The Empire Flails

A few weeks back, in "endorsing" George W., we wrote that "the Bush agenda is running up against constraints imposed by resistance from abroad, at home, and, lately, in the judiciary..."

Since that writing, yet more cracks have begun to appear in the facade. In case you missed them:

• The stunning Eminem video, "Mosh".

• Uruguay has elected a socialist President, joining up with Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia in opposing the Beast.

• "The FBI appears to have widened its probe into Halliburton, investigating allegations from a top Army Corps of Engineers official about the way the Bush administration handed out billions of dollars in contracts to the politically connected company."

• It's getting hotter in Tom DeLay's kitchen.

• Saboteurs have mounted the biggest attacks yet on Iraq's oil infrastructure, blowing up three pipelines in the north and hitting exports via Turkey, oil officials said Tuesday. [...] "Technically, the system was shut down."

• China has signed a $100 Billion natural gas deal with Iran, with a $100 Billion oil deal in the works. (Britain has also said that it will not cooperate with any military operations in Iran -- but we can't but surmise that Tony Blair's arm can be twisted easily enough.)

• U.S. District Judge James Robertson has shut down pre-trial hearings in a case in Guantanamo, arguing that the Bush Administration is in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The Administration "vigorously" disagrees with the Robertson's having put "terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war." (For more on the United States' "legitimate" methods, see here and here.)

• John Ashcroft and Donald Evans have resigned from Bush's Cabinet; while Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice are thought to also be on the way out. Not in and of itself a constraint on the Bush Administration's power, but the rats may be even more acutely aware than is the public of the amount of water being taken on by the Administration ship.

• "There's confusion throughout the ranks and an extraordinary loss of morale and incentive," at the CIA, after resignations apparently inspired by new Director Porter Goss' intransigence.

• "Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and the service's senior weapons acquisition manager plan to resign before the start of the second Bush administration, senior Defense Department officials said yesterday. Roche and Air Force assistant secretary for acquisitions Marvin R. Sambur were involved in the past three years in a scandal-ridden proposal to lease new fuel tanker aircraft for the Air Force from the Boeing Co.."

• The defeat over the weekend of President Bush's attempts to fund research and possibly development of a new family of nuclear weapons was hailed Monday [November 22] by arms control advocates as their biggest success in more than a decade.

The fuckers in and around the Bush Administration are on the run, I tells ya!

Posted by Eddie Tews at November 2, 2004 05:24 PM