I wake up to the blessed Bob Woodward's voice on Radio 4. He's pushing his book State of Denial which reveals that Bush has tried to cover up the undenied fact that there are 7-900 insurgent attacks in Iraq a week. Thanks to Woodward we now know that one of Bush's principal advisers on Iraq is Dr Henry Kissinger - he meets Dick Cheney about once a month, has met up with Bush about 20 times in the past 2-3 years. "Victory is the best exit strategy" is Dr Death's advice. Woodward thinks Kissinger's "fighting Vietnam all over again".
It's as well to remember that Kissinger won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973, an outrage that even Swift might not have dared to dream up for one of his satires had he lived through the Nixon period. History amnesiacs or the neo-conned may relish the following then -taken from the New Internationalist, 2002:
"Evidence shows that Kissinger sabotaged the 1968 Vietnam peace talks which allowed the US -Vietnam War to drag on for another four years. Three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were killed in that conflict. There is also proof that Kissinger personally persuaded Nixon to extend the war to Cambodia and Laos which led to another million civilian deaths. The secret bombing raids were given nauseating code names like 'Operation Breakfast'.
"After one raid, Nixon's chief of staff HR Haldeman wrote in his diary: 'Historic day, K's "Operation Breakfast" finally came off at 2:00pm... K really excited... he came beaming in with the report, very productive. 'The raids killed 350,000 civilians in Laos and more than 600,000 in Cambodia'."
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