ALAN GREENSPAN COUNSELLED BUSH & CHENEY TO REMOVE SADDAM

I used to think Alan Greenspan was acceptable as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Then he came out several years ago in favor a tax cut, just after Bush had proposed his surplus-busting tax cut. Instead of shoring up the Social Security trust fund, Greenspan in effect endorsed Bush's vision of economic life in the U.S. This was a mean and small view. The heck with Social Security, everyone should have his or her own 401(k). The government has no role in making sure retirees are able to survive after no longer being able to work. This was Greenspan's view.

Then, today, I read in The Washington Post that Alan Greenspan recommended to both Bush and Cheney that the United States remove Saddam Hussein. Bob Woodward reports that Greenspan said Saddam should be removed to protect the oil security of the U. S.

Writes Woodward:

"Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.


"Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq War is largely about oil." In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy."

So it turns out Alan Greenspan is just as much complicit in the illegal and unjustified invasion of Iraq as is George Bush and Dick Cheney. Surely Greenspan knew and knows that one country has no right under international law to invade another, topple its leader, then have him hung. Just like O. J. has no right to bust into someone's hotel room and take back his stuff, so Greenspan violated the rule of law when he said that it was important to kill Saddam.