Bush emerged gravely damaged: Business Week devoted a cover to a photo of Bush and
the legend: "Losing Ground: GOP Losses in Congress, statehouse setbacks, and internal
party strife are eroding George Bush's authority-- and his ability to lead the nation." "A
few more good days like that and Republicans will go the way of Whigs," wrote the
magazine. The vote was a "humbling rebuke to a barnstorming Bush." [49] In the words
of an October 31 headline in the pro-regime Washington Times, "Bush in 92? 'Dead
Meat,' say skeptics." Kevin Phillips noted that economics could prove fatal for Bush:
"Since World War II the GOP's pattern has been for economic downturns during midterm
election years: full-fledged recessions in 1954, 1958, 1970, 1974, and 1982, and a severe
farm-belt and oil-patch slump in 1986. Today's economic thunderclouds, however, are
the first in memory (at least since the post-1929 period) to portend their storms for the
third year of a GOP presidency." And for Bush, the economic bad news was to be found
even in the New York Times: "What Recession? It's a Depression," proclaimed one
article. Leonard Silk made the optimistic case in the same paper: "Why It's Too Soon to
Predict Another Great Depression," was his title. [fn 59]
But well before the dust had settled from the election debacle, Bush had resumed his
march towards a holocaust in the Middle East. On the day after the election, Baker,
speaking in Moscow, launched Bush's all-out press for a UN Security Council resolution
legitimizing the use of armed force against Iraq over the Kuwait question. Bush had to
push his war through both the US Congress and the UN permanent five; his estimate was
that the world powers would be easier to dragoon, and that the assent of the Security
Council could then be used to bludgeon the Congress into acquiescence. [fn 60]
It is important to note that in shifting his policy towards aggressive war, Bush was once
again dancing to the tune being piped in from London. On Wednesday, November 7, the
racist crone Thatcher, now on her way out as Prime Minister, issued her most
warmongering statement so far on the Gulf crisis:
Either [Saddam Hussein] gets out of Kuwait soon or we and our allies will remove him
by force and he will go down to defeat with all the consequences. He has been warned.
[fn 61]
Yet again, the United States was to be drawn into a useless and genocidal war as the tail
on the British imperial kite.
And so, flaunting his vicious contempt for the democratic process, on Thursday
November 8, just two days after the election, Bush made what any serious, intelligent
person must have recognized as a declaration of preemptive war in the Gulf:
After consultation with King Fahd and our other allies I have today directed the secretary
of defense to increase the size of US forces committed to Desert Shield to ensure that the
coalition has an adequate offensive military option should that be necessary to achieve
our common goals. Towards this end we will continue to dicuss the possibility of both
additional allied force contributions and appropriate United Nations actions. Iraq's