Bush administration fiscal and monetary policies have caused the value of the US dollar to plunge. This has driven international petroleum producers to seek options for trading their crude in more stable currencies, driving down demand for artificial dollar reserves. Skittish international investors are seeking safer and more responsible financial havens for investment.   Although generally underreported in the United States, the plunging value the dollar means Americans are suffering disproportionately from war induced inflation.  Over the past five years they've faced average yearly petroleum cost increases of 29% even as Congress passed subsidies spurring demand for the domestic manufacture of highly fuel inefficient vehicles.  Europeans experienced a more manageable 19% average annual petroleum price increase and more options created by heavy EU investment in non-automotive centric transportation infrastructure.

"No bombs Possible.  Meanwhile, many asked whether the Israel reactor could really produce sufficient plutonium, a nuclear weapon component, to construct a bomb.   Science editor William L Laurence of the New York Times deflated these reports, on Dec. 25, when he wrote that 'the plutonium produced in a small nuclear reactor of 24,000 thermal kilowatts is very minute indeed…and 'completely useless for bomb material.'  The basic facts, if fully understood, would make it clear why only great industrial nations, particularly the United States and Soviet Russia, can be full-fledged members of the 'atomic club.'"

Disclosures by Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu revealed that the reactor would ultimately be cooled and configured to operate at 120-150 megawatts, capable of producing enough enriched materials for up to 12 nuclear bombs per year. In March of 1968, the Mossad surreptitiously acquired 24 tons of uranium ore from West Germany, ostensibly bound for an Italian company, but illicitly diverted by sea to Israel. By 1969, Israel had quietly emerged as a full blown nuclear power. By 1979 the Israelis even tested a low yield nuclear artillery shell, which was detected by an American spy satellite despite the cloudy conditions. Not until 2008 would a former US president confirm for the first time that Israel had developed an arsenal of 150 nuclear weapons.  Isaiah Kenen and the Israel lobby prevailed with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. US and Israeli officials would neither confirm nor deny the existence of Israeli nukes.  Kenen received over $38,000 from Israel to publish the Near East Report during this critical period.  Jimmy Carter broke with self-censorship last month.  Americans must now ask what other damaging policies have been institutionalized at great cost to American interests.

In a January 2006 report on the future of petroleum, IRmep made several predictions based on supply, and more importantly, demand side factors driving higher prices.  Now a university economics case study, the report predicted that:

1. Congressionally mandated tax subsidies spurring artificial SUV and pickup truck sales to end users who did not need their capacity attributes would dramatically shift the gasoline demand curve;
2. The US Energy Information Administration "underestimated future petroleum prices" and should be ignored.  The EIA's rosy scenario of petroleum prices rising gradually to $65 by 2030 was driving dangerously unrealistic vehicle manufacturing in the US;
3. Top tier think tank policy preoccupation with national oil entities, blinkered supply perspectives, and terrorism continue to be as valueless to average Americans as their public relations campaign and policies for war in Iraq launched between 1996 and 2002.

During a speech to a meeting of the American Jewish Committee on April 29, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced an important new doctrine for classifying and prosecuting terrorists:

"When Israel was besieged by terror in 2001 and 2002, it was the United States that insisted that Israel had the right to defend itself. When people used to say, and we now forget that they did, “Well, you see, one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter”, it was the United States that said: No, that is wrong. No, the intentional murder of innocent people is wrong, and you cannot hug Hezbollah and Hamas and say that you are fighting al-Qaida."

Until Rice's clarification, the US has not been consistent in defining that terrorists also operate within the sphere of allies or groups the US generally does not prosecute.  The new "Rice Doctrine" is a welcome advance but faces an early test - the long delayed extradition of three terrorists who attacked US State Department facilities in Eqypt.

A key State Department role in the world is public diplomacy.  In 1953 the United States Information Agency was established to expand the cultural and educational exchange of the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.  In the summer of 1954, Israel conducted a covert false-flag operation in Egypt code named "Operation Susannah." Israeli agents trained by the IDF launched terrorist bombing attacks against U.S. -, British-, and Egyptian-owned targets in Egypt.  US Information Service libraries in Alexandria and Cairo were targeted.

The event was covered up by the Israeli government for decades, but the new Rice doctrine clearly applies.  The US must now seek the extradition of Marcelle Ninio, Robert Dassa and Meir Zafran for prosecution as terrorists.  In 2005 Israel gave them military ranks in recognition of their "service to the state". However, as the last surviving members of the Operation Susannah terror attacks, their prosecution in the US will be an important first test of the Rice doctrine. 

See also William James Martin's "Condoleezza Rice:The Secretary who came in from the Cold War"

Segment of George Bush: ...War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing the war in Iraq.... 

RFI Translation: Bush...So now they are saying that the war is costing too much...we have heard exaggerations about the costs of this war.  No one will dispute that this war has had a high cost in lives and treasure.  But these costs are necessary when we consider the costs of  a strategic victory of our enemies in Iraq....

RFI: Bush affirms that the invasion in 2003 was a sound decision, and that it is a battle America can and should win.   The president's legacy now rests on the outcome of the war on Iraq which started five years ago tomorrow.  This speech may be one of the last George Bush makes about Iraq as president.   Let's turn to comments about the president's speech to Grant Smith of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, DC.

Grant Smith: He is desperately trying to avoid any discussion or measurements made based upon his pretexts for the US invasion of Iraq.   He also wants to solidify a larger base of support around the concept that the war on Saddam Hussein in 2003 was the correct decision.  This is now contrasted against the position of Democratic Party  candidates, in particular Barack Obama, who is saying that it was a mistake to invade, and that mistake is affecting the US economy in a very negative way, underneath the broader sentiment that all of the stated reasons for invading were never legitimate. 

It [Bush's speech] was predictable.  It was basically the same old justification roped to the tired and simplistic rhetoric that there is some sort of massive global "war on terror" in the world and that Iraq formed some kind of front.  In terms of public opinion in the US, there's not only much credulity in this, but few even pay much attention any more to this type of speech.  Voters are turning toward fall elections in which, for the first time ever, they'll have a true referendum on the entire Iraq war, its costs and its consequences.

Todd Feinburg: The Todd Feinburg Show, Grant Smith is here.  He's the director of Research at IRmep, located in Washington DC.  His book is Foreign Agents, going after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for violating, Grant believes, and his organization believes, the laws that control this sort of lobbying by foreign influenced entities.  And it sounds like you're really, it's another alarm Grant, in the long series of complaints that the US government has fallen prey to special interests without being balanced out by what the best interest of the US is, i.e. the following our laws and doing things the way they are supposed to be done here.  Is that a fair assessment?
Grant Smith: Yeah, I think it is.  And it falls into a very important area of policy obviously because we are talking about matters of life and death.  To have an organization of this size and influence be so intransparent is problematic.
Todd Feinburg:  How is it intransparent...how is it opaque?  Doesn't it have to report?  Like any other organization would....?
Grant Smith: Very minimal reporting for some of the financial aspects of how many donations, what were the overall expenditures, salaries of the directors, but those are not important.  What would be interesting would be the specific activities lobbying for the Iraq war.  What are specific activities across the United States generating support for military strikes on Iran.  Those are items of extreme importance that if it were registered under FARA it would have to disclose... 

The plunging US economy and drastic efforts by the Bush administration to stimulate consumption through a $145 billion package raise an important question, "how did we get into such dire economic straits?"

In the year 2000 neoconservative ideologues called for a major overhaul of US military strategy in their policy paper "Rebuilding America's Defenses".  This followed their 1998 call for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq on "weapons of mass destruction" pretexts.  The overall economic implications have been disastrous.  Core goals for the incoming Bush administration mandated by PNAC advisors included securing forward military bases in the Middle East and increasing military spending from 3% to 4% of GDP (absent some catalyzing "Pearl Harbor" type event). 

9/11 and the subsequent "Global War on Terror" have provided their pretext for a radical increase in US military spending to finance US occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and hostile posturing toward Iran.  This resource misallocation has reverberated throughout the entire economy, cutting off investment in growth industries and overall middle class American wealth creation.  While it is highly debatable whether the administration's ground wars in the Middle East have increased American security, the long term economic impact of run-away military spending no longer carries any mystery:

• Military spending (cited from the OMB financial statements) will consume 6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008, double the level of the 1990's.
• Military spending will have grown on average 13.36% per year (2001-2008) while the US economy has only grown 2.24% per year.
• Tax revenues collected from individuals increased 6% per year over the last five years, while tax revenues from businesses have grown 23% per year to pay for increased military spending; this still has not been enough to close the yawning budget deficit.
• Military spending will contribute to a US budget deficit of $10 trillion by 2010 (if not sooner) double the 1997 deficit. 
• Mismanagement and malfeasance (including corrupted mortgage markets) and military industrial resource misallocation has hobbled the US economy to a forecast rate of only 1.2% GDP growth in 2008, a quarter the growth level of the year 1999.

This is the end result of the "Global War on Terror" and policies of the "New American Century".  Louder and even more vacuous calls to "support the troops" and other red herring can no longer hide the massive damage wrought upon American households and businesses.

Sibel Edmonds has been placed under an unprecedented gag order by a federal judge, ostensibly to protect US "state secrets".  Congress has refused to allow Edmonds to testify in public, and mainstream US broadcast news outlets have not yet taken her up on her offer to divulge details on yet another ring of alleged rogue foreign agents committing crimes on US soil and abroad.

Continue (Year 2007 Research and Events)