Here at "Let Us Have Peace" we return again to one of our favorite topics- the murderess. And not just any murderess either. Here we prefer the white, lady-like middle class murderess who looks as though a pat of butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. And, for an added fillip- we love the ones who GET AWAY WITH IT. So, to the list of Louise Woodward, Kate McCann and many others we add the name of Laura Bush. To be fair, Laura Bush is not the only First Lady who was a murderess. No, the first First Lady who was a murderess was Florence Harding, who poisoned her philandering husband Warren G. Harding and then claimed he had died from eating "a dressed crab" She would not let physicians examine the body and refused permission for an autopsy. (Imagine this happening today. A First Lady would not be allowed any control over her husband's corpse.)

To get back to the murder that Laura Bush committed, when she was seventeen she t-boned her lover's car at an intersection. He died almost instantaneously of a broken neck. The gossip at the time was that she thought herself pregnant by this boy, Michael Dutton Douglas. After informing him of this fact instead of getting the marriage proposal she expected she was instead handed her walking papers. This unpleasant and upsetting incident supposedly occurred THREE DAYS before the fatal "accident".

Now I want it to be understood that in the study of forensic psychology there are no such things as coincidences. If a man who is having an affair takes out an enormous insurance policy on his wife and comes home a month later to find his house "ransacked" by those mysterious thieves who steal nothing who always appear in these cases and his wife is lying dead on the floor, then he murdered her. If, as occurred in a famous case in North Carolina a woman's first husband shot himself accidentally with a gun in the bedroom and then ten years later her second husband is shot accidentally with a gun in the bedroom, then she murdered them both. And, if a car going sixty-five miles an hour in a thirty mile an hour speed zone plows into another car on a perfectly dry, clear evening and three days previously the occupant of said car was summarily dumped and publicly humiliated by the occupant of the second car, then the occupant of the first car murdered the occupant of the second car.

We have spoken before on this website about consciousness of guilt and the way it makes people behave stupidly. In the case of Laura Bush she committed the typical guilty persons' mistake and lied, not once, but continuously, about the facts of the case. Guilty people always talk themselves into trouble whereas innocent people have much less to say and generally confine themselves to the facts. We will enumerate her lies so that you can evaluate them for yourselves. After you have read them you can then decide if, as the old saying goes, Laura Bush has a rag left on her.

1. Laura Bush said that she did not know who her murder victim was until she got to the hospital. Michael Dutton Douglas' father was following his car and was on the scene seconds after the "accident". EMT'S also say that Laura Bush was out of her car standing staring at her lover's dying body as it lay in the road (he had been thrown from his car on impact). Laura Bush knew her lover, she knew her lovers' car, and she knew her lovers' father. Of all her lies, I feel that from the point of view of consciousness of guilt this one is the most important.

2. Laura Bush for years insisted that she was not even driving, that the girlfriend who was with her was.

3. Laura Bush said that it was raining and the roads were slippery. The weather was dry and clear.

4. Laura Bush said that her lover was driving in an open Jeep. He was riding in a 1962 Corvair Sedan.

5. Laura Bush said that Michael Dutton Douglas was not her lover but a "boy from her crowd". 

The true facts of this case came out when the police report was released in 2000, thirty-seven years after the fact. The Texas Attorney General compelled the release of the report after a newspaper in Odessa, Texas filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Unfortunately for Laura Bush the police report exposed her as a liar of the highest order.

Of course you may ask, why wasn't drug and alcohol testing done on Laura Welch, as she was then, at the hospital? Why wasn't she indicted by a grand jury for vehicular homicide or reckless driving? She wasn't the President's wife then. For answers we must turn to the Sheriff's Department in Midland, Texas. Of course, since this happened so many years ago all the personnel who were on duty that day have long since died or retired. When Bush was elected president the sheriffs knew that they would be asked by journalists about the case so they decided to unofficially reinvestigate it. They went out to Farm Road 868 and tried to re-enact the "accident". They immediately decided that even the story that Laura Bush had told detectives at the time did not hold water. The Midland detectives and sheriffs came to the conclusion that Laura Bush was drunker than a skunk. "No young healthy person could possibly get into an accident like this without being grossly intoxicated. The only accidents like this we see are when an older person has a seizure or stroke" was the statement made by a spokesperson. When asked why Laura Bush was not indicted for drunken driving or even tested for alcohol, he stated, "Those were different times. She was a white woman and came from a good family. Now, she'd do ten years."

Their conclusion is slightly different than mine. I feel Laura Bush was lying in wait for her ex-lover in a murderous rage. When she saw his car pull out onto the main road from the street where he lived, which she could easily do given the configuration of the roads, she gunned her much larger Chevrolet Impala, ramming his car and killing him. In his tiny Corvair he never would have had a chance. I also do not see why drunkeness could not have contributed to this crime as it removes inhibitions. Did she mean to kill him or in her drunken state did it just seem entertaining, to hurt him somehow or ruin his car? 

There are those who believe that there is a Day of Judgement when we will all pay for our sins. Others believe in Karma, that our current lives are in some way a reward or punishment for past lives and that in each new incarnation we are here to learn. Others feel that our Hell is right here on Earth. I am not sure which I believe. However, when I see Laura Bush, eyes unfocused from drugs, staggering along beside her drunken cretin of a husband with his ever-present doxie Condoleeza Rice walking two steps behind them I am quite sure of one thing. Laura Bush's Hell is right here and now.

Much to the disappointment of those who cherish moments of priceless humor, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez did not make an appearance at the UN General Assembly yesterday. It is possible that Chavez realized that there was absolutely no way he could top last years' appearance, in which he called US president George Bush "the devil" and claimed that there was an odor of sulphur around the speakers' podium. (Actually, Hugo, that was a whiff of cheap booze)

Poor George was forced to carry on alone, giving his usual fumbling and canned remarks about "Human Rights" and "Democracy", to the sound of crickets chirping in the room after several delegations, including the Cuban one, walked out. However all was not lost on the entertainment front after members of the White House staff handed copies of Bush's actual text out to journalists by mistake. So that Bush would not make errors of pronunciation in his speech the entire thing was spelled out phonetically by his staff. In other words Sarkozy was spelled out sar-KO-zee and Mugabe was spelled out moo-GAH-bee. Caracas was spelled kar-A-kas. The entire speech was written out that way. As Bush is so fond of comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, and the back of the envelope that Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address in pencil on has been carefully preserved possibly in the Bush Presidential "Library" this UN speech, too will be on public display in a glass case, right next to that dog-eared copy of "My Pet Goat". America is certainly a great country. Anyone, even a mental defective, has the opportunity to become the president.

As far as Chavez goes, he was extremely involved in Venezuela starting a new campaign against the Venezuelan custom of giving breast implants to young girls to celebrate their quincerananos, or fifteenth birthdays. Many people would find this topic more riveting than the typical boilerplate UN speech, including it seems most Venezuelans as Chavez remained on the air on his weekly Sunday call in show  for over eight hours. "A new record" the Venezuelan president boasted proudly. "Now some people think, 'My daughter's turning fifteen, let's give her breast enlargements' That's horrible. It's the ultimate degeneration" Chavez then stated that Venezuelan women were not Barbie dolls which he called western-imposed consumer icons.

"I am calling on your conscience, fathers of this country, mothers of this country " Chavez stated.

When asked for comments plastic surgeons stated that performing breast augmentation on a fifteen year old girl was not a good idea as the implants have a 21 percent chance of leaking or moving around in the body, which means that the operation would have to be repeated every few years or so. Personally, as a fifteen year old, a lifetime of breast surgery is not something I would be looking forward to.

Of course, there is an alternative to breast augmentation surgery. It is called weight resistance training, is basically free once you buy the weights, is non-invasive, and as long as you stick to it and show some discipline, it really works. If you do bench presses two or three times a week, your bust will increase in size and everyone, even Hugo, will be happy. Bush on the other hand I am not so sure about.

The coverage of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York to address the United Nations shows the total bankruptcy of American foreign policy and the complete stupidity of the American political class. President Ahmandinejad wished to visit "Ground Zero", the former site of the World Trade Center, and lay a wreath. He was, of course denied this privilege on the grounds that it was a "publicity stunt" or a "propaganda ploy" depending on which cable television channel you happened to be watching at the time. "This will increase Ahmadinejad's prestige inside Iran!" fumed a woman with very badly bleached blonde hair on MSNBC. I have never been to Iran but it would strike me as very queer that the prestige of the presidency of any country would be solely dependent on laying wreaths at monuments in foreign countries, especially foreign countries which have been prattling about "regime change", discussing potential bombing raids of Iran, and lest we forget, nineteen years ago blew an Iranian jumbo jet with 300-odd passengers in it out of the sky, an event which seems to have dropped down the Orwellian memory hole.

What I would like to see is what the response of these same pundits (It is a little known fact but "pundit" is really Farsi for "jackass") would have been had Ahmadinejad REFUSED to go to "Ground Zero" and lay a wreath. One can just imagine the streams of vitriol then. "He hates Americans! He danced in the streets on 9-11!"

Having finished with Ahmadinejad's canceled trip to the World Trade Center, these dimwits moved on to an invitation the Iranian president had been offered from Columbia University. It seemed that all these ruling-class shills could do was to repeat over and over again three total canards against Ahmadinejad, which follow:

1. He threatened to "wipe Israel off the face of the map" 

2. He denied the Holocaust

3. He is trying to get nuclear weapons to attack Israel with

Well, let's take these one by one. The statement made by Ahmadinejad has been analyzed by expert linguists, of whom I am not one, and to a man they all say that what Ahmadinejad actually said was that Israel was going to be thrown into the dustbin of history some day, a statement with which I must say I heartily concur.

As far as the denial of the Holocaust goes it is true that Iran hosted a Seminar for Holocaust Study. Some of the people there, I think two or three, denied the Holocaust. Others, including the Torah True Jews, who had been invited, were of the opinion that it was a tragedy that human suffering had been exploited by Zionism to justify more human suffering, that of the Palestinians. Other scholars felt that this topic had not been researched enough and yet others, including this writer, are of the opinion that the Holocaust is not presented correctly. For example, did you know that six million Jews and seven million Slavs died in the Holocaust? And two million Russian soldiers and sailors? I can guarantee that the majority of my readers are scratching their heads. "Oh, I thought it was a Jewish thing- I thought they only killed the Jews" Well, if you doubt me, go ahead and look it up. I got the above figures from Whittakers' Almanac. Again, I am only speaking of those who died in camps, not Eastern Front war casualties which were I believe above twenty millions. Of course the next question you should all be asking yourselves is why you are all so misinformed. Who is misinforming you and why? Obviously, we need not one but many conferences on the Holocaust to clarify all these points so the the "Never Again" we are always hearing can refer to the fact that, as the Torah True Jews say, never again will the Holocaust be used to justify barbarism towards the Palestinians and the expropriation of their land.

As far as the third canard goes, that Iran under Ahmadinejad is trying to get nuclear weapons, Iran is in perfect compliance with the IAEA and all its rules and regulations, according to its chairperson, Mohammed el Baradei. Is Israel? No, of course not. As those familiar with the sad case of Mordicai Vanunu know (he was kidnapped in Rome and imprisoned in Israel for many years for describing the Israeli atomic-bomb making facility where he was employed at Dimona.) Israel has about 350 nuclear warheads. Are some of them pointed at Tehran? You bet. In point of fact I have to say that if I were the Iranians I would be trying to get nuclear bombs just for self-defense, although this seems not to be the case.

Here we see the dangers of firstly, relying on mainstream media for correct information, which you are not going to get, and the dangers of dehumanizing a whole people, such as the Iranians. Once you have diminished them to the status of subhumans, war becomes a very tempting, exciting option, sort of like a giant video game. However, it never works that way. The Iranians are real people and in a real war they would fight and die and we would fight and die. Of course, they would have all the morale on their side as they would be fighting to protect their homes and families, whereas we would be fighting for...Dick Cheney? As von Clausewitz said, in War the morale is to the material as four is to one. They would beat our ass.

It has been a very interesting week. On Tuesday Fed chief "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke exposed himself as a radical inflationist  when he kicked the can of the American economy's collapse down the road by slashing the fed funds rate a larger than expected half-point to 4.75%. The Fed panicked because of the toxic sub-prime mortgage loan fallout, which has magically erased up to 150 billion dollars from the balance sheets of the biggest brokers on Wall Street and the world's largest banks. A deadly sort of guessing-game has broken out as everyone tries to figure out how much of this garbage is lying around and who exactly is holding it. By Friday the dollar had predictably dropped to its lowest value against the euro ever.

If that isn't enough to make you nervous consider this interesting piece of news about President Bush from Arnaud de Borchgrave, the world's most famous remittance man: "When a recent visitor asked him what assurance he could give about his successor in 2009, President Bush replied, 'we'll fix it so he'll be locked in' (In Iraq)...a Texan friend called on him (Bush) recently and confided to his Washington hosts that Mr. Bush had said three times, thumping on his chest, 'I'm the president!' The close friend said he was a bit taken aback, as he had never before seen Mr. Bush in this mode".

There's just nothing like a president who is a paranoid megalomaniac to make one feel secure, is there? Maybe we'd all be better off if he just went back on the sauce. Again, this shows us all the lack of real democracy in the United States. Who decided that an insane drunk was going to decide that his successor was going to be locked in in Iraq, just so that his "legacy" looked better? Do you personally feel that your wishes were consulted in this manner? In a true democracy there would be an immediate recall of inefficient, corrupt, or mentally ill officials.

There is also very bad news concerning the world's food supply. A Food Commodity Index, which tracks raw materials used by food companies, shows cost inflation of 21% this year alone. In the past 12 months the cost of milk futures have gone up by 70%. Why, you may ask, is this suddenly happening? Ethanol. Strong global demand for corn to produce ethanol helped push corn prices to a 10-year high. You can bet that corn sold for ethanol will gradually start to displace corn sold for feed for cows for milk production and corn sold for feed for hens for egg production, and that fields which were planted out with wheat and soybeans, even though their price has gone up as well, will soon be planted out with corn instead. This "agriflation " means that we will have terrible terrible famines in the world as the food supply, in spite of what Monsanto tells us, is basically finite and cannot stand having such a large proportion of arable land used to grow crops that will not be used for food but for fuel. It is also a great truth that famines are generally not caused by an unavailability of food but by an inability of the general population to afford the food that exists. During the Irish Potato Famine it is well known that ships laden with butter, wheat, and cattle left Irish ports every day for England. The Irish peasants could not afford such foods and never ate them, living on potatoes and buttermilk. When the potato crop failed they could not afford to purchase substitutes and died in their millions of starvation and typhoid.

So there we have it - the collapse of the global economy in an unending sea of fiat currency, a neverending war in Iraq, an insane American president, and global famines. So far we have no epidemics, but all the great famines of history were accompanied by epidemics. In our modern world with the ability to circumnavigate the globe in a few hours by plane one wonders how quickly an epidemic like the Black Death could spread. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are here. And as they stand ready to charge the American public is dazzled by stories of O.J. and Britney and Kevin. We live in interesting times. Just how interesting they could become is anyone's guess.

I see that the McCann family has hired a new spokesman to proclaim their innocence, described as "an ex-BBC man". There is a certain twisted logic in this as I am sure that no one is more accustomed to peddling garbage than a former employee of the BBC. What I would like to ask those passionate supporters of the McCanns who bombard this website with accusations and inquiries is this: if the McCanns really want to find out what happened to their little girl, why have thousands of pounds been spent on posters, spokesmen and publicity, and not one penny on private detectives? Vincent Parco, the most prominent private investigator in the United States, appeared on American television last week to discuss this case. If I were the McCanns I would have hired him, or his British counterpart, months ago. Mr. Parco feels the case will be solved by circumstantial evidence. Unfortunately for the McCanns he seems to feel that this circumstantial evidence will implicate them and not clear them, which is probably why no private detectives have been hired - or am I just being cynical?

My gut feeling, knowing the British, is that because the crime happened in Portugal, the McCanns will escape justice. The fact that all of the evidence implicating them was provided by British forensic experts will be conveniently forgotten, and who would believe the word of some dumb dago Portuguese judges and detectives against two such upstanding professional British people? I fear they will get away with it.

Justice is a funny thing though, and sometimes it is the smallest detail or happening that will implicate a murderer. The scales of justice may tip one way or the other, but eventually they even out. Look at the case of the notorious "Honeymoon Killers", Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez. They criss-crossed the United States answering letters from lonely older women who had joined "lonelyhearts clubs", hoping to meet men. Some authorities believe they swindled over one hundred women and murdered seventeen.

Raymond Fernandez, after serving with some distinction as a British spy during WWII, was seriously injured when a heavy steel hatch cover fell on top of his head. After he recovered he changed from a family man to a complete sociopath who believed that he was a Voodoo god who could enslave women. Many serial killers have suffered from serious head injuries like Fernandez's. He immediately embarked upon his career of living off women. This was the late 1940's, and most of the women Fernandez robbed were too humiliated and afraid of public exposure to go to the police. At this stage of his career Fernandez only murdered when he was in danger of being exposed himself.

All this changed when he met up with Martha Beck, an obese nymphomaniac nurse who lived a life of misery with a domineering mother who ridiculed her for being fat and having two failed marriages. Originally he had Martha pegged as a victim but like calls out to like and he confessed his life of crime to her. She was even more sexually deviant than he, had become his creature, and immediately agreed to help him with his grotesque schemes. The swindles continued - but with a difference. Now, instead of Fernandez making love to his victims and then decamping with their money after several weeks, at Martha's insistence the poor women were murdered as soon as the pair got their hands on their assets. She was so insanely jealous that she could not bear Fernandez being with any other woman.

For their last and final crime, the pair singled out a young widow with a two-year-old child. She was intelligent enough to see through Beck and Fernandez but unfortunately instead of calling the police told the two sociopaths to get out. She was immediately shot and her body buried in the cellar. After two days Fernandez, who was rifling the house for assets and valuables, became annoyed by the child's presence and commanded Martha to drown her in the bathtub. Martha passively complied. Soon there were two graves in the cellar, one much smaller than the other. Instead of leaving town immediately, which would have enabled them to continue with their murder spree, Beck and Fernandez for some odd reason went to the movies. This gave the police enough time to respond to complaints from suspicious neighbors and find the two graves.

Their trial became a nine days' wonder, not so much because of the seventeen deaths they were suspected of but on account of Martha Beck's corpulence and explicit renderings of their sexual exploits. Still expressing undying love for each other, they were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in 1951.

As far as the McCanns go, who knows? As Vincent Parco says, maybe somebody saw something or knows something. Maybe we still will have a chance to someday find out the truth. 

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. For the past two, or is it three years now I have been bombarded with Op-Ed articles, blogs, and various opinion pieces informing me that the Bush-Cheney regime is going to start a war with Iran any moment now. First it was the General who was cashiered for adultery, supposedly because he was going to expose a "false flag" operation which would have caused a dirty bomb to go off in or around Newport News, VA. That was at least a couple of years ago. Then we had the planes flying over the US supposedly loaded with nuclear bombs. I think that was a couple of weeks ago.

My problem with all these scenarios is simple: If Bush and Cheney want war with Iran, what is it that they are waiting for? It would have been much easier from both a logistical and a political standpoint for them to have had this war on Iran two years ago than for them to try and start it now. They have exposed themselves as even bigger morons in the past two years than they were thought before, as hard as that is to believe, and in consequence have less power.

Of course people will say oh no, the "representative officials" such as the Senate and the Congress will just roll over in front of Bush and Cheney and show their backs like they did on Iraq. Well, maybe, if they have absolutely no interest in ever being reelected by their constituents. As far as the Republican party goes Bush and Cheney are known as the two cretins who have already lost the White House in '08.

Another problem-and I feel the biggest- is that I am not sure how a war is fought without men, without equipment, and without ordnance or even bullets. Again, every day that goes by without orders for equipment being placed or new ways to try to get youngsters to enlist or possibly reconstitute the draft is another day that a war with Iran is in the realms of impossibility. Tons of equipment and personnel were chewed up in Iraq and none of it has been replaced. To use that wonderful old Civil War expression, we have shot our wad.

Now I want everyone to know that I despise Bush and Cheney and think they are a couple of mental cases. I think they'd like to attack Iran. I think they'd like to attack a half a dozen different countries. Again, why wait? The American public has long ago given up supporting such nonsense, or feeling "safer" because of it, apart from the 25% or so of half-wits who exist in all societies. They are not going to be able to get support for this war by frightening people, because the American public has learned not to trust them.

No, I think this "war on Iran" stuff is just saber-rattling of the highest order. This would serve several purposes. It could serve as a distraction until the Boy Emperor leaves office, so that the American public doesn't find out what a fiasco Iraq really was until he is safely enthroned in Crawford; it could be a way for the neo-cons to look powerful and as if they have all these options so they can look really scary to the Russians and Chinese and, lest we forget them, the Iranians. This way they won't have to admit they painted themselves into a corner in Iraq and can look strong, instead of weak and vulnerable.

Of course, there is a second alternative and that is that Bush has just totally slipped his trolley and thinks he can will a war with Iran into existence. After all, this is the guy who surrounds himself with brilliant advisers like these: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities...We're history's actors and you will just be left to study what we do." 

Sure, buddy. And to quote an individual with slightly more intelligence, "Reality! What a concept!" 

P.S. If all the networks come up with a graphic and a silly name for this putative war on Iran, I will realize that I was wrong and admit defeat.

This website was the first to openly accuse Kate and Gerald McCann for being responsible for the death of their daughter Madeleine. In consequence I have been bombarded with questions and inquiries, some of them none too pleasant. Since people seem so confused by the case I have decided to offer a primer on why I suspected the McCanns and why the behaviors which to some people seem to suggest innocence are in reality proof of their guilt.

"Why did the McCanns stay in Portugal if they were guilty?"

Well, this one is easy. They stayed in Portugal because they were afraid. Some criminals will return to the scene of their crime over and over again, just to make sure that the police aren't hanging around, or that dogs have not dug up the body, or a myriad of other reasons, all having to do with consciousness of guilt and fear of being caught. Many criminals have been caught by CC camera surveillance or police stakeouts of a body-dumping sight, for example one Art Shawcross, the notorious Rochester Strangler. The body of one of his victims was allowed to remain in the open, dumped in the woods, at the suggestion of FBI profilers. Sure enough, Shawcross returned to the scene and began masturbating next to the corpse. A police helicopter circling the scene caught him in the act, and he was tried and convicted. In the case of the McCanns the forensic evidence seems to suggest that the body was moved several times after death in the trunk of a hire car. One assumes the McCanns kept an eye on the Portuguese police and tried to keep one jump ahead of them.

"Why did the McCanns call attention to themselves by starting a website and becoming involved with the media if they were guilty?"

There were many reasons for them to do this. The type of individual who "snaps" and  goes into rages and commits murders is the exact same type of person who would find the press attention and the publicity enthralling. These people are suffering from a mental illness called Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and once the attention started they would rapidly become dependent on and addicted to it.

It would also be a good way to deflect queries and criticisms from grandparents, friends, etc. "Well, see, we are looking harder for her than anyone" And then there is that consciousness of guilt again. There would be a tendency in a guilty person to be quite "over the top" and to give many interviews to the media. Guilty people talk a lot. Innocent people have more of a tendency to be quiet . Pam Smart, who had her sixteen year old lover murder her husband for insurance money, gave interview after interview to the press, complaining about how there had been no arrest. There is also the possibility, although in this case I consider it unlikely, that one of the parents is guilty and the other parent has no knowledge of the crime at all. Why wouldn't the innocent parent want to set up a website? And what excuse would the guilty parent have for not wanting to go along?

"How could any parent have done this to a child?"

Well that's the million dollar question, isn't it? In the annals of human depravity we have cases of mothers who have starved their children to death to get attention from doctors and priests- "Oh doctor, she just never gains any weight! Shouldn't we do tests?"- mothers who have kept their children locked in closets for years, mothers who ran their daughters as prostitutes, a father who kept large insurance policies on all his children and then would murder one every time he needed money to buy a new car, and a young mother in upstate New York who would smother her daughter until she was unconscious and then dial 911. Of course as in so many of these cases the pitcher goes back to the well once too often and one day the child died before she could be revived by EMT's. How could any parent have done any of those things to their children? Yet they do, and they do it all the time.

In point of fact I do not think the McCann's case resembles any of the cases mentioned above. I do not see premeditation or cruelty; I see carelessness and selfishness. Kate and Gerald McCann were MD'S and probably thought, as so many MD'S seem to, that the rules that apply to other people don't to them. Other people shouldn't allegedly drug their children so that they can go to a "tapas" (read drinking) party because they just aren't smart enough. But a doctor can do this because they are "trained".

Believe me, I pity Kate McCann. Her suffering and guilt are writ large on her face. What a horrible thing to happen to any mother, and I am sure that every day of her life is a living hell. I do not know exactly what happened to Madeleine but I am sure it was unintentional, a tragic accident. What Kate McCann has to do now to move forward with her life is to tell us all what really happened, so that the child's body can be retrieved for a decent burial and she can find some kind of redemption. 

I was quite a precocious child and in consequence remember the Vietnam war quite well. My first memory of it was the Tet Offensive, which happened when I was eight. I remember the drawings of Vietnam on the front pages, complete with arrows showing the movements of the Viet Cong on the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. The headlines were a bit confusing and I had to ask my father what a guerrilla was and what GIs were. He explained carefully, tried to show what the arrows meant, and then remarked that any one stupid enough to go into a country that the French had given up as a bad job deserved whatever they got. (My father was an officer in WWII and received two medals at The Battle of the Bulge)

By the time I was twelve the Vietnam War was still staggering along and I came to the conclusion that the United States could not possibly be a democracy because everyone I met or knew was against the war. It was obvious, too, that the Vietnam War had degenerated into a genocide. This fact could be read in "Underground" newspapers distributed by earnest-looking young men and women on the streets of Cambridge. Why, then, did the evil and awful war continue? The United States wasn't a democracy, it just wasn't- or the war would end immediately.

Of course I was quite correct. The United States is not and never was a democracy. The reason for this I discovered when I was in college and discovered the Third Universal Theory. The Third Universal Theory explains that representation is fraud and that representation is a denial of participation. Anything that stands between the people and their exercise of their power in a direct democracy such as a congress, a senate, a constitution, or a president is a negation of democracy. Of course here in the United States we are told that these marvelous institutions guarantee our "freedom". We are told this over and over again, as if repeating it often enough will make it true. Just what great "freedom" we possess I am not sure. The freedom to be taxed to death to support wasteful and idiotic government programs? The freedom to lie in the gutter? The freedom to sit back and watch while our industrial base was sold off for pennies on the dollar to the Chinese? The freedom to squirm in humiliation as atrocities are carried out in our names? The freedom to see another generation of youngsters maimed and degraded by carrying out said atrocities?

Now I have just turned forty-eight and here we are in the same stupid situation again, mired in a disgusting and genocidal war which we cannot win. The same idiotic slogans are trotted out again from when I was a child. We can't leave because the terrorists will be over here soon. Back then they were called Communists and by Gosh, if we threw in the towel in 'Nam soon they'd be landing on the beaches of California. We can't leave because there will be a bloodbath. Guess what? There is a bloodbath, and we caused it. The word "honor" is constantly trotted out. I would have to say that I know of no word so dishonored as the word "honor".

Of course the one important fact, one that I read in the paper today, is that 59% of the population thinks that Gen. Petraeus is full of it, that the "surge" is pointless, and that the troops should start coming home immediately. Well, 59% is a pretty impressive figure and if the United States is a democracy why is Congress sitting on their hands? They are doing nothing because we are not a democracy, that's why. Look, the problem is not who is "in power". If we are a true democracy, no one should be "in power" but the people, ever. 

What we need to do is follow the path to true freedom, which is to eliminate all politicians and representative governments. We need to take back our freedom. It is not bestowed from on high as a gift. It is ours. We need to start meeting in people's committees and people's congresses everywhere. How can we galvanize the passive and brainwashed population into action? That is the question I wish I knew the answer to.

Fuck Saddam we're taking him out. I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region. From a marketing point of view you don't roll out new products in August. It's a slam-dunk case. We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.

It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east west south and north. British Intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. We know he's absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. My answer is bring 'em on. We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. It'll be a cakewalk. Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. We found the weapons of mass destruction.

I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are. As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere!

I am not going to give you a number of how many insurgents there are because it's not my business to do intelligence work. Had we to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency. We don't do body counts.

We're kicking ass.

Mission Accomplished.

(The astute reader will have perceived that the above consists of actual quotes from high-ranking Bush administration officials, arranged in more or less chronological order. My thought was that if Gen. Petraeus was having problems with the presentation he has to make in Washington today, he might find this a very helpful guide) 

The average individual has a certain view of "a murderer". They call up images of Ted Bundy, or the Green River Slayer, or Jack the Ripper. Of course the above named individuals were all murderers but the serial sex murderer who kills strangers is the exception, not the rule. No, most of us who are fated to be murdered - some 80% - will be murdered by people we know, by our nearest and dearest. After all, they are the ones with the motives.

People also mistakenly point to the case of Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute who stalked the interstate and murdered her clients and stole their money and cars, as "the first female serial killer". Nothing could be further from the truth. Aileen Wuornos was the first woman to murder strangers in a type of a sex crime, but she was not the first female serial killer. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, when a woman goes wrong, she is the first of criminals.

The list of my favorite murderesses could go on forever. Look at  Countess Elisabeth Bathory, who was convinced that bathing in the blood of virgin peasant girls would preserve her beauty. The list of her victims is believed to exceed 300 by some commentators. Another favorite of mine is Mary Ann Cotton, who is thought by some to be the greatest female serial killer in British history. At least she is the greatest we know of, with some 65 victims, all family members poisoned with arsenic for small sums of insurance money. We then move down the scale to Velma Barfield, who was executed in North Carolina for murdering two husbands, a man she was engaged to, and several elderly people for whom she worked as a home health aide. The motive for the crimes was the theft of small sums of money to purchase Valium, and the victims were all killed with Terro Rat Poison. 

As I write this, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Kate McCann will be charged with the murder of her four-year-old daughter Madeleine. It seems that a car was rented in an attempt to hide the body, and evidence of the presence of the corpse is in the trunk of the car. Of course Mrs. McCann is hardly in the league of the ladies mentioned above. I feel that there was no premeditation in the death of Madeleine, and of course no evidence of prior murders by McCann. My theory of the crime is that Mrs. McCann was exhausted  by trying to take care of three children in a cramped holiday apartment in the Algarve. Madeleine probably acted up or out, as four-year-olds do, and the frustrated and upset Kate McCann beat her to death in a fit of rage.

The cover-up then started, with the tapas party, the unlocked door and window, the fake pedophile abduction story, the harassment of a harmless nerd and his computer expert friend, and the fake "sightings" of  "suspects", innocent people on holiday with their little daughters.

Believe me, I pity Kate McCann. She snapped, and she will have to pay for that every moment of every day for the rest of her life. What I cannot forgive was the grotesque and irreligious disposal of the body of the child, the harassment of innocent persons on account of the McCanns' lies, the blackguarding of detectives who were simply trying to do their jobs, and the exploitation of the trust of several naive and foolish persons, including the Pope and David Beckham, both of whom one would imagine ought to have known better.

Of course, the real heartbreak in this case is Madeleine. She never had any chance to live at all, her body was thrown away like garbage, and the people that she loved and trusted above all others, her parents, murdered her. Their big interest was obviously in getting away with this heinous crime, and they would have done anything or ruined anyone else's life to achieve this. The sad thing is that cases like this happen far too often, and very often the parents do get away with it.

There is breaking news in the Madeleine McCann case. As reported in this space several weeks ago the parents were the obvious suspects, and the poor little girl is dead. The mother, Kate Mc Cann, a primary care physician,  is at this moment being formally interviewed as a "witness" by the Portuguese police. Of course over the years we have learned to parse this nonsense and what is meant is that either she was a witness to her husband beating the child to death or that she was a witness to her own murder of the child. Here in the US we prefer the all-purpose term "person of interest"

The McCanns would have had us believe that a pedophile entered their rented apartment in the Algarve,  Portugal by an unlocked door, removed the little girl, and left through an opened window, carrying the child. Why any criminal would have acted in such an absurd manner was of course never explained. Neither was the fact that the highly trained cadaver dogs set on the crime scene signaled to their handlers that a dead body had been in the room. Of course in the annals of Forensic Psychology there have been criminals who abducted dead bodies. For example, Richard Allen Chase, "The Vampire Killer", would abduct dead bodies of babies and animals so that he could drink their blood at his leisure. Of course this individual was completely insane, and once he started his reign of terror he did not stop until the police apprehended him. Where in the Algarve are the similar crimes committed by a madman where the bodies of dead children have been abducted? Have corpses of rabbits and kittens been found in the area, drained of blood, as they were in "The Vampire Killer" case?

At this moment the interrogation has finally ended after eleven hours.

Friday, 7:33 AM: Kate McCann has just returned to an Algarve police station for more questioning, where she and her husband have just been "named as suspects". Is this what they used to call an arrest? I think so.

One morning in 1974 as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon were preparing Nixon's resignation speech, Kissinger turned to Nixon and declared that the verdict of history would be that he, Nixon, would be adjudged one of the greatest presidents in American history. To this Nixon shrugged and responded, "That depends, Henry, on who writes the history."

I have always heard it said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. If the recent behavior of George W Bush is any example, it is not patriotism. It is "history" Ah, yes, idiots like you and me and the other 65% of the population who can see that the Iraq war is a total fiasco have no idea what we are talking about. "The Verdict of History" will vindicate Bush! Magically he will be reconstituted as "The Great Leader" he always was in his narcissistic little fantasies. As youngsters in future generations page through their textbooks they will have their attention drawn to three pictures: Washington crossing the Delaware, the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and Bush staggering along the deck of that aircraft carrier in that flightsuit with the padded crotch, and the "Mission Accomplished!" sign.

I suppose it is possible that Bush spends his days peering into a crystal ball or avidly studying the combined works of the world's greatest historians but I doubt that he even has a firm grasp of what "History" really is. I think he is getting this garbage from the same neo-con crackpots that talked him into invading Iraq in the first place

Lately there has been a lot of hand-wringing about a potential war with Iran. There will not be one. The war is already over, and in case you missed it, Iran won. Because of the stupidity of the Bush-Cheney regime and their loopy advisers like Wolfowitz and Perle Iran didn't even have to fire a shot. Once Iraq was disposed of Iran became the regional superpower. From my little niche here at the heart of the military industrial complex I have been making the argument that there will be no war with Iran because the men and materiel have not been ordered for it. A lot of otherwise intelligent people disagree with my point of view because they have fallen into the trap of believing that US power is somehow omnipotent and infinite. Once a man is shot, he's dead or useless. Once a Humvee is blown up it needs to be replaced. Once ordnance is fired off it needs to be reordered from a phalanx of factories. None of this has happened.

I have decided to drop this argument for the next week or so to concentrate on Geopolitics and Economics. If America launches an attack on Iran, it would spark a general uprising in Iraq that would extend from Baghdad to Basra. The US troops would be reduced to the status of a group of hostages. The Iranians have a real army, unlike the Iraqis did. They would soon surround us. We would have our heads handed to us. China and Russia would then dump dollars and Treasuries on the markets, destroying the US economy. After the smoke cleared Russia, China, and Iran would be the new regional superpowers, dealing very efficiently with what would remain of a declining American power. 

It's over. Iran won. We lost . The verdict of the verdict of history is in, and all I can say is "Mission Accomplished"

 Once upon a time the world was controlled by Sea Power. Because of their dreadnoughts, capital ships, and ships of the line the British Navy went where they pleased and struck where they pleased. This changed because of two momentous events. The first was the Battle of Jutland, where Kaiser Wilhelm's High Seas Fleet fought the Royal Navy to a standstill, which had the result of the remnants of the British fleet spending the rest of the war hiding at Scapa Flow. Even more momentous than the fact that the myth of British invincibility was shattered was the fact that strategically the Battle of Jutland meant absolutely nothing. WWI was won by the introduction of the tank and the entry of America on the side of the British and the French.

The second nail into the coffin of the myth of the invincibility of the capital ship was provided by the British themselves at the Battle of Taranto in WWII. The Royal Navy launched the first all-aircraft naval attack in history , flying a small number of aircraft from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea and attacking the Italian fleet in their harbor at Taranto. The effect of the British aircraft on the Italian warships led pundits around the world to predict the end of the "Big Gun" ship and the rise of Air Power.

At first, during WWII, it seemed that the Airplane would reign supreme. The brilliant Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, which sent millions of dollars worth of battleships to the bottom at the cost of the loss of a few "Zero" fighter planes, led to the innovative bombing raid on Tokyo by Col. Jimmy Doolittle, which caused a huge loss of morale amongst the great mass of the Japanese people.

This, then, was the zenith of the myth of Air Power. Did the Japanese win WWII? What did Doolittle's raid really amount to? Nothing. The US Navy and the Marines had to slog it out from one flyspeck island controlled by the Japanese to another. The carnage and the casualties at Tarawa, at Saipan, at Iwo Jima, at Okinawa, as the Marines desperately tried to put boots on the ground and clear out the Japanese, are still burned into the minds of those who were there. I don't think the appearance of a few P-51's would have made the slightest difference.

We now move to the theater of war where many historians claim that the Axis Powers were truly defeated: The Eastern Front.

What did Air Power accomplish at Stalingrad or at Kursk? Nothing. Hitler had the Luftwaffe and Stalin had a few crop dusters flown by young girls. I need hardly reiterate who won both Stalingrad and Kursk, and who won the Battle of Berlin. These battles were won by infantry and armor, by the Soviets.

And now, after a half-century of under achievement, Air Power rears its ugly head again. It did little in the war against Imperial Japan; it did nothing on the Eastern Front: it did nothing in Korea: it did nothing in Vietnam; it has done nothing in Iraq; but somehow, somehow it is the answer in Iran. We don't need infantry, we don't need armor, we don't need logistics. All we need are a bunch of big-ass bombers lobbing a bunch of bombs at 1,200 targets at Iran and the Iranians will just magically curl up and die. I for one am not even sure where the bombs to strike the 1,200 targets will come from as we have dropped tons of ordnance on Iraq, none of which we have even bothered to replace.

All I can think of is the immortal words of John Keegan, the famous military historian: "The world is a very large place, and a man is a very small target on it "