Whatever the facts, they will believe US difficulties in Ibero-America can be traced to the Castro, Chavez, Correa, Ortega, Marulanda axis...

VHeadline's Washington D.C.-based commentarist Chris Herz writes: Iraq is for our wonderful corporate empire either a tactical defeat or perhaps at best a pyrrhic victory: So costly in terms of blood and treasure that even some of the establishment wonks now describe it as the greatest blunder in our history. And its author, President George W. Bush is often called in these same circles the worst president in our history.

All this may be true or not; as you please.

What is a fact, an astonishing fact, is that in utter despite of the disaster the major thrusts of US policy are still regarded as immutable.

No domestic movement or political bloc of any significance seeks to challenge policy at its basic level. And that is the use of aggressive military power to achieve global dominance for the corporate state. There are very cogent reasons which explain why this must be so.

Gone are the days when the USA could exist as a normal nation, attracting the cooperation of other nations by trade and commerce. These things have now been yielded up to East Asian or European manufacturers. Other than military aviation and agricultural products the USA possess or produce little of use to other nations that cannot be obtained more cheaply elsewhere. Thus trade is not an option for the maintenance of our polity.

For over two generations now our political economy has been based upon "military Keynesianism". That is to say the use of government purchases of military goods for the purpose of providing income for the well-connected and employment for their subordinates.

• Of course this is all an utter perversion of Lord Keynes' economics -- but neither more nor less than was the perversion by the Soviet bureaucracy of Marx and Lenin.

And no less than was the case in the late, unlamented USSR this command economy is in serious trouble. In fact, when the Soviet system collapsed under the weight of a mountain of worthless paper, we all discovered quite without the help of the CIA that the real Russian economy was rather smaller than that of Brazil.

Similar results can be expected when the laws of economics produce here in the USA their inevitable effects. We live as a terminal cancer patient: The very drugs which keep us alive hasten our demise.

For this reason the empire must, so long as it exists, remain the mortal foe of all nations in possession of goods or resources of interest to her elites. Venezuela among them.

For this reason among others I must criticize Venezuelan efforts to deny any relationship between the Bolivarians on the two sides of the Colombian frontier.

The efforts of the Venezuelan Embassy here to circulate information among the various outlets of US media denying connections between the government in Caracas, its president, on the one hand and the various liberation movements in Colombia are a waste of time and money.

Whatever are the facts, in the imperial motherland all will be led to believe that US difficulties in Ibero-America can be traced to the axis Castro, Chavez, Correa, Ortega, Marulandra.

• The only difference is that our propaganda is now based upon the War on Terror, not the War on the Evil Soviets.

Our intelligentsia, and especially those in policy-making circles seem particularly vulnerable to such manipulation.

The great reporter William L. Shirer wrote in the 1930's of the perversion of reason itself at the hands of Nazi propaganda -- its parroting by people who should have by reason of education easily seen through the thicket of verbiage to the lies upon which reposed the Goebbels line.

This phenomenon is no less remarkable here in Washington, even to former participants such as Al Gore. These people in government and the think-tanks remain still unable and unwilling to challenge any of our national mythologies.

Whether our new president is McCain, Obama or Clinton look for no changes in the imperial policy towards Venezuela.

From the Imperial Capital
Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com