U.S. IMPERIALISM: WHERE MADNESS AND EVIL SHAKE HANDS

The following quotation is from Ed Vulliamy, "Inside the Pentagon," the Observer, 30 September, 2001 (as quoted on page 145 of Ellen Meiksins Wood's Empire of Capital):

"As war begins in Afghanistan, so does the assault on the White House -- to win the ear and signed orders of the military's Commander in Chief, President George W. Bush, for what Pentagon hawks call 'Operation Infinite War'. . . .

"The Observer has learnt that two detailed proposals for warfare without limit were presented to the President this week by his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both of which were temporarily put aside but remain on hold. They were drawn up by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. . . . The plans argue for open-ended war without constraint either of time or geography. . . .

"[T]he Pentagon militants prefer to speak of 'revolving alliances', which look like a Venn diagram, with an overlapping centre and only certain countries coming within the US orbit for different sectors and periods of an unending war. The only countries in the middle of the diagrammatic rose, where all the circles overlap, are the US, Britain and Turkey.

"Officials say that in a war without precedent, the rules have to be made up as it develops, and that the so-called 'Powell Doctrine' arguing that there should be no military intervention without 'clear and achievable' political goals is 'irrelevant'. . . ."