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| The Sound of Silence |
| 10.31.03 (3:39 pm) [edit] |
[i]"Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision
That was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence"[/i]
The Bush Regime's silence is deafening ... they are refusing to co-operate with the investigation conducted into their pre-9/11 intelligence regarding the attack upon America on September 11, 2001. In order to fully comprehend what went wrong ... it is imperative for the White House to disclose information relevant to [b]What the Bushies Knew, and When They Knew It [/b]... Tragically, the Bushies are stonewalling, and it is outrageous, since they are accountable to the citizens of the United States of America.
"We the People" should be calling for the relevant documents to be turned-over to the 9/11-investigative committee, as there are many outstanding questions regarding that horrific tragedy that must be answered ... and a cover-up of the unsavory details does not do justice to the vital transparency of government, crucial for the very survival of our democracy. [ "What You Think You Know About Sept. 11 … … but don't." on http://slate.msn.com/id/20880... and "Bush & Bin Laden - George W. Bush Had Ties to Billionaire bin Laden Brood" on http://www.americanfreepress.... ]
[b]You should contact Congress urgently to demand that they support the 9/11-investigative committee in their efforts to discover the truth and report back to the American people, on http://www.congress.org .[/b]
"[i]And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share...
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence[/i]."
In "Sounds Of Silence" on http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... :
"Last December, when President Bush named Tom Kean, the mild-mannered Republican former governor of New Jersey, to lead the commission investigating the September 11 attacks, critics scoffed that Kean would be an administration patsy. But the White House's resistance to releasing crucial information about the attacks has stirred him to anger. "I will not stand for it," Kean fumed last week. "Anything that has to do with 9/11, we have to see it -- anything." Kean has complained for several weeks about executive branch foot-dragging and has suggested the administration may be trying to run out the clock on the committee's mandate, which expires in May.
Kean's not the only one who's upset. Other Republican members of the committee, including former Sen. Slade Gorton, a stalwart conservative, have echoed his complaints. And, given that the commission's mandate is to determine how the attacks happened and to make recommendations about stopping another one, these complaints are serious business.
Any lack of cooperation from the White House is troubling, but one key point of contention is especially disturbing: whether the commission will have access to daily intelligence briefings given to the president in the weeks before September 11, 2001. Particularly in light of revelations that at least one of these reports indicated that al Qaeda was planning to hijack U.S. airliners, these briefings are clearly relevant. Studying them might help the commission recommend ways of prioritizing future briefings more effectively.
But the White House is blocking the commission from seeing the briefings. The administration claims they contain sensitive information that, if made public, could compromise national security. But so does limiting our understanding of the terrorist attacks. And there's little reason to think that a panel of seasoned statesmen like former Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton, the commission's co-chair, would expose classified intelligence. The same goes for their professional staff, overseen by Phillip Zelikow, a professor at the University of Virginia, who is chummy with the GOP national security establishment and who co-authored a book with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. In fact, the 9/11 commission has vowed to take utmost care to protect the intelligence it receives.
The other key White House argument is that the release of past daily intelligence briefings will distort future ones. The White House argues that government officials might shape their advisories differently -- cover their asses, to put it bluntly -- if they have reason to think the briefings could become public someday. The Bush administration has repeatedly invoked this reasoning to defend "deliberative" internal documents on subjects as varied as Justice Department investigations, internal memos written by stymied judicial nominee Miguel Estrada, and Dick Cheney's secret energy policy sessions. While there may be theoretical merit to this argument, it is certainly less compelling than the need to fully account for a terrorist catastrophe and prevent another one. And it is badly undermined by the White House's tendency to invoke it only in cases when the administration may have something to hide. Consider, by contrast, the fact that Bob Woodward was readily shown hundreds of secret National Security Council documents revealing vast amounts of deliberative information for his hagiographic book, "Bush at War."
Another reason to distrust the White House's motives is its obvious, and loathsome, hostility to the commission itself. For months after September 11, the White House and its congressional allies blocked the creation of an independent panel. Last October, in fact, John McCain and Joe Lieberman complained to "The New York Times" that the Bush administration was "deliberately sabotaging their efforts to create an independent investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks." Even after Bush yielded to pressure from 9/11 survivors and allowed a commission, he failed to fund it in his budget request this year, forcing Congress to come to its rescue again. These crude White House tactics seem more than a little self-defeating. Because Congress can extend the commission's life, delays will only push any possibly embarrassing revelations closer to the 2004 election. [b]Surely the White House realizes that the perception of a cover-up is more politically damaging than turning over a few intelligence reports. Unless, of course, it really does have something scandalous to hide[/b]."
Hmmm ... I don't think the Bushies care ... They intend to highjack the 2004 election with another banana republican coup d'etat, rigged as per the 2000 election ... The principal question remains on just how they intend to rig the election: another terrorist attack, election shenanigans, or, declaring marshall law???
[i]""Fools," said I, "you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows."
"Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed in the wells of silence[/i]." - [b][i]Simon & Garfunkel[/i][/b]
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| GDP Growth Tiny Sign of Progress ... It Doesn't Neutralize the 228 Year Record-Level Deficit Fiasco |
| 10.30.03 (1:09 pm) [edit] |
The rise in GDP of 7.2% represents the fastest economic growth in a single quarter since 1984, and marks a very, very small sign of progress ... however, it does not neutralize a much larger economic problem looming on the horizon: The effects of Bush's historically record-level deficit of over $560 Billion for 2003 ($1.9 Trillion for Bush's term in office) ... the highest in our nation's 228 year history.
Financial experts and economists around the world, are very concerned at the [b]dire consequences of Bush's [/b]excessively corrupt "[b]borrowing and spending[/b]" at record-level rates, resulting in:
1) Largest re-distribution of wealth to the top 5% richest in our nation's history, that will result in dire hardships for the majority of Americans in the long-term, thus creating social unrest, and it's consequential increase in violence and crime;
2) Debt to pay for a hugely expensive war (Iraq & Afghanistan) and the reconstruction, with no significant contributions from other nations ($13 Billion in Donor's pledges are largely loans) ... resulting in over $166 Billion through 2004 alone, and no end in sight; Moreover, this cost to the American taxpayer provides no substantive benefits at home, as (a) Arab terrorism has increased (not diminished) as a result of Bush's invasion of Iraq; (b) large sums are diverted to the Bush's corporate cronies & war-profiteers-- not jobs for Americans; and, (c) costs at home are rising as the dollar plunges & the wealthy price-gouge our citizens;
3) Lack of investment in our nation's infrastructure, jobs, health care, education and other social services, needed for a civilized and advanced society ... leaving our citizens bereft of a healthy and prosperous environment, socially, financially & physically.
This will ultimately take a heavy toll, and if not reversed, could place us (U.S.A.) in financial peril. Our nation is literally "hocked" ... and the only reason we remain solvent is international confidence in our government to be able to pay-back the over $6.8+ Trillion (National Debt) in outstanding loans. If that confidence was to falter, then lending would stop-- banks would demand repayment-- and, we would be thrust into a major recession -- and perhaps, a tragic depression.
"We the People" are currently riding rough waters, and it is extremely unlikely that Bush's "Ship of 'Titanic' Fools" Economics, based upon an immoral and bankrupt philosophy of "corporate-take-all", and the wealthy & powerful paying an unjustly miniscule share of taxes, as compared with the population-at-large, (Bush Doctrine: [i]Only the Little People Pay Taxes & Bear Burdens[/i]), will be beneficial for America. The highly probable result of Bush's economically disastrous policies is hardship and misery for the majority of our citizens.
Indeed, the Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics, Dr. George Akerlof , said recently, of George W. Bush:
“I think this is the worst government the U.S. has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal governmental policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience (Dollars and Sense magazine, September/October 2003, page 4).
Clearly, this isn’t the usual stuff one expects from Nobel Prize-winning economists. It is extraordinary. But the essential message from Professor Akerlof was unmistakable: protest. When asked what kind, he replied, “I don’t know yet. But I think it’s time to protest - as much as possible.” " ["Bush 2: the worst ever?" on http://www.sfbayview.com/1022... ]
At mid-afternoon (30th October 2003), the stock market records:
DJIA : 9,783.20
Nasdaq : 1,937.07
S&P 500 : 1.047.01
This slight rise, does not reflect a major boost in confidence by investors in the stock-market. In "Dow Up 35, Nasdaq Gains 7 on GDP Report" on http://www.springfieldnewssun...;COXnetJSessionID=1hvF4oe RxQmoKdm17TbSXpGruov4r5Gi 6yfM9itJa6EO2vLRmbND!1740 268641?urac=n&urvf=106754 43897790.5327236090061694 :
")--Wall Street moved moderately higher Thursday as investors applauded a surprisingly strong third-quarter gross domestic product but nonetheless worried that the increase could not be maintained.
Analysts said the GDP report did not have more of a market impact because it reflected past economic performance, and investors were not certain future growth would be as robust.
``The sustainability is the biggest question,'' said Brian G. Belski, fundamental market strategist at US Bancorp Piper Jaffray. ``The question is what is the current GDP and what will the growth be over the next three quarters?''
By midafternoon, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 34.59, or 0.4 percent, at 9,809.12, following a three-day gain of 192 points.
The broader market was also higher. The Nasdaq composite index gained 7.36, or 0.4 percent, to 1,943.92. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 0.75, or 0.1 percent, to 1,048.86.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the nation's gross domestic product grew at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter. It was the strongest pace since the first quarter of 1984; it also beat analysts' estimates for a 6 percent growth rate.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported that new jobless claims last week declined by 5,000 to 386,000, signaling a slowdown in layoffs.
``Certainly the GDP number was good and the market celebrated that,'' said Barry Berman, head trader for Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee. ``But no one expects this number to continue at this rate, and they do expect the numbers'' to be eventually revised lower, he said.
Stocks have climbed since mid-March on investor expectations of a strong economic rebound. While gains have been more modest in recent weeks, analysts say investors are still looking for reasons to buy despite some concerns that stock prices might be too high."
Sources:
"Economy Grew at 7.2% Rate in 3rd Quarter, Fastest Since 1984" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...
"U.S. National Debt Clock" on http://www.brillig.com/debt_c...
"US stocks flat as GDP-fueled rally fizzles" on http://www.businessreport.co....
"U.S. Economy: Long-Term Recovery or Short-Term Blip?" by Frederick L. Joutz, Associate Professor of Economics, The George Washington University, on http://www.washingtonpost.com...
"Job Growth Key to Bush's Future" on http://205.177.120.143/artman...
"GDP data have limited effect on Wall St stocks" on http://news.ft.com/servlet/Co...
"COMMENT: Bring the president's nerds back in from the cold" on http://search.ft.com/search/a...+economic+policies&vsc_ap pId=totalSearch&state=For m" :
"During the Clinton years, Congress tried to get rid of the president's Council of Economic Advisers the old-fashioned way: by cutting its already modest budget. The Bush administration seems to have figured out a more effective way to rid the White House of those pesky economists: taking away their offices.
According to the age-old adage, the three most important attributes of property are location, location and location. This is doubly true for the White House, where proximity to the president says everything about your place in the political pecking order. Unfortunately, the CEA has recently been exiled to the Washington equivalent of Siberia.
This exile came in two stages. Shortly after September 11 2001 the economists were moved from their offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the West Wing to some interior offices with easy access to a ventilation shaft. Then, after the departure of Glenn Hubbard, President George W. Bush's initial choice to head the CEA, things really went downhill. The economists were banished to offices three blocks and a bevy of security checkpoints away from the Oval Office.
Why are we whining on behalf of the president's "nerdiest" employees, as Greg Mankiw, the new CEA chairman, recently called them? Perhaps because we both worked at CEA in the good old days, when economists hardly had to fight for access to the boss. But the real reason for telling the tale is that we believe the demotion will lead to a decline in the quality of economic advice given to the president.
Granted, Mr Bush has other sources of such advice. The Treasury secretary has assumed the role in some administrations. And the president can always turn to his National Economic Council. But these advisers have explicitly political portfolios and their views reflect the push and pull of pressure groups.
The CEA, by contrast, has generally stuck to the high ground. Its elite staff members, typically recruited from the rising stars of academia, have generally defined their jobs as bringing economic truth to the policy table. And while it would be naive to think of them as utterly objective, they have usually fought for policies that serve the common good rather than the special interests of the day, be they corporate America, the legal profession or lobbyists for pensioners.
Economists at the top of the profession have happily left their regular jobs to work at the CEA for substantially lower pay because they believe in the value of economic expertise in shaping public policy. Many are now household names, such as Larry Summers, the Harvard president, and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan.
But few good economists are likely to supply their services virtually pro bono if they have to toil away in offices far from the seat of power. Would you leave a cushy job at Princeton for that?
Critics might claim that proximity to the president does not necessarily equate to influence. After all, Robert Rubin never had difficulty influencing President Bill Clinton from down the street in the US Treasury building. And we assume that Donald Rumsfeld has the president's ear from across the river.
However, the Treasury and Defence Department have enormous influence by virtue of their control of huge programmes. The tiny CEA, by contrast, has no real mandated task other than to advise the president and senior White House staff. With the CEA on site, it is relatively easy for its economists to be invited to impromptu meetings and find out what is happening before the officials get locked into bad policy positions. Out of sight, the CEA is more likely to be out of mind.
How much will it really matter if this elite cadre of economists goes back to the ivory tower? Potentially, quite a lot. The difference between solid advice provided by the world's best economic thinkers and the gospel according to lobbyists could translate into tax policies and regulation that clip tens of billions from gross domestic product.
Fortunately, there is a simple solution: give the CEA back enough space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to house its small staff. Yes, space near the Oval Office is scarce, Mr President, but so is good, fair-minded economic advice. And you never know when you might need it."
Robert Hahn, executive director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Centre, and Scott Wallsten, a centre fellow, are resident scholars at the American Enterprise Institute
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| Rumsfeld's Memo Under Glass: Is It "The Harder We Work The Behinder We Get"??? |
| 10.29.03 (9:02 am) [edit] |
Rummy Rumsfeld's now infamous memo [ http://www.townhall.com/news/... ], resulted in the revelation to some and confirmation to others, that the war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire, is not the successful "Mission Accomplished", as portrayed by the dishonest Happy Talk crowd in the Bush Regime, who would prefer that we all join in their Kumbaya song-fest, and ignore the "unpleasant" realities of the heart-breaking fiasco in Iraq.
Rummy's observations are coming under increasing scrutiny by serious thinkers and legislators who wonder how the USA can extricate itself from the mess that the neo-con Bush Regime has stumbled and bungled us into:
"[i]The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions. Do we need a new organization? How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools? Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?
It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog. Does CIA need a new finding? Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course? What else should we be considering?[/i]" [Source: http://www.townhall.com/news/... ]
Bush is too weak to control the internal power-struggles and power-games, between his henchmen (Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, etc.) in the current regime, and although Rummy wanted to make his position clear, none of them are going to escape from the damning judgment of history ... This corrupt regime has massacred over 350 US servicemen & women, injured over 2070, as well as, perhaps 15,000 Iraqis, with no end in sight. [Sources: http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... , http://www.commondreams.org/h... ]
Moreover, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush cabal, arrogantly ignored warnings from Middle East & US Military Experts, prior to their illegal and immoral incursion into Iraq (based upon a plethora of lies and deceptions), and, have only started to re-fabricate new rationalizations-- and new "leaks" to "save their sorry skins", after their own strategy failed ... failed miserably. So, despite Rummy's desperate attempt to re-habilitate himself ... methinks he will (and should) suffer the same condemnation as the rest of the thugs in the Bush Regime.
[image]WinstonSmith_12757 82697.gif[/image]
[b]"We the People" should be asking our Congressmen and women ( http://www.congress.org ), whether or not, the Bush Regime, has led us down a horribly tragic and disastrous path, and to take steps necessary to put a stop to this insanity before more innocent lives are massacred.[/b]
Two excellent articles commenting upon Rummy's "long, hard slog" are worth reading:
"[b]Rummy's 'long, hard slog'[/b]" by Patrick J. Buchanan on http://www.wnd.com/news/artic... : -[i] Excerpt [/i]-
"Today," writes Rumsfeld, "we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists than ... the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
"Is our current situation such that the 'harder we work, the behinder we get'?"
These questions should have been asked before, not after, Rumsfeld prodded the president to send an army into Mesopotamia.
And the memo lacks reflection, imagination, vision.
Can the secretary not see that it is the U.S. presence itself in Iraq that recruits "terrorists"? Can he not see that it may not be our tactics that are faulty, but our policy? Did he not know that invading an Islamic country could create more Islamic enemies than we kill? Has the Pentagon never studied Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and her subsequent expulsion by the Hezbollah guerrillas who were tots and sub-teens when Sharon's Merkava tanks first came storming in?
Has the secretary not read history? Post-1945, every single Western imperial power has been expelled from the Arab world. Why did we think we could go back, set up an imperial outpost in an ancient Arab capital that was the seat of the caliphate for 500 years, and be welcomed by flower-tossing Baghdadis and Tikritis as liberators?
In 1945, no people were more admired in the Arab world than we Americans. Yet, no Western nation is now more reviled. A question for the secretary: Might it not be that we have behaved in the Middle East so as to be perceived by the Arabs as the British came to be perceived by our founding fathers, as blustering and arrogant imperialists?
Would one be surprised to discover in British archives a memo from Lord North to King George saying, in the vernacular of the time, "[i]Sire, the harder we work, the behinder we get[/i]"?" - [i]Excerpt [/i]-
"[b]Rumsfeld and the 'long, hard slog'[/b]" by David Isenberg on http://www.atimes.com/atimes/... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
"Considering that Rumsfeld has been virtually a one man band dragging a frequently kicking and screaming Pentagon towards the promised land, ie, the bright, shiny, "Revolution in Military Affairs" which advocates claim will enable the US, with a transformed, "net-centric" military, to defeat opponents with little fuss or muss. These are remarkable questions; both for their candor and the tacit acknowledgement that perhaps there are other, better ways to do things.
A case in point is Rumsfeld's almost plaintive question, "Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental? My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?"
As many commentators have noted, if former defense secretary Robert McNamara had asked similar questions back in the 1960s, the US war in Vietnam might have ended far differently. For example, by 1967 McNamara believed that the US would not win in Vietnam, yet he said nothing. The war lasted eight more years and cost tens of thousands more lives. It was not until 1995 that he admitted that his public certitude was a veneer, that architects of the war policy "were wrong, terribly wrong". " - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
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| Majority of US Independents & Iraqis Disapprove of Bush's Handling of Iraq Guerrilla Quagmire |
| 10.29.03 (6:45 am) [edit] |
The majority of independent voters disapprove of Bush's handling of his Iraq guerrilla quagmire ... and support continues to slip both here at home and in Iraq. It is clear that the poisonous mixture of corruption and incompetence displayed by the insane neo-con Bush Regime, is a lethal combination for anyone who happens to be caught in their web of massacres, vengeance and mayhem.
It is becoming obvious to Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Iraqis, alike (the rest of the world caught on a long time ago), that the Bush Regime's vested interest in "corporate-take-all" cronyism is not a recipe for success in Iraq. Indeed, the opposite is visibly true, as it was difficult for the USA to obtain aide from other nations who don't choose to wantonly exploit their citizens as Bush's cannon-fodder & ruthlessly rape their treasuries ... The majority of the world community lacks confidence in the Bushies' judgment (seen as poor, ignorant, cowboy style macho-man buffoonery), integrity (seen as dishonest & corrupt) and capability (seen as arrogant & incompetent).
[It turns out that the Madrid Donors' Conference only produced $13 Billion in loans (almost nothing in grants), and only on condition that the US not be allowed to touch the funds-- other nations demanded that funds be managed by the UN & World Bank ... to avoid theft by Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group & other Bush & Cheney obscene war-profiteers, thieves and robber-barons.]
"We the People" now face the challenging burden of being saddled with the exorbitant price-tag of re-building Iraq, while witnessing our own infrastructure crumble, and a lack of services needed by our own citizens-- which the Bushies claim (sic) to be providing to the Iraqi citizenry.
Meanwhile, Bush gave his corrupt corporate cronies & richest-of-the-rich obscene "welfare-for-the-rich" tax cuts (the rich are shielded from all sacrifice & burdens as they live imperial lives), while the lower-income, middle-class & fixed-income retirees have been swindled out of the lives of our boys & girls used as cannon-fodder, and monies needed to provide jobs, education, health care and other basic necessities of life. Apparently, in the [b]Doctrine According to Bush[/b]: [i]Only The Little People Pay Taxes & Bear Burdens![/i]
[b]Bush's miserable track-record [/b]may be summarized as follows:
1) Our unemployment rate stands at 9 million (Bush wiped out 3 million jobs),
2) Bush created the highest deficit in US history at $560 Billion for 2003 alone, and a staggering $1.9 Trillion for his corrupt time in office,
3) No health care coverage for over 45 million US citizens, and Bush hasn't taken any action to alleviate the misery of millions who can't afford care if taken ill,
4) Education is deteriorating because the Bushies intend to create a slave-class (by privatizing education so that the rich are well-served, and the rest of us are scammed & dumbed-down) to follow blindly what we're told by the neo-cons to think, say, and act,
5) Bush has the worst environmental record since prior to Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) who created national parks and believed in preservation of our lands,
6) Bush's Death Toll in Iraq stands at 349 American Soldiers killed and over 2014 injured & maimed ... and over 7768-9578 innocent Iraqi civilians massacred to-date and thousands injured & maimed,
7) Bush has squandered over $81.8 Billion thus far on his illegal & immoral bloody adventure in Iraq, and asked for an additional $87 Billion from Congress in the form of a "gift" (paid for by the lower-income, middle-class & fixed-income retirees-- the rich will effectively pay zip, zero, nada, since they've already been awarded immoral (and possibly illegal) "gifts" via Bush Debts for the rest of us to pay-off),
Bush has lied, deceived and falsified information, "smirked" to lead us into a war-- a crime under the US Constitution, and refuses to co-operate in investigations into his regime's many corruptions (etc. 9/11 - felony exposing a CIA agent - Iraq phony intelligence - kickbacks to corporate cronies paying bribes to Bushies),
... and many, many other Bush Crimes ... Read "[b]1000 Reasons Why Bush Must Go[/b]" on http://www.thousandreasons.or... .
[b]Bush is a national disgrace, and it is time for citizens to contract Congress and demand that Bush's insane tax cuts for the rich be repealed, before this nation is bankrupt and Bush transforms us into a 3rd world country.[/b] [[b]Contact Congress on [/b] http://www.congress.org ]
In "[b]Bush support slips amid terror attacks[/b]" on http://www.usatoday.com/news/... : - [i]Excerpt [/i]-
"Independent voters, who some say are key to President Bush's re-election hopes next year, are losing confidence in his leadership in Iraq as attacks there continue, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll has found. [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/... ]
In the poll, 39% of independents approve of the way the Bush administration has handled things in Iraq since Bush declared an end to major combat six months ago; 57% of independents disapprove. In the public overall, the poll found, 47% approve.
That is a substantial deterioration from late April, when it was assumed that U.S. troops had secured the country. At that time, when 80% of the public approved of the conduct of the war, 73% of independents approved." - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
In "[b]Still Waiting for the Euphoria - A Poll Among Iraqis Indicates the Bush Team Was Wrong in Foreseeing a Warm Welcome for the Occupiers [Zogby] [/b]" on http://www.commondreams.org/v... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
"What we found is that Iraqis, like people all around the world, hold nuanced views. They are glad to see Saddam Hussein gone — as shown by their desire to punish members of the old regime — but they don't really trust the Americans who drove him out.
They are intrigued by democracy but worry that it may not be compatible with their culture. They object to being occupied and are eager to take the reins of government themselves. But those in the minority are a little more nervous at the prospect of democracy than those in the majority.
Here are some specifics:
• Seven in 10 told us that Iraq would be a better country and that they themselves would be better off in five years.
• Only two in five (39%) said that "democracy can work in Iraq," while a majority (51%) agreed that "democracy is a Western way of doing things and will not work here." Shiites — who suffered the most under Hussein and who make up the majority in Iraq — are more evenly split about democracy (45%-46%), while Sunnis are far less favorable.
• Asked about the kind of government that would be best for Iraq, half of all respondents (49%) said they preferred "a democracy with elected representatives guided by Sharia (Islamic law)." Twenty-four percent prefer an "Islamic state ruled by clerics based on Sharia." Only one in five (21%) preferred a "secular democracy with elected representatives."
• Three out of five made it clear that they wanted Iraqis left alone to work out a government for themselves, while only one in three want the United States and Britain to "help make sure a fair government is set up." Two out of three Iraqis — and seven in 10 Sunnis — want U.S. and British forces out of Iraq in a year.
• Three out of four Iraqis want the leaders of Hussein's Baath Party punished. Osama bin Laden is viewed favorably by 36% and unfavorably by 47%.
• Half of all Iraqis interviewed say the United States will hurt Iraq over the next five years. Only 36% say the U.S. will help.
One thing is clear: The predicted euphoria of Iraqis has not materialized.
Months after the U.S. military victory, American policymakers and troops are left not only with the daunting task of nation-building and restoring the country's devastated infrastructure but also with having to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis who are not keen on the U.S. occupation.
Iraqis, like their fellow Arabs, feel victimized by a history of betrayal and humiliation at the hands of Western powers. It appears that U.S. policymakers overlooked or misread this sentiment." - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
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| Ne'er-Do-Well Bush Is In Deep, Deep Waters ... Way, Way In Over His "Dumb-Skull" Head! |
| 10.29.03 (6:32 am) [edit] |
Ne'er-Do-Well Bush is in deep, deep waters ... way, way in over his "dumb-skull" head ... and continues to spew his imbecilic propaganda screed, that simply doesn't make sense, when assessed against the back-drop of the actual bloody guerrilla quagmire in Iraq.
Apparently, Karl (Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles) Rove, along with Dick (Anal-Retentive) Cheney and Condi (Mother Hen) Rice, have as yet to come-up with a new, neo-orwellian script that Bush will smirk, fumble & bumble through ... The existing idiocy of "Kumbaya" Happy Talk is contradicted on a daily basis, by the tragic and bloody events, on the ground, as well as, Dummy Rummy's observations of a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan. [ http://www.townhall.com/news/... ]
Bush seems totally oblivious to the "unpleasant realities" in Iraq (and here at home) ... and indeed, prides himself on knowing nothing, reading nothing, and, mis-pronouncing & mis-speaking-- Bush is a national embarrassment! The three stooges, Rove, Cheney & Rice, try to protect and safeguard and shield him (like the Kid in the Plastic Bubble) from press conferences and any occasion where he is required to speak extemporaneously, because Bush is "unable to think-on-his-feet".
In a recent visit to Australia, Bush snubbed protocol for state visits, and refused to participate in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Howard ... since Bush is shabby, squalid & stupid next to any other World Leader, by comparison. Moreover, Prime Minister Howard had to apologize for Bush's outrageously insensitive ceremonial photo-op, whereupon laying a wreath on a soldier's grave, the Bushies didn't even bother to invite the grieving spouse -- It was a rush job for the cynical Bush gang to take a photo! Not a surprising mean-spirited blunder, from the callous, petty, party-boy Bush, who is the only president never to have attended a single funeral of a service man or woman killed in action, in his insane wars (to bolster his popularity ratings, enrich his corporate-take-all cronies & pander to the neo-con, neo-fascist PNAC groupies) ... Bush is a pathetic miserable excuse for a "human being" and a loser & bum for president.
Bush is squandering the lives and the treasure of our people ... " Every penny of the $87 billion requested by the president -- and the $79 billion already spent for Iraq -- is borrowed money.
The president has called on the country to pay any price to defeat the scourge of terrorism, but he apparently means everyone except the wealthiest Americans. While the Bush administration has asked our troops and their families to make the ultimate sacrifice, the president has given the richest 1 percent of Americans a huge tax cut. It is wrong to ask the younger generation, including our troops and their children, to bear the burden alone."
In "Escalation of attacks" on http://www.alternet.org/waron... :
""Car bombers struck the international Red Cross headquarters and three police stations across Baghdad on Monday, killing about 40 people and wounding more than 200 in a spree of destruction that terrorized the Iraqi capital on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan," reports AP. In the last 24 hours, 4 U.S. soldiers have been killed.
President Bush said U.S. progress in Iraq is making insurgents more "desperate" and fueling attacks, but there was no indication if he had any idea what he was talking about.
More from AP: "The string of bombings, all within less than an hour, was the bloodiest attack yet in the city of 5 million by insurgents targeting the American-led occupation and those perceived as working with it. It also appeared like a dramatic escalation in tactics -- in past weeks, bombers have carried out heavy suicide bombings, but in single strikes.
"One American soldier was killed in one of the police station attacks and six U.S. troops were wounded, the military said. Iraqi police Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister, put the Iraqi death toll at 34, including 26 civilians and eight police but not the suicide bombers.
"The bombings came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three U.S. soldiers overnight, and a day after insurgents hit a hotel full of U.S. occupation officials with a barrage of rockets, killing a U.S. colonel and wounding 18 other people. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was in the hotel, but was unhurt.
"'We feel helpless when see this,' a distraught Iraqi doctor said at the devastated Red Cross offices. The Red Cross said 12 Iraqis were killed at its office, including two of its own employees.""
[b]"We the People" must express our outrage to Congress [ http://www.congress.org ], and demand an investigation into the lies, deceptions and falsehoods to perpetuate the Crimes Against Humanity, committed by the corrupt Bush Regime. Moreover, let us work together to declare our independence from the Mad King George in 2004![/b]
Sources:
"Dubya Down Under" on http://www.motherjones.com/ne...
"PM apologises to widow over tribute" on http://www.theage.com.au/arti...
"Paying the Postwar Tab With Plastic" on http://www.washingtonpost.com...
"Fatal Vision" on http://www.democraticundergro...
"White House bans news coverage of coffins returning from Iraq" on http://www.wsws.org/articles/...
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| Republican To Subpoena Bush Regime For 9/11 "Cover-Up" Documents! |
| 10.27.03 (6:15 am) [edit] |
The Bush Regime has so many cover-ups to keep-track-of ... It boggles the mind! (One could be forgiven for wondering how many shares Bush and Cheney have purchased in Shredding Machine stocks, since they highjacked the White House) ... How many interns has Karl Rove hired (at taxpayer expense) to destroy and/or hide the "chain-of-evidence" related to:
* Their coercion of the CIA to fabricate phony intelligence, upon which the Bushies misled us into their ghoulish, bloody war-turned-guerilla-quagm ire [another US soldier killed today ... Bush's Death Toll now stands at 345 Americans & 1995 Americans reported maimed & injured, and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians massacred & wounded http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ] ... and now they are making the CIA the whipping boy & scapegoat for their own sordid crimes ... Bush's credo: "The Buck Stops Over There - Way, Way Over There" ...
* Their mean, petty & vengeful felony exposing an under-cover CIA operative, the wife (Valerie Plame) of ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson who disclosed the Bush's bogus lie regarding phony sales of uranium yellow-cake by Niger to Iraq ... the Bushies have placed the USA in greater danger of terrorist attacks & put the lives of CIA operatives & overseas sources in jeopardy ... loyalty to America is no longer permitted ... only loyalty to the corrupt, neo-imperial Emperor Bush is allowed ...
* Their secret energy meetings held by the anal-retentive Veep Cheney in the summer of 2000 (before 9/11), [with criminal Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay], promising their corporate robber-barons a de-regulated rape of American consumers (and, an Iraqi war to control Middle East Oil?) ... the Bush's "corporate-take-all" swindle takes a heavy toll on the lives and treasure of innocent people ...
And today, "We the People" learn that a Republican disgusted with the Bushies' plethora of lies, deceptions and falsehoods ... will subpoena the Bush Regime to hand-over documents that provide insight into What The Bushies Knew & When They Knew It, Prior to the 9/11 Attacks Upon America. It is already acknowledged that incompetent Condi Rice (who loves watching football games with Bushy-boy) had memos on her desk (that apparently she didn't have the time to read) warning of imminent attacks by Al Qaida (not Iraq) prior to 9/11, including highjackings ... But then Condi prefers to "play" with Bushy-boy ...
[Source: "9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files" on http://www.theledger.com/apps... ]
In "Administration Faces Subpoenas From 9/11 Panel" on http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm... :
"The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks said that the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he was prepared to subpoena the documents if they were not turned over within weeks.
The chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, also said in an interview that he believed the bipartisan 10-member commission would soon be forced to issue subpoenas to other executive branch agencies because of continuing delays by the Bush administration in providing documents and other evidence needed by the panel.
"Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached President Bush (news - web sites)'s desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990.
"That means that we will use every tool at our command to get hold of every document."
He said that while he had not directly threatened a subpoena in his recent conversations with the White House legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, "it's always on the table, because they know that Congress in their wisdom gave us the power to subpoena, to use it if necessary."
A White House spokeswoman, Ashley Snee, said that the White House believed it was being fully cooperative with the commission, which is known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. She said that it hoped to meet all of the panel's demands for documents.
Mr. Kean suggested that he understood the concerns of the White House about the sensitivity of the documents at issue, saying that they were the sort of Oval Office intelligence reports that were so sensitive and highly classified that they had never been provided to Congress or to other outside investigators.
"These are documents that only two or three people would normally have access to," he said. "To make those available to an outside group is something that no other president has done in our history.
"But I've argued very strongly with the White House that we are unique, that we are not the Congress, that these arguments about presidential privilege do not apply in the case of our commission," he said.
"Anything that has to do with 9/11, we have to see it — anything. There are a lot of theories about 9/11, and as long as there is any document out there that bears on any of those theories, we're going to leave questions unanswered. And we cannot leave questions unanswered."
While Mr. Kean said he was barred by an agreement with the White House from describing the Oval Office documents at issue in any detail — he said the White House was "quite nervous" about any public hint at their contents — other commission officials said they included the detailed daily intelligence reports that were provided to Mr. Bush in the weeks leading up to Sept. 11. The reports are known within the White House as the Presidential Daily Briefing.
Despite the threat of a subpoena and his warning of the possibility of a court battle over the documents, Mr. Kean said he maintained a good relationship with Mr. Gonzales and others at the White House, and that he was still hopeful that the White House would produce all of the classified material demanded by the panel without a subpoena.
"We've been very successful in getting a lot of materials that I don't think anybody has ever seen before," he said of his earlier dealings with the White House. "Within the legal constraints that they seem to have, they've been fully cooperative. But we're not going to be satisfied until we get every document that we need."
Last year, the White House confirmed news reports that President Bush received a written intelligence report in August 2001, the month before the attacks, that Al Qaeda might try to hijack American passenger planes.
Ms. Snee, the White House spokeswoman, said, "The president has stated a clear policy of support for the commission's work and, at the direction of the president, the executive branch has dedicated tremendous resources to support the commission, including providing over two million pages of documents."
After months of stating that it believed subpoenas to the executive branch would not be necessary, the commission voted unanimously this month to issue its first subpoena to the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) after determining that the F.A.A. had withheld dozens of boxes of documents involving the Sept. 11 attacks.
The subpoena appeared to be a turning point for the commission and for Mr. Kean, a moderate Republican known for his independence. In a statement on Oct. 15, the commission said it was re-examining "its general policy of relying on document requests rather than subpoenas" as a result of the issues with the F.A.A.
The commission, which has a membership that is equally divided among Republicans and Democrats, was created by Congress last year over the initial opposition of the White House. The law creating the panel requires that it complete its work by next May, a deadline that commission members say may be impossible to meet because of the Bush administration's delays in turning over many documents.
Mr. Kean's comments on Friday came as another member of the commission, Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, became the first panel member to say publicly that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from the panel for purely political reasons.
"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting."
He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."
Interviews with several other members of the commission show that Mr. Kean's concerns are widely shared on the panel, and that the concern is bipartisan.
Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the panel who served in the Senate from Washington from 1982 to 2000, said that he was startled by the "indifference" of some executive branch agencies in making material available to the commission. "This lack of cooperation, if it extends anywhere else, is going to make it very difficult" for the commission to finish its work by next May, he said.
Timothy J. Roemer, president of the Center for National Policy in Washington and a former Democratic member of the House from Indiana, said that "our May deadline may, in fact, be jeopardized — many of us are frustrated that we're still dealing with questions about document access when we should be sinking our teeth into hearings and to making recommendations for the future."
Congress would need to approve an extension if the panel requested one, a potentially difficult proposition given the reluctance of the White House and many senior Republican lawmakers to see the commission created in the first place.
"If the families of the victims weighed in — and heavily, as they did before — then we'd have a chance of succeeding," said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was an important sponsor of the legislation creating the commission. He said that, given the "obfuscation" of the administration in meeting document requests, he was ready to pursue an extension "if the commission feels it can't get its work done."
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| Arrogant Bush Regime Imposes Its Will On Unwilling Iraqi People |
| 10.27.03 (6:05 am) [edit] |
The arrogant Bush Regime imposes its will on unwilling Iraqi people, the majority of whom no longer want us to occupy their country. The Bushies appointed their own US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) (who apparently have "lost" $4 Billion ... it's not surprising that Donor Nations insist that their contributions be managed by an independent U.N. & World Bank, and not be handed-over to Bremer to go "missing"), and do not want Iraq to hold elections, as the Iraqi people might not "select" corrupt puppets amenable to the Bushies' medieval notion of "corporate-take-all" government. [ http://www.tblog.com/template... , http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
In a new poll, most Iraqis express their dissatisfaction with the U.S. Coalition forces and this catastrophic occupation. The Iraqi people no longer trust the U.S.A. to provide security or re-build their country. Nor, do they trust Bush's motives. Neither do many conscientious and well-informed Americans.
How would Americans feel if France (hypothetically) invaded the U.S.A. and deposed the Bush Regime, observing that the "selected" tyrant, imposed a neo-fascist Patriot Act designed to unravel our rights under the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights; launched immoral & illegal "pre-emptive" aggressions (aka neo-hitlerian); and, re-distributed our nation's treasure to the richest-of-the-rich, corporate robber-barons & the powerful oligarchy? What if France then sent in troops, set-up their own French-style CPA (e.g. with self-appointed goons like embezzler Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay -- e.g. our thief Ahmad Chalabi), and man-handled our citizens, massacring thousands in the process? [b]Frankly, no citizens like foreign forces to occupy their country.[/b] The Bushies, as occupiers, are principally interested in ensuring that their corporate cronies rape and loot, America and Iraq, for all we're collectively worth.
The people of Iraq have expressed : "Asked to rate various countries as their favorite political model for a future Iraq, 13.7 percent chose Iran while only 9.6 percent chose the United States." -- The Iraqi people have the right to determine their own future, and not have it imposed by the neo-imperial Bush "corporate-take-all" neo-con Global Empire, according to the insane Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
"We the People" have an obligation to re-assess the Bush Regime's justification for occupying Iraq-- as it is clear their motives had absolutely nothing to do with the so-called "war on terror", phony WMDs, nor, the liberation of the Iraqi people. Please contact your Congressmen and women on http://www.congress.org , and demand public hearings be conducted in order to ascertain the best way forward-- in order to free our US Soldiers being slaughtered almost every day, and to free the Iraqi people from further massacres, looting and economic rape by the corrupt Bush Regime.
In "Poll Shows Most Iraqis Unhappy with Presence of Coalition Forces" by Maureen Fan, on http://www.commondreams.org/h... :
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Most Iraqis feel unsafe in their neighborhoods, think the local Iraqi police can protect them better than coalition forces and increasingly view Americans as occupiers rather than liberators, according to a poll released Thursday by the independent, privately funded Iraq Center for Research & Strategic Studies in Baghdad.
Coalition forces have squandered the goodwill that resulted from removing Saddam Hussein from power, with nearly 43 percent of Iraqis viewing them as liberators six months ago but only 14.8 percent feeling the same way now.
More than 60 percent of Iraqis have little or no confidence that coalition forces will improve safety, but at least half (50.1 percent) support the coalition presence in Iraq, compared with 33.1 percent who would like to kick them out.
The sample of 1,620 people in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Ramadi, Fallujah, Erbil and Suliamaniyah, interviewed between Sept. 28 and Oct. 10, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 points. The results are the third installment in a monthly polling operation run by Sadoun al Dulame, director of the research center.
The survey comes amid increasing attacks on U.S. soldiers in the past couple of weeks. While U.S. officials insist postwar Iraq is improving, there have been more attacks from roadside and homemade bombs as well as an increase in suicide bombings.
The results reflect the challenges of handing over authority to the Iraqis, which Americans say they want to do as quickly as possible, but at a pace most Iraqis think isn't fast enough.
"We expect after three or six months if the same problems continue to exist in Iraq, the coalition forces are going to suffer a lot," said Dulame.
Most Iraqi respondents said there were no current political leaders they could trust. They rated members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, most of whom fared poorly.
Asked which political system they favored, 33.7 percent of the randomly picked respondents said an Islamic government would be best, compared with 30.5 percent who favored democracy and 24 percent who favored a combination of democracy and an Islamic system.
Asked to rate various countries as their favorite political model for a future Iraq, 13.7 percent chose Iran while only 9.6 percent chose the United States.
Dulame said the results didn't mean a majority of Iraqis want hardline clerics to rule them. In fact, religious leaders ranked behind lawyers, writers and other professionals as the best people to lead postwar Iraq.
"Most of the respondents don't know enough to know the nature of such systems so they chose that regime or this regime because they feel or think it is better than the other," said Nabeel al Ani, a professor at Baghdad University's International Studies Center.
"Some of the people have no idea, for example, about the political system in France or Britain or even the United States, but they have at least some knowledge about the political system in Iran, so most of them choose it." "
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| Donors Pledge $15-$20 Billion in Aide for Iraq ... Under Control of U.N. & World Bank |
| 10.24.03 (9:59 am) [edit] |
The Donors Conference has resulted in nations pledging between $15-$20 Billion in aide (loans & grants), in addition to the $20 Billion stolen from U.S. taxpayers for the re-building of Iraq. Initially, the world community spurned the Bush Regime's requests-- but significant pressure was brought to bear upon nations to give money (What will this cost the American taxpayer?).
The donor nations' contributions will be managed through a trust fund, independent of the U.S.A., and under the control of the United Nations and the World Bank. Hopefully, this will ensure that the resources are used to aide the horrific humanitarian crisis in Iraq, resulting from the Bush Regime's illegal and immoral incursion and the disastrous aftermath, and not squandered on "corporate-take-all" robber-barons, as is the case with our U.S.A. taxpayer's funding.
The total contributions of $40 Billion by the USA and other nations still fall short of the $56 Billion required according to the World Bank, for reconstruction of Iraq. Perhaps, if the Bushies and their corporate war-profiteers would charge normal prices, instead of price-gouge to swill on riches-- this might help-out the Iraqi people.
"We the People" look forward to reviewing the spread of donations by country; the consequential aide by the U.S.A. to each country in return for their assistance; and, how much of the monies are loans versus grants. Let us hope that America's low-income, middle-class and fixed-income retirees, who have been swindled and looted by Bush to enrich the fabulously wealthy, will not also be making massive bribes to other nations in return for some sort of propaganda victory for Bush. Hasn't Bush already squandered us into enough record-level deficits & debts that will bankrupt our future?
* * * * * *
Sources:
(1) "U.S. pressure pumps up Iraq aid" on http://www.globeandmail.com/s...
(2) "Donors [including USA $20.3B] promise $40 bln for Iraq" on http://www.reuters.co.uk/news...§ion=news
(3) "Iraq aid pledges 'to reach $18bn'" on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/eu...
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| World Spurns Emperor Bush's Demands for Iraq ... U.S.A. CPA is "Missing" $4 Billion!!! |
| 10.24.03 (8:36 am) [edit] |
The world community has spurned Emperor Bush's demand for billions to clean-up his war-turned-bloody-guerill a-quagmire nightmare in Iraq ... Is it any wonder? ... Given the following:
1) Bush's lack of diplomatic skills, temper tantrums, and brutish behaviour, in treating all who disagree with him in a bully-boy manner, is disgusting to all civilized peoples abroad (and also at home, where even Republican Senators are appalled as his neo-imperial "table-banging" and his squalid refusal to answer questions). [ http://www.washingtonpost.com... ]
2) Bush's corruption and renown reputation for swindling, looting and bilking his own (American) people for the benefit of "corporate-take-all" war-profiteers, crooks & rapists ... including Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Shell Oil, DynaCorp, Embezzler Ahmad Chalabi, Crony Joe Allbaugh, etc. etc. etc. ... campaign contributors thrilled to have a puppet-president willing to let them rape and pillage America and Iraq. [ http://www.alternet.org/story... , http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... , http://www.newbridgestrategie... ]
3) US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) suddenly "loses" $4 Billion (taxpayer) dollars intended for aide to Iraq in the aftermath of Bush's fiasco (Ha ha ha ... Aide? It's really intended to be pocketed by the "price-gouging" Bush cronies) ... Billions go missing!?@#$%?! [ http://www.unobserver.com/lay... ]
It is absolutely criminal that no-bid, no-cap, no-audit contracts were immorally (and possibly illegally) awarded to profit the Bushies, Cheneys and their cronies. Since the Bushies obviously haven't installed the audit controls and independent auditors to oversee the expenditure of American taxpayer dollars, then those in charge (i.e. Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc.) should be fired for incompetence and investigated for corruption (potential embezzlement).
"We the People" have been scammed and raped by a corrupt cabal who have given massive "welfare for the rich" gifts, tax cuts, tax loopholes and boondoggles-- to the rich, on a scale un-seen since prior to the Great Depression, when Herbert Hoover allowed the "capitalists" to ruthlessly rape America. Bush has run-up a record-level deficit in 2003 of $560 Billion resulting in $1.9 Trillion (2000-2004 Bush's term in office), in his despicable re-distribution of wealth to the powerful oligarchy & richest-of-the-rich. Who do you think will be forced to pay-off this debt (with interest)? [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
Today, another US Soldier was murdered in this "Mission Accomplished!" squalid fiasco, making Bush's Death Toll 341 American soldiers, 53 British soldiers, 17 journalists and 7757-9565 innocent Iraqi civilians, and over 1938 US soldiers injured, maimed and wounded. Whose kids do you think are asked to risk their lives and limbs? [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ]
In "Iraq: the missing billions" on http://electroniciraq.net/new... : - [i]Excerpt -[/i]
"A staggering US$4 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds earmarked for the reconstruction of the country has disappeared into opaque bank accounts administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the US-controlled body that rules Iraq. By the end of the year, if nothing changes in the way this cash is accounted for, that figure will double.
The fact that no independent body knows where this cash has gone is in direct violation of the UN resolution that released much of it for the rebuilding of Iraq's shattered infrastructure. The agency that is supposed to oversee these funds has not even been set up yet.
Christian Aid is calling for the full and immediate disclosure of how this money has been spent, and for urgent moves to establish a proper means of regulation. For the future, the British government should seek to ensure that a proportion of all Iraqi oil revenues are earmarked for the country's development - as a binding condition on future oil exploitation.
"This is Iraqi money. The people of Iraq must know where it is going and it should be used for the benefit of all the country's people - particularly the poorest,' said Roger Riddell, Christian Aid's international director.
The current situation goes to the heart of claims and counter-claims about how Iraqi oil revenue should be used. It can only fuel the serious suspicion in Iraq that a disproportionate amount of cash is being creamed off for the benefit of US companies - money that should be spent on alleviating the chronic unemployment and other serious problems faced by Iraqis, including the poorest and most vulnerable." - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
Yeah, right!!! ... Do you really believe that the Bushies give a damn about the poor and vulnerable of the world? (Ha ha ha) ... The corrupt Bushies only care about themselves and their greedy, rich cronies. Would you want your hard-earned money given with your best intentions to benefit those in dire circumstances, to suddenly "disappear"?
In "World spurns US appeal for $30bn to rebuild Iraq" by Stephen Castle in Brussels on http://news.independent.co.uk... : - [i]Excerpt [/i]-
"At the start of the fund-raising conference in Madrid its Spanish hosts lowered expectations by setting a $6bn (£3.5bn) target for the gathering, which is being held against the backdrop of divisions over the US-led occupation. Pledges are certain to fall short of the $30bn sought by Washington, with Europe expected to stump up about €700m (£487m) from EU and national coffers for 2004.
Moufawak al-Rabii, a member of Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council, stepped up pressure for a big cash injection by describing the deprivation in Iraq to delegates from 77 nations. Mr Rabii said more than two-thirds of Iraqis depend on food rations, less than half have access to clean drinking water and one in five children under the age of five is malnourished. Health conditions are deteriorating with maternal mortality quadrupling and diseases such as malaria returning to Iraq.
"We are thinking now of the basic needs, such as providing food and health services and fighting unemployment, which creates the environment for terrorism and which feeds terrorism," he said.
Iraq's Minister of Immigration and Refugees, Mohammed Jassem Khudair, said he needed to accommodate an estimated 4 million Iraqis displaced or driven out of the country.
President George Bush plans to set aside $20bn for Iraqi reconstruction over 18 months, although the US Senate voted to convert $10bn of the package into loans to be repaid with Iraq's oil revenues. Yesterday Washington made it clear that its aid will be paid bilaterally and not through an international trust fund administered by the UN, the World Bank and a committee of Iraqis.
With agreement having been reached on a new UN resolution, the climate of the conference is better than many expected. Japan has pledged $1.5bn for 2004, South Korea has agreed to pay $200m, and Canada has offered $150m. The World Bank has said it will lend Iraq $3bn to $5bn over the next five years. Spain has pledged a total of €300m from 2003-07, although that sum includes loans, and Britain has promised £260m in 2005-05.
Nevertheless several countries have noted a World Bank and UN estimate that Iraq could absorb no more than $5.2bn dollars in aid in 2004. And, despite agreement on the new UN resolution, countries such as France, Germany and Russia, which opposed the war, have already said they will not provide any more money. Worries about security in Iraq and the capacity of the economy to absorb large-scale aid have prompted some potential donors to delay commitments." - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
[b]Now is the time for all good men to "connect the dots" ... [/b]
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| The Wall-Street Robber-Barons & Crooks Raping America are Bush's Biggest Fans! |
| 10.24.03 (6:51 am) [edit] |
The Wall-Street robber-barons, war-profiteers and corporate rapists, who have swindled billions from pension funds, stock-market investors, and, the poor, dumb American public with fantasies of "get-rich-quick-schemes", are Bush's biggest fans!
This can only come as a surprise to hermits living in caves with no internet connections to the outside world. Bush's buddy, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay, who stole hundreds of millions from pension funds and employees-- has been let-off the "hook" by John (Robespierre) Ashcroft-- Kenny-boy is Bush's good buddy, and enjoys his Emperor-and-Liege's patronage, since he contributed tens of thousands to install the mediocre crook Bush as Governor of Texas and then President-- and Kenny-boy has been repaid by Emperor Bush's largesse, many times over.
Meanwhile, the richest-of-the-rich and corporations are awarded massive tax cuts, tax loopholes & boondoggles-- that are draining the life-blood from the economy and placing a back-breaking burden on the lower-income, middle-class and fixed-income retirees. The American worker is turned into a slave struggling to make ends meet and pay-off Bush's record-level debts, while the Bushies and their cronies are living an obese neo-imperial life-style that the corrupt Emperors of Rome only dreamt of, in their wildest dreams.
Nobel prize winning economists and economic experts all agree that Bush's "welfare for the rich" policies are a disaster for America-- they are not stimulating the economy-- they are not creating more jobs-- they are not improving the lives of our citizenry ... instead they resemble the very "Saddam-Hussein-built-pal aces-for-himself,-and-lea ves-his-people-bereft-of- services" that the hypocritical swindler Bush & Cheney Inc. condemns, as the Bushies smirk at us. Indeed, Saddam Hussein was MORE generous to his people than Bush & Cheney are: the Iraqi people enjoyed National Health Care and State Funded Education through university (which is why they aren't easily bamboozled by the corrupt Bushies).
Please read Robert Freeman's excellent article entitled: "Bush's Tax Cuts - A Form of National Insanity" on http://www.counterpunch.org/f... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
"Between 1992 and 2000, the U.S. economy produced the longest sustained economic expansion in U.S. history. It created more than 18 million new jobs, the highest level of job creation ever recorded. Inflation fell to 2.5% per year compared to the 4.7% average over the prior 12 years.
Bush inherited from Clinton a fiscal surplus of $127 billion. In his first year he turned that into a deficit of $158 billion. In this, his second year, he will run a deficit of over $400 billion-a swing to the worse of over $600 billion in only two years.
Now Bush has sold us on still another megadose of this same Supply Side voodoo. Two thirds of his new $350 billion tax cut will go to the top 10% of income earners. Bush's Congressional ally, Tom DeLay, promises more such cuts for every year Bush is in office.
The long term effects of these policies are profoundly damaging. When Bush took office, the government's ten year surplus was forecast to total $5.6 trillion. This was critical to building fiscal soundness as the Baby Boomers begin to retire.
Now, the ten year forecast projects a cumulative deficit of $1.1 trillion, a net loss of $6.7 trillion in only two years. With the exception of World Wars, this is the greatest, most rapid destruction of public wealth in the history of the world." - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
Bush is the only president to cut taxes during "war-time" ... and thus has thrust the USA into dire economic peril. With over 3 million jobs destroyed by Bush-y-nomics, and a total of 9 million unemployed-- and a skyrocketing national debt of over $6.8 Trillion, of which Bush has contributed over $1.9 Trillion-- we face a recession in which the filthy rich, given lavish gifts are able to afford skyrocketing costs & debts without flinching-- but a family of four making $30,000/annum will find $5/gallon gas (for example) a miserable burden to bear.
The corrupt Bush & Cheney Inc. are the darlings of Wall Street, because not only do they refuse to prosecute corporate rapists (with a few token exceptions cynically designed to squash critics)-- they also refuse to make the systemic changes required to regulate corporate accounting and auditing, in order that these goons can't "cook-the-books" ... Nor will the corrupt Bushies insist on limits to the legalized embezzlement of corporate assets by executives who "take-the-money-and-run": One reason why Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin took all his money out of the stock-market-- only the rich (who can afford to lose money), crooks and fools are investing money in today's stock-market swindle.
In "Why Bush's Tax Cut Won't Help the Economy" on http://www.alternet.org/story... , David Martin, Chris Hartman and Ben Robinson, report on the inequity and foolhardiness of the Bushies' corrupt tax cuts:
The top 1% make-out like bandits ... and rape our economy of over $726 billion over 10 years (Bush refuses to repeal any of his "welfare for the rich" gifts to pay for his debacle in Iraq-- $166 billion that American tax-payers are saddled with ... and no end in sight)!. In fact, Warren Buffet estimates that he'll enjoy an additional $300 million per year, from the dividend tax cuts alone-- that he doesn't need ... He was opposed to Bush's obscene swindle.
- [i]Excerpt[/i] - "Two-thirds of the dividend tax cut benefit will go to the top 5 percent. More than $4 out of $10 will go to the top 1 percent, people making more than $330,000 a year.
One quarter of the benefit will go to the top 0.2 percent, people making more than $1 million a year. That's as much as the bottom 90 percent combined will get from the dividend tax cut.
Tax filers making more than $1 million a year will get $27,100 a year. Tax filers making between $30,000 and $40,000 will get only $42 a year." - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
[b]Item 10-year cost in $billions: [/b]
* Eliminate tax on dividends $396
* Increase child tax credit from $600 to $1,000 $90
* Accelerate income tax cuts for the top 4 brackets $74
* End "marriage penalty" $55
* Expand 10% Tax Bracket $45
* Increase alternative minimum tax threshold $37
* Increase tax breaks for small business equipment purchases $29
What does this mean??? That the rich get richer ... and the rest of us are denied services and programs desperately needed to provide a decent life and conditions for the American people!!!
"We the People" must awaken from our collective fantasy that all taxation is "bad" ... taxation permits us collectively the ability for all citizens (not only the rich) to live with clean water, sewer systems, police, firemen, education, parks, etc.-- and should provide health care for all. The insane and stupid notion that only those with lots & lots of money should be permitted the basics needed to live decently, is obscene, uncivilized, and down-right barbaric. Those greedy and self-interested troglodytes who spout such medieval notions, should go back and read a little history of the world.
So, the Wall Street thugs are funding the corrupt Bushies ... no wonder, they were also behind the crook Herbert Hoover, who sold this nation to the "corporate-take-all" rapists. In "Once at Arm's Length, Wall Street Is Bush's Biggest Donor" by Glen Justice on http://www.commondreams.org/h... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
" day after a chilly reception at the United Nations last month, President Bush received a warmer greeting from a New York group that he had been keeping at arm's length: about a dozen leaders of the biggest firms on Wall Street.
That private meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria, to discuss the economy, is just one illustration of how the president and Wall Street seem to have grown on each other.
Mr. O'Neal of Merrill Lynch sent a series of letters to the homes of a few hundred of the firm's most senior executives in June, asking them to contribute to a fund-raising dinner in support of Mr. Bush. James E. Cayne, chairman and chief executive of Bear Stearns & Company, also sent a letter asking his executives to donate to the campaign.
Joseph J. Grano, who runs the brokerage operations of UBS, the Swiss bank, has been an avid backer of President Bush and the Republican convention. Mr. Grano promised to raise at least $200,000 for the re-election campaign and to gather money for the convention, said executives at the firm, formerly known as UBS PaineWebber.
Mr. Paulson, of Goldman Sachs, was recruited by Gov. George E. Pataki of New York to collect cash from the Wall Street firms to finance the convention, an official at the firm said, and has gathered $5 million so far.
Part of Mr. Bush's fund-raising success on Wall Street can be attributed to the new campaign-finance law that doubled, to $2,000, the amount an individual can give to a primary campaign. Several industries have already matched what they gave in 2000.
Mr. Bush plans to raise a record-setting $170 million for next year's race. His largest fund-raisers are grouped as Pioneers, who raise at least $100,000, and Rangers, who raise at least $200,000. An increasing number in both programs are from the financial sector." - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
So it costs close to $170 million to buy the White House ... hmmm ... a good return-on-investment, for the corporate rapists and crooks who are awarded billions in return for campaign bribes (ooopppsss ... contributions?), by swindling the American people.
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| Who is Really Running American Foreign Policy? Ariel Sharon or Veep Cheney ... It Ain't Bush! |
| 10.24.03 (6:37 am) [edit] |
Who is really running our disastrous American Foreign Policy?
Is it the Likud extremist and right-winger, Ariel Sharon?
Is it the neo-con, neo-fascist, Veep Cheney?
An analysis of the insane events that have created mayhem and chaos around the world, resulting in the massacre of tens of thousands (Iraq and Afghanistan), and the subsequent increase in terrorism (not the diminution of terror as proclaimed by the liars in the Bush Regime)-- it must be either Sharon and/or Cheney ... It sure as hell "ain't" Bush ... a party-boy that they've got running-around the world "hat-in-hand" to raise money (apparently fund-raising is something Bush likes to do, and claims he's good at ... unlike leading this nation: something he's appallingly bad at ...).
Meanwhile, Rummy Rumsfeld's grim view on the so-called "War on Terror" (i.e. divert American taxpayer monies to the fat-cats & top-dogs ... Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, etc.), squares with the disastrous and bloody fiasco in Iraq. In Iraq, the war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire is mired in unabated attacks [Source: "U.S. Reports Increase in Daily Attacks in Iraq" on http://www.nytimes.com/aponli... , US Commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez reports: "We've had an average number of engagements from 20 to 25 (daily). We've seen a spike up to 35 in last three weeks.''] Bush's Death Toll stands at 390 US (337) & British (53) soldiers, 17 journalists & 7757-9565 innocent Iraqi civilians ... as well as 1934 soldiers reported wounded, injured, or maimed along with thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.
While the Bushies give Condi Rice the refurbished job of fabricating orwellian propaganda, in liaison with Veep Cheney & Karl Rove, to sell us all on the phony notion that all is rosy in Iraq and that the Iraqis are tickled-pink with the US Occupation, it appears that Rummy Rumsfeld doesn't share in their "Kumbaya" Song Fest & Happy Talk:
In "Defense Memo: A Grim Outlook" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... , Dave Moniz and Tom Squitieri, provide an assessment of the inconsistencies between the Bushies' neo-fascist propaganda and the horrific nightmarish reality on-the-ground ... (Also, read the copy of Rummy's infantile memorandum, akin to something written by a freshman taking Business Management 101 at the Open University-- and disappointing for a Senior Cabinet Secretary of Defense!):
"Among Rumsfeld's observations in the two-page memo:
• The United States is "just getting started" in fighting the Iraq-based terror group Ansar Al-Islam.
• The war is hugely expensive. "The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' cost of millions."
• Postwar stabilization efforts are very difficult. "It is pretty clear the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."
Apparently Rummy is trying to "keep a sense of urgency alive" ... Hmmm ... that's nice! How thoughtful of Rummy to maintain "a sense of urgency", with so many of our troops in harm's way, in order to enrich the Bush Regime's war-profiteers, corporate cronies & robber-barons. We certainly don't want too much blood-letting before the Bushies' campaign contributors have their "shot" at bilking, plundering and looting America and Iraq.
Bush seems oblivious to the disaster and bungled fiasco, of his own making (Bush prides himself on his own ignorance and refuses to read newspapers). It is obvious that Bush is in reality, a weak and petty man, pretending to lead, but in deep, deep waters-- way, way over-his-head. So Bush slams his fist on the table and shouts imperial-style (or hitlerian-style) at those posing questions and keeps Condi, his "Mother Hen", close at hand, where they can hold onto each other like life-preservers, to avoid drowning.
In "Cheney's grip tight on foreign policy reins" by Jim Lobe on http://www.atimes.com/atimes/... , the bizarre and dangerously stupid modus operandi of the corrupt Bush Regime is exposed:
"The image was not an edifying one: the president of the United States a horse, his vice president, the rider.
But that is the picture Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, used to describe the power relationship between US President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in a recent interview with the National Journal.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to Biden's account, sometimes talks Bush into pursuing a more conciliatory foreign policy line, as he has done with North Korea or the United Nations from time to time.
"Like with a horse, Powell is always able to lead Bush to the water. But just as he is about to put his head down, Cheney up in the saddle says, 'Un-uh', and yanks up the reins before Bush can drink the water. That's my image of how it goes," Biden said.
That is also the image which is gaining currency in power circles in Washington. When it comes to foreign policy, Cheney is increasingly seen as holding the reins.
While the mainstream media continue to refer to Bush as the captain of his own foreign policy ship, hints that Cheney - a Republican right-winger surrounded by neo-conservatives, many with close ties to Israel's Likud Party - is the dominant figure in Washington's diplomacy have become too plentiful to ignore.
The most stunning example was disclosed in a recent Washington Post article that assessed Condoleezza Rice's performance as national security adviser. The authors reported that Bush had ordered cabinet officials not to give any preferential treatment to Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) as US forces moved into Iraq in the spring.
Imagine the shock felt by the State Department when, shortly after Bush gave the order, the Pentagon flew Chalabi and 600 of his armed followers into southern Iraq in early April "with the approval of the vice president".
Enforcing policy discipline, especially in a divided administration, is ordinarily the task of the national security adviser. But Rice, an academic whose substantive knowledge of foreign policy is largely confined to her expertise, the Soviet Union and Russia, has not been equal to the task.
Her failure in that regard, as well as Bush's own passivity and inexperience, is precisely what has enabled Cheney to dominate the policy process, particularly with respect to the Middle East, where Cheney's views are almost entirely consistent with those of the neo-cons close to Likud and Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.
Even before September 11, Cheney had endorsed Israel's selective assassination policy, even as the State Department was denouncing it. One year later, Cheney told Israel's defense minister, albeit privately, that he thought Palestinian President Yasser Arafat "should be hanged".
That Cheney should assume such a dominant role is not surprising given the degree to which Bush depended on him during his presidential campaign and in the administration's early days. And the fact that Cheney, who was asked by Bush to recommend his running mate in 2000, chose himself suggested that he felt confident that Bush would give him extraordinary powers if he won.
Similarly, Cheney played a much more important role than Rice, despite Rice's much closer personal relationship with Bush, in the appointment of both cabinet and sub-cabinet national security officials, beginning with Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon helm.
Not only did Cheney personally intervene to ensure that Powell's best friend, Richard Armitage, was denied the deputy defense secretary position, but he also played a key role in securing the post for Paul Wolfowitz.
Moreover, it was Cheney who insisted that ultra-unilateralist John Bolton be placed in a top State Department arms position, from which he has pursued policies that run counter to Powell's own preferences.
Cheney's own chief of staff and national security adviser, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Washington lawyer and Wolfowitz protege, is considered a far more skilled and experienced bureaucratic and political operator than Rice.
Moreover, his own national security staff, the largest ever employed by a vice president, has largely been chosen for both their ideological affinity with their boss and proven Washington experience. "They play to win," said one State Department official.
With several of his political allies, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Middle East director Elliott Abrams, on Rice's larger but more diverse staff, Libby "is able to run circles around Condi", a former senior official told IPS earlier this year.
Thus, Cheney played a key role in assigning responsibility for post-war reconstruction to the Pentagon, a major departure from past experience when the State Department was given the lead.
Similarly, Cheney backed the Pentagon's exclusion of State Department officials, including Tom Warrick, a highly regarded Iraq specialist who oversaw the mammoth "Future of Iraq Project" that involved hundreds of Iraqi expatriates and other experts, in the post-war administration.
It was also Cheney and Libby whose frequent trips to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the runup to the Iraq war played the decisive role in distorting the intelligence process, in part by pressing on CIA analysts questionable evidence supplied by the INC and Pentagon hawks under Rumsfeld, according to retired intelligence officers.
More recently, it was Cheney who led the effort to deny Powell the authority to negotiate a new UN Security Council resolution that could have reduced the Pentagon's control over the political transition in Iraq, even after the president had initially approved such a deal.
Even now, according to some sources, Cheney is actively trying to blunt Congressional pressure to reduce the Pentagon's control over Iraq policy and fire several senior Pentagon hawks, beginning with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who are believed to have misled Congress about both the evidence used to justify the war and the post-war situation.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar and Biden, the committee's ranking Democrat, explicitly mentioned Cheney in what amounted to a bipartisan appeal on NBC's "Meet the Press" television program on October 12 for Bush to assert his control over foreign policy.
Biden said, "I would say, 'Mr President, take charge. Take charge - let your secretary of defense, state, and your vice president know this is my policy, any one of you that divert from the policy is off the team'."
Lugar, a staunch, albeit moderate Republican, said he agreed with Biden, adding, "The president has to be president. That means the president over the vice president and over these secretaries."
The past month's announcements that Rice had hired Robert Blackwill, Bush's former ambassador to India and reputedly a skilled bureaucratic and Republican infighter himself, as a top deputy and that she is heading up a new, inter-agency Iraq stabilization group appeared designed to create the appearance that she was at last taking the reins.
So far, however, there is little evidence that Cheney is prepared to dismount."
"We the People" are watching the embarrassing phenomena of the Mad King George and his corrupt regime imploding ... and it sure as hell "ain't" a pretty sight, since we'll ultimately be forced to clean-up his nasty messes!
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| The Bush Regime Filters the Unpleasant Reality of their Bloody Guerrilla Quagmire in Iraq |
| 10.22.03 (8:16 am) [edit] |
The Bush Regime is filtering the unpleasant reality of their bloody guerrilla quagmire in Iraq. These cowardly arm-chair chicken-hawks only want rosy pictures showing Iraqis tickled-pink with the US occupation!
In "Ignoring Unpleasant Truths" on http://www.aljazeerah.info/Op...%20editorials/2003%20Opin ion%20Editorials/October/ 21o/Ignoring%20Unpleasant %20Truths,%20Arab%20News.htm : - [i]Excerpt [/i]-
"The Bush administration is ignoring some unpleasant truths about its occupation of Iraq. US generals and administrators say that the morale of its troops in Iraq is high and that they are fully motivated and determined to get on with the job of bringing order and security to the Iraqi people. A survey however, just done for the military’s own newspaper, the Stars and Stripes, suggests that 49 percent of personnel serving in Iraq were disillusioned and did not plan to re-enlist. Worse, 31 percent believed that there was little or no point in the tasks they were being asked to do in the country.
That is deeply disturbing. It means that they are going to be less and less able to carry out their duties, because around a third of most units is going to be made up of men fed up with the danger and difficulties to which they are exposed ...
It is now clear that if it has planned at all, Washington has misplanned the peace in Iraq. The reason for those miscalculations is common to both Pentagon strategists and the GI patrolling the streets of Baghdad. It is a fundamental ignorance of the world beyond the United States and a deep lack of appreciation of the mores and sensitivities of other societies. This may seem odd from citizens of a country that has drawn its lifeblood from immigrants. Nevertheless, it is there in the frustrated incomprehension of officials who cannot fathom why the violence will not stop and in the angry bemusement of US soldiers who cannot understand why Iraqis regard them with such suspicion." - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
In this neo-orwellian world of ours, where our leaders use [i]newspeak[/i] to tell us whom to love and whom to hate -- what is truth and what is un-truth -- and, how to think and how not to think, the terrifying realities are being papered-over and covered-up, in collusion with the corporate-owned media who now choose to play the role of the Bushies' cheer-leaders.
The Bush Regime has ruled that the pictures of coffins draped with the US flag brought home containing the corpses of our dead men and women, not be given to the press. These neo-fascists have banned the media from publishing their images. Can they do that? Apparently, so ...
In "It's Your Funeral -- Not His" by Matt Bivens on http://www.thenation.com/outr... :
"Chronicling the daily outrages committed by our current political leaders is like performing battlefield triage at a M*A*S*H unit. Not every candidate deserving of attention is going to get it.
So when Washington Post city columnist Courtland Millowy reported in September that President Bush was AWOL again -- too busy to attend the funeral of a fallen DC National Guardsman -- I let it slide. Yes, President Bush serves as commander in chief of the DC National Guard the way governors do in their states. Yes, Darryl T. Dent was just 21 when he lost his life in Iraq, in the service of George Bush's war. Yes, DC National Guard chief Bush was out fund-raising at fancy dinners instead of honoring the loss of one of his own men. No, he never called, or had an assistant drop off flowers or a card.
But as I triaged the outrages of the week, the day, even the hour, this one fell by the wayside. I reasoned, eh, it's possible Bush was simply not informed of it. And if Milloy also told a harrowing story of Bush's visit to Water Reed Medical Center this year -- when he invited a platoon sergeant who'd stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan to go jogging once he received his prosthetic -- well, I wasn't there, and I know people with prosthetics who do jog, and I could imagine how such an invitation could have been offered in dignity and accepted in that same spirit. (It's a different matter that President Bush is simultaneously cutting health-care benefits for the veterans injured or maimed on his watch. Get your prosthetics while they last, guys.)
But what possible excuse can there be for bringing dead American heroes back into the country guiltily, sneakily, under cover of press blackout?
"Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of US soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets," The Post reports. "To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases."
That report also confirms that President Bush -- unlike presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush the first and Clinton -- has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action. Supposedly this indicates some sort of perverse respect for the families, by not politicizing the deaths of men who served their country. But as Newsweek observes, "When CIA operative Johnny 'Mike' Spann was killed in Afghanistan in December 2001, the DOD had no problem letting the media in to witness the return of his remains to Andrews Air Force Base. But then, his death only stoked support for the war in Afghanistan."
Which takes us full circle to Milloy's indignant column about AWOL DC National Guard commander Bush. "Perhaps Bush could not figure out a way to make political hay out of Dent's funeral," Milloy wrote, and, "Bush appears to treat the loss of human life like a lost pawn on a chess board." It seemed a tad over-the-top and unfair to me back as I triaged September. Today, in mid-October, it looks spot on."
Even GOP Republican Senator Chuck Hagel admits that the Congress gave Bush too much latitude in conducting foreign policy in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In "Republican Senator Says Congress Gave Bush Too Much Leeway in Foreign Policy" on http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking... :
""When the security of this nation is threatened, Congress and the American people give the president great latitude," he said. "We probably have given this president more flexibility, more latitude, more range, unquestioned, than any president since Franklin Roosevelt - probably too much. The Congress, in my opinion, really abrogated much of its responsibility."
Hagel, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted last year to give the president the authority to attack Iraq but has frequently criticized Bush's execution of the war. He has been especially critical of the lack of allies and U.N. support.
Most people in other countries are too young to remember the good done by the United States in World War II and the Korean War, he said.
"The great reservoir of pro-American good will that has existed in the world since World War II . . . that reservoir is now down very low."
The Vietnam War veteran compared the United States' lack of international support in the Iraq war with what happened in Southeast Asia.
"The one great mistake that America made in those 58 years (since World War II) ... was we tried to do something alone. That was Vietnam," Hagel said."
"We the People" must recognize that Sen. Hagel is right ... and now we have Emperor Bush and his greedy "corporate-take-all" "crazies" who have thrust us into a bloody guerrilla-quagmire that has taken a heavy toll of human lives (390 US & British Soldiers, 17 Journalists & 7757-9565 innocent Iraqi civilians) and treasure ($166 billion through mid-2004, $80.6 billion squandered thus far at $1 billion/week)-- and No End in Sight.
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| The Corrupt Bush Regime's Massive LIES, War-Profiteering-So-Not-LOANS & Criminal LEAKS |
| 10.21.03 (1:51 pm) [edit] |
The corrupt Bush Regime should be under investigation by Congress for spreading massive [b]Lies[/b], war-profiteering for their cronies (i.e. [b]no Loans[/b]-- but instead they continue to swindle the American people using their "bait-and-switch" scam), and, criminal [b]Leaks[/b].
[b]Massive Lies, Deceptions, Falsehoods[/b]
The Bushies have lied to us, deceived us, and perpetrated falsehoods regarding the threat posed by Iraq. There were no WMDs ... and those responsible for coercing and pressuring the CIA including Cheney, Bolton, Feith, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle should be fired. Rice also is a liar and abdicated her responsibility and should be dismissed. Finally, Bush should be under investigation for his regime's Crimes Against Humanity, and leading our country into war based upon lies-- illegal under the U.S. Constitution.
Read "Annals of National Security - The Stovepipe" by Seymour M. Hersh on http://www.newyorker.com/fact... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
"Part of the answer lies in decisions made early in the Bush Administration, before the events of September 11, 2001. In interviews with present and former intelligence officials, I was told that some senior Administration people, soon after coming to power, had bypassed the government’s customary procedures for vetting intelligence.
The President’s response raises the question of what, if anything, the Administration learned from the failure, so far, to find significant quantities of W.M.D.s in Iraq. Any President depends heavily on his staff for the vetting of intelligence and a reasonable summary and analysis of the world’s day-to-day events. The ultimate authority in the White House for such issues lies with the President’s national-security adviser—in this case,Condoleezza Rice. The former White House official told me, “Maybe the Secretary of Defense and his people are short-circuiting the process, and creating a separate channel to the Vice-President. Still, at the end of the day all the policies have to be hashed out in the interagency process, led by the national-security adviser.” What happened instead, he said, “was a real abdication of responsibility by Condi.”"
Hersh's report outlines a serious of egregious and corrupt actions by the neo-cons in the Bush Regime, who chose to bypass proper procedures and cherry-picked fabricated information (that was not vetted) in order to wage their dirty war. They lusted for war and consequently created fantasies of "mushroom clouds" from "smoking guns" ... but instead there were no "mushroom clouds", no "smoking guns", no WMDs ... zip, zero, nada!
1) Where is Osama bin Laden, whom Bush promised to "get 'em Dead or Alive?"
2) Where is Saddam Hussein?
3) Where are all of those massive WMDs that the UN Inspectors weren't allowed to search for-- and in the aftermath of Bush's fiasco in Iraq, lackey-David Kay (with ties to the arms industry) is awarded over 5 times the number of inspectors (over 1200 - Hans Blix only had 120-220 & 5 months), 5 months squandered thus far & awarded another 6-9 months, and will have spent nearly $1 billion to "find" (or plant?) WMDs to save Bush's mess.
[b]War-Profiteering, So No Loans-- Just Scam American Taxpayers[/b]
The Bushies treat their "rubber-stamp" Congress just as they treat "Old Europe": with contempt and like slaves who better genuflect or accept the punishment doled out by Emperor Bush and his gang of thugs. When Senators attempted to question Bush regarding his regime's planning and disbursement of the $20.3 billion (reconstruction costs out of the $87 billion request), Emperor Bush slams his hand on the table and shouts "'It's not negotiable, and I don't want to debate it." ... [Source: "$87 Billion, Final Offer" on http://www.washingtonpost.com... ]
Meanwhile, we've lost 390 American (337) & British (53) Soldiers, 17 Journalists, and slaughtered between 7757 & 9565 innocent Iraqi civilians [Source: http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ] ... and spent over $80.6 billion, thus far at $1 billion per week ... with Congress approving an additional $87 billion, making the tab for this insane war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire over $166 billion, and no end in sight, since the World Bank has confirmed that billions more ($55B) is required to re-build Iraq.
Bush has immorally awarded massive no-bid, no-cap, no-audit contracts to his corrupt war-profiteers and robber-barons including Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Shell Oil, Embezzler Ahmad Chalabi, Joe Allbaugh and others. [Sources: http://www.alternet.org/story... , http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... , http://www.newbridgestrategie... ]
The Bushies neo-fascist propaganda machine brags about re-building the Iraqi infrastructure, schools, hospitals and other services. The only problem with this "bait-and-switch" scam (their "war on terror" has CREATED more terror-- and enriched them while impoverishing the rest of us and placing us in greater danger) "picture" is:
1) Bush & Cheney corporate rapists are plundering & looting American taxpayers and Iraq, by over-charging on a massive scale & no audits or controls keep the price-gouging from occurring.
2) Bush & Cheney are denying any improvements to Americans, who must suffer under crumbling infrastructure, lack of funding for education, health care, and other badly needed services.
3) Bush & Cheney have amassed the largest deficit in our nation's history (Big Spending Republicans on Welfare-for-the-Rich) of $560 billion-- and simultaneously awarded their campaign contributors gluttonous tax cuts, tax loopholes & boondoggles, unseen since the halcyon days of Herbert Hoover's "corporate-take-all" rape of this nation.
[b]Criminal Leaks[/b]
The corrupt Bush Regime have used illegal means to intimidate whistle-blowers able to expose their massive lies and crimes. Arrogant Bush himself, smirks that no one will find out who the felon in the White House is, who exposed an under-cover CIA Operative's identity to Robert Novak (Karl Rove's Lackey) and other reporters, in retaliation for her husband's (ex-Ambassador Joseph P. Wilson) disclosure that the Bushies lied about phony uranium sales by Niger to Iraq-- a bogus lie told to frighten the American people.
Instead of appointing an independent special counsel, the Bushies let their attack-dog and loon, John (Robespierre) Ashcroft assist the 3 stooges (Cheney, Rice & Rove) in covering-up the White House crimes.
"We the People" should call upon Congress to be accountable for the following:
1) Bush has threatened to veto Congress if they dare to convert a small proportion of the monies into loans ($10 billion in loans out of the $87 billion) swindled and stolen from the average American taxpayers, to enrich Bush's corporate thugs-- [Source: "Bush Admin. Threatens to Veto Iraq Aid" on http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... ]
Shouldn't all Congressmen and women who are simply puppets of the Bush Regime be "recalled" in 2004?
2) Bush refuses to repeal some of the immoral (and possibly illegal) monies stolen from the average American taxpayer and awarded to the richest-of-the-rich, corporations and wealthiest oligarchy, in the form of "tax cuts", "tax loopholes" and boondoggles.
Apparently the richest amongst us aren't required to make any sacrifice-- only the poor, lower-income, middle-class and fixed-income retirees, will be asked to spill the blood of their children and pay-off Bushies' obscene debts.
Shouldn't all Congressmen and women who do not call for repealing these tax "welfare-for-the-rich" gifts and confiscating war-profits, be "recalled" in 2004?
3) Shouldn't an investigation into the crimes committed by the Bush Regime's thugs be called for by Congress? Why haven't Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bolton, Feith, Rove and the other White House criminals, incompetents and goons been asked to resign (and possibly charged with crimes)?
Shouldn't all Congressmen and women who refuse to condemn the illegal and immoral acts committed by the Bush Regime be "recalled" in 2004?
Our nation deserves men and women loyal to the United States of America-- instead we've got a corrupt cabal only loyal to their own selfish, greedy interests ... and who punish anyone who doesn't worship at the altar of Emperor Bush, their symbol of the Global Corporate Empire in their insane doctrine according to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
All men and women of conscience, irrespective of their political persuasions, should be asking themselves these questions, for the sake of our nation ... for the sake of our honour and integrity ... and for the sake of their own private souls.
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| A Conservative's Review of Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars" ... |
| 10.21.03 (9:55 am) [edit] |
"It's official ... watching Fox News makes you ignorant!", according to Shaun Waterman in "Misleading America" on http://www.commondreams.org/v... : 80% of those who watch Fox News, the neo-con, neo-fascist news channel get their facts wrong!
Remember, Fox News is the proto-hitlerian propaganda channel that [i]cheer-leads [/i]for the corrupt Bush Regime. Recently they instigated an imbecilic law suit against Al Franken for mocking and criticizing their hypocritical orwellian motto "fair and balanced" ... when in reality, Fox News is unfair and imbalanced! Refer to "Laugh at Fox News, the Neo-Con's Neo-Fascist Network!" on http://www.tblog.com/template... . Fox News was ultimately forced to drop their insane law-suit, since Ashcroft probably told 'em he was too busy persecuting Arabs (and anyone else who doesn't genuflect in front of the imperial Bush Regime) to be bothered ...
It is time for the Bushies to begin to worry, as "We the People" comprising decent, hard-working citizens across the entire political spectrum, are disenchanted with the despicable Crimes Against Humanity committed by this insane neo-con regime to enrich the Bush & Cheney Inc. corporate cronies, robber-barons and war-profiteers. Even Robert (Rove's Lackey) Novak admits that "War Worried Republicans" are disappointed in Bush's poor (non-existent) leadership skills and ineptitude on http://www.townhall.com/colum... .
Increasingly, even honest conservatives with integrity are coming forward to express their dismay, disgust and disassociation with the corrupt Bush Regime. Refer to "A conservative's review of Al Franken's 'Lies and the Lying Liars'" by Becky Miller on http://www.oregonlive.com/com... :
"I must say that only once before in my life have I ever felt as utterly shocked as I am at this moment. The time before was when I first realized that my boss at the time, Bill Sizemore, was greedy and dishonest. The foundations of my universe shook. What has utterly shocked me today is Al Franken's latest book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look a | |
