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Bush's Words/'Feelings' Are Cheap! Bush Is Disgusting & Isn't Fit To Be An AMERICAN!

04.30.04 (11:30 am) [edit]

[b]Bush has no concern for the lives of ordinary Iraqis (Nor does he give a shit about U.S. Soldiers ... Why should he? Bush is making a killing $$$ on war-profits along with Cheney and Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group and the rest of these blood-sucking warmongers!)[/b]

[b]Stop the slaughter in Iraq - Write Congress [/b] http://www.congress.org

Before the eyes of millions of people around the world, the US military has begun a systematic and deliberate slaughter in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Speaking at the White House yesterday, President Bush publicly lifted all restraints on the conduct of the US troops. American forces, Bush declared, “will take whatever action is necessary” to subjugate the city.

On Wednesday, for the third day in a row, Fallujah suffered concerted bombardment by US warplanes and helicopter gunships. During the afternoon, jet fighters targeted an area of the southern suburbs with 10 laser-guided bombs, including a 1000-pound bomb that sent a massive explosion into the sky. As evening fell, jets and gunships launched missiles against buildings in the northwestern working class suburb of Jolan, which had also been subjected to heavy bombing on Tuesday. In the western area of the city, gunships strafed buildings and streets with 105mm cannon and machine gunfire well into the night.

The number of Iraqi casualties over the past several days is not known. What is known is that residential districts have been pounded. According to Associated Press, ambulances could not reach the areas that were attacked last night. Witnesses reported “large numbers of dead and wounded”. At least 25 buildings were reduced to rubble. One hospital reported to Al Jazeerah that it had taken in 10 wounded after the shelling in the afternoon.

It is necessary to cut through the fog of lies, distortions and Orwellian double-speak that the American establishment is attempting to cast over what is taking place in Fallujah.

Amidst the footage of an assault by state-of-the-art American air power, General Mark Kimmitt told the media that the US forces were respecting a “ceasefire” and only carrying out “a series of defensive responses” to attacks by fighters within the city. The Iraqi defenders have been repeatedly slandered in official press conferences and media reports as isolated supporters of the former Baathist regime or foreign terrorists. The only objective of the US assault is declared to be arresting those responsible for killing four American contractors on March 30.

The reality is that the attack is a deliberate and calculated reprisal against the entire population of the city for defying the US occupation of Iraq. The continued resistance to the US that is organised from within Fallujah—despite massive repression—has made it a symbol of the Iraqi people’s opposition to the invasion and subjugation of their country.

When US troops first entered the city just over a year ago, they were met with demonstrations demanding they leave. American paratroopers responded by murdering 13 people and wounding as many as 100 more. In retaliation for subsequent guerilla attacks on US forces, the city was subjected to numerous raids last year. Hundreds of men were dragged away to prison camps. The resistance, however, continued to grow, to the point where US troops withdrew from the city last December.

The current US offensive is the revenge. It was planned long before the events of March 30 and had already been delegated to the marine division that had moved into the area several weeks earlier. Marine General John Sattler boasted Wednesday: “When the marines came in [to Fallujah], they brought a substantially larger force than the one they replaced, with the intent of making sure they had the forces that were necessary to go in and reestablish or establish law and order.... The intent all along was to go into Fallujah.... It was a calculated, stepped-up process....”

The killing of the four contractors was simply used as the pretext to launch an attack.

Fallujah has been under siege for close to a month. As many as 700 people were killed during the first US blitz from April 5 to April 9, with many of the dead buried in shallow graves in backyards and football stadiums. At least 70,000 people have been forced to flee the city. There is no electricity. Parts of the city have no water. There is no functioning sewerage system; no garbage collection; and the hospitals are breaking down under the volume of wounded.

Now, after weeks of preparation, the US military has launched an offensive aimed at forcing the 150,000 or so people still defending the city into a humiliating submission. At the same time, US forces outside Najaf and in Baghdad are stepping up attacks on the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s militiamen and supporters who rose up this month against the tyranny of the occupation. Dozens of Shiite fighters have been killed over the past two days.

General Kimmitt implied on Tuesday that the US military was prepared to sit outside Fallujah and bomb the areas not under its control for as long as “six to eight weeks”. Marines and armoured units, however, are positioned for a ground assault whenever the city’s defences have been sufficiently weakened. The New York Times reported yesterday that a column of tanks and other vehicles was moving through checkpoints to the city’s west. Marine commanders reportedly requested tank reinforcements after the city’s defenders halted the first attack.

What is unfolding in Fallujah is on a par with the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the occupied people of Europe. The calculation of the Bush administration is that by inflicting death and destruction on the people of Fallujah, it will intimidate the entire Iraqi people into accepting the reduction of Iraq to a client-state of US imperialism. On June 30, a puppet Iraqi government, made up of only those who have, to one extent or another, collaborated with the American occupation, will be installed. It will have no powers over its territory or its armed forces.

The US media is playing an utterly criminal role in facilitating this agenda. Leading newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and New York Times have editorially called for and endorsed the assault on Fallujah. The cable stations, from CNN to Fox, are literally baying for blood and demanding the marines go into the city.

An inevitable logic lies behind both the views of the American establishment and the bloodbath being unleashed in Fallujah. Iraq was not invaded to bring democracy but in order to reduce it to the status of a colony and plunder its wealth and energy resources for the benefit of US transnationals and banks, as part of a broader perspective of using military power to overcome American capitalism’s long-term economic decline.

There is no turning back for the American ruling elite. Driven by its economic crisis, it is attempting to reorganise the globe under its hegemony. The oil- and resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia are central to its strategy. Republicans and Democrats alike are committed to continuing the occupation of Iraq and are therefore driven to call for murderous methods to crush the resistance of the Iraq people, which has threatened the US grip over the country in the past four weeks.

Millions of Americans, and working people around the world, are watching the scenes from Iraq with horror and disgust. A war carried out on the basis of lies and deception has degenerated into the slaughter of mass Iraqi resistance, with rapidly increasing US casualties. At least 1,000 young American soldiers have been killed or wounded this month alone.

The American and international working class is the only social force that is capable of defending the people of Fallujah and Iraq, and ending the atrocities. Rallies and meetings should be organised to demonstrate solidarity and to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all American and other occupation troops from Iraq, with the payment of war reparations to the Iraqi people. Those responsible for the war and the massacres being committed by the occupation forces are guilty of war crimes and should be prosecuted.

This includes the international allies of the Bush administration in Britain, Australia, Italy and elsewhere, who continue to justify and defend the actions of US imperialism. Bush’s principal ally, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, declared in parliament yesterday as bombs rained down on Fallujah: “It is right that the American forces try to make sure that order is restored to that city.”

The carnage in Iraq poses the need for more than immediate political action however. It highlights the incompatibility between the interests of the vast mass of the world’s population and imperialism, in which a handful of powerful states dominate every aspect of the globe’s economic and political life on behalf of the major corporations and wealthy. A unified international socialist movement needs to be built that can lead the working class into a struggle against the profit system and the future it is offering of colonialism and war. - http://www.wsws.org/articles/...

One Year Later, Dubya's "Mission" Is Sure As Hell Not "Accomplished"!!!

04.30.04 (11:23 am) [edit]

[i][b]Bush's Iraq speech on the USS Lincoln didn't foreshadow escalating insurgency in 2004[/b][/i].

One year ago Saturday, President Bush stood on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared major combat operations in Iraq over. What he and other administration officials may not have foreseen was that political combat for the soul of a shattered nation was just beginning.

Since then the US effort to rebuild Iraq has been caught in a cruel vise of time. To their surprise, provisional authority officials discovered that 30 years of oppression by Saddam Hussein had destroyed much of Iraq's civil society. Restoring a form of representative government would be harder than they had thought.

But the US hasn't had the luxury of time. The June 30 date to give Iraqis back limited sovereignty is looming nearer, while a determined insurgency wages a vicious battle to push Americans out and convince ordinary Iraqis that their gunmen own the future. Meanwhile, it's become obvious that for good or ill the US invasion of Iraq has loosed enormous change on the world. The security of the American people, the freedom of Iraqis, the very shape of the Middle East - all may hinge on the current struggle for Iraq's hearts and minds. "The days and weeks immediately ahead are fateful and they are perilous," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (D) of Connecticut in a speech at the Brookings Institution.

The May 1, 2003, appearance of Mr. Bush, wearing a flight suit and standing on the deck of a carrier in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, now seems premature to even the White House itself.

Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, has since said that he regrets the use of the banner and its implication that the hard part in Iraq was over. He has insisted, however, that he believes the banner was meant to refer to the mission of the Abraham Lincoln itself.

Administration officials also insist that much of the country remains peaceful, and that the physical reconstruction of Iraq has continued apace, with oil production back to prewar levels, electricity coming back, schools reopening, and so forth.

Health care spending in Iraq is now 30 times what it was under the regime of Saddam Hussein, noted Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in a recent congressional appearance.

Furthermore, the US has reversed itself on some initial occupation decisions that have turned out to be counterproductive. Baath Party officials from the old regime will no longer be automatically disqualified from government-related jobs. The use of former Iraqi Army generals to negotiate a possible end to the standoff with insurgents in Fallujah marks something of a turning point. "What that essentially reveals is how big a mistake it was to get rid of the old Army," says Pat Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

But that being said, the reconstruction period in Iraq has been much more difficult than the White House predicted in the wake of last year's initial push into the country. The ease of the initial military thrust may have been deceptive. To trap the US with a draining insurgency might have been the old regime's strategy all along. In any case, the US underestimated the devastation, both physical and mental, that Mr. Hussein would leave in his wake.

"More could have been done in the pre-war planning for postwar operations," said retired Army Gen. John Keane, who was vice chief of staff of the Army until last fall, in a recent congressional appearance.

General Keane said that he had not predicted how passive Iraq's people would be after 35 years of political repression, and how that would make them skeptical of all authority and wary of the Americans' insistence that they were liberators.

That sentiment is echoed by Mario Mancuso, a former Special Operations commander who spent close to a year in Iraq, including five months around Najaf. "I found a brutalized, traumatized, and paranoid people by and large," he says.

The US knew Iraqis as a whole were educated and industrious - the Germans of the Middle East, in an old Western stereotype. What they hadn't counted on was how much they had been beaten down, and how they would have to try and coax locals out of a battened-down survival mode. "We likely overstated how much they could help us," says Mancuso.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure of Iraq was decrepit. The US had thought it would have to protect electricity plants, oil pipelines, and other key installations against sabotage. It hadn't counted on having to protect them against rust.

"We received the country in terrible shape but not as a result of the conflict - only as the result of the lack of maintenance for the last decade or two," says John Reppert, an expert at the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany.

Thus the US is now in a very difficult position, notes Dr. Reppert. The US still must provide physical security for months to come in Iraq, with the steady drain of casualties that entails. Since last May, over 600 US soldiers have died.

Yet at the same time, its political control will inevitably begin to dwindle as the UN becomes more involved and Iraqis themselves agitate for more control. Ultimately, the Iraqi government will almost certainly be better than that of Hussein - but it may be far from the Jeffersonian democracy the US says it wants.

"We are going to have to abide by our decision to empower the Iraqis and to live with the decisions they make," Judith Yaphe, an Iraqi expert at the National Defense University, recently told Congress.

[u]A year later, mission still not accomplished[/u], http://www.csmonitor.com/2004...

One Year Later, Dubya's "Mission" Is Sure As Hell Not "Accomplished"!!!

04.30.04 (11:22 am) [edit]

How Bush And The Neo-Conservatives Are Putting The World At Risk

04.30.04 (11:09 am) [edit]

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are meeting with the 9/11 Commission today at the White House. [From yesterday's interview when the useless 9/11 Whitewash Committee gave Bush and Cheney a pass and let them lie.]

Their words will neither be recorded for history nor broadcast to the nation. The White House is insisting that no recording or transcript be made of their comments and only one member of the 10-person panel will be allowed to take notes. Bush and Cheney, who are not testifying under oath, will also be joined by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and another lawyer from the counsel's office.

Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and director of the Center's National Security Project. He is the author of the new book "Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives Are Putting the World at Risk" (Prometheus)

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:

This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more... http://www.democracynow.org/a...

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined in our Washington studio right now by Melvin Goodman. He is a former CIA and State Department analyst, now Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy, and head of the center's National Security Project. He has just co-written a book called "Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neo-Conservatives are Putting the World at Risk." With these kinds of stipulations and restrictions on the White House testimony before the 9-11 Commission, I’m surprised the commissioners are allowed to listen, Mel Goodman?

MEL GOODMAN: Well, why did they agree to such an arrangement, that's what I can't understand. They had some leverage on the White House because of the support of the families of the people who were lost on 9-11. I think they should have used that leverage. I don't think they should have been rolled over so easily. Now that they have them, it is going to be difficult to compare the remarks of one to the other with both in the room at the same time. I hope what they do, however, is not dwell so much on 9-11. I think we know what happened at 9-11. We know what a terrible failure it was on the part of the CIA and FBI. And the White House was to a certain extent asleep at the switch as well, but if Bush is going to talk about the need for intelligence reform, I would like to know, does he have any ideas whatsoever about what can be done with the intelligence community. Here is where the center of gravity is for what went wrong on 9-11. Here is where the center of gravity will be for avoiding another terrorist attack and responding in a way that's more efficient so so many lives are not lost as they were on 9-11. That's what they have to hear from Bush and Cheney. I don't think they're going to be hearing those things.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did they roll over, and what is the role of Phillip Zelikow, the director of the 9-11 commission? We have reported in the past that he is the co-author of a book with Condoleezza Rice. So, they clearly are colleagues and are close.

MEL GOODMAN: Well, he has ties to the first George Bush administration from 1989 to 1992. He has a very close working relationship, professional relationship with Condi Rice. He headed a case study project at Harvard and took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CIA. He used CIA documentation and produced case studies that exonerated the CIA from any charges of politicization of intelligence, particularly with regard to the Soviet Union. He has generally been an administration voice in all of the matters that he has dealt with, whether they are Democratic or Republican administrations. He didn't do a very good job in editing the Kennedy tapes, and archivists have been appalled by the work that Earnest Mae, who he named a staff member on the commission and Phillip Zelikow did. Having said that, however, the staff studies that we have seen so far, and there have been about a dozen of them, have not been bad. My problem there is, the print media has done a poor job. Only "The New York Times" has done one article on the staff studies that point to all of the failures. In fact, if you compare the questioners of the commission, which I have done, to the factual content of the staff studies, you have to wonder if the commissioners are even reading the staff studies. Because there's very good information in there about CIA failure and FBI failure and what went wrong at the Pentagon, and these questions are not being addressed. They spent far more time with Richard Clarke’s credibility, even though Clarke’s charges hold up extremely well on the reduced urgency on the Bush administration with regard to terrorism and the war on Iraq against the diversion against the so-called war against terrorism. So you have to wonder who is dotting i's and crossing t's on this commission.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mel Goodman, in your book, you talk quite a bit about how the Bush administration has radically changed the US foreign policy in the world, actually since World War II. You talk about the policy that emerged from World War II, more emphasis on collective security and more emphasis on diplomacy, and that this has been essentially shattered. Could you talk a little bit about that?

MEL GOODMAN: Yes, Juan, I think there are two fundamental points here. One, what Bush has done is turned upside-down 50 years of bipartisan foreign policy on the part of Democratic and Republican administrations. He has walked away from the international organizations. He has walked away from the United Nations. He has abandoned arms control. He is deploying a national missile defense which is now funded at over $10 billion a year in the current defense budget, which makes it the most expensive weapon system that we have in the defense budget. He has abrogated the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which was the cornerstone to deterrence and arms control. He has walked away from multilateralism and walked away from deterrence and containment. When you look at the war against Iraq, it's really symptomatic of a larger way of looking at the world that's putting the United States at a tremendous risk. This was a so-called pre-emptive war. You cannot go to war preemptively unless you have intelligence that gives you the knowledge to go to war. We didn't have such intelligence. So the White House created it. The CIA tailored it. The other point that is important is Iraq is far worse than Vietnam. In the case of Vietnam, I think Johnson and Nixon realized they were in a mess. They didn't know how to get out of it, and it took a very long time, but they compartmented Vietnam, and they tried to protect other aspects of American foreign policy. They established an opening to China, and improved relations with the Soviet Union, and they entered into arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, both SALT and ABM. They engaged in incremental and step by step arrangements in the Middle East, even with Syria and Israel, there was one, two with Egypt and Israel. This administration is not doing any of that. They're not only not compartmenting Iraq, but they're worsening our relations everywhere around the world, particularly if you look at the press conference between Sharon and Bush that took place in this town two weeks ago.

AMY GOODMAN: Mel Goodman, on that issue of the press conference and Sharon and Bush, what about the issue of assassination? In “Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk,” you address the issue of Bush lifting the ban on assassination.

MEL GOODMAN: Yeah. This is very dangerous. One thing that took place about a year half ago that we gave very little attention to, was when the CIA was controlling a Predator with a Hellfire missile and blew up a car in the desert in Yemen that supposedly had a driver who was from al-Qaeda. But there was also an American citizen in that car. Four people died in that explosion. You talk about depriving people of due process. This was an American citizen in the car, murdered by the CIA. There was never an investigation. There was never any attempt on the part of the congress to look on this. I think we know now from the Church Commission reports in the mid 1970's how dangerous it is to turn the CIA loose on this kind of political assassination. What I fear with the combination of preemptive war and attack, military dominance a return to low-yield nuclear weapons, which this administration has endorsed even though the uniformed members of the military want low yield nuclear weapons. They’re dangerous, and you can't fight on a battlefield where you have low yield weapons and unleashing the CIA. This policy is totally out of control.

AMY GOODMAN: John Negroponte. He looks like he's about to be confirmed, now US ambassador to the United Nations, more importantly, before that, ambassador to Honduras. We have done a lot on this with people have appealed to him 20 year ago, as Honduras was the staging ground for the illegal Contra War, to deal with the victims in Honduras of a CIA-trained battalion 316. What do you know about this?

MEL GOODMAN: The very simple thing about John Negroponte, that has to be known, is that he was part of the cover-up of the human rights disasters and murders and civil rights abuses that took praise in Honduras during the time that he was ambassador. Part of this was part of the Contra War, but the cover-up is something that never should have been tolerated. So, if you look around the administration and you say Elliot Abrams in the White House who is supposed to be in control of Middle East policy, even though he has no knowledge whatsoever of the Middle East, and if he had not been pardoned, he would have been in jail. Negroponte was involved in a cover-up. John Poindexter, who is no longer in the administration, also had to be pardoned, or he would have been in jail. The abuses of this administration and the politicization of every department and agency of this government is on another scale. That's why I strongly believe that no president has reduced America’s international stature the way this president has.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mel Goodman, to return to Iraq for a second. We're hearing reports now that Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority leaders have begun to meet with a lot of the former Ba'ath party leaders in an effort to find some group within the country that can achieve stability before the June 30 deadline. Any thoughts about that as now even former generals in the Iraqi army and other major leaders are being talked to about coming back into some sort of power.

MEL GOODMAN: The problem with that is it's probably too late. We're scrambling once again. It was Bremer who came in to replace General Gardner, who made the decision to let the Iraqi military go, and let the iraqi police go, to let Iraqi law enforcement people go. Don't deal with the Ba'athists. These were all the people who were responsible for a certain amount of order in the country, in the country of Iraq. To try to patch this together now as Bremer is leaving and Negroponte is coming in to man this huge American embassy that will have more than 1,000 American officials in it, but still not real authority, because the military is still running the country of Iraq, the American military. So, it's not going to be sovereignty or limited sovereignty for the Iraqis. There's not going to be real control on the part of the ambassador.

AMY GOODMAN: We'll take on that issue of a little bit of sovereignty with Phyllis Bennis next, who will join us in our Washington studio. Mel Goodman, I want to thank you for being with us. Long-time CIA analyst and now co-author of the book, "Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk."

Those Who Hate Palestinians Are As Bad As Those Who Hate Jews ...

04.29.04 (9:25 pm) [edit]

There are bigots who hate the Palestinian people and they are as misguided, foolish, illogical, destructive and are as [u]bad[/u] as those bigots who hate Jews ...

[u]Three excellent articles that address the insanity of the hate-filled neo-cons are[/u]:

Are Foes of Israeli Policy Enemies of Jews? - http://www.tblog.com/template...

Criticize Israel? - http://www.zmag.org/content/s...

Can Sharon win by force? - http://www.zmag.org/content/s...

Consequences Of Imperial Warfare: Bush Turns Us Into Barbarians

04.29.04 (9:19 pm) [edit]

[i]A significant thing: it is not the head of a civilization that begins to rot first. It is the heart[/i]. -Aimé Césaire

Jaw agape and fangs unsheathed, American colonialism has lashed out with severe brutality against the newly-unified Iraqi resistance, counting on its military might to crush the aspirations of Iraqis who seek to liberate their country from foreign control.

Relying so heavily on the force of arms against a people it claims to liberate, the US has inverted Clausewitz's famous dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means; our policy now is politics as a continuation of war by other means.

But it so happens that this is a double-edged sword with both edges thrust firmly into the heart of the occupation. For no matter how many Iraqi patriots America kills, ten more will spring forward for each who has fallen; and no matter how many are silenced by American bullets, the viciousness and arrogance with which those bullets were fired will speak loudly and convincingly to thousands of Iraqis who will be inspired to resist.

To illustrate our point it is necessary only to direct our gaze upon that great unfolding tragedy of Fallujah, the epicenter and icon of Iraqi resistance. US forces surrounded and attacked the city on the grounds of pursuing Iraqis who killed and then mutilated the bodies of four American mercenaries. The massive assault was carried out with the usual concern for civilian life: namely, none.

'Precision' weapons such as 2,000 lb. bombs and the massive Specter gunship, armed with four high-powered machine guns, were brought to bear against the town, as were attack helicopters and 60-ton tanks. Our troops employed such life-saving tactics as lobbing 18 tank shells into one house to kill one person and firing helicopter missiles at a rebel wielding a slingshot. (1) One Fallujah resident explained to the press, "As soon as the Americans see a group of people in the streets, they shoot at them, people venture out only if their homes risk being bombarded or if they must carry the dead or wounded to the city's clinics." A young Iraqi member of the US-created Civil Defense Corps saw "heavy bombings" with the town market hit, and "tanks ringing the town." (2) US snipers in the city, perhaps the only precision weapons deployed, have put their uniqueness to good use: shooting through ambulance windshields and killing their drivers. (3)

What were the broad consequences of this operation for the people of Fallujah? Thousands have fled and over 600 have been killed; the main hospital director said "most of the 600 dead in Fallujah were women, children, and elderly." (4) Another volunteer doctor reported that "The main hospital was taken over by the Americans. Doctors and patients had to evacuate to local health clinics." This resulted in even more suffering: "patients had to lie on the ground because of a shortage of beds. We were doing operations in the open. But we didn't have enough sterilizing equipment." He added, "About half the injured are women, children, and the elderly." (5) Those who needed to be operated upon received no anesthetics, which were "lacking", according to a Red Crescent official. (6) Such were the horrors under which thousands suffered and hundreds died.

Let us be honest with ourselves: this barbarous assault had nothing to do with capturing anyone. One never sets out to capture a handful of people by mounting a military assault on a town of 300,000,. Those rebels responsible for the four US deaths most likely melted away into more remote areas long ago. In fact, US officials have now dropped the demand for a hand-over of the offending rebels altogether. (7) No, this vicious attack upon an entire city bore the hallmarks not of any manhunt, but rather that of an arrogant power lashing out at what infuriates it most: humiliation.

For the open, unrestrained, and public attack on those four "security contractors" with guns in tow - probably on their way to kill Iraqis marked a definitive crossing of that line in colonial relations which separates occupier and occupied, dominator and dominated. The destruction, dismemberment and hanging of the bodies of men who usually have their heels placed on the neck of the native represents a violent rejection of the rules of colonialism. Our forces, which throughout our history are used to burying our enemies alive in the sands or napalming and carpet-bombing them into oblivion, could not tolerate the native's unforgivable crime of raising his eyes to meet ours. Thus began an orgy of violence to render the native not only blind, but deaf, dumb, and dead.

But listen closely: the jarring sound of a thousand Starbucks café doors bursting open fills the air; and a thousand "liberals", their tempers hotter than the cappuccinos they wield, start shrieking: "You endorse barbaric violence! You have no absolute moral values!" What these sages fail to understand is that anti-colonial struggle does not unfold like pull-out sofa-beds in their living rooms, nor does it bloom like budding flowers in their gardens. As Frantz Fanon, the most powerful writer on colonialism and a famous figure of the Algerian liberation campaign against the French, wrote: "The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these valuesmean that, in revenge, the native laughs in mockery when Western values are mentioned in front of him [...] the colonized masses mock at these very values, insult them, and vomit them up."

More notable is the peculiar timing the liberal faction has chosen to invoke its noble "absolute moral values." Where were they when hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were dying of sanctions? Where were they when thousands more were being killed during the first phase of the war? The answer: precisely where they are now, on the sidelines or complicit in imperialism, when Iraqis are being made homeless, amputated upon without anesthetics, and gunned downed like wild beasts. Only when violence is being committed by a force completely out of their control do they raise a voice of indignant protest. Such consistent cowardice certainly takes the "absoluteness" of their values right out of them.

What our liberals fail to comprehend, our generals grasp with ease. Brigadier General Kimmit, when informed about Arab anger at seeing so many slain Iraqi innocents on TV, responded: "Change the channelThe stations that are showing Americans killing women and children are not legitimate news sources." (8) Any outlet shedding light on the havoc wrought by American armor, or focusing on the deaths of Iraqi women and children, is "not legitimate." That the hospital reports confirm these "not legitimate" channels is of course irrelevant; what is relevant is our racism, our dismissal of Arab life, the "legitimacy" of which is derived from firing the bullet rather than being pierced by it.

Kimmit himself knows this full well. But knowing the dialectics of colonialism, the general is also a part of it: the colonizer's side. His crass dismissal of the native's life, both in rhetoric and action, are strands of a thread trying to symbolically sow back together the bodies of those four dismembered hired guns an attempt to sow back together the status and position of colonial power.

It is an attempt that will fail. Iraqis have already crossed the threshold of enduring resistance; the bridge beyond that threshold was laid by the same arrogance and brutality now being employed to sever it. A Baghdadi day-laborer who was long experiencing what a reporter called "humiliation, fear, anger, and depression," said, "in the last two weeks, these feelings blow up inside me. The Americans are attacking Shiite and Sunni at the same time. They have crossed a line. I had to get a gun." A young 13 year-old boy in Baghdad said, "We may be scared of [American] weapons. But we're not scared of them." (9)

The people have discovered, to borrow Fanon's words, "that the settler's skin is not of any more value than a native's skin; and it must be said that this discovery shakes the world in a very necessary mannerFor if, in fact, my life is worth as much as the settler's, his glance no longer shrivels me up or freezes mein fact, I don't give a damn for him. Not only does his presence not trouble me, but I am already preparing such efficient ambushes for him that soon there will be no way out but that of flight."

This is true not of one or two individuals but the entire city: the US press recently reported that the siege of Fallujah has "produced a powerful backlash in the capital. Urged on by leaflets, sermons, and freshly sprayed graffiti calling for jihad, young men are leaving Baghdad to join a fight that residents say has less to do with battlefield success that with a cause infused with righteousness and sacrifice." The American reporters also came upon a group of young men discussing the need to resist among them "a dentist, a prayer leader, a law student, [and] a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi police" As one teenager hopped into a truck with other volunteers, he smiled and shouted to the reporters, "We will defeat you, God willing." (10)

Fallujah resonates with Iraqis beyond bravado and an increasing will to fight - it has had the thoroughly revolutionary effect of uniting the previously discordant Sunni and Shia groups in solidarity for a common cause. Last week in Baghdad, "Solemn announcements boomed from mosquesbeseeching Iraqis for donations of blood, money and medical supplies for 'your sons and brothers struggling in Fallujah'. And across the capital, Shiite Muslims joined the Sunnis in rolling up their sleeves and reaching into their pockets." One poor old woman had arrived with the last food in her home, ready to donate "for my brothers in Fallujah". Both Sunnis and Shias "filled a tent erected behind the shrine, flexing and unflexing their fists to push blood from their veins into plastic sacks that would be carried to war wounded in Fallujah," a scene repeated across 70 Sunni mosques across Baghdad. (11)

A day later almost 200,000 Iraqis, "many of them Shias, crowded into the precinct of Baghdad's largest Sunni mosque to denounce the American occupation and pledge solidarity with the people of Fallujah" and the Shiite uprising. (12) The main preacher thundered, "The Americans invaded the land of Iraq, but they did not penetrate its people or their souls." He later declared, "The Americans are carrying out vicious terrorist attacks on the people of Falluja," and "hundreds of people wept" in response. Shias and Sunnis organized large aid convoys and led them toward Fallujah to relieve the plight of their fellow countrymen, bypassing or overrunning US military blockades. (13)

This heroic display of sacrifice and solidarity, achieved by a people beaten and battered time and time again, rings as a thundering indictment of those racist liberals and pundits who brandish the threat of "civil war" in Iraq to maintain our stranglehold on that country.

Of course, this has not prevented certain "practical men" from insisting on the feasibility of "pacifying" Fallujah and Najaf, of reestablishing control and crushing and isolating militants. For them, the superficial is the whole. The lull in violence in Fallujah, brought about by the partial cease-fire, combined with Sadr's signs of willingness to negotiate in Najaf, signal to them that the troubles are nearing an end.

But the dynamics of colonialism are not those of a set-piece battle. The fact that the colonial apparatus is negotiating with Sadr at all shows that they understand he is a force who must be reckoned with. Sadr's maneuvering to avoid a bloodbath in Najaf also shows that he is tactful, not suicidal. In an insurgency, there is no army on the battlefield to be destroyed; the army is the people, who can be mobilized at a moment's call with any number of light weapons.

The New York Times recently saw this process in motion: "The Khadamiya bazaar exploded in a frezy. Shopkeepers reached beneath stacks of sandals for Kalashnikov rifles. Boys wrapped their faces in black cloth. Men raced through the streets, kicking over crates and setting up barriers. Some handed out grenades. Within minutes this entire Shiite neighborhood in central Baghdad mobilized for war." (14) Given that mass support for the resistance has only spread, the idea that it will simply fizzle out as if by magic is utterly baseless.

The supposed lull in fighting does not even reflect actual conditions on the ground. On April 12, guerrillas shot down an Apache helicopter 3 miles outside Baghdad's airport and "cut off communications between military posts on a key road leading west from the city," where numerous ambush attacks have been launched. (15) These attacks also extend to the south of Baghdad, where "A convoy of flatbed trucks carrying M113 armored personnel vehicles was ambushed and burnt." US supply lines to Fallujah, Ramadi, and further forces down south have also been disrupted. (16)

Insurgents have also "sharply increased the sophistication, coordination and aggressiveness of their tactics" according to US Army officers, blowing up and crippling bridges and highways to be used by American convoys, reflecting what one colonel described as "a regional or even national level of organization." This has been precipitated by what another US major described as "a marriage of convenience between Sadr's militia and Saddam loyalists." (17)

But we must look behind the propaganda to truly grasp this remarkable development. The "Saddam loyalists", who were expected to blow up bridges to halt the American advance in March 2003, never materialized. They have taken action only now -and in cooperation with the poorest element of the Shia community. Why? We must admit that that these so-called "Saddam loyalists" were never loyal to Saddam that they are in fact genuine nationalists within what was the Iraqi Army has been proven through both their past inaction and present action.

This applies even to Fallujah, where one US soldier said, "It's the fight that never came last year. I guess these guys didn't really want to die for Saddam. But all this anti-American feeling is now uniting them." (18) Such "anti-American feeling" is quite understandable, given that Iraqis are being murdered in assaults planned by American commanders who hold Nazi attitudes towards Arabs as "untermeschen", according to a senior British officer. (19)

The most desperate argument now being aired by assorted 'experts', however, is that regardless of the violence, all Iraq needs is to "move the political process forward." But the utter failure of the occupation authorities to exercise its political-diplomatic muscle in coping with the resistance is a good indication that those muscles have either atrophied or never existed. The Iraqi Governing Council almost completely fell apart when the atrocities in Fallujah took place; four members resigned and the others were forced to denounce it in strong terms as "collective punishment" to avoid appearing like complete puppets in front of the populace. (20)

Even the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, trained and funded by the US, has failed the occupation. A whole battalion refused to serve in Fallujah, announcing "We did not sign up to fight Iraqis." One Iraqi soldier, whose comrades were jailed for not partaking in the fighting, declared, "How could an Iraqi fight an Iraqi like this? This meant that nothing had changed from the Saddam Hussein days. We refused en masse."(21) Others simply dropped out or defected to the resistance.

The response of American officials has been laughably pathetic. One general blithely announced, "The lines are blurring for a lot of Iraqis right now, and we're having a lot of problems with security functions right now." (22) The truth of the matter is that the lines are not "blurring" but sharpening, as more and more Iraqis come to see the undesirability of colonialism and the violence with which it announces its presence.

No credible occupation-backed domestic government or military force exists. It is therefore not possible to speak of any legitimate political process in the colonial context. Come the June 30th "handover", there will be nothing to hand over to anyone and no one to hand over anything to. No amount of violence or sophistry will suffice to inflate this farce enough to prevent its puncturing by that demand which many Iraqis are now willing to lay down their lives for: freedom.

Implicit in any recognition of this demand for freedom is an obligation upon the citizens of that nation which is denying freedom's fulfillment: absolute, unwavering, and resolute struggle against the platform of war by the people of the United States. This is, in essence, a demand to re-civilize ourselves. We must shatter the illusions crafted by our own elite that so often send us cowering into the corners of hatred and paranoia against this or that invented or exaggerated demon.

It is high time for us to cease imagining that we are merely "defending" ourselves against ubiquitous - and convenient - "barbarians at our gates." Let us instead open our eyes, and look upon those charred, mangled gates of Chile, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Vietnam, Palestine and now Iraq with an honest gaze. Let us angle away from the homes and bodies of the racial Other those torches we have been wielding so violently for decades, and instead aim them towards our own very real demons of racism and oppression to set them aflame; in their burning fires we may yet illuminate our own humanity and rediscover our innate connection with peoples abroad.

[b]Notes:[/b]

1. "In Falluja, Ceasefire Doesn't Reduce Tension, or Danger." New York Times. April 13,

2004.

2. "Fallujah: a ghost town where scared residents bury their dead in their yards." Agence

France Press. April 11, 2004.

3. Eye-witness account from Raul Mahajan , who has been blogging from Iraq at www.empirenotes.org. Leveled with the usual charge of not being white enough to be telling the truth, he has posted pictures of an ambulance with a bullet hole in the windshield at driver's chest level (April 14, 2004).

4. "Around 770 Die in Recent Iraq Fighting." Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press. April 12, 2004.

5. "Americans 'drop demand for handover of killers in Falluja atrocity'." Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, April 14, 2004.

6. see note 2.

7. see note 5.

8. "U.S. Looks for New Solution in Cease-Fire." Nicholas Riccardi and Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2004.

9. "Anti-U.S. Outrage Unites a Growing Iraqi Resistance." Jefrrey Gettleman, New York Times, April 11, 2004.

10. "Fallujah Gains Mythic Air." Karl Vick and Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, April 13, 2004.

11. "Rallying Around an Insurgent City." Karl Vick, Washington Post, April 9, 2004.

12. "Sunni and Shia unite against common enemy." Jonathan Steele and Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, April 10, 2004.

13. "Sunni and Shia guerrillas unite against US." David Blair, Daily Telegraph, April 12, 2004.

14. "At Word of U.S. Foray, A Baghdad Militia Erupts." Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times, April 7, 2004.

15. see note 12 and note 8.

16. "Allies keep shaky truces alive as Sadr pulls back." Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, April 13, 2004.

17. "Insurgents Display New Sophistication." Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, April 14, 2004.

18. see note 1.

19. "British commanders condemn US military tactics." Sean Rayment, Telegraph, April 12, 2004.

20. "Fallujah Bloodbath threatens US-Appointed Iraqi Government with Collapse" Juan Cole blog of April 10, 2004, citing AP report. www.juancole.com

21. "US holding 200 Iraqi 'mutineers'." Reuters, April 18, 2004.

22. "Iraqi Battalion Refuses to 'Fight Iraqis'." Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, April 11, 2004.

[u]M. Junaid Alam, 21, Boston, co-editor & webmaster of Left Hook, feedback: alam@lefthook.org[/u] - http://www.counterpunch.com/a...

Dubya's Ponzy Scheme: GOP Economic Rhetoric Versus Reality ...

04.29.04 (5:11 pm) [edit]

[b]Dubya's ponzy scheme has enriched his own criminal family and that of his gluttonous corporate cronies, campaign contributors and political toadies ... [/b]However, the corrupt Bush regime's insane, reckless and rapacious economic policies are [i]tragically destructive[/i] for the majority of Americans and Working people ... http://www.tblog.com/template...

"We the People" must learn quickly to separate the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] neo-orwellian rhetoric from the cold, hard and unpleasant reality of impoverishment of our nation's citizenry under the vile Bush Crime Family ...

[b]Read on ...[/b]

[b][u]Conservative Economic Rhetoric vs. Reality[/u][/b] - http://www.americanprogress.o...

[i][b]On Employment[/b][/i]

[u]Rhetoric[/u]: "There are more Americans working today than ever before." – Heritage Foundation, Issues 2004

[u]Reality[/u]: The American economy has lost nearly 2 million jobs since President Bush was elected – the worst record of job losses during a recovery since Herbert Hoover.

[u]Reality[/u]: The unemployment rate has gone from 4.2 percent to 5.7 percent under Bush, and increased again just last month.

[i][b]On Job Creation[/b][/i]

[u]Rhetoric[/u]: "America's economy is strong and getting stronger. . . and new jobs were created in March." – President Bush, April 2, 2004

[u]Reality[/u]: The past few years have seen the worst monthly average job creation during a recovery in over 60 years.

[u]Reality[/u]: No other post-war administration has had as few good months of good labor market performance as the Bush administration. This includes the Kennedy and Ford administrations, which were in office for shorter periods of time than Bush's has been.

[b][i]On Unemployment[/i][/b]

[u]Rhetoric[/u]: "The unemployment rate edged up slightly to 5.7 percent [in March], which is low by historical standards …. It is already within the healthy range that most economists consider close to full employment." – Heritage Foundation, Web Memo #468

[u]Reality[/u]: The unemployment rate is low because many workers have simply given up looking for work. If this "missing labor force" were properly counted, the unemployment rate would average well above 7 percent.

[u]Reality[/u]: The unemployment rate has risen from a low point of 3.9 percent in December 2000 and remained consistently at or above 5.6 percent for several months. In fact, the unemployment rate was 5.6 percent when the recovery started in November 2001.

[b][i]On Real Wages[/i][/b]

[u]Rhetoric[/u]: "Average real wages have risen by 3 percent over the last three years." – Heritage Foundation, Issues 2004

[u]Reality[/u]: According to the Economic Policy Institute, 2003 was the worst year since 1998 for growth in real (inflation adjusted) hourly wages. While GDP has been growing strongly - 4.1 percent in the fourth quarter following 8.2 percent in the third quarter of 2003 – total wage and salary income saw meager increases of 0.8 percent and 1.3 percent at the same time.

[u]Reality[/u]: Wages have increased by less than 1 percent since the start of the recession through January 2004. That increase is at about half the rate of prior recoveries.

[b][i]On Tax Cuts and Recession[/i][/b]

[u]Rhetoric[/u]: "The conservative remedy of lower taxes and free trade halted the recession in its tracks." – Heritage Foundation, Issues 2004

[u]Reality[/u]: President Bush's tax cuts have made it harder for Americans to find jobs because they were targeted towards the rich, created enormous deficits and put economic growth in jeopardy.

[u]Reality[/u]: Most American households received less than the average tax cut (in 2003 the average cut was $1800, but the majority of Americans got less than $850 in tax cuts). Gains from these cuts were more than offset by cost increases in medical care (up 4.5 percent since last year), tuition (up 28 percent over the last three years) and housing. Government expenditures for programs that help working families to meet these rising costs have now been reduced to pay for the tax cuts.

[b][i]On Financial Aid[/i][/b]

[u]Rhetoric[/u]: "More students are receiving federal Pell grants than when President Bush took office." - Rod Paige, Secretary of Education, March 4, 2004

[u]Reality[/u]: Financial aid is primarily based on family income. Median household income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, has fallen for the last two years for which data is available (2001 and 2002).

[u]Reality[/u]: College tuition has gone up 28 percent over the last three years. Financial aid – much of which comes in the form of loans – has not been able to offset these costs. That is despite an alarming rise in debt among recent college graduates, families are still struggling to pay the bills.

[b][i]On Health Care[/i][/b]

[u]Rhetoric[/u]: "Even if you don't have health insurance you are still taken care of in America. That certainly could be defined as universal coverage." - Secretary Of Health And Human Services Tommy Thompson, Seattle Times, March 3, 2004.

[u]Reality[/u]: The number of people with health insurance rose by 1.5 million and the number without increased by 2.4 million from 2001 to 2002. Currently, 43.6 million Americans lack health insurance. As health insurance coverage is declining, out-of-pocket medical expenditures rise. From 2000 to 2003, inflation adjusted out-of-pocket expenditures rose by more than 7 percent taking a bite out of consumption for other items.

[u]Reality[/u]: The overwhelming majority of Americans without health insurance say they don't have it because it is too expensive. Only 5 to 7 percent report that they don't need or don't want healthcare coverage.

[b]For another article outlining the break by moderate Republicans also opposed to the corrupt Bush regime's extremist favoritism towards corporations, wealthy oligarchs and hyper-rich plutocrats, read "A Task of Moderation" on [/b] http://nytimes.com/2004/04/28... .

[u]By Winston Smith[/u], http://www.tblog.com/template...

Isn't Health Care A Safeguard For Human Dignity???

04.29.04 (11:44 am) [edit]

"Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right." http://www.pnhp.org/

The majority of Americans support Universal Health Care http://www.pnhp.org/news/2003... which is a necessity for our people. The U.S.A. is the only industrialized nation not to provide health care for its citizens. Over 45 million citizens lack health care and either live in pain, go bankrupt or die. Over 18,000 Americans die each year because they lack health care coverage. http://www.wsws.org/articles/...

Check out a workable plan that would provide Universal Health Care for our citizens on http://www.kucinich.us/issues...

Physicians For A National Health Care Programme

04.29.04 (11:43 am) [edit]

Physicians For A National Health Care Programme

04.29.04 (11:39 am) [edit]

New Searchable Database Charts Bush/Cheney Lies ...

04.29.04 (11:31 am) [edit]

As the September 11th Commission grills President Bush and Vice President Cheney about their contradictory statements today, we wanted to alert you to a powerful new tool to help journalists, activists and the public compare the Bush administration's claims against well-documented facts. The Center for American Progress today launched a comprehensive Claim vs. Fact database at www.claimvfact.org that documents statements from conservatives like President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Members of Congress and Fox News personalities, and compares those statements to the facts. Each fact is sourced, and in many cases includes a web link directly to that source.

The database has more than 400 entries so far, but THEY NEED YOUR HELP BUILDING IT. If you know of a lie, distortion or dishonest statement from a Bush Administration official or another conservative that isn't already in the database, please go to their submission page at:

http://tinyurl.com/3e8xc" title="http://tinyurl.com/3e8xc" target="_blank"http://tinyurl.com/3e8xc

or

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/apps/fc/form.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=50898" title="http://www.americanprogress.org/site/apps/fc/form.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=50898" target="_blank"http://www.americanprogress.o...

There you can submit an entry for addition to the database, so that the tool grows and becomes a real-time tracker of lies. - http://www.misleader.org/dail...

New Searchable Database Charts Bush/Cheney Lies

04.29.04 (11:30 am) [edit]

New Searchable Database Charts Bush/Cheney Lies

04.29.04 (11:29 am) [edit]

New Searchable Database Charts Bush/Cheney Lies ...

04.29.04 (11:28 am) [edit]

Bush Uses Nazi Tactics To Win Election: WAR FEVER, HATRED & RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY

04.29.04 (10:59 am) [edit]

George Bush:

...foolish firebug who set himself alight trying to ignite Armageddon in the Middle East, now frantically peeing his own pants to douse the flame?

...or an implacable armchair Zhukov crushing Fallujah in deadly rings of steel and righteous determination?

No question the White House is pushing the second version.

And for that a lot of people in Fallujah are going to die.

Call them collateral damage in the main battle: the U.S. presidential election.

The reports about Rove's "No War in 2004" diktat were obviously greatly exaggerated.

Absent any shiny election-year credentials as conqueror, leader, or wealthmaker, Bush has decided to focus on process, not results.

The process: war.

Bush came out of the closet as our "war president" during his notorious interview with Tim Russert.

In B-school speak our prez has decided to "return to his core competency": knocking things down and screwing things up.

Apparently it was decided we needed to intensify the war in Iraq in a concerted effort to obscure, overshadow, and supersede Kerry and his authentic warrior credentials with some high profile, 21st century Sturm und Drang.

The Rove scenario has Kerry reprising his Vietnam-era role: not as hero but as anti-war bellyacher a.k.a. traitor and party pooper who dares to "undermine our troops again" by trying to interfere with the slaughter and our innocent appreciation of it.

Karen Hughes and the usual GOP suspects are hard at work denigrating Kerry's Vietnam achievements and impugning his integrity. One of the most ludicrous -- or shameful, if Bush wins the election -- artifacts of this campaign will be the US News and World Reports cover photograph contrasting the red, white, and blue proud Bush in full military fig with Kerry skulking along in civilian polyester under an immense helmet of blow-dried hair.

At the same time, Bush gives the American people what they want: a massive exhibition of remorseless American firepower in Fallujah.

Bush's gift to us is to let us share, at least vicariously via Wolf Blitzer, the overpowering thrill of leveling a city block filled with faceless Arabs with a load of AC-130 ordnance.

We might be in the wrong place and the wrong time and with no good options. But cutting loose with a "precision" tank and gunship assault against a crowd of desperate insurgents scuttling through Fallujah's ramshackle slums gives us that feeling of power and potency that lasts as long as a hit of crack..

Never mind that it exacerbates the political and security crisis in Iraq and exposes our hundred thousand plus troops in Iraq to the murderous rage of the inhabitants of the dismal country they will be occupying, fighting, and dieing in for the rest of the decade.

We will deal with that after the election -- or never.

I guess that's why we aren't supposed to see coffin photos yet. The Iraq war is about immediate gratification and endlessly postponed and easily ignored consequences.

War Bush-style is more of a journey than a destination, doncha see? And we're all invited along for the ride.

Maybe there will be a time for Bush to parade his manly, dignified grief over the fallen after fear-stoked binge of revenge and violence has run its course and we ache to demonstrate our profound humanity and fill the void in our exhausted, shame-filled souls.

Can Bush distract the American public with a series of splashy blitzkriegs against dehumanized Arab fanatics, thugs, and sadists?

Or will his poll numbers follow the future of our desperately mismanaged adventure in Iraq into bloody oblivion?

The Iraq war is a titanic failure of moral and political leadership, with tremendous costs and terrible and irremediable consequences. Even with the immense resources and initiative available to the president of the United States, the truth can't be hidden from people who are willing to see it.

It becomes ever more clear that the election is not about Bush vs. Kerry.

It's about us.

Whether we as a people will endure the continued misrule of a president who isn't trying to shoot his way out of trouble in Iraq...

...as much as he is trying to kill his way back into the White House.

If Bush wins the election, don't blame Kerry...

...blame us.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=15970&mode=nested &order=0" title="http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=15970&mode=nested &order=0" target="_blank"http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Bush Uses Nazi Tactics To Win Election: WAR FEVER, HATRED & RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY

04.29.04 (10:57 am) [edit]

Bush Is A Lousy President, Lousy Leader Because He Can't Control Departments

04.28.04 (8:38 pm) [edit]

[b]Rifts widen in Bush's foreign policy team

Backers of Powell's multilateralism clash with go-it-alone conservatives over the administration's direction[/b]. - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004...

When it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration's foreign policy team is speaking with one voice: All the players are saying that despite faulty prewar intelligence, the president's decision to go to war was right.
But behind the unanimity is dissonance in tones and forcefulness that suggests the deeper differences that have been part of the Bush foreign policy since the beginning. The failure to see eye to eye extends to the so-called Bush doctrine of preemptive war - one of the administration's defining policies - and reaches to the president's top foreign-policy players.

The continuing differences have only added to President Bush's woes as the White House has grappled with questions of whether what the administration knew about Iraq justified a war. But the bigger issue, some experts say, is what the differences suggest about the administration's ability to confront continuing problems, like North Korea and Iran, especially as Bush enters a battle for reelection.

With key members of the Bush foreign policy team expected to leave their posts at the end of the term - including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell - some are trying to set the record straight on the role they've played. They are also, clearly, trying to shape the direction things might go in a second term.

"Perhaps a second term would resolve things, but right now there continues to be a very fundamental disagreement," says Karl Inderfurth, a Clinton administration State Department official now at George Washington University. The highly visible rift is between elements "led by the vice-president, the secretary of defense, and his deputy, who hold to a notion of America's unique right to unfettered action, and others, allied with Secretary Powell, who continue to argue for an emphasis on what he has called a 'strategy of partnership' with the international community."

Mr. Inderfurth says that two recent comments typify the internal differences. At a closely watched security conference in Munich last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a spirited defense of the administration's national security strategy that "the higher the risk and the danger, the lower the threshold for action."

Also in recent days, Mr. Powell - who revealed in a Washington Post interview that he might have recommended differently on going to war with Iraq if he knew a year ago what's known now - has preferred to stress that Bush is not looking to respond to threats with force "if there are other ways to solve the problem."

"Here you have the two most prominent cabinet officials," says Inderfurth, "one hyping preemptive action and the other playing it down."

Some observers say the differences, played out in public, hurt the president - especially with Americans paying more attention to foreign-policy questions because of the 100,000 US soldiers in Iraq.

"Presidents always look bad when their main advisers are squabbling publicly over what the White House should be doing or has done," says James Lindsay, a foreign-policy expert with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "It hurts the president especially in this case because he's been under such criticism from Democrats for not coming clean on the intelligence aspects of the Iraq war."

Mac Destler, an expert in US foreign policy at the University of Maryland, recalls that Ronald Reagan, as a candidate against an incumbent president, criticized Jimmy Carter for a foreign policy team that failed to speak with one voice. "The problem for a president is that if [the division] reaches critical mass," he says, "it can end up diluting what should be a political advantage for the incumbent."

But Danielle Pletka, a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, says the Bush team has been "remarkably unified" on the issue of going to war with Iraq. She suspects that "people are so habituated to hearing about the deep divisions in the administration over foreign policy matters that they are looking for them." That doesn't mean they don't exist - they do on some issues, she says, like North Korea and Iran - just not over the justification of war with Iraq.

How Bush's foreign policy might shift if he is reelected will hinge on key appointments. Powell, who customarily answers questions about his tenure by saying he serves at the pleasure of the president, is not expected to return for a second term.

Many observers say some of Powell's recent actions, like his qualifying his enthusiasm for war and reemphasis on multilateral action, reflect a man trying to set the record straight on his legacy. "He's on his way out, so he's paying a little more attention to his place in history in these final months," says one insider at the State Department. "He's the good soldier as everybody says, but he also knows there are already books being written about him. He wants it remembered that he's the one who convinced the president to go to the UN before going to war, things like that."

Closer to the president, Ms. Rice has said this will be her last year in the White House - though that careful language does not rule out taking the top slot either at State or at the Pentagon. How Bush would fill those positions would reveal the way he wants America to be viewed by the world. Noting that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - dubbed the architect of the Iraq war - would love to take over at State, former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb says "that certainly sends a very different signal than if you pick a Senator [Richard] Lugar or [Chuck] Hagel," two moderate Republicans.

Dubya's Environmental Record Is A DISASTER As He Panders To BIG OIL

04.28.04 (5:12 pm) [edit]

President Bush yesterday tried to deflect questions about his environmental record by claiming that he supports efforts to reduce America's fossil fuel usage1. He said he had "introduced ideas like a hydrogen-powered automobile, put money behind it and research behind it" so that so that we will be "less dependent on foreign sources of energy" and we will "improve the environment." But Bush's hydrogen-automobile proposal is purposely engineered to be fossil fuel dependent, and it is paid for by taking money out of programs that are actually reducing fossil fuel use.

As Mother Jones reported, "the Bush Administration has been working quietly to ensure that the system used to produce hydrogen will be as fossil fuel-dependent - and potentially as dirty - as the one that fuels today's SUVs. According to the administration's National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, drafted last year in concert with the energy industry, up to 90% of all hydrogen will be refined from oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels"2. Such a system, experts say, would effectively eliminate most of the benefits offered by hydrogen because the Bush plan's use of oil/coal/gas to create fuel cells would generate large amounts of pollution. Not surprisingly, such a system would insure the massive profits of the energy industry, which bankrolls Bush's campaign3.

Bush is, in part, paying for this fossil-fuel-based program by stripping funding from programs that are actually reducing fossil fuel use in America. As AP reported, Bush moved money into his hydrogen program at the same time he "ended an eight-year program to help automakers develop high-mileage, family size cars" such as the successful hybrids now beginning to permeate the U.S. market4. Additionally, Bush proposed reducing "federal funding for renewable energy and efficiency research program by more than $200 million in 2002"5.

[u]Sources[/u]: - http://www.misleader.org/dail...

1. President Bush Touts Benefits of Health Care Information Technology, 04/27/2004.

2. "Hydrogen's Dirty Secret", Mother Jones, May/June 2003.

3. OpenSecrets.Org.

4. "Bush abandons high-mileage car program for hydrogen fuel-cell approach", Environmental News Network, 01/10/2002.

5. "Proposed Bush Budget Cuts Renewables and Energy Efficiency Programs", Resources for the Future, 04/11/2001.

Dubya's Disastrous Legacy: Horrible Trauma Cases in Iraq

04.28.04 (4:46 pm) [edit]

Atrios links the Washington Post story everyone's talking about today about the horrific injuries that the military hospitals in Iraq are dealing with and the trauma it is causing for the doctors and surgical teams. Atrios says:

[i]This stuff is just so horrible. I really hope Kerry gets out in front of this and proposes massive increases in VA funds. You can have my goddamn tax cut back. I'd rather pay out the money that way and get some quality care for these people than throw it into their change cups a few years from now.

I hate what these bastards have done, and I hate that they'd rather bankrupt the government than take care of the mess they've made. Assholes[/i].

Which I think rather misses the point of the article. The problem isn't lack of funds, it's that these guys are surviving hideous injuries that would have killed them just a few years ago.

[i]More and more in Iraq, combat surgeons say, the wounds involve severe damage to the head and eyes -- injuries that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair.

For months the gravest wounds have been caused by roadside bombs -- improvised explosives that negate the protection of Kevlar helmets by blowing shrapnel and dirt upward into the face. In addition, firefights with guerrillas have surged recently, causing a sharp rise in gunshot wounds to the only vital area not protected by body armor.[/i]

[i]The neurosurgeons at the 31st Combat Support Hospital measure the damage in the number of skulls they remove to get to the injured brain inside, a procedure known as a craniotomy. "We've done more in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery team did in eight months," Poffenbarger said. "So there's been a change in the intensity level of the war."[/i]

With advanced surgical techniques and the military's capability for moving casualties from the field to the hospital in record quick times, they are saving people with devastating brain injuries and people who are blinded and disfigured and paralyzed. There is nothing more money can do for injuries like this, which is what the doctors in the article point out.

[i]"See all that dark stuff? That's dead brain," he said. "That ain't gonna regenerate. And that's not uncommon. That's really not uncommon. We do craniotomies on average, lately, of one a day."

"We can save you," the surgeon said. "You might not be what you were."

Accurate statistics are not yet available on recovery from this new round of battlefield brain injuries, an obstacle that frustrates combat surgeons. But judging by medical literature and surgeons' experience with their own patients "three or four months from now 50 to 60 percent will be functional and doing things," said Maj. Richard Gullick.

"Functional," he said, means "up and around, but with pretty significant disabilities," including paralysis.

'Broken soldiers'

The remaining 40 percent to 50 percent of patients include those whom the surgeons send to Europe, and on to the United States, with no prospect of regaining consciousness. The practice, subject to review after gathering feedback from families, assumes that loved ones will find value in holding the soldier's hand before confronting the decision to remove life support.

"I'm actually glad I'm here and not at home, tending to all the social issues with all these broken soldiers," Carroll said.

But the toll on the combat medical staff is itself acute, and unrelenting[/i].

[i]In a comprehensive Army survey of troop morale across Iraq, taken in September, the unit with the lowest spirits was the one that ran the combat hospitals until the 31st arrived in late January. The three months since then have been substantially more intense.

"We've all reached our saturation for drama trauma," said Maj. Greg Kidwell, head nurse in the emergency room[/i].

The real solution to this problem is to get those Americans out of Iraq, not to throw money at yet another government program. Besides, if you want the best of care for these broken people why would you send them to a shabby hospital system like the VA anyway? Why throw money at the VA when there are thousands of state of the art hospitals all over the US? Let them go to real doctors at real hospitals, not government facilities which are all run as efficiently as Amtrak. Better yet, bring them home before any more get hurt.

Anyway, the point is, even if you gave the VA billions, it won't help. The cases that are demoralizing the doctors are the hopeless ones like brain injuries and missing eyes. These are permanent disabilities. No amount of money will replace eyes or fix an injured brain or spine. A significant number of these soldiers are making the return trip only so their families can see them one last time before they pull the plug. - http://www.antiwar.com/blog/i...

Justice Department Reviewing Ashcroft on Possible FEC Violations

04.28.04 (10:56 am) [edit]

The Justice Department's Public Integrity Section is reviewing allegations that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft may have violated federal campaign finance and disclosure laws based on information developed by the Federal Election Commission.

The section is responsible for determining whether allegations merit investigation as potential criminal violations of campaign finance and disclosure laws and for making recommendations as to whether a special counsel would be needed when a potential conflict of interest with senior Justice officials exists.

At issue is the valuable campaign fundraising list of then-Sen. Ashcroft (R-Mo.). He had claimed ownership of the fundraising list during an FEC inquiry, but had not reported it as an asset on his Senate or Justice Department financial disclosure statements.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine disclosed the review in an April 14 letter to the National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI), an election law interest group, which disclosed it to The Washington Post.

The institute triggered the original FEC investigation almost three years ago, which resulted in a determination in December that Ashcroft's 1998 leadership political action committee, Spirit of America, and his Senate reelection campaign committee, Ashcroft 2000, had committed at least four violations of federal campaign laws. The two committees agreed to pay a $37,000 fine to settle the issue.

The violations arose when the Spirit of America PAC in 1999 and 2000 earned $165,000 from renting its mailing list to outside groups and transferred $112,000 of that money to the Ashcroft 2000 campaign committee. Election laws, the FEC ruled, permitted the PAC to donate $5,000 for the primary and $5,000 for the general election to his Senate campaign committee.

During the FEC inquiry, Ashcroft campaign committee lawyers described him as the owner of the PAC mailing list, which would have exempted the fund transfers from any limitations. The FEC last year rejected that assertion because Ashcroft did not disclose his ownership or the rental income in his 1998 and 1999 Senate financial disclosures. He also did not report the mailing list as an asset in his required filings as attorney general.

Because the FEC can deal only with civil violations, the NVRI asked Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey Jr. on Jan. 15 to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Ashcroft or his committees had broken any criminal laws.

On March 4, having received no answer from Comey, the NVRI asked the inspector general to investigate "potential civil and criminal violations of federal law" by Ashcroft and the two campaign committees.

Fine wrote to the NVRI that the "matters in your previous letter to the deputy attorney general . . . had been referred to the Public Integrity Section for its review." There was no reference to the possible appointment of a special counsel.

Lisa Danetz, an NVRI lawyer, said yesterday that "we hope and expect that the Justice Department will diligently investigate the charges against the attorney general."

Ashcroft, who lost his reelection campaign before being appointed attorney general by President Bush, has avoided direct involvement with his fundraising committees' legal problems, even though he was the founder and a major figure in both. To make their case, committee lawyers instead used documents he signed, including one that they said established his ownership of the mailing list. The attorney general was not interviewed during the FEC inquiry.

Mark Corallo, Ashcroft's spokesman at Justice, said last month that the attorney general's disclosure statement "is complete." - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Justice Department Reviewing Ashcroft on Possible FEC Violations

04.28.04 (10:54 am) [edit]

Republican Senator Lugar Chides Bush For Incompetence

04.28.04 (10:52 am) [edit]

Deft diplomacy will be needed when the United States seeks a U.N. resolution to endorse its plan to transfer power in Iraq, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Monday, but within the Bush administration, "diplomacy is deficient."
President Bush's decision to invade Iraq was opposed by many countries, including several who are represented in the U.N. Security Council. Until his recent shift to seek a U.N. resolution for on the transfer of power, Bush has resisted a significant role for the international organization in reconstructing Iraq.

"Even if the decisions are correct, the diplomacy is deficient," Lugar said at a breakfast with Washington reporters. "By that I simply mean not many people agree with us, or like us or are prepared to work with us. That will really have to change."

He laid the responsibility for the poor international relations at Bush's doorstep.

"It starts with the president and proceeds, really, through the Cabinet and those who are advising him. Each administration has to determine which kind of tone it wants to establish in these matters, and that obviously starts with the president," he said.

In addition to improving U.S. relations with the United Nations, Lugar said, the Bush administration will have to explain to voters why it has changed its view about the United Nations' appropriate role and deal with the growing anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

"Americans will say why in the world should the French and Russians . . . after we have done all the fighting, have all the people on the ground, have paid all the money, why should they have a say in this? But then we're back to square one, where is where our administration has been until a short time ago, which is that they shouldn't have any say," Lugar said.

"When you see the polling of the Iraqis now, they don't like us; they resent our being there," he said. Asked whether the United States should leave immediately, Lugar said, "They say no, but they don't want the U.S. there any longer than you have to be - and that's among the more benign people, not the insurgents."

Lugar, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has been nudging the Bush White House since before the war started to also have a plan for postwar Iraq. Although Lugar is well regarded on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in Washington for his foreign policy expertise, recent news analyses have painted him as largely ignored by the Bush administration.

He did not dispute that characterization at the hour-long meeting with journalists.

"They're going to have to determine, really, who they want to have around the table," he said. "I do not purport to have played a significant role in those talks."

Lugar said he has had only one long conversation with Bush - 90 minutes when the two traveled to Indiana last fall on Air Force One.

But even if the White House doesn't solicit his advice, Lugar said, he has evidence that Bush and other top officials take note of his comments, although they don't necessarily take his advice.

For instance, Lugar said, the day after he said the June 30 deadline should be reconsidered, Bush publicly said it was a firm date; and when Lugar said it was important for the White House to name an ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte was nominated within days; and that when Lugar said it was important to conduct a hearing on Negroponte's nomination quickly, the administration initially said it would take more time, then agreed to an earlier date.

Nevertheless, he said, "the administration people have kept their counsel. The suggestion has been that perhaps I might be more intrusive. Sort of go down to the White House and hammer on the door and say, 'I'm here, and we ought to be talking.' " - http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/...

BUSH & CHENEY PROFITTING OFF OF ENRON & HALLIBURTON -- NOT KERRY!!!!!

04.28.04 (10:50 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Campaign Hired Jets from Enron, Halliburton [/b]

During the 2000 presidential election recount battle, George W. Bush's campaign used jets owned by several large corporations, including Enron Corp. and Halliburton Co., that are now under federal investigation, according to Internal Revenue Service records and officials.

Republicans said yesterday that there was nothing improper about the use of the corporate planes, for which the Bush-Cheney Recount Fund paid more than $13,000 to Enron and $2,400 to Halliburton, the company Dick Cheney ran before becoming vice president.

''Our use of planes was in full compliance with federal election law,'' said Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer for the Bush-Cheney recount fund.

Republicans said the amount the Bush campaign spent on corporate planes was a tiny fraction of the $13.8 million it paid out during the five-week recount battle. Bush won the White House after the Supreme Court blocked the recount of thousands of disputed Florida ballots.

Democrats said the payments were proof that Bush and Cheney were compromised by their close business ties.

''The Bush administration literally flew into power on Enron's and Halliburton's private jets,'' said Bill Buck, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

The recount committee for Al Gore, the Democratic candidate in 2000, did not report using any corporate jets in its Internal Revenue Service filings.

Federal law allows presidential candidates to use corporate jets so long as they reimburse the companies. They are required to pay the equivalent of a first-class ticket on a commercial flight or normal charter rates, said a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission.

The White House declined to comment.

Enron, a major financial backer of Bush's campaigns, was the world's biggest energy trader before it collapsed amid revelations of losses from off-the-books partnerships.

Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton, which provides products and services to the energy industry, from 1995 to 2000. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how the company accounted for cost overruns on construction jobs. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush's Attacks on Kerry's Vietnam Record Beyond Hypocritical - Bush is Despicable!!!

04.28.04 (10:47 am) [edit]

In the course of the past week an odd double standard has emerged in the presidential campaign. Every sentence and gesture of the young John Kerry has been scrutinized -- and often deliberately misinterpreted -- for signs of insincerity, self-promotion, lack of patriotism and fledgling Francophilia.

The sentences and gestures of the young George W. Bush, on the other hand, remain shrouded in obscurity. You don't build a record if you don't show up, and that's exactly what Bush did during the Vietnam War.

The Republicans have subjected Kerry's time in Vietnam to the kind of going-over normally accorded war criminals. Did he really deserve that third Purple Heart? How big, exactly, was that piece of shrapnel that had to be removed from his left arm?

We could, I suppose, ask an equivalent question of Bush, but only if they awarded Purple Hearts for paper cuts incurred in the campaign headquarters of the Republican Senate candidate for whom Bush worked during the year he was supposed to be serving with the Air National Guard in Alabama.

Kerry's leadership of Vietnam veterans who opposed the war has also come under attack. Last week a gang of Republican congressmen took to the House floor to charge that Kerry had undermined the war effort and betrayed his comrades in arms. "What he did was nothing short of aiding and abetting the enemy," said Texas Rep. Sam Johnson, who then took to calling Kerry "Hanoi John."

What Kerry did, in actuality, was provide a forceful voice and prudent guidance to a movement of angry men who had sacrificed for their country in a war that, by 1971, no longer had a plausible purpose but nonetheless continued to rage. By the time Kerry appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and posed his memorable question -- "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" -- it was plain that no one in the Nixon administration really believed that the war could be won.

The war not only dragged on, however, but Nixon expanded it to Cambodia (a decision that predictably destabilized the regime of Prince Norodom Sihanouk and in turn helped bring the Khmer Rouge to power). A number of antiwar activists, veterans among them, responded with a kind of crazed desperation, proposing increasingly confrontational actions. Like many antiwar leaders of the time, Kerry was fighting a two-front war: against the administration in the court of public opinion but also against those of his comrades who wanted to direct the movement into self-destructive spasms of rage.

It was precisely because Kerry's impulses were so mainstream that the Nixon White House feared him. Nixon didn't sit around with his goon squad of Bob Haldeman and Chuck Colson plotting against Kerry because they thought Kerry was Hanoi John. On the contrary, Kerry had to be taken down because his patriotism was so glaringly obvious.

He had, after all, joined the service despite the grave doubts -- to which he gave voice in his Yale class oration in t