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| Dubya Buries His Head in the Sand ... While The Lies Come Crashing Down Around Him |
| 09.30.03 (8:50 am) [edit] |
Dubya is burying is alcohol-soaked head in the sand ... while his neo-con extremist regime's lies come crashing down around him ... Rather than restore "honesty and integrity" to the White House, he has lied to the American People; acted like a neo-hiterlian thug on the world stage; and, plundered and looted taxpayers at home and the war-torn peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq, all to enrich himself and his corporate paymasters and corrupt cronies.
In "CIA Leak is Big Trouble For Bush" by David Corn on http://www.thenation.com/capi... , he reports:
"This is trouble for the White House. And that was evident today at McClellan's daily briefing for reporters. He was repeatedly asked what Bush intended to do to get to the bottom of this ugly episode. In essence, McClellan's answer was, nothing. Over and over, McClellan said the Justice Department, not the White House, was the "appropriate agency" to investigate. And he said that anyone with information on this matter should contact the Justice Department--not the president. But shouldn't the president be taking steps on his own? the reporters wondered. Every time that query was placed in front of McClellan, he batted it away with a stock reply, noting that the White House had no information beyond the media reports--which were based on anonymous sources--to "suggest White House involvement" in the Wilson leak. "Are we supposed to chase down every anonymous report in the newspaper?" McClellan asked. And several times, he challenged his inquisitors, "Do you have any specific information to bring to my attention suggesting White House involvement?"
This was a ruse. McClellan was claiming that the White House was not obligated to conduct an inquiry in response to allegations predicated on anonymous sources. But the CIA's request for an investigation indicated these allegations are serious and not merely the routine spin often attributed to anonymous sources in the media. After all, the anonymous quotes that appear in the papers each day rarely charge the White House with criminal behavior that possibly harmed national security. Isn't Bush--who promised to restore honesty and integrity to the White House--curious about whether his aides might have engaged in illegal and underhanded conduct? McClellan maintained that Bush takes the matter seriously. Just not seriously enough to order any action, such as questioning top White House aides." Read the entire story on http://www.thenation.com/capi... , as Corn also describes the WMDs lies that the Bushies are unable to cover-up.
Moreover, the nasty little scandal about Dubya's corrupt buddy (nope, not Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay this time) Joe Allbaugh's corporation designed to steal Iraqi businesses and natural resouces, is starting to emerge in the main-stream press. In "Washington Insiders' New Firm Consults on Contracts in Iraq" by Douglas Jehl, on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/0... , he reports:
"A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects.
The firm, New Bridge Strategies, is headed by Joe M. Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000 and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until March. Other directors include Edward M. Rogers Jr., vice chairman, and Lanny Griffith, lobbyists who were assistants to the first President George Bush and now have close ties to the White House." Read the rest of the story on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/0... .
"We the People" have sat idly by and watched, and thereby collaborated in the corrupt blood-letting by the Bush Regime resulting in the heart-breaking deaths of 360 American and British Soldiers, 17 Journalists, and between 7352 & 9152 innocent Iraqi civilians. (http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... )
Moreover, Dubya has squandered over $76.9 Billion thus far ( http://www.costofwar.com/ ) to enrich the Bushies and their corporate paymasters, driving us into a $500 Deficit that the rich have been exempted from paying-off (War-profiteering Corporations and Rich Robber-barons got Massive Tax Cuts, Tax Loopholes & Boondoggles) ... but mean slashed services for those in need and a back-breaking burden for us poor slobs.
It is time to stand-up now and revolt against the Bushies obscene corruptions. Please contact your Congressmen and women today and demand that Bush's request for another $87 Billion for a Grand Total of $166-$170 Billion Swindled American Taxpayer Money (blood-money sucked from American taxpayer to enrich Bushies' pimps - read "Hypocritical Bush Regime's List of Goodies for Iraq (Halliburton) That They Deny America" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ) be rejected. Contact Congress NOW on http://www.congress.org .
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| Hypocritical Bush Regime's List of Goodies for Iraq (Halliburton) That They Deny America |
| 09.29.03 (2:06 pm) [edit] |
The hypocritical and corrupt Bush Regime have requested that Congress squander over $20.3 Billion (included in the $87 Billion making the cost of this insane neo-imperial incursion $166 Billion), on a fat list of goodies for Iraq (i.e. Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Big Oil, etc.), that they deny America. Indeed, at a time that the neo-fascist Bushies cut programs here at home; put 3 million people out of work; and, mis-manage the economy to record-level $500 Billion Deficits ... it's a Gold Rush for Bush's Corporate Robber-barons.
"We the People" should be outraged at this obscene and bloody war-profiteering devised in order to benefit Bush's corrupt paymasters and cronies, at a time when we are "saddled" with massive debts, and the Bushies make no "sacrifices" and continue to live the "high life" as they lie, cheat and steal ... Moreover, the Bushies' ghoulish blood-suckers are already looting Iraq, having set-up new corporations (e.g. Joe Allbaugh's "New Bridge Strategies LLC", and "Iraqi International Law Group (IILG)" headed by Salem Chalabi, nephew of the embezzler and wanted thug, Ahmad Chalabi & puppet of the corrupt Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz Gang) to steal Iraqi businesses and natural resources [The Iraqi People have no voice! Some squalid "democracy" set-up by the Bush Regime.]. Refer to "Dig Deep Into Your Pockets To Pay-off Bush's Massive Boondoggles For His Corporate Cronies!" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
Once we have invested in re-building Iraq's infrastructure at a back-breaking cost to the American taxpayers (who are denied basic needs & improvements here at home), the Bushies and their cronies will then move in and steal (i.e. privatize) their businesses and natural resources, thus, scamming the two countries at the expense of the American and Iraqi peoples ... A Dual Swindle of Both Countries ... The Rich Get Richer and the Rest of Us Poor Slobs Pay With Our Blood, Sweat and Tears!
A better way-forward is outlined by Jessica Matthews in "Iraqis Can Do More" (hidden away in the back pages), on http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
"CPA is also letting the best be the enemy of the better-than-Saddam, employing U.S. contractors in needlessly expensive projects that strive for U.S.-level technology. U.S. contractors can't fix 1960s technology. They have to replace it. Iraqis, with a fraction of the money and sometimes with help from their original suppliers, could make it go. The benefit would be cost savings for us, employment and a priceless sense of ownership for them.
It is, after all, their country. The sooner we can convince Iraqis and the rest of the world that we understand this, and the sooner we can add the legitimacy conferred by a U.N. political role, the greater our still slim chances of success. We will need all the help we can get." -- The Bushies are Too Stupid & Too Corrupt to Comprehend and Follow Ms. Matthew's wise counsel.
Demand that Congress justify and explain this insane boon-doggle and rape of America and Iraq, before they "rubber-stamp" the corrupt Bush's imperial demands for a neo-feudal state here at home, followed by Iraq, on http://www.congress.org .
Just take a look at the list of some of the goodies for Iraq, from the IRAQ PROJECT SAMPLER:
The United States would spend $20.3 billion to rebuild Iraq under the latest spending proposal from President Bush. According to The Washington Post, some of the projects include:
1. Four-week business course for 2,000 Iraqis, $20 million ($10,000 per pupil)
2. Forty new garbage trucks, $2 million ($50,000 per truck).
3. Imported petroleum, including kerosene and diesel, $900 million.
4. Funding to bring in 100 prison-building experts for six months, $10 million ($100,000 per expert).
5. Seven planned communities to include 3,258 houses, roads, an elementary school, two high schools, a clinic, and a place of worship and market for each community, $100 million.
6. Witness protection program for 100 families averaging five persons per family, $100 million ($200,000 per person).
7. New curriculum to train the Iraqi army, $164 million.
8. Two 4,000-bed prisons, $400 million ($50,000 per bed).
9. Funding for 500 experts to investigate crimes against humanity, $100 million ($200,000 per expert).
10. Protection for 400 judges and prosecutors, $20 million ($50,000 per person).
11. Begin work on a $500 million to $700 million children's hospital, $150 million.
12. Overhaul business practices of Iraq's postal service, including start of ZIP code system, $9 million.
13. Computer study of the Iraqi postal service, $54 million.
Gail Russell Chaddock reports in "Senate digs into Iraq $87 billion: Debate begins Monday with focus on proposals for billions to build everything from prisons to a modern post office." on http://csmonitor.com/2003/092... :
"WASHINGTON – After a week of intense questioning, Congress Monday begins to mark up President Bush's $87 billion wartime supplemental spending request - the largest ever sought by a president.
The White House says it's a must-pass request. If the United States loses the peace in Iraq, "we will have provided the terrorists with an incredible advantage in their war against us," presidential envoy Paul Bremer told senators in his first of six appearances before congressional panels last week.
It's an argument likely to prevail on Capitol Hill, but not before lawmakers scour the minutiae of the request, especially the $20.3 billion set aside for Iraq's reconstruction.
With thousands of homes in the D.C. area - including Mr. Bremer's - still blacked out seven days after hurricane Isabel, lawmakers especially focused on the contrast between spending in Iraq and needs at home. The White House proposes $5.7 billion to rebuild Iraq's power grid at a time when many Americans doubt the viability of their own, Democrats say.
This is also time when lawmakers are acutely aware of the half-trillion-dollar budget deficit. They also see domestic programs getting the ax at a time when the White House wants to fund similar projects for Iraq.
Norman Ornstein, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says: "It's very clear that the $20 billion [for Iraq] includes a wish list plucked out of thin air - and some extremely generous amounts for social programs and building houses."
He continues: "The further you get away from reconstruction of things destroyed during the war and the closer you get to welfare state support, the more vulnerable they become, because it's at precisely the point that the White House wants to cut those areas here in Washington."
One example is homeland security. Democrats note that the Bush administration rejected, as too costly, a $200 million Democratic proposal to increase support for US first responders, even as it proposed $290 million for the Iraqi police force. Similarly, a request for $125 million to hire 1,300 more customs inspectors on US borders was turned down, yet $150 million is proposed by the White House for 5,350 border inspectors in Iraq.
"Many of us on this committee have tried to better protect the American people from future terrorist attack, but time after time the administration has actively opposed efforts to boost homeland security," says Sen. Robert Byrd (D) of West Virginia, ranking member on the Senate appropriations committee. "Eyes have been trained solely on Iraq, while we remain vulnerable here at home."
Another risk for Bush and his GOP allies in Congress is that many of the items for Iraq look bloated. For example, why would new Iraqi prisons cost $50,000 a bed? "They're spending more on prisons [in Iraq] that we do in the US," says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont.
Iraq administrator Bremer explained to the lawmakers that the cement used in Iraq for construction must be imported, boosting the cost.
Even for Republicans who strongly support the war and the rebuilding, the numbers Mr. Bush proposes appear daunting.
Sen. Larry Craig (R) of Idaho says the citizens of his state have some apprehensions: "In a time of flat economies and large deficits, we are expending a phenomenal amount of money."
GOP Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah pressed for assurances that the US aims to provide "simply the absolute baseline, plain-vanilla kinds of security and services that are necessary," while leaving Iraqis to pay for the rest.
Mr. Bremer responded, "By 2005 Iraq's oil revenues should be more than sufficient to pay for the Iraqi government and provide an extra amount ... for ... either more electricity or more schools."
But in the near term, members of Congress expect Americans will be footing most of the bill. The World Bank estimates that Iraq will need as much as $70 billion in the next four to five years to get its economy going. This $20.3 billion would be the first installment.
At the same time, Iraq's foreign debt is close to $200 billion, including $116 billion in unpaid Gulf War reparations.
"How do I explain to my constituents that those who helped to prop up Saddam's regime - the French, the Russians and others - could potentially be repaid, but those who financed the war to liberate the Iraqi people will not be repaid?" asks Sen. Evan Bayh (D) of Indiana.
Democrats and GOP moderates are pushing to make convert some of the aid to Iraq into a loan.
A Senate vote is on the $87 billion is expected this week."
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| Condoleezza Rice Should Go ... She Continues to Lie & Is Incompetent |
| 09.29.03 (7:40 am) [edit] |
On "Meet the Press" (Sunday, 28 September 2003), Condoleezza Rice again regurgitated the same old lie that Saddam Hussein had "connections" with Al Qaida, cynically used by the corrupt Bush Regime to frighten American people into mis-thinking that Iraq was somehow connected to 9/11: IT WASN'T! Condi Rice should go ... she is a liar.
Condi Rice described in July 2001, a weak, divided and militarily defenceless Iraq. "Saddam does not control the northern part of the country," she said. "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." Shortly after the horrific attack on America on 9/11, Condi said that it was an "enormous opportunity" to invade Iraq and grab their oil. This insane, immoral and illegal adventure into Iraq was waged to enrich the Bushies' corporate cronies, that is resulting in the rape of the American taxpayer and Iraqi resources (oil). Refer to "Condoleezza Rice and the Case of the Big Swindle" on http://www.tblog.com/template... and "Dig Deep Into Your Pockets To Pay-off Bush's Massive Boondoggles For His Corporate Cronies!" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
"We the People" should demand that the incompetent and corrupt Condi Rice step down, as she is a danger to our national security. Please contract Congress on http://www.congress.org .
Read "Post-War Iraq Planning Was 'Perfect Storm' of Mistakes and Bad Luck: Weak Intelligence, Wrong Assumptions, Blinders, Poor Coordination" - "Infighting at State Dept. and Pentagon Prevented U.S. From Taking Control Of A Bad Situation at the Outset" on http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/0... :
"NEW YORK, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Newsweek interviews with top government officials involved in the planning and execution of the reconstruction of Iraq point to a "perfect storm" of mistakes and bad luck: wrongheaded assumptions, ideological blinders, weak intelligence and poor coordination by White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Much of the damage was done at the outset-in the first days after the war, when political infighting and wishful thinking prevented the United States from taking control of a bad situation that was turning worse, report Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas and National Security Correspondent John Barry in the October 6 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, September 29).
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bi... )
Last February, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner to cut 16 of the 20 State Department officials from his roster of experts to rebuild Iraq after the war was over. It seems that the State Department people were deemed to be Arabist apologists, or squishy about the United Nations, or in some way politically incorrect to the right-wing ideologues at the White House or the neocons in the office of the Secretary of Defense, Newsweek reports. The vetting process "got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion," recalls one of Garner's team to Newsweek. Finally, Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to stand up for his troops and stop Rumsfeld's meddling. "I can take hostages, too," Powell warned the secretary of Defense. "How hard do you want to play this thing?"
There was considerable confusion over who was supposed to be in charge of post-Saddam Iraq. "What do we mean by 'regime change' anyway?" CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks queried Secretary Rumsfeld in the middle of the war. Many CIA and State Department officials were skeptical about Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi and other exiles, insisting (correctly) that they had no popular base of support. At the State Department, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, Powell's number two, fought bitterly with the Defense Department neocons, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's third-ranking civilian. Armitage was convinced that the Defense neocons had spies at the State Department. "Bats, we call them. Bats," said Armitage, in a colorful private harangue reported to Newsweek. "Because they hang upside down all day, with their wings over their eyes, pretending they don't see anything. But at night they spread their wings and fly off to whisper, whisper, whisper."
The ideological intrigue reached into the upper levels of the Bush administration. Rumsfeld ordered General Garner to drop a State Department official named Thomas Warrick from his reconstruction team. Garner protested, his aides recall; he needed Warrick, who had been the author of a $5 million, yearlong study called "The Future of Iraq." Rumsfeld's reply, as relayed by Garner to his aides, was: "I'm sorry, but I just got off a phone call from a level that is sufficiently high that I can't argue with him." Sources tell Newsweek that Rumsfeld was taking his orders from Vice President Cheney. Administration officials say that Warrick was vetoed because he did not get on with Iraqi exile leaders.
On May 16, five days after he arrived in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, who replaced Garner in Iraq, assembled the top American officials in Baghdad and announced that all ministries would be "de-Baath-ized" by removing roughly the top six layers of bureaucracy. The CIA's Baghdad station chief demurred. "We'll, that's 30,000 to 50,000 pissed-off Baathists you're driving underground," said the senior spook. Bremer went on: the army would be disbanded and not paid. "That's another 350,000 Iraqis you're pissing off, and they've got guns," said the CIA man. Said Bremer: "Those are my instructions."
Who is to blame for the missed signals and too-rosy scenarios? The person charged with coordinating U.S. foreign policy is the president's national- security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. She likes to say that her national security staff is not "operational," meaning that it advises on policy and leaves the implementation to government agencies, Newsweek reports. White House staffers are now surprisingly willing to dump on the Defense Department for bungling postwar security in Iraq. But for too long, White House staffers kept any qualms private. It is also true that the White House, including the president, signed off on the basic war plan and reconstruction effort.
On the ground, the Coalition Provisional Authority, charged with actually running Iraq until the Iraqis can take over, is the source of increasing ridicule. "CPA stands for the Condescending and Patronizing Americans," a Baghdad diplomat told a Newsweek reporter. "So there they are, sitting in their palace: 800 people, 17 of whom speak Arabic, one is an expert on Iraq. Living in this cocoon. Writing papers. It's absurd," says one dissident Pentagon official. He exaggerates, but not by much. Most of the senior civilian staff are not technical experts but diplomats, Republican appointees, White House staffers and the like. "
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| Dig Deep Into Your Pockets To Pay-off Bush's Massive Boondoggles For His Corporate Cronies! |
| 09.27.03 (12:29 pm) [edit] |
Bush is a puppet of the corporate robber-barons, and if anyone doubted that, the following article in today's Washington Post should dispel any question marks. Bush has swindled the American people by awarding massive boondoggles, tax loopholes, and tax cuts, to his corporate paymasters who put this corrupt regime in office-- and to the richest-of-the-rich. Meanwhile, we're being forced to dig into our pockets to enrich these crooks!
"We the People" should be rising up in outrage at the squandering of our hard-earned tax-payer dollars, that are obscenely funnelled to the immoral Bushies, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and, their criminals-in-arms, including Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Big Oil ... and new corporations are set-up by Bush's buddies like Joe Allbaugh's "New Bridge Strategies LLC", and "Iraqi International Law Group (IILG)", a new outfit ready to "help you secure contracts for rebuilding Iraq". [Do the Iraqi people have any choice in the matter?] And let me also introduce you to the head of IILG, Salem Chalabi, nephew of the embezzler, Ahmad Chalabi. Ahmad Chalabi is wanted throughout the Arab World for theft and embezzlement, and is a puppet of the corrupt Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz Gang-- all colluding to rape Americans and Iraqis for all we're worth.
The Bush Regime's shell game was exposed by Condi Rice, who in April last year, described September 11 2001 as an "enormous opportunity" and said America "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities." [ http://new.globalfreepress.co... ], Powell and Rice are reportedly to have said that Saddam Hussein was disarmed in the 1990s and posed no threat, early in 2001.
The Bush Regime saw an "enormous opportunity" to lie to the American People, and wage an illegal and immoral incursion into Iraq, in order to destroy their infrastructure, and thereby award lavish (no-bid, cost-plus, no-audit) top-secret contracts to re-build the infrastructure in order to enrich their corporate cronies & buddy-boys. Moreover, they waged that they could (1) get the sleepy-headed American public to foot-the-bill, and (2) then grab the 2nd largest oil reserves for Big Oil: A Double Whammy of Shake-Down of American Taxpayers and Iraqi Oil ... The Biggest Robbery in the History of the World!
Amongst the obscene squandering of monies is $54 Million for a computer study of the Iraqi post office!!! Entire computer projects cost many times less than this ... $54 Million for a study is a wasteful giveaway to some Bush crony, who probably paid $2,000 for bar-be-que at a recent party given by the Bushies while our men and women, and innocent Iraqis are dying and/or injured and maimed for life, to enrich these war-profiteers.
Call for a halt to the Bush Regime's corruption by writing your Congress on http://www.congress.org , and demanding a full-blown investigation into their Crimes Against Humanity and Fraud, perpetrated upon the American and Iraqi peoples. Also, demand that no reconstruction appropriation be awarded until a full-scale audit of the $76 Billion squandered to-date is conducted by an independent accounting firm, and made public to the American People.
Read "In GOP, Concern Over Iraq Price Tag - Some Doubt Need For $20.3 Billion For Rebuilding", by Jonathan Weisman and Juliet Eilperin, on http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
"A new curriculum for training an Iraqi army for $164 million. Five hundred experts, at $200,000 each, to investigate crimes against humanity. A witness protection program for $200,000 per Iraqi participant. A computer study for the Iraqi postal service: $54 million.
Such numbers, buried in President Bush's $20.3 billion request for Iraq's reconstruction, have made some congressional Republicans nervous, even furious. Although the GOP leadership has tried to unite publicly around its president, cracks are beginning to show.
"President Bush should live up to his recent pledges to restrain spending, by . . . taking a strong stance that the new Iraq can and should pay for its own reconstruction," wrote Rep. Tom Feeney (Fla.), a freshman Republican, and Stephen Moore, a conservative economist, in an editorial for the National Review.
The discontent is relatively contained so far, said Jim Dyer, Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, but that is because few lawmakers have read the proposal's fine print. As more details seep out, he said, anger is sure to rise.
Those details include $100 million to build seven planned communities with a total of 3,258 houses, plus roads, an elementary school, two high schools, a clinic, a place of worship and a market for each; $10 million to finance 100 prison-building experts for six months, at $100,000 an expert; 40 garbage trucks at $50,000 each; $900 million to import petroleum products such as kerosene and diesel to a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves; and $20 million for a four-week business course, at $10,000 per student.
"If those are what the costs are, I'm glad Congress is asking questions," said Brian Reidl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "If the White House wants to be portrayed as spending tax dollars in Iraq as cost-effectively as they spend [money] anywhere else, they're going to have to explain this."
Already, the administration's request for $400 million to build two 4,000-bed prisons at $50,000 a bed has raised enough questions in Congress to force Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer to explain that cement must be imported to make concrete.
"We're not talking sanity here," Dyer said. "The world's second-largest oil country is importing oil, and a country full of concrete is importing concrete."
Republicans have grown nervous enough about Iraq that Vice President Cheney and White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten traveled to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet privately with the agitated ranks and go over the $87 billion emergency war spending request.
"What [lawmakers] really wanted them to do was carefully review it so they can justify to constituents why they voted for it," said a GOP aide who was at the meeting. "You've got to be able to go back home and explain why we need to do all this."
In several closed meetings this week, Republicans questioned why the administration is piling more spending atop an ever-expanding federal deficit. Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, plans to offer an amendment making the package a loan, which the White House adamantly opposes.
"The people of eastern Tennessee want to know why the $20.3 billion couldn't be repaid by the Iraqi people from the oil revenues," Wamp said.
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) urged that the administration press nations such as France, Russia and Germany to forgive some of Iraq's $200 billion foreign debt, which Bremer conceded is now the United States' responsibility. "It's tough to make a case to give $20 billion outright," Flake said. "There are a lot of us who are still troubled."
Flake and other conservatives also want the administration to offset the reconstruction package with cuts in other areas.
Meanwhile, at a House hearing yesterday, Democrats pressed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz about whether the administration plans to withdraw troops right before the 2004 presidential election. He said no decisions are being made on political grounds.
"These are national security decisions; they have to be made on that basis," he said. Wolfowitz said that does not mean that "we're not trying to, in fact, get more Iraqis on the front lines, get them dying for their country so fewer Americans have to."
It is the reconstruction spending, however, that is drawing some conservatives' ire. Moore, who heads the political action committee Club for Growth, called some of the aid request "frivolous" and much of it "preposterous." Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the conservative National Taxpayers Union, said Americans are being misled.
"Many members of the general public are being led to believe this money is just to turn the lights back on in Iraq," Sepp said. "Once word gets out about the nature of some of these projects, it will pose a real dilemma for a number of policymakers who believe U.S. foreign aid is already suffering from administrative problems as well as overambitious goals. These are the kinds of things that radio talk show hosts love to chew up and give to their listeners."
GOP pollster Robert Teeter hinted that congressional Republicans are right to be nervous -- not so much about the military campaign in Iraq, or even the rising U.S. casualties, but about the White House's spending request. Support for the war remains relatively high, he said, and if elected Republicans can frame the full $87 billion package as the amount it takes to support the troops, they will be fine.
But as soon as the discussion turns to the nuts and bolts of Iraq's reconstruction, the public's long-standing antipathy to foreign aid quickly surfaces, Teeter said.
Then, he said, the overwhelming sentiment is, "We need to take care of our own." It is up to Republicans to keep the conversation centered on the troops, while Democrats will try to focus on the reconstruction's spending details.
Some Democrats want to split the $87 billion bill into a $67 billion military spending measure for quick passage and a separate reconstruction measure. Republican leaders adamantly oppose this, saying the entire proposal is essential and cannot be picked apart.
"The package is a wartime supplemental [spending bill], directly tied to the security and the ultimate withdrawal of United States forces from the region," said White House budget office spokesman Trent Duffy. "It has to be viewed in that context."
Duffy dismissed as "preposterous" Democrats' assertions that the administration is willing to spend more on Iraqis than on its own citizens. The federal government spends $5.9 billion on prisons each year, compared with the $510 million the administration wants for corrections in Iraq next year, he said. Domestic air and ground transportation consumes $64 billion, dwarfing the $753 million the White House wants for Iraq.
For conservatives pushing for less spending in the United States, such comparisons hold little value. It is not the dollar totals but the targets. "A $54 million study for their post office?" asked Dan Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation.
Some Republican aides say the numbers may be more defensible than they sound because the budget is not quite real. They suggest the administration has inflated costs, in part to avoid having to come back next year for a new emergency spending bill, and in part so they can skim some of the money for classified military efforts.
And many congressional Republicans quietly say they will never challenge the president's request in public. To do so, they say, would risk an intraparty rift that could endanger Bush's reelection efforts as well as their own.
Democrats, meanwhile, question how long the GOP can remain unified. "Republicans are losing confidence the president can commit these resources in a reasonable way," Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said.
Senate GOP leaders are rushing to bring the $87 billion request to a vote by the end of next week, prompting Democratic complaints that the measure is not being fully considered. Daschle questioned the need for haste, noting that Bremer told Democrats this week that the money will not be needed until January."
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| Is Bush's War a "Brain Fart"? ... Ret. General Zinni May Be Right, As Bush's War Stinks! |
| 09.27.03 (7:56 am) [edit] |
Retired General Anthony Zinni has rightly expressed his outrage that the Bush Regime misled the American people on the rationale for war. He called Bush's insane war a "brain fart", and this stupid war does indeed stink.
The Bushies' illegal and immoral incursion-turned-guerrill a-quagmire has resulted in the horrific massacre of 358 American & British Soldiers, 17 Journalists, and between 7346 and 9146 innocent Iraqi civilians. [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ] This nightmare of blood-letting and slaughter, is not waged for any beneficial purpose, but instead to enrich the Bush Regime's cronies.
Moreover, the Bushies have squandered over $76 Billion thus far at an obscene cost of $4 Billion per month with no end in sight-- as the United States faces the highest job losses (Bush destroyed 3 million jobs, to bring unemployment to 9 million) since the Great Depression, and over 34 million people are under the poverty line. Actually many additional millions also live in poverty in the richest country in the world, as the "poverty line" hasn't been revised since the 1960s-- it would be too embarrassing to reveal the truth to the public: that our nation's wealth is being stolen by a few of the richest robber-barons, and the rest of us are systematically being impoverished. The corruption of the American oligarchy (including the Bush Family) is as outrageous as the rogue regimes hypocritically condemned for our self-satisfied (but ignorant) consumption.
L. Paul Bremer gleefully declares that the extravagant sum of $87 Billion demanded by Bush (to enrich Cheney's paymaster Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Big Oil), should be a "gift" ... Oh yeah, it's easy for these greedy goons to give "gifts" (they've amassed millions) paid for by the rest of us ... Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer and their corporate pimps enjoy living like neo-emperor's off the hard-earned taxpayer dollars stolen from low-income, average, middle-class and fixed-income retirees. Remember, they've already awarded massive tax cuts to themselves and their rich campaign contributors, that would pay for Bush's corrupt war-mongering. Bush's insane tax cuts should be repealed as they have caused an unfair imbalance of burden in our society, with a $500 Billion Deficit! This may be acceptable to Bush's alcohol-soaked brain, but it is outrageous to demand that those of us who bear the heart-breaking consequences of their corrupt and back-breaking burdens be required to give our blood, sweat and tears, to the wealthiest among us. [ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin... ]
Rummy Rumsfeld says $87 Billion is his "exit strategy". Would you trust arrogant Rummy who has stumbled, bungled, and stupidly tumbled into a devastating guerrilla quagmire in Iraq, because he failed to listen to anyone with knowledge and brains??? [ http://news.ft.com/servlet/Co... ]
"We the People" should be calling for the resignations of the neo-con criminals who have so badly screwed us into a death trap, all to enrich the Bush/Cheney junta's corporate buddies-- and meanwhile, new companies are being set-up daily, to exploit and rape the Iraqi people of their businesses, resources and country, as they are too vulnerable and Iraq is too unstable, to discover they are being swindled. We have no excuse, however, as we watch the Bushies swindle America. Contact Congress now, to demand an investigation into Bush's and Cheney's crimes against humanity, and the dismissal of Rummy & Wolfy, and Powell & Rice, for their betrayal of their oaths of office, on http://www.congress.org .
David Corn in The Nation, tells Ret. General Anthony Zinni's story and it's worth reading on http://www.thenation.com/capi... :
"Did retired General Anthony Zinni really call George W. Bush's war in Iraq a "brain fart"? That seems to be the case. But first, some background.
On Thursday night, Zinni, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, was interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline. And he was rather sharp in his assessment of George W. Bush's policy in Iraq. Before the war, Zinni, who had been an envoy for Bush in the Middle East, opposed a U.S. invasion of Iraq, arguing that Saddam Hussein did not pose an imminent threat. On Nightline, Zinni compared Bush's push for the war with the Gulf of Tonkin incident--an infamous episode in which President Lyndon Johnson misrepresented an attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers in order to win congressional approval of the war in Vietnam--and he challenged "the credibility behind" Bush's prewar assertions concerning Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and its association with anti-American terrorists. "I'm suggesting," Zinni said, "that either the [prewar] intelligence was so bad and flawed--and if that's the case, then somebody's head ought to roll for that--or the intelligence was exaggerated or twisted in a way to make a more convenient case to the American people." Zinni said he believed that Hussein had maintained "the framework for a weapons of mass destruction program that could be quickly activated once sanctions were lifted" and that such a program, while worrisome, did not immediately endanger the United States.
Zinni raised the issue that Bush might have purposefully misled the public and not shared with it the true reason for the war: "If there's a strategic decision for taking down Iraq, if it's the so-called neoconservative idea that taking apart Iraq and creating a model democracy, or whatever it is, will change the equation in the Middle East, then make the [public] case based on that strategic decision....I think it's a flawed--like the domino theory--it's a flawed strategic thought or concept....But if that's the reason for going in, that's the case the American people ought to hear. They ought to make their judgment and determine their support based on what the motivation is for the attack."
Zinni was, in a way, being polite. Earlier in the month, he addressed a forum sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association. There he let loose. Reflecting the views of high-ranking U.S. military officials who were dubious about launching a war against Iraq and skeptical about the occupation that would follow, Zinni accused the Bush crowd of having not been ready for the challenges to come after defeating the Iraqi army. "We're in danger of failing," he noted, because the Bush administration had not readied itself for what would follow the initial military engagement. "We fought one idiot here [in Iraq], just now," he said. "Ohio State beat Slippery Rock 62 to 0. No shit! You know! But we weren't ready for that team that came onto the field at the end of that three-week victory." He went on:
"Right now, in a place like Iraq, you're dealing with Jihadists that are coming in to raise hell, crime on the streets that's rampant, ex-Ba'athists that still running around, and the potential now for this country to fragment: Shi'ia on Shi'ia, Shi'ia on Sunni, Kurd on Turkomen. It's a powder keg. I just got back from Jordan. I talked to a number of Iraqis there. And what I hear scares me even more that what I read in the newspaper. Resources are needed, a strategy is needed, a plan. This is a different kind of conflict. War fighting is one element of it."
Zinni displayed little confidence in Bush and his aides. He said that their Iraq endeavor has landed the United States into the middle of assorted "culture wars" in the Middle East. "We don't understand that culture," he remarked. "I've spent the last 15 years of my life in this part of the world. And I'll tell you, every time I hear...one of the dilettantes back here speak about this region of the world, they don't have a clue. They don't understand what makes them tick. They don't understand where they are in their own history. They don't understand what our role is....We are great at dealing with the tactical problems--the killing and the breaking. We are lousy at solving the strategic problems; having a strategic plan, understanding about regional and global security and what it takes to weld that and to shape it and to move forward."
Do you think Zinni is angry over the war? He did get worked up as he ended his speech:
"We should be...extremely proud of what our people did out there....It kills me when I hear of the continuing casualties and the sacrifice that's being made. It also kills me when I hear someone say that, well, each one of those is a personal tragedy, but in the overall scheme of things, they're insignificant statistically." (Perhaps he had in mind the comment Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made in June, when he played down attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq by saying, "You've got to remember that if Washington, D.C., were the size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month; there's going to be violence in a big city.") Zinni continued: "When we put [our enlisted men and women] in harm's way, it had better count for something, It can't be because some policy wonk back here has a brain fart of an idea of a strategy that isn't thought out."
Brain fart? That's not quite a military term. But those are fighting words. And Zinni practically counseled his audience to rebel against the Bush administration. U.S. troops, he said, "should never be put on a battlefield without a strategic plan, not only for the fighting--our generals will take care of that--but for the aftermath and winning that war. Where are we, the American people, if we accept this, if we accept this level of sacrifice without that level of planning? Almost everyone in this room, of my contemporaries--our feelings and our sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and lies, and we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we do that. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again? And you're going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are."
Brain fart. Garbage and lies. Never again. This was harsher rhetoric than Zinni deployed on Nightline, though his message was essentially the same. With such talk, he is in sync with Senator Ted Kennedy, who was blasted by Republicans for calling the war a "fraud." Note to Kennedy and other critics of the war: Fire away. If a Republican counter-attacks, you can always reply, at least I didn't say Bush is asking Americans to give their lives for a war based on mental flatulence. "
COMING SOON: David Corn's new book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers, due out September 30). For more information and a sample, check out the book's official website: http://www.bushlies.com .
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| Dreams and Delusions ... Crime is Universal and So is Humanity |
| 09.26.03 (9:07 am) [edit] |
Human traits are universal and not restricted to any specific ethnicity, race, culture or nation. The United States of America has our own criminals, terrorists, robber-barons and, thugs-- only out for themselves with no conscience or concern for the welfare for their fellow men. Fortunately, we have a written U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and a system of laws, so that the powerful cannot so easily pillage the vulnerable. Thankfully, we also have men and women of great courage, integrity, honesty, and honor, who care deeply about this country, other nations, and the welfare of all peoples on this planet.
Tragically, our country is now led by a corrupt Bush Regime that is not dissimilar to the Saddam Hussein Regime, with the exception that our laws have not as yet been so despoiled that mass executions can take place ... hopefully, that will not happen. Read Ted Rall's "Why We Hate Bush: It's the Stolen Election, Stupid" on http://www.uexpress.com/tedra... , as he articulates the contempt that the Bushies hold for America, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, as well as the rights of other nations and peoples:
"Fear breeds hatred, and Bush's policies create a lot of both. U.S. citizens like Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi disappear into the night, never to be heard from again. A concentration camp rises at Guantánamo. Stasi-like spies tap our phones and read our mail; thanks to the ironically-named Patriot Act, these thugs don't even need a warrant. As individual rights are trampled, corporate profits are sacrosanct. An aggressive, expansionist military invades other nations "preemptively" to eliminate the threat of non-existent weapons, and American troops die to enrich a company that buys off the Vice President.
"Time to dust off the F word. "Whenever people start locking up enemies because of national security without much legal care, you are coming close [to fascism]," warns Robert Paxton, emeritus professor of history at Columbia University and author of the upcoming book "Fascism in Action." We're supposed to hate fascists--or has that changed because of 9/11?"
Israel is also run by a ruthless right-winged party, who insanely threatens to assassinate the democratically-elected leader of the Palestinian people, Yassar Arafat, and, who justifies the slaughter of the Palestinians, by calling them "terrorists" ... following Bush's appalling example. The "terrorists" fight back and kill Israelis, and the cycle continues ... Neither Bush, nor Sharon, who massively out-gun and out-arm all of the Arab countries, have shown wise leadership, but rather have escalated the horrific and tragic violence, and are responsible for thousands of deaths of innocent people. Neither Bush, nor Sharon are "men of peace".
Today, amidst the recent tragedies of mass slaughter in Iraq, Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, by the Bush & Sharon Regimes, a tiny glimmer of hope arises from a surprising quarter.
In "Israeli pilots refuse to fly assassination missions", by Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem, on http://www.guardian.co.uk/isr...,2763,1049271,00.html , reports:
"A group of Israeli airforce pilots declared yesterday that they would refuse to fly missions which could endanger civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"The declaration was aimed at Israel's policy of assassinating activists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.
"The 27 pilots sent a letter to the commander of Israel's airforce refusing to carry out duties, which include track and kill operations, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. One of the pilots told Israeli television that the letter said: "We, veteran pilots and active pilots alike...are opposed to carrying out illegal and immoral attacks, of the type carried out by Israel in the territories.
"We, who have been educated to love the state of Israel refuse to take part in airforce attacks in civilian population centres. We refuse to continue harming innocent civilians." "
Over a year and a half ago, in January 2002, a similar protest by Israeli troops occurred, resulting in imprisonment for many soldiers. In "Israeli Troops Refuse to Serve in Gaza Strip, West Bank" by Laurie Copans on http://www.commondreams.org/h... :
"Fifty-two Israeli reserve soldiers said Friday they would no longer fight in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, claiming military actions there had nothing to do with security for Israel and were meant to control the Palestinians.
"In an advertisement in Israeli newspapers, the soldiers, some with the rank of major, said Israel's stringent travel bans, which confine many Palestinians to their communities, needlessly punish the Palestinians. Israel says the closures are needed to prevent attacks by Palestinian militants.
"We declare that we will not continue to fight a war for peace in the (Jewish) settlements" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, read the ad. "We will not continue to fight on the other side of the Green Line with an intent to control, expel, starve and degrade an entire people.""
Perhaps, since sadly, we live in an age in which our leaders are corrupt thugs with selfish interests, who ruthlessly exploit the vulnerable and needy, to enrich themselves and bask in their own power, it is "We the People" who must stand-up and say "No ... We Will Not Be Collaborators ... We Refuse To Participate In Your Atrocities ... ", as these brave men and women have done.
These brave Israeli pilots today provided a shining example of the best of humanity, and perhaps the eminent Palestinian professor and author Edward Said, who died this morning, would have been somewhat heartened. In one of his last essays entitled "Dreams and Delusions" on http://www.guerrillanews.com/... , he wisely reflected that:
"The great danger is that American "magical" thinking à la Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Bush is being passed off as the supreme standard for all peoples and languages to follow. In my opinion, and if Iraq is a salient example, then we must not allow that simply to occur without strenuous debate and probing analysis, and we mustn't be cowed into believing that Washington's power is so irresistibly awesome. And so far as the Middle East is concerned the discussion must include Arabs and Muslims and Israelis and Jews as equal participants. I urge everyone to join in and not leave the field of values, definitions, and cultures uncontested. They are certainly not the property of a few Washington officials, any more than they are the responsibility of a few Middle Eastern rulers. There is a common field of human undertaking being created and recreated, and no amount of imperial bluster can ever conceal or negate that fact."
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| Miserable Failures say $87 Billion is "Affordable" for Their Bungled Guerrilla Quagmire! For Whom? |
| 09.26.03 (9:02 am) [edit] |
The Bush Regime are Miserable Failures, who say that an additional $87 Billion is "affordable" to support their bungled guerrilla quagmire. For Whom? Their track-record is already abysmal, having:
1) Massacred thousands of lives in Iraq (354 US & British Soldiers; between 7346 & 9146 innocent Iraqis; 17 Journalists) - [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ];
2) Squandered over $75 Billion in taxpayer money on a failed guerrilla quagmire thus far at $4 Billion/Month, with no end in sight - [ http://www.costofwar.com/ ];
3) Instigated increased terrorism via their insane unilateral "go-it-alone" approach that has damaged our goodwill and standing, and we now (rightly) face mistrust by respectable nations throughout the civilized world [ Even G. H. W. Bush 41 was able to get our allies & Arab Nations to pay $54 Billion (88%) of the $61 Billion for the Gulf War - http://people.psych.cornell.e...~fhoran/gulf/GW_cost/GW_p ayments.html ];
4) Bungled and stumbled into an unnecessary guerrilla quagmire by stupid arrogance displayed by a corrupt and deaf cabal, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle and other neo-con ideologues, who told the American People that after the "war", the Iraqi people would be delighted to welcome us as "liberators", and that Iraq's oil would pay for the reconstruction and now American Taxpayers are being asked to sacrifice an additional $87 Billion making their misguided adventure $166 Billion, with no limits and no accountability - [ http://www.prospect.org/print... ];
5) Awarded massive no-bid, no-cap (with no audits) contracts to their Bush/Cheney/Rice cronies, most notably Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Chevron, etc., who are immorally profiteering from death, misery and hardships - [ http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... , and http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2... ]
6) Pulled a "bait-and-switch" by creating a $500 Billion Deficit Spending by a Republican Administration (Executive, Senate & House), and highest job losses of over 3 Million (9 Million are unemployed) since the Great Depression, with Executive Pay soaring over 571% while average worker's rose only 37%, to enrich their paymasters. Moreover the corrupt Bush Doctrine awarded massive tax cuts and tax loopholes to Corporations and the Richest Americans, while low-income, average, unemployed, and fixed-income retirees are made to suffer - [ http://www.tallahassee.com/ml... ];
7) Ignoring 45 Million Americans lack health care insurance, while Bush & Rice hypocritically condemns regimes denying a modern infrastructure (energy, water, sewage, roads), public schools and health care for their citizens. The majority of Americans support a Universal Health Care System, even if it means repealing Bush's Insane Taxes for the Richest Among Us. - [ http://people-press.org/repor... ]
Instead of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rice, and Powell, being investigated for crimes and summarily fired for incompetence and lying to the public, they are lobbying corrupt Congressmen to support their pillage and looting of America and Iraq. [ http://new.globalfreepress.co... ].
Rumsfeld has the unmitigated gall to say that "Is $87 billion a great deal of money?", before the Senate Appropriations Committee, "Yes. But can our country afford it? The answer is also yes. Because it is necessary for the security of our nation and the stability of the world." This from an arrogant bungler responsible for the deaths of 167 Americans and thousands of Iraqis, since Bush's imbecilic appearance on the 1st May, declaring the battle over behind a banner waving "Mission Accomplished". [ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin... ]
Perhaps, since "sacrifice" and "struggle" are what is required, the properties, assets and monies owned by the Bush Gang (Rumsfeld's to begin with) should be confiscated, and they should be paid minimum wage! Surely, this "generational commitment" of theirs is worth their "sacrifice" and I'm shocked that they haven't suggested it themselves!
Instead of impeachment hearings commencing against the worst president this country has ever had the misfortune to have thrust upon us, by a neo-con Supreme Court, Bush is making appallingly idiotic speeches at the U.N., that are an embarrassment to this nation. [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/eco...,12498,1030321,00.html and http://www.zmag.org/content/s... ]
The Iraqis weren't impressed with Bush's failed speech at the U.N. on Tuesday, either. In "Iraqis Negative About Bush's U.N. Speech" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/wor...,1280,-3186657,00.html :
"Iraqis gave largely negative reviews Wednesday to President Bush's speech to the United Nations in which he said Washington would not be forced into a hasty return of power to local authorities.
"Some longed for the return of a different kind of power - electricity - so that they can lead normal lives, and perhaps see such news on television.
"Iraqis also complained about security. Crime has increased dramatically since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and U.S. forces continue to come under attack, with civilians sometimes caught in the crossfire.
"Bush's speech was bad. He talked about liberating Iraqi people while the reality is that the Americans liberated only the criminals and bad people who are looting the country,'' said Anmar Mohammed, a former military officer who is now unemployed.
"He talked about Iraq being the front line for combating terrorism, while it was Bush's war that brought terrorists to our country. He talked about better life for the Iraqis, while now most of them are jobless,'' he said.
"Hani Jacob, a 40-year-old optician, agreed.
"What is the benefit of having a democratic system in the middle of this chaos?'' he asked. "
"Abdel-Razq Mohammed, a newspaper vendor, said Bush ignored the United Nations before the war but now wants the world body to bail him out. "
"Bush said many nice words about freedom, security and prosperity, but the Iraqi people need to see action. Saddam would have done better with less words,'' he said."
Moreover, our US Soldiers are disgusted and just want to come home. In "Most US Soldiers Say They Just Want to Go Home" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... , for example, "Most soldiers say they just want to go home. Jason Gunn, a 37th Armoured Division tank driver says the hardest thing is not the daily attacks, but the forced separation from his loved ones. ”You can deal with being shot at, because after a while you just get used to it,” he says. ”But when you come back in and you're by yourself, that's probably the hardest thing.”
"Without Iraqi friends, a soldier's life inside base is almost like being in prison."
"We the People" must express our outrage to our failed and rubber-stamp Congress that apparently is willing to write blank-checks to the corrupt and incompetent Bush Regime, and demands no accountability or responsibility for their crimes.
Please contact Congress on http://www.congress.org , and demand:
(1) Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be fired today for their lies, deceptions, and incompetence, costing the lives and treasure of the American people;
(2) Rice and Powell should be investigated for lying to the American People, from reports that they knew Saddam Hussein posed no threat (no WMDs, no terrorists in Iraq, no links to Al Qaida), and cynically mis-used 9/11 in order to frighten Americans into supporting a war for global hegemony and to enrich their corporate cronies;
(3) Call for impeachment hearings into the crimes committed by Bush and Cheney;
(4) Repeal the tax loopholes for Corporations, and the tax cuts for the top 5% income bracket and on dividends, that benefit the richest and the robber-barons;
(5) Revisit the no-bid, no-cap contracts awarded to the Defence Contractors, including Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bechtel, Chevron, and others, and confiscate their obscene profits to pay-off their War Debts;
(6) Establish a United Nations group to oversee the orderly transition of power to a democratically-elected Iraqi Government, within the next 6 months;
(7) Halt the privatization of Iraqi businesses, assets and natural resources, as the Iraqi people have had no say in this matter, and the sell-off of their institutions, is tantamount to the global corporate empire's rape of their country. It is outrageous to privatize Iraq without the consent of the Iraqi people!
It is only right and proper for the United States Congress to fulfill the actions listed above, or otherwise, deserve the growing appellation of "Rogue Hyper-Power", warranting condemnation by civilized nations and conscientious peoples of the world. Let us also condemn nations (USA?) that exploit their people and resources to build-up massive armaments, WMDs, enriching the wealthy who build palaces (Bush's Crawford TX Palace?)-- while leaving their own people to suffer without a modern infrastructure, jobs, public education and health care. Some say "good intentions only matter if they lead to good results": hmmm ... Bush's actions have been disastrous for America and Iraq.
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| The Big WMD Lie ... The Truth May Always Find A Way, But Perhaps Not In The U.S.A.? |
| 09.26.03 (8:57 am) [edit] |
In Bush's speech delivered to the United Nations on Tuesday, the U.S.A. calls upon all nations to sign a nuclear non-proliferation agreement and to ban WMDs. Apparently Bush intends that all nations disarm, except for the United States of America! (Israel hasn't signed any existing nuclear non-proliferation agreements either.)
"We the People" are being misled not only on WMDs that other countries might have or want, but also about our own government's insane massive build-up of arms, that is inconsistent with Bush's dishonest rhetoric of "seeking peace". Furthermore, such an arms race won't protect us: it will instigate more terror around the world, and bankrupt us here at home.
Bush called a regime evil, that squanders its' national resources on massive armaments, WMDs, and, palaces for the rich, while ignoring the needs of its' people to provide a working infrastructure (energy, water, sewage, roads), education and health care. Perhaps it is time for the Bushies to look inwards ... and blush at the hypocrisy of their own rhetoric, as they treat America, as Saddam Hussein treated Iraq.
In Matt Biven's Daily Outrage in The Nation, entitled "30,000 Nuclear Warheads" on http://www.thenation.com/outr... , he reports:
"We've got 11,000 nuclear weapons -- some as battlefield "tactical" nukes, some in storage, and about 7,000 mounted on fueled, hair-trigger-to-launch ICBMs. The Russians have about 19,500 nuclear weapons -- about 5,500 of them on fueled, hair-trigger-alert missiles. From the moment the early-warning systems cry danger (real or cyber-glitch), the US government allows itself 22 minutes before launch keys are turned in retaliation; the Russian government allows itself six minutes.
And the Bush Republican response?
1. We need more nukes. For terrorists.
2. North Korea is evil and can't have a nuclear weapon. Not one. Because someday soon we'll probably attack them. Unless they have a nuclear weapon.
3. The 30,000-strong Cold War arsenal of nukes will not, in any meaningful way, be on the agenda of the George Bush-Vladimir Putin summit this weekend. Not important enough, what with Iraq and oil and all.
And so goes yet-another missed opportunity for real security.
* * *
"Now look boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches. But I got a pretty fair idea that something doggoned important's going on back there. And I got a fair idea of the kind of personal emotions that some of you fella's may be thinking. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beings if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat. But I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a countin' on ya, and by golly we ain't about to let 'em down. Tell you somethin' else. This thing turns out to be half as important is I figure it just might be, I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with. That goes for every last one of you, regardless of your race, color, or your creed. Now, let's get this thing on the hump. We got some flying to do." -- that cowboy pilot from "Dr. Strangelove"
Read "Will New Nuclear Weapons Make Us More Secure?", by Henry Kelly and Ivan Oelrich, on http://www.fas.org/ssp/docs/0... , and "Senate approves nuclear spending - Sen. Feinstein predicts Bush's policy will result in 'arms race'" by Ian Hoffman, on http://www.oaklandtribune.com...,1413,82~1865~1637866,00.html .
Meanwhile, the truth may always find a way, but perhaps not in the U.S.A., where the following story has not as yet, been published. Refer to "Journo claims proof of WMD lies" by Paul Mulvey, on http://new.globalfreepress.co... :
"AUSTRALIAN investigative journalist John Pilger says he has evidence the war against Iraq was based on a lie that could cost George W. Bush and Tony Blair their jobs and bring Prime Minister John Howard down with them.
A television report by Pilger aired on British screens overnight said US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice confirmed in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been disarmed and was no threat.
But after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 that year, Pilger claimed Rice said the US "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq and claim control of its oil.
Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
Two months later, Rice reportedly said, "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
Powell boasted this was because America's policy of containment and its sanctions had effectively disarmed Saddam.
Pilger claims this confirms that the decision of US President George W Bush - with the full support of British Prime Minister Blair and Howard - to wage war on Saddam because he had weapons of mass destruction was a huge deception.
Pilger interviewed several leading US government figures in Washington but said he did not ask Powell or Rice to respond to his claims.
"I think it's very serious for Howard. Howard has followed the Americans and to a lesser degree Blair almost word for word," Pilger told AAP before his program was screened on ITV tonight.
"All Howard does is say `well it's not true' and never explains himself.
"I just don't believe you can be seen to be party to such a big lie, such a big deception and endure that politically.
"It simply can't be shrugged off and that's Howard's response.
"Blair has shrugged it off but Blair is deeply damaged. It's far from over here, there's a lot that is going to happen and much of it could wash onto Howard.
"And it's unravelling in America and Bush could lose the election next year.
"I've not seen political leaders survive when they've been complicit in such an open deception for so long."
Howard last week dismissed an accusation from Opposition Leader Simon Crean that he hid a warning from British intelligence that war against Iraq would heighten the terrorist threat to Australia.
In his report, Pilger interviews Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and friend of Bush's father and ex-president, George Bush senior.
McGovern told Pilger that going to war because of weapons of mass destruction "was 95 per cent charade."
Pilger also claims that six hours after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he wanted to "hit" Iraq and allegedly said "Go Massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
He was allegedly talked down by Powell who said the American people would not accept an attack on Iraq without any evidence, so they opted to invade Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden had bases. Pilger claimed war was set in train on September 17, 2001 when Bush signed a paper directing the Pentagon to explore the military options for an attack on Iraq.
The big lie
Mirror UK -Sep 22 2003
By John Pilger
EXACTLY one year ago, Tony Blair told Parliament: "Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing.
"The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down. It is up and running now."
Not only was every word of this false, it was part of a big lie invented in Washington within hours of the attacks of September 11 2001 and used to hoodwink the American public and distract the media from the real reason for attacking Iraq. "It was 95 per cent charade," a former senior CIA analyst told me.
An investigation of files and archive film for my TV documentary Breaking The Silence, together with interviews with former intelligence officers and senior Bush officials have revealed that Bush and Blair knew all along that Saddam Hussein was effectively disarmed.
Both Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's closest adviser, made clear before September 11 2001 that Saddam Hussein was no threat - to America, Europe or the Middle East.
In Cairo, on February 24 2001, Powell said: "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
This is the very opposite of what Bush and Blair said in public.
Powell even boasted that it was the US policy of "containment" that had effectively disarmed the Iraqi dictator - again the very opposite of what Blair said time and again. On May 15 2001, Powell went further and said that Saddam Hussein had not been able to "build his military back up or to develop weapons of mass destruction" for "the last 10 years". America, he said, had been successful in keeping him "in a box".
Two months later, Condoleezza Rice also described a weak, divided and militarily defenceless Iraq. "Saddam does not control the northern part of the country," she said. "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
So here were two of Bush's most important officials putting the lie to their own propaganda, and the Blair government's propaganda that subsequently provided the justification for an unprovoked, illegal attack on Iraq. The result was the deaths of what reliable studies now put at 50,000 people, civilians and mostly conscript Iraqi soldiers, as well as British and American troops. There is no estimate of the countless thousands of wounded.
In a torrent of propaganda seeking to justify this violence before and during the invasion, there were occasional truths that never made headlines. In April last year, Condoleezza Rice described September 11 2001 as an "enormous opportunity" and said America "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities."
Taking over Iraq, the world's second biggest oil producer, was the first such opportunity.
At 2.40pm on September 11, according to confidential notes taken by his aides, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, said he wanted to "hit" Iraq - even though not a shred of evidence existed that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the attacks on New York and Washington. "Go massive," the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." Iraq was given a brief reprieve when it was decided instead to attack Afghanistan. This was the "softest option" and easiest to explain to the American people - even though not a single September 11 hijacker came from Afghanistan. In the meantime, securing the "big prize", Iraq, became an obsession in both Washington and London.
An Office of Special Plans was hurriedly set up in the Pentagon for the sole purpose of converting "loose" or unsubstantiated intelligence into US policy. This was a source from which Downing Street received much of the "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction we now know to be phoney.
CONTRARY to Blair's denials at the time, the decision to attack Iraq was set in motion on September 17 2001, just six days after the attacks on New York and Washington.
On that day, Bush signed a top- secret directive, ordering the Pentagon to begin planning "military options" for an invasion of Iraq. In July 2002, Condoleezza Rice told another Bush official who had voiced doubts about invading Iraq: "A decision has been made. Don't waste your breath."
The ultimate cynicism of this cover-up was expressed by Rumsfeld himself only last week. When asked why he thought most Americans still believed Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of September 11, he replied: "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe I could say that."
It is this that makes the Hutton inquiry in London virtually a sham. By setting up an inquiry solely into the death of the weapons expert David Kelly, Blair has ensured there will be no official public investigation into the real reasons he and Bush attacked Iraq and into when exactly they made that decision. He has ensured there will be no headlines about disclosures in email traffic between Downing Street and the White House, only secretive tittle-tattle from Whitehall and the smearing of the messenger of Blair's misdeeds.
The sheer scale of this cover-up makes almost laughable the forensic cross-examination of the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan about "anomalies" in the notes of his interview with David Kelly - when the story Gilligan told of government hypocrisy and deception was basically true.
Those pontificating about Gilligan failed to ask one vital question - why has Lord Hutton not recalled Tony Blair for cross-examination? Why is Blair not being asked why British sovereignty has been handed over to a gang in Washington whose extremism is no longer doubted by even the most conservative observers? No one knows the Bush extremists better than Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and personal friend of George Bush senior, the President's father. In Breaking The Silence, he tells me: "They were referred to in the circles in which I moved when I was briefing at the top policy levels as 'the crazies'."
"Who referred to them as 'the crazies'?" I asked.
"All of us... in policy circles as well as intelligence circles... There is plenty of documented evidence that they have been planning these attacks for a long time and that 9/11 accelerated their plan. (The weapons of mass destruction issue) was all contrived, so was the connection of Iraq with al Qaeda. It was all PR... Josef Goebbels had this dictum: If you say something often enough, the people will believe it." He added: "I think we ought to be all worried about fascism (in the United States)."
The "crazies" include John Bolton, Under Secretary of State, who has made a personal mission of tearing up missile treaties with the Russians and threatening North Korea, and Douglas Feith, an Under Secretary of Defence, who ran a secret propaganda unit "reworking" intelligence about Iraq's weapons. I interviewed them both in Washington.
BOLTON boasted to me that the killing of as many as 10,000 Iraqi civilians in the invasion was "quite low if you look at the size of the military operation."
For raising the question of civilian casualties and asking which country America might attack next, I was told: "You must be a member of the Communist Party."
Over at the Pentagon, Feith, No 3 to Rumsfeld, spoke about the "precision" of American weapons and denied that many civilians had been killed. When I pressed him, an army colonel ordered my cameraman: "Stop the tape!" In Washington, the wholesale deaths of Iraqis is unmentionable. They are non-people; the more they resist the Anglo-American occupation, the more they are dismissed as "terrorists".
It is this slaughter in Iraq, a crime by any interpretation of an international law, that makes the Hutton inquiry absurd. While his lordship and the barristers play their semantic games, the spectre of thousands of dead human beings is never mentioned, and witnesses to this great crime are not called.
Jo Wilding, a young law graduate, is one such witness. She was one of a group of human rights observers in Baghdad during the bombing. She and the others lived with Iraqi families as the missiles and cluster bombs exploded around them. Where possible, they would follow the explosions to scenes of civilian casualties and trace the victims to hospitals and mortuaries, interviewing the eyewitnesses and doctors. She kept meticulous notes.
She saw children cut to pieces by shrapnel and screaming because there were no anaesthetics or painkillers. She saw Fatima, a mother stained with the blood of her eight children. She saw streets, mosques and farmhouses bombed by marauding aircraft. "Nothing could explain them," she told me, "other than that it was a deliberate attack on civilians."
As these atrocities were carried out in our name, why are we not hearing such crucial evidence? And why is Blair allowed to make yet more self-serving speeches, and none of them from the dock?
Related Articles:
Gulf-News and Asia Media didn't mention the "Iraq-lies"
Journo claims proof of WMDs lies - NEWS.com.au
Pilger claims White House knew Saddam was no threat - Sydney Morning Herald
Pacific Journalism Review features Iraq media war
Asia Pacific Media Network - 6 hours ago
... first time this week and features a series of articles about Iraq ... Weekly editor Patrick
Ensor, independent Australian journalist and film-maker John Pilger ...
Linda S. Heard: Apathy of Afghan women after Taliban
Gulf News, United Arab Emirates - 2 hours ago
... of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) recently told writer and filmmaker John Pilger ... by
the American president for the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq ...
Original Powell-Transcript, 24 February 2001
usis.it
"...We will always try to consult with our friends in the region so that they are not surprised and do everything we can to explain the purpose of our responses. We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue..." "
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| Iraqi Leaders and American Military Families Speak Out: Bring Them Home Now! |
| 09.25.03 (8:15 am) [edit] |
In the last few days, 6 US Soldiers have died for nothing, increasing Bush's Death Toll to 351 US and British Soldiers, and over 7,800 innocent Iraqi civilians [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ] in Bush's Guerrilla Quagmire. Our young men and women are dying, as are innocent Iraqis, while the Bushies and their corrupt cronies are enjoying the "high life" ... fat, juicy (top-secret) contracts for corporate war-profiteers; oil corporations lusting after the 2nd richest oil fields that belong to the Iraqi People; and, immoral tax cuts for the "top dogs" and "fat cats".
The lives of our US Military personnel are miserable, and they face the possibility of death on a daily basis ... but not for L. Paul Bremer and the Bush Gang, ensconced in palaces, well-fed, well-rested, and well-protected, in the bosom of their armed guards. In fact, Iraqi leaders plan to testify before Congress and report the money wasted by the Americans who are living like neo-emperors: Read "Iraqi Leaders to Press Congress for Control Over Rebuilding" by Patrick E. Tyler, on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/0... . An excerpt:
"The Americans are spending money here to secure themselves at a rate that is two to three times what they are spending to secure the Iraqi people," said Ahmad al-Barak, a human rights lawyer and a member of the council. "It would be better for us if we would be in charge of how to spend this money and, of course, they could monitor how it is spent."
"He estimated that in some cases the savings could be a factor of 10. "Where they spend $1 billion, we would spend $100 million," he said."
"In the spirit of demonstrating such savings, the Governing Council this month canceled the $5,000-a-day contract that Mr. Bremer had arranged to feed the 25-member body and its staff and found a cheaper supplier." One can only wonder the exorbitant amount of taxpayer dollars Bremer squanders on his own meals. Presumably more than is being spent on our U.S. Soldiers charged for their daily meals deducted from their measly incomes, if they are injured in battle and hospitalized.
The Iraqi people want control of their own country, and a delegation from the US-appointed Governing Council wants more authority turned over to Iraq. Refer to "Iraqis Urge Quick End to Occupation", by Rajiv Chandrasekaran on http://www.commondreams.org/h... .
Isn't is ironic that the Bushies don't want the Iraqis to control their own country after having "liberated" them? Of course not, because the Iraqi people might not agree to be raped by the Bush Gang's corrupt cabal of robber-barons like Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group & Big Oil-- The Bush Regime won't allow the Iraqis to determine their own future ... they won't allow them free elections, just as they won't allow us free elections in America.
Military families are rightly speaking out [http://www.mfso.org/ ], as they don't want their loved ones massacred, simply to save the corrupt Bush Gang's fatt rear-ends ... Why should human beings die for an insane neo-con ideology of global hegemony to enrich the corporate empire on behalf the rich oligarchy?
A letter from a soldier reads [http://www.alternet.org ]:
"I am a soldier currently on active duty and my husband is a member of the Reserves and has been activated since Feb. 13, and is currently in Iraq, supporting the 4th ID, where he's been since April. We were both deployed at the same time. I was fortunate enough to have my unit return earlier this summer.
"Some of the conditions I experienced over there were deplorable. It sickens me every time I see news articles quoting dignitaries coming from there saying, "The soldiers are in good spirits," "Morale is high." I'm here to tell you, it's all lies. Morale is at an all-time low. Soldiers are hating life there, so much so, some are taking their own lives rather than deal with the situation. It has become that drastic" ... For more access : http://www.alternet.org/waron... .
The hypocritical screed and propaganda spewed by the Bush Regime, must be exposed for the neo-fascist rhetoric full of deceptions, that it represents. Wolfy Wolfowitz lied over the week-end by suggesting that Saddam Hussein massacred millions of Iraqis, which is factually untrue, just as he lied about phony WMDs and fabricated links between Iraq and Al Qaida [ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/0... ]. But Wolfy plays fast-and-loose with reality, believing that Americans are dumb sheep willing to believe his neo-con flim-flam.
L. Paul Bremer must have racked up millions of frequent-flyer points, and is back in Washington DC today to sell another "lemon" to the rubber-stamp, credulous Congress, in order that he can play neo-Lawrence of Arabia, by persuading them to hand-over billions into his dirty, sticky fingers. "Terrorists love state sponsors" ... "Saddam's Iraq was one of those countries", spits Bremer, except for the fact, that Al Qaida was not linked to Iraq. The Bush Regime created chaos and a hot-bed for terrorism ... destroyed their infrastructure ... and now say "$87 Billion is an important element in the war on terrorism" and to re-build Iraq.
If Congress can't see past this flim-flam "bait-and-switch" scam, perpetrated by the arrogant Bush Regime to enrich their Corporate Cronies, then they are either stupid or corrupt or both. The Bushies want the poor, low-income, middle-class and fixed-income Americans to pay-off all their debts. The Bushies don't want their corporate cronies or their rich campaign contributors to sacrifice any of their ill-gotten blood-money.
The chaos and rape of America and Iraq, has been instigated on behalf of Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Big Oil, and other corporate robber-barons. Meanwhile, average taxpayers and Iraqi citizens are paying Bush's obscene $166 Billion War Tab, as well as his record-level $500 Billion Spending-Spree Deficit, all being squandered on the rich.
Meanwhile, the Bushies are pretending that all is rosy and everybody in Iraq, is tickled pink-- as Richard Perle spouts the official propaganda on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, except that representatives from global aide agencies, as well as reports showing real people on the streets (not in the palaces) of Baghdad, starkly contradicts the official Bush Regime's position.
"We the People" have an obligation to contact Congress today to demand that the war-profiteers' profits be confiscated; tax cuts for the richest-of-the-rich be repealed; and, liars like Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz be summarily fired for incompetence and corruption. Bush should also be tried and impeached for betraying his oath of office.
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| "Holding Fire" by Karen Kwiatkowski, Retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel |
| 09.22.03 (7:10 pm) [edit] |
"Holding Fire" is an insightful assessment of Bush's Iraqi Affair, by Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon. Ms. Kwiatkowski, was a senior Pentagon Middle East specialist, who worked in the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith until her retirement in April 2003. Upon retirement, she confessed:
"What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline," Kwiatkowski wrote [Rumsfeld's Office of Secretary of Defense]. "If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam [Hussein] occupation [of Iraq] has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense [OSD]."
"Kwiatkowski went on to charge that the operations she witnessed during her tenure in Feith's office, and particularly those of an ad hoc group known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), constituted "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-option through deceit of a large segment of the Congress".
"Kwiatkowski's charges, which tend to confirm reports and impressions offered to the press by retired officers from other intelligence agencies and their still-active but anonymous former colleagues, are likely to make her a prime witness when Congress reconvenes in September for hearings on the manipulation of intelligence to justify war against Iraq.
"According to Kwiatkowski, the same operation that allegedly cooked the intelligence also was responsible for the administration's failure to anticipate the problems that now dog the US occupation in Iraq, or, in her more colorful words, that have placed 150,000 US troops in "the world's nastiest rat's nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit plan". [Source: "Insider fires a broadside at Rumsfeld's office", by Jim Lobe on http://www.atimes.com/atimes/... ]
"We the People" should be outraged at the subversion and abuses by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Bolton and Feith, of the operations of government, to pursue their insane doctrine of global hegemony and corporate cronyism. Moreover, Bush, Powell and Rice have all collaborated in these ghoulish schemes, and regurgitated lies, deceptions and falsehoods devised to lead us into an illegal and immoral incursion into Iraq, that has resulted in the massacre of over 350 US & British Soldiers, over 7800 innocent Iraqi civilians, and untold misery for the injured and maimed.
The squandered cost in treasure currently exceeds $74 Billion thus far ($4 Billion per Month), and Bush has the gall to request an additional $87 Billion raising the wasteful costs to an obscene $166 Billion Death Tab. Meanwhile, Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bechtel, and other Bush Regime Paymasters are warmongers profiting from this horrific blood-letting, and are not asked to sacrifice any of their excessive gluttony ... nor are the richest in this country who were awarded massive tax cuts by the Bushies.
Contact Congress to demand the resignations of those responsible for Bush's Guerrilla Quagmire on http://www.congress.org .
In "Holding Fire" on http://www.lewrockwell.com/kw... , Mr. Kwiatkowski, observes:
"Secretary of State Colin Powell tells us, "Those who are so critical of the administration might want to hold their fire..." He said this in the context of his recent trip to Iraq and the "hope" he saw there. One hears a faint murmur of parley in Washington.
Powell is echoing Rumsfeld’s suggestion last week that "those who have been critical of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath might be encouraging enemies of the United States to believe that it might one day walk away from the effort, as it has in past conflicts." Considering Rummy’s vast personal experience fighting in such conflicts in Vietnam, Beirut and Somalia – adventures we walked into stupidly and away from too late – one is left to wonder only whether Rumsfeld is simply ignorant or willfully ignorant.
The administration seems to have hat in hand, as it awaits the rubber stamping of the second installment of nearly ninety BILLION dollars for more soldiers, more treads for the Bradley’s, more Kevlar, and more bullets for Iraq, and fully funded contracts for select U.S. conglomerates. Last time – only a few months ago – it was $71 or so billion, today it is $87 billion. But there’s more! Tricky Dick Cheney made a rare public appearance this weekend to tell us this won’t be the last government payment for the neoconservative cabal’s lies, feints and an expensive ideology that confuses the idea of human liberty with neocon freedom to remake the world as they see fit.
I’ll tell you what. I’ll consider holding fire, after I get a better look at that white flag the administration seems to be waving.
Is that flicker of white the letter Dubya has sent to the Pentagon asking for the post-haste resignation of Messieurs Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and Perle? Removing these un-elected desert pirates disguised as advisors to the President is basic justice given their massive and willful failure to properly utilize the trillion dollar U.S. taxpayer investment in intelligence and warfighting capability, thus causing gratuitous death, destruction and dismay for all involved. Firing Rummy, Wolfie, Dougie and Richie would also tip the scales towards practical solutions by instantly removing the two-legged roadblocks to bringing the rest of the world on board in cleaning up the neocon’s mess in Iraq. Immediately returning these ideologues to the private sector, as requested by Representative David Obey, would be the most, and to date the only, salient indicator that we are moving towards real Iraqi self-government.
Or is the flicker of white the rolled eye of a nervous horse, stamping and agitating about something its rider doesn’t see? I’d like to see a little white-eyed nervousness and stamping feet and agitation in the White House and Congress over the approval of this additional funding.
Instead of the mantra that "…this time we are going to make the President tell us how he is going to spend it, really we are…," I’d like to hear the kind of thing I tell my kids when they ask me for money. After they tell me what, when, why and how (and as with Bush the Younger, the rationale will predictably include equal measures of elaboration and pretense), I communicate my sincerest sympathy. Then, like Nancy Reagan, I usually just say no.
George Bush and the neocons will whine and cry and say I don’t understand, just like my own kids do. But the Rolling Stones told us true, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try, you just might get what you need. Work, creativity, patience, a change of plans – all of these things come into play. Bushco can figure out a way to drop their costs in Iraq and bring back our troops, or else the neocons can raise the cash and troops on their own. I am certainly willing to purchase a couple of uniforms for Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, to allow them report in style for guard duty in Najaf or Fallujah. They’ve earned that, and nothing else.
What we have here is far more than a failure to communicate. We have a broken contract. We were promised an oil-funded rebuilding of a free Iraq and a bunch of dangerous WMDs off the street. We got a United Fruit Company modeled oil monopoly in a serf-filled Iraq that, ENRON-like, exhibits only grandiose futuristic and imaginary accounts and assets. We have no WMDs, no nuclear or biological programs. David Kaye, for all of his posturing last year, is now embarrassed to submit the big report on the WMDs he couldn’t find. Who says Don Rumsfeld is a demanding old sea captain? He didn’t even ask David about the WMDs when they last met, saying he assumes "[David will] tell me if he’s got something that he thinks I need to know."
In the case of a broken contract, the normal thing to do is stop payment on any uncashed checks, and call the credit company. The Congress will be quite proud of itself for negotiating and nitpicking the $87 billion, even though the majority of Americans have ALREADY SAID NO to Bush’s request. What Congress needs to do is what we all do in the case of a broken contract. Stop further transactions and call the lawyer. Period.
The administration is asking me and millions of others to hold our fire. I am looking for a white flag and I’ve identified suitable substitutes I’m willing to accept. I haven’t asked for a mea culpa from 1600 Pennsylvania, and I don’t need groveling. But is Bush sending his arrogant and foolish advisors back to the dock? Is the White House and Congress exhibiting the slightest concern about the debts I and my children, and grandchildren will have to pay so that a U.S. cabal can manage global oil flows through well-armed brutality, military garrisons and puppet governments instead of through the free market?
Bush says America is safer now, and now we have the "real" pirates on the run. All evidence points otherwise, yet Captain George W. Kidd still insists the rest of us pay for his profiteering adventures. Like the famous privateer Kidd, a mission that started out as "a unique legal opportunity to steal from pirates and from the hated French" ended up with the poor Captain dishonored, landlocked and unable to find volunteers to crew his ship.
Bush and his administration of ne’er do wells have not invoked the right of parley. They have not presented a flash of white to help me understand their intentions. Therefore, I am left with no choice but to pull up broadside, and sink their ship."
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| Should A Man Be Judged By The Company He Keeps? |
| 09.20.03 (12:55 pm) [edit] |
Should a man be judged by the company he keeps? The old proverb "Birds of a Feather Flock Together" is a truism meaning that people generally associate with those who hold similar values, interests and behaviors.
The Bushies and their associates are not respectable individuals. Bush's best buddy Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay is a thief and criminal who stole livelihoods, pensions, and assets, leaving a bankrupt company and thousands of people jobless and desperate in his wake. Cheney's gang at Halliburton are making out like bandits in Iraq, from the blood and misery of Americans and Iraqis who die or are injured daily. Rice's cronies at Chevron are greedily rubbing their hands together in anticipation of grabbing Iraqi Oil. Rumsfeld's Defence Contractors are bilking the American taxpayer as they pour money into the pockets of the "top dogs" and "fat cats" for boon-doggles and massive armaments of death, that do not protect us, but indeed place us in more danger. Wolfowitz's PNAC (Project for New American Century) and neo-fascist AEI, have dreams of global domination and riches dancing in their pathological heads. Who said "The Crazies are Back!" at the Pentagon upon Cheney, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz's return?
The Bush Gang's Iraqi collaborator, embezzler and criminal-in-arms, is Ahmad Chalabi, wanted for stealing millions from banks throughout the Arab world. (Refer to "Bush's Whore Chalabi Should Be in Prison" on http://www.tblog.com/template... )
Chalabi had been living the high-life in exile for years, and is out-of-touch with the Iraqi people. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are buddies with Chalabi, because he is a man that they can do business with. He is like them:-- willing to rape, ravage and betray his own people on behalf of their Global Corporate Empire. He'll be well-rewarded for his slavish devotion to their ghoulish schemes. The Bush Regime and Chalabi Regime are "Birds of a Feather Who Flock Together", who feed off the carcasses of our dead and injured citizens, squander our treasure, and, loot our natural resources.
"We the People" should be outraged on behalf of the Iraqi People, with corrupt criminals like Chalabi thrust upon them by the Bush Regime, as they pursue their insane Doctrine of the Global Corporate Empire, intending to enslave their citizens, and exploit their resources, in order to handsomely profit rich, greedy robber-barons who are their paymasters.
Bush is betraying Iraq, as he has betrayed America. If a man is judged by the company he keeps, then the Bushies and Chalabi are mendacious war profiteers and greedy vultures who deserve each other ... But we deserve better.
In "Listening to the Wrong Iraqi", by David L. Phillips, on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/0... :
"Critics say the Bush administration had no plan for postwar Iraq. In fact, before the war, hundreds of Iraqis were involved in discussions with Washington about securing and stabilizing their country after military action. Today's difficulties are not the result of a lack of foresight, but rather of poor judgment by civilians at the Pentagon who counted too much on the advice of one exile — Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress — and ignored the views of other, more reliable Iraqi leaders.
Last year the State Department, joined by 17 other federal agencies, put together the Future of Iraq Project, which was supposed to involve Iraqis from the country's many ethnic and religious factions, including representatives from the exile community. The project had working groups on topics ranging from agriculture to the economy to new government structure. I was adviser to the democratic principles working group, which the Iraqis called the "mother of all working groups." Anticipating many of the problems playing out in Iraq today, participants worked on plans for maintaining security, restoring services and making the transition to democracy.
On security, the participants envisioned a key role for reformed elements of the Iraqi Army. They insisted on the dissolution of agencies involved in atrocities — like military intelligence and the secret police (the Mukhabarat) — and proposed setting up a body to investigate war crimes, prepare a "most wanted" list, and prosecute war criminals. They envisioned a military council vetting and then taking steps to professionalize the armed forces.
Representatives of the Iraqi National Congress, however, claimed to control a vast underground network that would rise in support of coalition forces to assist security and law enforcement. They insisted that the entire Iraqi Army be immediately disbanded. The Pentagon agreed, in the end leading many Iraqi soldiers who might otherwise have been willing to work with the coalition to take up arms against it. Mr. Chalabi's promised network didn't materialize, and the resulting power vacuum contributed to looting, sabotage and attacks against American forces.
The working group also emphasized winning hearts and minds of average Iraqis, largely through improving living conditions. It urged cooperation with Iraq's existing technocracy to ensure the uninterrupted flow of water and electricity. Though civil servants and professionals for the most part were required to be Baath party members, the working group maintained that not all Baathists were war criminals. The group proposed so-called lustration laws to identify and remove officials who had committed atrocities.
On the other hand, the Iraqi National Congress was adamant that all former Baath party members were inherently complicit in war crimes. Siding with Mr. Chalabi, the coalition provisional authority decided that the Baath party would be banned, and dismissed many party members from their jobs. As a result millions of Iraqis are still without electricity and fresh water, necessities they could at least count on under the criminal regime of Saddam Hussein.
Most important, the working group insisted that all Iraqis needed a voice in the transition to a stable, democratic Iraq. Participants agreed that exiles alone could not speak for all Iraqis, and endorsed discussions with leaders inside and outside the country as the basis for constituting a legitimate and broadly representative transitional structure.
Before the London opposition conference in December, Mr. Chalabi lobbied the United States to appoint a government in exile, dominated by his partisans, to be installed in Baghdad at the moment of liberation. Concerned about legitimacy, the Bush administration ultimately rejected this proposal. Still, Mr. Chalabi's supporters in Washington — particularly civilians in the Pentagon — relentlessly promoted him as Iraq's future leader. Exceptional treatment included airlifting Mr. Chalabi and his American-trained 700-man paramilitary force to Nasariya in the middle of the war. He is now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, serving as its president this month.
Why such devotion to a man whose prewar advice proved so misguided? For one thing, Mr. Chalabi has shown himself amenable to those in Washington who want to reshape the entire Middle East. They envision Iraq as a springboard for eliminating the Baath party in Syria, undermining the mullahs in Iran and enhancing American power across the region.
There are benefits to spreading democracy in the Middle East, but hegemonic ambitions are sabotaging the shorter-term project of turning Iraq into a viable state. The other day, a Sunni participant in the democratic principles working group told me he is reluctant to speak up about how its recommendations have been ignored lest criticism discourage the coalition. In frustration, he asked: "So this is liberation?"
The Iraqi people have suffered a generation of tyranny and deserve better. To succeed in Iraq, and be constructive elsewhere in the world, the Bush administration must listen to all voices, not just those that are ideologically compatible. Liberation cannot be imposed."
David L. Phillips is deputy director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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| The Villain is Ignorance: The Bush Regime's "Errors" Cost the Lives of Thousands & Endless Misery |
| 09.18.03 (5:34 pm) [edit] |
Did the Bush Regime make a "mistake"? Did the Bushies simply "mis-speak"? Did Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell et al. just "slip-up"? Ooooppppssss ... When most folks make a "mistake", it doesn't cost the lives of over 350 American and British Soldiers; over 7800 innocent Iraqi civilians; and, the misery of thousands of maimed and injured human beings, with lost limbs and living in abject agony.
Bush's "error" has cost thousands of lives; mistrust and hatred around the world; and a war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire thrusting the U.S., Britain (and others) and Iraq into a human tragedy resulting in death and endless misery; more terrorism (not less); and, an economic fiasco with human needs ignored in America, as well as Iraq.
Yesterday, Bush admitted (ooooppppssss) that Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in 9/11 ... The only buffoons who believed the Bush Regime's lies and deceptions as they perpetrated the myth that Saddam Hussein "supported" Al Qaida and "was" involved in 9/11, were: ... the ignorant (60% of Americans sheepishly lapping up the Bushies' bushit) ... neo-con ideologues blinded by lust for war ... neo-con court jesters desperate for invites to Bush & Cheney bar-b-ques ... and, neo-con naifs.
In "The Villain Is Ignorance" on http://www4.arabnews.com/?pag...§ion=0&article=32225&d=19 &m=9&y=2003 , a pro-American web-site opines:
"President Bush has said that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. A strange admission — because no one with even the most basic understanding of the Middle East believed that Saddam was in any way linked with the attack. Yet a poll in the US indicates that 70 percent of Americans believe it. A substantial number of them also think that Iraqis were involved in the attack, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
The blame lies entirely with the Bush administration. From the president downward, the US government has for the past two years deliberately clouded what were two distinct issues: Sept. 11 and the Iraqi regime. They confused the public and the media alike into believing that there was a link by constantly talking about Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda in the same breath. Only last week, Vice President Dick Cheney was still refusing to rule out a link between Iraq and Sept. 11, saying “we don’t know.”
Why now, two years on — after the invasion of Iraq that so benefited from the US public believing that Saddam Hussein was involved — has Bush come clean? Clearly with the 2004 election campaign under way, he needs to pre-empt accusations that he deliberately misled the American public. If there is one thing that Americans will not tolerate, it is official deception. The Democrats are going to throw that accusation at the Bush camp from now to November next year, and the US media is going to jump on it, all the more so because it too is likely to be bitter at having been used to spread the lie.
From an Arab and Muslim perspective, however, this has far more serious implications than the mere fate of Bush or the outcome of the next US election.
The appalling reality is that Americans were ready to believe anything about Saddam Hussein because he has been so demonized by American officialdom and the media. And so too has Yasser Arafat; if asked, Americans would probably answer that he too was involved in Sept. 11. It does not stop there. The anti-Saudi, anti-Muslim current flowing through American politics and media shows no sign of abating. Nor is it being countered, other than with complaints. There is no point expecting the American media or public to start seeing the Middle East as it is. They have already proved they cannot. What is needed is a pro-active, intelligent campaign, working alongside the mainstream US media, to change American perceptions. We have seen what happens when Americans get their facts wrong. They supported a war that was wrong; they support an Israel that is wrong. US public ignorance about the region is at the root of the Middle East’s problems. It has to be countered."
"We the People" cannot simply pretend that poor Bush's imbecilic "errors" are analogous to a child stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. The Bush Regime deliberately lied to wage war upon a sovereign nation that posed no threat to ourselves, when this war was opposed by the majority of nations of the world. The U.N. Security Council did not support Bush's War ... and they were declared "irrelevant" until Bush's Geniuses, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz proved they are not geniuses and planned-us-into-quick-san d! Now, the U.N. is "relevant" again as the Bushies (who don't seem to learn from their "mistakes") ask others to spill blood and squander treasure for zip, zero, nada!
The Bushies have squandered the lives and treasure of America and Iraq to enrich their corporate cronies. Who benefits from this tragedy: Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Big Oil ... etc. [Get your War-Profiteers & War-Mongers Deck of Cards on http://www.warprofiteers.com/... .]
As Jonathan Schell reflects in "Letter From Ground Zero: Learning the Obvious" on http://www.thenation.com/doc.... :
"Today, too, the obvious is trumped by the argument of power. The need therefore is not just to produce more facts and better arguments (though those are always needed) but to challenge the powers that uphold illusion. The best antidote is the counterforce of public opinion, which means, in the last analysis, the force of voting. Today, as in Vietna | |
