speculation, then blessed the speculation and helped cover up the bankruptcies

• Privatized profits and socialized losses, trashed the real value of the dollar, and let corruption run rampant

• Covered up all of the fraud which led to the crisis

• Rewarded looting by the big banks

• Given trillions in bailout or other emergency funds to private companies, but then refusing to disclose to either the media, the American people or even Congress where the money went

• Let banks buy the government lock, stock and barrel (and see this and this)

• Blown bubble after bubble

• Plundered the treasury to effect "a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives"

• Allowed high-frequency trading to completely warp the markets

• Waged unnecessary wars all over the world, so that even our top military commanders are begging to slash defense costs, and otherwise buried our nation under mountains of debt (see this, this, this, this, this and this)

• Failed to take any meaningful steps to stabilize - let alone fix - the economy (see this and this)

These aren't the only areas where the "incompetence" card was played.

Cenk Uygur pointed out:

The New York Times reported ... that we sent in 36 U.S. Special Forces troops to get Osama bin Laden when we knew
he was in Tora Bora. By contrast, we sent nearly 150,000 soldiers to
get Saddam Hussein. In case you're keeping count at home, we got
Saddam and we didn't get Osama. What does that tell you about this
administration’s priorities? This goes beyond incompetence. If you send only 36 soldiers to get somebody in the middle of Afghanistan, it means you don’t want to get him...

Osama
had about 1,500-2,000 well-armed, well-trained men in the region. 36
guys to get 2,000? Why would we let ourselves be outgunned like
that?...

There is an inescapable fact – if you put this little effort into capturing someone, it means you don’t want to capture him.

***

If
people inside the administration actually held back from capturing
Osama bin Laden when we had him cornered, it borders on treason.

And
former Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S.
Department of Justice under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan;
former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and currently a widely-sought
media commentator on terrorism and intelligence services (John Loftus) says:

The
information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11
was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or
FBI to assert a defense of incompetence.

Postscript:
If you still don't believe a bumbler like Bush could have really been a
rascal, remember that Colin Powell's Chief of Staff Lawrence
Wilkerson said:

The vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy.

(Just like they've hijacked foreign policy in the U.S. for nearly 40 years.)

Similarly, if
you think Obama is incompetent in fixing the economy and reining in
Wall Street, remember that Harold Bradley - who oversees almost $2
billion in assets as chief investment officer at the Kauffman Foundation
- said:

“We are in a cabal... five or six players ... own the regulatory apparatus. everybody is afraid to regulate them"

Comments

[Icepick]

that we sent in 36 U.S. Special Forces troops to get Osama bin Laden when we knew he was in Tora Bora. By contrast, we sent nearly 150,000 soldiers to get Saddam Hussein.

Would it be unsporting to mention that the US government sent 24 Special Forces troops to get Bin Laden at the start of May ... and got him?

Or to mention that counting ONLY the people tasked with a particular mission in Afghanistan while counting EVERYONE in Iraq as being tasked solely (or even primarily) with "getting Saddam" is a bit of bullshit on the part of the reporter in question?

Not saying out leaders are competent, or that major fuck-ups haven't happened on purpose, but that little bit is also bullshit.

[Confuchius]

@icepick

"Would it be unsporting to mention that the US government sent 24 Special Forces troops to get Bin Laden at the start of May ... and got him?"

You, sir, are spewing a line of total bullshit about which you know nothing.-102

[AR15AU]

Its called a straw man argument... Obviously, taking down the head of an entire nation requires more commitment. But GW is on a mission to try to equate Saddam Hussein with Osama Bin Laden, so he will use any embelishment necessary to achieve those ends.

[George Washington]

The war between liberals and conservatives is a false divide-and-conquer dog-and-pony show created by the powers that be to keep the American people divided and distracted. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

You've already shown your true colors, sir: here and here.

[AR15AU]

Actually, the war between liberals and conservatives is very real. Why pretend otherwise?

You obviously take the liberal side... why else would you quote some liberal dumbshit congressman saying that Bush is evil, blah blah blah. You are just too cowardly to admit your true colors, yet they are plain as day for all to see.

[jeff montanye]

what part of bush's national security state has obama dismantled?  what facet of bush's bank bailout/protection of control fraud has obama reversed?  what aspect of bush's war on whistle blowers has obama repudiated?  what of bush's war crimes or constitutional destructions has obama prosecuted?  oh they seem to scrap over gay sex, abortion and the drug laws but really, has roe vs. wade been overturned?  is pot legal?   

[JamesBond]

its been a tactic of liberals/socialists for decades now.  deny intentions/philosophy to garner votes.

[George Washington]

As I noted in 2009:

According to the U.S. Senate - Bin Laden was "within the grasp" of the U.S. military in Afghanistan in December 2001, but that then-secretary of defense Rumsfeld refused to provide the soldiers necessary to capture him.

This is not news: it was disclosed in 2005 by the CIA field commander for the area in Afghanistan where Bin Laden was holed up.

In addition, French soldiers allegedly say that they easily could have captured or killed Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but that the American commanders stopped them.

***

A retired Colonel and Fox News military analyst said that the U.S. could have killed Bin Laden in 2007, but didn't:

We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 [Note: this is the exact same team that is credited with killing Bin Laden yesterday] — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it ....Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden.

Indeed, a United States Congressman claims that the Bush administration intentionally let Bin Laden escape in order to justify the Iraq war.

[AR15AU]

Your writing here to inform us that a liberal congressman (D) from NY claims Bush let Bin Laden esape on purpose? Do you realize how fucking stupid you sound?

[George Washington]

The war between liberals and conservatives is a false divide-and-conquer dog-and-pony show created by the powers that be to keep the American people divided and distracted. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

You've already shown your true colors, sir: here and here.

[AR15AU]

Actually, the war between liberals and conservatives is very real. Why pretend otherwise?

You obviously take the liberal side... why else would you quote some liberal dumbshit congressman saying that Bush is evil, blah blah blah. You are just too cowardly to admit your true colors, yet they are plain as day for all to see.

[Citxmech]

The "battles" between right and left might be real - but the "war" is between the global financiers and us serfs. 

Think about it:  If you were super-rich and could fund political movements that benefited you - would you only fund one side - or all sides?  That's why the Dems and Repubs fuck their constituency over on a regular basis on the issues that matter to TPTB.  They are owned.  All the liberal v. conservative horseshit is part of a divide and conquer strategy.  

[Vic Vinegar]

Maybe someone needs to just toss this Carroll Quigley quote in for you every time you want to think there is a difference between the two sides.  You have conservative values?  Great.  You think there is a difference between liberal and conservative politicians?  No – both sides are pretending, and advancing the same agenda.

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.

[BigJim]

Unsporting? No. Irrelevant? Yes.

36 Special Forces men to go into a vast area defended by a few thousand Al Qaeda... vs... 24 to go into a house, sorry compound, with less than a dozen people in it. Big difference.

[Icepick]

And you completely ignore the idea that the reporter posits that EVERY SINGLE member of the armed forces in Iraq had the primary responsibility of finding Saddam. (I'm sure the guys refueling trucks were pissed that they had to give up their primary duty for such mundane tasks instead of going out into the desert looking for Ba'athists to waterboard.) It's disingenuous. It represents either a lie or incompetence. Given that the point of this piece is that our leaders are pretending to be incompetent in order to hide their true agenda, such BS doesn't come across so well.

[jeff montanye]

you have a reasonable quibble with the way gw wrote it above (but see his elaboration below).  however it remains true that obl was said to have escaped tora bora while saddam appears to have been liquidated.

[Icepick]

Pakistan isn't a vast area defended by thousands? Weren't the Special Forces most concerned with getting into a shooting match with the locals on both occassions? The compouind was only undefended if you think the Pakistanis were on the side of the US.

[nah]

a war economy manufactured for globalists with interest in increasing violent social control, dispair, and want... and we kind of vote for it in the UN IMF or whatever

.

sounds pretty dumb

[rlouis]

Well written George, reminded me of the Wilson quote:

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

[CompassionateFascist]

In WW's day, that power may have been "subtle". Not any more. It's right out in the open for all to see. So we don't have to "Name the Jew". They themselves are doing it for us. And why? Either they are increasingly desperate, or: they think they have won. We'll soon know which.  

[Andy Lewis]

There's a third option: Yer a lyin' sack o' shit.

[jeff montanye]

i like the "yer".  gives your comments that folksy touch.  like you're a dead end kid, an angel with a dirty face.

[BigJim]

Well, Wilson should know - he went ahead and gave 'them' the central bank they wanted. The rest is history.

[SilverFiend]

Almost a GW post without a mention of Iraq or 9/11.  Almost.

[New_Meat]

Ag, but, still W's fault ;-)

[AR15AU]

Michael Moore using a nom de plume / trying to wrap his ass in the flag...

Easy to discard the shrill parroting "9/11 was an inside job but Americans think Saddam did it" that features so prominently.

Read Michael Savage's "liberalism is a mental disorder" and you will get a feel for why he has to basically keep repeating his same beliefs to himself over and over and over and over...  

[Citxmech]

Citing to Michael Savage [aka Michael Weiner, PhD] as an authority on mental disorders would be funny if it weren't so sad.  Savage is a smart, and very educated guy - but IMHO, emotionally, he has never gotten over being passed-over for that teaching gig at Berkeley. Essentially, he has based his career upon feeding the outrage of those who harbor deep-seated resentment of others based upon overbroad ideological generalizations. 

[falak pema]

wait until the shit hits the fans...then ask the same question again...in a different perspective.

[A Man without Q...]

As someone who was aware of Cheney first and foremost through the Halliburton acquisition of Dresser Industries, I always felt the guy was a buffoon.  I thought that he would try to carry out plenty of dark deeds when in office, but I thought they'd end up screwing up a lot of them, because he liked the big picture, and tended to ignore minor details that interfered with his conception of the issue.

[George Washington]

It's some big picture that Cheney has pursued for 40 years.

[Rick64]

PNAC

[Citxmech]

I was pretty young when Nixon was in office - though I remember watching his "I am not a crook" speech on TV. 

Years later I remember watching some documetary and seeing pictures of Rumsfeld and Cheney in the Nixon Whitehouse and was just horrified - while presidents come and go -  those guys have been almost a friggen constant. . .  

[High Plains Drifter]

when everyone in our congress , stands on their feet repeatedly and gived bibi, standing o's then we know what is going on , don't we?

[Andy Lewis]

Yeah, yer stinkin' up the joint as usual, that's what.

[jeff montanye]

ad hominem all you got?  the u.s. congress's decades long suck up to israel is hardly controversial with regard to its occurrence.  you apparently like it; the drifter not so much.

[tamboo]

wars are most necessary for the zionist agenda, satanic mass human sacrifice,

and obscene profits. if a few nations get destroyed in the process then so much the better.

and if you think shrub or the jewish negro are the architects of "their"

agendas then you got a screw loose.

so who might constitute this shadowy cabal and who pulls their strings?

1849: Gutele Schnaper, Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s wife dies. Before her death she would state, “If my sons did not want wars, there would be none.”

http://www.planetization.org/rothschild.htm

http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/jewish_sacrifice.htm

[Andy Lewis]

Go flush yerself.

[Sudden Debt]

When I started working and was at the bottom of the food chain, I always thought that bosses and upper management where Gods.

Now I'm in Senior management and I know that only the biggest bastards and incompetent make it to the top. The reason why? They have learned the art of hiding their incompetence better than the rest and have all mastered the art of lying about the "enemy" or the competition within the company. Corporate politics. And believe me, it's a daily war that never ends.

[earnyermoney]

In senior management?

Do you see the irony in your broad categorization of executives within your company?

[Citxmech]

I worked for a while at an aviation maintenance facility for a large builder of business jets.  We had a crew chief who put a jack right through the wing of an airplane - missed the jack-point and set the jack on a fuel drain.  Management promoted him to shift supervisor where he couldn't do as much damage. 

Now there were other supervisors who were really good - but anybody who rocked the boat of the maintenance manager's favorite "yes men" got put down.  That was a huge lesson for me in who gets ahead and why. 

My supervisor told me that in corporate operations like that - you have to keep the person directly above you happy and looking good to management at all costs - that was the only way you would be protected when some shit came down.

What is the saying?  "Kissing the right ass is worth a college degree." 

[America- Some A...]

People get promoted to the level of their incompetence.

[weinerdog43]

My favorite part of mgmt. is that when an idea is suggested by the people who actually do the work, it will be roundly ignored.  But when we pay McKinsey & Co. a couple million dollars, it's a GREAT idea. 

[FunkyMonkeyBoy]

"Are Our Leaders Really Incompetent ... Or Just Pretending?"

- No, it's even more simpler than that... they are evil, they are some of the most evil human filth on the planet... it's that simple. Don't try to make it so complicated, by trying to reason or justify their behavior.

[High Plains Drifter]

most evil human filth on the planet? yep , that about explains them.

for instance.

perhaps everyone should take a break and watch this old film, about "them"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7725966698433381712#

[YHC-FTSE]

That is the most fucked up, disgusting, frightening thing I've ever seen in my life. How on earth did they manage to keep this hidden? The FBI should be out arresting every bastard politician mentioned in this video. Truly sickening. It might be old, but this story and the cover-up should be aired on every news channel. It's just beyond comprehension how evil these so-called elites are. 

[High Plains Drifter]

just remember that film the next time you see that old codger warren buffet, the oracle of omaha on CNBC. he may look like a nice old man, but is he? is he really?  it is amazing how men can dress up in suits and pretend to be good and decent men, but in secret, not so much.  ronald reagan was into this stuff as was GHW Bush. This sort of depraved behavior is the balliwick of the mossad, who wholeheartedly serve up whatever crap, that any of these sick bastards want and due their best to make sure all of it is on film, to be used later, if necessary. such is our government now. the level of sickness in our government cannot be fathomed by most amerikans. i would sincerely hope that boy's town, was not (at least at first) created for this terrible purpose, to be a place where young boys could be groomed and used by certain sick fucks.....

since the early 2000's they have had a boystown in washington dc. i mean why make those congressmen and others that are into this weird stuff, travel so far. heck , now all they have to do is go down the street....

http://www.boystown.org/washingtondc

other interesting discussion concerning this stuff.

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government/boys_town_abuse.htm

my take on all of this, is that all of these sick fucks deserve to be executed , all of them.

[YHC-FTSE]

I'll second that. 

After the vomit inducing shock of it all, I'm just numbed by the complete lack of action by the people in authority. If they could allow secret service thugs to silence the Washington Post, allow guilty congressmen to buy up the rights to the documentary so that it can't be aired, and keep a lid on a story as explosive as this with every msm's consent, then what chance does any normal person have? I thought surely there must be ONE decent person in Washington? But more than a decade of inaction tells me otherwise. 

[The Hawk]

You must be from MENA... I see they tend to use the word "filth" a lot... How are things going over there btw?  When will the first bombs start flying?

[anony]

Ask that another way.

Is it possible for anyone to lead a nation of 320,000,000 people WITHOUT appearing to be incompetent? 

There are no men and women in this world capable ---nor should be stupid enough to expect --- enough to lead that many people.

So we have two-fold problem:

1) they know they can only do so much so they do it for their campaign contributors---- a sliver of a fraction of the people who vote for them and never in opposition to their contributors. Halliburton, Bechtel, the lobbyists, and other usual suspects, and perps

2) people like yourself expect impossible leadership and are disappointed to find out that they cannot meet your expectations.

[JamesBond]

another daily paranoid delusional rant from GW.

what's new....