New York Times, Monday, May 18, 2015, Op-Ed page. Paul Krugman rails against the manufacturers of our reasonably recent history, 2001 and onward,, decrying the actions of the Bush Administration in “lying the United States into war.”  Calling it a crime, he appears confused by what might have driven the perpetrators to do such a thing; a mistaken belief that “shock and awe in Iraq would enhance American power and influence around the world,” the instituting of a “a pilot project, preparation for a series of regime changes,” or dog-wagging to “strengthen the Republican brand at home?”

And all of these musings come after reference to Rumsfeld’s 9/11-the day-of memo to staff about whether the event would be “good enough,” –imagine, for Jesus’s mother’s sake, the use of the words– “hit SH,(Saddam Hussein)…sweep it all up things related and not.”  And I think Krugman has to think even more deeply about the use of the words, “good enough.”  I don’t mean to suggest that their use ends any inquiry or is irrefutable proof of Rumsfeld’s conspiratorial intent with regard to the “inside job” aspect of the attacks.  And, I am not suggesting that there aren’t quite close to a thousand other evidentiary reasons for Krugman to rethink his understanding of 9/11 in toto, to the extent he has allowed himself to think about it at all.  What I want to call attention to is the vanishingly short distance one needs to trod between the frame of mind that is part and parcel of Krugman’s current understanding of the causes of the Iraq War, and the right-next-door mindset which conspires to create from, in all likelihood but not indisputably, someone else’s plan of a terrorist attack, that devastation which we now refer to as 9/11.

9/11 was probably the piggy-backing of a Cheney-Rumsfeld plan on top of a Khalid Sheik Mohammed plan, creating a false flag event of such scope and breadth that wholly decent American citizens would be defanged of their democratic teeth of thought, not to mention power of speech.  It is a fact, now repeated so many times in so many of those citizens, often with honest acknowledgement of the horror sought to be avoided, that it is cliche to suggest that this nation “can’t handle the truth.”  It is certainly no grave accusation to suggest that Krugman is in this class.  Virtually everyone is in this class.  The exceptions are simply mutant outliers whose relevant synapses were cut or frayed or rubbed raw idiosyncratically at some point in the last 14 years or before, through no fault or design of their own, but are now left to try to manage in the world with a corrupted epistemology as I think Sunstein called it.

Such corruption will not, however, let one be.  It cries for attention and constantly seeks for a loose brick in the wall.  Mr. Krugman, could you please take a careful look at the criminal intent, the mind behind that most heinous of war crimes, aggression.  I say that its impulses ranged from the political to the base financial, the passage of the Patriot Act, the projection of American power across the globe with the inestimable economic benefits to war contractors, suppliers, and operators, and of course the benefits to the political party in control of a nation at war, …and yes, oil and other resources in the affected regions and others where the power of example will prove helpful in later negotiations that some shorthanders refer to as, “the lead or the gold” conversations.  World domination is not all that hard to figure out once its theoretical possibility is allowed into the room.

So I am asking Mr. Krugman to consider that mind.  It is capable of the clear focus it takes to achieve a grand but deplorable accomplishment.  It is bereft of conscience that would ordinarily consider the even smallish body counts our finest wishes for their humanity would have to have envisioned, serious impediments to concerted action.  It is capable of manipulations of vast resources on the largest of stages, able to “see the whole board,” albeit with some genuinely perverted eyesight.  It is able to lie, again in the biggest way, understanding the essential need to mislead virtually an entire population.  And it is capable of the rankest desire for the achievement of financial gain.  Whatever I have left out, I will argue, can be found within the folds of what I have listed, even if there must be some fumbling around at first to find it there.

Denny Chin, then US District Court judge, now judge of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, whose panel agreed with him in every particular, said “it is simply not plausible that the Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and other high-ranking officials conspired to facilitate terrorist attacks that would result in the deaths of thousands of Americans.  If anything, the allegations are the product of cynical delusion and fantasy.”  Probably most Americans could have had the thought, if they couldn’t have written the words.  Krugman as well.  But take a look at the mind we have sought to peer into, the one that lied us into war.  Look at the benefits of doubt with which it is bestowed in the face of the worst things you can say about a human being, or group of them.  Yes, they are capable of war criminality, depravity, conscienceless, intricate, merciless imaginings for their own sick ends, and necessarily the ignoring of the probability of substantial if not enormous loss of American troops’ lives–one doesn’t mention Iraqi casualties in a serious conversation.  What in all that blushes at the idea of false flag.  What in all of that stops at the killing of someone with an American passport?   In what fanciful dimension are such parsings meaningful?  And the robe bleats about “fantasy.”.