As we all know, the rape of Iraq (or as future historians will doubtless call it, "The Dawn of the Shiite Empire") was planned openly several years ago by a hard-right agitprop cell led by Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Now it turns out that the recent big-monkey chest-beating aimed at Syria -- threats of sanctions, "surgical" strikes, and "regime change" -- was also carefully planned, by many of the same people, long before the Bush Regime seized power.

As we've often reported here, in September 2000 the Cheney-Rumsfeld outfit, Project for the New American Century, proudly published their blueprint for the direct imposition of U.S. "forward bases" throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. They even foresaw the need for what they called a "Pearl Harbor-type event" to galvanize the American public into supporting their ambitious program. Their reasons for this program were also stated quite openly: to ensure U.S. political and economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential "rival" or any viable alternative to the rapacious crony capitalism favored by the PNAC extremists. This dominance would be enforced by the ever-present threat -- and frequent application -- of violence. (A tactic known elsewhere as "terrorism.")

PNAC was also very honest about the role of Iraq in this crusade for empire, stating plainly that the need for a U.S. military presence in the area "superseded" the "issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." There was no sanctimonious posturing about "liberation," weapons of mass destruction or terrorist connections. To dominate the oil wealth centered in that region -- and hence the economic/political development of the world in the coming decades -- they needed a military presence in Iraq; it's as simple as that.

And now they've got it. Again, it's all quite open -- for anyone who cares to look. Last week, the Pentagon announced that it "expects" (i.e., "demands") to have "long-term access" to at least four major military bases in Iraq, The New York Times reports. (Rumsfeld -- or "Shifty" as cynics like to call him -- later issued a weasel-worded non-denial denial.) Although the hundreds of thousands of armed and angry Shiite Muslims currently clamoring for an Islamic state in Bush's new satrapy may yet cause a spot of bother for the sahibs, for now the generals and arms dealers installed as Iraq's new rulers believe they will still be sitting pretty in Fort Pretzel and Carlyle Air Base throughout the "new American century." This was, after all, the purpose of the recent slaughter -- as Cheney and Rumsfeld told us plainly years ago.