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| ... *** REVERSE ROBIN HOOD *** ... |
| 03.31.04 (5:45 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" need a [i]real[/i] Robin Hood ... Instead we've been saddled with rapacious Reverse Robin Hood(s) named Bush-[i]N[/i]-Cheney ([i]the siamese twins[/i]) who steal, plunder and loot American families and working people [i]struggling to make ends meet[/i], while the gluttonous corporations, criminal robber-barons, filthy rich plutocrats and wealthy oligarchs are getting [i]richer and richer and richer [/i]on an obscenely obese scale by wantonly exploiting, swindling and impoverishing their fellow citizens ...[/b]
Why? ... Because the traitorous Bush regime has[i] handed over our foreign and domestic policies [/i]to neo-fascist corporations and neo-imperial oligarchs & plutocrats who [i]criminally lust[/i] to turn us into a [i]neo-con 3rd world [/i]military [i]junta[/i] and [i]neo-fascist slave state [/i]... [b]Look at the facts[/b]:
... Dubya has skyrocketed the largest [i]Gap Between the Haves-and-the-Have-Nots [/i]unseen in over 75 years ...
... Dubya has recklessly and irresponsibly spent us into the [i]largest deficits in our nation's history [/i]creating an unconscionable[i] debt burden [/i]that will wreck our economy ...
... Dubya has [i]lost over 3.3 million jobs [/i]with an estimated [i]9-15 million citizens seeking-and-unable [/i]to find[i] work [/i]... (Contrast Dubya's appalling and callous malfeasance with Clinton's economic policies that created over 22 million jobs) ...
... Dubya has caused [i]poverty[/i] and[i] misery [/i]in the U.S.A. to dramatically increase with over 4 million of our fellow human beings [i]homeless[/i] and over 25 million families living below an outdated 1960s [i]poverty-line [/i](the situation is far more dire than reported by the census figures) ...
... Dubya has ignored the plight of over 45 million of our citizens without[i] health care coverage[/i]-- and over 18,000 Americans [i]die each year [/i]because they can't get [i]health care [/i]if they fall ill ...
... Dubya has [i]ruthlessly massacred our people and innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq[/i], based upon [i]impeachable[/i] lies, deceptions and falsehoods-- creating a potential humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and causing increased violence, death and misery around the world ...
The horrific consequences of the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] neo-con, neo-fascist treason is the increasingly dire and desperate circumstances [i]driving more of our citizens into penury, neo-slavery and desperate poverty [/i]... while the blood-thirsty Bushies and their hyper-rich ghoulish corporate cronies drink the profits of[i] the blood, sweat, and tears-of-misery [/i]of our weakest and most vulnerable citizens ... Sitting back and doing nothing in the face of such ugly and criminal injustice, economic rape and wanton exploitation is unconscionable and unthinkable ... [i]Where are you Robin Hood??? ... Robin Hood is "We the People"!!! ... It is time to take our nation back!!!! [/i]...
[u][b]Reverse Robin Hood[/b][/u]
Congressional leaders are attempting to finish work on the 2005 budget this week, though they still face significant hurdles. The 2005 budget in its current form diverts money for many crucial programs into tax cuts for the wealthy, which some conservatives are attempting to protect. According to new analysis by the [i]Center on Budget and Policy Priorities[/i], the 2005 budget contains myriad provisions that will have a detrimental effect on many Americans http://www.cbpp.org/3-4-04bud... : the budget "would likely lead to increases in the number of people without health insurance by requiring cuts in Medicaid. It also would raise taxes and reduce benefits for low-income workers by cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit." In fact, funding cuts of about $117 billion over five years "would affect nearly all domestic program areas, including education, veterans, environmental, and housing programs, among others."
[u][b]WINDFALL FOR SOME[/b][/u]: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has some good news. It's not for average Americans, however. [u][i]It's for the rich[/i][/u]. "At the same time that the resolution would cut domestic programs and raise taxes on some low-income workers, it would provide tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, by accelerating repeal of the estate tax and making permanent those tax cuts — such as estate tax repeal, the capital gains and dividend rate cuts, and the reductions in marginal tax rates — that provide huge benefits to the families with the highest incomes."
[b][u]"DIGGING THE HOLE DEEPER"[/u][/b]: If discretionary spending is slashed to the bone, it still has little effect on the burgeoning deficit as the hole gets deeper and deeper. The CBPP writes, even by "reducing funding for domestic discretionary programs, calling for cuts in Medicaid and the EITC, and necessitating further cuts to cover costs related to welfare-reform reauthorization, the Senate Budget Committee plan would increase the deficit in each of the next five years. The plan would cause deficits to be $178 billion higher over the next five years than they would otherwise be."
[u][b]TAX CHEATS REJOICE![/b][/u]: If you're a tax cheat, there's good news for you in the President's budget. Even though the number of taxpayers is constantly growing, the IRS is set to have fewer agents to look into returns next year than in 2002. For the fourth year in a row, President Bush has underfunded the IRS while calling for staff increases. "As a result,'' said a new report by the Oversight Board, "the administration's proposed [staff] increase" for next year "will erode before new employees can be hired, more taxpayer phone calls answered or new audits of possible tax cheats can be conducted." An average of 1,450 tax-law enforcement jobs have been proposed but not created because of "unrealistic budget proposals" each year.
[u][b]PEACE CORPS SHORT SHRIFT[/b][/u]: President Bush's budget underfunds the Peace Corps. At a time when the U.S. is working to improve its global image, paltry funding allocated for next year threatens to slow the growth of the Corps. After 9/11, interest in the Peace Corps sparked among Americans and applications grew to levels not seen since the 1970s. And the need is definitely there; the agency began projects in four new countries last year and has a waiting list of 20 nations seeking new projects. However, the President hasn't followed through on the money, and the agency is not on track "to reach 14,000 volunteers within the five-year period Bush proposed in his 2002 State of the Union address."
[u][b]THE COMPROMISE[/b][/u]: The Senate previously passed a progressive-led provision in its version of the budget that would require Congress to actually pay for any tax cuts. The measure passed against the wishes of Senate leaders; House leaders refused to have such a provision included in their bill, instead creating a separate bill that would protect tax cuts. In the Senate, Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) support the tax cut restrictions, saying "they will oppose the budget on final passage if they are watered down." However, two other senators who supported the tax restrictions, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, are less sure. CongressDaily reports Snowe yesterday "signaled Monday her willingness to compromise over pay/go enforcement rules on the FY05 budget resolution conference report." Collins is reportedly undecided.
[b]Source:[/b]
The Center for American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| Can't Bushy-boy Testify Without Someone Holding His Hand??? |
| 03.31.04 (1:37 pm) [edit] |
[b]It is almost too laughable for words ([i]if instead, it was not so pathetic[/i]) ... [/b]Like watching a[i] poorly crafted parody from a 3rd rate comedy flick [/i]in which the [i]dumb-hapless-boob-for- prez says to his vicious-mafia-style-veep[ /i]: "You'll come with me, [i]won't you [/i]Dick? I just couldn't face them, all by my lonesome. Please, oh please don't leave me [i] alone[/i] with them." ...[i] Jeez [/i]... [b]The [i]ugly truth [/i]is that this [i]is the reality [/i]of the corrupt Bush White House ...[/b]
In their neo-orwellian damage control to contain their neo-con criminal activities that warrant[i] impeachment [/i]from office, the corrupt Bush regime has agreed to let the [i]overrated NSA liar [/i]Condi Rice testify under oath in public-- but only on condition that she cannot be re-called & no one else from the White House can be questioned ... ([i]Ooopppsss, so much for their "inviolate stand on principle" ... which was a sham from the beginning, much like their phony WMD scam[/i]) ... And, so much for[i] honestly resolving [/i]any discrepancies that may arise from conflicting testimonies given to the 9/11 Commission Toadies-- in this heinous [i]Whitewash [/i]...
But the funny ([i]or not so funny, really[/i]) conditions set by the neo-imperial Bushies[i] are that [/i]the neo-fascist Bush-and-Cheney-[i]duo[/i ] will be [i]tied together like siamese twins [/i]and that [i]they will not testify under oath[/i]... because Bushy-boy [i]is unable to testify alone -- doesn't want to testify under oath -- and subsequently be charged with perjury and doesn't want to go to hell (I presume) [/i]...
Why won't Bushy-boy testify [i]alone[/i]??? ...
... Is it that Bushy-boy is [i]too stupid to remember his lines [/i]and keep their neo-fascist lies straight?
... Is it that Bushy-boy [i]might accidentally smirk-out [/i]the truth and incriminate himself & his corrupt cabal of neo-con thugs & goons?
Or, is it that Bushy-boy [i]needs someone with him because he is unable to face [/i]the cold, hard scrutiny of questions[i] by himself[/i], having always been protected by others?
Also, don't forget that [i]no [/i]tape, transcription or recording will be made of Dubya-and-Cheney[i]-duo's [/i]testimony-- so that if they are challenged later, they can deny it ... This is outrageous.
The[i] ne'er-do-well-frat-boy-cu m-spoiled-AWOL-deserter [/i]has [i][u]never[/u][/i] had to face the consequences of his disastrously reckless and irresponsible decisions [i]throughout his failed life[/i], while destroying the lives of others, so that [i]he can criminally swagger and swan off to the next "party"[/i] ...
"We the People" surely deserve better than this despicable [i]imbecilic creep-cum-coward [/i]of a president and his [i]neo-fascist gang [/i]of liars, thieves, felons and war criminals-cum-corporate-t oadies.
[b]Source:[/b]
"Rice to testify in public, under oath - Bush, Cheney to meet [jointly] in private with full 9/11 commission" on http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO...
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| Who Is Behind Dubya's Fundraising & What They Expect In Return ... |
| 03.31.04 (11:19 am) [edit] |
[b]Our Founding Fathers knew that in order for "We the People" to keep hold of our rights and freedoms under the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights that our people must be vigilent, well-informed and responsible citizens.[/b]
Our nation was established to promote the General Welfare of All Citizens, and was not meant to be hijacked by corporations, corporate-robber-barons and their sluttish puppets put in office in order to corrupt our system into becoming a neo-slave state protected by a neo-nazi military[i] junta [/i]devised to service neo-con warmongers for war-profits and neo-fascist corporate-take-all pimps ... Economic poverty is the most pernicious form of enslavement known to mankind ... and corporate rule is a form of fascist, dictatorial government that feeds off the misery and slavery of working people, the vulnerable and those too weak to fight back ... Our government must be accountable to "We the People" and must protect our interests and not pander to the gluttonous rape of our nation by the neo-imperial corporations, plutocrats and oligarchs, otherwise we return to the bad, mad old days of miserable feudalism ...
We live in very dangerous times and must fight against this disastrous trend towards a neo-fascist Global Corporate Empire ...[i] Follow the Money [/i]and see who really gains/profits from the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]domination of our country ... It is [i]not[/i] the American Middle-Class or American Workers who are helped or who benefit from this mendacious and traitorous tyrannical Bush regime ... Refer to "[i][b]Bought and Paid For[/b][/i]" by[i] Craig Aaron[/i], In These Times, on http://www.inthesetimes.com/c... :
[u][b]Who’s behind the president’s fundraising machine—and what they expect in return[/b][/u]
[b]It’s official:[/b] [i]President Bush’s re-election campaign is underway[/i].
For those who haven’t been paying attention—and Bush, Cheney and their corporate cronies certainly hope you haven’t—the president officially launched his campaign at a March 20 “kickoff” rally in Orlando. “I’m looking forward to this campaign ahead,” Bush told the assembled party faithful between chants of “Four more years!” and “USA! USA!” “With you at my side, there is no doubt in my mind we’re headed to a victory.”
Bush may claim the “political season” is just beginning, but he has spent the past nine months crisscrossing the country on a dash for cash, personally headlining 45 million-dollar fundraising events on the way to amassing an unprecedented $170 million campaign war chest. Awestruck by the sheer amount of cash on hand, the media sometimes mistake Bush’s piles of money for popularity. Venality is more like it. Bush has turned the election into an auction, an invitation-only opportunity for Corporate America to prove its loyalty to the president.
The engine in Bush’s money machine has been an elite regiment of 455 “Rangers” and “Pioneers,” the honorary titles bestowed on fundraisers who can collect at least $200,000 or $100,000, respectively. Legally, each of these individuals is limited to a maximum donation of $2,000. But the Bush campaign has perfected a sophisticated system of bundling—by which corporate executives, lobbyists or other insiders pool a large number of contributions to maximize their political influence. The Rangers and Pioneers have collected at least $64.2 million so far.
In return, these worthies have received access to the administration, relaxed regulations, legislative favors, targeted tax breaks, lucrative federal contracts, and plum appointments at home and abroad. But some hold more of a stake in Bush’s re-election than others: The 10 industries profiled on the following pages have been among the most generous supporters of the president—and they stand to reap the greatest rewards if Dubya prevails in November.
[b]Bullish on Bush[/b]
Nearly one in five Rangers and Pioneers comes from the financial sector. This group of 85 bankers, stockbrokers and wealthy private investors—which has bundled at least $12.5 million for the 2004 Bush campaign—includes 20 top Wall Street executives. Wall Street firms account for six of the top 10 companies whose employees have donated the most to Bush this cycle.
Bush’s economic policies—particularly the sweeping dividend, capital gains and income tax cuts—have lined Wall Street’s pockets. Now the industry is leading the drive to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, endorsing administration plans to overhaul the retirement system and salivating over the prospect of Social Security privatization.
These same firms have been at the center of almost every major corporate scandal from Enron to Worldcom to Martha Stewart. Yet Wall Street is banking on Bush to muzzle watchdogs like New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and fend off further regulation of mutual funds, derivatives trading and arcane, highly profitable tax-avoidance schemes. The[i] Wall Street Journal [/i]reported that hedge fund consultant Lee Hennessee sent out invitations to a March 11 Bush fundraiser with this message: “The current administration is favorable to the hedge fund industry, and we need to do all we can to keep them in office.”
[b]Under the Influence[/b]
Fundraising for Bush is a win-win situation for Washington lobbyists. Achieving Ranger or Pioneer status ensures insider access to the administration, which these influence-peddlers can then turn around and market to their clients. The client lists of major Bush backers read like a corporate scandal sheet—from Boeing and Wal-Mart to Tyco and the tobacco companies.
The 55 Rangers and Pioneers registered as federal lobbyists have bundled at least $6.7 million in contributions for Bush this cycle. These same lobbyists met repeatedly with Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force to do the bidding of energy interests, took millions from drug companies to help push through the Medicare bill and led the fight for Bush’s tax cuts on behalf of the business community.
While the Bush campaign has produced ads attacking Senator John Kerry for being beholden to “special interests,” the president has accepted more in direct contributions from lobbyists in 2003 than Kerry did in the past 15 years. “The issue is hypocrisy in saying you’re going to take on the special interests, not who took the most special interest money,” Bush media strategist Mark McKinnon told the[i] Washington Post[/i]. “You don’t hear the president in the Oval Office railing against the special interests.”
[b]Shocking Developers[/b]
Real estate developers, who have donated at least $32.2 million to Bush campaign efforts since 1999, have helped shape the White House’s anti-environment agenda. Working closely with its developer friends and donors, the Bush administration repeatedly has attempted to weaken the protection of wetlands. And under Bush, the Endangered Species Act—long seen as a major obstacle by developers—is threatened with extinction.
Nowhere is the Bush administration’s favortism for developers more apparent than in Florida, home to a third of the more than three dozen Rangers and Pioneers from the real estate industry. To oversee the fragile western Everglades, President Bush appointed an EPA regional administrator who has made it nearly impossible to deny permits for developers wishing to build there. EPA biologist Bruce Boler quit after the agency endorsed a developer-financed study that concluded wetlands discharge more pollution than they absorb.
One of the developers who helped finance the study—which implied water quality could be improved by replacing wetlands with golf courses and mansions—is Al Hoffman, a Ranger and finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hoffman has described regulators as radicals “who think the world will end if they can’t protect that little tree.”
[b]Power Play[/b]
In May 1999, Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, sent a letter to his colleagues in the electric utility industry soliciting support for Bush’s nascent presidential campaign. Kuhn exhorted them to include his campaign tracking number on their checks to “ensure that our industry is credited.”
The industry must have earned extra credit for the $5.2 million it contributed to Bush in the 2000 election. Electric utility officials and their high-priced lobbyists served on the Bush transition team and met behind closed doors numerous times with Cheney’s secret energy task force. “Just because somebody makes a campaign contribution,” Cheney told the Associated Press, “doesn’t mean they should be denied the opportunity to express their view to government officials.”
Recommendations by the Cheney task force led to the undoing of a key clean air rule that required electric utilities to install modern anti-pollution equipment at old, coal-fired plants when they made major upgrades that significantly increased emissions. The rule change will save the utility companies billions. Bringing the plants into compliance would have reduced emissions by nearly 7 million tons annually, cutting air pollution from U.S. power plants in half.
Next on Bush’s agenda was the Clear Skies initiative, which would allow the release of far more sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and airborne mercury than existing regulations—delaying by as much as a decade cuts currently required under the Clean Air Act. Kuhn has called Clear Skies “an exciting opportunity for our industry.”
The biggest prize of all for the electric utility industry may be the proposed repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which would lead to widespread deregulation and consolidation of electric utilities. Repealing PUCHA would put an estimated $1 trillion in regulated electric power generation, transmission and distribution facilities up for sale to the highest bidder. This would allow big power companies and Bush backers like Southern Co. and Cinergy to merge and expand, encouraging further Enron-style debacles.
[b]Oil Slicksters[/b]
The Bush administration’s handouts to the oil and gas industries have gone beyond a wildcatter’s wildest dreams. Oil and gas companies, which gave $13.4 million to Bush campaign efforts in 2000, were welcomed in Washington with open arms. At least a dozen industry officials were named to the Bush transition team. Not surprisingly, the administration’s energy policy has focused on expanding the supply of fossil fuels—largely by opening up public lands to exploration—rather than reducing demand through efficiency and alternative energy sources.
The centerpiece of the administration’s strategy is drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even though this precious ecosystem likely contains only enough oil to satisfy six months of U.S. demand. The Senate rejected this scheme again last year, but the administration continues to press forward. Bush’s 2005 budget includes $2.4 billion in projected revenues from oil lease sales in ANWR in 2006.
In 2000, the oil and gas industry produced 41 Pioneers. But in the current cycle just a dozen industry rainmakers are on the list. They include several longtime Bush supporters from Texas such as billionaire Lee Bass and Nancy Kinder (Ken Lay’s former secretary, whose husband Richard, was an ex-president of Enron). The oil goliaths such as ConocoPhillips and Exxon may be holding back until passage of the energy bill, which contains billions in industry benefits. Or perhaps these companies are keeping a lower political profile, hoping to avoid a Halliburton-like backlash.
[b]King Coal[/b]
“You did everything you could to elect a Republican president,” William Raney, director of the West Virginia Coal Association told a group of industry executives in May 2001, after the Bush administration reneged on its pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and abandoned the Kyoto global warming treaty. “You are already seeing in his actions the payback, if you will, his gratitude for what we did.”
The paybacks just kept coming. In 2002, the EPA adopted an environmentally devastating rule promoting mountaintop removal coal mining, which would allow companies to bury hundreds of miles of streams under piles of rubble. A federal judge found that the rule change was “designed simply of the benefit of the mining industry.” Bush Pioneer James H. “Buck” Harless sits on the board of Massey Energy, one of the biggest practitioners of mountaintop removal mining.
An even bigger gift to the mining industry would be passage of the energy bill. Even the “slimmed down” version of the bill crafted to speed its passage still contains $7.4 billion in subsidies and tax breaks for the mining industry. Jack Gerard, head of the National Mining Association and another Bush Pioneer, told the West Virginia Coal Symposium in January that “the Energy Policy Act may well be the best opportunity the mining industry will have in our lifetimes.”
[b]Prescription for Profits[/b]
Pharmaceutical companies and their executives have spent half a billion dollars since 1999 on lobbying, campaign contributions and industry front groups in an all-out effort to prevent a Medicare prescription drug benefit that would give government the power to negotiate lower prices. Decrying “price controls” and clamoring for a “market-based” solution, the nation’s drug-makers—already the most profitable industry in the country—have made it clear they won’t tolerate any threat to their bottom line.
The Medicare bill passed by Congress and signed by Bush last fall is tailor-made to their interests. Projected to cost taxpayers at least $530 billion over 10 years, the bill greatly expands the customer base for the pharmaceutical giants but ensures that the prescription drug benefit will be administered by private companies. In fact, the bill expressly prohibits the government from negotiating lower prices.
The drug industry also has aggressively opposed the “re-importation” of less expensively priced drugs from Canada. Pfizer, whose CEO Hank McKinnell is a Ranger, has threatened to blacklist any Canadian pharmacy that sells drugs to Americans. The Bush administration has marched in lockstep with the drug-makers, insisting drugs from Canada pose a risk to public safety. Yet when pressed by Congress to substantiate these claims, one top FDA official admitted, “We have very little evidence.”
The real danger, it seems, is to drug company profit margins.
[b]Bad for Your Healthcare[/b]
Executives in managed care, hospitals and nursing homes also stand to profit from the massive Medicare package, which promises them additional billions. For example, managed-care companies like UnitedHealth—which is headed by Pioneer William McGuire—will take in at least an extra $14.2 billion over 10 years in payments designed to entice them to offer drug coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And Medicare revenues for managed-care companies are expected to increase six-fold from $37 billion in 2003 to $226 billion by 2010.
Meanwhile, the president is pushing federal medical malpractice legislation, which would insulate healthcare providers from the costs of their own negligence by limiting court awards to patients, especially those who have been catastrophically injured. Charles “Chip” Kahn III, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, told the [i]National Journal[/i]: “Medical-malpractice reform is a mountaintop issue for our members. That’s why people were motivated and why we were successful” at soliciting enough campaign contributions to become a Pioneer.
Bush’s push for medical malpractice legislation also earns him points with doctors’ groups and nursing homes. Consider the potential benefits to Ranger W. Andrew Adams, president of the nursing home chain National Healthcare Corp. When it comes to negligence and liability, Adams has obvious concerns: As of June 2003, his company faced at least 87 personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits—including 46 suits in Florida alone, where the company was forced to close up shop after its insurer canceled its liability policy. More lawsuits may be on the way: A fire in September killed 14 residents in a company facility in Nashville that had not been equipped with sprinklers.
[b]Unfairness Inc.[/b]
Tort reform also is a top priority of the insurance industry, which has given more than $12 million to Bush’s federal campaigns. The Class Action Fairness Act—a Bush-backed bill now held up in the Senate—would help insurance companies and their corporate clients by pushing more cases from state to federal courts, where judges are far more likely to avoid certifying class action lawsuits.
Of the nine insurance companies with Bush Pioneers, at least seven have faced potential class-action suits for illegally denying claims for necessary medical treatments, using misleading sales practices, deceiving shareholders, retaliating against internal whistleblowers, and even failing to pay benefits on policies held by Holocaust victims.
None of this fazes Bush, who has praised the industry for working “long and hard” on the tort reform issue. As one official boasted to an industry trade magazine, “Any time the president of the United States uses his bully pulpit to remind the American people that an out-of-control legal system hurts consumers—that is a good day.”
[b]Media Monopolies[/b]
On February 2, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) swung into action, promising a “thorough and swift” investigation of a burgeoning national media calamity: Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl striptease.
For his part, President Bush claimed he dozed off during the second quarter and missed all the excitement. Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” may have garnered all the headlines, but the real outrage at the FCC under Bush has been the nonstop deregulation and unfettered consolidation of the companies controlling the airwaves. On these issues, the president hoped to catch the public napping.
Yet the FCC decision to allow one company to own television stations reaching up to 45 percent of the U.S. viewing public was second only to the Iraq war in the number of complaints received on Capitol Hill last year. Eventually, the White House signed off on a “compromise” ownership cap of 39 percent—just enough to ensure that neither News Corp. nor Viacom would have to sell any stations.
But returning Bush to office—and thus preserving the 3-to-2 Republican majority at the FCC—is crucial for the next round of media mega-mergers to win approval. After all, that narrow 3-to-2 margin made possible the controversial $3 billion merger of Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting. Univision Chairman and CEO Jerry Perenchio, a Pioneer, profited handsomely from the deal, which combined his television network with the country’s largest Spanish-language radio network.
But the Univision merger was small potatoes compared to Comcast’s plans for media domination. On February 11, the country’s largest provider of cable TV and broadband Internet services made an unsolicited offer to buy Walt Disney for $47.8 billion. If the deal goes through, it would create the largest media company in the world. Comcast Cable President Stephen Burke already has raised $200,000 for Bush’s re-election.
[i][b]Craig Aaron writes a monthly column from Washington, where he is an investigative reporter for Public Citizen's Congress Watch and www.WhiteHouseForSale.org He is the former managing editor of In These Times and the editor of Appeal to Reason: 25 Years In These Times (Seven Stories Press). Now a senior editor of the magazine, his reporting, commentary and criticism also have appeared in The Progressive, TomPaine.com, The Memphis Flyer and other publications[/b][/i]. - http://www.inthesetimes.com/c...
[i][b]Refer to the [i]WhiteHouseForSale[/i] website: [/b][/i] http://www.WhiteHouseForSale....
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| Dubya's Abortions: Over 590 U.S. Soldiers & Over 15,000 Innocent Iraqi Civilians!!! |
| 03.30.04 (2:28 pm) [edit] |
[b]Where are the hypocritical self-righteous so-called "Right-to-Life [[i]sic[/i]]" crowd when it comes to Dubya's abortion of over 590 U.S. Soldiers & over 15,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, in his insane neo-con war-mongering in Iraq for neo-fascist war-profiteering, and based upon [i]treasonable lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/i]??? ...[/b]
"We the People" should be getting pretty tired by now of [i]the tinny-sounding cliches' and neo-orwellian propaganda [/i]from those whom [i]on-the-one-hand claim to "love life [[i]uh-huh ... jeez[/i]]" so much [/i]that they oppose abortion (... [i]without even comprehending the circumstances surrounding a woman's right to choose [/i]...) ... and yet, [i]on-the-other-hand[/i], these same neo-con, neo-fascist hypocrites in the corrupt Bush regime [i]treat life-post-womb [/i]like cannon-fodder, waste and trash to be thrust down the garbage disposal of unnecessary illegal and immoral war ... [b]Dubya commits abortions every day based upon heinous greed and blood-thirsty fabrications-- [i]not out of self-defense [/i]...[/b]
Consider also "[i][b]The [hypocritical] 'war president' waged a war of lies[/b][/i]" by Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, on http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand... :
A cascade of embarrassing revelations and accusations are demolishing George W. Bush's slickly packaged, made-for-TV persona as a "war president" and the scourge of Islamic terrorists.
Former president Jimmy Carter accused Bush and British PM Tony Blair of waging a war of "lies" against Iraq.
Poland's president said he was "deceived" by Bush into sending troops to Iraq. Spain's new prime minister denounced Bush's Iraq adventure as a "fiasco" and a "war based on lies."
A group of leading American business executives ran a full-page ad in The New York Times entitled "Have you noticed what's happened to chief executives who lie?" with a picture of an executive being led away in handcuffs. The ad described the Iraq invasion as a "state-sponsored deception (that) already dwarfs the damage done by the worst corporate scandals," citing 566 American dead and a cost of $125 billion US (not to mention 20,000 Iraqi deaths).
The underlying message was stark: the president and his "war cabinet" ought to face criminal charges for lying to the nation and starting an unnecessary war for domestic political reasons.
The fourth bombshell exploded when Richard Clarke, the respected former counter-terrorism chief under presidents Clinton and George Bush Sr., went public with the most damning accusations yet made against the White House. His testimony before a commission investigating the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. asserted the Bush administration damaged U.S. national security, did not do enough to prevent the 9/11 attacks, and obsessed over Iraq while largely ignoring al-Qaida's threat.
Bush, said Clarke, did "a terrible job" in fighting terrorism. Bush's obsession with Iraq left the U.S. "needlessly unprepared" to counter an al-Qaida attack. He also criticized, somewhat less strongly, the Clinton administration's anti-terrorism efforts.
Clarke, a Republican, insisted there were no links between Iraq and either 9/11 or terrorism, and that Iraq had no concealed weapons, a position long maintained by this column. But the feeble, politicized 9/11 commission failed to follow up on this dramatic testimony.
Vice President Dick Cheney was described by Clarke as a "right-wing ideologue." He accused Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a principal architect of the Iraq War, of "belittling" the al-Qaida threat.
We learned Defence Secretary Rumsfeld was so preoccupied with anti-missile defence before 9/11 he ignored al-Qaida.
[b]Urgent warnings [/b]
The commission's report stated Rumsfeld "did not recall any particular counter-terrorism issue that engaged his attention before 9/11," though the CIA claimed to have urgently warned both Bush and Rumsfeld of impending attacks.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who refused to testify, was shown to be a dithering, confused amateur and a character assassin who has led the White House attacks on Clarke.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, another self-styled scourge of terrorists, actually proposed cutting spending on counter-terrorism exactly one day before 9/11 - and again, afterward. Unfortunately, the commission failed to ask why the Bush administration had been sending millions in aid to the "terrorist" Taliban until four months before 9/11.
This column has repeatedly asserted the Bush administration was asleep on guard duty on 9/11.
True, there were no warnings hijacked airliners were coming on that specific day. But with the benefit of hindsight, we see the same ineptitude and confusion that preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor - a combination of distraction, smugness, self-deception, disbelief and bungling. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan's naval codes were being intercepted and deciphered; her attacking aircraft were spotted by radar. Yet the obvious conclusions somehow were not made. The same applies to Sept. 11, 2001.
In the U.S. Navy, a ship's captain is responsible for all accidents or misfortunes, no matter what the excuse. But no senior member of the Bush administration has accepted responsibility for the death of some 3,000 people on 9/11. No one resigned.
No senior U.S. official acted with the honour and courage of Britain's foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who resigned to protest a war against Iraq he charged was based entirely on falsehoods and disinformation.
Instead, the Bush administration launched a trumped up war against Iraq to mask its own negligence prior to 9/11, and to satisfy America's lust for revenge by attacking a nation innocent of that crime.
Clarke, at least, had the decency to apologize to the families of the 9/11 victims, saying, "the government failed you. And I failed you." We have yet to hear a peep of self-criticism from the blundering but arrogant Bush White House.
Of course not. This administration is running for re-election on its "war record" against Iraq, and its so-called war on terrorism. Bush is playing Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman.
But his claim to be a war president is like the man who murders his family, then begs for mercy because he is an orphan. The Iraq war was not one of self-defence, like World War II, but an unprovoked, illegal aggression engineered by the Bush administration and justified by a torrent of shameful lies. Bush's "war on terrorism" is a police action that was unnecessarily and foolishly militarized.
Richard Clarke, no matter his motives, has done his nation an important, badly needed service.
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| Bush Puts A 'Cancer' On The Presidency ... |
| 03.30.04 (2:00 pm) [edit] |
[b]Make no mistake about it: [i]another[/i] four years of the hellish [i]'Useful Idiot' [/i]Bush means unrelenting, bloody warfare throughout the Middle East ... Next stop: [i]Syria & Iran [/i]... All based upon the corrupt Bush regime's [i]heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/i] of phony WMDs or other fabricated threats and [i]'sexed-up' [/i]neo-orwellian propaganda ... [/b]
[u]Who[/u] pays the[i] heart-breaking price in blood and misery [/i]and the [i]back-breaking costs in U.S. taxpayer dollars[/i] for the corrupt Bush regime's illegal and immoral neo-con nightmarish fantasies-turned-warfare of Global Corporate Empire? ... [i]Not [/i]the neo-fascist Bushies --[i] Not [/i]their wealthy campaign contributors -- [i]Not [/i]their corporate-take-all pimps and war-profiteers (Halliburton, Bechtel, the Carlyle Group, Unocal, etc.) ... It is "We the People"[i] who are asked to spill our loved-one's blood and go-broke paying off record-level deficits as far as the eye can see[/i], while these tyrannical traitors in Bush's cabal of neo-con, neo-fascist arm-chair chicken-hawks [i]revel in their infinite power and vast wealth [/i]...
Let "We the People" put a stop to this [i]insanity[/i] ... [i]before it is too late [/i]... It is [i]already [/i]too late, as over 590 U.S. Soldiers & over 10,000-15000 innocent Iraqi civilians have been ruthlessly slaughtered in order to satiate the blood-thirsty lusts of the dictatorial Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i], based upon their [i]treasonous lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/i] used to mislead the American people and the entire world community.
Consider "[i][b]Bush puts a 'cancer' on the presidency[/b][/i]" by[i] Robert Scheer[/i], L.A. Times on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/... :
"[i]Worse Than Watergate[/i]," the title of a new book by John Dean, Richard Nixon's White House counsel, is a depressingly accurate measure of the chicanery of the Bush/Cheney cabal. According to Dean, who began his political life at the age of 29 as the Republican counsel on the House Judiciary Committee before being recruited by Nixon, "This administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous." And when it comes to lies and cover-up, the Bush crowd makes the Nixon administration look like amateurs. As Dean writes, they "have created the most secretive presidency of my lifetime … far worse than during Watergate."
Dean knows what he's talking about. He was the one who dared tell Nixon in 1973 that the web of lies surrounding the Watergate break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters had formed "a cancer on the presidency." When Dean went public about that conversation, the Nixon White House smeared him as a liar. Fortunately, the conversation had been taped, and Dean was vindicated.
The dark side of the current White House was on full display last week when top officials of the Bush administration took to the airwaves to destroy the credibility of a man who had honorably served presidents Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes.
The character assassination of Richard Clarke, the former White House anti-terrorism chief, was far more worrisome than Nixon's smears of Dean because it concerned not petty crime in pursuit of partisan political ambition but rather the attempt to deceive the nation and the world as to the causes of the 9/11 assault upon our national security — and to justify an unnecessary war in Iraq.
First, Bush's aides suggested that Clarke had invented the meeting in which Clarke said the president pressured him to find a link between the 9/11 attack and Iraq, ignoring Clarke's insistence that intelligence agencies had concluded that no such link existed. But on Sunday, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was forced to admit that Bush had pressed Clarke on an Iraq connection. This backed up earlier assertions by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as to Bush's obsession with Iraq from the very first days of his administration at the expense of focusing on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
That the Bush lies didn't work this time may be because just too many veterans of the U.S. intelligence community are finding their voices and are willing to denounce an administration that has seriously undermined the nation's security.
They are speaking out, as 23 former CIA and other defense intelligence agents did in Robert Greenwald's devastating documentary, "[i]Uncovered[/i]." They have stepped forward, as did David Kay, Bush's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq.
This is an administration that has been dominated by the neoconservative ideologues who condemned the logical restraint of the first Bush administration on foreign policy as a betrayal of the national interest.
These neocons have made a horrible mess of things, but that gives them no pause. They went to war with a nation that had no weapons of mass destruction and few connections to terrorism — but have coddled Pakistan, which sponsored the Taliban and Al Qaeda and which recently was revealed as the source of nuclear weapons technology for North Korea, Iran and Libya.
The president's team is wrong to believe its outrageous lies can continue to lull a gullible public. Nixon's lies won him a second election, but then he lost the country.
Bush smiles better than Nixon, but when the lies are exposed, the smile turns into a character-revealing smirk. That happened last week when the White House released photos of a skit, performed for the amusement of jaded media heavyweights, in which the president pretended to look under his desk for the missing weapons of mass destruction. This may have amused his cynical audience, but to the general public, the carefully lip-synced policy pronouncements of the man who cried wolf has morphed into a sick joke.
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| ... Gangsters In The White House ... |
| 03.30.04 (9:57 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" had [i]better wake-up before it is too late [/i]to the vile nature of the criminal gang of neo-con thugs and neo-fascist goons who have hijacked our nation ... [/b]The crooked neo-con Bush regime represents the worst sort of dictatorial and tyrannical war-mongering administration that has undermined the principles of our republic enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, unseen in America's 229 year old history ...
[u][b]There are gangsters in the White House[/b][/u].
Whenever the Bush Administration gets criticized, it responds like Tony Soprano, and Bush's capos put a hit out on whoever dares to question the don.
That's the way it was when Paul O'Neill, Bush's former Treasury Secretary, said Bush wanted to go to war against Iraq way before 9/ll. Within hours, the Bush goons were threatening O'Neill with prosecution for allegedly publicizing classified information.
That's the way it was when former ambassador Joseph Wilson went public with his account of how the Bush Administration played up the false story of uranium in Niger. Within days, the White House was outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA officer, with Karl Rove reportedly saying, "His wife's now fair game."
And that's the way it is today, with Bush surrogates unloading on Richard Clarke, the counterintelligence pro who has leveled two serious charges against the Administration.
First, that it was "lackadaisical" about Al Qaeda prior to 9/ll.
And second, that Bush's Iraq adventure has "greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
Rather than just debate the merits of these accusations, rather than have Condoleezza Rice testify in public before the Sept. 11 bipartisan commission, the Bush thugs have revved up the slime machine. [Condoleezza Rice apparently will now testify under oath in public, but only on the condition that no other White House officials are called by the 9/11 commission http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... ... This is morally wrong and makes a mockery of the 9/11 commission hearings.]
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist slammed Clarke for being, in Frist's words, "consumed by the desire to dodge blame for the 9/11 attacks" and for "profiteering." But he didn't stop there. Frist went on to make very unsubtle threats about prosecuting Clarke for perjury, alleging that Clarke lied to Congress. [Later Frist admitted that he hadn't read any of Clarke's testimony.]
Then the White House began to blackball Clarke. "You're not going to make another dime in Washington again," said one White House staffer, Clarke told Tim Russert.
Hostile to the very essence of democracy, which is the freedom to dissent and to criticize our government, the Bush gang wants to rule by fear, intimidation, and goon squad tactics.
--[i] Matthew Rothschild[/i] - The Progressive, http://www.progressive.org/we...
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| Bush's Gang: Wild, Mad Attack Dogs Foaming At The Mouth!!! |
| 03.30.04 (8:30 am) [edit] |
... Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) claimed that between his 2002 testimony and his recent testimony, Richard Clarke "has told two entirely different stories" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... to Congress. Frist later admitted he has not read Clarke's earlier testimony http://slate.msn.com/id/20978... ...
[b]Like wild, mad attack dogs foaming at the mouth, the savage and brutal on-slaught of the blood-thirsty ravaging & cannibalizing of Richard Clarke is a national disgrace.[/b] The corrupt Bush regime has unleashed a neo-fascist propaganda campaign to smear Clarke's reputation with slander & libel of his personal and professional life, because they are unable to counter his facts ... http://www.progressive.org/we...
"We the People" had better differentiate between the Bush/Cheney Inc[i] junta's [/i]brutish and mendacious character assassination and the cold, hard facts revealed by Joseph C. Wilson IV, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke and others ...[i] Our lives may well depend upon it [/i]...
[b]Foaming At The Mouth ...[/b]
Conservatives are continuing their assault on former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, a man who President Bush personally praised upon his retirement. The right-wing attack machine is now resorting to unsubstantiated claims and even racially charged rhetoric to try to change the subject. On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) demanded that Clarke's 2002 private testimony to the congressional 9/11 commission be declassified claiming that Clarke "has told two entirely different stories." Frist specifically recounted details of what he said was Clarke's closed-door testimony. But as questions were raised about the legality of Frist's disclosure of still-classified testimony, Frist quickly "retreated" from his claims, admitting "that he personally had no knowledge that there were any discrepancies between" Clarke's 2002 testimony and his testimony last week. On the talk shows, Ann Coulter disparaged Clarke, saying he was just "upset a black woman took his job" while Robert Novak asked a guest "Do you believe Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman, Condoleezza Rice?" But in all of the huffing and puffing, not one Bush official or right-wing pundit has addressed the fundamental question: why was the Bush Administration asleep at the wheel before 9/11?
[u][b]POWELL ASKED QUESTION BY AMERICAN PROGRESS; HAS NO ANSWER[/b][/u]: Appearing on [i]CBS Face the Nation[/i], anchor Bob Schieffer told Secretary of State Colin Powell, "[i]The Center for American Progress[/i] has posed this question: If, as the administration claims, the White House did make terrorism a priority, why did Vice President Cheney wait five months to establish a terrorism task force which then never met?" Powell responded by claiming other meetings had taken place, but according to the official transcript, said "With respect to the task force, I--I--I can't answer the specific question. I'm not familiar with the--with the document." See a video of the interchange.
[u][b]SELECTIVELY DEFINING "THE PUBLIC INTEREST"[/b][/u]: White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended releasing an off-the-record background briefing Clarke gave in 2002, saying "It's important for the American people to know the facts" and that the release "was very much in the public interest" (For his part, Clarke is welcoming the declassification of all of the documents). However, the same standard is not being applied to Condi Rice, who refuses to testify publicly before the 9/11 commission, and who even refuses to go under oath or allow commissioners to transcribe her private testimony. Similarly, the White House "public interest" argument is also being ignored as the Administration refuses the 9/11 commission's request to make public some of the President's Daily Intelligence briefings.
[u][b]ATTACKING CLARKE FOR APOLOGIZING[/b][/u]: Instead of demanding the White House live up to its "personal responsibility" mantra and publicly offer contrition, conservatives are attacking Richard Clarke for his apology to 9/11 families. Frist said Clarke's apology "was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility." A White House official said Clarke's apology was "bull___." Condoleezza Rice categorically refused to take any responsibility at all on [i]60 Minutes[/i], despite being the top national security official at a time of one of the worst national security failure in American history. Clarke defended himself, saying "I have felt an enormous sense of guilt since September 11th...There are 3,000 families around the world who lost loved ones, and I'm sorry if Senator Frist thinks I don't have a right to apologize, but I do."[i] Newsweek [/i]reports that "for many families of 9/11 victims, Clarke's apology was important" and evoked "elation" that at least one Bush official would admit some culpability. He was publicly embraced by many of those families at the hearings last week after his apology.
[u][b]BILL FRIST, HYPOCRITE[/b][/u]: Frist further disparaged Clarke by saying that "I am troubled that someone would sell a book, trading on their service as a government insider with access to our nation's most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured." Of course, it was Frist who capitalized on the traumatizing anthrax attacks of 2002: instead of waiting until the situation was brought under control, he actually published a new book on bioterrorism and aggressively promoted it while the crisis was still unfolding. For his part, Clarke said he wrote the book (which was cleared for publication by the White House) because "I had to tell the families of the victims who have been asking me, 'What went wrong?'" and wanted to offer suggestions about how we structure "the government so that we can avoid this kind of thing in the future." He also said he plans to make "substantial donations from the profits of this book" to 9/11 families.
[u][b]RICE'S CLAIMS ABOUT AFGHANISTAN IN QUESTION[/b][/u]: Rice last night claimed that "The president focused our energies and our attention" on Afghanistan after 9/11 – but even that claim was refuted by a new USA Today story which notes that as early as 2002, special forces were "pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for Iraq" while the White House "took CIA specialists away from the Afghanistan effort" for Iraq. Now, two years later, the U.S. is being forced to send in reinforcements, as the United Nations warns that Afghanistan "is in danger of reverting to a terrorist breeding ground." For more on Rice's interview last night, see this[i] American Progress [/i]backgrounder http://www.americanprogress.o... .
[b]Source[/b]:
[i]The Center for American Progress[/i], http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| George Bush, Lying and The Mad Dogs of War ... |
| 03.29.04 (3:18 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" have been ruthlessly manipulated by the neo-hitlerian Bush regime who have committed heinous acts of neo-fascist barbarity, cruelty and inhumanity towards our fellow men here at home and abroad. [/b]The insane neo-con doctrine of Global Corporate Empire used to invade Iraq (...[i] while the real culprits of terrorism were allowed to get away, and the real 'war on terrorism' was criminally 'put-on-the-back-burner' by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc[/i]. ...) is in violation of the basic tenets of civilization and decency and moreover contravenes international law.
It is time to reject the illegal and immoral neo-con war machine massacring thousands of innocent human beings-- for war-profiteering in order to enrich the rapacious and sluttish Bush regime's corporate pimps: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Rove, Wolfowitz and the rest of their criminal gang of liars, thieves and traitors, be [i]impeached-or-fired [/i]and tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...
[b]"[i]Cry ‘Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war[/i]."
- [i]Shakespeare[/i], Julius Caesar[/b]
Before the Iraqi war, the Bush administration cried "[i]Havoc[/i]!" and used a number of lies to justify setting the dogs of war loose.
The non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the phony uranium purchases from Niger weren't the only falsehoods. There also were lies about Al-Qaeda training camps in Iraq http://www.caabu.org/press/do... , aluminum tubes http://www.caabu.org/press/do... , Hussein kicking the UN inspectors out of Iraq http://www.fair.org/activism/... , unmanned airplanes that could attack the East Coast of America http://www.informationclearin... , mobile bioweapon laboratories http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD... , and on and on and on.
Once the war was underway, the folks who brought us death and destruction peddled further lies: the triumphant toppling of the Hussein statue http://www.informationclearin... , the Jessica Lynch story http://www.thestar.com/NASApp... (she actually got a medal for bravery despite not doing anything), the bogus stories to explain the killing of civilians, and more.
[u][b]It Never Stops[/b][/u]
Now that the war is over, the discredited prewar lies have been discarded, and the administration is resorting to new claims, such as:
• The world is a safer place with Saddam Hussein gone.
• The Iraqi people are finally free.
• Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator.
• "The defense of freedom is always worth it," as George Bush said last week.
[u][b]Character Assassination[/b][/u]
And we need to add to these prevarications the character assassination the administration fires at anyone who exposes its lies by relating personal experiences within the administration. Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke have felt the full force of the government-press partnership.
The moment Clarke went public with statements that Bush was determined to blame 9-11 on Iraq, and that Bush was much more eager to attack Iraq than attack Al-Qaeda, the administration redirected the dogs of war from Hussein to Clarke.
Top administration officials have already appeared on numerous national news shows. Condoleezza Rice showed up on all five national morning shows (on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and CNN). The attack dogs said very little about the actual charges, preferring to attack Clarke personally as a hypocrite who previously praised President Bush's response to terrorism.
Providing their usual support for big government, TV and press reporters repeated and discussed statements Clarke made in 2001 and 2002 — statements that seemed to back up the charge that Clarke was an opportunistic hypocrite.
But did you notice that every reporter showed us exactly the same statements from Clarke? Some of the apparent "statements" weren't even complete sentences. Why did everyone who commented on Clarke's apparent flip-flop focus on exactly the same fragments?
They did so because those were the only fragments they had to work with. The quotes were all provided by the Bush administration — and they're the only quotes available. If the reporters had possessed the original documents, some of them would have picked out other statements or fragments from those documents.
It is very, very, very important to realize that . . .
Virtually everything we think we know about a foreign-policy issue is only what the government tells us.
We have no way of knowing whether the fragments are actually true statements Clarke once made. Nor do we know in what context the fragments appeared originally. All we know is that this is what the administration wants us to believe.
Even if every fragment is true and indicative of Clarke's previous opinions, it doesn't mean he's a hypocrite. What he said in 2001 or 2002 may have seemed true to him at the time, but has since been refuted by reality.
For example, Clarke supposedly said in 2002 that the Bush administration "changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda." But that doesn't mean the strategy did change. Politicians continually make statements promising revolutionary improvements that never come to pass. One year after making that statement, Clarke quit working for the government — partly, we presume, because Bush's actions didn't match his promises.
Fox TV News has provided a complete transcript of a press briefing http://www.foxnews.com/story/...,2933,115085,00.html Clarke gave in 2002 — from which the above quote was taken. You can search the entire transcript and not find unequivocal praise for George Bush.
We have no way of knowing what Clarke really thought about Bush in 2001 and 2002, because we have mostly only out-of-context fragments of statements Clarke made — fragments that have been carefully selected and released by the Bush administration in order to discredit Clarke. And the press dutifully publicizes those statements without pointing out that they are necessarily only small, out-of-context pieces of the puzzle.
So let me repeat what you should never forget . . .
[i]Virtually everything we think we know about a foreign-policy issue is only what the government wants us to know[/i].
[u][b]Other Postwar Lies[/b][/u]
What about the Bush administration's postwar lies? . . .
• The world is a safer place with Saddam Hussein gone.
Is it really?
Tell that to the 200 people who died in Spain two weeks ago — or to their families. Tell it to the Israelis who continue to be killed in Palestine suicide attacks. Tell it to the Palestinians who continue to be killed in Israeli military attacks. Tell it to the people in America who have been jailed without formal charges, without benefit of an attorney, without a speedy trial or the opportunity to confront their accusers.
[u][b]Free At Last!, Thank God Almighty, We Are Free at Last![/b][/u]
• The Iraqi people are finally free.
Oh really?
The country is occupied by a foreign power.
Its officials are appointed by that foreign power.
Its citizens must carry ID cards http://www.commondreams.org/h... , and submit to searches of their persons and cars at checkpoints and roadblocks.
They must be in their homes by curfew time http://www.commondreams.org/h... .
Many towns are ringed with barbed wire http://www.commondreams.org/h... .
The occupiers have imposed strict gun-control laws, preventing ordinary citizens from defending themselves — making robberies, rapes, and assaults quite common http://truthout.org/docs_03/0... .
The occupiers have decreed that certain electoral outcomes won't be permitted.
Families are held hostage http://www.washingtonpost.com...¬Found=true until they reveal the whereabouts of wanted resisters — much like the Nazis held innocent French people hostage during World War II.
Public protests are outlawed.
Private homes are raided or demolished http://www.commondreams.org/h... — with no due process of law.
Newspapers, radio stations, and TV are all supervised by the occupiers.
[u][b]Brutality[/b][/u]
• Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator.
So what?
Is it the duty of the American people to give their resources — and maybe their lives — to topple every dictator in the world and make sure the Bill of Rights is enforced in every country (except, perhaps, the United States)?
And if toppling dictators is so important, why is George Bush cozying up to brutal dictators in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan?
If George Bush wants to donate his own money to revolutionary movements in oppressed countries, he has a right to do so. If he wants to quit his job and go fight in one of those revolutionary movements, he has a right to do so.
But he has no constitutional authority to commit American money and American lives to the fight for freedom in other countries.
Even the claims of Hussein's brutality are suspect, because they come mostly from the same administration that has already discredited itself. The "human shredder" http://www.lewrockwell.com/sp... atrocity story has already been refuted, and who knows how many more of George Bush's favorite horrors will be exposed as lies eventually?
[u][b]Say What?[/b][/u]
When confronted with the charge that he misled the American people about the need to go to war with Iraq, President Bush replied http://www.usatoday.com/news/... , "The defense of freedom is always worth it."
Is that right?
Worth what?
The loss of more of our freedoms in America?
A cost of hundreds of billions of dollars paid by Americans for the freedom of people in foreign countries?
And worth it to whom?
Obviously, the Iraqi war was worth it to George Bush. (At least it seemed so until now.)
But was it worth it to the hundreds of Americans who died?
Was it worth it to the thousands of Iraqis who died?
Was it worth it to the families of those who died?
And what freedom are we talking about?
The U.S. was never threatened by Saddam Hussein. He had no capability to attack America, and he never indicated any desire to attack America.
In short, American "freedom" was never threatened by Saddam Hussein. So why is an unprovoked attack on another country considered to be a "defense of freedom"?
[u][b]The Dogs of War[/b][/u]
So the lies continue.
And the dogs of war are unleashed on anyone who threatens to expose those lies and seems to have the public forum in which to do so.
[b]Source[/b]:
Harry Browne, http://www.harrybrowne.org/ar...
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| The Corrupt Bush Regime and Rice's Betrayal of Democracy ... |
| 03.29.04 (12:10 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime (...[i] and particularly the over-rated, dishonest, incompetent and traitorous Condoleezza Rice[/i] ...) are betraying the principles of democracy ...[/b]
"We the People" have a right to hold our leaders accountable for their decisions that affect our nation's well being and especially those that lead us into war ... Moreover, we have a right to know whether or not our leaders have betrayed our trust or simply badly bungled our national security through incompetence and malfeasance ... The insane, neo-con, neo-fascist Bush regime was so obsessed with Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the early days of their mad reign that they neglected advice and warnings from CIA, FBI and NSA officials regarding the potential terrorist threats from Al Qaida prior to 9/11 (... [i]Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaida [/i]...) ...
Instead of testifying under oath and demonstrating a respect for "We the People", the neo-orwellian Bushies are using obfuscation and cynical manipulation to ruthlessly deceive us with mendacious T.V. propaganda ... This is outrageous and we should violently protest against the disgraceful Bush regime's [i]myriad lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/i] representing [i]impeachable[/i] High Crimes under the U.S. Constitution ... Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that Bush, Cheney, Rice and the other neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons in this insane, criminal regime be subpoenaed to testify before an investigative committee truly interested in our nation, instead of their own sordid and squalid political gains ...
Refer to "[i][b]The Rice Dilemma[/b][/i]" by[i] Beldeu Singhon [/i]on http://www.independent-media....%20Reported
All American ideals pertaining to governance and holding public office and officers who serve the American public directly or indirectly through the Oval Office stamp from "government of the people, by the people, for the people." That is the founding principle that sums up democracy and the working of democracy and life under democracy.
It is the sacrosanct duty of every American citizen and its institutions to uphold this founding principle and never to violate it but to give full effect to it through their actions, deeds and conduct as officers and officials whether they are appointed or elected. Equally, it is the duty of the people to any time to call on these officers or officials to give a full and proper effect to it. It must be fully supported and protected by laws, relevant provisions of statutes that govern the conduct and duty of these officers and officials in order to deliver good governance to the people of America. Only then will democracy blossom.
Good governance is one of the basic rights of the people. Frank and forthright testimony and truth-telling are essential demands that buttress the pillars of responsibility and accountability. Without these pillars there is no democracy, and if there is one to start with, it will be driven into a coffin and sealed in it, in good time.
The founding principle is not just a political statement that stands frozen in a speech. It is the breath of America and it must be kept alive as a basic legal precept for creating laws that form the foundational premise for good governance to deliver the rule of democracy, not the rule of persons. It is the overriding principle that governs conduct of officers and officials.
The Presidency in the American structure of political life is an instrument of democracy that rests on the founding principle. Nothing more. It is not above it. It cannot rise above it. It is incumbent upon the entire political structure to, at all times, hold it on the highest pedestal.
Going against the people of America or against public policy or acting in ways or in any manner that creates suspicion or charges of breach of public trust or anything that conjures or amounts to treason against the public is a betrayal of the founding principle and it naturally necessitates the establishment of a commission or a body for inquiry into these suspicions or acts for it is an inviolable principle.
Any instance or event or a series of instances or a series of events or a combination of instances and events involving the misuse of public funds or misleading the public or misleading the Congress or misleading the public and Congress or misleading any public institution whether by tendering or giving false information with or without fraudulent intention and precipitating an event or causing it to happen on the basis of false information or by misleading or by lies or by deceit or by lies and deceit or by avoidance to tell the truth, based on the founding principle, comes under public scrutiny and the public have a right to hear testimony publicly, simply because "government for the people" precludes rule by misdeeds, lies, deceit, misleading, fraud or fraudulent intent and avoidance to tell the truth.
Each of these elements form the anti-thesis of "government for the people". These elements are destructive to the spirit of democracy that is to bloom forth from the founding principle.
Inherent in the founding principle, therefore, is the compelling element that ought to persuade Condoleeza Rice to testify publicly for the people to hear rather than "tell a good story" through writing or television appearances. The art of telling good stories through such writings and appearances lies outside the body and scope of the founding principle, the purpose of which is only to exact the truth for the public to hear in connection with all matters that encompass government of and by the people.
A public Body or a Commission established for purposes of such a hearing is automatically empowered by the founding principle to compel anyone to testify under oath for the public to hear and no specific laws or frames of reference can curtail it or render it limp or impotent to serve democracy or the people.
Rice has created a dilemma for American democracy and if she refuses to testify under oath before the Commission, she stands in contempt of the founding principle and her "good story" in television appearances and writings in the media will seem nothing more than public relations and an avoidance to tell the story under oath. Public relations efforts can often be crafted to dress-up truth but the requirement under the founding principle is the naked truth.
Will Rice prevail or will the founding principle and the right of the American people to hear the truth publicly prevail? White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said that in order for presidents to receive the most candid advice from their staffs, "it is important that these advisers not be compelled to testify publicly before congressional bodies such as the Commission."
The whole issue is not about giving or receiving advice. An officer or official is free to give any advice - the crux of the matter is the act, conduct or deed that is relevant because it is the happening or the event or occurrence that the public scrutinizes in a public hearing. So, in a democracy, the need for accountability is more fundamental and pressing that to "receive the most candid advice from their staffs". The lack of accountability is the tomb of democracy.
The constitution, the presidency and the courts cannot be used to carve a tomb for democracy by destroying accountability because they are instruments of democracy to uphold democratic ideals and to perpetuate democracy.
In the final analysis, public scrutiny is about the actions taken or the deeds and misdeeds or the conduct and misconduct or leading and misleading and not about the giving and receiving of any kind of advice. In other words, it is about the nature of acts, deeds and conduct that is embodied in "government for the people" that the people need to hear and know.
The "government for the people" is the very purpose of the Constitution, the Presidency and any Body or any Commission constituted to receive testimony under oath, and when such a body or commission is constituted, the Presidency is in a subservient position to the body or the commission and it has to submit to it, more so when the President is under inquiry for his lies or deceit or his lies and deceit or any of his actions, deeds or events precipitated by him or under his leadership. That is the natural order of things.
It is about the truth and the virtue of truth in ruling and governing people. The founding principle ensures that the people prevail not the people who govern and in that resides the force that blossoms democracy.
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| Corrupt Bushies LUV To Wage Wars That Turn Into Miserable Failures ... |
| 03.29.04 (11:07 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] [u]LUVs[/u] to wage wars, but they are miserably inept at it ... The insane neo-fascist Bushies' illegal and immoral neo-con warfares for war-profiteerings (e.g. [i]Failed Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq[/i] ...) inevitably turn into miserable failures and bloody guerrilla quagmires ...[/b]
Condi Rice, an over-rated, incompetent and mendacious traitor, arrogantly pretends to [i]stand on "principle"[/i] to avoid testifying under oath before the 9/11 Commission about the National Security Agency's intelligence briefings prior to 9/11 ... Boy, how[i] funny [/i]to hear this[i] win-at-all-costs [/i]criminal Bush regime [i]stand on "principle"[/i], when they are willing to break the law, slander-and-libel whistle-blowers, and betray our nation by being the most [i]secretive Stalinist-style [/i]administration in US history while perpetrating heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]here at home and abroad.
"We the People" [i]are not persuaded [/i]according to a new poll http://msnbc.msn.com/id/46148... that the vile and arrogant neo-imperial Bushies are telling us the truth ... They are incompetent, corrupt and self-obsessed with their own infinite power and riches-- and these liars, thieves and war criminals have ruthlessly betrayed us in order to achieve their own blood-thirsty aims.
Refer to "[b]The War Against Clarke Is a Miserable Failure[/b]" by the[i] Pundit Pap Team[/i], on http://www.americanpolitics.c... :
The number one priority of George W. Bush is to defeat the biggest danger to his administration.
Osama bin Laden? [i]Uh-uh[/i].
Ayman al-Zawah'ri? [i]Nope[/i] -- and we doubt Li'l Shrubya can even pronounce it correctly.
John Kerry? [i]Not even warm[/i].
The number one threat to Bush comes from one Richard Clarke, onetime senior counterterrorism advisor to Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton, and allegedly the top counterterrorism chief to "[i]Popular Wartime Preznit [/i]©" George -- although it has come to light that the Junior Bush's handlers were keeping Clarke as far away from El Smirko and the entire Cabinet as possible, allowing him contact for the most part with their senior staffers.
Remember -- this is the one guy in the executive branch who had a better handle on the real threat of terrorism than anyone.
This is also the man who dared to personally apologize to the families of the victims of Al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001 attacks -- and dared say that the government had "failed" -- during a tempestuous and dramatic appearance before the 9/11 commission earlier this week.
And now he's the number one target of Team Shrub -- because not only do the revelations from the afore-mentioned appearance (under oath, mind you) destroy the credibility of Bush's so-called "war against terrorists" during an election year, but Clarke's daring assertion that the Iraq escapade actually undermined and continues to undermine the campaign to take out terrorists supports a position the Democrats are already pushing.
For their part, the administration let "Uncle Donald" Rumsfeld do the talking on FAUX News Sunday and [i]ABC's This Week[/i]. Condolleeza Rice will be appearing on [i]60 Minutes [/i]-- but will not be put under oath before the 9/11 Commission for even 60 seconds. The reason by now is obvious: her testimony would corroborate Clarke's. We bet that she actually does want to testify -- but the callow Bush Boy refuses to allow such a thing to happen.
Clarke himself appeared on [i]Meet the Press [/i]-- in what will be remembered as one of the most important Sunday interviews of the year -- and the lukewarm "[i]Late Edition[/i]," with Judy Woodruff recycling Tim Russert's questions.
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| Bush Whitewash: Conflict-of-Interest At The Heart Of The 9/11 Commission ... |
| 03.28.04 (12:18 pm) [edit] |
"[i]Many family members believe the "fix was in" from the very beginning and cite the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the commission's executive director as proof positive.
Zelikow was a Bush-appointee who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; he worked under Jim Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Sr; spent three years on the first President Bush's National Security Council and, as well as working with Condoleezza Rice, wrote two books with her as well[/i]."
"We the People" are witness to a phony neo-con scam in progress ... The heroic and patriotic Richard Clarke, author of "[i]Against All Enemies[/i]" http://www.commondreams.org/v... , http://www.commondreams.org/v... , has the courage to be a [i]whistle-blower[/i], knowing that the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] would unleash its massive mad-dog attack machine and ugly court-jesters [i]out-in-force [/i]to attempt to destroy him, with their vile lies and mendacious neo-orwellian propaganda-- because they are [i]unable to counter his credibility or claims [/i]with facts ...
It is obvious to anyone with an [i]iota of brain-matter[/i], watching these tragic events unfold that the 9/11 Commission is a [i]cowardly gang of traitorous toadies[/i], "marching in lock-step" to the orders given by Dubya, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Rove-- instead of doing their duty to the American people ...
Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that the liars and war criminals in the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush regime be[i] impeached from office [/i]for High Crimes in waging illegal and immoral warfare in Iraq based upon [i]heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods,[/i] on behalf of their gluttonous and criminal war-profiteers: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.
Consider "[i][b]White House Whitewash[/b][/i]" by [i]Neil Mackay[/i], Sunday Herald, Scotland, on http://www.commondreams.org/h... :
[u][b]A conflict of interest at the heart of the US 9/11 Commission hearings has been exposed by the families of the Twin Towers victims[/b][/u]
ANDREW Rice is angry with George Bush. His brother David was 31 years old when he died as United Airlines Flight 175 ploughed into the south tower of the World Trade Center where David worked as a financier with the investment firm Sandler O'Neill.
Andrew doesn't buy the rhetoric from the White House that Bush is a great war president who can make America stronger and safer. To Andrew, Bush is a charlatan making a mockery out of the deaths of his brother and the some 3000 other men, women and children who died on September 11, 2001.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that Andrew Rice might then be glad to see the bloody battering that the Bush administration took this week during the ongoing commission hearings in Washington into whether or not the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented.
Bush and his team were painted as a feckless, lazy and ill-informed bunch who had little clue about al-Qaeda, and were fixated on Iraq. Security seemed far from the top of their agenda while an ideological obsession with taking out Saddam appeared to obscure the real dangers posed by Osama bin Laden's network of fundamentalist killers.
But the hammering that Bush took during the hearings did little to appease Rice and other family members like him. To Rice, who chairs the 9/11 Commission Committee of the September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows organization, the whole inquiry is one big fix that will do everything it can to hide the truth of what the US president and his closest advisors knew about the attacks.
Last week saw Dick Clarke, the former White House anti-terrorism chief under Bush and Bill Clinton, give evidence before the inquiry. Most of America already knew what he was going to say as they'd read it in his bestseller Against all Enemies where he claimed that the Bush administration ignored mounting warnings of a coming terror attack. Clarke said that when 9/11 did happen the Bush inner circle was desperate to link it to Saddam .
Clarke also said that Bush's national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, who has refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission under oath, didn't seem to know what al-Qaeda was. Rice gave Clarke the brush-off when he warned Bush officials in a January 2001 memo about the growing al-Qaeda threat. Dilatory plans by the Bush administration to deal with al-Qaeda, which weren't finalized until a week before the 9/11 attacks, were scorned by commission member Bob Kerry, who said he'd seen the document and it contained "nothing new whatsoever".
While Democrats might be whooping it up at the expense of Bush, Andrew Rice and many other families of 9/11 victims see these events as nothing more than political point-scoring. They don't care which politician comes off best, what they care about is the truth and they are sure that they are not going to get it.
You can hardly blame Rice for his pessimism. Many family members believe the "fix was in" from the very beginning and cite the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the commission's executive director as proof positive.
Zelikow was a Bush-appointee who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; he worked under Jim Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Sr; spent three years on the first President Bush's National Security Council and, as well as working with Condoleezza Rice, wrote two books with her as well.
Zelikow supported the White House when the administration said it would only release the president's daily briefings (PDB), prepared by the CIA, to the commission once they had been edited. Zelikow said: " The notion that the commission should want to read PDB articles that have nothing to do with al-Qaeda would be a novel suggestion."
One Democrat on the commission, Timothy Roemer, said agreeing to the White House demands would remove the context in which intelligence was presented and allow any "smoking guns" to be hidden from public scrutiny.
The White House acknowledged back in 2002 that a copy of the PDB in August 2001 noted that al-Qaeda might use hijacked planes in an attack on the USA. The commission has designated four members to read the reports. They will be allowed to take notes, but the White House can edit their notes to remove anything deemed sensitive.
Family members believe Zelikow's key conflict of interest stems from his role in the transition period between the Clinton and Bush presidencies. It was then that Zelikow worked on Bush's team to smooth the handover in terms of intelligence and to help formulate national security policy.
The Clinton administration has claimed that al-Qaeda was a top security priority. Zelikow would know, therefore, just how much importance both the Clinton and Bush governments placed on al-Qaeda. He would also have had a role in fine-tuning the Bush policy on al-Qaeda.
Clarke says he clearly and bluntly warned Bush officials about the risk of al-Qaeda when they took office. "It was very explicit," he said. "Rice was briefed ... and Zelikow sat in." Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the 9/11 Commission, said there was no question of any conflict of interests regarding Zelikow.
Andrew Rice seethes over information like this. "I've contacted the commission to say that it's laughable that Zelikow was appointed to such a position. I have big problems with the White House editing the PDBs, but Zelikow defended the decision. He worked with these people and now he is defending them.
"This commission was created by the establishment and the friends of the establishment are now part of the commission. Is it really an investigation? Zelikow is a symbol of the way this inquiry has been constructed. As far as the Clinton and Bush administrations being held to account - we won't hear about it. It is not about transparency, it is just there to appease the public.
"But it won't appease me or many other family members. We need a truly independent commission that is outside the realm of government. Zelikow should never have been in this in the first place. Aren't there other and better people out there who didn't work with Condoleezza Rice?
"The worst case scenario is that I fear this could be a whitewash and a cover-up. We know these people were obsessed with Iraq and not al-Qaeda - and that could ruin the administration. We also know the administration had strong ties to the Saudis.
"Bush only wants to be re-elected. It is so disingenuous of him to portray himself as the 9/11 president. He doesn't want people to look at all the dirty relationships."
The commission findings won't be published until April 2005 - after the presidential election in November. "We know the commission's findings can't affect the election, so why don't we push back the deadline further and get a new guy in?" asks Rice.
" No-one at any level of government - from a security guard at an airport to the President - has been held accountable for the biggest security failure in the history of this country."
Rice suspects that at the end of the inquiry a "figure like Ollie North will take the spear in the chest, while the rest will all be protected".
"In a situation like this, there is so little I can do," he adds. "I'm as powerless as when I watched my brother murdered on TV. We have so little recourse to find out who is responsible, who, by their mistakes and incompetency, helped this happen.
" My brother's death will not be in vain. I have to work hard to illuminate the hypocrisy of politicians who want to benefit from these tragedies while not caring about transparency.
"There is such a lack of humility. Bush runs ads draping himself in this tragedy. My brother wouldn't have wanted that. If we want to be secure then we need to know the full truth."
When Clarke told the September 11 families crowded into the commission chamber that he was sorry, that "the government failed you and I failed you", they got to their feet, with tears in their eyes, and cheered and clapped him. Why the outpouring of thanks and sadness? Simple, says Kirsten Breitweiser, a 9/11 families spokeswoman: "It was the first time we received an apology, or any acknowledgement of mistakes."
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| Retired Top Military Brass Urges Dubya To Stop Scamming American Taxpayers ... |
| 03.27.04 (4:27 pm) [edit] |
[b]Dubya has been neo-con[i] conning, scamming and swindling [/i]the American taxpayers ([i]yes, with immoral and criminal tax cuts for corporations and the rich, but also[/i] ...) with awarding insane, obscenely costly no-bid, no-audit, no-accountability 'contracts' for outrageous weapons systems boondoggles ([i]that don't even work[/i]) to his corrupt corporate campaign contributors in the rapacious Military Industrial Complex ...[/b]
Already it is [i]well-documented [/i]that vile [i]war-profiteers-cum-tra itors[/i] at Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, and the ghoulish Defense Contractors, are gluttonously helping themselves to the[i] 'spoils-of-looting'[/i] engineered via their vicious[i], illegal and immoral war-mongering in Iraq[/i], in order to steal and embezzle vast riches from the American taxpayers, while our U.S. Soldiers and Innocent Iraqi Civilians are 'cannon-fodder' [i]taking the hit [/i]for these blood-thirsty War Criminals ...
"We the People" should support the surprising, but welcome request by 49 Retired Military Top Brass, asking Dubya to [i]stop scamming Americans [/i]while we are at war ([i]of the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush regime's making[/i]) and in the record-level deficit disaster heading for an economic train-wreck ([i]of the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush regime's making, too[/i]) not seen since the Great Depression ...
P.S. The phony 'Defense Shield' is a "perpetual money-making machine" for greedy and traitorous Corporate Top Dogs & Fat Cats ... [i]The damn thing doesn't even work[/i]! http://www.tompaine.com/featu...
Consider "[b]Retired top brass say [i]no[/i] to 'missile shield'[/b]" by [i]Bryan Bender[/i], The Boston Globe, on http://www.independent-media....%20Reported :
Forty-nine retired generals and admirals yesterday urged President Bush to suspend plans for a national missile shield and instead use the money to secure nuclear materials abroad and ports and borders at home.
The Bush administration plans to field a nationwide defense system in September to shoot down missiles armed with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, and has budgeted $3.7 billion this year for the project.
Lexington, Mass.-based Raytheon is one of the main government contractors and is developing the missile interceptor and most of the radar technology.
But the 49 former senior military leaders contend that the system remains unproven. They also said it is more likely that terrorists would smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States than a country would launch a missile at the United States, risking a devastating retaliatory strike.
"As you have said, Mr. President, our highest priority is to prevent terrorists from acquiring and employing weapons of mass destruction," wrote the former officers, including retired Admiral William J. Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired General Joseph P. Hoar, former chief of the US Central Command.
The retired officers added that "the militarily responsible course of action" is to use the funding for the missile shield "to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States."
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, recently concluded that only two of the antimissile system's 10 key technologies have been fully tested. Meanwhile, to make the September deadline, the Pentagon has waived some operational testing requirements. The military's top weapons tester stated earlier this month that such testing is not planned "for the foreseeable future."
The letter calls on the president to "postpone operational deployment of the expensive and untested" system.
It is one element of a larger missile defense effort -- estimated to cost $53 billion over the next five years -- that will use ships at sea and other methods to track and deflect missile launches. Navy Secretary Gordon England announced Monday that a specially equipped Aegis destroyer will be positioned this fall in the Sea of Japan, where it will be an alert for North Korean missile launches.
Raytheon builds the "kill vehicle" designed to destroy an incoming missile. The firm also makes many of the system's radars, including ones positioned on Cape Cod, the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, and the Pacific island of Kwajalein.
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| Dubya's Universe: 1st World Militarily??? 3rd World Inequality??? |
| 03.27.04 (1:18 pm) [edit] |
[b]In Dubya's bizarre and terrifying universe:--[/b]
[b]* Brute force trumps diplomacy, respect for others and the ability to negotiate peaceful compromises with opponents ... No respect for the rule of law ... [/b]Oh [i]yes[/i], it is[i] 1st world military might-through-naked-power -and-aggression[/i], with vast sums of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars diverted into obscene spending on WMDs, weapons boondoggles ([i]that often don't work[/i]!), and over-bloated stockpiles of armaments, instead of a [i]sane[/i] military and defense expenditure with oversight to ensure that greedy Defense Contractors don't swindle, steal and loot Americans ... Spending more than the top 17-18 richest industrialized nations combined is [i]sheer lunacy [/i]... The USA will be spending more than all other nations on this planet combined in the next 5-10 years-- [i]sheer madness [/i]... Dubya's neo-fascist Military Industrial Complex is a neo-con swindle that scams us into blindly-believing-[i]cum[ /i]-fantasizing that we are safer, when instead it impoverishes us and makes us less safe ...
* [b]Corporations and the rich are entitled to [i]welfare-for-the-wealth y [/i]on a grand scale creating the largest [i]Gap[/i] between the [i]Hyper-Rich-Greedy-Have s [/i]and the[i] Impoverished-Neo-Slave-Ha ve-Nots[/i], unseen in over 75 years ... [/b]Dubya's neo-fascist 3rd world[i] slave-state-cum-outsourci ng [/i]for an insane Global Corporate Empire that rapes and exploits working people and natural resources across the world in order that a few Neo-Emperor Caligulas can live in lavish, obesely pornographic splendor off the misery and hardship of others-- is an outrageous, barbaric crime. Dubya is turning the USA into a 3rd world-style impoverished country where workers are systematically being denied a living wage, overtime, rights to a safe work place, health care, unemployment benefits, etc.-- in order that the so-called growth in profits can be [i]gorged-and-swilled [/i]by over-rated, over-paid Corporate CEOs, Top-Dogs & Fat-Cats who are Criminal Embezzlers, Thieves and Neo-Slave Owners.
"We the People" must put a stop to the insane nightmarish fantasies that the Mad King George is thrusting upon us in order to enrich and empower himself and his ghoulish neo-con, neo-fascist corporate paymasters. Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that Dubya's immoral and criminal tax cuts, tax loopholes and boondoggles for corporations and the hyper-rich plutocrats be repealed immediately.
While blacks are[i] hit hardest today[/i], the rest of the privileged white population (and other minorities) will be feeling the horrific effects of sluttish Dubya's reckless and irresponsible mis-management of the economy on behalf of his corporate pimps [i]tomorrow[/i]. For a look into [i]your future[/i], consider also [i]The Center for American Progress' [/i]report entitled "[i][b]Inequality in America[/b][/i]" on http://www.americanprogress.o... :
The Urban League recently unveiled its first "[i]Equality Index[/i]," a statistical measure designed to gauge the disparities that exist between whites and blacks in a variety of socioeconomic categories. The results are an alarming reminder of America's persistent equity gaps. The report found that, "despite substantial progress, the status of African Americans is .73, or 73 percent, when compared to their white counterparts." The economic data were particularly troubling: African Americans came in at 56 percent of the white America's index. The Urban League report, combined with other recent data on Americans' economic well-being, shows that:
[b]1. Employment and benefit numbers for minorities are worse than those of white Americans. [/b] The unemployment rate for African Americans has been over 10 percent for 15 consecutive months (versus 7.3 percent in March 1999). African American teenage unemployment was an astounding 33 percent in 2003. Minorities are less likely to be offered any sort of retirement savings plan at work than are white Americans: 49 percent of Hispanics and 58 percent of African Americans have this option, while 73 percent of white Americans do.
[b]2. In terms of health status and insurance coverage, minorities are measurably worse off than are white Americans. [/b]Forty-one percent of Hispanic adults are uninsured, compared to 20 percent of African-Americans and 12 percent of whites. Minorities are also less likely to get health care than are whites: 27 percent of Hispanics did not visit a health care provider in the last year, compared to 15 percent of whites. Twenty-nine percent of Hispanic women and 20 percent of African American women report that they are in fair or poor health, compared to 3 percent of white women.
[b]3. Proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicaid have a disproportionate impact on minorities.[/b] According to the AARP, older African Americans receive more than 44 percent of their total income from Social Security. The program is the only source of income for one-third of African-Americans over the age of 65. The numbers for Medicaid are similar. Recent proposals to privatize Social Security and cut Medicaid funding would thus exacerbate the equity gaps that already exist.
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| Dubya Admits Negligence ... Rice Is A Proven Liar ... Dubya & Rice Should Resign ... |
| 03.26.04 (4:20 pm) [edit] |
[b]Dubya is guilty of [i]gross negligence for ignoring warnings [/i]of the likely eventuality of terrorist attacks upon America, leading up to 9/11 ... Moreover, instead of focusing on the dire warnings by experts within the U.S. Government of the dangers of Al Qaida, Dubya has been [i]insanely obsessed [/i]with Saddam Hussein (who had nothing to do with 9/11 and Al Qaida). Dubya's side-kick Condi Rice is an over-rated, self-obsessed [i]liar, who is a proven incompetent [/i]and highly dangerous to our national security, because she spends her time [i]sucking-up [/i]to powerful and rich "contacts", instead of listening to employees and managing the National Security Agency[/b].
"We the People" should contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that they ask Dubya & Rice to[i] resign [/i]... Of course, the corrupt Bush regime should be[i] impeached [/i]from office, but as many journalists and commentators have pointed out:-- With a Republican-controlled Congress and a Corporate-owned right-wing media, that event is unlikely to occur ... But[i] not impossible [/i]if the American people will simply loudly express our outrage and disgust enmasse ...
Refer to [i]The Center for American Progress' [/i]report entitled "[i][b]Bush Admits Negligence[/b][/i]" on http://www.americanprogress.o... :
President Bush yesterday once again tried to fend off charges of gross negligence before 9/11, saying, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people." But with more evidence emerging this week that the White House received repeated warnings before 9/11 of an imminent Al Qaeda attack, the President's "had I known" defense raises two disturbing scenarios: Either a) the Administration is telling the truth, actually did not know of the threat despite receiving repeated warnings and was totally oblivious to a brewing national security crisis. Or b) the Administration is not telling the truth, actually knew about the threat from the warnings it received, and yet still failed to act with adequate urgency. See a list of warnings the Administration received before 9/11 and what they failed to do in response: http://www.americanprogress.o...%7bE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A52 1-5D6FF2E06E03%7d/911TC.DOC . Also see these internal government documents showing how the Administration downgraded and tried to slash funding for counterterrorism before 9/11: http://www.americanprogress.o...%7bE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A52 1-5D6FF2E06E03%7d/911TC.DOC
[u][b]DISHONEST – RICE REFUTES HERSELF[/b][/u]: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice this week reiterated the President's "ignorance" defense, but in doing so repeated a lie that she had previously admitted was a lie. In 2002, she supported the President's "had I known" defense saying, "I don't think anybody could have predicted...that [terrorists] would try to use an airplane as a missile." But when presented this month with overwhelming evidence that the Administration had been warned about such a plot, she admitted privately to the 9/11 Commission that she had "misspoken." Yet, even after this admission, she proceeded to repeat the same dishonest claim, writing in a [i]Washington Post [/i]op-ed this week that "we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles." As one widely-respected FBI terrorism expert said, the Administration's "ignorance" defense is "an outrageous lie. And documents prove it's a lie." See this new [i]American Progress [/i]backgrounder analyzing Rice's dishonesty: http://www.americanprogress.o... .
[u][b]DISHONEST – BUSH ADMINISTRATION REFUTES RICE[/b][/u]: Rice this week said the Administration had formulated a National Security Policy Directive (NSPD) before 9/11 "that called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership." But according to the 9/11 Commission, "There is nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion plan, a military plan." Bush Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was asked whether Rice's assertions were true, and responded, "No."
[u][b]DISHONEST – RICE DISCREDITS HERSELF[/b][/u]: Rice claimed this week that "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." But the 9/11 Commission reported, "On January 25th, 2001, Richard Clarke forwarded his December 2000 strategy paper and a copy of his 1998 Delenda plan http://www.washingtonpost.com... to the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice."
[u][b]NEW EVIDENCE – BEFORE 9/11, BUSH ADMIN SAYS BIN LADEN FOCUS WAS "MISTAKE"[/b][/u]: New evidence emerged yesterday that discredits the Bush Administration's claim that fighting terrorism was their "top priority" when they came to office. On 4/30/01 the Bush Administration released the government's annual report on terrorism, but unlike previous Administrations, it decided to specifically omit an "extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State Department official told [i]CNN[/i] the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden." Similarly, [i]AP[/i] reported in 2002 that the Bush Administration's "national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions."
[u][b]NEW EVIDENCE – BEFORE 9/11, BUSH ADMIN REJECTED BIPARTISAN COMMISSION[/b][/u]: President Bush yesterday claimed that "Prior to September the 11th, we thought oceans could protect us." That is a troubling statement from a President, considering that in January of 2001, the U.S. Government's Commission on National Security gave the White House a bipartisan report that warned of an attack on the homeland and urged the new Administration to implement its specific "recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism" (an intelligence warning of a domestic attack was also given to the White House in May of 2001). Unfortunately, according to Sens. Warren Rudman (R-NH) and Gary Hart (D-CO), the Administration rejected the Commission's report, "preferring to put aside the recommendations." Instead, the White House said it would have Vice President Cheney head up a task force to analyze the threat himself. The Administration then waited five months to officially create the task force, and then failed to convene a single meeting of the task force in the four months before 9/11.
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| Four Months Before 9/11, Neo-Fascist Bushies Said Focusing on Osama bin Laden is "A Mistake"!!! |
| 03.26.04 (12:19 pm) [edit] |
[b]Evidence sufficient to[i] impeach [/i]the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]from office has arisen ... [/b]Four months prior to the 9/11 attacks upon America, the corrupt and incompetent Bushies declared it "[i]a mistake to focus[/i]" so much attention on Osama bin Laden ... This is hardly surprising when [i]one focuses one's own attention [/i]upon "[b]Exposed: [i]the Carlyle Group[/i][/b]" on http://www.tblog.com/template... , that reports Poppy Bush 41, some shady Carlyle Group cronies and the bin Laden family were in meetings together on 9/11 and watched the attacks upon America on T.V. ... Within a day or so following 9/11 ([i]while airspace was closed down to all commercial and private aircraft[/i]), the bin Ladens were [i]mysteriously allowed to whisk themselves back [/i]to Saudi Arabia on instructions from the White House ([i]Jeez ... One assumes of course, the secretaries don't give orders-- but that Bush, Cheney & Rice gave the go-ahead [/i]...) ...
"We the People" should [i]stop hiding [/i]from the truth: The traitorous Bush Crime Family has long-standing ties to the bin Laden family, who illegally and immorally funnels monies ([i]bribes from foreign interests[/i]) to the Bushies in return for favors, at the back-breaking expense of the American people:-- a vile act of treason under the U.S. Constitution ... Isn't it time for us to oust the treasonous and dangerously fascist neo-con Bush regime from office??? ... [i]Of course, it is [/i]... Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org , attaching this article and demand the [i]impeachment[/i] of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, Powell, Rumsfeld and their band of neo-con, neo-fascist criminals and traitors ...
Consider "[b]White House, 4/01: [i]Focus on Bin Laden "A Mistake"[/i][/b]" on http://www.misleader.org/dail... :
A previously forgotten report from April 2001 (four months before 9/11) shows that the Bush Administration officially declared it "a mistake" to focus "so much energy on Osama bin Laden." The report directly contradicts the White House's continued assertion that fighting terrorism was its "top priority" before the 9/11 attacks1.
Specifically, on April 30, 2001, [i]CNN[/i] reported that the Bush Administration's release of the government's annual terrorism report contained a serious change: "there was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden" as there had been in previous years. When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush State Department official told [i]CNN [/i]the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden."2.
The move to downgrade the fight against Al Qaeda before 9/11 was not the only instance where the Administration ignored repeated warnings that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent3. Specifically, the [i]Associated Press [/i]reported in 2002 that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions"4. Meanwhile, [i]Newsweek[/i] has reported that internal government documents show that the Bush Administration moved to "de-emphasize" counterterrorism prior to 9/115. When "FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence agents" to deal with the problem, "they got shot down" by the White House.
[b]Sources[/b]:
1. Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, 03/22/2004.
2. CNN, 04/30/2001.
3. Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11; Lawmakers Want Public Inquiry, ABC News, 05/16/2002.
4. "Top security advisers met just twice on terrorism before Sept. 11 attacks", Detroit News, 07/01/2002.
5. Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/2002.
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| Now The Corrupt Bushies Are 'Playing the Race Card' ... Jeez ... Neo-Con Nutjobs!!! |
| 03.26.04 (8:49 am) [edit] |
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[b]The White House can't discredit Richard Clarke with facts http://www.alternet.org/story... ... So, now the corrupt neo-con Bushies are [i]'playing the race card' [/i] ([i]ala Johnny Cochran's fear-tactic used in the O.J. Simpson trial[/i]) ... [i]Jeez[/i] ... We all are very well-versed now with the vile[i] mud-slinging, slandering and libelling [/i]by the treasonous Bush regime's neo-fascist right-wing media and neo-orwellian mad-dogs vomitting their stinking bile and slime ... [/b]But now these neo-con thugs & goons are telling the American people: [i]'Hey, if you dare to criticize our 'blacks', we'll call you a racist'!!! [/i]... This transparent [i]neo-con scam [/i]gets Dubya and the rest of t | |
