May 21, 2004 - Matters of great moment are suddenly in the air all around us: stark evidence of war crimes by the leaders of the West; the growing certainty of a humiliating geopolitical defeat inflicted on the world's greatest power; terrorism and torture as the mirrored emblems of the age, a deadly double helix giving rise to a hideous global reality.

It's tempting in such times to inflate the image of those in the forefront of events, painting them, for good or ill, in the colors of legend: bold, outsize figures, Great Ones playing dice with nations, characters whose roiling depths -- tragic, evil or heroic -- transcend the puny limits of the common herd. Although on rare occasions this viewpoint might hold true, the squalid history of our ill-cobbled species provides endless examples to the contrary.

And they don't come any more squalid than the crew now steering the American boat straight into the shoals of disaster. For despite all the grandiose political rhetoric and world-historical perturbations emanating from the Bush Regime's imperial project, we should never lose sight of one simple fact: Deep down, these guys are nothing but cheap hoods, two-bit chiselers hustling for loot, thug-brained goons with no more grandeur about them than the meanest pack of Mafia knee-breakers. For them, statecraft is just a crowbar for bashing heads and jimmying open lockboxes. Two recent stories, both obscured by the blood and thunder of the Iraqi crack-up, illustrate this ugly truth.

Throughout the spring, as hundreds died in the spiraling conflict, as Regime bosses applied their hardcore "anti-terrorist" tortures to innocent bystanders raked up in their occupation nets, as Regime mouthpieces prated endlessly of "liberation" and "sovereignty," Bush viceroy Paul Bremer was quietly signing a series of edicts that will give the United States effective control over the military, ministries -- and money -- of any Iraqi government, for years to come, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Bremer has placed U.S.-appointed "commissions" made up of Americans and local puppets throughout Iraqi government agencies; the ministers supposedly in charge weren't even told of the edicts. These boards "will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens," the Journal reports. Any new Iraqi government "will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials."

Earlier Bremer edicts laid the Iraqi economy wide open to ruthless exploitation by Bush-approved foreign "investors"; dominance of such key sectors as banking, communications -- and energy -- is already well advanced. The latest dictates aim to ensure that this organized looting goes on, no matter what kind of makeshift "interim government" the United Nations manage to piece together. Bush's plans to build a Saddamite fortress embassy in Baghdad and 14 permanent military bases around the country are designed to provide the knee-breaking "security" for these lucrative arrangements.

Each passing day of scandal and carnage makes this sweet dream seem ever more unlikely, of course. But not to worry; Bush always has another country to loot -- his own. The second ignored story tells of domestic corruption small in scale, but large in revelatory power.

In April, Bush quietly gave a mining conglomerate larded with his top contributors a little gift: $155 million worth of federal land, the Denver Post reports. Invoking an obscure 1872 law designed to help frontier prospectors gain title to their small mining claims, Bush turned over a swathe of prime Colorado mountaintop property to the firm of Dodge Phelps, whose board is packed with oil men, military contractors and official Bush "Pioneers": corporate fat cats who've strongarmed at least $100,000 from their friends -- and employees -- for Bush campaign coffers.

Because the never-updated 1872 law requires that federal mining land be sold for $5 per acre, Bush's bagmen only had to pony up $875 for the whole spread -- in an area where land is worth a staggering $1 million per acre. The idea is to build an elite ski playground on the looted public property -- even though the law requires that such land sales be used for actual mining.

But what is law in this bold new Abu Ghraib era, when Bush's own legal team pronounces the Geneva Convention "obsolete?" In fact, as Newsweek reports, they explicitly told Bush to repudiate the law, to establish the precedent that there is "no binding legal effect on either the President or the military" in wartime. Otherwise, they warned, he could be "subject to prosecution [under U.S. law] for war crimes" -- especially "if the political climate changes."

In the Colorado caper, as in so many others, Bush is following in the mucky footprints of his father. In the waning days of his failed presidency, George I used the 1872 law to cut a sweetheart deal with Barrick, the Canadian mining giant. For $10,000 in chump change to the federal treasury, Old Bush gave Barrick government land containing $10 billion in gold, Greg Palast reports. Afterwards, Bush I became a "special advisor" to Barrick, pocketing kickbacks from the gold deal for seven years and traveling the world on behalf of his corporate master, trying to rig up insider deals with his "old friends" -- bloodthirsty dictators like Indonesia's Suharto and Zaire's Mobutu. In return, Barrick later poured streams of its Bush-gotten gold into Little George's 2000 campaign.

That's how they operate, these cheap hoods. Like Saddam, like Osama, they mouth great pieties, they strut and preen on the world's stage. But underneath they're still nothing but witless, murdering, money-grubbing goons.

Annotations

Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings

Newsweek, May 17, 2004

Abuse Scandal Focuses on Bush Foundation

Associated Press, May 16, 2004

Behind the Scenes, U.S. Tightens Grip on Iraq's Future

Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2004

The Gray Zone

Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, May 15, 2004

Bush Pioneers Fill War Chest, Then Capitalize

Washington Post, May 15, 2004

I Don't Care What the International Lawyers Say, We Are Going to Kick Some Ass

George W. Bush, quoted in "Against All Enemies," Richard Clarke, Free Press, March 22, 2004

'I Killed Innocent People For Our Government

Sacramento Bee, May 16, 2004

Chaos in Washington

TomDispatch, The Nation Institute, May 18, 2004

Bush Hands Million-Dollar Public Land to Mining Company for $875

Greenwatch, May 5, 2004

Sale of Mining Patents Roils Crested Butte Residents

Denver Post, Apr. 6, 2004 (archive fee required)

Poppy Strikes Gold

UTNE Reader, April 8, 2003

Locked in Abu Ghraib: The Prison Scandal Keeps Getting Worse

Slate.com, May 17, 2004

The Doctrine of Atrocity

Village Voice, May 11, 2004

Lies Were Fed to CIA on Iraq, Says Powell

International Herald Tribune, May 18, 2004

Up to 90 Percent of Iraqi Detainees Arrested by Mistake, Red Cross Says

Chicago Sun-Times, May 11, 2004

Torture: A Systematic Process Learned From the Cold War

The Independent, May 14, 2004

The Roots of Torture

Newsweek, May 24, 2004 issue

God, Country and Torture

CounterPunch, May 14, 2004

The Buck Stops-Where?

Slate.com, May 14, 2004

US Vows to Stay in Control of Iraqi Troops

The Guardian, May 17, 2004

Prison Abuse: Patterns From the Past

CounterPunch, May 12, 2004

Implausible Denial I

The Nation, May 14, 2004

Implausible Denial II

The Nation, May 17, 2004

Powell Says Bush Was 'Informed' Of Red Cross Concerns

Baltimore Sun, May 12, 2004

'I Never Saw Such a Thing Under Saddam

Chicago Sun-Times, May 16, 2004

Legal Advice on Torture Rejected

ABC News, May 16, 2004

The Phoenix Program Revisited

CounterPunch, May 15, 2004

Rise in Birth Deformities Blamed on Allies' Deadly Weaponry

The Independent, May 13, 2004

Amnesty Reports 37 'Disputed Killings' by UK Soldiers

The Independent, May 11, 2004

The Rise of bin Laden

New York Review of Books, May 27, 2004 issue