POLJUNK

According to Wonkette.com, George W's daughter Jenna recently "...paid a secret diplomatic visit to Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and U.S. Ambassador James Cason. There were no press conferences, no public sightings and no official confirmation of her 10-day trip which apparently ended (last) week." Perhaps Jenna was just picking out curtains for her family's new digs. Let's hope Jenna didn't get anything on her dress during her meeting with el Presidente.

Human rights champion and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel floated the idea that this land-grab is a precursor to a war for water. As wary as I am about some of our government's global plans, that seems a bit far-fetched. I can't imagine it being economically feasible to transport water from that region to the American southwest, as the esteemed Esquivel suggests. Yes, the southwest is starved for water with all those new housing developments and golf courses springing up all over, but I suppose economic feasibility of transporting water from South to North America depends on just how scarce fresh water gets for Phoenix and Las Vegas. Is Bush aware of an impending disaster here in America that we should all know about? All that water would come in handy should the Bush family need to escape to a post-apocalyptic fortress conveniently built right on top of one of the world's largest aquifers.

It looks like the Bushes intend to set up house in the shadows of the Mariscal Estigarribia Military Base in Paraguay, which, per some reports, can house up to 16,000 troops and has an airfield that can accommodate aircraft as large as Lockheed's C-5 Galaxy. I live just a block from a Metra station and two blocks from an "L" station and I can tell you that there's nothing like living close to transportation.

Apparently, the U.S. military has been operating in the region to "spread democracy" and hem in any terrorist or narco-trafficking activity that the region might be harboring, according to Benjamin Dangl at TowardFreedom.com. Gee, where have we heard "spread democracy" before? The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), an independent non-partisan research organization, reported that, "On June 1, 2005 the Paraguayan National Congress entered into an agreement with Washington that allows U.S. troops to enter into Paraguay for an 18-month period."

"The allegations about a purported U.S. military base appear to be based on misunderstandings about a series of 13 separate joint military exercises, which Paraguay and the United States began in July 2005, and which continue through December 2006," reports globalsecurity.org. "These short, time-limited exercises have been mischaracterized as a long-term stationing of U.S. troops in Paraguay. This is not true, and the military exercises themselves are nothing new. Paraguay and the United States have been conducting routine bilateral military exercises since 1943." The globalsecurity.org piece also says that the airfield's "numerous deficiencies also make it impractical to use" and calls into question whether or not the airfield is suited to accommodate B-52's, much less larger heavy-lift cargo aircraft such as the C-5 Galaxy.

The official word from Washington is, "Since June 2005, a myth has developed falsely claiming that the United States plans to establish a military base in Paraguay." Well, maybe the United States government itself doesn't have such plans, but obviously the Bushes plan to establish themselves in the region.

One might be inclined to deride all of the paranoia and speculation surrounding the Bush family's Paraguayan land purchase as lunacy. One would be right to do so, quite literally, since the Bush land purchase resembles a much larger land purchase (nearly 1.5 million acres) in the same region by the cultist reverend Sun Myung Moon, no stranger to the Bush family, ostensibly to create an "ecological paradise." "Now, with the reports of the Bush purchase of an 'ecological reserve' alongside Moon's, we have good reason to suspect that U.S. national security has again been seconded to the Bush family business," opines Jeff at Rigorous Intuition.

Does Bush know something that the rest of us don't? Are the Bushes planning to "escape" to South America? Escape from what? Are 9/11 conspiracy theorists about to be proven right in their allegations of the Bush Administration's collusion in the attacks? Is Bush aware of an impending unstoppable nuclear, chemical, or biological attack on the United States? Is Colin Powell, along with a cadre of disillusioned generals, about to tell us that the Iraq war was a deliberate fraud from square one? Or are the Bushes simply creating a base from which to propagate their extra-governmental influence over prospective business interests? Exploiting natural resources for profit is the Bush family stock-in-trade, after all. Maybe George W. is just looking for a week-end getaway to take the place of Camp David once his second term is up. I bet there's plenty of brush to clear at Crawford South.

This should be fun to watch.