Part of the Lowdown from Hightower

The latest issue of The Hightower Lowdown, courtesy of Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer, is titled "What 8 years of BushCheney have done to the world."

It's not a pretty picture: Hightower reflects back five years to the day "our Glorious Leader was strutting around in a top-gun outfit, cockadoodling about American prominence in the world and wallowing in job-approval ratings of 28%.

"Now, after all his lies, all the lives and blood he cost us, all the money wasted and debt accumulated, all the opportunities squandered, all the credibility respect drained, the little banty rooster has sunk to a public-approval rating lower than that of several major diseases."


Then Hightower gets specific about the BushCheney disaster:

In 2003, when Bush made his "Mission Accomplished" speech, 139 U.S. military had died in Iraq. In 2008, over 4,040. In 2003, there had been 7,409 Iraqi deaths. By 2008, an estimated 1.03 million Iraqis have been killed. In 2003, the number of U.S. military that had been wounded was 542. Five years later that number stands at almost 29,000.

Referencing al Qaeda, Hightower notes that in 2003 the terrorist group had "no organized" presence in Iraq. Osama bin Laden held a very low opinion of Saddam Hussein, and called Iraq an "apostate regime." In 2008, the Congressional Research Service says that a mere 2% of the violence in Iraq is due to al-Qaeda. Still, "'Senior-Moment' McCain ... routinely [asserts] it's us versus al-Qaeda in Iraq."


Under the heading of "Global Money," Hightower tells how Bush in 2001 gave "a huge tax break to the richest citizens and cut interest rates to 1%, hoping that American industry would invest in production and we'd all get booming."

Didn't happen. Industry failed to invest. "But banks and grabbed the low-cost money and offered easy-entry mortgages, which induced homeowners to borrow and spend."

The "Wall Street geniuses ... bundled all those shaky mortgages with more valuable IOUs and sold these bundles around the world. [Now] Banks and mortgage lenders in dozens of countries [have] discovered that billions, perhaps trillions of the U.S.-originated IOU's they hold are worth bupkus."

Not only so, but incrementally increasing the budding disaster was Bush's financing of his war adventures on credit. We've borrowed money to carry out and carry on the Iraqi/Afghanistan mess. This meant that the U.S. debt jumped from $5.7 trillion at the time Bush stole the election in 2000, to $9.4 trillion today; and it is still growing!

Here's the kicker: Over 1/2 of this money is owed to "individuals, corporations, and foreign governments.

"The rest is owed by the government to itself, most of it to Social Security and other trust funds, which have been running surpluses. (Bush, like previous presidents, says Social Security is broke! That's because they spent the money.)"

Oil has risen from $25 a barrel to $120 a barrel.

"Now oil countries and Asian nations flush with greenbacks are buying chunks of American companies."


Looking at the situation in Afghanistan, Mr. Hightower refers to a recent Bush statement in which the prezident said, "A nation that was once a safe haven for al Qaeda is now a young democracy."

He must have forgotten that Osama and bunch are still running around freely through the mountains of Afghanistan (and Pakistan).

In 2008, the retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, former US commander in Afghanistan said, "[the enemy] 'is unquestionably a much stronger force than the enemy we faced in 2004.'"

The Reuters News Agency reported recently that "The Taliban controls 54% of the country as of November 2007."

And from The New York Times of November 2007: "Afghanistan has long been the world's largest producer of opium, except when the Taliban government banned it in 2001. After the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, poppies made a major comeback and yielded 95% of global heroin."


Much of this material we may have read at one time or another. What Jim Hightower has done is put in all together in a way that it can be read and assimilated easily to better form a true picture in our minds as to the scope of the BushCheney disaster, the cosmic cost of their reign at the helm of our beloved country.

You can read more and subscribe to The Hightower Lowdown here.