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U.S. Reviled by Most Iraqis ...

06.30.04 (7:15 am) [edit]

[b]How do Iraqis feel about the U.S.? [/b]

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The irony is enormous. More than 200,000 American forces topple one of the world's most hated dictators. In short order, however, the liberators are seen as the occupiers -- reviled by many of the people they came to free.

Nearly 60 percent of Iraqis surveyed believe U.S.-led forces were wrong to invade Iraq, according to a poll released Monday.

But half also think that democracy is what their country needs most. And nearly 60 percent believe that the United States must help rebuild Iraq if it wants the country's interim government succeed.

Iraqis say a long list of ill-advised American moves fueled an insurgency, created chaos and plowed the ground for today's harvest of terrorism.

The frustration felt by Iraqis has been deepened by the failure of the U.S.-led occupation to secure essential services, especially electricity, and recent disclosures that Iraqi detainees were abused by their American guards.

''It would seem that the Americans are not familiar with Iraq, the mentality and customs of its people,'' said Abdul-Ghafour al-Samrai, a senior Sunni Muslim cleric.

Resentment toward the ''liberators'' has been fed by some of the practices of the U.S. military -- like detaining women, searching private homes and the accidental killing of Iraqis. An Iraqi tendency to exaggerate and indulge in conspiracy theories has helped fuel such negative feelings too.

Bashing America has become almost a tradition to many Arabs for decades. Iraq is no exception, and many here often forget to mention that the removal of Saddam has given them the kind of freedoms that are hard to find in the rest of the Arab world.

''When difficulties persist, it is natural for people to express resentment at those in authority -- especially when the latter are foreign powers exercising authority as an occupier,'' Peter W. Rodman, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, said earlier this month. - http://www.suntimes.com/outpu...

U.S. Reviled by Majority of Iraqis ...

06.30.04 (7:14 am) [edit]

Der Furor: DimWit & FuckWit Play the Nazi Card ...

06.30.04 (7:10 am) [edit]

[b]Der Furor

Bush [& Cheney] play(s)s the Nazi card[/b]

[i]Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed" was produced for the Bush campaign by Maverick Media. To watch the video on the Bush campaign Web site, click here http://www.georgewbush.com/Vi... . For a script, click here http://www.georgewbush.com/Ne... [/i].

[b]From: [i]William Saletan[/i]
To: [i]Jacob Weisberg[/i][/b]

Where to begin with this despicable video?

Six months ago, MoveOn.org held a contest to find the best amateur ad against President Bush. The group invited people to make ads and submit them to its Web site. Some idiot spliced images of Bush together with images of Adolf Hitler, evidently trying to make Bush look like a warmonger. His submissions, which arrived with 1,500 others—too many to be screened quickly—were posted on the contest Web site http://www.bushin30seconds.or... . As soon as MoveOn.org leaders realized what was in the ad, they removed and denounced it.

The Bush campaign, outraged by the mixture of Nazi images with images of an American politician, has decided that the best response to this offense is to repeat it.

The Bush video's opening white-on-black graphic says, "The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party. The Coalition of the Wild-eyed." Next comes a parade of angry speakers: Al Gore, Hitler, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Dick Gephardt, Hitler, Gore, and Kerry.

Is Bush suggesting that Hitler fits in with this group? Don't be silly, Jake. Bush's aides insist they're just showing the Hitler footage so you can see the filth Democrats are putting out. But we already know how Bush's GOP presents images from Democratic ads when it wants to discredit them. In 2000, Republican National Committee ads repeatedly depicted Al Gore's commercials running on a small television screen in a kitchen. The RNC ads didn't show the Gore ads at full size on your screen because the RNC didn't want the images in the Gore ads to be taken at face value.

This time, the Bush campaign shows the Hitler images at full size, in an unexplained sequence with Gore, Dean, Gephardt, and Kerry. Draw your own conclusions.

[i]The Full Story [/i] http://slate.msn.com/id/21030...

Der Furor: DimWit & FuckWit Play the Nazi Card ...

06.30.04 (7:09 am) [edit]

Der Furor: DimWit & FuckWit Play the Nazi Card ...

06.30.04 (7:08 am) [edit]

Iraq Regime Change a Sham, Say Mideast Experts

06.29.04 (8:59 am) [edit]

[b]Iraq Regime Change a Sham, Say Mideast Experts [/b]

UNITED NATIONS - Despite the positive responses Monday from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and members of the Security Council who praised the U.S. "transfer of sovereignty" to an interim government in Iraq, Middle East experts and political analysts dismiss the regime change in Baghdad as a "monumental fraud".

"The truth is that Iraqi sovereignty is a sham," says Rahul Mahajan, publisher of the blog EmpireNotes.org and author of 'Full [i]Spectrum: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond'[/i]. http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob...

The United States will keep at least 138,000 troops in Iraq (augmented by about 20,000 from other countries) for the forseeable future, he said. Fourteen permanent or semi-permanent military bases have been and are being constructed to house them, said Mahajan, who returned recently from a trip to Iraq.

"Those forces have, by an eleventh hour edict of Paul Bremer (head of the former U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority), complete immunity from Iraqi law and Iraqi courts," he added.

The role of the new interim government in Baghdad has been reduced to "advice" and "consultation". "This is, and remains, a direct military occupation," Mahajan told IPS.

He said the level of control that the United States retains "is just short of full colonial administration".

The interim government, headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, will be operating under several restrictions imposed by the outgoing Coalition Provisional Authority.

Allawi's government, which will hold office until country-wide elections are held in January next year, will not have the power or the authority to change the interim constitution or even amend the Transitional Administrative Law.

An edict signed by Bremer also gives U.S. and Western defense contractors complete immunity from Iraqi law.

Additionally, Bremer created and appointed an electoral commission that can ban political parties; gave five-year terms to the new hand-picked national security adviser and national intelligence chief; and appointed inspectors-general with five-year terms over every one of the 26 Iraqi government ministries.

Last month, the U.N. Special Representative in Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi described Bremer as "the dictator of Iraq". "Nothing happens without his agreement in this country," Brahimi said.

At a low-key ceremony in Baghdad Monday, Bremer "transferred sovereignty" to the interim government. The handover of political power to Allawi -- originally scheduled for Jun.30 -- was advanced by two days primarily to take the insurgents by surprise, and undermine any attempts to escalate the level of violence over the next three days.

"This is a historical day," Allawi told Bremer. "We feel we are capable of controlling the security situation."

Bremer left for the United States in a military transport plane immediately after the ceremony in Baghdad.

In a statement released Monday, Annan "welcomed the state of Iraq back into the family of independent and sovereign nations". And speaking on behalf of the 15 members of the Security Council, Ambassador Lauro Baja Jr. of the Philippines "hailed an end to the occupation of Iraq" and praised the country's "fully sovereign and independent" interim government.

Dilip Hiro, a longstanding Middle East expert based in London, says the interim government is no better than the U.S.-appointed former Iraqi Governing Council (IGC).

"In the final analysis, they are all beholden to the United States. And as was true of the IGC, two-thirds of the 36-member interim government carry foreign passports, chiefly British and American," Hiro told IPS.

Of the remaining 12 who have only Iraqi passports, half are women. "Remarkably, most of the former exiles of the IGC didn't even bring their families back to Iraq," said Hiro, author of 'Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm.'

He also pointed out that a former IGC member, Adnan Pachachi, returned to his base in Abu Dhabi within days of his failure to secure the post of president of Iraq in early June.

"Now, the former exiles on the interim government are following the same IGC example and keeping their families abroad. This shows just how skin deep their attachment to Iraq is, and how little faith they have in its future as a U.S.-dominated 'stable, democratic state'."

Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, says that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell -- in a letter to the Security Council early June -- said that the military forces that will make up the proposed new multinational force in Iraq will remain committed at all times to act consistently with their obligations under the law of armed conflict, including the Geneva Conventions.

These laws of armed conflict can be found in U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, the Law of Land Warfare, he said.

"Thereunder, if the U.S. government wants to set up a puppet government such as the so-called interim government of Iraq (whose prime minister is a longstanding agent of the Central Intelligence Agency), it can. Nevertheless, as the belligerent occupant of Iraq, the U.S. government shall remain at all times accountable under law of war for the activities of its puppet government in Iraq," said Boyle, author of 'Destroying World Order.'

"The restrictions placed upon the authority of a belligerent government cannot be avoided by a system of using a puppet government, central or local, to carry out acts which would be unlawful if performed directly by the occupant. Acts induced or compelled by the occupant are nonetheless its acts," Boyle told IPS.

He also said that the Security Council resolution adopted in early June endorsing the "handover" of power to Iraq "proves that the imperialist powers who dominate the Council and are its permanent members, together with their allies, are now primarily interested in carving up Iraq among themselves and looting Iraq of its oil resources -- along the lines of what Japan did in its puppet state of Manchuko in pre-World War II China."

"The peoples of the world are now witnessing the rapid decline of the United Nations itself along the lines of what happened to the League of Nations in the 1930s. Can World War III be far behind?" he asked. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

DimWit-Bush & FuckWit-Cheney's Fiasco: Iraq Regime Change a Sham, Say Mideast Experts

06.29.04 (8:58 am) [edit]

Iraq war casualties mounting for U.S. citizen soldiers

06.29.04 (8:55 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON - The Iraq war is taking a growing toll on soldiers of the National Guard and Reserve, which have suffered more deaths since April 1 than in the previous seven months combined.

The trend may continue after the transfer of sovereignty, since the size of the U.S. military force in Iraq - including Guard and Reserve soldiers - is not shrinking, and may even increase. Military officials warn that while the U.S.-led occupation authority ends Wednesday, the danger for troops will not.

"We should expect more violence, not less, in the immediate weeks ahead," Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee this past week.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying with Pace, predicted that the next six months will be "particularly difficult, particularly dangerous," for American forces in Iraq.

That forecast was underlined Thursday by a surge of insurgent attacks across Iraq.

Part-time soldiers of the National Guard and Reserve have played a role in virtually every U.S. conflict, including the 1991 war against Iraq. But rarely have they suffered so many casualties. Some states are reporting their first Guard combat deaths since World War II.

The Guard and Reserve are on active duty by presidential order. They might have played a somewhat smaller role in Iraq, but the Bush administration could not get as many foreign troop contributions as it anticipated and the Iraqi insurgency has been more violent than expected.

Throughout the conflict, deaths among National Guard and Reserve troops have represented 15 percent to 20 percent of the monthly U.S. total. In May that figure jumped to 28 percent, and it jumped even higher this month, when 15 of the first 32 Americans who died were members of the Guard or Reserve.

The Pentagon has not publicly announced all the units that will be going to Iraq in the next rotation of forces, which begins in July, but the National Guard and Reserve are likely to represent at least 35 percent-40 percent of the total force. They make up about 35 percent of the troops there now.

Army Gen. George Casey, chosen to assume command of all U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq, told Congress on Thursday that that National Guard and Reserve troops could make up as much as 50 percent of the total U.S. force in Iraq in the months ahead.

The Guard and Reserve typically provide support for active-duty combat forces, such as military policing and driving trucks. In Iraq, those duties can put them in the line of fire from roadside bombs, sniper fire, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and other guerrilla attacks.

Pentagon casualty reports show that 98 members of the National Guard and 56 members of the Reserves have died in Iraq since the war started in March 2003 - either killed in action or by noncombat causes.

Of that 154 total, 52 perished in the past three months, compared with 49 over the preceding seven months. May was the deadliest month for the Guard and Reserve, with 22 killed in action.

Among states hit especially hard in recent weeks:

... Oregon and New Jersey each had four Guardsmen killed this month. Oregon also had one Army Reservist killed in Afghanistan on May 29.

... Arkansas lost a total of seven Guardsmen and one Reservist in Iraq in April and May.

... Vermont lost three in the past month.

... Florida lost five on May 2 - all Navy Reservists - and it lost one Guardsman in Afghanistan on May 5.
Florida also lost an Army Reservist on June 16, Sgt. Arthur S. Mastrapa, a 35-year-old father of two. He was killed in a mortar attack on his unit's camp at Balad, Iraq, two days before he was to return to the United States.

The mortar attack that took Mastrapa's life also killed Army Reserve Spc. Jeremy M. Dimaranan, 29, of Virginia Beach, Va. - and one of the few field grade officers to die in Iraq, Maj. Paul R. Syverson III, 32, of Lake Zurich, Ill., who was with the Army's 5th Special Forces Group.

There currently are three National Guard combat brigades in Iraq, from North Carolina, Arkansas and Washington state. In the next several months they will be replaced by brigades from Louisiana, Tennessee and Idaho, and possibly a fourth from Mississippi. Also, the 42nd Infantry Division headquarters from the New York National Guard has been mobilized for Iraq duty.

In addition, the 3,000 soldiers of the 56th Brigade of the Texas Army National Guard's 36th Infantry Division were alerted in May for possible deployment to Iraq. Lt. Col. John Stanford, spokesman for the Texas National Guard, said the 36th Division has not seen combat since World War II. - http://www.katu.com/news/stor...

Iraq war casualties mounting for U.S. citizen soldiers

06.29.04 (8:52 am) [edit]

Bush is in Trouble; Will bin Laden Bail him Out?

06.28.04 (6:37 pm) [edit]

BEFORE PRESIDENT Bush’s Mesopotamian adventure, [i]TomPaine.com [/i]produced an advertisement showing Osama bin Laden pointing at the reader, à la Uncle Sam, and exclaiming, “I want you to invade Iraq.”

As agitprop, it was brilliant; as commentary on the probable effects of an Iraq invasion, it wasn’t so bad, either.

With about four months to go until Election Day, I’m hoping that TomPaine or some other wise guys will put out an ad with the same image of bin Laden but with the request, “I want you to vote for Bush.”

It’s not hard to imagine bin Laden, tucked away in some remote tribal village along the Afghan–Pakistani border, chuckling to himself and mockingly chanting: “Four more years, four more years.” Bush has done a stunning job of playing into al–Qaida’s hands; the terrorist group could not have planned his response to Sept. 11 any better.

That’s essentially the argument made by a senior U.S. intelligence official, identified by the London Guardian as “centrally involved in the hunt for bin Laden,” in a soon-to-be-published book called “Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.”

Written anonymously—because its author is still serving in an unnamed agency as a counterterrorism analyst—the book may represent what many career intelligence officials are thinking.

Terrorism expert Peter Bergen, who has written two books on bin Laden and al–Qaida, told the Guardian that “Imperial Hubris” presents “an amped-up version of what is emerging as the consensus among intelligence counterterrorist professionals.”

According to the Guardian, “Imperial Hubris” characterizes the Iraq invasion as “an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.

“Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even willful failure to recognize the ideological power, lethality, and growth potential of the threat personified by bin Laden, as well as the impetus that threat has been given by the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq.”

The author of “Imperial Hubris” believes bin Laden may well be planning a catastrophic attack on the United States before November—with the intention of getting Americans to rally around Bush and carry him to victory.

“I’m very sure they [al–Qaida] can’t have a better administration for them than the one they have now,” “Anonymous” told the Guardian.

A less “amped up,” but no less politically potent, critique of Bush emerged earlier this month from a bipartisan group of former diplomats and military commanders who have launched an unprecedented campaign to persuade Americans that “a whole new team is needed to repair the damage” caused by Bush and his neoconservative brain trust.

The White House has tried to dismiss the 27 former high-ranking officials as partisan hacks, but that’s yet another administration distortion. Many of those in Diplomats & Military Commanders for Change served Republican presidents, including Bush’s father. Some of the ex-officials even voted for Bush in 2000.

Says retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, a member of the group who is advising John Kerry but was Oregon chairman for the Dole campaign in 1996 and a Veteran for Bush in 2000: “I don’t think that this accusation of politics on my part will wash. It’s just this administration has gone away from me, not vice versa.”

The Iraq debacle is “the worst reverse we’ve had on the international scene, and it simply has to be laid at the feet of the president,” says McPeak, who served as Air Force chief of staff under the first President Bush and commander in chief of Pacific air forces under President Reagan.

Americans are starting to understand this line of critique. A CNN–USA Today–Gallup poll released Thursday found that, for the first time since the start of the war, most Americans believe it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq. Most Americans also feel that the war has not made the United States safer from terrorism, according to the poll.

A survey released by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press on June 17 found that Americans have become “considerably more negative” about how they view the war in Iraq in relation to the war on terrorism.

In that poll, 43 percent of Americans said the Iraq war has helped the war on terrorism, while 44 percent said it has hindered it. About a year ago, 65 percent felt the Iraq invasion had aided the war on terrorism, Pew noted.

Finally, a Washington Post–ABC poll released Monday found that only half the country approves of how Bush is conducting the war on terrorism. That’s down 13 points since April, the Post reported.

The poll also found that Bush has lost his once-commanding lead over Kerry as the candidate whom Americans trust to do a better job of protecting them from terrorism.

If the public-opinion trends indicated by these polls persist, Bush is in big trouble.

But the wild card is bin Laden. If the terrorist mastermind has a bloody October surprise up his sleeve, our blundering misleader may be rewarded with another four years to undermine our security.

DimWit & FuckWit: The Hijacking of America ...

06.28.04 (7:34 am) [edit]

[b]Two great articles about [i]DimWit N' FuckWit [/i]and how they hijacked America:[/b]

[b]DimWit: [u]'The case against Bush, part 1: Closing of the presidential mind'[/u][/b]

On February 27, 2001, George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress. When the president had last ventured to the Capitol for his inauguration 37 days earlier, he had delivered a homily urging the nation to move past the sting of the Florida recount. This time, he dispensed with the magnanimity and unveiled his agenda, delivering a speech filled with promises to cut taxes, pay down the national debt, study Social Security privatization, and deploy national missile defense.

If commentators had been allowed a peek inside the West Wing in the days before Bush's address, they would have noticed that the speech didn't just set policy priorities; it defined the administration's intellectual style. During the Clinton administration, wonks immersed themselves in the preparation of State of the Union addresses. In the months leading up to the speech, academics--from Michael Sandel to Robert Putnam to Alan Brinkley--suggested themes. During the last fevered weeks, speechwriters sat at their keyboards while government economists cycled through their offices to fact-check language and tweak proposals. Michael Waldman, Clinton's chief speechwriter, described the process in his memoir, Potus Speaks, as repeated "grill[ing of] policy experts" and "[boiling] gallons of advice into a few tablespoons of intense sauce."

[i]The Full Story [/i] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

[b]FuckWit: [u]'Cheney gave voice to administration's attitude'[/u][/b]

'Go bleep yourself," Vice President Dick Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leahy last week, after what was supposed to be a friendly gathering on the Senate floor.

The men had exchanged words because Cheney was still bristling over the Vermont Democrat's charge that the vice president's old firm, Halliburton, was profiteering from the war in Iraq, while Leahy was miffed at Cheney's accusation that his refusal to confirm a judicial nominee was "anti-Catholic."

Watergate and Abscam taught us that our public officials are often ungentlemanly in private, but Cheney's public profanity shocked some people. It showed just how ugly things are between Bush administration officials and anyone who dares to criticize them. It's as if there's a new level of arrogance that says: "We can do what we damned well please, and if you don't like it, well, bleep you!"

Cheney is the administration's pit bull, and his Halliburton connection is a major sore point for the Bushies.

[i]The Full Story [/i] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

DimWit & FuckWit: The Hijacking of America ...

06.28.04 (7:32 am) [edit]

DimWit & FuckWit: The Hijacking of America

06.28.04 (7:30 am) [edit]

MICHAEL MOORE TURNS UP THE HEAT ON A CORRUPT FUCKED-UP BUSH & FUCK-YOU CHENEY!!!

06.27.04 (7:02 pm) [edit]

[b]We need this kind of heat[/b]

In Ray Bradbury's futuristic "Fahrenheit 451," Americans drive too fast, watch too much television on wall-size screens and walk around with radios attached to their heads. Hmmm. Among the things Bradbury wrote that haven't materialized since the book was published in 1953 are firefighters who don't stop fires but set them. To burn books.

We haven't started book burnings yet, but for anyone who's interested, the temperature at which they ignite is 451 degrees; the number we call in emergencies is 911. If Bradbury's "Fahrenheit" doesn't make you nervous, Michael Moore's just might.

Moore's Cannes-honored affront to the Bush administration - "Fahrenheit 9/11" - opened last week with a degree of high-level discourse, needy anticipation ("I need to see it!") and the echo of heavy guns the likes of which seldom precede the opening of any motion picture, much less a documentary. Such noted movie moguls as Mario Cuomo came out batting for Moore; Cuomo said he would do anything he could to get as many Americans as possible to see the film. Move America Forward, a group headed by former California state legislator Howard Kaloogian (who helped stop CBS from airing "The Reagans" and boost Arnold Schwarzenegger to unseat Gov. Gray Davis) was trying to get as many Americans as possible not to see the film. MoveOn.Org, the anti-Bush Web site, was urging its members to go en masse. Disney, which refused to distribute the movie ... well, we don't know what Michael Eisner was thinking, but if "Fahrenheit 9/11" does as well as expected, he may have to fall on his sword (or borrow one from Puss in Boots).

One of the more nettlesome questions we kept hearing about Moore's movie was, "Is it balanced?" Puh-leeeezzz. This is a country in which The New York Times has apologized for leading the country down the garden path to war (giving itself too much credit, but we appreciate the groveling). A country in which Bill O'Reilly is considered a journalist. One in which CNN hasn't - but should have - apologized for its pro-administration cheerleading pre-Iraq invasion, and one in which the corporate ethos and shilling that informs even the most innocuous of pictures - "The Terminal," for instance, which contains more product placement than QVC - is greeted with little more than a yawn.

Total objectivity may be a pipe dream, but the idea that a documentary should have less subjectivity than any other form of expression is simply unrealistic. Even for Moore, who's done very well for himself (especially through book sales), making nonfiction films is a crapshoot. For most documentaries, the audience is meager, the payoff microscopic, the celebrity negligible. One has to have even more passion, not less, to make a doc. Keeping that passion out of the mix would be more than emotionally dishonest. It would be all but impossible.

And Moore doesn't try. Nor should he. At a time when Orwellian Newspeak is the government's lingua franca, why should Michael Moore be the only one in the mass media expected to cool his jets? He doesn't lie - far from it; members of his opposition haven't contradicted anything in the movie, they've merely complained about its disclosure. Granted, Moore makes the president look like a chimp, showing perhaps insufficient respect for the office. But he gets a lot of help.

Concurrent in the cinemas with "Fahrenheit 9/11" is "The Hunting of the President," a similarly inclined film that doesn't work as well as Moore's. Why? Not because it has any less of an agenda - Harry Thomason, one of Bill Clinton's closest friends, co-wrote and co-directed the film, which chronicles Clinton's travail over Whitewater, Monica, Paula, etc., ad nauseum. Based on the book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, the film begins with the conclusion that a right-wing conspiracy was behind Clinton's persecution, and again, no one has disputed, or likely will dispute, what the film holds forth is true. But at the same time, the dramatic re-creations, newsreel footage and comedy film clips amount to a general smirk. To say that "Hunting" is preaching to the converted is to achieve maximum understatement.

Moore, on the other hand, always begins his little cinematic journeys with a sense of wonder: How could this be? he asks his audience about some outrage, and then proceeds to tell them. It's shtick, but it's workable shtick.

Fair and balanced reporting is an honorable thing, something to aspire to - sometimes. But when one side dictates what we see and hear on a day-to-day basis and operates with such an evident agenda, we need a Michael Moore, if only to retip the scales. - http://www.newsday.com/entert...,0,2780350.column?coll=ny-entertainm ent-columnists

Bush Caught in a (Another) Lie About the 9/11 WTC Attacks

06.27.04 (6:56 pm) [edit]

At http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPT... is a transcript of President Bush's comments regarding the day of the attacks on the World Trade Towers.

Towards the bottom of the transcript is the following quote. (Note: Some readers are reporting that the version of the CNN transcript they see in some parts of the country has been edited to remove the following comment. George Orwell would be proud!)

Click on http://www.whatreallyhappened...

THANK YOU MICHAEL MOORE: FOR EXPOSING BUSH FOR THE LIAR, TRAITOR & DIMWIT HE TRULY IS!!!

06.27.04 (6:44 pm) [edit]

[b]William Rivers Pitt: 'Thank you, Michael Moore'[/b]

"[i]The light at the end of the tunnel could be the bulb in a film projector[/i]." - Jeanette Castillo

Screens in Bartlett, Chattanooga, Jackson, Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee will be showing it. Screens in Layton and West Jordan, Utah will be showing it. If you find yourself in Leawood, Merriam, Shawnee or Wichita, Kansas, you can see it. The same goes for Centerville, Fairfax and Abington, Virginia. If you happen to be in Akron, Bexley, Dublin or Elyria, Ohio, you're all set. Hoover, Montgomery and Mobile, Alabama will not be left out.

Laramie, Wyoming? It's there. Bozeman, Montana? Indeed. Should you call home Grand Island, Lincoln or Omaha, Nebraska, you have not been forgotten. The largest mall in the country, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, will have it in its theater. If you are a soldier at Camp Lejune or Fort Bragg, about to be shipped to Iraq, you can see it in nearby Fayetteville, North Carolina.

These towns, large and small, along with towns large and small from sea to shining sea and straight through the American heartland, will begin screening Michael Moore's documentary, 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' beginning at 12:01a.m. Friday morning, the 25th of June, 2004. For the majority of people who will see this movie, in those towns large and small, the experience will be nothing short of a mind-bomb.

The Who once sang about how the hypnotized never lie, but as we have seen, people hypnotized by television and deliberately enforced fear can certainly support a war, and a President, which are fundamentally at odds with basic American decency. In fact, people hypnotized by television and deliberately enforced fear will feed themselves into the meat grinder with "God Bless America" on their lips.

Michael Moore's film will snap that hypnosis, but good. Those Americans who believed what their President told them because they saw it on the TV will, after less than two hours in their local theater, look at both their television and their President with doubt and loathing when they walk from the darkness into the bright light of day. There are millions of Americans who believed what they were told - about 9/11, about Iraq, about George W. Bush himself - who will come into that bright light with the realization that they have been lied to.

Speaking personally, none of the data in this film surprised me. Having spent every day of the last three years working to expose as many Americans as possible to the truth of the man they call President, Mr. Moore was unlikely to explode any shells across my bow. The connections between Bush, the Saudis, the Carlyle Group and the 9/11 attacks were there. The connections between Cheney and Halliburton were there. The connections between Enron, Unocal, natural gas pipelines, the war in Afghanistan and a little-known country called Turkmenistan were there. I enjoyed the fact that Moore showed off unredacted copies of Bush's military service record, allowing us to see the parts of those documents which had been blacked out. I found no fact, no assertion in this film to question or doubt. I have done my homework, and as was made painfully clear, Michael Moore did his.

Most Americans don't know about this stuff, and seeing it fully documented and meticulously researched on the big screen will be, to say the least, revelatory. Yes, Virginia, there are billions of dollars to be made off this Iraq war for Bush's friends. The second door on the left is the recruiting office. Sign on the line that is dotted, and be the first kid on your block to die for the benefit of Carlyle's stock options. Be sure to save your pennies beforehand, however, because the Army will dock your pay for the days you are dead. It's policy, you see.

Mr. Moore put two daggers into me with this film, the first of which had to do with American soldiers. Trooper after trooper spoke frankly for Moore's camera, condemning both the war and the people who thrust them into it. Several scenes graphically explained what happens to a soldier's body when it is caught in an explosion. The result is ruinous, and the cries of the wounded and the dying will ring in my ears forever.

The most wrenching scenes in the film center around a woman named Lila, who loves her country, loves her flag, and above all loves her children whom she actively persuaded to join the armed services. We learn that Lila has a son in Iraq, and because of that, she despises those protesting the invasion. We find out later that her son was killed in Karbala on April 2nd, when his Blackhawk helicopter was shot down. We watch her read her son's last letter home, in which he rages against Bush and the war. We last see Lila standing at the gates of the White House, tears boiling from her eyes, as she discovers her true enemy, the one who took her baby from her.

The other dagger Moore put into me came during his montage of the media coverage of the war. Journalist after journalist is shown rhapsodizing Bush, his administration and the war. Each and every one of them carried forth that which we now know to be bald-faced lies: That Iraq had WMDs, that Iraq was a threat, that we had to go, and that everything is fine. It was a slideshow of the nonsense Americans have been spoon-fed for far too long.

If you doubt this, Sidney Blumenthal's aggressive and effective actual journalism, as found in his most recent report titled 'Reality is Unraveling for Bush,' should help you along. "Most of the media was on the bandwagon or intimidated," writes Blumenthal. "Cheney himself called the president of the corporation that owned one of the networks to complain about an errant commentator. Political aides directed by Karl Rove ceaselessly called editors and producers with veiled threats about access that was not granted in any case. The press would not bite the hand that would not feed it."

With a single stroke, Michael Moore has undone three years of poor, slanted, biased, factually bereft, compromised television journalism. This, in the end, is the final greatness of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Not only will Americans get a sense of the depth of the deception they have endured, but 'journalists' all across the country will be forced to endure the humiliation they so richly deserve.

I was privileged to see this film in the company of three groups - Military Families Speak Out, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and Veterans for Peace - which have stood against this disastrous war from day one. Many in the theater had family in Iraq, or had lost family in Iraq, or had lost family on 9/11 and seen their beloved dead used as an excuse for unwarranted war, and there was not a dry eye in the house.

'Fahrenheit 9/11' is not a victory for anyone. We the People should have known better, We the People should have been given the facts before sending 851 of our children to die. We the People have been betrayed, by our leaders and by a media that profited, and profits still, from the daily sale of lies. This film drove that horrid fact home with a mallet, and it hurt.

I was reminded, as I filed out with this company of heroes, of a portion of Shakespeare's rendition of Henry's speech before Agincourt:

[i]He that outlives this day and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say, 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:' Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day[/i].'

Many of us were not hypnotized. Millions of us took to the streets in this country and around the world, to try and stop this madness before it was unleashed. The people in that theater with me had done this, had never stopped doing this, though their President and their media named them traitor. They were right. They were right. They were right.

Michael Moore has unleashed a wolf within Mr. Bush's fences. There is no getting around it. Perhaps, now that it is far too late, we as a nation will wake up. On the day of that awakening, those of us who never stopped standing, never stopped marching, learned to live without sleep, learned to live in a nation that scorned truth for televised fantasy, those patriots I was with tonight in that theater can pause for breath. We can sit upon the grass on a bright day, strip our sleeves, and show our scars.

[b]William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'[/b] - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Roger Ebert's Review of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' ... 9 out of 10 Critics Give It the "Thumbs-Up"!!!

06.27.04 (6:36 pm) [edit]

[u][b]FAHRENHEIT 9/11 REVIEW BY ROGER EBERT[/b][/u]

Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is less an expose of George W. Bush than a dramatization of what Moore sees as a failed and dangerous presidency. The charges in the film will not come as news to those who pay attention to politics, but Moore illustrates them with dramatic images and a relentless commentary track that essentially concludes Bush is incompetent, dishonest, failing in the war on terrorism, and has bad taste in friends.

Although Moore's narration ranges from outrage to sarcasm, the most devastating passage in the film speaks for itself. That's when Bush, who was reading My Pet Goat to a classroom of Florida children, is notified of the second attack on the World Trade Center, and yet lingers with the kids for almost seven minutes before finally leaving the room. His inexplicable paralysis wasn't underlined in news reports at the time, and only Moore thought to contact the teacher in that schoolroom -- who, as it turned out, had made her own video of the visit. The expression on Bush's face as he sits there is odd indeed.

Bush, here and elsewhere in the film, is characterized as a man who owes a lot to his friends, including those who helped bail him out of business ventures. Moore places particular emphasis on what he sees as a long-term friendship between the Bush family (including both presidents) and powerful Saudi Arabians. More than $1.4 billion in Saudi money has flowed into the coffers of Bush family enterprises, he says, and after 9/11 the White House helped expedite flights out of the country carrying, among others, members of the bin Laden family (which disowns its most famous member).

Moore examines the military records released by Bush to explain his disappearance from the Texas Air National Guard, and finds that the name of another pilot has been blacked out. This pilot, he learns, was Bush's close friend James R. Bath, who became Texas money manager for the billionaire bin Ladens. Another indication of the closeness of the Bushes and the Saudis: The law firm of James Baker, the secretary of State for Bush's father, was hired by the Saudis to defend them against a suit by a group of 9/11 victims and survivors, who charged that the Saudis had financed al-Qaida.

To Moore, this is more evidence that Bush has an unhealthy relationship with the Saudis, and that it may have influenced his decision to go to war against Iraq at least partially on their behalf. The war itself Moore considers unjustified (no WMDs, no Hussein-bin Laden link), and he talks with American soldiers, including amputees, who complain bitterly about Bush's proposed cuts of military salaries at the same time he was sending them into a war that they (at least, the ones Moore spoke to) hated.

Moore also shows American military personnel who are apparently enjoying the war; he has footage of soldiers who use torture techniques not in a prison but in the field, where they hood an Iraqi prisoner, call him "Ali Baba" and pose for videos while touching his genitals.

Moore brings a fresh impact to familiar material by the way he marshals his images. We are all familiar with the controversy over the 2000 election, which was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. What I hadn't seen before was footage of the ratification of Bush's election by the U.S. Congress. An election can be debated at the request of one senator and one representative; 10 representatives rise to challenge it, but not a single senator. As Moore shows the challengers, one after another, we cannot help noting that they are eight black women, one Asian woman and one black man. They are all gaveled into silence by the chairman of the joint congressional session -- Vice President Al Gore. The urgency and futility of the scene reawakens old feelings for those who believe Bush is an illegitimate president.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" opens on a note not unlike Moore's earlier films, such as "Roger & Me" and "Bowling for Columbine." Moore, as narrator, brings humor and sarcasm to his comments, and occasionally appears onscreen in a gadfly role. It's vintage Moore, for example, when he brings along an unsuspecting Marine recruiter as he confronts congressmen, urging them to have their children enlist in the service. And he makes good use of candid footage, including an eerie video showing Bush practicing facial expressions before going live with his address to the nation about 9/11.

Apparently Bush and other members of his administration don't know what every TV reporter knows, that a satellite image can be live before they get the cue to start talking. That accounts for the quease-inducing footage of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz wetting his pocket comb in his mouth before slicking back his hair. When that doesn't do it, he spits in his hand and wipes it down. If his mother is alive, I hope for his sake she doesn't see this film.

Such scenes are typical of vintage Moore, catching his subjects off guard. But his film grows steadily darker, and Moore largely disappears from it, as he focuses on people such as Lila Lipscomb, from Moore's hometown of Flint, Mich.; she reads a letter from her son, written days before he was killed in Iraq. It urges his family to work for Bush's defeat.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is a compelling, persuasive film, at odds with the White House effort to present Bush as a strong leader. He comes across as a shallow, inarticulate man, simplistic in speech and inauthentic in manner. If the film is not quite as electrifying as Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," that may be because Moore has toned down his usual exuberance and was sobered by attacks on the factual accuracy of elements of "Columbine"; playing with larger stakes, he is more cautious here, and we get an op-ed piece, not a stand-up routine. But he remains one of the most valuable figures on the political landscape, a populist rabble-rouser, humorous and effective; the outrage and incredulity in his film are an exhilarating response to Bush's determined repetition of the same stubborn sound bites. - http://www.suntimes.com/ebert...

... [b]Also, 9 out of 10 Critics give 'Fahrenheit 9/11' the [i]THUMBS-UP[/i]!!! [/b] http://www.tblog.com/template...

Anti-Bush 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Sets a Record at Box Office (9 out of 10 Critics Back It)

06.27.04 (5:58 pm) [edit]

[u][b]Anti-Bush 'Fahrenheit' sets a record at box office[/b][/u]

Michael Moore's anti-Bush "Fahrenheit 9/11" became the highest-grossing documentary of all time on its first weekend in release, taking in $21.8 million as it packed theaters across the country this weekend.

[i]The Full Story [/i] http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...

[u][b]One Group That's Not Polarized: 9 out of 10 Film Reviewers for Daily Papers Back 'Fahrenheit'[/b][/u]

They like Mike. While the country as a whole appears split, along political lines, over the controversial Michael Moore documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," movie reviewers at U.S. daily newspapers are not.

An E & P survey of 63 daily papers that ran reviews, in "red" and "blue" states alike, finds that 56 gave the film a positive nod, with only 7 abstaining, an almost 90% favorable rating.

[i]The Full Story [/i] http://www.editorandpublisher...

Hypocrisy in Action

06.27.04 (6:20 am) [edit]

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."

- George W. Bush
Sept. 13, 2001, http://www.pbs.org/weta/washi...

"I don't know where [Osama bin Laden] is and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

- George W. Bush
March 13, 2003, http://www.pbs.org/weta/washi...

Hypocritical Flip-Flopper, Liar & Traitor Bush on his buddy Osama bin Laden

06.27.04 (6:18 am) [edit]

Greenspan's Iraq Interest (Connect-the-Dots on Iraq War & US Inflation)

06.27.04 (6:14 am) [edit]

[i]A smooth transition of power in Iraq next week means that the uncertainty hanging over the global market will lift, and prices and inflation will likely increase. To the rescue are Alan Greenspan and the Fed, with plans to pre-emptively increase the interest rate. Here, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich explains the ties between Rumsfeld's war on Iraq and Greenspan's war on inflation[/i].

[b]Two events will affect[/b]—hopefully not roil or rock, but certainly influence—global markets by the middle of next week. The first is the transfer of authority in Iraq to the provisional government, scheduled for June 30. The second is the decision by the Fed’s Open Market Committee, also expected by June 30, to lift interest rates from their 40-year low. Although treated as separate stories in the news, the two are in fact closely related.

The reason is that markets hate uncertainty. Knowing that something big might happen but not knowing whether it will, or how big it will be, causes many investors to hold back until the coast clears. It also causes many businesses and consumers to delay expenditures until more is known. So uncertainty is itself a cost that reduces the market value of assets and retards their growth.

If the transfer of power in Iraq goes smoothly—if oil pipelines there and in Saudi Arabia get by relatively unscathed, if transportation and communication facilities throughout the Middle East and Europe are unharmed, if there are no major strikes against the United States—then global markets will breath a large sigh of relief, and the world economy can get on with its business much as before.

As to the Fed, well, it’s likely to raise the overnight rate it charges member banks by at least a quarter point when it meets next week, meaning that short-term interest rates will rise by that much. Alan Greenspan has already signaled it, and markets have taken it into account. It will be the first rate increase since May of 2000, the first increase after a slump since 1994. The economy is on an upswing, and the Fed is determined to make a pre-emptive strike against inflation.

Now, if all goes relatively smoothly with the transfer of power in Iraq, and the extra uncertainty hanging over the global economy lifts, then the value of all assets will rise and continue to rise. Hence, more upward pressure on prices. Therefore, expect further rate increases from the Fed through the summer and fall, bringing short-term interest rates up to about 3.5 percent by the end of the year.

On the other hand, if the transfer of authority in Iraq goes badly, if instability in the Middle East continues or increases, then uncertainty will weigh down global markets. Yes, oil prices may rise. But investors, companies, and consumers will hold back enough to keep most other prices in check. Inflationary expectations will dim, and the Fed’s Open Market Committee will be reluctant to raise interest rates any further.

Donald Rumsfeld and Alan Greenspan control entirely different parts of the government, but Rumsfeld’s war in Iraq has a direct effect on Greenspan’s war on inflation.

[b]Robert B. Reich is the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University, and was the secretary of labor under former President Bill Clinton[/b]. - http://www.tompaine.com/artic...

Greenspan's Iraq Interest (Connect-the-Dots on Iraq War & US Inflation)

06.27.04 (6:10 am) [edit]

Bush Smirks: US commander present when detainee died at Abu Ghraib

06.26.04 (2:53 pm) [edit]

BAGHDAD: Captain Donald Reese said a “Colonel Pappas” was one of a number of people present during the interrogation. Colonel Thomas Pappas was commander of the 205 Military Intelligence Brigade at the prison near Baghdad. He is now deployed in Germany, a US military spokesman said. Captain Donald Reese described how he saw the bleeding body of a prisoner who was brought in alive after a bomb attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Iraqi capital on October 27. “I was told that when he was brought in he was combative, that they took him up to the room and during the interrogation he passed,” Reese said during his testimony on Thursday, adding that the first time he saw the man was when he was dead in a shower. Reese said he had at first been told that the man died of a heart attack. The body “was bleeding from the head, nose, mouth,” he said. “I heard Colonel Pappas say: ‘I’m not going to go down alone for this’,” Reese told the hearing. The body was left locked in the shower overnight to avoid frightening other prisoners and an autopsy was conducted the following day, the captain said.[i] afp [/i]- http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/...

Irish Demonstrators Don't Want Bush on Irish Soil: "No Red Carpet for Killer Bush" (Pictures)

06.26.04 (8:05 am) [edit]

[b]Stepping Out to a Cold Irish Welcome [/b]

Smiling and waving, George Bush glided down the steps of Air Force One at Shannon airport last night, seemingly unfazed by his tag as the most unwelcome American ever to set foot on Irish soil.

=http://img33.photobucket.com/...
[i]Anti-U.S. President George W. Bush visit protesters march towards Dromoland Castle on the main road were U.S. President George W. Bush is holding US-EU summit with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern in Ireland, June 26, 2004.[/i]

The president and his wife, Laura, were spared the sight of thousands of Irish protesters at the airport entrance and whisked off in an armoured Cadillac to the 16th century Dromoland castle in County Clare. Mr Bush enjoyed a rather military-looking walk around the expansive grounds with the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, but was expected to retire early to his £900-a night presidential suite, which the castle promotes as the authentic "landed gentry" experience.

The president will use today's US-EU summit to try to heal the transatlantic rifts over Iraq before the Nato summit in Turkey.

Pretzels are off the menu at his working lunch with European statesmen. Only the finest Irish seafood and lamb will grace the table as the conversation turns to the Middle East and famine in Sudan. The French wine-list will serve as a reminder of the difficult task at hand.

But what Mr Bush has been choking on recently is the gristle of the Irish media. Expecting nothing more than a gentle probing from a friendly state which America "helped" to prosper, he gave the first White House interview to an Irish journalist for 20 years. But the state broadcaster RTE subjected him to a grilling which left him fuming and had media commentators and licence-payers debating the Irish style of journalism.

The interview was intended as a cordial start to the president's first visit to the Irish Republic. Some claim the summit was tailored to give Mr Bush a pre-election media-opportunity for the 50 million or so Irish folk back home.

But RTE's Washington correspondent, Carole Coleman, was not about to let Mr Bush off the hook. In an interview broadcast on television and a radio breakfast show she persisted with questions about dead US soldiers, torture, the issue of making the world a more dangerous place, and being disliked.

"I don't really try to chase popularity polls," the president said.

After Irish churchmen queried the president's morals this week, there was also an inevitable question about his devotion to the Lord.

"I get great substance from my personal relationship [with God]," he said. "That doesn't make me think I'm a better person than you are, by the way, because one of the great admonitions in the good book is, 'Don't try to take a speck out of your eye if I got a log in my own'."

Mr Ahern's fashion sense will ensure that he gets the coverage he requires. Once known as anorak-man, the prime minister hogged much media time by his recent appearance in a garish pair of canary-yellow trousers at the G8 summit that the issue was raised in the Irish parliament.

The visit was accompanied by the inevitable anti-Bush demonstrations in Shannon, Dublin and several other cities. Three protesters, including Edward Horgan, a leading peace activist and former officer in the Irish army, were arrested on board a boat on the River Shannon yesterday afternoon.

=http://img33.photobucket.com/...
[i]A protester takes a photo with her mobile phone at a peace camp, just outside Ennis, Co Clare, Ireland on Friday June 25 2004 where protesters gathered to protest against the visit US President George W. Bush, who was arriving in Ireland later in the day on his way to a NATO summit in Turkey[/i].

Radio phone-in shows - the barometer of Irish life - have been flooded with anti-Bush callers. One of the loudest pro-Bush voices was that of a former US diplomat, George Dempsey, who said Ireland should be welcoming Mr Bush by waving American flags but instead had been poisoned by media bias.

He said the foreign policy debate in Ireland was "dominated by a self-justifying leftist fixation on the US". He had written a book dissecting the "vicious misrepresentation" in the Irish media.

The one person who did not seem to need advice on dealing with Irish resentment was the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who travelled with the president and Colin Powell.

She said she was aware the president would be greeted by protesters but the Irish should remember that the right to protest was a part of democracy once denied to Iraqis.

Irish demonstrators were resolute. "No red carpet for killer Bush," said a placard in a hedgerow. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush's Tag in Ireland: "Most Unwelcome American ever to set foot on Irish soil" (Pictures)

06.26.04 (8:02 am) [edit]

[b]Stepping Out to a Cold Irish Welcome [/b]

Smiling and waving, George Bush glided down the steps of Air Force One at Shannon airport last night, seemingly unfazed by his tag as the most unwelcome American ever to set foot on Irish soil.

=http://img33.photobucket.com/...
[i]Anti-U.S. President George W. Bush visit protesters march towards Dromoland Castle on the main road were U.S. President George W. Bush is holding US-EU summit with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern in Ireland, June 26, 2004[/i].

The president and his wife, Laura, were spared the sight of thousands of Irish protesters at the airport entrance and whisked off in an armoured Cadillac to the 16th century Dromoland castle in County Clare. Mr Bush enjoyed a rather military-looking walk around the expansive grounds with the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, but was expected to retire early to his £900-a night presidential suite, which the castle promotes as the authentic "landed gentry" experience.

The president will use today's US-EU summit to try to heal the transatlantic rifts over Iraq before the Nato summit in Turkey.

Pretzels are off the menu at his working lunch with European statesmen. Only the finest Irish seafood and lamb will grace the table as the conversation turns to the Middle East and famine in Sudan. The French wine-list will serve as a reminder of the difficult task at hand.

But what Mr Bush has been choking on recently is the gristle of the Irish media. Expecting nothing more than a gentle probing from a friendly state which America "helped" to prosper, he gave the first White House interview to an Irish journalist for 20 years. But the state broadcaster RTE subjected him to a grilling which left him fuming and had media commentators and licence-payers debating the Irish style of journalism.

The interview was intended as a cordial start to the president's first visit to the Irish Republic. Some claim the summit was tailored to give Mr Bush a pre-election media-opportunity for the 50 million or so Irish folk back home.

But RTE's Washington correspondent, Carole Coleman, was not about to let Mr Bush off the hook. In an interview broadcast on television and a radio breakfast show she persisted with questions about dead US soldiers, torture, the issue of making the world a more dangerous place, and being disliked.

"I don't really try to chase popularity polls," the president said.

After Irish churchmen queried the president's morals this week, there was also an inevitable question about his devotion to the Lord.

"I get great substance from my personal relationship [with God]," he said. "That doesn't make me think I'm a better person than you are, by the way, because one of the great admonitions in the good book is, 'Don't try to take a speck out of your eye if I got a log in my own'."

Mr Ahern's fashion sense will ensure that he gets the coverage he requires. Once known as anorak-man, the prime minister hogged much media time by his recent appearance in a garish pair of canary-yellow trousers at the G8 summit that the issue was raised in the Irish parliament.

The visit was accompanied by the inevitable anti-Bush demonstrations in Shannon, Dublin and several other cities. Three protesters, including Edward Horgan, a leading peace activist and former officer in the Irish army, were arrested on board a boat on the River Shannon yesterday afternoon.

=http://img33.photobucket.com/...
[i]A protester takes a photo with her mobile phone at a peace camp, just outside Ennis, Co Clare, Ireland on Friday June 25 2004 where protesters gathered to protest against the visit US President George W. Bush, who was arriving in Ireland later in the day on his way to a NATO summit in Turkey[/i].

Radio phone-in shows - the barometer of Irish life - have been flooded with anti-Bush callers. One of the loudest pro-Bush voices was that of a former US diplomat, George Dempsey, who said Ireland should be welcoming Mr Bush by waving American flags but instead had been poisoned by media bias.

He said the foreign policy debate in Ireland was "dominated by a self-justifying leftist fixation on the US". He had written a book dissecting the "vicious misrepresentation" in the Irish media.

The one person who did not seem to need advice on dealing with Irish resentment was the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who travelled with the president and Colin Powell.

She said she was aware the president would be greeted by protesters but the Irish should remember that the right to protest was a part of democracy once denied to Iraqis.

Irish demonstrators were resolute. "No red carpet for killer Bush," said a placard in a hedgerow. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Welcome to Bush's political dark ages: White House tries to rein in scientists

06.26.04 (7:53 am) [edit]

[b]Welcome to Bush's political dark ages: White House tries to rein in scientists[/b]

The Bush administration has ordered that government scientists must be approved by a senior political appointee before they can participate in meetings convened by the World Health Organization, the leading international health and science agency.

A top official from the Health and Human Services Department in April asked the WHO to begin routing requests for participation in its meetings to the department's secretary for review, rather than directly invite individual scientists, as has long been the case.

Officials at the WHO, based in Geneva, Switzerland, have refused to implement the request, saying it could compromise the independence of international scientific deliberations. Denis G. Aitken, WHO assistant director-general, said Friday that he had been negotiating with Washington in an effort to reach a compromise.

The request is the latest instance in which the Bush administration has been accused of allowing politics to intrude into once-sacrosanct areas of scientific deliberation. It has been criticized for replacing highly regarded scientists with industry and political allies on advisory panels. A biologist who was at odds with the administration's position on stem-cell research was dismissed from a presidential advisory commission. This year, 60 prominent scientists accused the administration of "misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes."

The president's science advisor, Dr. John Marburger, has called the accusations "wrong and misleading, inaccurate."

The newest action has drawn fresh criticism, however, as the request has circulated among scientists.

"I do not feel this is an appropriate or constructive thing to do," said Dr. D.A. Henderson, an epidemiologist who ran the Bush administration's Office of Public Health Preparedness and now acts as an official advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. "In the scientific world, we have a generally open process. We deal with science as science. I am unaware of such clearance ever having been required before."

Henderson worked for the WHO for 11 years directing its smallpox eradication program. He said he could not recall having to go through government bureaucrats to invite scientists to participate in expert panels, except in the case of small Eastern European countries. In 2002, Henderson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was praised by Bush as "a great general in mankind's war against disease."

A few scientists have been worried about the department's vetting demand since April, but concerns heightened this week when Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) complained in a letter to Thompson. "The new policy … politicizes the process of providing the expert advice of U.S. scientists to the international community," Waxman wrote.

Thompson's spokesman, Tony Jewell, called Waxman's criticism "seriously misguided."

"No one knows better than HHS who the experts are and who can provide the most up-to-date and expert advice," Jewell said. "The World Health Organization does not know the best people to talk to, but HHS knows. If anyone thinks politics will interfere with Secretary Thompson's commitment to improve health in every corner of the world, they are sadly mistaken."

The WHO, founded in 1947, is the United Nations agency dedicated to health. It is governed by 192 member states and conducts forums, recommends international health and safety standards and draws leading scientists from around the world to expert panels that review the latest literature on chemical, biological, industrial and environmental threats.

The organization traditionally insists on picking experts to sit on official scientific review panels.

"It's an important issue for us," Aitken said. "We do need independent science. If we want government positions, we have government meetings. We have many, many of these government assemblies, but they address a separate set of concerns" than the scientific gatherings.

Scientists who attend the meetings are reminded that they are invited to offer their scientific views, not to represent their government or financial interests.

The letter to Aitken declaring the new vetting policy was signed by William R. Steiger, special assistant to Thompson. He came to Washington with Thompson from Wisconsin, and is the son of a congressman and the godson of former President George H.W. Bush.

"Except under very limited circumstances, U.S. government experts do not and cannot participate in WHO consultations in their individual capacity," Steiger wrote. Civil service and other regulations "require HHS experts to serve as representatives of the U.S. government at all times and advocate U.S. government policies."

The letter asserts that "the current practice in which the WHO invites specific HHS officials by name to serve in these capacities has not always resulted in the most appropriate selections."

The letter provided no specifics. But WHO panels sometimes have disagreed with positions taken by the administration. A WHO panel met in Lyons, France, this month and declared formaldehyde a known carcinogen — relying on studies that Bush administration political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency had rejected as inconclusive.

Voting members of the panel included scientists from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health who had been authors of the studies.

Several leading scientists said the new policy would undermine scientific deliberations.

"This is really tampering with a process that has worked very well," said Linda Rosenstock, the dean of the UCLA School of Public Health who directed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health under President Clinton. "To have this micromanaged at the HHS departmental level raises the specter that political considerations rather than scientific considerations will determine who is allowed to go" to the world's most important scientific meetings.

Rosenstock said that some WHO divisions — including the one reviewing cancer threats — have become targets of industry groups. "There is real concern that science could be trumped by politics and vested interests."

For Waxman, a frequent critic of the administration, the department's letter to the WHO is part of a pattern of mixing politics with science — and one he contends diminishes U.S. stature internationally. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Welcome to Bush's political dark-ages: White House tries to rein in scientists

06.26.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

Bush's Destruction of America: Start With Eliminating Science to Bring-in Another Dark Age!!!

06.26.04 (7:48 am) [edit]

TBLOG FASCISTS ON WMDs IN IRAQ: "HEY DON'T YOU BELIEVE BUSH? HE SAYS THEY'RE THERE!" ... LOL ...

06.25.04 (8:14 am) [edit]

[b]The neo-con, neo-fascist nazis on Tblog seem to think that simply because their [i]Gods[/i], Herr-Fuhrer-Bush and the Fucker-Reich-Marshall-Che ney say something that it is true, even when facts disprove their myriad lies, lies, lies, lies and more lies.[/b]

For some [b]Facts[/b] if you're interested click on http://www.ceip.org/files/pro...

Democracy Itself is in Grave Danger

06.25.04 (7:18 am) [edit]

When we Americans first began, our biggest danger was clearly in view: we knew from the bitter experience with King George III that the most serious threat to democracy is usually the accumulation of too much power in the hands of an Executive, whether he be a King or a president. Our ingrained American distrust of concentrated power has very little to do with the character or persona of the individual who wields that power. It is the power itself that must be constrained, checked, dispersed and carefully balanced, in order to ensure the survival of freedom. In addition, our founders taught us that public fear is the most dangerous enemy of democracy because under the right circumstances it can trigger the temptation of those who govern themselves to surrender that power to someone who promises strength and offers safety, security and freedom from fear.

It is an extraordinary blessing to live in a nation so carefully designed to protect individual liberty and safeguard self-governance and free communication. But if George Washington could see the current state of his generation's handiwork and assess the quality of our generation's stewardship at the beginning of this twenty-first century, what do you suppose he would think about the proposition that our current president claims the unilateral right to arrest and imprison American citizens indefinitely without giving them the right to see a lawyer or inform their families of their whereabouts, and without the necessity of even charging them with any crime. All that is necessary, according to our new president is that he - the president - label any citizen an "unlawful enemy combatant," and that will be sufficient to justify taking away that citizen's liberty - even for the rest of his life, if the president so chooses. And there is no appeal.

What would Thomas Jefferson think of the curious and discredited argument from our Justice Department that the president may authorize what plainly amounts to the torture of prisoners - and that any law or treaty, which attempts to constrain his treatment of prisoners in time of war is itself a violation of the constitution our founders put together.

What would Benjamin Franklin think of President Bush's assertion that he has the inherent power - even without a declaration of war by the Congress - to launch an invasion of any nation on Earth, at any time he chooses, for any reason he wishes, even if that nation poses no imminent threat to the United States.

How long would it take James Madison to dispose of our current President's recent claim, in Department of Justice legal opinions, that he is no longer subject to the rule of law so long as he is acting in his role as Commander in Chief.

I think it is safe to say that our founders would be genuinely concerned about these recent developments in American democracy and that they would feel that we are now facing a clear and present danger that has the potential to threaten the future of the American experiment.

Shouldn't we be equally concerned? And shouldn't we ask ourselves how we have come to this point?

Even though we are now attuned to orange alerts and the potential for terrorist attacks, our founders would almost certainly caution us that the biggest threat to the future of the America we love is still the endemic challenge that democracies have always faced whenever they have appeared in history - a challenge rooted in the inherent difficulty of self governance and the vulnerability to fear that is part of human nature. Again, specifically, the biggest threat to America is that we Americans will acquiesce in the slow and steady accumulation of too much power in the hands of one person.

Having painstakingly created the intricate design of America, our founders knew intimately both its strengths and weaknesses, and during their debates they not only identified the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive as the long-term threat which they considered to be the most serious, but they also worried aloud about one specific scenario in which this threat might become particularly potent - that is, when war transformed America's president into our commander in chief, they worried that his suddenly increased power might somehow spill over its normal constitutional boundaries and upset the delicate checks and balances they deemed so crucial to the maintenance of liberty.

That is precisely why they took extra care to parse the war powers in the constitution, assigning the conduct of war and command of the troops to the president, but retaining for the Congress the crucial power of deciding whether or not, and when, our nation might decide to go war.

Indeed, this limitation on the power of the executive to make war was seen as crucially important. James Madison wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, "The constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature."

In more recent decades, the emergence of new weapons that virtually eliminate the period of time between the decision to go to war and the waging of war have naturally led to a reconsideration of the exact nature of the executive's war-making power. But the practicalities of modern warfare which necessarily increase the war powers of the President at the expense of Congress do not render moot the concerns our founders had so long ago that the making of war by the president - when added to his other powers - carries with it the potential for unbalancing the careful design of our constitution, and in the process, threatening our liberty.

They were greatly influenced - far more than we can imagine - by a careful reading of the history and human dramas surrounding the democracies of ancient Greece and the Roman republic. They knew, for example, that democracy disappeared in Rome when Caesar crossed the Rubicon in violation of the Senate's long prohibition against a returning general entering the city while still in command of military forces. Though the Senate lingered in form and was humored for decades, when Caesar impoliticly combined his military commander role with his chief executive role, the Senate - and with it the Republic - withered away. And then for all intents and purposes, the great dream of democracy disappeared from the face of the Earth for seventeen centuries, until its rebirth in our land.

Symbolically, President Bush has been attempting to conflate his commander-in-chief role and his head of government role to maximize the power people are eager to give those who promise to defend them against active threats. But as he does so, we are witnessing some serious erosion of the checks and balances that have always maintained a healthy democracy in America.

In Justice Jackson's famous concurring opinion in the Youngstown Steel case in the 1950's, the single most important Supreme Court case on the subject of what powers are inherent to the commander in chief in a time of war, he wrote, "The example of such unlimited executive power that must have most impressed the forefathers was the prerogative exercised by George III, and the description of its evils in the declaration of independence leads me to doubt that they created their new Executive in their image...and if we seek instruction from our own times, we can match it only from the Executive governments we disparagingly describe as totalitarian."

I am convinced that our founders would counsel us today that the greatest challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism, and not war, but how we manage our fears and achieve security without losing our freedom. I am also convinced that they would warn us that democracy itself is in grave danger if we allow any president to use his role as commander in chief to rupture the careful balance between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government. Our current president has gone to war and has come back into "the city" and declared that our nation is now in a permanent state of war, which he says justifies his reinterpretation of the Constitution in ways that increase his personal power at the expense of Congress, the courts, and every individual citizen.

We must surrender some of our traditional American freedoms, he tells us, so that he may have sufficient power to protect us against those who would do us harm. Public fear remains at an unusually high level almost three years after we were attacked on September 11th, 2001. In response to those devastating attacks, the president properly assumed his role as commander in chief and directed a military invasion of the land in which our attackers built their training camps, were harbored and planned their assault. But just as the tide of battle was shifting decisively in our favor, the commander in chief made a controversial decision to divert a major portion of our army to invade another country that, according to the best evidence compiled in a new, exhaustive, bi-partisan study, posed no imminent threat to us and had nothing to do with the attack against us.

As the main body of our troops were redeployed for the new invasion, those who organized the attacks against us escaped and many of them are still at large. Indeed, their overall numbers seem to have grown considerably because our invasion of the country that did not pose any imminent threat to us was perceived in their part of the world as a gross injustice, and the way in which we have conducted that war further fueled a sense of rage against the United States in those lands and, according to several studies, has stimulated a wave of new recruits for the terrorist group that attacked us and still wishes us harm.

A little over a year ago, when we launched the war against this second country, Iraq, President Bush repeatedly gave our people the clear impression that Iraq was an ally and partner to the terrorist group that attacked us, al Qaeda, and not only provided a geographic base for them but was also close to providing them weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs. But now the extensive independent investigation by the bipartisan commission formed to study the 9/11 attacks has just reported that there was no meaningful relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda of any kind. And, of course, over the course of this past year we had previously found out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So now, the President and the Vice President are arguing with this commission, and they are insisting that the commission is wrong and they are right, and that there actually was a working co-operation between Iraq and al Qaeda.

The problem for the President is that he doesn't have any credible evidence to support his claim, and yet, in spite of that, he persists in making that claim vigorously. So I would like to pause for a moment to address the curious question of why President Bush continues to make this claim that most people know is wrong. And I think it's particularly important because it is closely connected to the questions of constitutional power with which I began this speech, and will profoundly affect how that power is distributed among our three branches of government.

To begin with, our founders wouldn't be the least bit surprised at what the modern public opinion polls all tell us about why it's so important particularly for President Bush to keep the American people from discovering that what he told them about the linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda isn't true. Among these Americans who still believe there is a linkage, there remains very strong support for the President's decision to invade Iraq. But among those who accept the commission's detailed finding that there is no connection, support for the war in Iraq dries up pretty quickly.

And that's understandable, because if Iraq had nothing to do with the attack or the organization that attacked us, then that means the President took us to war when he didn't have to. Almost nine hundred of our soldiers have been killed, and almost five thousand have been wounded.

Thus, for all these reasons, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have decided to fight to the rhetorical death over whether or not there's a meaningful connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. They think that if they lose that argument and people see the truth, then they'll not only lose support for the controversial decision to go to war, but also lose some of the new power they've picked up from the Congress and the courts, and face harsh political consequences at the hands of the American people. As a result, President Bush is now intentionally misleading the American people by continuing to aggressively and brazenly assert a linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

If he is not lying, if they genuinely believe that, that makes them unfit in battle with al Qaeda. If they believe these flimsy scraps, then who would want them in charge? Are they too dishonest or too gullible? Take your pick.

But the truth is gradually emerging in spite of the President's determined dissembling. Listen, for example, to this editorial from the Financial Times: "There was nothing intrinsically absurd about the WMD fears, or ignoble about the opposition to Saddam's tyranny - however late Washington developed this. The purported link between Baghdad and al Qaeda, by contrast, was never believed by anyone who knows Iraq and the region. It was and is nonsense."

Of course the first rationale presented for the war was to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Then the rationale was to liberate Iraqis and the Middle East from tyranny, but our troops were not greeted with the promised flowers and are now viewed as an occupying force by 92% of Iraqis, while only 2% see them as liberators.

But right from the start, beginning very soon after the attacks of 9/11, President Bush made a decision to start mentioning Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the same breath in a cynical mantra designed to fuse them together as one in the public's mind. He repeatedly used this device in a highly disciplined manner to create a false impression in the minds of the American people that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Usually he was pretty tricky in his exact wording. Indeed, Bush's consistent and careful artifice is itself evidence that he knew full well that he was telling an artful and important lie -- visibly circumnavigating the truth over and over again as if he had practiced how to avoid encountering the truth. But as I will document in a few moments, he and Vice President Cheney also sometimes departed from their tricky wording and resorted to statements were clearly outright falsehoods. In any case, by the time he was done, public opinion polls showed that fully 70% of the American people had gotten the message he wanted them to get, and had been convinced that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

The myth that Iraq and al Qaeda were working together was no accident - the President and Vice President deliberately ignored warnings before the war from international intelligence services, the CIA, and their own Pentagon that the claim was false. Europe's top terrorism investigator said in 2002, "We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. If there were such links, we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever." A classified October 2002 CIA report given to the White House directly undercut the Iraq-al Qaeda claim. Top officials in the Pentagon told reporters in 2002 that the rhetoric being used by President Bush and Vice President Cheney was "an exaggeration."

And at least some honest voices within the President's own party admitted as such. Senator Chuck Hagel, a decorated war hero who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, said point blank, "Saddam is not in league with al Qaeda...I have not seen any intelligence that would lead me to connect Saddam Hussein with al Qaeda."

But those voices did not stop the deliberate campaign to mislead America. Over the course of a year, the President and Vice President used carefully crafted language to scare Americans into believing there was an imminent threat from an Iraq-armed al Qaeda.

In the fall of 2002, the President told the country "You can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam" and that the "true threat facing our country is an al Qaeda-type network trained and armed by Saddam." At the same time, Vice President Cheney was repeating his claim that "there is overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government."

By the Spring, Secretary of State Powell was in front of the United Nations claiming a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network."

But after the invasion, no ties were found. In June of 2003, the United Nations Security Council's al Qaeda monitoring agency told reporters his extensive investigation had found no evidence linking the Iraqi regime to al Qaeda. By August, three former Bush administration national security and intelligence officials admitted that the evidence used to make the Iraq-al Qaeda claim was "tenuous, exaggerated and often at odds with the conclusion of key intelligence agencies." And earlier this year, Knight-Ridder newspapers reported "Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence" of a connection.

So when the bipartisan 9/11 commission issued its report finding "no credible evidence" of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection, it should not have caught the White House off guard. Yet instead of the candor Americans need and deserve from their leaders, there have been more denials and more insistence without evidence. Vice President Cheney insisted even this week that "there clearly was a relationship" and that there is "overwhelming evidence." Even more shocking, Cheney offered this disgraceful question: "Was Iraq involved with al-Qaeda in the attack on 9/11? We don't know." He then claimed that he "probably" had more information than the commission, but has so far refused to provide anything to the commission other than more insults.

The President was even more brazen. He dismissed all questions about his statements by saying "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." He provided no evidence.

Friends of the administration tried mightily to rehabilitate their cherished but shattered linkage. John Lehman, one of the Republicans on the commission, offered what sounded like new evidence that a Saddam henchman had attended an Al Qaeda meeting. But within hours, the commissions files yielded definitive evidence that it was another man with a similar name - ironically capturing the near-miss quality of Bush's entire symbolic argument.

They have such an overwhelming political interest in sustaining the belief in the minds of the American people that Hussein was in partnership with bin Laden that they dare not admit the truth lest they look like complete fools for launching our country into a reckless, discretionary war against a nation that posed no immediate threat to us whatsoever. But the damage they have done to our country is not limited to misallocation of military economic political resources. Whenever a chief executive spends prodigious amounts of energy convincing people of lies, he damages the fabric of democracy, and the belief in the fundamental integrity of our self-government.

That creates a need for control over the flood of bad news, bad policies and bad decisions also explains their striking attempts to control news coverage.

To take the most recent example, Vice President Cheney was clearly ready to do battle with the news media when he went on CNBC earlier this week to attack news coverage of the 9/11 Commission's conclusion that Iraq did not work with Al Qaeda. He lashed out at the New York Times for having the nerve to print a headline saying the 9/11 commission "finds no Qaeda-Iraq Tie" - a clear statement of the obvious - and said there is no "fundamental split here now between what the president said and what the commission said." He tried to deny that he had personally been responsible for helping to create the false impression of linkage between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

Ironically, his interview ended up being fodder for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Stewart played Cheney's outright denial that he had ever said that representatives of Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence met in Prague. Then Stewart froze Cheney's image and played the exact video clip in which Cheney had indeed directly claimed linkage between the two, catching him on videotape in a lie. At that point Stewart said, addressing himself to Cheney's frozen image on the television screen, "It's my duty to inform you that your pants are on fire."

Dan Rather says that post-9/11 patriotism has stifled journalists from asking government officials "the toughest of the tough questions." Rather went so far as to compare Administration efforts to intimidate the press to "necklacing" in apartheid South Africa, while acknowledging it as "an obscene comparison." "The fear is that you will be necklaced here (in the U.S.), you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck," Rather explained. It was CBS, remember, that withheld the Abu Ghraib photographs from the American people for two weeks at the request of the Bush Administration.

Donald Rumsfeld has said that criticism of the Administration's policy "makes it complicated and more difficult" to fight the war. CNN's Christiane Amanpour said on CNBC last September, "I think the press was muzzled and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say but certainly television, and perhaps to a certain extent my station, was intimidated by the Administration."

The Administration works closely with a network of "rapid response" digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for "undermining support for our troops." Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, was one of the first journalists to regularly expose the President's consistent distortions of the facts. Krugman writes, "Let's not overlook the role of intimidation. After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative of the President...you had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation.

Bush and Cheney are spreading purposeful confusion while punishing reporters who stand in the way. It is understandably difficult for reporters and journalistic institutions to resist this pressure, which, in the case of individual journalists, threatens their livelihoods, and in the case of the broadcasters can lead to other forms of economic retribution. But resist they must, because without a press able to report "without fear or favor" our democracy will disappear.

Recently, the media has engaged in some healthy self-criticism of the way it allowed the White House to mislead the public into war under false pretenses. We are dependent on the media, especially the broadcast media, to never let this happen again. We must help them resist this pressure for everyone's sake, or we risk other wrong-headed decisions based upon false and misleading impressions.

We are left with an unprecedented, high-intensity conflict every single day between the ideological illusions upon which this administration's policies have been based and the reality of the world in which the American people live their lives.

When you boil it all down to precisely what went wrong with the Bush Iraq policy, it is actually fairly simple: he adopted an ideologically driven view of Iraq that was tragically at odds with reality. Everything that has gone wrong is in one way or another the result of a spectacular and violent clash between the bundle of misconceptions that he gullibly consumed and the all-too-painful reality that our troops and contractors and diplomats and taxpayers have encountered. Of course, there have been several other collisions between President Bush's ideology and America's reality. To take the most prominent example, the transformation of a $5 trillion surplus into a $4 trillion deficit is in its own way just as spectacular a miscalculation as the Iraq war.

But there has been no more bizarre or troubling manifestation of how seriously off track this President's policies have taken America than the two profound shocks to our nation's conscience during the last month. First came the extremely disturbing pictures that document strange forms of physical and sexual abuse - and even torture and murder - by some of our soldiers against people they captured as prisoners in Iraq. And then, the second shock came just last week, with strange and perverted legal memoranda from inside the administration, which actually sought to justify torture and to somehow provide a legal rationale for bizarre and sadistic activities conducted in the name of the American people, which, according to any reasonable person, would be recognized as war crimes. In making their analysis, the administration lawyers concluded that the President, whenever he is acting in his role as commander in chief, is above and immune from the "rule of law." At least we don't have to guess what our founders would have to say about this bizarre and un-American theory.

By the middle of this week, the uproar caused by the disclosure of this legal analysis had forced the administration to claim they were throwing the memo out and it was, "irrelevant and overbroad." But no one in the administration has said that the reasoning was wrong. And in fact, a DOJ spokesman says they stand by the tortured definition of torture. In addition the broad analysis regarding the commander-in-chief powers has not been disavowed. And the view of the memo - that it was within commander-in-chief power to order any interrogation techniques necessary to extract information - most certainly contributed to the atmosphere that led to the atrocities committed against the Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. We also know that President Bush rewarded the principle author of this legal monstrosity with a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. President Bush, meanwhile, continues to place the blame for the horrific consequences of his morally obtuse policies on the young privates and corporals and sergeants who may well be culpable as individuals for their actions, but who were certainly not responsible for the policies which set up the Bush Gulag and led to America's strategic catastrophe in Iraq.

I call on the administration to disclose all its interrogation policies, including those used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan and those employed by the CIA at its secret detention centers outside the U.S., as well as all the analyses related to the adoption of those policies.

The Bush administration's objective of establishing U.S. domination over any potential adversary led to the hubristic, tragic miscalculation of the Iraq war, a painful adventure marked by one disaster after another based on one mistaken assumption after another. But the people who paid the price have been the U.S. soldiers trapped over there and the Iraqis in prison. The top-heavy focus on dominance as a goal for the U.S. role in the world is exactly paralleled in their aspiration for the role of the president to be completely dominant in the constitutional system. Our founders understood even better than Lord Acton the inner meaning of his aphorism that power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely. The goal of dominance necessitates a focus on power. Ironically, all of their didactic messages about how democracies don't invade other nations fell on their own deaf ears. The pursuit of dominance in foreign and strategic policy led the Bush administration to ignore the United Nations, do serious damage to our most important alliances in the world, violate international law and risk the hatred of the rest of the world. The seductive exercise of unilateral power has led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that would have been the worst nightmare of our framers.

And the kind of unilateral power he imagines is fools gold in any case. Just as its pursuit in Mesopotamia has led to tragic consequences for our soldiers, the Iraqi people, our alliances, everything we think is important, in the same way the pursuit of a new interpretation of the presidency that weakens the Congress, courts and civil society is not good for either the presidency or the rest of the nation.

If the congress becomes an enfeebled enabler to the executive, and the courts become known for political calculations in their decisions, then the country suffers. The kinds of unnatural, undemocratic activities in which this administration has engaged, in order to aggrandize power, have included censorship of scientific reports, manipulation of budgetary statistics, silencing dissent, and ignoring intelligence. Although there have been other efforts by other presidents to encroach on the legitimate prerogatives of congress and courts, there has never been this kind of systematic abuse of the truth and institutionalization of dishonesty as a routine part of the policy process.

Two hundred and twenty years ago, John Adams wrote, in describing one of America's most basic founding principles, "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them...to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men."

The last time we had a president who had the idea that he was above the law was when Richard Nixon told an interviewer, "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal... If the president, for example approves something, approves an action because of national security, or, in this case, because of a threat to internal peace and order, of significant order, then the president's decision in this instance is one that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating the law."

Fortunately for our country, Nixon was forced to resign as President before he could implement his outlandish interpretation of the Constitution, but not before his defiance of the Congress and the courts created a serious constitutional crisis.

The two top Justice Department officials under President Nixon, Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus, turned out to be men of great integrity, and even though they were loyal Republicans, they were more loyal to the constitution and resigned on principle rather than implement what they saw as abuses of power by Nixon. Then Congress, also on a bipartisan basis, bravely resisted Nixon's abuse of power and launched impeachment proceedings.

In some ways, our current President is actually claiming significantly more extra-constitutional power, vis-à-vis Congress and the courts, than Nixon did. For example, Nixon never claimed that he could imprison American citizens indefinitely without charging them with a crime and without letting them see a lawyer or notify their families. And this time, the attorney general, John Ashcroft, is hardly the kind of man who would resign on principle to impede an abuse of power. In fact, whenever there is an opportunity to abuse power in this administration, Ashcroft seems to be leading the charge. And it is Ashcroft who picked the staff lawyers at Justice responsible for the embarrassing memos justifying and enabling torture.

Moreover, in sharp contrast to the courageous 93rd Congress that saved the country from Richard Nixon's sinister abuses, the current Congress has virtually abdicated its constitutional role to serve as an independent and coequal branch of government.

Instead, this Republican-led Congress is content, for the most part, to take orders from the President on what they vote for and what they don't vote for. The Republican leaders of the House and Senate have even started blocking Democrats from attending conference committee meetings, where legislation takes its final form, and instead, they let the President's staff come to the meetings and write key parts of the laws for them. (Come to think of it, the decline and lack of independence shown by this Congress would shock our founders more than anything else, because they believed that the power of the Congress was the most important check and balance against the unhealthy exercise of too much power by the Executive branch.)

This administration has not been content just to reduce the Congress to subservience. It has also engaged in unprecedented secrecy, denying the American people access to crucial information with which they might hold government officials accountable for their actions, and a systematic effort to manipulate and intimidate the media into presenting a more favorable image of the Administration to the American people.

Listen to what U.S. News and World Report has to say about their secrecy: "The Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government - cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters."

Here are just a few examples, and for each one, you have to ask, what are they hiding, and why are they hiding it?

More than 6000 documents have been removed by the Bush Administration from governmental Web sites. To cite only one example, a document on the EPA Web site giving citizens crucial information on how to identify chemical hazards to their families. Some have speculated that the principle threat to the Bush administration is a threat by the chemical hazards if the information remains available to American citizens.

To head off complaints from our nation's Governors over how much they receive under federal programs, the Bush Administration simply stopped printing the primary state budget report.

To muddy the clear consensus of the scientific community on global warming, the White House directed major changes and deletions to an EPA report that were so egregious that the agency said it was too embarrassed to use the language.

They've kept hidden from view Cheney's ultra-secret energy task force. They have fought a pitched battle in the courts for more than three years to continue denying the American people the ability to know which special interests and lobbyists advised with Vice President Cheney on the design of the new laws.

And when mass layoffs became too embarrassing they simply stopped publishing the regular layoff report that economists and others have been receiving for decades. For this administration, the truth hurts, when the truth is available to the American people. They find bliss in the ignorance of the people. What are they hiding, and why are they hiding it?

In the end, for this administration, it is all about power. This lie about the invented connection between al Qaeda and Iraq was and is the key to justifying the current ongoing Constitutional power grab by the President. So long as their big flamboyant lie remains an established fact in the public's mind, President Bush will be seen as justified in taking for himself the power to make war on his whim. He will be seen as justified in acting to selectively suspend civil liberties - again on his personal discretion - and he will continue to intimidate the press and thereby distort the political reality experienced by the American people during his bid for re-election.

War is lawful violence, but even in its midst we acknowledge the need for rules. We know that in our wars there have been descents from these standards, often the result of spontaneous anger arising out of the passion of battle. But we have never before, to my knowledge, had a situation in which the framework for this kind of violence has been created by the President, nor have we had a situation where these things were mandated by directives signed by the Secretary of Defense, as it is alleged, and supported by the National Security Advisor.

Always before, we could look to the Chief Executive as the point from which redress would come and law be upheld. That was one of the great prides of our country: humane leadership, faithful to the law. What we have now, however, is the result of decisions taken by a President and an administration for whom the best law is NO law, so long as law threatens to constrain their political will. And where the constraints of law cannot be prevented or eliminated, then they maneuver it to be weakened by evasion, by delay, by hair-splitting, by obstruction, and by failure to enforce on the part of those sworn to uphold the law.

In these circumstances, we need investigation of the facts under oath, and in the face of penalties for evasion and perjury. We need investigation by an aroused congress whose bipartisan members know they stand before the judgment of history. We cannot depend up on a debased department of Justice given over to the hands of zealots. "Congressional oversight" and "special prosecution" are words that should hang in the air. If our honor as a nation is to be restored, it is not by allowing the mighty to shield themselves by bringing the law to bear against their pawns: it is by bringing the law to bear against the mighty themselves. Our dignity and honor as a nation never came from our perfection as a society or as a people: it came from the belief that in the end, this was a country which would pursue justice as the compass pursues the pole: that although we might deviate, we would return and find our path. This is what we must now do.

[b]by Al Gore
American Constitution Society
Georgetown University Law Center
June 24, 2004[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Democracy Itself is in Grave Danger

06.25.04 (7:14 am) [edit]

Bush's Torture: Document Dump Deception

06.25.04 (7:10 am) [edit]

[b]BUSH'S TORTURE & ABUSE

Document Dump Deception[/b]

In a transparent effort to mute criticism about the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal – and broader concerns about the treatment of prisoners by the United States worldwide – the administration made public a selection of documents related to the treatment of detainees. Among the documents released: a 50-page memorandum written on 8/1/02 by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Just two weeks ago Attorney General John Ashcroft told Congress that he could not discuss or release that document because "to provide this kind of information would impair the ability of advice-giving in the executive branch to be candid, forthright, thorough and accurate at all times, and...impair our ability to conduct ourselves in the executive branch." Ashcroft also said he couldn't release the document because "we are at war. And for us to begin to discuss all the legal ramifications of the war is not in our best interest and it has never been in times of war." The release of this document just two weeks later means either: 1) Ashcroft misled Congress about the implications of releasing the documents, 2) the administration impaired the functioning of the executive branch and war efforts for political purposes, or 3) Ashcroft has no idea what he is talking about. (Add your name to the American Progress petition http://www.americanprogress.o... to remove Ashcroft from office.)

[u]BUSH MEMO DOES NOT DEMONSTRATE A COMMITMENT TO HUMANE TREATMENT[/u]: Bush administration officials – including White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales – touted a 2/7/02 memo signed by Bush as demonstrating his commitment to the humane treatment of prisoners. But even that memo provides no such guarantees. In the memo Bush says that detainees should be treated consistent with the Geneva conventions only "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity." The "military necessity" exception is so broad and vague it effectively allows the protections of the Geneva convention to be ignored at will. In response, just last week, the Senate adopted an anti-torture amendment by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL).

[u]INCOMPLETE SELECTIVE DISCLOSURE[/u]: The administration's document dump was notable for what it didn't include. For example, according to Sen. Patrick Leahy it included "only 3 of the 23 documents that Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee requested and tried to subpoena last week, and of those 3 documents, 2 were already available worldwide on the Internet." Although the administration released a February 2002 memo by President Bush addressing the treatment of prisoners it didn't address the critical question: "Did the President sign any directive regarding the treatment or interrogation of detainees after February 7, 2002?" And although the last document released was dated April 16, 2003 the worst abuses are known to have occurred months later. Leahy has introduced a motion that would require the administration to fully disclose all relevant documents.

[u]NO DISCLOSURE OF CIA TACTICS[/u]: By Gonzales's own admission, none of the documents address "CIA activities." In Tuesday's press conference a questioner pointed out interrogators included "agency [CIA] people along with military people, and isn't that just a convenient loophole to allow one person to use certain techniques that are prohibited by the other?" It is widely believed that interrogation tactics used by the CIA are the most aggressive.

[u]DOCUMENTS SHOW RUMSFELD AUTHORIZED PRISONER MISTREATMENT[/u]: While the administration officials may have hoped that the newly released documents would clear them of blame in the prisoner abuse scandal, the material instead demonstrates the culpability of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Undermining Rumsfeld's earlier claim that he was "blindsided" by the abuse at Abu Ghraib, the documents show that in December 2002, he authorized interrogation techniques for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay including the use of dogs for intimidation, the removal of clothing, the hooding of prisoners, and the use of "non-injurious physical contact." This approval was rescinded in January 2003, and soon replaced by an April directive which, under some conditions, allowed for changes in diet, reversal of sleep cycles, and isolation. Rumsfeld made this last decision, reports the Washington Post, despite a warning from a Pentagon working group that there were "possible adverse effects on U.S. Armed Forces culture and self-image, which at times in the past may have suffered due to perceived law of war violations."

[u]ADMINISTRATION REWARDED MEMO AUTHOR WITH TOP JUDGESHIP[/u]: The administration took the extraordinary step of repudiating an 8/1/02 memo by then-assistant attorney general Jay S. Bybee. The memo argued "there is significant range of acts that, though they might constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment fail to rise to the level of torture" because they don't cause physical injury equivalent to organ failure. Even with that stipulation, he concluded that "under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might" qualify as torture. In disavowing the memo, a senior Justice Department official called it "overbroad and irrelevant" and the department is now rewriting the memo. But the administration's displeasure with the Bybee memo is a recent phenomena. After he wrote the memo Bybee was rewarded by Bush with a lifetime term on a federal appellate court

[i]For links, click on[/i]: http://www.americanprogress.o...

Bush's Document Dump Deception Shows He Is Guilty of Cover-up of His Murders/Tortures/Rapes/Abuses .

06.25.04 (7:05 am) [edit]

War Analysis Paints Grim Picture

06.25.04 (6:59 am) [edit]

[b]Iraq War Analysis Paints Grim Picture[/b]

Unless you own a lot of stock in Halliburton or other big defense, security, or construction companies, chances are the Iraq war has turned out to be a pretty bad investment, both in human lives and taxpayer dollars, according to a new assessment by a progressive Washington-based think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

In what it claims is the first comprehensive accounting of the costs of the war on the U.S., Iraq, and much of the rest of the world, IPS concludes that not only have U.S. taxpayers paid a ”very high price for the war,” they have also become ”less secure at home and in the world.”

Citing a number of recent studies, the report, [u]'Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War[/u],' http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/co... also notes that the 151.1 billion dollars that will have been spent through this fiscal year could have paid for comprehensive health care for 82 million U.S. children or the salaries of nearly three million elementary school teachers. According to one study cited in the 54-page report, the war and occupation will cost the average U.S. household at least 3,415 dollars through the end of this year.

If spent on international programs, the same sum could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine, childhood immunization, and clean water and sanitation needs of all developing countries for more than two years.

The report's release comes just a week before the planned handover by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) of Iraq's ”sovereignty” to the interim government, although its authors stress that the new Iraqi authorities will exercise only very limited authority given the continuing presence and autonomy of more than 160,000 U.S. and foreign troops under U.S. military command and their inability to rescind nearly 100 orders decreed by the CPA chief Paul Bremer.

It also comes amid a number of other negative assessments, including by Bremer himself, as well as by a series of public-opinion surveys in Iraq about the occupation's achievements, both for the U.S. and Iraqis.

According to one mid-May poll that was commissioned for the CPA, more than 80 percent of Iraqis say they have no confidence in the occupation authorities, and 55 percent said they would feel safer if coalition forces left the country.

While the financial costs of the war are enormous, according to the report, the costs in blood, both for U.S. citizens and Iraqis, are by no means insignificant.

More than 850 U.S. troops have been killed since the start of the war on Mar. 19, 2003, just over 700 of them since U.S. President George W. Bush declared the end of major hostilities on May 1, 2003, making the post-combat phase of the war by far the bloodiest U.S. engagement since the Indochina conflict.

In addition more than 5,134 troops were wounded through Jun. 16, 4,593 of them since the official end of combat. Nearly two-thirds of the wounded, according to the report, received injuries serious enough to prevent them from returning to duty.

But despite precision bombing and other weapons and tactics designed to reduce ”collateral damage”, the toll among Iraqis has been far more dramatic, according to the report whose principal author was Phyllis Bennis, IPS' main Middle East analyst.

As of Jun. 16, it estimates that between 9,436 and 11,317 civilians have been killed as a direct result of the U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. In addition, during ”major combat” operations both during the invasion and after May 1, 2003, the report estimates that between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed as of mid-June.

Moreover, these figures do not take account of the long-run health impacts of the estimated 1,100 to 2,200 tonnes of ordnance made from depleted uranium (DU), which many scientists blamed for illnesses among U.S. soldiers in the first Gulf War and a seven-fold increase in child birth defects in southern Iraq since 1991, that were expended during the March 2003 bombing campaign.

Nor do they account for the psychological impact of both the war and the skyrocketing violence, including murders, rapes, and kidnapping, that followed the invasion and that now keeps many Iraqi children from attending school and requires many women to stay off the streets at night. Violent deaths, according to the report, rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in 2003.

Despite promises by the Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) to rebuild and expand Iraq's infrastructure, the country is still not producing as much electricity or as much oil on a sustained basis as it was just before the war, according to the report. Its authors blame a combination of sabotage by insurgents and incompetence and profiteering by big U.S. companies like Halliburton that captured virtually all of the reconstruction contracts despite the much greater experience of Iraqi firms.

Due to security concerns, school attendance is reportedly running below pre-war levels, while Iraq's hospitals and health systems have been overwhelmed by a combination of lack of supplies and unprecedented demand created by the ongoing violence.

”We have played a large part in destroying this country,” said Bennis, who recalled the first Gulf War and the 13 years of U.S.-backed U.N. sanctions that had already weakened much of Iraq's infrastructure before the war.

Washington's invasion and occupation have also exacted other costs for which the United States may have to pay for a very long time, according to the report, which cited a recent assessment by the conservative International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) that the Iraq war has greatly increased recruitment by al Qaeda and similar radical groups. The London-based think tank estimated al Qaeda's membership at 18,000 with 1,000 active in Iraq.

That assessment also echoes the conclusion of a new book by a top active-duty Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer to be released next week that ”(t)here is nothing that (al Qaeda chief Osama) bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.” The author, ”Anonymous,” until recently headed the CIA efforts to track down bin Laden and is considered an expert on al Qaeda.

Washington has also dealt a serious blow to its own standing and credibility in the larger world, as well as in Arab and Islamic nations, according to the report, which cites recent surveys of public opinion in more than two dozen countries, including its closest European allies; the weakening of the United Nations and international law resulting from both the precedent created by going to war unilaterally and in the inhumane treatment of detainees in both Afghanistan and Iraq; and the alienation of the Iraqi public.

”Rather than winning hearts, U.S. actions have destroyed lives,” said Anas Shallal, an Iraqi-American who founded the Mesopotamia Cultural Society and contributed to the report. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush's Bloody Fiasco: Iraq War Analysis Paints Grim Picture

06.25.04 (6:57 am) [edit]

Unless you own a lot of stock in Halliburton or other big defense, security, or construction companies, chances are the Iraq war has turned out to be a pretty bad investment, both in human lives and taxpayer dollars, according to a new assessment by a progressive Washington-based think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

In what it claims is the first comprehensive accounting of the costs of the war on the U.S., Iraq, and much of the rest of the world, IPS concludes that not only have U.S. taxpayers paid a ”very high price for the war,” they have also become ”less secure at home and in the world.”

Citing a number of recent studies, the report, [u]'Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War[/u],' http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/co... also notes that the 151.1 billion dollars that will have been spent through this fiscal year could have paid for comprehensive health care for 82 million U.S. children or the salaries of nearly three million elementary school teachers. According to one study cited in the 54-page report, the war and occupation will cost the average U.S. household at least 3,415 dollars through the end of this year.

If spent on international programs, the same sum could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine, childhood immunization, and clean water and sanitation needs of all developing countries for more than two years.

The report's release comes just a week before the planned handover by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) of Iraq's ”sovereignty” to the interim government, although its authors stress that the new Iraqi authorities will exercise only very limited authority given the continuing presence and autonomy of more than 160,000 U.S. and foreign troops under U.S. military command and their inability to rescind nearly 100 orders decreed by the CPA chief Paul Bremer.

It also comes amid a number of other negative assessments, including by Bremer himself, as well as by a series of public-opinion surveys in Iraq about the occupation's achievements, both for the U.S. and Iraqis.

According to one mid-May poll that was commissioned for the CPA, more than 80 percent of Iraqis say they have no confidence in the occupation authorities, and 55 percent said they would feel safer if coalition forces left the country.

While the financial costs of the war are enormous, according to the report, the costs in blood, both for U.S. citizens and Iraqis, are by no means insignificant.

More than 850 U.S. troops have been killed since the start of the war on Mar. 19, 2003, just over 700 of them since U.S. President George W. Bush declared the end of major hostilities on May 1, 2003, making the post-combat phase of the war by far the bloodiest U.S. engagement since the Indochina conflict.

In addition more than 5,134 troops were wounded through Jun. 16, 4,593 of them since the official end of combat. Nearly two-thirds of the wounded, according to the report, received injuries serious enough to prevent them from returning to duty.

But despite precision bombing and other weapons and tactics designed to reduce ”collateral damage”, the toll among Iraqis has been far more dramatic, according to the report whose principal author was Phyllis Bennis, IPS' main Middle East analyst.

As of Jun. 16, it estimates that between 9,436 and 11,317 civilians have been killed as a direct result of the U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. In addition, during ”major combat” operations both during the invasion and after May 1, 2003, the report estimates that between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed as of mid-June.

Moreover, these figures do not take account of the long-run health impacts of the estimated 1,100 to 2,200 tonnes of ordnance made from depleted uranium (DU), which many scientists blamed for illnesses among U.S. soldiers in the first Gulf War and a seven-fold increase in child birth defects in southern Iraq since 1991, that were expended during the March 2003 bombing campaign.

Nor do they account for the psychological impact of both the war and the skyrocketing violence, including murders, rapes, and kidnapping, that followed the invasion and that now keeps many Iraqi children from attending school and requires many women to stay off the streets at night. Violent deaths, according to the report, rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in 2003.

Despite promises by the Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) to rebuild and expand Iraq's infrastructure, the country is still not producing as much electricity or as much oil on a sustained basis as it was just before the war, according to the report. Its authors blame a combination of sabotage by insurgents and incompetence and profiteering by big U.S. companies like Halliburton that captured virtually all of the reconstruction contracts despite the much greater experience of Iraqi firms.

Due to security concerns, school attendance is reportedly running below pre-war levels, while Iraq's hospitals and health systems have been overwhelmed by a combination of lack of supplies and unprecedented demand created by the ongoing violence.

”We have played a large part in destroying this country,” said Bennis, who recalled the first Gulf War and the 13 years of U.S.-backed U.N. sanctions that had already weakened much of Iraq's infrastructure before the war.

Washington's invasion and occupation have also exacted other costs for which the United States may have to pay for a very long time, according to the report, which cited a recent assessment by the conservative International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) that the Iraq war has greatly increased recruitment by al Qaeda and similar radical groups. The London-based think tank estimated al Qaeda's membership at 18,000 with 1,000 active in Iraq.

That assessment also echoes the conclusion of a new book by a top active-duty Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer to be released next week that ”(t)here is nothing that (al Qaeda chief Osama) bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.” The author, ”Anonymous,” until recently headed the CIA efforts to track down bin Laden and is considered an expert on al Qaeda.

Washington has also dealt a serious blow to its own standing and credibility in the larger world, as well as in Arab and Islamic nations, according to the report, which cites recent surveys of public opinion in more than two dozen countries, including its closest European allies; the weakening of the United Nations and international law resulting from both the precedent created by going to war unilaterally and in the inhumane treatment of detainees in both Afghanistan and Iraq; and the alienation of the Iraqi public.

”Rather than winning hearts, U.S. actions have destroyed lives,” said Anas Shallal, an Iraqi-American who founded the Mesopotamia Cultural Society and contributed to the report. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush's Bloody Fiasco: Iraq War Analysis Paints Grim Picture

06.25.04 (6:54 am) [edit]

Fahrenheit 9/11 sets US alight ...

06.24.04 (7:01 pm) [edit]

[b]Moore film fires up left and incenses right, adding cultural fuel to fight for presidency [/b]

For the second time in a week, the liberals of New York stood in line for their cultural sustenance.
On Monday night they waited to snatch the first autographed copies of the memoirs of the former Democratic president Bill Clinton.

On Wednesday they went to watch Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a film aimed, at least in part, at ending the incumbency of of the current Republican president, George Bush.

The film officially opens today in 900 theatres - three times as many as for Mr Moore's previous film, the Academy Award-winning Bowling for Columbine. But New Yorkers got an early sight, along with premiere-goers in Washington DC.

What was billed as the launch of a film, however, looked more like the beginning of a political campaign.

Both left and right encouraged their supporters to write, email and fund-raise to either talk up or rubbish the movie, while the Democrats and the White House are wondering respectively how to capitalise on the film or minimise its impact.

The Washington showing was attended by several prominent Congress figures, while in New York activists of the Democratic National Committee collected money outside the cinema, from which people emerged after seeing the film saying they were moved to tears. The Bush administration had heated discussions on how to respond, with those who advocated a blitz of refutations losing to others who believed it best to ignore the film rather than give it credibility.

Like Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, which energised the right, the disputes reveal a huge overlap between politics and culture in this election year.

"I can't think of any precedent for [the furore over Moore's film] in a presidential campaign," Frances Lee, a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, told the Washington Post. "As a marketing phenomenon it seems to echo The Passion [of the Christ]: intense enthusiasm, organised groups buying tickets with proselytising zeal, the sense that one is getting something that corporate America wanted to stifle."

One liberal advocacy group, MoveOn.org, is holding meetings on Monday around the country so members can discuss the film. It has also alerted its 2.2 million members, asking them to pledge to see the film in its opening weekend, and is providing spokesmen and women for comment on the movie at venues in swing states. MoveOn says it is acting at least in part to counter conservative efforts to stop the film being screened. For, in a symbol of the extent to which America has become polarised, if Moore is loved by the left, he is no less loathed by the right.

A documentary, Michael Moore Hates America, which lambasts his methodology, is to be released; and a book, Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, will be published next week - a riff on the title of his bestseller Stupid White Men.

A conservative group, Move America Forward, has called on members to lobby their local cinema chains to stop them screening it.

"Since we are the customers of the American movie theatres, it is important for us to speak up loudly and tell the industry executives that we don't want this misleading and grotesque movie being shown in our local cinema," said the group's director, Siobhan Guiney.

A letter-writing campaign by the group persuaded CBS to drop a TV documentary on Ronald Reagan held to be too disrespectful of the late president, but this time the group may fail.

"There has been some communication, but not an overwhelming amount. And we do intend to play the film," said Dick Westerling, the spokesman for one cinema chain, Regal Entertainment Group, which has 6,020 screens in the country.

David Bossie, head of another conservative group, Citizens United, has accused Moore of violating federal election laws: "Moore has publicly indicated that his goal is to impact this election."

There is some truth to this. "It's my personal aim that Bush is removed from the White House," says Moore, who has hired former Clinton operatives as a rapid response unit to any attacks that impugn the film's integrity. "But if the movie can inspire a few of the 50% of the Americans who do not vote to get involved and be engaged, then that is important."

While the film is far more subtle than Moore's previous work, there are few who have seen it who believe it will convert anybody who has not already made up their mind. But what it could do is galvanise those who may vote to get organised, and encourage those not inspired by the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, to go to the polls to remove Mr Bush.

To the charge that he was speaking to the choir, Mr Moore said: "I'm very happy to speak to them, because that choir has been asleep. If I can give them a song to sing as they leave the theatre and become active once again, that's a good thing." - http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,13918,1246848,00.html

Supreme Fascists Take Orders From Herr Fuhrer Bush & Reich Marshall Cheney

06.24.04 (7:49 am) [edit]

[b]Court Won't Order Cheney Papers Released, As Democracy in America (along with transparency in government) Is Flushed Down The Toilet ... So What if Bush & Cheney's Energy Cronies Scam-us & Plan Mideast Wars Behind Our Backs to Enrich Themselves ... Either You Are "With Us or Against Us" ... The Rich Robber-Barons Get Richer & You Are Cannon-Fodder and/or Slave Labor in Herr Fuhrer Bush & Reich Marshal Cheney's New World Order ...[/b]

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration won't have to reveal secret details of Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s energy task force before the election, after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a lower court should spend more time sorting out the White House's privacy claim.

In a 7-2 decision, justices said the lower court should consider whether a federal open government law could be used to get task force documents. Even if that court rules against the administration, appeals would tie up the case well past November.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the federal district court judge who ordered records opened to the public had issued too broad a release of documents.

"Special considerations applicable to the president and the vice president suggest that the courts should be sensitive to requests by the government" in such special appeals, he wrote.

The issues in the case have been overshadowed by conflict-of-interest questions about Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites), who sided with the majority.

Scalia defiantly refused to recuse himself from the case, rejecting arguments by critics who said his impartiality was brought into question because of a hunting vacation that he took with Cheney while the court was considering the vice president's appeal.

He and Justice Clarence Thomas (news - web sites) wrote separately Thursday to say U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan "clearly exceeded" his authority in ordering the administration to release records.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (news - web sites) and David H. Souter said in a dissent that Sullivan should be allowed to consider what records should be released. They said it was not enough for the Bush administration to request blanket protection from having to make records public.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that while the White House hasn't had a chance to review the decision, it is pleased. "We believe the president should be able to receive candid and unvarnished advice from his staff and advisers. It's an important principle," he said.

At issue was a 1972 open government law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires government panels to conduct their business in public, unless all members are government officials.

Until the government produces some records, it won't be clear who drafted the government's policies, lawyers for the groups that sued to get the records argued.

Shortly after taking office, President Bush (news - web sites) put Cheney, a former energy industry executive, in charge of the task force which, after a series of private meetings in 2001, produced recommendations generally friendly to industry.

The Sierra Club (news - web sites), a liberal environmental club, and Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, sued to get the records. They argued the public has a right to information about committees like Cheney's. The organizations contended that environmentalists were shut out of the meetings, while executives like former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay were key task force players.

The suing groups allege the industry representatives in effect functioned as members of the government panel, which included Cabinet secretaries and lower-level administration employees.

The Bush administration argued that privacy is important to ensure members of such panels can speak candidly. It contended that the open records law did not apply to the task force.

The case had become a potentially embarrassing election-year problem for the administration. Thursday's decision buys the administration more time. If it loses in the appeals court, the administration can return to the Supreme Court in another extended appeal before having to release information.

The Sierra Club had asked Scalia to stay out of the case, because the justice flew with Cheney to hunt in Louisiana in January, weeks after the high court agreed to hear the administration's appeal. Many Democrats and dozens of newspapers also called for his recusal.

Scalia, a Reagan administration appointee and close friend of the vice president, had said the duck hunting trip was acceptable socializing that wouldn't cloud his judgment. "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," he wrote in an unusual 21-page memo announcing his decision to stay on the case.

The Supreme Court was the latest stop in a nearly three-year fight over access to records of the task force that prepared a national energy strategy in 2001. Most of the recommendations stalled in Congress.

A separate lawsuit seeks thousands of documents under a separate law, the Freedom of Information Act. A judge ruled this spring that those documents should be released.

The case is Cheney v. U.S. District Court, 03-475. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

Supreme Fascists Take Orders From Herr Fuhrer Bush & Reich Marshal Cheney

06.24.04 (7:45 am) [edit]

Bush's credibility gap widens ...

06.24.04 (7:40 am) [edit]

The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks has hammered one more nail in the credibility of the Bush administration.

The commission's staff reported last week that there was no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks and no evidence of a terrorist collaboration between Saddam and al-Qaida.

Such an alliance was one of two contentions at the heart of the Bush administration's pro-war spin in the months before the invasion of Iraq.

Of course, the other administration claim -- that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction -- was shown previously to be phony, though national security affairs adviser Condoleezza Rice was saying Friday that the elusive weapons merely had not been found "yet."

Before the war, President Bush and other administration officials spoke of Saddam and 9/11 in the same breath nearly every day in an apparent effort to spread the subliminal message of linkage.

Is it any wonder that a Washington Post poll last year found that 69 percent of Americans believed Saddam was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks?

Asked about that poll soon after it was published, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "I think it's not surprising that people make that connection."

Well, of course it wasn't surprising, given that Cheney and his colleagues had made every rhetorical effort to converge Saddam and al-Qaida in the public mind.

Now, faced with the non-partisan findings of the 9/11 commission staff that shoot down such a connection, Bush and company are lashing out from the corner they've been forced into.

After a Cabinet meeting Thursday, Bush -- on the defensive -- said, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida -- because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida."

An irate Cheney said in a CNBC broadcast "the evidence is overwhelming" of a link between Saddam and al-Qaida.

No matter the facts, the president's fallback position is that "the world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power."

The human and financial price of such an undertaking has never been fully addressed by Bush. The entire Iraq debacle makes it extremely unlikely that Bush -- or any future president -- would be able to wage "pre-emptive war" in the future. The concept is discredited with every passing day.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan hung the albatross firmly around Secretary of State Colin Powell's neck. At a news briefing Thursday, he reminded reporters that Powell had told the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, that there was a "sinister nexus" between Saddam and the terrorist networks.

Somehow, McClellan failed to mention that Powell has been backing away from that discredited testimony ever since.

Bush is clinging to a rapidly shrinking fig leaf, loudly repeating his contention about Saddam and al-Qaida as if mere repetition were proof. It's an old propaganda adage: Repeat it enough and they'll believe it.

In the latest chapter in the administration's constantly shifting rationale for war, McClellan, speaking for the White House Thursday, said Saddam had the "intention" of attacking the United States and it would be foolhardy to wait for that to happen.

The facts that are tumbling out should arouse public anger about the flaky basis for the U.S. invasion. However, few Americans appear willing to challenge the administration while U.S. troops are still in harm's way in Iraq.

One has to wonder what it takes for Americans to demand an accounting from the president when faced with the fact that they were deluded into going to war.

The burden of demanding a White House accounting falls on Congress, which defaulted on its sole constitutional right to declare war in the first place. -
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/178875_helen2 2.html?searchpagefrom=1&sea rchdiff=2" title="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/178875_helen2 2.html?searchpagefrom=1&sea rchdiff=2" target="_blank"http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...

Cheney-Speak

06.24.04 (7:36 am) [edit]

ONE DAY after the Sept. 11 Commission said that there was "no collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda, Vice President Cheney reasserted on CNBC, "There clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming."

CNBC's Gloria Borger asked Cheney, "Do you know some things that the commission does not know?"

Cheney said, "Probably . . . There are reams of material here. Your show isn't long enough for me to read all the pieces of it."

The Dick Cheney Show isn't long enough for how many times he has claimed to possess overwhelming reams of material, yet has not read one piece of it on the air. By saying he "probably" knows things the commission does not yet know, Cheney makes a mockery of the morning in April that the commission interviewed him and President Bush at the Oval Office.

Credibility that day was already strained because no oaths were taken and Bush and Cheney allowed no tape recording for posterity. The session lasted three hours. Afterwards, Bush talked as if it were less a grilling than a kaffee klatsch. "I'm glad I did it," Bush said. "I'm glad I took the time . . . I enjoyed it."

You would enjoy it too if you knew that the majority of your words could never be parsed for contradictions and lies. The commission, desperate for whatever face time it could get, issued a statement saying that Bush and Cheney were "forthcoming and candid" in the "extraordinary" meeting. Commissioner Jim Thompson, the former Republican governor of Illinois, said, "The president put everybody at ease. There were no tense moments."

Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor and previously one of the more feisty Democratic members of the commission, said Bush "answered all of our questions. I don't think we have the need to ask any further questions of the president." Everyone was so at ease that two Democratic members of the commission split an hour early: vice chairman and former US Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana and former Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.

Commission chairman Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, capped the klatsch by saying that if the session had been made public, Americans "would've had a lot more confidence in our government."

Kean may be a Republican, but partisanship does not extend to being made to look like a fool. Reminded on the Sunday talk shows about Cheney's claim that he "probably" had more information, Kean said, "We need it, and we need it pretty fast." Kean said that Al Qaeda had far more active contacts with Iran and Pakistan than with Iraq.

In what can only be described as an attempt to help Cheney save face, one of the other Republican members of the commission, former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, said Sunday that Cheney was "right." Lehman said new information that "still has to be confirmed" had indeed come in on Iraq and Al Qaeda ties.

But by Monday, US officials said there was yet no evidence for Lehman's claim.

The other problem with Lehman's claim is that Cheney has boasted for months that he had all the information we needed. Last fall Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that a successful invasion and occupation of Iraq "will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographical base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

In an interview with National Public Radio last January, Cheney said, "There's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government . . . I'm very confident that there was an established relationship there."

Yet over a year after the NBC interview, five months after the NPR interview, and nearly two months after the Oval Office kaffee klatsch, the 9/11 commission said the opposite.

It said the opposite despite its access to classified documents. It said the opposite despite nearly two years of statements by White House officials that built upon Bush's November 2002 declaration that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein "is dealing with Al Qaeda."

Besides Cheney and Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice flooded the talk shows and spiced up major policy speeches with claims of possessing "reams of information." Sometimes, the administration talked in the past tense that Hussein "had" ties. But they spoke often enough in the present tense after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that nearly 70 percent of Americans thought Iraq had a direct hand in 9/11.

A month before the Iraq invasion, Powell said to the United Nations Security Council, "What I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network." The 9/11 Commission, despite losing to history the verbatim testimony of Bush and Cheney, still did America a major service. It brought to our attention the sinister nexus between Bush, Cheney, and their network of statements that terrorized Americans into a gruesome war. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Cheney-Speak

06.24.04 (7:35 am) [edit]

AP Sues for Access to Bush Guard Records

06.23.04 (7:14 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON - The Associated Press sued the Pentagon (news - web sites) and the Air Force on Tuesday, seeking access to all records of George W. Bush's military service during the Vietnam War.

Filed in federal court in New York, where The AP is headquartered, the lawsuit seeks access to a copy of Bush's microfilmed personnel file from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission in Austin.

The White House says the government has already released all the records of Bush's military service.

Controversy surrounds Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard because it is unclear from the record what duties he performed for the military when he was working on the political campaign of a U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama.

There are questions as to whether the file provided to the news media earlier this year is complete, says the lawsuit, adding that these questions could possibly be answered by reviewing a copy of the microfilm of Bush's personnel file in the Texas archives.

The Air National Guard of the United States, a federal entity, has control of the microfilm, which should be disclosed in its entirety under the Freedom of Information Act, the lawsuit says.

The White House has yet to respond to a request by the AP in April asking the president to sign a written waiver of his right to keep records of his military service confidential. Bush gave an oral waiver in a TV appearance that preceded the White House's release this year of materials concerning his National Guard service.

The government "did not expedite their response ... they did not produce the file within the time required by law, and they will not now estimate when the file might be produced or even confirm that an effort has been initiated to retrieve a copy from the microfilm at the Texas archives," the lawsuit says.

In the absence of any privacy objection by the president and in light of the importance of the file's release in advance of the November election, says the lawsuit, AP seeks a court order to compel the release of records "that are being unlawfully withheld from the public."

The released records were from the Texas Air National Guard at Camp Mabry and the Defense Financing Accounting Service in Denver.

Under Texas law, a copy of military personnel files of those serving in the Texas Air National Guard must be retained on microfilm at the Texas archives.

The lawsuit says that no one has looked at any of the Texas Air National Guard records maintained at the state archives since 1996.

Responding to AP's request, the Texas Air National Guard concluded that Bush's file was a federal record under control of the U.S. Air National Guard.

When the government did not produce the documents, AP appealed to the Pentagon, saying that by law, the microfilm copy should have been produced within 20 days. The Pentagon said it could not respond within the legally required period. [Of course not, shredding & wiping out the history of AWOL Bush's drinking, drug abuse & slutting around takes time.] - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

AP Sues for Access to Bush Guard Records

06.23.04 (7:12 am) [edit]

Mutually Assured Pre-Emption

06.23.04 (7:08 am) [edit]

For those wondering about the veracity of Vladimir Putin's sudden peculiar claim that Russian intelligence, sometime after the 9-11 attacks, had passed along to the Bush administration a vague warning that Iraq might be planning "terror" attacks against the U.S., there is another explanation besides the one put forth in the June 21 issue of CounterPunch by Gary Leupp, who suggests Putin is just currying favor with Bush by trying to help him out of a domestic political jam.

And this alternate explanation should cause Bush, John Kerry, and indeed every American, to think long and hard about the much ballyhooed Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war.

The Bush Doctrine, recall, is that America (and by extension every country on the globe) has the absolute right to attack a foreign foe if the government believes the U.S. is in danger of imminent attack.

Now, put aside the important question of whether Iraq really was planning some "imminent" attack on the U.S. back in the fall of 2001-something for which there is absolutely no evidence.

Who was, in the fall of 2001, without a doubt planning an imminent attack?

Bingo! It was the U.S., which almost before the smoke cleared at the World Trade Center ruins, was hard at work plotting a full-scale war against Iraq.

The point to remember is that according to the logic of the new Bush Doctrine, and indeed under established international law, whatever we may think about Saddam Hussein, Iraq had every right to take pre-emptive measures to counter the imminent U.S. threat posed by Bush's war preparations.

As to the legality of those presumptive measures, it would all depend upon what it might have been that Iraq was allegedly planning.

As I wrote in an earlier CounterPunch column (April 2, 2003, "Legitimizing Terrorism? Making America Safer... for Iraq Fighters"), international law experts say that if Iraqi agents in the U.S. had attacked military, or even certain strategic civilian targets (for example, CIA headquarters, the Pentagon, a military base, an oil storage facility, a communications center, or a government building of any kind), and if the perpetrators of the attack wore military uniforms during any action, it could be properly considered not an act of terror, but an act of war.

What's sauce for the goose, as the saying goes, is sauce for the gander.

Odds are that this talk of an Iraq attack in 2002 is all nonsense-just a case of one leader helping another in trouble. But the American public nonetheless should take note.

All this anti-terrorism stuff, and particularly the doctrine of pre-emptive war, to which John Kerry has added his endorsement, carries with it some nasty baggage.

If other countries (North Korea, for example, or Iran, come to mind) were to learn that the U.S. was planning an attack, they would be within their rights to act pre-emptively.

For that matter, as long as the U.S. continues to battle insurgents in Iraq, the doctrine of reciprocity means that embattled Iraqi insurgents are entitled to respond in kind-both within Iraq and also against American interests abroad and in the U.S. itself. If they were to do this, their actions would have to be defined as acts of war, not of terror, which could limit America's punishment options.

The American public, and certainly Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry, need to think this all through very carefully, instead of just talking tough about terror. The expansive and unending so-called "War on Terror" begun with such bluster by the Bush administration in the wake of 9-11, far from making America safer, is inviting those nations which we threaten to take not just retaliatory, but even pre-emptive action themselves against us.

Putin's claim concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged terror plans may well be bogus, but the logic behind his having been planning something to counter America's war plans could well lead other threatened leaders to think along similar lines.

Is this what we want happening? - http://www.counterpunch.com/l...

Mutually Assured Pre-Emption

06.23.04 (7:02 am) [edit]

Fact vs. Fiction

06.22.04 (4:30 pm) [edit]

NOW THAT President Bush and co-president Cheney have backed themselves into a corner with statements about Iraq and terrorism that aren't credible, it's interesting to watch them squirm.

Bush has an entertaining habit of confusing assertion with argument. For example: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

The logic here is breath-taking. [In fact is it a tautology, which means Bush's statement is a load of rubbish.]

Cheney is, as ever, more elliptical. Cornered for a change, he is striking out at the press, preferring not to take on the 9/11 Commission whose evidence (more to the point, its absence of any) exposes his pre-invasion and post-invasion hype and, shall we say, misstatements.

His initial line is that the press is hateful because it is confusing an important issue -- namely, that the absence of any information linking the former Iraqi regime to the 9/11 attacks is not the same as any assertion that there was no "tie" between Osama bin Laden's murderous organization and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Confronted with the point that the 9/11 Commission's staff report last week asserts no credible evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between the two, Cheney is trapped. To escape, he says that the 9/11 Commission is wrong, he knows more secret stuff than it does but can't get into specifics.

What Bush and Cheney are doing is what they have been doing since the summer of 2002 -- confusing the concepts of war in Iraq and war on terrorism. In fact, Bush and Cheney have always made it a point to emphasize that their concept of a nation at war is defined as a war against terror -- almost never Iraq.

The result has been -- up to now at least -- an administration-created confusion between the two, resolved by many Americans in favor of a linkage. Just prior to the invasion of Iraq in March of last year, more than two-thirds of the public believed that Iraq was directly involved in the attacks on this country. I don't remember Bush or Cheney doing anything to disabuse the public of this idea, though there are several incidents where they did all they could to encourage it.

All these months later, the percentage of Americans who still believe this fiction has cracked the 50 percent barrier on the way down. In the view of Bush reelection strategists, it cannot fall much further without further undermining the views of nearly half the public that the invasion was worth its subsequent cost. The administration has already spent six months trying to accommodate the truth that, again contrary to its assertions, Iraq had no stockpiled, ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion; the political team's view is that it can't take another hit of this nature.

That is why Bush and Cheney are pushing back so hard -- and lamely -- with their assertion that there was indeed a "relationship" or a "tie" of several years' duration between Saddam and Osama.

Specifics refute the contention. Bush, programmed as he is, can only manage the silly assertion that "high-level" people from the two sides met in the Sudan. According to the 9/11 Commission, this was in 1994, at the time that terrorist-supporting state was trying to persuade Osama to stop trying to topple the secular Iraqi regime, which he despised. An Iraqi intelligence official had to make three trips to the place before he could see the terrorist, who wanted help in getting equipment, weapons, and training bases. To the day Saddam's regime crumbled there was no evidence that Iraq ever responded, and there is also no evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda ever collaborated on anything, anywhere, anytime.

Cheney's contribution has been repeated ever since a few weeks after the terrorist attacks: peddling an uncorroborated assertion by one Czech intelligence official that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta had been seen five months before meeting with an Iraqi agent in Prague. The 9/11 Commission, citing physical and documentary evidence, said the facts indicate Atta was already here by then and had never left.

Cheney feeds the opinion polls with this garbage, and then wiggles on the hook by claiming that he can spread the tale because it hasn't been refuted. I trust real decisions on security matters are not made in such a slipshod, duplicitous fashion.

Cheney and Bush are squealing so much because the unmasking of their fiction about Iraq is one more shot into the solar plexus of their diminishing credibility -- and in the president's reelection campaign, credibility is a major route to the independent-minded voters who will probably decide the election.

Cheney and Bush, in short, have been caught in a lie, and that is why they are squealing. - http://www.boston.com/news/gl...

Bush's Neo-Con Racists' "Final Solution to the Arab 'Problem'" ...

06.22.04 (7:08 am) [edit]

[b]Only one example out of many from Bush's neo-con racist mouth-pieces:[/b]

There he goes again. Here's what Bill O'Reilly had to say on his June 17 broadcast of The Radio Factor:

O'REILLY: Because look ... when 2 percent of the population feels that you're doing them a favor, just forget it, you're not going to win. You're not going to win. And I don't have any respect by and large for the Iraqi people at all. I have no respect for them. I think that they're a prehistoric group that is -- yeah, there's excuses.

Sure, they're terrorized, they've never known freedom, all of that. There's excuses. I understand. But I don't have to respect them because you know when you have Americans dying trying to you know institute some kind of democracy there, and 2 percent of the people appreciate it, you know, it's time to -- time to wise up.

And this teaches us a big lesson, that we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them, just like we did in the Balkans. Just as we did in the Balkans. Bomb the living daylights out of them. But no more ground troops, no more hearts and minds, ain't going to work.

O'Reilly also declared the Iraqis are "just people who are primitive."

The Fox news host has a history of making racist remarks and advocating the mass murder of civilians. When four armed US mercenaries were killed in Fallujah, O'Reilly commented: "Problems continue for the U.S. Military in Fallujah. Why doesn't the U.S. Military just go ahead and level it?" He made it clear he doesn't "care about the people of Fallujah" and that "we know what the final solution should be." Apparently, the mass slaughter of hundreds of civilians in Fallujah by the US military just didn't do it for O'Reilly.

O'Reilly's bloodlust also extended to Afghanistan. A few days after 9/11 he declared "the U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble--the airport, the power plants, their water facilities, and the roads" if the Afghan government did not extradite Osama bin Laden. O'Reilly continued: "This is a very primitive country. And taking out their ability to exist day to day will not be hard. Remember, the people of any country are ultimately responsible for the government they have. The Germans were responsible for Hitler. The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should not target civilians. But if they don't rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period."

The Geneva Convention states that destroying infrastructure essential to the survival of civilian populations is a war crime and the "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited." Besides being an obvious racist, O'Reilly is an advocate of targeting and killing civilians (non-white folks, of course) that clearly constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

When the United States deliberately targeted and systematically destroyed Iraq's water treatment facilities during the first Gulf War in order to create "favorable conditions for disease outbreaks, particularly in major urban areas" (according to a 1991 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency document) and followed that with a deliberate policy of blocking humanitarian supplies to deny necessary repairs, medicines and medical equipment, Denis Halliday, former Deputy Under Secretary of the UN, declared the policy as "genocidal." O'Reilly is openly advocating genocidal tactics to be used against civilians - proposals that would kill millions of civilians if they were carried out.

The virulent racism and fascist mindset of O'Reilly is also pervasive within the US military. The racist contempt of the Iraqis and blatant disregard for civilian lives by US troops in that country is disturbingly common. One need only look at the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib for confirmation, not to mention US troops murdering Iraqis by deliberately firing into crowds of unarmed protesters, dropping large bombs in urban neighborhoods, slaughtering wedding parties, engaging in collective punishment, house demolitions, kidnapping, torture, and firing into vehicles filled with civilians at military checkpoints. A number of American troops perceive Iraqis as "untermenschen" - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans".

To those who object and protest such actions, O'Reilly suggests you just "shut up" or you will be declared an "enemy of the state." He made his feelings about dissent pretty clear shortly before the war started. On February 26, 2003 he said:

"Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can't do that, just shut up. Americans, and indeed our foreign allies who actively work against our military once the war is underway, will be considered enemies of the state by me. Just fair warning to you, Barbara Streisand and others who see the world as you do. I don't want to demonize anyone, but anyone who hurts this country in a time like this, well. Let's just say you will be spotlighted."

You are either with us or against us. America über alles. Sound familiar? - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Bush's Neo-Con Racists' "Final Solution to the Arab 'Problem'" ...

06.22.04 (7:05 am) [edit]

Bush's Neo-Con Racists' "Final Solution to the Arab 'Problem'" ...

06.22.04 (6:59 am) [edit]

Bush's Neo-Con Racists' "Final Solution to the Arab 'Problem'" ...

06.22.04 (6:55 am) [edit]

Dry-drunk president losing his grip?

06.22.04 (6:52 am) [edit]

The lies, delusions and deceptions of George W. Bush have reached a point where the "dry drunk" madness and the "stinking thinking" in his frighteningly flawed mind are what drives all his remarks on the bogus al-Qaida-Iraq connection and the president's rigid, judgmental world view.

In the best of times, George W. can be impatient, self-important and prone to irrational, contorted rationalization. Now that his crazy, unnecessary war in Iraq and grandiose plans to change the Middle East with more violence have clearly failed and he fears that he might get bounced from the White House like his daddy, our president's mental pathology is gaining more control over his behavior.

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks set off the president's panic attack. The commission -- which Bush first opposed and then ostensibly supported, while his minions thwarted its work -- arrived at a conclusion that sent the White House into white heat.

[b]The Full Story [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Dry-drunk president losing his grip?

06.22.04 (6:50 am) [edit]

Bush's ratings erode as anti-terror fighter ...

06.22.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

Public confidence in President Bush's ability to fight terrorism has significantly eroded, in a challenge to his re-election campaign as a "war president," according to a poll released on Monday.

The ABC News/Washington Post poll also found, for the first time, that more than half of Americans believe the Iraq war was not worth fighting.

The poll's findings could spell trouble for Bush, whose ratings in the anti-terrorism fight have been one of his strongest suits as he seeks re-election on a national-security platform.

The poll said that approval of Bush's handling of the U.S. campaign against terrorism had fallen to 50 percent, down 8 points in the last month and 29 points below its post Iraq-war peak.

"Bush ... has weakened in his once-strongest area," ABC said in reporting the poll on its Web site. (http://abcnews.go.com)

In addition, Americans now rate Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry level with Bush in ability to combat terrorism. Bush had led Kerry by 13 percentage points on the issue a month ago, and by 21 points the month before, but the new poll showed Kerry with 48 points to Bush's 47 points.

[b]The Full Story [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Bush's ratings erode as anti-terror fighter because Americans see Bush increases terrorism ...

06.22.04 (6:37 am) [edit]

American Extremists (Neo-Con Fanatical Fascists Akin to Nazis)

06.21.04 (9:49 am) [edit]

[b]When Laws Get In The Way of Torture ...[/b]

People like to quote Karl Marx's comment on the two successive Napoleonic empires, that of Bonaparte himself, and, after 1848, the second empire of his nephew, Napoleon III. Marx said that it was a tragedy repeated as a farce.
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The United States has reversed the sequence, so that a few years ago the nation, or at least Congress and the media, was obsessed by President Bill Clinton's disputed definition of what does or does not amount to sexual congress with a White House intern.
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The tragedy that has followed the farce is torture as an instrument of American national policy in the cause of spreading democracy.
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Documents recently obtained by the press reveal White House anxiety about how to protect President George W. Bush and members of his cabinet from going to prison for ordering, authorizing or deliberately permitting systematic torture of persons in their control, but technically outside formal American legal jurisdiction. The question put to lawyers was how the president and the others could commit war crimes and get away with it.
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Thus, according to these reports, the president last year obtained from his lawyers an opinion that he is not bound by U.S. laws or by international engagements prohibiting torture and that Americans committing torture under his authority cannot be prosecuted by the Justice Department.
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This opinion rests on the argument that national security considerations override both U.S. law and international treaties. As one of the military lawyers who took part in these discussions has said, it was an assertion of "presidential power at its absolute apex."
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It deliberately overrode the norms the military had previously been trained to regard as mandated by the Geneva Conventions. The world now knows how overriding the norms at the top overrides them all down the line.
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The Bush administration's civilians had been complaining about how law, international treaties and conventions, and military norms and inhibitions, were interfering with their determination to seize and hold anyone they pleased in secret prisons, declare them without legal rights even when they were American citizens, torture them whenever they wanted and keep them forever, if they liked (a totalitarian ambition, obviously). They wanted these obstructions removed.
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Their complaints sounded like the complaints of Adolf Eichmann, when he described during his trial in Israel the irksome bureaucratic and legal obstacles he ran into in wartime Germany in carrying out his genocidal responsibilities.
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High U.S. administration figures reportedly lingered - with delectation? - over what exactly was to be done to the unfortunate prisoners - for how long, in what position, with what pain inflicted.
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(There was also - whoops! - the problem of what to do when things went wrong, and the torturers had a dead man, or woman, on their hands.)
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And when all this began to come out, what did the administration have to say? The president said on May 24 that "a few American troops ... disregarded our values." Civilians in the Pentagon, speaking informally to the press, blamed the Abu Ghraib scandals on "a few hillbillies."
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The American operation in Iraq, and apparently in Afghanistan before, has been haphazard, planned and run by people mostly without serious knowledge of these countries and their societies. The administration has gone in for wholesale arrests and interrogations, sweeping people up virtually at random, because it doesn't know what else to do.
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This has been futile and irrational, as well as evil. The nearly universal uselessness of torture is well-known in intelligence and special warfare circles. Even if you have a key figure who does possess useful information, and you eventually get him (or her) to tell you what you want, what actual good is it?
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Is it really true? Is it merely what the torturer has inadvertently conveyed to the victim that he wants to hear? Even if true, is it any longer useful? Every resistance or underground organization works with a system of cut-outs that limits what any one individual knows, and signals everyone else to scatter when a prisoner is taken.
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A network doesn't have to be organized to do that. Any band of armed insurgents in Iraq knows that when one of them is taken the rest don't wait around.
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The vast majority of those in Iraqi prisons have turned out to be people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, or had a name resembling someone else's name, or were related to someone whose name was on a U.S. list. They were tortured because that had become the practice. They might know something. When higher commanders complained that they weren't getting enough intelligence, the same prisoners were tortured again.
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All of this is a ghastly scandal, one of the worst in American history. It is evident cause for impeachment of this president, if Congress has the courage to do it, and for prosecution of cabinet figures and certain commanders. However in view of the partisan alignment in Congress, quite possibly nothing will happen before the November election.
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What then? It also is quite possible that George W. Bush will be elected to a second term. In that case, the American electorate will have made these practices its own. Now that is something for our children to think about. - http://www.iht.com/articles/5...

No contest: Iraq-gate trumps Monica-gate!!!

06.21.04 (6:50 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON -- Former President Bill Clinton is back in the national spotlight to promote his autobiography, just in time to remind us of how trivial his sexual shenanigans with Monica Lewinsky were compared with the Bush administration's spin job concerning its war in Iraq.

After all, no one died in Monica-gate. No one was tortured. Our international allies were shocked or amused, but not alienated.

The Bush White House, by contrast, is in full spin mode to downplay a bracing conclusion of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission that it found "no credible evidence" that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.

Team Bush turned on the media, insisting it never asserted any such connection. "This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda," President Bush said. "We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda."

But facts are stubborn things. So are the quotes from Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and others that have asserted not only "contacts" but the active collaborative relationship between Hussein and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda that the Sept. 11 commission now calls fiction.

Last year, for example, Bush called Hussein "an ally of Al Qaeda" and declared "the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001."

In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that Mohamed Atta, who is accused of masterminding the U.S. attacks, had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official. The Sept. 11 commission agreed with the CIA that the meeting probably did not take place.

Later, Cheney called Iraq the "geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

The Sept. 11 panel's report, by contrast, says that there were contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Bin Laden tried to get aid from Hussein but the Iraqi president did not respond, the commission found.

By week's end, Cheney was hunkered down in full media-bashing mode, as if there was no significant disagreement between the administration and the commission's conclusions. In fact, most of the administration's evidence of Hussein's ties to "terrorism" related to his well-known ties to Palestinian terrorism against Israel, not Al Qaeda. Either way, Team Bush delivered the Hussein-Al Qaeda message so well that a poll last year found two-thirds of Americans were convinced Hussein was tied to Sept. 11.

That's why the administration is in full spin mode today. After turning up barely a trace of Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction, the credibility of the White House is at stake over whether Iraq was a bonus in the war against Al Qaeda or the dangerous distraction that the administration's critics have called it.

At one time, the administration tried to blame the photographed prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib on a "few bad apples." More recently disclosed information indicates that some of the bad apples were near the top of the barrel.

For example, Human Rights Watch, a leading international advocacy group, charged in a June 8 report that the Bush administration deliberately "circumvented" Geneva Convention rules, allowed illegal interrogation techniques, then covered up or ignored reports of torture or abuse.

What's the truth? When President Clinton misbehaved, a Republican Congress pressed him for answers. The current Republican Congress has dragged its heels with Team Bush regarding its justifications for the war and the reported abuses of Iraqi prisoners. I am sure Bill Clinton wishes he could have been that lucky.

Clinton sounded properly contrite in excerpts of his Sunday CBS "60 Minutes" interview with Dan Rather. "I did something for the worst possible reason: just because I could," he said. "I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything."

As confessions go, that one is a model of concise contriteness. No equivocation. No excuses. He sinned simply because he could.

That would have been an appropriate confession for Team Bush during the same week it faced questions about its use of the "war on terrorism" as an excuse to go around most of our traditional allies to topple Saddam Hussein--and to skirt the Geneva Convention standards of humanitarian treatment in handling Iraqi detainees. They did it because they could. You can get away with a lot when no one holds you accountable.

A presidential election year is an appropriate time to hold a thorough national debate on such thorny issues as these, not just because we can, but because we should. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

No contest: Iraq-gate trumps Monica-gate!!!

06.21.04 (6:49 am) [edit]

No contest: Iraq-gate trumps Monica-gate!!!

06.21.04 (6:47 am) [edit]

Heralding the arrival of the End Times for Bush!!!

06.21.04 (6:44 am) [edit]

If the reports are true, President Bush consulted with fundamentalist Christians before deciding if the Israeli move to withdraw from Gaza would fit in with their "End Times" view of the world. In everything from wild dreams of an American Empire to a callous disregard for the frail environment on which all life relies, Bush's short-term policies seem to indicate he is indeed ready for an imminent Second Coming. What seems to be coming, however, in a "like father like son" replay, is End Times for the Bush regime.

The really tough question on the collapse of the presidency of George W. Bush these days is where to start. If you go back even a little way, the connection between the Bush family and the oil moguls of Saudi Arabia is so clear and convincing that a hundred websites have been dedicated to it. Check out www.copvcia.com and follow the links from there. When you're done, you'll find the Bush presidency/ family/cabinet/business interests so intertwined with our aggressive foreign policy that you begin to understand why we are in Iraq--and it doesn't have a thing to do with 9/11.

The 9/11 attackers were mostly citizens of Saudi Arabia, our supposed friend, or at least partner in ARAMCO, the Arabian-American Corporation that encompasses the Saudi Royal Family as well as 25 percent of the world's known petroleum reserves.

Unfortunately, thanks to the Bush Crusade, our "friends" the Saudis are now experiencing a revolution of their own as Arabs seek to crawl out from under the thumb of the Americans. They are killing Westerners, and particularly Americans if they can, not because they "hate freedom," but because they hate American corporate control over their lives. It is exactly this corporate control, backed up by force of arms, which George Bush and the sneering countenance of Dick Cheney would impose on the entire world through their radical policy of global militarization.

We no longer have to wonder: "Why do they hate us?" But now, the grand dreams of American Empire, just as all grand dreams of empire, are coming undone.

Perhaps you have seen Bush's latest poll numbers, where he is not quite down to Judy Martz levels, but is certainly headed that way. John Zogby, the highly respected pollster, has opined that Bush's numbers are now so low that "the race is Kerry's to lose."

Or perhaps you have seen the poll numbers on whether or not it was worth going to war in Iraq. The single pounding message from the White House for the last two years has been that we had no choice but to go to war to protect our nation. Then, after the collapse of the phony WMD premise, how necessary it was for us to depose Saddam and "free" Iraq. Yet, on a daily basis, fewer and fewer Americans are finding the message either accurate or convincing, and now less than half think it was worth all the money and blood we have poured into those desert sands.

You may also have noticed, despite the best efforts of Washington to obfuscate the news with endless paeans to Ronald Reagan, that the CIA's director and top assistant resigned last week--back to back in the middle of the night. So now, with the nation on Code Orange alert and expecting the attacks al-Qaeda has promised to deliver, we are left with no one at the top.

Or how about the news that both Bush and Cheney have retained private criminal attorneys because they are beginning to get worried over what is finally crawling its way to the light of day in the case of Valerie Plame, the CIA undercover agent whose identity was revealed by someone at the highest levels of the Bush administration in a vindictive attack on her husband, who blew apart the myth that Iraq was purchasing nuclear material from Niger.

They might also need those attorneys as the Abu Ghraib torture investigation leaves behind the urine- and blood-stained cells of the infamous prison and brings fear to the halls of the Pentagon and White House. Private Lynndie England, the lady with the prisoner on the leash in the notorious Abu Ghraib pictures, is putting up a fight over becoming the sacrifice for America's shame--and the finger, like her witness list, is pointing ever higher up the chain of command.

Then there's the latest admission by the Pentagon that Dick Cheney overruled an Army lawyer in the awarding of billions in "no bid" Iraq oil contracts to his former company, Halliburton. Although he has vigorously denied any involvement, a letter sent this week to Cheney from Rep. Henry Waxman said the circumstances "appear to contradict your assertions that you were not informed about the Halliburton contracts. They also seem to contradict the administration's repeated assertions that political appointees were not involved in the award of contracts to Halliburton."

Or how about Enron's billion-dollar energy rip-off of the Western States, where their cold-blooded traders laughed about the "poor grandmothers" desperately trying to pay the price of their savagely manipulated utilities? Remember who told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to stay out of the fray? Yep, the White House once again.

As Bush's election chances diminish and his desperation grows, who can miss the delicious irony that one of the most corrupt and lying administrations of modern times is now taking the unprecedented step of trying to get their religious backers to bring politics to their pulpits. Their apparent quid pro quo is a promise of leniency in enforcement that would otherwise revoke the tax-free status for religious groups who infuse their sermons with political endorsements.

As the End Times descend on the Bush administration, it's no wonder they're hoping for the Second Coming to save them. What's more likely to happen, however, is the Second Going--as Bush follows his father out of the White House after just one term. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Heralding the arrival of the End Times for Bush!!!

06.21.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

Heralding the arrival of the End Times for Bush!!!

06.21.04 (6:42 am) [edit]

Heralding the arrival of End Times for Bush!!!

06.21.04 (6:41 am) [edit]

Iraqis See Dishonest Bush's U.S. Sham as Abuse Trials Open (Why Ain't Bush & Rummy in the Dock?)

06.21.04 (6:36 am) [edit]

[b]Iraqis see U.S. sham as abuse trials open[/b]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Court-martial proceedings against Maryland-based U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners are to begin here today, but among many Iraqis the verdict on the legal process is already in: It's a sham.

Their evidence has little to do with what went on inside Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities and more to do with conditions outside those walls more than a year after American promises of a new Iraq were made: Government buildings are still charred shells, clogged streets are still without traffic signals, gasoline supplies are limited, hospitals are filled with maimed Iraqis, morgues are overflowing with the dead.

Beyond that, many Iraqis doubt punishment will be directed where they think it belongs - much higher in the chain of command than the low-ranking soldiers charged in the beating and abuse of detainees.

"The Americans have lied about everything - about helping Iraq," said Jaleel Atwan, 44, covered in sweat as he arranged fruit at his market in Baghdad. "We know now that Americans are not people who tell the truth. Tell me, why should Iraqis believe anything the Americans say?"

Today, three reservists from the 372nd Military Police Company, based near Cumberland, are scheduled to appear at the Baghdad Convention Center for a military proceeding in which their attorneys are expected to ask that the charges be dropped or, short of that, the trials be moved. A fourth soldier faces charges at Fort Bragg, N.C., beginning tomorrow.

U.S. officials, including President Bush, have said the trials will show that the United States does not tolerate such behavior.

[b]Unkept promises [/b]

In the markets of Baghdad, though, and on the city's street corners, the lack of faith in the proceedings stems from a general distrust of the United States because of promises unfulfilled. The promised liberation from dictator Saddam Hussein has come true, but for many Iraqis, day-to-day conditions are more difficult and dangerous. Daily bombings and attacks have left dozens of civilians dead in recent weeks.

The courts-martial seem unlikely to placate many Iraqis. Instead, they are likely to be another source of mistrust and a reminder of the humiliation, abuse and death that Iraqis faced at the hands of Americans in a prison first made notorious as Hussein's most brutal torture and execution facility.

"It's a fake trial, to make the Americans look better to the world," said Saad Na'shat, 52, a civil affairs employee. "They are taking young soldiers who were following orders and say they will punish them. But they will not be punished in 100 years, and the people who gave the orders will never be punished in 1 million years."

Attorneys for the soldiers facing court-martial are expected to make arguments echoing such complaints, heard repeatedly on the streets of Baghdad: The soldiers are paying the price for decisions made at much higher levels.

Among those facing charges are two of the soldiers said to be ringleaders for the abuses, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick II and Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr.

Frederick, 37, who in civilian life is a guard at Buckingham Correctional Center in Dillwyn, Va., is accused of forcing Iraqi detainees to masturbate in front of soldiers and their cameras and of punching one so hard that the man required medical attention to be certain he was not in cardiac arrest.

He is also the soldier, the military says, who attached wires to a detainee's hands and genitals and made him stand on a box, creating a picture that has been published around the world.

[b]Following orders [/b]

The sergeant's family and attorney, Gary Myers, say Frederick is being made a scapegoat after following orders from military intelligence officers to "soften up" detainees so they would be more willing to provide information.

Graner, 35, is accused of supervising much of the abusive behavior and was among the most feared of the American guards at Abu Ghraib, according to military investigators.

His face has become recognizable from published photographs of him standing, arms folded, over a pile of naked Iraqi men and from another of him flashing a thumbs-up as detainees were piled into a pyramid.

He faces a charge, among others, of committing an indecent act by watching detainees commit a sexual act. And military investigators have said that among the evidence collected is a video of him having consensual sex with Pfc. Lynndie R. England, who faces proceedings at Fort Bragg, N.C., tomorrow.

Graner's family has said that he, too, is being made a scapegoat and that he did nothing he was not ordered to do.

"Just think of what was going on at the time and what a few reservists from the hills were asked to do," said Paul Bergrin, an attorney representing Sgt. Javal Davis, the third soldier scheduled to appear in court here this week. "You have your military friends being killed one after another, you have Saddam Hussein still out there somewhere, and you have virtually every single senior military officer - not only in Iraq but also in the Pentagon - telling these guys to loosen the detainees up, to hood them, to get the damn intelligence."

Bergrin said Davis, who attended Morgan State University in Baltimore for a time, was following orders from military intelligence. Several military intelligence officers have come forward in recent weeks to say that colleagues in their units, in charge of interrogations, encouraged the abuses.

"So now you have the intelligence guys, the CIA guys, saying this is all right," Bergrin said. "Do you think the answer is, when this all gets out, to hold a kid like this responsible?"

U.S. authorities have made a point of holding court proceedings for the soldiers in Baghdad, where the Iraqi people can follow the trials and see the American justice system at work, though cameras have been excluded from the courtroom.

[b]A hearing in N.C.[/b]

For now, that has left only England, who is six months' pregnant with Graner's child, as the public face of the abuse scandal in the United States.

England, 21, of Fort Ashby, W.Va., was transferred this year to Fort Bragg, where military officers will conduct an Article 32 hearing beginning tomorrow to determine whether she should face a court-martial.

England, shown in photographs from Abu Ghraib holding a leash tied to the neck of a naked prisoner and pointing at the genitals of another, faces charges that include conspiring to mistreat Iraqi prisoners and assaulting detainees.

The young soldier has become a polarizing figure. While the photos that show her smiling and giving the thumbs-up sign over naked inmates outraged the nation, her family and friends insist that England was following orders from officers, none of whom face criminal charges.

"That's not the type of person she is," said her sister, Jessica Kleinstiner, the day England was charged. "If any one of you would need money for anything, my sister would give you money without wanting money in return - that's how she is."

England's Article 32 hearing, roughly equivalent to a preliminary hearing in civilian courts, is expected to last two to three days at the sprawling base in Fayetteville, and will be the first chance for the public to hear a detailed account of the events that led to the criminal charges.

England's attorneys will be allowed to cross-examine witnesses, but she is not expected to testify. In her only public interview, broadcast by a Denver television station, England contended that the abuses and photos were ordered by superiors. Asked who gave the orders, she said only: "Persons in my chain of command."

In Baghdad, Haider Abbas, a 38-year-old truck driver, said he is surprised that U.S. soldiers have been charged but will never believe that those truly responsible will be punished.

Even if the soldiers are sentenced to prison, he said, as soon as they are returned to the United States they will be freed.

"I think they will be freed in a deal," Abbas said. "The deal is, 'Don't say who told you to do it, and after the big show you can run free.'" - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Iraqis See Dishonest Bush's U.S. Sham as Abuse Trials Open (Why Ain't Bush & Rummy in the Dock?)

06.21.04 (6:35 am) [edit]

Bush's Buddy-boy, Kenny-Boy (Enron) Lay Faces Criminal Indictment!!!

06.21.04 (6:29 am) [edit]

[b]Paper: Indictments of Ken Lay Seen Soon [/b]

HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors are expected to ask a federal grand jury to indict former Enron Corp. chairman Ken Lay within two weeks on charges related to the company's 2001 collapse, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

The Houston Chronicle, citing unnamed sources, said Lay likely would face fraud charges similar to those filed earlier against former Enron chief executive office Jeffrey Skilling and former Enron chief accounting officer Richard Causey.

Those two have been indicted on multiple charges including insider trading, securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and lying about Enron finances.

Lay, 62, led the now bankrupt energy trading giant for many years and was a major financial contributor and political ally of President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush.

Enron collapsed in a huge financial scandal in 2001 when it was revealed the company, once a Wall Street darling, had used off-the-books partnerships to hide billions of dollars of debt and inflate profits.

The fall of Enron touched off investigations that uncovered widespread financial fraud in corporate America and caused the high-flying energy trading industry to implode.

Prosecutors have called numerous witnesses to testify before a special Enron grand jury in recent days and appear to be focusing on Lay's behavior from August 2001 to the company's December 2001 bankruptcy filing, the Chronicle said.

During that time, Skilling resigned as CEO, Enron vice president and whistleblower Sherron Watkins wrote Lay a memo warning of financial misdeeds and an Enron credit line provided Lay was expanded from $4 million to $7.5 million, the paper said.

Prosecutors also are looking at positive statements Lay made to employees, analysts and investors about Enron, as well as his trades of company stock for millions of dollars during that time, it reported.

Prosecutors could not comment on the possibility of impending indictments, but Lay lawyer Michael Ramsey expressed skepticism his client would be charged, the Chronicle said.

"Indict him for what?" he asked. "I don't know what they could charge him with."

Ramsey was not immediately available for comment on Saturday.

The Chronicle said that so far 21 former Enron employees along with eight other people who did business with the company have been charged in the scandal. Ten of those have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors, including former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow. - http://wireservice.wired.com/...

For Years, Bush Has Taken Bribes From Criminal Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay Who May Face Indictment!!!

06.21.04 (6:27 am) [edit]

Latest Horror Could Destroy President of Divided Nation

06.19.04 (4:30 pm) [edit]

Is this the horror that will finally undo George Bush's presidency? First Nicholas Berg, now Paul Johnson: in two months and in two different countries, two US civilians have been kidnapped and beheaded by their al-Qa'ida-affiliated captors, becoming not only pawns in a deadly geopolitical game but also symbols of the complicated feelings of revulsion unleashed by the Bush administration's "war on terror".

It is hard not to think back to earlier acts of defiance against the might of the United States and wonder if we are not seeing a parallel erosion of presidential authority: the steady drip-drip of casualty figures from Vietnam that proved the undoing of Lyndon Johnson's presidency in 1968, or the corrosive effect of the Iran hostage crisis on Jimmy Carter 12 years later.

We have now witnessed four similar killings of Western civilians in the conflicts unleashed by the attacks of 11 September 2001, starting with Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in January 2002 and including the Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi in Iraq in April. Even in our jaded, news-saturated age there is something about these cases that bespeaks almost bottomless horror, in a way that the deaths of more than 800 US servicemen in Iraq or the violence and death visited upon thousands of Iraqi civilians have not.

The fact that the images of ritual slaughter have been posted on the internet has only made the brutality more vivid, more palpable - even to those who have not had the stomach or the inclination to watch. This is a propaganda war, fought with images as much as with guns and knives.

With each new beheading, the political mood has shifted. When the [i]Wall Street Journal [/i]reporter Daniel Pearl was abducted in Karachi two-and-a-half years ago, it gave rise to a sense of national, even international solidarity. There was nothing divisive or controversial about the mourning that greeted news of his death. Indeed, his family has gone on to set up a foundation in his name to promote cross-cultural understanding that enjoys universal admiration.

The case of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old from Pennsylvania abducted and killed in Iraq just last month, was very different. There was the question of how exactly he had come to grief, with his family alleging he had been in US custody and that the FBI somehow put him in the path of danger on his release. And there was the anger of his father, Michael Berg, who said unequivocally: "My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld."

Mr Berg Sr was at an anti-war demonstration in Washington two weeks ago in which he continued to denounce the administration for its "callous behavior" which, he said, had "in effect tied him [his son] to the track until it was no longer possible to escape that speeding hate train".

It would be wrong to believe that the rest of the United States shares Michael Berg's outlook. Rather, his anger has underscored the deep polarization in American politics between those who have come to loathe the Bush administration and those determined to defend its every action. And it remains to be seen whether Mr Johnson's death provokes anger against the administration or rather cries for revenge against his butchers.

Still, the overall mood is slipping away from the President. Two recent polls show that a majority believe the war against Saddam Hussein was not worth it. The Abu Ghraib torture scandal remains incendiary. And the recent traumatic events in Saudi Arabia - the siege of a residential compound in the oil town of al-Khobar last month, the shootings of Americans and other Westerners, and now the grisly fate of Mr Johnson - have raised anxious questions about the direction of US foreign policy and its ostensible goal of diminishing the terrorist threat.

Yesterday, a [i]Washington Post [/i]article was headlined: "Is al-Qa'ida winning in Saudi Arabia?" It was just such questions about America's enemies that led President Johnson to his "Cronkite moment" in 1968 - his realization that he could no longer count on the support of the country's favorite television news anchor, Walter Cronkite, and that he had therefore lost the sympathy of the electorate as a whole. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Latest Horror Could Destroy President of Divided Nation

06.19.04 (4:29 pm) [edit]

American Empire Is Squeezing Out American Democracy

06.19.04 (4:27 pm) [edit]

Most Americans don't sense the profound changes in the country since 9/11. That's due to a political bifurcation. Inside the 50 American states, democracy prevails. And so, in the domestic arena, money and votes can buy power. But in overseas America, the Pentagon uses power to get money -- and more power. The Pentagon has hundreds of bases all over the world, and Congress finances them with few questions asked. That alone shows that democracy is waning and empire waxing.

Like the Roman Empire's legions, armed forces are empire's main weapon. American democracy used to use the draft to fight wars or threats, in order to prevent the rise of standing armies. But empires need standing armies to control the huge territories they have to patrol. That is why, even without a draft, we have a Pentagon that gets money from Congress but only scantly reveals what the money is for. That's the situation in Iraq, where the Pentagon employs paid-for-service personnel. When that happens, the decline of democracy and the rise of empire speeds up even faster.

The Random House Dictionary (RHD) defines empire as "an aggregate of nations or peoples ruled over by an emperor or other powerful sovereign or government, usually [on] a territory greater than a kingdom." Americans believe we don't have an emperor and therefore we are not an empire.

But in recent years our presidents have easily switched two hats. One hat -- that of the "Chief Executive" -- is familiar throughout the world. But the president can, if a serious crisis occurs, suspend the Constitution. Then he swiftly puts on the other hat: "Commander-in-Chief." Since the Korean War (1950-53), presidents have found they can appear in overseas America as the Commander-in-Chief, but in the USA of the 50 states as the Chief Executive.

The scholars who put together the RHD in the early 1960s added, after the
word emperor, "or other powerful sovereign or government." In those Cold War days, the other "powerful sovereigns" were Communist rulers. However, by also adding the word "government," they left the door open for a future time, like now, when democracy is waning and empire waxing.

When the Soviet Union disintegrated in late 1991, many American and European intellectuals hailed the coming triumph of democracy all over the world. When China showed signs of troubles, especially the Tiananmen massacre, the intellectuals predicted an imminent collapse. Yet Russia is now regaining its former strength -- and not in democratic ways. And China has become capitalism's most spectacular success story in the new century, even while flaunting the hammer and sickle, the worldwide emblem of Communism.

In fact, the Pentagon may have generated a new political wave worldwide. Many countries, especially in the non-Western world, understand what is going on in America. While they are adopting many institutions of American democracy, they also note the advantages of a state-within-a-state such as the Pentagon. The result is that empires are sprouting up all over the world, as other nations try to assert their power more widely.

The world's biggest continent, Asia, now is witnessing the resurrection of four ancient empires. The oldest empire (11 century BCE) is China in the east; the next is Indian civilization (also 11 century BCE) in the south; the next (6th century BCE) is Iran in the west; and the youngest (9th century CE) is Russia in the north.

China created the world's first organized state. With few breakdowns,
it also is the longest political entity in world history. Now it is the premier performer in the world economy. India began to build its civilization the same time as China built its state. India exported its culture to China, while both countries for centuries carried on the biggest bilateral trade in the world. Now they are on the verge of repeating this feat.

In the 6th century, Iranian tribes swept into the Middle East and brought in a new religion, Zoroastrianism, that influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Cyrus the Great created an empire that extended from Central Asia to the Aegean. He exerted great influence on Alexander the Great, who in turn influenced the Romans, who let the Republic wilt away while they created an empire even bigger than Cyrus'.

Russia and Iran are now flexing their neo-imperial muscles. The Russians are continuing to supply nuclear know-how for Iran's allegedly peaceful energy program. But within Russia and Iran, as well as China and India, lies a deeply embedded pride in their ancient empires.

Large numbers of diverse peoples and large expanses of territory are marks of empire. In Africa, for example, Nigeria has been acting as a fledgling empire by bringing about peace within its smaller neighbors. Contrary to Hollywood depictions of empire, empires don't want war, because war undermines their prosperity. The ancient Roman Empire's main policy was to enforce the Pax Romana, "the Roman Peace."

It's not impossible, but it is unlikely, that the European Union (EU) could become an empire. The only empires Europe had were short-lived (Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler). The only empire many European have is NATO, which is commanded by the Pentagon.

Latin America has potential for empire, especially in Brazil. Brazilian history includes a real emperor, Dom Pedro, in the 19th century. More important, Brazil resembles the United States with its diverse peoples and great cultural and social gifts. The future will reveal whether it develops its own Pentagon.

[b]PNS Editor Franz Schurmann (fschurmann@pacificnews.org) is emeritus professor of history and sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and the author of numerous books[/b]. - http://news.pacificnews.org/n...

American Empire Is Squeezing Out American Democracy

06.19.04 (4:26 pm) [edit]

Bush's resistance to truth ...

06.19.04 (4:23 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush's resistance to truth [/b]

[[u]Bush's mental instability[/u]: http://www.unknownnews.net/in... ]

Clearly, the Bush administration regards the commendably detailed and careful reports of the presidential commission investigating the 9/11 attacks as primarily a political booby trap that must be circumvented.

This is a profound abdication of presidential leadership. The American people deserve the fullest possible accounting of one of the great tragedies of American history, and the President's role should be to add to that understanding to the fullest extent possible.

The latest example demonstrating that White House priorities lie elsewhere is its response to the commission's staff report Wednesday that there is no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida or of an Iraqi role in the 9/11 atrocities.

That's not really even news. Such a link was widely doubted even before the Iraq war began, and President Bush was eventually forced to acknowledge that Iraq was not involved in the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Yet, what has been the administration's reaction to this week's report? Vice President Dick Cheney said of Saddam, "He had long established ties with al-Qaida." The President emphasized the presence in Iraq of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who may be directing some of the guerrilla attacks in post-war Iraq.

But, of course, the commission didn't contend that were never any contacts between Iraqi officials and al-Qaida operatives. What it does show is that Iraq did not answer al-Qaida's requests for help; that captured senior associates of Osama bin Laden adamantly and credibly denied ties between Iraq and al-Qaida, and that there was apparently never a meeting in Prague between 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer. Mr. Cheney and other hawks in the past have made numerous references to such a meeting.

What Messrs. Bush and Cheney are engaged in is a transparent attempt to persuade the nation to believe a lie without technically lying themselves.

A central rationale for the war was, and continues to be, the administration's assertion that it is a nucleus of a struggle against terrorism. Moreover, the President's increasingly endangered bid for re-election rests on the claim that his leadership is essential to combat terrorism.

And that is why the 9/11 commission's report poses such a grave threat to Mr. Bush. If more evidence was needed, this is the most compelling to date that waging war on Iraq was not justified either by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, or by the global peril of terrorism.

Iraq is Ground Zero of terrorism today, and al-Zarqawi may well be at the helm. But those are the results of the war, not pre-war circumstances that justified a pre-emptive invasion.

That is the truth that the White House is sparing no effort to hide. - http://www.courierjournal.com...

Brain-dead Bush's Resistance to the Truth

06.19.04 (4:21 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush's resistance to truth [/b]

[[u]The Brain-dead[/u]: http://www.unknownnews.net/in... ]

Clearly, the Bush administration regards the commendably detailed and careful reports of the presidential commission investigating the 9/11 attacks as primarily a political booby trap that must be circumvented.

This is a profound abdication of presidential leadership. The American people deserve the fullest possible accounting of one of the great tragedies of American history, and the President's role should be to add to that understanding to the fullest extent possible.

The latest example demonstrating that White House priorities lie elsewhere is its response to the commission's staff report Wednesday that there is no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida or of an Iraqi role in the 9/11 atrocities.

That's not really even news. Such a link was widely doubted even before the Iraq war began, and President Bush was eventually forced to acknowledge that Iraq was not involved in the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Yet, what has been the administration's reaction to this week's report? Vice President Dick Cheney said of Saddam, "He had long established ties with al-Qaida." The President emphasized the presence in Iraq of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who may be directing some of the guerrilla attacks in post-war Iraq.

But, of course, the commission didn't contend that were never any contacts between Iraqi officials and al-Qaida operatives. What it does show is that Iraq did not answer al-Qaida's requests for help; that captured senior associates of Osama bin Laden adamantly and credibly denied ties between Iraq and al-Qaida, and that there was apparently never a meeting in Prague between 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer. Mr. Cheney and other hawks in the past have made numerous references to such a meeting.

What Messrs. Bush and Cheney are engaged in is a transparent attempt to persuade the nation to believe a lie without technically lying themselves.

A central rationale for the war was, and continues to be, the administration's assertion that it is a nucleus of a struggle against terrorism. Moreover, the President's increasingly endangered bid for re-election rests on the claim that his leadership is essential to combat terrorism.

And that is why the 9/11 commission's report poses such a grave threat to Mr. Bush. If more evidence was needed, this is the most compelling to date that waging war on Iraq was not justified either by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, or by the global peril of terrorism.

Iraq is Ground Zero of terrorism today, and al-Zarqawi may well be at the helm. But those are the results of the war, not pre-war circumstances that justified a pre-emptive invasion.

That is the truth that the White House is sparing no effort to hide. - http://www.courierjournal.com...

Bush Must Have Gotten A Kick Out of Beheading (Dubya Tortured Animals) ...

06.18.04 (10:00 am) [edit]

[b]Pschoanalyst describes Bush as "paranoid meglomaniac," "untreated alcoholic"[/b]

A new book by a prominent Washington psychoanalyst says President George W. Bush is a "paranoid meglomaniac" as well as a sadist and "untreated alcoholic." The doctor's analysis appears to confirm earlier reports the President may be emotionally unstable.

Dr. Justin Frank, writing in Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, also says the President has a "lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... [and] pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad."

Even worse, Dr. Frank concludes, the President's years of heavy drinking "may have affected his brain function -- and his decision to quit drinking without the help of a 12-step program [puts] him at far higher risk of relapse."

Dr. Frank's revelations comes on the heels of last week's Capitol Hill Blue exclusive that revealed increasing concern by White House aides over Bush's emotional stability.

Aides, who spoke only on condition that their names be withheld, told stories of wide mood swings by the President who would go from quoting the Bible one minute to obscenity-filled outbursts the next.

Bush shows an inability to grieve -- dating back to age 7, when his sister died. "The family's reaction -- no funeral and no mourning -- set in motion his life-long pattern of turning away from pain [and hiding] behind antic behavior," says Frank, who says Bush may suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Other findings by Dr. Frank:
. His mother, Barbara Bush -- tabbed by some family friends as "the one who instills fear" -- had trouble connecting emotionally with her son, Frank argues.

. George H.W. Bush's "emotional and physical absence during his son's youth triggered feelings of both adoration and revenge in George W."

. The President suffers from "character pathology," including "grandiosity" and "megalomania" -- viewing himself, America and God as interchangeable.

Dr. Frank has been a psychiatrist for 35 years and is director of psychiatry at George Washington University. A Democrat, he once headed the Washington Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

In an interview with The Washington Post's Richard Leiby, Dr. Frank said he began to be concerned about Bush's behavior in 2002.

"I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote, and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed," Dr. Frank told Leiby. Bush, he said, "fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated."

Dr. Frank's expert recommendation? "Our sole treatment option -- for his benefit and for ours -- is to remove President Bush from office ... before it is too late."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to comment on the specifics of Dr. Frank's book or the earlier story by Capitol Hill Blue.

"I don't do book reviews," McClellan said, even though he last week recommended the latest book by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward to reporters at the daily press briefing. - http://www.unknownnews.net/in...

Sean Hannity + Fox Nazi Propaganda Channel = Neo-Orwellian Bullshit!!!

06.18.04 (9:17 am) [edit]

[b]The Document Sean Hannity Doesn't Want You To Read[/b]

Speaking at the [i]Take Back America [/i]conference on June 3, American Progress CEO John Podesta said, "I think when you get so distant from the facts as -- as guys like Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do, yeah, I think that tends to -- it kind of -- it tends to corrupt the dialogue." Apparently he struck a nerve with Fox News' Sean Hannity. Hannity challenged Podesta to "defend and explain one example where I -- where I said something that was so false." Since choosing just one of Hannity's distortions is too difficult, here are fifteen examples:

All Hannity quotes from [i]Hannity and Colmes [/i]unless otherwise noted.

[b]1. WMD[/b]

HANNITY: "You're not listening, Susan. You've got to learn something. He had weapons of mass destruction. He promised to disclose them. And he didn't do it. You would have let him go free; we decided to hold him accountable." (4/13/04)

FACT: Hannity's assertion comes more than six months after Bush Administration weapons inspector David Kay testified his inspection team had "not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material" and had not discovered any chemical or biological weapons. (Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay, 10/2/03)

[b]2. Colin Powell on Iraq[/b]

HANNITY: "Colin Powell just had a great piece that he had in the paper today. He was there [in Iraq]. He said things couldn't have been better." (9/19/03)

FACT: "Iraq has come very far, but serious problems remain, starting with security. American commanders and troops told me of the many threats they face--from leftover loyalists who want to return Iraq to the dark days of Saddam, from criminals who were set loose on Iraqi society when Saddam emptied the jails and, increasingly, from outside terrorists who have come to Iraq to open a new front in their campaign against the civilized world." (Colin Powell, 9/19/03)

[b]3. Saddam/Al-Qaeda Connection[/b]

HANNITY: "And in northern Iraq today, this very day, al Qaeda is operating camps there, and they are attacking the Kurds in the north, and this has been well-documented and well chronicled. Now, if you're going to go after al Qaeda in every aspect, and obviously they have the support of Saddam, or we're not." (12/9/02)

FACT: David Kay was on the ground for months investigating the activities of Hussein's regime. He concluded "But we simply did not find any evidence of extensive links with Al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links at all." He called a speech where Cheney made the claim there was a link "evidence free." (Boston Globe, 6/16/04)

[b]4. 9/11 Investigation[/b]

HANNITY: "[After 9-11], liberal Democrats at first showed little interest in the investigation of the roots of this massive intelligence failure...[Bush and his team] made it clear that determining the causes of America's security failures and finding and remedying its weak points would be central to their mission." (Let Freedom Ring, by Sean Hannity)

TRUTH: Bush Opposed the creation of a special commission to probe the causes of 9/11 for over a year. On 5/23/02 CBS New Reported "President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11." Bush didn't relent to pressure to create a commission, mostly from those Hannity would consider "liberal" until September 2002. (CBS News, 5/23/02; ABC News, 9/20/02)

[b]5. The Recession[/b]

HANNITY: "First of all, this president -- you know and I know and everybody knows -- inherited a recession...it was by every definition a recession" (11/6/02)

HANNITY: "Now here's where we are. The inherited Clinton/Gore recession. That's a fact." (5/6/03)

HANNITY: "The president inherited a recession." (7/10/03)

HANNITY: "He got us out of the Clinton-Gore recession." (10/23/03)

HANNITY: "They did inherit the recession. They did inherit the recession. We got out of the recession." (12/12/03)

HANNITY: "And this is the whole point behind this ad, because the president did inherit a recession." (1/6/04)

HANNITY: "Historically in every recovery, because the president rightly did inherit a recession. But historically, the lagging indicator always deals with employment." (1/15/04)

HANNITY: "Congressman Deutsch, maybe you forgot but I'll be glad to remind you, the president did inherit that recession." (1/20/04)

HANNITY: "He did inherit a recession, and we're out of the recession." (2/2/04)

HANNITY: "The president inherited a recession." (2/23/04)

HANNITY: "The president inherited a recession." (3/3/04)

HANNITY: "Well, you know, we're going to show ads, as a matter of fact, in the next segment, Congressman. Thanks for promoting our next segment. What I like about them is everything I've been saying the president ought to do: is focusing in on his positions, on keeping the nation secure in very difficult times, what he's been able to do to the economy after inheriting a very difficult recession, and of course, the economic impact of 9/11." (3/3/04)

HANNITY: "All right. So this is where I view the economic scenario as we head into this election. The president inherited a recession." (3/16/04)

HANNITY: "First of all, we've got to put it into perspective, is that the president inherited a recession." (3/26/04)

HANNITY: "Clearly, we're out of the recession that President Bush inherited." (4/2/04)

HANNITY: "Stop me where I'm wrong. The president inherited a recession, the economic impact of 9/11 was tremendous on the economy, correct?" (4/6/04)

HANNITY: "[President George W. Bush] did inherit a recession." (5/3/04)

HANNITY: "[W]e got [the weak U.S. economy] out of the Clinton-Gore recession." (5/18/04)

HANNITY: "We got out of the Clinton-Gore recession." (5/27/04)

HANNITY: "We got out of the Clinton-Gore recession." (6/4/04)

FACT: "The recession officially began in March of 2001 -- two months after Bush was sworn in -- according to the universally acknowledged arbiter of such things, the National Bureau of Economic Research. And the president, at other times, has said so himself." (Washington Post, 7/1/03)

[b]6. The Hispanic Vote[/b]

HANNITY: "The Hispanic community got to know him in Texas. They went almost overwhelming for him. He more than quadrupled the Hispanic vote that he got in that state." (9/16/03)

FACT: Exit polls varied in 1998 governors race, but under best scenario he increased his Hispanic vote from 24 to 49 percent – a doubling not a quadrupling. He lost Texas Hispanics to Gore in 2000, 54-43 percent. (Source: NCLR , NHCSL)

[b]7. White House Vandalism[/b]

HANNITY: "Look, we've had these reports, very disturbing reports -- and I have actually spoken to people that have confirmed a lot of the reports -- about the trashing of the White House. Pornographic materials left in the printers. They cut the phone lines. Lewd and crude messages on phone machines. Stripping of anything that was not bolted down on Air Force One. $200,000 in furniture taken out." (1/26/01)

TRUTH: According to statements from the General Services Administration that were reported on May 17, little if anything out of the ordinary occurred during the transition, and "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy." (FAIR)

[b]8. Patriotism[/b]

HANNITY: "I never questioned anyone's patriotism." (9/18/03)

FACT:

HANNITY: (to attorney Stanley Cohen) "Is it you hate this president or that you hate America?" (4/30/03)

HANNITY: "Governor, why wouldn't anyone want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, unless they detested their own country or were ignorant of its greatness?" (6/12/03)

HANNITY: "You could explain something about your magazine, [the Nation]. Lisa Featherstone writing about the hate America march, the [anti-war] march that took place over the weekend..." (1/22/03)

HANNITY: "'I hate America.' This is the extreme left. There is a portion of the left -- not everybody who's left -- that does hate this country and blame this country for the ills of the world..." (1/23/02)

HANNITY: (speaking to Sara Flounders co-director of the International Action Center) "You don't like this country, do you? You don't -- you think this is an evil country. By your description of it right here, you think it's a bad country." (9/25/01)

[b]9. Separation of Church and State[/b]

HANNITY: "It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state." (8/25/03)

FACT: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." (1st Amendment)

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (Article VI)

[b]10. James Madison[/b]

HANNITY: "You want to refer to some liberal activist judge..., that's fine, but I'm going to go directly to the source. The author of the Bill of Rights [James Madison] hired the first chaplain in 1789, and I gotta' tell ya' somethin', I think the author of the Bill of Rights knows more about the original intent--no offense to you and your liberal atheist activism--knows more about it than you do." (9/4/02)

TRUTH: The first congressional chaplains weren't hired by James Madison--they were appointed by a committee of the Senate and House in, respectively, April and May, 1789, before the First Amendment even existed. James Madison's view: "Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative." (James Madison)

[b]11. Alabama Constitution[/b]

HANNITY: "But the Alabama Constitution, which Chief Justice Roy Moore is sworn to uphold, clearly it says, as a matter of fact that the recognition of God is the foundation of that state's Constitution." (8/21/03)

FACT: While the preamble of the Alabama Constitution does reference "the Almighty," section three provides: "That no religion shall be established by law; that no preference shall be given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship; that no one shall be compelled by law to attend any place of worship; nor to pay any tithes, taxes, or other rate for building or repairing any place of worship, or for maintaining any minister or ministry; that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state; and that the civil rights, privileges, and capacities of any citizen shall not be in any manner affected by his religious principles." (Alabama Constitution, Section 3)

[b]12. Rent for Public Housing[/b]

HANNITY: Betsy, they're not going to lose it [public housing], because if you work less than 30 hours a week -- if you work more than 30 hours a week, you don't have to do it. If you're between the ages of 18 and 62 and you're not legally disabled and you have free housing -- in other words...

BETSY MCCAUGHEY: No. Wait a second, Sean. Let me correct you. Most people in public housing are not receiving free housing. Many of them are paying almost market rates.

HANNITY: Betsy, that is so ridiculous and so false, it's hardly even worth spending the time. (10/23/03)

FACT: Residents of public housing pay rent scaled to their household's anticipated gross annual income, less deductions for dependents and disabilities. The basic formula for rent is 30 percent of this monthly adjusted income. There are exceptions for extremely low incomes, but the minimum rent is $25 per month. No one lives in public housing for free. (Department of Housing and Urban Development)

[b]13. Kerry Tax Plan[/b]

HANNITY: "The Kerry campaign wants to cut taxes on people who make two hundred thousand dollars. She [Teresa Heinz Kerry] only paid 14.7 percent of her income in taxes, because their plan doesn't go to dividends, only income. So they don't want to tax themselves." (5/12/04)

FACT: Kerry's plan would "Restore the capital gains and dividend rates for families making over $200,000 on income earned above $200,000 to their levels under President Clinton. (Kerry Press Release, 4/7/04)

[b]14. Kerry and Weapons Systems[/b]

HANNITY: "He's [Kerry's] flip-flopped all over the place... on the issue of Iraq. All the munitions that we have built up, most of them wouldn't be there." (1/30/04)

HANNITY: "But he wanted to cancel…every major weapons system. Specific votes that he would have canceled the weapons systems we now use." (2/26/04)

FACT: "In 1991, Kerry opposed an amendment to impose an arbitrary 2 percent cut in the military budget. In 1992, he opposed an amendment to cut Pentagon intelligence programs by $1 billion. In 1994, he voted against a motion to cut $30.5 billion from the defense budget over the next five years and to redistribute the money to programs for education and the disabled. That same year, he opposed an amendment to postpone construction of a new aircraft carrier. In 1996, he opposed a motion to cut six F-18 jet fighters from the budget. In 1999, he voted against a motion to terminate the Trident II missile." (Slate, 2/25/04)

[b]15. Kerry and the CIA[/b]

HANNITY: "If he (Kerry) had his way and the CIA would almost be nonexistent." (1/30/04)

FACT: John Kerry has supported $200 billion in intelligence funding over the past seven years - a 50 percent increase since 1996.

Kerry votes supporting intelligence funding:

FY03 Intel Authorization $39.3-$41.3 Billion
[2002, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 9/25/02]

FY02 Intel Authorization $33 Billion
[2001, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 12/13/01]

FY01 Intel Authorization $29.5-$31.5 Billion
[2000, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 12/6/00]

FY00 Intel Authorization $29-$30 Billion
[1999, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 11/19/1999]

FY99 Intel Authorization $29.0 Billion
[1998, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 10/8/98]

FY98 Intel Authorization $26.7 Billion
[1997, Senate Roll Call Vote #109]

FY97 Intel Authorization $26.6 Billion
[1996, Unanimous Senate Voice Vote 9/25/96]

(Source: CDI) - http://www.americanprogress.o...

Sean Hannity + Fox Nazi Propaganda Channel = Neo-Orwellian Bullshit!!!

06.18.04 (9:14 am) [edit]

Right-Wing Haters of America: Neo-Con Fascists Want to Censor Michael Moore! (Scared of Truth!)

06.18.04 (9:08 am) [edit]

[b]Moving America backward: Censoring Michael Moore[/b]

If the group [i]Move America Forward [/i]has its way, come June 25th, you will not be able to see Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11.

Why? Well, the main reason seems to be...[i]we do not like what Michael Moore has to say about America. And, being freedom-loving Americans, we want to pressure movie theater chains not to screen the film[/i].

Another question that comes to mind is, what the hell is [i]Move America Forward[/i]? I know, I hadn't heard of them, either, until recently. As I looked over their web site, the first thought that popped into my mind was: right-wing fascist nut cases. But that's not fair. I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, so I'm not qualified to make judgments on the mental health of [i]Move America Forward's [/i]board of directors and staff.

[b]The Full Story [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Hypocritical Bush/Cheney Can't Have It Both Ways!!!

06.18.04 (7:36 am) [edit]

[b]'The Soros slander campaign continues'[/b]

[i][b]Hypocritical Bush/Cheney Fascists Don't Want Dems to Raise Money-- But It's Okay for Them To Take Hundreds of Millions in Corporate Campaign Bribes![/b][/i]

We return this week to the conservative crusade to destroy the reputation of financier and philanthropist George Soros. The Hungarian-born billionaire has driven Republicans to distraction for two reasons. First, after decades of dedicating his fortune to fighting for democracy and civil society in his native Eastern Europe, he has turned his attention to the United States, where he is spending as much as $15 million to help various liberal groups improve their efforts to expose the malfeasance of the Bush Administration and defeat it in 2004. Second, in response to some surprise questioning at a meeting with Jewish leaders last year, Soros offered his opinion that Israeli foreign policy is in significant measure responsible for increasing anti-Semitism around the world.

The attacks have been ratcheted up in recent weeks because the Republicans see his prominent role in funding organizations like America Coming Together, MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress (where I am a senior fellow) as a means to tar John Kerry as a dangerous radical by association. They'd also like to scare off others who might be considering such roles for themselves. The Republican National Committee has circulated a briefing paper on Capitol Hill in which Soros is referred to as "Lord of the Democrats" and the "Daddy Warbucks" of the drug legalization movement, and which highlights what it deems to be his controversial positions on abortion, gun control and the right to end one's own life.

[b]The Full Story [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Keep Religious Bigots/Pulpits Out of Government!!!

06.18.04 (7:32 am) [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

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 [link] ) with Susan Jacoby, author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" (excerpt on [link] ), 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" [link] ...

"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 ...

[b]By WinstonSmith. For Access to Links [/b] http://www.tblog.com/template...

Right-Wing Haters of America: Neo-Con Fascists Want to Censor Michael Moore! (Scared of Truth!)

06.18.04 (7:29 am) [edit]

Right-Wing Haters of America: Neo-Con Fascists Want to Censor Michael Moore! (Scared of Truth!)

06.18.04 (7:28 am) [edit]

Right-Wing Haters of America: Neo-Con Fascists Want to Censor Michael Moore! (Scared of Truth!)

06.18.04 (7:27 am) [edit]

Right-Wing Haters of America: Neo-Con Fascists Want to Censor Michael Moore! (Scared of Truth!)

06.18.04 (7:26 am) [edit]

Right-Wing Haters of America: Neo-Con Fascists Want to Censor Michael Moore! (Scared of Truth!)

06.18.04 (7:25 am) [edit]

Mad King George Shoves Lies Down Out Throats With Imperial: "Because I Say So"

06.18.04 (7:21 am) [edit]

[b]Bush defends his lies: al Qaeda-Iraq links exist because I say they exist[/b]

President Bush and Vice President Cheney said yesterday that they remain convinced that Saddam Hussein's government had a long history of ties to Al Qaeda, a day after the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that its review of classified intelligence found no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" that linked Iraq to the terrorist organization.

Mr. Bush, responding to a reporter's question about the report after a White House cabinet meeting yesterday morning, said: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda" is "because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

He said: "This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two."

He repeated that Mr. Hussein was "a threat" and "a sworn enemy to the United States of America."

Last night Mr. Cheney, who was the administration's most forceful advocate of the Qaeda-Hussein links, was more pointed, repeating in detail his case for those ties and saying that The New York Times's coverage yesterday of the commission's findings "was outrageous."

[b]The Full Story [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Mad King George Shoves Lies Down Out Throats With Imperial: "Because I Say So"

06.18.04 (7:19 am) [edit]

Smack That Cheney-Bot!

06.17.04 (7:17 am) [edit]

The whole thing was extremely suspicious.

People here still haven't stopped buzzing about the president's bizarre behavior at the White House unveiling ceremony for the Clintons' official portraits on Monday. Mr. Bush acted totally out of character: witty, engaged, amiable, bipartisan and magnanimous. Even to Bill and Hillary.

He gave a sly wink to his own black-sheep past and that of the wayward Rodham brothers, Hugh and Tony, when he greeted the Rodhams' mom, Dorothy: "Welcome, we're glad you're here. And those two boys you're still trying to raise."

W. gave lavish encomiums — and even a nickname — to the man he once accused of stripping the White House of dignity and honor. Saying his dad was 41 and he's 43, he grinned and said, "We're glad you're here, 42."

Even Bill Clinton was dumbfounded, not to mention confounded. Maybe that's why the usually articulate 42 declared he felt like "a pickle stepping into history." Shouldn't he have felt like the ham and cheese between two slices of Wonder bread?

Mr. Clinton told friends afterward that he was blown away, that W. had never been so nice to him before. There was no smirk, no begrudging. And Clinton pals at a Georgetown restaurant that night alternated between bellowing about getting rid of President Bush and marveling at how great he'd been at the unveiling.

"Maybe after a week of seeing the comparisons of himself and Reagan, in which he did not come out as well," one Clintonista speculated, "he's getting the knack of acting more like Reagan." Mr. Clinton used to study Reagan tapes to pick up pointers; why shouldn't Mr. Bush?

Perhaps we have a Potomac invasion of the body snatchers. Maybe, like the grumpy wives of Stepford, bristly W. has been replaced by soothing W. With the race with John Kerry so tight, the Republicans were reminded last week of the advantages of a leader with a light touch — not one who's at odds with the world, and rattled about the prison torture scandal creeping toward Rummy and the sulfurous reversals in Iraq. (Although it would be natural for Mr. Bush to feel churlish. After going to war to save Iraqis from a regime that "tortured children in front of their parents," now he can't even trust the Iraqis to bring Saddam to justice.)

Like the Stepford husbands, G.O.P. bigwigs could have met in a smoky men's club and decided they wanted a W. who was a little less pushy and a little more sunny. All world domination, all the time, can be wearing.

The Republicans messed up their first attempt at this, when they took Dick Cheney to an undisclosed location to switch him with a replicant. Instead of an affable, reassuring presence, as he was in Bush I, the Bush II vice president is a macabre automaton who keeps repeating, over and over, as contrary evidence piles up, that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked, and that Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague.

Mr. Cheney did it again on Monday in Florida speaking at — where else? — a conservative think tank; he said Saddam "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." This claim, used by the White House to justify its gallop to war, was once more flatly contradicted by the 9/11 panel's report yesterday: "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

The report says Osama did seek help from Saddam in the 90's, "despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime." But aside from sending an official to meet with Osama in Sudan, Saddam stiffed his request for weapons and training-camp space.

Mr. Cheney isn't programmed to process evidence that shows he was wrong; he simply keeps repeating the same nonsensical claims as if he has a microchip malfunction.

Unfortunately, there's no spouse to give him a knock on the head, as the Stepford husbands do when their Farrah fem-bots go haywire and keep repeating things like, "I'll just die if I don't get that recipe. . . . I'll just die if I-I-I [bop!] don't get that recipe. . . ."

Cheney-bot just keeps going and going: "He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda. . . . He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda-a-a. . . . He-he-e-e—— brzzzrrrp!" - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

Smack That Cheney-Bot!

06.17.04 (7:14 am) [edit]

[b]Smack That Cheney-Bot![/b]

The whole thing was extremely suspicious.

People here still haven't stopped buzzing about the president's bizarre behavior at the White House unveiling ceremony for the Clintons' official portraits on Monday. Mr. Bush acted totally out of character: witty, engaged, amiable, bipartisan and magnanimous. Even to Bill and Hillary.

He gave a sly wink to his own black-sheep past and that of the wayward Rodham brothers, Hugh and Tony, when he greeted the Rodhams' mom, Dorothy: "Welcome, we're glad you're here. And those two boys you're still trying to raise."

W. gave lavish encomiums — and even a nickname — to the man he once accused of stripping the White House of dignity and honor. Saying his dad was 41 and he's 43, he grinned and said, "We're glad you're here, 42."

Even Bill Clinton was dumbfounded, not to mention confounded. Maybe that's why the usually articulate 42 declared he felt like "a pickle stepping into history." Shouldn't he have felt like the ham and cheese between two slices of Wonder bread?

Mr. Clinton told friends afterward that he was blown away, that W. had never been so nice to him before. There was no smirk, no begrudging. And Clinton pals at a Georgetown restaurant that night alternated between bellowing about getting rid of President Bush and marveling at how great he'd been at the unveiling.

"Maybe after a week of seeing the comparisons of himself and Reagan, in which he did not come out as well," one Clintonista speculated, "he's getting the knack of acting more like Reagan." Mr. Clinton used to study Reagan tapes to pick up pointers; why shouldn't Mr. Bush?

Perhaps we have a Potomac invasion of the body snatchers. Maybe, like the grumpy wives of Stepford, bristly W. has been replaced by soothing W. With the race with John Kerry so tight, the Republicans were reminded last week of the advantages of a leader with a light touch — not one who's at odds with the world, and rattled about the prison torture scandal creeping toward Rummy and the sulfurous reversals in Iraq. (Although it would be natural for Mr. Bush to feel churlish. After going to war to save Iraqis from a regime that "tortured children in front of their parents," now he can't even trust the Iraqis to bring Saddam to justice.)

Like the Stepford husbands, G.O.P. bigwigs could have met in a smoky men's club and decided they wanted a W. who was a little less pushy and a little more sunny. All world domination, all the time, can be wearing.

The Republicans messed up their first attempt at this, when they took Dick Cheney to an undisclosed location to switch him with a replicant. Instead of an affable, reassuring presence, as he was in Bush I, the Bush II vice president is a macabre automaton who keeps repeating, over and over, as contrary evidence piles up, that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked, and that Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague.

Mr. Cheney did it again on Monday in Florida speaking at — where else? — a conservative think tank; he said Saddam "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda." This claim, used by the White House to justify its gallop to war, was once more flatly contradicted by the 9/11 panel's report yesterday: "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

The report says Osama did seek help from Saddam in the 90's, "despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime." But aside from sending an official to meet with Osama in Sudan, Saddam stiffed his request for weapons and training-camp space.

Mr. Cheney isn't programmed to process evidence that shows he was wrong; he simply keeps repeating the same nonsensical claims as if he has a microchip malfunction.

Unfortunately, there's no spouse to give him a knock on the head, as the Stepford husbands do when their Farrah fem-bots go haywire and keep repeating things like, "I'll just die if I don't get that recipe. . . . I'll just die if I-I-I [bop!] don't get that recipe. . . ."

Cheney-bot just keeps going and going: "He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda. . . . He had long-established ties with Al Qaeda-a-a. . . . He-he-e-e—— brzzzrrrp!" - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

Liars Bush/Cheney Think They'll Fool Us if They Repeat Same Ole' LIE!!!

06.17.04 (7:13 am) [edit]

Bush's "Compassion" is War! Today Bush's Death Toll in Iraq Climbs Killing 35 & Injuring 138!!!

06.17.04 (7:10 am) [edit]

[b]Blast at Iraqi recruiting center kills at least 35

Explosive-laden SUV slams into crowd; minister blames Zarqawi[/b]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A sport-utility vehicle packed with artillery shells slammed into a crowd of people waiting to volunteer Thursday for the Iraqi military, killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 138, authorities said. A U.S. military officer said the bombing was believed to be a suicide attack.

[b]More on [/b] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5...

Bush's "Compassion" is War! Today Bush's Death Toll in Iraq Climbs Killing 35 & Injuring 138!!!