Retribution Time or
To Hell with All the B_______
William A. Cook

It occurred to me in one of my less cynical moments, deluded no doubt by the merriment of the season, that all of those responsible for the havoc and chaos of these past six years should face the wrath of the American people and, one might hope, the wrath of the God of Justice and Vengeance. Once before I had similar urgings, in July of 2004 to be exact, and I penned an article titled “Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons” that appeared in Counterpunch, wherein I placed our benighted leaders into the Inferno’s circles of Hell. The experience of the last two years heaped on that of the preceding four necessitates a reconsideration of the leniency of Dante’s punishment as it fits the crimes of our current horde that deserve an exclusive damnation prepared for their unique and heinous sins.

      The urgency of this endeavor grows with time as these nefarious lunatics slither away from the public eye escaping to new positions and new offices beyond the glare of TV cameras and press conferences. Should one envision the Capital afloat in the marshes of the Potomac just beyond Jefferson’s Memorial, one might see the rats cascading down the gang planks and sliding down the ropes fleeing the Ship of State as it sinks into the muck led by William F. Buckley Jr. while Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, and Douglas Feith cling to his coattails in their mad rush to disclaim responsibility for the death and destruction they have wrought on the American people and the people of the mid-east. Behind them come the other “wormsmiths,” the crafters of polemics that enticed the American people and their clueless representatives to arms against innocent people that their ends might be achieved in wealth and power.

      These men crafted their arguments in patriotic colors and ingenious innuendo that belied the deceit buried in obfuscation and omission. Their own conflict of interest -- working on behalf of another state, benefiting from the largesse of Abramoff and his cronies, gaining visibility that brought them renown and access to insider contracts that increased their wealth – went unmentioned as they sent our youth to slaughter and sent America’s good will into the gutter. As the American people express their displeasure, indeed their anger at the lies and deception that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, almost 3000 American soldiers slaughtered and countless maimed and wounded, and in Palestine, thousands of innocent civilians savaged by missiles, cluster bombs, and chemical weapons of unimaginable kind, as the horrendous cost in infrastructure, commercial and cultural buildings and hospitals reaches into the billions of dollars, these pin-striped, coiffured and scented men scatter into the darkness of obscurity lest their vile words be resurrected and their guilt made transparent.

      These men and the organizations they represent must receive universal recognition for the devastation they have wrought: Adelman and Abrams, Cheney and Chalabi, Cohen and Clawson, Feith and Frum, Krauthamer and the Kristols, Ledeen and Libby, Perle and Pipes, Rumsfeld and Rubin, Steiner and Eisenstadt, Wolfowitz and the Wurmsers, Beck and Foxman and Limbaugh and Yousef and all whose names I have failed to mention deserve equal representation in this time of retribution.

      Let us not forget the instruments used to disseminate their lies and deceit, the litany of think tanks and organizations that propelled the country into the morass it now faces as this once proud ship of state sinks into the slough of despond:  the Project for the New American Century that issued the report that led the U.S. into the ditch, the document that emblazoned pre-emptive war and extra-judicial killing and world dominance as the foreign policy of America, the American Israel ‘Political’ Action Committee, that equal opportunity exploiter of our Congressional representatives, that managed to infiltrate our Congress and the administration to such a degree that one cannot distinguish American policy from Israeli, the American Enterprise Institute, the Defense Policy Board, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, the Office of Special Plans, the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Affairs, the Center for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, the Iraqi National Congress and others too numerous to mention.

      Now these same voices through these same think tanks pour out their declarations of innocence as they rush to the ramparts to cast blame on an inept President and his Secretary of Defense. Had they been in positions of power to direct the war they initiated, all, they proclaim, would have turned out well; but since they did not care to run for office and receive the mantle of power, they had no right to entice the republic into illegal wars or support for apartheid regimes like that in Israel. And so lacking a position that carries with it responsibility to the people they have harmed, these cowards slither off to other places where they can belittle the idiots they lured to the precipice, always in the comfort of air conditioned offices and plush surroundings, never caring to view the legless, eyeless, mind-broken men that return from the field of battle scarred for life because these soulless Neo-Cons take no responsibility for the slaughter they have brought upon a hapless people.