“Our lives begin to end the day we become ‘silent’ about things that matter.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

He held one of the highest positions that can be bestowed on a public servant. I’m referring to Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (1987-2006). After leaving office, he penned a tell-all book that filled his pockets with mega-greenbacks. It’s entitled, “The Age of Turbulence.” In it, he made this shocking statement: “It is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what ‘everyone’ knows: the Iraq War is largely about oil.” Translation: Greenspan consciously chose to remain silent about what he now reveals was one of the true reasons for the Iraq War--oil! Why didn’t he resign his office and come clean with the American people that a massive fraud, a war based on serial lies, was being perpetrated on them by the Bush-Cheney Gang? (1) As of today’s date, 3,808 U.S. troop have died in that conflict.

Is Greenspan also suggesting that his fear of feeling “politically inconvenient,” was more important to him than exposing the cover story of the Bush-Cheney Gang’s rush to war as a lie? What did Greenspan mean, too, when he wrote that “everyone” knows that the Iraq War is “largely about oil?” Who in this present administration didn’t know the conflict was “largely about oil?” Were President George W. Bush, V.P. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz all in the loop? Greenspan should be subpoenaed before a Federal Grand Jury and/or the House Judiciary Committee and required to give testimony under oath with respect to his amazing disclosure. It is a federal crime for President Bush, (and his V.P. Cheney, too), to lie to the U.S. Congress. Both of them have insisted repeatedly that the war in Iraq was about Saddam Hussein having WMDs, ties to al-Qaeda, and a connection to the 9/11 tragedy. We now know their cover story was a smokescreen and a lie. (1) So, what were the real reasons for the war? The American people are entitled to straight answers and the liars deserve to be severely punished.

In fact, H. Res. 333, authored by Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), which calls for the impeachment of the grossly callous Cheney, now has 21 sponsors. In Article 1 of that historic document, it is charged that Cheney, Halliburton’s favorite gofer, deliberately fabricated “a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” in order to justify the invasion, destruction and occupation of that beleaguered country. (2) It is estimated that a million Iraqis have died in that blood stained conflict and that another 3.7 million have been made refugees. It is arguable that the Iraq War is a “War of Aggression” under the holdings of the Nuremberg Tribunal, and that it constitutes a “War Crime.” (3)

Rep. Kucinich has also attacked the dastardly scheme of the Bush-Cheney Gang to “privatize” Iraq’s huge oil reserves. Under the plot, about 65 percent of Iraq’s oil would go to the global oil companies, especially the U.S. and the British-based ones. He has labeled it “a theft” and a “War Crime.” (4) Rep. Kucinich has been supported in his efforts to block this skullduggery by many Iraqi Oil Workers, the AFL-CIO and U.S. Labor Against the War. (5)

Back to Greenspan. If he is required to testify under oath--and I think he should be--and if his testimony shows that Cheney was one of the culprits who knew the war was “largely about oil,” it could begin a steamroll in the House of Representatives for the V.P.’s impeachment, and eventual removal from public office for committing “High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Cheney, after his ouster, might also face a criminal indictment, and if convicted, imprisonment. If anything, the House’s passage of “Article of Impeachment” against Cheney could stop this criminally reckless administration from nuking Iran and starting WWIII. (6)

Another question comes up: How could Greenspan sleep at night knowing that so much death and mayhem in Iraq was happening, not because of a purported need for “regime change,” but because a Special Interest, “Big Oil,” wished to enrich its bottom line? And, what exactly did Greenspan mean when he said the Iraq War was “largely” about oil? What else did he know it was about? When I mention Special Interests, like the “Military Industrial Complex” and the “Israel Lobby,” does that refresh his memory?
In his tome, “Sorrows of Empire,” Professor Chalmers Johnson made the case for those three cited Special Interests coming together to push for the illegal and immoral Iraq War. In his follow-up book, “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic,” he detailed the disastrous consequences of the militarism let loose by the Bush-Cheney Gang, not only for its many victims, but for our fading Republic. He sees our fate for years to come embracing “perpetual war, a collapse of constitutional government, endemic official lying, and disinformation and finally bankruptcy.”

There is a passage in Professor Johnson’s book, “Nemesis,” that has relevance to Greenspan’s failure to speak out. He quotes a question from a Canadian political commentator, Adam Young. Mr. Young asked: “How did the chief magistrate of a confederated republic degrade into the global tyrant we experience today, part secular pope, part military despot, part pseudo-philsopher-king and full-time overbearing global gangster?” Let me submit that Bush had a lot of accomplices, along with Cheney, in and outside the government. Author Johnson puts the blame partly on the “atrophying of the legislative and judicial branches.” He also added how an imperial presidency and the rabid militarism (737 military bases located in 130 countries) have turned “many of the organs of our ‘free press’ into Pravda-like mouthpieces.”

I submit that Greenspan, and others of his ilk, are clearly part of this problem. Like other White House intimates, he had a high duty to tell the truth about the real reasons why the Bush-Cheney Gang was taking the country into war. If he didn’t want to come clean himself, he could have told his wife, Andrea Mitchell, a senior correspondent for NBC-TV News. And, if he did tell her, and she didn’t want to go on record about it, she could just as easily given that information to one of her favorite elected politicians--Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). Mitchell and Specter knew each other when Specter was a District Attorney in Philadelphia, PA, and she was then a reporter for a local television station.

Instead, Greenspan failed miserably in his primary obligation to the people. He had a fiduciary responsibility to his fellow Americans that he ignored. Greenspan went along with the White House’s flagrant deceptions, even after Irving “Scooter” Libby was convicted of lying to a Grand Jury and to the FBI. (7) And the lies of the Bush-Cheney Gang just go on and on. Bush’s “Surge” ploy is just another big lie. Today, Bush and Cheney are lying about why we need to attack Iran. The lies are so pervasive, that novelist Norman Mailer’s quote rings even truer. He said: “Each day a few more lies eat into the seed from which we were born.”

I say: Damn the malicious lies of the Bush-Cheney Gang, and damn weasels, like Greenspan. He went along with the liars and the lies of the Bush-Cheney Gang, because he insisted that it was “politically inconvenient” to tell the American people the full truth. Meanwhile, our brave troops are continuing to die in the Iraq War, while more than 27,000 have come home after being seriously wounded. And, on top of all that, the country is wasting $8 billion a month in the Iraq hell hole. And, all for what? DAMNABLE LIES!

Notes:

1. www.alternet.org/story/16274/ and www.whatreallyhappened.com/WMDlies.html and www.davidcorn.com/book.php and
www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/ and www.afterdowningstreet.org/
2. www.afterdowningstreet.org/cheney
3. www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/nuremberg.htm and
www.youtube.com/watch
4. www.youtube.com/watch
5. www.youtube.com/watch and
www.youtube.com/watch
6. www.redress.cc/global/uavnery20070929 and www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh
7. baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/15198/index.php

©2007, William Hughes.

William Hughes is an author, video and print journalist. His videos can be found at: www.youtube.com/profile.
Email Contact: liamhughes-AT-comcast.net.