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| Radical Changes Underway To Undermine Our U.S. Constitution |
| 02.29.04 (2:38 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" live in extremely dangerous times ... [/b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] rigged the 2000 election with the help of their traitorous [i]criminals-in-arms[/i], Jeb Bush & Co. in Florida and the Supreme Fascist Scalia ...
Having hijacked our government, the radical neo-con, neo-fascist thugs & goons wage[i] illegal and immoral warfare [/i]to enrich themselves & their war-profiteering cronies ... The vile Bushies have [i]handed-over[/i] the foreign and domestic policy-making of our nation to their corporate pimps, corporate robber-barons, and hyper-rich plutocratic buddies ... The criminal Bush regime is [i]transforming[/i] the United States of America into a 3rd world banana republic with the neo-imperial oligarchs raping, exploiting and swindling us in order to enrich themselves beyond the wildest fantasies of Emperor Caligula, while the rest of us are relegated to the miserable roles of neo-serfs who will bear the back-breaking burdens of their gluttonous, lavish life-styles and ungodly deficits & debts ...
"We the People" should be[i] alarmed [/i]that radical changes to our U.S. Constitution are being proposed that are not being reviewed, debated and discussed publicly ... Nor are we analyzing, assessing and weighing the consequences that may ensue from such radical reforms that hand-over the power of Kings & Emperors to the criminal, rapacious and lawless Bushies ...
Consider [i][b]"[New] Cornyn bill rearranges presidential succession[/b][/i]" by [i]Michael Hedges[/i], Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau, on http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/s... :
WASHINGTON --Legislation introduced this month by Senate Republicans, including Texan John Cornyn, would dramatically change the way presidential succession works.
Should the president become incapacitated along with the vice president, members of Congress would be ineligible for the top leadership position in favor of Cabinet members.
"We really didn't have a workable plan if the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had been successful and the heroic passengers had not stopped that plane in Pennsylvania (that the FBI has said was aimed at Washington)," Cornyn said. "We began looking at exactly what would happen, and the more we scratched away, the more problems we saw."
At this time, if a president and vice president were killed, the speaker of the House would become president. Next in line would be the president pro tem of the Senate, a senior member of the majority party.
Cornyn and other lawmakers, along with a number of scholars and researchers, think the law is outdated and may be unconstitutional.
The bill he introduced with Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi would remove members of Congress from the line of succession. Instead, Cabinet members, beginning with the secretary of state and followed by the treasury secretary, defense secretary, attorney general and the homeland security director, would form the line behind the president and vice president.
Part of the argument against the current law is that the country could be left with a president who holds views far different from those of the person elected by the American people. For example, the Reagan-Bush administration would have been replaced by liberal Democratic House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, and the Clinton-Gore team by conservative Republican Newt Gingrich.
But some scholars challenge the idea of taking Congress out of the line of succession.
"Cutting all elected officials out of the loop (if the president and vice president were dead or incapacitated) is somewhat disturbing," said Paul Brace, a political scientist at Rice University. "The leaders in Congress are sensitized to the demands of running a democracy. With Cabinet members, you have had people of wildly varying capabilities over the years."
Other scholars say the language in the Constitution should keep the powers of the branches of government separate -- keeping Congress out of the loop.
The bill would clear up the constitutional questions, said John Fortier, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.
"Having congressional leaders in the line of succession poses a lot of problems," Fortier said. "Is it a good idea to have the kind of radical policy shift you could have had during some periods if the speaker from one party replaced the leader of the rival party?"
The Lott-Cornyn bill has had a low profile on Capitol Hill so far. The leading Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, has not taken a formal position on the bill.
The line of succession was last altered by Congress in 1947 during President Truman's administration. In the 19th century, Congress first placed members of Congress in the line, then took them out.
Under the bill, the Cabinet member who becomes president would hold the job until the next scheduled election or until a disabled president or vice president recovers. If a Cabinet member becomes president temporarily while a president recovers from an incapacitating condition, the Cabinet member would not have to resign the Cabinet post, as present law requires.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., has not taken a position on the legislation.
Fortier is part of a private commission that, soon after 9/11, began looking at how power might be passed in orderly fashion in case of a Washington cataclysm. The panel is headed by Lloyd Cutler, a former counsel to Democratic presidents Carter and Clinton, and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming. Two former House speakers, Democrat Tom Foley and Republican Newt Gingrich, served on the commission and support its findings.
In the early 1980s, Reagan officials set up an elaborate plan that would have established continuity of government in case of disaster. People such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then a business executive, and Vice President Dick Cheney, then a congressman, were listed among dozens of experienced leaders who would disperse to secret locations outside Washington to ride out catastrophe.
After Sept. 11, 2001, it became even clearer that some of the issues of who would govern after a deadly attack, and how power would be transferred, needed to be addressed in legislation, Fortier said.
Last fall, Cornyn introduced another bill that followed recommendations of the Cutler-Simpson commission on how Congress could be reconstituted in case of an attack on the Capitol building that killed scores of lawmakers.
Under that bill, states could choose a method to fill the seats. Those temporary lawmakers would hold office until elections could be held within 120 days.
[b]Contact Congress http://www.congress.org now to oppose this bill:-- This represents outrageous tyranny in order to hand-over excessive power to the corrupt Bush regime.[/b]
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| Former Cabinet Member Questions Legality of Iraq War |
| 02.29.04 (1:01 pm) [edit] |
"All wars are fought for money." – Socrates
[b]Americans should be clamouring for Bush's i[i]mpeachment[/i], as many Brits are demanding that Blair [i]step-down [/i]...[/b]
"We the People" were ruthlessly and recklessly misled into an insane, illegal & immoral neo-con, neo-fascist war-turned-bloody guerrilla quagmire by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who criminally told myraid [i]lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/i], while the [i]real[/i] reasons for their vile, horrendous war-mongerings were to enrich themselves & their vile, horrific war-profiteers-- and ergo, the lawless, tyrannical Bush regime are thereby [i]unfit to serve [/i]under the terms of the U.S. Constitution ...
[b]Clare Short: [i]Was Attorney General leant on to sanction war[/i]?[/b]
[b]In her own words, the former cabinet minister questions the legality of conflict[/b]:
This week the charges against Katharine Gun, a former employee of GCHQ, were dropped in a way that posed once again big questions about the legitimacy of the rush to war in Iraq. She was accused of passing a document to The Observer which showed the US asking the UK for help to spy on non-permanent members of the Security Council: the purpose was to strengthen the ability of the US and UK to "persuade" them to vote for war.
Her lawyers made clear that her defence would rest on the argument that her action was justified because the war was illegal. They therefore intended to call for evidence on how the Attorney General came to the conclusion that there was legal authority for war. The lawyers concluded that the case was dropped because he did not want his advice to be subject to scrutiny.
I was asked to comment by the Today programme. I made two points. The first was that if it was illegitimate to contemplate bugging the offices of fellow members of the Security Council, then our security services should stop distributing transcripts of Kofi Annan's private telephone calls. My second comment was that the claims of Ms Gun's lawyers should be considered alongside the claim that one of the reasons for the exaggeration of the threat from WMD in Iraq was to manufacture legal authority for war.
The response of the establishment has been extraordinary. They are faced with two allegations: one that the Attorney General's legal advice authorising war in Iraq was manipulated in dubious ways, the other that Britain is intruding on the privacy of Mr Annan's phone calls.
There were howls of outrage that the British people should be informed that the powers of their state were being misused to dishonour the secretary general of the United Nations. There was very limited comment on the claim that the Attorney General may have misused his powers to authorise a war that has led to the death of 20,000 people and to an increase in bitterness and instability in the Middle East and to a strengthening of al-Qa'ida.
The Prime Minister says that I am being deeply irresponsible and endangering the British security services. Journalists ask if I should be ejected from the Labour Party and/or the Privy Council. And some - who are not in a position to know - suggest that there are no transcripts of Mr Annan's phone calls. I'm afraid that there is no question that such transcripts were regularly circulated.
It is likely that the Prime Minister was unaware of this. He's not a man for detail but he is in a position to stop the practice. But the suggestion that there is any threat to our national security or intelligence services from the exposure of the fact that such transcripts are circulated is laughable.
The suggestion, however, that the Attorney General's opinion may have been manipulated is very serious. There is no doubt that the way in which a truncated opinion authorising war appeared at the very last minute was very odd. Foreign Office lawyers disagreed on the legality of war. Senior officials in Whitehall worried that they were being asked to prepare for illegal action. I was informed that the military would not move without the Attorney General's authorisation. Then on the day Robin Cook resigned, the Attorney General came to the Cabinet, sat in Robin's seat and circulated two sides of A4 which said that successive UN resolutions provided legal authority for war. I tried to ask why he was so late and if there was any doubt but was told in no uncertain terms there was to be no discussion. No other advice was made available across Whitehall.
As I go over and over events leading up to the rush to war, I cannot help but conclude that the way in which the Attorney General's opinion was produced and handled was very strange. It is hard not to suspect that he had doubts and was leant upon.
And, for the record, I am not at all bitter. I am not even angry. I am still astonished and sad and disappointed. I believe that our country and my party have been deeply dishonoured, large numbers of people have lost their lives and the world made more bitterly divided and dangerous. I committed myself to the Labour Party very many years ago because I believed it to be an instrument of moral advance and justice at home and abroad.
I believe the best way to correct the mistakes is to persuade Tony Blair to stand down. I have made no secret of this view. I have not enjoyed reaching these conclusions but they are my serious opinions. I do not support my party right or wrong. I want to preserve my party as an instrument of justice. I also think we should stop invading the privacy of the secretary general of the United Nations.
[b]Source[/b]:
[i]Clare Short[/i], Independent UK, http://argument.independent.c...
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| 'Stop the War' Coalition Will Sue Bush and Blair Over Iraq ... |
| 02.29.04 (11:04 am) [edit] |
"We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace." - Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
[b]'Stop the War' coalition will sue Bush and Blair over Iraq[/b] - It is time that [i]someone[/i] did ... It is shameful that the American public has [i]not[/i]:-- [i]impeached[/i] the corrupt Bush regime ... -- sent Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld & the rest of their neo-con thugs & goons off to the International Court at the Hague to be tried for[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... -- and, [i]confiscated [/i]their assets & all of the assets of their war-profiteers to help [i]pay-down [/i]their scandalous record-level deficits & debts caused by their immoral & illegal war-mongerings and tax cuts for corporations and their filthy rich cronies ...
"We the People" must[i] put a stop [/i]to the neo-fascist Bush regime's tyrannical rule over our nation and their neo-imperial stomping on the rest of the world ...
Consider "[b]'Stop the War' [i]coalition will sue Bush and Blair over Iraq[/i][/b]" by [i]AFP[/i] on http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/... :
[b]LONDON[/b]: A coalition of groups opposed to the US-led invasion of Iraq said on Saturday it intended to take legal action for “mass murder” against British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“What has happened is the mass murder of 20,000 or so Iraqis,” said Chris Coverdale, a spokesman for the Stop the War coalition, told [i]Sky News[/i].
“We have to ensure that Bush and Blair and all the others associated with that decision to attack and kill Iraqis are held to account for it.” Some 600 supporters of the coalition, which was formed in September 2001, met in London to prepare for a mass demonstration in the capital on March 20, the anniversary of the invasion of oil-rich Iraq.
The anti-war movement brought an estimated one million people to demonstrate against the war in London a year ago and up to 200,000 braved massive security to protest at a visit by Bush to London in November 2003. Coverdale said the coalition had asked police, the prosecution service and the nation’s top legal official, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, to investigate the accusations.
He said that under the statute establishing the international criminal court, if such requests at the national level were refused, the movement was then “entitled to approach the prosecutor in The Hague to ensure and ask him to initiate an investigation and a criminal prosecution of the offenders”.
The coalition’s decision coincided with mounting pressure on Blair to explain the basis on which the country went to war. “The war with Iraq was illegal but, furthermore, crimes were committed,” Coverdale said. “Therefore you want to ensure that people who have committed the crimes answer for them in court.” He said Stop the War was basing its position on articles in the United Nations charter forbidding war. —
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| 'Halliburton deals are good for Cheney, bad for the U.S.' ... |
| 02.29.04 (8:11 am) [edit] |
[b]"Clearly, what's good for Halliburton is good for Dick Cheney. But what about the [i]rest of us[/i]?" ... [/b]Halliburton has represented a severe moral and economic[i] drain [/i]on the[i] rest of us [/i]...
The corrupt Bush regime's callous and raw greed is not new to American history. "Witness the Credit Mobilier scandal, Teapot Dome or Vice President Agnew. But the Halliburton scandal of the early 21st century will probably bring disgrace upon the image of the United States for decades to come." ...
As of now, the [i]liar-cum-thief-n-crimi nal [/i]Cheney will probably be on the ticket for 2004 - and cashing in on the Iraq war, along with the rest of the neo-con, neo-fascist Bushies ... But, [i]jeez [/i]...
Isn't it time for "We the People" to oust these neo-con con-artists in the Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta[/i]??? ...
Refer to "'[i][b]Halliburton deals are good for Cheney, bad for the U.S.[/b][/i]'" by [i]Mike Pope[/i], Tallahassee Democrat, on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/... :
Now that the Democrats are in the midst of speculation about a vice presidential choice, the president seems to have once again fallen in love with Dick Cheney. After rumors surfaced that the vice president had become a liability with Middle America soccer moms, the buzz emitted from the Beltway was that Cheney must go.
A list of names was enumerated; a Republican dream team was fantasized; bumper stickers were imagined. But then the president shushed all the rumors, announcing that Cheney had once again been put in charge of the vice presidential selection team and that he had once again recommended himself.
The Bush/Cheney 2004 bumper stickers that have already been slapped on those oil-guzzling SUVs are now safe from potential obscurity. Cheney, health permitting, will be on the ticket.
[b]For the [i]Full Story [/i]click onto [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| Bush Tells US: 9/11 is None of Your Business!!! ... |
| 02.29.04 (6:44 am) [edit] |
[b]The arrogant Bush regime is acting like a tyrannical dictatorship ... [/b]We are told by the White House attack-dogs & court-jesters that the Mad King George, Veep-[i]N[/i]-Creep Cheney & Queen Condi "[i]don't feel[/i]" like testifying regarding [i]what they knew[/i], and [i]when they knew about [/i]the heinous attacks upon the USA in the days leading up to 9/11 ...
Are "We the People" simply supposed to [i]roll-over-and-play-dea d, and deaf-dumb-and-blindly accept [/i]the neo-con, neo-fascist treason committed by the corrupt tyrants who have hijacked our nation??? ... After all, 9/11 [i]IS OUR[/i] business ...
Consider "[i][b]Sorry, Right Number[/b][/i]" by [i]Maureen Dowd[/i], NY Times, on http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... :
Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, George Tenet was asked why the C.I.A. never picked up the trail of Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot who crashed Flight 175 into the south tower on 9/11.
Thirty months earlier, German intelligence had passed on a hot tip to the C.I.A. — the Al Qaeda terrorist's first name and phone number.
"The Germans gave us a name, Marwan — that's it — and a phone number," the director of central intelligence replied, adding: "They didn't give us a first and a last name until after 9/11, with then additional data."
For crying out loud. As one guy I know put it: "I've tracked down women across the country with a lot less information than that."
Mr. Tenet is not in any trouble for that sorry answer, of course, just as he hasn't had to pay any penalty for building up the phantom arsenal that Saddam only dreamed he had.
The catchphrase du jour is Donald Trump's snappy, "You're fired." But no one has lost a job over the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 or the war that was trumped up and velcroed to 9/11. In fact, the only people the president and vice president are trying to put out of business are the members of the commission charged with figuring out how 9/11 happened and how to prevent another one.
The White House seems more worried about the public's finding out how much it knew and how little it did before 9/11 than it does about identifying and fixing security weaknesses.
After trying to kill the commission and then trying to put Dr. Strangelove-Kissinger in charge, President Bush and Dick Cheney have done their best to hamper the panel that's the best hope of the 9/11 widows, widowers and orphans to get justice.
"This is not no-fault government," said Lorie Van Auken, a 9/11 widow. "You don't just let people go on doing what they're doing wrong."
It is a triumph of chutzpah for Mr. Bush to thwart the investigation into 9/11 at the same time he seeks re-election by promoting his handling of 9/11 and scaring us with the specter of more terrorism. He's even using 9/11 memorials as the backdrop for his convention in New York.
Last week, the president played it sly, acting as though he was willing to extend the commission's deadline to finish the work that was taking longer because the administration was stonewalling. But the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, was clearly helping out the White House, answering the "who will rid me of this meddlesome panel?" call.
Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, who helped create the commission, played hardball, threatening highway funds and federal jobs if the commission didn't get two extra months. Mr. Hastert caved.
Mr. McCain said he's expecting the same administration "obfuscation and delay" when he sits on Mr. Bush's hand-picked intelligence review board. "That's why I made sure I got subpoena power," he said. "No bureaucracy will willingly give you information that may be embarrassing to them."
Especially not such a secretive, paranoid and high-handed administration. Bush officials act as though they own 9/11, even while refusing to own up to any 9/11 mistakes.
Because of 9/11, they think they can suspend the Constitution, blow off investigators, attack nations pre-emptively, and keep Americans afraid by waging a war against terrorism that can never be won.
As Bob Kerrey, a frustrated member of the 9/11 commission, told Chris Matthews, the U.S. should have declared war on Osama as soon as it became apparent that he had an army with a "tremendous, sophisticated capability" and an ideology that dictated killing Americans.
"To declare war on terrorism, it seems to me to have the target wrong," he said. "It would be like after the 7th of December, 1941, declaring war on Japanese planes. We declared war on Japan. We didn't declare war on their tactic. . . . Terrorism is a tactic."
A Bush 41 official agreed: "You can't fight terrorism conventionally like a war. Any 16-year-old kid can strap on dynamite and take down any building. It must be fought clandestinely, dealing with the underlying causes and taking security measures in our own country."
Here's a hot tip: If you think the White House should be more cooperative with the 9/11 commission, call George at (202) 456-1111.
I'm sure everyone outside the C.I.A. can take it from there.
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| Has Osama bin Laden Already Been Captured??? ... So What!!! ... |
| 02.28.04 (4:44 pm) [edit] |
[b]Rumors are rife (... and have been for many months [i]now[/i] ...) that Osama bin Laden has [i]already[/i] been captured by the corrupt Bush regime who are waiting for the [i]"right political moment" [/i] to [u]capitalize[/u] on the American people's ability to be suckered, scammed and neo-con conned (...[i] Karl Rove Inc. has been bragging about an October surprise ... but won't be able to keep this "gem" a secret for that long[/i] ...) ...[/b]
Are we being played for [i]suckers, dupes & fools[/i] yet [i]again[/i] by the cynical Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who [i]mis[/i]lead us [i]around by the nose [/i](... [i]they must laugh at how it is easier than taking candy from a baby [/i]...)??? ...
Perhaps it is time for "We the People" to [i]remain calm [/i] and refuse to be [u]manipulated[/u] like[i] brain-dead sheep[/i], when the capture of Osama bin Laden[i] finally [/i]does occur and simply respond by shouting back at the neo-con, neo-fascist Bushies & Cheneys, and sordid, squalid Rices & Roves:--
[b]So [i]What[/i]!!! ... It's the [i]Economy[/i], Stupid!!! ...[/b]
[b]Wouldn't [i]that [/i]be something!?! ...[/b]
Refer to "[i][b]Iranian Radio Reports Bin Laden Captured[/b][/i]" by [i]Ali Akbar Dareini [/i]on http://www.independent-media....%20Reported :
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's state radio, quoting an unnamed source, said Saturday that Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) was captured in Pakistan "a long time ago." U.S. and Pakistani officials denied the report.
The report said that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's visit to the region this week was in connection with the arrest. In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied early Saturday that bin Laden was captured.
The report was carried by Iran radio's external Pushtun service. The director of Iran radio's Pushtun service, Asheq Hossein, said he had two sources for the report that bin Laden had been captured.
A Pakistani military operation has been under way in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan (news - web sites), and a Pakistani official said previously that members of al-Qaida are being sought there, although bin laden was not a specific target.
Pakistani Army spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan also told The Associated Press that the report was not true. "That information is wrong," he said.
Speaking to the AP in Tehran, Hossein identified one of the sources as "Shamim Shahed, editor" of the English-language Pakistani newspaper The Nation in Peshawar. Hossein said Shahed told him Friday night that bin Laden was arrested "a long time ago."
But Shahed, who is The Nation's Peshawar bureau chief and not its editor, denied telling the Iranian radio station that bin Laden had been captured.
"I never said this," Shahed said in a telephone interview with the AP's Islamabad bureau. "But I have for the last year been saying that he is not far away. He is within their (the Americans') reach, and they can declare him arrested any time."
Shahed gave no evidence to back up that claim.
Hossein said he had a second source for his report that bin Laden had been captured, but he declined to identify him except to say he was "a man with close links to intelligence services and Afghan tribal leaders."
Iranian state radio quoted its reporter as saying the arrest happened a long time ago.
"Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election," he said.
Homayoun Jarir, son-in-law of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, said he could not confirm the report.
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| Who's A Terrorist? |
| 02.28.04 (12:15 pm) [edit] |
[b]"Who's A Terrorist?" ...[/b]
This key question should [i]alarm[/i] us because the corrupt neo-fascist Bush regime who have heralded the [i]Age of Fascism in the 21st Century [/i]are using these pernicious terms "terrorist", "enemy combattant", "anarchist", etc. etc. etc. in order to[i] punish [/i]those who disagree with them ... The ugly and traitorous Bushies have betrayed our nation founded on Thomas Jefferson's great principle that "Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism" ...
"We the People" must fight against the neo-con Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] ... Please write to Congress http://www.congress.org [i]today[/i] and demand that the insane Patriot Acts be [i]repealed now [/i]... Dubya's neo-stalinist Patriot Acts are repugnant to our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ...
[b]You are urged to visit "[u]Criminalizing Dissent[/u]?" on the [i]NOW with Bill Moyers [/i]web-site [/b]on http://www.pbs.org/now/politi... ...
Consider also "[i][b]Who's A Terrorist?[/b][/i]" by [i]John Feffer[/i], TomPaine, on http://www.tompaine.com/featu... :
People in the business of conflict resolution routinely intervene in bloody, horrific wars and, by talking to all sides involved, try to guide the actors toward a more peaceful conclusion. Sounds like noble work, right? Not always, according to the USA PATRIOT Act. It all depends on whether the peace professionals are talking with terrorists, and "terrorism" is very much in the eye of the (U.S.) beholder.
The PATRIOT Act—a sweeping assault on civil liberties approved just after September 11 by every U.S. Senator except Russ Feingold, D-Wis.—includes a provision that criminalizes "expert advice and assistance" provided to terrorist organizations. As a result, anyone who provides advice on how to exit violent conflict to any of the 36 organizations on the State Department’s terrorism list could be liable for criminal prosecution. So, for instance, the World Tamil Coordinating Committee of Jamaica, New York, is potentially breaking the law by trying to help negotiate a permanent peace agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the opposition Tamil Tigers.
The provision applies beyond conflict resolution. The Federation of Tamil Sangams of North American (FETNA) wants to develop Tamil-language school curricula in areas of Sri Lanka controlled by the Tamil Tigers. The Humanitarian Law Project in California has provided training in international human rights law for members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK. Since the PKK and the Tamil Tigers have been on the State Department’s terrorism list since 1997, these efforts might well lead to a 15-year jail sentence.
[b]The PATRIOT Act Takes A Hit [/b]
Rather than wait to be prosecuted, the above organizations brought suit against the Justice Department. On January 23, the California District Court partially upheld their challenge in Humanitarian Law Project v. John Ashcroft. By declaring the “expert advice and assistance” clause overly broad and infringing on First Amendment rights of free speech, the court struck the first successful legal blow against the PATRIOT Act. "We are harmed as a society when people refrain from exercising their First Amendment rights out of fear of being prosecuted and convicted under vague laws like the PATRIOT Act provision under challenge in the Humanitarian Law Project suit," says Nancy Chang, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) who was co-counsel in the case. Jeanne Herrick-Stare, a senior analyst on civil liberties at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, points out that it is difficult to know how many groups have cut back on their activities for fear of prosecution.
Humanitarian organizations often don’t care what agency, on paper, they’re dealing with, she notes, because “humanitarian organizations care about the hungry, the people who need the aid.”
For the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), it’s legal déjà vu. The Center mounted a legal challenge to the PATRIOT Act’s precursor, the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. A Clinton administration law, it criminalized “material support” of terrorist organizations even if that support was for the peaceful activities of the organization. In this case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that while the U.S. government could sue those providing cash and humanitarian aid to the designated terrorist groups, the provision of “personnel” and “training” was protected by the First Amendment. According to the CCR’s useful summary of court rulings on terrorism and civil liberties, the material support provision has been used in three jury convictions and several cases decided in plea bargaining. But until 2001, conflict resolution professionals could go about their business without fear of reprisal. The PATRIOT Act, which amended the “material support” provision to include “expert advice and assistance,” appeared to re-criminalize the negotiating, legal and medical services that some U.S.-based organizations are offering “terrorist” organizations.
[b]In The Eye Of The Beholder [/b]
The term “terrorist” is controversial, as is the list of terrorist organizations that the State Department updates regularly. The ANC in South Africa, Likud in Israel, Sinn Fein in Ireland: these groups have all grown out of movements that were and sometimes still are called terrorist. The U.S. government has in the past supported groups that could easily be labeled terrorist, from the Contras in Nicaragua to RENAMO in Mozambique. Today, the State Department’s terrorism list is highly politicized. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement is included, largely as a thank-you to China for its support in the war on terrorism. The Kosovo Liberation Army never made it on the list because it was fighting against Serbia. Despite attacks against civilians, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan has not been considered terrorist in Washington because it was useful in the fight against the Taliban just as Osama bin Laden and the mujahedin had been in the fight against the Soviets.
The PATRIOT Act not only reinforces this politicized designation but also discourages efforts to bring such groups into the political realm. The State Department’s labeling of two Philippine rebel groups as terrorist, for example, has led to an impasse in peace talks in that country’s 35-year-old civil war. The Cheney faction in the Bush administration believes that “evil” must be defeated, not negotiated with. But negotiating with those you disagree with is otherwise known as diplomacy. And encouraging negotiations between implacable foes, regardless of the names they throw at each other, goes by the name of conflict resolution.
“We make a deliberate decision to work with both sides, regardless of whether they are called ‘terrorist’ or something else,” says Richard Rubenstein, professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University. “If you’re not willing to work with ‘terrorists’ you’re not going to do conflict resolution.”
Conflict resolution professionals often act as neutral mediators, but sometimes they provide assistance and advice to groups to prepare them for negotiations. Ron Kraybill, who teaches in the conflict transformation program at Eastern Mennonite University, notes that “terrorists” don’t abruptly make a decision to engage in a negotiating framework: “they don’t walk in the door all by themselves; it’s a process.”
Portions of the PATRIOT Act are up for review by Congress, but the “expert advice and assistance” provision is not subject to the sunset clause. The Bush administration has meanwhile promised to veto legislation designed to scale back the worst excesses of the Act. So the courts, for better or worse, are where the action is. If the Justice Department successfully challenges the California District Court decision, conflict resolution as well as medical aid and legal advice may once again become treasonous. In the meantime, the January 23 ruling remains a slender victory not only for civil libertarians but for all those who hope to bring peace to war-torn regions.
[b]By John Feffer [/b][i]is the author most recently of North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis[/i].
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| No Skunks Allowed!!! ... |
| 02.28.04 (10:17 am) [edit] |
[b]Punished for Honest Intelligence ...[/b]
[b]For the leaders of a government to punish those who tell them the truth[/b], ... bypass the normal channels of government, ... create [i]rogue [/i]departments staffed with slavish lackeys & neo-fascist ideologues ([i]with no integrity[/i]) to[i] come-up [/i]with ([i]fabricate[/i]) whatever proto-"[i]facts[/i] [[i]sic[/i]]" they [i]want [/i]to hear ... This is[i] more [/i]than dangerous-- [b]This is treasonous [/b]...
Yet, this is precisely the [i]crime[/i] that the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] committed in fabricating a phony WMDs so-called "[i]case[/i]" against Iraq-- the neo-cons' mendacious [i]casus belli [/i]for[i] WAR [/i]that has proved to be a disastrous [i]LIE [/i]... Meanwhile, over 550 US Soldiers and over 10,000 Innocent Iraqi Civilians have been massacred in order to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. etc. etc. ...
Isn't it time for "We the People" to[i] reclaim [/i]our constitutional heritage and [i]demand[/i] that Congress http://www.congress.org impeach Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz and the rest of the neo-con, neo-fascist cabal of liars, traitors and criminals??? ...
Consider "[i][b]No Skunks Allowed[/b][/i]" by [i]Ray McGovern[/i], on http://www.counterpunch.com/m... :
It was a quite a show at the Senate Intelligence Committee's worldwide threat assessment briefing on Tuesday, Feb. 24. Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., outdid himself as damage control officer for fallout from failed intelligence.
Sen. Roberts captured the spirit when he told reporters that, although "everybody would have some second thoughts" about the reasons for the war, he believes that Saddam Hussein posed a threat "in some ways more dangerous [than weapons of mass destruction]," because his leadership had deteriorated (sic). Small wonder that Roberts took pains to ensure there would be none who might snicker at the formal briefing.
The casting was a dead giveaway. For the first time since annual threat assessment briefings by the heads of key intelligence agencies began a decade ago, the director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was disinvited.
Roberts and his Republican colleagues decided to preclude the possibility that some recalcitrant senator might ask why INR was able to get it right on Iraq when everyone else was wrong. Recall that the CIA and other intelligence agencies signed on to the worst National Intelligence Estimate in 40 years--the one issued in October 2002 with the loaded title "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." (The only near rival in infamy is the NIE of September 1962, which said that the Soviet Union would not risk trying to put missiles in Cuba. The missiles were already en route.)
[b]Punished For Honesty[/b]
INR has been forced to sit with its face to the wall ever since it resisted White House pressure to cook intelligence to the recipe of high policy. CIA Director George Tenet and other malleable intelligence managers acquiesced in that pressure and became accomplices in the Bush administration's successful effort in the fall of 2002 to deceive Congress into forfeiting to the president its constitutional prerogative to declare war.
INR was the skunk at that picnic. It dissented loudly from some of the most important key judgments of the NIE of October 2002. For example, the canard about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger--impossible on its face and based on a forgery--found its way into the estimate, but INR's footnote dismissed the story as "highly dubious."
This was no small matter. As Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., noted in an irate letter to the president on March 17, 2002, the Iraq/Niger canard had been "a central part of the U.S. case against Iraq" --a key piece of "evidence" used to sway Congress to give its approval for war.
INR analysts also debunked the fable about aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment for Iraq. Although the tubes had been advertised by National Security Adviser Condolleeza Rice as useful only in a nuclear application, State Department intelligence analysts joined counterparts in the Department of Energy and U.N. specialists in pointing out, correctly, that the tubes were for conventional artillery.
Most obstreperous of all, on the highly neuralgic nuclear issue, INR was unwilling to predict when Iraq's "nuclear weapons program" was likely to yield a nuclear device. Why? It saw no compelling evidence that Vice President Dick Cheney was correct in claiming that the previous nuclear weapons program had been "reconstituted."
And if that were not enough, State Department intelligence committed several sins not directly connected with the NIE. INR's most experienced Middle East specialists prepared a study exposing as a chimera the notion that democracy could be brought to the area at the point of a gun. INR also provided invaluable support to the interagency team that worked so hard to prepare sensibly for post-war Iraq. Its analysis and recommendations were trashed by Pentagon neophytes who knew the invasion would be a "cakewalk"--and by Vice President Dick Cheney, who knew that our troops would be seen as liberators.
[b]Who Needs Context?[/b]
A bad lot, those State Department intelligence types! Always trying to "put things in context;" unable to see the overriding need to "get with the program."
Last year, INR's director, Carl Ford, harped on the need for putting the country's best analysts to work providing policymakers with the context in which threats arise. Ford has retired, but the current acting director, Thomas Fingar, is cut of the same cloth--the kind of straight shooter likely to say things that would embarrass the CIA, the administration and maybe even the committee itself.
Who needs context? Better to let them talk about how many terrorists they can kill than the conditions that breed terrorism. Let them continue to use the paradigm of combating malaria: Surely it's easier to try to shoot down the mosquitoes as they leave the swamp than to drain the swamp.
And tell Tenet, too, to lay off this context business. The administration is still smarting from that memorandum he sent up two years ago warning that "the underlying causes that drive terrorists will persist." That CIA report cited a Gallup poll of almost 10,000 Muslims in nine countries in which respondents described the United States as "ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased."
Rubbish! They just hate our democracy.
When senators ask--as they undoubtedly will--if the United States is safer now than after the 9/11 attacks, we want to have folks who know the correct answer. Tenet, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lowell Jacoby know it has to be "yes." As for the State Department, although Secretary Colin Powell has now been brought into line, you can never be sure his intelligence specialists will see the light and "get with the program."
[i][b]Better to keep them away[/b][/i].
[i][b]- Ray McGovern [/b]is a 27-year veteran CIA analyst whose duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an outreach ministry in the inner city of Washington, DC. He can be reached at: rmcgovern@slschool.org [/i]
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| War-by-Fraud Strategy ... |
| 02.27.04 (7:52 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime is in [i]big[/i] trouble ... [/b]This week one of their criminal liars-[i]cum[/i]-swindler s, Richard Perle http://www.tblog.com/template... resigned from the Defense Policy Board, and experts predict that more resignations of vile neo-con liars, thieves and traitors are forthcoming ...
"We the People" must demand our rightful justice of Congress http://www.congress.org -- to impeach those responsible for misleading the public with their myriad[i] lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/i] including Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, and the rest of their lawless cabal, that led to the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]illegal & immoral war into Iraq ...
Review "[i][b]Cheney's Whole War-by-Fraud Strategy Is Now Exposed[/b][/i]" by [i]Jeffrey Steinberg [/i]on Executive Intelligence Review ([b]EIR[/b]) on http://www.larouchepub.com/pr... :
The lid has blown on the outright criminal disinformation campaign, run by Vice President Dick Cheney, to get his dirty little war in Iraq. This promises to be the biggest scandal yet, in the whole sordid "Cheneygate" affair. Over 500 American GIs are dead, another 3,000 are wounded, many with life-altering injuries. At minimum, officially, 15,000 Iraqis are dead, along with scores of Italian, Polish, British, Spanish and other nationalities among the occupation troops. And the whole war was willfully built on a pile of disinformation.
At the same time, the financial crisis will determine the future—the very near future, and candidate LaRouche is warning the population to wake up now. In a brief campaign statement that will be published soon, LaRouche warns voters against choosing candidates the way they "cheer for a sports figure in the arena." We are on the edge of a collapse of the present world monetary-financial system, one more dangerous than what FDR faced in March 1933," says LaRouche. He tells voters, "You are in the arena of a world economic crisis. Don't be a sidewalk superintendent. Act in this election as if your personal future depended upon it. It does."
[b]Dirty Story Has Come Together[/b]
Here are the essentials of the story of Cheney's imperial crimes, and how the pieces came together over the past 24 hours. On Friday, the[i] London Daily Telegraph [/i]and the [i]Washington Times [/i]published the identical article, quoting Ahmed Chalabi, admitting, in effect, that his Iraqi National Congress had funneled disinformation to the United States, to induce an American invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein. The article began with the blunt statement: "An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty prewar intelligence to Washington said his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons—even if discredited—achieved the aim of persuading the United States to topple the dictator." Chalabi, himself, was quoted, gloating, "We are heroes in error. As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. Our objective has been achieved. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important." Chalabi went one step further, taunting, "The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if [President Bush] wants."
The [i]Telegraph/Times [/i]article reviewed several examples of INC-provided disinformation, including the most famous case of the alleged Iraqi mobile biological weapons labs, which turned out to be mobile units producing hydrogen for weather balloons. The source of the later-discredited claims was a major in the Iraqi intelligence service, who had been made available by the INC. "U.S. officials at first found the information credible, and the defector passed a lie-detector test," the story noted. "But in later interviews it became apparent that he was stretching the truth and had been 'coached by the INC.' He failed a second polygraph test and in May 2002, intelligence agencies were warned that the information was unreliable. But analysts missed the warning, and the mobile laboratory story remained firmly established in the catalogue of alleged Iraqi violations until months after the overthrow of Saddam."
The reality is, as Chalabi hinted in his[i] Telegraph/Times [/i]comments, offering to "fall on the sword" for Cheney/Bush: The disinformation campaign was "[i]Made in Washington[/i]," not in Baghdad, nor in Chalabi's upscale London headquarters. And this can now be proven.
In a discussion with [b]EIR[/b] last week, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who served for ten months in the Near East South Asia (NESA) policy shop at the Pentagon, which housed the Office of Special Plans, described how OSP personnel, including Col. William Brunner—a former military aide to then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich—had regularly arranged debriefings of Iraqi defectors—set up through Chalabi and the INC. While CIA and DIA personnel participated in the debriefings, and sent the information to analysts, for cross-checking and evaluation, the OSP unit, led by former Cheney Vice Presidential staffer William Luti, funneled the undigested and unverified information right to Cheney's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby—as if it were fully vetted intelligence. Cheney and Rumsfeld used this fake intelligence to bludgeon President Bush, Secretary of State Powell and others into going to war.
Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski provided her own eyewitness accounts of NESA staff meetings, where Luti boasted that he was taking his marching orders directly from "Scooter," an unprecedented violation of the usually harshly-enforced Pentagon chain of command. Cheney's office was tasking Luti and OSP to go out and dig up whatever disinformation could be found, to sell the war—to the President, the Congress and a duped American public.
Further tightening the noose around Cheney, in June 2002, a Washington representative of the INC sent a letter to the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee, identifying Luti and Cheney's deputy chief of staff John Hannah, as two people who directly received the intelligence generated by the INC, under the Information Collection Program. The [i]Information Collection Program [/i]established under the[i] Iraq Liberation Act of 1998[/i], funneled millions of dollars to Chalabi and the INC, to provide defectors and other sources of intelligence to the U.S. government on goings-on inside Saddam's Iraq.
[b]INC Probe Will Bring Cheney Down[/b]
So, it was U.S. taxpayers' money that bankrolled the disinformation scheme. In fact, the latest Pentagon budget still includes between $3 million and $4 million dollars to the INC for the Intelligence Collection Program, according to a [i]Knight-Ridder [/i]story by Jonathan Landay, Feb. 21, 2004. Landay wrote, "The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war."
Late Friday, Feb. 20, a high-level Washington intelligence source further filled out the picture, confirming that the INC-linked defectors had been prepped to provide specific pieces of tailored disinformation, often in the form of bogus "eyewitness" accounts, purporting to identify locations where they had seen cannisters of chemical weapons, and other components of Saddam's phantom WMD programs. These precise pieces of eyewitness information not only gave Luti the "sexed up" intelligence to feed to Cheney, et al., to argue for war. They gummed up the "official" intelligence process with bogus information that had to be chased down, and which became part of the database from which analysts made judgments about Saddam's weapons. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) reported, over the weekend, that he had recently learned from the CIA that, when UN weapons inspectors, under Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, went to the sites where U.S. intelligence said Saddam had stockpiled WMD, they found nothing. How much of that bogus information came from the Cheney-Chalabi defectors' scam?
There is good reason to believe that some of the Congressional investigators are aware of at least a portion of this story. When, last month, Senate intelligence panel leaders Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), reached an agreement to expand the official probe of prewar intelligence, three areas that were added to the investigation were: intelligence provided by the INC; the role of the OSP and a second Pentagon neocon propaganda shop, the Counterterror Evaluations Group (made up, at one time, of David Wurmser and Michael Maloof); and the uses/abuses of intelligence by senior Bush Administration policymakers.
One document that Senate investigators will certainly wish to review is a September 2003 DIA "internal assessment" which, according to [i]New York Times [/i]reporter Douglas Jehl, "has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement." Writing in the Sept. 29, 2003 [i]New York Times[/i], Jehl revealed, "In addition, several Iraqi defectors introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials said... One Defense Department official said that some of the people were not who they said they were and that the money for the program could have been better spent."
[b]A serious probe into this nexus of INC-tutored defectors, the [i]OSP[/i], and the Office of Vice President Cheney, will bring Dick Cheney down. Expect all Hell to break loose over this new "Cheneygate" flank. These bastards will not go quietly, but the evidentiary noose is definitely getting tighter.[/b]
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| Senate Panel Presses Bush on War's Plan ... |
| 02.27.04 (2:52 pm) [edit] |
[b]Public pressure brought to bear upon Congress http://www.congress.org forces them to[i] take action to do their duty[/i], that they would otherwise[i] avoid [/i]... [/b]
The White House has been [i]stone-walling [/i]investigative committees (... [i]9/11, Iraq, etc[/i]. ...) and has refused to[i] hand-over [/i]relevant documents and to fully [i]testify[/i] under oath ... The corrupt Bush regime are [i]covering-up [/i]their [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...
"We the People" should pay close attention to the following developments ...
Refer to "[i][b]Senate Panel Presses Bush on War's Plan[/b][/i]" by [i]Douglas Jehl[/i], NY Times, on http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... :
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — Faced with a refusal by the Bush administration to provide certain documents related to prewar intelligence on Iraq, the Senate intelligence committee voted in a closed session on Thursday to move toward a possible subpoena, according to senior Congressional officials.
The bipartisan vote on the Republican-led panel sets a three-week deadline for a voluntary handover by the administration, after which the committee would employ unspecified "further action," which could only mean a subpoena, the officials said.
In a brief telephone interview, the top Democrat on the panel said that "there's no other interpretation" of the committee's action if the White House fails to turn over the documents by late March.
"We need these things, we want them, and if we don't get them, we will resort to other means," said the Democrat, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, who declined to discuss the committee's deliberations in detail.
The plan approved by the panel calls for Senator Rockefeller and Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the top Republican, to issue an explicit warning in a letter to President Bush if the documents are not received, Congressional officials said.
The panel requested the information as part of its inquiry into the administration's prewar intelligence about Iraq, including the disputed intelligence about Iraq's illicit weapons and ties to terrorism, the officials said.
The White House has said publicly that it is complying with the panel's requests. But Congressional officials say the administration is continuing to withhold important information, including copies of the president's detailed daily written intelligence digest.
After the independent commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks issued its own subpoena threat, the White House and the commission agreed earlier this year on a plan that is to allow representatives of that panel to review some copies of the presidential briefings, which are highly classified. But in discussions with the Senate committee, the White House has so far insisted that the documents be kept away from Congress, on the ground that they are covered by executive privilege.
In a letter in October to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, the committee demanded that the White House lift its objections to releasing the documents.
Earlier this month, the committee staff completed a draft report on the first phase of its investigation, covering the quantity and quality of prewar intelligence on Iraq. But Congressional officials say that to complete their work, they still need access to documents and interviews that have not been provided.
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| Bush Makes Jokes & Laughs About Iraq War ... Jeez ... |
| 02.27.04 (1:39 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" should hang our collective heads in shame ... [/b]How dare we [i]put-up [/i]with a despicable [i]ne'er-do-well-cum-AWOL -deserter-cum-drunkard[/i ] who panders to a crowd of [i]repugnant traitors [/i]while making jokes about his bungled neo-con, neo-fascist war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire in Iraq ... Meanwhile, over 550 US Soldiers & over 10,000 Innocent Iraqi Civilians have been ruthlessly slaughtered in order to enrich the corrupt Bush regime's corporate cronies: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. etc. etc. ...
[i][b]Read on ...[/b][/i]
Consider "[i][b]'When the punch line is [u]war[/u]'[/b][/i]" by [i]Charles Cutter[/i], Magic City Morning Star, on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/... :
If you take George W. Bush at his word - a dubious and risky prospect, at best - in the space of twenty-four hours he made it clear he has more respect for the sanctity of marriage than for the sanctity of human life.
Anyone watching television news in the past week couldn't help but see Mr. Bush wringing his hands over the dilemma of same-sex marriage. On Tuesday, he made his pronouncement: "Our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage." Mr. Bush made this declaration as though he were talking about al Queda, wearing his most solemn face, using a slow and measured cadence.
The night before, in contrast, he was getting big laughs from his Republican friends as he made jokes about the war in Iraq.
On Monday evening Mr. Bush addressed the Republican Governors Association to highlight the themes of his re-election campaign. He referenced his "war on terror" at least four times; September 11, at least five. Another solemn occasion, one would think. But to the man who dodged Viet Nam, the world of war does not inspire solemnity - at least not when he's performing for campaign money.
Speaking presumably about the Democrats, but more likely about anyone who disagrees with his administration, Mr. Bush said, "[i]They now agree that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power; they just didn't support removing Saddam from power[/i]. ([b]Laughter[/b].)" The parenthetical reference to "laughter" is copied from the White House web site; it's not as if they're ashamed of this levity. Mr. Bush followed up with, "[i]Maybe they were hoping he'd lose the next Iraqi election[/i]. ([b]Laughter and applause[/b])"
The fact is, the cost of deposing Saddam Hussein has been staggering. There have been, as of this writing, 549 U.S. military deaths, as well as another 100 among other coalition forces. The death toll among Iraqi civilians - and nobody is bothering to keep a very accurate count - is estimated at between 8,000 - 10,000 people. Those who argued against this war, who protested that the cost in human lives would be too great, deserve more respect than to be the punch line at a Republican fund-raiser.
It's vital for us to realize that this president does not understand, and never has understood, the necessity of dissent as an essential aspect of American freedom. There is no room in this administration for honest disagreement (dishonest agreement has yielded much more profitable results). A person may indeed feel the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power; but the flip-side of that argument, which Mr. Bush conveniently avoids, is "However, I didn't support wasting American lives - and vast American resources - in a rush to war, based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, adorned with fairy tales about being greeted as liberators and withdrawing our troops in thirty days." By forcing a choice between two simplistic extremes, Mr. Bush flatly ignores the voices of anyone who refuses to unthinkingly embrace his radical policies. This position is not only dishonest, it is simply anti-American.
And the fact remains that the cost of Bush's Iraqi war goes far beyond the lives lost. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being transferred from the pockets of American taxpayers into an already corrupt and chaotic "rebuilding" of that country. Let's not miss the significance of this fact: While we continue to fund an open-ended commitment in Iraq, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank is telling the citizens of this country that they will have to work longer and/or accept reduced benefits in Social Security and Medicare in order to reduce America's catastrophic deficit. (Mr. Greenspan still believes, however, that the tax cuts for the most wealthy Americans should be made permanent; in other words, that the deficit should be paid for by those least able to afford it.) If an electoral majority of the American public continues to support this president and these priorities, they deserve the increasingly diminished quality of life that will be the inevitable result of that choice.
Mr. Bush went on to draw a further distinction between himself and his opponents: "They seem to be against every idea that gives Americans more authority and more choices and more control over their own lives." In a rapid display of hypocrisy, the next day he insisted that the very framework of American democracy be altered, empowering the federal government - and not the individual citizen - to define that most personal of institutions - marriage.
Bush & Co. have been haunted by math problems recently - their numbers never seem to add up - so they abandoned that strategy this week, jumping into a hornet's nest of word problems instead. Their words have been offensive, divisive, glaringly inconsistent and - considering the Secretary of Education calling the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" - downright bizarre. Perhaps they should simply base their re-election campaign on photo-ops of Mr. Bush wrapped in an American flag. If nothing else, it would be interesting to see how they screw that up.
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| Bush's Job Creation Plan ... |
| 02.27.04 (11:44 am) [edit] |
[image]WinstonSmith_21793 1140.gif[/image]
"[b]We the People" know that Bush doesn't care about America's Working People ... [/b]Bush is [i]in the 'bulging' pockets [/i]of neo-fascist corporations, gluttonous wealthy oligarchs & greedy filthy rich plutocrats who are betraying our nation ...
[b]Refer to [/b][i]The Center for American Progress' [/i][b]Labour Market [/b]reports on http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| The Class Warrior ... |
| 02.27.04 (9:20 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" should[i] rise-up enmasse & revolt [/i]against the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush regime's insane [i]tax cuts, tax loopholes & boondoggles [/i]for corporations [i]and[/i] the wealthiest oligarchs [i]and [/i]filthy rich plutocrats, who are betraying our nation ... [/b]
Write to your representatives in Congress http://www.congress.org [i]today[/i] and demand that the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] rapacious, irresponsible and destructive[i] tax giveaways [/i]for corporate robber-barons and the wealthiest be repealed[i] now [/i]...
"[b]The Class Warrior[/b]" by the[i] Center for American Progress [/i]on http://www.americanprogress.o...%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A52 1-5D6FF2E06E03%7D/040226.HTM#2 :
[b]After supporting tax cuts for the [i]wealthy[/i] [/b]which have already blown a gaping hole in the federal budget, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told lawmakers that Congress should extend the cuts indefinitely – at a cost of $1.5 trillion over the next ten years – and pay for it by slashing Social Security. Greenspan's comments were particularly surprising because our current budget problems are completely unrelated to Social Security. A recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study reveals that, in the last three years, the nation's long-term budget projection has gone from a $5 trillion surplus to a $4.3 trillion deficit and tax cuts were the single largest factor behind that decline. The large role of tax cuts in the deficit has been confirmed by the President's own budget analysis. Social Security, meanwhile, continues to run a surplus. Greenspan's recommendation amounts to a huge transfer of wealth from future retirees to the very rich. The President, for his part, dodged a direct question yesterday about whether he believes, as Greenspan does, we should scale back Social Security to deal with the rising budget deficit, saying he needed to "see exactly what [Greenspan] said."
[u][b]GREENSPAN FLASHBACK – WE NEED TAX CUTS TO REDUCE REVENUE[/b][/u]: Yesterday, Greenspan argued that the tax cuts should be extended because allowing them to rise to their previous levels would "pose significant risks to...the revenue base." But when he argued in favor of Bush's first tax cut in January 2001, he made the opposite argument – that lowering tax rates was necessary to reduce revenue. Greenspan was worried that the government would quickly pay off the entire deficit and be awash in so much money it wouldn't have anywhere productive to spend it. The WP reported on 1/27/01 that Greenspan "justified his support of tax cuts by focusing on a problem that may not even emerge until the end of a possible second Bush term – the government being forced to buy private assets because it had paid off all the national debt and still had buckets of cash left over." Given the dramatic turnaround in the nation's fiscal health – a $9.3 trillion turnaround in just three years – Greenspan's prediction was horribly wrong.
[u][b]GREENSPAN FLASHBACK – WE CAN AFFORD TAX CUTS AND SOCIAL SECURITY[/b][/u]: When he was aggressively pushing the President's massive tax cut in 2001, Greenspan was directly questioned about its effect on Social Security. On 03/02/01, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) asked Greenspan, "Do I want tax cuts?...this is my problem: there's such a considerable measure of uncertainty in the projections over the course of the baby boomers' retirement that how are we going to prepare for this?" Greenspan responded that there was no reason for concern because "despite the fact that there is a very dramatic rise" in the retiring population from the Baby Boom, "the effect of [the] acceleration in productivity" will mean that revenues will be "more than adequate to meet that big surge through a goodly part of the decade subsequent to 2010."
[u][b]GREENSPAN FLASHBACK – NOT EVERYONE WAS FOOLED[/b][/u]: While Greenspan claims that his recommendations are in response to recent budget deficits, cutting Social Security was on his agenda long before deficits emerged. The WSJ has complied a litany of such comments dating back to November 1997. In 2001, when Greenspan became a champion of the President's tax cuts for the wealthy, Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-CA) predicted Greenspan's desired outcome. On 1/27/01, Matsui told the WP: "What [Greenspan's] done is created a situation where we'll have benefit cuts in Social Security. That's inevitable if you have a $2 trillion tax cut. And maybe that was his ultimate goal."
[u][b]GREENSPAN TODAY – WHITEWASHING JOB LOSS[/b][/u]: Yesterday, Greenspan tried to whitewash the Administration's job crisis, saying "progress creating jobs has been limited." But since the Administration has taken office, the economy has shed more than 2 million jobs and, at the current pace of job creation, it would be May 2007 before the first net new private-sector job was created. Meanwhile, the WP reports, "More than 2,400 employers across the country reported laying off 50 or more workers in January, the third-highest number of so-called mass layoffs since the government began tracking them a decade ago." The Administration attempted to eliminate the statistic in 2002, until stopped by Congress.
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| Bush's Service Record Takes A Comic Twist ... |
| 02.27.04 (7:58 am) [edit] |
[b]Thankfully, "We the People" have some politically irreverent and clever people amongst us, willing to "[i]take-up arms[/i]" against the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]... [/b]
Refer to "[i][b]Bush's service record takes comic twist[/b][/i]" on http://smh.com.au/articles/20... :
The political and frequently irreverent Doonesbury comic strip is offering $US10,000 ($13,000) to anyone who can show US President George Bush served in the Air National Guard in Alabama.
"That's right - we're offering $10,000 cash to anyone who can prove George W. Bush fulfilled his guard duty in Alabama," Wednesday's strip said. "So if you served with Mr Bush - even if only in the officers' club - we want to hear from you right now!"
Readers are referred to the website http://www.doonesbury.com, where a Witness Registration Form asks for online testimony. The creator of Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau, is underwriting the prize money, the site says. "Thanks to Bush's massive tax cuts for people who don't need them, GBT [Trudeau] is flush."
The hitch is the winner will not actually receive the reward. Instead the site says the cash will be be donated in the winner's name to the United Service Organisation, which entertains US troops.
The strip first offered the reward on Monday and already there were hundreds of responses, said David Stanford, duty officer at the online Doonesbury Town Hall.
"We're only in day three and have already received witness forms from over 600 contestants, with more streaming in every hour," Mr Stanford said.
"We'll be carefully processing all of them, but what's immediately striking is that so many who've plunged into the depths of their 1972 memories have surfaced with accounts that involve automobiles, alcohol, aliens, secret ops and Elvis."
The White House had no comment on the contest. But Christine Iverson, of the Republican National Committee, said: "It sounds like a stunt worthy of a comic strip."
Documents released earlier this month offered no new evidence to show that Mr Bush was present for National Guard duty in Alabama during the latter part of 1972, a period when the Democratic National Committee chairman, Terry McAuliffe, has accused him of being absent without leave.
[b]([i]Reuters[/i])[/b]
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| Generalissimo el Busho - Closing the Credibility Gap??? ... |
| 02.26.04 (5:21 pm) [edit] |
[image]WinstonSmith_85558 7284.gif[/image]
[b]"We the People" are seeking the[i] real [/i]president!!! ... Let's go look in [i]Veep Cheney's office [/i]...[/b]
Refer to "[i][b]Cheney's unprecedented power[/b][/i]" by Robert Kuttner on http://www.boston.com/news/gl...
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| Like Poppy, Bush Just Doesn't Get It ... |
| 02.26.04 (1:50 pm) [edit] |
[b]Like his callous and privileged Poppy, Bush just doesn't get it ... [/b]
"We the People" are living a nightmare with a corrupt Bush regime who is callous to the deaths of over 550 US Soldiers (... [i]as well as over 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians [/i]...) killed in Iraq based upon myriad neo-con lies, deceptions & falsehoods ... and their economic ravaging of our US Treasury in order to enrich themselves and their neo-fascist corporations, corporate pimps, wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats ...
Refer to "[i][b]Like his father, Bush doesn't get it[/b][/i]" by[i] Marie Cocco, [/i]Newsday, on http://www.newsday.com/news/c...,0,4034524.column?coll=ny-news-colum nists :
He hasn't gone on a shop-hop to J.C. Penney. [i]Yet[/i].
President George W. Bush tries so hard not to be a chip off the old block. His father's answer to the country's agitation over losing middle-class comfort to recession was to stop and pick up sweatsocks, thereby demonstrating the virtue of consumer spending to consumers who were too strapped to spend. Message: [i]He didn't get it[/i].
The son won't be caught at the counter. The medium has changed. But the message hasn't. [i]He doesn't get it either[/i].
This is the message engraved in the Rosetta stone of the current Bush administration's economic policy: the Economic Report of the President, released earlier this month to generally poor reviews.
There is, to start with, the matter of the missing jobs. With the economy having lost some 2.4 million jobs since a now-ended recession officially began in March 2001, the president predicted that 2.6 million would be created this (election) year alone. The estimate is so irrationally exuberant that the White House disavowed it days after releasing it.
And about that recession. The White House often explains a shaken economy by three factors mostly beyond Bush's control: The terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001; the fallout from corporate scandals; and the need to wage war. One problem: The president's own economic report claims the recession began in the fall of 2000 - on Bill Clinton's watch. If that's true, then the doldrums couldn't have been brought on by terrorists who hadn't yet struck, scandals that hadn't burst and wars that hadn't begun.
However, there need be no public outrage about out-sourcing, the president's chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, says. The shipping of U.S. jobs overseas is just a "new way of doing international trade." And if yours is the job that's traded to Bangladesh? The White House promises training, but doesn't plan to fund it.
If you can't get a good job or training, then perhaps there's something at the local McFactory. These are the fast-food outlets the White House says may really be generating those missing manufacturing jobs - they just aren't counted as factory jobs because the definition of manufacturing is too murky. After all, a mere frozen patty is transformed on the fast-food line into an edible delight. It's just like molding steel into fenders, but without the overtime, the health insurance and the pension.
Did someone mention retirement? The president espouses dramatic benefit cuts for future Social Security recipients, but Bush doesn't call them that. His economic report suggests that the old-age benefit could be pegged to prices, which grow more slowly than wages, and not to wage growth - the traditional yardstick. So, if you work hard to move up from burger-flipper to franchise manager, your benefit wouldn't necessarily reflect it. And if the economy suddenly started producing a bumper crop of even higher-paying jobs, the government pension system would ignore this, too. But you could put some payroll taxes into a private account, and try to self-finance a retirement income to make up for the cuts.
As for health care, it would be much more efficient, the president says, if insurers just tailored policies to "different types of consumers" and have them "priced accordingly." That is, the industry could offer one policy at a certain price to a family with a cancer-stricken child. And another to triatheletes.
So if you're worried about jobs, they're just around the corner - or the next corner or the next. Health care? Trust the insurance industry to heal it. Retirement? There's nothing wrong with Social Security that a few benefit cuts can't fix.
This is more shocking than buying socks as a substitute for economic leadership. But our current Bush doesn't lay out his agenda for the cameras.
He'd much rather talk about gay people. And really, who can blame him?
[i]Marie Cocco is a nationally syndicated columnist and member of Newsday's editorial board[/i].
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| One Criminal Down ... And ... The Rest Of The Neo-Con Gang To Go ... |
| 02.26.04 (1:22 pm) [edit] |
[b]Only one criminal in the corrupt Bush regime has resigned thus far,[i] unfortunately [/i](... [i]The entire Bush/Cheney Inc. junta should be charged with treason, impeached and tried for fabricating lies, deceptions & falsehoods regarding phony Iraqi WMDs posing an imminent threat to our national security, along with Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...) ... [/b]
Richard Perle is one of the core extremists belonging to the vile cabal of neo-con, neo-fascist [i]arm-chair chicken-hawks [/i]in the cowardly and criminal Bush regime, who lusts for perpetual war-mongerings on behalf of themselves & their sordid & squalid war-profiteers including Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. etc. etc. http://www.tblog.com/template...
Richard Perle has resigned from the Defense Policy Board-- one of the scary Pentagon war-mongering neo-orwellian propaganda machines run by the neo-con, neo-fascists Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
One Criminal [i]Down [/i]... [i]And[/i] ... The Rest Of The Neo-Con Gang [i]To Go [/i]...
"We the People" should be demanding[i] now [/i]that the entire criminal gang of corrupt neo-con, neo-fascists in the traitorous Bush regime be impeached by Congress http://www.congress.org .
Consider "[i][b]Perle Resigns[/b][/i]" by ABC NEWS on http://abcnews.go.com/section... :
[i][b]Controversial Figure Quits Advisory Panel Post[/b][/i]
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25— A controversial associate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has resigned from his seat on a key Pentagon advisory panel, [i]ABCNEWS[/i] has learned.
Richard Perle, a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration's national security policies, informed Rumsfeld more than two weeks ago he was quitting the Defense Policy Board. He confirmed the decision in a letter to the defense chief last Wednesday.
"We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which I have strong views will be widely discussed and debated," Perle wrote. "I would not wish those views to be attributed to you or the President at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign."
[b]An Outspoken Figure[/b]
Perle is a leading figure of the "neo-conservative" ideological school, and outlines his strong views on wielding U.S. military power against Islamic radicals in his new book, [i]An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror[/i]. http://www.tblog.com/template...
He was a major advocate of the war in Iraq and has advocated a stronger U.S. hand in the entire Middle East region. More recently, he has called for the resignation of CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency head Adm. Lowell Jacoby.
Senior Pentagon officials said that, despite the controversial statements and writings, Rumsfeld did not ask for Perle's resignation.
Last March, Perle stepped down as chairman of the same board. The move followed published news reports questioning whether his work with a company seeking favor with the Pentagon was a conflict of interest for such a senior adviser. Perle has consistently insisted he did nothing wrong.
And his attorney, Samuel Abeday, told [i]ABCNEWS[/i] today Perle is quitting the board altogether so he can sue the news organizations that "falsely accused him of conflicts of interest."
Abeday also said the Defense Department's inspector general conducted a thorough investigation that "exonerated Perle 100 percent."
The Defense Policy Board has no actual authority but advises Pentagon leaders on defense policy matters.
[b]For more about Richard Perle[/b], [i]refer also [/i]to "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| Bush Regime: Encouraging Job Flight & Benefit Reductions ... |
| 02.26.04 (12:39 pm) [edit] |
[b]The neo-fascist Bush regime has the worst record on job losses since the Great Depression ... [/b]Contrast Clinton's economic policies that encouraged the creation of over 22 million jobs with Bush whose insane [i]take-all, rape-all [/i]by corporations and the richest-of-the-rich has resulted in over 3.3 million jobs lost in 3 years ... Moreover, the corrupt and callous Bushies have undermined unemployment benefits leaving millions of citizens in dire misery, poverty and desperation ...
"We the People" must stand-up and fight against the rapacious [i]corporate-take-all [/i]Bush regime and their destructive economic policies that are undermining our nation's prosperity for all of our citizens ...
Consider "[i][b]Encouraging Job Flight & Benefit Reductions[/b][/i]" by the [i]Center for American Progress [/i]on http://www.americanprogress.o... :
With millions out of work and U.S. wages stagnating, the Bush Administration has pushed economic policies that are making the situation worse. From touting offshore outsourcing, to encouraging companies to moving jobs to China, the White House has systematically put the interests of working families behind the interests of its largest corporate benefactors.
[u][b]WHITE HOUSE REPORT CELEBRATES LOSS OF U.S. JOBS TO OUTSOURCING[/b][/u]: Under the headline "Bush Supports Shift of U.S. Jobs Overseas" the LA Times reported that the Bush Administration "embraced foreign outsourcing, an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years." The Administration made the announcement even as analysts predict "as many as 2 million U.S. white-collar jobs" will be exported at a time when millions are already out of work. When asked whether the White House's top economic advisor who touted outsourcing should resign, the Administration said the mere suggestion was "laughable."[[b]Source[/b]: LA Times, 2/10/04; Reuters, 12/30/03; Hastert release, 2/11/04; CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight, 2/11/04]
[u][b]ADMINISTRATION SPONSORS CONFERENCES TO HELP COMPANIES MOVE JOBS TO CHINA[/b][/u]: The Bush Commerce Department actively "sponsors" and "participates in conferences and workshops that encourage American companies to put operations and jobs in China." For one event at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria in New York, the "Commerce Department was described by the Chinese as a co-sponsor." [[b]Source[/b]: NY Times, 12/11/03]
[u][b]ADMINISTRATION SUPPORTS NEW TAX BREAKS FOR COMPANIES MOVING OFFSHORE[/b][/u]: After the WTO prohibited a U.S. provision "shielding companies' overseas sales from taxes," the Administration's allies wrote a bill to "make up for the lost tax break by creating others." One of the new tax breaks would have "allowed $70 million in tax breaks for off-shore construction contracts" – a specific incentive to move jobs offshore. [[b]Source[/b]: SF Chronicle, 10/31/03; New York Sun, 10/29/03]
[u][b]ADMINISTRATION ALLOWS COMPANIES TO MOVE OFFSHORE TO AVOID TAXES[/b][/u]: While "President Bush says the Bermuda loophole" that allows companies to move their offices offshore to avoid U.S. taxes "should be closed, he has yet to support any of the bills that would do so." Meanwhile, when Congress passed a bill barring federal contracts from going to such companies, the White House did not support it and the bill died. Because of the loopholes, in 1998, "$155 billion in corporate income literally disappeared." The top Fortune 500 corporations (which include Halliburton) who benefit from the loophole have given Bush and his allies more than $5.2 million since 2000. [[b]Sources[/b]: ABC, 7/12/02; AP, 7/31/02; Chrs. Sci Monitor, 5/22/02; Citizen Works; Center for Responsive Politics]
[b]For links to sources[/b], [i]please click onto [/i] http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| G.W. Bush: Truth, Lies & Consequences ... |
| 02.25.04 (5:56 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush is a Liar ... A Liar on [i]EVERY[/i] issue facing "We the People" ...[/b]
[i][b]Truth & Consequences[/b][/i]
In two separate speeches to governors, President Bush attempted to recast his record after a month that has seen his public support drop precipitously. But to echo the recent cover of[i] Time Magazine[/i], the disconnect between the President's rhetoric yesterday and the reality in America is now highlighting a very serious question: [b]"[i]Does President Bush Have a Credibility Gap[/i]?"[/b] If yesterday's two speeches are any indication, the answer is a resounding [i][b]yes[/b][/i]. As a new [i]American Progress [/i]backgrounder shows, http://www.americanprogress.o... on everything from homeland security to taxes, from jobs to the economy, the President's words appear almost completely divorced from his record and from well-reported facts. Here are some of the highlights:
[u][b]CLAIM VS. FACT – ECONOMY[/b][/u]: In his first speech, President Bush made his most shocking comment of the day, saying "5.6% unemployment is a good national number." But as the [i]LA Times [/i]notes, on top of "the 8.7 million unemployed" there "are 4.9 million part-time workers who say they would rather be working full time — the highest number in a decade." There are "also 1.5 million people who want a job but didn't look for one" because the economy had become so bleak. "Add these three groups together and the jobless total for the U.S. hits 9.7%." Even recent drops in the official unemployment rate to which the President was referring did not come about because of job creation. As [i]Knight-Ridder [/i]reported, last month's modest decline "was because more people gave up looking for work." All told, the recent drop "was wholly due to a contraction in the labor force, which declined by 309,000." As the[i] New York Times [/i]noted, "compared with previous economic recoveries, job growth remains well below par." And of course, this says nothing of the stagnating wages and Bush tax increases that are hitting middle-class Americans hard.
[u][b]CLAIM VS. FACT – JOB CREATION[/b][/u]: With the Administration poised to become the first since Herbert Hoover to have a net job loss at the end of its term, the President said in his second speech that "we have a positive vision for the years ahead [including] creating jobs and opportunity here at home." He then proceeded to lay out a "job creation" program that consisted of nothing more than making his tax cuts permanent. The Administration made the same job creation promises to pass the first two tax plans. But as the [i]Economic Policy Institute [/i]notes, the Administration has fallen 1.8 million jobs short of its promises. The [i]WP[/i] notes, "over three years, the Administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create." As an [i]American Progress [/i]backgrounder shows, http://www.americanprogress.o... the Administration has pursued a radically conservative economic agenda that, in many cases, has exacerbated the negative effects of the sluggish economy for millions.
[u][b]CLAIM VS. FACT – SMALL BUSINESSES[/b][/u]: The President said, "The tax relief we passed…helps small businesses," claiming the top income tax rate was cut not to enrich the wealthy, but to help small businesses. Of course, the implication is that many small businesses actually pay this tax – but according to the WP, just "3.8% of the 18.2 million business tax returns filed that year reported taxable income of $200,000 or more." With the top tax bracket at $311,950, it means only a tiny fraction of small businesses actually benefited from the tax bill. As an analysis by the [i]Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [/i]found, small business owners "would be far more likely to receive no tax reduction whatsoever from the Administration's 2001 tax package than to benefit" in any way. In terms of the 2003 tax cut, "52% of people with small business returns would get $500 or less" and the bill included provisions that actually hurt small business.
[u][b]CLAIM VS. FACT – FISCAL DISCIPLINE[/b][/u]: In one breath, the President said, "to keep this economy growing, we will have fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C. To keep this economy going, the tax cuts must be permanent" – as if the current record deficits will not be affected by the $1 trillion needed to fund the permanent tax cut plan. While the President claims that the deficits were created by the war, the [i]Congressional Budget Office[/i] reports that the tax cuts are the single largest factor creating the deficit. Those deficits are now at record-high levels.
[u][b]CLAIM VS. FACT – IRAQ, LEAKS & WMD[/b][/u]: The President said his Administration "stands for a culture of responsibility in America. We're changing the culture of America from one that said, 'if it feels good, do it,' and 'if you've got a problem, blame someone else,' to a culture in which each of us understands we're responsible for the decisions we make." Yet, the President has refused to take any responsibility for ignoring intelligence warnings and overhyping the WMD case against Iraq as a justification for war. Instead of answering questions about why the Administration received warnings and then ignored them, the White House has tried to attack and blame intelligence community. Similarly, the President has refused to take responsibility for his Administration's leak of a CIA operative's name.
[u][b]CLAIM VS. FACT – THE MILITARY[/b][/u]: President Bush simultaneously praised the work of the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, but then claimed that "when Dick Cheney and I came to Washington, we found a military that was under-funded and under-appreciated." Yet, this logic contradicts Vice President Cheney, who noted in 2000 that current military successes are rightly credited to the preceding Administration which was responsible for preparation. As he said, "when [the Gulf] war ended, the first thing I did was to place a call to California, and say thank you to President Ronald Reagan." Comedian Al Franken took Cheney at his word, and asked Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz "the Clinton military did a great job in Iraq, didn't it?" Wolfowitz responded, "[i]F**k you[/i]."
[b]Sources & Links[/b]:
The [i]Center for American Progress [/i]on http://www.americanprogress.o...%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A52 1-5D6FF2E06E03%7D/040224.HTM#1
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| Instead of Admitting Economic Truth, Bush Resorts to Statistical Manipulation |
| 02.25.04 (3:34 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime ruthlessly lied about phony WMDs, their neo-con neo-orwellian [i]casus belli [/i]for their illegal and immoral aggression into Iraq [/b]that has deteriorated into a bloody guerrilla quagmire resulting in over 1 American killed [i]unnecessarily [/i]every day [i]for nothing [/i](... [i]Death Toll is Over 550 US Soldiers & Over 10,000 Innocent Iraqi Civilians [/i]...) as well as squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars funnelled into the bulging pockets of traitorous war-profiteers and corporate pimps including Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. etc. etc.
The neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] also shamelessly propagandizes their myriad[i] lies, deceptions & falsehoods [/i]regarding the putrid state of our economy that they have plundered, swindled & looted on behalf of corporations, wealthy oligarchs and the filthy rich plutocrats ...
"We the People" must keep focused on these most important issues and not allow the insanely brutish Bushies to hijack the political discourse in order to divert our attention away from their [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i].
Consider "[b]Instead of Admitting Economic Truth, Bush Resorts to Statistical Manipulation[/b]" on http://www.misleader.org/dail... :
President Bush, attempting to obscure his record as the worst economic steward since Herbert Hoover, has become so desperate that he is exploring ways to manipulate statistics.1 Just days after Bush reneged on his pledge to create 2.6 million jobs2 and said with a straight face that "5.6% unemployment is a good national number,"3 the New York Times uncovered a White House report showing that the president is considering re-classifying low-paid fast food jobs as "manufacturing jobs"4 as a way to hide the massive manufacturing job losses that have occurred during his term.
As[i] CBS News [/i]reports, "Since the month President Bush was inaugurated, the economy has lost about 2.7 million manufacturing jobs."5 But if the president enacts the statistical change he is considering, this number would be purposely obscured because lower-paying fast food jobs would be added to make the real manufacturing losses look smaller. Of course, fast food jobs typically pay much less and have fewer benefits than real manufacturing jobs, meaning the statistical change would also obscure the fact that, under Bush, "in 48 of the 50 states, jobs in higher-paying industries have given way to jobs in lower-paying industries."6 All told, jobs in growing industries like lower-paid service sector/fast food jobs are paying 21% less than contracting industries like real manufacturing.
The president's efforts to manipulate statistics and mislead Americans are also getting a boost from his allies on Capitol Hill. Earlier this month, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-OK) pointed to an optimistic "household" jobs survey as proof that "we're at an all-time high in employment" and that "the employment situation has improved rather substantially."7 The problem is that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said definitively that "payroll data" - not the household survey - "is the series which you have to follow" in order to be accurate. The payroll data shows "a loss of more than two million jobs since 2001."
[b]Sources[/b]:
1. "George Walker Hoover?", Slate, 04/30/2003.
2. "Bush Backs Off Forecast of 2.6M New Jobs", ABC News, 02/18/2004.
3. Remarks by the President to the National Governors Association, 02/23/2004.
4. "In the New Economics: Fast-Food Factories?", New York Times, 02/20/2004.
5. "Building Blue-Collar…Burgers?", CBS News, 02/20/2004.
6. Economic Snapshots, 01/21/2004.
7. "Two Tales of American Jobs", New York Times, 02/22/2004.
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| Trying Another Lie On For Size!!! ... |
| 02.23.04 (4:57 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime is on the [i]rampage[/i] to see how [i]stupid[/i] we really are ... They are trying more [i]lies on for size [/i]...[/b]
[i][b]Consider ...[/b][/i]
[b]Run it by the boss first?[/b]
This morning we noted http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... that [b]Bush campaign [/b]chairman Marc Racicot [b]tried to float the demonstrably false line that President Bush had volunteered for service in Vietnam, but hadn't been 'selected'[/b]. [Jeez ... What lies, deceptions & falsehoods[i] won't [/i]the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]try on, in order to defraud us?]
Now, our first thought was that Mr. Racicot might be angling to be the next winner of the 'Heather Wilson [b]"[i]I think the American people are a bunch of god-forsaken idiots"[/i] Award'[/b]. http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
But this isn't just a blatant mistatement of the facts that Racicot apparently believes the press will be too timid to call him on. He's even contradicting what the president himself said only two weeks ago.
Let's go to the tape ...
"[i]He (i.e. the president) signed up for dangerous duty. He volunteered to go to Vietnam. He wasn’t selected to go, but nonetheless served his country very well[/i]."
- [i]Marc Racicot, NPR Interview[/i], http://www.npr.org/features/f... February 23rd, 2004
Now, here's what the president himself said [i]just two weeks ago [/i]...
[b]RUSSERT[/b]: Were you favor of the war in Vietnam?
[b]BUSH[/b]: I supported my government. I did. And would have gone had my unit been called up, by the way.
[b]RUSSERT[/b]: But you didn't volunteer or enlist to go.
[b]BUSH[/b]: No, I didn't. You're right.
- [i]Meet The Press[/i], February 8th, 2004
And here's an even more [i]candid version [/i]of events from the president from fourteen years ago ...
"[i]I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes[/i]." [Young men and boys from poor families didn't have that chance!!!]
- [i]George W. Bush[/i], 1990, as quoted in [i]The Houston Chronicle[/i], May 8th, 1994.
No doubt there are other examples in which the president has conceded the undeniable truth that he didn't volunteer for service in Vietnam. And if folks want to send them in to me, I'd be obliged.
But let's just consider what Racicot is doing here.
This wasn't a slip of the tongue. This was deliberate. Now that the topic has been moved a bit to the back burner, they're trying to get back on the offensive by floating a deliberate and undeniable deception in the hopes that no one will notice. If no one does then the new false story will become the accepted version in the coming campaign debate.
[b]You really can't [i]let your eyes off them [/i]for a second.[/b]
Is anyone going to ask the campaign or the White House whether their[i] new line [/i]is that the president volunteered to go to Vietnam but just never got picked?
[b]"We the People" are not only going to [i]ask[/i], but we are going to [i]check[/i] and [i]verify[/i]!!![/b]
[b]Source[/b]:
Joshua Micah Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo, http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
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| Is THIS What We Really WANT??? ... |
| 02.23.04 (3:23 pm) [edit] |
[b]Saddam Hussein committed the heinous acts of massacring the Kurds and Shias of Iraq, during the Reagan & Poppy Bush presidencies, aided and abetted by Poppy Bush and the very same neo-con, neo-fascist thugs & goons who have hijacked our nation ... [/b]Cheney sold Saddam Hussein his WMDs and Rumsfeld bartered the WMDs deals ... Without Poppy Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's encouragement to the Kurds & Shias to [i]rise-up and overthrow[/i] Saddam Hussein a few years later (... [i]when he invaded Kuwait[/i] ...), promising that the U.S. would stand behind their uprising (... [i]but then Poppy Bush stood by and let Saddam Hussein do his dirty deed [/i]...) then those atrocities that the hypocritical Bush regime self-righteously condemns, would [i]never [/i]have happened ... Ergo, the corrupt Bush regime should be impeached and Poppy Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld should be handed over to the International Court at the Hague to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i] ...
"We the People" are currently being swindled, plundered and looted out of the precious lives of our U.S. Soldiers (... [i]as well as the precious lives of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians slaughtered based upon Bush's myriad lies, deceptions & falsehoods [/i]...) and out of hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars (... [i]from the working class, as the rich got off with huge tax cuts [/i]...) in order to[i] pay-off [/i]the vile Bush regime's traitorous war-profiteers including Halliburton, etc. (... [i]and of course, the squalid Bush & Cheney families pocket hundreds of millions for themselves [/i]...) ... But also, to [i]pay-off [/i]the [i]neo-Saddam-Hussein-sty le [/i]Ahmed Chalabi (... [i]convicted embezzler, liar, thief, murderer, etc. ... whom the Iraqi people can't stand [/i]...) and his barbaric, criminal family ...
Is [i]THIS[/i] the type of irresponsible, incompetent and ruthlessly criminal regime we [i]WANT[/i] in the White House??? ...
Refer to[i] Joshua Micah Marshall's [/i]expose' in TalkingPointsMemo on http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... :
"[i]As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important[/i]." ... [... SO WHAT IF I[i] LIED[/i]!!! ...]
Those were the [ugly weasel] words http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...;$sessionid$5RM3YWKKUZDFX QFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/ news/2004/02/19/wirq19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/ 19/ixworld.html last week of Ahmed Chalabi, head of the INC, member of the IGC, and central player in a scandal the scope of which Americans are only now beginning to grasp.
The "what was said before" that Chalabi is referring to, of course, are the numerous bogus claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction he peddled into American governmental channels over the last half dozen years and more.
After these words he was kind enough to say that "the Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."
Now, I can't say that I was particularly surprised by this, though I didn't expect him to be quite so public about it. For months, when asked about what happened with all their crackerjack intel and defectors, those in Chalabi's entourage have responded with a blase version of 'the ends justify the means'. The general idea they communicate is: Okay, so there weren't any weapons. But we wanted Saddam gone. And he's gone. Our conscience is clean.
Not quite an admission, but also quite a ways from a denial. In other words, more or less what Chalabi told the [i]Telegraph[/i]: "[i]What was said before is not important[/i]." [... IT'S OKAY TO LIE ... [i]THIS[/i] CHALABI IS BUSH'S BUDDY-BOY & PUPPET TO [i]HEAD[/i] IRAQ? ... HOW MARVELOUS [[i]sic[/i]] FOR THE IRAQI PEOPLE!!! ...]
Now, to me Chalabi's motives are extremely suspect. But there are many, many Iraqi nationalists who were willing to do or sacrifice anything to rid their country of this brutal dictator. And from that perspective I can understand how their consciences would be clear. They're not Americans. They're not bound up in the ins-and-outs of truth-telling in the context of American domestic politics. Their primary interest is not the vital interests of the United States. What they're trying to do is overthrow a tyrant in their country. And if that means hoodwinking the great power to come in and do the job or perhaps just telling the leaders of the great power what they want to hear, then so be it.
There's no point belaboring this hypothetical. I don't think it really applies to the people in question here. I am only trying to sketch out a potential way to see the rights and wrongs of all this from a very different perspective.
However that may be, Chalabi seems to be at the point of all but calling us suckers to our faces. If we were scammed, you'd think we'd be a bit angry about it -- right? -- even if we helped bring it on ourselves and even if some of our leaders were complicit in the scam.
Yet, we really don't seem to be angry at all. We [i]funded [/i]Chalabi's pre-war intelligence operation in Iraq -- thus placing ourselves in the pathbreaking position of bankrolling a disinformation campaign against ourselves. (Much of his other money came from Iran. But we can get into that later.) And amazingly, we're [i]still [/i]funding it.
According to this [i]KnightRidder[/i] article http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/s... from late last week the Pentagon has set aside between [b]$3 and $4 million to fund Chalabi's Information Collection Program through 2004[/b]. [b]So we want to keep buying Chalabi's prized intel for at least the next ten months?[/b]
We're far past the point where there's any question that basically all the intel we got from Chalabi was bogus. We're not far from the point of concluding that it was knowingly bogus or at least passed on with a willful indifference to its validity. [b]And we're still going to pay his 'intelligence' operation $4 million more this year?[/b]
[b]Isn't the $400 million worth of contracts http://www.newsday.com/news/n...,0,735950.story to companies tied to his family enough to keep him happy?[/b] [... OUR U.S. TAXPAYER DOLLARS ...]
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| McFactory Jobs??? ... |
| 02.23.04 (2:13 pm) [edit] |
[image]WinstonSmith_11686 66701.gif[/image]
[b]"We the People" are being relegated to playing the subservient roles of neo-slaves and neo-serfs in the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] neo-fascist, neo-imperial slave state ...[/b]
[b]ECONOMY
McFactory Jobs???[/b]
[b]A new poll shows that 90% of Americans say "jobs and foreign competition will be important issues" this year[/b], http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... and 55% disapprove of how the Bush Administration is handling those issues. In the face of those numbers, stagnating wages, and lackluster job creation, the Bush Administration has responded not with a new economic policy, but with an effort to simply change the way statistics are counted. Specifically, the NYT reports President Bush's economic report to Congress "questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should be reclassified as manufacturers." Under this scenario, the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs might be blurred because some of those jobs have been replaced by lower-paying fast food jobs. The tactic, which provoked outrage from members of Congress, was the second affront to working people | |
