Mark Smith     June 2004+

 

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Table of Contents
Thank you Fundies for 8 years of hell. Your ignorance elected this idiot- TWICE!
Hitler_&_Bush 750_Injured_Flown_Out_of_Iraq_Each_Month Bill_Maher_Commenting_on_George_Bush Emboldening_The_Terrorists Brokeback_Mountain_II AN_APOLOGY_FROM_A_BUSH_VOTER DEMONcrats Drive_Out_The_Bush_Regime Memo_On_Torture Lied_Into_War Bushs_Crappy_Crusade_in_Iraq (& # of dead) Bush_Family_Values Terror_Alert_Prediction Set_Free..._of_George_Bush Expect_a_Stupid_President_to_do_Stupid_Things A_Letter_to_All_Who_Voted_for_George_W._Bush The_Ever-Changing_Storyline_of_WHY_We_Invaded_Iraq Iraqiization_of_the_War_a_Total_Failure Republicans_and_Lynching-_Hand_in_Hand Who_is_Worse-_Clinton_or_Bush Bush-_That_Sinking_Feeling Save_America_from_Saddam Free_Trade Amend_The_Constitution George_Galloway-_Iraq_War_Based_on_Pack_of_Lies Three_Strikes_for_Rumsfeld To_Honor_the_Dead Bush_the_Good_Christian_LIAR Oliver_Cromwell_&_The_Air_Force_Academy Persecution_Complex	Click on the finger to play the video. Opens in its own separate window. "I will set a different tone. I will restore civility and respect to our national politics. ... I will work with Republicans and reach out to Democrats ... I will treat the other party with respect, and when we make progress, I will share the credit. ... I will unite our nation, not divide it. I will bring Americans together." George Bush, April 2000   Tee Shirt (no longer) Available Due to the dismal lack of sales on this item, I have decided to pull it from the market. There weren't enough sales to make it profitable, only irritating. Rhetoric -vs- Reality: we've heard the rhetoric, and now we've lived thru the reality. See for yourself with the video above exactly how Bush is "restoring civility and respect" in the post-Clinton era. As for Christian presidents, Bush isn't worthy to even wash the feet of Jimmy Carter. Can you even IMAGINE Carter doing something like flipping off America? Regardless, you Fundies are all thinking:  Thank goodness we have such a good and devout Christians leading our country!!! Bush & Cheney are such  better moral examples to our young people than that... BILL CLINTON, who had- gasp! SEX outside of marriage. Who did he think he was anyway, a man of the cloth such as Rev. Jimmy Swaggart or Rev. Jim Bakker, carrying on that way?
Blood_on_Fundy_Hands The_Illegal_Invasion_&_Occupation_of_Iraq Bush_Redneck_Supporter_of_The_Year_Award Sweet_Neo_Con_(The_Rolling_Stones) Misc_Quotes_&_Thoughts	Doonesbury, for Sunday, July 24, 2005. We can only dream...
While_Rome_Burned__(Bush_and_Nero_the_same) A_Piece_of_Work-_Just_How_Low_Can_Bush_Go ? .True_Love.. Hundreds_of_US_Soldiers_Wasted_in_A-Wreck Inner_Moral_Compass??? $1,000_Per_Person:_The_Cost_of_Bushs_Crusade_(so_far)	John Bolton- Bush's latest turd tossed into the international punch bowl. WWIII  here we come!!!
The_Christian_Reich Bush_the_Christian_Hypocrite GOD_HELP_AMERICA Sheep  (by Mark Smith) Misc_Items,_Thoughts,_Comments
Pre-Election 2004 Items
INTRODUCTION (Pre-Election) List_of_Reasons_Bush_Must_Go_ Oprah_Slaps_Bush Hometown_Paper_of_Bush_Endorses_Kerry  (excellent!) Bush_Bored_With_Fighting_Terrorism Bushisms-_Stupidities_or_Freudian_Slips??? The_Bush_Monkey
The_Anti-Christ Misc_Quotes_and_Snippets Books_&_Movies Bushtianity_and_Bushtians-_Fundy_Christians_LOVE_Bush The_Conservative_Case_for_Kerry
Manipulating_The_Data Great_Links Significant_News_Articles Humor-_What_is_Funny_About_This_Election Why_Fundy-Mental_Christians_Support_Bush
Jihad_Joe Graphical_Representation-_US_Soldiers_Killed_in_Iraq Al_Gore_Rips_Bush_a_New_One Al_Gore_Speaks_on_Iraq Seymour_Hershs_ACLU_Keynote_Speech_Transcribed Bush_Fucked_Over_McCain_in_2000 Feeling_the_Draft Nickle_and_Diming_the_War-_STILL_No_Armor_Even_in_October_2004
Bush_Likes_Waffles_How_About_This_One! Rev._Al_Sharpton_at_the_DNC_Convention_July_28_2004 I_Feel_Like_Im_Fixing_to_Die-__Anti-War_Lyrics Missing_In_Action-_from_the_New_York_Times A_Flip_and_a_Flop_and_Now_Just_a_Flop-__Michael_Moore Muzzling_Soldiers_Is_Nothing_New-_by_David_Hackworth Why_We_Cannot_Win-__Sgt_Al_Lorentz,_Iraq Jokes Bibliography	O What a Tangled Web We Weave... When First We Practice to Deceive.

 

Bush, Bushites, & Their Damn Crusade in Iraq

 

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'We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators'

Pre-War Prediction of Dick Cheney, Meet The Press, March 16, 2003

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Hitler & Bush 

 

 

 

 

 

750 Injured Flown Out of Iraq Each Month 

 

750 Per Month, Thanks to George Bush

This is the average number of American soldiers that are injured so severely that they are flown out of Iraq on hospital flights to Germany, month in and month out, last month, this month, and every month to come, thanks to George Bush- and those genius Christian Fundies that re-elected him. Bush has these Americans driving around Baghdad etc. just to provide target practice for Islamic snipers and bombers.  And let me remind the gung-ho pro-any-war types; there's no "glory" in coming back from a war with a life-long brain injury, wearing a dirty diaper and drooling on yourself for the rest of your life.

 

"Support The Troops"
Republican Fundies:  "Support The Troops"  to Fundy word twisters means sending even more of them into the meatgrinder of Iraq to die or get maimed.
Democrats: "Support The Troops" means keeping them OUT OF Iraq in the first place to prevent their being killed or maimed.
Question:  Who REALLY  "supports the troops"????

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Maher Commenting on George Bush 

 

Bill Maher, commenting on George Bush

 

This man, come on, let’s get real. Joe Scarborough did a whole week of panel discussions on whether he was an idiot. And when you’ve lost Scarborough Country… And I think the science is in on this question, I think he is, the people who were defending him were saying, well, he’s just inarticulate. But inarticulate doesn’t explain foreign policy. I mean it’s not that complicated. The man is a rube, he is a dolt, he is a yokel on the world stage, he is a Gilligan who cannot find his own ass with his own two hands. He is a vain half-wit who interrupts one incoherent sentence with another incoherent sentence.   …The alternatives (Gore and Kerry) would have actually been better presidents both times. Al Gore would have been a better president; John Kerry would have been a better president; NOT because they’re democrats but because they READ. They’re READERS- wow, what a concept. The republicans are the party of ideas. Big, stupid ideas.    … The surge means more of what’s not working now. And this is an amazing situation, cause here��s George Bush, the decider, deciding all on his own that this was a good idea. This was not a recommendation from our commanders on the ground. This was not a recommendation from the Iraq Study Group, as you know. It’s not supported by the American people. It’s not supported by the Iraqi people. It’s just President “Charles in Charge” spit-balling, thinking outside the bun, and saying to himself, “EVERYBODY else is wrong. I ALONE know what the right answer is. I got everybody else’s recommendations, and then I, you know, I talk to The Big Guy.”  Even the Pope admitted being wrong about that thing he said about the Muslims. But this recovering alcoholic from Midland Texas, HE cannot be wrong at ANY point.      (The Tonight Show, 2/20/07)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emboldening The Terrorists 

Barney Fife says:  "Bush can do no wrong! So, whatEVER Bush did, even break the law and bragging about it, well,  it must have been the right thing to do, 'cause Bush can do no wrong!"

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"I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least,
 and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."
-Steven Colbert 4/29/06   White House Correspondents Association dinner

I really do believe this man will go down as the worst president this country has ever had. 
(Senator Harry Reid, Nevada. The New York Times National Edition, 3/17/06 p. A19)

"Bush Mourns the Fallen, Vows to Create  More"  -Mark Smith, 11-27-05

"Let Iraqis stand up for Iraq." -Senator John Kerry, 11/18/05

"You don't call John Murtha a coward. … I mean, Dick Cheney had five deferments in a row in Vietnam, when John Murtha went to serve."  -Senator John Kerry, 11/18/05

"I like guys who've never been (to war) that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments (i.e. Vice President Dick Cheney) and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."  -Congressman John Murtha 11/16/05

 

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  "Emboldening & Encouraging The Terrorists" 

  "Bring it on!!!" G.W. Bush

Thanks to George W. Bush's childish taunt inviting Terrorists world-wide to come to Iraq and kill Americans, they have been doing so now by the thousands. Brave but inept George is good at starting fights that others have to finish, while he himself, Mr. "Avoid Vietnam via National Guard" sits backs and enjoys the mayhem from his easy chair safe in the White House. No one- I repeat: NO ONE has "emboldened" or "encouraged" the terrorists more than George himself with this stupid and totally irresponsible taunt. Has any, ANYone, in this country, made a personal and VERY public invitation to all the Terrorists of the world to come and kill American soldiers in Iraq? Has Cindy Sheehan? John Kerry? Michael Moore? If anyone is looking for grounds for impeachment, here it is, for thanks to George's personal invitation, terrorists from throughout the entire world have flocked to Iraq and put over 2,125 Americans into body bags and blown arms and legs and other body parts (think tits & dicks) off another 15,000 sons & daughters. "Emboldening The Terrorists"??? That's you, George, you fucking dumbass.  Some of the other stupid things George has done that have aided, abetted and "emboldened" the enemy (aren't those crimes???) are the following}

• Disbanding the Iraqi army and stiffing them on their pensions. RESULTS:      400,000 pissed-off well-armed & trained "I hate Americans!" unemployed soldiers.

• Allowing unrestrained looting to go on for a month after our invasion. RESULTS:   All criminal records & government organization were destroyed.

• Allowing Terrorists to empty out Saddam's arsenals and ammo dumps. RESULTS:   That ammunition is now used in over 700 attacks PER DAY in Iraq.

• Not ever putting enough American troops in to get the job done. RESULTS:   Always having to go back and recapture the same areas: Fallujah- 4 times already.

• Torture of prisoners, and desecration of the Koran. RESULTS:    Terrorists count this as their #1 recruiting tool to sign people up worldwide to fight against us.

• Forcing American troops to drive around Iraq in under-armored Humvees and totally UN-armored trucks rather than using helicopters.  RESULTS:    Lots of target practice for the bad guys, and 15,000 fucked-up Americans.

 

 

 

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Brokeback Mountain II

Watch the love story of all time- how a tough go-it-alone Texan cowboy stands up to flag-waving yahoo's and sells our national ports (and sells out our national security) to his middle eastern lover, and also allows the price of gasoline to double and triple, making his rich Arabian lover even richer. And watch how he continues to fool the yokels into thinking he's still a macho American cowboy with only their best interests at heart, yet gasoline stays above $3 a gallon. See "Brokeback Mountain II" playing in real life (or a gas station) near you!  

 

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AN_APOLOGY_FROM_A_BUSH_VOTER

AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER    Monday, May 8th, 2006

By Doug McIntyre / Host, McIntyre in the Morning Talk Radio 790 KABC

There’s nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re wrong. By the way, admitting you’re wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you don’t believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on the limb in public, it’s out there where everyone can see it, or in my case, hear it.

So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.

In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn’t sure about the Texas Governor. He had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than that? What? Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of President Gore was… unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.

For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either. He cut taxes and I like tax cuts.

Then September 11th happened. September 11th changed everything for me, like it did for so many of you. After September 11th, all the intramural idiocy of American politics stopped being funny. We had been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy and it was time for all of us to row in the same direction.

And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President when he said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11 murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the terrorists and the nations that harbored them.

I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan, after all, that’s where the Taliban was, that’s where al-Qaida trained the killers, that’s where Bin Laden was.

And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.

Then, the talk turned to Iraq and I winced again.

I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But Colin Powell impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case had to be strong. I was worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, “The Project for the New American Century.” It’s been around since ‘92, and it raised alarm bells because it was based on a theory, “Democratizing the Middle East” and I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried because Iraq was being justified on a radical new basis, “pre-emptive war.” Any time we do something without historical precedent I get nervous.

But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat of Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned to Saddam passing nukes on to terror groups. After 9-11, the risk was too great. As the President said, “The next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.” At least that’s what I thought at the time.

I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center. I worked with a guy, Frank O’Brien, who put the elevators in both towers. I lost a very close friend on September 11th. 103 floor, tower one, Cantor Fitzgerald. Tim Coughlin was his name. If we had to take out Iraq to make sure something like that, or worse, never happened again, so be it. I knew the consequences. We have a soldier in our house. None of this was theoretical in my house.

But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk, inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as the President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of September 11th.

I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will make the battlefield decisions, and the war won’t be run from Washington. Yet, politics has consistently determined what the troops can and can’t do on the ground and any commander who did not go along with the administration was sacked, and in some cases, maligned.

I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found. Then the Vice President told us we were in the “waning days of the insurgency.” And I started wincing again. The President says we have to stay the course but what if it’s the wrong course?

It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to victory. We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making tapes. It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t create this reality, bad policy did.

Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a President’s place in history. So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.

But we don’t live fifty years in the future. We live now. We have to make public policy decisions now. We have to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose now.

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both.

Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding — the competition is fierce for the worst of the worst. Still, the damage this President has done is enormous. It will take decades to undo, and that’s assuming we do everything right from now on. His mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.

And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let’s talk for a minute about President Bush’s domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the public’s money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about its true cost. It was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller government. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or worker’s rights.

I’ve talked so often about the border issue, I won’t bore you with a rehash. It’s enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for the wages of working people; he’s debased the work ethic itself. “Jobs Americans won’t do!” He doesn’t believe in the sovereign borders of the country he’s sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11 world. The President’s January 7th, 2004 speech on immigration, his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a deal breaker for me. I couldn’t and didn’t vote for him in 2004. And I’m glad I didn’t.

Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any American’s lifetime.

You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you’re right, history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on terror, then history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation.

None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt. This is the second crime of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times like these when America needs a vibrant opposition to check the power of a run-amuck majority party. It requires it. It doesn’t work without one. Like the high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a healthy, positive opposition offers a path back to the center where all healthy societies live.

Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking no responsibility for anything. In fairness, I don’t believe a Democrat president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately, I don’t know if President Gore would have gone into Afghanistan. And that’s one of the many problems with the Democrats.

The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect, but it has only collapsed once, in the 1850s, and the result was civil war.

I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on the brink of a second collapsed. It’s currently running on spin, anger, revenge, and pots and pots and pots of money.

We’re being governed by paper-mache patriots; brightly painted red, white and blue, but hollow to the core. Both parties have mastered the cynical arts of media manipulation and fund raising. They’ve learned the lessons of Watergate and burn the tapes. They have learned to divide the nation for their own gain. They have demonstrated the willingness to exploit any tragedy for personal advantage. The contempt they have for the American people is without parallel.

This is painful to say, and I’m sure for many of you, painful to read. But it’s impossible to heal the country until we’re willing to acknowledge the truth no matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves off sugar coated partisan lies.

With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system is broken, so broken, it’s almost inevitable it pukes up the Al Gores and George W. Bushes. Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men and women of vision and accomplishment? Why do we have to settle for recycled hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is basic competence and simple honesty too much to ask?

It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the possibility that I’m all wet about everything I’ve just said. But I’m putting it out there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this is how I see it today. I don’t say any of this lightly. I’ve thought about this for months and months. But eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own.

I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I don’t believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means we’re on our own to save this magnificent country. The United States of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused and it’s rightful owners, We the People, had better step up to the plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.

So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn’t be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part, but at this point whose buying the act?

Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he’s down. After all, you were kicking him while he was up.

You were right, I was wrong.

 

 

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DEMONcrats 

 

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Drive Out The Bush Regime

 

 

Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

 

People look at all this and think of Hitler — and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

 

 

 

 

 

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"Lied Into War"

"Why doesn't someone ask Bush why the story line
 for why we invaded Iraq has changed so many times?"

• Endless "Whack The Gopher" Arcade Game      There are NOT enough American troops to hold the territory they fight and die for. They invade a city, chase the Islamic Party Poopers out of the city, then leave the city after a week or so, and the bad guys move right back in. From the L.A. Times (10/5/05 p. A3) "The offensive... brought Marines BACK to Haditha... two months AFTER driving insurgents out of the area. US forces suffered heavy looses in that early August assault: 14 Marines died when an armored vehicle hit a landmine. DAYS AFTER American forces left, however, militants were BACK IN CONTROL, dominating a region of 100,000 people with no... police force."  So tell me, Bushies, just WHAT THE FUCK did those 14 Marines die for back in August, when you GAVE THE CITY BACK to the bad guys just to be RE-taken by us in October??? Are you going to tell their grieving families that, "yes, your only son died so that Haditha could be free of terrorists... for a whole 3 days." Those 14 Marines THREW THEIR LIVES AWAY FOR N-O-T-H-I-N-G.  Nothing.  A total and complete WASTE OF HUMAN LIFE, thanks to George Bush's lack of planning and stubborness.

• Do The Math:  We'll Be There Forever      On "Meet The Press" today (Oct 2, 2005) it was mentioned that the Iraqi battalions that are able to stand on their own- without U.S. forces- has decreased from three in July to just one now. And as it will take about 140 of these battalions of Iraqis to replace the U.S. forces there, and as its taken (so far) two and one half YEARS just to end up with ONE (which may or may not "disappear"), doing the math... that means that America will have thousands of soldiers dying each year in Iraq for another 347 years, up into the year 2352 AD. But Bush calls for "patience". Patience, my ass!

• Going Backwards = "Moving Forward!"       Also mentioned on Meet The Press (Oct 2, 2005), but with no apparent outrage, is just WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO 2/3^rds OF THE IRAQI BATTALIONS SINCE THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER??? This is what Bush called "progress" in his national radio address yesterday-  progress to him is 2/3^rds of Iraqi battalions "disappearing" into thin air, and this moving BACKWARDS Bush calls "moving forward"!!! Is Bush at ALL in touch with reality, or has drinking got him living in la la land????

• 500 Attacks EVERY DAY      Meet The Press, (Oct 2, 2005), also mentioned the number of daily attacks by the Muslim party poopers is averaging FIVE HUNDRED- that's right, 500, each and every day. Compare this  number to the two or three a day acknowledged on FOX or CBS etc news. Yeah, George, that's REAL progress- IF you're an insurgent!

• Honor The Dead With Even More Dead?      Bush says the reason he can't pull out of Iraq is "to honor the soldiers who have already died". Let me translate that into plain English, so all can see the absurdity of it:  he want to "honor the soldiers who have already died" with even more dead soldiers, as the only way to properly honor a mistake of this magnitude... is by increasing the magnitude of the mistake!  As there will never come a time when he WON'T want to "honor the soldiers who have already died" there will therefore also never come a time when he can pull the troops out. Therefore, to the already huge stack of dead rotting American corpses he intends to keep adding even more dead rotting American corpses, world without end.

• How Many Dead So Far?     Imagine a typical bedroom 10' x 10' with an 8' ceiling. Now imagine it jam packed with dead stinking rotting American corpses sent home from Iraq, crammed in from floor to ceiling. It can hold about 90 bodies. Now imagine 21 of these bedrooms stacked up vertically- to the height of a 21 story building. That's how many he's gotten killed so far, as of Sept 2005. And he wants it even higher, to "honor those who have already died". This from the man who broke the record for death row inmates executed while he was governor of Texas. Pro-life my ass!

• Just Like Our War With Japan?     San Diego, CA}   In a speech Tuesday, August 30, 2005, Presidunce Bush, according to news sources,  "sought to cast the conflict [in Iraq] as the modern day equivalent of America's World War Two struggle against Japan, which ended 60 years ago this month." What Presidunce Bush conveniently left out were THE two glaring giant humongous differences, the differences that makes ALL the difference: JAPAN ATTACKED US, IRAQ DID NOT.   And that Japan was the aggressor then, WE are the aggressor NOW. And therefore, whatever moral guilt Japan is painted with for STARTING that war, we are ourselves JUST AS GUILTY NOW. (NOTE: While Bush was giving this speech to his rich friends to drum up $$$ for the Republican party, thousands of poor blacks were drowning in New Orleans for lack of being rescued.)

• Dying for WHAT Country?     American soldiers in Iraq aren't  "dying for their country" or "defending America"; they're dying for Iraq, and who, deep down inside, really gives a shit about Iraq- enough to die or get maimed for it, except maybe the people stuck living there, and alot of them don't seem too crazy about it either. Do YOU, my reader, give enough of a shit about, say, Outer Slobovia, enough to go DIE or get MAIMED FOR LIFE trying to improve it? Is THEIR happiness worth YOUR misery? How about Timbuktu? Would you sacrifice your son's life if it improved Baghdad's sewer system? Is THIS the new American foreign policy, to sacrifice endless quantities of American troops in every fucked up place in the world trying to unfuck them until we go broke and/or bleed ourselves to death?  Is a fucking SEWER SYSTEM the "noble cause" Bush keeps saying our troops are dying for?

• "Embolden the Terrorists"     What a STUPID dittohead "talking point". How is announcing a time schedule supposed to "Embolden the terrorists"??? They're already "embolden enough" to blow themselves up to kingdom come. Maybe Bush would like to explain just what the hell can possibly be more bold than that? You really want to "embolden the terrorists"??? How about having the President of the United States swagger up to the microphone and challenge all the terrorists of the world to "Bring it on!!!" How's THAT for "emboldening the terrorists"? As for setting a date, IF John Doe Terrorist knew that America was going to withdraw, say, tomorrow, do you think he'd blow himself up TODAY to make America withdraw? If anything, setting a date would cause LESS terrorism, NOT more.

•  "Aiding & Helping the Terrorists"     Another stupid dittohead slogan. Let me show you why it's soooo damn stupid} The terrorists have moved TO Iraq BECAUSE President Chickenhawk INVITED THEM THERE, and not because of Cindy Sheehan or any anti-war movement!!! It was Bush, not Cindy, who issued the insane "Bring it on!!!" challenge to terrorists worldwide. Well, they HAVE "brought it on", just like our idiot President wanted.  Now once all these terrorists get to Iraq (because, after all, they were INVITED there, remember?) they then STAY IN IRAQ because it gives them opportunity to practice target shooting, with your sons and daughters being the sitting ducks. Therefore, if and when the Americans LEAVE Iraq, the terrorists will ALSO leave Iraq, as they'll no longer have a reason to BE in Iraq, the same as if you removed all the deer from a forest, the deer hunters will also leave. Therefore all you pro-war people, you want to "aid and help the terrorists"??? Keep the troops in.

• As Moral as Hitler     What is the big moral difference between Bush taking over Iraq based on a bunch of lies, and Hitler taking over Poland based on a bunch of lies?

• Cindy Sheehan     Secret Memo from Karl Rove to all Republican Lapdogs}   "Attack Cindy Sheehan! Kill the messenger! Attack the messenger! Attack! Attack! Attack! Drown out what she's trying to say and just attack her personally. Make fun of her, mock her, insult her, SWIFT BOAT HER ASS!!! Do whatever you WANT with her, even run over her crosses, scream at her or shoot her- just for God's sake don't LISTEN to her or try to answer her questions. Remember, she is ANTI-War and a peacemaker and it's a lie that Jesus ever said "Blessed are the peacemakers". We Republicans are PRO-War, PRO-Jesus, Go Jesus, Rah!     In Jesus' blessed name, Karl"  Don't be fooled- Rove is the one hiding backstage pulling the strings of Limbaugh, Hannity, and all the rest of the right-wing puppets, to "swift boat" Cindy with a smear campaign via all these ad hominem attacks. Ad hominem attacks  "are a fallacy in which a claim is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the the person presenting the claim."  This means, all the personal attacks they are making against her carry as much intellectual weight as "Of course Cindy is wrong! After all, she's got blond hair!" After all the Christian slandering and gossip is done, this fact remains steadfast and unmoved: Cindy's son DIED FOR A LIE, a lie that originated from the good Christian LIAR George W. Bush, and she just wants  that good Christian to grow enough BALLS to fess up to it! What's so fucking out of line about THAT??? Bush has the "swagger", now let the spoiled rich kid grow the BALLS to match that fake ass swagger and for the first time since he was elected President face something other than a hand-picked censored "We love you George!" kiss-ass Fundy Christian audience. Can "macho" George face-off with an angry mom? I doubt it. George has always been a pussy, from skipping out on finishing his National Guard duty, to having a total melt-down during the debates with Kerry, and to only appearing before audiences who have to sign a fucking LOYALTY OATH just to get in the door. Pussy. Big time pussy. Bush is to macho as Henry Winkler is to Fonzy on Happy Days.

• "Stay the Course"     Over 50,000 American lives were totally wasted in Vietnam "staying the course" before we finally got the hell out. Now, how many American lives will be flushed down the Iraqi toilet by recycling that same stupid 1960's "stay the course" slogan? Vietnam went communist, and Iraq is already falling apart in bloody civil war, so what lasting good will our having "stayed the course" in either hell-hole have done? Let me repeat myself: 50,000 Americans paid the ultimate price in Vietnam because of a mule-headed stubborn-ass president. What good lasting thing was bought with all those lives spent? NOTHING. Vietnam is today the same as if we had never gone in, except that 50,000 Americans came home in body bags. Likewise in Iraq, all that's going to happen is to have gotten a whole lot of Americans killed and fucked up for life for no good reason and the country will end up as it was before we got there: fucked up, and probably worse so. Thank you George, you fucking moron. Only a stubborn fool would "stay the course" when said "course" is taking him straight into a brick wall at 100 mph.

"Stay, uhhh, the course!  And, uhhh, icknore that wall uphead! Jezzus talks 2 me so me perfek- no musteaks- ebber!"

Read all about the melt down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenne}    http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7483.shtml

 

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Terror Alert Prediction

(Wednesday, Oct 26, 2005 @ 7:30 PST)   As I write this, the Indictments in the CIA leak/treason investigation case have yet to be released. They are expected shortly. But based upon past behavior of the rich spoiled brat occupying the White House, this is what I predict will follow the release:

• Terror Alert:     Within days a much publicized "Terror Alert" will be issued. Of course, there will be no REAL terror threat. This will merely be partisan politics using the whole alert system to distract people from bad news about Bush. In debate circles it's called a "red herring".

• The Prosecutor:     Within a week, stories will surface attempting to make the prosecutor look like Satan himself. He wet his bed till he was eight; he played hooky in 9th grade, whatever. It will be Karl Adolf Rove attacking- attacking & destroying being the only strategy he seems to know.

Will I be right, or will I be wrong? We shall see...
UPDATE: The indictments came out Friday. The countdown begins...

BZZZT!!!  Right on the money... A new TERROR ALERT came out Tuesday, Nov. 1st, but was mostly IGNORED by the media because the lying sacks of shit (all good Christians, by the way) running ruining this government have too often cried "The sky is falling!!!" for anybody to take these bullshit "Terror Alerts" serious anymore.

 

 

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Set Free... of George Bush
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" John 8:32
 

  Truth:  Bush & Co. lied us into a frivolous war 
"What the White House has to fear is a trial... where all the secrets of
what was done to stampede us into war come spilling out. This case...
could also become about whether we were
lied into a war General Odom calls the
 'greatest strategic disaster in the history
of the United States.'"  *Pat Buchanan 10/20/05

 

  Truth:  Bush & Co. attack Americans for telling the truth about their frivolous war 
"When Joe Wilson told the truth, the Administration's reaction was to attack him,
attack his wife, and attack Iraq. That's the real crime here, whether (or not)
Rove, Libby, or anyone else is indicted."  
*Bob Shrum, 10/17/05

 

  Truth:  Starting frivolous wars is a crime against humanity 
Former dictator Saddam Hussein is currently on trial for his life, in a Baghdad courtroom. He is on trial for horrendous crimes. One of those crimes he is accused of, and may pay with his life for, is EXACTLY the same thing George W. Bush did:  starting frivolous wars for no good reason in which hundreds and hundreds of his own soldiers have died. What I want to know is this: if it is a crime- a horrific crime- a crime beyond the pale- for Saddam Hussein to have done this, why is not similarly a crime for the drunk from Texas? What hypocritical double standard has Saddam on trial for his life while our own version of Saddam struts around free???

 *  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9601200/#051019a
**  L.A. Times, 10/10/05  p. A-11

 

 

Whether you love or hate him, this is one shirt that really advertises his "I don't give a crap what anybody thinks" attitude. And the best part is, you can safely wear it anywhere! After all, what can they say about it- it's the friggin' President, for Christ sake! YOU'RE not doing it, you're just the messenger.

Bush Tee Shirt:  $20

 

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Expect a Stupid President to do Stupid Things

 

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's right-hand man for 16 years, and the former director of the U.S. Marine Corp War College at Quantico, had these comments at a policy forum at The New America Foundation on 10/19/05}

Cheney & Bush Are In It For The Money:
The "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" is influenced by the business world and that Cheney was a member of the "military industrial complex." "How much influence on their decisions? I think a lot -- in how much the decisions reflect their connections with the cartels and the corporations and so forth, I think a lot. I think the president, too....Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, from the business world – how much influence on their decisions? I think a lot – in how much the decisions reflect their connections with the cartels and the corporations and so forth, I think a lot. I think the president, too. You bring this sort of idea that the bottom line is everything.

Bush is Ignorant & Apathetic of Foreign Affairs:
"You've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either."

Disaster in Iraq / Idiots Running the Government
And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran. Generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita – and I could go on back – we haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it sometimes again. I just use it for a tutoring class for my students down in the District of Columbia. It forced me to read it really closely because we’re doing metaphors and similes and antonyms and synonyms and so forth, and read in there what the founders say in a very different language than we use today. Read in there what they say about the necessity of the people to throw off tyranny or to throw off ineptitude or to throw off that which is not doing what the people want it to do. And you’re talking about the potential for, I think, real dangerous times if we don’t get our act together.

Stupid People Put In Charge
Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Franks said was the stupidest blankety, blank man in the world. He was. (Laughter.) Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. (Laughter.) And yet – and yet – and yet, after the secretary of State agrees to a $40 billion department rather than a $30 billion department having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw itself in a closet somewhere.

Bush is Destroying The U.S. Army
We may have to do that anyway because my army right now is truly in bad shape – truly in bad shape. And I’m not talking about the billions and billions of dollars of equipment it’s burning up in Iraq at a rate 10 or 15 times the rate its life cycle said it should be burned up at, but I’m also talking about when you have officers who have to hedge the truth, NCOs who have to hedge the truth. They start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam, my war. They come home and they tell their wife they’ve got to go back for the third tour and the fourth tour and the wife says, uh-uh, or the husband says, uh-uh, and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel. And the signs are very concrete right now that the Army and the Marine Corps – to a lesser extent the other services because they’re not quite as involved in the deployments that we’re talking about here and the frequency thereof, the op tempo as we say it – problems are brewing. Problems are brewing.
 

Bush is Basically Brainless
Kim Campbell, the former prime minister (of Canada), at the panel we had, she said, we’re not anti-American, we’re scared; we’re scared to death the giant has no head. You’re in the world and you have no head.

 

Bush is an Undiplomatic Brute & Bully
I like to use the world gracelessness, and I use that word because grace is something we have lost in the modern world. It’s a very important product. It’s very different, for example, to walk in with a foreign leader and find something you can be magnanimous about. You don’t have to win everything. You don’t have to be the big bully on the block. Find something you can be magnanimous about, that you can give him, that you can say he gets credit for, or she gets credit for. That’s diplomacy. That’s diplomacy. You don’t walk in and say, I’m the big mother on the block and if everybody’s not with me, they’re against me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The difference between father and son, in my mind, sort of comes from that attitudinal approach to the world.

 

Bush Has Destroyed 50 Years of Diplomacy
So if you’re unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you’re declaring the Geneva Convention is not operative, if you’re doing a host of things that the world doesn’t agree with you on and you’re doing them blatantly and in their face – as I said before, without grace – then you’ve got to pay the consequences, and the consequences are your public diplomacy people have a really tough job. And is Karen Hughes going to turn it around? I pray for her every night.

 

 

For a transcript of his entire speech, go to}

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/Wilkerson%20Speech%20--%20WEB.htm

 

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A Letter to All Who Voted for George W. Bush

Michael Moore,  Sunday, September 11th, 2005

To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it feel?

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?

That's right. Horse shows.

I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton. Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us in case of an emergency or catastrophe.

I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call America.

Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you think we are safer?

When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure?

When men who never served in the military and have never seen young men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never there?

Do you really believe that turning over important government services to private corporations has resulted in better services for the people?

Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for America? GOOD OR BAD?

With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?

Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake.

That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.

It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in his jumbo jet, peeking out the window at the misery 2500 feet below him as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat" to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job!"

My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing stock of the world?

And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?

Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can't string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can't pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever.

Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you've sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away?

I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn't up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren't up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?

I have an idea, and it isn't a horse show.

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

*************************

From the website:  http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=185
 

 

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The Ever-Changing Storyline of WHY We Invaded Iraq

 

"Why doesn't someone ask Bush why the story line
 for why we invaded Iraq has changed so many times?"

 

• To take over the oil fields so the Terrorists couldn't. (2)

• To put "Freedom on the march!"  Iraq's democracy will shine like a beacon of hope in the Middle East and thus inspire Muslims elsewhere in the region to do likewise.

• To allow the provisional constitution to be completed.

• To allow Iraq the joy of having an American election.

• To save the world from Iraqi nuclear warheads on missiles. (And who can forget THIS classic fear-mongering line? "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud")

• To save the world from Iraqi biological attacks.

• To fight terrorists "over there" so we don't have to fight them elsewhere, like say, in London subways.

• To save us from all those weapons of mass destruction.

• To attack all those hundreds of al Qaeda bases and terrorists camps in Iraq.

• To save Israel from all those hundreds of SCUD missles hiding in Western Iraq.

• Because it would be such a "cake-walk" and the Iraqi's would welcome us with open arms.

• Because of George Bush's deep respect for the United Nations, he just couldn't stand it anymore to see Saddam ignoring U.N. Resolution 1441

• To save the Iraqi people from that awful despot.

• To punish Iraq for flying those planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001  (1)

 

  

1) President Bush said:  "the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."

2) President Bush in a speech at Mira Loma Naval Air Station, California, August 30, 2005

 

 

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Iraqiization of the War a Total Failure

August 26th, 2005 5:38 pm
Iraqi forces may need years of preparation


By Tom Lasseter / Knight Ridder Newspapers

HIT, Iraq - (KRT) - American Sgt. LaDaunte Strickland, sweat pouring down his face, stared at the four Iraqi soldiers sitting in the shade of a truck.

They were supposed to be helping Strickland and a group of U.S. Marines man a vehicle-control point, a basic operation in which troops hope to catch insurgents at traffic stops they set up quickly on the roadsides.

"Come on. Come on! Get up," said Strickland, 30, of Cleveland, stabbing a cigar in the air to make his point. "Damn, will you PLEASE get up!"

The Iraqis didn't stir. Without an interpreter - a common occurrence - the Iraqis didn't understand Strickland, no matter how loud he got.

Three weeks of patrols and interviews in restive Anbar province suggested that Iraqi security forces will need years of preparation before they're ready to take charge of the complex and violent tribal areas of western Iraq. President Bush has said repeatedly that U.S. troops will withdraw only when Iraqi troops are ready to take over.

Many of the Iraqi troops were in poor condition, unable or unwilling to complete long foot patrols without frequent breaks. They often didn't know what to do in complicated situations, standing back and letting American Marines and soldiers take the lead.

Most of the Iraqi troops interviewed were Shiite Muslims - the majority religious group in Iraq - who were long oppressed by Sunni Muslims, Anbar's predominant ethnic group but a minority across Iraq. That history creates obstacles to establishing trust with the locals.

In Fallujah, after a U.S. assault last November routed the insurgency that had demolished the town's police force, the Interior Ministry sent in its Public Order Battalion. Residents accuse the battalion of being a de facto Shiite militia.

Marine Maj. Shaun Fitzpatrick, 36, of San Antonio said the Marines were aware of the sectarian problems and were hoping to put a predominantly Sunni police force on the streets in coming months. Until then, he said of the public-order troops, "Basically, they're Shiite and they're from Baghdad or Basra (a Shiite town). We've had problems. There are inevitable cultural clashes."

In the meantime, insurgents are attacking new police stations and intimidating contractors.

The Iraqi National Guard, heralded last year as the answer to security in the area, has been disbanded because morale was low and insurgents had infiltrated it. The old national guard trucks, with their blue emblems, now sit rusting. As with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, the predecessor to the national guard, American officials say the new Iraqi army and police will establish security in places such as Anbar.

However, the police force has collapsed in Ramadi, the provincial capital. Two divisions of Iraqi soldiers - a total of 12,000 men - are to establish security, but so far only 2,000 are available, and half of them lack basic training.

Hit, a city of 130,000, has no police force. North of Hit, in Haditha - near the site of attacks that killed 20 Marines this month - the police chief handed over all the patrol cars to the Marines in January.

"He said, "We can't protect these anymore,'" said Maj. Plauche St. Romain, the head intelligence officer for the Marine battalion that oversees Haditha, Haqlaniya and Hit. "He turned in the uniforms and (armor) vests, too."

That police chief was assassinated in April.

"It was pretty obvious what happened with the police. Their police stations got blown up and a lot of them were murdered," said Army Maj. William Fall, 48, of Cresson, Pa., who oversees Iraqi security-force operations in Ramadi.

Marine Capt. John LaJeunesse, who works with the police in Ramadi, said it wasn't fair to put too much blame on the police. Those who've remained to get trained and be part of the new force haven't been paid in two and a half months, he said.

So far, a little more than 5,900 police officers have been screened for all of Anbar, about half the number needed. Most of those still must be trained, said LaJeunesse, 30, of Boise, Idaho.

"The ones that stay are working without pay, and the insurgents are threatening their families," he said.

During a recent operation in Haqlaniya, a squad from the Iraqi Intervention Force, one of the more seasoned units in Iraq's army, swept through neighborhoods looking for insurgents. One of the soldiers was so overweight that he had trouble putting on his flak vest.

During a raid on a suspected insurgent hideout, the Iraqis discovered they'd forgotten their bolt cutters. Instead of sending someone back to get them, they tried breaking a lock off an outside gate with the butts of their AK-47s. By the time they were through, they'd made so much noise that everyone in the neighborhood was aware of their presence on what was supposed to be a stealth operation.

When they arrived at their second objective, still without bolt cutters, the men wanted to use grenades to breach the door.

Their supervisor, U.S. Army Capt. Terrence Sommers, stepped in and said they'd risk hurting themselves and would give away their position to insurgents.

"They've still got a ways to go," said Sommers, 34, of Trenton, N.J.

One of the Iraqi officers, Maj. Ahmed, said his men were less than motivated because they didn't understand why the Americans kept sweeping through towns and moving on without leaving troops behind to secure them.

"The people are scared to give us information about the terrorists because there are many terrorists here. And when we leave, the terrorists will come back and kill them," said Ahmed, who gave only his first name out of fear of retribution from the insurgents. "The army has to stay in these cities; that way we would have control. But this way, no, it doesn't make any sense."

On a nighttime raid in Ramadi this month, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Chris Chapin, a military adviser to the Iraqi army, said he hadn't been able to get the Iraqi troops to mount a platoon-sized operation. Chapin had no interpreter with him, and none of the Iraqis could speak English.

"We definitely need to do something about this interpreter thing," said Sgt. 1st Class Anthony James, 33, of Vicksburg, Miss. "I don't see things changing here. We're not reaching the people."

Because the Iraqis and Americans couldn't communicate with one another, they frequently ended up wandering in the middle of the street, yelling commands in English and Arabic and heading in opposite directions.

Chapin, 39, of Proctor, Vt., walked around at one point, yelling, "Lieutenant, where is my lieutenant?" Two of the target houses were within a block of each other, and the entire neighborhood was probably aware of the soldiers' presence, blowing any chance of making a quiet entrance.

"They're always getting bunched into a gaggle, especially at night. I think it's because they're scared," said Sgt. Adam Detato, 24, of Montoursville, Pa. "Between the language barrier and a lot of them having a fifth-grade education, it's hard to teach them our tactics."

In Hit, Strickland finally managed to get three of the Iraqi soldiers to help him with the checkpoint. The fourth remained in the shade, making hand gestures indicating that he needed a light for his cigarette. Within five minutes the other three were making frequent motions toward the sun and then in the direction of the base. "Finish?" they asked. "We finish?"

A Marine standing nearby suggested to Stickland that maybe the answer was to train Iraqis as traffic police, give them orange vests and have them do traffic stops on their own.

Strickland laughed. "Yeah, until the muj finds out the Americans gave them the vests; then they'll kill `em," he said, referring to the insurgents by the Arabic word for "holy warrior," mujahedeen. "When they have problems, these guys will just leave their uniforms and walk off."

 

From:     http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3877

 

 

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Whether you love or hate him, this is one shirt that really advertises his "I don't give a crap what anybody thinks" attitude. And the best part is, you can safely wear it anywhere! After all, what can they say about it- it's the friggin' President, for Christ sake! YOU'RE not doing it, you're just the messenger.

Bush Tee Shirt:  $20

 

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Persecution Complex

by Mark Smith

 

It appears that some Fundies in Congress are upset NOT by what's happening at the Air Force Academy (see "Oliver Cromwell..." above), but rather at others in Congress who have dared to object to what's happening at the Air Force Academy. Apparently, even objecting to when Fundies persecute Jews or Baptists is now construed to be persecution of Fundies! Don't you just loooove Fundy logic!!!   From Jon Stewart of The Daily Show for Wednesday, June 22, 2005}   "(This) came from Indiana Republican John Hostettler." (shows a video clip of Hostettler speaking to Congress)  "Mr. Chairman, the long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives..."  Jon Stewart (in a very sanctimoniously loud voice):    "Yes, the looooong war on Christianity. I PRAY that one day WE may live in an America where Christians can worship freely, in broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion, perhaps around their necks? And maybe, dare I dream it, maybe one day, there could be an openly Christian president, OR, perhaps, 43 of them- consecutively!"   Rightfully so Jon Stewart mocks the persecution complex the 900 pound gorilla of Fundamentalism has saddled itself with. A few days later he went on to add:    "Does anyone know- does the Christian persecution complex has an expiration date? Because, ahhh, you've all been in charge pretty much since, ahhh, what was that guy's name- Constantine? And he converted in, ahhh, what was it, 312 AD? I'm just saying, enjoy your success."

 

 

 

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Sweet Neo Con (The Rolling Stones)

The Rolling Stones, from their album "A Bigger Bang"
Sept. 2005

You call yourself a Christian
I call you a hypocrite
You call yourself a patriot
Well I think you're full of shit.

 

Whether you love or hate him, this is one shirt that really advertises his "I don't give a crap what anybody thinks" attitude. And the best part is, you can safely wear it anywhere! After all, what can they say about it- it's the friggin' President, for Christ sake! YOU'RE not doing it, you're just the messenger.

Bush Tee Shirt:  $20

 

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Misc Quotes & Thoughts

 

I really do believe this man will go down as the worst president this country has ever had. 
(Senator Harry Reid, of Nevada. The New York Times National Edition, 3/17/06 p. A19)

"George W. Bush is not Lord."
Christianity Today, July 2005, page 22

61% of All Americans Now Disapprove of President Bush  (August 7, 2005)

Question:  What kind of Christianity rewards those who lie and punishes those that don't?
Answer:  George W. Bush's Christianity!
(Mark Smith)

I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Neuman is in charge in Washington.  (Senator Hillary Clinton)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
(H. L. Mencken)
 

Most combat vets pick their fights carefully. They look at their scars, remember the madness and are always mindful of the fallout. That's not the case in Washington, where the White House and the Pentagon are run by civilians who have never sweated it out on a battlefield.
(Col. David Hackworth, O.C. Register, p. News 18, 5/7/05)

How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him?
(Headline in The Mirror, UK, after Bush won reelection.)

In addition, the origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction remain a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a "massive intelligence failure," in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for war.  
(Rep. John Conyers, Jr, Letter to President Bush, May 5, 2005)

What good fortune for governments that the people do not think. 
(Adolf Hitler, Germany)

"The real question ought to be: 'Are we better off with a foreign policy that promotes regime change
while justifying war with false information?'"
(Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Republican,   http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=2136)

Bush is too busy lobbing turds like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz into the international punch bowl. 
(Jim Washburn" OC Weekly 5-20-05)

 

 

 

 

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While Rome Burned  (Bush and Nero the same)

 

 

 

 

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A Piece of Work- Just How Low Can Bush Go ?

by Mark Smith

On the 20th of June, 2005, in a nationally televised press conference held outdoors, our president publicly insulted the Prime Minister of Luxembourg (standing directly to his right), by calling him "a piece of work". The really sad part is, the Washington press corp has gotten so used to this kind of irrational behavior that barely a peep was raised. Here is a transcript from The Washington Post}

 

 

For those of you who may not be familiar with the phrase "he's a piece of work" here are some examples of its use found from a quick Google search which should give you a feeling for what it means. And as for Bush's concern that "it might not translate too well", oh no Mr. Bush- it translates juuuuuust fine: you just called  the most important man in Europe (current head of the European Union) a piece of shit, a dumb fuckup, a sleazebag, a wack job. And, like alot of the crap you say, the media once again let you get away with it- just like polite company would do to the rantings of a retarded man.

 

Examples of the Phrase "Piece of Work" So You Can Get a Feeling for What It Means}}}

Gleason is one of the book's brighter spots. You've seen his type before, in the writings of Jimmy Breslin and Michael Daly. He's a piece of work, a sleazebag who's proud of it.  [2003, Book Review http://www.gamblingmagazine.com/articles/39/39-03.htm  ]

I'm sure I've heard "he's a wack job" before, somewhere, sometime. It's like "he's a piece of work"    [September 2004, discussion board  http://forum.wordreference.com/archive/index.php?t-1635.html  ]

A real piece of work,  but ya'll step right up an defend this POS's (translation: Piece of Shit) right of free speech  [Jan. 2005,  http://www.writersontheloose.com/writers/PeterLounsbury/index.cfm?story=17764 ]

Qualen: I must say, you're a real piece of work.
Gabe: I must say, you're a real piece of shit.
   [From the script for the movie "Cliff Hanger", http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106582/quotes ]
 

He is a real piece of work and his wife is worse.   [http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1436396/posts ]

Jim’s parents are a real piece of work. His father (Jim Backus) is a wimp, ineffectual and completely overshadowed by his domineering wife. [http://hometheaterinfo.com/rebel.htm ]

 

 

 

 

 

 

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..True Love..

 

It's obvious George and Abdulla really enjoy kissing and strolling hand in hand at the Crawford "ranch" (4/25/05), but I wonder if they knew Texas had just outlawed same-sex marriage?

 

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Hundreds of US Soldiers Wasted in A-Wreck

1,875  U.S. Soldiers Wasted in A-Wreck
by Mark Smith

Since Bush is so hot for this crusade, why hasn't he encouraged his own two daughters to join the Army and go to Iraq??? Instead, while he is mountain biking or partying in the White House YOUR children (not his, of course) are being shot up like sitting ducks, driving around what's left of Baghdad providing target practice for Muslim fanatics, getting maimed and murdered (I dare you to look at these graphic photos and tell me their sacrifice is worth it:  http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/wounded/gallery.htm )  by the hundreds every month in an unnecessary and contrived war started FOR NO GOOD REASON based on TOTAL LIES AND FABRICATIONS and which will accomplish NOTHING OF LASTING VALUE. But you Fundies are all ok with Bush lying to start a war and getting thousands upon thousands of your kids maimed for life in the process, all because you read the book "The Faith of George W. Bush" and bought into it hook, line, and sinker. The idea that Bush just might be a hypocritical lying con man never crossed your mind, did it? The scripture Matthew 7:15, where Jesus warns his followers of wolves disguising themselves as sheep, that scripture must have been left out of your Bible, right?

A recent story in Newsweek inadvertently leads to the deaths of about 20 people in Pakistan via a single unknowingly false (and since retracted) story regarding the Koran. Bush, on the other hand, with deliberate premeditation, strung together an entire pack of lies and sold it to the world for the sole purpose of starting a war, and over 100,000 Iraqis and Americans have been killed so far. Yet Bush, typical Fundy hypocrite that he is, is demanding (!!!) an apology NOT from himself, but from Newsweek! 20 -vs- 100,000, you do the math. You can almost imagine the president yelling to reporters "The shame of it all- the moral outrage! Look at all those deaths resulting from a lie! No, not my lie in Iraq, Newsweek's lie in Jalalabad, look there!"

But Bush lying to start a war- that's perfectly ok with you Fundies isn't it, for after all, he said he's GOD'S man therefore he can't lie so therefore he must be GOD'S man, so this must all be GOD'S plan, and when your children die they go to heaven anyway, right? Besides, you HAD to vote for George, because your Pastor said to, and, even if George did lie, he can just ask JeJuice to forgive him for lying, right? After all, you Fundies have a blank check from Joe Hovah that allows you to commit any wrongdoing and get instant forgiveness, and thus you have no reason whatsoever to be moral, so why shouldn't Bush lie, eh?
    

You Fundiots (Fundy + Idiot = Fundiot) also buy into Bush's constant optimistic bushit drivel how things are getting better in Iraq when for the past two years things have been getting consistently worse. How much worse? As of May 11, 2005, over 400 Iraqis have been blown up just in the last two weeks, and over 70 bombings and/or machine gun attacks PER DAY are currently taking place. (Fallujah, one of the LARGEST cities in the nation, was LEVELED. Picture Chicago getting reduced to rubble & Bush saying things are getting better). Month by month we see more bombings, more shootings, more kidnappings than before, yet you geniuses continue to blind yourself to the fact that Bush is LYING when he says things are getting better  *(see section below for proof). Everybody's who's been to I-Wreck admits this- but off the record, of course, in fear of Bush's petty wrath towards anyone for telling the truth. At this rate if things get any MORE "better" there won't be any Iraqis left to lie about!

 

And as to WHY the Iraqis may be getting ANGRY at the United States for this mess, ask yourself:  if some men from half a world away took it upon themselves to take over your neighborhood without asking, saying they were here to save you from a few bad guys, then invited ("Bring it On!") thousands of other bad guys to move in and empty out ammunition dumps and your neighborhood got much much worse rather than better, how would YOU feel? Under King George's God-inspired "I'm a WAR president" leadership, Iraq has lost most of its electricity, fresh water, jobs, oil income, educational systems, and its safety. Given all that, they have reasons- MANY reasons- to be pissed.
    

The United States, using a pack of lies as their "evidence", under no provocation or threat whatsoever, illegally conquered a sovereign county with no more moral justification than when Hitler conquered Poland and France, and promised protection; but instead of protection, Iraqis by the hundreds are getting blown into human hamburger all across their county by ammunition WE failed to secure used by terrorists WE goaded into Iraq by George "Bring it on!" Bush himself.
    

So after more than two years of following Bush's understaffed "strategy" as things continue to go from bad to worse, we see Iraq spiraling out of control. Under Bush's leadership, the USA has shown itself incapable of even protecting the leaders of Iraq from bombs and bullets. Given these FACTS which fly in the face of Bush's LIES, maybe it's time Bush, Rove, and their buddy Jesus step down and put the Generals in the Pentagon back in charge (who want to double or triple the troop strength) or better yet, just get the hell out of Iraq.

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*Below is a transcript of the daily White House press briefing for Thursday, June 16  2005.  Notice how the reporter Terry Moran keeps trying to get a straight answer out of Bush's spokeshole McClellan regarding the White House claim that the insurgency is in it's "last throes" and will soon fade away.

 

June 16th, 2005 7:10 pm Terry Moran vs. Scott McClellan on 'Last Throes' of Insurgency in Iraq from the website:  http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3030   By E&P Staff / Editor & Publisher NEW YORK With polls showing rising public concerns about the war in Iraq, and even some Republicans calling for a withdrawal timetable, White House correspondents and White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan responded in their separate ways today. At his daily briefing, McClellan announced that the President was going to bring a “sharper focus” to the issue in new discussions with the public, while reporters seemed respond not only to that but to rising criticism of their performance in holding the administration's feet to the fire. After McClellan outlined the president's plans, leading up to a key June 28th speech, ABC correspondent Terry Moran asked a pointed question, which referred back to an assessment recently made by Vice President Dick Cheney. Q Scott, is the insurgency in Iraq in its 'last throes'? McCLELLAN: Terry, you have a desperate group of terrorists in Iraq that are doing everything they can to try to derail the transition to democracy. The Iraqi people have made it clear that they want a free and democratic and peaceful future. And that's why we're doing everything we can, along with other countries, to support the Iraqi people as they move forward…. Mark Smith here}    Notice the weasel totally ducked the question. Q But the insurgency is in its last throes? McCLELLAN: The Vice President talked about that the other day -- you have a desperate group of terrorists who recognize how high the stakes are in Iraq. A free Iraq will be a significant blow to their ambitions. Mark Smith here}    Again asked a point-blank question, and again he weasels out of giving an answer. Q But they're killing more Americans, they're killing more Iraqis. That's the last throes? McCLELLAN: Innocent -- I say innocent civilians. And it doesn't take a lot of people to cause mass damage when you're willing to strap a bomb onto yourself, get in a car and go and attack innocent civilians. That's the kind of people that we're dealing with. That's what I say when we're talking about a determined enemy. Mark Smith here}    That doesn't bear even a slight resemblance to being an answer! Fundy Christians, please think back to how pissed off you were when Clinton was dodging direct questions with his "is..is" bullshit. Now examine what's going on here- there is not a lick of difference! IF Clinton proved himself a dishonest scumbag with weasel tactics, then you MUST acknowledge that Bush also is a dishonest scumbag, and certainly not the "good Fundy Christian" that he passed himself off to be just to win your vote. Q Right. What is the evidence that the insurgency is in its last throes? McCLELLAN: I think I just explained to you the desperation of terrorists and their tactics. Mark Smith here}    Good work Terry- don't give up trying to get a straight answer out of this lying political prick. Don't let this spokeshole for Bush get away with ignoring a point-blank straight question. He's just trying to tire you out till you give up asking. Keep it up! Q What's the evidence on the ground that it's being extinguished? McCLELLAN: Terry, we're making great progress to defeat the terrorist and regime elements. You're seeing Iraqis now playing more of a role in addressing the security threats that they face. They're working side by side with our coalition forces. They're working on their own. There are a lot of special forces in Iraq that are taking the battle to the enemy in Iraq. And so this is a period when they are in a desperate mode. Mark Smith here}    Again, a total and complete dishonest evasion of a simple question! How much MORE evidence of lying do you Fundies have to see until you acknowledge that Bush & Company are a pack of liars specializing in packaging lies???? Q Well, I'm just wondering what the metric is for measuring the defeat of the insurgency. McCLELLAN: Well, you can go back and look at the Vice President's remarks. I think he talked about it. Q Yes. Is there any idea how long a 'last throe' lasts for? McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve.... Mark Smith here}    The spokeshole here can't take it any more and moves the Q&A on to someone else. And Fundies, please remember: this is the SAME spokeshole who, for months on end, had their own secret plant in these breifings masquerading as a reporter until someone caught him advertising gay sex for sale on the internet. Tell me, WHERE is the moral quality and dignity of the White House with Bush in there, if not in the gutter? THESE are the Christians you voted for???

 

 

 

 

 

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Inner Moral Compass?

by Mark Smith

Christians oft times speak of their "inner moral compass" and how it guides them. Some have even bragged that, with such a "compass" President Bush doesn't have to take time to think a matter through: he instantly knows which way to go on an issue. They actually see this lack of thinking, these snap judgments, to be a GOOD thing, not a bad thing.

Such Christians need to be reminded of the shortcomings of compasses. Compasses do NOT point to true north- never have, never will. Compasses also point in different directions depending on where you're at in the world. For example, a compass in Saudi Arabia will indicate north to be in a different direction than say a compass in Rome, Washington DC, or Salt Lake City. Also, a compass can be easily influenced to point in a totally wrong direction if some metallic coins were pocketed nearby.

In short, an "inner moral compass" is not to be trusted, as it may say "blow yourself up" in the Middle East, or  "it's ok to lie to get elected" in Crawford, Texas.

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$1,000 Per Person: The Cost of Bush's Crusade (so far)

by Mark Smith

This is how much George Bush's unprovoked, unjust, unnecessary war is costing every single American, as of May 2005.  $300 billion divided by 300 million Americans = $1,000 that is coming out of the pocket of every American. You good Christian Republicans don't seem to give a damn about Bush crippling for life more than 10,000 of your kids. Neither do you seem to care about the more than 1,500 human sacrifices to Moloch that Bush has extracted from you. You're more than happy to offer your kids up as human sacrifices upon the altar of Bush's supposed "War on Terror." You seem willing to even pour 10 or even 100 million more American lives down this Iraqi sewer- your beloved dictator has never said what this limit would be, has he? Hell then, why not the entire friggin country save for the "Chickenshit in Chief"? Would THAT be a "price too high"? Of course not- after all, George was anointed by God himself, wasn't he? So anything and everything this dumbass does is just fine with you, even walking hand in hand (4/25/05 at the Crawford "ranch") with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who just days before had 40 Christians thrown in jail for the crime of going to church. After all, you geniuses voted him back in office, didn't you? I just thought you might like to know, because you ARE Republicans and you seem to care not for lives but only about money and how to make the rich even *richer, I thought you might like to know just how much richer you might have been... if not for this war.
*(CEO pay up 12.6% in 2004, L.A. Times 4/25/05 p. C2. Thank you, George Bush!)

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The Christian Reich

At least that's what you'd be living in if you attended the East Wayneville Baptist Church in Waynesville, North Carolina. Back in October of 2004 their pastor, Rev. Chan Chandler commanded his flock of 100: "If you vote for John Kerry this year you need to repent or resign" and being the good Christian that he is, he later lied in denying ever saying it, but too bad for him- it was caught on tape! Ha ha ha. To enforce his word, on Monday, May 2, 2005 he booted out nine members who were pro-Satan, er, Kerry. So much for the separation of church and state! And thank you to the forty members who have since resigned in protest.  http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2005/may/06/050604734.html

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Bush the Christian Hypocrite  

by Mark Smith

 

(Feb. 20, 2005)  Doug Wead, a former Assemblies of God minister and close personal friend of George W., has come out with the revelation that he secretly taped conversations with the shrub before his first run for the presidency. Read the following from the AOL news report}

Preparing to meet Christian leaders in September 1998, Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, "As you said, there are some code words. There are some proper ways to say things, and some improper ways." He added, "I am going to say that I've accepted Christ into my life. And that's a true statement."

If a man has to take lessons in how to ACT like a Fundy- learn the "buzz words", rehearse, and practice them- he is no more a Fundy than Charlton Heston was Moses- both took ACTING LESSONS to play their roles. It's now painfully obvious that Bush was merely PRETENDING  to be a Fundy so he'd get the vote of gullible Fundies. AND IT WORKED! I'm an Atheist, but I saw thru him a long time ago- why didn't you Fundies?? Jesus said, "not everyone who says 'Lord, Lord' will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven", but apparently it's enough to get you into the White House. The AOL article goes on to say:

Preparing to meet with influential Christian conservatives, Mr. Bush tested his lines with Mr. Wead. "I'm going to tell them the five turning points in my life," he said. "Accepting Christ. Marrying my wife. Having children. Running for governor. And listening to my mother." ...He said he learned "a couple of really good lines" from Mr. Robison, the Texas pastor... he also saw Mr. (John) Ashcroft as an ally because he would draw evangelical voters into the race.

He learned "a couple of really good lines"??? I can just see him, "Hey Doug, do these lines make me sound like a Fundy? I heard some preacher saying them, and the Fundies really ate it up! I don't really know what they mean, but who cares, as long as it gets me elected, eh Here, check em out- do they sound stupid and corny enough for you?"  The article went on to say how when Karl Rove had invited a group of Fundy ministers to meet with Bush, and when Bush found out about it, he went ballistic, screaming at Rove in anger, "What the HELL is THIS all about!!!???" Tell me, is THAT something ANY of you "REAL" Christians would do if your wife told you Rev. Jones from your church was coming over for dinner???

On top of all that, now you Christians also have the deeds (not the mere words) of Bush's "Culture of Life" he claimed he was for. And guess what? He let them pull the feeding tubes on Terri Schiavo so she could starve to death!!! He could have sent in the National Guard, the FBI, even the Secret Service- hell, he himself could have flown down there and put the tubes back in- who would have stopped him??? Did he? Hell no, because his whole "Culture of Life" shtick was only a ploy to get you to re-elect him- which you did, and he was probably laughing at all of you suckers behind his tinted bullet-proof limo windows in his inaugural parade. Now that he can't run for office anymore, he doesn't need you people: "Thank you, good bye, go away".

Fundies, YOU'VE BEEN SUCKERED, and now all of us, thanks to your ignorant gullibility, are stuck with this hypocrite.

 

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GOD HELP AMERICA
The Mirror, United Kingdom

Nov 4 2004
 

THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.

This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.

This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.

And for a few hours early yesterday, when the exit polls predicted a John Kerry victory, it seemed they had.

But then the horrible, inevitable truth hit home. They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, blinkered and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas.

A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.

A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.

And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11.

Why else do you think bin Laden was so happy to scare them to the polls, then made no attempt to scupper the outcome?

There's only one headline in town today, folks: "It Was Osama Wot Won It."

And soon he'll expect pay-back. Well, he can't allow Bush to have his folks whoopin' and a-hollerin' without his own getting a share of the fun, can he?

Heck, guys, I hope you're feeling proud today.

To the tens of millions who voted for John Kerry, my commiserations.

To the overwhelming majority of you who didn't, I simply ask: Have you learnt nothing? Do you despise your own image that much?

Do you care so little about the world beyond your shores? How could you do this to yourselves?

How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him?

Kerry wasn't the best presidential candidate the Democrats have ever fielded (and he did deserve a kicking for that "reporting for doo-dee" moment), but at least he understood the complexity of the world outside America, and domestic disgraces like the 45 million of his fellow citizens without health cover.

He would have done something to make that country fairer and re-connected it with the wider world.

Instead America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2billion surplus from Clinton, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world's largest debtor nation.

A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons.

A man who flattens sovereign states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers.

A man who promotes trade protectionism and backs an Israeli government which continually flouts UN resolutions.

America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive man-hunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths.

A RADICAL Christian fanatic who decided the world was made up of the forces of good and evil, who invented a war on terror, and thus as author of it, believed he had the right to set the rules of engagement.

Which translates to telling his troops to do what the hell they want to the bad guys. As he has at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless towns across Iraq.

You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out.

These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one.

As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity.

Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets.

The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong".

You probably won't be surprised to learn of would-be Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn who, on Tuesday, promised to ban abortion and execute any doctors who carried them out.

He also told voters that lesbianism is so rampant in the state's schools that girls were being sent to toilets on their own. Not that any principal could be found to back him up.

These are the people who hijack the word patriot and liken compassion to child-molesting. And they are unknowingly bin Laden's chief recruiting officers.

Al-Qaeda's existence is fuelled by the outpourings of America's Christian right. Bush is its commander-in-chief. And he and bin Laden need each other to survive.

Both need to play Lex Luther to each others' Superman with their own fanatical people. Maybe that's why the mightiest military machine ever assembled has failed to catch the world's most wanted man.

Or is the reason simply that America is incompetent? That behind the bluff they are frightened and clueless, which is why they've stayed with the devil they know.

VISITORS from another planet watching this election would surely not credit the amateurism.

The queues for hours to register a tick; the 17,000 lawyers needed to ensure there was no cheating; the $1.2bn wasted by parties trying to discredit the enemy; the allegations of fraud, intimidation and dirty tricks; the exit polls which were so wildly inaccurate; an Electoral College voting system that makes the Eurovision Song Contest look like a beacon of democracy and efficiency; and the delays and the legal wrangles in announcing the victor.

Yet America would have us believe theirs is the finest democracy in the world. Well, that fine democracy has got the man it deserved. George W Bush.

But is America safer today without Kerry in charge? A man who overnight would have given back to the UN some credibility and authority. Who would have worked out the best way to undo the Iraq mess without fear of losing face.

Instead, the questions facing America today are - how many more thousands of their sons will die as Iraq descends into a new Vietnam? And how many more Vietnams are on the horizon now they have given Bush the mandate to go after Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba...?

Today is a sad day for the world, but it's even sadder for the millions of intelligent Americans embarrassed by a gung-ho leader and backed by a banal electorate, half of whom still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

Yanks had the chance to show the world a better way this week, instead they made a thuggish cowboy ride off into the sunset bathed in glory.

And in doing so it brought Armageddon that little bit closer and re-christened their beloved nation The Home Of The Knave and the Land Of The Freak.

God Help America.


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14832124%26method=full%26siteid=50143%26headline=god%2dhelp%2damerica-name_page.html 
 

 

 

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Sheep

by Mark Smith,   January 2005

I think I've finally gotten over my anger regarding the re-election of Bush. The anger has been replaced by understanding. Once you understand that people act according to their nature, it's hard to be angry at them for being what they are. In this case, sheep.

Sheepness is often mistaken for dumbness. The Daily Mirror (England) had a front page headline after the election, "How Can 59,000,000 People Be So Dumb?". But as much as I enjoyed that cover when I first saw it, I now realize it's shortcomings. Sheep can be dumb. Sheep can be smart. Sheep can be Christians and sheep can be Atheists. Whichever, sheep are still sheep. They can't HELP being sheep, and couldn't be anything else even if they tried. They were born that way, and it is not wrong for us non-sheep to recognize that fact.

We CAN feel superior to the sheep because we ARE superior to the sheep. We can think for ourselves. They can't. They're sheep. But it is only by accident of birth that it is this way. We too could have been born as sheep. No one chose to be a "block-headed Fundy" or an "open minded free thinker", and no amount of talking can change one into the other. As Popeye used to say, "I yam what I yam". You are what you are, sheep or non-sheep.

Don't get mad at a sheep for acting stupid, for being (and thus acting) as a sheep- to do so is stupid itself. It's like getting mad at a shark for being a shark. And what are some of the characteristics of sheep?

• Crave security.

• Require someone else to direct their life- tell them what to think, where to go and not go, what to do etc.

• Herd mentality- uncomfortable on their own- gotta feel a part of the herd.

• Minimum thinking.

• Minimum questioning.

• Blind obedience.

• Conformity.

• Lack curiosity.

• Lack creativity.

• Lack and/or fear of new ideas.

• Gullible

• Take orders well

Sheep can no more help being sheep than gays can help being gays, or you can help being you. Understand them. The way they act is no act, it is them.

 

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Anti-Bush Bumper Stickers available at:  http://www.evolvefish.com/fish/stickers.html

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Misc Items, Thoughts, Comments

 

The Wailing Right Wing
I read daily the poisonous wails and barbs of the angry right wing in the Opinion section. And as I read these seething diatribes I wonder what they have to be angry about. They control all three branches of the federal government, the majority of state legislatures and a majority of the media.

One would think such power and success would drive a person or party celebrating into the streets and yet all the Republican Party and many of its constituents can do is hiss, spit and honk at some eleitist, liberal bastion that exists only in their imaginations and hate-filled rhetoric.   ---Sean Sagan's letter to the Editor, Orange County Register, 2/16/05

 

 

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Pre-Election Material

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by Mark Smith

 

INTRODUCTION:    Normally I don't bother writing about politics. It's too transitory (what I write today will be irrelevant a year from now), and it's normally not related much to my topic of choice: Christianity. But in the case of George W. Bush, there's just too much to ignore any longer, and if super Christian George W. Bush doesn't get evicted from the White House this next election, he'll mess up the country and the world even more than he already has.

What are the main problems I have with President George? I think President Ronald Reagan's son said it best, the year before King George ascended the throne. Way back in August of 2000, before Bush even ascended the throne, when asked his opinion of George W. Bush, he said the following:

• The man is incompetent for the job of President.
• The man's greatest accomplishment in his life so far seems to be that, at age 40, he stopped being an obnoxious drunk.¹

I believe Bush's first term in office has more than proved the correctness of what Ron Reagan said. Bush needs to be retired before he can cause any more damage. And lest anyone forget who exactly was piloting our ship of state when it ran into the iceberg of 9/11, his name was Bush.

 

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Oprah Slaps Bush

With 30 states poised to smack down women's rights again, the one true savior emerges
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
 

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

 

So there she was, the nation's most powerful and popular public female, kicking butt on a recent installment of her insanely beloved TV show with the help of celeb guests (Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, P. Diddy, Christina Aguilera) and galvanizing stunned women across the nation to participate in this election, or else.

There was Oprah, doing what she does so freakishly well, cheerleading and extolling and impressing upon, getting women up and getting them angry and demanding that they exercise their hard-won right to vote and demanding that they quit dissing their feminist ancestors, the ones who worked so damn hard for suffrage and for freedom of choice and for the right to tell powerful sexist Republican men where they can shove their repressive sexist antichoice bigotry.

This was her fabulous, much-needed message: Take your rights for granted at your peril, ladies. Move, or else. Choose how you want the laws to treat and respect you and your body -- or someone else, someone who hasn't touched a vagina for 30 years and who thinks sex is only tolerable in the dark, fully clothed and with a respectable prostitute, will choose for you.

Sound like a cliché? Same ol' quasi-feminist rally message? Not exactly. Not this time. Just imagine this:

Imagine Bush filches another election in November. Nations mourn, black clouds gather, children cry, colons spasm, the remaining shreds of the American experiment wither and die.

And within a very short time, as many as 30 U.S. states have recriminalized abortion and made repressing women and hating sex fun again, as young American females everywhere who thought their right to choose was pretty much incontrovertible and indisputable and unfailing and who therefore didn't bother to vote in '00 or '04 suddenly go, oh holy freaking hell.

Hello, 1950s. Hello, coat-hanger surgery. Hello, millions of despondent daughters of uptight parents. Hello, dead or mutilated teenage girls who suffer botched procedures. Hello, a fresh national nightmare, revisited, regurgitated, reborn. And hello again to smug right-wing males who've wanted to put women back in their place for the past 50 years. Check that: 200 years. Check that: forever.

Just a silly nightmare? Utterly impossible? A ridiculous liberal daydream? Not even close, sweetheart.

It's all about the Supreme Court, of course. Fact is, our next president will almost surely get to appoint a number of new high-court justices to replace those who will likely retire after enduring Bush's toxic first term. They hung in there, these few -- especially stalwarts Sandra Day O'Connor and moderate, pro-choice John Paul Stevens -- hoping to disallow the nation's highest judiciary from becoming overly stacked with homophobic self-righteous right-wing neocon wingnuts (hi, Justice Scalia!) who would have us revert -- morally, sexually, spiritually, misogynistically -- to 1953. Check that: 1853. Check that: 1353.

With the exception of nearly useless neoconservative sycophant Clarence Thomas, not a single justice now serving on the court is under 65. Many insiders say Stevens, O'Connor and bitter old man William Rehnquist (almost 80) are all likely to retire before 2008. BushCo's chosen replacements could easily tip the scales of the court the other direction, from its very precarious 5-4 progressive tilt to a very sneering 6-3 conservative one, a court that would then very easily overturn parts or even all of Roe v. Wade. Talk about a malicious legacy.

It gets worse. It gets nastier, more widespread. Because should Shrub swipe another term, he will also be on his way to naming more federal trial and appeals judges -- hundreds, by most counts -- than either Clinton or Reagan, the last two-term presidents. Bush could, in short and for all intents and purposes, stack the nation's courts with enough neoconservative, antichoice, antiwomen crusaders to make Strom Thurmond giggle in his grave.

Which brings us straight back to Oprah. Say what you will about the often weirdly effusive and overtly gushy and often slightly smarmy woman who just gave away 276 Pontiacs to her entire studio audience (hard to tell if that was an act of astounding generosity and beneficence, or some sort of weird punishment -- I mean, they were Pontiacs), but the woman can electrify and inspire and educate her millions of devoted viewers like nobody's business.

And if there's one famously disenfranchised and alienated and apathetic voting bloc that needs to get off its collective yoga butt and stand up and make itself known this election lest it lose an even larger chunk of its basic human rights than it even realizes, it's youngish women.

This is, after all, what so many women don't seem to know. That the Bush administration has already, in just a few short years, managed to roll back a truly astounding number of their basic rights, making it more difficult, for example, for doctors to perform abortions, or making it illegal for schools to discuss contraception or for hospitals to discuss pregnancy-termination options.

From demeaning and ineffectual abstinence-only programs to biased counseling to cutting all funding for international women's health organizations that provide care to poor women in third-world nations (hell, Bush hacked that one away in his first month in office), Dubya has done more than any president in the last 100 years to smack women upside their sexually empowered heads.

Oh and by the way, that suggestion currently being floated by some in Congress that the Iraq war has become so nasty and desperate that we might very well need to reinstate the military draft? That draft includes young women. And oh yes, Bush has already upheld the ban on abortions for servicewomen stationed overseas, even if they pay for it themselves. Feeling patriotic yet?

This has been the GOP's message to women since, well, forever: Be like Laura Bush -- submissive, matronly, heavily shellacked and ever flashing a disquieting mannequin grin, off in the corner reading stories to the kids and cutting lots of pretty ceremonial ribbons and keeping quiet about the Important Stuff and never having sex and always be standing just out of the spotlight, secondary and inferior and in the background. You know, right where you belong.

Truly and sadly, few indeed are the powerful and articulate public female voices in our major media to counter this ideological poison. Who, Barbara Walters? Not exactly hotly connected to youth and issues of the day. Katie Couric? About as female empowering as a terrier. Martha Stewart? Busy designing barbell cozies for the prison gym. The wholly queasy pseudo-feminists on the wholly awful "The View"? Please.

And while plethoric are the powerful women working behind the media scenes, execs and pundits and writers, senators and world leaders and even forthright, independent wives, and while there are plenty of strong-willed, outspoken female celebs making their voices known, in terms of visibility and raw power and sheer reach, nobody can touch Oprah. Which is exactly why her message was so wonderful.


Here's the bottom line: 50 million eligible women didn't vote in 2000, and 22 million of them were single and nearly every one of them probably thought their vote doesn't matter and it isn't really worth it and who cares anyway because no matter who wins, everything's still pretty much run by rich powerful men anyway. Which is, you know, sort of true. But not quite.


Because as Oprah knows, there are powerful men who get it and who love women and who understand their issues and who have cool articulate daughters and opinionated self-defined multilingual firebrand wives (Hi, Teresa), and there are aww-shucks antichoice Texans with lifeless token wives who think your body is government property and you should just pipe down and keep your damn legs closed and go pray to an angry Republican God to forgive your plentiful vagina-induced sins.

Hey, it's your choice. But not for long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hometown Paper of Bush Endorses Kerry

    Note: So far this is the BEST editorial against Bush that I have seen, even better than big city newspapers.

Kerry Will Restore American Dignity
2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement

http://news.iconoclast-texas.com/web/Columns/Editorial/editorial39.htm

Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:

• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
• Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.

These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.

The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.

Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.

Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration:

1. His initiatives to disable the Social Security system,

2. The deteriorating state of the American economy,

3. A dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and

4. His continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.

President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.

The Social Security Trust Fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay Social Security while you are running a huge deficit? It’s impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. Social Security money is being used to escalate our deficit and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.

Privatization is problematic in that it would subject Social Security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the Stock Market. It would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the Ivan Boeskys and Ken Lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the Market and the Social Security Fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of American families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.

Kerry wants to keep Social Security, which each of us already owns. He says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. This would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the Bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever-changing demographics.

Our senior citizens depend upon Social Security. Bush’s answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as Americans have never experienced. Do we really want to risk the future of Social Security on Bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.

He let us down.

When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.

He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.

Rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of Iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what Bush called a more immediate menace, Saddam Hussein, in oil-rich Iraq. After all, Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.

The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Again, he let us down.

We presumed the President had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. Otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.

Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.

Now he argues unconvincingly that Iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. It is like arguing that America provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9/11.

Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.

We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a “wartime president.” America is in service 365 days a year. We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.

What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House intern’s dress. America’s reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.

Iraq is now a quagmire: no WMDs, no substantive link between Saddam and Osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. We are asked to go along on faith. But remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and “spin” will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.

Kerry has remained true to his vote granting the President the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate Saddam Hussein into allowing weapons inspections. He believes President Bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.

Kerry also voted against President Bush’s $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in Iraq, privileged Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of Americans.

Kerry’s four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraq’s multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.

The publishers of the Iconoclast differ with Bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans’ entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling “test” from Washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the Patriot Act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.

We are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by Bush appointees. Funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as Halliburton — companies with strong ties to oil and gas. Job training has been cut every year that Bush has resided at the White House.

Then there is his resolve to inadequately finance Homeland Security and to cut the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the Small Business Administration, and to under-fund veterans’ programs.

Likewise troubling is that President Bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 Commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations.

 
Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process — an enormous conflict of interest — plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of Export-Import Bank of America, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.

When examined based on all the facts, Kerry’s voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.

The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.

John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.

Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.

That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.

 
The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.

 

 

 

 

 

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Bush Bored With Fighting Terrorism

by Mark Smith

 

Our President used to be concerned about terrorism, but he got bored with it after six months- read his own words}

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him!"   (George W. Bush, September 13, 2001)

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."  (George W. Bush, March 13, 2002) NOTE: Reread the bottom quote above, but this time put yourself in the shoes of one of the thousands who lost a loved one in the World Trade Center attack. Osama is the biggest mass murderer in American history, and our idiot president just publicly confessed his real feelings: he doesn't give a rat's ass where Osama's at, or about catching Osama. In other words, he's got other priorities on his mind. I wonder what they are???

 

 

 

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For more of "Get Your War On" cartoons go to:   http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html

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Bushisms- Stupidities or Freudian Slips ???

 

"Too many OBGYN's are not able to practice their love of women all across America."  George Bush 9/7/04

 

Here is a link to a video that shows the idiot in all his glory, trying to bullshit his way out of a question regarding Indian tribes in the United States:

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/sovereignty.mov

 

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The Bush Monkey

And THIS man is in charge of the largest arsenal in the world???? Holy Shit!!!

 

 

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The Anti-Christ

Bush Seeks Church Membership Data
By David Morgan, Reuters

 

WASHINGTON (July 1) - President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday.

In a move sharply criticized both by religious leaders and civil libertarians, the Bush-Cheney campaign has issued a guide listing about two-dozen "duties" and a series of deadlines for organizing support among conservative church congregations.

A copy of the guide directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees, identify new churches that can be organized by the Bush campaign and talk to clergy about holding voter registration drives.

The document, distributed to campaign coordinators across the country earlier this year, also recommends that volunteers distribute voter guides in church and use Sunday service programs for get-out-the-vote drives.

"We expect this election to be potentially as close as 2000, so every vote counts and it's important to reach out to every single supporter of President Bush," campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

But the Rev. Richard Land, who deals with ethics and religious liberty issues for the Southern Baptist Convention, a key Bush constituency, said he was "appalled."

"First of all, I would not want my church directories being used that way," he said, predicting failure for the Bush plan.

The conservative Protestant denomination, whose 16 million members strongly backed Bush in 2000, held regular drives that encouraged church-goers to "vote their values," said Land.

"But it's one thing for us to do that. It's a totally different thing for a partisan campaign to come in and try to organize a church. A lot of pastors are going to say: 'Wait a minute, bub'," he added.

The guide surfaced as a spate of opinion polls showed Bush's reelection campaign facing a tough battle.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed Bush running neck-and-neck with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry among registered voters, 47 percent of whom said they now believed the president had misled Americans about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The Bush campaign has also been spending heavily on television ads, only to see the president's approval ratings slump to new lows.

Stanzel said the campaign ended the month of June with $64 million on hand. He had no figures on how much Bush has raised in June. At the end of May, Bush had raised $213.4 million and spent all but $63 million.

The latest effort to marshal religious support also drew fire from civil liberties activists concerned about the constitutional separation of church and state.

"Any coordination between the Bush campaign and church leaders would clearly be illegal," said a statement from the activist group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

07/01/04 19:30 ET

 

 

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Misc Quotes and Snippets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jon Stewart, The Daily Show     Jon Stewart, via Bush's own words, truly shows what a hypocritical lying scumbag Mr. Bush really is. Follow this link and see for yourself, then use your Return arrow to come back here.

 

 

 

Bushites are Blinded     The University of Maryland conducted a survey and found just how out of touch with reality the Bushites really are. Of course myself, knowing that most of these knuckleheads are also Fundy Christians, the results of the survey don't surprise me. The survey found that Bush supporters have a "resistance to information", which is a nice way of saying they are out of touch with reality, and in order to STAY out of touch with realities they don't like they censor what they let into their brains, or as the article puts it, "to avoid this cognitive dissonance, Bush supporters suppress awareness of unsettling information."  Some of the things they have blinded themselves to are Bush's policies. If they won't allow themselves to see anything bad about Bush, well gosh then, Bush will look pretty darn good! The survey found that most Bush supporters have "numerous misperceptions" about the president's positions. They incorrectly think that Bush backs the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the treaty banning land mines. They also somehow think that most people in the world LIKE Bush and want him reelected! (The truth is, in international survey after survey, the VAST majority of the world hates Bush with a passion.).    (survey results from The Orange County Register, Friday Oct. 22, 2004 p. News 7)

 

 

Bushaholics     This brief analysis is based on several years of chatting with Christian Fundies in AOL chatrooms, reading their rantings on message boards, and emailing with them.

Christian Fundies see President Dubya as "God's anointed man of the hour" so to speak. They believe that he is the one whom God will use to usher in the Battle of Armageddon, and hence the Second Coming of Christ! In the fundy mental universe, everything revolves around end-time prophecy (because a literal second coming of Christ is their central Hope), and end-time prophecy revolves around the so-called State of Israel. At least in their narrow and oddball understanding.

This parallels, somewhat, the situation in first century Palestine, where various revolutionary groups (the Zealots and Sicarri to name just two) were staging guerilla attacks on the occupying Roman forces in a heartfelt faith-filled belief they could thereby "force Yahweh's hand" into delivering them miraculously from their enemies via a Messiah. What they got, of course, was a final invasion of Palestine by the Roman general Titus who finally defeated, slaughtered, and dispersed them in 70 AD.

Today, we have Fundies anxious to see a literal second coming of Christ in their lifetime (so the Baby Boomers wont have to grow old and die I suppose), and they see the terrible situation in the Middle East as signaling the End Draweth Nigh. George Bush and his lunatic activities are seen as fulfillment of Bible prophecy, and that Bush will be the one to "force Yahweh's hand" in ushering in the Battle of Armageddon (to take place in the Middle East), and then the glorious literal Second Coming of Christ.

Yes, these people are bizarrely and dangerously deluded. Religion will do that to you. Religion is a mental virus, a meme, and can afflict and delude even otherwise intelligent adults into believing fantastic nonsense. (Do you think ALL the terrorist bombers who blow themsleves up are stupid?)

Hold onto your hats folks. It's going to get much worse here on in if Dubya is reelected.

Nathan

 

 

 

 

Marshal Mathers, aka Eminem:     "He (Bush) has been painted to be this hero and he's got our troops over there dying for no reason. I haven't heard an explanation yet that I can understand. Explain to us why we have troops over there dying... I think he started a mess. He fucked up so bad he doesn't know what to do right now. Bin Laden attacked us and we attack Saddam. We ain't heard from Saddam for ten years, but we go attack Saddam. Explain why that is. Give us some answers." Rolling Stone magazine, Nov 2004

Jon Stewart of The Daily Show:     While saying that President Bush is a "decent" man, Stewart lampooned him for saying during a presidential debate that he couldn't name one of his mistakes.  "He can't think of one?" Stewart asked. "I got a list."  New York, Oct. 15, 2004
 

Michael Moore:     "How about that debate Thursday?" Moore asked, proceeding to mimic the president's facial expressions and emphasis on the "hard work" involved in fighting the war on terrorism. "We know it's hard work. That's why we want you out of there. You've been on vacation 40% of the time."
 

 

Senator John Kerry on Iraq:     Iraq is now what it was not before the war: a haven for terrorists.   (9/24/04)

Time magazine Editorial      "The neoconservatives had ulterior motives; almost all were fervent believers in the state of Israel and, as a prominent Turkish official told me last week, 'They didn't want Saddam's rockets falling on Tel Aviv'".  (Editorial by Joe Klein 5/17/04, page 25)

Orange County Register (a VERY Republican newspaper): Lead Editorial from Sept. 10 2004

"That (Iraq) war bids to continue for years, diverting precious attention and resources from the stateless terrorist who may well be planning the next attack even now... It was not an abstraction called 'terrorism'  that attacked America, but a specific group of terrorists. Instead of engaging in a vague crusade to reshape the world, why not renew America's resolve to inflict damage on those who inflicted damage on us?"

Gore Vidal, Author      No. We are talking about despotism. I have read not only the first PATRIOT Act but also the second one, which has not yet been totally made public nor approved by Congress and to which there is already great resistance. An American citizen can be fingered as a terrorist, and with what proof? No proof. All you need is the word of the attorney general or maybe the president himself. You can then be locked up without access to a lawyer, and then tried by military tribunal and even executed. Or, in a brand-new wrinkle, you can be exiled, stripped of your citizenship and packed off to another place not even organized as a country - like Tierra del Fuego or some rock in the Pacific. All of this is in the USA PATRIOT Act. The Founding Fathers would have found this to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged.

L.A. Weekly interview, Nov 14-20 2003 issue,

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/52/features-cooper.php 

 

 

 

A Quick Question for Bushmen:        Here is a quick way you can tell WHY a person supports Bush- one question that will tell you if there's hope of changing his mind, or if the person "come hell or high water" will STILL vote for Bush. Ask him this:  IF Bush came out on national TV tomorrow and admitted that he's an Atheist, and has ALWAYS been  an Atheist would you still vote for him???   This one question will tell you if he's open to reason and facts, or if his mind is hopelessly closed, for if the ONLY thing that would change his mind is Bush's religiousness, then that is really the only thing he's voting for. Facts and figures & reasons, 900 dead American soldiers, stealing an election, destroying the Bill of Rights, and going AWOL from the military- all these will be wasted on him, and taking him to see Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9-11" will only have value if the popcorn turns out good.

 

Ron Reagan         "I'm here tonight to talk about research into what may be the greatest medical breakthrough in our lifetime- the use of embryonic stem cells... It may be within our power to put an end to this suffering- we only need to try...  Now there are those who would stand in the way of this remarkable future, deny funding for such crucial research... There are some whose belief is sincere, but the theology of a few should not be allowed to forestall the health and well being of the many. And how can we "affirm life" if we abandon those whose own lives are so desperately at risk? ...We can choose between true compassion, and mere ideology."      (July 27, 2004 @ The Democratic National Convention)

General Wesley K. Clark:    "That flag is our flag. We served under that flag. We've seen men die for that flag. And no John Ashcroft or Tom DeLay or Dick Cheney is going to take that flag away from us!"  (Orange County Register, July 27, 2004, p. News 7)

Barack Obama        "When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they're going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world."  (July 27, 2004 @ The Democratic National Convention)

 

Senator Ted Kennedy:   

Despite the Kerry campaign's admonition to convention speakers not to risk alienating undecided voters with red-meat attacks on the president, Kennedy unleashed what amounted to the latest in a string of flame-throwing verbal assaults on Bush. In recent months, for example, he has called the war in Iraq a fraud "made up in Texas," a political product "marketed" by the Bush administration to win elections and ultimately Bush's Vietnam.

"More than 900 of our service men and women have already paid the ultimate price," he said in his convention address, his voice sometimes cracking. "The administration has alienated longtime allies. Instead of making America more secure, they have made us less so.   If each of us cared about the public interest, we wouldn’t have the excesses of Enron. We wouldn’t have the abuses of Halliburton. And Vice President Cheney would be retired to an undisclosed location."
 

Kennedy likened Bush to a "monarch named George who inherited the crown" drawing laughs. And, invoking the memory of Democratic icon Franklin D. Roosevelt, he told the crowd: "The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George W. Bush."  http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040727_2179.html
(July 27, 2004 @ The Democratic Convention)

 

Bush Caused This War:     "It is the Bush administration... who spoke the words that have cost us more than 900 lives and billions of dollars and have left our international reputation inn tatters." ³

Regarding Torture as Policy:    "There's a reason why we sign these treaties -- to protect my son in the military," Senator Biden growled at Mr Ashcroft. "That's why we have these treaties.  "So when Americans are captured, they are not tortured. That's the reason, in case anybody forgets it."²

Bumper Sticker:    Somewhere in Texas... a village is missing its idiot.

Dumbness:    To someone dumber than Bush, he looks smart!

 

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Bushtianity and Bushtians- Fundy Christians LOVE Bush

by Mark Smith

For the fanatical Christian followers of George W, the ONLY thing that would make them NOT vote for Bush is if he came out on national TV and said he was really an Atheist- that he had lied about all that Jesus crap. That's it. Baring that, they'll vote for him come hell or high water.

 

"I know Bush has done things that aren't perfect, but Bush said that he's accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. I believe that the way he tries to take the United States is more toward God."  Kevin Patesel, Canton Ohio, as quoted in the Orange County Register, 9/27/04 p. News 7

 

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The Conservative Case for Kerry
Clyde Prestowitz
Washington, DC
 

As a former Reagan-administration official, registered Republican, born-again Christian, and traditional conservative, I am going to vote for John Kerry. So are many other old-line Republicans. Here's why.

While the Bush administration calls itself "conservative," its use of the term is frankly Orwellian. It not only deprives the word of meaning, but also presents the administration's philosophy as the opposite of what it actually is.

Conservatives have always believed in fiscal responsibility: in being sure you could pay your way and in providing for the future. Conservatives pay down debt, rather than adding to it. This doesn't necessarily mean balancing the budget every year, but at a minimum it means striving toward balance as a top priority.

The Bush approach is completely at odds with such thinking. If any proof were needed, it was amply provided in the president's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. With Congressional Budget Office projections showing oceans of red ink for the indefinite future, President Bush promised more tax cuts. His audience cheered.

Conservatives are often well off, but they understand that the best way to preserve the society in which they are doing so well is to ensure that all its members can survive at a reasonable standard of living. It was the conservative Otto von Bismarck, after all, who first introduced social-security programs in 19th Century Germany for just that reason.

Conservatives do not loot the Treasury or bet the future health of their society on the chance that the best-case scenario will actually materialize. They provide for the worst case. So a conservative would have expected that the president's tax cuts and promises of more to come would at least have been accompanied by plans for cutting expenditures.

That expectation would have been disappointed, however, as the president promised about $1 trillion of new spending programs that, given his tax cuts, can be paid for only with red ink.

Which brings us to a second fundamental principle of conservatism: small government. From the founding of the Republic until now, conservatives have feared the threat to liberty posed by big government.
Conservative icon Ronald Reagan came to power primarily by focusing on big government as the source of most of the country's problems. But the Bush administration has presided over a steady increase in the size of government, as federal expenditure has risen as a percentage of gross domestic product, after declining in the late 1990s.

Conservatives have never been enthusiastic about foreign adventures or about messianic undertakings. John Adams made the point early in our history when he emphasized that "America does not go abroad to slay dragons."

It was the liberal Democrats Woodrow Wilson and John Kennedy who committed the United States to making the world safe for democracy and to "bearing any burden and paying any price to assure the success of liberty." These are fine-sounding words, but they are not the words of conservatives. Thus, when President Bush promises to democratize the Mideast, conservatives cringe. So much so, in fact, that several former high-ranking officials of the Reagan and first Bush administrations have told me that they are not supporting the president for re-election.

This is because they know that, administration rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, we are not safer today than we were three years ago. Far from destroying al-Qaida and cutting its alleged links with Saddam Hussein, we have made Iraq into a magnet for terrorists. Worse, there is a real possibility that Osama bin Laden could gain control of our ally Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons and operational long-range missiles. Safe? Not on your life.

Nor are we freer. Conservatives are nothing if not steadfast defenders of individual rights, rule of law, and due process. Yet the Patriot Act and the procedures at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere have visibly infringed on all of these. It is ironic that even as it preaches about widening the circle of freedom abroad, the administration is reducing it at home.

Before the current campaign, it might have been argued that at least in affirming the importance of faith and respecting those who profess it the administration had embraced traditional conservative views. But in the wake of the Swift Boat ads attacking John Kerry, even this argument can no longer be maintained. As an elder of the Presbyterian Church, I found that those ads were not at all in the Christian tradition. John McCain rightly condemned them as dishonest and dishonorable. The president should have, too. That he did not undermines his credibility on questions of faith.

Some say it's just politics. But that's the whole point. More is expected of people of faith than "just politics."

The fact is that the Bush administration might better be called radical or romantic or adventurist than conservative. And that's why real conservatives are leaning toward Kerry.

http://blog.johnkerry.com/blog/archives/003498.html

 

 

 

 

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Manipulating The Data

by Mark Smith

The Bush administration has already been caught several times manipulating the data to serve its own ends. In the latest fiasco (June 2004) Secretary of State Colin Powell had to publicly retract the previous released "happy face" data on the number of terror incidents, and replace it with data that shows things have gotten worse- WAY worse. Again, how lying shenanigans like these fail to merit the disapproval of Fundy Christians... all I can say is that back when I was a Christian, lying was still considered a SIN. It looks like things have changed since then, for these modern Fundies, if it's THEIR man doing the lying, lying is A-OK with them.

Other cases that may come to mind: cooking the books to get the Medicare Insurance/Ripoff cards passed thru congress, doctoring the release of the panel on greenhouse gases to show all is ok, and let us not forget: arranging the data to show that Saddam was ready to nuke or poison the US.

As with all Fundy Christians, Bush & Co. seem to have no hesitation to lie if and when it suits their purpose. After all, for them the END justifies the MEANS, and if they lie, so what? A simple "sorry, Jesus" wipes away all the sin while leaving all the benefits.

 

 

 

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Great Links!!!!!

 

 

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Significant News Articles

 

Retired Diplomats, Military Commanders Fault Bush's Leadership
Administration Unable to Handle Global Leadership, Former Ambassadors, Generals Say

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; 3:32 PM

The Bush administration does not understand the world it faces and is unable to handle "in either style or substance" the responsibilities of global leadership, an eminent group of 27 retired diplomats and military commanders charged today.

"Our security has been weakened," the former ambassadors and four-star commanders said in a statement read at a packed Washington news conference.

"Never in the two and a quarter centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted."

The statement fit onto a single page, but the sharp public criticism of President Bush was striking, coming from a bipartisan group of respected former officials united in anger about U.S. policy.

The commentary emerges at a time when public doubt about the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Bush's handling of national security has grown and faith in Bush's leadership has fallen, as measured by opinion polls.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the administration "has a record that it's happy to stand on." He said United States fights terrorism with "diplomatic, military, intelligence and law enforcement means."

As for the group of former government officials drafting a strong statement, Boucher said it is "within their rights, within their freedom. Well, it's a free country. They can do that if they want, just like any other citizens. "

Also today, the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks said it found "no credible evidence" that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had worked with al Qaeda on the Sept. 11 attacks or any other missions in the United States.

Significant players in the Bush administration have worked to connect Hussein in the public's mind with Sept. 11 and anti-American terrorism, an effort that largely succeeded. As recently as this week, Vice President Cheney said Hussein had "long-established ties" with al Qaeda.

"Why the vice president continues to make that claim beats me. I have no idea," said Phyllis Oakley, a signatory of the anti-Bush statement and a former director of the State Department's intelligence office.

Oakley and the other 26 signatories described Bush administration "manipulation of uncertain intelligence about weapons of mass destruction" and "a cynical campaign to persuade the public that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda and the attacks of Sept. 11."

The new group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, believes Bush must be replaced for the United States to regain credibility and strengthen valuable foreign alliances.

They said they did not coordinate their message with the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, but they made clear that they support the Massachusetts senator's quest.

Gen. Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak, former U.S. Air Force chief of staff, said he was the Oregon chairman of Republican Robert J. Dole's presidential campaign in 1996 and joined Veterans for Bush in 2000. Now he is advising Kerry.

"This administration has gone away from me, not vice versa," McPeak told reporters.

A consistent theme of the statement and the news conference at the National Press Club was that the Bush administration has taken steps that have alienated allies and undermined U.S. interests -- ultimately making the world a more dangerous place for Americans.

Noting the arrests without trial of Muslims since Sept. 11 and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman criticized a "post 9/11 atmosphere of hysteria."

"I think we will in time come to be very ashamed of this period in history," Freeman said, "and of the role some people in the administration played in setting the tone and setting the rules."

Donald McHenry, former ambassador to the United Nations, answered a question about the effectiveness of U.S. public diplomacy, a special focus of the Bush administration, especially in the Muslim world.

"You can embark on all the public diplomacy you wish, but if there is no substance to the policy, it's very difficult to sell," McHenry said. '

"You can't sell product no matter how extensive your P.R. efforts are if the product is lousy," McHenry continued. "I think that, unfortunately, is the situation in which the United States finds itself in many parts of the world."

The former diplomats and military commanders said the United States suffers from "close identification" with autocratic governments in the Muslim world and "the perception of unquestioning support for the policies and actions of the present Israeli government."

The group called for greater balance.

Among those who signed the statement are Adm. William J. Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Ronald Reagan, and Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, appointed by George H.W. Bush to lead U.S. forces in the Middle East.

The participants include a pair of former ambassadors to the Soviet Union, two former ambassadors to Israel, two former ambassadors to Pakistan and Adm. Stansfield Turner, onetime Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Bush from the outset "adopted an overbearing approach to America's role in the world, relying on military might and righteousness, insensitive to the concerns of traditional friends and allies, and disdainful of the United Nations," the statement says. "Motivated more by ideology than by reasoned analysis, it struck out on its own."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46538-2004Jun16.html

 

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Humor- What is Funny About This Election

Letterman's Top Ten List: Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit 9/11":

10.   That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing

9.     It oversimplified the way I stole the election

8.     Too many of them fancy college-boy words

7.     If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported

6.     Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger

5.     Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true

4.     Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe

3.     Where the hell was Spider-man?

2.     Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth

1.     I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball
 

"Here's something shocking according to the latest issue of Newsweek magazine: The Bush administration officials are reviewing a proposal that would allow for the postponement of the presidential election in the event of a catastrophe. You know, like Kerry winning."  -Jay Leno


"I love that the Department of Homeland Security always tells Americans if you don't fly commercial airlines, 'the terrorists have won.' If you don't hold the Super Bowl or the World Series, 'the terrorists have won.' If you don't get out to the mall and do your Christmas shopping, 'the terrorists have won.' Comes time for the election, 'Oh, let the terrorists have that one."'  -Jay Leno

 

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Why Fundy-Mental Christians Support Bush

 

Subject: Why Fundy Mental Christians Support Bush
Date: 11/1/2004 1:56:28 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: Mojave Nate

 

This brief analysis is based on several years of chatting with Christian Fundies in AOL chatrooms, reading their rantings on message boards, and emailing with them.

Christian Fundies see President Dubya as "God's anointed man of the hour" so to speak. They believe that he is the one whom God will use to usher in the Battle of Armageddon, and hence the Second Coming of Christ! In the fundy mental universe, everything revolves around end-time prophecy (because a literal second coming of Christ is their central Hope), and end-time prophecy revolves around the so-called State of Israel. At least in their narrow and oddball understanding.

This parallels, somewhat, the situation in first century Palestine, where various revolutionary groups (the Zealots and Sicarii to name just two) were staging guerilla attacks on the occupying Roman forces in a heartfelt faith-filled belief they could thereby "force Yahweh's hand" into delivering them miraculously from their enemies via a Messiah. What they got, of course, was a final invasion of Palestine by the Roman general Titus who decisively defeated, slaughtered, and dispersed them in 70 AD.

Today, we have Fundies anxious to see a literal second coming of Christ in their lifetime (so the Baby Boomers wont have to grow old and die I suppose), and they see the terrible situation in the Middle East as signaling The End Draweth Nigh. George Bush and his lunatic activities are seen as fulfillment of Bible prophecy, and that Bush will be the one to "force Yahweh's hand" in ushering in the Battle of Armageddon (to take place in the Middle East), which will then lead to the glorious literal Second Coming of Christ.

Yes, these people are bizarrely and dangerously deluded. Religion will do that to you. Religion is a mental virus, a meme, and can afflict and delude even otherwise intelligent adults into believing fantastic nonsense. (Do you think ALL the terrorist bombers who blow themselves up are stupid?)

Hold onto your hats folks. It's going to get much worse here on in if Dubya is reelected.

Nathan
 

 

 

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Jihad Joe People often wonder how Donald Rumsfeld plans to win the "hearts and minds" of all the Muslim kids in the world. This is his latest idea. He's been trying it out on George W. It's a new action toy called "Jihad Joe" and in trials with George W it certainly is keeping him occupied during those long boring security meetings when all those adults are using those big words he doesn't understand. If it works well with keeping George amused, they'll try it out on more sophisticated minds next: First Graders.

 

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Graphical Representation- US Soldiers Killed in Iraq

by Mark Smith

2,200

(Wounded for Life: 17,000+)

As you look at the graphic below, please remember that each of these symbols represents a human life. Each solider who has died leaves behind two parents whose lives will never be the same,  a family that will never fully recover, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives, and orphans. This is the human cost of this war that George Bush started FOR NO GOOD REASON, and this cost will last decades. None of these soldier's lives were worth the ungrateful response Iraq is showing the world for us having removed Saddam Hussein, nor a penny of profit for Halliburton. If a magic wand were available I'd like to bring all these soldiers back to life and put Saddam back in charge of Iraq- they deserve him. We, however, don't deserve this carnage that Bush set up over a bunch of lies and half-truths.

  And please, don't expect real sympathy from a president who, while governor of Texas, executed more prisoners than any other governor in American history. Bush is on a crusade to save Israel from future scuds, and Christianize the Middle East, and if it costs this country thousands upon thousands of more lives, he doesn't care- for "God" told him to bring democracy to the world. Just remember this: everyone of these dead Americans would have been alive today if it weren't for the warmongering "God told me to do it" of George ChickenHawk Deserter Bush, willing to be brave with other's lives in time of war, but not his own.

 

 

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Al Gore Rips Bush a New One

Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States
New York University, May 26, 2004

 

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a groan man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name.

President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."

When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.

Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers."

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars (CHECK) and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all these years.

One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. ... The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible for this kind of abuse..

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.

He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and twenty five days remaining in this president's current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration.

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point.

We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense.

Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?

The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights....

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly - that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'

Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders.

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America - it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president.

Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength."

The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation...We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth...The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Admistration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of September 11th.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world.

President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world - but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability...

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility."

 

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Al Gore Speaks on Iraq

Oct. 18, 2004

http://www.moveonpac.org/gore5/

 

 

I have made a series of speeches about the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration – with regard to Iraq, the war on terror, civil liberties, the environment and other issues – beginning more than two years ago with a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco prior to the administration’s decision to invade Iraq. During this series of speeches, I have tried to understand what it is that gives so many Americans the uneasy feeling that something very basic has gone wrong with our democracy.

There are many people in both parties who have the uneasy feeling that there is something deeply troubling about President Bush’s relationship to reason, his disdain for facts, an incuriosity about new information that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he wrestles with on behalf of the country. One group maligns the President as not being intelligent, or at least, not being smart enough to have a normal curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second group is convinced that his religious conversion experience was so profound that he relies on religious faith in place of logical analysis. But I disagree with both of those groups. I think he is plenty smart. And while I have no doubt that his religious belief is genuine, and that it is an important motivation for many things that he does in life, as it is for me and for many of you, most of the President’s frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible. But it is crucially important to be precise in describing what it is he believes in so strongly and insulates from any logical challenge or even debate. It is ideology – and not his religious faith – that is the source of his inflexibility. Most of the problems he has caused for this country stem not from his belief in God, but from his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporations over the interests of the American people. Love of power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency.

The surprising dominance of American politics by right-wing politicians whose core beliefs are often wildly at odds with the opinions of the majority of Americans has resulted from the careful building of a coalition of interests that have little in common with each other besides a desire for power devoted to the achievement of a narrow agenda. The two most important blocks of this coalition are the economic royalists, those corporate leaders and high net worth families with vast fortunes at their disposal who are primarily interested in an economic agenda that eliminates as much of their own taxation as possible, and an agenda that removes regulatory obstacles and competition in the marketplace. They provide the bulk of the resources that have financed the now extensive network of foundations, think tanks, political action committees, media companies and front groups capable of simulating grassroots activism. The second of the two pillars of this coalition are social conservatives who want to roll back most of the progressive social changes of the 20 th century, including women’s rights, social integration, the social safety net, the government social programs of the progressive era, the New Deal, the Great Society and others. Their coalition includes a number of powerful special interest groups such as the National Rifle Association, the anti-abortion coalition, and other groups that have agreed to support each other’s agendas in order to obtain their own. You could call it the three hundred musketeers – one for all and all for one. Those who raise more than one hundred thousand dollars are called not musketeers but pioneers.

His seeming immunity to doubt is often interpreted by people who see and hear him on television as evidence of the strength of his conviction – when in fact it is this very inflexibility, based on a willful refusal to even consider alternative opinions or conflicting evidence, that poses the most serious danger to the country. And by the same token, the simplicity of his pronouncements, which are often misinterpreted as evidence that he has penetrated to the core of a complex issue, are in fact exactly the opposite -- they mark his refusal to even consider complexity. That is a particularly difficult problem in a world where the challenges we face are often quite complex and require rigorous analysis.

The essential cruelty of Bush’s game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals then cloaks it with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the process he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities. Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the citizenry of America and give as much as possible to the already wealthy and privileged, who look at his agenda and say, as Dick Cheney said to Paul O’Neill, “this is our due.”

The central elements of Bush’s political – as opposed to religious -- belief system are plain to see: The “public interest” is a dangerous myth according to Bush’s ideology – a fiction created by the hated “liberals” who use the notion of “public interest” as an excuse to take away from the wealthy and powerful what they believe is their due. Therefore, government of by and for the people, is bad – except when government can help members of his coalition. Laws and regulations are therefore bad – again, except when they can be used to help members of his coalition. Therefore, whenever laws must be enforced and regulations administered, it is important to assign those responsibilities to individuals who can be depended upon not to fall prey to this dangerous illusion that there is a public interest, and will instead reliably serve the narrow and specific interests of industries or interest groups. This is the reason, for example, that President Bush put the chairman of Enron, Ken Lay, in charge of vetting any appointees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Enron had already helped the Bush team with such favors as ferrying their rent-a-mob to Florida in 2000 to permanently halt the counting of legally cast ballots. And then Enron went on to bilk the electric rate-payers of California, without the inconvenience of federal regulators protecting citizens against their criminal behavior. Or to take another example, this is why all of the important EPA positions have been filled by lawyers and lobbyists representing the worst polluters in their respective industries in order to make sure that they’re not inconvenienced by the actual enforcement of the laws against excessive pollution. In Bush’s ideology, there is an interweaving of the agendas of large corporations that support him and his own ostensibly public agenda for the government he leads. Their preferences become his policies, and his politics become their business.

Any new taxes are of course bad – especially if they add anything to the already unbearable burden placed on the wealthy and powerful. There are exceptions to this rule, however, for new taxes that are paid by lower income Americans, which have the redeeming virtue of simultaneously lifting the burden of paying for government from the wealthy and potentially recruiting those presently considered too poor to pay taxes into the anti-tax bandwagon.

In the international arena, treaties and international agreements are bad, because they can interfere with the exercise of power, just as domestic laws can. The Geneva Convention, for example, and the U.S. law prohibiting torture were both described by Bush’s White House Counsel as “quaint.” And even though new information has confirmed that Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in reviewing the specific extreme measures authorized to be used by military interrogators, he has still not been held accountable for the most shameful and humiliating violation of American principles in recent memory.

Most dangerous of all, this ideology promotes the making of policy in secret, based on information that is not available to the public and insulated from any meaningful participation by Congress. And when Congress’s approval is required under our current constitution, it is given without meaningful debate. As Bush said to one Republican Senator in a meeting described in Time magazine, “Look, I want your vote. I’m not going to debate it with you.” At the urging of the Bush White House, Republican leaders in Congress have taken the unprecedented step of routinely barring Democrats from serving on important conference committees and allowing lobbyists for special interests to actually draft new legislative language for conference committees that has not been considered or voted upon in either the House or Senate.

It appears to be an important element in Bush’s ideology to never admit a mistake or even a doubt. It also has become common for Bush to rely on special interests for information about the policies important to them and he trusts what they tell him over any contrary view that emerges from public debate. He has, in effect, outsourced the truth. Most disturbing of all, his contempt for the rule of reason and his early successes in persuading the nation that his ideologically based views accurately described the world have tempted him to the hubristic and genuinely dangerous illusion that reality is itself a commodity that can be created with clever public relations and propaganda skills, and where specific controversies are concerned, simply purchased as a turnkey operation from the industries most affected.

George Orwell said, “The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

And in one of the speeches a year ago last August, I proposed that one reason why the normal processes of our democracy have seemed dysfunctional is that the nation had a large number of false impressions about the choices before us, including that Saddam Hussein was the person primarily responsible for attacking us on September 11 th 2001 (according to Time magazine, 70 percent thought that in November of 2002); an impression that there was a tight linkage and close partnership and cooperation between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, between the terrorist group al Qaeda, which attacked us, and Iraq, which did not; the impression that Saddam had a massive supply of weapons of mass destruction; that he was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, and that he was about to give nuclear weapons to the al Qaeda terrorist group, which would then use them against American cities; that the people of Iraq would welcome our invading army with garlands of flowers; that even though the rest of the world opposed the war, they would quickly fall in line after we won and contribute money and soldiers so that there wasn’t a risk to our taxpayers of footing the whole bill, that there would be more than enough money from the Iraqi oil supplies, which would flow in abundance after the invasion and that we would use that money to offset expenses and we wouldn’t have to pay anything at all; that the size of the force required for this would be relatively small and wouldn’t put a strain on our military or jeopardize other commitment around the world. Of course, every single one of these impressions was wrong. And, unfortunately, the consequences have been catastrophic for our country…

And the plague of false impressions seemed to settle on other policy debates as well. For example in considering President Bush’s gigantic tax cut, the country somehow got the impression that, one, the majority of it wouldn’t go disproportionally to the wealthy but to the middle class; two, that it would not lead to large deficits because it would stimulate the economy so much that it would pay for itself; not only there would be no job losses but we would have big increases in employment. But here too, every one of these impressions was wrong.

I did not accuse the president of intentionally deceiving the American people, but rather, noted the remarkable coincidence that all of his arguments turned out to be based on falsehoods. But since that time, we have learned that, in virtually every case, the president chose to ignore and indeed often to suppress, studies, reports and facts that were contrary to the false impressions he was giving to the American people. In most every case he chose to reject information that was prepared by objective analysts and rely instead on information that was prepared by sources of questionable reliability who had a private interest in the policy choice he was recommending that conflicted with the public interest.

For example, when the President and his team were asserting that Saddam Hussein had aluminum tubes that had been acquired in order to enrich Uranium for atomic bombs, numerous experts at the Department of Energy and elsewhere in the intelligence community were certain that the information being presented by the President was completely wrong. The true experts on Uranium enrichment are at Oak Ridge, in my home state of Tennessee. And they told me early on that in their opinion there was virtually zero possibility whatsoever that the tubes in question were for the purpose of enrichment – and yet they received a directive forbidding them from making any public statement that disagreed with the President’s assertions.

In another example, we now know that two months before the war began, Bush received two detailed and comprehensive secret reports warning him that the likely result of an American-led invasion of Iraq would be increased support for Islamic fundamentalism, deep division of Iraqi society with high levels of violent internal conflict and guerilla warfare aimed against U.S. forces. Yes, in spite of these analyses, Bush chose to suppress the warnings and instead convey to the American people the absurdly Polyanna-ish view of highly questionable and obviously biased sources like Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted felon and known swindler, who the Bush administration put on its payroll and gave a seat adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. They flew him into Baghdad on a military jet with a private security force, but then decided the following year he was actually a spy for Iran, who had been hoodwinking President Bush all along with phony facts and false predictions.

There is a growing tension between President Bush’s portrait of the situation in which we find ourselves and the real facts on the ground. In fact, his entire agenda is collapsing around his ankles: Iraq is in flames, with a growing U.S. casualty rate and a growing prospect of a civil war with the attendant chaos and risk of an Islamic fundamentalist state. America’s moral authority in the world has been severely damaged, and our ability to persuade others to follow our lead has virtually disappeared. Our troops are stretched thin, are undersupplied and are placed in intolerable situations without adequate training or equipment. In the latest U.S.-sponsored public opinion survey of Iraqis only 2% say they view our troops as liberators; more than 90% of Arab Iraqis have a hostile view of what they see as an “occupation.” Our friends in the Middle East – including, most prominently, Israel – have been placed in greater danger because of the policy blunders and the sheer incompetence with which the civilian Pentagon officials have conducted the war. The war in Iraq has become a recruiting bonanza for terrorists who use it as their damning indictment of U.S. policy. The massive casualties suffered by civilians in Iraq and the horrible TV footage of women and children being pulled dead or injured from the rubble of their homes has been a propaganda victory for Osama bin Laden beyond his wildest dreams. America’s honor and reputation has been severely damaged by the President’s decision to authorize policies and legal hair splitting that resulted in widespread torture by U.S. soldiers and contractors of Iraqi citizens and others in facilities stretching from Guantanamo to Afghanistan to Iraq to secret locations in other countries. Astonishingly, and shamefully, investigators also found that more than 90 percent of those tortured and abused were innocent of any crime or wrongdoing whatsoever. The prestigious Jaffe think tank in Israel released a devastating indictment just last week of how the misadventure in Iraq has been a deadly distraction from the crucial war on terror.

We now know from Paul Bremer, the person chosen to be in charge of U.S. policy in Iraq immediately following the invasion, that he repeatedly told the White House there were insufficient troops on the ground to make the policy a success. Yet at that time, President Bush was repeatedly asserting to the American people that he was relying on those Americans in Iraq for his confident opinion that we had more than enough troops and no more were needed.

We now know from the Central Intelligence Agency that a detailed, comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the likely consequences of an invasion accurately predicted the chaos, popular resentment, and growing likelihood of civil war that would follow a U.S. invasion and that this analysis was presented to the President even as he confidently assured the nation that the aftermath of our invasion would be the speedy establishment of representative democracy and market capitalism by grateful Iraqis.

Most Americans have tended to give the Bush-Cheney administration the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his failure to take any action in advance of 9/11 to prepare the nation for attack. After all, hindsight always casts a harsh light on mistakes that were not nearly as visible at the time they were made. And we all know that. But with the benefit of all the new studies that have been made public it is no longer clear that the administration deserves this act of political grace by the American people. For example, we now know, from the 9/11 Commission that the chief law enforcement office appointed by President Bush to be in charge of counter-terrorism, John Ashcroft, was repeatedly asked to pay attention to the many warning signs being picked up by the FBI. Former FBI acting director Thomas J. Pickard, the man in charge of presenting Ashcroft with the warnings, testified under oath that Aschroft angrily told him “he did not want to hear this information anymore.” That is an affirmative action by the administration that is very different than simple negligence. That is an extremely serious error in judgment that constitutes a reckless disregard for the safety of the American people. It is worth remembering that among the reports the FBI was receiving, that Ashcroft ordered them not to show him, was an expression of alarm in one field office that the nation should immediately check on the possibility that Osama bin Laden was having people trained in commercial flight schools around the U.S. And another, from a separate field office, that a potential terrorist was learning to fly commercial airliners and made it clear he had no interest in learning how to land. It was in this period of recklessly willful ignorance on the part of the Attorney General that the CIA was also picking up unprecedented warnings that an attack on the United States by al Qaeda was imminent. In his famous phrase, George Tenet wrote, the system was blinking red. It was in this context that the President himself was presented with a CIA report with the headline, more alarming and more pointed than any I saw in eight years I saw of daily CIA briefings: “bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.���

The only warnings of this nature that remotely resembled the one given to George Bush was about the so-called Millenium threats predicted for the end of the year 1999 and less-specific warnings about the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. In both cases these warnings in the President’s Daily Briefing were followed, immediately, the same day – by the beginning of urgent daily meetings in the White House of all of the agencies and offices involved in preparing our nation to prevent the threatened attack.

By contrast, when President Bush received his fateful and historic warning of 9/11, he did not convene the National Security Council, did not bring together the FBI and CIA and other agencies with responsibility to protect the nation, and apparently did not even ask followup questions about the warning. The bi-partisan 9/11 commission summarized what happened in its unanimous report: “We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 th between the President and his advisors about the possibility of a threat of al Qaeda attack in the United States.” The commissioners went on to report that in spite of all the warnings to different parts of the administration, the nation’s “domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction and did not have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law authorities were not marshaled to augment the FBI’s efforts. The public was not warned.”

We know from the 9/11 commission that within hours of the attack, Secretary Rumsfeld was attempting to find a way to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11. We know the sworn testimony of the President’s White House head of counter-terrorism Richard Clarke that on September 12 th – the day after the attack: "The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this…I said, 'Mr. President…There's no connection. He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection…We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts…They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.' …I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."

He did not ask about Osama bin Laden. He did not ask about al Qaeda. He did not ask about Saudi Arabia or any country other than Iraq. When Clarke responded to his question by saying that Iraq was not responsible for the attack and that al Qaeda was, the President persisted in focusing on Iraq, and again, asked Clarke to spend his time looking for information linking Saddam Hussein to the attack.

Again, this is not hindsight. This is how the President was thinking at the time he was planning America’s response to the attack. This was not an unfortunate misreading of the available evidence, causing a mistaken linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda, this was something else; a willful choice to make the linkage, whether evidence existed or not.

Earlier this month, Secretary Rumsfeld, who saw all of the intelligence available to President Bush on the alleged connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, finally admitted, under repeated questioning from reporters, “To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.”

This is not negligence, this is deception.

It is clear that President Bush has absolute faith in a rigid, right-wing ideology. He ignores the warnings of his experts. He forbids any dissent and never tests his assumptions against the best available evidence. He is arrogantly out of touch with reality. He refuses to ever admit mistakes. Which means that as long as he is our President, we are doomed to repeat them. It is beyond incompetence. It is recklessness that risks the safety and security of the American people.

We were told that our allies would join in a massive coalition so that we would not bear the burden alone. But as is by now well known, more than 90 percent of the non-Iraqi troops are American, and the second and third largest contingents in the non American group have announced just within this last week their decisions to begin withdrawing their troops soon after the U.S. election.

We were told by the President that war was his last choice. It is now clear from the newly available evidence that it was always his first preference. His former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill, confirmed that Iraq was Topic A at the very first meeting of the Bush National Security Council, just ten days after the inauguration. “It was about finding a way to do it, that was the tone of the President, saying, ‘Go find me a way to do this.’”

We were told that he would give the international system every opportunity to function, but we now know that he allowed that system to operate only briefly, as a sop to his Secretary of State and for cosmetic reasons. Bush promised that if he took us to war it would be on the basis of the most carefully worked out plans. Instead, we now know he went to war without thought or preparation for the aftermath – an aftermath that has now claimed more than one thousand American lives and many multiples of that among the Iraqis. He now claims that we went to war for humanitarian reasons. But the record shows clearly that he used that argument only after his first public rationale – that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction -- completely collapsed. He claimed that he was going to war to deal with an imminent threat to the United States. The evidence shows clearly that there was no such imminent threat and that Bush knew that at the time he stated otherwise. He claimed that gaining dominance of Iraqi oil fields for American producers was never part of his calculation. But we now know, from a document uncovered by the New Yorker and dated just two weeks to the day after Bush’s inauguration, that his National Security Counsel was ordered to “meld” its review of “operational policies toward rogue states” with the secretive Cheney Energy Task Force’s “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”

We also know from documents obtained in discovery proceedings against that Cheney Task Force by the odd combination of Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club that one of the documents receiving scrutiny by the task force during the same time period was a detailed map of Iraq showing none of the cities or places where people live but showing in great detail the location of every single oil deposit known to exist in the country, with dotted lines demarking blocks for promising exploration – a map which, in the words of a Canadian newspaper, resembled a butcher’s drawing of a steer, with the prime cuts delineated. We know that Cheney himself, while heading Halliburton, did more business with Iraq than any other nation, even though it was under U.N. sanctions, and that Cheney stated in a public speech to the London Petroleum Institute in 1999 that, over the coming decade, the world will need 50 million extra barrels of oil per day. “Where is it going to come from?” Answering his own question, he said, “The middle east, with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies.”

In the spring of 2001, when Cheney issued the administration’s national energy plan – the one devised in secret by corporations and lobbyist that he still refuses to name – it included a declaration that “the [Persian] Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy.”

Less than two months later, in one of the more bizarre parts of Bush’s policy process, Richard Perle, before he was forced to resign on conflict of interest charges as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, invited a presentation to the Board by a RAND corporation analyst who recommended that the United States consider militarily seizing Saudi Arabia’s oil fields.

The cynical belief by some that oil played an outsized role in Bush’s policy toward Iraq was enhanced when it became clear that the Iraqi oil ministry was the only facility in the country that was secured by American troops following the invasion. The Iraqi national museum, with its priceless archeological treasures depicting the origins of civilization, the electric, water and sewage facilities so crucial to maintaining an acceptable standard of living for Iraqi citizens during the American occupation, schools, hospitals, and ministries of all kinds were left to the looters.

An extensive investigation published today in the Knight Ridder newspapers uncovers the astonishing truth that even as the invasion began, there was, quite literally, no plan at all for the post-war period. On the eve of war, when the formal presentation of America’s plan neared its conclusion, the viewgraph describing the Bush plan for the post-war phase was labeled, “to be provided.” It simply did not exist.

We also have learned in today’s Washington Post that at the same time Bush was falsely asserting to the American people that he was providing all the equipment and supplies their commanders needed, the top military commander in Iraq was pleading desperately for a response to his repeated request for more equipment, such as body armor, to protect his troops. And that the Army units under his command were “struggling just to maintain��relatively low readiness rates.”

Even as late as three months ago, when the growing chaos and violence in Iraq was obvious to anyone watching the television news, Bush went out of his way to demean the significance of a National Intelligence Estimate warning that his policy in Iraq was failing and events were spinning out of control. Bush described this rigorous and formal analysis as just guessing. If that’s all the respect he has for reports given to him by the CIA, then perhaps it explains why he completely ignored the warning he received on August 6 th, 2001, that bin Laden was determined to attack our country. From all appearances, he never gave a second thought on that report until he finished reading My Pet Goat on September 11 th.

Iraq is not the only policy where the President has made bold assertions about the need for a dramatic change in American policy, a change that he has said is mandated by controversial assertions that differ radically from accepted views of reality in that particular policy area. And as with Iraq, there are other cases where subsequently available information shows that the President actually had analyses that he was given from reputable sources that were directly contrary what he told the American people. And, in virtually every case, the President, it is now evident, rejected the information that later turned out to be accurate and instead chose to rely upon, and to forcefully present to the American people, information that subsequently turned out to be false. And in every case, the flawed analysis was provided to him from sources that had a direct interest, financial or otherwise, in the radically new policy that the President adopted. And, in those cases where the policy has been implemented, the consequences have been to detriment of the American people, often catastrophically so. In other cases, the consequences still lie in the future but are nonetheless perfectly predictably for anyone who is reasonable. In yet other cases the policies have not yet been implemented but have been clearly designated by the President as priorities for the second term he has asked for from the American people. At the top of this list is the privatization of social security.

Indeed, Bush made it clear during his third debate with Senator Kerry that he intends to make privatizing Social Security, a top priority in a second term should he have one. In a lengthy profile of Bush published yesterday, the President was quoted by several top Republican fundraisers as saying to them, in a large but private meeting, that he intends to “come out strong after my swearing in, with…privatizing Social Security.”

Bush asserts that – without any corroborating evidence – that the diversion of two trillion dollars worth of payroll taxes presently paid by American working people into the social security trust fund will not result in a need to make up that two trillion dollars from some other source and will not result in cutting Social Security benefits to current retirees. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, run by a Republican appointee, is one of many respected organizations that have concluded that the President is completely wrong in making his assertion. The President has been given facts and figures clearly demonstrating to any reasonable person that the assertion is wrong. And yet he continues to make it. The proposal for diverting money out of the Social Security trust fund into private accounts would generate large fees for financial organizations that have advocated the radical new policy, have provided Bush with the ideologically based arguments in its favor, and have made massive campaign contributions to Bush and Cheney. One of the things willfully ignored by Bush is the certainty of catastrophic consequences for the tens of millions of retirees who depend on Social Security benefits and who might well lose up to 40 percent of their benefits under his proposal. Their expectation for a check each month that enables them to pay their bills is very real. The President’s proposal is reckless.

Similarly, the President’s vigorous and relentless advocacy of “medical savings accounts” as a radical change in the Medicare program would – according to all reputable financial analysts – have the same effect on Medicare that his privatization proposal would have on Social Security. It would deprive Medicare of a massive amount of money that it must have in order to continue paying medical bills for Medicare recipients. The President’s ideologically based proposal originated with another large campaign contributor – called Golden Rule -- that expects to make a huge amount of money from managing private medical savings accounts. The President has also mangled the Medicare program with another radical new policy, this one prepared for Bush by the major pharmaceutical companies (also huge campaign contributors, of course) which was presented to the country on the basis of information that, again, turns out to have been completely and totally false. Indeed the Bush appointee in charge of Medicare was secretly ordered – we now know �� to withhold the truth about the proposal’s real cost from the Congress while they were considering it. Then, when a number of Congressmen balked at supporting the proposal, the President’s henchmen violated the rules of Congress by holding the 15 minute vote open for more than two hours while they brazenly attempted to bribe and intimidate members of Congress who had voted against the proposal to change their votes and support it. The House Ethics Committee, in an all too rare slap on the wrist, took formal action against Tom DeLay for his unethical behavior during this episode. But for the Bush team, it is all part of the same pattern. Lie, intimidate, bully, suppress the truth, present lobbyists memos as the gospel truth and collect money for the next campaign.

In the case of the global climate crisis, Bush has publicly demeaned the authors of official reports by scientists in his own administration that underscore the extreme danger confronting the United States and the world and instead prefers a crackpot analysis financed by the largest oil company on the planet, ExxonMobil. He even went so far as to censor elements of an EPA report dealing with global warming and substitute, in the official government report, language from the crackpot ExxonMobil report. The consequences of accepting ExxonMobil’s advice – to do nothing to counter global warming – are almost literally unthinkable. Just in the last few weeks, scientists have reached a new, much stronger consensus that global warming is increasing the destructive power of hurricanes by as much as half of one full category on the one-to-five scale typically used by forecasters. So that a hurricane hitting Florida in the future that would have been a category three and a half, will on average become a category four hurricane. Scientists around the world are also alarmed by what appears to be an increase in the rate of CO2 buildup in the atmosphere – a development which, if confirmed in subsequent years, might signal the beginning of an extremely dangerous “runaway greenhouse” effect. Yet a third scientific group has just reported that the melting of ice in Antarctica, where 95 percent of all the earth’s ice is located, has dramatically accelerated. Yet Bush continues to rely, for his scientific advice about global warming, on the one company that most stands to benefit by delaying a recognition of reality.

The same dangerous dynamic has led Bush to reject the recommendations of anti-terrorism experts to increase domestic security, which are opposed by large contributors in the chemical industry, the hazardous materials industry and the nuclear industry. Even though his own Coast Guard recommends increased port security, he has chosen instead to rely on information provided to him by the commercial interests managing the ports who do not want the expense and inconvenience of implementing new security measures.

The same pattern that produced America’s catastrophe in Iraq has also produced a catastrophe for our domestic economy. Bush’s distinctive approach and habit of mind is clearly recognizable. He asserted over and over again that his massive tax cut, which certainly appeared to be aimed at the wealthiest Americans, actually would not go disproportionally to the wealthy but instead would primarily benefit middle income Americans and “all tax payers.” He asserted that under no circumstances would it lead to massive budget deficits even though common sense led reasonable people to conclude that it would. Third, he asserted – confidently of course – that it would not lead to job losses but would rather create an unprecedented economic boom. The President relied on high net worth individuals who stood to gain the most from his lopsided tax proposal and chose their obviously biased analysis over that of respectable economists. And as was the case with Iraq policy, his administration actively stopped the publication of facts and figures from his own Treasury Department analysts that contained inconvenient conclusions.” As a result of this pattern, the Congress adopted the President’s tax plan and now the consequences are clear. We have completely dissipated the 5 trillion dollar surplus that had been projected over the next ten years (a surplus that was strategically invaluable to assist the nation in dealing with the impending retirement of the enormous baby boom generation) and instead has produced a projected deficit of three and one half over the same period. Year after year we now have the largest budget deficits ever experienced in America and they coincide with the largest annual trade deficits and current-account deficits ever experienced in America – creating the certainty of an extremely painful financial reckoning that is the financial equivalent for the American economy and the dollar of the military quagmire in Iraq.

Indeed, after four years of this policy, which was, after all, implemented with Bush in control of all three branches of government, we can already see the consequences of their economic policy: for the first time since the four-year presidency of Herbert Hoover 1928-1932, our nation has experienced a net loss of jobs. It is true that 9/11 occurred during this period. But it is equally true that reasonable economists quantify its negative economic impact as very small compared with the negative impact compared with Bush’s. Under other Presidents the nation has absorbed the impact of Pearl Harbor, World War II, Vietnam War, Korean war, major financial corrections like that in 1987 and have ended up with a net gain of jobs nonetheless. Only Bush ranks with Hoover. Confronted with this devastating indictment, his treasury secretary, John Snow, said last week in Ohio job loss was “a myth.” This is in keeping with the Bush team’s general contempt for reality as a basis for policy. Unfortunately, the job loss is all too real for the more than two hundred thousand people who lost their jobs in the state where he called the job loss a myth.

In yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, Ron Suskind related a truly startling conversation that he had with a Bush White House official who was angry that Suskind had written an article in the summer of 2002 that the White House didn’t like. This senior advisor to Bush told Suskind that reporters like him lived “in what we call the reality-based community,” and denigrated such people for believing that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality…that’s not the way the world really works anymore…when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality, judiciously as you will, we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

By failing to adjust their policies to unexpected realities, they have made it difficult to carry out any of their policies competently. Indeed, this is the answer to what some have regarded as a mystery: How could a team so skilled in politics be so bumbling and incompetent when it comes to policy?

The same insularity and zeal that makes them effective at smashmouth politics makes them terrible at governing. The Bush-Cheney administration is a rarity in American history. It is simultaneously dishonest and incompetent.

Not coincidentally, the first audits of the massive sums flowing through the Coalition Provisional Authority, including money appropriated by Congress and funds and revenue from oil, now show that billions of dollars have disappeared with absolutely no record of who they went to, or for what, or when, or why. And charges of massive corruption are now widespread. Just as the appointment of industry lobbyists to key positions in agencies that oversee their former employers has resulted in institutionalized corruption in the abandonment of the enforcement of laws and regulations at home, the outrageous decision to brazenly violate the law in granting sole-source, no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars to Vice President Cheney’s company, Halliburton, which still pays him money every year, has convinced many observers that incompetence, cronyism and corruption have played a significant role in undermining U.S. policy in Iraq. The former four star general in charge of central command, Tony Zinni, who was named by President Bush as his personal emissary to the middle east in 2001, offered this view of the situation in a recent book: “In the lead up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility; at worst lying, incompetence and corruption. False rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our over-stretched military. All of these caused me to speak out...I was called a traitor and a turncoat by Pentagon officials.”

Massive incompetence? Endemic corruption? Official justification for torture? Wholesale abuse of civil liberties? Arrogance masquerading as principle? These are new, unfamiliar and unpleasant realities for America. We hardly recognize our country when we look in the mirror of what Jefferson called, “the opinion of mankind.” How could we have come to this point?

America was founded on the principle that “all just power is derived from the consent of the governed.” And our founders assumed that in the process of giving their consent, the governed would be informed by free and open discussion of the relevant facts in a healthy and robust public forum.

But for the Bush-Cheney administration, the will to power has become its own justification. This explains Bush’s lack of reverence for democracy itself. The widespread efforts by Bush’s political allies to suppress voting have reached epidemic proportions. The scandals of Florida four years ago are being repeated in broad daylight even as we meet here today. Harper’s magazine reports in an article published today that tens of thousands of registered voters who were unjustly denied their right to vote four year ago have still not been allowed back on the rolls.

An increasing number of Republicans, including veterans of the Reagan White House and even the father of the conservative movement, are now openly expressing dismay over the epic failures of the Bush presidency. Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a veteran of both the Heritage Foundation and the Reagan White House, wrote recently in Salon.com, “Serious conservatives must fear for the country if Bush is re-elected…based on the results of his presidency, a Bush presidency would be catastrophic. Conservatives should choose principles over power.” Bandow seemed most concerned about Bush’s unhealthy habits of mind, saying, “He doesn’t appear to reflect on his actions and seems unable to concede even the slightest mistake. Nor is he willing to hold anyone else responsible for anything. It is a damning combination.” Bandow described Bush’s foreign policy as a “shambles, with Iraq aflame and America increasingly reviled by friend and foe alike.”

The conservative co-host of Crossfire, Tucker Carlson, said about Bush’s Iraq policy, “I think it’s a total nightmare and disaster, and I’m ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it.”

William F. Buckley, Jr., widely acknowledged as the founder of the modern conservative movement in America, wrote of the Iraq war, “If I knew then, what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

A former Republican Governor of Minnesota, Elmer Andersen, announced in Minneapolis that for the first time in his life he was abandoning the Republican Party in this election because Bush and Cheney “believe their own spin. Both men spew outright untruths with evangelistic fervor.” Andersen attributed his switch to Bush’s “misguided and blatantly false misrepresentations of the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The terror seat was Afghanistan. Iraq had no connection to these acts of terror and was not a serious threat to the United States as this President claimed, and there was no relation, it is now obvious, to any serious weaponry.” Governor Andersen was also offended, he said, by “Bush’s phony posturing as cocksure leader of the free world.”

Andersen and many other Republicans are joining with Democrats and millions of Independents this year in proudly supporting the Kerry-Edwards ticket. In every way, John Kerry and John Edwards represent an approach to governing that is the opposite of the Bush-Cheney approach.

Where Bush remains out of touch, Kerry is a proud member of the “reality based” community. Where Bush will bend to his corporate backers, Kerry stands strong with the public interest.

There are now fifteen days left before our country makes this fateful choice – for us and the whole world. And it is particularly crucial for one more reason: T The final feature of Bush’s ideology involves ducking accountability for his mistakes.

He has neutralized the Congress by intimidating the Republican leadership and transforming them into a true rubber stamp, unlike any that has ever existed in American history.

He has appointed right-wing judges who have helped to insulate him from accountability in the courts. And if he wins again, he will likely get to appoint up to four Supreme Court justices.

He has ducked accountability by the press with his obsessive secrecy and refusal to conduct the public’s business openly. There is now only one center of power left in our constitution capable of at long last holding George W. Bush accountable, and it is the voters.

There are fifteen days left before our country makes this fateful choice – for us and the whole world. Join me on November 2 nd in taking our country back.

 

 

 

 

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Seymour Hersh's ACLU Keynote Speech Transcribed

July 15, 2004

http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2004/07/post_1.htm
 

Introduction
… The truth is, it's so ironic… the best information we may get about this election may come from a combination of The Control Room, Fahrenheit 9/11, John Sayles, the nightly news from Jon Stewart if some of you watch that. At the height of the prisoner abuse stories, [Jon Stewart] had one of his mock news broadcasters say very seriously to the camera, on the Stewart show, he said, "The important thing is not that we commit torture and abuses, it's that we're a country that doesn't condone torture and abuses" [laughter] — that's a wonderful line.

And so, you start talking about failures of communication, I don't know where we're going to go with this, I can't make you feel happy about where we are. We've got a very important election coming up, probably the most important since, what, 1860. I think it is, and there's nothing I can say to you about any of that. …



So here we are. The bottom line is, by the way, I'm in a tough position because I'm not done reporting on all of this. … It's a tough position because there is more to the story. …
 

Standards for Government Ethics

I guess the way to describe how you look at things is, I don’t know about you, but I have a wife and children, and one of the things that makes life livable is trusting in my partner, never lying to my children and never wanting my children — with the exception of teenage girls [laughter] — to lie to me about anything. …

But basically you know what I’m talking about, the core of how we exist. The way we live — not us, there’s nothing special about us, everybody in the world — we all live, the most important thing in our life is our family structure and the integrity with which we live, and the honesty with which we conduct our life, and the trust with which we have people [sic].

And if you think about it, you begin to understand the bad bargain we have [now]. It’s, it's, it's a condition, a requirement, one that we so desperately live with our own families with that we don’t even begin to levy on the President of the United States and the National Security Advisor. It’s not even a requirement [for them]. We don’t even have any expectation that they’re going to have the same trust and integrity in conducting their affairs as we do in our own personal life.

It’s a bad bargain for us in the commonweal. We don’t even begin — we understand what they are. You heard talking about Henry Kissinger, who, for all of his genius, lied like most of us breathe. And when you’re in a situation like that — is that partisan or non-partisan, I don't know [referring to the ACLU's need to remain non-partisan].

But it’s really a bad bargain. And we live with it pretty happily, we go along, ok another President, another National Security Advisor, Condi Rice in this case — and we know we don’t get the story, and what do they have the right to do? They have the right to send our children, men and women now, in the name of democracy to go kill people and be killed and torture and perhaps be tortured in return, which is always going to be the end result of torture. And so, I think there’s nothing wrong with holding these people to the highest possible standards. It doesn’t happen enough. But that’s what we have to do.

 

Scope of the Crimes of Torture

We don’t know — I’ll tell you right now, the reason I’m saying all that — is what happened at Abu Ghraib, I can just tell you this, and I have to do the reporting on this and you have to wait for me to do it — but it’s not about an academic debate in long essays between the Justice Department and the White House, legal essays about where the Geneva Convention ends and the Presidential prerogative begins.

What we had was a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the President and the Vice President, by this administration anyway, I can say that, I can’t say who did it.

The only way to look at this is as war crimes. What happened are war crimes. I’m not saying it’s there yet. It’s not there yet. But that’s where it has to go. We have to stop looking at it as some sort of academic debate about Geneva Conventions and really begin to look at it in terms of: Who did what? Who died? Why did he die? Are there people missing? Are we doing what the Brazilians and Argentineans did back two or three decades ago and actually into this decade? Are we disappearing people? Are there people being tortured knowingly in advance that the torture was going to put their lives in peril and is nothing being done to relieve their suffering to the point that they die?

Is there mens rea? Is there guilty knowledge? Is it a crime? And we’re going to get there, because I think that’s where it’s sort of ineluctably going, you can just see on and on and on, and we’re not there yet. I’m not telling you I can take it there, I’m just telling you that that’s the way you have to look at it.

 

Repercussions in the Arab World

I’ll tell you what an Israeli told me. And the Israelis as you know — a very tough, hard-nosed Israeli told me at one point, about all this — he said, you know, we hate the Arabs. This is a guy who spent his career in the intelligence service and, you know, his hands are bloody. He said, we hate the Arabs, and the Arabs hate us, and before 1948, we’ve been killing Arabs, and they’ve been killing us. But I have to tell you something, he said. We know somewhere down the line, we’re going to have to live with these people, much as we can’t stand them, they’re going to have to be our neighbors. And if we had done in our prisons to the Arabs what you have done to the Arabs in your prisons, we couldn’t live that way.

And so the bottom line is we have started something that we don’t know [what] the end, the bottom line, is of this treatment, as more details come out.

And I can tell you it was much worse, and the government knows it's much worse, than they’ve even told you. There are worse photos, worse videotapes, worse events. To The New Yorker’s credit we decided, not for censorship, but just how much can you, how much can you levy on Arab manhood, in public?

But Arabs, I will tell you, it’s not just the radicals — and we all know how this policy, this administration’s policies, in Afghanistan, too, and also of course in Iraq, has really done exactly the contrary of what they said they were going to do. They haven't ended the war of terrorism — they’ve expanded it — that’s nothing obvious [sic], that’s totally clear.

But Arabs now, moderate Arabs, Arabs that normally would be doing the kind of — as you know, the overwhelming, the vastly overwhelming percentage of moderate Arabs deplored what happened to this country on 9/11, as much as anybody here — but those Arabs we’ve lost. They see us as a sexually perverse society. The sexual stuff we did to them is seen as just perversion. And I think we’re going to have consequences for a long time to come. There’s an awful lot of respect in the Arab world for Americans, I travel there all the time, and American Jews even, it’s not, nobody’s going to — I wouldn’t walk around Baghdad — but most of the world is very safe. We have a lot of problems.

 

The Neocon Cult

So, rather than deal with the obvious stuff about Bush and this election and what it means, I think the real question we have to answer, and this is the question I'm inchoate about, I don't have an answer …

The question we have to say to ourselves is, ok, so here’s what happens, a bunch of guys, 8 or 9 neoconservatives, cultists — not Charles Manson cultists, but cultists — get in and it's not, with all due respect to Michael Moore, and you’ll read it, his movie’s fine, but it’s not about oil, it’s not even about protecting Israel, it’s about a Utopia they have, it’s about an idea they have. Not only about — democracy can be spread — in a sense, I would say Paul Wolfowitz is the greatest Trotskyite of our time, he believes in permanent revolution, and in the Middle East to begin, needless to say.

And so you have a bunch of people who've been for 10, 12 years have been fantasizing since the 1991 Gulf War on the way to resolve problems. And of course Israel will be a beneficiary and etc. etc., but the world in their eyes — this was Utopia. And so they got together, this small group of cultists, and how did they do it? They did do it. They’ve taken the government over. And what’s amazing to me, and what really is troubling, is how fragile our democracy is. Look what happened to us.

[In the press, there is] self-censorship, which is the beacon word for me, you know I always think it comes more, you know there is a corporate mentality out there, but there’s also a tremendous amount of self-censorship among the press. It’s like a disease.

But also — they not only — they took away the edge from the press, they also muzzled the bureaucracy, they muzzled the military, they muzzled the Congress, and it’s an amazing feat. We’re supposed to be a democratic society, and all of those areas of our democracy bowed and scraped to this group of neocons who advocated a policy.

 

General Shinseki

You know, we all know the story of how mad they got at General Shinseki, who I think is going to run for the Senate in Hawaii and should, for Inouye’s seat, he’s a great general. The important thing about Shinseki for me, and this is just heuristic, I don’t know this, the important thing about Shinseki is this. He testifies before the Gulf War we’re going to need a couple hundred thousand troops and everybody, Wolfowitz and the others — I count Wolfowitz, I lead with him, because he’s sort of the, he’s the genius in the background, he’s the man, very articulate, very persuasive — and so Shinseki testifies we need a co