Finally, Why We Went to War

No big surprise for a lot of us, I suppose, but it's finally been confirmed by Greg Palast and the BBC -- the Bush administration had plans in place to invade Iraq for its oil long before 9/11. In fact, it seems the biggest confrontation during the war isn't between soldiers and "insurgents", but between Big Business and Big Government over how to divide the oil up!

Two years later, neither plan for that oil has panned out, 1500+ of our soldiers are dead, Bush got another 80+ billion of our tax dollars to sink into the sand while billions already given are now completely missing, the architect of the whole mess might be put in charge of the World Bank (whose purpose is to help poor nations, not destroy them), and our Alaskan Wildlife Refuge will probably get drilled, even though there's only enough oil under it to last six months.

The Average Man thinks it's high time we got ourselves out of this mess. In fact, a peaceful solution might just be possible! But will Bush & Co take it? Sure, if democracy and peace were their real reasons for invasion.

Way back in 1933, a WWI Veteran named Smedley Butler realized that War is a Racket -- that "for a very few brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit." He even proposed a very simple solution to ending war. Read it and see -- maybe this century, we'll finally figure out how to make it happen?

Our Economic Empire

From fellow Average Man Barry --

"So, I was watching C-SPAN 2 over the weekend, and I fell upon this dude talking about his book called "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" ... I have to say that I was totally blown away by much of what he had to say.  Anyway, please read this short interview, and then tell me you are not a little freaked out about some of the revelations (especially regarding Iraq)."

Uh, yeah.