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---> Why Dick Cheney Deserves an "F" in History

08.31.04 (5:47 pm) [edit]

[b]Why Dick Cheney Deserves an "F" in History

By Robert E. May

Mr. May, is a professor of History at Purdue University and a writer for the History News Service. [/b]

In a critique of John Kerry's presidential candidacy, Vice President Dick Cheney invoked historical memory to mock Kerry's call for a "more sensitive" war on terrorism. Cheney told a Dayton, Ohio, gathering on Aug. 12 that none of America's victories in war can be attributed to "being sensitive."

To support his point, he summoned some of the heavy guns of America's wartime leadership: Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Generals U.S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur.

It turns out that Cheney is dead wrong. It was their very sensitivity in conducting war that made Lincoln, Roosevelt, Grant and Eisenhower great wartime leaders.

Let's start with Lincoln. In the Civil War's early going, the Lincoln administration restrained its armies from all-out war in the hope that conciliatory policies might induce the Confederate states to rejoin the Union, or might at least ensure that the four border slave states still in the Union (Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland and Missouri) would not secede also.

Not only were orders issued for the protection of civilian property in the South, but Lincoln, always "sensitive" to the knowledge that effective war-making means much more than simply engaging the enemy, countermanded emancipation efforts by Union generals, despite his own hatred of slavery. Lincoln overruled Gen. John C. Fremont's declaration freeing the slaves of active enemy supporters in Missouri, a particularly telling move, given Fremont's stature as a former presidential candidate of Lincoln's party. Lincoln shrewdly waited to issue his Emancipation Proclamation until Union armies had substantially secured the four border states.

Cheney could learn much from Lincoln's sensitivity, as he presses today's war on terrorism, especially among Muslim populations who regard the United States with hostility. Not only did Lincoln manage to keep four slave states in the Union, gaining control of invaluable industrial and agricultural resources within their borders, but approximately 300,000 slave-state residents, including many thousands from states in the Confederacy, actually fought for the Union army.

Grant's record also reveals the baseless nature of Cheney's claim. When Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Grant near the end of the war, Grant allowed Lee and his men to return to their homes on parole with their horses and provided the Confederates with rations. Rather than unnecessarily humiliate his Confederate enemies, Grant "sensitively" allowed Lee and his fellow officers to keep their side arms, even though the Civil War was still being waged by Confederate forces in other locales.

In World War II, the United States also fought more sensitively than Cheney suggests, despite the American record of relentless saturation bombing and resort to nuclear weapons, as well as the savage nature of much of the fighting in the Pacific against Japan. President Roosevelt talked about "total victory" in wartime pronouncements and demanded the "unconditional surrender" of Germany, Japan and Italy. Yet to end the fighting with Italy and obtain Italy's collaboration with the Allies, he abandoned his tough policy. Italy surrendered under an elaborate protocol from which the term "unconditional" had been intentionally removed.

Cheney also misrepresents Gen. Eisenhower, one of the most sensitive and successful coalition commanders of all time. Cheney forgets that Ike diverted U.S. and British forces approaching the German capital of Berlin from the west in 1945 to avert the possibility of an accidental collision with allied Soviet forces moving in on Berlin from the east. He also forgets that to accommodate their British allies' strategic interests (as well as for logistical reasons), Eisenhower and other U.S. military leaders deferred from 1942 to 1944 their desired cross-channel invasion against Hitler. Successful coalition warfare requires restraint and compromise -- "sensitivity," in Cheney's terms.

Many other chapters in our military history make the same point that successful commanders wage war by carefully weighing their options. For instance, Gen. Winfield Scott's American army was able to conquer the enemy capital, Mexico City, in 1847, effectually ending the U.S.-Mexican War, because Scott's campaign had been based on tactical finesse and restraint toward enemy civilians. Scott's army frequently bypassed enemy strongholds, thus isolating them, and marched under strict orders to protect civilian property, especially Catholic churches. As a result, Scott's vastly outnumbered forces of fewer than 7,000 effective troops never faced a mass uprising. Unlike U.S.commanders in Iraq today, Scott didn't offend the religious sensibilities of native peoples.

Only Douglas MacArthur merits Cheney's praise as being "insensitive." But did this make him effective? MacArthur almost lost the Korean War by his insensitive decision to cross the 38th parallel into North Korea, despite strong signals from Chinese leaders that they would enter the war on North Korea's side if that happened. Chinese troops nearly drove U.S. forces off the entire Korean Peninsula before the situation stabilized.

It's not surprising that the vice president should sample history for political advantage in a heated campaign. But his remarks suggest that his historical understanding is superficial. If Cheney's views reflect the Bush administration's perspective as a whole, they may go far to explain why the current administration has foundered so noticeably in Iraq, Afghanistan and other venues of its "war on terrorism." - http://hnn.us/articles/6936.h...

---> Israeli Spy Case: First Arrest Imminent!!! [Neo-Cons Are Traitors to the USA!!!]

08.31.04 (2:32 pm) [edit]

[b]F.B.I. Is Said to Brief Pentagon Bosses on Spy Case; Charges Are Possible[/b]

F.B.I. agents met in recent days with two high-level Pentagon officials to discuss the case of a Defense Department analyst who is suspected of turning over a classified policy document to Israel, a senior official in the department said on Monday.

The two officials, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, and Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary for policy, were briefed on the case of the analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, who was a lower-level employee in Mr. Feith's office who specialized in Iranian issues.

The official said that meetings with Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Feith were briefings rather than interviews. It remained somewhat unclear whether either man was asked any questions during the meetings about his knowledge of Mr. Franklin's activities.

Mr. Feith met with agents at his home on Sunday, the official said. It was not clear exactly when and where the agents met with Mr. Wolfowitz. The meetings were first reported on Monday by the Associated Press.

Pentagon officials said in a statement on Friday that no one at the Defense Department beyond Mr. Franklin was suspected of any wrongdoing. Neither Mr. Wolfowitz nor Mr. Feith is regarded as having any involvement in the matter other than as potential witnesses because of their familiarity with Mr. Franklin's work.

So far, no charges in the case have been brought, but behind the scenes government lawyers prepared to make the first arrests by issuing a criminal complaint against one or more figures in the case, government officials said on Monday.

A complaint is a relatively quick method of charging someone with a crime. The use of that approach suggested that the government has decided to move quickly to resolve the legal questions in the yearlong national security case rather than wait for indictments after a grand jury investigation.

Mr. Franklin's legal status is unclear. The authorities believe that Mr. Franklin gave a draft policy directive on Iran to officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, who then provided the information to Israeli intelligence.

Aipac and Israel have denied that they engaged in any wrongdoing. Efforts to contact Mr. Franklin have been unsuccessful, but friends and associates have said he was a highly ethical government employee with little access to senior policy makers who would never have violated the law.

Mr. Franklin has been cooperating with the federal authorities and is thought to be negotiating a deal with the government that could result in leniency in the form of reduced charges in exchange for his information about other people in the case. It is not clear when or even whether he will be charged in the case.

The case has been assigned to the federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., in an office that has long experience in prosecuting espionage cases. The office is headed by Paul McNulty, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. A spokesman for Mr. McNulty would not comment on the matter.

Along with Mr. Franklin, two unidentified officials of Aipac suspected of passing information to the Israelis are also under investigation. Their legal status could depend on what information Mr. Franklin has supplied about their activities along with evidence already obtained by physical and electronic surveillance.

Some Justice Department lawyers are said to have expressed reservations about the proposal to make quick decisions about bringing charges, fearing that such a move would force the government to show its hand, disclosing evidence in a case in which investigators have already been forced to move more quickly than they had hoped because news organizations became aware of the inquiry.

Some officials suspect that the case will never reach the level of an espionage matter. Investigators do not fully understand the motivations of two Aipac officials who they believe were in contact with Mr. Franklin. Moreover, investigators have given up their hope of determining whether Israel regarded Mr. Franklin as an asset in a formal intelligence collection operation or as informal source.

Mr. Franklin worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency for most of his government career until he transferred to the Pentagon policy office in the summer of 2001 to deal with Iranian issues. In his current job, he is one of two Iran desk officers who work in the policy office's Northern Gulf directorate. Mr. Franklin is one of about 1,500 employees who work under Mr. Feith in the policy office.

Mr. Franklin is also a colonel in the Air Force Reserve who spent at least one of his annual tours on active duty working in the defense attaché's office in the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv in the late 1990's, defense officials said. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

---> A Parade of Corporate Panderers and Opportunists: the GOP Keynote Speaker Roster

08.31.04 (1:08 pm) [edit]

It is hard to imagine how the GOP could have assembled a speakers' list that would better represent everything the party stood for: self-interest, deception, opportunism, and corporate pandering. From Zig Zag Zell Miller (a veritable 'Gollum' of a turncoat trickster) to John 'Kerry's my Friend but Don't Expect Me to Act Like It" McCain, to Michael 'Paid Token Diversity Rep' Steele to Rudy 'Squeezin' 9/11 for All It's Worth' Guiliani...the GOP is showing it's true colors!

[b]More [/b]... http://www.democrats.com/view...

---> Hand 'Rummy-boy' Rumsfeld his Walking Papers!!!

08.31.04 (8:36 am) [edit]

The time has come for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to leave his Pentagon post, either by dismissal or resignation.

Two separate reports last week make it clear that Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials were ultimately responsible for the sadistic abuse of prisoners in Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib.

A report by a four-member panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger traced the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq to failures that went all the way up the chain of command in the Pentagon.

Read article on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Hand 'Rummy-boy' Rumsfeld his Walking Papers!!!

08.31.04 (8:33 am) [edit]

---> Part-time President Dubya Needs Long Rest ...

08.31.04 (8:28 am) [edit]

George W. Bush is right on target with the leisure part, but that cultivated stuff doesn't interest him. America's worst president ever also has the distinction of being the most rested. He typically takes more time off in the month of August than the vast majority of American workers do for the entire year.

When Bush speaks to the Republican Convention he'll be tanned and relaxed, fresh from another nine-day stay at his Rancho Wacko in Crawford, Texas. This is his 34th paid vacation in his three-and-a-half years in office.

Bush, who disdains most things European, goes on holidays at a rate that would make a French nobleman blush. The summer numbers have not yet been tallied -- he will, of course, need more rest after his grueling convention duties -- but the vacation stats he's already chalked up are staggering.

Read article on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Bush Misleads on Global Warming ...

08.31.04 (8:24 am) [edit]

Campaigning for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush promised to place mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions to control global warming.1 After he assumed office - in what was widely seen as payback for the energy industry that helped finance his campaign - Bush quickly reneged on his pledge.2 Bush claimed such regulations were inappropriate because there was no clear scientific link between human activity and global warming.3

But last week, a report signed by Bush's Secretary of Commerce Don Evans and Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham,4 concluded, "rising temperatures in North America are due in part to human activity."5 The report found that global warming was already causing draught, damaging farms and changing migration patterns.6

Nevertheless, the Bush administration is still content to do nothing. John H. Marburger, the president's top science adviser, said the report has "no implications for policy."7 Bush himself denies that there has been any change in the administration's position. Asked by the New York Times to explain the switch, Bush replied "Ah, did we?...I don't think so."8

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

1. "Bait and Switch," Pollution Engineering, 12/01/03.
2. "Bush u-turn on climate change wins few friends," The Guardian, 8/27/04.
3. "Bush administration report links human acts to global warming," The Boston Globe, 8/27/04
4. "Our Changing Planet: The U.S. Climate Change Science Program for Fiscal Years 2004 and 2005," U.S. Climate Change Science Program , 8/25/04.
5. "Administration Shifts on Global Warming," Washington Post, 8/27/04.
6. "White House Climate Policy Remains Unchanged in Face of Science Shift," Natural Resources Defense Council, 8/26/04.
7. "Administration Shifts on Global Warming," Washington Post, 8/27/04.
8. "White House cites human role in global warming," CNN, 8/27/04.

---> Bush Misleads on Global Warming ...

08.31.04 (8:22 am) [edit]

---> Bush Misleads on Global Warming ...

08.31.04 (8:19 am) [edit]

---> Madame Butterfly Flies Off with Ballots - Florida Fixed Again?

08.30.04 (1:53 pm) [edit]

[b]Madame Butterfly Flies Off with Ballots

Florida Fixed Again?

Absentee Ballots Go Absent[/b]

On Friday, Theresa LePore, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach, candidate for re-election as Supervisor of Elections, chose to supervise her own election, no one allowed. This Tuesday, Florida votes for these nominally non-partisan posts.

You remember Theresa, "Madame Butterfly," the one whose ballots brought in the big vote for Pat Buchanan in the Jewish precincts in November 2000. Then she failed to do the hand count that would have changed the White House from Red to Blue.

This time, Theresa's in a hurry to get to the counting. She began tallying absentee ballots on Friday in her own re-election race. Not to worry: the law requires the Supervisor of Elections in each county to certify poll-watchers to observe the count.

But Theresa has a better idea. She refused to certify a single poll-watcher from opponents' organizations despite the legal requirement she do so by last week. She'll count her own votes herself, thank you very much!

And so far, she's doing quite well. Although 37,000 citizens have requested absentee ballots, she says she'd only received 22,000 when she began the count. Where are the others? Don't ask: though she posts the names of requesters, she won't release the list of those who have voted, an eyebrow-raising deviation from standard procedure.

And she has no intention of counting all the ballots received. She has reserved for herself the right to determine which ballots have acceptable signatures. Her opponent, Democrat Art Anderson, had asked Theresa to use certified hand-writing experts, instead of her hand-picked hacks, to check the signatures.

Unfortunately, while Federal law requires Theresa to allow a voter to correct a signature rejection when registering, the Feds don't require her to permit challenges to absentee ballot rejections.

I know what you're thinking. How could Madame Butterfly know how people are voting? Well, she's printed PARTY AFFILIATION on the OUTSIDE of each return envelope. That certainly makes it easier to figure out which ballot is valid, don't it?

And dear Reader, please take note of the implications of this story for the big vote in November. Millions have sought refuge in absentee ballots as a method to avoid the dangers of the digitizing of democracy. Florida and other states are reporting 400%-plus increases in absentee ballot requests due to fear of the new computer voting machinery. Some refuge. LePore is giving us an early taste of how the Bush Leaguers intend to care for your absentee ballot.

If there's no safety in the absentee ballot, how about the computerized machines? The LePores of America have that one figured out too.

On Friday, the day on which Theresa began her Kremlim-style vote count, the New York Times ran a puff piece on Jeb's Palm Beach political pet. Cub reporter Amy Goodnough derided fears of Democrats who painted "dark scenarios" about the computer voting machines Madame Butterfly installed over the objections of the state's official voting technology task force.

If you're wondering why the experts told her not to use the machines, I'll tell you -- because the New York Times won't. It's not because the voting specialists are anti-technology Luddites. The fact is that Florida counties using touch-screens have reported a known error rate 600% greater than the alternative, paper ballots read by optical scanners. And those errors have occurred -- surprise! -- overwhelmingly in African-American precincts.

First Brother Jeb has teamed with LePore to keep the vote clean and white. Together they have refused the Democrats request for the more-reliable paper ballots as an option for voters.

In Leon County, by contrast, Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho insisted on paper ballots and did not lose a single vote to error in the March presidential primary. Sancho told me it's a slam-dunk certainty that the computer screens will snatch away several thousand Palm Beach votes.

Theresa and the Jebster have been quite close since LePore came out of the closet. The Republican-turned-Democra t, nominally independent, this year accepted the sticky embrace of the Republican Party. One really has to wonder if she ever truly left the Republicans in the first place.

It's a shame that Supervisor LePore was too busy counting her votes and rejecting ballots to respond to my phone calls. I wanted to be the first to congratulate her on her election victory -- two days before the election. Or maybe she fears I might be the early birddog who catches the butterfly as she turns back into a worm.

**********

[b]Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His article on vote manipulation in Florida for Harper's Magazine, was nominated for a 2002 National Magazine Award.[/b] - http://www.gregpalast.com/det...

[b]On September 28, Disinfo/Ryko will release on DVD his film, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on Palast's investigative reports for BBC Television -- described as "courageous reporting." (Michael Moore) and "twisted and maniacal" (Katherine Harris). View a 2-minute preview at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff... [/b]

---> 25 things we now know three years after 9/11 ...

08.30.04 (7:47 am) [edit]

[b]The Republican Party -- in a shameless , all-too-obvious attempt to manipulate the tragedy of 9/11 for partisan ends -- chose New York City for its nominating convention. Must have seemed like a great idea at the time.[/b]

Their coming to Manhattan not only infuriates New Yorkers, who were badly played by Bush&Co. after the attacks, but enables the rest of us in the country to use Ground Zero as the backdrop for examining the gross failures and crimes of the Bush Administration since that tragic day in September 2001.

So, here is an update of things we've learned during the three years since 9/11 -- documented mostly from government papers and respected journalistic accounts -- about the Administration that rules in our names. If you find this compendium useful, you might want to make this list available to your friends and colleagues, especially to those still uncertain which presidential candidate they will vote for ten weeks from now.

[b]THE 9/11 ATTACKS/COVERUP[/b]

1. Immediately after the destruction of the Twin Towers, Bush's Environmental Protection Agency tested the air in and around Ground Zero. Anxious Lower Manhattan residents, worried about possible airborne toxic particles affecting them and especially their children, were assured by the EPA on September 18 that the tests indicated it was safe for them to return to and live normal lives in their homes and apartments and businesses. It wasn't until two years later that the EPA admitted that they had lied to New Yorkers: The Bush Administration knew from their own test results that the toxicity revealed was WAY over the safe levels. Typical Bush&Co. pattern: secrecy, lies, denial, coverup.

2. There is no evidence that Bush&Co. ordered Osama bin Laden -- who had been on the CIA payroll in Afghanistan when he and his forces were battling the Soviet occupiers -- to launch terrorist attacks on the U.S. Resurgent radical Islam is a genuine phenomenon, with its own religious and political roots. There definitely are Bad Guys out there.

What is well-documented is that the highest circles around Bush were quite aware in the Summer of 2001 -- as a result of fairly detailed intelligence frantically being passed on to them by other governments in the months and weeks before 9/11-- that a massive terrorist attack was in the works, which likely would involve hijacked airplanes aimed at icon American economic and political targets. (The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," talked about al-Qaida wanting to strike the nation's capital, preparations for airline hijackings, casing of buildings in New York, terrorists in the U.S. with explosives, etc.) Bush went to ground in Texas, the FBI told Ashcroft to stop flying commercial jets, etc. The attacks finally came on 9/11.

Bush could have assumed command immediately; instead, 27 minutes went by while he sat in a schoolroom and then posed for photos. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, somewhere on the Pentagon premises, was strangely missing from action, uninvolved in defending the country until after the horrific events had unfolded. Even though the protocols were clear, NORAD could not reach Rumsfeld and did not scramble jets until long after the horrific mass-murder attacks were over. When Bush did emerge from the school, he claims he could not reach Cheney or the White House by phone. (Passengers using cell phones on the final doomed jet had no problems reaching their loved ones and emergency centers all around the country.)

In short, the key Administration officials responsible for protecting Americam, and coordinating its responses to attacks, were not available, either out of incompetence and confusion or out of more nefarious motives. As Nina Moliver, a 9/11 sleuth puts it, "On 9/11, there was a grand stall. A stall for time. I learned this from a glance at the findings of the 9/11 commission. How could ANYBODY miss it? Bush and Rumsfeld didn't 'fail' on Sept 11. They succeeded masterfully." A bit far out, to be sure, but if the Bush circle knew something was coming that morning -- and numerous others did, including the mayor of San Francisco -- it's certainly a theory that can't be ruled out.

3. We know that the future neo-conservative architects of Bush foreign/military policy, members of The Project for The New American Century (PNAC), knew that their ideas were too extreme for most Americans to swallow. They noted that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Again, there is no proof of coordination by the Bush Administration with the al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the terrorist attacks, but BushCheney and their closest aides were aware on 9/11 that they now had the "Pearl Harbor" that would clear the way for their agenda to be realized.

4. We know that Bush and Cheney, early on, approached the leaders of the House and Senate and urged them not to investigate the pre-9/11 activities of the Administration, because of "national security." The coverup was beginning.

5. The 9/11 Commission examined how the intelligence community screwed up the pre-9/11 intelligence -- thus effectively laying the blame on lower-level agents and officials -- but says it won't issue its report on how the Bush Administration used or misused that information until AFTER the election. The coverup continues. Many victims' families are furious.

6. We know that the Bush Administration has been able to obtain whatever legislation it needs in its self-proclaimed "war on terror" by utilizing, and hyping, the understandable fright of the American people. The USA PATRIOT Act -- composed of many honorable initiatives, and many clearly unconstitutional provisions, cobbled together from those submitted over the years by GOP hardliners and rejected as too extreme by Congress -- was presented almost immediately to a House and Senate frightened by the 9/11 attacks and by the anthrax introduced into their chambers by someone still not discovered. Ridge and Ashcroft emerge periodically to manipulate the public's fright by announcing another "terror" threat, based on "credible" but unverified evidence; these announcements can be correlated almost exactly to when Bush seems to need a headline to distract the public from yet another scandal or significant drop in the polls.

[b]THE ATTACK ON IRAQ[/b]

7. We know that a cabal of ideologically-motivated Bush officials, on the rightwing fringe of the Republican Party, were calling for a military takeover of Iraq as early as 1991. This elite group included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Woolsey, Bolton, Khalizad and others, all of whom are now located in positions of power in the Pentagon and White House, and, to a lesser extent, State Department.

They were among the key founders of the Project for The New American Century (PNAC) in 1997; among their recommendations: "pre-emptively" attacking other countries devoid of imminent danger to the U.S., abrogating agreed-upon treaties when they conflict with U.S. goals, making sure no other country (or organization, such as the United Nations) can ever achieve parity with the U.S., installing U.S.-friendly governments to do America's will, using tactical nuclear weapons, and so on. In short, as they put it, the goal is "benevolent global hegemony" -- or, in layman's English, a kind of neo-imperalism.

All of these extreme suggestions, once regarded as lunatic, are now enshrined as official U.S. policy in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published by the Bush Administration in late-2002.

8. We know that the Bush Administration was planning to attack Iraq long before 9/11, and that, even though Rumsfeld was told by his intelligence analysts that 9/11 was an al-Qaida operation, he began dragging an attack on Iraq -- which had no significant contacts with bin Laden's network -- into the war planning. When the traditional intelligence agencies couldn't, or wouldn't, furnish the White House with made-up "facts" to back up an attack on Iraq, Rumsfeld set up his own "intelligence" unit inside his office, the Office of Special Plans, staffed it with political PNAC appointees, and, lo and behold, got the justifications he wanted -- which cooked-"intelligence" turned out to be the lies and deceptions that took the U.S. into Iraq.

Note: Rumsfeld's secretive Office of Special Plans, with direct access to the Secretary of Defense and thus to shaping policy toward Iraq and Iran, is implicated in the current, serious scandal involving possible treason (passing classified material to foreign countries, in this case maybe Israel and Iran), with potential links to the slimy double-agent Ahmad Chalabi and others.

9. We know that the Bush Administration felt that it could not get Congressional and public support for its plan to attack Iraq if the true reasons were revealed -- to control the massive Iraqi oil reserves, to obtain a military staging base in the region, and to use a U.S.-friendly "democratic" government as a lever to alter the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and beyond. So, according to Wolfowitz, it settled on the one justification they thought would work: accusing Saddam Hussein of preparing to attack its neighbors and the United States with supposed massive stockpiles of "weapons of mass destruction." Senators were lied to by Administration briefers, who told them Iraqi drone planes could drop biochemical agents over American cities; Condoleezza Rice warned about "mushroom clouds" over New York and Washington.

Millions of citizens across the globe, and world leaders among our own allies, warned the Bush Administration that an attack on Iraq -- a weak country, with no military power to speak of -- was wrong, would backfire on the U.S. and world peace, would enrage the Islamic world and produce more terrorist recruits, and would lose America its reputation and its post-9/11 sympathy across the globe. But the Bush Administration had made the essential decision to go to war a year before the invasion ("Fuck Saddam," Bush told three U.S. Senators in March of 2002. "We're taking him out.") And, even though Saddam authorized the United Nations inspectors to return to Iraq to complete their weapons survey, Bush was determined to go to car. Secretary of State Powell was dispatched to the United Nations to outline the U.S. case and obtain authorization; his case was filled with laughably thin and phony intelligence, and the U.N. demurred. Bush launched his attack.

10. We know that no WMDs were discovered. No nuclear program. No missiles aimed at U.S. or British interests. No drone planes. No biochemical weaponry. Bush and his spokesmen then attempted to change the rationale for the war away from those scary WMDs to an implication that Saddam was part of the terrorist network that carried out the 9/11 attacks. There was no convincing proof offerred, merely the constant repetition of the non-existent al-Qaida tie -- so much so that the Big Lie technique worked early on as 70% of Americans thought there must have been some tie-in to 9/11. The 9/11 Commission verified that there was no such operative connection to al-Qaida. Bush publicly agreed, but Cheney and others even today continue to suggest otherwise. When the American public stopped believing in the al-Qaida/Iraq lie, the rationale for the war was switched again. Now the reason for the war was that Saddam Hussein was a terrible tyrant -- an assertion everybody could agree on -- though why we toppled this guy and not a half dozen other equally as bad dictators (some of them our close allies) was left unanswered.

10. We know that the predictions of our key allies, and those millions in the streets who protested, have come true. The U.S., having had no "post-war" plan, is bogged down in Iraq, facing a nationalist insurgency, and a rebellious religious faction of fighters, with no end in sight; it has lost the countryside and is losing the cities as well. The U.S. has engineered an American-friendly interim government that is locked into the reconstruction contracts that permit huge American corporations such as Bechtel and Halliburton -- who, quite by coincidence, of course, are huge financial backers of the Bush Administration -- to make out like bandits in that country, often with no-bid contracts. The U.S. has at least 14 military bases in Iraq, which it intends to continue using as a military/political lever in reshaping the geopolitics of the Middle East -- regardless of the costs in lives and treasure, and not caring that its policies with regard to the Palestinian/Israeli problem fan the flames of terrorism in that area of the world, and beyond.

[b]AUTHORITARIAN MANEUVERINGS[/b]

11. We know that CIA Director George Tenet fell on his sword, taking the thrust of the bad-intel blame away from Bush. Other elements inside the agency, outraged by Bush&Co. using them as whipping-boys, then began leaking all sorts of damaging information about White House skulduggery. Elements in the State Department, appalled at the neo-cons in control of U.S. military policy at the Pentagon, likewise leaked information damaging to the extremists.

12. We know that once Bush assumed power, he moved to obtain immunity for U.S. officials and troops from international war-crimes prosecutions, pulling America out of the relevant treaties. We didn't know why at the time, but later, after our covert and overt behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq and the tortures scandal erupted, we figured it out.

13. We know that Bush lawyers in the White House and Pentagon (State Department attorneys did not agree) issued memorada that outlined how Bush and other key officials could avoid criminal prospecution for their wartime policies and for advocating use of "harsh interrogation methods" (read: torture) of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, and in Afghanistan, Iraq and other U.S. facilities around the world. Ignoring the Founders' wise "separation of powers" -- designed to keep any leader or branch of government from assuming total control of the levers of powers -- the lawyers claimed that whenever Bush acts as "commander in chief" during "wartime," he is above the law. In common parlance, these are rationalizations for authoritarian rule, by dictatorial decrees.

14. We know that the Pentagon was well aware of the tortures at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- key military reports had been submitted -- but the issue was ignored until grisly photographs and videotapes surfaced in public media documenting the "harsh interrogation methods"; some of those methods resulted in a goodly number of deaths to prisoners under U.S. control. Several commissions reported that the rot came from the top at the Pentagon, including Rumsfeld, but, by and large, only lower-level troops and officers have been disciplined or charged. In the meantime, the humiliating and brutal treatment of Muslim men, women and children in U.S. custody has reverberated throughout the Islamic world, helping create more and more converts to terrorist organizations.

[b]SCANDALS AT HOME[/b]

15. In two instances, the Bush Administration, for its own political reasons, compromised American national security by naming key intelligence operatives -- one a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, with important contacts in the shadowy world of weapons of mass destruction (outed by two "senior Administration officials," apparently in retaliation for her husband's political comments); revealing the name of a CIA agent is a felony. The other, more recently (apparently to show off how successful they were in their anti-terrorism hunt), was a high-ranking mole close to bin Laden's inner circle, who could have kept the U.S. informed as ongoing and future plans of al-Qaida. That's our anti-terrorism government at work.

16. We know that Karl Rove -- Bush's senior political advisor, who along with Dick Cheney, manipulates Bush's strings -- has been instrumental in helping get the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" off the ground. Longtime GOP operatives and major Bush donors supplied the money and organizing skill, and then let them loose with their lies -- with precious little skepticism displayed by the corporate-owned mass-media. Apparently, at least initially, the Big Lie technique worked once again -- though now polls show the smears being doubted -- forcing Kerry to stop his attacks on Bush domestic policies and concentrate on damage control. The Kerry campaign took a while to rev up its counter-campaign, bringing in all sorts of eyewitnesses that documented the truth of his heroism in winning his Vietnam medals. Even slimier charges are expected at any moment about Kerry's post-discharge opposition to that war.

[b]PROTECTING THE VOTE [/b]

17. We know that even though several large states -- among them, California and Ohio -- have prohibited computer-voting machines from beng used in the November election, unless there is a voter-verified paper trail, most of the toss-up states will be using the touch-screen, unverified system. This would be suspicious if Democrats or Republicans were in charge of those machines, but in this election it's virtually all Republicans. The three largest makers of the machines are owned by far-right Republicans; those same companies tabulate the results. Republican-leaning companies also control the testing of those machines. In short, it smells rank -- especially inasmuch as it's been demonstrated how easily the software can be manipulated, without anybody knowing -- and definitely looks as if the fix is in. The CEO of one of the companies, a major "Pioneer" donor to the Bush campaign, promised Bush he would "deliver" his state to the GOP candidate, and Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida has quashed all attempts to stop or alter computer-voting in his state. (Note: The GOP has urged all its members in Florida to vote by absentee ballot, because the machines are "unreliable." Get the picture?)

18. We know that the GOP is trying, by hook or by crook, to lower the number of potential Democrat voters. Attempts have been made to remove thousands of African-American citizens from the rolls (reminiscent of Florida in 2000, where anywhere from 47,000 to 90,000 black voters where disenfranchised), police agents have visited numerous elderly black voters in their rural homes and warned them about possible violence at the polls, a GOP official in Michigan talked about the need to "discourage" the vote in largely-black Detroit, GOP "observers" will stand outside voting places in rural areas as possible intimidators of older black voters, GOP operatives registering new American citizens filled out the paperwork for them and signed them up as Republicans, and so on.

19. We know that Administration lawyers have issued memoranda making it possible for Bush to "postpone" the November election for "anti-terrorist" reasons -- say, a major attack or "credible" threat of a major attack. Note: There has never been a national election postponed, not even during the Civil War.

20. We know that Administration attorneys have issued memoranda that would make it possible for Bush to be elected by partial voting. That is, he could be elected by voters supporting him, even if citizens in pro-Kerry states were prohibited from voting or having their votes counted. Again, the fig-leaf is "terrorism." If a "red alert" were to be issued for certain areas on November 2 -- say, the West Coast and New England states -- Bush could, under state-of-emergency declarations, "limit the movement" of citizens in those areas, while the election proceeded as normal elsewhere. A truncated election would be permitted, and, under this scheme, whoever had the most ballots would win.

[b]STARVING THE GOVERNMENT[/b]

21. We know that the Bush Administration paid off its backers (and itself) by giving humongous tax breaks, for 10 years out, to the already wealthy and to large corporations. This was done at a time when the U.S. economy was in recessionary doldrums and when the treasury deficit from those tax-breaks was growing even larger from Iraq war costs. So far as we know, the Bush Administration has no plans for how to retire that debt and no real plan (other than the discredited "trickle-down" theory) for restarting the economy and creating jobs. In 2004, it's clear that whatever positive "trickle-down" effect the tax refunds may have provided, that impact is no more, and the (jobless) "recovery" is slowing and starting to look recessional again. People need good-paying employment.

22. We know that the HardRight conservatives who control Bush policy don't really care what kind of debt and deficits his policies cause; in some ways, the more the better. They want to decimate and eviscerate popular social programs from the New Deal/Great Society eras, including, most visibly, Head Start, Social Security, Medicare (and real drug coverage for seniors), aspects of public education. Since these programs are so well-approved by the public, the destruction will be carried out stealthily with the magic words of "privatization," "deregulation," "choice" and so on, and by going to the public and saying that they'd love to keep the programs intact but they have no alternative but to cut them, given the deficit, weak economy and "anti-terrorist" wars abroad.

23. We know that Bush environmental policy -- dealing with air and water pollution, national park systems, and so on -- is an unmitigated disaster, more or less giving free rein to corporations whose bottom line does better when they don't have to pay attention to the public interest.

24. We know from "insider" memoirs and reports by former Bush Administration officials -- Joseph DeIulio, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, et al. -- that the public interest plays little role in the formulation of policy inside the Bush Administration. The motivating factors are greed and control and remaining in political power. Further, they say, there is little or no curiosity to think outside the political box, or even to hear other opinions -- in other words, don't bother me with facts, my mind's made up. Some of this non-curiosity may be based in fundamentalist religious, even Apocalyptic, beliefs.

25. Finally (although we could continue forever detailing the crimes and misdemeanors of this corrupt, incompetent Administration), we know that more and more, the permanent-war policy abroad and police-state tactics at home -- with the shredding of Constitutional rights designed to protect citizens from a potential repressive government -- are taking us into a kind of American fascism at home and an imperial foreign policy overseas.

As a result, we are beginning to see more alliances between liberal/left forces and libertarians/traditional conservatives horrified that their party has been hijacked by extreme ideologues. If Bush loses his bid for a second term, it will come less from what we progressives do and more from those moderate-to-conservative Republicans and Libertarians, who cannot abide what Bush&Co. have done to their party, their movement, and to this country.

[b]Bernard Weiner, Ph.D in government, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). He is a contributing author to the recently-released "Big Bush Lies" book[/b]. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> George W. Bush is Damaged Goods ...

08.30.04 (7:40 am) [edit]

[b]Damaged Goods

How Far Will Republicans Go to Hold Onto Power?[/b]

George W. Bush is damaged goods, but he has found his campaign voice--the forked tongue of the high road/low road politician. The lofty Commander in Chief will solemnly remind Americans of their fears, while his wicked twin tears viciously into John Kerry's flesh. When the Warrior President tries to sound like Churchill, he affects a peculiar Texas staccato. "We-must-be-strong. We-must-be-resolute-again st-these-cold-blooded-kil lers." But the down-and-dirty Prez turns sly and sarcastic, inviting regular guys to share a belly laugh over Kerry's "nuances," while Bush's surrogates smear Kerry's Bronze Star in Vietnam as phony. What's this wobbly peacenik talking about anyway? We're at war, remember. No time for lying, liberal sissies.

The Bush campaign strategy is already in play before the GOP convention. The President runs on fear and character assassination--big fear and big lies. While Bush's claims and insinuations are utterly distant from the truth, the strategy can't be dismissed, because Republicans are so experienced at this kind of politics. GOP marketing proceeds on a cynical assumption that voters can be moved by the brazen repetition of evocative falsehoods and broad-brush caricature. Their model is 1988, when Bush's daddy used the racist "Willie Horton" ads and "card-carrying member of the ACLU" to defenestrate Michael Dukakis, a decent and capable governor they turned into a national joke.

For big fear, Bush Junior has the federal government at his disposal, and he's using it to pump up anxieties. Does anyone think the "Ashcroft alert," based on old and murky material, was anything more than a thematic tuneup for the fall campaign? Nor was the White House necessarily upset by the headlines about FBI agents chasing after antiwar protesters who might be planning "violent" actions at the GOP convention. Anything that polarizes public opinion about unknown dangers is assumed to help Bush. Meantime, his war planners are suddenly escalating the "threat" rhetoric surrounding Iran and its nuclear bomb-making. Anything that changes the conversation from Iraq can be helpful too.

For personal slander, the Bush regime is hurling mud at Kerry's brightest armor--his sterling reputation as a decorated Vietnam War hero. The Swift Boat veterans attacking Kerry are clearly agents of the Republican machine--financed by Bush money boys and already exposed for multiple lies and distortions. The well-coordinated attack has produced a media tempest, but this is August, the doldrums between conventions, and we can't yet know how much real damage may be done.

What this farfetched smear demonstrates for sure, however, is the President's desperation. The man will do anything (didn't we already know that?). If Kerry is smart, he can turn this latest hit job into an excellent opportunity. Since Bush has raised the question of character and honesty, by all means let's talk about it. Kerry should open every speech with that line and then review the shameful evidence of Bush's mendacious character, from the fictitious threats from Iraq to the 5 million jobs his rich-guy tax cuts were going to produce for ordinary Americans. Which candidate trashes the truth? By all means let the election be decided on that question.

Despite the propaganda barrage, John Kerry seems to be holding his own. The most recent Gallup poll reported a slight improvement in the President's numbers but also found that Kerry is now more trusted to handle the war in Iraq by 48 percent, compared to 47 percent for Bush. That's a remarkable finding, given that effective war-making was supposed to be Bush's best and biggest card. Indeed, given the bloody muddle in Iraq, many Americans may be in the mood for more nuance in US foreign policy and less extremism from the White House.

This is not 1988. To begin with, trying to portray Kerry as a cowardly liar in Vietnam simply doesn't have the emotional resonance of Willie Horton, especially since Bush himself wimped out during that war. More to the point, Kerry is not playing passive, as Dukakis did, but counterpunching smartly, forcefully challenging Bush on the warrior's own turf. Kerry has even introduced the magic word people yearn to hear about Iraq--"withdrawal"--albei t in a backhanded way. Kerry's position is lathered in nuances, calling for an "enormous reduction" starting next year, but he is now positioned to express his idea loudly and often (and "responsibly," of course), if he finds the nerve to do so. A big if, alas. Bush can hardly win points by attacking "withdrawal." He tried to top Kerry by promising to bring US troops home from Europe and Asia, but that's another attempt to change the subject.

Kerry has also acquired an unusual asset--the neutrality of the major media. After playing compliant lapdog for the Warrior in Chief, the New York Times and Washington Post are now creating distance from their former hero and even challenging his distortions (both newspapers recently confessed institutional embarrassment for their go-to-war enthusiasm). At least the big media are not ridiculing Kerry as they did so freely with Al Gore in 2000 and Dukakis in 1988. Reporters and editors read the polls too. They know this incumbent President is in deep trouble. They can see his old moves are not working--not yet, anyway.

The core dynamic driving the 2004 campaign is this: George W. bet his presidency on two dubious, high-risk propositions, and he lost on both. First, he assumed that top-down tax cuts and other regressive, wealth-shifting measures would be sufficient to restore a prospering economy. Second, he decided after 9/11 to become the President of permanent war. As recently as nine months ago, this looked like a sure winner to the White House. Republican insiders assumed an easy re-election would be buoyed by the return of "good times" at home and patriotic fervor for triumph in Iraq. Wrong on both fronts.

When the opposite occurred, Bush was trapped by his own concocted image of Churchillian tough guy. It's too late to change, so Bush's best shot now is destroying Kerry. The President cannot acknowledge the disappointing results in Iraq or the struggling economy without diminishing himself. Plus, a lot of people have figured out that the man tells lies--big lies--or, worse, is not capable of handling hard facts and adjusting his policy accordingly.

In short, can people any longer trust this guy--not just on personal honesty, but his sense of judgment, his competence as President? That killer question is now stalking the Bush II regime. I discern (wishfully, perhaps) that the Kerry campaign understands that this contest will pivot on the public's declining trust in the President and is poking relentlessly at this vulnerability in different ways. I wish Kerry would put the attack more forcefully but, who knows, maybe he is right not to get too personal or, like Bush, hit below the belt.

The question of trust also threatens the right-wing agenda for governing. Bush's people assumed--correctly, it seemed--that an inert, alienated people would tolerate his conservative reforms, whacking away at long-established liberal government and social values, in deference to the popular war leader. But now the people are aroused and agitated by Bush's failures to deliver on his two big bets. He can still trot out the right-wing ideas again if he chooses--dismantling Social Security, taxing work and consumption instead of capital and corporations. But these radical propositions are burdened now by the same question: Can we believe anything this guy says? In any case, Bush's bizarre ideological convictions do not speak to what's on people's minds--the open-ended war and the faltering economy. Bush's great challenge is to divert people from the hard facts of his presidency and get them to focus on a set of fantastic smears of his challenger.

The intensity of this contest has put the Republic in fragile, possibly dangerous, circumstances. The Bush crowd is smart and skillful, and above all devious. They have demonstrated that to hold on to power, they will do anything. In the background chatter of Washington, a real worry is expressed that the White House might put the bombers aloft and strike somewhere in a supposed emergency -- maybe take out Iran's nuclear program? -- to change the subject big-time and to scare the bejeezus out of American voters just before the election.

Normally, I wouldn't take such talk seriously. But when I consider Bush's dilemma and all that's at stake, I begin to think these fears are not implausible. In a newly concocted crisis, would anxious Americans stampede to the President's side? Or would they see through the cynical charade and toss him out? I would bet on the latter, but I wouldn't bet the whole farm.

[b]William Greider is The Nation's National Affairs Correspondent. He has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People and, most recently, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster). [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> The insane neo-cons give Iran the Iraq treatment ...

08.30.04 (7:27 am) [edit]

[b]The neo-cons give Iran the Iraq treatment[/b]

[b]Sexed-up reports, pressure on the United Nations... here we go again, writes Jonathan Steele[/b].

History is beginning to repeat itself, this time over Iran. Just two years after the British Government's notorious "Downing Street dossier" on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction and the first efforts to get United Nations approval for war, Washington is trying to create similar pressures for action against Iran.

The ingredients are well-known: sexed-up intelligence material that puts the target country in the worst possible light; moves to get the UN to declare it in "non-compliance", thereby claiming justification for going in unilaterally even if the UN gives no support for invasion; and at the back of the whole brouhaha, a clique of US neo-conservatives whose real agenda is regime change.

The immediate focus for action against Iran is the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has produced five reports on Iran in the past 14 months. Part of the UN, the IAEA in its reports has raised questions about Iran's professedly civilian nuclear program and its desire to create its own fuel cycle that could eventually be used to produce bombs.

To satisfy its critics, Iran agreed last year to allow so-called intrusive inspections. As a confidence-building measure, it also stopped enriching uranium. In a few days' time the IAEA will issue a new report, and it is its wording that is causing the latest flurry.

John Bolton, the Bush Administration's point-man, has been rushing round Europe claiming the evidence of sinister Iranian behaviour is clear, even though the IAEA has consistently made no such judgement. It has called for more transparency, but prefers to keep probing and, like Hans Blix in Iraq in 2003, insisting that it needs more time.

Iran, meanwhile, says the IAEA should accept that nothing wrong has been found and let Iran receive the civilian nuclear technology - with the safeguards that go with it - that countries such as Germany and France have promised.

Bolton is not, at this stage, claiming to have intelligence that the IAEA's inspectors don't. After the fiasco of the US's pre-war material on Iraq, he has not started to trumpet US sources. But he is choosing to interpret the available knowledge as harshly as possible. He is also close to the Washington hardliners in the Project for the New American Century, who created the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against unfriendly states and who favour regime change to deal with Islamist fundamentalism.

Norman Podhoretz, the arch-conservative editor of Commentary magazine, one of their house journals, said last week: "I am not advocating the invasion of Iran at this moment, although I wouldn't be heartbroken if it happened."

There are differences from the anti-Iraq campaign two years ago. This time the US is taking the lead in going to the UN. Bolton wants the IAEA board to say that Iran has violated its commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and take the matter to the Security Council for a decision on sanctions or other stern action. France and Germany are resisting a move to the UN.

Second, even the US (Podhoretz excepted) is not talking about a full-scale US invasion with ground troops. It has too many soldiers tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan to spare many for a third campaign. The talk is of using US Special Forces or air strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear plants, or giving a green light to Israel to do it.

The biggest difference, though, is in Britain's stance. Unlike the Bush campaign against Saddam, Britain is siding with France and Germany this time. It is part of a "troika" that promotes constructive engagement rather than confrontation with Iran.

They have powerful arguments. The disaster of the Iraq war and the failure to bring peace, stability or order make them want to avoid a repetition with Iraq's more populous and larger neighbour. Even "limited" air strikes on Iran's nuclear plants would unify the country and harden hostility to the West throughout the Middle East, especially if Washington subcontracted the attacks to the Israeli air force.

Most Iraqi resistance to the Americans is based on nationalist resentment, and Iranians are no different. People of all political persuasions in Tehran support their country's right to have nuclear power, and probably even bombs. Threatening them with force is not the most intelligent way to persuade them otherwise.

The defeat of Iran's reformist MPs in this northern spring's unfair elections, as well as the certainty that President Mohammad Khatami will be replaced by a less liberal figure next year, have not ended the chance of dialogue with Tehran. European diplomats detect the emergence of a group of "pragmatic conservatives" in the Iranian leadership who could be easier to deal with than the beleaguered liberals of the past seven years. They want better relations with the West.

London's difference with Washington on Iran is remarkable. But does Britain's alignment with France and Germany on Iran mean that Tony Blair has really parted with George Bush on a key geo-political and military issue?

We will know the answer after the US election. Even if John Kerry wins, European diplomats expect no major change in Washington's policy towards Iran. [Except that Kerry will not rush to war with Iran as Bush will!] So how will Blair cuddle up to the new president? What easier way than to break with France and Germany and show Kerry that, whether there's a Democrat or a Republican in the White House, Britain's prime minister is still best friends when it comes to being tough with Islamist bullies and taking the brave and moral route to war?

[b]Jonathan Steele writes on international affairs for The Guardian, London[/b]. - http://www.theage.com.au/arti...

---> Bush Admin Spent an Obscene $6.5 BILLION to Protect Secrets and Block Public's Right to Know

08.29.04 (2:29 pm) [edit]

[b]Common Dreams:[/b] "Government data confirm what many have suspected: secrecy has increased dramatically in recent years under policies of the current administration. For every $1 the federal government spent last year releasing old secrets, it spent an extraordinary $120 maintaining the secrets already on the books, according to an analysis by OpenTheGovernment.org. "Excessive government secrecy hides problems that the public needs to know, and information embarrassing to officials," said Rick Blum of OMB Watch.The government spent $6.5 billion last year creating 14 million new classified documents and securing accumulated secrets -- more than it has for at least the past decade. said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "While it may be necessary to close access to some extremely sensitive data in response to terrorism, there is no evidence to suggest that the public will only be safe if it is kept ignorant of government activity."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.commondreams.org/n...

---> Bush Admin Spent an Obscene $6.5 BILLION to Protect Secrets and Block Public's Right to Know

08.29.04 (2:25 pm) [edit]

---> SPEAK UP AMERICA! A Campaign to Take Back the Nation's News Media! ...

08.29.04 (2:20 pm) [edit]

There is increasing evidence that the corporate media is not just spinning news now - they are blatantly suppressing information (blacking out material postive about Kerry and negative about Bush) and buying off pollsters to get grossly manipulated results that will support rigged results in November. This is OUR country and OUR press (or should be!). We will run this notice every day until election, with its link to the nation's news outlets. It is time for the media to hear us ROAR! Call, write, fax, or go in person, but send the message: WE WANT REAL NEWS! WE WANT FAIR NEWS! Also start contacting the major advertisers of news sources that engage in propaganda and let them know how you - the American "consumer" feels! For advertiser contact info go to http://www.hoovers.com/free/

[b]More[/b] ... http://newslink.org/

---> SPEAK UP AMERICA! A Campaign to Take Back the Nation's News Media!

08.29.04 (2:17 pm) [edit]

---> Swift Boat Scandal: Only 24% Now Believe Kerry is Lying, While 50% Believe its a Bush Smear

08.28.04 (6:45 am) [edit]

[b]AP:[/b] "Americans increasingly believe President Bush's re-election campaign is behind the ads attacking Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam experience, a [National Annenberg Election Survey poll found." Interestingly, the % of people who did not believe Kerry earned his medals was never that high - 30% at the peak, which has dropped to 24%. "In polling from Monday through Thursday, 46% said they believed the Bush campaign was behind the ads and 37% said they thought the ads were done independently." However, "After Ginsberg resigned from the campaign on Wednesday, 50% said in polling the next two nights that the Bush campaign was connected to the ads and 34% said it was not." And, as the full force of public response always lags by 7-10 days, we predict that this incident may be what does Bush in.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/...

---> Rumsfeld Misleads about Prison Abuse [Again ...]

08.28.04 (6:39 am) [edit]

Speaking yesterday in Phoenix, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed that there was no way that he and other top military officials could have known about the abuse and torture that took place at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Rumsfeld said, "if you are in Washington, D.C., you can't know what's going on in the midnight shift in one of those many prisons around the world."1 But a classified portion of a report by three Army generals (the Fay report) - obtained by the New York Times - found that the atrocities that took place in military prisons were the result of actions taken at the top of the military hierarchy.

According to secret sections of the Fay report, the former top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez "approved the use in Iraq of some severe interrogation practices intended to be limited to captives held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan."2 Moreover, "by issuing and revising the rules for interrogations in Iraq three times in 30 days, General Sanchez and his legal staff sowed such confusion that interrogators acted in ways that violated the Geneva Conventions."3

A separate investigation headed by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger "faulted the Pentagon's top civilian and military leadership yesterday for failing to exercise adequate oversight and allowing conditions that led to the abuse of detainees in Iraq."4 Rumsfeld was cited specifically for contributing to "confusion over what techniques were permissible for interrogating prisoners in Iraq."5

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

1. "Rumsfeld: No plans to resign ," Arizona Daily Star, 8/27/04.
2. "Army's Report Faults General in Prison Abuse," New York Times, 8/27/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Top Pentagon Leaders Faulted in Prison Abuse," Washington Post, 8/25/04.
5. Ibid.

---> Neo-con Goon in the Pentagon (Feith, the Fuck) May Be A Spy-Traitor for Israel!!!

08.27.04 (6:05 pm) [edit]

[u][b]FBI Probes if Official Spied for Israel[/b][/u]

WASHINGTON - The FBI (news - web sites) is investigating a Pentagon (news - web sites) official for allegedly spying for Israel, including the passing of classified materials about secret White House deliberations on Iran, a federal law enforcement official said Friday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the investigation is continuing and no arrests have yet been made.

The investigation was first reported Friday evening by CBS News.

David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said: "We categorically deny these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous."

The law enforcement official would provide few details about the investigation, except to confirm that U.S. investigators are looking into the possibility that the Pentagon official passed classified information to employees at the main pro-Israeli lobbying group in Washington, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, which then allegedly gave them to the Israeli government.

AIPAC officials would not immediately comment.

The federal law enforcement official refused to identify the Pentagon employee who is under investigation, but said the person works in the office of Douglas J. Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official.

Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, is a key aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, working on sensitive policy issues, including American policy toward Iraq (news - web sites) and Iran.

The federal law enforcement official, and another law enforcement official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the investigation centers on whether the employee in Feith's office passed secrets about Bush administration policy toward Iran to the Israelis.

President Bush (news - web sites) has identified Iran as part of an "axis of evil," along with North Korea (news - web sites) and the former Iraqi regime.

Pentagon officials refused to comment, referring all questions to the Justice Department (news - web sites). - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

[u][b]US examines 'Israeli spy' claim[/b][/u]

[i][b]A top Pentagon analyst is under investigation for having allegedly spied for Israel, according to reports[/b][/i].

The FBI believes the Pentagon employee gave Israel access to secret material regarding US policy towards Iran, US TV network CBS has claimed.

Israel's Washington embassy has denied the allegations, describing them as "completely false and outrageous".

CBS says the analyst worked on US policy in Iraq and has ties to leading officials in the Department of Defence.

The network said the FBI believed the analyst spied for Israel "from within the office of the secretary of defence [Donald Rumsfeld]".

It claimed the suspected spy had ties with Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, both of whom are believed to have played key roles in planning the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

[b]'No arrests' [/b]

Last year, the alleged spy handed over the draft of a US presidential concerning policy towards Iran, the network said, citing unnamed sources.

"This put the Israelis - according to one of our sources - 'inside the decision-making loop' so they could 'try to influence the outcome'," CBS said.

A security official interviewed by the Associated Press agency confirmed an investigation was underway but said no arrests have been made.

The anonymous official also appears to confirm a claim in CBS' report that the alleged spy is thought to have passed on the classified information to using pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

A spokesman for the group, Josh Block, said the claim was "baseless and false".

He said the group "would not condone or tolerate for a second any violation of US law or interests".

David Siegel, a spokesman for Israel's embassy in Washington said: "We categorically deny these allegations." - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...

---> Pentagon Official: 'Half of govt secrets shouldn't be secret' [Easy-peasy Bush crimes cover-up]

08.27.04 (1:01 pm) [edit]

[b]'Half of govt secrets shouldn't be secret'[/b]

Washington, DC, Aug. 24 (UPI) -- The official in charge of information security at the Pentagon and the government's secrecy watchdog told lawmakers Tuesday that at least half of the information the U.S. government classifies every year should not be kept secret.

Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Counter Intelligence and Security Carol Haave testified before a House panel about the problem of over-classification by government agencies. She was joined by the administration's secrecy watchdog, Bill Leonard, head of the Information Security Oversight Office.

Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., the panel chairman, called the system for safeguarding the nation's secrets "incomprehensibly complex" and "so bloated it often does not distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant."

The panel heard examples of information that was classified by one agency, then released by another; information that was redacted from one part of a document by an agency, but published in another part of the same document; and information that an agency insisted should be classified until it was pointed out it was available on the agency's own Web site.

The hearing was one of an unprecedented summer recess series held to consider the recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

The commission found that "current security requirements nurture over-classification" that was a barrier to the information sharing between agencies and with local law enforcement that they decreed vital to the fight against terrorism.

Although no commission members testified Tuesday, the body's Chairman Tom Kean, the former GOP Governor of New Jersey, has said that one of the great surprises of the unprecedented access he and his fellow commissioners were given to highly classified government documents was finding out how much of it he already knew from reading the newspapers.

Shays said there was broad agreement that many of the 14 million pieces of information the government classified last year did not need to be secret, but that estimates of how bad the problem was varied wildly.

"Some estimate 10 percent of current secrets should never have been classified. Others put the extent of over-classification as high as 90 percent," he said, and asked the witnesses for their estimate.

"How about if I say 50-50," Haave responded, after initially demurring to answer. She said that while there was over-classification it generally was not done maliciously, but because "people have a tendency to err on the side of caution."

Leonard said that there were two kinds of over-classification, and both were growing.

He said that the worst kind was classification of information that was "ineligible to be classified" under President Bush's executive order governing secrecy, introduced in March 2003. That order says that information can lawfully be classified only if its "unauthorized disclosure ... reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security."

He said that there was a disturbing increase in the number of classification decisions in "clear, blatant violation of the order."

But even where information met the criteria for classification, he said, which made the decision "a matter of judgment," more than half of it classified "really should not be classified in terms of what we lose -- the price we pay for classification outweighs any perception, any advantage we perceive we gain."

The problem, said Bill Crowell, a former deputy director of the National Security Agency who has served on a number of commissions inquiring into classification and secrecy, was that the system dated from the Cold War.

"The current system assumes that it is possible to determine in advance who needs to know particular information, and that the risks associated with disclosure are greater than the potential benefits of wider information sharing," he said.

As a result, there were significant incentives to protect information, but none to share it. - http://www.washtimes.com/upi-...

---> Where Is The Shame???

08.27.04 (11:49 am) [edit]

Max Cleland, minus the three limbs he lost in Vietnam, showed up in his wheelchair outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Wednesday to suggest that the president take the simple and decent step of condemning the slime that is being spread by Bush supporters against the war record of John Kerry.

He didn't get very far. The president was busy vacationing and had neither the time nor the inclination to meet with Mr. Cleland, a former U.S. senator who was himself the target of vicious, unconscionable attacks by the G.O.P. slime machine when he ran for re-election in Georgia in 2002.

Later, at a press conference under the hot Crawford sun, Mr. Cleland told reporters: "The question is, where is George Bush's honor? Where is his shame?"

Mr. Cleland reminded reporters of the scurrilous attacks by Bush forces against Senator John McCain in the Republican presidential primary in 2000 and said: "Keep in mind, this president has gone after three Vietnam veterans in four years. That's got to stop."

In what is surely the most important election of the last half-century, we seem trapped in the politics of the madhouse. What is incredible is that these attacks on men who served not just honorably, but heroically, are coming from a hawkish party that is controlled by an astonishing number of men who sprinted as far from the front lines as they could when they were of fighting age and their country was at war.

Among them:

Mr. Bush himself, the nation's commander in chief and the biggest hawk of all. He revels in the accouterments of combat. The story was somewhat different when he was 22 years old and eligible for combat himself. He managed to get into the cushy confines of the Texas Air National Guard at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968 - a year in which more than a half-million American troops were in the war zone and more than 14,000 were killed.

The story gets murky after that. We know the future president breezed off at some point to work on a political campaign in Alabama, skipped a required flight physical in 1972 and was suspended from flying. He supported the war in Vietnam but was never in any danger of being sent there.

Vice President Dick Cheney, another fierce administration hawk. Mr. Cheney asked for and received five deferments when he was eligible for the draft. He told senators at a confirmation hearing in 1989, "I had other priorities in the 60's than military service." Many draft-age Americans had similar priorities - getting an education, getting married and starting a family.

Attorney General John Ashcroft. He is reported to have said, "I would have served, if asked." But with the war raging in Vietnam, he received six student deferments and an "occupational deferment" based on the essential nature of a civilian job at Southwest Missouri State University - teaching business law to undergraduates.

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary and a fanatical hawk on Iraq. He was not fanatical about Vietnam and escaped the draft with student deferments.

There are many others.

I would like to see at least some of these men, in keeping with their positions as leaders of a great nation, stand up and say it is wrong - just wrong - to try and reap a cheap political gain by defacing the sacrifices of individuals like John Kerry, John McCain and Max Cleland, who put themselves in mortal danger in the service of their country.

It's one thing to decline to serve. It's quite another to throw mud at those who did serve - or to remain silent as allies hurl the mud.

I've interviewed several soldiers and marines who have suffered grave wounds in Iraq, including the loss of limbs. A permanent place of honor should be reserved for them in the pantheon of American heroes. The idea that someone some years from now may trash their service for political gain is beyond disgusting.

George W. Bush ought to call off his dogs. The one thing we ought to be able to do in this hyperpoliticized era is rally in a bipartisan way behind those who have been willing to fight our wars.

The privileged classes no longer feel an obligation to put their lives - or their children's lives - on the line in defense of the nation. The very least they could do is insist that those who have put themselves in harm's way be treated with respect. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

---> More Evidence That Rumsfeld Lied About Abu Ghraib Crimes Against Humanity ...

08.27.04 (11:43 am) [edit]

Speaking yesterday in Phoenix, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed that there was no way that he and other top military officials could have known about the abuse and torture that took place at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Rumsfeld said, "if you are in Washington, D.C., you can't know what's going on in the midnight shift in one of those many prisons around the world."1 But a classified portion of a report by three Army generals (the Fay report) - obtained by the [i]New York Times [/i]- found that the atrocities that took place in military prisons were the result of actions taken at the top of the military hierarchy.

According to secret sections of the Fay report, the former top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez "approved the use in Iraq of some severe interrogation practices intended to be limited to captives held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan."2 Moreover, "by issuing and revising the rules for interrogations in Iraq three times in 30 days, General Sanchez and his legal staff sowed such confusion that interrogators acted in ways that violated the Geneva Conventions."3

A separate investigation headed by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger "faulted the Pentagon's top civilian and military leadership yesterday for failing to exercise adequate oversight and allowing conditions that led to the abuse of detainees in Iraq."4 Rumsfeld was cited specifically for contributing to "confusion over what techniques were permissible for interrogating prisoners in Iraq."5

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

1. "Rumsfeld: No plans to resign ," Arizona Daily Star, 8/27/04.
2. "Army's Report Faults General in Prison Abuse," New York Times, 8/27/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Top Pentagon Leaders Faulted in Prison Abuse," Washington Post, 8/25/04.
5. Ibid.

---> Top 10 HippoCrites of the Week!!!

08.27.04 (11:38 am) [edit]

[b]The Top 10 Conservative Idiots of the Week!!! [/b]

There are two months to go to the election, George W. Bush's approval rating is slumping, and he has no issues to run on. What's a presidential candidate to do but slime his opponent?

Team Bush (1) has launched an all-out offensive against John Kerry in the last couple of weeks while simultaneously pretending that they have nothing to do with it ...

But Larry Thurlow (2) of the Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth" is part of the plan, as is ...

Michelle Malkin (3) ...

Meanwhile, George W. Bush (4) is sitting back and doing nothing while oil prices reach record highs ...

Elsewhere, Zell Miller (5) is stabbing the Democratic party in the back yet again, Kenneth Cordier isn't the only Bush campaign reject this week - ...

meet Deal Hudson (8), and ...

Alan Keyes (10) continues to provide us all with priceless entertainment. As usual, don't forget the key http://www.democraticundergro... .

[b]For all of the Top 10 HippoCrites of the Week, click here http://www.democraticundergro... [/b]

---> The Bush Betrayal ...

08.26.04 (3:23 pm) [edit]

As we defend liberty and justice abroad, we must always honor those values here at home.
– George W. Bush, October 28, 2003

George W. Bush came to the presidency promising prosperity, peace, and humility. Instead, Bush has spawned record federal budget deficits, launched an unnecessary war, and made America the most hated nation in the world. Bush is expanding federal power and stretching prerogatives in almost every area that captures his fancy. Though Bush continually invokes freedom to sanctify himself and his policies, Bush freedom is based on boundless trust in the righteousness of the rulers and all their actions.

Truth is a lagging indicator in politics. A president's promises and speeches receive far more publicity than subsequent reports and revelations about how his cherished programs crash and burn. This book does not aim to analyze all Bush policies. Instead, it examines an array of his domestic and foreign actions that vivify the damage Bush is inflicting and the danger he poses both to America and the world.

Bush governs like an elective monarch, entitled to reverence and deference on all issues. Secret Service agents ensure that Bush rarely views opponents of his reign, carefully quarantining protesters in "free speech zones" far from public view. The FBI has formally requested that local police monitor antiwar groups and send information on demonstrators to FBI-led terrorism task forces. Thanks to the campaign finance act Bush signed, Americans have also lost much of their freedom to criticize their rulers – at least in the 60 days before an election.

After 9/11, privacy is a luxury Americans supposedly can no longer afford. The administration has left no stone unturned, giving itself powers to sweep up people's e-mail with the FBI's Carnivore system, unleash FBI agents to conduct surveillance almost anywhere, allow G-men to secretly search people's homes, bankroll Pentagon research on creating hundreds of millions of dossiers on Americans, expand the military's role in domestic surveillance, and vacuum up personal data to create a federal "color code" for every air traveler. The administration is defining freedom down, pretending that protection from federal prying is no longer relevant to liberty. Americans are supposed to accept that freedom from terrorism is the ultimate freedom – and nothing else matters any more.

Bush is dropping an iron curtain around the federal government. The Bush administration is hollowing out the Freedom of Information Act, making it more difficult for citizens to discover government actions and abuses. Bush invoked executive privilege to block a congressional investigation into the FBI's role in mass murder in Boston and in framing innocent men for those murders. The Supreme Court tacitly endorsed the Bush doctrine that the feds may carry out mass secret arrests and suppress all information about the roundup (including names of those detained, charges, and details on prison beatings).

Bush is wrapping himself in a flag drenched with the blood of Americans who died due to the failure of the federal government he commanded. The Bush reelection campaign is running television ads showing an American flag flying in front of the ruins of the World Trade Center towers and a flag-draped corpse being carried out of Ground Zero by firefighters. The Republicans will hold their national convention in New York days before the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Bush exploits the 9/11 dead while he stonewalls the 9/11 commission. The Bush reelection team seems convinced that Bush's actions on that day entitle Bush to rule Americans for four more years.

[b]KING OF ALL BOONDOGGLES[/b]

Americans will be forced to pay trillions of dollars in higher taxes in the coming decades to finance George Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. Bush browbeat Congress into enacting the biggest expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The White House blatantly deceived Congress about the cost of the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement, withholding key information that would have guaranteed the defeat of Bush's giveaway. The administration launched a federally financed ad campaign showing a crowd cheering Bush as he signed the new law; federal auditors ruled that the ads were illegal propaganda. The new drug benefit will expedite Medicare's bankruptcy and do nothing to improve medical care for most seniors.

Vote-buying is the prime motive of many Bush policies. Bush signed the most exorbitant farm bill in history in 2002, bilking taxpayers for $180 billion to rain benefits on millionaire landowners and other deserving mendicants. Bush repeatedly bragged that his farm bill was "generous" – as if Washington politicians have carte blanche to redistribute Americans' paychecks to any group they choose. Bush imposed high tariffs on steel imports, wantonly destroying thousands of American manufacturing jobs simply because he wanted to try to snare the endorsement of the United Steel Workers and to boost his reelection chances.

After 9/11, almost every expansion of government became a coup for homeland security. When Bush announced plans to bloat the AmeriCorps "paid volunteer" program, he declared: "One way to defeat terrorism is to show the world the true values of America through the gathering momentum of a million acts of responsibility and decency and service." While Bush portrays AmeriCorps recruits as heroes, AmeriCorps members busy themselves putting on puppet shows to persuade three-year-olds of the value of smoke alarms, hoeing corn at tourist farms, and sanctimoniously picking up litter in bad neighborhoods. Bush summoned every citizen to give four thousand hours of "service." After dubious federal statistics showed a marginal rise in volunteering, Bush hyped the uptick as proof that his leadership is morally rejuvenating America.

The Transportation Security Administration and its 45,000 member airport occupation army is one of the Bush administration's biggest shams. Despite more than $10 billion spent since 9/11, airport screeners are not any more competent than they were in 1987. Yet, as long as TSA brags about seizing millions of pointy objects each year from grandmothers and other scofflaws, Americans are supposed to believe that the endless delays are worthwhile. TSA is punishing critics, slapping fines of up to $1,500 on airline passengers guilty of showing the wrong "attitude" as they pass through TSA checkpoint gauntlets.

Some of Bush's cherished reforms consist of little more than finding new names for old boondoggles. Bush sharply boosted foreign aid and created a new program, the Millennium Challenge Account. Bush denounces traditional foreign aid for bankrolling corruption, and insists that his program rewards governments for being honest. Even though the aid still goes to many of the same Third World politician-looters, the new program's lofty rhetoric automatically converts the money into a force for goodness.

Political cosmetics pervade many Bush policies. The No Child Left Behind Act is perhaps Bush's biggest domestic fraud. The act was falsely sold as giving freedom to local school officials. In reality, it empowers the feds to effectively judge and punish local schools for not fulfilling arbitrary guidelines. Many states are "dumbing down" academic standards, using bureaucratic racketeering to avoid harsh federal sanctions. Though the No Child Left Behind Act promised to permit children to escape "persistently dangerous" schools, most states defined that term to claim that all their schools were safe. As long as people believe Bush cares about children, it doesn't matter that his education policy is a charade.

While Bush hypes himself as a "compassionate conservative," his drug policy relies on wrath and harsh punishment (except for special cases like his niece Noelle Bush and talk show host Rush Limbaugh). John Walters, Bush's drug czar, demonized drug users in federally funded TV ads, portraying people who buy drugs as terrorist financiers threatening America with complete destruction. Federal drug warriors have arrested cancer patients who smoke marijuana to control their chemo-induced nausea, busted doctors who give suffering patients more pain killers than the DEA approves, and carried out high-profile crackdowns on targets ranging from hemp food makers to comedian Tommy Chong (busted for bong trafficking).

[b]TERRORIZING IN THE NAME OF ANTITERRORISM[/b]

Bush appears determined to force Americans to pay almost any price so that he can be a world savior. He declared in December 2003: "I believe we have a responsibility to promote freedom [abroad] that is as solemn as the responsibility is to protecting the American people, because the two go hand in hand." But the Constitution does not grant the president the prerogative to dispose of the lives of American soldiers any place in the world he longs to do a good deed. Though Bush is adept at destroying freedom in America, he has yet to demonstrate any ability to create it in foreign lands.

Bush greatly exaggerates the benefits of his conquests. After the Afghan war, Bush repeatedly told Americans that they had liberated Afghan women and that Afghan girls were now going to school. Yet, women are still heavily oppressed in most of Afghanistan and most Afghan girls still do not attend schools. While Bush portrays Afghanistan as a liberated new democracy, most Afghans are brutalized either by warlords or the resurgent Taliban. But the Bush White House rarely allows cold facts to impede a warm and touching story line.

For Bush, the right to rule apparently includes the right to lie. In his 2004 State of the Union address, Bush proclaimed that, as a result of actions such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "No one can now doubt the word of America." A year earlier, in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush rattled off a long list of biological and chemical weapons that he claimed he knew that Iraq possessed. No such weapons have been found. Bush has never shown a speck of contrition for his false prewar statements. Instead, he acts like a clumsy magician who assumes his audience is too feebleminded to recognize the elaborate trick that fell to pieces in front of their eyes.

The war in Iraq is the most visible debacle of the Bush war on terrorism. The president pirouetted in a flight suit on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, in front of a giant banner proclaiming, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." But Iraq subsequently became far more treacherous. On July 2, when asked about Iraqi attacks on American forces, Bush issued a taunt: "Bring 'em on!" In the subsequent months, more than 600 American soldiers were killed and thousands were wounded and maimed as Iraqis took up the Bush challenge. While Bush continually brags of how the United States "liberated" 25 million Iraqis, the U.S. military government vigorously suppresses television stations and shuts down newspapers that criticize American forces or U.S. policy. While Bush rhapsodizes about winning Iraqi hearts and minds, U.S. troops carry out crackdowns with names such as Operation Iron Hammer, conduct thousands of no-knock raids in people's homes searching for weapons, routinely demolish the houses of suspected resistance fighters, imprison people solely for being relatives of insurgents, and kill hundreds of innocent civilians. Bush-style benevolence was best captured by U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Nathan Sassaman, commanding a battalion that enclosed an entire Iraqi town with barbed wire, when he observed: "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them."

Bush proudly declared last year: "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have." In reality, Bush has done more to formally subvert rights than any American president of the modern era. Bush claimed the right to label people as enemy combatants and thereby nullify all of their legal rights. Once detainees had no rights, torturing them apparently became permissible – at least in the eyes of some Justice Department and Pentagon officials. The Bush administration ignored warning after warning of the gross abuses that were being committed against detainees in Afghanistan, Cuba, and Iraq. After the torture photos from the Abu Ghraib prison became public in April 2004, Bush repeatedly falsely claimed that the abuses were the result of a few wayward soldiers. In speeches in his reelection campaign, Bush continued to brag about ending Saddam's torture.

Foreign military "victories" have done nothing to increase the competence of homeland security. Even though federal agencies' failure to combine terrorist watch lists helped allow two known Al Qaeda members to enter the United States before the 9/11 hijackings, the federal government still does not have a single, up-to-date terrorist watch list. The General Accounting Office concluded in late 2003 that the feds are still doing a lousy job of pursuing terrorist finances, despite a vast increase in the financial surveillance of average Americans. A federal commission on terrorist threats reported in December 2003 that federal, state, and local government agencies are still doing a very poor job of sharing key information about terrorist threats. And some of the information that the feds do send along – such as the FBI warning that people carrying world almanacs could be terrorist plotters – aids only late-night television comics.

Bush's foreign policies are creating more terrorists than he is vanquishing. There are far more terrorist attacks in the Middle East now than before the United States invaded Iraq. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, declared in early 2004 that "Al Qaeda remains as dangerous as it was before September 11." British intelligence experts warn that Al Qaeda is a greater threat than before. Bush's interventionist policies and meddling are spurring intense animosity throughout the Arab and Muslim world. And there is no evidence that the Bush administration is competent to protect Americans from all the new enemies its policies are breeding.

[b]REPEALING 1776[/b]

President George W. Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and other administration officials continually remind Americans that everything changed after 9/11. But does that include the Constitution? Are the myths of 9/11 undermining the truths of 1776?

The Founding Fathers taught Americans that power is dangerous regardless of who wields it. Bush would have people believe that, after 9/11, America will perish if the president lacks boundless power. The Founding Fathers saw individual rights as bulwarks against government abuses. Bush acts as if individual rights are barriers to public safety. The Founding Fathers sought to deter tyranny with checks and balances within the federal government. Bush acts as if the only legitimate check on his power is people's chance to cast a ballot once every four years. Bush perennially talks as if tax cuts are the only protection people need against Big Government.

The Bush presidency is continuing and accelerating many of the noxious trends of the Clinton era, most of which started long before William Jefferson Clinton became president. Many of the abuses of the last few years would likely have occurred regardless of who was elected president in 2000. However, the glorification of Bush after 9/11 would not have reached such extremes without the slavish efforts of many Republican congressmen and much of the conservative news media. The president's rarely challenged power grabs revealed the cravenness of many of Washington's avowed champions of freedom.

Though this book focuses primarily on the blunders and deceits of Bush and his team, Democratic members of Congress are either complicit in or acquiescent to most of Bush's abuses. Most of the budget disputes in Washington involve how to waste tax dollars, not whether tax dollars should be wasted. Some Democrats did yeoman work – such as Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) in opposing the war on Iraq, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) in opposing the Patriot Act, and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in opposing Ashcroft. Yet Democratic members of Congress as a group have been less vigilant and courageous in opposing misgovernment than were Republicans during the first Clinton administration.

Regardless of who wins in November 2004, Americans must recognize the damage the federal government is inflicting on their rights, liberty, and safety. Even if Bush wins reelection, the more Americans who recognize the failures and frauds of his first term, the more difficult it will be for Bush to perpetrate new abuses in his second term. Americans must understand the Bush Betrayal if they are ever to rein in the government. - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/b...

---> Bush is a Coward in Every Way ...

08.26.04 (8:24 am) [edit]

[b]Josh Marshall writes[/b], "The stubborn refusal ever to change course, which [Bush] tries to pass off as a sign of leadership or devotion to principle, is actually an example of his cowardice. For the same reasons, he runs from soldiers' funerals like they were burying victims of the plague -- because it's the easy way out. If there's a problem, he denies it or finds someone else to take the fall for him. Everyone has these tendencies in their measure. No one is perfect. But they define Bush. The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face, those are the same qualities that led [Bush] to lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due. That's the argument John Kerry needs to be making."

[b]More on [/b]... http://www.talkingpointsmemo....

---> Bush Flip-Flops & Lies About His Neo-con Iraq Fiasco ...

08.26.04 (7:10 am) [edit]

[b]The Bush Betrayal
Chapter One: Introduction [/b]

As we defend liberty and justice abroad, we must always honor those values here at home.
– George W. Bush, October 28, 2003

George W. Bush came to the presidency promising prosperity, peace, and humility. Instead, Bush has spawned record federal budget deficits, launched an unnecessary war, and made America the most hated nation in the world. Bush is expanding federal power and stretching prerogatives in almost every area that captures his fancy. Though Bush continually invokes freedom to sanctify himself and his policies, Bush freedom is based on boundless trust in the righteousness of the rulers and all their actions.

Truth is a lagging indicator in politics. A president's promises and speeches receive far more publicity than subsequent reports and revelations about how his cherished programs crash and burn. This book does not aim to analyze all Bush policies. Instead, it examines an array of his domestic and foreign actions that vivify the damage Bush is inflicting and the danger he poses both to America and the world.

Bush governs like an elective monarch, entitled to reverence and deference on all issues. Secret Service agents ensure that Bush rarely views opponents of his reign, carefully quarantining protesters in "free speech zones" far from public view. The FBI has formally requested that local police monitor antiwar groups and send information on demonstrators to FBI-led terrorism task forces. Thanks to the campaign finance act Bush signed, Americans have also lost much of their freedom to criticize their rulers – at least in the 60 days before an election.

After 9/11, privacy is a luxury Americans supposedly can no longer afford. The administration has left no stone unturned, giving itself powers to sweep up people's e-mail with the FBI's Carnivore system, unleash FBI agents to conduct surveillance almost anywhere, allow G-men to secretly search people's homes, bankroll Pentagon research on creating hundreds of millions of dossiers on Americans, expand the military's role in domestic surveillance, and vacuum up personal data t