Amid the media circus sparked by the official launch of the 2016 presidential campaign of celebrity candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, it is easy to forget that there exists another challenger for the Democratic nomination–besides Senator Bernie Sanders. His name is Lincoln Chaffee. He is largely unknown out of his home state of Rhode Island.

About the only thing Chaffee has in common  with Hillary Clinton is that he is also the product of a political dynasty of sorts. His father, John Chaffee, served as governor of Rhode Island, U.S. Senator and Secretary of the Navy during the Nixon administration. After a background working in harness racetracks after college, Lincoln Chaffee followed in his father’s footsteps. He served as the mayor of Warwick, Rhode Island. As a part of the dying breed of moderate Republicans, he won election to the U.S. Senate. When he lost his reelection bid, be successfully won election as governor of Rhode Island, running as an independent; this was the first time an independent candidate won the gubernatorial contest in his state since 1790. After serving one term as governor, Chaffee chose not to run for reelection. He is now a registered Democrat. Recently, he officially announced that he is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/03/lincoln-chafee-expected-to-announce-longshot-presidential-bid/ ).

All of the above might seem indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton, or the virtual army of Republican contenders who have either formally announced their candidacies, or are about to do so. That appears to be the existential problem with American presidential politics; it has been reduced to the geometric convergence of resumes shaped by savvy public relations consultants with massive amounts of money–in the 2016 presidential election, the price of attaining the White House will be measured at record billions of dollars.

If, however, the 2016 presidential election were not based on extravagantly-financed PR spin,  but rather on character, courage and basic common sense, Lincoln Chaffee would be the clear frontrunner. One single act in the Senate career of Lincoln Chaffee not only establishes him as the most qualified candidate to serve as America’s next President and Commander-in-Chief; it marks him as one of the very few contemporary U.S. politicians who has displayed the highest level of moral clarity and political courage.

Amid the continuing catastrophe that is the Iraq war that the United States remains  trapped in, despite President Obama’s forlorn attempt to end U.S. involvement through a precipitous and ill-conceived withdrawal of American troops, it is easy to forget how this madness all began. Let us go back to  October 2002, and recall that President George W. Bush did not launch the invasion of Iraq on his own– he required Congressional authorization. A compliant Congress  provided that authorization in the form of a blank check, empowering Bush to initiate his military adventure in the heart of the Middle East whenever he chose, without further consultation with Congress.  We know who voted for the Iraq war . The list of approving senators included Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of 29 Democratic senators who voted in favor of Senate Joint Resolution 45.

There were 49 Republicans in the Senate when SJR 45 came to a vote, of which 48 voted in favor of the war authorization measure. Only one Republican senator had the strength of character and moral integrity to vote against his own party’s president. Lincoln Chaffee, the sole Republican in the Senate to oppose the invasion of Iraq, earned the undying  contempt of many of his fellow Republicans, a factor that undoubtedly led to his eventually changing party affiliations. However, his vote of conscience and rationality should forever earn the gratitude of the American people.

The political dissent Chaffee displayed in the U.S. Senate was not only courageous; it showed a level of sophistication and understanding of international events that is sadly lacking among the current crop of presidential contenders. All who allowed the genies out of the bottle when America invaded Iraq must be held accountable for the calamitous geopolitical results. The Shiite-Sunni civil war raging in the Middle East is a direct result of this geostrategic blunder, the consequences of which will haunt the U.S. for generations to come. To expect Hillary Clinton, a co-architect of this monumental disaster, to somehow contain its horrific aftershocks is to hope for the impossible. Only a political leader who understood from the beginning that launching a war in Iraq was a terrible mistake can inspire confidence in  his ability at finding solutions to contain the metastasizing after-effects.

Most will conclude that however meritorious Lincoln Chaffee’s case for being elected America’s 45th president is, he doesn’t stand a chance, particularly against the Clinton political machine and its vast base of financial support–and that this is a tragedy for Mr. Chaffee. I look at this equation somewhat differently. It is not a tragedy for Lincoln Chaffee, but for America.

Hillary Clinton is running for President of the United States  in 2016. See the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW VIDEO Hillary Clinton Nude

The latest news from Iraq clearly has geopolitical implications. No less important are the economic ramifications.  The Iraq war, which began with the U.S. invasion in 2003, is entering a new phase, and perhaps far more dangerous territory.

A Salafist-Islamist  insurgent group which goes by the acronym in English of ISIS (and by other acronyms and names as well), said to be to the right of Al-Qaeda (if that is even possible), has seized Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, with a population of approximately two million. ISIS has seized others towns and strategic locations, while boasting of a march on Baghdad. The Iraqi army appears to be crumbling.

Amid talk of the United States getting back into the Iraq war, or Iran intervening directly with its own military forces , the price of oil has begun to spike. Normally, any military conflict, especially in the Persian Gulf region, will elevate the per barrel price of oil. However, another factor is at play. Just as Iraq was approaching the pre-2003 level of petroleum extraction, the internecine conflict’s escalation into outright civil war threatens to torpedo any meaningful exports of Iraq’s crude oil in the future.

A disruption in the supply of Iraq’s oil on the world market could create a cascading effect on oil prices, already at $110 per barrel and climbing. It should be remembered that in the summer of 2008 oil’s climb to a price north of $140 per barrel was a key element in the unleashing of the global economic crisis, from which a feeble recovery is still underway. The global economy is  fragile and vulnerable to another oil shock.

Among all the calculations being weighed in Washington, Tehran  and elsewhere, policymakers must understand that the growing signs of disintegration of the unified Iraqi state, among other crises in the Middle East, may foreshadow a repetition of the oil price crisis of 2008. The unraveling of the American-installed Iraqi political structure may be a harbinger to a return to oil scarcity and elevated oil prices, with all the attendant negative effects on the global economy.

If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States  in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW VIDEO Hillary Clinton Nude

President Barack Obama is scheduled to address the nation on the end of the American combat role in Iraq. Fifty thousand troops will remain behind to train the Iraqi security forces, and with massive bases remaining and the country’s biggest embassy located in Baghdad, it is clear that a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq is foreseen. The road has been a long one since the previous president, George W. Bush, formally announced the “end” of American major combat operations in Iraq from the deck of an aircraft carrier, more than 7 years ago.

One can debate about the merits of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq ( I happen to believe it was a major strategic blunder) but what cannot be debated, apart from the human toll, has been the frightful cost to the U.S. economy. In 2008, two distinguished academicians, Nobel Prize winning economist  Joseph Stiglitz  and his colleague, Linda Bilmes from Harvard University, published the most comprehensive analysis of the actual cost, current and future, of America’s Iraqi adventure. Their conclusion, published in 2008, was that the ultimate expenditures of the American taxpayers due to the Iraq war and its aftermath will be at least $3 trillion. They labeled their study, quite appropriately, “The Three Trillion Dollar War.”

In the current economic purgatory that America finds itself in, it is astonishing that no policymaker has been held accountable for this $3 trillion “mistake” (mistake, that is, for those who believe the invasion was really based on the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction-as opposed to reengineering the Middle East and securing oil resources).  However, these same policymakers tell us to relax, the war was placed on the nation’s proverbial credit card, so it will be the children and grandchildren of America who will eventually pay for the Iraq military conflict. But what about the costs of the Afghanistan war, which will likely reach and may exceed the figures that  Stiglitz and Bilmes calculated for the Iraq conflict? Add them all up together, factor in the structural mega-deficits and costly financial bailouts engineered by the politicians in Washington, and one cannot escape the conclusion that it will be bankruptcy, not victory, which will be the final outcome and legacy of America‘s war on Iraq.