It’s been surreal! Suddenly, the mostly conscience-challenged U.S. Congress in recent history sprang upright into bipartisan action on all fronts. Its members held press conferences, did talk shows, while its chairpersons called their respective committees to hearings. In unison, they demanded, along with the Media, immediate answers from the Bush-Cheney Gang. No, it wasn’t asking about how it had dragged the nation into the dreadful Iraqi War based on a pack of lies. (1) Hell, no, that’s too relevant. It was about an United Arab Emigrates-owned firm taking over a contract to handle stevedoring operations in six U.S. ports. “National security,” was at risk, they collectively roared. In my opinion, whoever cleverly orchestrated this Ports Brouhaha Production deserves an Oscar nomination for - “Best Director!”

As I watched a group of wirepullers, who constitute a “Shadow Government,” in this country, abruptly turn its full fury on President George W. Bush over this over-hyped ports issue, I had a flashback. In the early ‘70s, I was in London. It was the spring of the year and the city was just glorious and bustling with activity. There were lots of things to see and do, especially going down to Piccadilly and checking out the stage shows. Back then, I was also obsessed with a matter in the states - Watergate! (2) I couldn’t wait to buy the “International Herald Tribune” every morning to keep up with the latest news on it. This was the scandal which eventually brought President Richard M. Nixon down.

In retrospect, Watergate now seems to me like it was used as a convenient device by a clique of wirepullers to dump Nixon. It then unleashed its puppet, the Media, as the tool to finish him off. They knew long before that Nixon was a master manipulator, (the bloody CIA coup in Chile is only one example), and the father of serial dirty political tricks. (3) They did little or nothing about those wrongs when they occurred. Isn’t it true, too, that this Shadow Government could have just as easily gotten rid of President Ronald Reagan over his role in Contragate, if it really wanted to do so? (4) So, why all the fuss now over the port deals? Why raise the red herring of national security over this? Don’t these complainers know, that the U.S. Coast Guard is in charge of port security and not the stevedoring companies, whether it’s the British firm of P&O doing the work, or the likes of the UAE’s Dubai Ports World? Who benefits from all Arabs, and Arab states, like the ultra-friendly UAE, being demonized in the U.S. as potential tools of Osama bin Laden? If we don’t have any Arab allies in the Middle East, then what does that say about our foreign policy in that important area? (5) Can you spell the word - F-A-I-L-U-R-E?

Is this ports deal dispute, inadequately explained by the administration, going to be Bush’s Watergate? No, it doesn’t have the claws to do that. But, this doesn’t mean there isn’t another scandal being held in reserve by the Shadow Government for that sole purpose. I don’t think it will be an Iraqi war-related one either, since that kind of mess might lead back to the string pullers in the smoked-filled back room. This is why, too, the Irv “Scooter” Libby case has been deliberately limited by the special prosecutor.

How ironic all of this is! The U.S. illegally, and without just cause, invaded Iraq in March, 2003, reduced it to mostly rubble, while killing tens of thousands of its innocent citizens. This mega-crime also made our country nearly a billion new enemies in the Islamic World. Now, if the Iraqi debacle isn’t the mother of all security threats to the American people, I don’t know what is. Many of the politicians and talking heads, who are screaming for Bush’s scalp over the UAE-related ports deal, and pretending that he has betrayed them on the issue of “national security,” are the same ones who are complicit in the Iraqi war and the outrageous lies of the Bush-Cheney Gang which got us into the conflict initially. (1) Could this feeding frenzy over the ports affair be because the Iraqi war is an abysmal failure and the Wirepullers are ready to sacrifice to the altar of public outrage the dunce in the White House? (6) We know, they won’t be blaming the cunning Neocons for the war, or others who have profited so richly from it, since those targets hit too close to the truth for comfort. (7)

It also made me sick to my stomach watching Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD) mugging shamelessly to the TV cameras, and Arab-baiting away, on this over-stimulated ports security business. (8) Although, she voted, reluctantly, against the Iraq War, she has repeatedly voted to fund it to the tune of close to $245 billion. As for the safety of the port, and the people of Baltimore, it didn’t bother this spotlight-loving shrill one little bit when the Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Plant, all 3,000 acres of it, was recently sold to a foreign-based interest. A wannabe terrorist could easily fire a sophisticated weapon from anywhere on that huge tidewater plant and strike City Hall, in Baltimore. On top of that, 20 percent of U.S. industries are now in the hands of foreigners, without a word of protest coming out of motor mouth Mikulski. (9)

As for Watergate, I’ve lately come to question all of that “Bob Woodward is an investigative reporter/genius” nonsense. I think Nixon’s fall was choreographed from behind the scenes. It more likely went down like this: The Wirepullers deeply resented Nixon’s ideas of rapprochement with China, peace in Vietnam and an end to the Cold War with the Soviet Union. (10) So, they decided to impeach him, remove him from office and put a more malleable creature in the White House. And, this is exactly what happened. They had to also ditch Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon’s V.P., which turned out to be a no brainer. He had been on the take, since his days as a Baltimore County executive. (I still, however, have fond memories of Agnew because he gave me an “A” in a Torts course, without an exchange of a white envelope, at the U. of Baltimore Law School back in the early ‘60s.) The country then ended up with the golf-addicted, and highly pliable, Gerald R. Ford, presiding in the White House. He also supposedly played too much football in his youth on the U. of Michigan’s team, as its center, without wearing a helmet!

Nixon for all his faults, and there were many, was a strong president. He had the creepy Henry Kissinger, America’s Iago, as an advisor, but he made his own decisions. Nixon was also for better or worse - an American, not a globalist lackey! In the ‘72 election, he carried 49 out of the 50 states. As far as the back room boy-ohs were concerned, however, getting rid of Nixon was a win-win for them. The impeachment drama helped to destabilize the country, keep the expensive military arms race humming along, while the last of the genuine nationalist president became history. I think Nixon got off easy myself. Don’t forget what the Wirepullers did to another strong nationalist, JFK, on Nov. 22, 1963! (11)

So, where does all of this leave Bush? Shaking in his cowboy boots, if you ask me. The wirepullers have definitely turned on him. To prove it, they had two congressional pit bulls, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), reading out of the same angry hymn book, with New York City harbor serving as a backdrop, as they condemned the Liar-in-Chief for putting the nation at risk over the ineptly prepared ports deal. Then, on top of all that, Maryland GOP Governor, Robert Ehrlich, also stuck his knife deep into Bush’s back, just as he needed a buddy the most to defend him. Ehrlich sharply criticized him over the Dubai-ports measure. (I think Bush was heard to say on that cut: “Et Tu, Bob!”)

Finally, I believe the ports deal brouhaha was a shot over Bush’s bow to let him know who’s really in charge of the country. His only mistake was in failing to check it out first with his bosses from the Shadow Government! Question: Will the half-demented Bush decide to get even and declare all the members of the Shadow Government gang as “enemy combatants,” and house them, involuntarily, of course, at Gitmo? Who knows? The country is fast going to hell. Anything is possible. Stay tuned!

Notes:

1. www.afterdowningstreet.org/
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate
3. www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAnixon.htm
4. www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php
5. “More U.S. Navy ships dock at UAE ports than any port outside the United States.” See, “Bush’s Response to the Ports Deal Faulted as Tardy,” Washington Post, 02/26/05, Jim Vandehei and Paul Blustein.
6. Now, even that dinosaur of a Right Winger and congenital War Hawk, Bill Buckley, himself, has declared that the Bush-Cheney’ Gang’s “objective in Iraq has failed!” See, www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200602241451.asp
7. “The Sorrows of Empire,” by Chalmers Johnson.
8. See, at: www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz.hancock26feb26,0,2493825.column: Jay Hancock’s article, “Politicians Bashing Dubai All but Ignore Real Threats,” 02/26/06, Baltimore Sun.
9. www.economyincrisis.org/
10. Check out for a more reflective analysis of the Bob Woodward-created Watergate myth, “Silent Coup: The Removal of a President,” by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin; and, “Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA,” by Jim Hougan.
11. “Deep Politics and the Death of JFK,” by Peter Dale Scott.

© William Hughes 2006.

William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘’No’ to the War Party” (IUniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at liamhughes-AT-comcast.net.