Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Heavens to Betsy, baby O -- I come back from dumpin' off the domestic partner at the airport, well past two AM, her designer luggage filled with leg irons, her Valley Of The Dolls daughter and a doped-up dog that feels like a warm loaf of bread in his pooch pouch... where was I? Oh yeah, I've just no more than returned to her stately cape by the sea, and hit the rack and -- there's the phone! Ringing like sleep's sleeve-unraveller supreme.

Naturally, it's my shadowy source, Mr Y from Foggy Bottom, that dissolute scion of four generations of FSOs, each nuttier than the last.

"Jaybo!" he shrieks, "now you're no longer there to guide the proceedings past the obvious traps, I see the holy father's site is gleefully making mountains out of stage props!"

He went on in that vein for quite a while -- cocaine, you know, is still considered quite hip in Washington -- but here's the gist:

"The Iraq occ has two, maybe three year legs... It just ain't that costly in blood weight, and to the backers -- well, it's win/win by lose/lose. Like Korea after the Chicoms entered screaming... it's a very swell ongoing demo of our limits. Message to the rube-iat: take these fuckers seriously.

"It feeds the brass hats' plans -- helps 'em consolidate a permanent surge, a real $100 bil per annum surge in Uncle's two ground services. Shows we need a jump-up in our full-time, ready-to-hop boot strength?

"Kim and Hug and that dude in the turban, with the black beard -- they're all laughin' at Uncle, stuck in that sand trap. And meanwhile, on the dark side, it keeps Iran turning on the spit: yer 'it' in the schoolyard, bub.

"And the tens of billions per quarter down the rathole over there? Come on, big big plus side item, global manna for the trans-nats -- contracts get let to dig holes, contracts get let to fill holes. Oil price stabilize at 50 not 25 dollars per -- and with the earth-wide capital glut, this is better use of surplus funds than all that crazy-ass hedge-funding. Hell, that's like a trillion pounds of nitro movin' around the planet at internet speed."

Okay, little O, I grant you he's crazy as a bedbug, and lord knows what illicit substances are flowing in his veins -- but give the bastard credit. He's always walkin' on the big-picture side of life.

Frankly, I don't give a shit. Whatever it morphs to, it won't be anti-empire. It won't be "away all bases and boats away" globally. It won't be "yankee go home and stay home and sin with explosives no more."

But because I owe you some gossip, here's an update from Foggy Bottom. Yes, it's from the source-n-a-tor himself, Comrade Y of le service etranger pousse-gateau. He'd been at one of those embassy parties sucking down the Martinis, and he called me up last night, full of prepster bonhomie. "Fort Kurd ain't enough, Paine!"

"I see."

"No you don't, Paine. The position a la mode last summer -- you know, fall back under a cloud of red white and blue bluster to bases in Kurdistan and let the sectarian arab civil war sort itself out -- not lookin' so swell now, mon vieux."

"Y! Were you at the French embassy?"

"How'd you know? Anyway, the Shia can't be allowed to win the "lower Iraq" gig any more than they can in Lebanon -- in fact, call Arab Iraq Lebanon times eight. Uncle has a long term area problem containing Iran, and that problem looks far worse now, after the Hezi-wezis made the Tel Aviv catamounts look like pussycats.

"The present nightmare -- a brutal core of Shia runing amok from the Gulf up past Basra and past Baghdad to the oily skirts of Kurdistan itself. Yikes! We got a dog in the hunt after all. Far from attacking Iran, Uncle's having trouble figuring out how to defend the gulf!

"Oddly, the building boom underway along the Arab littoral dwarfs even Chinese efforts. Example: for one sheikville, more office space completed this coming year than all -- that's right, all -- the office space in existence in downtown San Francisco.

"War zone -- boom zone -- war zone -- boom zone -- the trans-nats are at this stuff 24/7.

"Oh, and by the way, there will be no hot war with the Iranians. It's all just hot air. You can take that to the bank, Paine. I got a little spool of micro film here you'd just love to see, buddy."

"Y! Watch it, will ya? Not on the phone!"

"Nemmine, Paine, nemmine... I'm not scared... I've got insurance... I know where the bodies are buried, bro."

I worry about the guy sometimes.