They are looting the US treasury, have the US economy on the brink of depression, the US military on its knees, the UN reduced to "irrelevance", and are doing all they can to turn the middle east into the flare to start WWIII (except that they call it WWIV).

I suspect some very powerful people know the current world order is unravelling (peak oil, global climate change, end of US economic hegemony) and they are looting what thay can in preparation for what will come next. In the process of looting, they may be instrumental in bringing about a crisis faster, but what do they care? They have Blackwater to defend them.

When the system does unravel, they are laying the groundwork to use the apparatus of the state to defend themselves from the angry mob.
Stan Goff: The Global Battlefield: We Are Standing Oon It (8/10/05)

The Evolution of the Bush-Rumsfeld War Doctrine - Roadmap to Martial Law

It's also what allows some of the most mediocre political and military intellects in the last century (and that is a highly competitive claim) to create one of the most dangerous and decisive historical conjunctures we may ever witness... and hopefully survive.

It appeared in the most arcane of headlines, this desperate new phase in the empire that had been gestating in the tense womb of the Pentagon-White House nexus.

"US military rethinking the two-war strategy"

It wasn't actually the military as a whole reconsidering anything, we find upon reading the article. This is a leak from high-level Pentagon insiders to the press, and more than one insider. There is an artful rebellion taking place among generals.

The first line of the article reads: "The U.S. military, under stress from fighting in Iraq and protecting America from terrorism, is debating whether it can remain ready to fight two big wars at once, according to defense officials." Further along, we find out that the "civilian and military officials, who asked not to be identified, confirmed a report in Tuesday's New York Times that top Defense Department planners were challenging longstanding strategy that requires the armed forces to be prepared to fight two major wars at once."

Officials, plural. If the leak were a felony, like the Plame case, this would add conspiracy to the charge.

So what is going on, and why did this leak come at the same time that the Department of Defense published its strange and alarming "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support"? To answer that rhetorical question, I will have to go to the strategy document itself, hot off the presses.

Department of Defense, Washington, D.C., June 2005 - Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support. From the Executive Summary:

"We now confront an enemy who will attempt to engage us not only far from US shores, but also at home. Terrorists will seek to employ asymmetric means to penetrate our defenses and exploit the openness of our society to their advantage. By attacking our citizens, our economic institutions, our physical infrastructure, and our social fabric, they seek to destroy American democracy. We dare not underestimate the devastation that terrorists seek to bring to Americans at home.

"To defeat 21st Century threats, we must think and act innovatively. Our adversaries consider US territory an integral part of a global theater of combat. We must therefore have a strategy that applies to the domestic context the key principles that are driving the transformation of US power projection and joint expeditionary warfare."