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George W. Bush und die Bombardierung von Auschwitz
13.01.08

Haben Sie schon gehört? George W. Bush sagte neulich in Israel, daß es ein historischer Fehler gewesen wäre, im 2. Weltkrieg Auschwitz nicht zu bombardieren. Den Tränen nahe wäre er gewesen in der Holocaust - Gedenkstätte Jad Vaschem deswegen. Ach Gottl. Weiß der gute Mann denn nicht, daß seine Sippe mit diesen Vorgängen aufs engste und vor allem aufs peinlichste verbunden sind?

Was ist, liebe Leser, wissen Sie, oder wissen Sie nicht? Ich meine: den Zusammenhang zwischen der Familie Bush einerseits, dem Dritten Reich und Auschwitz andererseits?

Doch eines nach dem anderen....

Zunächst die schlichte Nachricht, wie sie von zahlreichen Presseorganen vermittelt wurde, etwa
http://www.n-tv.de/902634.html
von n-tv.de, um nur ein Beispiel zu nennen.

Unter der Überschrift "Bush sieht historischen Fehler" schreibt am 11. Januar 2008 ein Ulrich W. Sahm aus Jerusalem:

Die USA haben nach Auffassung von US-Präsident George W. Bush im Zweiten Weltkrieg einen "historischen Fehler" gemacht, als sie 1944 "nicht das Vernichtungslager Auschwitz und die Eisenbahnlinien dorthin bombardiert haben". Das sagte Bush zum Direktor der Holocaust-Gedenkstätte Jad Vaschem, Avner Schalev, während der Führung durch das Museum (....)

G.W. Bush, ein Historiker. Wer hätte das gedacht?

Als Bush vor den Luftaufnahmen stand, war er zunächst verwirrt.

Tatsächlich? Warum denn?

Er murmelte etwas von einem "schweren Beschluss" und erkundigte sich dann bei seiner Außenministerin Condoleezza Rice, warum denn US-Präsident Franklin D. Roosevelt nicht den Befehl zur Bombardierung gegeben habe.

Hm. Von welchem "schweren Beschluss" mag er da fabuliert haben?

Rice antwortete, dass man damals glaubte, dass es "nicht effektiv" gewesen wäre. Danach wandte sich Bush an Avner und erklärte, dass das ein "historischer Fehler" gewesen sei.

Rührend, nicht wahr? Ein wirklich "mitfühlender Konservativer", unser George.

Liebe Leser, mir ist bewusst, dass es unter Ihnen zwei Kategorien gibt: Wissende und Unwissende in dieser Angelegenheit ( Bush & Auschwitz ). Die (noch) Unwissenden bitte ich um Geduld, mein Sarkasmus wird sich im Laufe dieses Artikels für Sie aufklären. Die Wissenden allerdings wissen bestimmt, warum ich so schreibe.

Die anderen bitte ich noch um Geduld, ich mache es gern spannend.

Der
http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/jad-vaschem-besuch_aid_233218.html
Focus setzt dem ganzen noch die Krone auf und zerfließt fast vor Mitgefühl mit dem "mitfühlenden Konservativen" Bush:

Jad-Vaschem-Besuch: Bush den Tränen nahe

Nein, ich spotte jetzt nicht, liebe Leser. Mir ist nämlich überhaupt nicht zum Spotten zumute. Dem Focus gebührt immerhin die Ehre, im Unterschied etwa zum Spiegel die Schattenseite dieser Angelegenheit wenigstens schon einmal angesprochen zu haben.

Vor längerer Zeit gab es nämlich mal
http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/auschwitz-klage_aid_89792.html
einen unscheinbaren Artikel in Focus Online mit dem seltsamen Titel:

Auschwitz-Klage. Bush muss vor Gericht aussagen

Und in diesem Artikel lesen wir:

Im Verfahren um Millionenklagen von Auschwitzopfern gegen George W. Bush soll der US-Präsident vor dem Kadi Stellung nehmen.

Uh? Millionenklagen von Auschwitzopfern gegen G.W. Bush? Wie denn das? Das sind sicher die Fragen, die sich die noch Unwissenden unter Ihnen stellen.

Im Jahr 2003 stieß ich bei Internet - Recherchen zufällig auf einige sehr seltsame Hinweise den Großvater von G.W. Bush betreffend. Zu recherchieren hatte ich begonnen, nachdem ich rein zufällig auf die Information gestoßen war, dass die Sippe Bush und die Sippe Bin Laden (zu der auch ein gewisser Osama bin Laden gehört/e) seit Jahrzehnten aufs engste geschäftlich verbunden waren, dass offenbar G.W.Bush Osama bin Laden persönlich gekannt hatte. 2003? Sie erinnern sich? Das war das Jahr der Irak - Invasion durch die USA. Das war 2 Jahre nach dem 11.September 2001 und dem Anschlag auf das World Trade Center, der ja angeblich von OBL gesteuert worden sein soll. Sie erinnern sich? Sie können sich vorstellen, dass mich dann die Familiengeschichte der Bushs brennend zu interessieren begann. Was ich dann herausfand, übertraf alle meine Vorstellungen.

Ich stieß auf die
http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm
"Unauthorisierte Biography" von George Bush (dem Vater des heutigen Präsidenten), verfasst von Webster Tarpley und Anton Chaitkin.

Zugegeben, viele der Thesen dieses online lesbaren Buches (in englischer Sprache) verschlugen mir völlig die Sprache, so unglaublich erschienen sie mir. Doch speziell das Kapitel über das
http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm
"Hitler - Projekt" ließ es mir angeraten erscheinen, der Sache näher nachzurecherchieren.

Großvater Prescott Bush maßgeblich verantwortlich gewesen für die Finanzierung der NSDAP 1929 und der Wiederaufrüstung der Wehrmacht ab 1933? Nicht zu glauben! Doch ich tat mehr und mehr andere Quellen auf, die aber genau das bestätigten. Ich wurde schier erschlagen von einer wahren Faktenflut allein nur über diesen Aspekt der Angelegenheit. Welche Angelegenheit?


Die Rolle der Sippe Bush in der Zeitgeschichte. Ich machte mich sofort daran, eiligst einen Artikel zu verfassen unter dem Titel "Eine schrecklich nette Familie: die Bush - Dynastie", den ich dann bei indymedia
http://de.indymedia.org/2003/03/44968.shtml
Deutschland veröffentlichte, unter dem Pseudonym Konrad Argast. Alles, was ich hatte in Erfahrung bringen können, brachte ich in diesen Artikel hinein. Ich musste mich mit einem Moderator herumschlagen, der partout den Artikel nicht auf die Titelseite bringen wollte. Er schiß sich nämlich in die Hosen, weil er meinte, ich würde "G.W.Bush und Adolf Hitler vergleichen", worum es in diesem Artikel eigentlich gar nicht ging. Lesen Sie den Artikel selbst. Er ist zwar leider schlecht formatiert und stilistisch nicht ausgereift, aber lohnt der Lektüre.

Als meinen Einstand seinerzeit beim Politblog schrieb ich sogleich auch zu diesem
http://politblog.net/nachrichten/2007/04/05/749-gw-bushs-grossvater-finanzierte-hitler-die-nsdap-und-die-aufruestung-der-wehrmacht/
Thema einen Artikel und war doch erstaunt, wie wenig bekannt diese Dinge doch immer noch sind.

G.W. Bushs Großpapa als Steigbügelhalter der NSDAP und damit Wegbereiter des Dritten Reiches - ist das eine "Verschwörungstheorie"?

Nicht im mindesten, liebe Leser. Es handelt sich insgesamt um gut belegte, nachprüfbare und dokumentierte historische Fakten.

Der wikipedia - Artikel zu
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush
Prescott Bush ist zwar durchaus auch beschönigend, nennt aber essentielle Fakten, z.B. die Enteignung des wackeren Herrn 1942 wegen "Zusammenarbeit mit dem Feind" (Hitlerdeutschland).

Eine recht
http://www.wsws.org/de/2003/jun2003/bush-j13.shtml
ausführliche und sehr detaillierte Darstellung der historischen Fakten finden Sie hier.

Prescott Bush war sicher kein Einzelfall, obwohl seine finanziellen Verbindungen mit dem Dritten Reich vielleicht enger waren als die der meisten anderen. Henry Ford war ein bekennender Bewunderer Hitlers und Ford spielte zusammen mit General Motors die wichtigste Rolle als Lieferant der Militärlaster, in denen die deutschen Truppen durch Europa rollten. Nach dem Krieg verlangten und erhielten beide Firmen Reparationen für Schäden an ihren deutschen Fabriken, die durch Bombardements der Alliierten entstanden waren.

Die Tätigkeit Prescott Bush im Dienste einer transatlantischen Zusammenarbeit zwischen der NSDAP und der us-amerikanischen Großindustriellenelite ist auch keineswegs etwa den Mainstreammassenmedien unbekannt, wie dieser
http://www.wdr.de/themen/politik/international/bush_klage/index.jhtml
WDR-Artikel beweist.

Hat der Großvater des Präsidenten von Sklavenarbeit im KZ Auschwitz profitiert?

Prescott Bush, der Großvater des amtierenden Präsidenten, soll angeblich mit Nazi-Deutschland lukrative Geschäfte gemacht haben. "Prescott Bush gehörte nicht nur zu einer Gruppe von Hitler-Finanziers, er profitierte als Miteigentümer einer Stahlgesellschaft während des Zweiten Weltkriegs auch von der Sklavenarbeit in Auschwitz", behauptet Anwalt Wolz. Er wirft dem Bush-Clan, der den Großvater beerbte, vor, er habe sich aus dem Profit eines Verbrechens gegen die Menschlichkeit ungerechtfertigt bereichert.

Aufsehen erregte kürzlich ein Sachbuch
http://www.buecher.de/shop/Holocaust/Amerika-und-der-Holocaust/Schweitzer-Eva/products_products/detail/prod_id/12719967
der Amerikanistin Eva Schweitzer, die in ihrem Buch "Amerika und der Holocaust" genau diese Zusammenhänge in allgemeinverständlicher und akzentuierter Form ihren Lesern präsentierte

Angesichts dieser historischen Fakten ist die Dreistigkeit eines G.W.Bush geradezu atemberaubend, sich mit "Tränen in den Augen" und medienwirksam zum Thema zu äußeren.

Ein George W. Bush allerdings kann sich darauf verlassen, dass seine Komödie mithilfe der stromlinienförmigen Massenmedien als dramatischer Akt durchgeht.

Ein Beispiel dafür ist - wie üblich - SPIEGEL ONLINE, das neokonservative Leitmedium in Deutschland.Die Verkommenheit eines den Mächtigen gefälligen "Journalismus", seine geballte Korrumpiertheit, findet hier seinen konzentrierten Ausdruck. Ein wenig Googeln zeigt das. Wenn
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=spiegel-online+bush+auschwitz&btnG=Suche&meta
wir mit den Suchbegriffen "Spiegel", "Bush" und "Auschwitz" suchen, so finden wir im wesentlichen nur die rührseelige Geschichte von Anfang vor.

Für die Nichtbombardierung
http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/topicalbumbackground/1198/warum_die_alliierten_auschwitz_nicht_bombardierten.html
von Ausschwitz findet der Spiegel selbstverständlich auch eine gute "historische Begründung.

Das völlige Totschweigen unstrittiger historischer Fakten wie die völlig eindeutige Rolle von Prescott Bush bei der Finanzierung der NSDAP, Hitlers Machtergreifung und er Wiederaufrüstung der Wehrmacht ist auf den Seiten von Spiegel - Online so vollständig, dass sich der Verdacht einer strikten internen Directive geradezu aufdrängt.

Überzeugen Sie sich selbst, googelt man speziell NUR in www.spiegel.de nach den Stichworten "prescott bush nsdap", so findet man seit Gründung von Spiegel - Online keine einzige Seite vor, die dieses historische Faktum auch nur erwähnt.

Die ausgefeilte
http://www.google.de/search?as_q=+prescott+bush+nsdap+auschwitz&hl=de&num=10&btnG=Google-Suche&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&cr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=www.spiegel.de&as_rights=&safe=images#
Suche nur auf den Seiten von www.spiegel.de erbringt das Ergebnis, daß für dieses heikle Thema beim Spiegel (im Unterschied zu Focus und WDR) offenkundig das Gesetz des Schweigens gilt, eine Art "Omerta
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omerta ". Ist das nicht faszinierend und graulig zugleich - immerhin erwähnte ja selbst das CDU - nahe Magazin Focus den Versuch mit der Millionenklage gegen G.W.Bush durch die Projektgruppe Auschwitz (siehe oben)

Liebe Leser, ich verbreite keine "Verschwörungslegenden". Prüfen Sie selbst nach, ich habe meinen Artikel ja mit genügend Links unterlegt. Glauben Sie mir nicht aufs Wort, sondern recherchieren Sie selbst nach! Stimmt es denn, dass

* Prescott Bush gemeinsam mit Fritz Thyssen ein umfangreiches Spendennetz für die NSDAP aufbaute?
* Prescott Bush als geschäftsführender Direktor der amerikanischen Union Banking Corporation (UBC) einen wesentlichen Teil der finanziellen Transaktionen zur Unterstützung der NSDAP und später der Hitler - Regierung durch die amerikanische Hochfinanz und Schwerindustrie betreute?
* Prescott Bush (neben anderen) am 20. Oktober 1942 zwangsenteignet wurde wegen Verstoß gegen den Trading-with-the-enemy-act
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_with_the_Enemy_Act , weil er auch nach der Kriegserklärung Deutschlands an die USA die blühenden Geschäftsbeziehungen fortführte?
* Prescott Bush darunter auch enge Verbindungen zur Silesian-American Corporation, einem polnischen Stahlkonzern, der nach der Besetzung Polens durch die deutsche Wehrmacht für die deutsche Kriegsindustrie arbeitete.
* Prescott Bushs enge Verbindung zur Silesian-American Corporation in (nicht näher bezifferbaren) Geschäftsanteilen bestand.
* Die Silesian-American Corporation im Dienste der deutschen Kriegsmaschine auch Sklavenarbeiter aus Konzentrationslagern bezog, zufällig aus, dreimal dürfen Sie raten, Ausschwitz.
* Prescott Bush als Entschädigung für seine enteigneten Güter in den USA (UBC) 1,5 Millionen Dollar vom amerikanischen Staat erhielt, was den Grundstock bildete für den Reichtum, den sich die Sippe in der Folge mit Ölgeschäften verdiente.


Was schreibt wikipedia
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush dazu?

Am 1. November 2004 versuchte die Internationale Projektgruppe Auschwitz Sammelklagen, seinen Enkel George W. Bush auf Schadensersatz in Höhe von 400 Millionen Dollar zu verklagen, weil Prescott Bush an einem Unternehmen beteiligt war, das Gewinn aus der Zwangsarbeit von KZ-Häftlingen zog.

Ihrer Ansicht nach beruht das geerbte Vermögen Bushs zum Teil auf Gewinnen aus NS-Sklavenarbeit, die dessen Großvater Prescott Bush durch Geschäfte mit den Nazis im Zweiten Weltkrieg gemacht haben soll. Der Miteigentümer einer Stahlfirma habe so auch von der Sklavenarbeit im Vernichtungslager Auschwitz profitiert.

An die anfänglich Unwissenden richte ich die Frage: na, was haben Sie jetzt für Gefühle, wenn sie sich die Szene vor Augen halten, wo ein George W. Bush "mit Tränen in den Augen" darüber sinniert, ob Roosevelt die Zufahrtswege zum Vernichtungslager Auschwitz nicht besser hätte bombardieren sollen? Das hätte ja möglicherweise die Familieneinkünfte des Herr Großpapa geschmälert.

Sie mögen vielleicht sagen, verehrte Leser, ist es denn gerecht, den Enkel für die Verbrechen des Großvaters haftbar zu machen? Was kann denn der Enkel dafür, dass er einen so missratenen Vater hatte, abgesehen davon, dass er eigentlich nie für irgendwas bestraft wurde (für was auch?)? Mit Verlaub, worüber reden wir denn? Der nicht gerade als geistiger Überflieger gerühmte G.W.Bush verdankt schließlich sein Amt als Präsident nichts anderem als der Tatsache, dass sein Großvater durch seine willige Ausführung besonders heikler Geschäfte im Dienste der durchaus hitlerfreundlichen amerikanischen Großindustrie einen steilen Aufstieg erlebte. Durch die NSDAP - Geschäfte stieg die Familie Bush erst wirklich in die höchsten Ränge der amerikanischen Elite auf. Der heutige George W. Bush ist der perfekte Ausdruck der amerikanischen Plutokratie, denn er ist in vielerlei Hinsicht ihr Repräsentant.


Es ist für mich keinen Augenblick glaubhaft, dass dieser Mann nichts über die Geschäfte seines Großvaters weiß, dem er sein Erbe verdankt. Und er ist - wie die engen Beziehungen zwischen ihm und der saudischen Sippe bin Laden beweisen - ein guter Schüler seiner Vorfahren, in Raffinesse, Skrupellosigkeit und Kaltblütigkeit dieser Familientradition überaus würdig. Nein, über die schmutzigen Geschäfte seines Vaters G.Bush möchte ich mich in diesem Artikel nicht auslassen.

Bleiben wir beim Thema G.W.Bush und Auschwitz. Es existiert also durchaus ein Zusammenhang zwischen diesen beiden Worten, und -ehrlich- hätten Sie gedacht, dass ein solch direkter und geradezu schicksalhafter Zusammenhang besteht (falls Sie zu den eingangs Unwissenden gehört haben)?

Ist George W. Bush für die ungesühnten Verbrechen seines Großvaters haftbar? Eine gute Frage, nicht wahr? Es handelt sich schließlich nicht um einen netten älteren Herrn, der im Bürohaus gegenüber arbeitet und immer freundlich grüßt, sondern um den Verantwortlichen für die völkerrechtswidrigen Kriege und Besetzungen von Afghanistan und dem Irak. Wir reden von einem Mann, der angesichts eines Auschwitz - Museums "Tränen in den Augen" haben soll und von einer "schweren Entscheidung" murmelte (Von was für einer schweren Entscheidung sprach er nur?), wohl wissend (so unterstelle ich), daß er eine Schmierenkomödie abzieht? Denn schließlich dienen solche Auftritte auch noch zu nichts anderem als der Kriegvorbereitung auf den Iran (muß ich wirklich erläutern, wieso?). G.W.Bush ist in jeder Hinsicht williger Erbe dieser Familientradition, die in ihrer ganzen Skrupellosigkeit wohl auch typisch und repräsentativ für ihre gesamte Gesellschaftsklasse ist. Politik ist aus Sicht dieser Leute lediglich Business, man muß die Dinge immer nur gut verkaufen können. Und anscheinend kann man sich auch das Schweigen der Massenmedien zur Familiengeschichte erkaufen, auch "Sturmgeschütze der Demokratie" sind käuflich.

Liebe Leser, ich möchte Sie ermuntern, über diese Dinge selbst zu recherchieren. Glauben Sie mir kein Wort im Zweifel. Aber vielleicht ist es mit dieser Angelegenheit wie mit der Szene im Film "Matrix", wo der Filmheld zwischen blauer und roter Pille wählen muss. Wenn Sie einmal zu den Wissenden zählen, dann ist nichts mehr wie vorher.

Und lassen Sie sich nicht zu sehr vom Ekel übermannen, falls Sie feinfühlig sind. Erzählen Sie das alles lieber weiter, bloggen Sie es, damit tun Sie ein gutes Werk.
http://tinyurl.com/2xswqb

cls (14.1.08 14:43)
http://www3.ndr.de/ndrtv_pages_std/0,3147,OID1006804,00.html

"Drei amerikanische Geschäftsmänner betrieben die Bank Brown Brothers Harriman in der Berliner Behrenstraße. William Averell Harriman, George Herbert Walker und Prescott Bush. Harriman wurde später US-Wirtschaftsminister, Walker und Bush sind die Ahnen der Bush-Dynastie. Diese Bush-Bank, behauptet Eva Schweitzer, war wissentlich in Geschäfte mit dem Vernichtungslager Auschwitz verwickelt - möglicherweise bis 1942."

siehe auch:
Hitlers Partner
Amerika, die Bushs und der Holocaust
02.11.2004 - 3sat / Kulturzeit
http://tinyurl.com/2p9ssx

Did Insects Kill the Dinosaurs?
Jan. 10, 2008
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

By now, scientists have a pretty good idea of what conditions were like in the Cretaceous period, which started about 135 million years ago, and came to a sudden end 70 million years later, with the death of the dinosaurs. Or rather, they think they do — but two new sets of research results suggest there's a lot more to learn.

The first has to do with the period's cataclysmic close. In lots of people's minds, the mystery of what killed the dinosaurs and other species — paving the way for the rise of mammals — was solved a couple of decades ago: a giant asteroid or comet slamming into the Earth, resulting in a dust cloud that shrouded the sun, cooled the planet dramatically and killed off plants and animals wholesale. It's a compelling story, but plenty of scientists never completely bought it. The dinos died pretty quickly, they admit, but not quite abruptly enough to be explained this way. So alternate theories — the dinosaurs succumbed to allergies, from the rise of flowering plants, or to world-shaking volcanoes in what's now India, or to disease — have always bubbled around the periphery of the conventional wisdom. We wrote about one of these hypotheses a couple of months ago.

Now the disease theory has gotten another boost, in the form of a book titled What Bugged the Dinosaurs, from the Princeton University Press. Authors George and Roberta Poinar (George is a zoologist at Oregon State University and a former World Health Organization consultant on infectious disease) specialize in ancient insects preserved in amber (a key plot element in the movie Jurassic Park) and also in fossilized dinosaur poop. Among other things in their lode, they've found ticks, nematodes, biting flies and all sorts of other nasties, including intestinal parasites, dating back to the Cretaceous period. From some of the insects, the Poinars have extracted microbes that cause leishmania and malaria — evidently new pathogens back then, against which dinosaurs wouldn't have had much resistance.

The authors aren't arguing that the dinos all died in a massive epidemic; rather, the constant wear and tear of illness weakened the dinosaurs so that other catastrophes, like comets and volcanoes, could have finished them off. Still, the Poinars couldn't resist a bit of made-for-Hollywood drama. One great quote from the book: "The largest of the land animals, the dinosaurs, would have been locked in a life-or-death struggle with [insects] for survival."

The other recent challenge to conventional Cretaceous wisdom comes from a paper in the journal Science, published Thursday. It's pretty certain from many lines of evidence that the world was much hotter then (which is why a post-comet cold snap would have been pretty tough on the dinosaurs). During a period called the Turonian, about 90 million years ago, things got especially toasty: In some places, during what's often called the "super-greenhouse" years, the ocean's surface temperature approached 100 degrees F, and alligators thrived in the Arctic.

So, how come there were massive glaciers in Antarctica at the time? Paleo-climate experts have seen hints of this oddity before, but the new Science paper nails it down much more firmly. Andre Bornemann, of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, along with several colleagues, got their information by analyzing the amount of the isotope oxygen-18 in foraminifera, tiny, shelled sea dwellers that thrived at the time. It turns out that when water evaporates from the sea but doesn't return (implying that it's trapped up on land somewhere, frozen), the ratio of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 in seawater changes (O-18 is heavier, so it evaporates less). The foraminifera aren't picky; they just incorporate oxygen into their shells, in whichever form.

What researchers found was a stretch of a few hundred thousand years during which foraminifera shells were unusually rich in oxygen-18, suggesting the presence of glaciers. Though changes in ocean temperature can also alter the oxygen balance, sea-bottom temperatures don't vary much no matter what's happening up top, yet the bottom-dwelling foraminifera still exhibited an oxygen imbalance, implying that the ice effect was more likely. Nobody can explain how you can have glaciers in a superhot world. But then, nobody can really explain how the world got quite that hot in the first place.

Taken together, the hothouse glaciers and the sickly dinosaurs suggest a conclusion that should serve nicely as the new conventional wisdom about the paleontological past: Don't take conventional wisdom too seriously.
http://tinyurl.com/2mtyfu

Chief Rabbi Metzger thanks Bush for intervening in Iraq
Jan. 9, 2008
Matthew Wagner , THE JERUSALEM POST

During a short verbal exchange Wednesday at the Ben Gurion Airport Terminal Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger thanked President George Bush for the US's military intervention in Iraq.

"I want to thank you for your support of Israel and in particular for waging a war against Iraq," Metzger told Bush, according to the chief rabbi's spokesman.

Bush reportedly answered that the chief rabbi's words "warmed his heart".

Metzger's stand on the Iraqi war, while reflecting the Israeli majority and Orthodox Jewry, is not shared with most US Jews. The American Jewish Committee's annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion, published last year, found that 70 percent of US Jews disapprove of the Iraq war, with 28 percent backing it.
http://tinyurl.com/3ygmaf

Gandhi grandson disparages Israel
Published: 01/13/2008

The grandson of Mahatma Gandhi called Israel and Jews the "biggest players" in the world's "culture of violence."

Nearly 500 people responded to the blog entry by Arun Gandhi, part of the Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" section.

The respondents were divided between those that called Gandhi an anti-Semite and those that added their own criticism of Jews and the Jewish state, as well as examinations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the Holocaust experience," Gandhi stated in his Jan. 7 blog. "It is a very good example of how a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends."

He added that the Jewish future appears bleak, since it is a nation "that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs."

In an apology posted three days later, Gandhi said that while he stands behind his criticisms of the State of Israel's use of violence, he should not have implied that all Jews support this.

in a statement released Sunday, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee chided Gandhi.

"To suggest that Jews today are using the Holocaust at the expense of others is reprehensible," David Harris wrote. "Regrettably, in the Internet age, it is difficult for a writer, especially one with a popular family name, to retract such hurtful, misinformed statements, and, indeed, Mr. Gandhi has fallen short in his subsequent apology.

"Let’s be clear. Israel, since its establishment by the United Nations 60 years ago, has sought to live in peace and security with all her neighbors. Israel was not created as a militaristic state, nor has it sought to dominate another people, as Gandhi argues."
http://tinyurl.com/2hvgdk

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush
The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup.
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
December 2007

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.
Remember the Surplus?

The world was a very different place, economically speaking, when George W. Bush took office, in January 2001. During the Roaring 90s, many had believed that the Internet would transform everything. Productivity gains, which had averaged about 1.5 percent a year from the early 1970s through the early 90s, now approached 3 percent. During Bill Clinton’s second term, gains in manufacturing productivity sometimes even surpassed 6 percent. The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, spoke of a New Economy marked by continued productivity gains as the Internet buried the old ways of doing business. Others went so far as to predict an end to the business cycle. Greenspan worried aloud about how he’d ever be able to manage monetary policy once the nation’s debt was fully paid off.

This tremendous confidence took the Dow Jones index higher and higher. The rich did well, but so did the not-so-rich and even the downright poor. The Clinton years were not an economic Nirvana; as chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers during part of this time, I’m all too aware of mistakes and lost opportunities. The global-trade agreements we pushed through were often unfair to developing countries. We should have invested more in infrastructure, tightened regulation of the securities markets, and taken additional steps to promote energy conservation. We fell short because of politics and lack of money—and also, frankly, because special interests sometimes shaped the agenda more than they should have. But these boom years were the first time since Jimmy Carter that the deficit was under control. And they were the first time since the 1970s that incomes at the bottom grew faster than those at the top—a benchmark worth celebrating.

By the time George W. Bush was sworn in, parts of this bright picture had begun to dim. The tech boom was over. The nasdaq fell 15 percent in the single month of April 2000, and no one knew for sure what effect the collapse of the Internet bubble would have on the real economy. It was a moment ripe for Keynesian economics, a time to prime the pump by spending more money on education, technology, and infrastructure—all of which America desperately needed, and still does, but which the Clinton administration had postponed in its relentless drive to eliminate the deficit. Bill Clinton had left President Bush in an ideal position to pursue such policies. Remember the presidential debates in 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush, and how the two men argued over how to spend America’s anticipated $2.2 trillion budget surplus? The country could well have afforded to ramp up domestic investment in key areas. In fact, doing so would have staved off recession in the short run while spurring growth in the long run.

But the Bush administration had its own ideas. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000—more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American. The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, this one skewed even more heavily toward the rich. Together these tax cuts, when fully implemented and if made permanent, mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000.

The administration crows that the economy grew—by some 16 percent—during its first six years, but the growth helped mainly people who had no need of any help, and failed to help those who need plenty. A rising tide lifted all yachts. Inequality is now widening in America, and at a rate not seen in three-quarters of a century. A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in poverty when Bush became president. America’s class structure may not have arrived there yet, but it’s heading in the direction of Brazil’s and Mexico’s.
The Bankruptcy Boom

In breathtaking disregard for the most basic rules of fiscal propriety, the administration continued to cut taxes even as it undertook expensive new spending programs and embarked on a financially ruinous “war of choice” in Iraq. A budget surplus of 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (G.D.P.), which greeted Bush as he took office, turned into a deficit of 3.6 percent in the space of four years. The United States had not experienced a turnaround of this magnitude since the global crisis of World War II.

Agricultural subsidies were doubled between 2002 and 2005. Tax expenditures—the vast system of subsidies and preferences hidden in the tax code—increased more than a quarter. Tax breaks for the president’s friends in the oil-and-gas industry increased by billions and billions of dollars. Yes, in the five years after 9/11, defense expenditures did increase (by some 70 percent), though much of the growth wasn’t helping to fight the War on Terror at all, but was being lost or outsourced in failed missions in Iraq. Meanwhile, other funds continued to be spent on the usual high-tech gimcrackery—weapons that don’t work, for enemies we don’t have. In a nutshell, money was being spent everyplace except where it was needed. During these past seven years the percentage of G.D.P. spent on research and development outside defense and health has fallen. Little has been done about our decaying infrastructure—be it levees in New Orleans or bridges in Minneapolis. Coping with most of the damage will fall to the next occupant of the White House.

Although it railed against entitlement programs for the needy, the administration enacted the largest increase in entitlements in four decades—the poorly designed Medicare prescription-drug benefit, intended as both an election-season bribe and a sop to the pharmaceutical industry. As internal documents later revealed, the true cost of the measure was hidden from Congress. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies received special favors. To access the new benefits, elderly patients couldn’t opt to buy cheaper medications from Canada or other countries. The law also prohibited the U.S. government, the largest single buyer of prescription drugs, from negotiating with drug manufacturers to keep costs down. As a result, American consumers pay far more for medications than people elsewhere in the developed world.

You’ll still hear some—and, loudly, the president himself—argue that the administration’s tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy, but this was never true. The bang for the buck—the amount of stimulus per dollar of deficit—was astonishingly low. Therefore, the job of economic stimulation fell to the Federal Reserve Board, which stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent. In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree. Looked at another way, Bush’s own fiscal irresponsibility fostered irresponsibility in everyone else. Credit was shoveled out the door, and subprime mortgages were made available to anyone this side of life support. Credit-card debt mounted to a whopping $900 billion by the summer of 2007. “Qualified at birth” became the drunken slogan of the Bush era. American households took advantage of the low interest rates, signed up for new mortgages with “teaser” initial rates, and went to town on the proceeds.

All of this spending made the economy look better for a while; the president could (and did) boast about the economic statistics. But the consequences for many families would become apparent within a few years, when interest rates rose and mortgages proved impossible to repay. The president undoubtedly hoped the reckoning would come sometime after 2008. It arrived 18 months early. As many as 1.7 million Americans are expected to lose their homes in the months ahead. For many, this will mean the beginning of a downward spiral into poverty.

Between March 2006 and March 2007 personal-bankruptcy rates soared more than 60 percent. As families went into bankruptcy, more and more of them came to understand who had won and who had lost as a result of the president’s 2005 bankruptcy bill, which made it harder for individuals to discharge their debts in a reasonable way. The lenders that had pressed for “reform” had been the clear winners, gaining added leverage and protections for themselves; people facing financial distress got the shaft.
And Then There’s Iraq

The war in Iraq (along with, to a lesser extent, the war in Afghanistan) has cost the country dearly in blood and treasure. The loss in lives can never be quantified. As for the treasure, it’s worth calling to mind that the administration, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, was reluctant to venture an estimate of what the war would cost (and publicly humiliated a White House aide who suggested that it might run as much as $200 billion). When pressed to give a number, the administration suggested $50 billion—what the United States is actually spending every few months. Today, government figures officially acknowledge that more than half a trillion dollars total has been spent by the U.S. “in theater.” But in fact the overall cost of the conflict could be quadruple that amount—as a study I did with Linda Bilmes of Harvard has pointed out—even as the Congressional Budget Office now concedes that total expenditures are likely to be more than double the spending on operations. The official numbers do not include, for instance, other relevant expenditures hidden in the defense budget, such as the soaring costs of recruitment, with re-enlistment bonuses of as much as $100,000. They do not include the lifetime of disability and health-care benefits that will be required by tens of thousands of wounded veterans, as many as 20 percent of whom have suffered devastating brain and spinal injuries. Astonishingly, they do not include much of the cost of the equipment that has been used in the war, and that will have to be replaced. If you also take into account the costs to the economy from higher oil prices and the knock-on effects of the war—for instance, the depressing domino effect that war-fueled uncertainty has on investment, and the difficulties U.S. firms face overseas because America is the most disliked country in the world—the total costs of the Iraq war mount, even by a conservative estimate, to at least $2 trillion. To which one needs to add these words: so far.

It is natural to wonder, What would this money have bought if we had spent it on other things? U.S. aid to all of Africa has been hovering around $5 billion a year, the equivalent of less than two weeks of direct Iraq-war expenditures. The president made a big deal out of the financial problems facing Social Security, but the system could have been repaired for a century with what we have bled into the sands of Iraq. Had even a fraction of that $2 trillion been spent on investments in education and technology, or improving our infrastructure, the country would be in a far better position economically to meet the challenges it faces in the future, including threats from abroad. For a sliver of that $2 trillion we could have provided guaranteed access to higher education for all qualified Americans.

The soaring price of oil is clearly related to the Iraq war. The issue is not whether to blame the war for this but simply how much to blame it. It seems unbelievable now to recall that Bush-administration officials before the invasion suggested not only that Iraq’s oil revenues would pay for the war in its entirety—hadn’t we actually turned a tidy profit from the 1991 Gulf War?—but also that war was the best way to ensure low oil prices. In retrospect, the only big winners from the war have been the oil companies, the defense contractors, and al-Qaeda. Before the war, the oil markets anticipated that the then price range of $20 to $25 a barrel would continue for the next three years or so. Market players expected to see more demand from China and India, sure, but they also anticipated that this greater demand would be met mostly by increased production in the Middle East. The war upset that calculation, not so much by curtailing oil production in Iraq, which it did, but rather by heightening the sense of insecurity everywhere in the region, suppressing future investment.

The continuing reliance on oil, regardless of price, points to one more administration legacy: the failure to diversify America’s energy resources. Leave aside the environmental reasons for weaning the world from hydrocarbons—the president has never convincingly embraced them, anyway. The economic and national-security arguments ought to have been powerful enough. Instead, the administration has pursued a policy of “drain America first”—that is, take as much oil out of America as possible, and as quickly as possible, with as little regard for the environment as one can get away with, leaving the country even more dependent on foreign oil in the future, and hope against hope that nuclear fusion or some other miracle will come to the rescue. So many gifts to the oil industry were included in the president’s 2003 energy bill that John McCain referred to it as the “No Lobbyist Left Behind” bill.
Contempt for the World

America’s budget and trade deficits have grown to record highs under President Bush. To be sure, deficits don’t have to be crippling in and of themselves. If a business borrows to buy a machine, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. During the past six years, America—its government, its families, the country as a whole—has been borrowing to sustain its consumption. Meanwhile, investment in fixed assets—the plants and equipment that help increase our wealth—has been declining.

What’s the impact of all this down the road? The growth rate in America’s standard of living will almost certainly slow, and there could even be a decline. The American economy can take a lot of abuse, but no economy is invincible, and our vulnerabilities are plain for all to see. As confidence in the American economy has plummeted, so has the value of the dollar—by 40 percent against the euro since 2001.

The disarray in our economic policies at home has parallels in our economic policies abroad. President Bush blamed the Chinese for our huge trade deficit, but an increase in the value of the yuan, which he has pushed, would simply make us buy more textiles and apparel from Bangladesh and Cambodia instead of China; our deficit would remain unchanged. The president claimed to believe in free trade but instituted measures aimed at protecting the American steel industry. The United States pushed hard for a series of bilateral trade agreements and bullied smaller countries into accepting all sorts of bitter conditions, such as extending patent protection on drugs that were desperately needed to fight aids. We pressed for open markets around the world but prevented China from buying Unocal, a small American oil company, most of whose assets lie outside the United States.

Not surprisingly, protests over U.S. trade practices erupted in places such as Thailand and Morocco. But America has refused to compromise—refused, for instance, to take any decisive action to do away with our huge agricultural subsidies, which distort international markets and hurt poor farmers in developing countries. This intransigence led to the collapse of talks designed to open up international markets. As in so many other areas, President Bush worked to undermine multilateralism—the notion that countries around the world need to cooperate—and to replace it with an America-dominated system. In the end, he failed to impose American dominance—but did succeed in weakening cooperation.

The administration’s basic contempt for global institutions was underscored in 2005 when it named Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense and a chief architect of the Iraq war, as president of the World Bank. Widely distrusted from the outset, and soon caught up in personal controversy, Wolfowitz became an international embarrassment and was forced to resign his position after less than two years on the job.

Globalization means that America’s economy and the rest of the world have become increasingly interwoven. Consider those bad American mortgages. As families default, the owners of the mortgages find themselves holding worthless pieces of paper. The originators of these problem mortgages had already sold them to others, who packaged them, in a non-transparent way, with other assets, and passed them on once again to unidentified others. When the problems became apparent, global financial markets faced real tremors: it was discovered that billions in bad mortgages were hidden in portfolios in Europe, China, and Australia, and even in star American investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. Indonesia and other developing countries—innocent bystanders, really—suffered as global risk premiums soared, and investors pulled money out of these emerging markets, looking for safer havens. It will take years to sort out this mess.

Meanwhile, we have become dependent on other nations for the financing of our own debt. Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American I.O.U.’s. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. Most likely these creditors will not call in their loans—if they ever did, there would be a global financial crisis. But there is something bizarre and troubling about the richest country in the world not being able to live even remotely within its means. Just as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have eroded America’s moral authority, so the Bush administration’s fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority.
The Way Forward

Whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 will face an unenviable set of economic circumstances. Extricating the country from Iraq will be the bloodier task, but putting America’s economic house in order will be wrenching and take years.

The most immediate challenge will be simply to get the economy’s metabolism back into the normal range. That will mean moving from a savings rate of zero (or less) to a more typical savings rate of, say, 4 percent. While such an increase would be good for the long-term health of America’s economy, the short-term consequences would be painful. Money saved is money not spent. If people don’t spend money, the economic engine stalls. If households curtail their spending quickly—as they may be forced to do as a result of the meltdown in the mortgage market—this could mean a recession; if done in a more measured way, it would still mean a protracted slowdown. The problems of foreclosure and bankruptcy posed by excessive household debt are likely to get worse before they get better. And the federal government is in a bind: any quick restoration of fiscal sanity will only aggravate both problems.

And in any case there’s more to be done. What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we don’t have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure.

When it comes to taxes, we should be trying to shift the burden away from things we view as good, such as labor and savings, to things we view as bad, such as pollution. With respect to the safety net, we need to remember that the more the government does to help workers improve their skills and get affordable health care the more we free up American businesses to compete in the global economy. Finally, we’ll be a lot better off if we work with other countries to create fair and efficient global trade and financial systems. We’ll have a better chance of getting others to open up their markets if we ourselves act less hypocritically—that is, if we open our own markets to their goods and stop subsidizing American agriculture.

Some portion of the damage done by the Bush administration could be rectified quickly. A large portion will take decades to fix—and that’s assuming the political will to do so exists both in the White House and in Congress. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden—even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.

In short, there’s a momentum here that will require a generation to reverse. Decades hence we should take stock, and revisit the conventional wisdom. Will Herbert Hoover still deserve his dubious mantle? I’m guessing that George W. Bush will have earned one more grim superlative.

Anya Schiffrin and Izzet Yildiz assisted with research for this article.
Joseph Stiglitz, a leading economic educator, is a professor at Columbia.
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