“President Bush made a conciliatory political pilgrimage Saturday to an annual gathering full of newly empowered House Democrats and urged bipartisan action on a host of issues that could determine the success or failure of his last two years in the White House,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. “Bush’s 19-minute speech before about 175 members of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House caucus was received cordially and respectfully, if not enthusiastically.”

It is a “political pilgrimage” that sends an incisive, unambiguous message: Bush’s neocons will work with the Democrats, not only on “U.S. energy self-sufficiency, global warming, economic competitiveness and immigration,” but also on the mass murder “surge” in Iraq and, soon enough, Iran.

According to the Chronicle, the former issues are “activist,” conjuring images of liberal socialism, when in fact they are more of the same old neoliberal globalism, a form of socialism for the ruling elite and predatory multinational corporations.

For instance, “economic competitiveness” translates into more “free trade” banditry, more third world fire sales, more international banker loan sharking. Immigration, of course, is a buzzword for open borders, thus establishing a hemispheric “supra-national organization” for the benefit of multinational corporations at the expense of American workers who will be replaced by cheap labor from Mexico and beyond, thus leveling the standard of living playing field, that is to say moving Americans closer to the Indian and Chinese model of subsistence living. As for global warming, this canard, or half-baked scientific theory, will serve to fill the coffers of world government, as a “carbon tax” is considered an “internationally administered scheme,” that is to say a boondoggle designed to finance neoliberal slavery on a global scale. “A carbon tax is inevitable,” declared French president Jacques Chirac, a proponent of dirigiste (state directed) “ideas” and the most senior member of G8, that wonderful neolib organization responsible for the “debt crisis,” that is to say imposing loan sharking operations on poor nations.

But let us return to the all-war, all-the-time consensus hammered out by Bush’s public relations stunt, colorfully described as a “political pilgrimage.”

On “the overriding issue of the Iraq war,” the Chronicle would have us believe, “Bush and his Democratic critics remained as far apart as ever.” Regardless of all the mumbo-jumbo issued by Democrats on bringing the troops home, “one of the party’s leading lights” (sic), as the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, characterized Hillary Clinton, “has shown little appetite to challenge Bush’s policy more directly and embrace a plan to set a timetable for bringing U.S. forces home.”

According to Sam Graham-Felsen, Barack Obama is “the major anti-war candidate.” In this context, the word “major” comes with a few strings attached, as Obama “puts forward a faux withdrawal plan full of holes big enough to drive a convoy of Bradley Fighting Vehicles through,” according to Glen Ford. “The President should announce to the Iraqi people that our policy will include a gradual and substantial reduction in U.S. forces,” Ford quotes the senator as declaring. “He should then work with our military commanders to map out the best plan for such a redeployment and determine precise levels and dates. I am not suggesting that this timetable be overly-rigid.” Naturally, there are conditions, custom-made to keep the United States in Iraq for years to come, as planned. “The redeployment could be temporarily suspended if the parties in Iraq reach an effective political arrangement that stabilizes the situation and they offer us a clear and compelling rationale for maintaining certain troop levels.”

Surely, due to the neocon master plan to sow division and discord among Arabs and Muslims, a plan based on the British colonial divide and rule strategy, “the parties” (i.e., Iraqi puppets) will not be able to “reach an effective political arrangement that stabilizes the situation.” Not surprisingly, “[c]ontradictions abound in the ephemeral formula Obama shares with most of the Democratic presidential field. The senator donned his Uncle Sam top hat to scold the Iraqi parties/militias, demanding that they provide the U.S. with a ‘political solution’ to the chaos ushered in by the invading Americans.”

In short, scratch Obama as a “major anti-war candidate.”

Next up, John Edwards, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, who deemed Iraq “a grave and growing threat,” thus authorizing the neocon invasion, and subsequently insisting on its legality, despite the consensus of the international legal community that the invasion and occupation was illegal.

True to his nature as a snake oil salesman, Edwards now tells us he regrets his vote and, if we will only vote him in as president, he will “have the troops out in roughly 12 to 18 months.”

Meanwhile, Edwards told “a fairly hawkish bunch meeting in Israel,” according to Discourse.net (the adverb “fairly” is wholly inappropriate, as the “bunch” in Israel are nothing less than ethnically cleansing Zionists, determined to lay waste to Arab and Muslim society and culture), “Iran threatens the security of Israel and the entire world. Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons. For years, the US hasn’t done enough to deal with what I have seen as a threat from Iran. As my country stayed on the sidelines, these problems got worse. To a large extent, the US abdicated its responsibility to the Europeans. This was a mistake. The Iranian president’s statements such as his description of the Holocaust as a myth and his goals to wipe Israel off the map indicate that Iran is serious about its threats.”

In other words, Iran has replaced Iraq as the “threat” to the world—Edwards, of course, means Israel, as most of the world does not have a problem with Iran—and, no doubt, after its civilian infrastructure is decimated and Iranians are locked in sectarian strife, Mr. Edwards will suggest having the “troops out in roughly 12 to 18 months.”

If we are to believe a recent Newsweek poll, Hillary Clinton “has taken a predictable lead over Republican rival Senator John McCain and other Democrat presidential hopefuls… [and] is in a position garner 50 percent of the American vote as opposed to McCain’s 44 percent because of the latter’s decision to defend President George W Bush’s latest policy on Iraq,” DailyIndia reports. “Illinois Senator Barack Obama is also leading McCain by 48 to 42 percent, while former Vice-President nominee John Edwards is ahead of McCain by four points,” hardly a miracle, as McCain is obviously a borderline mental patient with a shady past of dealings with the Keating Five crime syndicate.

As well, the unsavory Rudy Giuliani, who should be serving hard time for disrupting the 9/11 crime scene and tampering with evidence, and Mitt Romney, rumored to be courting the outgoing Florida governor Jeb Bush for a possible Romney-Bush 2008 ticket—Bush and Clinton, Clinton and Bush, neolib and neocon dynasties die hard—are in the Democrat ‘frontrunner” blind spot. “Just under half of all registered voters said they’d rather see a Democrat elected President next year, versus 28 percent who would prefer continued Republican control of Oval Office.”

Naturally, we should expect only cosmetic change, as both Clinton and Edwards rushed off to Herzliya, Israel—the former in person, the latter via satellite—to put “all options on the table,” that is sign off on the impending Iran attack and also make sure there is never a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

According to Edwards, the rabid Zionist settler government of Israel has “made many concessions” and “not only has the right to defend itself, it has an obligation to defend itself” against crazy Palestinians who cannot get it in their heads that ethnic cleansing is in their best interest.

“John Edwards proclaimed his support for the neoconservative agenda of the Israel Lobby, and he even echoed the bellicose rhetoric of George Bush vis-à-vis Iran,” notes Michael Carmichael for the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel.

Last week, Clinton “scrubbed her campaign trip to New Hampshire,” the all-important primary state, in order to address AIPAC in Manhattan. “Much of the money she has raised—some analysts expect her to bring in $500 million by election time—has come from Jewish donors,” writes the Florida Jewish News. “Pro-Israel lobbyists say Clinton’s voting record on issues related to funding for Israel and isolating its enemies, including Iran and Syria, has been top notch, and she has visited the country multiple times since becoming a senator.”

If you believe electing Clinton will usher in an era of peace and brotherhood, think again.

During a Hanukkah dinner speech delivered on December 11, hosted by Yeshiva University, Joshua Frank quotes Clinton as declaring: “I held a series of meetings with Israeli officials [summer, 2005], including the prime minister and the foreign minister and the head of the [Israeli Defense Force] to discuss such challenges we confront. In each of these meetings, we talked at length about the dire threat posed by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to Israel, but also to Europe and Russia. Just this week, the new president of Iran made further outrageous comments that attacked Israel’s right to exist that are simply beyond the pale of international discourse and acceptability. During my meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, I was reminded vividly of the threats that Israel faces every hour of every day … It became even more clear how important it is for the United States to stand with Israel…”

Thus Hillary, as Bush before her, and her husband before that, will, if selected and elected, will continue to “stand” with Israel (i.e., she will make darn sure billions flow into Israel’s racist coffers and American soldiers die in wars cooked up by the Zionist state, in collusion with the all-war, all-the-time neocons and their neolib pals, not shy when it comes to perpetual war for perpetual profit and third world fire sales).

Expect more of the same. Indeed, expect something worse, as it now appears certain the Bush neocons will attack Iran and kick off a new round of horrific war and mass murder, a situation Hillary, as Madame decider, will be forced to deal with.

Of course, considering her fealty to the now comatose Ariel Sharon and the war chortling AIPAC, we can assume, if selected and elected, Clinton may well oversee the final destruction of America, as China, Russia, and no shortage of other nations are rapidly approaching the limit of their tolerance for the World War Four crowd.