Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2005 January
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
2004 June
2004 May
2004 April
2004 March
2004 February
2004 January
2003 December
2003 November
2003 October
2003 September
2003 August
2003 July
My Links
Contact Congress
Casualties in Iraq
National Debt Clock
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
|
| Politicizing the War ... |
| 05.31.04 (4:28 pm) [edit] |
"[i]Dissent is the highest form of patriotism[/i]" - Thomas Jefferson
[b]What is Freedom??? ...[/b] Freedom [i]is so much more than[/i] the right to go to football games ... Freedom[i] is so much more than [/i]the right to speak your mind in the privacy of your own home ... [b]True Freedom [i]is the right [/i]to publically disagree with your government and affect real change in policy, leadership and those vital issues that most touch all of our lives [/b]...
Today "We the People" are staring down a dangerous precipice because of a tyrannical & dictatorial government gone astray and run amok ... Our democracy and freedoms are tottering on the edge of an abyss-of-fascism, for we are told that we should[i] shut up[/i]-- If "We the People" even dare to [i]criticize, debate or question [/i]the corrupt & traitorous Bush regime's policies regarding their illegal & immoral incursion into Iraq, we are told that we are "politicizing it" [i]as though that is something wrong [/i]([i]For goodness sake[/i]!!!) ... Consider this however, "politicizing" a vital issue central to our people's health & well-being[i] is what makes us strong [/i]as a nation for it means that we are engaged in healthy civic dialogue, the life-blood of a free society ... It is when we [i]cower and are afraid [/i]of "politicizing" an issue that our democracy and freedoms [i]shrivel & die[/i] ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[u][b]Politicizing the War[/b][/u] - http://www.zmag.org/content/s...
Many people (mostly Republicans) say (mostly to Democrats) that it's wrong to "politicize" the war in Iraq. But politicizing the war is exactly what should now occur. To be precise, those who oppose the war should politicize it as much as the Bush administration has already done. Politics is not just the activity of politicians; it is a democratic people's chief means of making basic decisions about its future. Such decisions -- whether the country's foreign policy will be imperial or democratic, whether the constitutional system will remain intact, whether the United States stands for or against torture -- are now before the electorate. In any case, it seems clear from the President's speech at the Army War College on May 24 that no basic change in US Iraq policy is likely before November 2. On the other hand, the entire direction of American politics is at stake on that day. To point this out is not to be indifferent to the welfare of the people of Iraq. For the shape of their future will also depend chiefly on the outcome of the election.
The beginning of realism is to acknowledge that the next step in the President's policy -- his promise of "full sovereignty" to Iraq -- is a cosmetic operation. The story of the war has been one of official claims or predictions dissolving upon contact with fact. Let's see how quickly I can run through the over-familiar list: Weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's Iraq? Not there. Iraqi ties with Al Qaeda before the war? Missing. Democracy in Iraq? Drowned in blood at Abu Ghraib. Transformation of the whole Middle East? For the worse.
The promise of "full sovereignty" is the next in this series (coming along just in time to refresh the litany). But in one way it's different. You had to wait some months for the previous mirages to dissipate, but this one is dead before arrival. It is a phrase advanced in the teeth of multiple admissions by the administration itself, which has let it be known that the new "sovereign" will not: possess authority over either American forces or its own; be able to pass legislation; control its own news media; make decisions about the economy of the country. Neither will it enjoy the authority of the "interim constitution" recently promised by Bush but now simply forgotten. Arguably, the new group will possess less authority even than the powerless existing "governing council." "Withdrawal of power" might be a better description than "transfer of power" for what is about to happen -- except that the governing council lacked real power in the first place. As for the election promised in January, this will be as uncertain, once the US election in November is out of way, as the interim constitution turned out to be.
What is at stake on June 30 has little to do with any reality in Iraq. In all important respects, American policy will remain the same. The Coalition Provisional Authority will be renamed an "embassy." (The President said, "Our embassy in Baghdad will have the same purpose as any other American embassy." This is true if the comparison is to, say, the American Embassy in Chile in 1971.) Some 138,000 -- or more -- troops will remain in the country, using, in the President's ominous words, "measured force or overwhelming force." The electricity, water and oil will stop and start as usual. The fighting will continue. Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis will jockey for power. The prison at Abu Ghraib will be torn down, but a new "modern maximum security prison" -- America's latest gift to Iraqi democracy -- will replace it (as if a building, not the people in it, had been torturing Iraqi prisoners.)
The changes that will occur are all in the realm of appearances. But they are not, for that reason, insignificant, for as the White House well knows, it is appearances that may determine the November election. The trick for the administration is to create, for a period of four months, an illusion that American policy is working. In this effort, there are at least four distinct fronts. One is the United Nations. Theoretically, its man Lakhdar Brahimi is choosing the country's next government. In actuality, he has become a key figure, however unintentionally, in George W. Bush's election effort. Now the United States and Britain have placed before the Security Council a draft resolution inviting the UN to give its blessing to the new order in Iraq. The UN is in danger of creating an aura of legitimacy and international control where none in fact exist. The draft permits the Security Council to "review" -- not "renew" -- the presence of the American and other foreign troops after a year. That is, the United States, wielder of a veto in the council, can keep its troops in Iraq as long as it wants.
The second front is the political leadership in Iraq, which is under intense pressure by the administration to play its part. What happens to defectors was recently illustrated by the treatment of the Pentagon's former favorite Iraqi, Ahmad Chalabi, who made the mistake of turning against the occupation, stating, "sovereignty is not to be given, it is to be seized." With a brutality that is the hallmark of this administration's approach to any opposition, an Iraqi force accompanied by Americans looted his office and home, breaking up furniture and smashing family photographs.
The third front is the American media. Its members should awaken to the fact that every time they use phrases like "handing over sovereignty" or "transition to democracy" they are misleading the public just as thoroughly as so many did when they accepted at face value the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
A final front is the administration's Democratic opposition, which is hobbled by Senator John Kerry's own "stay the course" position. Perhaps he is simply following the old political rule that when your opponent is destroying himself by his own efforts, you should stay out of the way. However, by failing to challenge the President on the war, he risks himself becoming a kind of unwilling accessory to the White House propaganda maneuvers.
The UN should not abandon the people of Iraq; neither, of course, should the leadership of Iraq; American reporters should not become partisans of the Democratic Party; and John Kerry should not adopt any view on the war simply to bait his rival. But all of them should be aware that, to whatever extent they give credence to the charade on June 30, they are above all else assisting in the re-election of the President.
[b]This is a Jonathan Schell "Letter from Ground Zero" column from the[i] Nation [/i]magazine. Many of Schell's Ground Zero columns since 9/11/2001 have just been collected into a book, A Hole in the World, An Unfolding Story of War, Protest and the New American Order (Nation Books). Schell, the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute, is also the author of The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People among many other books[/b]. - http://www.zmag.org/content/s...
|
|
|
| |
| Is the President American??? |
| 05.31.04 (11:38 am) [edit] |
"[i]And for the support of this Declaration [of Independence], with a firm reliance on the protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor[/i]." - The Signers of the Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776
[b]Our Founding Fathers were men of great courage ... They risked http://www.constitutionfacts.... their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor-- and would have been hung as traitors had Great Britain succeeded in putting down the American Rebellion, Revolution and/or Insurgency by those so-called "uncivilized terrorists", our Founding Fathers ... [/b]Historians agree http://www.tblog.com/template... that the failure Bush will go down as the [i]worst president [/i]to befall this nation in our 229 year history ...
Tragically[i] how far we have fallen [/i]to find ourselves saddled with the most stupid, childish and corrupt man ever to be thrust upon our nation ... Bush is an ignorant, callous and arrogant man http://www.tblog.com/template... who has [i]never risked anything [/i]in his entire wasted-and-spoilt, overly-pampered, and ne'er-do-well life in which Poppy Bush has [i]bailed him out of every mess and failure [/i]he stumbled, fumbled and bumbled into ... Bush was an AWOL deserter who spent Vietnam in a drunken stupor partying, instead of serving his nation while better men risked their lives and many died ... Flash-forward to 1st May 2003 and the buffoon-boy Bush prances around, dressing-up Holloween-style in Military Garb barking "Mission Accomplished!" as he foolishly jokes about our U.S. Soldiers & Innocent Iraqi Civilians slaughtered in his illegal and immoral war in Iraq (while embezzling US Taxpayer monies diverted into the bulging pockets of Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.) ...
Even today on Memorial Day 2004, "We the People" [i]are making all of the sacrifices [/i]in blood and treasure, while the immature adolescent-minded Bush http://www.smh.com.au/article... and his traitorous cabal of neo-con liars, thugs, traitors and war criminals "take-the-money-and-run" ... Congress http://www.congress.org should be compelled by "We the People" to [i]impeach[/i] Bush & Cheney and to [i]fire[/i] the dishonorable Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the neo-con crooks who disgrace our nation ...
[u][b]Is the President American?[/b][/u] - http://www.independent-media....%20Reported
What made America great? What fuels the American Dream? What soars American ideals? What American values touch your heart? What in America gives hope to society and solace to the mind? It is rooted in being American. From that germinated the founding values, principles and the pillars of democracy which, in turn, characterized how America will grow as a nation and how America will be governed. All the goodness that made America great, admired, respected, loved and gave pride flowed from that fountain of America's founding values and principles.
At anytime an American officer becomes confused or if American society or its institutions are brought to a crossroads or faced with conflicting values, all that is needed is to steal some fleeting moments to look at or reflect upon America's founding values and principles for guidance. They will never fail you.
If they tell you to retreat from what you are doing, you retreat and refrain for you may bring calamity or shame. If they tell you to change your path, you correct it. If they tell you to keep working, you labor on till you taste the fruits of thy labor. If they tell you to march on, you keep going till victory is thine. If they tell you its time to blow the whistle, you become a whistle-blower.
The values and the principles on that founding tablet are as sacred as the divine writ in your heart. Its practice in government shall always prompt the president to be straight and forthright. It shall always prompt the president to always act in favor of human dignity. It shall always prompt the president to protect human rights. It shall always prompt the president to aid the meek and the innocent. It shall always prompt the president to act in fairness. It shall always prompt the president to nurture the good name of America.
It shall not prompt the president to hound or denounce whistle-blowers. It shall not prompt the president to abandon the legal recourse. It shall not prompt the president to sanction or authorize tortures. It shall not prompt the president to manipulate the public or public fears and it shall not prompt the president to lie. Therein lies the greatness and strength of America.
Yet, there is mounting evidence that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, authorized harsh (and degrading) interrogation techniques, which were aimed at terrorists in Afghanistan and transferred to Iraq because these methods apparently proved successful. According to Seymor Hersh in the New Yorker, the "program was approved by every federal agency and President Bush was informed about it (NST, May 29 2004).
That may very well explain the sizzling lies by the various spokespersons, including the Pentagon Chief spokesman, Larry DiRita who says, "I think for the moment, everyone has been treated, as has been generally described, either Geneva three or Geneva four" (AFP, NST, May 28 2004). The third and fourth Geneva Conventions bar cruel, humiliating or degrading treatment. That is called cover-up or down-play publicity, as if the public are a bunch of idiots and dinkidoos.
The International Red Cross had already reported that there was a pattern of systematic abuse. This, in all likelihood is the case because the same pattern was seen at Guantanamo, Afghanistan and later at Iraq. And that finding that the method was successful in their aim against terrorists in Guantanamo and Afghanistan and was approved and transferred to Iraq seems to have a credible foundation and in contrast, the suggestion that the prison tortures were the work of a few rogue soldiers does not hold water.
The first step in the pattern was to strip the prisoners or detainees, many of whom were not combatants. In mid-east cultures, stripping is already a form of torture. The other steps included putting them in stress positions for hours. Where sexual humiliation was also a step, prisoners and detainees were forced into sexual acts, including sexual acts between males. This is an aggravated form of sexual torture for those cultures and some of those released say their manhood was taken away from them and, "I consider myself dead." Some were left to bleed to death while others were choked or smothered. Sitting on their chests was a "compression" technique used to create painful suffering against the will to breathe and live. A general is said to have died from compression.
If that sounds like grotesque prison tortures or sadistic orgies in prisons, what about the rape of girls whose screams come to haunt. Some will like to call it a program but lawyers acting for freed detainees say there is "compelling evidence of an institutionalized regime of torture and degrading treatment" (Reuters, NST, May 29 2004). Could an institutionalized regime of torture and degrading treatment or a pattern of 'abuse' that was apparently successful in Afghanistan and transferred to Iraq be the work of a few rogue soldiers or isolated incidents or one coming with approval from every federal agency as reported in the New Yorker, after their evaluations?
There is no such authority under the provisions of the War on Iraq Act 1998 to sanction or carry out such prison tortures of the grotesque and sadistic prison orgies or rape of Iraqi girls in prisons. And American values forbid it. US law does not even allow prison officers, as they did in Alabama, to handcuff prisoners to a metal post in the sun.
The lies are too many. Lie after lie spun out into webs that choke democracy and democratic values and it is afflicting the way the government is run. Spokespersons are telling lies, too. If not half-truths, some of the statements are twisted, compressed and choked to death. Sizzling lies from a Presidency that will not admit mistakes or wrong doings or misdeeds and one that will not hold itself accountable to anyone is dangerous for America simply because it has strayed too far from the founding values and principles. And that means it has strayed too far from being American!
Now more than ever, more Americans are wondering if they really got a straight story about taking the US to invade Iraq on a USD200 billion bill. Tony Blair has passionately defended "the historic struggle in Iraq" while Bush is saying the "war he started is an epic struggle against terror".
The hard facts are that the Twin Towers were brought down with only USD200,000.00 while the sufferings of Iraqis and Iraqi children have, in consequence of the War on Iraq increased, excluding the 11,000 abused and tortured Iraqis in US run prisons for whom its a nightmare.
In the meantime, the rebuilding of Iraq is degenerating into insurgencies organized and carried out by the infiltrating Al Qaeda fighters. It is a management gone wrong. And a vision gone wrong from defeating a WMD threat to creating a "free and stable Iraq" - a democratic Iraq. Never before did Washington ever nurtured such a "mission".
Iraq is struggling. Iraq might break into civil war and in that turbulence it might break into three nation states. Then, there is the difficult situation of handling Saddam under the War on Iraq Act 1998. Legally, it is not proven that he was a threat to the US and the sovereign authority used to invade his country and topple him falls flat. Iraq is slipping. It might be too late for Iraq.
All of this anguish hijacks the mind. So, take a deep breath. Reflect on the founding values and principles. It is beautiful to be American, but only when molded in those values. There is no place for "twisted values and atrocious policies". If you like an honest-to-goodness, law abiding, caring neighbor nurtured by polite education, so must the President be. If America was founded on values, so must the Presidency be. Its time to stop and think, "Is the President American?" He is an American citizen, but is he American? - http://www.independent-media....%20Reported
|
|
|
| |
| Too Little, Too Late??? ... US Needs Help in Iraq, Rumsfeld (Finally) Admits ... |
| 05.30.04 (5:34 pm) [edit] |
[b]Too little, too late??? ... [/b]The corrupt, traitorous and incompetent Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] waged its illegal & immoral war in Iraq based upon heinous lies, deceptions & falsehoods-- having wantonly ignored the advice, warnings and admonitions by our allies-- and subsequently these neo-con, neo-fascist thugs & goons [i]who have hijacked our nation [/i]went even further down a [i]dead-end road to chaos & misery [/i]by recklessly ignoring the sage counsel of U.S. Military & Mideast experts who warned the[i] deaf, dumb & blind [/i]Bush regime that a[i] 'go-it-alone' [/i]strategy would[i] fail [/i]... But the arrogant Bushies[i] ruthlessly ignored [/i]everyone and said that they didn't need or want any help from anyone else ([i]because they greedily lusted for the war-booty to gorge upon by themselves ... Bush's Crime Family has stolen hundreds of millions in war-profits from their neo-fascist war in Iraq ...[/i]) ... Now we find ourselves saddled with the crooked Bushies' tragic bloody nightmarish fiasco in Iraq ... So [i]now[/i] "know-it-all" Rummy [i]finally admits [/i]that "we need help" to clean-up the neo-cons' disastrous mess ... The War Criminal Rummy has [i]some nerve [/i]...
It is time to demand the [i]impeachment[/i] of Bush and the[i] resignations [/i]of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz and the rest of their neo-hitlerian neo-cons ... Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org in order to express your outrage at the unnecessary and tragic daily slaughtering of lives and the squandering of treasure to enrich the rapacious Bush regime's corporate-take-all pimps: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc...
Surely "We the People" deserve[i] better [/i]than this ... If so, then we[i] must demand [/i]it ...
[u][b]US needs help in Iraq, Rumsfeld admits[/b][/u] - http://news.independent.co.uk...
Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, conceded at the weekend that America needs help from other countries to end the bloodshed in Iraq and defeat terrorism around the world.
"This cause is an international one," he said in a speech to the graduating class at the West Point military academy in New York. "Its success depends on convincing friends and allies with whom we are so inter-dependent to not be terrorised by threats or isolated by fears".
His address was striking in its conciliatory tone. Two years ago, President George Bush used the same ceremony at West Point to outline his doctrine of pre-emptive strikes that was the backdrop to the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent fraying of America's relations with many of its traditional allies. "We must take the battle to the enemy," Mr Bush said at that time.
Mr Rumsfeld warned that the global war on terrorism was likely to be long. "We are closer to the beginning of this struggle, this global insurgency, than to its end," he said. Mr Rumsfeld made no mention of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. In recent weeks, he has faced pressure from critics to take responsibility for the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and resign his post.
Hours after the Secretary of Defence made his speech on the campus about 100 protesters marched to the gates chanting: "Rumsfeld resign!" His speech was met by mostly polite applause from the graduating cadets.
|
|
|
| |
| Self-Fulfilling Prophesy: "Rumsfeld Says 'War on Terror' Just Beginning" ... |
| 05.29.04 (3:15 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt neo-con Bush cabal must be [i]thrilled out of their "crazy" minds [/i]as they seek to make[i] their dreams, our nightmares [/i]self-fulfilling prophesies ... The neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] hijacked our nation with a [i]lust in their hearts [/i]and[i] no brains in their empty-headed minds[/i], in order to wage insane neo-imperial warfare for illegal & immoral war-profiteering ... The sluttish Bushies & their corporate pimps (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.) have made a vast ([i]mountain of gold[/i]) fortune out of embezzling the American Taxpayers via waging terror and warfare ... [/b]
Terror!!! ... Terror!!! ... Terror!!! ... And a [i]terrified[/i] American public[i] suits the sordid motives & squalid purposes [/i]of these neo-hitlerian mafiaso-style fear-mongers.
"We the People" must [i]reject and oust the traitorous Bush regime & their GOP toadies in Congress, as soon as possible, [/i]and clearly ring-out the[i] bell of freedom [/i]in the [i]great-and-wise words [/i]of Franklin D. Roosevelt who said that "[b]We Have Nothing To Fear, But Fear Itself[/b]" http://historymatters.gmu.edu... ... And "We the People" must [i]stand strong and firm against [/i]the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush cabal of criminal liars, thugs, crooks, traitors & war criminals [i]who cannot be permitted [/i]to forceably put[i] fear [/i]into our hearts and minds ... Let us elect representatives to the White House and Congress who will[i] pursue sane policies [/i]to [i]improve the prosperity and freedoms [/i]in the great tradition of the United States of America and who are[i] capable of working well with other nations [/i]of the world who [i]also oppose terrorism[/i], but who [i]refuse[/i] to let [i]fear defeat[/i] them into [i]becoming paralyzed and overcome [/i]by tyrannical dictators like the Bush/Cheney War Criminals ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[u][b]Rumsfeld Says 'War on Terror' Just Beginning[/b][/u] - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
WEST POINT, New York - The United States' declared war on terror is closer to the beginning than the end, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told graduates of the U.S. Military Academy on Saturday.
Rumsfeld told the 2004 graduating class of 935 cadets that in the three years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, the U.S.-led coalition had "overthrown two vicious regimes and liberated 50 million people, disrupted terrorist cells across the globe and thwarted many terrorist attacks."
"Yet despite our successes, we are closer to the beginning of this struggle with global insurgency than to its end," he said.
Rumsfeld addressed the graduates, who wore full dress uniforms at West Point's Michie Stadium football field, before heading back for Washington for the dedication of the World War II Memorial.
Rumsfeld said the world "has changed dramatically" since the Sept. 11 attacks when hijackers flew commercial airplanes into buildings in New York and Washington, killing nearly 3,000.
He said on the latest front, in Iraq where the Bush administration is facing continued fighting that is undermining efforts to end the U.S. occupation, "We are facing a test of wills, with an enemy that seeks to derail the Iraqi people's path to self-governance."
"The extremists know the rise of a free, self-governing Iraq, respectful of all religions - would deal the terrorists a decisive blow," Rumsfeld said. "Its success depends on encouraging friends and allies with whom we are so interdependent to not be terrorized by threats or isolated by fear."
|
|
|
| |
| Will George W. Bush Use Terrorism to Become America's First Dictator??? |
| 05.29.04 (7:52 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" better ponder the[i] disastrous consequences [/i]that have already befallen our nation in the calamitous time that the corrupt & traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]has waged its heinous war upon America ... The insane neo-con, neo-fascist Bush regime is tearing our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights asunder and we must take action to stop them[i] now[/i]!!! ...[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Will George W. Bush use terrorism to become America's Pinochet?
Attorney-General John Ashcroft is priming the public for a terrorist attack, which can only mean Bush is sharpening his blades to behead the Constitution.
Augusto Pinochet seized absolute power in Chile on September 11, 1973. The US national security apparatus, including George H.W. Bush, used terrorism as an excuse to help Pinochet destroy what had been a constitutional democracy.
So is Shrub a president? Or is he a Pinochet?
By a 4:1 margin American historians have already rated W. "a failure." More than one in ten surveyed in the recent George Mason University History News Network Poll also rate Bush as "the worst president ever." http://www.tblog.com/template...
But ultimately, this Bush has no peer among US presidents. Let's look at three likely matches.
Richard Nixon trained Dick Cheney and Karl Rove as Dirty Tricksters. Nixon is Bush's role model for corruption, cynicism and personal psychosis. But Nixon was also a skilled, literate global diplomat who opened doors to China and the former Soviet Union and supported environmental protection. Bush has trashed all that.
Herbert Hoover callously presided over the beginnings of America's worst economic depression. Bush is right there. But Hoover was also a skilled, literate bureaucrat, and a Quaker-raised foe of war. Not exactly Bush.
Warren G. Harding was astonishingly corrupt. Bush, Halliburton and Enron have more than matched him. But Harding also hated repression and brought the anti-war socialist Eugene V. Debs straight from a federal prison cell to meet him in the Oval Office. Bush might well have had Debs executed.
Ultimately, Bush's real peers are not US presidents but Third World dictators, like Pinochet, many of whom his father also put in office. Their [i]coda[/i] is clear:
-- Use of "terror" as an excuse for totalitarian control;
-- Official secrecy for its own sake;
-- Seizure of power in contempt of free elections;
-- Totalitarian militarism;
-- Abuse of human rights and liberties;
-- Love of the death penalty;
-- Hatred of a free press;
-- Imprisonment without legal recourse;
-- Widespread torture;
-- Brazen theft of public billions;
-- "Free market" smokescreens for corporate domination;
-- Taxing the poor to benefit the rich;
-- Hatred of labor unions;
-- Decimation of the natural environment;
-- Assaulting elected leaders anywhere, anytime;
-- Contempt for international treaties;
-- Reactionary alliance with right wing church groups;
-- Contempt for women's rights;
-- Manipulating divisions of race and class.
The one American actually offered a dictatorship, George Washington, turned it down, shaping the nature of the Presidency for more than two centuries....[i]until now[/i].
Meanwhile Bush has beheaded the American economy, replacing First World surpluses with Third World debt.
Reminiscent of Joe Stalin, foreign intelligence, economic assessment and even basic science must not contradict Rovian spin or fundamentalist prophecy.
American education, once the envy of the world, is in shambles, with global students now turning away for the first time. America's moral prestige, never higher than after September 11, 2001, has been trashed. No US president has ever been so personally hated.
And never has a would-be Third World dictator stood more ready to shred our Constitution.
Stalin once quipped that power resides not with those who cast the votes, but with those that count them.
Bush may try to follow Stalin's (and brother Jeb's) lead by stealing the 2004 election, as in 2000. Or he may try to seize power like Pinochet did on 9/11/73 in a repressive crusade against convenient terrorism.
But one thing is certain: if Shrub's hyped-up power play succeeds, the beheading of America will be complete. - http://www.freepress.org/colu...
|
|
|
| |
| Can Osama bin Laden Save George W. Bush??? ... |
| 05.28.04 (2:17 pm) [edit] |
[b]"Will Bush Stage A Terrorist Attack To Terrify Americans & Take-Over In A Coup d'Etat???" was a question I posed http://www.tblog.com/template... in the aftermath of the lunatic Attorney General John Ashcroft's bizarre pronouncement that we face a [i]big shot at another "terrorist attack" [/i]on our soil in the near future ([i]before the November elections [/i]...)-- although later we learnt that Ashcroft's so-called "intelligence" was [i]old news [/i]and that his cynical press conference was more likely [i]staged for political purposes [/i] http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... to take some of the [i]heat off [/i]of the corrupt & traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's [/i]heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...[/b]
More thoughts on whether "We the People" would be [i]so easily duped yet again [/i]by the mendacious Bushies ...[i] Can Osama bin Laden save George W. Bush??? [/i]... [i][b]Hmmm[/b][/i] ...
If you ever doubted the potential for violent actions to affect political change, the events in Madrid on the morning of March 11th 2004 erased all doubt. Early on that Thursday morning, sympathizers of Osama bin Laden seized a wide-open opportunity to alter the course of a modern western democracy through carnage.
Four packed commuter trains were torn apart by powerful explosives designed to kill in large numbers -- they did. In all, 191 people on their way to work died and some 1500 were wounded. The timing, just four days prior to Spain's national elections, was clearly an effort to affect those elections. The ruling People's Party, led by Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, was unexpectedly swept from power by the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. But the life and death question is, why?
[b]Why Spain turned on Aznar [/b]
You may attempt to make the argument that Spain rewarded Osama bin Laden by rejecting Aznar, but I do not recommend you attempt to make it on the streets of Madrid. If you did, you would quickly be confronted by the truth. Aznar sealed his own fate by lying to the Spanish people.
Aznar lied on two major counts. First; In committing the Spanish to a war they did not want, taking the position that it was needed to fight terrorism. That is a lie. The minions of bin Laden will never be defeated by armies marching. They can only be defeated meticulous police work and by social and economic conditions that do not drive supporters to them. Second; In the aftermath of the bombings, Aznar attempted gain political advantage by blaming the Basque separatist group ETA. That was an insult to Spain.
The resulting verdict rendered at the polls was not an acceptance of bin Laden's madness, but rather a condemnation of Aznar's betrayal of Spain.
[b] The other side of the Atlantic [/b]
On the 10th day of September 2001, George W. Bush's poll numbers were better than they are today, but not much. The Rehnquist-ordained presidency was having difficulty impressing anyone but the Republican faithful. That was about to change; as the towers fell, George W. Bush's fortunes rose. Overnight his approval ratings doubled, and that was just the start. Over the past two and a half years since the attacks, Bush has used the fear generated by September 11th to effect a broad social and economic agenda that had little or nothing to do with national security.
[b] Attacks this summer [/b]
Wednesday's press briefing by John Ashcroft was a puzzlement. The presentation appeared more geared towards public relations than public safety. One had to wonder if Ashcroft was trying to stop terror, or cause it. Where was the information here? What purpose did this serve? For the record Mr. Ashcroft, if you have any real information about attacks on Americans, we would love to hear about them -- you know John, like the information that caused you stop flying commercial aircraft in the weeks prior to the attacks of September 11th? How do we qualify for those kind of warnings?
Ashcroft did take the opportunity to suggest that Madrid might set the stage for similar attacks in the U.S. prior to our November elections, saying, "Al-Qaida may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences." Al-Qaida may perceive that, but only if they can't read. The last Al-Qaida operation on U.S. soil did little to empower the opposition. On the contrary, it put the opposition on the endangered species list.
[b]The Baghdad trap [/b]
If you believe that bin Laden would like to sweep Bush from power, then you would have to wonder if an act of violence on U.S. soil would produce that. However if you are concerned that Baghdad is bin Laden's trap for Bush, then you might wonder if another attack on U.S. soil might better serve bin Laden's interest. It would, in greater likelihood, keep Bush in power and the U.S. Army in Baghdad. If that, in fact, is what bin Laden wants, then this could be a very dangerous summer indeed.
[b]Can bin Laden save Bush?[/b]
Bush is in trouble for sure. It would take something big to wash away the memory of the twisted freak-show at Abu Grahib, and the Chalabi betrayal has yet to really see the light of day. So the question hangs a bit. The answer may lie in another question: [i]Will the Americans accept the same lies that the Spanish would not?[/i]
[i][b]You can send comments to t r u t h o u t Executive Director Marc Ash at: director@mail.truthout.org[/b][/i] - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...
|
|
|
| |
| The Return of the "Stab in the Back" ... |
| 05.28.04 (8:58 am) [edit] |
[b]Our greatest institution in addition to our ability to hold our elected representatives in the Executive and Legislative Branches of our government accountable (and the Judicial Branch can be held accountable through the impeachment process if they violate the law and ethics regulations ...) is our Freedom of the Press, as per the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ... It is vital that our media and press [i]are not made the scape-goats [/i]for reporting the truth and the facts ... [/b]
"We the People" must be [i]cognizant of the difference [/i]between editorialists who by definition give their opinions (the right-wing dominates the airways with blow-hard neo-con neo-fascists like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Fox News, and other ideological demagogues ...) but [i]it is up to the intelligent citizen to differentiate [/i]editorialists and opinionated pundits from reporters ... Tragically, the corrupt and traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] is attempting to[i] tyranically put down factual reporting on the ground [/i]in Iraq and is launching a neo-hitlerian, neo-orwellian campaign to squash Freedom of the Press in order to avoid having the truth and the facts reported to "We the People" ... Moreover, it is the right of editorialists of all persuasions to express their opinions (conservative, liberal, independent, etc.) and this is why newpapers separate their editorial sections from their reporting sections ... The heinous violation of our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, must not be allowed to continue by the neo-con, neo-fascists who will do anything including destroy our nation in order to prop-up their corporate-owned Bush regime ...[b] Please[i] boycott those whom you hear blame the media and the press [/i]instead of the neo-con Bush regime for [i]its' own [/i]blatant and ugly failures, criminal corruptions and unconscionable incompetence that has led to their heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the tragic sullying and tearing-down of America's values of democracy and freedom ...[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Take a look at the morning paper nowadays and it's clear that America has a lot of enemies. Two or three different brands of insurgency are operating in Iraq. North Korea has nuclear weapons and Pakistan is selling them. Our former best friend in Baghdad [Convicted embezzler, liar and neo-con con-man Ahmed Chalabi] turns out to be an American spy [Given top-secret U.S. intelligence by the Neo-Con Traitors in the Pentagon while spying for the Iranians]. Al Qaeda, of course, is still out there. All this notwithstanding, some commentators on the right seem to have decided that the real enemies aren't the ones they read about it the papers, but the people who write them.
Thus, Michael Barone opined http://www.townhall.com/colum... in his May 24 column "that today's press works to put the worst possible face on the war" in Iraq. The president's main task, then, is not to improve his war-fighting policies, but to "show, once again, that the media have got it wrong." Three days earlier, columnist Morton Kondracke warned http://www.realclearpolitics.... that "the media and politicians" are "in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq."
The argument here - that everything is fine except the media coverage - is absurd on its face. [u]The reporters in question are[/u], [i]unlike their pundit-detractors[/i], [u]on the ground in Iraq witnessing the situation for themselves[/u]. It is undeniable, moreover, that a growing chorus of former war supporters - liberals and conservatives alike - people like George Will, Tucker Carlson, Thomas Friedman, Fareed Zakaria, and Bill Kristol have grown increasingly dubious that the president's policies will bring us to success. Is this band of ex-hawks really trying to bring America down, or are they sincerely worried that the president[i] is the one [/i]bringing us low? The doubters, moreover, are hardly to be found in the press alone. Three of the past four top generals in the U.S. Central Command have denounced http://www.washingtonmonthly.... the president's handling of the situation and the fourth is on the board of a company that depends on good will from the Pentagon to stay in business. These general are not die-hard liberals, or surly reporters, they're men who've spent years commanding all U.S. military forces in the region. Perhaps the argument can be made that the likes of Barone and Kondracke are more familiar with the difficulties of war-fighting ([i]sic[/i]) in the Middle East than are these men, but it's a case I've yet to see.
Nevertheless, the political purpose of the theory isn't hard to grasp. The groundwork is being laid for a new version of the "stab in the back" myth that helped destroy Weimar Germany. No matter how far south things go in Iraq,[i] the blame will be laid not at the feet of the president who initiated and conducted the war[/i], but rather on those who had the [u]temerity to note[/u] that it wasn't working. Rather than the critics having been proven right, or so the story goes, the critics are to blame for the failure of the very policy they were criticizing. It's an ugly tactic, and as you go down the journalistic food chain, it grows uglier still.
Former Gingrich aide, Tony Blankley, writing in the well-known bastion of journalistic "propriety" ([i]sic[/i]) that is [i]The Washington Times[/i], likewise took the press to task, calling it "heatbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president's political and media opposition want the president's defeat more than America's victory." Standard stuff, so far, but he went on to lament that nothing could be done about it . . . yet. "Sedition laws almost surely would be found unconstitutional, currently -- although things may change after the next terrorist attack in America." Some might find it heartbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president's political and media allies [i]are more committed to his re-election [/i]than to the basic principles of American democracy.
On May 18, Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and the proprietor of InstaPundit, the most popular of the hawkish weblogs, pushed http://www.instapundit.com/ar... this line of thought further down the road. "[b]Freedom of the press, as it exists today[/b]," he observed, "[b]is unlikely to survive if a majority - or even a large and angry minority - of Americans come to believe that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic[/b]." While Blankley worried that the courts might block his dreams of censorship, Reynolds doesn't even need a majority. How will this work? Mob violence, perhaps? Indeed, if his campaign http://www.instapundit.com/ar... to incite the defacement of [i]New York Times [/i]distribution boxes goes well, that might be the next logical step.
The image of an "unpatriotic" press hell-bent on wrecking Bush's war couldn't be further from the truth. Indeed, we got into this mess in no small part because of the [i]media's reluctance to apply a proper degree of scrutiny to the administration's claims [/i]about weapons of mass destruction and the likely postwar situation. With the original rationale for war long since having bitten the dust, we've now shifted to a campaign designed to bring American freedoms to Iraq. It's a campaign that will likely fail, not because it's being undermined by a hostile media, but because the president has steadfastly refused to commit the resources necessary to achieve his grandiose vision. As if the consequences of the fateful mismanagement of the war weren't bad enough, we now face that prospect of losing the very liberties we set out to spread.
[i][b]Matthew Yglesias is a staff writer at The American Prospect. Visit his Web site at www.matthewyglesias.com.[/b][/i] - http://www.americanprogress.o...
|
|
|
| |
| Terror and Lies??? ... |
| 05.27.04 (3:07 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt panic-striken Bush regime is[i] playing us [/i]all for suckers and idiots ... Listen folks, the Justice Department under John ("[i]Bible-thumper, but it would be nice if he knew something about the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights[/i]") Ashcroft didn't even let its own people, governmental departments and/or police agencies around the country know about their "threat of terrorism" ...[/b] Even folks within the Justice Department responsible for planning response programs & communications plans [i]found-out about it [/i]on TV ... [i]Jeez [/i]... There appears to be a bizarre [i]power-struggle going on [/i]between various elements within the [i]out-of-control [/i]Justice Department who don't agree on how to handle the "threat of terrorism" according to the [i]CBS Evening News [/i]... Meanwhile, "We the People" are victims of the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]corruption & incompetence ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Crusader-in-Chief John Ashcroft seized control of George Bush’s re-election effort yesterday. Hoping that faked-up warnings of an imminent terror attack by Al Qaeda would rally support in Bush’s imploding polls, Ashcroft cited “credible intelligence from multiple sources” to warn that Al Qaeda was planning “to hit the United States hard” this summer.
Just in case we didn’t get the point, a Bush administration official quoted in the pro-Bush [i]Washington Times [/i], the Moonie News, said that the coming attack might even involve weapons of mass destruction. “A WMD attack remains on the table for the bad guys. Although Osama bin Laden has not used these attack modes yet, clearly he is interested in them.”
Really? Would those be the same “sources” who said that Iraq was an imminent threat? And that Iraq supported Al Qaeda? (False and false, of course.) [i]The Washington Times [/i]announced all this in a screaming headline with photos of seven supposed terrorists—somehow omitting that lawyer in Oregon, who is now collecting FBI apologies—but it received enormous coverage in sane newspapers, too.
Well God bless [i]The New York Times[/i]. Ashcroft’s baloney appeared nowhere on page one. Instead, it was relegated to page A14, in an article whose headline said: “[u]Some Question the Threat and Its Timing [/u].” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... Wow. Here’s an excerpt:
[i]There's no real new intelligence here, and a lot of this has been out there already,” said one administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There is really no significant change that would require us to change the alert level of the country.
The names of six of the seven were publicly circulated by the authorities months ago, and officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said that they had no reason to believe that any of the suspects were in the United States.
Some intelligence officials said they were uncertain that the link between the fresh intelligence and the likelihood of another attack was as apparent as Mr. Ashcroft made it out to be.
Harold Schaitberger, head of the International Association of Firefighters, told reporters in a conference call organized by Mr. Kerry’s campaign that he found the timing of the announcement to be “politically convenient at best” because it came after “we see the president’s approval ratings plummet.[/i]” - http://www.tompaine.com/artic...
|
|
|
| |
| America is Asking ... |
| 05.27.04 (7:42 am) [edit] |
"[i]An outraged president called yesterday for the immediate resignations of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Douglas Feith and Stephen Cambone.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the president in the White House. It was the shadow president, the one who won the popular vote[/i]." - Maureen Dowd, NY Times, http://nytimes.com/2004/05/27...
"[b]Bush speech alarms even war enthusiasts[/b]" is the lede http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin... in an article that begins: "Even the staunchest supporters of President Bush's Iraq enterprise were less than cheered by his speech to the nation Monday night outlining the path forward, some describing the administration as being in a state of panic." ... Clearly whether or not you are a "staunch" Conservative, a "flaming" Liberal, or a "middle-of-the-road" Independent-- increasingly the American people are (rightly) losing confidence in the corrupt Bush regime ... Bush has [i]badly mis-managed [/i]his illegal and immoral war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire in Iraq; and what is worse, he [i]refuses to fire [/i]those responsible for the bloody fiasco and war crimes that have cost:
1. The [i]precious lives [/i]of over 800 U.S. Soldiers and over 4,000 U.S. Soldiers maimed, injured and/or scarred for life;
2. The[i] precious lives [/i]of between 11,000-15,000 Innocent Iraqi Civilians and tens of thousands of Innocent Iraqi Civilians who are maimed, injured and/or scarred for life as well; (No one knows the exact count because Bush's ugly U.S. Occupation doesn't consider Iraqi casualties worth counting ...)
3. Over $191 Billion squandered in bloody warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq that is a horrendous failure as well as a [i]corrupt swindle of the U.S. Taxpayer[/i] because much of our U.S. treasure is diverted into the gluttonous, corrupt pockets of Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.
The insane Bush Mantra of "[i]I'll 'Free' Y'all Iraqis, If I've Got To Kill Every Last One Of Y'all To Do So[/i]" is a heinous affrontery to civilization ... "We the People" should carefully consider the dire and disastrous consequences of the barbaric Bush's extravagant mistakes, costly blunders and deadly errors-- that will cost the U.S.A. for years to come in U.S. Lives, U.S. Taxpayer Dollars and U.S. Goodwill Around the World ...
[u][b]About What President Bush Failed to Say Monday Night[/b][/u] - http://www.americanprogress.o...
President Bush's speech at the Army War College on Monday night was the first in a series outlining the administration's plans for ongoing operations surrounding the June 30 transfer of power in Iraq. Many American newspapers noted that the speech failed to provide any new details and did little to satisfy the skepticism of the American public. The following is a sample of editorial opinion from across the country.
[b]Kennebec, Maine - [u]Maine Kennebec Journal[/u][/b], [i][b]May 26, 2004[/b][/i]
"President Bush failed to give the nation what it was seeking Monday night.
"His speech, promoted in advance as one that would spell out the future of the United States involvement in Iraq, did not even come close to providing answers to the complex questions about this war. Instead of details, the president offered platitudes about staying the course.
"Iraq might have a new government on June 30, but nothing will change for Americans.
"'History is moving, and it will tend toward hope or tend toward tragedy,' Bush said. 'We will persevere and defeat this enemy and hold this hard won ground for the realm of liberty.'"
"Fine-sounding words, indeed. But they offer no answers."
[b]St. Petersburg, Fla. – [u]St. Petersburg Times[/u][/b], [i][b]May 26, 2004[/b][/i]
"President Bush's five-point plan for bringing self-rule to Iraq was too vague and unrealistic to reassure Americans and win new international support.
"President Bush disappointed Americans who had hoped that his Monday night address at the Army War College would lay out a concrete and pragmatic plan for ending the U.S. military occupation in Iraq. Instead, the president's five-point plan sounded more like a five-point wish list.
"Beyond his troubling lack of specifics, the president still shows no willingness to acknowledge the grievous failures of the past year and demand accountability from those responsible.
"Every sane American supports the president's stated goal of building 'a free and self-governing Iraq" and bolstering "the security of America and the civilized world.' But this administration's policies have brought chaos to Iraq and left our country more isolated and more vulnerable.
"The president plans to deliver several more speeches between now and June 30. Americans deserve to hear a more realistic plan for reversing those policy failures than they heard Monday night."
[b]Louisville, Kentucky - [u]Louisville Courier Journal[/u][/b], [i][b]May 26, 2004[/b][/i]
"President Bush's best chance to achieve a bearable outcome in Iraq rests on his willingness to acknowledge that terrible mistakes have been made and to present a coherent strategy to prevent a disintegrating mess from collapsing into utter disaster. Unfortunately, as he demonstrated again Monday night in a televised speech, he seems incapable of doing either.
"The President merely outlined familiar steps that his administration's timetable for Iraq contemplates, with inadequate indication of how they might successfully be accomplished.
"Meanwhile, the President's aversion to admitting error leaves him unable to reconcile the daunting challenges in Iraq with his ludicrously premature declaration of victory a year ago. He speaks of terrorists and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, without noting the deep religious and ethnic cleavages that pose a greater threat of civil war.
"He insists Iraq must not become a base for terrorism, without acknowledging that the terrorists arrived after the American invasion, not before.
"The President plans five more speeches on Iraq before June 30. He will achieve neither the international cooperation nor the domestic support he needs if he does not drop the pretenses and speak truth."
[b]Albany, New York – [u]Albany Times Union[/u][/b], [i][b]May 26, 2004[/b][/i]
"There are increasing signs that the Bush administration has finally realized it must reassess its policies in Iraq and take prompt corrective action. But the President's speech, meant to restore public confidence in his handling of Iraq, gave no indication that he has a specific plan of action.
"For all of his expressed determination to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush failed to answer the questions that are troubling many Americans on his ability to lead.
"[He also] leaves unanswered the question of how a new Iraqi government can root out the terrorists who have now flocked to that country to kill Americans. Will that require a long-term American military presence, then? Or is there an exit strategy? If so, what ends must be accomplished before it can take effect?
"Mr. Bush's speech was the first in a series of weekly addresses on Iraq. Perhaps in time he will answer all questions that he avoided Monday. He should. Time is wasting."
[b]Norfolk, Va. - [u]The Virginian-Pilot[/u][/b], [i][b]May 26, 2004[/b][/i]
"Americans are steadily losing faith in President Bush's stewardship of the war in Iraq.
"If his speech to the U.S. Army War College was meant to rally Americans and bolster their faith, then it was a disappointment.… the speech contained little of substance to reassure jittery Americans.
"If the Army War College speech is a preview of what's to come in the five weeks ahead, then it appears the president intends to say the same things as before, only more frequently.
"It's becoming ever more apparent that America, the United Kingdom and a handful of other nations with nominal troop contingents in Iraq can't do the job by themselves. The U.S. needs help and the president should ask for it."
[b]Minneapolis, Minn. - [u]Minneapolis Star-Tribune[/u][/b], [i][b]May 25, 2004[/b][/i]
"Let's be clear at the outset: President Bush's much-anticipated speech Monday night at the Army War College in Pennsylvania wasn't about Iraq. It was about the general election on Nov. 2…
"Throughout his speech, he continued his effort to wrap the war in Iraq in the war on terror. At this late date, just five weeks from the return of some sovereignty to Iraq, Bush refuses to acknowledge what is plain: The war in Iraq had no relationship to the war on terror; it was a distraction from the essential war on Al-Qaida and other terrorists who wish America harm.
"Bush spoke also of returning full sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30. He spoke of five steps necessary to make that sovereignty meaningful, but none of it is new; all of it has been known for months.
"The Bush team has screwed up from the get-go in Iraq, and no amount of feel-good spin will change that."
|
|
|
| |
| Ignoring the Crisis ... |
| 05.26.04 (3:14 pm) [edit] |
"[i]We've passed what's called Health Savings Accounts...It's a good way to help control costs[/i]." – President Bush, 5/25/04, http://www.whitehouse.gov/new...
[i][b]VERSUS[/b][/i]
"[i]Sharply higher health insurance deductibles may hit workers in the next two years as employers embrace newly created tax-free Health Savings Accounts[/i]." – USA Today, 4/25/04, http://www.usatoday.com/money...
[b]"We the People" surely must not idly sit by and watch the corrupt and traitorous Bush regime squander $200 Billion with no end in sight ([i]in wanton waste of US lives & treasure[/i]) on illegal and immoral warfare to enrich their corporate pimps (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.) ... while over 45 million of our citizens lack health care coverage-- with millions of people living in miserable pain and ill unable to get care-- and, with over 18,000 Americans dying each year because they can't get care ... And, the situation is growing worse because this callous and greedy Bush regime is[i] ignoring the crisis [/i][u]here at home[/u] ...[/b]
[b]U.S. HEALTH CARE: IGNORING THE CRISIS [/b]- http://www.americanprogress.o...
With four million more Americans losing their health insurance since 2001, President Bush yesterday promoted a modest proposal to increase funding for community health centers. He gave his speech in Ohio, where more than one million people (13 percent of the state's population) are uninsured. Nationally, the numbers are even worse – a recent report found that more than 74 million Americans were forced to go without health care coverage at some point between 2001-2002. While the president billed the $1.8 billion proposal as a major step in addressing this health care crisis, he did not mention that the increase is more than offset by billions of dollars in other health care cuts he is proposing. For instance, Families USA notes the President's latest budget would reduce Medicaid funding "by nearly $1 billion in 2005 and by nearly $16 billion" over the next ten years, even as states have been forced to dramatically reduce their low-income health insurance programs because of budget shortfalls. Similarly, the American Association of Family Physicians points out the president's budget also calls for $1.1 billion in cuts to non-Medicare/Medicaid programs, such as rural health programs and grants for the uninsured.
[b]PROPOSALS THAT EITHER MAKE THINGS WORSE OR DO NOTHING:[/b] In his speech yesterday, the president trumpeted his "health savings account" proposal, claiming the accounts are "aimed at helping to control medical costs" for average workers. But because the accounts only apply when workers have high-deductible health insurance plans, they essentially encourage employers to raise their deductibles and premiums. As USA Today notes, "widespread adoption of the plans could drive up the annual deductible paid by workers." The President also claimed new "drug discount cards will allow seniors to save between 15 percent and 25 percent off of brand-name medicines." But the drug cards do not guarantee any savings, as they allow drug companies to raise prices at any moment, while locking seniors into the card they choose. And as the WP notes, many Internet pharmacies already sell medicines at lower prices than would be offered by the drug cards. Additionally, the massive increase in prescription drug prices is now threatening to negate any positive effects of the drug cards. [i]American Progress [/i]columnists Judith Lichtman and Alice Weiss argue the Bush plan is a flawed approach to helping the uninsured.
[b]STUDIES – MIDDLE CLASS GETTING SQUEEZED:[/b] A series of studies show how the Bush administration's inaction on prescription drug and health care costs is now putting the squeeze on the middle class as never before. Families USA and AARP yesterday each released reports showing "prices for name-brand medicines most commonly prescribed for seniors have risen at least three times faster than inflation in the last four years." Late last year, Business Week calculated that overall health spending is rising at about 7.3% a year, with the average premium for a family health insurance policy now at $9,086 per year – 21% of the median household income. In all, Americans pay the highest prices on the planet for prescription drugs and spend the most per-capita on health care, yet have the largest amount of uninsured citizens in the industrialized world.
[b]CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS WELL SPENT:[/b] Why would the Bush administration continue to negate health care issues when more and more Americans are being squeezed by health care costs? Because the health care industry that bankrolls the Bush campaign is making out like bandits. A recent study found that HMO's profits increased 52% last year – raking in an extra $6.7 billion from American consumers. Meanwhile, according to the administration's own cost estimates, these insurers stand to gain an additional $46 billion from the new Medicare law over the next decade. These are the same companies that gave at least $10 million to President Bush and his allies in Congress, http://www.opensecrets.org/in... and who have seven former or current executives in the President's "Pioneer" club (those who gave him $100,000 or more http://www.whitehouseforsale.... ).
[b]WHITE HOUSE INACTION ON AIDS DRUG CRISIS:[/b] Consumer groups are demanding action from the Bush administration after Abbott Laboratories announced a massive increase in the price of a key AIDS drug developed, in part, at U.S. taxpayer expense. Abbott, which is a major contributor to President Bush and which has financial ties to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, said it was raising the price of Norvir by 400%. Drug companies regularly argue they need to charge exorbitant prices to pay for research and development, and recover losses incurred when they explore new drugs that never come to fruition. But, as Abbott itself admitted in its patent application, Norvir was originally developed with $3.2 million in taxpayer-funded NIH grants, meaning taxpayers took the original risk, yet are now being fleeced with exorbitant prices. The non-profit consumer group Essential Inventions is now asking the NIH and the Bush administration to invoke the bipartisan Bayh-Dole Act, which permits other companies to produce drugs developed at taxpayer expense if the original company (Abbott) misuses its patent. But the drug industry is one of President Bush's largest campaign contributors, and the administration has appointed former drug industry officials to key government positions. That means, as the WSJ reports, "there is little indication http://lists.essential.org/pi... the Bush administration is inclined to [intervene and] take a step that would be anathema not only to Abbott, but to the entire pharmaceutical industry."
|
|
|
| |
| Will Bush Stage A Terrorist Attack To Terrify Americans & Take-Over In A Coup d'Etat??? |
| 05.26.04 (2:49 pm) [edit] |
[b]Don't be [i]surprised [/i]if the neo-con neo-fascists in the Bush regime[i] stage [/i]a terrorist attack upon America ([i]because experts claim that Americans would "rally around the president" out of fear [/i]...) ... [/b]Bush has a sordid history of telling squalid lies, deceptions and falsehoods that place the United States of America in dire danger ... Bush did not protect America in September 2001, when his approval ratings were low and he was facing a crisis with the Enron / Oil Rape by Cheney who illegally price-gouged the American people in the summer of 2001 ... Don't forget that Bush's popularity ratings jumped in the aftermath of 9/11 because Americans were scared and wanted to believe that a "father-figure" could rescue and protect our nation ... It was illusory on our part to place trust in Bush who doesn't deserve it, and wantonly squandered it ...
Bush traitorously took the nation to war in Iraq by misleading the American people about phony WMDs posing a so-called "imminent threat" to our national security; phony non-existent links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein; and false accusations that Iraq was involved in terrorism-- when in fact, his crooked-cronies, the Saudi Royal Family were involved in 9/11 instead (Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11) ...
Bush [i]cannot[/i] be trusted ... Bush is a dangerously stupid, corrupt and incompetent president-- a deadly combination of moral depravity and intellectual vacuity ...
"We the People" must demand that the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] be[i] impeached [/i]from office ... The alternative is that we face the[i] end [/i]of our Republic ...
Consider "[b]'Those missing Taguba pages: More dirty tricks in TortureGate'[/b]" by[i] Kurt Nimmo [/i]on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/... :
It sure is curious how documents entering the Bush Machine exit with blank pages. It happened with Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons and now it has happened again with the report on prison abuse produced by Major General Antonio M. Taguba.
"The copy [the Senate Armed Services Committee] got after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony on May 7 was a thick document with 106 annexes, and it was quickly arranged into separate binders. Only later did the committee stack up all the pages, compare them with a ream of 6,000 blank pages and decide that at least 2,000 pages were missing," reports Time Magazine.
If indeed the Bushites filched the pages it would hardly be surprising or unusual. This is a criminal administration at ease with deception and thievery. Lies, dirty tricks, and theft are their modus operandi -- from the 2000 election onward.
Obviously, the pages in question are not missing because they contain embarrassing nudie shots of the Bush twins. The pages are missing because there is ample evidence of Bush administration complicity in the torture of Iraqi detainees.
"Interviews and government documents obtained by The New Yorker and Newsweek show that the very highest levels of the Bush administration -- including President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld -- set up programs designed to extract more information out of detainees by circumventing international laws banning torture. Moreover, they were fully conscious that in doing so they were violating US and international law and leaving themselves open to prosecution for war crimes," writes Alex Lefebvre.
Seymour Hersh's article The Gray Zone reveals how the Bushites set up torture mills after September 11, 2001. From the very outset of the so-called war on terror the Bush administration and the Pentagon neocons have conspired to violate international law.
"If the government is not handed over to the Iraqis, if Osama Bin Laden is not arrested and if torture photos keep coming in, Bush will lose the election," predicts Joseph Napolitan, a former political adviser to John F. Kennedy.
Napolitan would be correct under normal conditions. However, since Bush stole the 2000 election, conditions have been anything but normal. Is it outrageous to believe Bush will steal it again or contrive a situation where the American people believe they have no choice but to hand him the election? Bush's only option may be to demand a rally.
"Even though Bush II will lose the popular vote in the US presidential election of 2004, his electoral college victory seems assured. With Republican party governors firmly in charge of Florida, California, Texas and New York, and supported by a whopping Bush campaign war chest approaching $200 million, dubious electronic voting schemes courtesy of Diebold, Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors (http://www.blackboxvoting.com...), it seems certain that Bush will make it back to the Oval Office through the back door that is the Electoral College," writes John Stanton. "And if not the Electoral College then by benefit of a rebel attack on US soil which kills thousands of Americans and leads to the suspension of the US Constitution."
Stanton's mention of a "rebel attack" on the US during or prior to the election is not the fictional meandering of a conspiracy theorist. Condi Rice talked about just such a possibility recently. "I think that we do have to take very seriously the thought that the terrorists might have learned, we hope, the wrong lesson from Spain," Rice told Fox News Sunday. And then there is the "nightmare scenario" floated by the White House. "We assume an attack will happen leading up to the election," a senior official told US News & World Report.
David Rothkopf, former Clintonite, made similar observations. "Recently, I co-chaired a meeting hosted by CNBC of more than 200 senior business and government executives, many of whom are specialists in security and terrorism related issues," Rothkopf wrote in a Washington Post op-ed piece. "Almost three-quarters of them said it was likely the United States would see a major terrorist strike before the end of 2004."
Bush and Crew believe the Taguba report is little more than a troublesome public relations problem. It will not be allowed to get in the way of the neocon plan to attack the Arab Middle East and cripple Islam. Four more years will give the Pentagon neocons time to set up bases in Iraq --- these "enduring camps" are in the process of construction (as Christine Spolar wrote the Chicago Tribune) -- and devise pretexts to invade Syria and Iran.
"Pentagon hardliners are drawing up plans to invade Iran once Iraq and its oil are 'liberated.' They hope civil war will erupt in Iran, which is riven by bitterly hostile factions, after which a . regime will take power. If this does not occur, then Iraq-based U.S. forces will be ideally positioned to attack Iran. Or, they could just as well move west and invade Syria, another of Israel's most bitter enemies," Eric Margolis wrote in November, 2002. "Israel's Likudniks thirst for revenge against Syria -- and also Iran -- for supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, which drove Israeli forces from Lebanon."
None of this should be particularly surprising. It's all spelled out in A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, written by Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, Jonathan Torop, David Wurmser and Meyrav Wurmser way back in 1996 for then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "It provides an early window into some of the current administration's thinking. For one, it predicted that toppling the Hussein regime could be the beginning of a larger rollback of autocratic, terrorist-supporting states such as Syria and Iran, blamed for supporting Hezbollah guerrillas operating in southern Lebanon and accused of terrorism against Israel and the United States," reported the Boston Globe last August.
But it's not simply Hezbollah or the mullahs in Iran. It's the whole neoliberal global game plan -- or rather the neocon take on it -- that's at stake if Bush is shown the door in November.
Team Bush will do whatever it takes to get Dubya reinstalled in the White House, even if it means the installation process -- some of us still refer to it as democracy -- is circumvented entirely. Treason concerns them little.
As Joe Nichols writes in Asia Times Online, the central issues beyond Israeli dominance in the Middle East are "oil, the prospects for privatizing the region, derailing any possibilities for a common currency among Arab nations, the position of the dollar in petroleum markets and for the central reserves in Asia, and the balance of trade between the US and the nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries." These issues are so important to our rulers they will not allow an election to get in the way.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon rolled out glib excuses for the crucial pages missing from the Taguba report. "If there is some shortfall in what was provided, it was an oversight," explained Pentagon spokesman Larry Dirita.
Sure it was, Larry. And so was the bogus report that Saddam had acquired uranium from Niger, a crudely fabricated lie Bush pawned off on the United Nations and the world in order to invade Iraq and kill 10,000 innocent civilians. Bush has amassed a pile of lies as of yet unanswered for -- the aluminum tubes, the WMD trailers, the fictious links between al-Qaeda and Saddam, misrepresentations concerning weapons inspections and the International Atomic Energy report alleging that Iraq was "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon. All clear-cut lies. Is there any reason to believe the curious disappearance of pages from the Taguba will be any different? Is it foolish to believe the election is so hallowed Karl Rove and his dirty tricksters will not subvert it, especially now that Bush is running neck and neck with that other neolib, John Kerry?
Is it possible the Bush neocons in the Pentagon will stage a terrorist attack as the election approaches, or take advantage of a terrorist "event" in order to steal the election?
Considering the pathological lies and dirty tricks of this administration -- lies and dirty tricks resulting in war crimes and arrogant disregard for international law -- a "nightmare scenario" cannot be ruled out.
In fact, as continuous scandals and evidence of misdeeds pile up on Bush's doorstep -- and as an inevitable result he falls behind in the polls -- the American people should expect nothing less than dirty tricks.
Question is, will they sheepishly accept it?
Or will enough finally be enough?
|
|
|
| |
| Bush Promises the "Appearance" of Chaos??? ... Jeez ... |
| 05.26.04 (9:05 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" must be in a[i] nightmarish sleep-walking daze[/i] like the Germans were in the 1930s when Hitler led them down a path of chaos and destruction ...[/b]
Bush promises the "appearance of chaos" ... [i]because[/i] his panic-striken incompetent and blood-thirsty regime[i] [u]is[/u][/i] in chaos ...
Perhaps Bush should promise the "appearance of corruption" ... [i]because[/i] it is obvious that his traitorous regime [i][u]is[/u][/i] corrupt ...
Perhaps[i] too [/i]Bush should promise the "appearance of insane neo-con, neo-fascist lunacy" ... [i]because[/i] his Un-American regime[i] [u]is[/u] [/i]comprised of neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons who are undermining our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, and waging illegal and immoral warfare for war-profiteering and at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Neo-Nazi Likud Party ... [i]Jeez [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
There was a moment in Bush's speech to the nation on May 24 when he appeared lost, and his eyes bugged out, and he paused. He simply did not know how to pronounce the name of the Iraqi prison first made notorious by Saddam's brutality and now made further notorious by the torture some U.S. soldiers committed there.
It's remarkable that the President didn't know how to pronounce Abu Ghraib (he tried three different pronunciations in three different sentences, including "Abu Grump"). This has only been the single biggest scandal of his Administration.
He appeared like an unprepared high school actor who forgot his lines in the class play. Even after countless rehearsal he couldn't get it right.
On the substance of the scandal, all he said was that it amounted to "disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values."
But these "few American troops" weren't the only ones.
Bush did not mention White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who sent out a memo after September 11 that said the war on terrorism "renders obsolete" the "strict limitation on questioning of prisoners" that the Geneva Conventions require. In that memo, Gonzales referred to some of the Geneva protections as "quaint."
Bush did not mention Donald Rumsfeld, who insisted that the Taliban in Afghanistan did not merit the protection of the Geneva Conventions. According to Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker, Rumsfeld gave these interrogators a free hand in Afghanistan and then sent them to Iraq to pry out information from the detainees there.
Bush did not mention his own culpability for unleashing the CIA. "The President has given the agency the green light to do whatever is necessary," one senior official told Bob Woodward in a Washington Post article on October 21, 2001. "The gloves are off."
This scandal is not about a few sadistic soldiers.
Something much more disturbing, something much more systemic, is going on, but Bush did not even come close to describing the magnitude of the problem, much less own any responsibility for it.
Anyone looking for Bush to be contrite, or to come clean, or to fire Rumsfeld was out of luck.
What you found instead was Bush's fusing of the Iraq War yet again with the war against Al Qaeda. "We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it," Bush said.
But Bush certainly did seek the war against Iraq, which--as Richard Clarke and Anthony Zinni and many others have noted--was unconnected to the war on terror and actually exacerbated it.
No matter. For Bush, it's all just a matter of playing fill-in-the-blanks for the names of the bad guys.
Forget about Saddam. Now the problem is "an Al Qaeda associate named Zarqawi" and "a young radical cleric [Muqtada al-Sadr] who commands an illegal militia."
Ironically, by waging this unnecessary and illegal war, Bush may have created an Al Qaeda threat in Iraq where none existed before.
It's a threat he feeds off of.
Bush invoked "the flames of September 11," and he took pains to mention that Americans have "learned new terms, like 'orange alert' and 'ricin' and 'dirty bomb.' "
He seems to like nothing more than to remind Americans of how vulnerable we are so that we'll trust him to protect us.
He even alluded to the decapitation of Nicholas Berg, though Berg's family blames Bush for his death.
One particularly alarming moment in Bush's speech came when he was boasting that the American military showed restraint in Fallujah, but then suggested that this might not last forever. "In the city of Fallujah . . . American soldiers and Marines could have used overwhelming force" but decided not to because it could "alienate the local population and increase support for the insurgency," Bush said. But he added, "We will do all that is necessary--by measured force or overwhelming force--to achieve a stable Iraq."
The itch to use overwhelming force has been with Bush for a long time. Here are his words from his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2000: "A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world . . . the victory must be overwhelming."
A couple of times Bush promised to transfer "full" sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30, which is different from the "limited sovereignty" that some of the members of his Administration had been talking about.
But how "full" will that sovereignty be?
Unlike Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said that if the new Iraqi government wants the U.S. troops to leave then they'll leave, Bush said, "After June 30th, American and other forces will still have important duties. American military forces in Iraq will cooperate under American command as part of a multinational force authorized by the United Nations." And Bush said, "We'll maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary," hinting that the number may even rise.
What kind of sovereignty is it that has a massive foreign army in its midst?
And what kind of sovereignty is it that has to accept the new currency that Bush's viceroy Paul Bremer introduced?
And what kind of sovereignty is it that has to accept the privatization of the economy that Bush insisted upon? Bush lauded the Iraqi Governing Council for approving a law Washington drafted "that opens the country to foreign investment for the first time in decades." This law allows for 100 percent repatriation of profits: a dream come true for U.S. corporations.
Bush said "the U.S. occupation will end" on June 30--but it will still be a de facto U.S. occupation.
He played up the prospects of the interim government that U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is feverishly trying to cobble together.
But Bush gave no reason why the turnover of power will go smoothly. Quite the contrary: He said there will be more violence before and after the turnover. And he provided no realistic basis for expecting that the resistance to the U.S. occupation will fade.
Instead, he tried to foreshadow troubles to come. "There are difficult days ahead, and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic," he said.
That may be the understatement of the year. - http://www.progressive.org/we...
|
|
|
| |
| Neo-Con Traitors: Pentagon Spies Betraying the U.S.A.??? |
| 05.26.04 (8:14 am) [edit] |
[b]Neo-con traitors in the corrupt Bush regime turning over [i]top-secret U.S. government information [/i]to Chalabi [i]and/or [/i]the Iranians??? ... [/b]It is already becoming evident that some like Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Abrams, Bolton will [i]lie, cheat, steal & commit war crimes [/i]on behalf of Israel and have [i]no loyalty whatsoever[/i] to the United States of America ... The fact that the former are able to so easily [i]dupe[/i] the neo-crooks Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Rove demonstrates that the latter are [i]unfit to serve[/i] in government and the entire cabal should be shipped off to the Hague to be tried for heinous[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...
"We the People" should demand that a[i] full blown investigation [/i]into the spying by the neo-cons who have betrayed our nation commence[i] immediately [/i]... Contact Congress on http://www.congress.org ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
The fallout from the fall of Ahmad Chalabi looks like it might splash all over the Pentacons—the neocon hardliners in the Pentagon who've backed Chalabi since the '90s. And Chalabi's backers are worried. Here's today's [i]Wall Street Journal [/i]editorial, citing a report in [i]The New York Times [/i]that U.S. intelligence officials are investigating Pentagon officials:
[i]Critics of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy are using the raid and the leaks as an excuse for demanding a purge of anyone who ever supported Mr. Chalabi. A Monday piece in The New York Times , based on more anonymous leaks, noted that 'intelligence officials' are investigating a handful of officials in Washington and Iraq who dealt regularly with Mr. Chalabi.' Are they Iranian agents, too[/i]?
Maybe, and maybe not. But next, here's a report from [i]The Guardian[/i] http://www.guardian.co.uk/Ira...,2763,1224075,00.html :
[i]An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from an electronic communications intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials.
"This was 'sensitive compartmented information'—SCI—and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib," the intelligence source said.
The DIA is also reported to have launched its own inquiry into the INC-Iran link.
An intelligence source in Washington said the FBI investigation into the affair would begin with Mr. Chalabi's "handlers" in the Pentagon, who include William Luti, the former head of the office of special plans, and his immediate superior, Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defence for policy. There is no evidence that they were the source of the leaks. Other INC supporters at the Pentagon may have given away classified information in an attempt to give Mr. Chalabi an advantage in the struggle for power surrounding the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30[/i].
Next is this, from UPI yesterday, reporting that the FBI is investigating a Pentagon official and a former Pentagon official for having passed classified info to Chalabi. Though not named, the two officials in the UPI story are, according to my sources, Harold Rhode, an official in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, and Michael Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute. Reports UPI:
[i]Officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority are suspected of having leaked sensitive CIA and Pentagon intercepts to the U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress, which passed them on to the government of Iran, according to federal law enforcement officials and serving and former U.S. intelligence officials.
These sources also acknowledged that the Bush administration has been the victim of an enormous Iran-perpetrated intelligence fraud that worked to provoke a U.S. military invasion of Iraq in order to defeat Iran's bitter, long-time enemy, a campaign of deception which one U.S. source called "positively a most brilliant and extraordinarily successful operation."
This source said that some of the intercepts are believed to have been given to Chalabi by two U.S. officials of the Coalition Provision Authority, both of whom are not named here because UPI could not reach them for comment.
Other targets of the probe include senior and other Pentagon officials who dealt with Chalabi on a regular basis, this source said[/i].
One former CPA official has returned to the United States and is employed at the American Enterprise Institute, the former very senior official said, a fact which FBI sources confirmed without additional comment.
When I asked Rubin if the story was accurate, he replied with the three-word message: "It is untrue." [Rubin is [i]not[/i] a source to be believed ...]
It's not clear where all this might lead. Certainly, the CIA is a sworn enemy of Chalabi, and it has been for many years. And certainly, Chalabi's enemies would love to use the scandal over Chalabi's Iran connections to tarnish his Pentacon allies. But it seems to me unlikely that they would risk a formal investigation unless they had some concrete evidence to support what otherwise would be a witch hunt.
[b]Source:[/b]
The Dreyfuss Report, TomPaine.com, http://www.tompaine.com/artic...
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Lack of Credibility: The Reality Gap in Iraq ... |
| 05.25.04 (4:23 pm) [edit] |
"[i]America continues to fight and win the war on terror[/i]." - President Bush, 4/26/03, http://www.whitehouse.gov/new...
[i][b]VERSUS[/b][/i]
"[i]Al-Qaeda remains a viable and effective 'network of networks' and has been galvanized by the war in Iraq...the group is present in more than 60 countries and has '18,000 potential terrorists at large[/i].'" - International Institute for Strategic Studies, 5/25/04, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/mi...
[b]"We the People" must demand a serious[i] course correction [/i] to put an end to the bloodshed; chaotic fiasco; and the tyranny of US Occupation in Iraq, instead of Bush's insane "stay the course" lunacy ([i]Bush's Mantra: "I'm dumb and so I'll drive us off a cliff, but I can claim to be so-called "decisive" [/i]...) ... [/b]We are witness to the tragic massacre of U.S. Soldiers & Innocent Iraqi Civilians[i] on a daily basis with no end in sight [/i]... The mediocrity Bush and his neo-con cabal of war criminals are "[i]in over the heads[/i]" without a clue what to do and are [i]operating in panic mode[/i], in [i]'make-it-up-as-you-go- along' mode[/i], etc.-- so they continue their heinous neo-orwellian spins, lies and propagating falsehoods [i]on a daily basis with no end in sight[/i] ... Let "We the People" bring this catastrophe to an end and demand the [i]impeachment[/i] by Congress http://www.congress.org of the corrupt, traitorous Bush regime ...
[b]Consider ...[/b]
Facing polls which show Americans have lost confidence in his ability http://www.washingtonpost.com... to manage the crisis in Iraq, President Bush delivered the first in a series of speeches to respond to growing criticism. He offered not one new policy proposal. One administration official acknowledged the growing credibility gap on Iraq, saying the president's speech was needed to dispel "this idea that we don't know what we're doing." But the post-speech headlines reflected just how far the president was from laying out a clear vision: Newsday headlined, "Bush: More of the Same," http://www.newsday.com/news/o...,0,7376782.story?coll=ny-editorials- headlines the Boston Globe pointed out "Bush's Reality Gap" http://www.boston.com/news/gl... and the Houston Chronicle noted "Iraqi Leaders Say They're Dissatisfied With Post-Occupation Plan." http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/s... Bush "did not provide the midcourse correction that even some Republicans had called for in the face of increasingly macabre violence." He also did not "try to answer some of the looming questions that have triggered growing skepticism and anxiety at home and abroad about the final U.S. costs, the final length of stay for U.S. troops, or what the terms will be for a final U.S. exit from Iraq." Instead, he "basically repackaged stalled U.S. policy as a five-step plan." While President Bush does not have a plan for Iraq, American Progress does: see our Strategy for Progress in Iraq http://www.americanprogress.o... .
[b]UNANSWERED – HOW ARE WE GOING TO PAY FOR THIS?: [/b]With $166 billion already spent, the speech provided no answers about how much the war will ultimately cost Americans. As senior appropriator Rep. David Obey (D-WI) noted, by the end of this year, "we will have spent on Iraq more than the United States spent on World War I, and that's after it's adjusted for inflation." Instead of fessing up to this reality, the president trumpeted the fact that Iraqi oil revenues had reached $6 billion, expecting Americans to forget that before the war, the administration told Congress Iraq's oil revenues would bring in "between $50 and $100 billion" in the first two to three years, and that Iraq "can really finance its own reconstruction." The president also provided no justification for why he is pushing $1 trillion in new tax cuts at the same time he wants Congress to increase the national debt to finance more spending on the war. According to the LA Times' Ron Brownstein, the Bush cut-taxes-and-war-spend policy is the first of its kind in American history: every president since Lincoln who faced a major war asked the country to sacrifice by paying more taxes. Brownstein asks: "If Iraq is important enough to bleed for, isn't it important enough to pay for?"
[b]UNANSWERED – WHAT ARE THE POLICY CHANGES AT PRISONS?: [/b]Addressing the burgeoning prison abuse scandal, the president said the eventual replacement of the Abu Ghraib prison with a new, U.S.-funded maximum security prison would put the entire controversy to rest. Ignoring the fact that American maximum security prisons are renowned for their poor conditions, the proposal did not modify administration-approved policies that may have led to the Abu Ghraib abuses in the first place. Nor did Bush follow through on pledges to enforce "personal responsibility" and fire senior Pentagon officials. As the NYT reported, in December the administration sent a letter to the Red Cross emphasizing the "military necessity" of isolating and mistreating some inmates at the prison for interrogation. Similarly, Newsweek reported that "President Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door" to the abuse. For a plan to restore American credibility in the wake of the prison scandal check out this American Progress report http://www.americanprogress.o... .
[b]UNANSWERED – HOW TO DEAL WITH THE CREDIBILITY GAP IN IRAQ?: [/b]The president claimed the coalition "has a clear goal, understood by all" – an implication that the U.S. has broad support among the Iraqi people. But Slate's William Saletan points out, even before the prison scandal, "the most reliable Iraqi poll http://www.reuters.co.uk/news...§ion=news (to which his own Coalition Provisional Authority submitted questions) found that most Iraqis want coalition soldiers to get out." USA Today confirms, "American credibility in Iraq may be at its lowest point since the war began," with "much of the trust desired and needed for a smooth transition" being "replaced by cynicism." According to a nationwide poll by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, whereas six months ago only 1% of Iraqis supported cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his insurgency against American troops, 68% now say they support him.
[b]UNANSWERED – WHO IS GOING TO SECURE AND RUN IRAQ?: [/b]The President promised that on June 30, "the occupation will end, and Iraqis will govern their own affairs" – but offered no details as to whom the U.S. would transfer power, and did not mention that there would be "severe limits" on the new government's sovereignty, including "no authority to enact new laws." He also said that "a force of 260,000 Iraqi soldiers, police, and other security personnel" will be able to secure the country – ignoring the fact that these same forces "are suffering from inadequate training, poor pay, equipment shortages and a serious lack of public support." He said that "we want the Iraqi people to know that we trust their growing [security] capabilities" – but failed to mention that American forces will continue to assume full responsibility and that Iraqi generals will be forced to serve under an American general.
[b]UNANSWERED – HOW WILL WE GET INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT?: [/b]One of the key points in the president's speech was his promise to "encourage more international support" and attract more international military help. But only moments after that promise, he tried to revise history, claiming "at every stage, the United States has gone to the United Nations to confront Saddam Hussein." The reality is, after promising to hold a U.N. vote on military action against Iraq, he reversed himself, and refused to hold a vote. Now the White House is circulating a new U.N. resolution that was "disappointingly sketchy" on how to internationalize the military operation, and would fail to "commit the Security Council to do anything in particular." While it might be easier to secure more multinational forces by giving the U.N. more control in decisions, that "possibility was ruled out" by the Bush Administration. You can find complete American Progress coverage on Iraq here http://www.americanprogress.o... . - http://www.americanprogress.o...
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Neo-Con Scam: You Call This "Sovereignty"??? ... |
| 05.25.04 (3:02 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" are taken for imbecilic idiots, fools and buffoons by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]who are laughing at us ("[i]all the way to the bank[/i]") and are vile traitors that deserve to be[i] impeached [/i]and tried at the Hague for[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...[/b]
Last night's neo-con scam delivered by the brain-dead Bush who simply reads ([i]badly[/i]) Cheney-Rice-and-Rove's neo-con, neo-fascist screed, was a disgraceful Un-American display of arrogance, hypocrisy and dishonest rhetoric ... How many more lies, deceptions and falsehoods are we prepared to [i]put-up with[/i]???
[b]Read on ...[/b]
As violence continued in Iraq http://sg.news.yahoo.com/0405... , President Bush addressed the nation Monday night http://antiwar.com/news/?arti... about his plans for the June 30 "transfer of power." Bush offered preliminary details about Iraq’s forthcoming sovereignty http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... .
Iraqi "sovereignty" will apparently include a large U.S. military and advisory presence for the indefinite future. No date is set for coalition troops to leave Iraq http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... .
Speaking before an audience at the Army War College, Bush blamed the military for underestimating the number of troops needed for such a task.
"Our commanders had estimated that a troop level below 115,000 would be sufficient at this point in the conflict," he said. No comment yet from former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki http://www.theage.com.au/arti... .
"Given the recent increase in violence, we will maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary," he said, adding that he would send more troops if needed.
While Bush admitted that violence has worsened in Iraq, the news was not all bad. In a promising sign that the Iraqis understand the concept of sovereignty, the president noted, "In some cases, the early performance of Iraqi [military] forces fell short. Some refused orders to engage the enemy."
In response to recent torture scandals http://www.antiwar.com/news/?... , Bush pledged meaningful reform.
"America will fund the construction of a modern maximum security prison," he said. "When that prison is completed, detainees at Abu Ghraib will be relocated. Then with the approval of the Iraqi government, we will demolish the Abu Ghraib Prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning."
As the president put it in his stirring conclusion, "We will persevere and defeat this enemy and hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty."
Related news and analysis:
... 12 killed in Najaf; Iraqi Governing Council president says draft U.N. resolution "fell short of our expectations." http://sg.news.yahoo.com/0405...
... The White House now says it’s considering moving the proposed Iraqi elections up, from next January to next fall. http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...
... "Bush is a scorpion": Iraqis react to the president’s plan. http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
... Critics remark on Iraq’s proposed "sovereignty lite." http://www.antiwar.com/ips/de...
... Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham says the resolution would give the Iraqis no power to make foreign troops leave. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/0405...
... U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will appoint a president, prime minister, two vice presidents and various ministers who will serve until the scheduled elections in January 2005. This new interim government will supposedly control the $10 billion Development Fund for Iraq http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap... , though a deputy in Iraq’s foreign ministry claims that the U.S. is actually skimming from the oil revenues http://english.aljazeera.net/... supplying the fund.
... France, Germany and others want the resolution to specify a date for coalition withdrawal http://www.smh.com.au/article... . British and U.S. diplomats say the mandate can be reviewed after a year.
... The U.S. will not pressure the new government to retain the interim constitution, which guarantees minority rights. Shi’ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has protested these guarantees as undemocratic; Iraqi Kurds have insisted upon them. http://news.ft.com/servlet/Co...
... Iraqi troops and police will remain under U.S. control. http://www.nytimes.com/aponli...
... Meanwhile, U.S. officials are backing away from plans to disarm militias. http://www.iht.com/articles/5...
... American and international advisers will stay on after the June 30 transfer http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... . Security issues for the new embassy, which will be one of the world’s largest, have not yet been resolved.
[b]Source:[/b]
"A Government to be Named Later: You Call This 'Sovereignty'?" by Matthew Barganier on http://antiwar.com/barganier2...
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Feel-Good Iraq Plan Versus Reality: an Anti-B.S. Guide |
| 05.24.04 (3:36 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" surely are [i]not[/i] willing suckers, buffoons and fools ready to "buy" Bush's Bull-Shit [i]over and over and over again [/i]... What will [i]change[/i] and/or be [i]different[/i] for Iraqis in Iraq on 1 July 2004??? ... Hmmm ...[/b]
[u][b]Bush's Feel-Good Iraq Plan Versus Reality: an Anti-B.S. Guide[/b][/u] - http://www.democrats.com/view...
Tonight (5/24), Americans will be presented with Bush's "vision" for Iraq, a speech that should be retitled, "What the White House Wants You to Believe This Week." Various previews of the content of the speech have indicated that the "vision" is simply business as usual for Bush. Business as usual being, of course, hiding beneath a thin PR veneer constructed of half-truths and corporate doubletalk glued together by feel-good platitudes and evangelical exhortations against "evil."
Based on the "talking points" expected to be presented, here's an "anti-B.S." guide to Bush's Iraq plan
[b]Bush Plan[/b]:
Authorize a multinational peacekeeping force to maintain order.
[b]Reality[/b]:
The UN and individual nations have repeatedly said in recent weeks that until the situation in Iraq calms down, they WILL NOT send any forces into Iraq. So while "multinational peacekeeping forces" may sound good in a speech, the existence of such a thing on the ground in Iraq in the near future is highly unlikely.
In the wording of the UN Security Council Resolution just submitted by Bush and Blair, they refer to "multinational forces" as if they were already on the ground in one section, then speaks of the creation of a "multinational force" in a later section. What happened to "coalition forces?" Are they now interchangeable terms? This is just one example of the "intentional ambiguity" built into the resolution.
[b]Bush Plan[/b]:
The US will keep 130,000 troops in Iraq after June 30 to "keep peace."
[b]Reality[/b]:
Even some of America's European allies have warned that keeping such a large US force in Iraq would be proof to the Iraqis that the nation is still under US domination. That being the perception, any "peace" is highly unlikely in the near future.
[b]Bush Plan[/b]:
The future Iraqi government will be allowed to "review" the presence of the U.S.-led multinational force. The force's mandate would be reviewed in 12 months "or at the request of the Transitional Government of Iraq."
[b]Reality[/b]:
Notice that the phrasing of the resolution proposed by Blair and Bush calls for a multinational force. And because, as stated above, a multinational force is highly unlikely to exist for some time to come, this is a meaningless "sound good" phrase at best - a cynical corporate trick of rhetoric at worst. Afterall, Bush can claim later that US forces - as opposed to a multinational force - is NOT subject to any review.
And speaking of cheap corporate tricks of rhetoric, how about the phrases "future Iraqi government" and "transitional government"? As the "Baltimore Sun" pointed out on 5/24, "It wasn't immediately clear whether this was a reference to the interim government that will take over on June 30 or the government chosen by the Transitional National Assembly due to be elected by Jan. 31." The Bush administration has continually used the "open to interpretation" trick to manuver and change the rules as it goes along. I would call this modus operandi the "label now, redefine later bait and switch game." And by floating several different terms (coalition gov, interim gov, transitional gov) at once, the White House is insuring (intentionally) maximum confusion in the public mind.
[b]Bush Plan[/b]:
The US will remove its troops if the present coalition government asks it to.
[b]Reality[/b]:
The present coalition government, having been hand-picked by the Bush administration, is hardly likely to ask the Bush administration to leave. And as the offer to "leave if asked" apparently applies only to the Coalition government, this means Bush can later say NO if the Interim Government picked by Brahmini asks the US to leave. It will be interesting to see how Bush qualifies this - or if he does.
[b]Bush Plan[/b]:
The new interim government would be given "control" over oil and gas resources -- as well as a fund now in the hands of the United States and Britain where oil revenue has (allegedly) been deposited.
[b]Reality[/b]:
Again we have corporate rhetoric. "Control" on paper for the new government is not the same as real control. The real control of Iraq's oil and gas resources is in the hands of the western corporations and their private security contractors, who have taken possession of the oil extraction and refining facilities. The number of Iraqis working at these facilities is extremely low, with many former workers having been displaced as soon as the western contractors took over. In fact, the Iraqi managers of the facilities were the first to be pushed out. As to a "fund" - Bush must be referring to the Iraqi government payroll because nearly all Iraqi oil and gas revenues are currently being used just to keep the government going. Very little has gone into reconstruction or human services for the general Iraqi public.
In addition, Bush has placed John Negroponte, a Kissinger-like corporazi with a record of human rights abuse complicity in Central America, in charge of all Iraq aid funds. That includes all monies for reconstruction, which means Negroponte can decide who gets the contracts in the oil and gas industries and thus who has the real control. By the way, Bush is using shady corporate rhetoric where Negroponte is concerned. Bush keeps asserting that Negroponte is not replacing Bremer, implying intentionally that Negroponte won't have the same powers. Well, guess what? Negroponte will have MORE power than Bremer. In fact, Negroponte himself describes his duties as "vast."
The only way that real control of Iraq's oil and gas can be given to Iraqis is for US corporations to turn the ACTUAL FACILITIES over to Iraqis, leaving only a few advisors, and then only if those are requested.
[b]Bush Plan[/b]:
U.S.-led international forces will continue "to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq including by preventing and deterring terrorism."
[b]Reality[/b]:
As we all now know by now, giving the Bush cartel the right to take "all necessary measures" is not a good plan. Especially with the extremely open and general wording of the Bush/Blair resolution. I suspect that "deterring terrorism" will continue to be used as an excuse to commit all sorts of economic and human rights abuses. Under this sort of carte blanche, I would expect to see the same situation shaping up around Iraq's oil and gas fields that occurred around US corporate holdings in Indonesia and Burma - a human rights and environmental nightmare where countless horrific abuses have been committed in the name of "security."
If you want to see the NeoCon "template" for Iraq, read: "Bloody Hands Full of Gold," the story of Henry Kissinger and his corporazi pals in Indonesia. http://www.newsinsider.org/se...
[b]Bush Plan[/b]:
Iraqi security forces will be under the control of an Iraqi general who will operate "in partnership" with coalition forces.
[b]Reality[/b]:
On May 24, Deputy Sec. of State Richard Armitage stated unequivocally that the US plans to retain complete control of Iraq's police, security forces and military. Doesn't sound like much of a "partnership" to me. And you can bet that any Iraqi general partnering with the coalition will first get the Bush rubber stamp.
|
|
|
| |
| Bush In A Bubble ... |
| 05.24.04 (2:11 pm) [edit] |
[i]“...there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up[/i].” - Ret. General Zinni, "They've Screwed It Up", http://www.cbsnews.com/storie...
[b]Bush likes to live in a protected [i]bubble[/i] ... In an interview with Charlie Rose ([i]22.May.2004[/i]), Bob Woodward http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... , author of "[i]Plan of Attack[/i]", says that the Mad King George told him that he doesn't like to seek the viewpoints of experts, colleagues or knowledgeable professionals-- but instead prefers to have a[i] few close cronies [/i](like the liars, traitors & embezzlers Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and the neo-cons??? ... Jeez ...) [i]tell him what's what [/i]... This is[i] so dangerous [/i]... [/b]
"We the People" ought to [i]send Bush back to his bubble in Crawford[/i], as he is[i] unfit [/i]to be president ... Bush acts like a Mad King or Emperor, and is isolated, ignorant and dangerous in his lack of curiosity; lack of interest in the truth; lack of respect for the rule of law; lack of intellectual rigor; lack of knowledge of history, culture [i]and/or [/i]politics; and, his complete lack of moral authority [i]and/or [/i]ethics ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[u][b]The Other Long Occupation: Bush in a Bubble[/b][/u] - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal was raging, American soldiers were battling Iraqi insurgents near a Shiite shrine, and the Europeans were arguing with the United States over the powers of a new government in Baghdad.
But on that hot, troubled Washington morning of May 14, when President Bush met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with foreign ministers from the Group of 8, the world's leading industrialized democracies, he spoke to them for exactly eight minutes, took no questions, then left.
"We listen to his speeches, and then the president is gone," said a European diplomat who asked not to be named because he did not want to be seen as criticizing Mr. Bush.
Last week, when the president made a rare trip to Capitol Hill to try to soothe Republicans who are anxious over the increasing chaos of the American occupation, he gave them a 35-minute pep talk, shook hands, took no questions, then left.
"I was hoping the president would have some back and forth," said Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, the only Republican in the Senate who voted against the war in Iraq.
Specifically, Mr. Chafee said he would have liked to have asked Mr. Bush one question about Iraq: "If this thing starts spiraling downward, what are our options?"
All presidents live in a bubble, but Democrats, European officials and a group of moderate Republicans say that Mr. Bush lives in a bigger bubble than most. As the problems of the occupation and insurgency in Iraq have intensified, they say, Mr. Bush has appeared to retreat more than ever into his tight circle of aides.
"He needs to break out of that cocoon a little bit, and to listen to more advice than he gets from his vice president and his war cabinet," said Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, a frequent critic of the president. "This administration has seen Congress as an enemy and a constitutional nuisance. The world right now is in trouble, and we need to have a Congress and a president and an executive branch that's working together."
Over the next five weeks, Mr. Bush will take a few steps out of the bubble in a series of speeches, starting on Monday night at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., that will outline his strategy for transferring power to the Iraqis by a June 30 deadline. But in a classic White House public relations offensive, Mr. Bush will in essence be informing the globe of his prelaid plans.
"The president talked about being humble when he was running for office," Mr. Chafee said, "but the opposite seems to be true."
This past weekend, Mr. Bush seemed more inside his bubble than usual. After a commencement speech on Friday in the largely Bush-friendly territory of Louisiana State University, the president ended up at his Texas ranch.
He spent part of Saturday afternoon falling off his mountain bike and sustaining minor injuries on a 17-mile ride, and he skipped the graduation of his twin daughter Jenna from the University of Texas, where university officials had predicted protests if Mr. Bush turned up. Later in the day, Mr. Bush went to a private family dinner in Austin, at a restaurant called Moonshine, to celebrate Jenna's graduation.
The president repeated the pattern in New Haven on Sunday, when he attended a family dinner celebrating the graduation of the other twin, Barbara, from Yale. But once again, he planned to skip the actual commencement, on Monday. Yale officials, too, had predicted that there would be large protests if the president appeared.
The larger question is this: Inside the bubble, what is Mr. Bush's level of concern about the turmoil in Iraq? Does he think that the sunny predictions of Vice President Dick Cheney and the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, were all wrong? Does he blame them, or himself?
In public, a president who is determined not to be Jimmy Carter is relentlessly upbeat. In private, he is described by some people who have seen him recently as grim and subdued.
"I think the president is concerned in the sense that he appreciates some very difficult decisions are going to have to be made," said Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In an interview, Mr. Lugar said that in a recent meeting the president had been receptive to his ideas, along with those of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. "We were not shy, and it was about a 45- or 50-minute period," Mr. Lugar said.
Nonetheless, the even-keeled Mr. Lugar sent a warning to Mr. Bush on Saturday, when Mr. Lugar questioned the administration's war against terrorism in a commencement speech at Tufts University.
"Military action is necessary to defeat serious and immediate threats to our national security," Mr. Lugar said. "But the war on terrorism will not be won through attrition, particularly since military action will often breed more terrorists and more resentment of the United States."
In the interview, when asked if Mr. Bush was properly handling the troubles in Iraq, Mr. Lugar replied, "I don't know."
|
|
|
| |
| Israeli Official Compares Israeli Action to Nazis' |
| 05.24.04 (10:40 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" should be questioning our U.S. Foreign Policy because the corrupt neo-cons who have hijacked our nation (Useful Idiot Bush is [i]too stupid to comprehend the consequences [/i]of the [i]orders he takes [/i]from Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, etc.) are using heinous slander, libel and neo-hitlerian nazi-style intimidation tacits (including falsely calling those who dare to question the[i] costs-and-benefits of warfare[/i], and/or those who dare to refuse[i] to blindly support atrocities [/i]committed by the U.S.A. & Israel: "anti-semitic") in an attempt to traitorously squash and silence all discussion ...[/b]
It is[i] not [/i]"anti-semitic", [i]nor[/i] is it "anti-Israel", [i]nor[/i] is it "anti-American" http://www.tblog.com/template... to criticize the horrendous [i]War Crimes [/i]committed by George W. Bush and/or Ariel Sharon, both of whom should be sent to the Hague to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... Indeed it is [i]our duty [/i]as responsible citizens to do so ...
Refer to "[b]Ret. General Zinni says 'Neo-Cons have Hijacked U.S. Foreign Policy'[/b]" on http://truthout.org/docs_04/0... ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
JERUSALEM - An Israeli Cabinet minister on Sunday said the army's demolition of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) reminded him of actions the Nazis took against his family during World War II and called for a halt to the policy of destroying homes.
The remarks by Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, sparked an uproar at the weekly Cabinet meeting, officials at the meeting said.
The ministers were discussing Israel's demolition of homes in the Rafah refugee camp. Dozens of homes have been destroyed or damaged during an ongoing offensive along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Lapid was quoted by officials at the meeting as saying a picture of an old Palestinian woman on the rubble of her home reminded him "of my grandmother in the Holocaust."
The statement outraged hard-line Likud Party ministers, who demanded he recant.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) said such comments add "oil to the fire of incitement."
Lapid said he was not comparing Israel to the Nazis but there "is no forgiveness for people who treat an old woman in this way." - http://www.independent-media....%20Reported
|
|
|
| |
| Americans Should See How Callous & Stupid Bush Really Is ... Call For Airing of "Fahrenheit 9/11"!!! |
| 05.24.04 (8:20 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" should demand that Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" be released in our country [i]immediately[/i] ... [/b]It is[i] unacceptable [/i]that this film is being[i] censored [/i]by Disney (because Disney CEO Eisner http://www.fair.org/activism/... is in the fat, bulging pockets of the corrupt Dubya & Jeb Bushies) and we [i]have the right to see it [/i]... Contact Disney on-line at http://psc.disney.go.com/gues... or at their mailing address:
The Walt Disney Company
500 S. Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521
Refer to "[b]Disney blocks release of Michael Moore documentary[/b]" on http://www.wsws.org/articles/... ...
Refer also to "[b]Eisner's Fantasyland Excuse for Censorship[/b]" on http://www.fair.org/activism/... ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
"[i]But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer[/i]." - Barbara Bush on "Good Morning America", March 18, 2003
SHE needn't have worried. Her son wasn't suffering. In one of the several pieces of startling video exhibited for the first time in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," we catch a candid glimpse of President Bush some 36 hours after his mother's breakfast TV interview — minutes before he makes his own prime-time TV address to take the nation to war in Iraq. He is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. A makeup woman is doing his face. And Mr. Bush is having a high old time. He darts his eyes about and grins, as if he were playing a peek-a-boo game with someone just off-camera. He could be a teenager goofing with his buds to relieve the passing tedium of a haircut.
"In your wildest dreams you couldn't imagine Franklin Roosevelt behaving this way 30 seconds before declaring war, with grave decisions and their consequences at stake," said Mr. Moore in an interview before his new documentary's premiere at Cannes last Monday. "But that may be giving him credit for thinking that the decisions were grave." As we spoke, the consequences of those decisions kept coming. The premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" took place as news spread of the assassination of a widely admired post-Saddam Iraqi leader, Ezzedine Salim, blown up by a suicide bomber just a hundred yards from the entrance to America's "safe" headquarters, the Green Zone, in Baghdad.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" will arrive soon enough at your local cineplex — there's lots of money to be made — so discount much of the squabbling en route. Disney hasn't succeeded in censoring Mr. Moore so much as in enhancing his stature as a master provocateur and self-promoter. And the White House, which likewise hasn't a prayer of stopping this film, may yet fan the p.r. flames. "It's so outrageously false, it's not even worth comment," was last week's blustery opening salvo by Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. New York's Daily News reported that Republican officials might even try to use the Federal Election Commission to shut the film down. That would be the best thing to happen to Michael Moore since Charlton Heston granted him an interview.
Whatever you think of Mr. Moore, there's no question he's detonating dynamite here. From a variety of sources — foreign journalists and broadcasters (like Britain's Channel Four), freelancers and sympathetic American TV workers who slipped him illicit video — he supplies war-time pictures that have been largely shielded from our view. Instead of recycling images of the planes hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11 once again, Mr. Moore can revel in extended new close-ups of the president continuing to read "My Pet Goat" to elementary school students in Florida for nearly seven long minutes after learning of the attack. Just when Abu Ghraib and the savage beheading of Nicholas Berg make us think we've seen it all, here is yet another major escalation in the nation-jolting images that have become the battleground for the war about the war.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is not the movie Moore watchers, fans or foes, were expecting. (If it were, the foes would find it easier to ignore.) When he first announced this project last year after his boorish Oscar-night diatribe against Mr. Bush, he described it as an exposé of the connections between the Bush and bin Laden dynasties. But that story has been so strenuously told elsewhere — most notably in Craig Unger's best seller, "House of Bush, House of Saud" — that it's no longer news. Mr. Moore settles for a brisk recap in the first of his film's two hours. And, predictably, he stirs it into an over-the-top, at times tendentious replay of a Bush hater's greatest hits: Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court, Harken Energy, AWOL in Alabama, the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, the lazy Crawford vacation of August 2001, the Patriot Act. But then the movie veers off in another direction entirely. Mr. Moore takes the same hairpin turn the country has over the past 14 months and crash-lands into the gripping story that is unfolding in real time right now.
Wasn't it just weeks ago that we were debating whether we should see the coffins of the American dead and whether Ted Koppel should read their names on "Nightline"? In "Fahrenheit 9/11," we see the actual dying, of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike, with all the ripped flesh and spilled guts that the violence of war entails. (If Steven Spielberg can simulate World War II carnage in "Saving Private Ryan," it's hard to argue that Mr. Moore should shy away from the reality in a present-day war.) We also see some of the 4,000-plus American casualties: those troops hidden away in clinics at Walter Reed and at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital in Fort Campbell, Ky., where they try to cope with nerve damage and multiple severed limbs. They are not silent. They talk about their pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. "I was a Republican for quite a few years," one soldier says with an almost innocent air of bafflement, "and for some reason they conduct business in a very dishonest way."
Of course, Mr. Moore is being selective in what he chooses to include in his movie; he's a polemicist, not a journalist. But he implicitly raises the issue that much of what we've seen elsewhere during this war, often under the label of "news," has been just as subjectively edited. Perhaps the most damning sequence in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the one showing American troops as they ridicule hooded detainees in a holding pen near Samara, Iraq, in December 2003. A male soldier touches the erection of a prisoner lying on a stretcher underneath a blanket, an intimation of the sexual humiliations that were happening at Abu Ghraib at that same time. Besides adding further corroboration to Seymour Hersh's report that the top command has sanctioned a culture of abuse not confined to a single prison or a single company or seven guards, this video raises another question: why didn't we see any of this on American TV before "60 Minutes II"?
Don Van Natta Jr. of The New York Times reported in March 2003 that we were using hooding and other inhumane techniques at C.I.A. interrogation centers in Afghanistan and elsewhere. CNN reported on Jan. 20, after the Army quietly announced its criminal investigation into prison abuses, that "U.S. soldiers reportedly posed for photographs with partially unclothed Iraqi prisoners." And there the matter stood for months, even though, as we know now, soldiers' relatives with knowledge of these incidents were repeatedly trying to alert Congress and news organizations to the full panorama of the story.
Mr. Moore says he obtained his video from an independent foreign journalist embedded with the Americans. "We've had this footage in our possession for two months," he says. "I saw it before any of the Abu Ghraib news broke. I think it's pretty embarrassing that a guy like me with a high school education and with no training in journalism can do this. What the hell is going on here? It's pathetic."
We already know that politicians in denial will dismiss the abuse sequence in Mr. Moore's film as mere partisanship. Someone will surely echo Senator James Inhofe's Abu Ghraib complaint that "humanitarian do-gooders" looking for human rights violations are maligning "our troops, our heroes" as they continue to fight and die. But Senator Inhofe and his colleagues might ask how much they are honoring soldiers who are overextended, undermanned and bereft of a coherent plan in Iraq. Last weekend The Los Angeles Times reported that for the first time three Army divisions, more than a third of its combat troops, are so depleted of equipment and skills that they are classified "unfit to fight." In contrast to Washington's neglect, much of "Fahrenheit 9/11" turns out to be a patriotic celebration of the heroic American troops who have been fighting and dying under these and other deplorable conditions since President Bush's declaration of war.
In particular, the movie's second hour is carried by the wrenching story of Lila Lipscomb, a flag-waving, self-described "conservative Democrat" from Mr. Moore's hometown of Flint, Mich., whose son, Sgt. Michael Pedersen, was killed in Iraq. We watch Mrs. Lipscomb, who by her own account "always hated" antiwar protesters, come undone with grief and rage. As her extended family gathers around her in the living room, she clutches her son's last letter home and reads it aloud, her shaking voice and hand contrasting with his precise handwriting on lined notebook paper. A good son, Sergeant Pedersen thanks his mother for sending "the bible and books and candy," but not before writing of the president: "He got us out here for nothing whatsoever. I am so furious right now, Mama."
By this point, Mr. Moore's jokes, some of them sub-par retreads of Jon Stewart's riffs about the coalition of the willing, have vanished from "Fahrenheit 9/11." So, pretty much, has Michael Moore himself. He told me that Harvey Weinstein of Miramax had wanted him to insert more of himself into the film — "you're the star they're coming to see" — but for once he exercised self-control, getting out of the way of a story that is bigger than he is. "It doesn't need me running around with my exclamation points," he said. He can't resist underlining one moral at the end, but by then the audience, crushed by the needlessness of Mrs. Lipscomb's loss, is ready to listen. Speaking of America's volunteer army, Mr. Moore concludes: "They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?"
"Fahrenheit 9/11" doesn't push any Vietnam analogies, but you may find one in a montage at the start, in which a number of administration luminaries (Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Powell) in addition to the president are seen being made up for TV appearances. It's reminiscent of Richard Avedon's photographic portrait of the Mission Council, the American diplomats and military figures running the war in Saigon in 1971. But at least those subjects were dignified. In Mr. Moore's candid-camera portraits, a particularly unappetizing spectacle is provided by Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of both the administration's Iraqi fixation and its doctrine of "preventive" war. We watch him stick his comb in his mouth until it is wet with spit, after which he runs it through his hair. This is not the image we usually see of the deputy defense secretary, who has been ritualistically presented in the press as the most refined of intellectuals — a guy with, as Barbara Bush would have it, a beautiful mind.
Like Mrs. Bush, Mr. Wolfowitz hasn't let that mind be overly sullied by body bags and such — to the point where he underestimated the number of American deaths in Iraq by more than 200 in public last month. No one would ever accuse Michael Moore of having a beautiful mind. Subtleties and fine distinctions are not his thing. That matters very little, it turns out, when you have a story this ugly and this powerful to tell. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
|
|
|
| |
| Reich-Marshall Rumsfeld Solves His "Problem": Camera Phones Banned in Iraq!!! |
| 05.23.04 (4:03 pm) [edit] |
[b]How "convenient" for the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] ... Nazi Germany [i]here we are[/i]!!! ... [/b]How does Reich-Marshall Rummy solve his "problem ([i]sic[/i])" of the traitorous Bush regime's heinous murders; tortures; rapes; harnessing & riding elderly Iraqis like donkeys and other horrendous nazi-style abuses; etc. etc. etc., that conscientious Americans find [i]appalling[/i] and are in [i]contravention[/i] of the Geneva Conventions??? ... Nope, don't [i]stop[/i] the horrors ([i]says Rummy[/i]) ... Stop the[i] recording [/i] of the horrors!!! ... When will "We the People" stop the[i] horror [/i]of being under the neo-con, neo-fascist [i]"boot-on-our-neck"[/i] -tyranny imposed illegally and immorally upon our nation by the insane Bush regime???
[b]Read on ...[/b]
MOBILE phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, [i]The Business [/i]newspaper reported today.
Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones.
"Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works.
Disturbing new photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse, which the US government had reportedly tried to keep hidden, were published on Friday in the [i]Washington Post [/i]newspaper.
The photos emerged along with details of testimony from inmates at Abu Ghraib who said they were sexually molested by female soldiers, beaten, sodomised and forced to eat food from toilets.
[b]Source:[/b]
"Rumsfeld bans camera phones", From correspondents in London, http://news.com.au/common/sto...,4057,9643950%5E401,00.html
|
|
|
| |
| Historians 'Weigh-in' On Bush, The Ugly American ... |
| 05.23.04 (2:41 pm) [edit] |
[b]George W. Bush is the Poster-Bully-Boy of the Ugly American:[/b] The imbecilic ne'er-do-well-[i]cum[/i]- asshole Dubya takes[i] pride [/i]in the fact that he is stupid, ignorant and treats other nations and peoples with disdain and contempt ... Moreover, the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush tramples & treads on the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights which he [i]also[/i] treats with disdain and contempt ... Bush [i]isn't fit [/i]to be president, as the majority of historians (who actually [i]do[/i] know something about history, culture and politics) will tell you ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Although his approval ratings have slipped somewhat in recent weeks, President George W. Bush still enjoys the overall support of nearly half of the American people. He does not, however, fare nearly so well among professional historians.
A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure.
![]() =http://img27.photobucket.com/...
Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush’s administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush’s presidency is only the best since Clinton’s and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success.
Among the cautions that must be raised about the survey is just what “success” means. Some of the historians rightly pointed out that it would be hard to argue that the Bush presidency has not so far been a political success—or, for that matter that President Bush has not been remarkably successful in achieving his objectives in Congress. But those meanings of success are by no means incompatible with the assessment that the Bush presidency is a disaster. “His presidency has been remarkably successful,” one historian declared, “in its pursuit of disastrous policies.” “I think the Bush administration has been quite successful in achieving its political objectives,” another commented, “which makes it a disaster for us.”
Additionally, it is, of course, as one respondent rightly noted, “way too early to make a valid comparison (we need another 50 years).” And such an informal survey is plainly not scientifically reliable. Yet the results are so overwhelming and so different from the perceptions of the general public that an attempt to explain and assess their reactions merits our attention. It may be, as one pro-Bush historian said in his or her written response to the poll, “I suspect that this poll will tell us nothing about President Bush’s performance vis-à-vis his peer group, but may confirm what we already know about the current crop of history professors.” The liberal-left proclivities of much of the academic world are well documented, and some observers will dismiss the findings as the mere rantings of a disaffected professoriate. “If historians were the only voters,” another pro-Bush historian noted, “Mr. Gore would have carried 50 states.” It is plain that many liberal academics have the same visceral reaction against the second President Bush that many conservatives did against his immediate predecessor.
Yet it seems clear that a similar survey taken during the presidency of Bush’s father would not have yielded results nearly as condemnatory. And, for all the distaste liberal historians had for Ronald Reagan, relatively few would have rated his administration as worse than that of Richard Nixon. Yet today 57 percent of all the historians who participated in the survey (and 70 percent of those who see the Bush presidency as a failure) either name someone prior to Nixon or say that Bush’s presidency is the worst ever, meaning that they rate it as worse than the two presidencies in the past half century that liberals have most loved to hate, those of Nixon and Reagan. One who made the comparison with Nixon explicit wrote, “Indeed, Bush puts Nixon into a more favorable light. He has trashed the image and reputation of the United States throughout the world; he has offended many of our previously close allies; he has burdened future generations with incredible debt; he has created an unnecessary war to further his domestic political objectives; he has suborned the civil rights of our citizens; he has destroyed previous environmental efforts by government in favor of his coterie of exploiters; he has surrounded himself with a cabal ideological adventurers . . . .”
Why should the views of historians on the current president matter?
I do not share the view of another respondent that “until we have gained access to the archival record of this president, we [historians] are no better at evaluating it than any other voter.” Academic historians, no matter their ideological bias, have some expertise in assessing what makes for a successful or unsuccessful presidency; we have a long-term perspective in which to view the actions of a current chief executive. Accordingly, the depth of the negative assessment that so many historians make of George W. Bush is something of which the public should be aware. Their comments make clear that such historians would readily agree with conclusion that then-Democratic presidential hopeful Richard Gephardt pronounced a few months ago: the presidency of George W. Bush is “a miserable failure.”
![]() =http://img27.photobucket.com/...
The past presidencies most commonly linked with the current administration include all of those that are usually rated as the worst in the nation’s history: Nixon, Harding, Hoover, Buchanan, Coolidge, Andrew Johnson, Grant, and McKinley. The only president who appeared prominently on both the favorable and unfavorable lists was Ronald Reagan. Forty-seven historians said Bush is the best president since Reagan, while 38 said he is the worst since Reagan. Almost all of the historians who rate the Bush presidency a success are Reagan admirers. Indeed, no other president (leaving aside the presumably mostly tongue-in-cheek mentions of Clinton) was named by more than four of the historians who took a favorable view of the current presidency.
Ronald Reagan clearly has become the sort of polarizing figure that Franklin Roosevelt was for an earlier generation—or, perhaps a better way to understand the phenomenon is that Reagan has become the personification of the pole opposite to Roosevelt. That polarization is evident in historians’ evaluations of George W. Bush’s presidency. “If one believes Bush is a ‘good’ president (or great),” one poll respondent noted, he or she “would necessarily also believe Reagan to be a pretty good president.” They also tend to despise Roosevelt. “There is no indication,” one historian said of Bush, “that he has advisors who are closet communist traitors as FDR had. Based on his record to date, history is likely to judge him as one of America’s greatest presidents, in the tradition of Washington and Lincoln.”
The thought that anyone could rate the incumbent president with Washington and Lincoln is enough to induce apoplexy in a substantial majority of historians. Among the many offenses they enumerate in their indictment of Bush is that he is, as one of them put it, “well on his way to destroying the entire (and entirely successful) structures of international cooperation and regulated, humane capitalism and social welfare that have been built up since the early 1930s.” “Bush is now in a position,” Another historian said, “to ‘roll back the New Deal,’ guided by Tom DeLay.”
Several charges against the Bush administration arose repeatedly in the comments of historians who responded to the survey. Among them were: the doctrine of pre-emptive war, crony capitalism/being “completely in bed with certain corporate interests,” bankruptcy/fiscal irresponsibility, military adventurism, trampling of civil liberties, and anti-environmental policies.
***
The reasons stated by some of the historians for their choice of the presidency that they believe Bush’s to be the worst since are worth repeating. The following are representative examples for each of the presidents named most frequently:
REAGAN: “I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan--because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse.”
NIXON: “Actually, I think [Bush’s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.” Bush uses “doublespeak” to “dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ‘Forest Restoration Act’ (which encourages the cutting down of forests).”
HOOVER: “I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America’s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.”
COOLIDGE: “I think his presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for the environment, for international relations, for health care, and for working Americans. He’s on a par with Coolidge!”
HARDING: “Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.”
McKINLEY: “Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ‘hip pocket’ of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove’s favorite historical president (precedent?).”
GRANT: “He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney’s corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant.”
“While Grant did serve in the army (more than once), Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. That means that Grant is automatically more honest than Bush, since Grant did not send people into places that he himself consciously avoided. . . . Grant did not attempt to invade another country without a declaration of war; Bush thinks that his powers in this respect are unlimited.”
ANDREW JOHNSON: “I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Andrew Johnson. It has been a sellout of fundamental democratic (and Republican) principles. There are many examples, but the most recent would be his successful efforts to insert provisions in spending bills which directly controvert measures voted down by both houses of Congress.”
BUCHANAN: “Buchanan can be said to have made the Civil War inevitable or to have made the war last longer by his pusillanimity or, possibly, treason.” “Buchanan allowed a war to evolve, but that war addressed a real set of national issues. Mr. Bush started a war . . . for what reason?”
![]() =http://img27.photobucket.com/...
EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. “Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don 't think that you can do much worse than that.”
“Bush is horrendous; there is no comparison with previous presidents, most of whom have been bad.”
“He is blatantly a puppet for corporate interests, who care only about their own greed and have no sense of civic responsibility or community service. He lies, constantly and often, seemingly without control, and he lied about his invasion into a sovereign country, again for corporate interests; many people have died and been maimed, and that has been lied about too. He grandstands and mugs in a shameful manner, befitting a snake oil salesman, not a statesman. He does not think, process, or speak well, and is emotionally immature due to, among other things, his lack of recovery from substance abuse. The term is "dry drunk". He is an abject embarrassment/pariah overseas; the rest of the world hates him . . . . . He is, by far, the most irresponsible, unethical, inexcusable occupant of our formerly highest office in the land that there has ever been.”
“George W. Bush's presidency is the pernicious enemy of American freedom, compassion, and community; of world peace; and of life itself as it has evolved for millennia on large sections of the planet. The worst president ever? Let history judge him.”
“This president is unique in his failures.”
And then there was this split ballot, comparing the George W. Bush presidencies failures in distinct areas. The George W. Bush presidency is the worst since:
“In terms of economic damage, Reagan.
In terms of imperialism, T Roosevelt.
In terms of dishonesty in government, Nixon.
In terms of affable incompetence, Harding.
In terms of corruption, Grant.
In terms of general lassitude and cluelessness, Coolidge.
In terms of personal dishonesty, Clinton.
In terms of religious arrogance, Wilson.”
***
My own answer to the question was based on astonishment that so many people still support a president who has:
. Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.
. Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover’s.
. Taken, in the wake of the terrorist attacks two years ago, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and squandered it by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone invasion of Iraq, thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation. (One historian made this point particularly well: “After inadvertently gaining the sympathies of the world 's citizens when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, Bush has deliberately turned the country into the most hated in the world by a policy of breaking all major international agreements, declaring it our right to invade any country that we wish, proving that he’ll manipulate facts to justify anything he wishes to do, and bull-headedly charging into a quagmire.”)
. Misled (to use the most charitable word and interpretation) the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq and so into a war that has plainly (and entirely predictably) made us less secure, caused a boom in the recruitment of terrorists, is killing American military personnel needlessly, and is threatening to suck up all our available military forces and be a bottomless pit for the money of American taxpayers for years to come.
. Failed to follow through in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping, once more increasing the threat to our people.
. Insulted and ridiculed other nations and international organizations and now has to go, hat in hand, to those nations and organizations begging for their assistance.
. Completely miscalculated or failed to plan for the personnel and monetary needs in Iraq after the war, so that he sought and obtained an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq, a sizable chunk of which is going, without competitive bidding to Haliburton, the company formerly headed by his vice president.
. Inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230 billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit in less than three years. This negative turnaround of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is totally without precedent in our history. The ballooning deficit for fiscal 2004 is rapidly approaching twice the dollar size of the previous record deficit, $290 billion, set in 1992, the last year of the administration of President Bush’s father and, at almost 5 percent of GDP, is closing in on the percentage record set by Ronald Reagan in 1986.
. Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed—what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit—can be stated succinctly: “If you had to work for your money, we’ll tax it; if you didn’t have to work for it, you can keep it all.”
. Severely curtailed the very American freedoms that our military people are supposed to be fighting to defend. (“The Patriot Act,” one of the historians noted, “is the worst since the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams.”)
. Called upon American armed service people, including Reserve forces, to sacrifice for ever-lengthening tours of duty in a hostile and dangerous environment while he rewards the rich at home with lower taxes and legislative giveaways and gives lucrative no-bid contracts to American corporations linked with the administration.
. Given an opportunity to begin to change the consumption-oriented values of the nation after September 11, 2001, when people were prepared to make a sacrifice for the common good, called instead of Americans to ‘sacrifice’ by going out and buying things.
. Proclaimed himself to be a conservative while maintaining that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people, but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government. (As one of the historians said, “this is not a conservative administration; it is a reckless and arrogant one, beholden to a mix of right-wing ideologues, neo-con fanatics, and social Darwinian elitists.”)
. My assessment is that George W. Bush’s record on running up debt to burden our children is the worst since Ronald Reagan; his record on government surveillance of citizens is the worst since Richard Nixon; his record on foreign-military policy has gotten us into the worst foreign mess we’ve been in since Lyndon Johnson sank us into Vietnam; his economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover; his record of tax favoritism for the rich is the worst since Calvin Coolidge; his record of trampling on civil liberties is the worst since Woodrow Wilson. How far back in our history would we need to go to find a presidency as disastrous for this country as that of George W. Bush has been thus far? My own vote went to the administration of James Buchanan, who warmed the president’s chair while the union disintegrated in 1860-61.
. Who has been the biggest beneficiary of the horrible terrorism that struck our nation in September of 2001? The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone who considers where the popularity ratings and reelection prospects of a president with the record outlined above would be had he not been able to wrap himself in the flag, take advantage of the American people’s patriotism, and make himself synonymous with “the United States of America” for the past two years.
. That abuse of the patriotism and trust of the American people is even worse than everything else this president has done and that fact alone might be sufficient to explain the depth of the hostility with which so many historians view George W. Bush. Contrary to the conservative stereotype of academics as anti-American, the reasons that many historians cited for seeing the Bush presidency as a disaster revolve around their perception that he is undermining traditional American practices and values. As one patriotic historian put it, “I think his presidency has been the worst disaster to hit the United States and is bringing our beloved country to financial, economic, and social disaster.”
Some voters may judge such assessments to be wrong, but they are assessments informed by historical knowledge and the electorate ought to have them available to take into consideration during this election year. - http://hnn.us/articles/5019.h...
|
|
|
| |
| ... How Fascism Starts ... |
| 05.23.04 (12:23 pm) [edit] |
"[i]Dissent is the highest form of patriotism[/i]" - Thomas Jefferson
... [i]and then there is [/i]...
![]() =http://img27.photobucket.com/...
- Bush's insane neo-con, neo-fascist redefinition of "patriotism (sic)" ...
[b]"We the People" must demand a stop to this Un-American trend to transform our nation into a fascist militaristic state ... Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that the[i] impeachment [/i]of the corrupt Bush regime commence immediately ...[/b]
Consider "[i][b]How fascism starts[/b][/i]" by Molly Ivins, on http://www.informationclearin... :
It's pretty easy to get to the point where you don't want to hear any more about Abu Ghraib prison and what went on there. But there are some really good reasons why Americans should take a look at why this happened.
I suspect the division here is not between liberals and conservatives (except for a few inane comments made by some trying to be flippant), but between those who are following the story closely and those who are not. I particularly recommend both Sy Hersh's follow-up piece in the current issue of The New Yorker and the investigative piece in the current issue of Newsweek. What seems to me more important than the "Oh ugh" factor is just how easy it is for standards of law and behavior to slip into bestiality.
The problems go all the way back to the administration's refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions. President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft "signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted in order to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Convention, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war," according to Newsweek.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and the military's lawyers objected. You may recall the military's objections (broadcast, as usual, by retired officers) were on the excellent grounds that if we didn't observe the Geneva Conventions neither would our enemies -- the very reason they were signed in the first place.
The Pentagon still insists that "suspected Al Qaeda followers" have no rights under Geneva III, as they are "enemy combatants" rather than POWs. Geneva III also has procedures for what to do if the status of a detainee is in doubt -- full Geneva rights apply until "a competent tribunal" decides. We have been holding 595 prisoners at Guantanamo for two and half years, not counting those we have already let go, in conditions in violation of Geneva. Only now are a few of these prisoners being assigned lawyers, and the lawyers are raising hell about the whole process.
The legal rationale came from White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, including the line, "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
According to Newsweek, Bush first signed a secret order granting new powers to the CIA, a directive authorizing it to set up secret detention facilities outside the United States and to question those held in them with unprecedented harshness. The agency also schlepped suspected terrorists off to other countries known to practice torture.
In addition to the fact that torture is morally repulsive, it also doesn't work. Of course you can torture information out of people. What you can't do is torture accurate information out of people who don't have it. The Defense Department's JAGs were so concerned they finally went to a New York lawyer who specializes in international human rights law and told him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" about how Geneva should be applied.
These military lawyers named Assistant Secretary Douglas Feith and the Pentagon's general counsel William Haynes, since nominated for an appeals court judgeship by Bush.
Meanwhile, Gitmo had been taken over by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, under whose loving care the "72-point matrix for stress and duress" was developed, laying out as ugly a set of rules for of-course-it's-torture-st upid as anyone could dream up.
You may recall Rumsfeld testifying before Congress that Miller had been sent to "inspect" Abu Ghraib in September 2003, as though that had been some step toward responsible oversight. In fact, Miller told the general then running the prison the place should be turned over to military intelligence.
Normally, something like Abu Ghraib can be blamed in part on the Downward Communication Exaggeration Spiral, which afflicts most organizations. Someone at the top makes a mild suggestion, and by the time it reaches the troops, it's iron-clad law. This appears to be a rare case of a reverse spiral, with the orders coming from the very top and questions being raised about them all the way down, until finally Army Spc. Joseph Darby spoke out and set off the Taguba investigation.
In this case, there is more than sufficient evidence pointing to the culpability of those at the top. But at the same time, the Pentagon is putting out the word that it was "only a few bad apples," six low-level soldiers who have already been charged, with no one else involved. This just stinks of cover-up. Damned if I think these six low-level soldiers should be hung out there to take the blame for a set of explicitly written and signed policies made by people wearing expensive suits, getting paid big bucks and bearing some of the highest titles in the land.
You can read all the memos and documents for yourself. It's important to know how fascism starts.
|
|
|
| |
| Wolfowitz's Blunders Cost Us Dearly-- But Bush & Cheney Are Crooks Who Love Crooks ... |
| 05.23.04 (10:38 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush & Cheney are crooks who love other crooks ... Decent people want nothing to do with them ... Neither should "We the People" ...[/b] [Refer to "[i]Bush Incapable of Choosing "Friends" Wisely ... But Who Exactly Has Been Duped???[/i] ..." on http://www.tblog.com/template... ... ]
Wolfowitz is a prime example of a bloody vulture (responsible for the blood-thirsty massacre by the neo-con, neo-fascists in the Bush regime of nearly 800 U.S. Soldiers & 11,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi civilians ... and squandered $165 Billion with no end in sight ...) and crook who has perpetrated treasonous lies, deceptions and falsehoods against the United States of America-- as well as unbelievable incompetence, for which he, Feith & Bolton (as well as Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, etc.) should be fired and tried for treason, war crimes and[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...
Consider "[b]Wolfowitz's blunders cost us dearly[/b]" by Bronwyn Lance Chester, THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT, on http://www.tallahassee.com/ml... :
It's a good thing the Pentagon didn't contract out the position of deputy defense secretary. Corporate America would have surely canned Paul Wolfowitz by now.
Almost every rosy prediction made by the Iraq war's architect has fallen flat. Instead of squandering company profits, however, Wolfowitz's high-stakes bungling and erroneous forecasts have helped sacrifice more precious commodities: thousands of lives, billions of taxpayer dollars and much of the global goodwill America enjoyed after Sept. 11.
How many strikes does this guy get before he's out? At this rate, Wolfowitz is turning into the Bob Uecker of foreign policy.
[u]Let's recap[/u].
[b]Blunder No. 1[/b]: Iraq as global threat. Like a wonkish Cotton Mather, Wolfowitz preached the gospel of the Iraqi menace through the 1990s from his university pulpit in Washington, while those actually charged with containing Saddam Hussein - including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of Central Command - declared Iraq a diminishing power and of little threat.
[b]Blunder No. 2[/b]: Troop strength. In February 2003, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told a congressional panel that America would need several hundred thousand troops to pacify Iraq after the invasion.
Wolfowitz rushed to Capitol Hill two days later to undermine Shinseki, declaring the general's numbers "way too high," telling a House committee "we can say with reasonable confidence" Shinseki's figures were "way off the mark."
A year later, America finds itself breaking deployment taboos, robbing troops from Korea and generally looking everywhere but under the sofa cushions for more soldiers. And we're still unable to pacify Iraq or even control the country's borders.
[b]Blunder No. 3[/b]: Foreign troop participation. According to Wolfowitz, countries skittish about invading Iraq would be willing to deploy peacekeeping troops afterward. But there has been no great global rush to help America. In fact, some countries that sent handfuls of troops to Iraq have now pulled out.
[u]Note to Wolfie[/u]: Peacekeeping troops tend to follow U.N. resolutions, not neo-cons testing academic theories.
[b]Blunder No. 4[/b]: Ahmed Chalabi. Wolfowitz pushed the Bush administration to position - and fund - Chalabi, an Iraqi exile, convicted embezzler and peddler of false intelligence about WMDs, to lead the newly freed country. And Wolfowitz's fingerprints are all over Iraq's new group of "benevolent rulers" known to locals as "Ahmed Chalabi and the 20 Thieves."
It was Chalabi who famously declared that Iraqis would welcome the American invaders with sweets and flowers. Wolfowitz echoed that, saying we would be greeted as liberators.
Instead, we got rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and mutilation.
[b]Blunder No. 5[/b]: Paying for the occupation. Last year, Wolfowitz told a House panel that Iraq's oil could produce up to $100 billion in revenues over three years, making the entire operation self-financing.
Instead, Iraq continues to be a budgetary black hole. The $87 billion that U.S. taxpayers shelled out last year isn't even enough to get us through this one: Officials predict a $4 billion shortfall by summer.
Wolfowitz may be the only person happy to see oil prices rise. When crude reaches $1 million a barrel, Iraq might cease being a net drain on the U.S. Treasury.
Any real-world working stiff with this many gaffes in his personnel file would be trying desperately to avoid being hit by the screen door on his way out.
But Wolfowitz, protected by an administration that confuses denial with strength, continues making both national security policy and a sizeable taxpayer-funded salary.
And his flat-out wrong string of predictions about Iraq continue to cost us. Dearly.
Guess that's what they mean by "close enough for government work."
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Fall ... Training-Wheels Won't Help, It's Too Late For That!!! ... |
| 05.23.04 (8:23 am) [edit] |
![]() =http://img27.photobucket.com/...
[b]"We the People" are [i]now[/i] to be bombarded with a neo-orwellian P.R. campaign by the traitorous Bushies in order to attempt to[i] sucker us (yet again) [/i]into believing (their myriad lies, deceptions & falsehoods) that their bloody fiasco-cum-guerrilla-quag mire is all [i]rosy[/i] ... Are you that [i]stupid[/i]??? ... Let's hope [i]not[/i]!!! ...
Finally, finally[/b], the president has decided to confront the root problem in our troubled occupation of Iraq:[i] the spin deficit[/i].
From Robin Wright's front page piece http://www.washingtonpost.com... in today's [i]Post[/i] ...
... "[i]President Bush will launch an ambitious campaign tomorrow night to shift attention from recent setbacks that have eroded domestic and international support for U.S. policy in Iraq, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the escalating violence, and focus instead on the future of post-occupation Iraq.
The president will open a tightly orchestrated public relations effort in a speech at the Army War College outlining U.S. plans for the critical five weeks before the transfer of political power June 30[/i]." ...
Along related lines, I can't help but wonder whether the spill the president took from his bicycle today won't become iconic in the same way that the state dinner the first President Bush attended in Tokyo on January 8th 1992 in which he collapsed into the arms of, and then vomited on, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa became a symbol of his then-faltering presidency.
Drudge reported the following about John Kerry's alleged response ...
... [i]"Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, 'Did the training wheels fall off?'... Reporters are debating whether to treat it is as on or off the record... Developing[/i]... "
Let me translate this: Off the record John Kerry quipped "Did the training wheels fall off?" But the quote was so good that several reporters couldn't resist and passed it on to Drudge.
Bad politics? [i]Maybe so, maybe not[/i].
But I have to admit that it made me laugh and think of these two grafs from a post http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... from Thursday afternoon ...
... "[i]According to several participants, President Bush told Republicans that the Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" by assuming power.
That's a bit of a condescending thing to say about a country which encompasses what is generally considered to be the cradle of civilization. But the thought that an extra set of training wheels may now be available prompts the question of whether the Iraqis might be willing to hand their pair off to the White House[/i]." ...
On the other hand, giving it more thought, perhaps what he needs is not so much a pair of training wheels as a set of brakes ...
[b]Instead, Bush needs [i]a one-way ticket [/i]to the nearest mental institution ...[/b]
[b]Source:[/b]
Joshua Micah Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo, http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
|
|
|
| |
| What Would Our Founding Fathers Say About Bush's So-Called "Christianity"??? |
| 05.22.04 (5:39 pm) [edit] |
"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society." - Thomas Jefferson, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu...
Our Founding Fathers were adament in creating a "wall of separation between church and state" and would have been appalled at the pressure brought to bear to impose hateful intolerence & divisive ideologies by so-called "religious" zealots and tyrannical fanatics like the traitorous & hypocritical Bush (unfit to be president) who is corrupting our system of democracy ... Bush's so-called form of "Christianity (sic)" pathetically has resulted in:
1. Bloody warfare based upon heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods (e.g. phony WMDs posing a so-called "imminent threat" to our national security, phony links between Al Qaeda & Saddam Hussein, cynically manipulating the fear & anger of Americans in the aftermath of 9/11, when Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, unlike the Saudis: Bush's buddies, etc.) for which he should be impeached;
2. Lack of compassion, lack of action to help over 45 million Americans without health care coverage (while Bush brags & smirks about Iraqis getting health care-- that is, when they are not being murdered, tortured, raped, ridden like donkeys, and abused in atrocities committed on orders from Bush, Cheney, Rice & Rumsfeld ...)-- so Americans live in miserable pain, diseased or go bankrupt with over 18,000 Americans dying each year because they can't afford health care;
3. Lack of concern, lack of action about skyrocketing poverty in the U.S.A. with over 25 million families desperately trying to to make ends meet, living below an out-dated poverty-line established over 40 years ago-- over 4 million Americans who are homeless-- between 9-15 million Americans without jobs;
4. Highest gap between the Hyper-Rich Haves & the Impoverished Have-Nots in over 75 years, with America's backbone, the Middle-Class shrinking;
5. Inflation (e.g. higher gas prices, higher costs in goods & services, more people losing their homes because they can't pay their mortgages) hitting the Middle-Class and Working people very hard, while corporations, wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats are awarded immoral tax cuts, tax loopholes and tax boondoggles and living like Emperor Caligulas-- supported by the rest of us who are saddled with Bush's record-level deficits and historically high debts-- that are hurting the value of the dollar and our standard of living.
Our nation's infrastructure is crumbling all around us (e.g. Bush's "Leave No Child Behind" Failure has Left Lots of Children Worse Off because no funds were allocated to enable teachers to teach [Why do you think that the rich send their kids to private schools with 15 kids/class instead of the 30-40/class sizes that public school teachers have to contend with?]!-- No money for fire-fighters-- No money for roads, hospitals, schools, etc.), while the so-called "Christian (sic)" Bush is spending over $5 Billion/Month on Iraq (over $114 Billion thus far in Iraq, with no end in sight!)-- Bush's gang of neo-con thugs bribed the embezzler, crook & liar Ahmed Chalabi with over $33 Million (including $340,000/Month) for false information, and Chalabi betrayed our nation by selling national security secrets to Iran (Which Neo-Con Traitors in the Pentagon gave their "pet" Chalabi Top-Secret US information? Shouldn't these Neo-Con Traitors including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton-- who have gotten us into this mess be fired and tried for treason?) Condi Rice was appointed head of the Iraqi Stabilization Group (ISG) back in October 2003 by Bush and the situtation has continued to spiral out-of-control ever since! Why is Rice still in office, as she is over-rated, incompetent and a liar?
Where are all of these so-called "Christian (sic)" "values"??? Americans are being damaged, harmed and impoverished by a reckless, ruthless gang of neo-con warmongers for war-profiteering... There is nothing "Christian" in their heinous War Crimes and Rape of America.
It is sad to watch the cynical manipulation of uneducated, well-meaning, but foolish so-called "Christians (sic)" who stand behind a dangerously stupid buffoon Bush who acts like a Nazi and not an American. These misguided people are suckered by the Bushies who are using them/us as cannon-fodder, slave labour & sheep to further their own sordid & squalid aims. Those who profess to "love life" should be concerned (or outraged) over Bush's abortions of nearly 800 U.S. Soldiers and between 11,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi Civilians (pregnant women with unborn kids are amongst his casualties) with the death toll rising day-in-and-day-out and no end in sight... Moreover, do these so-called "Christians (sic)" approve of murder, rape, torture, putting a harness on the elderly and riding them like a donkey, and abuse of prisoners??? If so, it is no wonder that the Arab world wants none of it... The rest of the world wants none of it ... Conscientious and thoughtful Americans want none of it either...
Let "We the People" reject the hypocrisy of the corrupt Un-Christian, Un-American Bush regime and their over-zealot followers who would make Jesus Christ weep with shame for their heinous & callous treatment of American people and other peoples around the world (especially the Iraqis and the Afghanistianis who have been mercilessly massacred, tortured, etc.) ... And, who would make Our Founding Fathers weep, for we are NOT a so-called "Christian (sic)" nation and this ugly, arrogant and self-righteous religiosity is tinny, false, abhorrent and destructive to our Republic For Which It Stands (Our Republic Stands for our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, and NOT the Bible) ...
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
In a highly informative interview by Bill Moyers (NOW with Bill Moyers http://www.pbs.org/now/societ... ) with Susan Jacoby, author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" (excerpt on http://www.beliefnet.com/stor... ), they explore the dangers of our society being turned into a fanatical religious totalitarian system if we do not go back to the roots of our government, our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ... Indeed, Ms. Jacoby cites John Adams, 2nd President of the U.S., who in the Treaty with Tripoli (1796-97), reassures the Barbary States of Northern Africa that the United States of America is "not to be founded on Christianity" http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/j... ...
"We the People" must extricate ourselves from the dangerously stupid and corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. junta, comprised of vile traitors who are undermining our nation's heritage, system of laws and historical role in the world community ...
|
|
|
| |
| By the Standards of the Nuremberg Tribunals, Bush Would Be Hanged ... |
| 05.22.04 (1:39 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" should extricate ourselves from the corrupt and treasonous Bush regime and demand that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton and the other traitors, war criminals and neo-con liars be sent to the Hague to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... [/b]The neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] has brought down blood-shed, death, chaos and misery upon our nation and the Middle East ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[b]Bush Doctrine: BBC Interview by Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Paxman on http://www.zmag.org/content/s... :[/b]
If George Bush were to be judged by the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunals, he'd be hanged. So too, mind you, would every single American President since the end of the second world war, including Jimmy Carter.
The suggestion comes from the American linguist Noam Chomsky. His latest attack on the way his country behaves in the world is called [i]Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance[/i].
Jeremy Paxman met him at the British Museum, where they talked in the Assyrian Galleries. He asked him whether he was suggesting there was nothing new in the so-called Bush Doctrine.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, it depends. It is recognised to be revolutionary. Henry Kissinger for example described it as a revolutionary new doctrine which tears to shreds the Westphalian System, the 17th century system of International Order and of course the UN Charter. But nevertheless, and has been very widely criticised within the foreign policy elite. But on narrow ground the doctrine is not really new, it's extreme.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
What was the United States supposed to do after 9/11? It had been the victim of a grotesque, intentional attack, what was it supposed to do but try...?
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Why pick 9/11? Why not pick 1993. Actually the fact that the terrorist act succeeded in September 11th did not alter the risk analysis. In 1993, similar groups, US trained Jihadi's came very close to blowing up the World Trade Center, with better planning, they probably would have killed tens of thousands of people. Since then it was known that this is very likely. In fact right through the 90's there was technical literature predicting it, and we know what to do. What you do is police work. Police work is the way to stop terrorist acts and it succeeded.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
But you are suggesting the United States in that sense is the author of Its own Nemesis.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, first of all this is not my opinion. It's the opinion of just about every specialist on terrorism. Take a look, say at Jason Burke's recent book on Al-Qaeda which is just the best book there is. He runs through the record of how each act of violence has increased recruitment financing mobilisation, what he says is, I'm quoting him, that each act of violence is a small victory for Bin Laden.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
But why do you imagine George Bush behaves like this?
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Because I don't think they care that much about terror, in fact we know that. Take say the invasion of Iraq, it was predicted by just about every specialist in intelligence agencies that the invasion of Iraq would increase the threat of Al-Qaeda style terror which is exactly what happened. The point is that...
JEREMY PAXMAN:
Then why would he do it?
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Because invading Iraq has value in Itself, I mean establishing...
JEREMY PAXMAN:
Well what value?
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Establishing the first secure military base in a dependant client state at the heart of the energy producing region of the world.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
Don't you even think that the people of Iraq are better off having got rid of a dictator?
NOAM CHOMSKY:
They got rid of two brutal regimes, one that we are supposed to talk about, the other one we are not suppose to talk about. The two brutal regimes were Saddam Hussein's and the US-British sanctions, which were devastating society, had killed hundreds of thousands of people, were forcing people to be reliant on Saddam Hussein. Now the sanctions could obviously have been turned to weapons rather than destroying society without an invasion. If that had happened it is not at all impossible that the people of Iraq would have sent Saddam Hussein the same way to the same fate as other monsters supported by the US and Britain. Ceausescu, Suharto, Duvalier, Marcos, there's a long list of them. In fact the westerners who know Iraq best were predicting this all along.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
You seem to be suggesting or implying, perhaps I'm being unfair to you, but you seem to be implying there is some equivalence between democratically elected heads of state like George Bush or Prime Ministers like Tony Blair and regimes in places like Iraq.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
The term moral equivalence is an interesting one, it was invented I think by Jeane Kirkpatrick as a method of trying to prevent criticism of foreign policy and state decisions. It is a meaning less notion, there is no moral equivalence what so ever.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
If it is preferable for an individual to live in a liberal democracy, is there benefit to be gained by spreading the values of that democracy however you can?
NOAM CHOMSKY:
That reminds me of the question that Ghandi was once asked about western civilisation, what did he think of it. He said yeah, it would be a good idea. In fact it would be a good idea to spread the values of liberal democracy. But that's not what the US and Britain are trying to do. It's not what they've done in the past. Take a look at the regions under their domination. They don't spread liberal democracy. What they spread is dependence and subordination. Furthermore it's well-known that this is a large part of the reason for the great opposition to US policy within the Middle East. In fact this was known in the 1950's.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
But there is a whole slur of countries in eastern Europe right now that would say we are better off now than we were when we were living under the Soviet Empire. As a consequence of how the west behaved.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
And there is a lot of countries in US domains, like Central America, the Caribbean who wish that they could be free of American domination. We don't pay much attention to what happens there but they do. In the 1980s when the current incumbents were in their Reganite phase. Hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in Central America. The US carried out a massive terrorist attack against Nicaragua, mainly as a war on the church. They assassinated an Archbishop and murdered six leading Jesuit intellectuals. This is in El Salvador. It was a monstrous period. What did they impose? Was it liberal democracies? No.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
You've mentioned on two or three occasions this relationship between the United States and Britain. Do you understand why Tony Blair behaved as he did over Afghanistan and Iraq?
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, if you look at the British diplomatic history, back in the 1940s, Britain had to make a decision. Britain had been the major world power, the United States though by far the richest country in the world was not a major actor in the global scene, except regionally. By the Second World War it was obvious the US was going to be the dominant power, everyone knew that. Britain had to make a choice. Was it going to be part of what would ultimately be a Europe that might move towards independence, or would it be what the Foreign Office called a junior partner to the United States? Well it essentially made that choice to be a junior partner to the United States.
So during the Cuban missile crisis for example, you look at the declassified record, they treated Britain with total contempt. Harold McMillan wasn't even informed of what was going on and Britain's existence was at stake. It was dangerous. One high official, probably Dean Atchers and he's not identified, described Britain as in his words "Our lieutenant, the fashionable word is partner". Well the British would like to hear the fashionable word, but the masters use the actual word. Those are choices Britain has to make. I mean why Blair decided, I couldn't say.
JEREMY PAXMAN:
Noam Chomsky, thank you.
|
|
|
| |
| Gore Vidal on the "United States of Amnesia" |
| 05.22.04 (8:01 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" are fortunate indeed to have a great [i]American Patriot [/i]and [i]National Treasure [/i]in one of the most brilliant writers amongst our novelists, polemicists, essayists and historians, Gore Vidal ...[/b]
Gore Vidal is one of America’s most prolific and best-known writers. He has written more than 22 books and more than 200 essays -- a collection of his essays won the National Book Award in 1993.
Vidal is the author most recently of[i] Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace[/i] and[i] Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Bush-Cheney Junta[/i].
Taken together, the books constitute a comprehensive attack on America‚s imperialist ambitions and the military industrial complex.
Writing in the Scotsman, critic Gavin Esler called Perpetual War "the finest serious critique of America's use and abuse of power in the 21st century that I have read."
I had an opportunity to speak with Vidal recently. We’re going to play some of that interview. He begins by discussing his thoughts about the United States post 9-11.
Acclaimed author Gore Vidal’s new book is called "[i]Imperial America: The United States of Amnesia[/i]." We spoke with Vidal recently about the Bush Administration historical memory, and 9/11. Listen to the interview with Gore Vidal by DemocracyNow on http://www.democracynow.org/a...
|
|
|
| |
| Act Now! Join the Virtual March to Stop Bush's Blood-Thirsty Agenda! |
| 05.22.04 (7:46 am) [edit] |
[b]Now is the time for "We the People" to stand against the corrupt Bush regime ...[/b]
Please register now to join with us in our virtual march on the White House taking place on Sunday 29th August 2004 at 2PM US Central Standard Time, 7PM UK time!
Let the Bush regime know exactly what you think about their policies!
Just click here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... , then click on the "Join this live march" button, then on "sign up now" and enter your details.
You'll receive reminders about the protest.
Shortly before the action begins you'll receive an email with instructions on where to send your messages, along with a suggested messge, please keep this to hand and rally here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... no later than 10 minutes before the start of the virtual march.
When the countdown clock on that page reaches 0:0:0 start sending those faxes and emails, phone the White House and visit the website! - http://geocities.com/tellbush...
|
|
|
| |
| George W. Bush: Historians' Take on the Poster-Boy of the Ugly American ... |
| 05.20.04 (11:10 pm) [edit] |
[b]George W. Bush is the Poster-Bully-Boy of the Ugly American:[/b] The imbecilic ne'er-do-well-[i]cum[/i]- asshole Dubya takes[i] pride [/i]in the fact that he is stupid, ignorant and treats other nations and peoples with disdain and contempt ... Moreover, the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush tramples & treads on the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights which he [i]also[/i] treats with disdain and contempt ... Bush [i]isn't fit [/i]to be president, as the majority of historians (who actually [i]do[/i] know something about history, culture and politics) will tell you ...
"We the People" should [i]not have to put up with [/i]the tragic consequences of the heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i] commited by the corrupt Bush regime ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Although his approval ratings have slipped somewhat in recent weeks, President George W. Bush still enjoys the overall support of nearly half of the American people. He does not, however, fare nearly so well among professional historians.
A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure.
![]() =http://img27.photobucket.com/...
Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush’s administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush’s presidency is only the best since Clinton’s and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success.
Among the cautions that must be raised about the survey is just what “success” means. Some of the historians rightly pointed out that it would be hard to argue that the Bush presidency has not so far been a political success—or, for that matter that President Bush has not been remarkably successful in achieving his objectives in Congress. But those meanings of success are by no means incompatible with the assessment that the Bush presidency is a disaster. “His presidency has been remarkably successful,” one historian declared, “in its pursuit of disastrous policies.” “I think the Bush administration has been quite successful in achieving its political objectives,” another commented, “which makes it a disaster for us.”
Additionally, it is, of course, as one respondent rightly noted, “way too early to make a valid comparison (we need another 50 years).” And such an informal survey is plainly not scientifically reliable. Yet the results are so overwhelming and so different from the perceptions of the general public that an attempt to explain and assess their reactions merits our attention. It may be, as one pro-Bush historian said in his or her written response to the poll, “I suspect that this poll will tell us nothing about President Bush’s performance vis-à-vis his peer group, but may confirm what we already know about the current crop of history professors.” The liberal-left proclivities of much of the academic world are well documented, and some observers will dismiss the findings as the mere rantings of a disaffected professoriate. “If historians were the only voters,” another pro-Bush historian noted, “Mr. Gore would have carried 50 states.” It is plain that many liberal academics have the same visceral reaction against the second President Bush that many conservatives did against his immediate predecessor.
Yet it seems clear that a similar survey taken during the presidency of Bush’s father would not have yielded results nearly as condemnatory. And, for all the distaste liberal historians had for Ronald Reagan, relatively few would have rated his administration as worse than that of Richard Nixon. Yet today 57 percent of all the historians who participated in the survey (and 70 percent of those who see the Bush presidency as a failure) either name someone prior to Nixon or say that Bush’s presidency is the worst ever, meaning that they rate it as worse than the two presidencies in the past half century that liberals have most loved to hate, those of Nixon and Reagan. One who made the comparison with Nixon explicit wrote, “Indeed, Bush puts Nixon into a more favorable light. He has trashed the image and reputation of the United States throughout the world; he has offended many of our previously close allies; he has burdened future generations with incredible debt; he has created an unnecessary war to further his domestic political objectives; he has suborned the civil rights of our citizens; he has destroyed previous environmental efforts by government in favor of his coterie of exploiters; he has surrounded himself with a cabal ideological adventurers . . . .”
Why should the views of historians on the current president matter?
I do not share the view of another respondent that “until we have gained access to the archival record of this president, we [historians] are no better at evaluating it than any other voter.” Academic historians, no matter their ideological bias, have some expertise in assessing what makes for a successful or unsuccessful presidency; we have a long-term perspective in which to view the actions of a current chief executive. Accordingly, the depth of the negative assessment that so many historians make of George W. Bush is something of which the public should be aware. Their comments make clear that such historians would readily agree with conclusion that then-Democratic presidential hopeful Richard Gephardt pronounced a few months ago: the presidency of George W. Bush is “a miserable failure.”
![]() =http://img27.photobucket.com/...
The past presidencies most commonly linked with the current administration include all of those that are usually rated as the worst in the nation’s history: Nixon, Harding, Hoover, Buchanan, Coolidge, Andrew Johnson, Grant, and McKinley. The only president who appeared prominently on both the favorable and unfavorable lists was Ronald Reagan. Forty-seven historians said Bush is the best president since Reagan, while 38 said he is the worst since Reagan. Almost all of the historians who rate the Bush presidency a success are Reagan admirers. Indeed, no other president (leaving aside the presumably mostly tongue-in-cheek mentions of Clinton) was named by more than four of the historians who took a favorable view of the current presidency.
Ronald Reagan clearly has become the sort of polarizing figure that Franklin Roosevelt was for an earlier generation—or, perhaps a better way to understand the phenomenon is that Reagan has become the personification of the pole opposite to Roosevelt. That polarization is evident in historians’ evaluations of George W. Bush’s presidency. “If one believes Bush is a ‘good’ president (or great),” one poll respondent noted, he or she “would necessarily also believe Reagan to be a pretty good president.” They also tend to despise Roosevelt. “There is no indication,” one historian said of Bush, “that he has advisors who are closet communist traitors as FDR had. Based on his record to date, history is likely to judge him as one of America’s greatest presidents, in the tradition of Washington and Lincoln.”
The thought that anyone could rate the incumbent president with Washington and Lincoln is enough to induce apoplexy in a substantial majority of historians. Among the many offenses they enumerate in their indictment of Bush is that he is, as one of them put it, “well on his way to destroying the entire (and entirely successful) structures of international cooperation and regulated, humane capitalism and social welfare that have been built up since the early 1930s.” “Bush is now in a position,” Another historian said, “to ‘roll back the New Deal,’ guided by Tom DeLay.”
Several charges against the Bush administration arose repeatedly in the comments of historians who responded to the survey. Among them were: the doctrine of pre-emptive war, crony capitalism/being “completely in bed with certain corporate interests,” bankruptcy/fiscal irresponsibility, military adventurism, trampling of civil liberties, and anti-environmental policies.
***
The reasons stated by some of the historians for their choice of the presidency that they believe Bush’s to be the worst since are worth repeating. The following are representative examples for each of the presidents named most frequently:
REAGAN: “I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan--because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse.”
NIXON: “Actually, I think [Bush’s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.” Bush uses “doublespeak” to “dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ‘Forest Restoration Act’ (which encourages the cutting down of forests).”
HOOVER: “I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America’s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.”
COOLIDGE: “I think his presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for the environment, for international relations, for health care, and for working Americans. He’s on a par with Coolidge!”
HARDING: “Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.”
McKINLEY: “Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ‘hip pocket’ of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove’s favorite historical president (precedent?).”
GRANT: “He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney’s corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant.”
“While Grant did serve in the army (more than once), Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. That means that Grant is automatically more honest than Bush, since Grant did not send people into places that he himself consciously avoided. . . . Grant did not attempt to invade another country without a declaration of war; Bush thinks that his powers in this respect are unlimited.”
ANDREW JOHNSON: “I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Andrew Johnson. It has been a sellout of fundamental democratic (and Republican) principles. There are many examples, but the most recent would be his successful efforts to insert provisions in spending bills which directly controvert measures voted down by both houses of Congress.”
BUCHANAN: “Buchanan can be said to have made the Civil War inevitable or to have made the war last longer by his pusillanimity or, possibly, treason.” “Buchanan allowed a war to evolve, but that war addressed a real set of national issues. Mr. Bush started a war . . . for what reason?”
![]() =http://img27.photobucket.com/...
EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. “Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don 't think that you can do much worse than that.”
“Bush is horrendous; there is no comparison with previous presidents, most of whom have been bad.”
“He is blatantly a puppet for corporate interests, who care only about their own greed and have no sense of civic responsibility or community service. He lies, constantly and often, seemingly without control, and he lied about his invasion into a sovereign country, again for corporate interests; many people have died and been maimed, and that has been lied about too. He grandstands and mugs in a shameful manner, befitting a snake oil salesman, not a statesman. He does not think, process, or speak well, and is emotionally immature due to, among other things, his lack of recovery from substance abuse. The term is "dry drunk". He is an abject embarrassment/pariah overseas; the rest of the world hates him . . . . . He is, by far, the most irresponsible, unethical, inexcusable occupant of our formerly highest office in the land that there has ever been.”
“George W. Bush's presidency is the pernicious enemy of American freedom, compassion, and community; of world peace; and of life itself as it has evolved for millennia on large sections of the planet. The worst president ever? Let history judge him.”
“This president is unique in his failures.”
And then there was this split ballot, comparing the George W. Bush presidencies failures in distinct areas. The George W. Bush presidency is the worst since:
“In terms of economic damage, Reagan.
In terms of imperialism, T Roosevelt.
In terms of dishonesty in government, Nixon.
In terms of affable incompetence, Harding.
In terms of corruption, Grant.
In terms of general lassitude and cluelessness, Coolidge.
In terms of personal dishonesty, Clinton.
In terms of religious arrogance, Wilson.”
***
My own answer to the question was based on astonishment that so many people still support a president who has:
. Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.
. Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover’s.
. Taken, in the wake of the terrorist attacks two years ago, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and squandered it by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone invasion of Iraq, thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation. (One historian made this point particularly well: “After inadvertently gaining the sympathies of the world 's citizens when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, Bush has deliberately turned the country into the most hated in the world by a policy of breaking all major international agreements, declaring it our right to invade any country that we wish, proving that he’ll manipulate facts to justify anything he wishes to do, and bull-headedly charging into a quagmire.”)
. Misled (to use the most charitable word and interpretation) the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq and so into a war that has plainly (and entirely predictably) made us less secure, caused a boom in the recruitment of terrorists, is killing American military personnel needlessly, and is threatening to suck up all our available military forces and be a bottomless pit for the money of American taxpayers for years to come.
. Failed to follow through in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping, once more increasing the threat to our people.
. Insulted and ridiculed other nations and international organizations and now has to go, hat in hand, to those nations and organizations begging for their assistance.
. Completely miscalculated or failed to plan for the personnel and monetary needs in Iraq after the war, so that he sought and obtained an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq, a sizable chunk of which is going, without competitive bidding to Haliburton, the company formerly headed by his vice president.
. Inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230 billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit in less than three years. This negative turnaround of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is totally without precedent in our history. The ballooning deficit for fiscal 2004 is rapidly approaching twice the dollar size of the previous record deficit, $290 billion, set in 1992, the last year of the administration of President Bush’s father and, at almost 5 percent of GDP, is closing in on the percentage record set by Ronald Reagan in 1986.
. Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed—what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit—can be stated succinctly: “If you had to work for your money, we’ll tax it; if you didn’t have to work for it, you can keep it all.”
. Severely curtailed the very American freedoms that our military people are supposed to be fighting to defend. (“The Patriot Act,” one of the historians noted, “is the worst since the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams.”)
. Called upon American armed service people, including Reserve forces, to sacrifice for ever-lengthening tours of duty in a hostile and dangerous environment while he rewards the rich at home with lower taxes and legislative giveaways and gives lucrative no-bid contracts to American corporations linked with the administration.
. Given an opportunity to begin to change the consumption-oriented values of the nation after September 11, 2001, when people were prepared to make a sacrifice for the common good, called instead of Americans to ‘sacrifice’ by going out and buying things.
. Proclaimed himself to be a conservative while maintaining that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people, but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government. (As one of the historians said, “this is not a conservative administration; it is a reckless and arrogant one, beholden to a mix of right-wing ideologues, neo-con fanatics, and social Darwinian elitists.”)
. My assessment is that George W. Bush’s record on running up debt to burden our children is the worst since Ronald Reagan; his record on government surveillance of citizens is the worst since Richard Nixon; his record on foreign-military policy has gotten us into the worst foreign mess we’ve been in since Lyndon Johnson sank us into Vietnam; his economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover; his record of tax favoritism for the rich is the worst since Calvin Coolidge; his record of trampling on civil liberties is the worst since Woodrow Wilson. How far back in our history would we need to go to find a presidency as disastrous for this country as that of George W. Bush has been thus far? My own vote went to the administration of James Buchanan, who warmed the president’s chair while the union disintegrated in 1860-61.
. Who has been the biggest beneficiary of the horrible terrorism that struck our nation in September of 2001? The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone who considers where the popularity ratings and reelection prospects of a president with the record outlined above would be had he not been able to wrap himself in the flag, take advantage of the American people’s patriotism, and make himself synonymous with “the United States of America” for the past two years.
. That abuse of the patriotism and trust of the American people is even worse than everything else this president has done and that fact alone might be sufficient to explain the depth of the hostility with which so many historians view George W. Bush. Contrary to the conservative stereotype of academics as anti-American, the reasons that many historians cited for seeing the Bush presidency as a disaster revolve around their perception that he is undermining traditional American practices and values. As one patriotic historian put it, “I think his presidency has been the worst disaster to hit the United States and is bringing our beloved country to financial, economic, and social disaster.”
Some voters may judge such assessments to be wrong, but they are assessments informed by historical knowledge and the electorate ought to have them available to take into consideration during this election year. - http://hnn.us/articles/5019.h...
|
|
|
| |
| George W. Bush: Morally Depraved & Intellectually Deprived ... |
| 05.20.04 (10:26 pm) [edit] |
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."
"Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
"An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass."
- Quotations by George Washington
Now is the time for all good American Patriots to come to the aide of their country. Put your political partisanship aside as George Washington wisely advised that loyalty to country is paramount over narrow party affiliation.
Please call for the impeachment of President Bush and the firing of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and the neo-cons in the Pentagon who have led us down a path to chaos, ruin and bloody disaster:
1. President Bush has betrayed his oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, committing the most heinous act of treason by waging warfare based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods. Moreover, we now know that he sought legal counsel to advise him upon how to sanction murder, torture, rape and abuse of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib (and other prisons) as well as in Afghanistan. Bush is unfit to be president because he is morally depraved and intellectually deprived. Bush has committed Crimes Against Humanity.
2. Dick Cheney should be fired immediately because he set-up the Office of Special Planning (a fascist militaristic agency under the direction of the Traitor Douglas Feith) which paid Ahmed Chalabi over $340,000/Month for false information, that Cheney continues to use to deceive the American people. Cheney also has abused his office by allowing corporations (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.) to hijack our government and define U.S. Domestic & Foreign policies. As such, Cheney is a traitor, unfit to serve as Vice President.
3. Condoleezza Rice has been a disastrously over-rated, incompetent and corrupt National Security Advisor. She did not read reports advising of potential terrorist attacks upon the U.S.A. prior to 9/11-- She treated her own employees with contemptuous disregard, preferring instead to pander to her powerful bosses, and ignored advice that could have prevented 9/11-- She has continuously lied about pre-9/11 intelligence, phony WMDs in Iraq, and was put in charge by Bush back in October 2003 of the Iraqi Stablizations Group (ISG), which she has mismanaged with utter arrogance, ineptitude and malfeasance. Rice is unfit to serve in government.
4. Donald Rumsfeld directed that the Special Access Program (SAP) under Stephen Cambone be set-up to bypass the Geneva Conventions in violation of international treaties. Rumsfeld refused to take action based upon reports provided by the Red Cross and Taguba-- and only feigned a pretence of "regret" because photographs surfaced that rightly outraged conscientious and patriotic Americans who do not want America to become a Nazi Germany. Rumsfeld should be fired and put on trial for War Crimes, and is back to his arrogant and criminal activities-- since Bush (who is without conscience and morals) has "let Rummy off the hook". Rumsfeld is unfit to be Secretary of Defense.
5. Paul Wolfowitz is a traitor. Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton & the other neo-cons should be sent to Israel, as they have betrayed our nation and have no loyalty to the U.S.A. They are willing to squander U.S. lives and treasure in order to wage war based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods, in their insane quest to conquer the Middle East on behalf of the treasonous Project for the New American Century. Moreover, Wolfowitz has mis-managed the Iraqi war effort so badly, that over 790 US Soldiers & 11,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi Civilians have been ruthlessly slaughtered.
The neo-cons have no legal or moral right to sacrifice our nation's people, our nation's well-being and our nation's prosperity for the sake of the Israeli Likud government, now undertaking a blood-thirsty neo-hitlerian annihialation of the Palestinian people. Their secondary motive (that serves Cheney's traitorous lusts) is the grab of Middle East oil and the installation of their Global Corporate Empire imposing (not democracy) corporate rule upon the world for gluttonous profits for a few wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats, to the detriment of working people.
The neo-cons are a blight upon our nation, and their justification of warfare, torture, murder, rape and abusive atrocities, in order to achieve their sordid and squalid aims is in direction violation of the law, and is abhorrent to the behaviour of civilized and humane societies.
Bush and his neo-con cabal of fascists, liars, felons and traitors have no moral authority. They have wantonly squandered our good will and our good name throughout the world. Moreover, the treasonous Bushies are brutalizing America, dividing our nation by playing on the fears of our citizens and using partisanship in order incite hatred, anger and blood-lust.
It is our duty as citizens to let the civilized world know that "We the People" are outraged, angered and reject the brutish barbarity of the Bush/Cheney neo-con doctrine of racism, hatred and 'pre-emption' cloaked under a false-and-phony pretence of "democracy" when in fact, their criminal intentions have nothing to do with "freedom and democracy" and the values that America stands for. I implore you to take action today to rid our nation of these War Criminals in the Bush regime, using the legal mechanisms defined in our U.S. Constitution.
|
|
|
| |
| Bush Incapable of Choosing "Friends" Wisely ... But Who Exactly Has Been Duped??? ... |
| 05.20.04 (10:02 pm) [edit] |
[b]Who [i]exactly [/i]has been duped???
... The incompetent and corrupt neo-con Bush regime by the embezzler, liar and crook, Ahmed Chalabi???
... Or, the American people by the incompetent and corrupt neo-con Bush regime???
... Or, [i]both[/i]???
The [i]biggest sucker [/i]of a [i]crooked con-man [/i]is [u]another[/u] [i]crooked con-man [/i]... An honest man [i]cannot [/i]be so easily duped!!![/b]
Let "We the People" [i]not [/i]be [i]so easily [/i]duped ... Let "We the People" [i]recapture[/i] our own integrity ... Let "We the People"[i] look corruption and evil in the face [/i]and reject the insane Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]...[i] We have nothing to fear, but fear itself [/i]...
Consider "[b]America's 'Best Friend' A Spy?[/b]" by [i]CBS News[/i], on http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... : - [i]Excerpts [/i]-
... In the latest setback for a man once seen as the possible leader of a free and democratic Iraq, Iraqi police backed by U.S. troops raided the Baghdad home and offices of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi. ...
... Chalabi, who had returned to Iraq with a private army of 700 "freedom fighters" following the invasion, began to lose favor with U.S. officials as it became increasingly clear that much of information he supplied was suspect.
Chalabi holds a seat on the Iraqi Governing Council, but he has been unable to build a base of popular support with the Iraqi people.
The[i] New York Times [/i]and the [i]Washington Post [/i]report that Chalabi has been feuding with L. Paul Bremer, the American civilian administrator in Iraq. The [i]Times[/i] quoted Chalabi aides as saying the former exile's relationship with Bremer was so bad that he skipped Governing Council meetings that Bremer attended.
Earlier this week, the U.S. ended the $340,000 monthly payment it was making to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. That action was followed by the raid on his Baghdad home. ...
But consider the following "[b]Neocon Lets Cat Out of Bag[/b]" by [i]Robert Dreyfuss[/i], TomPaine, on http://www.tompaine.com/artic... :
Michael Rubin—a young staffer at the American Enterprise Institute who’s just left the Pentagon, where he played a small role as a neocon cog in the Office of Special Plans war machine—let a herd of cats out of the bag about his favorite Iraqi phony, Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress.
Chalabi, of course, is the roly-poly perpetrator of intelligence fraud and the convicted bank embezzler who still hopes to be leader of Iraq. Lately, Chalabi has scuttled into a would-be alliance with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the scowly fatwa man. In doing so, he’s had the temerity to criticize the United States, leading some fuzzy thinkers to believe that Chalabi, whose puppet strings are made of steel, might be trying to show some independence from Washington. Well, says Rubin, who served as one the Pentagon’s liaisons to Chalabi, that’s exactly what they want you to think:
“[i]Much of the information he collected was to roll up the insurgency and Ba'athist cells. It caught people red-handed," said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser who is now at a conservative think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute.
"By telegraphing that he is not the favorite son of America, the administration will bolster him, showing he is his own man.[/i]"
In other words, it’s all a big con game. The still-neocon-dominated Pentagon—which this week stopped funding Chalabi’s INC —is playing its last card, hoping that it can boost Chalabi’s sagging fortunes by pretending to sever ties with him. That, the neocons hope, will allow Chalabi to strengthen his ties to Sistani, the king-making mullah who, they hope, holds Iraq’s fate in his wrinkled hands.
[b]Somehow, methinks the ugly neo-con game[i] isn't up [/i]between the embezzler, crook and lying criminal Ahmed Chalabi and the liars, crooks and traitors in the neo-fascist Bush regime ...[/b]
[b]Consider also the following links for more information[/b]:
"How Hapless Bush & The Neo-Cons Were Conned By Ahmed Chalabi ..." on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"U.S. Army Raids Chalabi, The Neo-Con's Pet Is Planning A Coup d'Etat ..." on http://www.tblog.com/template...
[b]Don't we deserve a president who is astute and a government with integrity??? If we had such a wise president and a government interested in the well-being of our nation, "We the People" wouldn't be in the[i] bloody, chaotic mess[/i] we're in today ... [i]But it is down to us, not to be willingly duped [/i]...[/b]
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Economy In Trouble As Economists Downplay U.S. Jobless Claims Rise ... |
| 05.20.04 (2:41 pm) [edit] |
"[i]I don't remember ever in the history of warfare when we cut taxes[/i]." —Sen. John McCain http://www.chicagotribune.com...,1,2838689.story?coll=chi-newsnation world-hed , chastising fellow Republicans on May 19 for pushing tax cuts for the rich while U.S. troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We the People" are being ruthlessly [i]swindled, scammed and neo-con conned [/i]by the corrupt, sluttish Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i], who have engineered a dire economic fiasco for the near future in order to enrich themselves and their corporate pimps, while [i]impoverishing[/i] the American Middle Class & Working people (including the highest deficit spending & national debt in our nation's history) ... http://www.americanprogress.o... ... The reckless and irresponsible mis-management and malfeasance of the U.S. Economy warrants the[i] firing [/i]of the traitorous Bush regime ...
Consider "[b]Economists downplay US jobless claims rise[/b]" by the Financial Times, on http://news.ft.com/servlet/Co... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
The number of Americans claiming unemployment benefit for the first time rose by more than expected last week, according to official figures released on Thursday morning.
Initial jobless claims climbed 12,000 to 345,000.
[b]Bush's discredited Labour Department [i]doesn't want us to know [/i]how dire his economic train-wreck really is ... For example, take a look at the[i] Factory Bush Touted Closes; 1,300 Ohioans Jobless [/i]...[/b]
Last April, President Bush visited a Timken Company manufacturing plant in Ohio to press for passage of new tax cuts that he said would spur the economy. During the speech Bush said that "the future of this company is bright and therefore, the future of employment is bright for the families that work here"1. Less than a year after the tax cuts for the wealthy passed, that same factory is shutting down -- putting about 1,300 people out of work2 and inflicting a "devastating" blow to the Canton community3. With the White House pushing even more tax cuts for the wealthy4 and supporting outsourcing of American jobs5, Ohio has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs since President Bush took office6.
Of course, one person who will not be feeling the pain of the President's economic policies is W.R. "Tim" Timken - a top Bush fundraiser and the man who decided to shut down the factory. Having earned more than $2.6 million last year, Timken stands to receive $59,000 in new tax breaks from President Bush this year7 - Timken also happens to have raised $600,000 for the President in one night8. By contrast, 89% of Ohio residents will receive less than $100 by 2006 from the latest Bush tax cuts9. - http://www.misleader.org/dail...
[b]Sources[/b]:
1. President Discusses Plan for Economic Growth in Ohio, 04/24/2003.
2. "Timken to close Ohio factory", Pittsburgh Business Times, 05/17/2004.
3. "Timken Layoffs Potentially Devastating For Canton", NewsNet5.com, 05/16/2004.
4. "Bush seeks to make tax cuts permanent", Washington Times, 09/05/2003.
5. "Bush Econ Advisor: Outsourcing OK", CBS News, 02/13/2004.
6. "BUSH STUMPS IN OHIO, DEFENDS JOBS RECORD", 05/04/2004.
7. Citizens for Tax Justice, Fall 2003.
8. Campaign Money Watch.
9. Citizens for Tax Justice Brief.
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Betrayal: "Broken Engagement" |
| 05.20.04 (1:48 pm) [edit] |
"[i]We can't know precisely how the desire for freedom among the peoples of the Middle East will grow and evolve into movements that result in stable democratic governments. Different countries may take different paths. Progress may come from a beneficent king, from enlightened mullahs, from a secular military, from a women's movement, from workers returning from years spent as immigrants in Western Europe, from privileged sons of oil barons raised on MTV, or from an increasingly educated urban intelligentsia, such as the nascent one in Iran. But if the events of the last year tell us anything, it is that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely to come at the point of our gun. And [even] Ronald Reagan would have known better than to try[/i]." - Gen. Wesley Clark, U.S.A. (Ret.), was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, from 1997-2000, and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004.
[b]In the category of articles you should not miss[/b]: Take a look at Wes Clark's new piece http://www.washingtonmonthly.... in [i]The Washington Monthly[/i] on democracy, the Middle East and the how the Bush administration failed to understand how either works.
"We the People" have been [i]played for suckers [/i]and [i]swindled in the most ruthless neo-con con-game [/i]ever perpetrated upon our nation ... Warfare for war-profiteering, oil and a power-grab in the Middle East ... Historians will surely judge http://www.tblog.com/template... that the corrupt Bush regime was indeed the worst in our nation's history[i] before it is all over [/i]...
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Cover-up: Stonewalling on Bin Laden/Saudi Flights After 9/11 |
| 05.20.04 (10:04 am) [edit] |
[b]Tragically the 9/11 Whitewash Commission let the traitorous Bush & Cheney [i]'off-the-hook' [/i]from testifying under oath and in public ... [/b]Thus this [i]joke-of-a-GOP-controll ed [/i]gang of toadies & patsies has permitted the corrupt Bush regime to commit heinous crimes against the United States of America for which they are [i]not[/i] being rightly held accountable ...
"We the People" should be as outraged as are the families of the 9/11 victims who are actively vocal that the criminals in the vile Bush regime are covering-up their collusion with the Saudi Royal family, the bin Laden family, and refusing to disclose[i] what they knew [/i]and [i]when they knew it [/i]... Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org and insist that an independent Congressional Committee be convened in order to commence[i] impeachment hearings [/i]for[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]committed by Bush & Cheney in waging their illegal & immoral war-turned-bloody-guerril la quagmire in Iraq based upon criminal lies, deceptions & falsehoods ([i]i.e. phony WMDs posing a so-called 'imminent threat' to our national security; phony ties to Al Qaeda; and Iraq wasn't involved in 9/11 at all; etc.[/i]); and to insist upon[i] full and immediate disclosure [/i]of the role played by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in 9/11 ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
With questions swirling about who authorized allowing relatives of Osama bin Laden to fly out of the country immediately after 9/11, The Hill newspaper is reporting that President Bush is "refusing to answer repeated requests by the September 11 commission" about the matter1.
Last year, Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that, even as all foreign and domestic flights were grounded after 9/11, the bin Ladens and other wealthy Saudis were allowed to fly out of the United States. He said that "the flights were well-known and it was coordinated within the government"2.
Yet now, even as White House officials claim that "the [P]resident has fully cooperated with this commission in an unprecedented way"3, the panel vice chairman Lee Hamilton disclosed that the Administration is refusing to answer any questions on the subject -- even in closed-door meetings with Senators4. The President is also still refusing to release 28 pages of the bipartisan 9/11 congressional report about the Saudi Government. That report is known to "depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda"5. Some of that money may have even flowed through Riggs Bank6, where the President's uncle7 (and major fundraiser8) is a top executive. Nonetheless, the President continues to refer to the Saudi government as "our friend"9. - http://www.misleader.org/dail...
[b]Sources:[/b]
1. "Who let bin Ladens leave U.S.?", The Hill, 05/18/2004.
2. Interview on NBC's Meet the Press With Tim Russert, 09/07/2003.
3. Meet The Press transcript, 04/04/2004.
4. "Who let bin Ladens leave U.S.?", The Hill, 05/18/2004.
5. "Saudi Government Provided Aid to 9/11 Hijackers, Sources Say", Los Angeles Times, 08/02/2003.
6. Riggs Press Release, 05/31/2000.
7. Riggs Press Release, 05/31/2000.
8. Texans for Public Justice.
9. President Bush Vows to Bring Terrorists to Justice, 05/16/2003.
|
|
|
| |
| U.S. Army Raids Chalabi, The Neo-Con's Pet Is Planning A Coup d'Etat ... |
| 05.20.04 (9:11 am) [edit] |
[b]Sordid & Squalid ... [/b]The corrupt Bush regime(s) under Poppy Bush[i] propped-up [/i]the dictator Saddam Hussein, and the current neo-con, neo-fascists under Baby Bush [i]props-and/or-propped-u p [/i]the embezzler, liar & thug Ahmed Chalabi http://www.tompaine.com/artic... paying him over $340,000/month out of the U.S. Taxpayer's coffers ... Isn't it time to get rid of this traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta[/i]??? ... [i]Of course, it is!!! [/i]... "We the People" are writing Congress http://www.congress.org in[i] record-numbers[/i], so please [i]add your voice [/i]to those of us who want our country back ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[i]Finally[/i], the U.S. army hit the right target, after ([i]oops[/i]!) massacring dozens of Iraqi wedding attendees yesterday. That target was Ahmed Chalabi. It sounds to me like the first serious sign that the U.S. military is trying to clear the decks for the soon-to-come announcement of the new Iraqi government by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi , who is bitterly opposed by Chalabi. Here’s the CNN report http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD... :
... BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN)—U.S. military personnel and Iraqi police Thursday raided the compound of the Iraqi National Congress and the nearby home of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi, formerly a close adviser to the Pentagon.
Chalabi aides said its part of a "smear campaign by the CIA" and U.S. Administrator Paul Bremer is trying to intimidate Chalabi because of his call for full Iraqi sovereignty and his insistence that the United Nations Food for Oil program be investigated.
Chalabi's nephew, Salim Chalabi, said the forces entered his uncle's home, put a gun to Chalabi's head and threatened him.
In addition, an SUV was backed into the garage of the compound with people dressed in civilian clothes carrying out files from inside the headquarters.
Salim Chalabi, who serves as Iraq's war crimes prosecutor, said the U.S. military personnel and Iraqi police entered his uncle's home with their weapons drawn, and threatened Chalabi's security personnel. Describing what his uncle told him, Salim said the forces were "looking for something" and were upset with Chalabi. ...
[i]There’s more[/i]. They also raided the Iraq National Congress offices:
... The forces also cordoned off the Iraqi National Congress headquarters in a separate building nearby, taking guns away from the security there, Salim said.
Iraqi National Congress spokesman Entifadh Qanbar, speaking to CNN from Washington, said the compound was raided "in a very savage way."
“Even pictures on the wall were smashed. Even his holy Koran, his personal holy Koran was taken as a document." ...
[i]Even his holy Koran[/i]? Chalabi must have been hiding his embezzled bank funds in it, if so.
The INC blamed the CIA for the raid, which is plausible, because the CIA has long been suspicious of the lying Chalabi, who was recently accused by Newsweek of covert ties to Iran’s Shiite fundamentalist government.
According to Andrew Cockburn http://www.counterpunch.org/c... , Chalabi was planning a [i]coup d’etat [/i]in Iraq. As I’ve been reporting for weeks, Chalabi and Ayatollah Sistani have been getting closer and closer, and mobilizing forces against Brahimi. Says Cockburn:
... Lashing out against his exclusion from power, [Chalabi] has in effect been laying the groundwork for a coup, assembling a Shia political coalition with the express aim of destabilising the "Brahimi" government even before it takes office. "He has been mobilising forces to make sure the UN initiative fails," one well connected Iraqi political observer, who knows Chalabi well, told me today. "He has been tellling these people that Brahimi is part of a Sunni conspiracy against the Shia." ...
[i]Next target[/i]: raid the American Enterprise Institute?
[b]Another botched-up, fucked-up fiasco engineered by the wastrel, incompetent and corrupt Bush regime and their neo-con, neo-fascists ...[/b]
|
|
|
| |
| Bush White House Memorandum on the Geneva Conventions |
| 05.20.04 (6:51 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" have incontrovertible proof before us that the corrupt Bush regime is guilty of committing[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]and should be [i]impeached[/i] immediately for [i]War Crimes [/i]... [/b]Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org today and demand that [i]action be taken [/i]to oust the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] from office ... Please feel free to incorporate the following links or texts into your plea: http://www.americanprogress.o... ... Also refer to "'[b]An Army of Asses Led by a Lion is Better Than an Army of Lions Led By An Ass'[/b]!!!" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
[u][b]Memorandum on the Geneva Conventions[/b][/u] - http://www.americanprogress.o...
[i][b]Tossing Aside the Geneva Conventions, Bush Decisions Place U.S. Troops in Greater Danger[/b][/i]
New information was revealed today indicating that decisions by Bush administration political appointees to ignore the advice of senior military and State Department officials led directly to the types of abuses seen in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere.
Michael Isikoff of Newsweek has uncovered two internal administration memos - a [i]draft memorandum [/i] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... from White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales recommending that the Geneva Conventions not be applied to the conflict in Afghanistan and an[i] urgent response from Secretary of State Colin Powell [/i] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... disagreeing with that recommendation and many of Gonzales' arguments.
In a report on[i] ABCNews.com[/i], meanwhile, Jake Tapper and Clayton Sandell [i]quote two former Judge Advocates General [/i](JAG) http://abcnews.go.com/section... who charge that the uniformed military was overruled when it tried to make sure the Geneva Conventions be applied to all detainees in U.S. custody.
[b]The memoranda and interviews also make clear[/b]:
... Senior Bush political appointees devised a legal basis to systematically circumvent the requirements of the Geneva Conventions largely to protect themselves from future domestic prosecution for war crimes.
... Objections and warnings from Secretary of State Colin Powell, his legal advisor, and senior Pentagon officials were brushed aside.
... The former JAGs state flatly that had their advice been heeded, the abuses in U.S. facilities would not have happened.
[b]In his memo, Gonzales [/b]demonstrates an enormous talent for justifying setting aside a century of U.S. policy. [i]Highlights of the memo to President Bush [/i] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... (January 25, 2002):
... Gonzales says the "new paradigm" of the war on terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
... Gonzales outlines the pros and cons of applying the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. He is prescient in his prediction that a failure to apply the Conventions across the board "could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries."
... He rejects his own argument, concluding that "our military remains bound to apply the principles of GPW [Geneva Conventions on Prisoners of War] because that is what you have directed them to do."
... Gonzales also notes that "It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441 (of the US code, the War Crimes Act). Your determination [to bypass the Geneva Conventions] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."
[b]The response from Secretary Powell [/b]– dispatched one day later – takes issue with Gonzales' arguments and conclusions. [i]Highlights of the memo to Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice[/i] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... :
... Powell and his legal adviser William H. Taft IV argue: "It [declaring Geneva does not apply] will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general."
... The memo also says that removing the protections of the Geneva Conventions from certain detainees would undermine U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo Bay and weaken our ability to hold potential terrorists. "The Geneva Conventions are a more flexible and suitable legal framework than other laws that would arguable (sic) apply," the memo contends. "Determining GPW does not apply deprives us of a wining ([i]sic[/i]) argument to oppose habeas corpus actions in U.S. courts."
[b]The [i]ABCNews.com [/i]report [/b] http://abcnews.go.com/section... presents unusually stark condemnation by two former JAGs, who argue that their warnings were ignored.
... "'If we – 'we' being the uniformed lawyers – had been listened to, and what we said put into practice, then these abuses would not have occurred,' said Rear Admiral Don Guter (ret.), the Navy Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002."
... "'When you say something down the chain of command like, 'The Geneva conventions don't apply,' that sets the stage for the kind of chaos that we've seen,' said Rear Admiral John Hutson (ret.), who was the Navy Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000."
|
|
|
| |
| "An Army of Asses Led by a Lion is Better Than an Army of Lions Led By An Ass"!!! |
| 05.19.04 (7:01 pm) [edit] |
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."
"Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
"An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass."
- Quotations by George Washington
Now is the time for all good American Patriots to come to the aide of their country. Put your political partisanship aside as George Washington wisely advised that loyalty to country is paramount over narrow party affiliation.
Please call for the impeachment of President Bush and the firing of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and the neo-cons in the Pentagon who have led us down a path to chaos, ruin and bloody disaster:
1. President Bush has betrayed his oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, committing the most heinous act of treason by waging warfare based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods. Moreover, we now know that he sought legal counsel to advise him upon how to sanction murder, torture, rape and abuse of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib (and other prisons) as well as in Afghanistan. Bush is unfit to be president because he is morally depraved and intellectually deprived. Bush has committed Crimes Against Humanity.
2. Dick Cheney should be fired immediately because he set-up the Office of Special Planning (a fascist militaristic agency under the direction of the Traitor Douglas Feith) which paid Ahmed Chalabi over $340,000/Month for false information, that Cheney continues to use to deceive the American people. Cheney also has abused his office by allowing corporations (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.) to hijack our government and define U.S. Domestic & Foreign policies. As such, Cheney is a traitor, unfit to serve as Vice President.
3. Condoleezza Rice has been a disastrously over-rated, incompetent and corrupt National Security Advisor. She did not read reports advising of potential terrorist attacks upon the U.S.A. prior to 9/11-- She treated her own employees with contemptuous disregard, preferring instead to pander to her powerful bosses, and ignored advice that could have prevented 9/11-- She has continuously lied about pre-9/11 intelligence, phony WMDs in Iraq, and was put in charge by Bush back in October 2003 of the Iraqi Stablizations Group (ISG), which she has mismanaged with utter arrogance, ineptitude and malfeasance. Rice is unfit to serve in government.
4. Donald Rumsfeld directed that the Special Access Program (SAP) under Stephen Cambone be set-up to bypass the Geneva Conventions in violation of international treaties. Rumsfeld refused to take action based upon reports provided by the Red Cross and Taguba-- and only feigned a pretence of "regret" because photographs surfaced that rightly outraged conscientious and patriotic Americans who do not want America to become a Nazi Germany. Rumsfeld should be fired and put on trial for War Crimes, and is back to his arrogant and criminal activities-- since Bush (who is without conscience and morals) has "let Rummy off the hook". Rumsfeld is unfit to be Secretary of Defense.
5. Paul Wolfowitz is a traitor. Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton & the other neo-cons should be sent to Israel, as they have betrayed our nation and have no loyalty to the U.S.A. They are willing to squander U.S. lives and treasure in order to wage war based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods, in their insane quest to conquer the Middle East on behalf of the treasonous Project for the New American Century. Moreover, Wolfowitz has mis-managed the Iraqi war effort so badly, that over 790 US Soldiers & 11,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi Civilians have been ruthlessly slaughtered.
The neo-cons have no legal or moral right to sacrifice our nation's people, our nation's well-being and our nation's prosperity for the sake of the Israeli Likud government, now undertaking a blood-thirsty neo-hitlerian annihialation of the Palestinian people. Their secondary motive (that serves Cheney's traitorous lusts) is the grab of Middle East oil and the installation of their Global Corporate Empire imposing (not democracy) corporate rule upon the world for gluttonous profits for a few wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats, to the detriment of working people.
The neo-cons are a blight upon our nation, and their justification of warfare, torture, murder, rape and abusive atrocities, in order to achieve their sordid and squalid aims is in direction violation of the law, and is abhorrent to the behaviour of civilized and humane societies.
Bush and his neo-con cabal of fascists, liars, felons and traitors have no moral authority. They have wantonly squandered our good will and our good name throughout the world. Moreover, the treasonous Bushies are brutalizing America, dividing our nation by playing on the fears of our citizens and using partisanship in order incite hatred, anger and blood-lust.
It is our duty as citizens to let the civilized world know that "We the People" are outraged, angered and reject the brutish barbarity of the Bush/Cheney neo-con doctrine of racism, hatred and 'pre-emption' cloaked under a false-and-phony pretence of "democracy" when in fact, their criminal intentions have nothing to do with "freedom and democracy" and the values that America stands for. I implore you to take action today to rid our nation of these War Criminals in the Bush regime, using the legal mechanisms defined in our U.S. Constitution.
|
|
|
| |
| Impeach the S.O.B.!!! |
| 05.18.04 (3:43 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" should stop with the [i]procrastination[/i] and do our duty as responsible citizens ... [/b]Surely we've seen enough corruption, deception, and treasonous behaviour perpetrated upon the United States of America by the vile Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who should be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... Let's [i]stop beating around the "Bush" [/i]and [i]impeach[/i] the bastards-[i]cum[/i]-war-c riminals ... Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and send the following petition ... Also, sign the petition "[i]Join the Call for an Impeachment Inquiry of Bush and Cheney[/i]" on http://www.votenader.org/get_...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
It's time to stop beating around this Bush and start beating up on him--but good. There is no set of humanitarian or democratic principles by which this administration would not have been removed in any sane society. The last election was questionable at best, and his reckless, dangerous and criminal actions in the ensuing years have shown the whole world he is unfit to govern. The only democratic remedy, impeachment, was set aside early and forcibly by an opposition still afraid of its own shadow. It did make some sense, early on, to argue that, since the Greasy Oil Plutocrats (GOP) controlled both houses, it was a waste of time and energy.
Cynical political calculation is the currency of a failed "democracy," and Washington is crawling with sellouts and political weathervanes. In the Sausage Factory that is the legislative process, anyone who wants to get anything done had best be ready to hold her nose and roll up her sleeves. Still, principle still counts for something. To hear either of the Mega-Parties talk, you'd think they were all about principle. Grandiose rhetoric covers the tiniest focus-grouped nuances; minor tweaks to failed policies are disguised as major ideological shifts, their proponents bravely marching, Quixote-style, into the windmill of their ever-so-slightly differing opponents.
So maybe it's time for a simple, radical proposition: Truth is True. Of course Republicans will fight impeachment like crazy--so what? Anyway, it's past time to put to rest the right-wing myth that Nixon was "hounded out of office" by the opposition. By the time Barry Goldwater met with Nixon to tell him the jig was up, he reported that the president could expect no more than ten votes in the Senate. "And," he is reported to have added, "I'm not one of them." Politicians don't always toe the party line, especially when it is one drawn in the sand by a crook.
The damage done to decades-long international agreements, to the reputation of the US, and simply the revulsion at all the atrocities commited in our name, is almost beyond calculation, and quite likely beyond repair. Cornered at every turn, the thieves and liars of this junta respond to every new self-inflicted crisis with greater abandon. There are dangerous and powerful forces trying to keep this man in power, and there is no doubt that confronting them head on will prove difficult. But there is no choice left. The iceberg whose tip is now poking its way into the eye of a weary world is gargantuan, and will not melt of its own accord. These men intended all along to shred the Geneva Convention, the US constitution and every safeguard in between. The "Iraq Prison Abuse Scandal," a misnomer if ever there was one, is not about a few hicks on a rampage. Anyone with a brain could see that immediately, and once again we were proven right. The attempt to end-run the CIA and establish a fully secret system of torture and "intelligence gathering" lays bare the core of these men's "principles:" utter contempt for democracy and due process.
It should be something of a clue to learn that the CIA was too accountable for these guys. The CIA, as we well know, is loath to bend any rules or skirt accountability in pursuit of its own shadowy goals. Doug Feith, apparently, knows better than the CIA, and he wouldn't trust them for...well, let's say for all the assassination manuals in Central America.
It has become the unspeakable, torturous mess we knew it would, and they still won't come clean. That's why they mustn't be let to leave of their own accord. Next January is far too long, too many wars, atrocities and frayed alliances too late. These guys, and yes, I mean all of them, from Dubya and Lon Chaney on down--these guys have to go now. And I don't mean back to cutting brush in Crawford. (What's the deal there, by the way? Does this guy live on a billion acres that he cuts himself, or what? Isn't he done yet?).
No, not back to Crawford or off to some slimy lobbying firm--they need to go sit in a dock in the Hague and await the judgement of the world. The world's responsibility is to convene an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute the war crimes of the Iraq war--just as they do with other rogue nations who refuse to subject themselves to the conventions of international law. Our responsibility in the US is to facilitate the process by first removing the war criminals from power, and then not stopping the international peacekeeping force when they come to arrest them.
Shocked? Why? Of course, it is often shocking to turn the looking glass around, but if we try to see what the rest of the world sees, these are the logical next steps. Instead, the internal "debate" grows more and more deaf to the outside world. The Democrats have already picked their pro-war candidate, and he is staying the course, while rumors about a "unity ticket" with McCain swirl above the wreckage of the international scene. What planet are we on? I actually saw an article recently chiding the left with the spectre of 1968, claiming that it was our fault (the antiwar crowd) that Humphrey lost. Huh? I guess it couldn't have been Humphrey's fault that he saddled himself with Johnson's War. At least he was the sitting vice president--what's Kerry's excuse?
And as long as we're playing the bogus counterfactual history "whose fault was Nixon" game, there are plenty of turns to go around. Assume that RFK had not been killed in June of 1968. Having won the California primary, he was poised to wrest the nomination from Humphrey, relieving the Democrats of their war burden, and would presumably have swept to victory over Tricky Dick. Imagine...no Houston Plan, no destabilizing Chile--maybe a few million still alive in Southeast Asia.... Well, maybe it's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the point is history is not an a la carte menu. You can't pick and choose once the opportunities are gone.
The only way the Democrats can lose this election, as I see it, is to fail to embrace and stay ahead of the exploding buyer's remorse now coming into focus over the quagmire in Iraqnam. The RFK analogy is with us still, in the person of Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich is RFK for 2004--the late-surging candidate whose war stance-deemed opportunistic by some, too establishment by others--represents the hope of the party but whose candidacy, alas, is not to be: RFK's because he was shot in the head, and DJK's because he was shot in the image, budget, soul...take your pick. But it doesn't graft well a generation later. No bullets were necessary to doom Kucinich's candidacy, and no matter what changes between now and July, it is exceedingly unlikely that Democrats in the "disciplined," slick "modern" era would abandon the walking disaster that is the Kerry candidacy--although they should be thinking hard about it.
But of course, it's beside my point. Who cares who's running in November?[i] Impeach the bastards now[/i]. By the time the dust settles and the indictments are all handed out, we may well have come far enough down the chain of succession to where a new government might mean something: Bernie Sanders, or Kucinch, and Barbara Lee. Full speed ahead.... - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Economic Fiasco: Most Lose-Out With Tax Cuts, Unless You Are Filthy Rich!!! |
| 05.17.04 (9:46 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" are being[i] played for suckers [/i]by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]who have awarded massive, immoral tax cuts, tax loopholes & tax boondoggles to their corporate pimps ([i]now 61% of corporations pay Zip, Zero, Nada taxes[/i]), wealthy oligarchs and hyper-rich plutocrats ... [/b]Meanwhile, the American working people are[i] hit hard [/i]by the highest gas prices in history, inflation and paying-off ([i]in blood as well as treasure[/i]) the murderous Bush regime's illegal neo-con, neo-fascist war-turned-bloody-guerril la quagmire in Iraq ... Dubya is the [i]only president in history [/i]to lower taxes for the rich [i]at a time of war [/i]leaving the back-breaking burden on the shrinking American Middle & Working classes ...
[b]Is [i]class warfare [/i] being waged by Bush & Cheney??? You bet [i]it is[/i]!!! Let "We the People"[i] 'Bring it On' [/i]and [i]oust these rapacious bastards [/i]from office ...[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
... Staring us in the face is a reckless fiscal policy that has been marked by three consecutive years of poorly timed, regressive and irresponsible tax cuts. The essence of these tax cuts is captured in a cartoon that has been making the rounds lately. It shows a janitor, hard at work, wearing a shirt that reads, "The President enacted a bunch of tax cuts and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." Regrettably, for janitors and all Americans, the numbers support that sentiment.
The average tax cuts Americans received in the past three years were more than offset by cost increases elsewhere, especially for such priorities as housing, medical care and higher education. Moreover, the vast majority of taxpayers received less than the average tax cut. And all of this happened at a time when millions of new jobs – the promised benefits of the tax cuts – have failed to materialize. By any measure, the short and long-term costs of the tax cuts outweigh any of its purported benefits. - http://www.americanprogress.o...
Download the entire column in [i]PDF[/i] on http://www.americanprogress.o...{E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521- 5D6FF2E06E03}/taxday.pdf .
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Disastrous Failure in Iraq: U.S. Losing its Grip ... |
| 05.17.04 (9:27 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime committed treason by illegally and immorally invading Iraq based upon heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods perpetrated against the American people ... Now it is clear that not only is the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]morally depraved and criminally culpable, but they are [i]also[/i] tragically incompetent and appallingly inept http://www.fff.org/comment/co... as well ...[/b]
"We the People" should call upon Congress http://www.congress.org to commence [i]impeachment hearings[/i] to rid ourselves of this[i] cancerous plague [/i]upon our nation ...
[u][b]Administration Losing Grip in Iraq[/b][/u] - http://www.americanprogress.o...
Thirteen months of post-war failures in Iraq reached a crescendo today with the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Izzadine Salim – the second and most senior member of the council to be assassinated. With the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis quickly approaching, the administration needs to develop a coherent strategy for security and reconstruction immediately.
[b]The June 30 transfer of authority is more and more likely to leave Iraq unstable and vulnerable to civil war. Questions about Iraq's future increase by the day. [/b]Today's assassination comes on top of the widening Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the ongoing violence in southern Iraq and rebellion from Moqtada Sadr's personal militia. The problems continue to grow and it is increasingly likely that the Bush administration will leave Iraq in a chaotic and unstable position after June 30.
[b]The administration must unequivocally state its intentions to provide security in Iraq.[/b] Recent comments from Colin Powell and Paul Bremer that the U.S. would withdraw troops if asked to by the new Iraqi government do not back up President Bush's promise to stay the course in Iraq. The U.S. simply can not back out of its obligation to stabilize the country it upended more than one year ago and must work with the new government to ensure a secure Iraq.
[b]The Bush administration needs to present a coherent strategy for Iraqi security and transition now.[/b] The administration's failure to present any viable plan for Iraq speaks volumes about its indifference and mismanagement. More troops and international legitimacy are clearly needed to bring security and stability to Iraq. The U.N. should fully oversee the political transition and NATO should take over security needs. An independent trust fund for reconstruction should be immediately created to provide consistent and designated support for the rebuilding of the country.
Click here http://www.americanprogress.o... to read the full recommendations for ensuring security and winning the peace in Iraq from the [i]Center for American Progress.[/i]
|
|
|
| |
| Bush Has Put the U.S. 'Back In the U.S.S.R.' |
| 05.16.04 (6:44 pm) [edit] |
[b]George Orwell would be[i] laughing his head off [/i]because what is [i]so[/i] surprising is how much the United States has come to resemble the old Evil Empire ... Orwell's dire predictions of an insane totalitarian regime have come true ([i]not in 1984[/i]) in 2004 in the U.S. of A.!!![/b]
"We the People" need to get rid of this corrupt cabal of [i]neo-orwellian neo-cons [/i]in the tyrannical Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who are a[i] disgrace [/i]to our nation ...
[u][b]Bush Has Put the U.S. 'Back In the U.S.S.R.'[/b][/u]
When the Beatles sang "back in the U.S., back in the U.S., back in the U.S.S.R." in the late 1960s, I suspect they were trying to rile up the dyed-in-the-wool anti-communists of their parents' generation by wittily likening the Soviet Union -- then safely tucked away behind the Iron Curtain -- with the United States, defender of the free world.
How times have changed.
You may not be able to fly in to Moscow from Miami Beach on the now-defunct British Overseas Airways Corporation, but apart from that all of those seemingly far-fetched American delights described by the Fab Four can be found right here in post-communist Russia.
What's even more surprising is how much the United States has come to resemble the old Evil Empire. George Orwell, another sardonic Brit, would have been amused.
Russians who lived through the years of "developed socialism" remember well the inane, almost surrealistic slogans and policies of the time. If you happen to feel any nostalgia for the years of stagnation under Leonid Brezhnev, try taking a trip back to the U.S. of A.
You can start at the U.S. Embassy, which many Russians describe as the last vestige of the Soviet Union in Moscow. If fortune is kind and you actually receive a visa, brace yourself for your introduction to the world of Big Brother at the U.S. border, where you will be photographed and finger-printed. These procedures may seem irritating, but they could be big attractions as part of a retro-tourism package.
The renaming of French fries and French toast as "freedom fries" and "freedom toast" in the cafeterias of the U.S. House of Representatives last year takes the gateau, as it were. Too bad the Supreme Soviet never came up with this idea. Just imagine a decree changing the Russian word for skunk -- amerikanskaya vonyuchka, or American stinker -- to "freedom stinker."
Freedom is the buzzword in American newspeak. In Orwell's novel "1984," newspeak is a language that contains only words needed to express approved ideas. It has been calculated that in five speeches on Iraq last year, President George W. Bush used the words "liberty," "free" and "freedom" 131 times. In addition to freedom fries we have Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. The building that will replace the World Trade Center will be called -- what else -- Freedom Tower.
This unhealthy obsession with freedom is reminiscent of the old Eastern Bloc, where words such as "People's" and "Democracy" were liberally sprinkled in the names of member countries such as the People's Republic of Bulgaria. This trend lives today in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. As civil liberties are increasingly curtailed in the wake of 9/11, "freedom" may soon ring almost as hollow in the United States as it did in the Soviet-era people's democracies.
Patriot II, or the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, for example, stipulates that providing material support to terrorists is punishable with the loss of U.S. citizenship. There's just one snag, of course: This practice is expressly banned by the U.S. Constitution. Citizenship can only be renounced voluntarily. Not to worry. According to the Justice Department, a person's intent to renounce his citizenship need not be expressed verbally. It can be inferred by the authorities from his actions. Prosecutors at Stalin's show trials would have admired this twisted logic.
The comparisons are endless. Consider the new Iraqi flag, unveiled in April. With two blue stripes and a blue crescent against a white background it looks so much like the Israeli flag that you can't help but recall the 15 look-alike national flags of the former Soviet republics.
However amusing, alarming or appalling, these are facile parallels, of course. A more serious resemblance can be found at the level of government policy. Like the decisions of the Soviet leadership, U.S. policy is increasingly driven by ideology, not based on facts. In the old days, the U.S. government took a conservative, realistic approach to managing the economy. The Soviets, armed with scientific Marxism, were great believers in economic miracles. Shift productive assets from the rich to the state and -- presto -- you've got a highly industrialized, efficient and prosperous economy.
Today, Russia has finally realized that double-digit economic growth will have to be sustained for a decade before the country can catch up with Portugal. Americans, by contrast, have come to rely on economic miracles. First it was the new economy of the 1990s, and now the massive tax cuts intended to generate universal prosperity. What ever happened to the proverbial Yankee with both feet firmly planted on the ground?
The Bush administration's foreign policy is even more worrisome. It rejects the traditional approach that served the United States so well in the past in favor of Soviet-style adventurism. During the Cold War, Washington pursued a policy of containment, opposing Soviet expansionism and preserving the status quo. Now, driven by newfound ideological zeal, the United States is bringing down foreign regimes and exporting freedom at gunpoint.
Ideology is the cause of America's current woes in Iraq. There is no need to plan carefully when you possess the one true creed. Minor setbacks will be overcome, and the glorious prospect of Iraqi Freedom makes it all worthwhile. This explains why the Bush administration never bothered to develop a realistic strategy for pulling out of Iraq, and why control over U.S. forces in the country is lax enough to permit the much-publicized atrocities against Iraqi prisoners.
According to the ideology of freedom, the Iraqis, like every other nation in the world, should have embraced U.S.-style democracy and hailed the Marines as liberators. The fact that something closer to the opposite has happened is still being dismissed as a bump in the road to freedom, the work of a few Baathist extremists and foreign terrorists. Blinded by ideology, Bush administration officials appear increasingly divorced from reality when they discuss the situation in Iraq.
As the Soviet experience has shown, you can live in this kind of dream world for a while, but not forever, even if you possess the most powerful military in the world.
[i][b]Alexei Bayer, a New York-based economist, writes the Globalist column for Vedomosti on alternate weeks. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times [/b][/i]- http://www.themoscowtimes.com...
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Big Lies Continue Unabated, As Bush Destroys Myriad Lives & Squanders US Taxpayer Dollars!!! |
| 05.16.04 (1:03 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush is a ruthless and reckless liar, thief and squalid wastrel ... [/b]Hypocritical Bush is engaged in a heinous cover-up of his corrupt regime's ungodly massacres, tortures, rapes and abuses in Iraq, in violation of the Geneva Conventions http://www.newyorker.com/fact... ... Moreover, the Traitor Bush is responsible for the [i]murder[/i] of over 780 U.S. Soldiers & 10,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi Civilians [i]as well as[/i] the [i]wanton destruction [/i]of tens of thousands of human lives maimed, injured & impoverished http://antiwar.com/casualties... for which he should be shipped off to the Hague to be tried for[i] Crimes Against Humanity[/i], something he is avoiding at all costs http://www.commondreams.org/h... ... Furthermore, instead of addressing the neglected issues of dire poverty, joblessness, health care, homelessness, education and a crumbling infrastructure in [i]our own nation[/i], Traitor Bush has treasonously[i] handed-over U.S. foreign & domestic policy-making [/i]to his gluttonous corporate war-profiteers (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.) who are swindling, plundering & looting the American taxpayers ([i]unlike[/i] the [i]greedy & power-hungry [/i]Bush Crime Family who has awarded itself massive tax cuts, tax loopholes & tax boondoggles for corporations & the richest-of-the-rich, while the rest of us[i] foot-the-bill[/i]) for over $5 Billion per Month on illegal and immoral warmongering in Iraq with [i]no end in sight [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[b]Bush’s big lies continue[/b]
Stalin, the infamous and ruthless Russian dictator, once said that people will believe any big lie if you tell it often enough. All the evidence to date is that President Bush and his entire administration are huge devotees of Stalin’s twisted political philosophy—and the American public continues to be deluged by an endless series of big lies.
Initially, we were misled into war based on President Bush’s assertion that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. We now know that this was but one of Bush’s big lies. When we couldn’t find the weapons, Bush pounded his flag-draped chest and re-justified the invasion as “cleansing the world of a brutal dictator” and bringing “freedom and democracy” to Iraqis.
Now our country is reeling from the collapse of what we were assured was our superior moral justification for the American invasion of Iraq. With the revelation of the atrocities committed by American soldiers and “contractors” at Abu Ghraib prison, it is Americans, not Saddam Hussein, who are torturing and killing Iraqis. These atrocities, which are being witnessed worldwide, are perceived as merely replacing one sadistic, murdering regime in Iraq with another. It hurts to read the stories and see the images, and few want to believe that this is where our flag-waving, super-patriotic rush to war has led us—but the undeniable evidence is there in grim detail before our eyes every day.
Unfortunately, the opinions of the civilized nations of the world mean little to President Bush. Remember, it was Bush who called the United Nations “irrelevant,” who insulted our longtime allies, and who took the position that America, blessed with his vision of moral rectitude, had a job to do in chasing down and eliminating “the evildoers” of the world. But now, as the images and stories of American brutality flood into our homes, we are becoming defensively aware of the historic dishonor the big lies of the Bush era are bringing to our nation.
If he had any shred of personal integrity, Bush would say: “The buck stops here.” He would admit that he led our nation into war based on false premises and he would take responsibility for his own huge part in setting the stage for the inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners. It is President Bush, after all, who continues to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to describe those who resist America’s invasion of their countries as “murderers and killers,” not as enemy combatants. Thus, it is Bush himself who has set the stage for his underlings to treat these prisoners of war in such degrading and dishonorable ways instead of receiving the humane treatment required by the Geneva Convention.
Instead, President Bush continues to delude Americans through bizarre diametric labeling, in which his “Clear Skies” program in reality means more air pollution and his “Healthy Forests Initiative” means more stumpfields. Rising to heights of deception of which even Stalin would be proud, Bush now tells us that our nation “owes a debt of gratitude” to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on whose watch and under whose control these atrocities occurred.
Considering Bush’s avalanche of big lies, it now seems that he may succeed in once again twisting the truth backwards, because so many Americans are so dumbed down that they will believe anything he says.
First there was the Big Lie that started America on its downward path: Bush won the election. We now know that, if people are elected by a majority of the voters, Bush in fact lost the election. He didn’t garner a majority of the votes and, had the Supreme Court not curtailed the recount and appointed Bush to the presidency, he wouldn’t be in the White House today.
Or how about the Big Lie that the Sept. 11 attacks occurred because “our enemies hate freedom.” We are supposed to believe that people were willing to commit suicide by flying jetliners into buildings because they “hate freedom.” But isn’t it possible that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were targeted because of America’s ruthless and exploitive global economic policies? After all, the World Trade Center was the undeniable symbol of America’s predatory economic domination, and the “muscle” for enforcing those policies is carried out by the long and bloody arm of the American military, which is located in the Pentagon.
Another big lie is that America’s corporate corruption, as evidenced by Enron, is the result of just a “few bad apples.” The proof is incontrovertible that a whole panoply of corporations colluded to manipulate energy supplies to ravage California—and unlike Enron, most of those continue to do a brisk business to this day. The truth, if it were to be told, is that there is little if any corporate responsibility to anyone these days. The most prevalent philosophy in this country, both in business and in society, is to “get yours while you can” and devil take the hindmost.
The most recent big lie is that record high prices for gasoline are occurring because of the so-called “economic recovery.” Now let’s see—the nation was genuinely booming throughout the ’90s and gas often barely cracked a buck a gallon. Now, with record numbers of Americans suffering economic hardship, the cost of gas has doubled.
Sometime in the future, as happened with California’s “energy crisis,” we will likely find out that our citizens have once again been the victims of market manipulation. Unfortunately, by the time the latest big lie is discovered it will be too late—especially for those who have been beggared by the unconscionable practices. But remember, oil companies spent a lot of money putting President Bush in office and they expect, and are getting, their huge and on-going payoffs.
How many more big lies will Americans fall for? It’s tough to say—but don’t be surprised if the next thing you hear is that “we owe a debt of gratitude” to Exxon, too. - http://www.everyweek.com/News...
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Pimps Fill Campaign War Chest, Then Capitalize on Bribes Knowing Bush Must Buy the Election! |
| 05.16.04 (10:21 am) [edit] |
[b]The American people are[i] increasingly angered and disgusted [/i]with the Traitor Bush and his corrupt cabal of neo-con, neo-fascist War Criminals who should be shipped off to the Hague to be tried for[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... [/b]The [i]sluttish[/i] Dubya's corporate[i] pimps [/i]are [i]desperate to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes [/i]for his campaign war chest in order that they can [i]continue to swindle, plunder, loot and rape American working people [/i]senseless using their traitorous [i]neo-con scams [/i]and [i]neo-fascist fraudulent get-rich-quick-schemes [/i]impoverishing our nation ... Refer to "[b]Newsweek Poll: [i]Bad Days for Bush[/i][/b]" on http://msnbc.msn.com/id/49868...
"We the People" should realize that the [i]only way [/i]Dubya can be[i] (s)elected [/i]([i]apart from election-rigging [/i]which he's got his criminal buddy Walden O'Dell at Diebold Electronic Voting Systems trying to do in concert with his crook-of-a-brother Gov. Jeb of Florida http://www.commondreams.org/h... ) is through immoral (and [i]should[/i] be illegal) [i]"buying-up"[/i] the White House with[i] bribes [/i]from corporations & special interests, who then[i] hijack our foreign and domestic policies for their own gluttonous & vile lusts[/i], leaving our nation [i]destroyed in tatters and shreds [/i]... Surely we [i]don't want [/i]four more years of[i] hell on earth [/i]with this corrupt and incompetent Bush gang of traitorous liars, thieves, swindlers, felons, embezzlers and war criminals ...
[b]Consider:[/b] [b]THE BUSH MONEY MACHINE : Fundraising's Rewards
[i]Pioneers Fill War Chest, Then Capitalize [/i][/b]
Joined by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and a host of celebrities, hundreds of wealthy Republicans gathered at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge here in the first weekend in April, not for a fundraiser but for a celebration of fundraisers. It was billed as an "appreciation weekend," and there was much to appreciate.
As Bush "Pioneers" who had raised at least $100,000 each for the president's reelection campaign, or "Rangers" who had raised $200,000 each, the men and women who shot skeet with Cheney, played golf with pros Ben Crenshaw and Fuzzy Zoeller and laughed at the jokes of comedian Dennis Miller are the heart of the most successful political money operation in the nation's history. Since 1998, Bush has raised a record $296.3 million in campaign funds, giving him an overwhelming advantage in running against Vice President Al Gore and now Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). At least a third of the total -- many sources believe more than half -- was raised by 631 people.
When four longtime supporters of George W. Bush in 1998 developed a name and a structure for the elite cadre that the then-Texas governor would rely on in his campaign for president, the goal was simple. They wanted to escape the restraints of the public financing system that Congress had hoped would mitigate the influence of money in electing a president. Their way to do it was to create a network of people who could get at least 100 friends, associates or employees to give the maximum individual donation allowed by law to a presidential candidate: $1,000.
The Pioneers have evolved from an initial group of family, friends and associates willing to bet on putting another Bush in the White House into an extraordinarily organized and disciplined machine. It is now twice as big as it was in 2000 and fueled by the desire of corporate CEOs, Wall Street financial leaders, Washington lobbyists and Republican officials to outdo each other in demonstrating their support for Bush and his administration's pro-business policies.
"This is the most impressive, organized, focused and disciplined fundraising operation I have ever been involved in," declared Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, who has been raising money for GOP candidates since 1980. "They have done just about everything right."
For achieving their fundraising goals, Pioneers receive a relatively modest token, the right to buy a set of silver cuff links with an engraved Lone Star of Texas (Rangers can buy a more expensive belt buckle set). Their real reward is entree to the White House and the upper levels of the administration.
Of the 246 fundraisers identified by The Post as Pioneers in the 2000 campaign, 104 -- or slightly more than 40 percent -- ended up in a job or an appointment. A study by The Washington Post, partly using information compiled by Texans for Public Justice, which is planning to release a separate study of the Pioneers this week, found that 23 Pioneers were named as ambassadors and three were named to the Cabinet: Donald L. Evans at the Commerce Department, Elaine L. Chao at Labor and Tom Ridge at Homeland Security. At least 37 Pioneers were named to postelection transition teams, which helped place political appointees into key regulatory positions affecting industry.
A more important reward than a job, perhaps, is access. For about one-fifth of the 2000 Pioneers, this is their business -- they are lobbyists whose livelihoods depend on the perception that they can get things done in the government. More than half the Pioneers are heads of companies -- chief executive officers, company founders or managing partners -- whose bottom lines are directly affected by a variety of government regulatory and tax decisions.
When Kenneth L. Lay, for example, a 2000 Pioneer and then-chairman of Enron Corp., was a member of the Energy Department transition team, he sent White House personnel director Clay Johnson III a list of eight persons he recommended for appointment to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Two were named to the five-member commission.
Lay had ties to Bush and his father, former president George H.W. Bush, and was typical of the 2000 Pioneers. Two-thirds of them had some connection to the Bush family or Bush himself -- from his days in college and business school, his early oil wildcatting in West Texas, his partial ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball team and the political machine he developed as governor.
"It's clearly the case that these networking operations have been the key driving Bush fundraising," said Anthony Corrado, a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution and a political scientist at Colby College. "The fact that we have great numbers of these individuals raising larger and larger sums means there are going to be more individuals, postcampaign, making claims for policy preferences and ambassadorial posts."
Asked whether the president gives any special preference to campaign contributors in making decisions about policy, appointments or other matters, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said, "Absolutely not." The president, Duffy said, "bases his policy decisions on what's best for the American people."
Pioneers interviewed for these articles were reluctant to discuss on the record their contacts with the administration. "That's dead man's talk," one said. The Bush campaign declined repeated requests to reveal the entire 2000 list of Pioneers, saying it is contained in computer files they can no longer access.
Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "Our campaign enjoys support from nearly 1 million contributors from every county in this nation. We're proud of our broad-based support, and the Bush campaign has set the standard for disclosure."
M. Teel Bivins, a rancher, Pioneer and member of the Texas Senate awaiting confirmation as ambassador to Sweden, spoke more openly in an interview with the BBC in 2001. "You wouldn't have direct access if you had spent two years of your life working hard to get this guy elected president, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars?" he said. "You dance with them what brung ya."
For the 2004 election, the composition of the Pioneers has changed, reflecting the broad support the Bush administration has given and received from industries ranging from health care to energy.
Of the 246 known Pioneers from the 2000 election, about half -- 126 -- are Pioneers or Rangers again. They are joined by 385 new Pioneers and Rangers whose backgrounds are less from Texas and the Bush circle than from the nation's business elite, particularly Wall Street and such major players as Bear Stearns & Co. Inc., Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.; Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston Inc. and Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc.
The campaign's most productive Zip code this year is Manhattan's 10021: the Upper East Side, bounded by Fifth Avenue, East 80th Street, East 61st Street and the East River.
"This is the most successful political fundraising mechanism in the history of politics, and it will be emulated by other candidates and campaigns in the future," said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, a public interest group that has tracked the Pioneer network for five years.
[b]First Goal: $50 Million [/b]
No candidate in recent history was better positioned than George W. Bush to draw on so many disparate sources of wealth. The task for the four Bush friends who met in Midland, Tex., in late 1998 -- Texas Republican fundraiser and public relations specialist James B. Francis Jr., fundraiser Jeanne Johnson Phillips, state Republican chairman Fred Meyer and Don Evans, then a Texas oil man -- was to figure out how to capitalize on the extensive network of rich and powerful people that the governor, his father, brothers, uncles, grandfather and great-grandparents had built up over the past century.
This account of the founding of the Pioneers is drawn from interviews with three of the four participants.
Two wings of the family, the Bushes and the Walkers, had long been entrenched in the industrial Midwest and on Wall Street. This establishment, in turn, had produced the investors who had bankrolled the venture of George H.W. Bush into the oil industry after World War II, his acquisition of wealth through oil and his ascent to national prominence.
The 41st president had, in pursuing his own political ambitions, built up a financial network that he in turn could pass on to two of his sons, George W. and Jeb.
At the time of the 1998 Midland meeting, Evans, Phillips, Francis and Meyer had the relatively modest goal of raising a minimum of $50 million to reject public financing for the 2000 Republican primaries and to be free to spend without limit until the summer nominating conventions.
Other Republicans had rejected public money for the primary season before, in order to spend their own wealth. Bush, in contrast, was not going to use his own money -- he was going to raise it from hundreds of thousands of donors.
The early signs were favorable. For months, Bush's handlers had been signaling that the Texas governor was ready to run for the White House. Big givers, in turn, were promising support. The pledges posed two problems.
The first was that the Bush network was made up of men, and a scattering of women, who were used to writing big checks. Donations to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns, to the Republican National Committee's "Team 100," to Jeb Bush's Florida Republican Party and to the Bushes' earlier oil and baseball ventures had no contribution limits. Transfers and gifts of $100,000 or more were commonplace within this universe.
Federal elections, however, were different. A key provision of the 1974 Watergate reforms for the first time set a limit on individual contributions to a presidential campaign: a relatively paltry $1,000.
"We had to turn these people into money raisers instead of money givers," Francis said in a recent interview -- to get them to do the dirty work of politics, to make hundreds of calls to clients, subcontractors, to their corporate subordinates, to their law partners and fellow lobbyists and plead for cash.
Their problem can be illustrated by looking at the $41 million Bush had collected for his two gubernatorial bids under rules allowing unlimited contributions. If the same number of people had contributed under federal campaign rules with a limit of just $1,000 each, Bush would have raised only $14.3 million.
At the 1998 Midland meeting, the goal was to figure how to get "two steps ahead" -- to use Meyer's phrase -- of the $1,000 contribution limit.
Francis came up with the idea of making it a competition. "We purposely set the bar high," Francis said. "These are very successful, very competitive people," and the requirement of raising at least $100,000 in contributions of $1,000 or less was designed "to tap into their competitive instincts."
Not only would the fundraisers compete to make Pioneer, they would also vie to see who could raise the most money, and, even more significantly, who could recruit the largest number of other Pioneers.
The second problem was accountability. Fundraisers are notorious for making extravagant promises and claiming credit for every name they recognize on a donor list. "You can have an event that pulls in $3 million, and there will be 20 guys each saying they raised $1 million," said a Republican fundraiser who spoke under the condition of anonymity.
A system was needed to make certain there was no double or triple counting, that when a check came in for $1,000, proper credit was given to the fundraiser who had solicited the money.
Phillips proposed a solution: Every fundraiser would be assigned his or her own four-digit tracking number. A Pioneer would get credit only for those checks that arrived with the correct tracking number clearly printed on them.
In addition, prospective Pioneers would have a direct line into the Bush campaign finance offices. There they could routinely find out where they stood, compared with the rest of the field. Every month, they would get printouts of donations. Everyone assigned a number could check regularly to see if their $1,000 pledges had been fulfilled.
Soon after the 1998 Midland strategy session, Francis, Evans, Phillips and Meyer joined other campaign operatives in Dallas to put the plan to work. The four reported directly to Karl Rove, Bush's principal political adviser. Francis took charge of the Pioneer program. In addition to Bush family members and friends, Francis had essentially four spheres of money to mine, all of which overlapped at various points.
The first sphere was formed by the group of men who had repeatedly gambled on George W. Bush as an entrepreneur, investing in failed Bush ventures in the oil business and then joining Bush in the highly profitable acquisition of the Texas Rangers baseball team. The Rangers made millions for Bush and his partners.
The second sphere was made up of the Texas political elite and business community that supported him as governor. Many were involved in the energy industry. Others sought tighter restrictions on lawsuits against corporations and physicians. Gov. Bush had won approval of state legislation favorable to both of these constituencies.
The third sphere was made up of the Republican financial elite with strong ties to Bush's father, the 41st president.
During the Nixon and Ford administrations, the senior Bush had cemented alliances on crucial fronts, serving in top posts at the United Nations, the Republican National Committee and the Central Intelligence Agency. More importantly, during three runs for the presidency, two terms as vice president and one as president, the elder Bush had cultivated and assiduously maintained a national base of major donors and fundraisers. Many were ready and willing to support his son -- including some of the 252 members of the Republican National Committee's "Team 100," each of whom had given the party at least $100,000.
The importance of this legacy to George W. Bush is clearly reflected in the composition of the 246 men and women who would become Pioneers in 2000. At least 60 -- 24 percent -- had been supporters of Bush's father in the 1980 or 1988 campaigns.
The fourth sphere was composed of the supporters of Bush's fellow Republican governors, most importantly those of his brother, Jeb Bush in Florida. By November 1999, well before any primaries or caucuses had been held, George W. Bush already had the endorsements of 26 of 30 GOP governors.
The Bush campaign tapped these sources to raise a then-record $96.3 million for the primaries in 2000, far outdistancing Democrat Gore's $49.5 million. Both candidates received $68 million in public financing for the general election campaign.
In 2002, Congress enacted the McCain-Feingold bill banning contributions to political parties of what is known as "soft money" -- unlimited donations from corporations, unions or the wealthy. Instead, the legislation raised the "hard money" limit on contributions to candidates from $1,000 to $2,000.
"The organization of the Pioneers and Rangers is significant, and it is the way of the future," said Ken Goldstein, a University of Wisconsin political scientist. "People with Rolodexes and the ability to raise money have always been valuable, but with the passage of McCain-Feingold, they have become especially valuable. . . . [T]he ability to get friends, colleagues and business associates to give the maximum hard money amount is now even more valuable."
With soft money banned, the 2004 Bush campaign has greatly expanded the Pioneer program, setting a new record of more than $200 million raised so far. This year, Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, followed Bush's lead and rejected public financing for his primary campaign, fearing he would be crushed by the Bush organization if he were forced to abide by the $45 million spending limits that accompany public financing. Kerry recently released a list of 182 people who have each raised a minimum of $50,000, helping to bring his total to at least $110 million.
The Democrats are increasingly relying on independent groups known as 527s, after their designation in the tax code. They currently raise unlimited funds for political ads that have been used to attack Bush. Two prominent examples are the Media Fund and Moveon.org. Financier George Soros and Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corp., have each given more than $7 million to these organizations.
For the general election campaign, Bush and Kerry are accepting public money; each will get $75 million.
Until the conventions this summer, Bush can enjoy his spending advantage over Kerry, saturating the airwaves with ads that help to define Kerry, particularly in the battleground states.
The Bush reelection campaign is currently riding a wave of Wall Street money and has consolidated the Republican establishment with the backing of prominent Washington lobbyists and trade association executives. They are not only highly effective fundraisers themselves but also their client and membership lists include some of the most regulated, and most politically active, corporations in every state.
At least 64 Rangers and Pioneers are lobbyists, including Jack Abramoff, who until recently specialized in representing Indian tribes with gambling interests; Kirk Blalock, whose clients include Fannie Mae, the Health Insurance Association of America, and the Business Roundtable; Jack N. Gerard, president of the National Mining Association; and Lanny Griffith, whose clients include the American Trucking Associations, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., the Southern Co., a major energy concern, and State Street Corp.
[b]On Track to Appointments [/b]
Big donors, Republican and Democrat, have always received benefits from the administrations that received their largess. Bill Clinton brought big donors into the White House and let them sleep in the Lincoln bedroom and appointed some to government jobs.
The Bush campaign's innovation in the late 1990s was to institutionalize what other administrations had done more informally, which is to create a special class of donors that can be singled out from the pack and tracked with precision. Some of their transactions with the administration can also be tracked.
Sometimes the interests of Pioneers are relayed in subtle, indirect ways, through members of Congress or Republican leaders, especially in the case of major administration bills enacted since Bush took office: three bills granting tax relief to the wealthy and to corporations, the 2003 Medicare bill supported by the drug industry and other major health lobbies, and pending legislation providing tax breaks and regulatory relief to the energy sector.
At another level, requests for tickets to an event, such as a White House party, are likely to be more overt than the nuanced approach needed to get on the radar for a presidential appointment.
"It is noticed that you are doing extra work and you have a lot of friends in the administration," said Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.), a Pioneer who was considered for a presidential appointment. Her son, Reagan Dunn, was hired by the Justice Department, and her new husband, E. Keith Thomson, was appointed last year as the director of the Office of Trade Relations. "A lot [of Pioneers] have a particular interest and you have lots of contacts, and you say, 'I'd like to sign up to be an ambassador when one comes along.' "
The Pioneer tracking system ensures that hard work gets noticed. That's why Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) signed up this year. He read that Dunn, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and others were Pioneers. Portman had already raised money, "but I didn't have a tracking number. I finally decided to get one. I wanted to be supportive, and be viewed as supportive."
Critics complain that the Pioneer and Ranger program allows the campaign to track those who raise big money while cloaking details about them from the public; campaigns are required to report the names of the individual donors, but not the fundraisers who solicit the donations.
"The campaign is tracking them and giving them credit -- and supposedly all the access and influence that comes with huge campaign contributions," said McDonald of Texans for Public Justice. He said the Bush campaign has never released a complete list of Pioneers and Rangers with the specific amounts of money they have raised. Once, in response to a lawsuit, campaign officials said that such a list was not available.
"It is unbelievable that the most successful fundraising list in the history of politics has been misplaced," McDonald said.
Gary C. Jacobson, a University of California at San Diego political scientist who specializes in campaign finance, said the Pioneer program "is a way of allowing individuals to accumulate political clout despite the fact that contribution limits are relatively low."
"You can no longer give $100,000 and be an ambassador, but you might be able to raise that amount and accumulate the same kind of political debt," Jacobson said.
Nancy Goodman Brinker, one of the 23 Pioneers from the 2000 campaign who became an ambassador, said she does not remember exactly when or who first brought up a diplomatic appointment. She said it "seemed to evolve" after someone asked her whether she wanted to serve. The next thing she knew, she was talking to Clay Johnson in the White House personnel office about her choices. "One of the reasons why I chose and asked to be placed in Budapest," Brinker said at her Senate confirmation hearing, "was because I think there's been an amazing story of loyalty by this country."
Brinker said one of her primary concerns, before accepting the nomination, was her parents, who are in their eighties. The presidential personnel team works with a potential nominee to find a good fit, which she called "matching talent with interests." She knew George W. Bush from his days in Texas, where she founded the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, named for her sister who died of breast cancer.
"There were discussions where your talents fit in which country," Brinker said. "I specifically did not want to go -- I could not -- be farther than a 10-hour plane ride because of my [elderly] parents. I wanted to be in the European continent somewhere, particularly a country like this, where I thought I could try to make some kind of difference."
Patronage decisions for Pioneers and other friends of the president are made largely by Rove, the White House senior political adviser, and Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff, in consultation with the Office of Presidential Personnel, which handles the vetting process, according to senior Republicans who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. Any donor who wants to be considered for a major job must indicate interest to one of those two men, the Republicans said.
These Republicans acknowledged that finance issues were taken into account, but said there were instances of donors being disappointed and people getting plum positions who had done little to help the campaign treasury.
In making decisions immediately after the election, Rove consulted Jack Oliver, a trusted insider in Bush's political family who managed the fundraising effort for both of his presidential campaigns. Oliver's main function was to tell Rove "what people had really done" to raise money, one of the senior Republicans said. Now, such decisions are made entirely within the White House, the official said, and Rove and Card also have sway over lesser favors, and "scrub the lists" of invitations to White House holiday parties.
"I can call Karl, and I can call about half of the Cabinet, and they will either take the call or call back," said one lobbyist Ranger, who described such access as "my bread and butter" and spoke only on the condition of anonymity. He and others noted that going to top officials in either the White House or in Cabinet departments is only used as a last resort on important issues and not always with success.
"It's much better to start with an assistant secretary or the White House public liaison office. Those people know who you are and can usually deal with the issue," another Ranger said. "You don't seek out the maitre d' unless you really need to."
Several major fundraisers in the lobbying community complained that as the election approaches, Rove has become a "little gun-shy" when dealing with association executives and lobbyists, fearful that his involvement with any special interest might produce adverse publicity.
"It's different now that we are in campaign mode," the lobbyist said. "Karl doesn't even want to be involved in courtesy visits [with clients]. 'Don't bring this to my office,' he'll say. He's been snakebitten" because of past controversies over his alleged involvement with groups seeking special favors, especially decisions involving steel import tariffs.
In response to questions about his contacts with Pioneers and Rangers, Rove said, "I talk to a wide variety of people, members of the campaign from the grass roots on up. . . . It's part of my job to keep an open ear to what people are saying around the county."
White House sources said that if anyone refers to fundraising while seeking something from the administration, the policy is to then "vet" the request with the White House counsel's office to make sure no regulations or laws are being violated.
Commerce Secretary Evans also plays a key role. "Evans acts as a kind of court of appeals . . . everybody knows that Evans is one of the president's best friends. So he can be very effective intervening for you with just about any department," one fundraiser-lobbyist said.
This lobbyist described the following situations as the type in which Evans can effectively help: "Say you've got a bunch of telecom companies that are frozen out of doing business in Russia, and [the] State [Department] won't do anything, or your sugar people can't get a fair hearing at USTR [the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative] in negotiations with Mexico. . . . [Evans] can make them stop and listen. He can get something unstuck."
Evans was the one fellow Pioneer Ken Lay turned to in desperation in the fall of 2001, when Enron spiraled toward bankruptcy. Lay wanted help with the company's credit rating, but Enron was in too much trouble, and Evans was unable to oblige.
[b]For 2004: Super Rangers [/b]
Last month at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge on Lake Oconee, after the golf and the entertainment and a reception with Bush for the elite Rangers, the "appreciation" of the campaign's leading fundraisers gave way, inevitably, to a business meeting.
On a bright Saturday morning, more than 300 of Bush's Pioneers and Rangers eschewed the links to gather in a windowless conference room. Sipping imported mineral water and coffee, Wall Street mingled with Texas.
A Post reporter walked into the session, which the campaign described later as an event closed to the media. The speakers "were under the belief that they were speaking privately with our contributors," campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish said.
There they learned that the Rangers would soon lose their top status, just as the Pioneers had before them. Raising $200,000 was a starting point, they were told. But to qualify as a "Super Ranger," they would have to raise an additional $300,000 for the Republican National Committee, where the individual contribution limit is $25,000.
"The name of the game is maxing out the dollars," Oliver told the gathering.
As the Super Ranger notion was unveiled, attendees shifted in their seats. Some looked up eagerly, but others demurred. "The rest of us, who don't have members or clients with deep enough pockets to come up with $25,000 said, 'Oh, [expletive],' " said one attendee who asked to remain anonymous.
To reach the new goals, Travis Thomas, the Bush-Cheney finance director, explained to the gathered Rangers and Pioneers how they could hold fundraisers in their homes featuring an appearance by the president that would bring in $2 million to $3 million in bundled contributions. Private homes, he pointed out, are more comfortable for the president.
And, Thomas added, "If it is in a private residence, it can be closed to the press." - http://www.washingtonpost.com...
|
|
|
| |
| Is Torture Okay??? If So, Why Not Torture Bush, Cheney & Rice About Pre-9/11 Intelligence??? |
| 05.15.04 (4:32 pm) [edit] |
[b]Of course, war crimes including murder, rape, torture and abuse of the accused, prisoners and the vulnerable are [i]morally wrong [/i]and are [i]evil atrocities in the eyes of every civilized human being [/i]... [/b]The following hypothetical question is posed to right-wing neo-con, neo-fascist brain-dead sheep who are unconscionably attempting to make ugly neo-nazi "[i]excuses"[/i] for the corrupt Bush regime's heinous[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]in Iraq and Afghanistan:-- Why [i]not[/i] torture Bush, Cheney & Rice about pre-9/11 intelligence in order to find out [i]what they knew[/i]-- [i]when they knew it[/i]-- and [i]whether or not they let 9/11 happen[/i] to give them an "[i]excuse[/i]" to [i]piggy-back [/i]upon the tragic terrorist attack waged by Al Qaeda (not Saddam Hussein, not Iraq) against America in order to[i] lie and deceive the American people [/i]and wage their illegal & immoral war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire in Iraq??? ... We know that Bush, Cheney, Rice & their neo-con liars, traitors, felons and war criminals in the Bush Crime Organization are covering-up their [i]Crime Against America on 9/11[/i] http://www.americanprogress.o... , and should be made to[i] come clean[/i] ... Instead the 9/11 Whitewash Committee is a [i]fraud[/i] who let this neo-fascist cabal of crooks[i] off-the-hook [/i]...
"We the People" [i]should [/i]be outraged, angered and appalled by the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] neo-con, neo-fascist massacres, tortures, rapes and abuses of Iraqi and Afghanistani prisoners ... If [i]not,[/i] why[i] not [/i]murder, torture, rape and abuse Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their neo-con cabal of neo-fascist thugs & goons??? ... [b][i]Should [i]we[/i]??? [/i]... [i]Of course not!!![/i][/b] ...
[b]Consider the following ...[/b]
[b]Rancid from Top to Bottom
[u]Green Lights for Torture[/u][/b]
So there were WMDs in Iraq after all. They're called digital cameras. Partly because of them the US faces one of the most humiliating defeats in imperial history. But there's also a clear paper trail. Not just the long and copiously documented record of US torture, with many of its refinements acquired by the CIA from the Nazis after World War Two, but the more recent lineage of encouragement.
Within in a few days of the Trade Towers going down in September, 2001, a vacationing FBI agent told an acquaintance of mine in Puerto Vallarta that torture was being used on detainees in the US. On May 3, 2004, two such detainees, a Pakistani called Javaid Iqbal and an Egyptian, Ehab Elmaghraby, filed a civil complaint with a US court describing their beatings in the Brooklyn Detention Center, being forced to walk naked in front of female guards, put in a tiny cell lit 24 hours a day without blankets, mattress or toilet paper. Both were expelled from the US, pleading guilty to charges unrelated to terrorism. The Detention Center was harshly criticized in a 2003 DOJ report for serious maltreatment of inmates.
By early November, 2001, public opinion here in the US was being softened up for the use of torture. At the start of November the Washington Post published a piece by Walter Pincus citing FBI and Justice Department investigators as saying that "traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the Sept 11 attacks and terrorist plans." Pincus reported that "alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those used occasionally by Israeli interrogators."
Jonathan Alter, Newsweek's in-house liberal pundit, confided to his readers in the weekly's edition for November 5, 2001, that something was needed to "jump-start the stalled investigation." His tone was facetiously upbeat, in line with the "just hazing" approach now promoted by the pain-averse Rush Limbaugh. Alter: "Couldn't we at least subject them [detainees] to psychological torture, like tapes of dying rabbits or high decibel rap?" Alter also made respectful reference to Harvard's pride, Alan Dershowitz, then running around the country promoting the idea of "torture warrants" issued by judges and recommending needles under detainees' fingernails, and to Israel, where (in Alter's terms) "until 1999 an interrogation technique called 'shaking' was legal. It entailed holding a smelly bag over a suspect's head in a dark room", a decorous way of referring to how Palestinians were nearly suffocated by having their heads stuffed in sacks of excrement by Israeli torturers.
It was not far into the war in Afghanistan that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld made plain his views of the treatment of prisoners, after horrifying accounts began to surface of the treatment of Taliban POWs.
Recall that after the surrender of the Kunduz fortress in November 2001 hundreds of Taliban were taken prisoner along with an American called John Walker Lindh. Rumsfeld had originally stated that the US was "not inclined to negotiate surrenders". He then amended this to say that the Taliban should be let out of the net but that foreign fighters should expect no mercy: "My hope is they will either be killed or taken prisoner."
It turned out they endured both Rumsfeld's options. A year later Jamie Doran, a British television producer, aired his documentary establishing beyond reasonable doubt that hundreds of these prisoners - with no distinction between Taliban or "foreign fighters"- died either by suffocation in the container trucks used to transport them towards the Shebarghan prison, or by outright execution near Shebarghan.
On the basis of interviews with eyewitnesses, Doran said U.S. soldiers were present when the containers were opened. "When the containers were finally opened, a mess of urine, blood, faeces, vomit and rotting flesh was all that remained ... As the containers were lined up outside the prison, a [U.S.] soldier accompanying the convoy was present when the prison commanders received orders to dispose of the evidence quickly. Newsweek's investigation into the Afghan atrocities ("The Death Convoy of Afghanistan," 26 August 2002) stated that "American forces were working intimately with 'allies' who committed what could well qualify as war crimes."
Witnesses also stated "600 Taliban PoWs who survived the containers' shipment to the Shebarghan prison ... were taken to a spot in the desert and executed in the presence of about 30 to 40 U.S. special forces soldiers" (The Globe and Mail, 19 December 2002). Other U.S. soldiers are said to have involved themselves directly and enthusiastically in the "dirty work" of prisoner torture and the disposal of corpses. "The Americans did whatever they wanted," stated one Afghan witness. "We had no power to stop them. Everything was under the control of the American commander."
John Walker Lindh was kept in a coffin sized box. As his lawyer later stated, the photographs left no doubt as to what kind of treatment he had endured. Part of his lawyer's final deal with the prosecution was a dropping of any possible charges of torture.
From May , 2003, the Red Cross was complaining to US army commanders and to proconsul Bremer in Iraq, to Rumsfeld, assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about frightful treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. "The elements we found were tantamount to torture," Pierre Kraehenbuehl, operations director for the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross, told reporters in Geneva at the end of the first week in May, 2004, after the Wall Street Journal disclosed the contents of a major Red Cross report. "They were clearly incidents of degrading and inhuman treatment."
Kraehenbuehl said said the ICRC investigations showed "a pattern, a broad system" rather than "isolated acts of individual members of the coalition forces." During an unannounced October visit to Abu Ghraib, for example, the ICRC monitors witnessed "the practice of keeping persons completely naked in totally empty concrete cells in total darkness for several consecutive days," the report said.
The Red Cross teams also saw guards forcing male prisoners to parade around in women's underwear, according to the summary report. When an ICRC official complained to the military officer in charge, the report says, the American explained that the practice was "part of the process." The ICRC report said the suspects were "beaten severely by [coalition forces] personnel" and one man, identified as 28-year-old Baha Daoud Salim, died. In the words of the report, "His co-arrestees heard him screaming and asking for assistance."
The Red Cross began making its complaints just about the time, back in May and June 2003, the U.S. was on a full-press diplomatic campaign to compel other countries to sign bilateral agreements exempting U.S. citizens, whether military or civilians, from the potential jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court (ICC) in Rome.
What's clear enough is that the quality of US leadership from the very top down, both civilian and military, is rancid. Accountability has long gone out of the window. The venality and corruption of Bremer's coalition officials and many of Sanchez's officers have naturally allowed many in the armed forces to degenate into criminal thuggery. Iraqi families complain that after US troops have searched and smashed up their homes, the occupants return to find their safes broken open and their savings and valuables stolen.
The Red Cross report cites some coalition military intelligence officers as reckoning that "between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake."
It's ironic how the great moral crusade for freedom and democracy in Iraq has foundered on a photo of Private Lynndie England hauling around The Other on a dog leash. Even the images of torture degrade one's moral instincts with appalling speed. I''d love to see a photo of Anne Coulter clipping the leash on Rush Limbaugh, though not being Muslim he probably wouldn't care. Remember, being forced to strip naked and have one's genitals menaced by savage dogs is something Muslims apparently find abhorrent. Those Others are a bunch of ninnies, aren't they? Not like us Christians. - http://www.counterpunch.com
|
|
|
| |
| Bush Apparently Is Too Stupid To Tell the Difference Between Success & Failure!!! |
| 05.15.04 (2:32 pm) [edit] |
[b]Apparently Bush is [i]too stupid [/i]to tell the difference between success & failure, as his disastrous fiasco in Iraq is clearly a bungled mess costing the precious lives of U.S. Soldiers & Innocent Iraqi Civilians in an unconscionable blood-letting with[i] no end in sight[/i]-- and the squandering of the U.S. Treasury with hundreds of billions of U.S. Taxpayer Dollars funnelled into the bulging pockets of the traitorous war-profiteers: the Bush Crime Family, Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. with [i]no end is sight [/i]... Not [i]one [/i]out of the many crooks, liars, traitors, embezzlers, felons and incompetent buffoons in his traitorous regime has been fired ... [i]Why?[/i] ... [i]Because Bush is too weak, too scared and too stupid[/i] ... Of course, the culpable opportunistic vultures might write[i] tell-all books [/i]showing-up Dubya for the War Criminal that he truly [i]is [/i]... [/b]
Bush is also[i] too morally depraved [/i]to tell the difference between war crimes and right-and-proper actions as he's got his insane neo-con, neo-fascist attack-dogs & court-jesters [i]out-in-force [/i]trying to persuade us that murder, torture, rape and heinous abuse of innocent Iraqis (Arabs) is[i] just fine-and-dandy [/i]...
"We the People" must rid ourselves of the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]who are irresponsible, immoral and reckless war criminals who deserve to be shipped off to the Hague to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...
Consider "[i][b]'Stop blaming your henchmen, Mr. President[/b][/i]" by [i]Fred Kaplan[/i], Slate, on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/... :
And so it seems I, too, have misunderestimated http://slate.msn.com/id/21000... the president. This past Wednesday, I wrote a column holding George W. Bush http://slate.msn.com/id/21004... responsible for our recent disasters--the torture at Abu Ghraib and the whole plethora of strategic errors in Iraq. My main argument was that Bush has placed too much trust, for far too long, in the judgment of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, despite his ceaseless string of bad judgments.
However, two news stories that have since come to my attention--one that appeared on the same day, the other more than two months ago--suggest not merely that Bush is guilty of "failing to recognize failure" (as my headline put it) but that he is directly culpable for the sins in question, no less so than his properly beleaguered defense chief.
The first story, written by Mark Matthews in the May 12 [i]Baltimore Sun[/i], http://www.baltimoresun.com/n...,0,2804533.story?coll=bal-news-natio n quotes Secretary of State Colin Powell--on the record--as saying Bush knew about the International Committee of the Red Cross reports that were filed many months ago about the savagery at the prison. Powell is quoted as saying:
[i]We kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC and other international organizations as part of my regular briefings of the president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues, and when we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us ... we had to respond to them[/i].
Powell adds that he, Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice kept Bush "fully informed of the concerns that were being expressed, not in specific details but in general terms." (Thanks to Joshua Micah Marshall, whose blog http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... alerted me to the [i]Sun[/i] story.)
So much for Rumsfeld's protective claim, at last week's hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that he had failed to bring the matter to the president's attention. No wonder Bush, in turn, rode out to the Pentagon and praised his servant-secretary for doing a "superb" job.
It's amazing, by the way, how Colin Powell seems to have scuttled his good-soldier http://slate.msn.com/id/20957... routine altogether, criticizing his president at first quasi-anonymously (through Bob Woodward's new book http://slate.msn.com/id/20992... ), then through close aides (Wil Hylton's GQ http://us.gq.com/plus/content... article), and now straight up in the [i]Baltimore Sun[/i]. One wonders when he'll go all the way and start making campaign appearances for John Kerry.
The second news story that heaves more burdens on the president comes from an NBC News http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... broadcast by Jim Miklaszewski on March 2. Apparently, Bush had three opportunities, long before the war, to destroy a terrorist camp in northern Iraq run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida associate who recently cut off the head of Nicholas Berg. But the White House decided not to carry out the attack because, as the story puts it:
[i]The administration feared [that] destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam[/i].
The implications of this are more shocking, in their way, than the news from Abu Ghraib. Bush promoted the invasion of Iraq as a vital battle in the war on terrorism, a continuation of our response to 9/11. Here was a chance to wipe out a high-ranking terrorist. And Bush didn't take advantage of it because doing so might also wipe out a rationale for invasion.
The story gets worse in its details. As far back as June 2002, U.S. intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart bombs. The White House turned it down. In October 2002, intelligence reported that Zarqawi was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe. The Pentagon drew up another attack plan. The White House again demurred. In January 2003, police in London arrested terrorist suspects connected to the camp. The Pentagon devised another attack plan. Again, the White House killed the plan, not Zarqawi.
When the war finally started in March, the camp was attacked early on. But by that time, Zarqawi and his followers had departed.
This camp was in the Kurdish enclave of Iraq. The U.S. military had been mounting airstrikes against various targets throughout Iraq--mainly air-defense sites--for the previous few years. It would not have been a major escalation to destroy this camp, especially after the war against al-Qaida in Afghanistan. The Kurds, whose autonomy had been shielded by U.S. air power since the end of the 1991 war, wouldn't have minded and could even have helped.
But the problem, from Bush's perspective, was that this was the only tangible evidence of terrorists in Iraq. Colin Powell even showed the location of the camp on a map during his famous Feb. 5 briefing at the U.N. Security Council. The camp was in an area of Iraq that Saddam didn't control. But never mind, it was something. To wipe it out ahead of time might lead some people--in Congress, the United Nations, and the American public--to conclude that Saddam's links to terrorists were finished, that maybe the war wasn't necessary. So Bush let it be.
In the two years since the Pentagon's first attack plan, Zarqawi has been linked not just to Berg's execution but, according to NBC, 700 other killings in Iraq. If Bush had carried out that attack back in June 2002, the killings might not have happened. More: The case for war (as the White House feared) might not have seemed so compelling. Indeed, the war itself might not have happened.
One ambiguity does remain. The NBC story reported that "the White House" declined to carry out the airstrikes. Who was "the White House"? If it wasn't George W. Bush--if it was, say, Dick Cheney--then we crash into a very different conclusion: not that Bush was directly culpable, but that he was more out of touch than his most cynical critics have imagined. It's a tossup which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the chance to kill a top-level enemy in the war on terrorism for the sake of pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq--or a president who leaves a government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to his aides.
|
|
|
| |
| Act Now! Join the Virtual March to Stop Bush's Blood-Thirsty Agenda! |
| 05.15.04 (12:28 pm) [edit] |
[b]Now is the time for "We the People" to stand against the corrupt Bush regime ...[/b]
Please register now to join with us in our virtual march on the White House taking place on Sunday 29th August 2004 at 2PM US Central Standard Time, 7PM UK time!
Let the Bush regime know exactly what you think about their policies!
Just click here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... , then click on the "Join this live march" button, then on "sign up now" and enter your details.
You'll receive reminders about the protest.
Shortly before the action begins you'll receive an email with instructions on where to send your messages, along with a suggested messge, please keep this to hand and rally here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... no later than 10 minutes before the start of the virtual march.
When the countdown clock on that page reaches 0:0:0 start sending those faxes and emails, phone the White House and visit the website! - http://geocities.com/tellbush...
|
|
|
| |
| Freethinkers: Keeping Government Out of Religion & Religion Out of Government |
| 05.15.04 (10:09 am) [edit] |
"[i]Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society[/i]." - Thomas Jefferson, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu...
[b]Our Founding Fathers were adament in creating a "wall of separation between church and state" and would have been appalled at the pressure brought to bear by religious zealots and tyrannical fanatics like the traitorous Bush (unfit to be president) who is corrupting our system of democracy ...[/b]
In a highly informative interview by Bill Moyers ([i]NOW with Bill Moyers[/i] http://www.pbs.org/now/societ... ) with Susan Jacoby, author of "[b]Freethinkers: [i]A History of American Secularism[/i][/b]" (excerpt on http://www.beliefnet.com/stor... ), they explore the dangers of our society being turned into a fanatical religious totalitarian system if we do not go back to the roots of our government, our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ... Indeed, Ms. Jacoby cites John Adams, 2nd President of the U.S., who in the Treaty with Tripoli (1796-97), reassures the Barbary States of Northern Africa that the United States of America is "not to be founded on Christianity" http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/j... ...
"We the People" must extricate ourselves from the dangerously stupid and corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who are [i]vile traitors [/i]to our nation's heritage, system of laws and historical role in the world community ...
[i]NOW with Bill Moyers [/i]web-site has more links to sources regarding the separation of church and state so vital to our nation's democracy and freedom on http://www.pbs.org/now/societ...
Susan Jacoby, who began her writing career as a reporter for THE WASHINGTON POST, is the author of five books, including WILD JUSTICE, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, she has been a contributor to THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NATION, TomPaine.com and the AARP Bulletin, among other publications. She is also director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York and lives in New York City.
In her latest book, FREETHINKERS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN SECULARISM, Jacoby offers an impassioned history that challenges the current marginalization of secular values. FREETHINKERS illuminates the neglected accomplishments of secularists who have stood at the forefront of the battle for every kind of reform — from the framing of a Constitution based on human rights rather than divine authority to the feminist and civil liberties movements of the 20th century. The book not only explores the religious skepticism of such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton but also restores to history such dedicated and forgotten secular humanists as Robert Green Ingersoll, known as "the Great Agnostic" and the most famous orator in 19th-century America.
Read an interesting interview with Susan Jacoby on http://www.beliefnet.com/stor... .
|
|
|
| |
| Yes, Even The Pro-War Press & Conservatives Break With Bush ... |
| 05.14.04 (5:46 pm) [edit] |
[b]Conscientious Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike are[i] disgusted [/i]with the corrupt Bush regime, particularly the fact that [i]no action whatsoever has been taken [/i]against those who misled us into their illegal & immoral neo-con, neo-fascist war in Iraq ([i]based upon heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/i]) and[i] no action whatsoever has been taken [/i]against those in the Pentagon ([i]i.e. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc[/i].) who are responsible for their ungodly murder, torture, rape and abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Bush has fired[i] no one[/i]-- and consequently Bush is culpable and guilty of traitorous [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i] ...[/b]
Just as many conscientious Germans ([i]tragically, not enough[/i]) stood-up and opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party recognizing that so-called "loyalty" to an evil regime is misguided, cowardly and evil itself, so "We the People" should recognize that our duty as loyal Americans is to stand against the corrupt Bush regime and to oppose their acts of neo-nazi evil in Iraq and Afghanistan ...
Consider "[i][b]The Pro-War Press Breaks With Bush[/b][/i]" by [i]Jefferson Morley[/i], Washington Post, on http://www.washingtonpost.com... : - [i]Excerpts[/i] -
In the ranks of journalism, they were the coalition of the willing: the newspapers that supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.
These news outlets made the case for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, often in the face of strong anti-war feelings in their countries. Their editorials lent credibility and moral support to the White House's claims that the U.S.-led war had international backing.
Today, they are having second thoughts.
... Their recommendation: Rumsfeld should resign.
"Democracy means accountability," they conclude. "For the United States to recapture a sense of decency, he should do the decent thing." ...
Consider also "[i][b]Conservatives' dissent puts pressure on Bush[/b][/i]" by [i]Steven Thomma and James Kuhnhenn[/i], The Seattle-Times, on http://seattletimes.nwsource.... :
President Bush is facing sharp dissent from his conservative base that could force him to change course on the war in Iraq and other issues or risk losing critical support for his re-election campaign.
The complaints are rising from the traditional conservative wing of the Republican Party — including such influential voices as Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois and columnist George Will, who are challenging the "neo-conservative" doctrine that the United States can remake the Middle East by toppling Saddam Hussein and nurturing a democracy.
"It would be foolish, not to say ruinously arrogant, to believe that we can determine the future of Iraq," Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said yesterday.
Bush still has solid support from his party's rank and file — 95 percent of conservative Republicans plan to vote for him or are leaning toward doing so, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
But if dissatisfaction over the war and other hot-button issues — such as soaring federal-budget deficits, an expensive new Medicare drug entitlement and a proposed near-amnesty for illegal immigrants — spreads through conservative ranks, it could force Bush to change course or face the prospect that some conservatives might sit out what's expected to be another close election.
Bush tried to rally his base last night, addressing the 40th annual meeting of the American Conservative Union in Washington. He stuck to his Middle East vision of a new democracy in Iraq.
Allies "know a free Iraq will be an agent for change in a part of the world that so desperately needs freedom and peace," Bush said. "The Iraqi people want to run themselves. And so, on June 30th a sovereign Iraqi interim government will take office, and there will be tough times ahead. These are not easy tasks. They are essential tasks, and America will finish what we have begun and we will win this essential victory in a war on terror."
Days earlier, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested Bush's vision of America's role may be unrealistic and unwise.
"We need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts, a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy, by force if necessary," Roberts said in a speech.
Hyde and Roberts aren't abandoning their support for the war to topple Saddam. Both voted for the congressional resolution last year authorizing military action in Iraq, citing the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
But no evidence has been found that Iraq had chemical or biological weapons or an active nuclear-weapons program, and Hyde and Roberts now insist that the administration's first priority should be to stabilize the country so Iraqis can form a government.
"There's a growing split between conservatives and neo-cons," said a senior House Republican aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. "From day one, traditional conservatives did not believe that the United States could deliver democracy to Iraq."
Unlike traditional conservatives, who are wary of big government, budget deficits and foreign entanglements, so-called "neo-conservatives" believe that America has an opportunity and even a duty to export its concept of liberty. Some in the administration thought Iraq would be Exhibit A of how readily Western democracy would take root.
Will, who is influential with traditional conservatives, recently scorned such neo-conservative thinking. Conservatism, he wrote, means seeing the world as it is, not as it should be.
"Traditional conservatism," Will wrote. "Nothing 'neo' about it. This administration needs a dose of conservatism without the prefix."
In a follow-up column, Will voiced sharp criticism of the Bush White House for refusing to consider changing course in Iraq.
"This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts," Will wrote. "Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in the face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice."
Bush faces other criticism from traditional conservatives, notably over budget policies.
David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union, noted in a recent letter to members that federal spending has increased by $300 billion since Bush took office, including $96 billion for domestic social-welfare programs. By comparison, Keene said, spending increased by only $51 billion during President Clinton's first six years.
|
|
|
| |
| British Government Officials Urge Blair To Divorce Himself From Bush ... So Should Americans... |
| 05.14.04 (1:17 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" need to [i]get a divorce [/i]from Bush ... [/b]Senior governmental figures in the United Kingdom from Prime Minister Tony Blair's[i] own party [/i]are encouraging him to [i]'detach' himself [/i]from the corrupt Bush regime ... Wise counsel from our allies[i] across the pond [/i]... We should[i] take them up [/i]on their sage advice and oust the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] ...
Consider "[i][b]Blair urged to loosen ties with US[/b][/i]" by [i]Nicholas Watt and Michael White[/i], Guardian UK, on http://politics.guardian.co.u...,11538,1216540,00.html :
[b]Ministers call for public disengagement[/b]
Senior figures across the Labour party are intensifying pressure on Tony Blair to publicly detach himself from the Bush administration, calling on him to spell out an independent British position on the Middle East, peacekeeping in Iraq and the US presidential election.
Normally loyal ministers have joined backbench colleagues to urge the prime minister to demonstrate his political detachment from Washington amid fears that the crisis in Iraq is undermining his domestic standing.
According to ministers and Labour backbenchers from all wings of the party interviewed by the [i]Guardian[/i], Mr Blair should seize the earliest opportunity to recalibrate his approach to foreign affairs.
Key party members are advising Downing Street to change tack in [i]three key areas[/i]:
· Drawing a line between Britain's widely acclaimed peacekeeping record and the heavy-handed military tactics of US forces in Iraq;
· Advocating a more emollient approach to the Middle East peace process, undoing the damage of Mr Blair's Rose Garden endorsement of the Sharon plan. In particular, they want No 10 to highlight the EU's refusal to follow Washington's imposition of sanctions on Syria;
· Courting US Democrats more actively in election year without breaking traditional conventions of government-to-government neutrality.
Mr Blair has made clear to his supporters that he will not criticise President George Bush in public. In an interview with the [i]Independent[/i] today the prime minister said it was not a time to start "messing around with your main ally".
But he is said to have conceded tha he will have to soften his stance on Iraq in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. "Tony can seem a bit one-dimensional on Iraq because he is so sure that what he did was right. That has changed with the pictures from Abu Ghraib: he now realises that people who supported the war are very worried and have the right to ask: How did it end up like this?" one former minister said.
Mr Blair has also indicated that he will do more to court the Democrats, who are seeking to put Senator John Kerry in the White House. Mr Blair is understood to have heeded the advice of ministers who say that, unless his party can improve ties with the Democrats, the government will be badly exposed if Mr Kerry wins on November 2.
Ministers are expected to try to shape their US trips around Democrat-controlled states, where they will meet like-minded opposite numbers.
Downing Street's priority is to refocus political debate on the domestic agenda. Mr Blair yesterday concluded the outlines of a deal with his chancellor and rival, Gordon Brown, to rescue 60,000 people who lost their occupational pensions when their firms went bust.
The prime minister also enjoyed what was billed as "one of the best-humoured cabinets". He then headed for the West Midlands to trumpet plans to offer a free "second chance" to adults without five GCSEs or equivalent NVQs.
John Prescott told yesterday's cabinet to "get things in perspective". And a Blair adviser said: "When you go out and meet real people, no one mentions Iraq."
But many MPs are more divided over the much-debated prospect of Mr Brown succeeding to the Labour leadership this side of a general election, a bet on which the bookmaker William Hill cut the odds from 14/1 to 8/1 yesterday.
The extent to which the Iraq crisis is spreading political unease across Europe was underlined yesterday when the French government said the region was spinning out of control. Speaking to[i] Le Monde[/i], foreign minister Michel Barnier, likened Iraq to a black hole. He said: "It all gives the impression of a total lack of direction.
"What strikes me is the spiral of horror, of blood, of inhumanity that one sees on all fronts, from Falluja to Gaza and in the terrible pictures of the assassination of the unfortunate American hostage."
In negotiations in New York on a new UN resolution for Iraq, the French government is pressing for as many powers as possible to be handed to the caretaker government. The main sticking point is the role of US-led forces after June 30.
Any change of tack in British foreign policy would show the degree of soul-searching at the top of government.
Earlier this week, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, made unusually forthright criticisms of the Bush administration.
Peter Hain, leader of the Commons, followed suit yesterday with a strong statement on the US's abuse of prisoners. "It is a stain on the coalition and the sooner the better it is got control of - and eradicated - then we can move forward," he told MPs.
|
|
|
| |
| More Blank Checks & No Oversight??? ... Enough Is Enough!!! |
| 05.14.04 (10:03 am) [edit] |
"Congress, including prominent conservatives, has grown so restive about the wisdom of Mr. Bush's strategy that on Thursday the deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, had to retreat from a Senate hearing when members of both parties demanded far more specifics than he could provide about plans for spending the $25 billion [Now it's up to $50 billion and this is just the[i] tip-of-the-iceberg [/i]...] the president is seeking to pursue the war in Iraq and Afghanistan." - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
[b]The corrupt Bush regime is used to behaving like a [i]tyrannical out-of-control dictatorship [/i]and is arrogantly asking for [i]more and more [/i]U.S. Soldiers ([i]Dubya's cannon-fodder[/i]) and[i] more and more [/i]U.S. taxpayer dollars to clean-up their bloody-fiasco in Iraq with no oversight http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... by our representatives in Congress ... [/b]This is outrageous and "We the People" should demand that Congress http://www.congress.org refuse to authorize more [i]wasteful squandering [/i]of the precious lives of our U.S. Soldiers & Innocent Iraqi civilians as well as [i]ruthlessly funnelling [/i]of U.S. taxpayer dollars into the bulging pockets of the traitorous war-profiteers: the Bush Crime Family, Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.-- who are [i]raping[/i] our nation in order to enrich themselves in the most heinous and criminal manner possible ... No wonder we lack the funds for improving our own citizens' well-being and solving problems here at home, with the insane Mad King George's neo-con neo-fascist swindle, plunder & looting of the American Middle-Class & Working People, for illegal & immoral warfare and treasonous tax cuts, tax loopholes & tax boondoggles for gluttonous corporations, wealthy oligarchs and hyper-rich plutocrats ... [i]Enough Is Enough!!! [/i]...
Please call upon Congress http://www.congress.org to commence [i]impeachment hearings [/i]in order to [i]remove from office [/i]the liars, traitors, embezzlers, felons, thieves and war criminals in the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who have committed heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... [i]Enough Is Enough!!! [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
On the same day the White House sent its new $25 billion Iraq spending request to Congress, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told lawmakers the administration would actually need at least $50 billion more, http://seattletimes.nwsource.... and other military experts told CongressDaily that number might even reach $80 billion. The $25-billion request will not release money until October of 2004 – four months from now despite an immediate need for protective equipment. http://www.washingtonpost.com...¬Found=true The massive spending request was just one page in length, as the White House refused to detail http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb... how it wanted to spend the money – essentially demanding "unfettered flexibility" in an attempt to circumvent any congressional oversight. The legislation also included language allowing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to move resources into classified areas (such as interrogation operations) with next to no congressional approval. The request comes even as the administration has been unable to refute charges http://www.voanews.com/articl... that it secretly moved $700 million http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin... out of Afghanistan operations and into Iraq war planning in 2002, without the consent of Congress which is required by law http://www.americanprogress.o... .
[b]NEW STATE-BY-STATE REPORT ON IRAQ COSTS: [/b]The National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group, today released a new report analyzing how much the Iraq War has cost taxpayers in each state http://www.nationalpriorities... , and comparing it to how much each state has received for other federal programs. For instance, in Wisconsin, where President Bush will be giving a commencement address http://www.fox19.com/Global/s... today, the state has forked over roughly $2.6 billion for Iraq, while receiving just $861 million for education programs, and $221 million for environmental protection in the same time period.
[b]LAWMAKERS WANT MORE OVERSIGHT:[/b] Lawmakers from both parties yesterday appeared concerned that the carte blanche language in the White House's $25-billion request would allow the administration to spend money wherever it wants, instead of mandating that the money go directly to areas most in need. http://www.washingtonpost.com...¬Found=true House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young (R-FL) told CongressDaily that "he would insist on some restrictions on flexibility in using the additional funds." Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticized the bill as "a blank check," http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... while "even staunch White House allies like Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Wayne Allard (R-CO) said that the Senate needed more details."
[b]WHITE HOUSE HAS LOST ALL CREDIBILITY ON FUNDING ISSUES:[/b] After Wolfowitz made more predictions about the cost of war in Iraq, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) questioned his credibility, noting, "You have made numerous predictions, time and time again, that have turned out to be untrue and were based on faulty assumptions." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... To see Wolfowitz's and others' false claims about the cost of war, see[i] American Progress's Claims vs. Facts [/i]database at www.claimvfact.org http://www.americanprogress.o... – we have just added a special topic on Iraq War Costs.
[b]EVIDENCE WHITE HOUSE NOT TAKING SUPPORT FOR TROOPS SERIOUSLY:[/b] Despite the White House saying that the $25-billion request was specifically to help fund immediate military shortfalls, the text of the legislation (page 4 of this document http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb... ) actually says the money cannot be spent until October 1, 2005 – a full 16 months from now. When this was pointed out by the[i] Center for American Progress[/i], CongressDaily reported that administration "spokesman Chad Kolton said it was in fact a typographical error -albeit a rather big one." http://www.govexec.com/dailyf... Kolton then attacked [i]American Progress [/i]for having the nerve to scrutinize the bill so closely, saying, "They might want to try turning the lights out a little earlier over there" – an action that apparently scores of taxpayer-funded staffers writing Bush administration legislation know all too well.
[b]Sources:[/b]
The Center for American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.o...
"Polls Show Bush's Job-Approval Ratings Sinking" on http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
"Senators Assail Request for Aid for Afghan and Iraq Budgets" on http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
|
|
|
| |
| Is There More To The Nick Berg Beheading Story Than We're Being Told??? |
| 05.13.04 (3:31 pm) [edit] |
[b]Is there [i]more[/i] to the tragic Nick Berg[i] Beheading [/i]story than we're being told??? [/b]Normally one should be [i]very wary [/i]of conspiracy stories, however I was astonished upon seeing the following comments made by [i]well-respected news sources [/i]... "We the People" should [i]demand the truth [/i]from Congress http://www.congress.org and[i] insist upon an investigation [/i]as more and more[i] inconsistencies [/i]between the [i]facts[/i] and the corrupt Bush regime's [i]tale[/i] are coming to light http://www.khilafah.com/home/... http://www.news24houston.com/... http://www.libertyforum.org/s... http://www.timesdaily.com/app... http://www.news24.com/News24/...,,2-10-1460_1526618,00.html http://www.paknews.com/headin... http://www.conspiracyplanet.c... http://www.boston.com/dailyne...:.shtml ... Also, given the[i] ugly track-record [/i]of the mendacious Bush/Cheney's continuous lies, deceptions and falsehoods, we should be suspicious ...
If the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] had Nick Berg decapitated in order to divert attention away from their heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]including their unconscionable murder, torture, rape and abuse of Iraqi prisoners, then "We the People" should take to the streets and insist upon their [i]impeachment & removal[/i] from office immediately ...
[b]"[i]CIA did it to take the heat off the Pentagon[/i]"--[i]NBC reporter[/i]
Wed May 12, 2004 23:17
69.43.13.218[/b]
"...[i]the CIA did it to take the heat off the Pentagon[/i]"--NBC reporter stated tonight prime time news, continuing, [i]"...a story that will not die easily here in the Arab world[/i]".
NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, May 12th
Thus said the reporter from NBC News already "innoculating" the public against this reasonable "conspiracy theory" being promulgated by more questioning minds in both America and overseas. BUT IT MAKES ALL THE SENSE IN THE WORLD!
The previous article posted, "Fishy Circumstances and Flawed Timelines" is worth reading, especially the numbered observations at the close of the article. But there is more to add:
1. Both Drudge and Aljazeera report that "ِِA body found on Monday by US military patrol along a roadside over the weekend was identified as Berg's." ALJAZEERA http://english.aljazeera.net/...
Note the confused reporting in this direct quote, "on Monday", "over the weekend", by US military patrol. Was it found on Monday or over the weekend--which one? Does this make sense to anyone? Or was someone scrambling a press release (in panic) of wording that was hastily contrived, and uncertain themselves about how the facts would compare to the report. VAGUE TIMING BEGS THE QUESTION, WHEN WAS THIS BODY REALLY FOUND?
Secondly, how was the body identified as "Berg's", if it was headless? Or was it? How do you quickly identify a body without a head?
Third, WHO were the U.S. forces that found it? Were they the same ones involved in his illegal detention?
2. Here is the smoking gun: If the body was found on Monday (May 10th), or previously "over the weekend" (prior), how could the execution and video be taped on May 11th, as is reported?
"The statement in the video was signed off with Zarqawi's name and dated 11 May" (Drudge and Aljazeerah).
An Arab magic trick indeed...to be able to execute a man on video tape ("May 11"), AFTER HIS BODY IS FOUND BY US FORCES, on "May 10th"!!!!! The video is not the only thing that appears fuzzy!!
3. The video was dated May 11th, typical Judeo-Masonic (CIA/MOSSAD) signature and M.O., like 9/11, and the recent 3/11 in Spain. Sorry, there is an M.O. to this "terrorism" that matches that of government psy-ops! Funny how they never mention the obvious pattern of dating isn't it? And the "terroists" signed his name to the video, though they wore hoods and masks! (Why?)
4. Berg's father filed law suit against the illegal detention of their son....and, bingo, he was released the next day (but not very popular we can be certain)! "His father, Nick, filed a lawsuit on 5 April stating Berg was being held illegally by the US military in Iraq. The next day Berg was released." Aljazeera and Drudge
5. The Guatanamo Bay type US issue prison suit is very suspicious! Either he was handed over to the alleged "terrorists" in it--meaning US forces complicity to rid them of an American "dissident"--or the executions are Government--i.e. CIA (well-fed, lily white hands, hooded...but leaving the name of the executioner?)!
6. According to the video clock notations in the film, the "execution" took place between 13:46 and 13:47....apparently around 1:46 to 1:47 pm. Why is the video time not in Arabic? Do Arabs use military time? http://www.drudgereport.com/i...
7. "God is great".....typical propaganda to libel militant Muslim jihaders with the crime, while they have lily white hands, their victim in US issue prison clothes, and video time in US military English!
8. The TIMING of this event being reported to the American public, on May 11th evening (note how quickly this went to full-blown news coverage by 6:30pm EDT on the very day of the execution......fast......and conveniently. Even MORE remarkable is how this was reported to Congress (not sure when) during WORK HOURS IN SESSION, precisely as the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, etc., were being grilled, and Senators were investigation the horrific prisoner abuse, and who was behind it! TALK ABOUT WELL-COORDINATED AND EXPEDITED 1) EXECUTION 2) BODY FOUND, IDENTIFIED, 3)NOTIFICATION OF KIN, 4) REPORTED TO CONGRESS...5) RELEASE IN FULL DETAIL WITH VIDEO TO NETWORK NEWS..........ALL IN ONE AMAZING DAY!!!!!
Is that a credible timetable WITHOUT government involvement? The 9/11 "hijackers" were not even identified for a couple days....but this one is instantly solved, and we are expected to swallow it whole without choking!
8. The pattern of US government information, from Bush, the Pentagon, Jessica Lynch, justification for Iraq, the "911" story is a HISTORY OF PROVEN LIES AND FALSEHOODS FOR POLITICAL ENDS!!! So why should ANYONE believe this!!
This is the most inaccurate combination of facts of any realistic scenario of an execution and identification of who did it--contrived in panic and haste to deflect the outcoming of literal "war crimes" by US forces--that would not be sustained in any court of law, except that of the naive and brainwashed American mind, that has a Yankee flag wrapped around its eyes and ears!
BUSH GOVERNMENT (CIA) DID IT......AGAIN!
One more piece below, by Andrea Mitchell of NBC, how not just the Army, but Special Forces and the ever-present CIA were ALL involved in the gross abuses and deaths of Iraqi prisoners, in this bogus war..... THIS PROVES CIA INVOLVEMENT AND MOTIVE FOR COVERING UP ABUSIVE TORTURE AND KILLINGS, AS WELL AS ADMITTED COVERUPS ABOUT THEM.
May 6: As the investigation into the prison abuse scandal expands, there are new indications it reaches beyond the Army. NBC's Andrea Mitchell has details.
[i]NBC Nightly News [/i]
Delta Force, Navy SEALs involved in abuse?
[i][b]By Andrea Mitchell
Correspondent
NBC News[/b][/i]
Updated: 6:15 p.m. ET May 06, 2004As the investigation expands, officials tell NBC News that special operations forces, including both Delta Force and Navy SEALs, were possibly also involved in abusing prisoners in Iraq.
In fact, one prisoner, Mon Adel al Jamadi, died while being interrogated in Abu Ghraib by a CIA officer last November, shortly after being captured by Navy SEALs. Al Jamadi was being questioned about a plot to attack U.S. forces with plastic explosives.
An autopsy revealed al Jamadi had broken ribs and had been “badly beaten.” His CIA interrogator has told investigators the prisoner was injured before he was turned over to the CIA — something the Navy denies.
In a second case, the CIA is being investigated for the death of Iraqi Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush near the Syrian border, also last November. The CIA says he died several days after they questioned him.
A third CIA prisoner died last June in Afghanistan — also after a severe beating.
Did the CIA or other intelligence agencies tell the guards to get the prisoners to talk? According to former CIA officer Robert Baer, “I can’t believe that those MPs knew enough about Arab culture to systematically do this.… Somebody prompted them.”
Intelligence officials deny directing the abuse. But the Army’s investigation said military intelligence and “other government agencies” — the Army’s code for the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and special operations forces, “actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.”
The general who was in charge of the prison says it got out of hand. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski remembers, “They said, ‘Hey, that worked pretty well.’ They told us to take the clothes away from those six prisoners, and nobody seemed to think that that was wrong, so let’s take clothes away from 12 of them.”
Now the CIA confirms that some of its officers hid prisoners from watchdog groups like the Red Cross — violations also under investigation.
© [b]2004 MSNBC Interactive[/b], http://disc.server.com/discus...;article=54893;title=APFN
|
|
|
| |
| How The Bush/Cheney Inc. Junta Is Lying To The Public About Kerry ... |
| 05.13.04 (2:44 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" are being[i] played for suckers [/i]by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]who are [i]out-and-out lying[/i] in the most despicable manner about the statements made by John F. Kerry ... [/b]
[b]You know Bush-Cheney's mouth-piece Marc Racicot's reputation as a liar is getting pretty widespread when the[i] Post [/i]walks its readers through something like this http://www.washingtonpost.com... ...[/b]
... "The Bush campaign has repeatedly accused the senator of "politicizing" Iraq. Bush-Cheney chairman Marc Racicot told reporters Wednesday that Kerry is relentlessly "playing politics" and exploiting tragedy for political gain.
Racicot, for instance, told reporters that Kerry suggested that 150,000 or so U.S. troops are "somehow universally responsible" for the misdeeds of a small number of American soldiers and contractors. Racicot made several variations of this charge. But Kerry never said this, or anything like it.
As evidence, Racicot pointed to the following quote Kerry made at a fundraiser on Tuesday: "What has happened is not just something that a few a privates or corporals or sergeants engaged in. This is something that comes out of an attitude about the rights of prisoners of war, it's an attitude that comes out of America's overall arrogance in its policy that is alienating countries all around the world."
What Racicot did not mention was that Kerry preceded this remark by saying, "I know that what happened over there is not the behavior of 99.9 percent of our troops."" ...
[b]Hats off to Jim VandeHei, the author of the piece, http://www.washingtonpost.com... though Racicot has been at this for months[/b].
|
|
|
| |
| Think Again: Oops! |
| 05.13.04 (11:18 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush has [i]divided[/i] our nation[i] more than ever before [/i]creating a poisonous political atmosphere dangerous to our national well-being because those who dissent from blindly supporting disastrous and tyrannical neo-con policies are being maligned, slandered, libelled and destroyed (e.g. Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, etc.) ... [/b]But Bush has[i] united [/i]the the entire world in their collective hatred of the traitorous neo-con, neo-fascist regime that[i] ruthlessly tramples [/i]upon our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights enshrining [i]our freedoms [/i]that peoples around the world [i]truly do admire [/i]... Many peoples around the world are[i] sickened [/i]to witness the[i] betrayal [/i]of our nation's promise of [i]democracy and freedom [/i]by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] ... "We the People" should be outraged and sickened [i]as well [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
It's an ancient dream of empire-builders to unify the world, but George W. Bush's way of being a uniter, not a divider, is surprising and unique—he's united the world against himself. It should come as no surprise to anyone paying a shred of attention—that is, anyone outside Bush's inner circle—that the man is hated almost everywhere, for plausible reasons and bad ones alike. This would be bad news for Bush, if he cared. (His care is probably negative: he'll campaign as the man who stands tall against flabby, unreliable, or downright loathsome furrners.) Bush's abysmal reputation is much worse news for America. However bad the bad reasons for hating him, anyone who devotes a moment's thought to the problem of blocking, defeating, and uprooting the murderous legions of Islamist fundamentalism knows that hatred of America is a gift to terrorists present and future.
The fancy term for what America has squandered in the past year and a half or so is legitimacy. On March 2, the neoconservative Robert Kagan wrote in the Washington Post: "The problem the United States faces today is…a problem of legitimacy." On April 11, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times of "a staggering legitimacy deficit." But some of our pundits, even the best, underestimate the revulsion against American policy and whatever they think, rightly or wrongly, drives it. The estimable Fareed Zakaria wrote in the Washington Post on April 10, "the war on terror is really a war of ideas. And I'm not sure we are winning it." Not sure?
I've just returned from 7 weeks abroad, traveling in Greece, Turkey, and India, and I'm sure we're losing it. I lectured to journalists, students, faculty, and businessmen. I picked as many conversations as possible. I did not pretend to be a Canadian: I went out of my way to tell anyone who asked that I was an American, and encountered no personal hostility whatever. Neither did I encounter a single good word about George W. Bush and his Iraq venture.
In Athens, a bold law professor who defended the Bosnia intervention (in a country that sided with the Serbs as fellow sufferers in Orthodoxy) and one year ago argued staunchly in favor of the Iraq war now thought that Bush had botched it beyond belief.
In New Delhi, an influential Indian businessman of my acquaintance—no man of the left but a market-loving, union-hating man of wealth who went to high school and university in the United States—groaned at the mention of Bush's Iraq operation. He was crystal-clear that America's cross to bear was specifically George W. Bush.
Some pundits diffuse responsibility for America's sinking fortunes. The conservative Kagan, in the article I quoted, called the legitimacy problem one "that neither began with nor will end with the Bush administration." In the crudest sense, that's true. But the gulf between everyone else and the United States has gotten much, much deeper under the current dispensation. One way to measure it is to note the distinction that kept coming up between better and worse Americans: specifically, between Bill Clinton and Bush.
In 10 or so shop windows in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, in a small Turkish town and in two Indian cities, I came across photos of Hillary, Chelsea, and Bill Clinton greeting local merchants. Across Greece, Turkey, and India, I came across a grand total of one Bush poster, above a merchant's shop—and this was of the senior Bushes, George W.'s parents. Clinton must be the most esteemed person in the world. George W. Bush must be the most despised.
A secular social-democratic columnist for the moderately Islamist Turkish daily Zaman said to me passionately (in the presence of America's consul general in Istanbul): "Take this message home. Clinton was beloved here. We didn't even understand how Bush could win without a majority vote. But one thing is clear: Since Bush arrived, the prestige of the United States has suffered a terrible loss."
A men's-room attendant in Kappadokya, the weird and glorious post-volcanic rock-and-cave zone in the middle of Anatolia, asked me where I was from.
"New York. America."
"Ah. You have many problems."
He didn't sound like a hater. "What do you think of the war in Iraq?"
"We don't like it," he said."Why every time war on Muslim people?"
I decided to let that pass. "What will happen now?" I asked lamely.
He shrugged. "Not good."
It mattered little what subject I spoke on in Turkey, or whether the locale was governmental Ankara or industrial Bursa or cosmopolitan Istanbul. I might be lecturing on media, globalization, and democracy; or on media saturation; or on war reporting since Vietnam, and the same questions came flying: Are the U.S. media able to give factual information about the Iraq war? What does the U.S. Greater Middle East project mean, really? Why was Bush misleading the American public?
Turkish papers of varying persuasions run variously unflattering photos of Bush as a matter of course. Left-wing, center-right, moderate Islamists, young, middle-aged, you name it—crusading America scares them. These people admire our universities. (Some attended them. Some want to.) They like free expression. They don't "hate our values." They're not ill-disposed toward NATO. If wishes were votes, Turks would not be a swing state: It would heartily send John Kerry to Washington.
When I met the executive secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in the industrial center of Bursa, Turkey's fourth-largest city, he'd just returned from a Turkish-American confab in Washington. He spoke of Pentagon and State Department officials with respect. He didn't sound like a ranter. Yet he said that such "discussions" were monologues.
In Ankara, the tough-talking PR chief of Zaman—circulation 200,000 and growing—said firmly, "America has lost the respect of the world." I made plain my opposition to Bush's war, but also my distaste for the pro-Saddam propaganda I'd seen on al-Jazeera's English-language Web site. After what diplomats might call a full and frank exchange of views, he said to me, "I don't know whether this kind of discussion will be possible in 20 years."
Zaman is the sort of paper the heart-and-mind winners want to see thriving—the alternative to bin Laden in a mainly Muslim society, a NATO member at that. U.S. policy sends them around the bend.
And this was before the Abu Ghraib pictures blanketed the world. Tamer Korkmaz, a Zaman columnist, wrote the other day: "The episodes in the Abu Ghraib House of Torture have rendered all speeches on 'civilization' that the U.S. will deliver to the world empty from now on."
Another Zaman columnist, Ali H. Aslan, plainly not an America-hater, wrote (in the Web site's stiff translation, slightly fixed by this writer): "The U.S., which might be considered as the founder of the international system based on human rights and the rule of law through its pioneering efforts after World War II, has been thoughtlessly destroying the principles and institutions it built….The Bush administration overshadows the U.S.'s constructive policies. Although, contrary to their claim, democracy and human rights are not the primary goals of U.S. foreign policy strategy—they are more often advertised than actually enacted—America's contributions to those who seek these ideals in the world cannot be denied. The frequent mentioning of these sublime ideals by an administration that is so disliked in the world, and in the context of a controversial war like Iraq, especially in the wake of the latest torture scandal, gives a boost to the opponents of freedom."
Aslan worried aloud that "the angel within America" is going to be "defeated by the devil inside." The world is populated by people who know the difference. They've been hung out to dry. How much longer will Greeks, Turks and Indians root for our better angel with sinking hearts?
[b]Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University and author of 10 books including, [i]The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage [/i]and most recently, [i]Letters to a Young Activist[/i][/b]. - http://www.americanprogress.o...
|
|
|
| |
| Act Now! Join the Virtual March to Stop Bush's Blood-Thirsty Agenda! |
| 05.13.04 (11:08 am) [edit] |
[b]Now is the time for "We the People" to stand against the corrupt Bush regime ...[/b]
Please register now to join with us in our virtual march on the White House taking place on Sunday 29th August 2004 at 2PM US Central Standard Time, 7PM UK time!
Let the Bush regime know exactly what you think about their policies!
Just click here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... , then click on the "Join this live march" button, then on "sign up now" and enter your details.
You'll receive reminders about the protest.
Shortly before the action begins you'll receive an email with instructions on where to send your messages, along with a suggested messge, please keep this to hand and rally here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... no later than 10 minutes before the start of the virtual march.
When the countdown clock on that page reaches 0:0:0 start sending those faxes and emails, phone the White House and visit the website! - http://geocities.com/tellbush...
|
|
|
| |
| Who Was The Obscene Nimrod in the Corrupt Bush Regime Who Ordered "Shock-and-Awe"??? ... |
| 05.12.04 (9:40 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] doesn't and didn't [i]give a damn [/i]about the Iraqi people or about democracy for Iraq ... [/b]The traitorous Bush regime doesn't [i]give a damn [/i]about the American people or about democracy for America [i]either[/i] ... "We the People" better [i]take our blinders off [/i]and [i]face[/i] the [i]cold, hard reality [/i]that neo-con thugs and neo-fascists goons in the vile Bush organization who have hijacked our nation, will[i] tear us asunder [/i]in order to fulfill their[i] sordid aims & squalid lusts [/i]for infinite power and gluttonous riches ...
Consider [b]"Who Ordered "Shock-and-Awe"?" [/b]by [i]William Pfaff[/i], International Herald Tribune, on http://www.commondreams.org/v... :
To what extent have the policies of the Bush administration - and the values and attitudes that have characterized the conduct of the so-called war against terror - contributed to a state of mind and morale in the American military that opened the way to the torture, abuse and, in some cases, apparent murder of prisoners in Iraq?
Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration displayed hostility toward international law and treaty obligations that it considered as limits on U.S. national sovereignty or as obstacles to American national interest.
In the Afghanistan war it summarily shipped prisoners outside of the country, notably to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without serious examination of their cases, and in disregard of Geneva norms concerning prisoners taken in war.
U.S. Army regulations on dealing with prisoners of war were bypassed, since these people were by presidential definition "enemy combatants," not prisoners of war.
Ordinary American norms of justice, requiring timely presentation of charges, legal representation and impartial adjudication, were ignored then and continue to be ignored.
While the administration's disregard for international, military and constitutional law was widely acknowledged at the time, there was little protest in the American press, and no effective challenge from Democratic Party leaders. There is a bipartisan responsibility for what has happened.
Some Afghan and other "war against terror" prisoners were transferred to third countries. Reporters were informed - with a smile and a wink - that this was because they could be tortured there. Again there was negligible reaction in U.S. press and political circles.
In Afghanistan, and subsequently in Iraq, an obvious reason for the involvement of civilian "contract employees" in intelligence and interrogations has been that they are not subject to military discipline, and responsibility for them and what they do can be "plausibly denied" by U.S. officials.
All this is consistent with an attitude toward violence characteristic of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, who have for years insisted that history is made through violence, and that in the national cause a governing elite has the right to mislead the public in order to achieve goals that the leaders alone are in a position to understand.
This lies behind the administration's pressure for violent action to "change regimes" and intimidate so-called rogue nations, constantly described - however implausibly - by the president and vice president as threatening mass destruction attacks on the United States, jeopardizing national survival. Iraq had to be attacked before it was "too late."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly says that those who oppose the United States in Iraq and elsewhere have to be killed. He does not speak in terms of defeating them, much less of negotiating with them, as the British do in southern Iraq.
Dehumanizing language has deliberately been employed to describe all those who oppose the United States. The cumulative effect of this has conveyed to American troops that international and national norms of lawful conduct have been suspended or crucially limited in the war against terror.
It can be argued that the Bush administration created a state of expectation, mode of conduct, hostility to traditional norms of military behavior, and attitude toward Iraqi, Afghan and other Islamic "terrorists," that opened the way to atrocities.
Finally, there is a problem with U.S. military doctrine. Offensive operations are intended to "shock and awe" opponents through massive use of violence, even when civilians are potential victims, as in the armored column assault that led the attack on Baghdad a year ago.
Additionally, American military doctrine of "force protection" mandates killing civilians perceived as being in any way threatening to American forces. This requires American soldiers to treat all Iraqis as potential enemies, and their lives as being of lesser worth than American lives.
A British officer recently complained to The Daily Telegraph in London - a pro-American newspaper - that Americans "don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen - subhuman, a term applied by the Nazis to Jews and Gypsies.
"They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life the way we are. Their attitude toward the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful ... As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them."
But that is what they have been trained to think. One result of that training was what happened in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
Young military reservists from small American towns do not spontaneously torture, humiliate, sexually abuse and obscenely mock powerless prisoners unless people in authority over them have ordered or encouraged them to do so.
An American friend who works in Saudi Arabia recently e-mailed me to say "it's all over with those pro-American Arabs who until now have credited Washington with good intentions in Iraq. Photographs of American women soldiers sexually taunting and abusing naked and bound Arab men says to them that the United States is a totally depraved society."
But who debauched these young American men and women soldiers? I would argue that the moral debauchery came down the chain of command from Washington. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...
|
|
|
| |
| Noam Chomsky: How to Get Out of Iraq ... |
| 05.12.04 (8:15 pm) [edit] |
[b]Noam Chomsky is one of the truly great intellectuals of our time ... [i]The Nation [/i]has sponsored a forum for various eminent contributors including Noam Chomsky http://www.thenation.com/doc.... to provide their thoughts and reflections on the way forward to extricate our nation from the horrendous fiasco that the corrupt Bush regime has illegally and immorally caused through their blatant corruption and incompetence ... "We the People" should reflect upon his wise counsel ...[/b]
[b][u]How to Get Out of Iraq by Noam Chomsky[/u][/b]
Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population. It follows that the orders issued by proconsul Bremer are illegitimate and should be rescinded, including those designed to place the economy effectively in the hands of Western (mostly US) banks and MNCs, and the 15 percent flat tax, which, apart from its injustice, bars the way to desperately needed social spending and reconstruction. Without economic sovereignty, prospects for healthy development are slight and political independence verges on formality.
It also follows that Washington should end the machinations to insure its long-term military presence and control of Iraqi security forces, in defiance of the will of Iraqis, who call for Iraqis to control security, according to Western-run polls, which record only minuscule support for the occupying military forces and their civil counterparts (the CPA) or the US-appointed Governing Council. With a decision, however reluctant, to transfer authentic sovereignty to Iraqis--not just the traditional facade for Great Power domination--there will be no justification for the huge diplomatic mission, apparently the world's largest, announced by the occupiers.
Such steps entail abandonment of plans to establish the first secure military bases in a client state at the heart of the world's major energy reserves, a powerful lever of world control, as has been understood for sixty years, and a means to subordinate the region more fully to US interests--and the prime motive for the invasion, according to Western polls in Baghdad, though some agreed with articulate Western opinion that the goal was to establish democracy (1 percent) or to help Iraqis (5 percent).
A large majority of Americans believe that the UN, not the United States, should take the lead in working with Iraqis to transfer authentic sovereignty as well as in economic reconstruction and maintaining civic order. That is a sensible stand if Iraqis agree, as seems likely, though the General Assembly, less directly controlled by the invaders, is preferable to the Security Council as the responsible transitional authority. Reconstruction should be in the hands of Iraqis, not delayed as a means of controlling them, as Washington has indicated. Reparations--not just aid--should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions; and--together with other criminal states--for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.
[b]Noam Chomsky's most recent books are A New Generation Draws the Line; New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind; 9-11; Understanding Power; On Nature and Language; The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?; Chomsky on Democracy and Education; Middle East Illusions; and Hegemony or Survival.[/b] - http://www.thenation.com/doc....
|
|
|
| |
| A Vote for Bush is a Vote for Osama bin Laden: Bush Regime Outside the Law ... |
| 05.12.04 (5:19 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime operates[i] outside of the law [/i]which must thrill Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda because people in the Middle East who might have[i] waited to see [/i]if the lives of Iraqis improved (and were watching to see how America treats those whom they make war upon & occupy) are seeing first-hand that life under Bush comprises miserable killings, tortures, abuses, rapes and misery ...[/b] "We the People" should vote against the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]in November for a [i]vote for Bush is a vote for Osama bin Laden's recruitment efforts [/i]... Americans should realize that Bush's contempt for the lives of the Iraqis mirrors his contempt for the lives of average and working Americans ...
[b][u]Outside the law[/u][/b]
Outlaw behaviour, or at least some types of it, pains Donald Rumsfeld. The US defence secretary is particularly anguished by newspaper leaks of torture in Iraqi prisons. That amounts to a violation of national security, he told senators on Friday in Washington. The torture sickened him too, he said, but he saved his famous arched eyebrow for the villain who put this "radioactive" material into the public domain rather than let the system of military justice run its course.
Mr Rumsfeld, like his president, does not much care for truth. Truth undermines his own portrayal of himself, his administration and his nation as victims. He apologised last week for the scenes reproduced alongside his own image on split television screens: the prisoner on a leash, the piles of naked bodies, the nude, hooded figure with wires dangling from his finger tips. He even offered to pay for the damage. He also warned that there were more, and more horrific, photos and videos still to come. Something of what he feared appears on our front page this morning. Mr Rumsfeld regretted that images like this have offended the world. Yet he knows from the same Red Cross sources that first warned of the abuses more than a year ago that torture continues under coalition direction, and he left too much unacknowledged. These images are more than merely unfortunate and embarrassing now. They are shaping the way the world sees the Iraq occupation.
Mr Rumsfeld did not apologise for the Red Cross reports of unarmed Iraqi prisoners being shot to death by military personnel in watchtowers. He said nothing of the "interrogation techniques" developed by US intelligence agencies and taught to security services the world over, including here. He expressed no regret for employing private contractors to question people who were accused of no crime, then hiding their sadistic behaviour from public scrutiny. He never mentioned how sorry he might be for turning over captives to other governments using even cruder torture methods. He showed no contrition for continuing to hide hundreds of people in Guantánamo Bay away from the law. Such leaders have placed themselves outside the bounds of international law, their own code of justice and their much-admired constitution. In doing so, they have also removed the protection of law from those who follow their orders.
George Bush started to withdraw the US from the international community at the beginning of his presidency. Earlier this year he dismissed foreign objections to his policies by insisting that the US needed no permission slip from the rest of the world to defend itself. At home, he has evaded oversight by Congress on matters of finance, intelligence operations and foreign relations. He sidestepped questioning by the press by holding fewer news conferences than any other modern president.
The Iraq revelations have given much of the world its voice back. The Washington Post reported yesterday that "profound anger" is building within the US Army against Mr Rumsfeld's rule. Now some soldiers have gone on the record calling for him to go. All this marks a quantum shift in the politics of the Iraq occupation. We need to hear now from others about how they believe the torture system - for that is what it is - came about, and what changes they propose. We need to hear from John Kerry. And we need to hear from Tony Blair too. Above all, we need to have a sign from President Bush that he understands his mistake, not the mistakes of a handful of ill-trained reservists acting out policies developed by intelligence services over many years. That sign could be given by presidential order, no permission slip needed from Congress, from coalition partners or from the United Nations. Close Guantánamo. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/Ira...,2763,1213194,00.html
|
|
|
| |
| Bush's Neo-Orwellian Propaganda: What Are They Smoking At The Labor Department? |
| 05.12.04 (3:43 pm) [edit] |
"[i]Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death[/i] ..." - [i]1984[/i], George Orwell
[b]The corrupt Bush regime is akin to the fascist government [b]George Orwell [/b]so brilliantly described in his [i]magnum opus[/i] [i][b]1984[/b][/i] ... [/b]It is criminal ([i]thoughtcrime[/i]) to even suggest that the corrupt Bush regime might manipulate figures in order to give the bungling crook Dubya a [i]lift in the polls [/i]... For those of us who look around and see for ourselves that the immoral and unconscionable[i] Gap [/i]between the hyper-rich[i] Haves [/i]and the neo-slavish [i]Have-Nots [/i]is skyrocketing to levels unseen in over 75 years under the traitorous Bush's Fascist Global Corporate Empire, it is [i]not surprising [/i]that the Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]would resort to such appalling, despicable and criminal tactics ... Because thus far, "We the People" have[i] not held them to account [/i]so the neo-con, neo-fascist Bushies believe that they can get away with lying, murder and embezzlement ... [i]Are they right??? [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
DON'T get too excited about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April. I'm not going to waste a lot of my precious space on this, but the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were created last month may not really exist.
They could be figments of statisticians' optimism.
Anyone who plodded through my column last Thursday knows I predicted that job growth in April would be better than the 160,000 to 170,000 jobs that the "pros" were anticipating.
But I also said, quite emphatically I hope, that the stronger growth would be an illusion - the result of the Labor Department's computers making happy predictions about seasonal job creation that could neither be verified nor justified.
I'll explain one aspect.
Back in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.
That estimate comes from the Labor Department's "birth/death model." You can look up these numbers on the Department's Web site.
As staggering as the assumption about new companies was in March, the Labor Department got even more brazen in April.
Last Friday, it was disclosed that these imaginary jobs had been increased by 117,000 to 270,000 for the latest month - because, I guess, the stat jockeys got a vision from the gods of spring.
Without those extra 117,000 make-believe jobs, the total growth for April would have been just 171,000 - sub-par for an economy that's supposed to be growing at more than 4 percent a year, but right on the pros' targets.
Take away all 270,000 make-believe jobs and, well, you have the sort of pessimism that the political pollsters are seeing.
If I was the suspicious type (and if I thought Washington was smart enough), I'd suspect a nasty motive behind the sudden surge in these mystery jobs. But for now, let's just acknowledge their existence.
Also keep in mind that the government doesn't distinguish between good companies being created and, say, a guy doing consulting work out of his basement because he can't find real work.
What does this new job announcement mean in the real world?
It means there will be more pressure on the financial markets, as we've seen for a while but especially since last Thursday.
It also means that the Federal Reserve now has the excuse it needs to raise interest rates in June (as I've said before would happen) and will probably start regretting that move by the end of the summer.
And President Bush will probably give in to temptation and start crowing about the economy, going against the mood, as captured by pollsters.
This will make him look as out of touch with reality as his father did.
* Press reports say they are thinking of removing a 9/11 plaque from the New York Stock Exchange because it's unduly flattering to former Chairman Dick Grasso, but I hear they are also replacing all the round, shiny doorknobs in the building.
It seems they remind too many people of the top of Grasso's head. (If you have an "I hate Dick" story, please send it to me.)
*
Here's some more bad news about Iraq.
A source in the intelligence community tells me that the U.N. oil embargo of Saddam Hussein was worthless because Iraqi oil was being shipped all these years to a Caribbean island called St. Eustatius, unloaded into onshore tanks and then reloaded into U.S.- bound tanker ships.
The same switcheroo is being done with Iranian oil, I'm told.
Oh, and the source says Washington would rather nobody know about this. - http://www.nypost.com/busines...
|
|
|
| |
| Pollsters: Kerry aside, Bush is in trouble ... |
| 05.12.04 (3:05 pm) [edit] |
[b]Corrupt Bush's approval rating is in [i]free-fall [/i]down to 44% of the American public ... Quite frankly, I'm surprised it is [i]that high [/i]... [/b]It just goes to show that "We the People" aren't paying sufficient attention to the heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i](as well as our nation) committed by the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] ...
[u][b]Pollsters: Kerry aside, Bush is in trouble[/b][/u] - http://msnbc.msn.com/id/49628...
[b][i]Approval rating keeps falling[/i][/b]
“[i]He is in dangerous territory now[/i],” pollster John Zogby says of President Bush.
Voters may not yet be ready to flock to challenger John Kerry, but President Bush’s continuing decline in opinion surveys — including one released Wednesday — is a clear warning sign for an incumbent trying to persuade the public to rehire him for four more years, pollsters say.
A new Pew Research Center poll Wednesday showed Bush’s approval rating at 44 percent, down from 48 percent a month ago and 58 percent in January. While the poll gives Kerry a 50-45 lead over Bush in a two-way race with a 2.5-point margin of error, his lead narrows to 46-43 when Ralph Nader is included.
But writing in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Wednesday, Pew director Andrew Kohut said, “There is no reason to expect a one-to-one relationship between public disaffection with the incumbent and an immediate surge in public support for his challenger.” First, Kohut said, voters will “decide whether the incumbent deserves re-election; only later do they think about whether it is worth taking a chance on the challenger.”
Wednesday’s poll is just one of several recent polls that show Bush’s approval ratings slipping below 50 percent amid growing doubts among voters about his handling of the war in Iraq and of the economy.
Growing majorities believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a traditional early indicator of the electorate’s mood.
[b]'Dangerous territory'[/b]
“He is in dangerous territory now,” pollster John Zogby said of Bush.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup poll, said Bush’s slowly sinking job approval rating, down to 46 percent in his latest survey, was similar to the dropping trajectory of the last three incumbents to lose their elections -- George Bush, the current president’s father, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.
In contrast, the five most recent incumbent presidents who won their elections never dipped below 50 percent in their job approval rating at any point in the election year, he said.
“The Bush campaign has to be concerned and worried at this point,” Newport said. “When you look at the trend, you certainly see that Bush is beginning to track the trajectory of the three losing presidents rather than the winners.”
The 46 percent who approved of Bush’s handling of the job in Monday’s Gallup poll was the lowest of his presidency. An NBC/Wall St. Journal poll last week put his approval rating at 47 percent, with 49 percent saying he did not deserve re-election and 50 percent saying the country was headed in the wrong direction.
Low approval and re-election numbers are particularly bad for an incumbent, who already is well known to voters. Undecided voters, who have had plenty of time to evaluate the incumbent, often break heavily for the challenger.
[b]Growing disapproval[/b]
Polls have found growing majorities of Americans, confronted daily with depressing pictures of death in Iraq and abuse of Iraqi prisoners, disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq and of the economy.
Pew pollsters found that “the Iraqi prison scandal has registered powerfully with the public — fully 76 percent say they have seen pictures depicting mistreatment of Iraqis by U.S. soldiers. There also has been a sharp rise in the number of Americans who think the military effort in Iraq is going badly. For the first time, a majority of Americans (51 percent) say the war is not going well and the percentage saying the war was the right decision continues to inch downward. The survey was conducted before release of a videotape showing the decapitation of an American in Iraq. For all that, however, public sentiment continues to run against an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. By 53-42 percent, Americans favor keeping the troops there until a stable government is established. That number has changed little since early April, after four U.S. contractors were murdered and their bodied desecrated.”
The plummeting faith in Bush’s Iraq policies threaten to turn one of his strengths — his leadership in a time of war — into a weakness, while voters rank the struggling economy as the nation’s biggest problem but have little faith that Bush can fix it.
Despite signs of renewed job growth and economic expansion, voters are still pessimistic and worried about jobs, inflation and slumping stock markets, pollsters said. The NBC poll found 60 percent thought the economy would be in trouble in the future.
“It takes some pretty sustained good news for public perceptions of the economy to pick up,” said poll analyst Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute.
That could be particularly worrisome for Bush, who saw his father’s 1992 re-election bid founder on voter worries about the economy — even as economic indicators already were beginning to improve.
The Bush campaign, where pollster Matthew Dowd has frequently predicted Bush’s ratings would fall, said the recent numbers were not a cause for alarm.
[b]'Polls will fluctuate'[/b]
“We understand that polls will fluctuate. The most important poll happens on Nov. 2,” said Scott Stanzel, a campaign spokesman. “We have always said the election will be close —potentially as close as 2000.”
Kohut of the Pew center pointed out in his Times piece that the lack of a direct correlation between an incumbent’s decline in the polls and a challenger’s ascent was “the same … in the 1980 race. President Jimmy Carter's favorable rating in the Gallup surveys sank from 56 percent in January to 38 percent in June, yet he still led Ronald Reagan in Gallup's horse-race measures. For much of the rest of the campaign, voters who disapproved of Mr. Carter couldn't decide whether Mr. Reagan was an acceptable alternative.”
“Similarly,” Kohut wrote, “in May 1992 President George H. W. Bush had only a 37 percent approval rating according to a Times Mirror Center survey, but the same poll showed him with a modest lead, 46 percent to 43 percent, over Bill Clinton. Only the Democratic convention and the debates brought about an acceptance of Mr. Clinton.” - MSNBC, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/49628...
|
|
|
| |
| Under the Radar ... |
| 05.12.04 (1:41 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] are committing[i] high treason [/i]against the United States of America in myriad crimes, misdemeanours and vile misdeeds that are [i]not making the main-stream news [/i]because the corporate-owned right-wing media are a neo-orwellian propaganda machine for this neo-con, neo-fascist administration ... [/b] "We the People" must take action by contacting our Congress http://www.congress.org and demanding accountability and justice for the illegal & immoral war in Iraq and the heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]committed by the insane Bush regime in our name ... A few[i] examples [/i]of the traitorous Bush regime's criminal activities are outlined below ...
[b][u]Under the Radar[/u][/b]- http://www.americanprogress.o...
[b]HOMELAND SECURITY – BUSH'S TIES TO SAUDIS UNDERMINE COUNTERTERRORISM[/b]: President Bush has engaged in strong rhetoric about cracking down on states subsidizing terror, saying on 9/10/03, "We're holding regimes accountable for harboring and supporting terror." http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... Today, the U.S. Treasury Department designated an Islamic charity with ties to a Saudi religious organization as a terrorist entity, but, the WSJ reports, "According to current and former U.S. officials, proposals by Treasury to designate other Muslim World League bodies as terrorism supporters have been blocked by officials from other U.S. agencies." http://users1.wsj.com/WebInte...%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2F0%2C%2CSB 108422799531607397%2C00.html%3Fmod%3Dpolitics_pri mary_hs Considering the president's "deep personal ties" http://www.boston.com/news/po... to the Saudis, it comes as no surprise that the Treasury's designation is only the second time since Sept. 11 that the U.S. "has moved against an entity controlled by the [Muslim World] League, which has tremendous clout within Saudi Arabia's deeply religious society." It's not the first time the administration's personal connections to Saudis have undermined http://www.commondreams.org/h... America's ability to effectively pursue terrorism abroad.
[b]WAR ON TERROR – SUCCESS IS NOT COMPUTING[/b]: AP reports, "The FBI's nearly $600 million effort to modernize its antiquated computer systems to help prevent terrorist attacks is 'not on a path to success,' https://registration.realcities.com/reg/login.do?url=http://www.philly.com%2Fmld%2Finquirer%2Fnews% 2Fnation%2F8635931.htm%3FERIGHTS%3D-81549840 18016972789philly%3A%3Ach ristynharvey%40hotmail.com%26KRD_RM%3D8oppqstpwq stvqsquovooooooo%7Cchrist y%7CY according to an outside review completed weeks after the bureau director gave Congress assurances about the program." The report, which will be released next week, "found that the FBI's Trilogy project did not adequately reflect the bureau's new priority on terror prevention since the Sept. 11 attacks. It urged the FBI to build new systems from scratch to help in this role." The study was conducted by technology experts for the National Research Council, a nonprofit research board operating under the National Academies of Science.
[b]IRAQ – CONSERVATIVES PROBE ADMINISTRATION'S USE OF FUNDS[/b]: Conservative congressmen, including Reps. David Hobson (R-OH) and Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), successive chairmen of the House Appropriations Committee's panel on military construction, are questioning the Bush administration's failure to keep congress informed on the way it used funds appropriated for military construction in the Middle East. "President Bush has acknowledged that months before Congress voted an Iraq war resolution in October 2002, he approved about 30 projects in Kuwait that helped set the stage for war, with 'no real knowledge or involvement' of Congress." Now senior lawmakers are charging "that, at the least, the Pentagon failed to follow the spirit of the laws requiring consultation." http://www.washingtonpost.com...://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1574 9-2004May10.html Pentagon officials claim to have provided briefings to congressional staffs on construction plans in Iraq, but "congressional aides, who asked not to be named, said the details were still often spotty, even allowing for the need to safeguard the security of U.S. facilities and avoid political difficulties for Muslim governments providing secret support to the United States."
[b]HEALTH CARE – TO THE VICTORS GO THE SPOILS[/b]: According to AP, just a "few weeks after the Bush administration named Medco to be one of the first Medicare drug card providers, a company executive helped throw a $100,000 fund-raiser for the president that was headlined by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson." The drug companies, which will benefit handsomely from the Medicare legislation pushed by the president, enjoy close ties with conservatives http://www.centredaily.com/ml... and the White House. "For instance, PacifiCare's lobbyists last year included Tom Loeffler, who raised at least $200,000 for Bush's 2004 campaign, and Jack Howard, a former White House employee who worked as deputy assistant to the president for legislative affairs. United Health Group's chairman and chief executive, William McGuire, earned the label Bush 'Pioneer' by raising at least $100,000 for Bush's campaign, as did Todd Farha, chairman and CEO of Wellcare Health Plans, and Samuel Skinner, a member of card provider Express Scripts' board of directors. Michael Hightower, who collected at least $200,000 for the Bush campaign to become a Bush fund-raising 'Ranger,' is vice president of government relations for Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Florida."
[b]IF YOU HATE SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION, SKIP THIS ITEM[/b]: It turns out the [i]Progress Report [/i]does more http://www.chireader.com/hott... than clog your inbox. The Chicago Reader originally had the story that top Iraq administrator Paul Bremer had spoken at a Robert B. McCormick Tribune Foundation conference six months before 9/11 and accused the Bush administration of "paying no attention" to terrorism. The story, the site now says, went "nowhere." Nowhere, that is, until it entered the [i]Progress Report[/i]. The quote, the Reader writes this week "showed up as an 'Under the Radar' http://www.americanprogress.o... note at the bottom of the [i]American Progress [/i]report the Monday after Hot Type ran. It reappeared Thursday" in a larger item. And "Bingo. Bremer made the networks' Thursday news shows. Catching the story on TV, the Associated Press prepared its own version. So did Reuters. I woke up Friday morning to hear my week-old story broadcast on WFMT, then read it in the Sun-Times and New York Times." The result? "By Sunday the story had advanced to its next phase: Bremer was taking everything back." http://www.foxnews.com/story/...,2933,118841,00.html
|
|
|
| |
| Iraq: A Strategy for Progress |
| 05.12.04 (12:55 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" would not be in the unconscionable blood-thirsty mess we are in today, if we would have called a "recall election" in 2000, in the aftermath of the shameful, illegal and immoral [i]banana republican coup d'etat [/i]staged by the corrupt Bush regime whom [i]the majority [/i]of Americans [i]did not want [/i]in office ...[/b]
The insane neo-con, neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] waged their illegal and immoral war-turned-bloody-guerril la quagmire in Iraq in order to enrich themselves and their traitorous corporate cronies: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex-- while awarding massive tax cuts, tax loopholes & tax boondoggles to corporations and the richest-of-the-rich driving-up their reckless deficit spending to be [i]paid-for [/i]by the American Middle Class & Working People that has created a [i]historical record-level $500 Billion debt for 2004 alone[/i], and no end in sight ... Moreover, the Bush neo-con's ungodly death toll taken on over 770 U.S. Soldiers & between 10,000-16,000 Innocent Iraqi Civilians represents a heinous [i]Crime Against Humanity [/i]...
There are various strategies for attempting to recover from the [i]disastrous fiasco [/i]created by the corrupt and incompetent Bush regime ... Amongst these, include the following proposal by [i]The Center for American Progress[/i]:
[b]Iraq:[i] A Strategy for Progress[/i][/b] - http://www.americanprogress.o...
[b]Iraq:[/b] [i]Strategy for Progress aims to achieve five principal objectives[/i]:
• To position the United States to meet the challenges we face in Iraq;
• To establish a clear path for a political transition until Iraqi elections;
• To secure our significant military and financial investments to date;
• To build a strong international coalition; and
• To enlist sustainable and popular support here at home for ongoing operations in Iraq.
As a first and necessary step, President Bush should immediately convene an emergency International Summit on Iraq to enlist support for a strategic shift and to strike concrete agreements with our partners. The Summit would provide an opportunity for the President to confer with other heads of state and to develop consensus on the international architecture for political, security, and economic arrangements in Iraq. The meeting, held outside of the United States, should include representatives from the Arab League, countries currently serving on the United Nations Security Council, major NATO allies, and core coalition partners. The Summit's goal should be to establish an Iraq Contact Group to which authorities in Iraq will report.
The United States must go in with a plan that provides for new international arrangements to manage the political, security and economic aspects of Iraq's transitions, and includes reorienting American policy to reflect those new international arrangements.
The recommendations below constitute a plan of action for dramatically shifting strategic direction. The primary recommendations provide the foundation for specific actions in the areas of political transition, security, and reconstruction. The secondary recommendations spell out targeted policy changes necessary to restore our credibility with international partners and, in turn, to empower the Iraqi people and advance reconstruction.
[i][u][b]Political Transition[/b][/u][/i]
[u][b]Primary recommendation[/b][/u]
[b]Authorize the creation of an international High Representative for Iraq[/b]. The United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII authority of the U.N. Charter, should authorize an international High Representative to take responsibility for enforcing and ensuring the transition from the Iraqi caretaker government proposed by U.N. Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi. A highly respected diplomat credible in the region, the High Representative should work with Iraqi civil society to facilitate the convening of a national conference and establishment of an Iraqi Consultative Assembly. While the Iraqi caretaker government would assume significant authority over the state of affairs in Iraq, the High Representative would possess emergency powers to veto controversial laws, policies, budgetary items, and government appointments. On a day to day basis, a Governing Authority – consisting of the Prime Minister of the Iraqi caretaker government, the High Representative, and the military commander in charge of security operations – would be responsible for strategic decisions. As an independent international official, the High Representative would report to the Contact Group, not the United Nations.
[u][b]Secondary recommendations[/b][/u]
[b]The United States should formally open the American Embassy in Baghdad prior to June 30[/b]. Ambassador John Negroponte should be dispatched immediately to Iraq to begin the process of transferring U.S. authority from the Pentagon to the State Department. The complete transition from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the new embassy should be accomplished by the June 30 deadline rather than initiated at that time. This approach would reduce the risk of critical issues falling through the cracks of the inter-agency transition, and ensure that he is fully operational as the lead U.S. representative on July 1.
[b]The White House should immediately nominate a new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations[/b]. At this critical juncture, the United States needs a new Ambassador to the United Nations to lead efforts to secure a Security Council resolution on Iraq. Replacing Ambassador Negroponte in New York should be addressed with the same urgency as was his Senate confirmation. The appointment of a highly respected and effective diplomat would bolster the Administration's credibility at the United Nations.
[b]The Pentagon should terminate monthly payments to the Iraqi National Congress and its special relationship with Ahmed Chalabi[/b]. With the formation of a new caretaker government, there is no credible rationale for direct U.S. support to the Iraqi National Congress (currently $340,000 a month). Continued support for Chalabi fuels Iraqi suspicions and lends credence to allegations of an American political agenda within Iraq.
[b]The new Iraqi caretaker government should repeal the decree on Iraqi press censorship[/b]. A vibrant free press is critical for a democratic Iraq and the United States should support open public dialogue, transparency in operations, and accountability at all levels. Any decision to address what might be considered illegal press activity should be undertaken by the Iraqi caretaker government in consultation with the High Representative.
[b]The new Iraqi caretaker government should amend the statute for the current Iraqi Special Tribunal to allow greater U.N. involvement and funding[/b]. Following the models of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Extraordinary Chambers in Cambodia, through an agreement with the U.N. Secretariat, a reconstituted Tribunal would carve out an explicit role for U.N.-endorsed judicial and administrative appointees, generate the necessary funding, and ensure adherence to international standards. Rather than having the U.S. bear the costs alone (estimated at over $75 million) the funding for the tribunal should come from assessments from U.N. member-states, as was the case with the ad hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
[b]The Pentagon should take immediate steps to reassure Iraqi citizens and the world that U.S.-controlled prisons in Iraq are in compliance with international standards and treaty obligations[/b]. Reports of abuse and humiliation of Iraqi detainees have done great damage in Iraq and throughout the region. Opening up the U.S.-administered prison system in Iraq to international inspection is the only way to restore lost credibility. The Pentagon's internal report on Abu Ghraib should be made public, to the extent possible, to demonstrate that immediate steps were taken to sanction criminal activity. A Permanent Committee for Monitoring Prison Conditions should be established with representatives from the international security force, the Iraqi caretaker government, Iraqi civil society, the International Committee of the Red Crescent and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. The new Iraqi Ministry of Interior should establish a citizen's liaison to compile and keep a centralized database of all detainees in Iraqi prisons.
[i][u][b]Security[/b][/u] [/i]
[u][b]Primary recommendation[/b][/u]
[b]Give NATO command of security operations in Iraq[/b]. The Administration should request that NATO assume command of security and stabilization operations in Iraq. The core of an adequate NATO force in Iraq already exists. Establishing a formal mission would make larger and more sustainable contributions by both NATO and non-NATO countries possible. Over time, better training of Iraqi forces and broader international participation would allow the United States to reduce its troop presence as the security situation improves.
To meet security needs, the total number of military forces, including American and international troops, should be increased to at least 200,000. This will not only provide greater security in Iraq , but will also allow the borders to be more effectively guarded. Non-member states, particularly from Muslim countries, should be actively encouraged to participate in the operation, as they did in the Balkans. The mission's security mandate should include the following components: countering the insurgency; improving security and controlling borders; and protecting humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. Expanded security forces will also ensure an atmosphere in which U.N. and Iraqi officials can safely administer the upcoming electoral process, and candidates, party activists and voters can freely participate.
General Abizaid should be given provisional NATO command authority as Supreme Allied Commander Middle East with overall responsibility for NATO operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Political guidance should be provided through the North Atlantic Council (NAC). NATO should also consider using this opportunity to develop better political and military relationships in the Middle East. Iraq, for example, could ultimately be offered partnership status through NATO's Mediterranean Initiative.
[u][b]Secondary recommendations[/b][/u]
[b]The United States should increase troop levels to 150,000[/b]. The recent U.S. increase to 135,000 was made possible by temporarily delaying the return of selected units for up to three months. For improved security, in the short-term, as Iraq prepares for elections and insurgents can be expected to challenge such progress, the United States must assume greater responsibility. To meet the troop level required, the redeployment of the Third Infantry Division should be moved up from its planned November date, and elements of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force based in Okinawa and the First Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division should be sent ahead of schedule. Force levels can be adjusted downwards only as overall security improves, transition milestones are achieved, greater international troop contributions are realized and Iraqi forces demonstrate an ability to assume greater responsibility.
[b]The United States should work to double international troop participation to at least 50,000. Non-American forces, primarily the British, add roughly 24,000 troops to the current coalition, but this component has shrunk with the recent departure of Spanish and Honduran forces[/b]. The United States must work with NATO allies and regional partners to increase long-term international involvement in the multinational force, with particular emphasis on contributions from Muslim countries. In addition to ensuring a troop presence capable of providing security, increased international troop contributions would reduce the need for private security forces, reduce the security and legal complications created by the presence of a large number of private contractors, and free up additional funds for reconstruction.
[b]The NATO mission should establish a dedicated force to protect and operate in and around sacred cities and sites[/b]. Comprised of troops from moderate Muslim countries and working under the NATO mission, this small force would advise and participate in security operations in the most culturally sensitive sites. Morocco, Pakistan, and Tunisia are three possible candidates.
[b]The NATO mission should devise a long-term strategy for developing and sustaining professional Iraqi security forces[/b]. The existing timetable for training the police and military should be extended to between two and three years to ensure that new Iraqi forces are adequately trained, vetted and able to assume responsibility for Iraq's security. Iraqi forces currently on duty should be re-vetted to avoid potential security problems.
[b]The NATO mission should conditionally allow individual members of militias to participate in new Iraqi security forces[/b]. The CPA's decision to bar selected militia from serving in the new Iraqi security forces ostracized them and thus provided them with an incentive to support the insurgency. Instead of polarizing a volatile and hostile segment of Iraqi society, transitional authorities should weaken and co-opt militias by disbanding units and absorbing vetted and separated individuals into programs closely monitored by U.S. authorities. There should be no wholesale incorporation of fixed units.
[b]The United States should conclude the Iraqi Survey Group review and transfer those responsibilities to U.N. weapons inspectors by June 30[/b]. Further accounting for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs should be transitioned back to the U.N. mission (UNMOVIC), consistent with existing U.N. Security Council resolutions. This would send a strong signal to the international community that the United States is ready to share responsibility in Iraq. The U.S. government's work should be completed prior to June 30.
[i][u][b]Reconstruction[/ b][/u][/i]
[u][b]Primary Recommendation[/b][/u]
[b]Create the Iraqi Transition and Reconstruction Fund[/b]. The activities of the Transition and Reconstruction Fund should have a triple mandate: first, to build and sustain Iraqi capacity in preparation for the ascendance of an elected government; second, to develop, for consideration by the elected Iraqi government, a detailed proposal for an Oil Trust Fund; and third, to ensure that there is no gap in payment of civil service salaries, through the Iraqi national budget, during the transition period. The activities of the Transition and Reconstruction Fund would be closely coordinated with the International Reconstruction Fund Facility established and led by the United Nations and World Bank.
The new Fund, authorized by the U.N. Security Council, would take over responsibility and assets from the Coalition Provisional Authority for the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI). A full accounting of DFI funds expended to date should be completed by the CPA by June 30 at the latest. The existing International Advisory Monitoring Board should be retained and amended to include no fewer than two representatives designated by the Iraqi caretaker government.
The Fund would be managed by an Executive Director named by the international High Representative and approved by the Contact Group. On a day-to-day basis, the Executive Director would report to the High Representative. The High Representative would appoint two Iraqi deputies chosen by the new caretaker government and approved by the Contact Group.
[u][b]Secondary Recommendations[/b][/u]
[b]U.S.-funded reconstruction programs should make job creation and the provision of basic social services top priorities, with specific emphasis on programs for demobilized soldiers[/b]. Significant funds should be allocated to create special opportunities for demobilized soldiers. Working with the High Representative, World Bank and other donors, the U.S. should support a demobilization program providing job training and start-up capital. Credits should be provided to companies that hire demobilized soldiers for reconstruction contracts. To reintegrate soldiers from rural backgrounds, the transitional authority should work with local authorities to identify productive opportunities.
[b]All U.S.-funded contracts should be awarded on the basis of open, competitive bidding[/b]. The proceedings of contract bidding, award and evaluation should be made available in full detail to the public. Regional and Iraqi firms and non-governmental organizations should be encouraged to compete and, where necessary, Iraqi entities provided with the assistance required to meet U.S. procurement, financial and other legal requirements.
[b]Responsibility for U.S.-funded reconstruction programs should be shifted from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the U.S. Agency for International Development[/b]. Congress should give USAID the necessary flexibility to fund critical reconstruction programs with special attention to streamlined approval for funding to Iraqi civil society organizations. The United States should ensure that the Commander's Emergency Response Fund (CERF) remains replenished until civilian management of the reconstruction is fully operational.
[b]The High Representative should work closely with the caretaker Iraqi government to draw up plans for an Iraqi Oil Trust Fund[/b]. The fund should be financed by a reasonable percentage of oil profits and governed transparently by a board of representatives comprised of Iraqi governmental and non-governmental representatives. The Trust Fund would use most of its funds for training and seed capital to increase Iraqi capacity to manage and serve the oil industry, as well as to support environmental, social and job-creation programs in oil-producing areas.
[b]U.S.-funded reconstruction efforts should be re-oriented to expand Iraqi involvement and extend the benefits of democratization beyond key urban centers[/b]. In particular, efforts should be made to incorporate Iraqi expertise and participation in program design and implementation, including through the more than 200 local councils currently operating around the country. As security improves, concerted efforts should be made to increase the flow of development assistance to rural areas and to expand U.S. engagement with Iraqi institutions and local and international non-governmental organizations.
[b]The United States should actively work to mobilize additional financial support[/b]. Former Secretary of State James Baker's current mandate should be broadened to seek greater financial support for the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, particularly from Middle East and Gulf states that will significantly benefit from a more stable Iraq. To support Baker's efforts, the Administration should launch a new initiative on eliminating odious debt at the upcoming G-8 Summit, with the recommendation that Iraq be among the first countries considered for inclusion. The initiative should provide limited debt relief based on an assessment of the legitimacy of the debt incurred during Saddam Hussein's reign. Other countries undergoing major political or security transitions should also be considered in the first round of the initiative.
|
|
|
| |
| Act Now! Join the Virtual March to Stop Bush's Blood-Thirsty Agenda! |
| 05.12.04 (12:39 pm) [edit] |
[b]Now is the time for "We the People" to stand against the corrupt Bush regime ...[/b]
Please register now to join with us in our virtual march on the White House taking place on Sunday 29th August 2004 at 2PM US Central Standard Time, 7PM UK time!
Let the Bush regime know exactly what you think about their policies!
Just click here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... , then click on the "Join this live march" button, then on "sign up now" and enter your details.
You'll receive reminders about the protest.
Shortly before the action begins you'll receive an email with instructions on where to send your messages, along with a suggested messge, please keep this to hand and rally here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... no later than 10 minutes before the start of the virtual march.
When the countdown clock on that page reaches 0:0:0 start sending those faxes and emails, phone the White House and visit the website! - http://geocities.com/tellbush...
|
|
|
| |
| How To Beat Dubya's Illegal & Immoral Election Rigging in November ... |
| 05.12.04 (12:27 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" are facing the horrendous prospect of [i]another[/i] scandalous illegal and immoral election rigged [i]yet again [/i] by the criminals Bush & Cheney, in the upcoming November presidential contest ... [/b]Walden O'Dell of Diebold Electronic Voting Systems has already [i]publically stated [/i]that he is "committed" to putting Dubya (his traitorous corporate-take-all puppet) back in office http://www.commondreams.org/h... ... The electronic voting systems are a[i] disaster [/i]for democracy because they lack paper ballot receipts-- are easily hacked into & manipulated-- lack audit trails-- lack dual-system and independent reconciliation to ensure that votes are correctly counted ... Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and insist that all electronic voting be cancelled for the November election because otherwise the votes will be rigged by the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i], who are out to [i]fix[/i] the upcoming November election-- in the brutish tyrannical and neo-hitlerian manner that they[i] rigged [/i]their [i]banana republican coup d'etat of 2000 [/i]...
"We the People" should take every measure possible to ensure that we do not have a rigged election by the treasonous Bushies [i] yet again [/i]in November ... [b]Read on ...[/b]
[u][b]How to beat a fixed election[/b][/u] - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
[i]It's an old story: Satan picks up the phone and calls St. Peter to challenge Heaven to a baseball game.
"Of course, we'll play," says Peter. "But have you forgotten? We have all the great baseball players."
"That may be so," replied Satan, "but we have all the umpires!"[/i]
John Kerry and his Democratic party face a similar problem: They may have the votes, but the other side has the machines that record and count the votes. How can the Democrats win?
A win over the Bushevik regime is not impossible, but it will be difficult and it will require considerable persistence and initiative.
Here are a few suggestions. No doubt, many who read this article will have still better ideas. Send them to us, (crisispapers@comcast.net) and we may follow this up with a compendium of the best of those proposals.
On its face, the evolving American electoral system is absurd and wide open to corruption and fraud. In Florida in 2000, the task of determining voter eligibility was turned over to a private corporation with ties to the Republican party. The resulting purge of legally eligible voters unquestionably cost Al Gore the state and, as it turned out, the Presidential election. As Greg Palast reports, http://www.thenation.com/docp... the ironically named "Help American Vote Act" (HAVA) is poised to extend the scourge of voter purging to other states.
"Paperless" and thus un-auditable electronic voting machines, most of which are manufactured by companies with strong GOP connections and employing secret ("proprietary") software codes, are expected to count at least 30% of the votes in the Presidential election http://www.lwv.org/where/prom... -- unless curtailed by legislation or law suits. The unreliability of these machines has been exhibited by numerous electoral anomalies, including lost votes, a surplus of votes tallied over votes cast, and even (however impossibly) "negative votes." Several University departments of computer science (most notably, Johns Hopkins) have examined the machines and have pronounced them unreliable and vulnerable to undetectable tampering. Many elections using paperless e-voting machines have resulted in returns at significant variance with pre-election polling, and almost all of these variances favored the Republican candidates.
For example, in the highly suspicious Georgia senatorial and gubernatorial election of 2002, http://www.commondreams.org/h... conducted entirely with touch-screen voting machines, the discrepancy between the pre-election polls and the election returns were beyond belief. The Democratic governor, Roy Barnes, who led Republican Sonny Perdue in the polls by 9 to 11 points, lost to Perdue by five points – a swing of about sixteen points. Max Cleland, ahead by five points, lost to Saxby Chamblis by six points.
These were shifts, respectively, of five and four margins of error. Talk to a statistician, and you will learn that the probabilities of such anomalies are vanishingly small. Is there, or was there, any way to validate the vote in those machines? Absolutely not. There is no independent record of the votes. That's just how the machines are designed.
Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) has introduced a bill that would require paper print-out verification of electronic voting. And in California, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has decertified "paperless" Diebold voting machines for the 2004 election. However, these attempts at ballot security are supported almost entirely by Democrats as, conversely, the Republicans in Congress and in the states are solidly opposed. One can't help but wonder why this is so.
Given the past history of Republican election manipulation, and the GOP involvement in the privatized voting industry, it appears that a close election will likely be "thrown" to Bush and the Republicans, just as it was in 2000. Sad to say, if Kerry and the Democrats are to win, they must do so with a super-majority.
[u][i]It has come to that in the United States of America[/i][/u].
It is not my purpose here to elaborate on the scandal of "the election industry," and its acute danger to the American democracy. I have written about this elsewhere http://www.crisispapers.org/E... , and we have collected at our website, The Crisis Papers, http://www.crisispapers.org/E... an extensive list of the most significant articles and book on the electoral crisis.
Instead, I will propose below, some possible counter-attacks.
[b][i]Back to the Paper Ballot[/i].[/b]
The simplest and most reliable voting technology is also the oldest: the paper ballot and the ballot box. To be sure, it is labor-intensive and slow, but that is a small price to pay for the preservation of our democracy. Besides, Canada uses this method and manages to report the election returns within hours. In our last whiz-bang, high-tech presidential election, it took weeks to settle the outcome, and only then by judicial ruling that halted the vote count. (And don’t get me started on that!)
When, a few weeks ago, I complained to Common Cause about their failure to get excited about the election fraud issue, they replied in part:
... [i]Common Cause is indeed in agreement with the concerns you express about the need for an auditable voting process. It is the position of Common Cause to support voting which can be audited; however, we do not believe that time allows for total institution of this process by the time of the presidential election. [/i]
With all due respect to the venerable Common Cause: [i]horse hockey[/i]!
Not only could a system of paper balloting be put in place in very short order, in fact, in many states it is already in place! In particular, in the largest state – my home state of California.
When I arrived at my polling place to vote in the infamous recall election, I encountered my first touch-screen voting machine and promptly cried bloody-murder. After calming me down, a kindly poll worker led me to a table with paper ballots, and I proceeded to fill one out. She explained that all polling stations had paper ballots (a) for those who preferred to use them, and (b) as backups in case the electronic machines broke down.
This means that high-tech California is just one simple step away from secure and verifiable voting. And that step is to collect all those infernal machines, load them on to a barge, and dump them in the Pacific.
While I haven’t checked this out, I rather suspect that there are paper ballot backups at the ready throughout the country.
Demand that they be used instead of the paperless monsters. And, failing that, when you vote, insist upon the paper ballot.
[i][b]A Diebold, etc. defection.[/b][/i]
Surely, amongst the thousands of workers on the payrolls of the primary manufacturers of paperless voting machines, Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia – still better, among the hundreds of top managers – there must be a few authentic patriots. And they must be sitting on a battalion of smoking guns. For example, a software programmer who devised a fixed election (e.g., Georgia in 2002) could have a David Brock-like epiphany and proceed to blow this scam wide open.
Let the invitation go forth: “If you would prefer to live in a free country, come over from the dark side! And don’t forget to bring your codes and documents with you.”
[i][b]Give a public demonstration.[/b][/i]
A voting machine and software should be acquired and, at last, put to honest use. Some computer experts claim that a virus can infect a voting machine, alter the results, and then “dissolve” leaving no trace of the “fix.” If so, then this can and should be demonstrated. One team should devise a hack that would transform a fifty-fifty input into (say) a seventy-thirty output. Then another team should be challenged to find proof of the dirty deed.
Recently, on “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart interviewed a hacker who claimed to have “invaded” a sample voting machine, altered the outcome of the election, and exited leaving no trace of the hack, all within five minutes. Is this just show biz, or is it for real? If authentic, then the stunt should be replicated and publicized. Thereafter, all balloting by such machines would be severely, perhaps fatally, compromised.
[i][b]Threaten Counter-Hacking.[/b][/i]
Surely there must be at least as many computer geniuses on the left as on the right. Probably many more. If further evidence accumulates of GOP election-rigging via the “proprietary” software of paperless, non-auditable machines, then the scoundrels should be put on notice that both political sides can play that game. While I wouldn’t want to advocate illegal activity here, there may be some value in alerting the public and “the other side” that there exists at least a capability for counter-measures.
If the counter-hackers are tempted to mess with an ongoing election, they must never, never, do so in a manner that would (a) be hidden, and (b) to the advantage of their preferred candidates. They must never aim to “rig” an election. Instead, the object of the activity should be to discredit an election technology that has been rigged by the opposing side. Thus, for example, they might select a few precincts that have routinely reported in the past, say 10,000 votes, 92% for the Democrats. Then they might “hack” the results to provide 30,000 votes for the GOP and absolutely none for the Democrats– still better, “negative” votes for the Democrats. This would present absolute proof that the technology is hopelessly haywire. Just a suggestion.
Now, of course, the Diebold and its sister corporations are telling us that such stunts are impossible, since their machines are 100% reliable. If so, then they have nothing at all to worry about, do they?
[i][b]Bring back the exit poll.[/b][/i]
Soon after the polls closed in 2002, the exit polls from Voter News Service began to announce trends that were favorable to the Democrats. Then, suddenly, VNS told us that the results were “unreliable” and the entire election day operation was shut down http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPO... .
How convenient for the GOP! And we have never received a clear explanation of what happened. Just the same message we had heard two years before in 2000: “Get over it!”
In fact, in the past, exit polls have proven to be the most accurate polling methods. So they must be brought back as “checks” against the non-auditable machines. If the media’s service, VNS, won’t do it, then the left must demand an explanation of why it won’t, and an alternative exit polling service must be put in place.
Perhaps we might invite in a team from Russia or India to monitor our elections.
Pre-election polling must be persistent and wide-spread throughout the country. Polls, such as those conducted during the 2002 Georgia election, remain strong statistical evidence of fraud and manipulation.
One revealing line of analysis would be to compare the accuracy of polls in states and precincts using paper and other auditable ballots, with the polls in states and precincts using touch-screen ballots. If the former produced accurate polls, and the latter did not, there would be good reason to suspect that the fix is in.
Also, as before, the ratio of plus-GOP shifts to plus-Democratic shifts should be tabulated and publicized. In a study of nineteen contests in 2002 http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/... , fourteen shifts favored the Republicans (many, as in Georgia, far outside the margin of error), two favored the Democrats (both within the margin of error), and three “close to correct.”
[i][b]California has taken the lead – follow it![/b][/i]
Finally, as favorable trends develop in the news, in public opinion, and in the law, these trends should be followed and “pushed along.” Case in point: the decertification of Diebold machines in California. The decision of Secretary of State Shelley is not final, and could be overturned by “the Governator.” Still, it stands a good chance of surviving the legal challenges. And it is an important precedent, as decertification of paperless machines are being proposed in other states. These must be recognized, publicized, and vigorously supported. There may be a trend here.
The GOP's the "Umpires" -- have a heavy thumb on the scales of our franchise. This advantage strikes at the very heart of our political covenant.
[i][b]Voters of the United States unite! You have nothing to lose but your democracy![/b][/i]
How to beat a fixed election? Send us your ideas to crisispapers@comcast.net , then watch this space for a report on your suggestions.
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" (www.crisispapers.org).
|
|
|
| |
| Shredding the Magna Carta ... |
| 05.12.04 (9:51 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" are witnessing a heinous crime of treason being instigated by the corrupt Bush regime taking place before our very eyes ... [/b]The insane neo-con, neo-fascists in the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]are systematically trampling and treading upon our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ... Moreover, the criminal Bush regime is proceeding to do what Adolf Hitler did in Nazi Germany at the outset: to do away with basic rights enshrined in laws founded on the principles set down in the Magna Carta ... Please write to your representatives in Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that the liars, traitors and war criminals in the Bush regime be [i]impeached[/i] from office because they are[i] unfit [/i]to serve our nation and have [i]betrayed[/i] "We the People" ...
[u][b]Shredding the Magna Carta[/b][/u]
The Bush Administration wants to rip up not just the Bill of Rights. It's going after the Magna Carta, too. It wants to do away with habeas corpus, the essential, 800-year-old right that allows the accused to appear before a judge and plead.
But the Bush Administration can't be bothered with that.
The foreign enemy combatants it is holding in Guantánamo have no due process rights at all, according to the Justice Department.
And enemy combatants who are U.S. citizens, such as José Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, barely have any, either. They are not entitled to counsel, they are not entitled to appear in court in person, and they are not entitled to a speedy trial. In fact, they can be held indefinitely without charge.
What is stunning is how brazen and weak are the arguments the Bush Administration has put forward in these cases.
Some of the arguments are downright laughable. In the Hamdi case, the government asserts in its brief that it is acting in a "humane" way, even though Hamdi has been in solitary confinement for two years. The President, the brief says, has "the authority to engage in the time-honored and humanitarian practice of detaining enemy combatants captured in connection with the conflict, as opposed to subjecting such combatants to the more harmful consequences of war." (Italics in original throughout.)
What would those be? Torture and dismemberment? According to the Justice Department, Hamdi should be grateful for his little cell.
Then there is the claim that the President and only the President can determine whether someone is a prisoner of war, who has certain rights, or an enemy combatant, who has none. "The President has conclusively determined that Al Qaeda and the Taliban detainees are not entitled to [Geneva Convention] privileges," the government writes in its Hamdi brief. "Neither the [Geneva Convention] nor the military's own regulations provide for any review of the military's determination that an individual is an enemy combatant in the first place." Or, as the Administration put it in the Padilla brief, "There is no warrant for second-guessing the President's judgment" in these designations.
As to why the enemy combatant may not have the benefit of counsel, the Administration is quite clear: It wants to be able to extract information from the detainee under interrogation, and granting counsel would interfere with that. "The military has learned that creating a relationship of trust and dependency between a questioner and a detainee is of 'paramount importance' to successful intelligence gathering," the Administration writes in its Hamdi brief. "This critical source of information would be gravely threatened" by access to counsel.
Justice John Paul Stevens tore this claim apart during oral arguments before the Supreme Court on April 28. He asked Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement: "Are there any cases in the international field or the law anywhere, explaining that the interest in detaining a person incommunicado for a long period of time for the purpose of obtaining information from them is a legitimate justification?"
Clement: "I don't know that there are any authorities that I'm aware of that address exactly what you're talking about."
Clement also claimed that Hamdi had already received the benefit of a neutral process, including the opportunity to present his side. How and when did this happen? When the military screened him on the battlefield and when the interrogators were questioning him. "The interrogation process itself provides an opportunity for an individual to explain that this has all been a mistake," Clement said.
This did not sell well with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who repeatedly asked about it. Nor did Justice Stephen Breyer take kindly to it. "The words in the Constitution are 'due process of law.' And also the words in the Magna Carta were 'according to law.' And whatever form of words in any of those documents there are, it seemed to refer to one basic idea that's minimum: that a person who contests something of importance is entitled to a neutral decisionmaker and an opportunity to present proofs and arguments," said Breyer.
To claim, as the government does, that a detainee can present such proofs and arguments to his own interrogator strains credulity.
Clement also failed to come up with any logical distinction between those whom the Administration gave access to the courts (Zacarias Moussaoui and John Walker Lindh) and those whom the Administration has labeled enemy combatants and tossed into the brig (Hamdi and Padilla).
Justice Ginsburg asked, "Does the government have any rhyme or rationale" for distinguishing between the two? She added: "How does the government justify some going through the criminal process and others just being held indefinitely?"
Clement: "Justice Ginsburg, I think that reflects the sound exercise of prosecutorial and executive discretion." Again, it's all up to the President.
Nor could Clement assure the justices that there was any limit to the length of detention, a problem that concerned several of them. Justice Anthony Kennedy asked if there was any "outer bounds," and Justice Breyer said: "Let's say it's the Hundred Years' War. Is there no opportunity for a court, in your view, to say that this violates, for an American citizen, the elementary due process that the Constitution requires? . . . It seems to me your answer boils down to saying, don't worry about the timing question, we'll tell you when it's over."
The government's argument in the Hamdi and Padilla cases rests on two assertions: First, that the President has the constitutional authority as commander in chief to designate and hold people as enemy combatants indefinitely, and second, that Congress granted the President additional authority to do so when it passed a law on September 14, 2001, granting the President the right "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11."
Both of those assertions are false and deeply troubling. While the President as commander in chief certainly has the right to capture and detain enemy soldiers and irregulars, nowhere does he get the blanket authority to do whatever he wants, including detaining U.S. citizens outside the court system for as long as he deems necessary.
Justice Breyer asked Clement about his interpretation of the "necessary and appropriate" language in the Congressional authorization, wondering whether "appropriate" might impose some limit on the President's actions. Clement would have none of that. "I certainly wouldn't read . . . the term 'necessary and appropriate' as an invitation for sort of judicial management of the executive's war-making power."
This assertion made at least two of the justices uncomfortable. One asked: "If the law is what the executive says it is, whatever is necessary and appropriate in the executive's judgment . . . unchecked by the judiciary, so what is it that would be a check against torture?" Clement responded by mentioning treaty obligations, the military code, and the President's intentions.
But he was then asked again, "What's constraining? That's the point. Is it just up to the goodwill of the executive? Is there any judicial check?"
Clement responded: "The fact that executive discretion in a war situation can be abused is not a good and sufficient reason for judicial micromanagement." He said that because Padilla and Hamdi are citizens, they could have some very limited access to habeas corpus. But that does not include the right to appear in court themselves or the right to have their own attorneys or the right to stand trial.
"You have to recognize that in a situation where there is a war, where the government is on a war footing, that you have to trust the executive," Clement said.
A huge problem for the government's case, however, is that a law exists on the books that expressly prohibits the President from doing what Bush has done to Padilla and Hamdi. In 1971, in revulsion at the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, Congress passed a law, known as 4001, that says, "No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress." This law overturned the 1950 Emergency Detention Act, which "established procedures for the apprehension and detention, during internal security emergencies, of individuals deemed likely to engage in espionage or sabotage." Clement said this applied only to civilian courts, not to military proceedings.
But Padilla's lawyer pointed out that Congress, when it gave Bush the authorization of force, did not toss out 4001. "There is simply no indication that when Congress passed the authorization for use of military force . . . the Congress also thought that they were authorizing the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens on American soil," said Jennifer Martinez, who argued Padilla's side of the case. Martinez added that shortly after the authorization of force Congress took up the Patriot Act. "It extensively debated a provision that allowed the detention of aliens for seven days," she reminded the court. Congress did not assume the President already had that power, much less the power to hold citizens indefinitely.
Martinez illustrated how vast the Administration's power could be under its own interpretation. "Mr. Padilla's mother, because she is associated with her son, may be argued to have associated with Al Qaeda, and clearly that's not what Congress had in mind, to allow that person to be locked up with no right to a lawyer, no right to a hearing for as long as the war on terror lasts," she told the court. "That's simply not consistent with our nation's constitutional traditions. It's a limitless power."
But just to be clear on the vastness of the Bush Administration's claims, Clement confirmed during oral argument that even without that Congressional authorization of force, the President still would assert the right to hold Hamdi and Padilla as enemy combatants. Clement added that the President could detain people like them even when there is no war. "The President had that authority on September 10th," Clement said.
The government's argument in the Guantánamo case was equally overreaching. The 650 foreign nationals whom the Pentagon is detaining in Cuba have no access whatsoever to U.S. courts, Solicitor General Theodore Olson argued on April 20. Though the Fifth Amendment says "no person" shall be denied due process of law, Olson asserted that foreign nationals have no right to due process.
As in the Hamdi and Padilla cases, here the government claimed that the President has the sole authority to determine whether the detainees are enemy combatants.
And the Bush Administration maintained the fiction that the U.S. government does not exercise sovereignty at Guantánamo, and so it's a no man's land for noncitizens--a "lawless enclave," as one attorney for the detainees put it.
The plaintiffs characterized the Bush argument as saying it "may unilaterally strip the federal courts of their statutory power to review the indefinite detention of foreign nationals without legal process, simply by deciding to detain them in an offshore prison."
Justice Ginsburg saw through this Administration claim. At Guantánamo, "American law is--and for a century has customarily been--applied to all aspects of life," she said during oral argument. "We even protect the Cuban iguana."
Justice Breyer wasn't buying the argument, either. "It seems rather contrary to an idea of a Constitution with three branches that the executive would be free to do whatever they want, whatever they want without a check," he said to Olson.
Olson's response was to say it's up to Congress to take care of any perceived problem. "Whether there is a check on the executive, there is a Congressional check through the power of legislation, through the power of oversight, through the power of appropriations." But there is no judicial check.
This is a frontal assault on our basic liberties. Frank Dunham, representing Hamdi's side of the case, said in closing his oral argument on April 28: "Who is saying trust us? The executive branch. And why do we have the Great Writ? We have the Great Writ because we didn't trust the executive branch when we founded this government. . . . Saying trust us is no excuse for taking away and driving a truck through the right of habeas corpus and the Fifth Amendment that no man shall be deprived of liberty except upon due process of law."
The Supreme Court will decide these cases by July. These are among the most momentous decisions to face the court in decades. If it rules for the Bush Administration in all three, our freedoms as we have known them will be a thing of the past.
[b]Source:[/b]
"Shredding the Magna Carta", The Progressive, http://www.progressive.org/ju...
|
|
|
| |
|
