 September 14, 2002
 Where Iraq Fits in the War on Terror
By MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT
" New York Times WASHINGTON — The core of President Bush's forcefully delivered message on Iraq at the United Nations yesterday was irrefutable. Saddam Hussein is a serial liar, a bully and a threat to peace. He has used chemical weapons, and he yearns to impress an Arab world that despises him by building a deliverable nuclear bomb.
"The president made a strong case for international action that results either in Iraqi compliance with its obligations or the establishment of a new and, ultimately, democratic government in Baghdad. There should be bipartisan backing for such a policy here at home, and the president wisely has chosen to solicit global support instead of attempting to go it alone.
"I hope, however, that the president will not be pushed by his hard-line advisers into an unwise timetable for military action. We should pick this fight at a moment that best suits our interests. And right now, our primary interest remains the thorough destruction and disruption of Al Qaeda and related terrorist networks.
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"Earlier this week, the International Institute of Strategic Studies released a summary of Iraq's military capabilities that foreshadowed the president's words yesterday. Iraq likely has significant quantities of biological warfare agents and some chemical munitions. It is striving to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, but there is no evidence it has succeeded. It may have a dozen missiles that could be used to threaten nearby states.
"Saddam Hussein is the enemy we know. Since the administration of former President George H.W. Bush, each time Mr. Hussein has pushed, we have pushed back. Today, American and British planes enforce no-flight zones over 40 percent of his country and a maritime force prevents weapons from reaching Iraq by sea. Saddam Hussein's military is far weaker than it was a decade ago. And he must surely be aware that if he ever again tries to attack another country he will be obliterated. All that is grounds for calm, but not complacency.
"The president said he is willing to work with the Security Council. I hope that will include an explicit call for United Nations weapons inspectors to return to Iraq, although I doubt Iraq will accept them. By promoting that option first, the administration would strengthen the diplomatic case for subsequent action. As the president pointed out, during the past decade Iraq has failed to comply with a host of Security Council directives. If Baghdad persists in its defiance, the president has rightly placed the burden on those who oppose the use of force to explain how else compliance may be assured. One cannot insist on the council's central role in promoting international security and law, then look the other way when the will of the council is repeatedly defied.
"Although the president's speech yesterday was persuasive in many respects, he was neither specific nor compelling in his effort to link Saddam Hussein to other, more urgent threats. As evil as Mr. Hussein is, he is not the reason antiaircraft guns ring the capital, civil liberties are being compromised, a Department of Homeland Defense is being created and the Gettysburg Address again seems directly relevant to our lives.
"In the aftermath of tragedy a year ago, the chief executive told our nation that fighting terrorism would be "the focus of my presidency." That — not Iraq — remains the right focus.
"During the past four years, Al Qaeda has attacked Americans here at home, in Africa and in the Middle East. We still do not know where its top operatives are or what they might be planning. There is evidence that Qaeda members are returning to Afghanistan, where thousands of Taliban supporters still live and lawlessness prevails. We have not given the government of Hamid Karzai even a fraction of the help it needs to make Afghanistan a permanent terrorist-free zone. Creation of an effective worldwide antiterror coalition remains a work in progress. Restructuring our intelligence services, law enforcement agencies and military to defeat the terrorist threat continues to be in the design stage.
"Obviously, we cannot wait until terrorism is entirely eradicated to deal with Saddam Hussein. But it makes little sense now to focus the world's attention and our own military, intelligence, diplomatic and financial resources on a plan to invade Iraq instead of on Al Qaeda's ongoing plans to murder innocent people. We cannot fight a second monumental struggle without detracting from the first one.
"The administration should take the time necessary to broaden support for its Iraq policy, respond to Congressional inquiries, strengthen Iraqi opposition groups, fine-tune military planning, develop a coherent blueprint for the post-Hussein era, identify the massive resources that will be required to fund the war and its aftermath, and conduct diplomacy aimed at cooling tensions in the Middle East. If United Nations inspectors are again rebuffed by Iraq, we should also give notice that we will destroy without warning any facilities in that country that we suspect are being used to develop prohibited arms. Even if those suspicions are later proved wrong, the blame should fall on Iraq for denying access, not on the United States for trying to enforce the Security Council's will. In the same vein, we should make it clear that anyone who assists Iraq's nuclear program will be considered an enemy of the United States.
"At the United Nations yesterday, the president began the job of spelling out the what and why of our policy toward Baghdad. The wisdom of that policy, however, will ultimately hinge on when he chooses to act."
Madeleine K. Albright was secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 and United States ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997.
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September 13, 2002
Bush Goes to United Nations --
Pretends to Care What World Thinks
United Nations Charter in Biwheel
With Natal Chart of George W. Bush
George W. Bush Speaks to the United Nations
Commentary
 | "By equating its repressive policies with the protection of human rights, Libya is sending a loud signal that it should not chair the United Nations' most important rights body." Joanna Weschler, Human Rights Watch UN Representative. Human Rights Watch
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You might as well know that the United Nations well, er, appointed Libya's Muammar Qaddafi as chair of its Human Rights Commission. That should tell you something about the overall wisdom of this august body and about an anti-west agenda stuffed inside some of the plush chamber's upholstry. You know what I mean: radical islam. However, the subject of this evening's commentary is not Qaddafi. It is about that great and greedy Christian Right Wing autocrat, George W. Bush and his arch enemy, the great and greedy secularist dictator, Saddam Hussein.
The United Nations chart has absolutely none of the earth element (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn). On the one hand, it makes sense. The United Nations is the "voice" of a world community but isn't itself a sovereign nation.
But on the other hand, this lack of "grounding" limits the United Nation's ability to make manifest its will and purpose -- world peace. There's a lot of talk (the chart signature is cardinal air/Libra) about world justice, but not a lot of getting off ass and sticking to the plan.
The UN, over time, has become an international country club where its elite members rue the plight of the third world while gorging on U.S. Grade A beef. Heads of state from the third world don't think much about taking doggy bags back to their people. They think about getting more money grants from the United States so they can line their own pockets, then sit at summit tables demonizing the decadent West. The rest of the world, just as self-serving as the USA, hasn't figured out that it can't have it both ways, either.
Okay, so things like actually enforcing U.N. sanctions against anyone isn't exactly the U.N.'s strong suit. Saddam Hussein and Iraq are just one case in point. However, if the United States and a couple of her silent coalition partners like maybe the ungrateful Kuwait and the craven Saudi Arabia had been more vocal on points of international law, perhaps Iraqi innocents would not have suffered so egregiously.
And, yes, yes, yes. I know it is about oil. We say "oil" when we can't think of anything else.
I can't think of anything else.
The United Nation's Moon at 22 Gemini (and its Uranus at 17 Gemini) are in square to the USA's Neptune of oil and lies in her 9th house of foreign relationships. Uranus and Moon conjoin Bush's natal Uranus (and progressed Uranus) and conjoin the USA's fighting mad Mars in her 7th house of enemies.
It gets better.
Bush's 12th house Saturn of secrets conjoins the United Nations' third house Mars and Saturn at 23 and 24 Cancer, respectively. Natch, that mix conjoins the USA's Mercury in its 8th house of joint ventures, big money and death.
Transiting Venus hit the U.N.'s natal Sun in its 7th house of enemies on September 8, 2002. Note that the Sun is in the degree of the lunar nodes. These same nodes are connected to Hamid Karzai's birth chart Pluto (life and death issues) and to the chart for Karzai's initial appointment to the position of interim president of Afghanistan at the Capricorn Ingress of December 2001. The ascendant for that chart is 2 Capricorn. Karzai and his government are strongly Capricorn sensitive. Saturn at 10 Gemini (December 21, 2001) is conjioned to the Republican Party's natal Saturn. During the initial months of the terrorist war in Afghanistan, the Republican Party experienced its third Saturn Return. (chart for GOP).
Karzai, of course, was at the United Nations today asking for increased security for Afghanistan. The assassination attempt on Karzai (September 7-8, 2002) coincided closely with Bin Laden's assassination of Massoud, the Northern Alliance freedom fighter, on September 9, 2001, just two days before the big bad horrible at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. There is synchronicity here. A drawing together of people, places and forces toward what terrifying horizon?
On September 22, 2002, Mars in purgative Virgo will square merciless Pluto in Sagittarius. This occurs on the same day as the Libra Ingress (Sun reaching 0 degrees of the sign). The Ascendant for the Libra Ingress (Washington, D.C.) is 14 Cancer, or conjunct the USA's 8th house Sun and George Bush's 12th house Sun. A knee-jerk Aries Moon (ruled by Mars still very close in orb to Bush's natal Virgo Mars) squares this rising from the 10th house promising an escalation in moves toward an invasion of Iraq.
On October 11, 2002, Transiting Mars will reach 28 Virgo. This constitutes a Mars Return for the Republican Party, a moment warhawks will love. T-Mars will square frustrating, relentless Saturn (28 Gemini) and square the Moon's position for September 11th's First Tower Impact at 8:46 a.m. The United Nation's North Node is progressed to 29 Gemini. (Chart not shown). The eerie thing about this Mars square is that it will reiterate the September 28th full Harvest Moon at 28 Pisces. The Virgo Sun will square Saturn that day. This may be a mournful aftermath of events on Yom Kippur (September 16). The Aquarian Moon will make numerous stressful aspects to Israel's chart, including its own Natal Leo Mars, which is currently opposed by T-Uranus. More suicide bombings may erupt during this powerful holy week.
Mercury in diplomacy oriented Libra will not be fully out of retrograde "shadow" until October 21, the day in which Mercury exceeds 13 degrees Libra, its retrograde degree. (Mercury retrograde from September 14 to October 6, 2002). Mark Bush's speech to the United Nations on September 12th (the date falls into the 3-day "retrograde" window). This will be the media's obsession up to an invasion or up to the mid-term elections, whichever comes first, and I still think it is an Iraq invasion. Especially with JEB's primary voting machine mess in Florida of September 10th! Add that to his horrific appointment of "its okay to beat your kids with a belt" wingnut to Florida's Department of Welfare, and it may not turn out so well for JEB on November 5th's election night. Of course, if Democrat Bill McBride wins, the Republican will scream "Stolen Election" for years to come! Oh, please! Make JEB have to ask for a recount and lose!
[I have deviated greatly from my original topic, Bush speaking before the United Nations and have gone I know not where. This is why we need to hope that I get a grip on a smoke-free life sometime soon.]
Bush's U.N. speech, tauted by some as masterful, has a couple of problems when considering the astrology of it. First, Mercury in Libra, the planet associated with speechifying is buried in the 12th house of lies and subterfuge. It has just left the degree of the Lunar Nodes (12 Gemini/12 Sagittarius). Neptune, the other big liar of the zodiac when it appears in the same sentence with the word "politician," is in the 3rd house of, er, well, speechifying. It is opposite the bloviating bloater, Jupiter, the other liar, in the the 9th house the chart which represents things like truth, belief, ideology, philosophy and foreign policy. Unfortunately, these are things Bush knows nothing about.
The aforementioned is made all the more difficult by noting T-Neptune's position in the United Nation's chart. It is in the 11th house of hoped-for coalition partners in square to the UN's nasty Scorpio Mercury which squares nasty Pluto (Mercury's ruler) in egocentric Leo. Jupiter is on the way to conjoin the UN's Pluto! What we have here is a T-square of such bloated magnitude I'm running out of vocabulary to get this idea across. This gas bag of a T-square releases out of 7th house Mercury in Scorpio virtually guaranteeing some of the most vitrolic attack/counterattack by the press, other politicians and certainly between Iraqi officials and the United States.
Bush will swagger more than usual, since the transit of Jupiter in Leo conjoins his Ascendant, opposes Transiting Neptune in his 7th house of enemies and advisors (Neptune in his 7th house means his advisors are giving him bad advice), and will conjoin his first house Mercury, Pluto and Venus. With a set up like this, he's liable to be insufferable.
Transcript of Bush's September 12, 2002 Speech before the United Nations.
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Okay. 43 days off cigarettes now. I've made absolutely no sense with this article.
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Starcats, September 13, 2002
The Village Voice & The New Republic:
Money At the Root of It. Oh, & Fossil Fuel
"Behind the memorial candles and commercial remembrances lies one of the most astute marketing campaigns in American political history. This week, as the nation marks the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the Bush administration will twist voters' outpouring of raw emotion and patriotic fervor into a launching pad for the inevitable invasion of Iraq." Village Voice
Iraq: An October Surprise?
"When a reporter asked whether war and terrorism might yet reclaim the agenda before Election Day, Jim Jordan, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a blunt-speaking veteran of hardball politics, offered a sardonic response: "You mean when General [Karl] Rove calls in the air strikes in October?" The crack drew nervous laughter--did he really say that?--but Jordan made it clear he took the notion seriously, if not quite literally. "I hope I'm wrong," he added. "Certainly none of us want to think that the administration, for domestic political reasons, would use the war. I think the temptation will be strong."
"Republicans seethed over Jordan's quip. But today few Democrats doubt its prescience. Even if party leaders don't yet agree on what to say about the war on Iraq--"There's not a plan," says a senior aide to one Democratic senator--they're largely united on one point: what the aide calls the "widespread" sentiment that "General Rove" has manufactured an urgent debate over Iraq in order to win seats in Congress this fall. As one party operative puts it, the White House is 'play[ing] domestic politics in the international community.'" The New Republic
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September 10, 2002
September 11th's Anniversary
is Drum Beat For More War
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First, I quit smoking 40 days ago and I don't know if I can write anymore. Cigarettes and the written word are to me as booze was to the written word for F. Scott Fitzgerald.
If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for one year, you will draw your hand to your mouth a total of 75,000 times. If you smoked for 37 years, as I did, then you'll draw your hand to your mouth 2,775,000 times. This is what we call CONDITIONING. It didn't take Pavlov that many times to get his dogs to salivate when he rang the bell.
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My whole brain has to be rewired. I'm NOT "over it," and don't fucking expect me to be over it. I'm feeling pretty homicidal right now. Know what I mean?
That being said, let's have a look at the Triwheel chart (below) and my commentary upon it:
Tri Wheel | Inner: Declaration of Independence
Middle: George W. Bush
Outer: Transits for September 11, 2002
Commentary
The ninth house of the Triwheel holds Bush's natal Mars (9 Virgo) and September 11th's Anniversary Mars (8 Virgo) both in square to explosive natal USA Uranus just shy of its 7th house cusp.
- Transiting Mars meets Bush's Mars in what's known as "a Mars Return." It takes the God of War two years to make its 12 sign circuit around the zodiac, inclusive of one retrograde cycle every two years. At September 11th's Anniversary, Bush's Mars is supercharged and made more bellicose by its square (struggle) aspect to the USA's revolution-oriented Uranus.
- Transiting Mars will square Bush's secretive 12th house Cancer Sun on September 18 and then square his equally secretive 12th house Saturn on October 8, 2002.
- Note: Mars will square the USA's natal Mars at 21 Gemini set for September 30, 2002. This trine coincides with a Mars trine to the USA's ruthless Pluto in its second house. Bush's natal Saturn is the ruler of the USA's Pluto. How the Bush administration wields the power inherent in a presidential Natal-Saturn, transiting Mars, Plutonic undertone is a bit frightening to contemplate when the aforementioned energies are to be off-loaded by the extreme Right Wing in American policics.
- Bush's Mars squares the USA's Ascendant (12 Sag) and the Transiting South Node in the USA's First House, and the North Node in the USA's 7th house. Jupiter in the 8th house rules the South Node (the past), and conjoins Bush's natal Mercury and Pluto. He will tell (Mercury) the American people (USA's first house) exaggerated (Jupiter) claims regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (Pluto) and could well be lying (Jupiter opposite Neptune in Aquarius) about the magnitude of the threat. [I heard rumors that Bush, Blair and Rummy were using satellite photos of Saddam's fixtures from 1991 (Sagittarius South Node -- the past/Jupiter opposite Neptune: inflating the truth) as if the photos had been quite recently taken.] The North Node, Gemini, in the the USA's 7th house of enemies draws us to the easiest of conclusions. War on two fronts: Afghanistan and Iraq.
- Bush's natal North Node (20 Gemini) is conjoined to the USA's natal Mars! Both are in square to the USA's 9th house Neptune: Foreign enemies; oil, enemies that own oil; oil and well, oil, oil, oil. Heads up: it will not be long before the global "war on terror" (which also includes stealing everyone else's assets) will include WATER. Before Enron went bankrupt, JEB Bush (Governor of the State of Florida) was in collusion with that corporation to sell it the Florida Everglades. In turn, Enron was going to purify and bottle Everglades water and sell it to people on the commercial/retail market.
When the world gets to the point where the wealthiest 1% of it begins selling clean air, water and fossil fuel to the common people we will have reached "checkmate." Difficult as it may be to envision this while living in a western nation that sports in-door plumbing and central air-conditioning, we will miss the point if we don't recognize that the world has entered a new dark age.
 | The bulk of real wealth is solely owned by the upper one percent of the world's population. The barbarians, radical Islamcists, are at the gate. Religious fundamentalists of all persuasions preach violence and social dissolution. Whether it be Al Qaeda style Islam preaching "Death to America," or the Christian fundamentalis Jerry Falwell who preaches Armageddon. How long can Rome stand? [graphic image by "Le Monde" of Paris, France.]
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- Mercury at 12 Libra on September 11, 2002 is in the degree of the transiting Nodes for the same day. As mentioned above, The Gemini North Node in the USA's 7th house reminds us of the Twin Towers, but also of the fact that the White House soon fights war on two fronts.
- Mercury turns retrograde on September 14th (at 13 Libra) and won't be direct again until October 6 (at 28 Virgo). October 7, 2001 was the date of the USA's invasion of Taliban/Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. If Bush plans an "October Surprise," it could well come close to the anniversary of the USA's invasion into Afghanistan. For Bush to go before the United Nations on September 12th then do whatever prevaricators do to make their case before the American people this soon can only mean an invasion is imminent. Otherwise, why the fuss only to drop the ball?
- The transiting Virgo Sun in the 9th house of foreign relations (18 degrees of the sign) will soon form a T-square with Bush's natal lunar nodes (20 Gemini North/20 Sagittarius South) across the USA's embattled first/seventh house axis. The transiting Sun also draws in to the T-Square Bush's natal Uranus conjoined to the USA's Mars (see 7th house of USA chart). The Virgo Sun, ruled by Mercury in the USA's 10th in Lunar Node Degree for September 11th means escalation in the Iraq invasion plan. Just as soon as the transiting Sun reaches the degree of Bush's natal Nodes (September 12,2002), he'll be standing before the United Nations (9th house again) making his case for an invasion of Iraq. The Sun's rapid transit of Bush's lunar nodes, the USA's Mars, as well as Bush's natal and progressed Uranus means fast action.
- The lunar nodes direct us to the fated contacts linked in these three charts. Bush's natal nodes across the Gemini/Sagittarius axis remind us of the three brutally harsh Saturn-Pluto oppositions of August 2001, which led to September 11, 2001, November 2001, which led to the fall of Mazir e Sharif and the liberation of Kabul in Afghanistan, and of late May 2002, when domestic issues here at home once again took precedence over foreign enemies.
- The USA's natal lunar nodes across the Leo/Aquarius axis remind us of the bottom dropping out the stock market; corporate corruption and dwindling surpluses (Neptune conjunct USA's South Node); and the fact that 40% of America's working poor need our food banks ever more. These food banks, according to "The Christian Science Monitor," have been drained dry due to the downturn in the economy. Do not believe what Bush says about the economy. The truth is: people are literally starving in America.
- The Lunar nodes for September 11th's Anniversary, along the Libra-Aries axis, draws us again into the world of diplomacy, of equality and world justice (Libra). The Aries node is war, strife and the necessity to remain vigilant. Not just against terrorists, but against George Bush's Right Wing adminstration. My sense is that An invasion of Iraq comes before the November 5, 2002 mid-term elections. Again, why would Bush go to the United Nations and before the American People if an invasion wasn't imminent?
- T-Jupiter in opposition to T-Neptune will add great pathos to September 11th's Anniversary remembrances across the nation. However, in matters of state, these two planets serve to inflate (Jupiter) the Right Wing's "religious" shadowy belief (Neptune) that they and they alone are the appointed keepers of morality; have the direct telephone line to God; and because of this, are "annointed."
They are unable to see the dangers that lie ahead once the military has invaded Iraq. Bush is unable to see the bad advice (Neptune on his 7th house cusp) he has received from war hawks like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Right Wing magazine editor Bill Kristol.
The grave misfortune of Bush's belief that biblical Armageddon prophecies should dictate foreign policy will cost the United States a full generation. It will take 20 to 25 years to recover from whatever debacle is unleashed in a middle east populated by dictators, terrified royals, and ignorant radical islamist warriors and war lords. A middle east war will break the resources of the United States. Not to mention the grievous losses of our military men and women.
If you find any mistakes in my article, leave them. I'll have more fun finding them by myself later on.
Starcats, September 10, 2002
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